Begin Again

by Artemis the Gentle

Atlanta's summer is hot and brooding and Lena Adams hates her new job at APD, where she works as a detective for the Domestic Violence unit. When one of her regulars turns up without his head attached, Lena has to work with a young detective from the prestigious homicide unit to discover what happened.

Begin Again

Lena Adams

Part II

Prologue

He'd dubbed it the Neon Rage because their anger seemed to flicker on as the sky darkened. All through the day they'd be dormant; Henry would sleep, eat, let out the dog, watch tv. Sometimes he'd be gone for a few hours. The man didn't know what Henry did for a job. For a living. For his money. This wasn't the sort of man that had a job, at least not the kind that required you pay taxes. On paper his income was probably low enough to qualify for food stamps but he was out a lot during the day, for an hour or two, and then he'd return to watch TV, eat food that would kill him if the illicit jobs didn't. He took care of his house the way he took care of his body, giving it just enough attention to make sure it didn't collapse, but that was it. The man didn't approve of that.

Sunny wasn't much better. She stayed at home a lot, though exactly what she did to pass the time was unclear to the man, no matter how much time he spent looking at her, listening to her. She played a lot of Fleetwood Mac and dressed herself like Stevie Nicks, or thought she did, with long flowing robes, scarves, lots of eyeliner. She spent a great deal of time in front of the mirror, changing clothes, flapping her arms in an attempt at something the man presumed must be dancing. He often smelled weed, though that wasn't restricted to Sunny: they both seemed to hit the pipe, bong or whatever they used a little too hard. The man wouldn't have minded if it had mellowed them out, but it hadn't, far from it in fact. It only seemed to egg them on, and what little rationale they possessed seemed to leave them altogether. Henry got home, they'd light up, and they'd go to town - one way or another. Their sex was as loud as their fighting. It made the man cringe, not because it was awkward or embarrassing, but because it was overt. Part of him envied them. Life would be so much easier without caring what other people thought. The man cared, possibly too much. His own home was spotless, though he lived alone. He did the job that was expected of him, paid his bills, waited in line at the grocery store with feigned patience and was superficially polite to bored cashiers and rude waitstaff. And for what? It was little but a habit these days, doing what society expected. Society expected a lot and gave little in return.

Then again, if the man would behave like these people, if everyone would behave like these people, the world as he knew it would collapse. The world needed upstanding citizens, even if it gave little in return. The man had accepted this, had learned to play his part, but at the same time the idea of getting out of it all fascinated him.

Watching Henry and Sunny have it out was cathartic, in a way. Henry, without the standard issue white trash uniform of cargo pants and a vest, had a taut, muscular body, smooth and toned and unsurprisingly defiled by alarming tattoos, though his skin was pockmarked from bad nutrition and pasty were the sun hadn't reached. Sunny, though, when she wasn't swaddled in rags with her eyes circled like a raccoon, was beautiful. Sexy. Soft but not fat. The man was embarrassed to watch them have sex and could only manage glimpses, but he didn't hate them entirely then.

But then the screaming would pick up again. From his perch he'd watch them have at it, calling each other every name under the sun. Henry's movements would be curt, restricted, jabbed fingers aggressively aimed at his partner's face. Sunny would be grandly gesticulating, her wide robes flapping like the wings of a panicked bird. The fight would turn physical not long after that. By then someone would usually call the cops. Sometimes either one of them or both would be arrested, though it was almost always Henry they took. The man understood why. He didn't want to be sexist but Sunny would almost invariably lose when the punches began. What he didn't understand was why she didn't cave. He'd seen her with a broken nose, with bruises on her face, with a limp even. Not that he sympathised. He didn't care for her, not even a little.

They couldn't see him where he was, didn't know he watched them. He wondered if they cared. They didn't now, evidently, with their fighting and fucking with the windows open for all the world to see. They just assumed nobody watched, nobody cared, nobody minded.

Well, the man watched. The man cared.

The man minded.

Chapter 1

Lena felt his lips on her breast, kissing it, his tongue working its way around her nipple, then following the curve down to her abdomen, lower and lower until his face was between her legs, the stubble of his cheeks burning against the skin of her thighs. Her hand gripped the covers of the bed as if it were an alien creature with its own will. Jeffrey's face moved up again, his tongue licking her stomach as he used his hands on her now, and she threw her head back, wanting him to go further, to rush into her, but he didn't, preferring to tease her first, to lead her on until she thought she was going to burst. She took control, using her hand to guide him in. He buried his face in her shoulder and with each thrust she felt his hot breath on her skin, and she wrapped her legs around his waist to lock him in deeper. She'd missed this. It was good, better, better than she'd ever imagined.

She jolted awake with a start.

It took her a while to realise where she was, but then familiar items and less familiar shapes and spaces began to drift into her vision. She was in bed. She was alone. She was at home, though it didn't feel like home. Nothing was wrong.

Nothing except for the explicit sex dream she'd just had about her former boss.

She scrambled to get out of bed, bumping her head on the low ceiling and trying not to swear lest she wake up Hannah. She didn't bother to check the time. She wouldn't be able to sleep now. Hell, she wondered if she'd ever be able to sleep in that bed again.

She paced the short length of the apartment for a few minutes, feeling dirty and even violated, then stopped in her tracks and forced herself to calm down. The sex had been in her mind. Her brain was an asshole, but she knew that by now. More important was the fact that this had been a dream. It had not been real. Nobody would know unless she told them about it, certainly not Jeffrey.

Yet she knew the antsy feeling she'd have would last the rest of the day. She felt the wetness in her underwear. Nausea rushed over her. She sprinted to the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet, but nothing but bile came out.

Even that was a letdown.

She flushed, went to the refrigerator - only took her five steps, really - and poured herself a glass of milk, hoping her stomach would take it. With her free hand she switched on the coffee maker. The clock on the microwave told her it was ten past four, and she groaned. She'd have to be up in less than two hours. Getting more sleep was out of the question, meaning she'd be feeling tired for the rest of the day on top of feeling weirded out by the dream and frustrated with her stupid job. Some days, there was just no winning. Most days, in fact. Lena had never had much patience with people lauding the effects of positive thinking. They were just fooling themselves.

At least she'd have a few hours to herself, provided she didn't wake up Hannah by banging into the furniture again. She wasn't quite used to the apartment, or how close everything was together.

She finished her milk, then dug up a pair of shorts and a sports bra. She tossed her night shirt into a corner, not bothering to get out of her underwear by way of punishment, and pulled out the dingy foldaway treadmill.

