“Which case?”

“The dead guy’s name is Kenneth Myers,” he told me. “At least that’s the name he was going by up in Seattle at the time of his death. Down here he was known as Kenneth Mangum. His mother had reported him missing years earlier, but because of the name confusion, it took a long time before someone up there connected your cold case with the missing persons report in Arizona.”

“What time frame are we talking about?” I asked.

“Hold on. I have some files here that may include all those details, but I’ll need to go out to the car to look through them. Do you want me to call back, or do you want to hang on?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you call me back in ten?” As soon as the call ended, I immediately dialed Ralph’s number. “I’m sure you and Mel have been burning up the phone lines this morning,” I grumbled when he came on the line.

“We’ve done no such thing,” Ralph replied. “In fact I haven’t spoken to Mel since right after you managed to drag her out of the trunk of that car. What’s she up to these days? Keeping out of trouble, I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” I said. “She’s spending the weekend in D.C. at a Homeland Security conference.”

“Tell her hello from me when she gets back,” Ralph said. “Now, what do you need?”

“What’s the deal with Brandon Walker?” I asked.

“He’s a good guy who used to be sheriff down south in Pima County,” Ralph answered. “He’s been a part of TLC not quite from the beginning, but close. He’s a neat guy. I like him. His wife, Diana Ladd, is a fairly well-­known author. I think she and Mel would hit it off.”

Ralph’s enthusiasm resembled that of a matchmaker setting up a blind date. I wasn’t amused. I didn’t figure Brandon Walker and I would ever be best buds, and neither would our wives.

“Tell me the truth, Ralph. Was Walker’s call today purely coincidental, or did you and Mel join forces to sic him on me?”

“Mel and I are innocent of all charges,” Ralph assured me. “I didn’t know a thing about any of this until Brandon called me this morning asking for your number.”

“All right,” I said grudgingly, “I’ll hear him out. In fact, he’s calling back right now. Gotta go.” I switched over to the other line. “That didn’t take long.”

“Look,” Walker said. “I can tell you’re not thrilled to have me intruding on your weekend. This case is an odd one, and if you’re not interested in helping . . .”

Odd is something that appeals to me. “What makes it odd?” I asked.

“The initial homicide, the one I’m working on, happened forty-­plus years ago. A guy named John Lassiter was convicted—­twice over—­of murdering a former pal of his, someone named Amos Warren. I was the investigating officer on that original case, and Lassiter has been in prison for thirty years or so. An outfit named Justice for All recently negotiated a plea deal, but he won’t take it—­because he won’t plead guilty to something he didn’t do.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered. “Where have I heard that before? You didn’t fall for that old line, did you? Is Lassiter the one asking you to reinvestigate the case?”

“Earlier this morning I talked to Lassiter’s daughter, Amanda Wasser. She’s the one who got JFA involved, but, yeah, Lassiter asked to see me because of my connection to TLC. The guy who prosecuted Lassiter isn’t exactly pure as the driven snow, so I decided to do some asking around. A few minutes ago, I finished interviewing Lassiter himself. I’m going with my gut here, but I think he’s the real deal.”

Walker may have been a believer, but I wasn’t. Busting my butt for a convicted killer wasn’t my idea of how to spend a quiet Saturday afternoon. Still, I was a little curious about the unsolved case here in Washington.

“What about the other case you mentioned,” I asked, “the one up here? Can you give me any further details on that?”

“I have a box full of paper files,” Walker said, “but I don’t want to try going over those by phone. Lassiter’s daughter has been amassing information on the case for years. That’s the box of files I just told you about, but she says she has digital copies of everything she gave me. If you would give me your e-­mail address, I can have her send you the digital copies of everything pertaining to the Kenneth Myers homicide.”

I gave him my e-­mail address. “Tell her she’s welcome to send me the stuff, but I’m not making any promises.”

The call ended. I made myself some coffee, went into the family room, took a seat in my not-­recliner, and picked up my computer. I intended to send Mel a note telling her about what Jim and I had found on our shopping spree along with photos of what we’d ­ordered, but when I opened my mail program I found a series of e-­mails from [email protected]. The first one was entitled SPD. Archives. KMyers.

I opened the attached file, intending to glance at it briefly and move on, but I didn’t.

The first page was nothing more or less than your basic bureaucratic CYA disclaimer:

The following information is being sent to Ms. Amanda Wasser in answer to her request under the Freedom of Information Act. It is the policy of the Seattle Police Department to cooperate fully with such requests when releasing information to the public is not considered to be detrimental to ongoing investigations.

The next page included an overview along with photos of the items in the evidence box, and there wasn’t much: a frayed leather belt, the remains of a pair of leather shoes, a gold pendant engraved with the names Calliope Horn and Ken Myers, a pair of prescription glasses, and two bullet fragments that were identified as .22 longs. There was no notation that the fragments had been sent out for testing, but that was hardly surprising—­that kind of testing costs money. After all, solving cold cases wasn’t necessarily a top priority back in the early ’90s, and since these were skeletal remains only, the Kenneth Myers case was stone cold from day one.

But this was a new century and a new time in solving cold cases. Before continuing, I made a note to myself to ask my friend Seattle PD assistant chief Ron Peters to have the two .22 bullets sent to National Ballistics Laboratory.

The next scanned page revealed the cover sheet of what I easily recognized as an SPD murder book. In the middle of the page was a struck-­through John Doe. Written in pen next to it was another name: Kenneth Myers a.k.a. Kenneth Mangum. The next page, the one listing the names of investigating officers, was the one that stopped me cold. Three names leaped out at me: Detective S. Danielson; Detective P. Kramer; and Special Homicide Investigator M. Soames.

Sue Danielson is someone I see often because all these years later she still haunts my dreams. We were working as partners when she died in a shoot-­out with her estranged husband. Realistically I know that her death was an act of domestic violence and that it was not my fault. Still, that doesn’t keep me from blaming myself and torturing myself with questions about what I could have done that would have meant the difference between Sue’s living and dying.

Phil Kramer was and is a jerk—­a brownnosing, butt-­kissing clown, whose undeserved—­as far as I’m concerned—­promotion to captain shortly after Sue’s death was the catalyst that caused me to pull the plug on my career at Seattle PD.

Then, of course, there’s Mel. She’s my wife, but one of the jobs she was tasked with on Ross Connors’s Special Homicide Investigation Team was searching through multistate missing persons files and trying to match those reports with unidentified homicide victims in Washington State.

Ignoring my coffee, I performed my first duty as one of Ralph Ames’s TLC volunteers. I settled in to read.

AGAIN GABE AWAKENED IN DARKNESS. This time, the first thing he realized was that the truck wasn’t moving. Then, somewhere nearby, he heard a strange buzzing sound. It took a moment for him to recognize what it was—­the sound of a cell phone buzzing because the ringer had been turned off. It wasn’t his phone. If it were, he would have felt it. That meant the phone belonged to the other prisoner. He still didn’t know for sure if his fellow inmate was Tim. What was important was that someone was calling—­someone was trying to reach them, but neither of them could answer. Moving closer, he was able to touch his companion’s pocket and feel the phone through the cloth. Before he could extricate it, the phone gave one last buzz and fell silent.