Dolittle dispatched one of the uniforms to talk to the old man whose house was behind the fence where the murder had occurred. The man, a gnarled-faced gentleman who went by R. T., said he knew the victim and nothing else. He had let his dog, Brave, back in the house at a late hour but had seen “not a thing.”

“Your dog stays out all night?” said the uniform.

“Usually he does. That’s my security guard right there. But he was barking at nothin’ last night. Leastways nothin’ I could see. I was up there on my stoop with the kitchen lights shining behind me. All’s my eyes could make out was the black of night.”

“Why’d you let him in?”

“Dog was barkin’ at a ghost, far as I could tell, and he wouldn’t stop. I was afraid Brave was gonna wake someone up.”

After getting a statement from the neighbor, Detective Dolittle went to notify the victim’s parents. He found the mother, Alethea Strange, drinking a cup of coffee at an eating table, wearing a uniform-style dress, preparing, she said, to head up into Maryland to her “Wednesday house,” where she worked as a domestic. The father, Darius Strange, had already left for his job as a grill man in a diner. The woman broke down briefly when Dolittle gave her the news, Dolittle standing before her, jingling the change in his pocket and staring impotently at the floor. She then composed herself, rose abruptly from the table, and phoned her husband. When she was done talking to him, she phoned her younger son.

FRANK VAUGHN HAD closed his fresh Petworth homicide the night before, the way most cases got closed: via a snitch. A parole violator brought in on a marijuana charge offered up the killer, with whom he regularly played cards, and cut a deal. Uniforms arrested the suspect at his grandmother’s apartment without incident. Vaughn interrogated the suspect at the station, but it was a formality, as he had already signed a confession he had written out, in pathetic grammar, before Vaughn arrived.

“Why’d you do it, Renaldo?” said Vaughn.

“Does it matter?”

“That’s up to your attorney to decide. But I just like to know. Off the record.”

Renaldo shrugged. “Man was fuckin’ my woman. I don’t even like the bitch, understand? But there’s some things you don’t do. I heard about it at a card game; all these boys I run with… everyone knew but me. Didn’t even bother me he was jammin’ this girl. He just shouldn’t have talked so free, is all it was. It shamed me. When a man don’t have his pride…”

He ain’t got nothin’ at all, thought Vaughn, tuning out Renaldo’s voice and finishing it off in his head. He’d only heard this story, in variation, about a hundred and fifty times. He had thought this might be the interesting exception here, something different to make his buddies down at the FOP bar laugh, but it was always the same. Now Renaldo, a triple offender, just like the solid citizen who’d ratted him out, was going to do twenty-to-life for defending the honor of a bitch he didn’t even like.

“Take it easy, Renaldo,” said Vaughn before leaving him in the box. At least you got your pride.

Now Vaughn was free to work the hit and run. He had pulled an eight-to-four and his plan was to pursue it all day.

At around nine, Vaughn was still in the station, drinking coffee and having a smoke, sitting at his desk, scanning the night sheets, when he read about the fresh victim down in Park View. Alethea’s oldest was named Dennis. Had to be the same man.

He picked up the phone, talked to Olga, gave her the news, listened to Olga’s theatrics, and got Alethea’s phone number. He phoned the Strange residence, and a man came on the line. He recognized the voice.

“Strange residence.”

“Frank Vaughn here.”

“Detective.”

“I just heard. It is your brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“My sympathies to you and your family. Please tell your mother that I was… that she’s in my thoughts.”

“I will.”

“Young man?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the primary? Do you know?”

“A Bill Dolittle.”

“Okay. You tell him I’m at his disposal, hear? And the same goes for you and your parents. Anything you need. Anything, understand?”

“Thank you, Detective,” said Strange, and hung up the phone.

Billy Do-nothing. That was a bad break. Unless the perp walked right into the station with pen in hand, or there was a forthcoming wit, or there was a plea-out involved, the case would go cold.

Vaughn rubbed at his face. The young man, Derek, had seemed unemotional, considering. Well, he was police. Some of them just felt they had to put up a hard front all the time. Secretly, Vaughn was relieved that the son, and not the mother or father, had picked up the phone. But he hoped Derek would pass on the message that he had called.

Vaughn sat there smoking his cigarette. What he knew of Dennis Strange came from Alethea, and Alethea gave up little of her private life. He remembered vaguely that the older son had been in the service, but that was long ago. There was little else to recall. When Alethea spoke of her sons at all, it was usually about Derek, the cop. He wondered if Dennis, the murder victim, had shamed her in some way or if it was just that Derek gave her such pride.

Vaughn crushed his L amp;M out in the ashtray before him, found an unmarked out in the lot, and went to work.

He visited several garages on the D.C. border. He went back down to 14th and recanvassed a few of the neighbors who lived close to the accident scene, and turned up jack.

Shortly thereafter, he sat at the lunch counter in the Peoples on Georgia and Bonifant, eating a burger-and-fries platter and washing it down with a chocolate shake, his basic early lunch. The steel cup used to make the shake sat next to his glass. The soda jerks here didn’t pour the extra out and waste it like they did at other five-and-dimes, and that was why Vaughn always came back.

He pushed away his plate and lit a smoke. When he was done with it, he took his notebook and pen out of his inside jacket pocket, went to a wooden phone booth in the drugstore, dropped a dime in the slot, and got Scordato, his PG County cop friend, on the line.

“Marin, it’s Vaughn.”

“Hound Dog, how’s it hangin’?”

“Straight down the middle,” said Vaughn. “Gimme somethin’, will you?”

“Get a pen.”

Vaughn drove into PG County. He visited a garage off Riggs Road, in Chillum. He got shrugs and the usual passive hostility. His next stop was a place near Agar Road, in West Hyattsville, near the Queens Chapel Drive-in, an unmarked garage on a gravel road set behind a strip of speed and tire shops.

Vaughn parked behind a Dodge Dart, a plum-colored GT with mag wheels. A Hi Jackers decal and another reading “WOOK: K Comes Before L,” were affixed to the rear window. He studied the car as he passed it and headed for the garage.

Vaughn walked through the open bay door. A white guy and a colored guy, both good sized, had their heads under the hood of an all-stock, pearl-finish Chevelle SS. “Windy” came from a radio set high on a shelf.

The white guy, light and freckled, wearing coveralls cut off at the shoulders, a cigarette dangling from his lips, stood free as Vaughn cleared his throat. The colored guy’s eyes came up, but only for a moment, returning his attention to the Chevy’s water pump, illuminated by a droplight. He worked a flathead to a clamp, tightening it around a hose. Vaughn saw homemade tattoos, probably done with a heated wire, on both of his forearms.

“How’s it goin’ today?” said Vaughn.

“We help you?” said the white guy, real chipper voice, smiling, looking Vaughn over, making him as a cop.

“I hope so,” said Vaughn, badging the white guy, replacing the badge case inside his jacket. “Frank Vaughn, MPD. I’m lookin’ for a Patrick Millikin.”

“You found him.”

“Can I get a minute?”