“I understand,” she said. Dan was listening intently to her end of the call, but she didn’t think he could hear Butch.

“Here’s the deal, okay? No way Ramirez’s prints got on that can legitimately,” Butch said. “It couldn’t have happened when Ramirez was working the crime scene. You see, my boys got to the scene first, before any other cops. The initial call came from the fire department. Ramirez only showed up afterwards. Frankly, I have no idea who the hell called him, but it wasn’t us.”

“So what does all that mean, Butch?”

“We had total control of that crime scene before Ramirez ever set foot in it. We already collected the can before he got there. If those are really his prints, maybe he thinks he can explain them away, but I gotta think they were there from before.”

“Before when?”

“Before. Like during the crime. Unless the fingerprint report is wrong, Ramirez was there when Benson was killed.”

“WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?” DAN ASKED when she hung up.

She’d never been so aware of the muscles in her face. How could she arrange her expression so she didn’t look like she was in complete shock?

She met Dan’s gaze. “Oh, just ballistics stuff,” she said, trying to sound casual.

Dan’s eyes bored into hers. She marveled once again at their exquisite clarity. The eyes of an innocent man. They demanded the truth, made her feel treacherous for deceiving him. She told herself it was merely a physical thing, that she shouldn’t be swayed by it.

“You’re lying, I can tell,” he said. “Are you holding something back from me on our investigation?”

“Of course not,” she said, but her voice came out small and uncertain.

He smashed the heel of his hand on the steering wheel, making her jump.

“What was that for?” she said, annoyed. If he was going to act threatening, she would feel no compunction about misleading him. But he looked over at her with terrible hurt in his face.

“I can’t believe you just looked me in the eye and lied to me,” he said. “I thought we trusted each other. I thought we had something, that we were a team.”

“Hey, pal, let me tell you something,” she said, anger coursing through her veins. “Team is a two-way street. Who’s the one who won’t give up the name of his informant? Who’s the one with his own agenda to protect? On the day you come clean with me, you’ll be justified in acting self-righteous. But today you’re out of line.”

He looked back at the road, shaking his head, whistling through his teeth.

“Well?” she said.

“You’re tougher than you look, you know that?”

“Never doubt it.”

44

DAN DROPPED HER AT HER OFFICE AFTER A HELLISHLY tense ride, claiming he was going to look for Randall and would call once he found him. She got out without a word and slammed the car door. He sped away, not looking back.

As she rode up in the elevator, exhaustion and depression overwhelmed her. She was in the middle of a murder investigation, and everybody assigned to help her was now on her list of suspects. Dan was now on her list of suspects. She had every intention of getting Slice. But she’d never counted on having to do it by herself.

She stepped off the elevator.

“Hey, Melanie!” the guard called from inside his glassed-in booth. “Lady here to see you.”

He pointed to the adjoining small reception area, where Mary Hale sat ensconced in a chair surrounded by at least twenty cardboard file boxes.

Mary stood up. “I’m responding to your subpoena.”

“So I see,” Melanie replied, startled. “But the subpoena said Mr. Reed should bring the documents to the grand jury himself, tomorrow morning. I don’t have time to review all this now.”

“Mr. Reed isn’t going to show up. He saw your fax and instructed me to start shredding.”

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” Melanie asked. “Destroying documents sought by a subpoena is a crime. Why would he do that, unless he had something to hide?”

“Ms. Vargas, I always realize what I’m saying,” Mary replied.

“So you’re telling me the Securilex deal was rigged?”

“Oh, my, yes.”

“And Mr. Reed knew that?”

“He didn’t just know it, he set it up,” she said, almost gleefully. “When Securilex went public, Mr. Reed structured the IPO. He demanded kickbacks from any investor who wanted to buy large blocks of stock at the insider price. All carefully disguised as legitimate payments, of course.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No, and when he finds out, he’ll do everything in his power to stop me from talking to you. I suggest we get down to business. There are years’ worth of documents in these boxes. It’ll take time to go through them.”

Melanie looked at her watch and then back at the boxes. Even if Securilex had played a role in Jed Benson’s murder, poring through boxes wouldn’t help her track down Slice and get him off the street any faster. On the other hand, if she uncovered enough evidence to arrest Dolan Reed, that could help find Slice. Reed would flip in a heartbeat and start talking. White-collar types like him couldn’t stomach the inside. And since there was at least some chance Reed had ordered the hit, he might have a way to get to Slice. A thought flashed into her mind. A way to get the work done and do a favor for a friend at the same time.

“Ms. Hale, could you wait here for just a moment, please? I’ll be right back,” she said eagerly.

“Certainly.”

Melanie swiped her card key through the magnetic lock and raced to Joe Williams’s office halfway down the hall, stopping, out of breath, in the open doorway. Joe looked up in surprise, chopsticks poised above a white paper carton.

“Joe! Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but I need a few minutes of your time. More than a few, actually.”

“Sure. Everything okay?”

“Yes! Guess what? I have the perfect case for you.”

AFTER SHE SETTLED MARY AND JOE IN A CONFERENCE room, Melanie dashed back to her office to figure out her next step. It wasn’t until then that she noticed her office door was shut tight. Strange, she’d left it wide open, as usual, last night when she went to the retirement dinner. She reached for the doorknob, sensing that something was wrong. Inside, the furniture seemed disturbed, as if someone had moved it and put it back in slightly different places. The cleaning service? Was she getting paranoid?

She walked over to her desk. The second she looked down at it, she knew for sure-the carefully arranged piles covering its surface had been tampered with. Somebody had been here, looked through them. She rifled through the piles frantically. The Bensons’ bank records. Gone! She immediately thought of Rommie Ramirez’s behavior last night. Despite her rebuffs, he’d repeatedly insisted on seeing them. Would he have gone so far as to sneak into her office and steal them? Who else had known about the bank records besides Rommie? At the very least, Bernadette and Dan. Neither of them was above suspicion the way things were going, although certainly Ramirez had expressed the greatest degree of interest. A highly unusual degree of interest, as she recalled.

Wait a minute! She looked through the piles a second time. The fingerprint report identifying Ramirez’s prints on the kerosene can was gone, too. Now she was convinced it was Ramirez. There were a few too many coincidences. Like the fact that he’d sneaked up on her in her office the other night, right before she got chased in the basement. Normally cops couldn’t just come and go as they pleased in the prosecutors’ offices. But Rommie had special access. Bernadette let him in.

Blind with rage, she backed out into the hallway. Before she thought twice, she was in the anteroom to Bernadette’s office.