“If it’s still here,” he said, straightening with a heavy sigh.

“What’s that mean?” Marty asked.

“Means you’re getting close to the wrinkle in time,” Stittle said.

“What’s that?” Marty asked.

“You never heard of A Wrinkle in Time?” Stittle asked. “Got no kids? Nah, you’re too young. Missy here knows what I mean.”

“I have no idea,” Casey said.

Stittle chortled, jolting his belly so that a tail of his shirt sprang loose from the waist of his pants. “Kids’ book. They get a wrinkle in time and, whoosh, what was there one second is gone the next.”

“I don’t have kids,” Casey said.

Stittle gave her a disappointed look and said, “We keep evidence as long as we can, but after a while, we gotta make room for the new stuff. You can’t believe the shit they make us hang on to these days-pardon the French, but last week they gave us a whole damn couch that smelled like cat piss.”

Casey shook her head. “No, wait. You threw away evidence from a murder case to make room for a couch?”

Stittle shrugged and headed for the doorway, his fingers fondling the plastic hotel. “We can take a look, but I’m pretty sure we threw out the last of the 1989 stuff in March and I’m a good ways into 1990, but that stuff in the back gets kind of jumbled.”

Casey glanced at Marty and they followed the big sergeant into the gloomy warehouse, their feet scuffing through the dust. When they reached the last row, Casey could see that the boxes, brown bags, and thick envelopes at the beginning of the row bore crisply printed labels with bar codes. Halfway down the aisle, the various containers had been spilled onto the floor. Beyond the clutter, the boxes and envelopes sagged inward, faded and dusty.

“Yeah,” Stittle said, sorting through several of the spilled boxes and envelopes. “These are all ninety. I don’t see anything from eighty-nine, but help yourself. Also, you could check in the Dumpster.”

“Wait,” Casey said, the numbers on a box across the aisle catching her eye.

She planted a finger on the date of a box resting eye level. “This says 1988. So does this. All these.”

Casey poked her finger at the dates on boxes and envelopes all up and down the area across from the mess.

“Yup,” Stittle said. “That’s eighty-eight, but I thought you said eighty-nine.”

“I did,” Casey said, trying not to raise her voice, “but why would eighty-nine be gone before eighty-eight? You can’t have gotten rid of eighty-nine. You still have eighty-eight.”

Stittle looked from one side of the aisle to the next, his hands hanging flat along the slabs of fat, the plastic hotel pinched between thumb and forefinger. He rubbed his right finger under his left eye and nodded and said, “Yeah, I don’t know.”

Casey planted a fist on either hip and asked, “Why would you get rid of one year before the other?”

Stittle slowly wagged his head. “I guess ’cause they’re on the other side of the aisle?”

“You guess?” Casey said. “You’re the one who threw this stuff out, right?”

“To make room.”

Marty cleared his throat. Casey looked hard at him and he shrugged apologetically.

“You’re welcome to look,” Stittle said, his little eyes shifting under Casey’s gaze.

“Right,” Casey said. “I can look. I can dig through the shit in your Dumpster and pull every box and bag down off the shelves in this aisle, but you know-and I know-that everything from 1989 is already gone, right?”

“Some stuff might be around,” Stittle said, using his thumb to roll the little hotel around in his palm.

“Right, because you’re doing such a half-ass job, something from a 1989 case just might be around somewhere,” Casey said, the pressure building behind her eyes. “But we both know that the evidence to this case, my case, is already gone. Don’t we?”

Stittle made a stupid face and shrugged.

“You got a Get Out of Jail Free card?” Casey asked.

“A what?” Stittle said, scowling.

“Monopoly,” Casey said, nodding at the red plastic hotel in his hand. “Get Out of Jail Free, you got one of those?”

“I don’t.”

“Too bad,” Casey said, turning to go. “When I’m finished, you’ll wish you did.”

8

CAN YOU DO a brief?” Casey asked, turning around in the front seat of the Lexus so she could see Marty’s face.

“A what?”

“A brief. A legal brief,” she said. “They taught you that in law school, right? Can you do one?”

“Oh, sure,” he said, nodding vigorously. “Of course.”

“Sorry,” Casey said. “I don’t mean to be a bitch. Those fucking morons just really got to me. Do they always act like that?”

“Pretty much. I’d never met Stittle before. He was a real piece of work.”

“We’ll drop you at your office,” Casey said, turning back around, facing the road. “I want you to put together a brief on the illegality of destroying evidence like that. Get me the statutes. Get me the case law. Get me the penal code. Make it short and sweet, but I want to walk into Barney Fife’s office tomorrow morning and make him sweat bullets. I’ll pull this whole damn town down around me.”

“Barney Fife?” Marty asked, sounding confused.

Casey looked at Ralph. He wore Oakley wraparound sunglasses and his face showed nothing. She turned back around and saw confusion and even a little fear in Marty’s expression.

“In other words, a real dumb-ass,” she said, drawing another blank.

“Everyone likes the chief,” Marty said quietly, going for his ear, then dropping his hand when he saw she was looking.

“That’s okay,” Casey said. “He’ll get over it.”

Marty directed Ralph to his family’s law offices on Genesee Street and got out in front of a sandblasted redbrick building with tinted glass windows and a wooden sign that read BARRONE & BARRONE in Old English characters.

Marty got out and rapped a knuckle on her window. Casey rolled it down.

“You don’t think I should go with you to the DA’s?” Marty asked. “He can be a little rough.”

“I’ll get along fine,” Casey said.

“He can’t hear out of his right ear so don’t talk to that side,” Marty said before she could get the window closed.

Casey just stared.

“Something you should know,” Marty said. “I just thought. I don’t mean to…”

She nodded and signaled Ralph to go. The DA kept his offices just up the street in the old Cayuga County Courthouse, a towering Greek temple with half a dozen three-story Ionic columns. Casey climbed the steps and passed through a metal detector before she was directed to the DA’s offices. A marble bench rested outside the door and Casey ran her hand over the smooth curve of its armrest as she turned the handle. A secretary appeared at the front desk and led her through a maze until she came to a large corner office. The secretary asked if she’d like coffee before she let Casey in and Casey declined. The DA, Patrick G. Merideth, sat working at his desk with a nail clipper and a small file. He dusted his fingers against his gray suit and shook Casey’s hand, offering her a large wing chair beside an unused fireplace.

“Marty parking the car?” the DA asked, taking the chair on the other side of the fireplace and accepting a saucer and cup of coffee from his secretary.

“Marty’s working on a brief,” Casey said.

“Should we wait?” the DA asked.

“I think I can handle it,” Casey said. “We can talk.”

The DA sniffed and nodded. He was a short round man with a crooked nose and even more crooked teeth.

“This is a courtesy call,” Casey said, “so I apologize up front if I don’t sound very courteous, but we’ve got a major problem already.”

“You’re trying to set a convicted murderer and rapist free after twenty years,” the DA said, taking a fussy little sip of his coffee. “A teenage girl bleeding to death in her daddy’s arms. Didn’t you expect some major problems?”