“Glad to hear it.”

“Thank you again for your sensitivity with her.”

“No problem.” She glanced at the lieutenant’s office. “Everything all right?”

Sam lowered her voice so they wouldn’t be overheard. “Just another run-in with my good friend Ramsey.”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Watch out for him. He hates your guts.”

“Any idea why?”

“I have my theories.” Erica’s gaze darted around nervously. “Let’s grab a coffee off campus sometime soon.”

“We’ll do that.”

Nodding, Erica said, “I haven’t seen you since your husband’s promotion. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. I think.”

Erica laughed and shook her head. “I can’t imagine.”

“Neither did we.”

“I’d love to hear all about it.”

“I’ll call you about that coffee.”

“Sounds good.” Sam left SVU and headed for IT where she received a much friendlier reception from Lieutenant Archelotta, the one fellow officer who’d seen her naked during their brief fling several years ago.

“Hey, Sam. What brings you up to my neck of the woods?”

She produced the CD from Gonzo’s building. “Could you take a look at this for me and see if you can isolate the person or persons who disabled the security camera in an apartment building?”

“Sure, I’ll put one of my guys right on it.”

“How’d you end up working on the holiday?”

“Nothing better to do,” he said with a sheepish grin. “You?”

“Caught a homicide first thing.”

“Oh, damn. So, I haven’t seen you since everything happened.” He stretched to look around her. “Where’s your Secret Service detail?”

“No detail for me. Just him and the boy.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“He made it a condition,” she said with a shrug. “They wanted him badly enough to give him what he wanted.”

“That’s very cool. I can’t believe your husband is the VP.”

“Neither can he.”

Archie laughed. “So business as usual for you, then?”

“That’s the goal.”

He held up the CD case. “I’ll get something ASAP for you on this and the phone Cruz brought in.”

“Thanks, Archie.” Keeping an eye out for Ramsey, Sam went downstairs to the detectives’ pit where most of her team had assembled. Freddie was on the phone so she gestured to her office. He held up his index finger as he nodded.

Sam sat behind her mess of a desk and corralled her still-damp hair into a clip. Her brain was whirling with disturbing thoughts and implications. A knock on the door preceded Captain Malone stepping into her office.

He shut the door behind him.

“Captain.”

“Lieutenant.” He was in jeans and a sweater today, his service weapon holstered to his hip and his badge clipped to the front pocket of his pants. Though he was approaching his late forties, he was still a badass in her eyes. “Tell me what we know about the Phillips homicide.”

“She was found early this morning in a car parked on Constitution Ave near West Potomac Park. She’d been manually strangled.”

“She was in the driver’s seat of the car?”

“Yes.”

“Was it her car?”

Sam shook her head. “It was registered to a George Phillips of Bowie.”

“Let’s get someone up there to talk to him.”

“It’s on the to-do list. I need to get with my team and figure out our next move.”

“And Detective Gonzales?”

“I spoke with him earlier. He and his fiancée were home all evening, celebrating their first anniversary. They arrived home yesterday afternoon and hadn’t yet left the apartment when I saw them.”

“And they can prove that?”

“Not exactly.” She filled him in on the situation with the security cameras in Gonzo’s building. “The super said the cameras were working fine yesterday. Archie has the footage and he’s checking to see if we can figure out who disarmed them.”

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

“You and me both.”

“If someone wanted to off her, who better to frame than someone who’s been locked in a custody battle with her?” Malone asked.

“I’ve had the same thought.”

“Where is he?”

“I suggested he visit his parents in West Virginia today.” She paused before she added, “As planned.”

“Good thinking.”

“How do we handle the brass on this? The minute we announce the name of our vic, the media will be all over us—and all over Gonzo. We know he didn’t do it, Cap.”

“You know that, and I know that, but we also know he had motive. As did Christina.”

“They didn’t do it.”

“We’re going to need to prove it. You got that, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said with a sigh.

“And we’re going to have conflict of interest issues working a case in which one of our guys had a strong motivation to see this woman dead.”

“So what are you saying?”

“The chief will want to call in outside reinforcements.”

Sam bent her head, which had begun to pulse with the early signs of a migraine. “What kind of outside reinforcements?”

“You know exactly what kind.”

The FBI. Avery Hill. “I’m getting tired of having him underfoot in every investigation, as if we can’t function on our own.”

“We function just fine on our own, but sometimes we need help. Such as when he cut through miles of red tape and got a search warrant for your niece’s dorm room or when he pushed the bullet through the lab after your dad’s surgery.”

“For all the good that did us.”

“It’s more information than we had before.”

The National Integrated Ballistics Information Network had come back with no match to the nine-millimeter bullet that had been retrieved from her father’s neck.

“If the person who fired that shot screws up again, we’ll have him—or her,” Malone reminded her. “Your dad’s bullet is now in the system. The case can break wide open at any time.”

Malone wasn’t telling Sam anything she didn’t know, but her high hopes for an immediate break had been dashed.

“How’s he doing anyway?”

“Terrible. The pain is bad. The doctors say it’ll get better, but it’s been more than a month, and it’s not improving at all. They’ve got him so hopped up on morphine that he’s out of it most of the time. Just when I thought his situation couldn’t get worse, it did.”

“I’m so sorry, Sam. I know it’s rough. Hell, it’s hard on us to see him like that, and we’re just his friends.”

“You’re much more than that to him. To all of us.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay?”

She nodded. “The visits from you—all of you—have sustained him.”

“We love him,” Malone said simply.

Sam needed to change the subject before she broke down in front of her boss. “We’ve got a meeting to get to.”

“Yes, we do. Speaking of shitshows.”

“I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“See you then.”

Before she left her desk, Sam downed two of the prescription pills that kept the migraines under control. Freddie appeared at the doorway, and Sam waved him in as she chased the pills with water.

“Everything okay?” her partner asked. “You look weird in the eyes.”

“Gee, thanks. Trying to fend off a migraine.”

“Just what you don’t need today.”

“Or any day. Where are we?”

“McBride and Tyrone have gone to Lori’s apartment to interview the neighbors. I’ve got Archie’s team dumping her phone, and Arnold is trying to figure out where she worked.”

Sam withdrew Lori’s wallet from her pocket and handed it to him. “Have Arnold go through it and catalog everything in it. You may find some employer info in there.”

“Got it. Will do.”

“I have a commander’s meeting at noon. After that, we’re going to Bowie.”

“Right.”

“Sorry if this is fucking up your holiday plans.”

“It’s not. Elin had to work today anyway. New Year’s Day is huge at the gym with all the resolutions.”

“Why in the hell do people do stupid things like suddenly decide to start working out just because it’s January first?”

Freddie laughed at the question and walked away shaking his head. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”