Exercising as the single parent of a toddler was hard enough; even if Lena could find the time she couldn't exactly take Hannah out running with her or get her to do some weight spotting at the gym. The treadmill had seemed like a reasonable compromise, though it was ramshackle as hell and would probably fall apart right underneath her not long from now. She'd gotten it on the cheap from Craigslist and it now stood in the one semi-free corner of her apartment, blocking access to a set of drawers that had been fixed underneath the stairs to the mezzanine where she slept. She'd much rather have put a nice plant there or used the stupid drawers, but exercise was the only thing that kept her sane these days. It would have to do.

She switched on the news; the talking head with the perfectly coiffed hair and caked on make-up cheerfully assured her that the day would be one for the record books. Lena knew what that meant. It meant she'd be up until the sun went down trying to get people to stop killing themselves. The heat drove them up the walls. Simmering rage boiled over. People gathered with family and friends, had too many beers, and one or two ill-advised games of truth or dare later Lena or her fellow cops would be called in to settle things down. And that was the best-case scenario. Worse was when she'd have to drag people into the hospital to get their drunken heads stitched up and watch them make up, sobbing with regret, only to be back at their house the day after.

It wasn't just her department; everyone was busier these days. Vice. Narcotics. SVU. Homicide. Even the rat squad was working overtime: cops weren't immune to the warm weather. Only the fraud team seemed to be off the hook, but people who sat behind a desk all day weren't really part of the team as far as Lena was concerned.

She stretched before cranking up the treadmill, then watched the news distractedly as she began her 5k. The talking head chirped excitedly about the opening of a new restaurant on Culverton Ave that specialised in Belgian food. Lena had no idea what that entailed. It didn't look great, but then again, what stew did? Not that she was an expert. Stews took time. The type of food Lena had came in cardboard containers or, on the rare occasions when she did cook, typically had the phrase just add water printed onto their packaging. Item number 3,421 on her list of failures.

The chirpy white woman with the purple eyeshadow was succeeded by a chirpy black woman in green eyeshadow talking about the weather in depth with a studied fascination Lena found hard to stomach, but then the tone of the programme changed. A man came on, make-up equally thick but trying and failing to be less conspicuous. He presented an item about gang wars in Grove Park, because crime was a man's item, even in this city which considered itself so much more advanced than the surrounding countryside. Lena felt a flare of anger at the thought and punched the speed button until the treadmill reluctantly cranked up the pace. Angrily her feet pounded the machine until it bleeped to tell her her mileage was up, and then it began to slow down even though she didn't want it to. Dejectedly she shut it down and put it back in its corner, then went to have a shower.

She was just drying off her hair when she heard Hannah stirring, banging her sippy cup on the side of her bed, and she heard the clatter of toys being thrown against the wall. Hannah's wake-up ritual was one of rage and furious activity, and as she struggled to get a tank top on over her moist skin Lena wondered if Hannah had stupid, weird dreams too.

The wailing started up just as Lena struggled to get into her pants, and she groaned as Hannah started up a determined chorus of "Mama. Mama! MAMA!", the volume rapidly increasing with each iteration. She didn't bother to put on her shirt just yet because odds were Hannah would manage to smear oatmeal, jam, milk or snot on it before breakfast was over. Possibly all four. Hannah was a master at spilling her food.

She rushed over to Hannah's bedroom before Hannah would wake up the neighbours, muttering curses to herself. Hannah was standing up when she opened the door, face screwed into what was the precursor to an epic screaming match, and she seemed almost disappointed that Lena was going to deprive her of a reason to really let go.

"Sorry", she told Hannah. "I'm sure you'll find something else to scream about." Hannah stretched out her arms and drawled "mama!", and Lena felt herself soften a little. She picked up her daughter, feeling her chubby legs wrap around her hip. It always went like this; they'd pretend to be mad at each other right until they got together, and then they dropped the act.

"Da", Hannah said, pointing towards the door. 'Da' could mean anything, from 'I want that toy and I want it, like, yesterday' to 'for God's sake, woman, feed me something'. Lena couldn't wait until Hannah was old enough to be able to actually talk, though her friend Art had assured her that would come with a host of new problems.

She slid Hannah into her high chair and quickly filled a bottle with milk before Hannah would realise just how hungry she was, then shoved it into her daughter's hands, which managed to be grubby even though she'd just gotten out of bed.

"For God's sake", she muttered to herself. To distract Hannah she switched on the TV to cartoons while she prepared a bowl of oatmeal with banana slices. Another parenting failure, but either she upped Hannah's screen time or she let her wake up the neighbours.

"Youuuuu!", Hannah yelped, and Lena groaned some more when she heard Caillou's familiar screech. Still, she pondered as she listlessly chewed a piece of toast and sipped her coffee, at least it got her some peace and quiet, at least until Hannah mowed her half-empty bowl off the table and onto the floor. Oatmeal and banana splattered against the kitchen cabinets as the bowl, which was supposed to be unbreakable, cracked and then bounced, spilling the remainder of its contents on the back of the sofa. Lena stared at it for a full minute, trying to decide whether to weep, laugh, or load Hannah into the car, close the door and deal with it at the end of the day. Eventually she got up to clean the mess, sternly telling Hannah "no!", which led to more wailing. There was porridge in Hannah's hair too, probably to teach Lena not to focus on her phone during breakfast.

She managed to dress herself and Hannah without further spillage, though the heat slammed into her as soon as she opened her front door and they'd both be drenched before the morning was over. Somehow the summer seemed even more intense in Atlanta than it had in the countryside, though in July and August the best place was still indoors with the airconditioning on high and the curtains shut. But the countryside at least offered shade, cool nooks underneath trees, a lake to dip your toes in. Here, the rich all had their private rooftop pools downtown and backyard pools in the suburbs, in ground for the wealthy, above ground for the middle classes, leaving the city's public pools for the working poor. On a hot day there'd be more people than water in those pools. Lena had only tried to visit once.

She struggled to get Hannah's bag and her own into the car at the same time, then strapped Hannah into her car seat and breathed a sigh of relief when she'd buckled up herself. As much as she disliked her job, mornings were unbearably hectic. At least in the evenings she'd have some time to herself after Hannah had been put down for the night.

Provided she'd get off at six, at least, which wasn't a given on a day like this.

She dropped Hannah off at daycare with a practiced routine that focused on speed, half because she was in a hurry and half because Hannah would start to wail if she dragged it out. She was in and out in under two minutes; when she got outside, Nour was already waiting for her.

"Freemans are at it again", he said, by way of greeting. "You drive."

