The snow was gray. That was the first thing Jack noticed when he pulled up to the apartment building on West 25th Street. Not white. Not even the dirty white of a city that had been plowed and salted a hundred times. Gray. The kind of gray that came from decades of coal smoke and industrial exhaust settling into every surface until the sky itself looked like it had been washed in someone else's dishwater.

He killed the engine and sat in the truck for a moment, watching his breath fog the windshield. The heater was broken. It had been broken since November. He could feel the cold coming through the floorboards, working its way up through the soles of his shoes. He didn't fix things. That was one of the things.

The apartment was on the third floor. The hallway smelled like boiled cabbage and old carpet. Lily Chen's door was already open when he got there. Two uniformed officers stood in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. They looked uncomfortable in everything. It was part of the job.

"Morning, Murdock," one of them said.

Jack nodded. He stepped inside.

Lily Chen was sitting at her desk. A cup of tea sat on the corner, cold and untouched. Her face was covered in scratches—parallel lines, deep enough to draw blood, running from her forehead down to her chin. Her fingers were curled inward, nails broken and bloody. She looked like someone who had been trying to scratch something off her skin that wasn't there. Or something that was.

The coroner had already made his call. Cat attack. Unlikely, but possible. Old woman, living alone, maybe a stray got in through the window, maybe she was feeding cats and one got scared, maybe—

Jack didn't believe in maybe. He believed in what he could see. And what he could see was that the scratches were too even. Too controlled. A cat's claws were curved. These were straight. Like something with a flat edge had been dragged across her face. Repeatedly.

He walked around the desk. The apartment was small. Two rooms. A kitchen that hadn't been cleaned in weeks. A living room with a couch covered in a crocheted blanket. The walls were lined with books—English literature, mostly. Austen. Eliot. Woolf. And on the wall above the desk, a painting. A black cat, rendered in dark oils against a pale background. The frame was old. The painting was decent. Maybe two hundred dollars at a flea market. Maybe more.

Jack opened the desk drawer. Empty except for a pen and a stack of unpaid bills. He opened the second drawer. A letter opener. A stapler. A small lockbox, locked. He didn't bother with the lock. He looked around the room for something that might have been a key. Found it in a ceramic bowl by the phone. Brass. Worn.

The lockbox contained a single document. An appraisal. Dated two weeks ago. The painting: estimated value $800 to $1,200. Signed by a man named Robert Eshelman of Eshelman Auction House, Euclid Avenue.

Jack took a photograph with his pocket camera. Put the lockbox back. Closed the drawer.

He asked the neighbors. Mrs. Gable downstairs said Lily was quiet. Never had visitors. Never complained. Taught English at a high school for thirty-five years, retired five years ago, spent her days reading and drinking tea and talking to the cat she used to have until it died last spring.

"I didn't know it was dead," Mrs. Gable said. "She just stopped feeding it. Stopped leaving the window open. One day the bird feeder was empty and I knew."

The other neighbor, a young man named David who sublet the apartment across the hall, said Lily had received a visitor a few days before she died. A man. Older. Quiet. He said the man looked sad.

"Sad?" Jack said.

"He just stood there in the doorway and looked at her like she was someone he used to know. Which, I guess, she was."

Jack asked for a name. David didn't know it. Said the man had a voice like gravel. Said he smelled like medicine.

Carl Schmidt lived ten miles away in a small house on a street that had been renamed three times and still didn't have a number on the mailbox. Jack found the house by asking at the gas station across the street. The attendant knew everyone who bought gasoline in this part of town. Carl Schmidt had been buying the same brand for forty years. Unleaded. Two gallons. Every Tuesday.

The house was small. White paint peeling. The lawn was overgrown. Jack knocked. No answer. He tried the door. Locked. He looked through the window. A living room with a television and a couch and a wall of bookshelves. No people.

