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Eight on Second Street. Think I saw that girl in here last night.”
    By this time Veronica Tyler’s family had been notified of her death, and her most recent photo had been released to the local media.
    “Okay, Wally,” Ashe said, nicely composed. “You pretty sure it was her?”
    “Yeah, damn sure.”
    “Was she with anyone?”
    “This guy. I mean, she was by herself at first, and then he sat down next to her. Seemed to be coming on pretty strong.”
    “Can you describe him?”
    “Not too good. It was crowded in there. The girl I noticed; she was a looker. As for the guy—I don’t know. He was dressed nice, I remember that.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “At the bar. I’m just opening up. Saw the report on TV while I was getting the kitchen ready for Julio.”
    “Who’s Julio?”
    “Substitute dishwasher. Our regular guy, Pedro, came down with the flu last night and had to go home early. Got a mess of dirty glasses here.”
    Moore was out of her seat. “Tell him not to wash anything. We’ll be right over.”
    * * *
    The bar had a friendless, disconsolate quality in daytime. Upended chairs rested on rows of tables. Sunlight struggled through high, frosted windows. The smell of stale booze hung over the place like the odor of disinfectant in a morgue.
    There was a kitchen at the rear where the overworked waitresses had deposited trays of used glasses. “Slow nights, I wash ’em myself,” Wally Stargill said to the small mob of agents and cops crowding in for a look. He was a tall, laconic man, his fleshy forearms crossed awkwardly over a spreading gut. “But Fridays and Saturdays are crazy here.”
    “Crazy,” Gifford echoed, perhaps thinking of Veronica Tyler with an ampule of toilet cleaner in her neck.
    Moore asked if the victim and the man who’d picked her up had left before or after Pedro went home.
    “After.”
    “So the glasses they used weren’t washed?”
    “Probably not, unless I cleaned them in the sink under the bar. Like I said, I do that when we’re not too busy. Last night I doubt I got a chance.”
    Moore pointed at the rows of glasses. Only Lovejoy knew her well enough to see that she was worked up. “He handled one of those.”
    Ashe frowned. “What are you going to do? Print them all?”
    “Right.”
    “You serious?”
    “Sure am.”
    “There must be three hundred glasses here.”
    “Then we’ll print three hundred glasses.”
    Lovejoy cleared his throat, a tentative sound. “Conceivably we can narrow it down.” He turned to the bartender. “You happen to recall what the man was drinking?”
    Stargill thought for a moment. “Beefeater on the rocks.”
    “You’re certain?”
    “Oh, yeah.” A sheepish smile. “I never forget a drink.”
    “So it was a lowball glass,” Gifford said.
    “That’s how we serve ’em.”
    Lovejoy coughed again. “There would appear to be no more than thirty or forty of those.”
    “All of a sudden this sounds a lot more practical,” Ashe said. “Got to warn you, though, our lab is pretty backed up. Staff cutbacks. You know the story.”
    “Possibly we can requisition some help, expedite the process.” Lovejoy sneezed. “Damn. I hate this climate.”
    “You hate all climates,” Moore said briskly. “Come on, let’s talk to I.D. Wally, may we use your phone?”
    * * *
    Identification Division flew in the Latent Fingerprints section chief, Paul Collins, to assist the Phoenix P.D. crime lab in the tedious procedure.
    Collins, an East Coast native who thought of Arizona as cow country and the local constabulary as rubes, was pleasantly astonished to find an argon laser at his disposal, along with cyanoacrylate fuming cabinets, iodine fume guns, and gentian violet baths. By the end of the assignment, he was humming “My Darling Clementine” and considering retirement in the Grand Canyon State.
    One hundred forty-six latents were recovered. It took three days to run cold searches on them all, using a modem link between the