The word hangs in the air between us, heavy with implications I can't let myself explore. Not yet. Not here in this concrete tomb with Casey's eager face staring at me through a phone screen.
"You're not supposed to be telling me this, remember?" I say, but my voice lacks the sharp edge it should carry. Instead, there's something almost indulgent in my tone, like a teacher gently correcting a favorite student.
Casey laughs nervously, the sound bouncing off the garage walls. "Yeah, but you don't gossip. You're like…the safest vaultI know. Besides, it's not like you're going to run to the press or anything."
She’s not wrong, of course. Idon'tgossip. Vault, though? That paints a picture a touch too magnanimous to be true. I collect information, file it away, use it when it serves my purposes. Still, Casey doesn't need to know that her trust in my discretion isn’t the wisest.
"What kind of bizarre?" I ask, leaning slightly into the camera's frame.
Casey's eyes practically sparkle with mischief. "Okay, so you know how we always tell people that crime scenes are nothing like TV shows? That real forensics is boring and methodical and definitely not glamorous?"
"Mm-hmm." I can already tell this is going somewhere ridiculous.
"Well, yesterday we processed a scene that was basically straight out of a really twisted sitcom." Casey shifts excitedly, nearly knocking over a coffee cup in the process. "Guy named Harold Brennan, sixty-eight years old, found dead in his kitchen. Natural causes—massive heart attack."
"That doesn't sound particularly bizarre, Casey."
"Oh, I'm just getting started." Casey grins wickedly. "So, Mr. Brennan was apparently in the middle of making breakfast when he croaked. Pancakes, specifically. Except when we arrived, there were seventeen pancakes arranged around his body. Seventeen. Perfect little towers, each exactly four pancakes high, syrup drizzled in precise geometric patterns."
I blink. "I'm sorry, what?"
"It gets better! His wife comes home from her book club, finds Harold face-down in pancake batter, and instead of calling 911 immediately, she spends forty-five minutes finishing hisbreakfast project." Casey's voice rises with delighted incredulity. "She told the responding officers that Harold was 'very particular about his pancakes' and she didn't want them to go to waste."
Despite myself, I feel my lips twitching upward. "She continued cooking pancakes around her husband's dead body?"
"For forty-five minutes! She even used different syrups—maple, blueberry, strawberry—because apparently Harold had very specific opinions about syrup-to-pancake ratios." Casey dissolves into giggles. "Dr. Martinez nearly had an aneurysm trying to process the scene. There's pancake batter in places pancake batter should never be, and Mrs. Brennan kept apologizing for the mess while asking if we wanted to take some stacks home."
The image is so absurd that I can't help the laugh that escapes. "Please tell me you have photos."
"Oh, we have photos. Beautiful, evidence-quality photographs of what is possibly the most politely disturbed crime scene in departmental history." Casey wipes her eyes, still chuckling. "Mrs. Brennan even left us a note with Harold's 'secret recipe' because she thought we might want to 'honor his memory properly.'"
"Did anyone take her up on the offer?"
"Jenkins did. Took three stacks home and said they were the best pancakes he'd ever had." Casey's grin turns wicked. "Though he did mention they tasted a little like formaldehyde, which really killed the mood."
I shake my head, genuinely amused despite myself. "Poor woman. Grief makes people do strange things."
"That's just it, though—she wasn't really grieving. At least, not in any way I recognized." Casey's expression growsthoughtful. "She seemed more…relieved? Like Harold dying mid-pancake was somehow exactly what she expected from forty-three years of marriage. She kept saying things like 'typical Harold' and 'he always did have to make everything complicated.'"
Something darker flickers in my chest at that observation. The resigned acceptance of a woman who's spent decades managing someone else's obsessions, even in death. There's something almost beautiful about Mrs. Brennan's response—the way she honored her husband's compulsions while simultaneously revealing their absurdity.
"Sounds like Harold was quite the character," I say carefully.
"According to the neighbors, he once spent six months reorganizing their entire house based on the Dewey Decimal System. Books, kitchen supplies, clothing—everything had a numerical classification." Casey shakes her head in wonder. "Mrs. Brennan told us she's thinking about keeping the pancake tradition going. Every Tuesday morning, seventeen pancakes, just like Harold would have wanted."
"A shrine made of breakfast food."
"Exactly! Though honestly, after seeing how methodical her pancake construction was, I think she might have been enabling his compulsions for decades. The woman has pancake-making down to a science."
"Seventeen pancakes is oddly specific."
"Right? That's what I keep thinking about. Not sixteen, not twenty. Seventeen. Like it meant something to him." Casey's expression grows contemplative. "Dr. Martinez thinks I'm overthinking it, but there's something almost ritualisticabout the whole thing. The precision, the patterns, the way Mrs. Brennan just…continued the work."
There's something fascinating about people who create order through compulsion, who find meaning in repetition and control. Harold Brennan's pancake obsession may seem absurd on the surface, but beneath it lies a deeper truth that speaks to the human need to impose structure on chaos. Even if that structure only makes sense to the person creating it.
"Maybe the number mattered to him," I suggest. "Anniversary date, age when something significant happened, biblical reference. People rarely choose arbitrary numbers for their compulsions."
"See? This is why I call you. You get it." Casey grins at me through the screen. "Mrs. Brennan couldn't tell us why seventeen was important, but she said Harold was very specific about it. Had to be exactly seventeen, arranged in a specific pattern around the kitchen island."
