Zipay flushed but he held his temper. “I didn’t know it was standard procedure for FBI agents to insult people when they want their cooperation.”

“I wasn’t being insulting. I was stating facts. Now I have no interest in busting your balls. All I want is information. If I get it I’ll probably forget the source unless you turn out to be an essential witness in the Ripper murders.”

Zipay mulled over the agent’s proposition. Evans could see that the PI was upset, which surprised him. Finally, Zipay took a deep breath. He looked very uncomfortable.

“Okay, I’ll help, but I don’t know much and the person who does…I don’t want her hassled. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why is that?’

“She was a cop and she’s gone through some really bad times. She was in a mental hospital for a year.”

“What happened?”

“Nobody I’ve talked to knows the whole story. I was off the force by then so I don’t have a lot of the details-and I’ve never asked her for them-but what I know is pretty awful. She was undercover and she got friendly with a meth cook. These were bikers. Very violent guys, but she worked her way in. They had a secret lab. No one could figure out where they were cooking. She was going to lead the cops to the lab when the bikers got on to her.” Zipay looked down. He shook his head. “They had her for three days before they found her.”

Zipay looked up and straight into Evans’s eyes. “You know I left the cops because I got into trouble. Almost everybody turned their back on me, but she didn’t. When I went private she fed me jobs, helped me out when she could. She has some kind of pension but it’s not much. Whenever I can I return the favor by hiring her to do odd jobs. This deal with the licenses was one of them.”

“Why did she want to know the registered owner?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said I should forget about the conversation. I will say that she sounded surprised about the Secret Service. I don’t think she was expecting me to say that one of the cars was registered to them.”

Maggie Sparks rapped her knuckles on the door to Dana Cutler’s apartment. When no one answered she knocked again, louder.

“Miss Cutler, this is the FBI. We’d like to talk to you.”

“What now?” Sparks asked Evans after they’d waited long enough for a response. He was about to answer when the door across the hall opened a crack.

“Are you really the FBI?” a woman asked in an accent that placed her origins somewhere in Eastern Europe.

“Yes, ma’am,” Evans replied.

“Show me some identification.”

Sparks and Evans held up their ID in the narrow space where a chain spread between the door and the jamb. A second later, the chain was detached and the agents found themselves face to face with an elderly woman in a pink house dress.

“She’s not in,” the woman said. “She hasn’t been there since the commotion.”

“What commotion?” Evans asked.

“It was a few nights ago. I called the police as soon as I heard the gunshot.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Mrs…?”

“Miss, young man. Miss Alma Goetz.”

“Miss Goetz, please tell us what happened.”

“These walls are paper thin. When I heard the shot I opened my door a crack to see what was happening. There wasn’t anyone in the hall and the shot sounded close by. That’s when I called 911. Then I heard her slam the door across the hall open.”

“Her?” Evans asked.

“Dana Cutler, the woman from across the hall.”

“How do you know it was Miss Cutler?” Evans asked.

“I saw her running toward the stairs.”

“Did the police come?” Sparks asked.

“Yes, there were two of them, but they were very rude.”

“Oh?” Evans said.

“You’d think they would be polite, since I risked my life to make the call. I could have been shot, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sparks said. “What you did was very brave.”

“I’m glad you think so because the police officer was very short with me. He told me to go inside and he didn’t even ask me any questions.”

“He didn’t take a report?” Evans asked, surprised.

“When I tried to talk to him he said that everything was under control and he ordered me to shut my door. He said this was police business and I could get arrested for obstruction of justice if I continued to ‘butt in.’ Those were his exact words, ‘butt in.’”

“So you didn’t see or hear anything else?” Evans asked.

“Oh, no, I heard plenty. Like I told you, these walls are very thin.”

“What did you hear?” Sparks asked.

“I heard screams before Miss Cutler ran out. That was after the shot.”

“Go ahead,” Evans urged.

“The police went into the apartment. They had their guns out. A man yelled out, ‘Don’t shoot, we’re federal agents.’ Then the policemen went inside and shut the door.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“I certainly did. About fifteen minutes after the policemen came, two men left the apartment. One of the men was supporting the other man. He looked like he was in pain. Ten minutes later, the police left. Fifteen minutes after that three other men went into the apartment.”

“Were they with the police?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t have uniforms.”

“How long were these men in the apartment?”

“An hour or so. When they left they were carrying black trash bags.”

“Did Miss Cutler ever come back to her apartment after the excitement died down?” Sparks asked.

“I never heard anyone go in or out, but I guess she could have come back while I was sleeping or out shopping.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Goetz. You’ve been a big help.” Evans handed her his card. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”

“I will. And you’re much nicer than those policemen.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I guess they teach you manners in the FBI.”

“Can you tell me where the super lives? We’d like to get inside Miss Cutler’s apartment.”

Miss Goetz gave them the apartment number and Sparks talked with Cutler’s neighbor while Evans went downstairs. He returned ten minutes later with the key.

Cutler’s bedroom was so messy it was hard to tell if it had been searched or not, and the tiny living room had the same lived-in feel, but someone had scrubbed down every surface in the hall and the kitchen.

“What do you think?” Evans asked.

“If you believe Miss Goetz, Cutler shot someone who may be a federal agent.”

“There’s no evidence anyone was shot.”

“There’s plenty of evidence that someone cleaned up. Just compare the hall and kitchen to the bedroom and living room. And you said that your informant ran plates that belonged to the Secret Service. If we’re talking about people in this town with enough clout to shut down a police investigation they’d be near the top of my list.”

“We don’t know that the investigation was shut down. There may be a police report, 911 tapes, medical records. We should check. This could just be a domestic dispute. Maybe Cutler was dating someone who works for a federal agency and she went off.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?” Sparks asked

“Not really.”

“What do we know? We’ve got a PI who writes down some license numbers. Why would she do that?”

“She’s on a case; we’re talking about car licenses, so she’s tailing someone,” Evans answered.

“Charlotte Walsh?”

“That’s my guess. She asked my informant to run Walsh’s plate and she was surprised when he told her that another plate was registered to the Secret Service. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was tailing a Secret Service agent.”

“So, somewhere, Walsh crosses paths with the Secret Service,” Sparks said.

Evans walked to the door to the bedroom and looked it over again.

“They were searching the apartment. Cutler came back and caught them,” he said.

“She shoots a federal agent then runs,” Sparks said. “Either she shot him thinking she’d surprised an intruder or she shot in self-defense.”