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my beat.”
    “So you hip-checked her, huh?”
    “I’m the police reporter.” His tone regained the familiar competitive edge I was used to—no more chitchat, as Murphy put it. I began to climb the stairs. “Joe, what about the shooting last night?”
    “What about it?”
    “Who was the stiff?”
    “We’ll let you know soon, Stan, along with everybody else.”
    “What was a guy like Phillips doing on Clark Avenue in the middle of the night? It’s sort of off his beaten track, isn’t it?”
    I came back down the stairs. “Stanley, just because you’re so brilliant and I’m so dumb, stupid games like that aren’t going to make me spill my guts. So back off. Do what you’ve got to do, but save the Woodward-Bernstein imitation for the other guys, okay?”
    He gave me a look as if I’d just grounded him for a week, but he had the courtesy to keep his mouth shut.
    If the average waist-level temperature downstairs was seventy degrees, as it probably was today, the second floor was about eighty-five. I walked slowly down the corridor to avoid working up a sweat and went through the door marked CLERK OF COURT.
    A young woman in an appropriately summery blouse looked up and smiled. “Hi, Lieutenant. We haven’t seen you up here in quite a while.”
    I let out an exaggerated puff of air and patted the top of my thinning gray hair. “People my age have to watch what they do. The stairs you dance up without a thought could kill me.”
    She laughed. “From what I’ve seen, they’d have to be loaded with dynamite to do it.” She suddenly leaned over the counter and poked me in the belly and then shook her hand as if she’d hurt her wrist. “Look at that—hard as a rock, see? And cute, too.” She was laughing now. “And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
    I felt my cheeks warm up. “All right, enough. Could you do me a big favor?”
    “Shoot.”
    “Get me the jury list for The State of Vermont versus Davis ?”
    She furrowed her brow. “When was that?”
    “About three years ago, maybe a little more. It was that big murder thing.”
    “Oh—the black guy. God, I remember that.” She looked around, glancing through a half-opened back door. She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “And you want that right now, of course—an emergency.”
    I shrugged, but she quickly laid her hand on my arm. “It simply can’t wait, right? I mean, you don’t have time to go through normal channels.” She drew out the word “normal.”
    I smiled—a little slow this morning. “Absolutely not. It’s an emergency.”
    “Boy—you guys, so pushy,” she said in a louder voice, walked over to the door, and spoke to someone out of sight. “I’ve got to go upstairs for some files—police priority request.”
    “Get it in writing,” was the only response.
    The young woman gave me a thumbs-up and went to a large filing cabinet to took up the file number. She scribbled it on a small pad and then handed me a form from her desk. “You can fill out the request while I’m looking. Follow me—you’re in for some more exercise.”
    We climbed to the top floor and an environment of Saharan hostility. The air was breathlessly hot, forcing both of us to pause on the landing. With sweat already prickling my forehead, I peeled off my jacket and draped it over the banister.
    “My husband says they ought to sink an insulated shaft down the middle of the building and put a fan in it to suck some of this heat downstairs. It wouldn’t be much to look at, but it would be cheaper than anything else they’ve come up with.”
    “Nothing’s cheaper than doing nothing.”
    She laughed and set out on her search. We wandered from room to room, turning on overhead lights and checking the labels on stacks of brown boxes and dented filing cabinets. I remembered reading My Brother’s Keeper when I was younger. It was a story of two brothers who never leave their family home, and who slowly fill it with newspapers, magazines, and