The woman spoke, and the man passed her the spliff. She drew deeply on it. He held out his hand and she took it, let him pull her off the couch. They began to dance, close, slow, their hips inches apart.

There was an ashtray on the arm of the couch, and he set the spliff in it and turned back to the woman. She was still dancing, eyes closed. He caught her braids, twisted them roughly so her neck bent. He kissed her then, openmouthed, and she ground against him.

When the kiss ended, she stepped back, pulled the T-shirt over her head. She was braless, and he leaned to suck her breasts while she worked at her belt. When it was loose, she pushed the jeans down, kicked them away. She knelt on the couch, facing away from him, her hands gripping the back of it. She looked over her shoulder, braids half-covering her face, spoke to him. He moved behind her, started to loosen his pants.

Morgan stepped down, picked up the cinder block, put it back where he’d found it. He could hear their noises inside, loud, even over the music. He walked back to the car.

He was still parked there, the cell on the seat beside him, when Mikey called back.

“C-Love gave me your message,” Mikey said. “What up?”

“These Haitians. How well you know them?”

“C-Love did the meeting. He handled the details. Why?”

“You trust them?”

“What you mean?”

“Would they rip you? Set up the deal, then take your boy down?”

A pause. Mikey thinking about it.

“No,” he said. “That don’t make sense. Those boys are businessmen. What I sent was a down payment, that’s all. There was more coming. A lot more. Why they want to mess that up?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why fuck with me anyway? They know that shit would come back on them.”

“Maybe they thought all the heat on you right now, you wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

Another pause.

“Nah. Like I said, don’t make sense. They got so much shit coming in down there, they don’t know what to do with it. Why cut off a market? And why leave the guns? No banger ever walked away from a machine gun.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Why you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Morgan said. “I’m down here, and that cop who shot Willis? His girlfriend’s got a taste for the dark. She’s holed up with him right now.”

“Haitian?”

“Could be.”

“Motherfucker.”

“Maybe it’s not connected,” Morgan said. “Maybe she just likes a little strange on the side.”

“Maybe you need to have a talk with that boy.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Let me send the twins, man. This shit is getting complicated.”

“No need for that. I’ll tell you if there is.”

“They ready when you need them.”

I’m sure they are, Morgan thought, and ready to get their hands on that money, too.

“No,” he said. “It’s under control.”

“Keep it that way, brother,” Mikey said and ended the call.

SIXTEEN

Sara signed on to the computer, got the keyword prompt, typed in “Taurus revolver,” hit RETURN.

Three hits, links to reports. The first was the Willis shooting. She clicked on the second, waited for it to come up. It was a case from a year ago that she remembered, an attempted armed robbery at a gas station, the suspect dropping the weapon as he fled. She wrote the evidence control number on a pad.

The third link was a domestic violence case from two years ago. Three guns had been seized as part of a restraining order-a Smith and Wesson.38 Chiefs Special, a Colt.45 automatic, and a Taurus revolver-but the Taurus was logged as being a.357. She wrote down the number anyway, did a fresh search on “Taurus” with no qualifiers, found nothing else. She signed off, tore the top sheet from the pad.

The Evidence Control Room was in the basement. A long, institutional-green corridor, pipes running along the ceiling, fluorescent lights hanging below them. There was a window halfway down the hall, a closed door beside it.

Charlie Stern was at the window, writing on a clipboard. She could hear his faint wheezing. He was in his late fifties but looked ten years older, his belly sloping over his belt, his flattop solid white.

“ ’Lo, Sara,” he said.

“Charlie, I’m wondering if you can help me with something.”

He looked at her, then at the clock on the wall behind him. “Five forty-five.”

“I know. This will only take a couple minutes.”

After six, when Charlie left, anyone wanting access to Evidence had to go through the sheriff. She didn’t want that.

“What have you got?” he said.

She handed him the slip of paper. “I need to see the weapons under these numbers. I’m looking for a Taurus,.38 caliber.”

“What’s this about?”

“Case I’m working. Just need to make sure they’re accounted for.”

“Hold on,” he said and left the window.

She waited. Through the window she could see rows of metal shelving rising to the ceiling, brown banker’s boxes. She could hear his breathing, his slow, heavy footsteps.

Five minutes later, he came back to the window, put two heavy plastic evidence bags on the sill, got his clipboard.

“You’ll need to sign these out,” he said.

“I just need to look. Only take a minute.”

She opened the bags, looked at the weapons inside. The first was the.38, with cracked walnut grips. The second was bigger, the.357, nickel plated. Both had yellow plastic cord threaded through the barrels and cylinders.

“Let me ask you something, Charlie.”

He raised an eyebrow. She could sense his impatience.

“When did we start computerizing all our evidence, logging it in?”

He shrugged.

“Nineteen ninety-nine maybe. They had a clerk in here for a while, backlogging the hard copies into the computer, but I don’t know how far back she got. Couple years maybe, why?”

“If I was looking for a weapon taken as evidence before that, how would I find it?”

“Well, if you knew the case file number, I could track it that way. Everything back here is in order, more or less. I need to go soon, Sara. Can this wait?”

She smiled at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But as long as I’m down here… if you could just help me out a little.”

“We used to keep logs, hard copy, of all the weapons moved into Evidence. That’s before my time, though.”

“You still have them?”

He sighed, then touched a button under the window. The door buzzed open. “Come on in.”

When she went through, he shut the door behind her, pulled the grate down over the window, secured it with a padlock.

“Last thing I need is someone else coming along,” he said. “They’re over here.”

On one side of the room was a desk and wall shelves stacked with ledger books.

“Each of those covers about four years,” he said. “None of them are in the computer yet.”

She took the first book down, dusted her sleeve along the spine-1986-1990.

She nodded at the desk chair. “You mind?”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ve got paperwork to finish up.” He went back to the window and the clipboard.

The desktop was cluttered with papers. Near the phone was a half-eaten cheese sandwich on white bread. A fly crawled along its edge. She sat, opened the book on her lap.

It was set up like a standard financial ledger, headings for each year, then each month, tabbed columns. Most of the entries were in blue ink, some in green or red. The same spidery hand throughout. Charlie’s predecessor, whoever that had been. Each entry had a case number.

She ran her fingers down the tabs, looking at the annotations. Shotgun, 12-gauge, single-shot. Colt.45, Peacemaker. Star.25. All weapons that had been seized during or after a crime. She stopped every time she came to a.38. Smith and Wesson. Rugers. Dan Wessons. No Taurus.

She turned pages, scanned columns, her nose itching from the dust.