These sudden attacks of crying had to stop. Before the beginning of this week, Treya couldn't remember the last time she had cried. It must have been just after Tom's death, when Raney was two. Twelve years, so long ago.

Tom.

She couldn't let herself think about him, not now, about what they could have had if… It would all be so different now if it hadn't been for the stupid red light, the stupid truck…

Her awful, awful luck…

The floodgates threatened to open. Nearly bursting with the effort to hold back tears, she finally turned the corner into her cubicle.

A hard-looking man was leaning against her desk, his arms crossed, impatience etched on his face. He had a hatchet nose and a scar through his lips. Treya Ghent?' he said brusquely, straightening up and holding out a badge. 'I'm Lieutenant Glitsky, homicide. I'd like to talk to you about Elaine Wager.'

She collapsed into tears.

'I thought you'd already arrested somebody.'

Nearly ten minutes had passed, during which time Glitsky waited at the workstation, allowing Treya to go to the bathroom to regain her composure. Now she was back with him, her emotions clamped down. If anything, she exuded a kind of cold fury he'd seen before, which he interpreted as self-loathing and anger that she'd lost control.

She sat at her desk and he'd pulled a chair around from someplace and straddled it backwards. So they were at about eye level in the small cubicle. 'We do have someone in custody, yes.'

'So what does that have to do with me? Or with anything else that might have happened here?'

More hostility. This woman, spooked by the police visit, shattered by a recent murder, didn't want to talk about it. It should just all go away.

'You're right. It may have nothing to do with anybody or anything here,' he replied in his professional tone.

'What could there be? It was some bum, wasn't it? She didn't know him.'

Glitsky's lips tightened. 'We're trying to make sure of that.'

'Didn't I read that he confessed?'

'You may have.' The leak on that development hadn't made Glitsky's day, and his face showed it.

'Well? That ought to settle that, don't you think?'

Glitsky crossed his arms on the back of the chair and purposefully looked away. Bringing his eyes back to her, he waited yet another moment. Finally, when he thought she was about to begin squirming, he spoke quietly. 'It's my understanding that you and Elaine were close.'

The question deflected some of the anger. Treya bit at her lower lip, then nodded. 'Yes.'

'Then it would seem to me that you'd want to cooperate in any way you could with the investigation into her death.'

'I do, but-'

Glitsky cut her off. 'Sometimes people confess to things they didn't do.'

'Did that happen here?'

'No.' The lieutenant drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'But even with a righteous confession, we still need to collect all the evidence we can.'

'Why?'

' Because when the killer gets a lawyer, which he will, he'll change his mind and plead not guilty.'

'After he's confessed?'

'It happens. In fact, it always happens. What has he got to lose?'

Treya sat back in her chair, digesting this. 'Then what about the confession?'

A grim smile. 'Oh, the argument will be that it was invalid. It was coerced somehow. Or the police beat it out of him. Or his memory was impaired. Maybe it was a dream, or he just mixed up what had happened.'

'Mixed up that he killed somebody?'

'Yeah. You'd think you'd remember something like that, but you'd be surprised how many people don't after saying they did.'

Abe and Treya's eyes locked in some kind of shared understanding across the small space between them. Not for long, though. Both of them, realizing it, looked away. 'So,' Treya said, 'you need evidence. Of what?'

This was difficult for Glitsky to explain, for the truth was that he was grasping at straws. It was bad enough that Elaine was dead, but to admit that she'd died in such a senseless attack was almost too much for Abe to bear. She couldn't have lived her interesting and committed life, done all she'd done, touched so many people, only to have it all wiped away in a completely random moment as though she were no more important than a bug.

Although, of course, that's exactly what did happen. But with his own daughter?

He couldn't fit it anywhere, couldn't live with it. At least until he knew more – about Elaine, about her killer, the intersection where some meaning could be attached to it.

It was important. It was stupid and made no sense. He had to do it.

Again, he met the woman's eyes. 'If, for example, Elaine worked at all with the Free Clinic or Legal Aid, if she had any professional contact with junkies…'

'Then she might have met with the man?'

Glitsky made a face. 'The point is, if Elaine volunteered with any of these people…'

Treya was shaking her head. 'She did volunteer, do some pro bono work, but not on the streets. She considered those people lost for the most part. If they were going to get back, it was going to have to be on their own. They weren't her issue.'

'So what was?'

'Students. People who were trying to do something with their lives. So she taught moot court at Hastings, for example. She didn't have much patience for professional victims – she always wanted to yell at people to not let themselves get in that habit.' Treya's eyes briefly flickered bright with a rogue memory. 'One of her great expressions was that there were only two kinds of people – victims and warriors.'

'I like that,' Abe said. 'But maybe Cole Burgess hung out with some students.'

'Law students? I don't think so.' Another shake of the head. 'I don't remember ever hearing the name.'

'All right.'

Treya bit at her lower lip again and Glitsky found himself watching her. The swollen, nearly pouting mouth.

'When was the last time you saw her?'

The question startled her. 'Why do you want to know that? You can't think I was…' She was staring, doe-eyed, in disbelief.

'I don't think anything.' Glitsky hadn't meant to spook her. He softened his voice. 'I'm trying to start somewhere, get a time line of her last hours. It's really routine.'

'Isn't that what the police always say when they suspect somebody? That it's routine?'

Glitsky's mouth turned up a fraction of an inch, another humanizing touch. 'Actually, they do, you're right. But I'm not doing that now.'

She sighed heavily. 'Sunday afternoon. Here.' At Glitsky's expression, she felt the need to explain and pressed on. 'I'm often in on weekends, and she was doing some special master work.'

Glitsky nodded in understanding. This wasn't unusual. A special master was an attorney appointed by the court to help serve a search warrant on material that might be privileged – doctor's records, lawyer's files, psychiatrist's tapes – and deliver whatever was not privileged in the requested records to the court. If the person who had the records was uncooperative, the master would do the actual searching and separate out what lawfully could be seized from the private records of other clients and patients, whose right to privacy was therefore protected from the police.

'And Elaine came back here when she was done with that?'

'Yes.'

'What time was that?'

Treya's face showed her concentration. 'I'm not sure, exactly. It was just turning dark, so maybe five thirty. I was finishing up.'

'And what did she come back here for?'

'Just to leave me some files. Then she was going out for a meeting and then home.'

Glitsky was leaning forward now. This was an unexpected bonus. Treya had talked to Elaine on the last day of her life, within hours in fact of her death. 'Did she say who she was meeting, or where?'