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that. Why do you live here?”
    “They let me. You can’t pitch a tepee just anywhere, you know. You got all these rules and ordinances and health and safety codes, and—”
    “Who let you?”
    “Rex.”
    “Why?”
    “I asked.”
    “Heather! Why is Braga allowing you to stay here?”
    “I told you.”
    I was getting nowhere. But this was a question I could take up with Braga. I glanced around the tepee. The sides looked sturdy, the poles—twelve in all—had been sunk solidly into the yard, and an inner canvas hung from them halfway down. The only light came from a marble oil lamp on the dressing table next to the crib. The table also held a mirror, bottles of makeup, nail polish, eyeliner, rouge—what any college girl might have on a dresser. Beside it was a portable radio, and hanging from the support pole were dresses, skirts, leather slacks—all of them expensive. I wanted to ask about them, but instead I said, “Where were you tonight?”
    Her face had softened in my silence, but now the scowl returned. “Here.”
    “In the tepee?”
    “Yeah.”
    “All evening?”
    “Yeah, all evening. Where do you think you go with a kid that age?”
    “You sure you weren’t at the ceremony?”
    “Listen, lady, if I was in there, with him”—she pointed to the sleeping infant “everyone would have known. And they would remember.”
    “You could have been there without him.”
    “I wasn’t.”
    I could check that against the patrol officers’ list of the members of the audience. I decided not to take the interview any further tonight. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said. “I want to talk to you then.”
    “Yeah, sure. I’m not going anywhere. The days of folding your tepee and stealing into the night are gone.”
    I headed back across the lawn toward the main building. Now the lights were out. I walked to the front. Leaning against the door was Howard, my fellow beat officer.
    Seth Howard was his full name, but for him the “Seth” seemed superfluous. To one and all, Howard was Howard. A six-foot-six redhead, he looked like the archetypal Irish cop, right down to the grin. For any other cop, that quasi-humorous expression would have caused problems. But no one pushed Howard too far.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked. Our shift had been over for nearly two hours.
    “I heard you had a murder on your hands. I just finished a pile of dictation and I thought I’d see how come you got this one, when you’re supposed to be off duty, yet.”
    I stared, trying to divine his motivation: professional interest or more?
    Howard’s beat covered the same area as mine—a square mile south of the campus inhabited by students and street people, and noted for its petty break-ins and drug traffic ranging from the sale of nickel bags to six-figure cocaine deals. We had handled a lot of drugs—too much. We’d both been glad when the word came down to lay off small-time marijuana. But murder was another thing. We didn’t have many of those—maybe twenty a year in the whole city. And heading a murder investigation could look very good on an officer’s record, particularly an officer who had visions of someday becoming chief. Like Howard. Like me. We had joked about our common ambition, but there was too much at stake for it to be entirely a joke. Beneath that superficial levity, I was keenly aware of our rivalry—he the cop’s cop and me the woman cop in a city that prided itself on advancing minorities.
    “I was at the ceremony when the guru was stabbed,” I said.
    “What?” Howard’s curly red eyebrows rose. “You turning religious?”
    “No. I know virtually nothing about Buddhism. A friend took me. She said it would be a good experience.”
    “Well, it will have been if you catch the killer before the Sunday papers go to press. If you let it go longer than that, it could be a very bad experience. There was a batch of reporters here when I arrived.”
    I glanced around. The complex was deserted