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Her pen flies through the air and hits the living room wall with a sharp clack before clattering unceremoniously to the floor.
Amy Santiago is frustrated, more frustrated even than when Marcia Grossman beat her (by a smidge) for high school valedictorian. She’s attempting to relax on the couch with the daily crossword puzzle after a long day at work, and it’s not going well, to say the least. She hasn’t had much time to puzzle it up lately; she’s been pretty all-consumed by work and trying to step into her new, challenging role as a supervisor. She figured she could jump right back into solving the crossword after a few days away without missing a beat, maybe even catch a typo or two, but reality is not living up to her sky-high expectations.
She throws the newspaper down on the coffee table and stews silently, secretly glad that Jake isn’t here to witness her small tantrum. He’s working through a string of burglaries that he’s so close to solving, so he’s spending his second night in a row at the precinct with Charles as they comb through leads and build the case. She’s excited for him – she loves how he throws himself into the job he loves with everything he has – but she can’t help but be slightly envious.
She loves being a sergeant and she’s thankful every day for the promotion, but working with the beat cops on the fourth floor, far away from the action she used to be in the thick of in the detectives’ bullpen, is harder than she ever could have imagined. Solving puzzles is something she’s loved ever since she was a little girl and her dad would let her climb on his lap to help him with the New York Times crossword each night before bedtime. The thrill of a well-earned solve gives her a rush of adrenaline unmatched by any form of exercise and she would be lying if she said she didn’t miss that part of her job. She only gets so much joy from handing out patrol shift assignments; shaping a schedule until it’s absolutely perfect just isn’t cutting it anymore.
She sighs and drags herself from the couch to retrieve the pen she carelessly cast aside, plopping it on top of the half-finished crossword on her way to bed. She doesn’t sleep well that night, missing Jake’s warmth and nostalgic for the past, allowing herself to wallow for the night.
Her feelings of inadequacy persist the next morning, however, much to her chagrin. So, she decides to break out her full arsenal: Sudoku books she ordered online straight from Japan, the big book of crosswords Rosa gave her last year for Christmas and an intricate ten-thousand-piece jigsaw of Monet’s garden that’s been sitting dormant in her closet for over a year. She spends her entire day off trying to finish something, anything, to no avail. Every time she gets stuck on one puzzle, she exchanges it for a new one, losing herself in a vicious, never-ending cycle.
When Jake arrives home that evening, exhausted beyond belief and eager to cuddle on the couch with his wife for the first time in two days, he’s greeted with the sight of said wife painstakingly sorting through a giant pile of puzzle pieces and swearing quietly to herself. Her hair is a mess of small braids and she has yet to change out of her pajamas even though it’s well past sundown – both blatant signs that Amy is headed for a full-on meltdown.
Jake sets his messenger bag down on one of the only dining chairs not obscured by jigsaw pieces and approaches with caution. “Hey, babe. What’s going on?”
She looks at him, startled, braids swinging wildly behind her. She smiles brightly when she sees it’s him. “Welcome home, babe! I missed you.”
He eyes the puzzles littering their dining room table and cocks a skeptical eyebrow. Next to the giant pile of puzzle pieces, Jake can see a stack of Sudoku books and a week’s worth of New York Times issues opened up to the daily crossword. “Are you sure? You look like you’ve been pretty busy without me.”
She flushes as she looks at the chaos surrounding her, as if she’s just now seeing it for the first time, and looks back at him sheepishly. “I may have gotten a little carried away.”
Jake immediately walks over to her and gently pulls her from the clutter towards the comfort of their couch so they’re sitting side-by-side. “Want to talk about what’s turned you into an episode of Hoarders? Ames, you haven’t stress-braided your hair in months.”
She looks at her puzzle pile across the room and back at him. His thumb swipes over her knuckles in a steady, soothing pattern and she feels the anxiety that’s been tightening around her heart for the past twenty-four hours begin to loosen with his touch.
She sighs. “It’s so stupid.”
“I bet it’s not,” he counters.
She takes a deep breath, the hand not clasped in his fidgeting with the hem of her old Academy t-shirt. “I love being a sergeant, you know that.” He nods, gaze firmly on hers. “I just – I miss being a detective, like way more than I thought I would. I guess I just wanted to feel like myself again, or my old self, so I thought solving a puzzle would help. But it’s been a day and I can’t seem to figure anything out, and maybe I’m never going to feel like me again.”
He squeezes her hand. “Babe, you’re still the same person you’ve always been, you’re just a little more badass now.” She scoffs. “I’m serious! Going from a detective to a sergeant is big and you’re still getting used to it, but not being able to put together a jigsaw puzzle doesn’t mean you aren’t you. Those things are insane – I’m pretty sure my mom has one half-finished in her attic from 1997.”
She laughs and burrows into his side. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer and softly kissing her temple. She looks up at him and says, “You’re right, I’m being ridiculous. I’m sure it’ll get easier the longer I’m in the job.”
He grins and rests his head on hers. “See? You’re already starting to sound like the Amy I know and love.”