Chapter 2

The Freemans lived out in Oakdale, one of Atlanta's wealthier suburbs. Before commencing with the SVU Lena wouldn't have thought they'd have to travel out there so often, but that preconception had been disbanded during her first week on the job. Apparently having a six-figure income put more strain on any relationship than she had initially thought. For most people in Oakdale, though, them showing up was mortifying enough that they either went into marriage counseling, split up, or stopped having embarrassingly loud arguments, but there were many exceptions and the Freemans were one of them, and as she drove - Nour usually let her drive, though he'd never told her why - she contemplated their relationship, or what was left of them. It was pretty typical: a volatile mix of alcohol, abject failure and unspoken expectations. Paul Freeman was a real estate broker of some type, the sort of profession Lena didn't know much about except that it apparently moved buckets of money around to drive up real estate prices. That alone made him unlikeable, but he had the domineering personality to match. Yvaine looked like she was supposed to be on Real Housewives of Atlanta, all tight leggings and silicone. They both drank too much. There were no children; not that they hadn't tried, but after six rounds of IVF and rejections from several adoption agencies both foreign and domestic it was pretty clear it wasn't going to happen. From the way they acted Lena thought it was probably for the best.

"Last time we came here was almost a week ago", Nour said. "We're making progress."

"I wouldn't go that far", Lena replied as she turned the car onto the Freemans' massive driveway. A man with a sleek black pickup truck met them halfway, and she guessed he was the one who'd called the police.

"Mornin'", he greeted them as they got out of the car, and though his tone stayed polite she could see him bristle at their appearance. "Y'all the police?" His eyes nervously darted from Lena to Nour and back; eventually, he settled for staring at the space between them as he spoke. "I figured they'd send a cruiser."

Lena had to bite back no, you expected two white men in uniform and instead told him: "specialised task force, sir. Would you like to see our ID?"

She'd expected him to cave in, but he puffed up his chest and told them: "if you wouldn't mind, please", so they silently pulled out their IDs. He squinted at them, making sure they knew he was actually reading them, memorising the names. Lena resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Recently retired, newly minted member of the HOA board, she guessed, one who talked a lot about law and order, lauding the police while at the same time lambasting them for not doing exactly those things he wanted them to do. She knew the type.

"Well", he said. "Taskforce, huh?" He glanced back at the house. "I'm the one that called you guys in. They've been at it for a while. Heard it when I made my round through the neighbourhood this morning."

"Your round, huh?", Nour said, and though his voice might have sounded neutral to a casual observer Lena knew him well enough by now to note the sarcasm. The man nodded. She asked him: "would you mind telling us your name, sir?" Then, before the flash of annoyance had finished crossing his face, she added: "just for the record."

He hesitated briefly, probably torn between wanting to be important and not wanting to divulge information to the Latina and the Arab who'd had the gall to use the front driveway and not just take the back door like the pool boy and the gardener. Eventually he said: "Andrew Macintosh, ma'm." He didn't offer any ID; Lena didn't ask him for it, not wanting to run the risk of him going into his car to retrieve it and fetch the firearm that was no doubt stashed in there instead.

"Y'all aren't gonna ask me for my ID?", the man asked. Lena shook her head. "No won't be necessary. Thank you for calling us. We'll take it from here." She'd jotted down his plates; if needs be she could always trace them to see if he was telling the truth, but men like him rarely lied to get their names out of the books - at least, when it wasn't them the cops came to fetch.

As they passed him and walked up to the front door, though, he followed them, and she was about to tell him off when he added: "it's just that they haven't paid their HOA fees for a while. I've given them several notices but they won't pay." He managed to get in front of them and stopped in his tracks, presumably because he thought they would, too, so they swerved around him wordlessly and continued. He didn't give up.

"Also, their front fencing is non-compliant with HOA rules and - "

"The HOA board is responsible for enforcement", Nour said. "If fines aren't paid you can go to small claims court."

"Listen", the man said, clearly annoyed that they had the temerity to argue with them. "You're going in there anyway, is it really too much to ask - "

"Not our job", Lena snapped. Official guidelines would probably dictate her to say we appreciate your work in keeping the neighbourhood in good condition and we understand your concern, but other departments are more suited for this and we would be more than happy to put you in contact with the appropriate authorities, but it was too hot for any of that shit. And besides, men like this were usually too flabbergasted by anyone lashing out at them, least of all a woman who looked like the maid. It worked just long enough to get them to the front door.

"I'm going to need to speak to your superiors", he said just as she rang the doorbell. Lena silently mouthed a few curse words and Nour, without turning around, told him: "Sure, sir. You can contact them at 202-456-1414." It was a joke he frequently played: it was the number of the White House.

"Wait, can you repeat that?", the man said, but then the door opened and he slunk back because men like him didn't meddle in the marital affairs of others.

"They're upstairs", Kasia said as she opened the door. Kasia was the perpetually grouchy maid. A Polish national who had been living in the US for six years and had been the Freemans' maid for half of that, she seemed unimpressed by either of her bosses. Lena wondered who had hired her; she was pretty enough to attract the attention of a horny fifty-something yet plain enough to be reassuring to his wife. In any case, Kasia was competent, stoic and bitchy, smart enough to stay out of they way when her bosses fought, smart enough not to fuck the man of the house, and the proud owner of a scowl that would deter anyone from speaking to her. When they'd leave there would be no sign of her, save for two paper cups of coffee she'd leave out for them. No doubt she did it to appease them, to make sure they came back instead of leaving her to deal with the mess, but that didn't matter. She made good coffee.

Kasia disappeared as soon as she'd shut the door behind them, and Lena could hear the angry voices coming from upstairs, as well as the sound of something heavy being thrown.

"Mrs Freeman? Mr Freeman?", Nour called out, then a second time, loud enough to be heard. The screaming immediately halted and "It's detectives Adams and Al-Jasem here. Mind if we come up?"

"Go away!", Yvaine screamed. Paul hushed her up before she said anything else, and he appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Who let you in?", he demanded. "I warned the maid - "

"C'mon, you know how it works", Nour said, slowly making his way up the stairs. Paul disappeared, probably to call his lawyer. Paul was the sort of man who pretended to have some serious self-restraint issues but still managed to shut his mouth as soon as the cops showed up.

"Get out of the fucking house!", Yvaine screeched from down the hallway, though it was unclear whether she meant her husband or Lena and Nour. Lena followed her partner upstairs. They'd been here so many times before that they didn't need to discuss a plan of approach beforehand. Paul was a raging asshole, but his sexism won out over his racism so Nour usually had a word with him, and Lena went to calm down a hysterical Yvaine. She'd mostly be upset but occasionally, she'd have a cracked rib or a bloodied nose. Judging from the stuffiness of her voice, this was one of those days.

