The bar smelled of stale beer and industrial cleaner, a scent Jacob knew better than his own reflection after three years of wiping down these same sticky counters. His hands moved automatically—ice, gin, twist of lime—while his mind kept replaying the voicemail from Detective Ramos: "Your father's case isn't cold, but the leads..." 

The young woman at Table 12 clutched her martini glass like it might sprout wings. Jacob noticed the way her shoulders hunched when the man in the pinstripe suit leaned too close, his fingers leaving sweaty prints on her bare arm. Thirty drinks tonight. Thirty times he'd swallowed the bile rising in his throat since identifying his father's body.

"Another cosmo, sweetheart?" Pinstripe's breath fogged the woman's earrings. His pinky ring caught the neon light as it traveled up her thigh.

The shaker slipped from Jacob's grip. Glass shattered at his feet like the sound of his father's study window breaking. 

"Look, motherfucker—" His own voice startled him, raw as the knuckles he'd split punching drywall after the funeral. "I've got nothing to lose tonight." 

Pinstripe blinked rheumy eyes. "The fuck you say, bartender?"

Jacob vaulted the counter. His dress shoes skidded in spilled vermouth as he grabbed the man's silk tie. The physics came easily—left foot behind Pinstripe's ankle, right hand on his sternum—the same move his dad taught him when bullies called him "mommy's little feminist." 

The crack of skull on hardwood echoed like that single gunshot in the study. Jacob's knees hit the floor beside the twitching body. He registered the wet warmth spreading across his palms before seeing the blood pooling from Pinstripe's nose, ears, the way his left pupil dilated grotesquely. 

"Call 911." Jacob's whisper cut through the sudden silence. Someone screamed. The young woman's mascara streaked her cheeks as she fumbled with her phone. 

Three gunshots. That's what the coroner said killed his father. Three distinct wounds—chest, abdomen, face—just like the three blows Jacob's fists had landed before Pinstripe stopped moving. 

The tile chilled his knees as the bartender's apron absorbed dark stains. Across the room, the emergency exit sign flickered like the faulty bulb in his dad's garage. Somewhere beneath the ringing in his ears, Jacob heard sirens weaving through downtown traffic. 

His fingers found Pinstripe's slack wrist. No pulse. Just like checking his father's carotid artery in that awful moment when he'd known, before the cops confirmed it, that the man who raised him was really gone. 

The first patrol car's headlights striped the blood-smeared floor. Jacob watched his own trembling hands eclipse the light—hands that had mixed cocktails and comforted crying strangers and, twenty-four hours ago, zipped his father into a body bag. 

"Sir?" An officer's flashlight beam trembled across the scene. "Sir, step away from—" 

Jacob lifted his palms toward the light. The blood looked black under the fluorescents. He wondered if ballistics could match the splatter pattern to his father's crime scene photos. If the coroner would note the same contusions on Pinstripe's jaw as those left on his dad's cheekbone. 

The young woman from Table 12 was crying into a detective's shoulder. Jacob watched her shoes—red pumps, one heel broken leave smeared footprints toward the exit. Behind her, the neon cocktail sign buzzed relentlessly: LAST CALL flickering in endless crimson loops. 

Handcuffs clicked cold around his wrists. Jacob inhaled sharply at the scent of the officer's aftershave—the same cheap drugstore brand his dad used. Through the cruiser's window, he watched crime scene technicians unfold a body bag with practiced efficiency. 

Three shots. Three punches. Three paramedics pronouncing time of death. 

The engine turned over. Jacob rested his forehead against the plexiglass partition as downtown streetlights strobed across his reflection a ghost with his father's exhausted eyes. Somewhere in the evidence locker, a detective would compare tonight's security footage to the cold case file gathering dust. 

Jacob closed his eyes. For the first time since finding his dad's body, the screaming in his skull quieted to a whisper.