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adults looking down at me, seen as if through an incredibly thick piece of glass.
    I felt that exact same sense of disconnection as I looked down.
    And saw warm brown eyes staring up at me through a foot of bloody rainwater.
    I almost hugged Scott right there and then. Almost dropped right into the water beside him in all my clothes, wrapped my arms around him.
    Except I was unable to move.
    I remembered the first time we met, at the 48th Precinct under the Cross Bronx Expressway. I was working overtime in the Homicide squad room upstairs, and Scott was working OT out of Narcotics downstairs, when the soda machine in the muster room wouldn’t take my dollar. He gave me one of his, and when I hit the button, two Diet Cokes dropped down.
    “Don’t worry,” Scott said, smiling. You could almost hear the click as our eyes met. “I won’t tell Internal Affairs.”
    I swallowed as the rain fell around me now. I eyed the tiny circles it was making over Scott’s dead eyes.
    “One of the uniforms ID’d him. Name’s Scott Thayer,” Mike said. “He’s a detective from Bronx Narcotics. One of us, Lauren. This is as bad as it gets. Somebody killed a cop.”
    My hands went up to my leaking eyes. I contemplated ripping them out.
    “He was beaten very badly,” my partner continued, sounding to me like he was speaking from somewhere out past Pluto.
    I nodded. Tell me something I don’t know, I thought.
    Then Mike did.
    “Beaten to a pulp,” he said, anger seeping into his voice. “And then somebody shot him.”

Chapter 19
    SHOT HIM?
    “See the entry wound under his left jaw?” my partner said, pointing as he continued to talk in a soft, mournful way.
    I stared, nodded. I couldn’t believe that I’d missed it. It looked like a misplaced belly button. I shuddered as I suddenly remembered the feel of Scott’s stubble on my stomach.
    “And the corneas.”
    I nodded. Death sometimes makes the corneas look blurry after a few hours. Scott’s were clear, indicating that he’d died very recently.
    “He’s got an ankle holster, but the gun is missing,” Mike said. “It’s a small holster, so I’m not sure if it was his service weapon . . . or maybe a throw-down in case he got into a questionable shoot. Who knows what he was doing here? Anyway, better to be tried by twelve than carried out by six, right? But it looks like Scott missed his day in court. God help him.”
    This was one reason not to get involved in an office romance, I thought as I stepped out of the fountain and collapsed back against the cold, wet edge a minute or so later.
    My brain made itself semi-useful by locking onto one word as I sat there. It banged against my skull, ricocheting off the inside like a trapped bird looking for an escape.
    Why?
    Why? Why? Why?
    Scott had been alive. I’d heard him moan when Paul put him in the car. I was a Homicide detective, a trained expert in these kinds of things. Scott had been alive.
    Had been,
I thought, alternating glances between the tarp and the ground between my feet. After a while, I noticed that it wasn’t actually a tarp. It was a Neat Sheet.
    I shook my head in disbelief. I remembered clearly the trip to Stop & Shop when I bought the picnic blanket for Paul to keep in the trunk of his car.
    Paul, you idiot, I thought as tears sprang hot from my eyes.
    You stupid, goddamn idiot.
    “I know, Lauren,” Mike said as he sat down beside me.
    “That might as well be you in there,” he said. “Might as well be me. Imagine, everything he ever worked for. Everything he ever enjoyed. Ever planned.”
    Mike shook his head grimly.
    “Dumped into a Bronx fountain like so much garbage.”
    For a moment I felt the immense weight of my guilt. The idea of owning up hovered over me like a waiting avalanche. All I needed to do was turn to my partner and spill my guts. Tell him everything. Commence the end of my life as I knew it.
    But I just couldn’t make the words come out. Not now, anyway. Was it some