“What did she talk about?”

Before he can answer, Cavallo’s voice booms in my ear. “March, what’s going on?” She dangles the bagged swab in the air, motioning for me to come along quietly, then gives the glorified baby-sitter a high-wattage smile. “Hi, Carter. We’ve got to get going. The flyers look great. You’re doing a wonderful job. Just keep it up, okay?”

Robb looks from me to her in mild confusion, nodding in a bemused if baffled way. Before I can fire off another question, she starts pulling me down the corridor, a forced smile on her lips.

“What was that all about?” she whispers.

“There’s something not right about that guy.”

“The way you were eyeballing him, I’m not surprised. You can’t run roughshod over these people. They’re doing everything they can to help.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t see that? The way he tensed up? I swear he was about to break into a sweat. And the mother, the way she talked about him, there was something she wasn’t saying.”

“Just keep walking,” she says.

Once we get outside, basking in the orange sunset, she finally slows her pace. Unlike me, she’s not impervious to the heat. She shucks off her jacket and pulls her blouse away from the small of her back. The way her heels snap out the cadence, I know she’s telling me off in her head.

“At least you got what you wanted,” she says.

Before I can answer, a couple of city cars roll up. In the passenger seat of the lead car, I recognize Wanda Mosser’s snowy dome. She hops out, spry as ever, fixing me with her pearl gray smile.

“What’s this man doing here?” she demands.

Cavallo rests a hand on her pistol’s jutting handle. “Causing trouble, boss.”

“I’m surprised he still knows how,” Wanda says, pulling me to one side. Then, lowering her voice: “What’s the deal, Roland? You looking for work or something?”

“Not me.” I explain about the dna swab and how Cavallo invited me along.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?”

I glance at Cavallo, who dabs at her damp forehead with the back of her hand. “Not really.”

“Ah.” Wanda smiles shrewdly. “You did notice the engagement ring, didn’t you?”

I nod.

“And the cross?”

I nod again.

“Roland,” she says, shaking her head. “I never figured you for something like this. Aren’t you happily married?”

Suddenly I do feel the heat. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s all right, Roland.” She gives me a knowing smile. “We’re all entitled to make fools of ourselves from time to time. But I have to tell you, you couldn’t have picked a less likely candidate. Cavallo’s straight as an arrow.” She leans closer. “And to be honest, a little uptight.”

I peel away. “Thanks for the warning.”

We rejoin Cavallo and the other detectives milling around the newly arrived vehicles.

“What up?” Cavallo asks. “You need me to stay?”

Wanda shakes her head. “You better get this one back to the office. I’m just here for a chat with the mother. If I can, I’m going to get her on TV.”

“Good luck.”

The drive back into town proves awkward. Maybe Cavallo overheard some of what Wanda said, or at least picked up on the body language. If I could think of anything to say, I would. But my old boss was right. I’ve made a big fool of myself. In addition to pursuing this long shot of a hunch, ditching a perfectly reasonable assignment from my lieutenant, I’ve been as transparent about this newfound attraction as a fifteen-year-old boy.

I can sense a load of bad karma coming my way. To balance the accounts, I call Mitch Geiger again. I leave another message.

The moment I put my phone away, it starts to ring. The caller id displays Lorenz’s name.

“You’re not going to answer that?” Cavallo asks.

“I better not. It could only mean trouble.”

She sniffs. “Then I’m sorry for dragging you out here.”

“What do you mean? I wanted to come. And listen, you can just give me the swab and I’ll take it from here. I have a contact at the ME’s office who can process it for me – ”

“This isn’t your case,” she says quietly. “It’s mine. I’ll handle it from here.”

I try arguing the point, but she’s solid, and not going to be worn down. Whatever she heard or inferred, whatever thought process my interaction with Wanda set off, Cavallo’s determined to have her way.

“I can get it done fast,” I say.

She laughs. “Believe me, nobody has more priority right now than we do.”

“So you’ll follow up quick? I need the result as soon as possible.”

She gives me a cloudy look, so cloudy I’m afraid to ask what’s going on behind it. My phone starts ringing again.

I switch the ringer off.

CHAPTER 7

The back wall of Mitch Geiger’s office features a network of stick-pinned mug shots and surveillance photos, some of them labeled and connected by lines but most marked with circles and question marks. Layered over them, frayed adhesive notes covered in ink. The display could be the work of an enterprising narcotics sergeant trying to map the local landscape. Then again, it could pass for evidence of a psychotic break, the kind of thing you find in the retrofitted garage of a perfectly average neighbor, along with the butcher knives and the stack of severed limbs.

Either way, it sparks my interest in Geiger. Unfortunately, he’s not at home. Eight in the morning isn’t the best time to find the narcs up and at it.

“You know where your sergeant is?” I ask a nearby stoner in a denim vest. If it weren’t for the badge around his neck, I’d assume he escaped from lockup. He scratches his head something furious, then smiles behind his brush-like mustache. Even if he did know, he might not share. In my jacket and tie I’m obviously Homicide. We might as well be wearing gang colors. When you work murder, you assume everybody who doesn’t wishes they could. We’re the first string, and murder is the big show. But a certain type of police sees Narcotics in the same light. There’s no accounting for taste.

For good measure I give Geiger’s mobile number a ring before leaving. By now I could recite the man’s recorded greeting from memory. No point in leaving another message. I’ve done what I can on this one for now.

En route to my desk I’m intercepted by a sullen twenty-year-old in tactical cargo pants and an hpd polo shirt, who waylays me just outside the elevator. He introduces himself as Edgar Castro from the crime lab, claiming to recognize me from the Morales scene, though I don’t remember him.

“I’ve been trying to get through to Detective Lorenz,” he says, “but he’s not returning my calls.”

As much as I sympathize after this morning’s fruitless errand, there’s a tribal imperative to observe. Crime-scene technicians can’t expect to have homicide detectives at their beck and call. The food chain runs in the reverse direction.

“He’s got his hands full at the moment,” I say.

He brandishes a shiny-covered report. “So can I leave this with you, then?”

“You wanna tell me what it is?”

So he starts explaining, turning the pages as he goes. “It’s actually pretty interesting. The victim in the hallway, the one sticking halfway out the bathroom? Hector Diaz -?”

“Little Hector,” I say, remembering what the girl across the street had called him.

“Originally, we thought he must have been leaning through the door pretty far, because he was hit three times in the side. Right here.” He uses his fingertips to indicate holes above his left kidney and between the ribs. “But I had a hard time making sense of that. I mean, if somebody’s taking a shot at you, and you’re returning fire, do you turn your flank toward them like that? For a right-hander like him, that’s not the best use of cover.”

I wonder if Castro’s ever been in a firefight, or for that matter any kind of fight. Making best use of cover, that’s a lesson they don’t teach on the streets.