"Morning", Paul", she heard Nour say. "You guys are up early. Sit your ass down." Much as she would have liked to listen to the rest of the conversation she went in the other direction, following the sound of Yvaine's frantic crying into the bedroom.

"Go away!", Yvaine screamed again. She was on the bed, on her side, fully dressed, though there was a tear in her shirt. Her face was a mess; there was some swelling around her left eye and blood coming out of her nose, which she'd managed to smear into the mascara running from her eyes. She looked awful, and Lena crouched down beside her.

"Yvaine", she said quietly, "can you sit up?"

"Go away", she repeated. "Go away…"

"Yvaine, can you sit up?"

They did their dance for a while until Yvaine dragged herself up with a heavy sigh and sat on the edge of the bed, slumped and pouting, though the bed was so high she visibly struggled to stay in her carefully chosen position. From her unfocused gaze Lena gathered she was drunk, though she didn't smell alcohol. Must be vodka. Possibly drugs.

"Good", Lena said. "Let's get you cleaned up a little and then we can talk about what happened, alright?"

Yvaine sniffed and looked away as Lena went into the en-suite to wet a washcloth, which she used to wipe away the tears, blood smears and messy streaks of mascara. The rag turned black and orange within seconds. Yvaine seemed not to care, though it must have been at least an hour's worth of make-up Lena was wiping away.

"There", she said, trying to keep the ennui out of her voice. "That's better." Yvaine sniffed again, staring at her hands. There was blood underneath one of her fingernails, and Lena suspected they'd find a big scratch on Paul somewhere which he'd use to claim his behaviour as self-defense.

"So", she began. "What was it this time, Yvaine?"

Yvaine shrugged, looked away, and though Lena knew patience and gentle coaxing was the only thing that would work even remotely, she struggled to focus. The heat was making her irritable, and so was the fact that even though she'd been working here less than six months, she'd been here almost two dozen times, having the same damn conversation over and over.

"Come on", she coaxed, sitting down next to Yvaine on the bed, taking up her hand like she gave a damn. "Tell me what happened, so I can help you."

"You can't help me", Yvaine pouted, then began to sob again. Lena counted to ten before asking: "did you and Paul have a fight?"

Yvaine shrugged, and Lena pressed: "what did you two fight about?"

"Just stuff." Yvaine was pretty in that generic way, or had been at least, once upon a time, but no amount of time at the gym or the plastic surgeon's office could halt the decay that had begun to set in.

"What kind of stuff?", Lena asked, and Yvaine shrugged vehemently, like a teenager. "Does it matter?"

"Did he hit you?"

More shrugging, though Yvaine subtly turned her face towards the window so that the light fell on the fresh bruise around her eye. The first few times Lena had come here she'd figured Yvaine was as dumb as a bag of bricks. It had taken her a while to see that that was how Yvaine wanted people to see her. The helpless waif who needed rescuing. The perpetual victim. Ten years ago Lena would have loathed her; these days she tried not to, but Yvaine was making that increasingly hard.

"That's a pretty bad bruise", Lena said. Yvaine put her hand up to touch it. Lena pressed on: 'I need you to tell me what happened, Yvaine, so I can keep you safe."

Help you. Keep you safe. They weren't, strictly speaking, lies. There were things Lena could arrange for women like Yvaine. Arrest Paul, whisk her away to a safehouse, somewhere out of his grasp. They both knew she wouldn't go for it. It took courage, determination, sacrifice. Yvaine was proud. Moreover, she liked luxury. She wasn't the sort of woman who wanted to hold down a job, and even if she did Lena doubted she'd last long.

From down the hall she could hear hushed voices. Yvaine looked up. There was a nasty cut on the bridge of her nose.

"I'm going to have a word with my partner, alright?", Lena said. "I'll be in the hallway. Be right back." She didn't wait for an answer; Yvaine had gone back to staring out of the window.

She met Nour in the hallway.

"Sup?", she asked. He rolled his eyes. "Got his lawyer on speakerphone, won't say a fucking thing. Her?"

"All misty-eyed Victorian waif", Lena said. "With botox. She's not saying a word."

"You think you'll get her to go to the hospital?"

"Not fucking likely", Lena said, glancing back at the door.

Sure enough, when she got to the bedroom Yvaine had gotten up, fiddling with her hem but looking determined.

"You should leave", she told Lena. "I didn't ask you to come."

During the first couple of weeks on the job Lena had had to resist the urge to smack her. It was a stupid impulse; she knew how hard it could be more than anyone else. In a way, though, that made it even harder to watch from a distance. She knew they weren't getting out, just as she knew she'd never done the things she was telling them to do either. She'd chickened out as much as they did.

Paul and Yvaine watched them go together, silently staring them down with the peculiar mix of arrogance and fear that the wealthy often had. Lena tried not to check her watch as they left. It couldn't have been past ten and already she was feeling drained.

Kasia had left them two bottles of water in lieu of coffee, probably because of the hot weather, and they felt pleasantly cool in Lena's hands as she walked. She offered one to Nour, and he stared daggers at her for a few seconds before she remembered.

"Sorry", she said. "I forgot."

He sighed and got into the car; she followed suit.

"Surely Allah will let you take a sip of water when it's this hot out?"

"You know how hot it is right now in Mecca?", he replied.

"Fair point." She started the engine. Nour checked his phone. "You wanna go to the office first, or - " He rolled his eyes as his phone began to buzz. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

"What is it?", Lena asked. Nour tossed his phone on the floor of the car. "Ionesco and Madigan. I swear, if the weather's not gonna come down over the next few days the entire city's going to kill itself."

Henry Ionesco and Sunny Madigan were another pair of regular customers, though they were considerably less well-off than Paul and Yvaine. Henry dabbled in small crime, though officially he worked for an auto shop that dealt in car parts. Sunny called herself an artist, a musician, a homemaker or a failure, depending on how the mood struck her. There were no children, though in Lena's first week on the job Henry had punched his wife in the stomach hard enough to cause a miscarriage. Sunny had claimed she hadn't known about the pregnancy and that it must have been spontaneous, which made prosecution harder, as did the fact that she kept changing her tune. Lena would never admit as much, but they unnerved her. She couldn't quite explain it. They were weird and unpredictable, but she'd learned to deal with the weird and unpredictable long ago. Why she found these two so off-putting she didn't know, but she was rarely as glad that Nour was with her as she was when she got to their run-down camelback house in an as of yet underdeveloped part of Blandtown.

