“You’re right.”

Exhausted, she put her head down on the desk.

Sometime later Ray-Ray Wong shook her shoulder. Melanie lifted her head blearily. A paper clip that had been stuck to her cheek fell to the desktop with a ping.

“Morning, ma’am. The lieutenant asked me to drive you back to the hotel.”

“What? Why? What’s happening?”

“Zero. Nada. Everybody in custody invoked, so they can’t be questioned. I’m tasked with returning you to the hotel for some shut-eye and then heading on to assist in the search at El Yunque.”

Melanie sighed and stood up. She had a headache so bad it felt like there was an ice pick stuck in her eye. Insect bites and thorn pricks on her arms and legs stung like hell. Trevor was missing. Carmen was still missing. Melanie was beginning to think they were probably both still in New York, dead or alive. And here she was in San Juan, at a big fat standstill.

56

MELANIE WASN’T one to stand still for long. After Ray-Ray dropped her off, she packed her suitcase, checked out, and took a cab to the airport. There was a seat available on a 7:00 A.M. Delta flight that got into JFK before lunch, so she handed over her credit card. Sitting in the airplane waiting to take off, she left a voice mail for Dan telling him where she was going, and why.

About five hours later, she stood in the harsh light of the baggage-claim area at JFK waiting to collect her suitcase. Supposedly a blizzard was on the way, and the woman next to her said the airport was closing in half an hour. So much for the prospect of reinforcements for whatever it was she hoped to accomplish here. The rest of the team would be stranded in San Juan. Lucky them. She shivered for fifteen minutes straight standing in the taxi line. On the ride in, New York City did its best impression of hell, with decaying highways, steam rising from enormous fissures in the roads, garbage and graffiti everywhere.

She checked her voice mail from the cab. A message from Detective Frank Leary prompted her to go straight to Noir, Jay Esposito’s club in the Flatiron District. The taxi let her out in front of an industrial-looking brick building on a cramped side street. She hauled her suitcase into the dark nightclub, breathing in cigarettes and stale beer, and found Detective Leary at the bar finishing an interview. When he was done, he escorted her back through the club, past the coat check and restrooms, toward Jay Esposito’s office.

“Apparent suicide. I’m all ready to slap cuffs on the asshole, and he goes and offs himself. Whaddaya gonna do?” Leary shrugged. He was a burly Irishman in his thirties, with a pleasant face and a receding hairline.

“I hate that. You’re just about to arrest somebody and they die. I always feel like I should do the case anyway,” Melanie said.

“Good news is, we think we found the murder weapon from the Deon Green case. Prick used his golf club, you believe that? We got the nine-iron with hair and blood still on it. Sent it to the lab for testing, but it matches up perfect with the bludgeoning MO in the Green case.”

“What makes you think Esposito killed himself?” Melanie asked as they entered the office, which was crowded with cops.

“I got maybe ten, fifteen witnesses saw Esposito come in here alone at eleven-thirty last night. Me and my partner show up around one, find him with a gun in his hand and his brains splattered all over that wall there. M.E. hauled off the body already, but you can see the debris.”

A nauseating amount of chunky tissue and clotted blood adhered to the concrete wall behind Esposito’s desk. Someone had drawn a large circle around it with red Magic Marker.

“I see,” Melanie said, swallowing hard, turning away.

“Found him slumped in the chair. Looks from the trajectory like he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“I have to tell you, Detective, based on what I know about Jay Esposito, he’d never kill himself.”

“Maybe he figured he was going down and he couldn’t stomach the thought of the inside. Some guys can’t,” Leary said.

“Esposito would just hire a big-name lawyer in a two-thousand-dollar suit and try to beat the charges. He wouldn’t go without a fight. I’m sure of it.”

“What are you saying? You think he was murdered and the shooter faked a suicide?”

“Maybe. Who knows?” She paused, thinking about all the evidence that Esposito was being framed by somebody, then said more firmly, “Yes, I do.”

“Got any suspects?”

“Esposito was running a string of heroin mules between San Juan and New York. The suppliers were Colombians. A deal scheduled for last night went south in a big way.”

“That’ll do it. Colombians’ll whack ya as easy as they’ll say hello, and if you fuck with their transactions, forget about it,” Leary said.

“Or it could be somebody else we just haven’t identified yet. Esposito had a lot of enemies. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t take anything for granted.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not. Crime Scene guys’ve been here for hours already, processing the place just like it was a murder.”

“Have they found anything?”

“They’re still working. So far the only item of interest besides the gun is a key they found, like, hangin’ out of Esposito’s jacket pocket. It was just kind of in a funny position, you know? Half in, half out, not natural. Like maybe somebody went through his pockets looking for something and knocked it out by accident.”

“Hmm. Do we know what the key is for?”

“Yeah, actually, that was weird, too. It had a tag with an address in Williamsburg. Not too often you find a key with the address actually written on it, right?”

“Maybe somebody wanted us to find it.”

“Huh. Interesting thought,” Leary said, looking at Melanie with enhanced respect. “Anyways, I dispatched a squad car a little while ago to check the place out. I’m waiting to hear.”

“I’d like to talk to the Crime Scene detectives.”

“Sure thing. Yo, Butch,” Leary called.

Butch Brennan from the Crime Scene team came over to them.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Hey, Butch, what’s up?”

“Ms. Vargas here thinks based on the case she’s doing there’s a chance our boy was whacked,” Leary said. “You got anything points to that?”

Butch smiled. “Funny you should mention that. C’mon outside.”

Butch opened a nearly invisible door faced in the same concrete as the wall. “We dusted the doorknob. Pretty interesting in itself. Nothing. Wiped clean,” he said.

They stepped out into a narrow back alley that was covered in a pristine carpet of fresh snow. A horde of pigeons that had been eating from a Dumpster took off with a flapping of wings.

Butch pointed out several faint indentations in the snow in a small area cordoned off with blue police barricades.

“See here? We photographed three footprints around four o’clock this morning. Right, left, right, leading away from the door. Snow’s picked up since then, so they got kinda blurry, but they were real clear when we shot ’em.”

“Could you tell what kind of shoe made them?” Melanie asked.

“I’m gonna say a male. Looks like a sneaker. More specific than that, we need to consult our footprint guy.”

“When were they made?”

“The snow wasn’t crusted or nothing, so they looked pretty fresh. I’d say late last night. But this is the interesting part. Take a look at the left print here.”

Butch knelt down, took a little handheld broom from his pocket, and began dusting at the middle impression. “Don’t worry. We already photographed it and took samples and everything.”

As Butch carefully removed the top layer of fluffy new snow, a small patch of dark purple appeared.

“Blood,” Melanie said.

“Yup. I’m betting it was the victim’s. Lab’ll confirm that. We’re photographing the black floor inside with the infrared to get a better look at any footprints in the blood spatters. There should be some. He had to pick the blood up someplace, right?”