Long Bright River

Mickey Fitzpatrick is a 31-year-old veteran of the Philadelphia police force. Because her regular partner is recovering from an injury, she is currently breaking in a new rookie partner whom she doesn’t like very much. His name is Eddie Lafferty. Mickey says of him, “He likes to talk—already I know more about him than he’ll ever know about me—and he’s a pretender” (8).

The two of them are investigating a tip about a dead body in the Kensington district of Philadelphia. It’s a poverty-stricken area where drug addicts and prostitutes congregate. When they arrive, they find a man in a hooded sweatshirt lurking around. Mickey assumes he is a local junkie and tells him to move away. Nearby, the two officers find the dead body of a female in her twenties. Mickey is relieved that the body doesn’t belong to her estranged sister, Kacey, a drug addict. Everyone concludes the Jane Doe in the field died of an overdose. Mickey notices burst blood vessels, which are signs of strangulation, and she believes the victim was actually murdered.

Mickey recalls when her sister first overdosed from drugs at the age of 16 in 2002. As the elder by a year and a half, Mickey looks out for Kacey, but the latter is always taking risks and defying authority. After their parents’ death, their grandmother, Gee, raised the sisters.

Mickey remembers 2002: Mickey pesters Gee to call the police once her sister has been missing for a week. Taking matters into her own hands, Mickey tracks down one of Kacey’s friends at a drug house and finds her sister there, seemingly lifeless. Mickey is panics at the thought of losing the only person in the world who matters to her. She says, “To have lost the only other person capable of shouldering all the weight that had been assigned to us at birth. The weight of our dead parents” (28). Paramedics arrive and revive Kacey. Mickey then realizes how much her sister hates her for bringing her back to life.

In the present, Mickey questions her boss, Sergeant Ahearn, about the girl found in Kensington. Ahearn is intimidated by Mickey and doesn’t like her. He says the autopsy was inconclusive and dismisses the case as Homicide’s problem.

Mickey turns her attention to domestic affairs. She and her son, Thomas, have recently moved to a new apartment. He doesn’t like his new babysitter. Upon returning from work, Mickey learns from her neighbor, Mrs. Mahon, that a man came looking for them. She assumes the visitor is her ex-boyfriend Simon and tells the neighbor that she doesn’t want this person to know where they live. When she goes inside to greet her son, she thinks, “Thomas, at almost five, is tall and strong and barreling, and already too smart for his own good. He’s handsome, too. As smart and as handsome as Simon. But unlike his father, so far, he is kind” (45).