Her cell phone rang almost immediately after Bill left, and she forgot that she couldn't speak. She punched talk, but only the sound of air came out of her mouth when she tried to say hello.

"What the hell happened to you?" It was her boss at Midtown North, Lieutenant Iriarte.

"Hahhhh," she answered.

"What? Where are you?"

"Pshhhh."

"For Christ's sake, speak up; I can't hear you." Iriarte's usual irritation sounded in his voice.

April rolled her eyes at Mike. Iriarte, she mouthed at him.

"April, I know you're there," the lieutenant said crossly. "What the hell is going on? When are you coming in?"

April passed the phone to Mike. "Hey, Arturo, it's Mike Sanchez. How ya doin'?"

"Mike. I heard about Bernardino. Terrible thing. What's with April?"

"Ah, she got into a little fight trying to apprehend the suspect."

"What! Nobody told me that. Where are you?"

"Well, she bolted from the hospital a while ago. Didn't anybody tell you she wasn't coming in?"

"She's supposed to call in. Let me talk to her, will you?" He barreled right ahead as if he hadn't heard the words hospital, fight, and suspect.

"Really sorry about that, Arturo, but I told you some asshole tried to wipe her last night and she's lost her freaking voice."

"Huh?" For a second April's boss was speechless himself, not sure whether or not Sanchez was pranking him to get April a day off. Pranking was not uncommon. Finally he said, "No kidding."

"No kidding. She's lucky he just knocked her voice out. It's a woman's nightmare, right?" Mike winked at April.

"Jeez," Iriarte said. "Anything I can do?"

Thanks, April mouthed at him. Thanks a lot.

The rest of April's day was just as frustrating. Bernardino's daughter, Kathy, arrived in the afternoon, but April was not able to call with her condolences, to inform her that she and Mike would be out to talk to her and to look at the house soon. Mike had to make that call, and it was a tough one. In less than two months Kathy and Bill had lost both their mother and father. Bill needed someone to blame. So heaven only knew what ideas the prosecutor would pour into the ear of his sister the FBI agent over dinner tonight. Both were trained investigators. It was almost enough to make a person paranoid. April didn't want to be paranoid, and she didn't want the Department to be blamed.

Chinese philosophy for health called for the consumption of no less than twenty cups of tea a day. For once April was following it. Hot water and Lipton's tea bags were all she had, but she downed some every twenty minutes. She was wired with all the caffeine and desperate for the return of her voice.

In her early years as a cop, April had followed orders and kept her thoughts to herself. Silence had been a choice she'd made to stay out of trouble. Now all her thoughts were trapped inside, but it wasn't like the old days, when silence was her comfort zone. She wanted to talk to Mike, but she had no voice and she could tell he was shutting her out.

And sure enough, just before two p.m. Mike glanced at the clock on his wall. "Ready to go home now, querida?" he asked, trying hard to sound neutral.

April shook her head. She wasn't going home. She had things to do. She wanted to see Marcus Beame, who'd been standing next to Bernardino at the bar before he left, probably the last person to speak to Bernardino. Beame had the same job in the Fifth Precinct that April had in Midtown North. He was second in command in the detective unit. He'd know what Bernardino had been working on.

"Querida," Mike said slowly. "I want you to go home now, rest up." He said it suavemente, con cariño, but there was steel behind the sweetness.

She shook her head.

"I know you want to stay on this, but you know you can't."

She shook her head some more. She didn't know why she couldn't. Anger flashed in her eyes.

"You've got to move over," he said softly.

Victims didn't investigate their own cases. It was clear that was what he meant. She wasn't being asked to the dance.

April's anger came and went quickly as she considered her options. For every rule deemed unbreakable in the Department, there was always an exception. Long history had proved that nothing was set in stone.

Homicide investigations were like construction sites. In the beginning there was the body and the physical evidence that included everything the perpetrator left behind of himself-fibers from his clothes, hair from his head, saliva from a cigarette butt or a piece of gum. A footprint, a fingerprint. A weapon. The shape of his hand on the victim's body. And everything he took away from the scene that could later prove he'd been there, had had contact with the victim. The cause of death itself could be a signature. The principal investigator on the case was the architect who had to construct the murder from the crime scene backward to precipitating events that might have been set in motion days, weeks, or even years before.

In easy cases the plan of the house could be read right in a crime scene that told the whole story almost from beginning to end. Man came home, surprised his wife/lover/girlfriend in bed with another man, shot them both, then himself. The lovers were naked. The perpetrator was clothed. Double homicide/suicide. Case solved in a matter of hours. In hard ones the physical evidence didn't lead to the perpetrator. They called the hard cases mysteries. April moved over to Mike's desk and nudged him out of his chair.

"I knew the day would come when you'd try to take my place." He laughed, but a little uneasily. April was nothing if not hard to manage.

"Look, querida, I got people waiting for me," he told her.

She blew air out of her mouth and started typing on his computer. Is IA investigating?

Mike read the words as they came up on his screen and nodded. Of course. So?

Are they going to talk to me? She typed some more.

"Probably." So?

Who's on it?

"I don't know," Mike said. "What's your thought?"

Just thinking dirty, she wrote.

"Any particular reason?" Reflexively, he lowered his voice.

Bill jumped on it, she typed.

"That doesn't mean anything." But Mike shook himself like a dog shaking off a hurt. Then combed his mustache with his fingers. "One of us?" He said it softly, doubtfully.

April took a few seconds to go through the list of people who'd been there at Baci's last night. People they'd known for years. People Bernardino had known for decades. Friends. But that wasn't where she was going with it. She was thinking about all the posters that had been up on every floor of the puzzle palace. Must have been hundreds of people who knew about that party and didn't go. People on the job, but also people coming in and out of the building for dozens of reasons. Civilians could read, too. Everybody who could read knew about it. Everybody who'd ever worked with Bernardino knew about it. It hadn't been private. And probably a poster had been up at the Fifth Precinct, too.

I'm not suggesting it's one of us. It was just an odd time and place to make a hit, she typed.

"Yeah." So, they already knew that.

Anybody talk to Beame yet? April changed tack.

"I'm sure. Why, do you want to talk to him?"

All this time he'd been standing next to her reading the screen. She swung around in his chair and looked at him. Yeah, I want to talk to him.

Shit. He sighed, shaking his head.

April turned back to the keyboard and typed some more. Well, what do you think?

He put his arms around her and breathed into her hair.

"I feel lucky, querida. I could have lost you." He said this seriously. He didn't go so far as to blame her for what she did. But it was in the air. For a second she felt a deep chill.