“How does it feel to have finally gotten the death penalty for Sarah Weiss?”

“Have a nice day, counselor.”

The doors begin to close. Paris catches them, clearing Jeremiah Cross’s path.

Paris watches Cross glide across the huge lobby at the Justice Center. He remembers the chaotic five-week trial of Sarah Weiss. At that time, a busy-body friend in the prosecutor’s office had told Paris that Jeremiah Cross was a bit of an enigma. She had done her standard snooping, then doubled her efforts when she had seen: (1) Jeremiah Cross’s good looks and (2) an empty computer screen when she had tried to dig up something on him.

In the end, all she could find out is that he subscribed to a telephone-answering service, and his letterheads had a post-office box return address on them, a 44118 zip code, which meant he picked up his mail in Cleveland Heights.

Of the twenty detectives in the Homicide Unit, eighteen are men, all are sergeants. Three men are under consideration for lieutenant: Jack Paris, Greg Ebersole, and Robert Dietricht. Paris isn’t interested, Ebersole doesn’t have the administrative personality, and Dietricht is one of the most officiously obnoxious pricks in the department, which means he’s a natural for the position. He’s also a brilliant detective.

At the moment, Bobby Dietricht is sitting on the edge of Paris’s desk, picking at an imaginary ball of lint on his perfectly creased pantleg, pumping one of his sources on Paris’s telephone. Bobby is thirty-nine years old, a few inches shorter than Paris’s five-eleven but in far better shape. Bobby, who never touches a drop of alcohol or a bite of red meat during the week, is in the gym every other day. Where Paris’s hair is thick and chestnut in color, constantly creeping over his collar, Bobby’s hair is an almost white blond, trimmed Marine Corps close on the sides and back, thinning in the front. Since Tommy Raposo’s passing, Bobby Dietricht had assumed the mantle of the Homicide Unit’s fashion plate. And he never rolls up his sleeves, even on the hottest days of the year.

“Okay,” Bobby says, “here’s what we’re going to do, Ahmed. I’m going to ask you one question, you’re going to give me one answer. Okay? Not your usual six. Just one. Got it?”

Paris, sitting behind the desk, only half-listening, knows the case Dietricht is working on. Muslim woman raped and murdered at Lakeview Terrace.

“Here it comes, Ahmed. Simple question requiring a one-word answer. Ready? Did you, or did you not, see Terrance Muhammad in the lobby of 8160 that night?” With this, Bobby reaches over and hits the speakerphone button, making Paris privy to the conversation, and to what Bobby obviously believes will be a classic piece-of-shit answer.

He is right.

“It is not so simple,” Ahmed says. “As you know, the CMHA is way behind on their repairs. We have taken them to court many, many times over this. Leaking ceilings, peeling plaster, unsafe balcony railings. And not to mention the rats, the vermin. Add to this the low wattage of the singular lamp in the lobby of 8160 and the certainty of such an identification becomes suspect at best. I would like to say that I saw Mr. Muhammad with some degree of certitude, but I cannot. And to think, a few extra watts, a few extra pennies a year might have made all the difference in a criminal investigation.”

“Ahmed, I’ve got you on the speakerphone now. I’m sitting here with Special Agent Johnny Rivers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Say hello to him.”

Paris buries his head in his hands. Johnny Rivers. Bobby Dietricht is famous for the pop culture mixed reference. Johnny Rivers recorded “Secret Agent Man,” not “Special Agent Man.” But it was close enough for Ahmed, and that’s all that matters.

“The FBI is there?” Ahmed asks, a little sheepishly. “I don’t . . . why is this, please?”

“Because the Justice Department is looking into the Nation of Islam and the contracts they have with Housing and Urban Development,” Bobby says. “Seems there’s been some allegations of corruption, extortion, things like that. Not to mention Homeland Security.”

Silence. Bobby has him.

“Could you take me off the speakerphone, please?” Ahmed asks.

Bobby and Paris touch a silent high five. Bobby picks up the hand-set. “Buy me coffee, Ahmed. When? No . . . how about now? Now is good for me. Twenty minutes. Hatton’s.”

Bobby hangs up the phone, stands, shoots his cuffs, turns to leave, then suddenly stops, sniffs the air. “Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“Question for you.”

“Yeah,” Paris answers, annoyed. He has just read the same sentence for the fifth time.

“Why do you smell like Jennifer Lopez?”

The phone. Of all the possibilities that exist when a homicide detective’s phone rings at work—from his long list of lowlife informants, to the coroner’s office calling with bad news, to the unit commander ringing with the cheery tidings that another body has been found and you get to go poke it with things—the one call that invariably changes his day completely is the one that begins:

“Hi, Daddy!”

It is always springtime in his daughter’s voice.

“Hi, Missy.”

“Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you, honey, but it’s not for four more days!” Paris says. “How’s school?”

“Good. We got out last Friday for the holidays.”

Of course, Paris realizes. Why doesn’t he ever stop and think before asking questions like that? “So what’s cookin’?”

“Well,” she says, taking a big swallow. “You know that we haven’t seen each other in a week and a half, right?”

“Okay,” Paris says, his heart aching with love for this little girl. She is so much like her mother. The Setup. The Flattery. The Kill. He lets her play it out.

“And I miss you,” Melissa adds.

“I miss you, too.”

Swallow number two. “Did Mom tell you that she has her office Christmas party tonight?”

“She may have mentioned something about it.”

“And do you remember if she told you that I was thinking about having a few of my friends over tonight, too?”

“No, honey. But it sounds like fun.”

“Well . . . it turns out that Darla has a cold.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. She can’t baby-sit.”

“I see,” Paris says, thinking about what a brilliant tactic this is, having Melissa call.

“So, do you think you could do it?” Melissa asks, then outdoes even her mother in the charm department. “I really miss you, Daddy.”

God, she’s going to be a dangerous woman, Paris thinks. He had planned to rent Sea of Love again, toss a turkey dinner in the microwave, maybe do a few loads of laundry. Why on earth would he give all that up to spend a few hours with his daughter? “Sure.”

“Thanks, Daddy. Mom says eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock it is.”

“Oh! I almost forgot!”

“What, sweetie?”

“Did Mom tell you what she got for me as an early Christmas present?”

“No, she didn’t,” Paris says, fully prepared to have been outspent, out-hipped. What he is not prepared for is outhustled.

“It’s the coolest,” Melissa says. “The absolute coolest.”

“What’d you get?”

“JLO perfume.”

On the way back to the store to return the perfume—having already dumped the perfume sample card after Bobby Dietricht’s smart-ass comment—Paris finds his thoughts returning to Sarah Weiss, a name he had tried very hard to put out of his mind for the past eighteen months. Although he had never partnered with Mike Ryan, Paris had considered him a friend, had known him to be a solid, stand-up cop, a family man with a terrific wife and a little girl in a wheelchair whom he loved to the heavens.

It was Mike Ryan who had given Paris the station-house nickname of Fingers, referring to Paris’s penchant for the impromptu card trick, complete with scatalogical patter, a habit stemming from a lifelong interest in close-up magic. Paris could remember at least a dozen times when a grinning Mike Ryan had staggered across a crowded downtown bar on a Friday night, a quartet of people in tow, a deck of cards in hand, shouting: “Hey, Fingers! Show ’em the one where all the kings lose their nuts in a hunting accident.” Or, “Hey, Fingers! Do the one with the four jacks, the queen, and the circle jerk.”