He came back the next day. Carl Schmidt was home. He opened the door wearing a cardigan and slippers and looking at Jack with the tired eyes of a man who had already said everything he was going to say and had no energy left to say more.

"Mr. Schmidt? Jack Murdock, Cleveland Police. I need to ask you about Lily Chen."

Carl Schmidt stepped back and let him in. The house smelled like peppermint and old paper.

"She's dead?" he said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Scratches. All over her face."

Carl Schmidt closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. Not crying. Just wet. Like the kind of wet that comes from staring at something too long.

"I told her to change the locks," he said.

Jack waited.

"I didn't do anything to her."

"I know."

"You don't know anything. You're a cop. You know what cops know. Which is nothing until someone tells them everything."

"Then tell me."

Carl Schmidt sat down in a chair by the window. The light from outside made his face look older than it was. Sixty-two years old. Retired pharmacist. Thirty years at the same pharmacy on Euclid Avenue. Same counter. Same stool. Same coffee from the same thermos every day.

"Lily was my teacher," he said. "Not in the way you're thinking. She taught English. I was her student once, thirty years ago, night classes. I was twenty. Working at the pharmacy during the day, going to school at night. She was the one who made me realize that words could do things. Not just communicate. Do things. Change things."

"That's nice. What does it have to do with her death?"

"She had a problem. A man. Harassing her. Showing up at her building. Leaving things on her doorstep. Flowers. Letters. She didn't want to call the police. Said it would make her look weak. So she came to me."

Jack leaned forward. "What did you give her?"

"Something to make him stop. A powder. Applied to the skin, it causes intense itching. Uncontrollable scratching. If you don't stop, the skin breaks and— The idea was to put it on the handle of her front door. He touched the handle, got a little on his finger, licked his finger like guys do, got a little on his lip, and then he'd be scratching for a few hours. Uncomfortable. Humiliating. He'd stop. She thought."

"Did you give it to her?"

"Yes."

"Did she use it?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her in three weeks. She said she'd call me when it was done."

Jack stood up. He walked to the window and looked at the overgrown lawn. The gray sky. The gray street. The gray house.

"Carl. When was the last time you saw her?"

"Four days ago. She called me. Said the man was back. Said she was scared. I told her to call the police. She said she wouldn't. I told her I'd come over. She said no. Said she'd handle it."

"And then she died."

"Yes."

Jack turned back. "You coated the painting, didn't you?"

Carl Schmidt looked at him. His face went very still.

"The painting," Jack said. "The black cat. In her apartment. You coated the frame. Not the door handle. The painting. She sat at her desk. She reached up to touch the painting—maybe she was adjusting it, maybe she was just touching it like people do—and her fingers got the powder. She started scratching. She couldn't stop. And you watched."

Carl Schmidt didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"You loved her," Jack said. It wasn't a question.

"No."

"Yes. You loved her. And you were angry. Because she chose to handle it herself instead of calling the police. Because she didn't trust the system. Because she thought she was stronger than she was. And when you found out she was dead—when you found out the powder killed her instead of just scaring the man away—you came to her apartment and you saw what she'd done. She'd touched the painting. Not the door handle. You'd given her the wrong instructions. Or she'd misunderstood. Or—"

"I don't know what happened."

"You do. You just don't want to say it."

Jack walked to the door. He put his hand on the knob.

"Jack," Carl Schmidt said. "What are you going to do?"

Jack looked back at him. The man was sitting in the chair by the window, looking small and old and tired. A man who had loved a woman he could never have and killed her with a bottle of powder from his own pharmacy.

"I'm going to write a report," Jack said. "And then I'm going to go home and drink a beer and pretend none of this happened. That's what I do. That's what I've always done."

He opened the door and walked out. The hallway smelled like boiled cabbage. The snow outside was still gray.

He drove back to the station in silence. He wrote the report. He filed it. He went home. He opened a beer. He sat in his apartment and watched the gray snow fall against the gray sky and drank the beer and it tasted like nothing.

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