“You have blood from a second victim on the sheets,” he says, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Type O-positive, as opposed to Morales’s much rarer B-neg. Your second victim is also female, as you suspected.”

I feel like hugging the man, or at least pumping my fist in the air, but Green’s presence coupled with Bridger’s usual reserve precludes most anything beyond a smile.

“And there’s more.”

“More?”

“I told you not to expect same-day service, but – ”

“You ran it through codis?”

He shrugs. “I got curious. Bad news is, you didn’t get a hit. Whoever she is, she doesn’t have a dna sample in the system.”

Green nods her head and gives me a told-you-so smile.

“You find something to match it against, Detective, and then you come back.”

“Thanks,” I say, and I really mean it. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Back in the parking lot, results in hand, I have no idea how to proceed. My initial hunch is confirmed, but then I never doubted there’d been a woman tied to that bed. All I know now that I didn’t before is that I’m right. This will help me with Hedges, but it won’t break the case, which is what I really need.

Instead of waiting until I get back downtown, I call in the results. Lorenz’s number goes straight to voicemail, which is fine with me. I dial Bascombe and report directly to him.

“So that’s that,” he says.

“I guess so. It’s more than we had this morning, anyway.”

On the radio, a local call-in show is discussing nothing but Hannah Mayhew, alternating “oh, what a tragedy” with “why can’t the police do more?” in perpetual rotation. A woman whose daughters attend Klein High calls in to let everyone know how devastated the students are. She’s dismayed the kids are returning to class after the Labor Day holiday.

Then an anonymous caller who claims he’s from the Harris County Sheriff ’s Department says this task force thing is only going to make matters worse. My sentiment exactly, but the rivalries being what they are, I find myself doubting when they come from a county deputy’s lips.

“At this point,” the host says, “Hannah’s been missing for more than seventy-two hours. Since noon on Thursday. How likely is it now that she’s gonna turn up safe?”

The supposed deputy clears his throat. “Well, I mean, stranger things have happened, but… If you ask me, it sure doesn’t look hopeful.”

I turn it off. Not because I disagree with his prognosis, which is only common sense, but because a light just went on in my head. Everyone’s up in arms about this missing girl. And I’ve got a missing girl I’m looking for, too. With O-positive blood. Hannah Mayhew disappeared at midday Thursday. My shooting went down later that night.

Has the solution been staring me in the face? It’s crazy, I know, but like the deputy said, stranger things have happened. And in a way, it’s so obvious. How many girls go missing in one day, even in a city of millions? No one has reported my victim’s disappearance, and that only strengthens the tie.

I’m afraid to say it aloud. Afraid to think it. But I’m going to have to when I get back to the office, because I’m starting to believe it’s true. The girl tied to the bed, the one the shooters took after lighting up Morales and his crew.

It was Hannah Mayhew.

It had to be.

CHAPTER 5

I should know better. But listening with such rapt intensity, Lorenz fools me at first. As I show him the printout from Bridger, explaining the significance just in case, he nods in that odd way of his, like there’s a neck spasm synchronized to his pulse.

“I know it’s a stretch,” I say, “but there are no coincidences.”

Not that I believe this. My work is full of coincidences – people in the wrong place at the wrong time – but my need to persuade him overcomes all nuance. To pursue this line of inquiry without any hindrance, I have to convince him it’s worth checking. At the same time, he needs to think it’s a fool’s errand, the perfect time-waster to keep me out of his way.

He examines a little chart on the page, bringing it close to his nose, then sets the printout to one side. The stacks of paper from this morning are neatly sorted into a series of piles, a sort that must have taken him all morning.

“Well?”

“Take a look at this,” he says, handing me a folder from the top of the nearest mound. “I need you to follow up on it – ” he consults his watch – “by the end of the shift today.”

Inside the folder, there are several muddy faxes, half-page incident reports typed in capital letters.

“What about my lead?”

“The guy to talk to in Narcotics is Mitch Geiger. He’s a friend of mine, does a lot of street-level intel. Rumor is, there’s a crew that’s been jacking stash houses on the southwest side. They don’t report it, obviously, but we’ve been hearing things. I want you to follow up on the prior incidents, see if you can substantiate anything. Maybe there’s a connection to the guys who hit our house.”

I toss the folder on his desk. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“I’m going to follow up on the blood trail. Running the dna profile turned up nothing, but if we can get a sample to compare with – from Hannah Mayhew’s parents, for example – that will tell us whether there’s a connection to pursue or not.”

He nods, then hands back the folder. “That’s what I want you working on, March. Geiger’s expecting you. If you have a problem, take it up with Bascombe.”

“What about the missing girl?”

“This is Homicide, not Missing Persons.”

“We have a missing female victim, and they’re missing a juvenile female. Her disappearance and our shooting took place on the same day. It’s reasonable to assume – ”

“Are you even listening to yourself, March? You think this girl from the news really ditched her classes, drove down to the ghetto, got herself tied down to a bed, then vanished after a crew came in and wiped out everybody else in the house? That’s your theory? Trust me, I’m saving you a world of embarrassment here.” He chuckles at the thought of this favor he’s doing me. “You’d be a laughingstock, man. Just talk to Geiger, all right? I think all that time on the cars-for-criminals detail warped your instincts. The point here is to clear some murders, not get yourself on TV.”

An hour ago I’d have put down money on the fact that nothing Lorenz could say had the power to sting. I would have been wrong. Problem is, he’s only saying what everyone else will be thinking. The lesson I learned putting in time with Villanueva is that the right kind of media attention makes careers. Hitching my wagon to Hannah Mayhew would represent the perfect application of the principle, assuming my hunch proved out. That’s not my motive, but Lorenz won’t be the last colleague to see it that way.

“I have to pursue this.”

Again with the insufferable nod. “March, you gotta do what you gotta do. But so do I. You’re either with me on this thing, or you’re against me. And if you’re against me, you’re out. I’m not just blowing smoke here. Go ask Bascombe and you’ll see.”

“Fine.”

I reach across him for the blood work, whipping the sheet within an inch of his nose. Just to be on the safe side, though, I keep the folder, too.

Bascombe’s office, just a fraction of the size of Hedges’s, is slotted into a row of glassed-in cubes along the back of the bullpen. On my way, I sense more than a few pairs of eyes tracking my progress. No one butted in on my conversation with Lorenz, but they all know what’s going on. I can only guess where their sympathies lie. Lorenz has made a lot of buddies on the squad, but he’s still pretty raw. My guess is, underneath the superficial bonhomie, my fellow detectives wouldn’t be too sad to see him taken down a notch.

Plus, a few of them have been around long enough to remember what I was like in my prime. Their respect might not be what it once was, but all those years on top have to count for something.