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interjected. “I made that false bust, remember?”
    “We all make our little mistakes,” he said. “Besides, your head … well, let’s just say you weren’t up for that kind of job.”
    This frigid sensation enveloped me. Like my pants had somehow just fallen down around my ankles with everybody watching.
    I glanced over at the two uniformed cops, their faces never veering from their computer keyboards. I knew they had to be dying to get a better view of our apparently friendly exchange. But I also knew they wouldn’t dare.
    I drank some more coffee and ruminated over Cain’s choice of words: Asking you as an old partner …
    “No choice,” I said like a question. The non-committing part-timer suddenly committed.
    He grinned. “Not really, no.”
    He checked the pockets of his blazer to make sure he had everything he needed: keys, smokes, lighter, wallet, extra bullets. He raised his right leg, set the sole of his shoe against the desk’s edge, checked to make sure the small black revolver holstered to his ankle was secure.
    Copasetic …
    Putting his leg back down, he began walking in the direction of Joy.
    “Hey,” I called out.
    He turned.
    I said, “You haven’t mentioned a word about my boy.”
    This time his smile was neither cop ironic nor cop forced.
    He said, “Kid’s okay. Just started Little League.”
    Little League, I repeated to myself. I didn’t know why it hurt so much to hear those two words. Sure, I had a visitation schedule with my son, but it was never enough time together. Sometimes I felt jealous of Mitch—the stepfather become the dominant parent.
    I asked, “How’s he doing?”
    Cain sort of smirked, nodding over one shoulder and then the other, as if to suggest not bad, but not great . “It’s tee-ball,” he said. “Kids are awkward at that age. But the kiddo’s having fun. I help with the coaching.”
    That hurt. Cain, coaching my kid—it felt like a punch to the stomach. Here was the good former partner now become the good dad to my son.
    I guess he must have sensed my disappointment, because he perked up a bit, took a quick look at his watch.
    I took one last sip of the still-too-hot coffee, set it back down onto the booking desk. My hands felt like they were on fire. I lifted them up to my face, blew on them. That’s when I remembered the cuts and scrapes. Almost abruptly I shoved them back into my jacket pockets.
    “There’s a kill scene waiting for us,” my old partner said.
    I exhaled a breath, felt my cut up hands buried in my pockets. I just could not get it through my head that Scarlet was dead; just could not get over the fact that I might have had something to do with it.
    “Hell of a way to make a living,” I said as I picked up my coffee, started walking.
    “It’s the only real living you got,” Cain said.

7
    HE STOOD OVER THE body—a large, dark-haired ghost of a man.
    He felt strange in a way, almost as if his own soul had left his body along with his wife’s. He knew he should be doing something now. Crying, wailing, something. Like they do on T.V. when someone as close as a wife dies.
    But despite the gruesome kill scene, Jake Montana was not sure he felt a goddamned thing.
    Maybe it was the result of shock. Or maybe shock had nothing to do with it. Maybe his heart was empty, bankrupt, and that’s all.
    No need to have called 911. Because right outside the door, his own police were waiting patiently to begin their crime scene investigation.
    Question: Would he become suspect in the murder of his own wife?
    Answer: Almost certainly.
    Did he kill her?
    Almost certainly not. Because if had killed her, he had no memory, no recollection of it. Nothing to go on. And it wasn’t like him not to remember.
    That is, unless he’d been drinking. Heavily.
    The doors and windows to his home were closed and locked. No broken glass, no jimmied door frames, no sign at all of foul play. Not a soul had attempted an intrusion. He was certain that a fingerprint