I abruptly stood up and shook my hair side to side like a Vidal Sassoon commercial, without the sultry smile. I bent over to give my hair another shake, and glanced at my boots, along with the several dozen roaches climbing up them. Then I felt them inside the boots, between the suede and the naked skin of my calves.

I freaked out, complete with full-blown girlish screams and hopping up and down. This knocked over my garbage can, and the remains of the Chinese feast Rick had delivered last night. Except that I didn’t see any garbage, because it was swarming with hundreds of scuttling cockroaches.

I ran out of that office like it was on fire. It took me five steps before I got any control back, and luckily no one saw me. I wound up sitting on a boardroom table, tugging off my boots, dumping about ten live roaches onto the floor. And a few dead ones, that I’d squished underfoot.

Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck yuck.

“At least they weren’t bees,” I said, my voice a wee bit higher than normal.

My white cotton socks, covered with roach guts, went into the garbage.

It took courage I didn’t know I had to put those boots back on, and then I flagged down one of the jumpsuited exterminators-one who looked a lot like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters-and gave him directions to my office.

“Kill them,” I said. “Kill them all.”

“That’s why we’re here, ma’am.”

He walked past, but I grabbed his elbow.

“Do, um, cockroaches carry any kind of disease?”

He scratched at his stubble. “They aren’t the cleanest. Like to eat spoiled food, and excrement. Tough little buggers too. A roach can survive a few weeks with his head cut off. Eventually starves to death. Can live if you flush them down the toilet. Can even survive radiation equivalent to a thermonuclear explosion. But they don’t carry any germs harmful to humans.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. And hold still, you got one in your hair.”

I clenched my teeth as he reached up to my scalp and pinched a roach between his bare fingers.

“Thanks again,” I said, forcing on a smile.

“Ah, there’s another one. Hold on.”

I forced myself to stay still.

“Just a sec… little fella crawled around the other side.”

Bill Murray walked behind me, rooting through my hair like he was giving me a hot oil treatment.

“Looks like you got a few in here. Maybe they’re having a party.”

And that was the straw that broke me. I ran squealing to the bathroom, leaned over the sink, and gave my scalp to the tepid spray. I got water up my nose, started to choke, but kept my head under, running my fingers through my hair over and over until I was sure every last bug was out.

Then I squeezed out the excess water, tried not to stare at the five bugs trying to crawl out of the slippery porcelain sink, and positioned myself awkwardly under the push-button hand dryer.

The air was hot and strong, but it took twelve button presses before I’d dried my head and jacket.

I checked the mirror. My expensive makeup hadn’t washed off, and my hair had lost the poofiness and actually looked pretty good.

I wasn’t going to go back into my office until I was sure it had been fumigated, sterilized, and hermetically sealed, so I took the stairs down to Records.

Chicago had twenty-six Police Districts, divided into four Areas. Each District housed their duplicate reports at a single Records facility in their Area. My District had that honor for my Area. Alger had worked the two-four, making him part of my Area, which meant copies of his files would be kept in my building.

Every year, we griped about digitizing the files and putting them in a database. And every year, we were told that there was no money for it. So even in this enlightened technological age, the CPD was still killing trees.

Records was an expansive, open room with floor-to-ceiling shelves. The shelves held document boxes labeled according to case numbers, which were divided by District and in semi-chronological order.

The cop running Records was a portly woman named Martel Sardina who’d worked here for six years and didn’t know where a damn thing was. It took a special talent to learn absolutely nothing about your job in that amount of time. I asked Sardina about it once, and her reply was jovial.

“I like it here. It’s quiet. I can read magazines. Records is considered scut-work, a stepping-stone to other positions. If I did a good job, I’d be promoted out of here. So I don’t do a damn thing.”

It made a warped kind of sense.

Sardina offered a friendly smile and wave when I walked in. Instead of reading magazines today, it appeared that she was working on crayon drawings. I asked where the two-four files were, and she shrugged.

“Come on, Officer Sardina. Just point me in the right direction.”

“I have no idea. Do we even have records from the two-four?”

“Yes. And I’m sure a thousand people have asked you where they are, over the years.”

“If they found them, they never shared their location with me.”

“If you had to guess, where would they be?”

“I couldn’t even guess.”

“Come on. I won’t tell. I’ll even put in a bad word to your superior.”

“I can’t help you, Lieutenant. And in all honesty, I don’t wish that I could.”

She smiled pleasantly.

“What if I told Captain Bains you’re doing a great job, and that I wanted you transferred to Homicide?”

“Threats won’t work,” she said. “He just threatened to suspend me, because of my art.”

She held up a poorly done stick figure crayon drawing of a man with a very large mouth yelling, “I’m a big stupid poop head!” The title at the top read Captain Bains.

“You got the eyes wrong. They’re brown dots, not blue dots. And I don’t think he has a pig snout.”

“Artistic expression. Want to see the one where he’s rolling around in the mud?”

“Maybe later.”

“Ask Mr. Creepy Exterminator Guy if he wants to see it. He’s around here somewhere, spraying for bugs.” She squinted at her drawing. “Think the captain would look good as a cockroach?”

“Just make sure you get the eyes right.”

While she hunted for a brown crayon, I walked down the ranks and files of shelves, trying to remember where I should begin. I had the case numbers, but where were the two-four files?

I checked the nearest box as a reference point. But the boxes on either side didn’t seem to be in order. Was that also part of Sardina’s plan to appear incompetent? Putting the files back out of order? If so, I was impressed. She deserved to be in management.

I moved an aisle over, and here the numbering system seemed to work. I opened a box to confirm. This was, indeed, the two-five section. I skipped the next aisle, turned, and almost bumped into a guy in a bright red jumpsuit, digging through one of the boxes.

“Are they eating our files?” I asked.

The exterminator looked up and smiled. He had a port-wine birthmark covering most of his right cheek, just above a thick goatee. Aviator glasses that reflected like mirrors. And a dark smudge on his forehead, grease or dirt.

“Little fellas like it dark. Gotta check everywhere.”

He set the box back on the shelf and picked up his chemical pack, slinging it over his shoulder. Then he held out the sprayer wand and squirted along the bottom of the shelf he’d been searching, coating the carpeting with white powder.

“Is that stuff dangerous?”

He winked. “Only to vermin.”

Sardina was right. Creepy guy. We passed each other, and I followed the numbers until I got to Alger’s case files. My internal alarm sounded-they were in the same box that the exterminator had been looking through.

I took off after him, rounding the corner, not even thinking that my piece was upstairs in my purse, and then I skidded to a stop because he was waiting for me, his sprayer extended.