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awful lot like Jenny Dial.”
    She frowned vaguely, then said, “Yeah, um . . .” She scrabbled around on her desk, came out with the picture I’d found on Delwood Anderson’s bed. She squinted at it. “You really think that’s her?”
    â€œI don’t know. Have you showed it to the parents?”
    â€œUhhh . . .” She kept frowning at the picture. “I guess I should, huh?”
    I raised my eyebrows like an idea had just struck me. “Hey, look, I’d be happy to run up there and talk to the parents. If you want. Save you a trip.”
    Sheila Fairoaks put her face in her hands and looked at me for a minute. “I thought you were assigned to that Cold Case outfit down in the basement.”
    â€œI’m just settling in. I could make a little time.”
    â€œYeah,” she said vaguely. “Yeah, sure. It’s just, seeing that you’ve just got the new job and everything? I better not use you if you haven’t been officially assigned to me. If it got back to—” She pointed her finger at the ceiling, obviously indicating the Chief’s office on the fourth floor. “—you know, you and me both could end up getting taken out to the woodshed.”
    â€œHey, I’ll just run it out there,” I said. “See if they think it’s her. If so, you can handle the follow-up, nobody’s the wiser.”
    â€œYeah, no, I’m kinda thinking . . .” She trailed off, then shook her head.
    â€œYou sure?” I edged toward the desk where the photo was lying.
    She nodded and hastily closed the folder. “Yeah. You better not.”
    â€œOkay,” I said. I stood there looking at the folder. “You’re gonna follow up, though, right?”
    Her eyes widened a little. “Hey, Detective, what—are you implying I’m not doing my job?” Suddenly I had gone from being “Mechelle” to “Detective.”
    â€œOh, hey, no!” I said. “You know how it is. You find some little piece of evidence and you get all motherly on it.” I grinned.
    She kept looking at me, but she didn’t grin back. “There’s a lot of stuff to sift through here,” she said. “Jenny’s stepfather’s a little sketchy. But at this point I’m still looking at the mother’s ex-husband, Jenny’s biological father. He’s up in Ohio, and at this juncture I’ve been unable to locate him.” Her voice took on a pedantic singsong. “As you know, most child abductions involve a relative.”
    â€œAnd the photograph?”
    â€œI have to prioritize.”
    â€œSo . . .” I said.
    She sat there, her face stiff as wood.
    â€œ . . . You’re saying the possibility that some asshole may be putting pictures of Jenny Dial on the Internet—that this isn’t a priority to you?”
    She got a slightly hurt look on her face. “Shame on you, Detective. You’re getting real close to calling my integrity into question.”
    I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, hey, look, forget I asked. I was just trying to help out.”
    â€œAnd I appreciate that,” she said. Not meaning it.
    â€œAll right then,” I said. “You take care now.”

EIGHT
    Back to the Marquavious Roberts case.
    Job one, get Vernell Moncrief’s DNA. Which meant, first, getting Vernell in the flesh. I looked at the map, noticed that his last known address was close to Jenny Dial’s house. Well, not actually. But it wasn’t more than five miles out of the way. Ten, max. And hey, I told myself, Atlanta is home of the world’s longest commute. Statistical fact, you can look it up, Atlantans drive farther every day than anybody else on the planet, Los Angelenos included. A five or ten mile drive—that’s nothing. What could be the harm, right?
    So before going on what I anticipated would be a wild-goose chase to find Vernell Moncrief,