"Looks like Sunny's been feeling artistic again", Nour told her, pointing at the grimy side wall of the house where someone had painted a bunch of orange and yellow flowers. Not her best work, Lena thought. The other side of the house had a surprisingly good reproduction of the Birth of Venus on it. Sunny wasn't a half bad artist if she could lay off the dope long enough. Judging from the flowers, she had not been able to resist the coke, acid, ecstasy or whatever it was that Henry had brought home this week. The drugs, at least, she understood. Why Henry and Sunny were a couple or how it had come to be that way was a bigger mystery.

"Christ", Nour muttered as he swerved around a massive dog turd planted firmly on the path leading to the front porch. Knowing these two there was a fifty-fifty chance of either a passive-aggressive neighbour and their dog being the culprits or Henry's pit bull - they called it a 'terrier mix' - shitting there and them being too lazy to clean it up. The pit bull, at least, didn't worry her; Henry probably got it because it looked tough, but the thing was about as fat as a throw pillow and just as threatening. It would occasionally bark at them and drag itself off the sofa, but it'd be out of breath after a few steps and collapse on the floor. Lena mostly felt sorry for it and quietly hoped it'd have a heart attack or a stroke in its sleep one day soon.

All was quiet inside the house; she heard a single hoarse bark as she ran the doorbell, and after a minute or so Sunny appeared, looking unduly surprised. Sunny always looked surprised. There were no bruises on her face, but she was clutching a piece of kitchen towel to her arm.

"Yes?", she said, like she'd never seen Lena and Nour before.

"Hi, Sunny", Lena said cheerfully. "Can we come in?"

"Now's not a good time", Sunny said, shifting from one foot to the other, her pupils the size of a small planet. Lena pushed her way past her into the living room.

"Nonsense. We'll be out of your hair in no time. Where's Henry?"

"He's just - he won't like - " Sunny started. Lena pointed at her arm. "What's that?"

She stared down at her arm as if she'd forgotten. Lena guessed it was a cigarette burn.

"Oh, nothing", Sunny muttered. "Just stupid. Burned myself on a match."

"A match? Really? Let me see", Lena said, but Sunny pulled her arm out of Lena's reach and said: "I really think it's better if you go."

"Where's Henry?", Nour asked. Sunny blinked, and he pressed: "He out back?"

"No, he's at - " She blinked again, probably realising the truck was in the driveway. "He's just gone out to get some - some - "

"I'll go see if he's out back. You don't mind, do you?", Nour said, crossing the living room with a couple of big strides.

"But - ", Sunny started, stretching out her arms after him while still clutching the kitchen towel. She blinked again. To distract her, Lena asked: "I saw the flowers on your house. Did you paint those?"

She seemed confused, but then told Lena: "well, who else would've painted them?"

"Fair point", Lena said. "How's your arm?"

Sunny cradled it, like a baby, and said nothing. From out back Lena heard loud swearing, so she told Sunny: "stay here" and followed the sound. She got to the back porch just in time to watch Nour pull Henry, screaming and kicking and spitting like an angry cat, out from underneath the back porch and against her better judgement she rushed in to help; they each grabbed one arm and forced him face-down into the grass. She resisted the temptation to push his face into a nearby dog turd. Henry screeched something unintelligible and Nour replied: "C'mon, Henry, you know how this is going to go." That line almost never worked but Henry was more calculating than he let on, and after a few swear words, his muscles slackened somewhat. From the corner of her eye, Lena could see Sunny on the back porch, staring at them with listless detachment.

"Got a new tat done, Henry?", Nour asked, and Lena saw that the bandage that had been taped on his bicep had let go to reveal a stylised eagle, wings framing a swastika.

"It's lovely", Nour said, his voice dripping with disgust. Lena said nothing and began to pat Henry down.

"Am I going to poke myself on something sharp in there, Henry?", she asked. Henry grunted something which she took to mean 'yes'.

"Great", Nour groaned, and Henry, from his position down on the ground, tried to give him the stinkeye and said: "go fuck yourself, fucking kike."

Nour stared at him in surprise for a few seconds. Lena asked: "did he just call you a jew?"

He nodded, then told Henry: "Boy, are you barking up the wrong tree there."

From the back porch, Sunny piped up with "actually, the swastika is an ancient holy symbol in hind - "

"You two make a fine pair of anthropology scholars", Lena told them. Nour pulled a pair of rubber gloves out of his pocket and told Lena: "go ahead. I'll take care of little Adolf here."

By the time she got Sunny to the hospital the drugs had worn off. Sunny had gone from vague and ethereal to jittery, scrambling on and off the gurney in the small room the nurse had pushed her into. Policy dictated that domestic abuse victims get their own room, but hospital resources were stretched thinly enough as it was and the room they were in now was basically a broom closet, hot and stuffy because the ancient airconditioning couldn't keep up with the sweltering temperatures outside, and uncomfortably cramped. Lena had forced herself into the one free corner of the room, knowing that once the doctor got here she'd have to either step out the door or sit on someone's lap.

"They're not taking him away, right?", Sunny suddenly said. Lena suppressed the urge to shake her.

"Detective Al-Jasem is going to process him. I don't know - "

"So he did some drugs", Sunny said, dismissively waving her hand. The cigarette burn was bleeding but she seemed not to notice. "That's not illegal."

"It is", Lena pointed out. Sunny seemed to mull it over. "Well, it shouldn't be."

"He's also not allowed to hurt you", Lena pointed out. She could almost see the gears in Sunny's head grind as she said: "He didn't hurt me."

"Did you do that to yourself?", Lena said, pointing at the burn on Sunny's arm.

"Yes", Sunny snapped. "I make my own paint. You have to heat some of the pigments to get them to mix. I dropped a match on my arm then leaned against the burner."

Lena had heard less convincing excuses, and she felt taken aback somewhat. Still, she'd seen plenty of cigarette burns in her time and this one looked exactly like that. It wasn't her job to determine that, though; that would be down to the doctor.

Sunny began to scratch her arm in a jittery beat, and Lena felt the stifling room close in on her.

"Do you want a soda, or something?", she heard herself say. Sunny didn't appear to have heard but just as Lena was about to repeat herself she said: "Sprite, if they have it."

"Sure", Lena said. It was a risky move because Sunny would bolt if given half a chance; sooner or later, the fact that she wasn't in custody was going to hit home and that would be the end of this round. She'd flee home to wait for Henry and the neighbours would call the police again, this time because they would mistake their loud make-up sex for a homicide in progress. It had happened before.

