Edgerton’s response to Dale set him apart from the rest of his squad, but this time there was nothing unique about it: to be a black detective in homicide required a special sense of balance, a willingness to tolerate the excesses of many white colleagues, to ignore the cynical assessments and barbed humor of men for whom black-on-black violence represented a natural order. To them, the black middle class was simply a myth. They had heard about it, they had read about it, but damned if they could find it in the city of Baltimore. Edgerton, Requer, Eddie Brown-they were black, they were essentially middle class-but they proved nothing. They were cops and therefore, whether they knew it or not, they were all honorary Irishmen. That logic allowed the same detective who could comfortably partner with Eddie Brown to watch a black family move into the house next door, then go to the police computer the next day and run his new neighbors.

The prejudice ran deep. A man had only to stand in the coffee room and listen to a veteran white detective’s scientific analysis of homeboy head shapes: “… Now your bullet head, he’s a stone killer, he’s dangerous. But your peanut heads, they’re just dope dealers and sneak thieves. Now your swayback, he’s generally a…”

Black detectives lived and worked around those limitations, tacitly offering themselves as contradictions to the ghetto scenes that greeted their white colleagues every night. If a white guy still insisted on missing the point, then fuck him. What was a black police going to do? Call the NAACP? For Edgerton and the other black detectives, there was no way to win the argument, and consequently, no argument.

But Edgerton does have an argument with Eugene Dale, one that he knows he can win. And when he walks out of the interrogation room the first time, he is as eager to give himself a break as to let Dale stew before going after a second, full statement.

Downstairs in the ballistics lab, Joe “No Compare ’em” Kopera, the dean of Baltimore’s firearms examiners, has both bullets under the microscope and is slowly turning each slug in the positioning clay, lining up the rifling marks and striations in the split screen viewer. From the most obvious gouges on each bullet, Kopera determines almost immediately that they are both from.32-caliber projectiles from the same class of weapon, in this case a six with a left twist. This means that the rifling grooves on the inside of the barrel-which differ for each mode of firearm-carve a total of six deep channels around the back end of the projectile, each channel twisting to the left.

Knowing that much, Kopera can say that the bullet that killed Andrea Perry was fired from the same or similar make of.32 revolver seized in that afternoon’s raid on Dale’s house. But to say that the bullet was fired from that gun requires more; the striation marks-thin scrapings caused by imperfections and debris inside the gun barrel-also have to be matched. Leaving the microscope on, Kopera walks upstairs for coffee and a conference with the detectives.

“What’s the verdict?” asks Nolan.

“Same type of weapon, same ammo. But it’s going to take me a little while to be sure.”

“Would it help if we tell you he’s guilty?”

Kopera smiles and wanders into the coffee room. Edgerton is already back inside the large box, suffering through Dale’s second statement. This time Edgerton mentions the possibility of fingerprints on the weapon, though in fact the lab tech couldn’t lift any latents before the gun went downstairs to Kopera.

“If it’s not your gun, then what will you say when we find your fingerprints all over it?”

“It is my gun,” says Dale.

“It is your gun.”

“Uh-huh.”

Edgerton can almost hear the sound of Dale’s brain lurching around in the dark. The Out. The Out. Where’s my Out? Edgerton already knows which window his suspect will reach for.

“I mean it’s my gun. But I didn’t kill anyone.”

“It’s your gun but you didn’t kill anyone.”

“No. I let a couple guys borrow it that night. They said they needed it to scare someone.”

“You let a couple guys borrow it. I had a feeling you were going to say that.”

“I didn’t know what they needed it for…”

“And these guys went out and raped this little girl,” says Edgerton, glaring at the suspect, “and then they took her down the alley and shot her in the head, right?”

Dale shrugs. “I don’t know what they did with it.”

Edgerton looks at him coldly. “What’s your friends’ names?”

“Names?”

“Yeah. They’ve got names, right? You lent them your gun, so you had to at least know who they were.”

“If I tell you that, then they’re in trouble.”

“Fuck yeah, they’re in trouble. They’re going to be charged with the murder, aren’t they? But it’s either them or you, Eugene, so what’s the names?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Edgerton’s had enough. “You’re about to be charged in a death penalty murder case,” he says in a voice rising with anger, “but you’re not going to tell me the names of the mysterious friends who borrowed your gun ’cause it might get them in trouble. That’s your story?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Because they don’t exist.”

“No.”

“You don’t have any friends. You don’t have a friend in the fucking world.”

“If I tell you, he’ll kill me.”

“If you don’t tell me,” shouts Edgerton, “I’m going to put you on Death Row. Your choice…”

Eugene Dale looks down at the table, then back at the detective. He shakes his head and raises his arms, a gesture of surrender, a plaintive appeal.

“Fuck it,” says Edgerton, getting up again. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering with you.”

Edgerton slams the door to the large interrogation room, then greets his sergeant with a half-smile. “He’s innocent.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Some friends borrowed the gun and then forgot to tell him they’d raped and killed a girl.”

Nolan laughs. “Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

“I swear I’m ready to hit this guy.”

“That bad, huh?”

Edgerton wanders into the coffee room for a fresh cup, but after five minutes, Eugene Dale has something more to say. He bangs loudly on the door, but Edgerton ignores him. Eventually, Jay Landsman comes out of his office to check on the racket.

“Detective, sir, can I have a word with you?”

“With me?”

“Yes, sir. That other officer won’t listen to me and I…”

Landsman shakes his head. “You don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “The only thing I want to do is kick the living shit out of you for what you did to that girl. You don’t-”

“But I didn’t-”

“Hey,” says Landsman. “If you want to talk to me you’re gonna do it without teeth, you understand that? You’re better off with the other detective.”

Dale retreats into the interrogation room as Landsman slams the door and walks back to his office, his day now considerably brighter than it had been.

Five minutes later, Edgerton returns to the hallway outside the interrogation room, now cool enough for one more sortie. As he opens the metal door, Kopera brushes past him on his way from the stairwell.

“It’s a winner, Harry.”

“Way to be, Dr. K.”

“The striation is a little light, but I don’t have any real problem.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Edgerton slams the door behind him and lays it down for Eugene Dale one last time: A living rape victim who will identify him as well as the gun. A ballistics match to the murder weapon. And, oh yeah, those fingerprints all over the gun…

“I’d like to tell you my friend’s name.”

“Okay,” says Edgerton. “Tell me.”

“But I don’t know his name.”

“You don’t know his name.”

“No. He told me but I forgot. But his nickname is Lips. He lives in West Baltimore.”

“You don’t know his name, but you let him borrow your gun.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lips, from West Baltimore.”

“That’s what they call him.”