“Two witnesses said the shooter was in a car,” said Ramirez, “black or blue, late-model sedan or small import, muffler busted or the music pumping.”

“The specificity of the description is devastating,” said Henderson.

“If the car was here and the shooter was sticking his automatic out the window, then the shots were in this direction.”

“Aiming at one of those houses?”

“Or someone walking along the street.”

“Anyone see anyone walking?” said Henderson.

“Just a lot of running. After.”

“Nothing you wouldn’t expect. Any names?”

“No.”

“Descriptions?”

“Nothing specific.”

“Black or white,” said Henderson. “Six feet tall or under five foot. Over forty or just a kid.”

“Something like that.”

“I am so weary.”

“You giving up already, old man?”

“You know what I’m going to get when I retire?”

“What’s that?”

“A puppy. Something to lap at my face and soothe the nerves. Something to run on up and jump at my chest when I call. I can close my eyes and see it.”

“A Labrador?”

“Nah, a mutt. Something dumb and happy. Just like I want to be. But to answer your question, no, I’m not giving up. Can’t give up, not with a girl dead and a killer on the loose. But a crime like this is beyond us. It will get solved only if one of these neighbors talks.

136 WILLIAM LASHNER

Except they’re afraid to talk, because the shooter will come back and we can’t protect them. And we can’t even pretend that by solving this we can stop the next one, because it’s a plague that can’t be solved case by case. Something bigger than us has to step in, but they won’t, because it’s only a little girl who’s lying there. So what we really are, you and me, is a salve to the conscience of the city, to make everyone feel like something is being done when nothing is being done.”

“You make me want to cry,” she said.

“You ever hear of Sisyphus?”

“What is that, an STD?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

His phone rang. He stepped away from Ramirez when he answered

it, holding the little piece of metal in his huge, latex-covered hands. Henderson had already locked down his emotions, so the words from the uniform, who happened to be in the hospital when the beating victim was brought in, didn’t register as anything other than another sad fact on an already dismal day. He thanked the uniform and snapped his phone shut.

“Now, that’s peculiar,” said Henderson.

“What?”

“You know that kid you were questioning on the Toth murder, the

one that broke into his father’s old office?”

“Byrne. Yeah?”

“He just got brought into the emergency room at Methodist, beat

all to hell.”

“What is that about?” said Ramirez.

“Don’t know for sure, but my guess is he wasn’t minding his own

business. Before they discharge him, maybe you ought to find out who he pissed off.”

“After we finish here.”

“That won’t be for a while,” said Henderson, looking beyond the

placards to the row of houses on the other side of the street. “Lot of stories I got to hear, and then I need to talk again to the girl’s family.” “They don’t know anything but the grief.”

“Maybe, but still, that’s what I need to do. Go on over to Methodist and find out what you can about what that boy is up to. And while you’re there, see if you can convince him to mind his own damn business.”

CHAPTER 21

DETECTIVE RAMIREZ FELT a slight but undeniable thrill as she was let into the working space of the Methodist Hospital emergency room, and it worried her. She hadn’t made her fabulous climb up the police department’s ladder of success by letting her emotions get in her way. In every post she’d been assigned, from her first beat on up, she had been the hard one, la reina del hielo. It hadn’t made her many friends, but she wasn’t looking for friends, she was looking to rise, and Lord knows she had risen. Like a rocket ship. And the key had always been the ability to keep her emotions in check. Let burnouts like Henderson weep over the blood and the futility—she had more important things to do. Like rise and rise some more.

But there was something about the big, goofy Byrne kid, the way he smiled so easily, the way he seemed to take nothing all that seriously, especially not her. He was as unrilable as he was unreliable, and both traits appealed to her in a perverse sort of way. And she did have to admit that he was easy on the eyes. Given how things had fallen apart with thin and grim Henry, letting herself feel something for someone like Kyle Byrne would have been sort of nice.

Except for the fact that he was neck-deep in one of their murder investigations.

She stopped outside the curtain wrapped around his assigned bed and took a deep breath before pushing the curtain aside. The bed was empty. She took the pulse of her disappointment, very much as the nurses would take the pulse of the patients surrounding her. It was steady and strong and worrisome, along with a fear that maybe something more serious than a mugging had happened to him. Get it together, girl, she told herself.

She heard a shuffling behind her. She turned, and there he was, struggling across the floor like an old man with a bent and crooked posture, taking baby steps as he dragged along his IV.

“My, how you’ve aged,” she said as he stepped slowly past her and then carefully, and with an old man’s grunt, lifted himself gently into the hospital bed. “I haven’t seen such a pathetic display since my grandfather had his prostate removed.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Dead.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sure he was quite the lively dancer.”

“What happened?” she said.

“Well, you see, there was this truck.”

“A truck. And did this truck have a name?”

“Vern.”

“Well, for a truck this Vern is quite the pro. A concussion, a couple of broken ribs, a bruised kidney, and according to your chart you are pissing blood, which is a lovely image, let me tell you. But your face, which actually could have used the work, is virtually untouched, except for a small mouse under your eye.”

“Is it cute?”

“Your face?”

“The mouse.”

She stepped toward the bed, leaned forward. She was filled with a strange worry that was almost maternal. She couldn’t help herself from reaching and tenderly brushing the swelling under his eye. The skin of his face felt soft and hot, electric—