Still, the room was hot and the machine was just a few yards away from the door so Lena decided to risk it. She got the Sprite, then a can of coke and cracked it open while leaning against the machine, making sure to stay out of the way of passing doctors and gurneys. She wasn't supposed to be out here but most of the ER staff knew her by now. Some of them nodded in passing and she nodded in return. At the end of the hallway she could see the green-eyed doctor who'd delivered Hannah. He appeared not to remember her whenever she'd spoken to him, and she'd been relieved by that. He treated her regulars sometimes.

"Detective Adams", she heard, and suddenly Louis was next to her. "What's new in the world of policing?"

"Nothing", she said drily. Louis sighed, pulled the coke can from her fingers and took a long gulp. She yanked it back before he could down the entire thing and asked: "you here for my frequent flyer? ?"

"Which one is it now?", he asked, fumbling to check the small tablet computer he kept in his pockets. She told him: "Madigan, Sunny." He frowned as he swiped through the files on his tablet. She reminded him: "the hippie looking chick with the budding heroin addiction."

"Oh, her!", he exclaimed, putting the tablet away. "What, again?"

She didn't bother replying. Louis was young, barely past student doctor, not the sort of person she'd have expected to pick emergency medicine as his specialty, but then again he was energetic and flexible and he'd probably grow the thick skin he'd need in this job. He had a lot to learn though, and one of those things was that victims of domestic abuse usually didn't show up just once but repeatedly, until they'd finally arrive to bypass the ER entirely and go straight for the big metal refrigerators in the basement.

"Yes, again", she said irritably when he kept staring at her expectantly. "Are you taking care of her or is - "

"Blauvelt told me to do it", he said. "Unless you two want to wait another hour - "

"God no", she said, pointing towards the door. "Lead the way."

He was always better at his job than she gave him credit for, possibly because he was about as intimidating as a labrador. He was easygoing, struck the right tone with Sunny almost immediately, doing what Lena could never do: pretending he was talking to a completely lucid person, talking about withdrawal symptoms with the same ease he'd have for an ingrown toenail. It worked like a charm on Sunny, for a while at least, until she managed to check the clock.

"I need to go", she said suddenly, and Louis barely had enough time to cut the last piece of tape on the gauze around her arm. "Henry will be home, he - "

"He's still in lockup", Lena told her. "You don't - "

"Am I under arrest?", she wanted to know, and Lena quietly cursed the fact that she'd gone back to lucidity at exactly the wrong moment.

"No, but - "

She stormed off before either of them could say another word, flung the door open with dramatic flair and then trotted down the hall with sudden determination, a flurry of tie-dye polyester and black kohl.

"The hell is she going?", Louis asked. Lena shrugged. "Home."

"But - I don't get it."

"There's not a lot to understand." She gathered her bag. "She doesn't really have a logical thought process."

Louis peered out in the hallway for a few seconds trying to catch a final glimpse of her, before giving up and turning back around, eying the "occupied" sign on the wall and checking his watch. Smooth, Lena thought. He said: "so, you want me to take a look at that bruise on your arm?" She supposed she should have feigned enthusiasm, asked him what bruise he was talking about, but she was hot and sweaty and Nour was waiting for her, so she told him: "Some other time, alright?"

She wasn't sure how it had started, really. She had no memory of Louis propositioning her, or she him, but all she remembered what that a few weeks ago they'd ended up having sex in one of the on-call rooms after a particularly difficult case. She supposed it was a normal way to let off steam, though she'd been glad Nour hadn't been around to figure out what she'd been up to. Louis had been genuinely upset, and maybe she'd wanted to comfort him, and maybe he'd taken the initiative. Maybe she'd let him. It was the most plausible scenario, but it had been a hard day and she didn't want to scrutinise her actions. Did it matter, anyway? They were consenting adults. They enjoyed themselves. It was just a casual fling - to Lena, at least. She'd hoped Louis felt the same way but he seemed to think of it as a more permanent arrangement.

He asked: "hey, you wanna hang out tonight?"

It took her off guard, so she tried to stall. "You don't have to work?"

"Nah. I'm not even on call." He grinned at her. "Maybe we can get takeout, or something."

She felt herself bristle at the thought, but still, she said: "maybe. I'm off at six, but people get antsy when it's this hot. I might not be able to make it."

"But you still have to pick up Hannah from daycare, right?", he pressed, and she wanted to slap Hannah's name out of his mouth.

"Daycare's open until nine", she lied as she left the room. "I'll let you know."

Nour was waiting for her when she got back to the station.

"Booked him for the usual", he said, which meant resisting arrest, possession and battery. None of it would last. The budget didn't stretch to random blood tests, especially if they didn't know what Henry had been taking; without a warrant they couldn't search the house and by the time they'd finally get it, Sunny would've flushed anything they had down the drain. Henry was smart enough not to keep any drugs on him and without Sunny's say-so, the battery charges weren't going to stick either. The surprise had worn off long ago; Lena just hoped the disappointment would do the same one day.

"So what's next?", she asked. Nour shrugged churlishly. "Report, report, report, we'll send him on his merry way and wait until the neighbours call again."

"Maybe we should hold him for a few more hours", Lena said. "Let me have a go with Sunny again." Nour scoffed.

"What a waste of fucking time", he sighed, and she couldn't blame him. She glanced at the clock. Only two.

Four more hours to go.

Chapter 3

She was at the coffee shop across from the station, enjoying that rare moment of peace and quiet after dropping off Hannah but before Nour picked her up, when she heard a familiar voice.

"Leelee! What are you doing in my neck of the woods? Oh wait, the fucking police station's right there. You work there, right? Art mentioned you moved to APD. So which department are you in? I don't think I've ever been inside that building." Tex DeWitt rolled up next to her, all long limbs battling gravity. He spilled half of his cup over his shoes, though that didn't impede the flow of words coming from his mouth the slightest. "Ah, shit. Now I'm going to have to queue again."

"Caffeine is the last thing you need", Lena told him. Leelee. The last person who'd called her that had walked away with a bruised eye. She'd been in second grade, he'd been in third. She'd had detention.

Nevertheless he grinned at her, so she told him: "and don't call me Leelee."

"Sorry. Can't help it. Got stuck in my head." He pounded his fist against his temple. "Just punch me in the face again next time I say it, which will happen again, I can guarantee it."

"I can't promise I won't", she said dryly, and she watched as he slipped his lanky body into the seat next to hers.

"So how've you been?", he asked.

It was a question she'd come to dread. She could have told him any of a long list of things. Lonely. Uneasy. Exhausted. Frustrated. Guilty. So, so guilty.

