She stared at the picture for a moment, frowning, waiting for a penny to drop, but nothing came to her. She picked up the photo and moved it over atop the letter.

The second photo showed the second man’s face. He was wearing a cheap rumpled business suit, but again, nobody she recognized. He was handing over a wrapped package to the third man, who was hidden in shadow.

The last photo was clearly taken as the meeting was breaking up, and one of the men was already hidden by the open back door of the club, the other preparing to enter. But it had the face of the third man, who up to that point had been hidden in shadow.

She felt a short-circuit shock of recognition and adrenaline like a fist to the temple. She put both hands on the desk and stood up, staring down at the picture, which showed her ex-partner, Ben McCarthy, staring almost full-face at the camera. She even knew the clothes—a long black trench coat, dress shirt, black slacks. No tie. Ben had never worn a tie, except at trials.

He was sliding the package into the pocket of his trench coat.

She stared at him for a long few seconds, trying to slow down the beating of her heart, and then focused on the date and time.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, and sank back in her chair.

That’s what had been nagging at her about the previous photos. Date and time.

The same date and time that Ben McCarthy had supposedly been on the other side of Kansas City cold-bloodedly putting bullets in the heads of two unarmed men and a woman.

The pictures clearly showed that he’d been behind the Velvet Palace, taking a payoff.

“You son of a bitch,” she amended, in a lost whisper, and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You lied. You lied.”

He hadn’t lied about being innocent—he hadn’t been guilty of the killings—but he hadn’t produced this alibi, either. Probably because it was nearly as bad, and would have unearthed more than just this one incident. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe he’d just plain believed that he could beat this thing, and then it had been too late to change his story.

Besides, two criminals and a payoff in an alley behind a strip club was probably not the world’s most believable alibi.

He hadn’t known about the pictures.

She stared down at them. The date and time. The faces of the men with him.

She’d been looking for evidence of Ben’s innocence all this time, but she hadn’t expected this. She also had no idea who had given it to Manny, or why. Why now?

Authenticate, she warned herself. This is crap without provenance. Without testimony from the guy who took them.

First step would be to find subjects number one and two in the photos.

She put the photos back in the box and carried them out to Pansy’s desk. Pansy, on the phone, looked up, saw her expression, and apologized to whoever was on the other end of the line before she hung up.

“Boss,” she said. That was all, but it was enough. Jazz set the box down on the corner of her desk.

“I need these scanned,” she said. “Evidence rules. I’m going to need some copies to take with me, too.”

Pansy nodded and reached in her desk drawer for latex gloves. “Did Manny already do the printing?”

“Believe me, Manny would have done everything it was possible to do to these photos, short of burning them and sorting through the ashes.” She cleared her throat. Something felt tight in there. “Pansy.”

“Boss?”

“It’s important.”

Pansy nodded solemnly. “I can tell that.”

“Soon as you have them done—”

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “You want me to talk to Lucia?”

“No, I’ll do it.” Because Lucia had contacts at the federal databases, who might or might not, depending on the political climate, be willing to run the faces against their records. But for now, Jazz was burning to do it the old-fashioned way: pounding pavement. “Soon as you can, all right?”

“Doing it right now,” Pansy said, and fired up the scanner. Jazz didn’t wait. She was already on her way back to the office to gear up.

When the knock came on the door, she figured it was Pansy, returning the pictures, but instead it was James Borden bearing gifts.

To be exact, a fruit basket in his right hand that would have looked perfectly at home on Carmen Miranda’s head, and in his right hand, a red envelope.

She blinked at the fruit basket, holstered the gun that she had just loaded and transferred her stare to his face.

Damn, he’s pretty, some traitor part of her brain told her. She ignored it. She wasn’t interested in pretty. She was interested in those photos telling her that Ben McCarthy had been on the other side of town when people were being murdered with his gun.

Borden raised the fruit basket and his eyebrows at the same time. “I come bearing…um, looks like bananas, papayas, some pears…”

“You come bearing trouble,” she said, and crossed to take the basket from his hand. It was heavy. She deposited it on the side table with a frown. “What if I don’t like fruit?”

“It’s good for you,” he said. “Chocolate seemed a little clichéd. But hey, there’s some pear honey in there, too. And pear butter. Are you going to shoot me?”

“Thinking about it,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way out.”

The humor drained out of his face. “Jazz, wait. Look, I’m sorry, but I want—need—to talk to you.”

“Bad timing,” she said grimly, and adjusted the shoulder rig under her loose jacket. “Some other day, maybe, but this one’s just turned a little more interesting than normal, so if you don’t mind—thanks for the fruit, now get the hell out.”

“I can’t. I need to—”

She rounded on him and took a step into his space, spearing him with a glare. “Look, I don’t care what you need, okay? You come here with your—your fruit basket and your stupid red envelope and just expect me to be available? Well, it’s not that easy. I’m an Actor, after all. Free will. Whatever.”

“You’re not the only one,” he said, and it occurred to her that she’d never heard anybody say, one way or another, what exactly James Borden’s role was in this little opera. Spear-carrier? Chorus? Actor? Lead?

Assuming she bought any of their bullshit, which she so very definitely didn’t. She’d gone to the cops and put in her statement about Blankenship’s murder. Lucia had put together an absolutely amazing cover story for why she’d been there on that street at that particular moment, and while detectives like Ken Stewart hadn’t cared for it, they hadn’t been able to poke holes in it, either.

And Wendy Blankenship’s killer was in jail, awaiting trial. That was something.

Sometimes, at weak moments, she wondered how the red envelope had managed to put her there on that street at the right time, if Laskins hadn’t been on the up-and-up with her. But she didn’t wonder too long or worry too much.

Too busy. If everything she did mattered, then she was damn well going to make every moment count.

“Right. I’m going…and, you’re not leaving,” she said, as Borden walked over to her couch and sat down, all arms and legs and angles. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

“I told you, I’m not going without talking to you.” He’d done something new to his hair, she decided. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but then, she hadn’t liked his last hairstyle, either. At least he looked comfortable today, not tied up in the suit and strangled in a tie. Blue jeans and that long-cut leather jacket she remembered from before. She’d never noticed before, but he had on some academic ring or other, something large, round and gold. Harvard or Princeton or something equally Ivy League, probably. He didn’t seem the type to have taken his J.D. at Podunk University.

“Okay, it’s possible that I’m using words that are too short for a smart guy like you to understand, but—”

“We have something we need you to do.”