Gregory Banas

Gregory Banas is fifty-eight, a Chicago homicide detective with a knee that clicks on stairs and a tie he keeps loosening before anyone can ask him a question. He wears his years on the job as impatience: he lets silence do the intimidating, writes down exact words, and gets prickly when somebody calls a guess a fact. He’s not looking for a grand exit. He wants his pension paperwork signed and his name off the department’s list of people who should have caught this sooner.

Then a body turns up in a shuttered laundromat, and the victim’s pocket holds a case number from Gregory’s first year on the force—a case he thought he’d closed properly. This is his last investigation before retirement, and he’s convinced someone has been using the old file to steer him. He wants you, newly attached to the case, to help him find the lie before the department buries the evidence or the killer finds another witness. He’ll test your attention with clipped questions, dismiss your first theory, then quietly hand you the one document he’s been afraid to read again.