The next night, they’re side-by-side in their tiny kitchen, chatting about their days and unloading their Chinese takeout for dinner. Now that they don’t work directly across from one another anymore, they’ve found that they have so much to say to each other once 5pm rolls around.
“Has Jennings stopped inviting you to join his book club yet?” Jake takes the mushu pork out its plastic bag confines and moves to the cabinet to retrieve some plates. Amy refuses to eat directly out of takeout containers and he’s been banned from doing so since the tzatziki-sauce-and-throw-pillow incident of 2016.
Amy, pulling silverware from the drawer next to him, groans. “Oh god, no. I keep telling him that it’s inappropriate for us to hang out after work but I think I might just have to tell him that I’m busy on Wednesday nights so he’ll stop.” Jake chuckles; Gary is such an Amy.
They move their food to the dining table. “Anyway, how was your day? Did you and Charles make any progress on the burglaries?”
“No, we can’t prove Walsh was at the second crime scene so I think we’ve officially hit a wall.” He angrily stuffs a piece of fried shrimp into his mouth before pausing to chew thoughtfully, watching his wife as she neatly spoons herself some fried rice.
He swallows and quickly puts down his fork. “Actually, Charles and I were thinking it might be good to get another set of eyes on the case. Would you want to take a look? I can show you the files tomorrow at the precinct.”
She stops loading her plate with food and stares at him. “Jake, I shouldn’t. You’re going to solve it; you’ve just hit a rut.”
“So have you,” he counters. She sighs and fixes him with a disbelieving glare. “I mean it, Ames, you’re the smartest person I know. Please take a look at the case files? For me?” He twists his face into an exaggerated puppy-dog pout – his secret weapon.
Amy tries to fight the smile forcing its way onto her face but fails miserably. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll take a look at them tomorrow if I have time.”
Jake pumps his fist in victory, but Amy knows her husband. His memory is worse than a goldfish’s; chances are, he’ll forget all about her concession and she’ll be off the hook.
However, when Amy returns to her desk after her daily briefing the next morning, she finds a thick case file labeled ‘Walsh’ nestled on her keyboard that wasn’t there before. Jake must have snuck upstairs and left it for her knowing she wouldn’t take a look unless forced. She sighs and shuffles it to the side of her desk so she can start on her pile of paperwork.
She works diligently for the next hour before she can’t concentrate any longer, the manila folder taunting her from her right. She hauls it in front of her and opens it, her first case file in over six months. She inhales the familiar folder smell and revels in the feeling of looking through the fragments of a complex case. She spends the next two hours rifling through crime scene photos, alibis and witness statements, thrilled and excited by the familiarity of it all.
For the first hour, she’s completely stumped. David Walsh, the main suspect, can be tied in some small way to every Park Slope jewelry store burglary in the last month – except for one. His alibi for the second burglary is airtight and officers weren’t able to recover any DNA at the scene. Knowing from personal experience that DNA isn’t completely infallible, Amy turns her attention to the security camera feeds.
In most of the burglaries, the cameras had been turned off before the thefts occurred, but they were left on in the second store. Maybe Walsh was trying to throw authorities off his scent by breaking the pattern. Pouncing on that thought, Amy loads the feed from the second store on her computer and quickly sifts through footage from the night of the break-in. She notices almost immediately that the camera’s viewpoint shifts ever-so-slightly over the span of a few hours until it faces the wall. This had to have been an inside job; only an employee would have had access to the security feeds. Thirty minutes of meticulous research proves that David Walsh’s former brother-in-law works at the jewelry store and has a shaky alibi for the night in question.
Amy stares at her notes for a moment in disbelief, adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream. She sprints downstairs with her notes and quite literally runs into her husband at the elevators.
“Jake, Walsh’s brother-in-law – “
Jake gently cuts her off. “Take a look in the holding cell.”
Amy, bewildered, turns to look and, sure enough, David Walsh is scowling in the holding cell, right next to his former brother-in-law turned partner-in-crime.
Her jaw drops and she turns back to her husband, who’s smiling her favorite close-lipped smile, eyes twinkling. That’s when it dawns on her.
She narrows her eyes at him. “You knew Walsh had been working with his brother-in-law when you left me the file.”
He tries but fails to hold in a laugh. “I did. Charles and I cracked it this morning.”
She’s speechless for a minute, irritation and confusion clouding her thoughts. She could have been working ahead on paperwork or checking in with her squad in the field, but instead she spent her entire morning working through a closed case. “Why did you leave it for me then?”
He gently grabs her shoulders and smiles down at her, and she briefly marvels at their slight height difference, more apparent now that she can’t wear her heeled boots to work. “Ames, you solved a puzzle! Just because you’re not a detective anymore doesn’t mean you aren’t still you. Now, you can go back to kicking ass as a sergeant without beating yourself up for leaving your old job behind.”
Amy kind of wants to cry but that would be extremely unprofessional in the workplace, so she flings her arms around him instead, feeling his arms clasp tightly around her back in return. “Thank you,” she says, voice muffled by his leather jacket. “You’re the best husband I’ve ever had.”
“Right back at you, Ames.”