“Where do we start?”

She suppresses a yawn. “The nearest coffeepot.”

Two styrofoam cups of scalding black brew later, we clear off space at the end of a long folding table, pull some chairs up, and divvy up the interview reports. I feel a little guilty for having slept last night, since Cavallo’s bloodshot eyes and involuntary yawning fits make it clear she didn’t.

“You okay?” I ask.

She moves a paper back and forth in front of her nose. “I can barely get my eyes to focus.”

“You notice the surveillance report didn’t mention anything about Robb, or us meeting him out in front of the Fontaine house?”

She silently peruses the form.

“You hear me?”

“I heard you,” she says. “That was my doing, March. He asked if it was significant and I said no.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It wasn’t significant, was it?” She puts the report down and fingers the cross at her throat. “And anyway, I didn’t want Wanda to start asking why we’d re-interviewed Robb. I figured the less said the better.”

“For my benefit?” I ask. “Or his?”

“His? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” It was a stupid thing to say. I just thought that, she being one of them, a co-religionist, maybe she’d decided to cut the young minister some slack. “The thing we need to talk about is that dna test. When are we going to get a result?”

She sighs. “You’re a one-note, you know that? Do you have any idea the kind of grief I’d get if Wanda or anyone else found out we’re pursuing this? I had to tap-dance around the whole swab thing already, and now she’s giving me funny looks.”

“Why keep it a secret?”

“I’m not,” she says. “I’m just being discreet.”

“But the test is being done, right? You took care of it? Cavallo, look me in the eye. You did take care of it, right?”

She looks at me, then blinks. “You know Sheryl Green at the medical examiner’s office? She’s doing it.”

“Yeah, I know her.”

Remembering Green’s interest in the case, I’m somewhat reassured, but I’d still rather have Bridger involved. Maybe I’ll call him and see if there’s anything he can do to rush things along.

“By the way,” I say, “I need to take a couple of hours today. Another angle to pursue.”

She taps a finger on her stack of interviews. “This is the angle we’re pursuing.”

“I know that. How about one hour?”

“How about lunch, then. You can do whatever you want on your break, all right? Now, can we please get to it?”

Just twenty minutes into the reading, I find myself underlining typos. I guess serving under Captain Hedges has had an effect. The minutes drag by, which is fine with me. I’m in no hurry to talk to Wilcox. No hurry at all.

Stephen Wilcox is an Anglophile at heart, one of those guys who’s traced his lineage back to some countryside castle, who can list a few centuries’ worth of sovereigns in the order that they reigned, and wears tattersall and waxed cotton whenever the inhospitable Houston climate will allow. He tells me I’m paying, then says he’ll meet me at the Black Labrador, our old stomping ground.

Given the distance, my lunch break is going to be a long one, meaning I’ll have to face Cavallo’s wrath. So be it.

Back in the day, Wilcox and I spent hours at the Black Lab, a Tudor-style pub on Montrose near Richmond, at the far end of a cobbled courtyard anchored by the ivy-clad Montrose Library, drinking in front of the unlit fireplace and watching the knee-socked waitresses scoot by. Once he even tried to coax me onto the giant chessboard they have on the front lawn to push the pieces around, but I drew the line at that. A cheeky snap of Charles and Di, severed down the middle, used to hang prominently up front, though it’s been long since replaced by a reverential portrait of the dead princess.

I haven’t been back since our split and I’m not looking forward to it. He’s already installed at one of the creaky tables, his checked jacket draped over the back of his chair. Seeing him again in the flesh, a rush of feeling floods back. The long, thin Easter Island face with the jutting jaw and heavy-lidded eyes. The childhood scar bisecting the left eyebrow, the thinning blond hair buzzed short in an effort to conceal how much is gone. This was the one guy I could always trust. What happened with us?

“I ordered the mussels,” he says.

An involuntary smile. “Thanks. I’ll pass.”

What happened was simple. Wilcox got tired of covering for my lapses. He got fed up with my indifference to the job. He cut me slack at first, saying he understood, saying he knew the kind of pain I must be in. But that sympathy could only last so long. When I was sloppy he’d tidy up, when I was indifferent, he’d make the extra effort. When I started making up my own rules, though, he drew the line. I remember him standing over me, one of my fictitious reports balled in his fist. “What is this? What are you trying to do to me?” And I remember staring back at him, unfazed: “Do what you want. I don’t care anymore.”

So what changed? It’s hard to say. Was it as simple as seeing those severed cords hanging from the bed frame?

I don’t need to look at the menu, but I do anyway just to have a prop in hand. The waitress comes over in a black tee and khaki skirt, her ribbed black socks pulled halfway over her knee. She tells me what’s good, then shrugs when I order the unadventurous fish and chips.

“When in Rome,” I say, glancing up at the timbered ceiling.

Wilcox doesn’t smile. “You want to tell me what I’m doing here?”

“You chose the place.”

“What I mean is, why is it that you can call out of the blue and I drop everything? That’s what I don’t understand. Does it make me a masochist?”

“You’re getting a free meal out of it.”

“We both know you owe me more than that.”

There’s a crack in the wooden table that suddenly takes on a fascinating aspect. I scratch at it with my nail, not wanting to see the expression on his face. “Listen, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”

“Important to you, you mean.”

“And you.”

He coughs into his hand. “Why do I doubt that?”

Driving over, I tried to tell myself his voice sounded pleasantly surprised over the phone. Maybe he’d even be happy to see me again. Wrong. I have no choice but to spit it out.

“What do you know about a guy named Joe Thomson?”

He ponders the question awhile. “Why are you asking?”

“He came to me with an offer.”

I tell him the whole story, only leaving out the setting. He knows about the Paragon, and the last thing I need is a lecture. The further I get into the story, the more interested he becomes. His mussels arrive and he leaves them untouched, his eyes fixed on me.

“I said the odds were slim, but Thomson told me to come to you specifically. He said you’d be interested in what he had to tell. Was he right?”

Wilcox sniffs. “He wasn’t wrong. I can’t make any promises, Roland, but this is something my people would be very interested in. I’m not sure having you involved is going to work for us, though.”

“It was me he came to. Take it or leave it.”

“Setting that aside for a moment, are you telling me you don’t know who this guy is?”

“He looked familiar.”

“For a detective, you don’t pay much attention, you know that?” He shakes his head, like he’s remembering what it was about me he never liked. “Joe Thomson used to be one of the worst guys in the department, the kind the psych evaluations are supposed to weed out. We’ve got a thick file on him in IAD, full of excessive-force complaints going all the way back to his rookie days. Before I transferred, Internal Affairs was looking at him in connection with a couple of different cases. Planting evidence, making threats against fellow officers, we’re talking a seriously bad dude.”

“I got that vibe off him. But you said he ‘used to be’ bad?”