She shrugged. "Same as always. What are you doing here?"

"Having coffee. Duh." He threw a look over his shoulder. "Last night's date brought me here but he ditched me halfway during the line. Can't have 'em all, I suppose." He grinned at her. "He wasn't that great to begin with. Easy on the eyes, though." He took a sip of coffee but managed to keep talking. "His apartment was a mess too. I live a couple of streets from here. I just moved there, like, two weeks ago. Guess we'll bump into each other soon enough so that'll be nice and awkward. Looking forward to it, actually."

Lena smiled politely, though the idea of running into him every now and then didn't irk her as much as she thought it would.

"When's the last time you talked to Art?", Tex wanted to know. "I haven't spoken to her in a couple of months. Time zones and all that. Plus she seems pretty busy. You think she likes it there? Must be hard on the kids. I hear it's good for them though. My parents almost moved us to Saudi-Arabia when we were kids but they chickened out at the last moment. Not sorry about that one. Can't imagine being stuck in Riyad for years on end, nothing but oil wells and stonings to watch all day. Hey, did you know - "

"Art's fine", Lena said. "She complains a lot but I think she likes it there."

"Good", Tex said. "I miss her though."

Lena did too, but saying out loud felt like it would make things worse.

Art had been appointed to the American embassy in Paris for at least one year, possibly two, and had uprooted her massive family from the Atlanta suburbs to a Parisian apartment. Lena had seen crown molding, tall windows, black marble fireplaces, intricate wooden flooring. It all seemed very cosmopolitan, very sophisticated. Just one more thing that made Lena feel small, inferior. Not that Art would ever hold it over her head; she was too polite for that, but in some ways the distance between them was uncomfortably large.

"There's a very tall and attractive man waving at you", Tex said. She looked outside, where Nour was leaning against his car, looking impatient. Lena scooped up her belongings.

"I don't suppose he's single?", Tex asked.

"Nope", she said. "See you."

He gave her a cheerful wave and in spite of herself, she found herself hoping they'd meet again.

"Sorry", she told Nour. "Ran into an acquaintance."

Nour looked behind her. "What's wrong with him?"

She looked back. Tex was still waving at her.

"Nothing", she told Nour. "He's just happy to see me."

"First date?", he asked as she got into the car, which pissed her off.

"I ran into him in the coffee shop. I can have male friends, right?"

"Sheesh", Nour said. "Never mind."

Silently, they drove off.

Lena and Nour's job description officially read something like 'target discipline enforcement officers' or 'key unit prevention liaison', bureaucratic lingo that meant their job was to get notoriously abusive couples to stop pummeling each other, preferably before one of them died. Most domestic violence calls were answered by uniformed cops who may or may not have had specialist training. What Nour and Lena did was keep an eye on the most notorious offenders, making sure they didn't kill each other and hoping they'd come to their senses and press charges. Lena had never been one to question the futility of her job, but these days it made her wonder why she did what she did on a daily basis. Often people were too proud and too stubborn to admit something would have to change. Sometimes they were afraid of losing everything they had, and not entirely without cause. And sometimes they just had nowhere to go, nobody to fall back on. Lena hadn't told Nour that she knew how it felt. She wondered if she ever would. She didn't know Nour well enough yet to predict his response. He was her partner, he'd take a bullet for her, and she for him, but she didn't know him, had never met his family, knew where he lived on paper but had no idea what his home looked like. Didn't know why he'd joined the police force, what he wanted to do there, what his hopes and dreams were, nor did he know these things about her. They'd find out in due course, she supposed. Or maybe not; APD had a pretty high transfer rate. She might have to get used to being partnered with someone else every few months.

And, to be fair, the things she missed about her old job had turned out to be things that hadn't been real. She'd thought she'd known Jeffrey, too.

Nour drummed his fingers on his legs as she drove, and she cleared her throat before speaking up.

"I wanna check up on Henry and Sunny", she said. Nour glanced at her sideways, but told her: "Fine with me."

"You don't think it's a waste of time?"

"Anything about this job is a fucking waste of time." He crossed his arms. "Oh, wait. We're not supposed to say it like that. We're performing a valuable service to - "

"Yeah, yeah", she said, and she could feel herself soften a bit.

The house looked unchanged from the last time they'd arrived, though as Lena parked her car she noticed more flowers had been added to the mural on the side of the house. They'd been yellow and orange last time; a clump of blue ones had been added unevenly. The paint had been applied in a thick layer and some of the flowers had begun to drip, giving the whole sorry thing a sad, messy look. Not that it had been much to begin with.

She knocked on the door while Nour casually hung back, trying to see into the backyard in case Henry made a dash for it again. As she waited she took a step back, trying to glance upstairs at the second story of the camelback house, but there was no movement. One of the windows was open; a curtain limply waved along with the breeze.

"Either they're out for groceries or they're zonked out of their minds", she told Nour.

"They left the window open", he said. She shrugged it off, though the dead silence emanating from the house made her nervous. They were loud, Sunny and Henry, whether they were fighting, having sex or just going about their day. The TV would be blaring or Sunny'd crank up the stereo, belting Fleetwood Mac songs from the top of her lungs. The odds of them being out, meanwhile, weren't great. Henry worked - nominally - but Sunny rarely left the home, and she wasn't the type to lock doors or turn off the TV when she did.

"You want to head back to the station?", Nour asked, and she hesitated. They were probably sleeping off a drug haze. No neighbours had called in to complain about the noise. There had been no 911 calls. Still, it didn't sit well with her.

"Let's talk to the neighbours to make sure", she told Nour. He looked put off. She couldn't blame him with temperatures still at over a hundred degrees, but to his credit he didn't complain and trudged after her as she made her way to the neighbour's house.

The neighbour on the left didn't answer the door; the lights were off and there was no car in the driveway. The house was a lot neater than that of Sunny and Henry; even Blandtown was gentrifying at an alarming rate these days, and it wouldn't be long before some enterprising soul would offer them a substantial sum of money to lure them out of their house so they could tear it down and replace it with something tediously expensive, and the neighbours would breathe a collective sigh of relief now that the weeds and the dog turds and the shitty paintings were removed from their view.

The neighbour on the right, though, opened the door in under a minute, and Lena guessed he'd been watching them.

