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her over, and sat up. “Why? You got something for me?”
    “We’re gonna take the Aronson murder. Swanson will brief us this afternoon. Black’s gonna join up temporarily. We need to get Del and Lane to come in. The short version of it is this: We got a freak.”
    “You gonna bring me back on line?” She tried for cool, and got eager instead.
    “Limited duty, if you want,” Lucas said. “We could use somebody to coordinate.”
    “I can do that,” she said. She got up, wobbled carefully once around the office, pain shadowing her eyes. “Goddamnit, I can do that.”
     
    R OSE M ARIE’S SECRETARY called while Lucas and Sherrill were planning an approach to the Aronson case. “Rose Marie would like to see you right now.”
    “Two minutes,” Lucas said, and hung up. To Sherrill: “So maybe the feds can give us a psychological profile of the artist. Get the drawings over to one of those architectural drafting places, with the super Xerox machines, and have them make full-sized copies. Mail them overnight them to Washington. Call what’s-his-name, Mallard. His name’s in my Rolodex. See if he can run interference with the FBI bureaucracy.”
    “Okay. I’ll have Del and Lane here at two o’clock, and get Swanson and Rie to move the files over and do a briefing.”
    “Good. I’m gonna talk to Rose Marie, then go run around town for a while, see what’s happening.”
    “You know you got a hickey?” she asked, tapping the side of her own neck.
    “Yeah, yeah. It must be about the size of a rose, the way people are talking about it,” Lucas said.
    Marcy nodded. “Just about. . . . So you gonna knock her up? Weather?”
    “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
    “Jesus. You’re toast.” Marcy smiled, but managed to look a little sad.
    “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.
    “I just wish I could get done with all this shit,” she said restlessly. She meant the pain; she’d been talking about it as though it were a person, and Lucas understood exactly how she felt. “I’m only one inch from being back, but I wanna be back. Fight somebody. Go on a date. Something.”
    “Hey. You’re coming back. You look two hundred percent better than you did a month ago. Even your hair looks good. A month from now . . . a month from now, you’ll be full speed.”
     
    R OSE M ARIE R OUX was a heavyset woman, late fifties, a longtime smoker who was aging badly. Her office was decorated with black-and-white photographs of local politicians, a few cops, her husband and parents; and the usual collection of twenty-dollar wooden plaques. Her desk was neat, but a side table was piled with paper. She was sitting at the side table, playing with a string of amber worry beads, when he walked in, and she looked at him with tired hounddog eyes. “You stopped by,” she said. “What’s up?”
    Lucas settled into her leather visitor’s chair and told her about the drawings and the Aronson murder. “We’re gonna take it,” he said. “Lester is worried about the media and what they’ll do. I’m thinking we might have to use them, and wanted to let you know.”
    “Feed it to Channel Three, make damn sure they know it’s a big favor, and that we’re gonna need a payback,” she said. She nodded to herself and repeated, almost under her breath, “Need a payback.”
    “Sure. So what’s going on?” Lucas asked uncertainly. “You sound a little stressed.”
    “A little stressed,” she echoed. She pushed herself onto her feet, drifted to her window, and looked out at the street. “I just talked to His Honor.”
    “Yeah, they said he was here.” Lucas tipped his head toward the outer office.
    “He’s not going to run this fall. He’s decided.” She turned away from the window to look at Lucas. “Which means I’m history. My term ends in September. He can’t reappoint me, not with a new mayor coming in a month later. The council would never approve it. He thinks Figueroa is probably the leading