"Sorry to bother you, sir", she said. "I'm detective Adams, this is detective Al-Jasem. We're with APD. We're here - "

"I think I've seen the two of you here before", the man said. He was young, mid to late twenties she guessed, dressed in that inoffensively bland style that men of his age seemed to prefer, with dark blue jeans and a white t-shirt with the stylised image of a guitar on it. His face betrayed nothing more than moderate curiosity. He was on the short side of average, and though he'd obviously been working out he was anything but bulky. He had a slight paunch, but nothing drastic. He was the sort of person you forgot about the moment they left your line of sight.

"I work from home", he said, nodding his head in the direction of Sunny and Henry's house. "I hear them fight a lot. I call 911 sometimes. Other times, someone else does it. They've been pretty quiet for the past couple of days though."

Never a good sign, Lena thought. She asked: "have you seen them around?"

The neighbour mulled it over for a few seconds, then said: "You know, I think I saw them yesterday."

"At what time?"

"Somewhere in the afternoon, I think? They were messing around in the yard with the dog. I didn't really pay attention. Wouldn't swear to it in a court of law either, but I think it was yesterday." He nodded as if to convince himself.

"Must be annoying, living to a couple like that", Nour asked, and the neighbour squeezed his eyes, as if he suspected Nour was fooling him. Knowing Nour, he actually might be.

"Sometimes", he admitted grudgingly. "But I got myself some noise-cancelling headphones and they work like a charm. It hasn't really been a problem since then." He nodded at the house. "I think they've got bigger problems than me."

Lena figured he was right. His own house was a similar shotgun style, but without the camelback. The front yard was a simple patch of grass with a brick path leading to the front door, and there was a chain link fence around the property. Paint on the door and window sills was beginning to peel, but not to such a degree that the house looked derelict. He was young, but he owned his own house in a big city. He was obviously doing well for himself.

As a formality, she asked for his ID then jotted down his name before getting back into the car.

"This doesn't sit well with me", Nour voiced her thoughts as she drove off. "They're always here. She's always here."

"She might have just gone out for groceries", Lena said, though she quietly agreed.

But as she turned the corner a familiar shape almost crossed the street right in front of them, and Lena had to floor the brakes to stop the car from running it over Sunny, who stared at them like a metaphorical rabbit caught in the literal headlights.

"Shit", Nour said with great surprise. "Mystery solved."

Sunny was indeed carrying a paper sack with the logo of a nearby supermarket chain printed on it. She shuffled back onto the pavement and turned around. Lena got out of the car and said: "wait!"

She halted in her tracks, then half turned around and said: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - "

"That's okay", Lena said, counting on Nour to get the car out of traffic. "Wait up. We were just coming to see you."

She studied Lena for a few seconds. "Do I know you?"

Lena suppressed a groan. She'd been to Sunny's house about a dozen times now.

"It's detective Adams", she said. "We've talked before. We just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"Why wouldn't I be alright?", Sunny asked, and though her confusion seemed genuine Lena wondered if it was a ploy to create deniability. She asked: "how's that burn on your arm?"

The bandage from the hospital was still in place, though it was grimy and had a blue stain on it and a yellowish spot where the wound had oozed. Sunny looked down on it but said nothing.

"You should probably get that looked at", Lena told her. It seemed to snap her out of it, because she lifted the bag a few inches and asked: "can I go now?"

"Where's Henry?", Lena asked.

"At work. Where else would he be?" She shifted on her feet, trying not to show how nervous she was and failing miserably. "I really need to go home. I bought some ice cream and it'll melt."

"Alright", Lena said. "But you call us if - "

Sunny turned around and headed back to the house with small, jittery steps.

Something was definitely off, Lena thought, though she couldn't say what.

"She seemed nervous", Nour told her when she got back into the car. "Did she say where Henry was?"

"At work, and she's always nervous." She started the car. "Not much we can do I guess. We'll check back in tomorrow."

"I'd still like to talk to him", Nour said.

"You want to visit his place of employment?", Lena replied sceptically. "I don't think - "

"I know", Nour said. "Bad idea. How 'bout we head over there at the end of our shift, catch him outside?"

"Fine with me", Lena said, feeling relieved at the thought of not having to go to the garage where Henry worked. It was one of those low level criminal operations, one that the organised crime and fraud divisions were all over - she'd checked - but these things took time. On the surface Henry worked as a mechanic and transport driver, which was probably code for drug runner. Back in Grant County she'd have dealt with all of it herself, though they'd have to have a paid expert to deal with the accountancy part, but everything else would've been on her plate. At APD she'd piss off a whole league of colleagues by stepping into Henry's skeevy workplace and all it would do was make his bosses more careful.

But as they headed back to the station all hell broke loose at the Freemans' place again and by the time Lena and Nour had finished dealing with them it was close to seven PM.

"I can check on them", Nour told her. "You go pick up Hannah."

"Nah", she told him. "She was fine when we left. We'll see them tomorrow."

He seemed relieved she wasn't pressing the issue. "Right. Have a good night."

"You too."

When she got to the daycare facility she found Hannah in the main room, slumped on the couch, staring at an iPad playing Peppa Pig cartoons.

"I fed her some bread sticks", the attendant told her, and Lena said thanks. She was supposed to pick up Hannah at six; it was now an hour and a half later, and the daycare charged extra for hot meals in the evening.

"Sorry", she told the attendant. "We got a messy call just before the end of - "

"It's no problem", the attendant assured her, and Lena thought wryly: well, it's not your problem.

All things considered, APD had arranged excellent daycare for its employees' children. The facility was fully staffed by qualified personnel, the rooms were large and as clean as they could be with several dozen small children roaming about inside. It offered round the clock care for single parents or couples who both worked night shifts. It was heavily subsidised and therefore not as expensive as other facilities. It still took an unimaginably big chunk of money out of Lena's paycheck and late fees were the last thing she could use.

Hannah began to wail as soon as she realised Peppa Pig would not be coming along for the duration of their car ride and began to pound Lena's back as Lena carried her to the car.

"No", Lena told her sternly. "Cut it out, Hannah."

"Peppa!"

She gave up and strapped her screaming daughter into the car seat. Parenting manuals would probably dictate that she engage in a meaningful conversation about media usage, or at the very least try to distract Hannah, but Hannah was tired and pissed off and Lena had enough experience by now to understand that nothing would help except go home, put Peppa Pig back on until Hannah fell asleep while Lena made a meal nobody would eat.

Hannah's wailing persisted until exactly two seconds after she'd put the cartoon back on and by then, Lena's ears were ringing. Exhausted, she leaned against the kitchen cabinets, knowing she should offer Hannah a hot meal but knowing just as well Hannah wouldn't eat a single bite of it. The fruit bowl on the table was empty save for a banana, already mottled with brown spots, but she peeled it, cut it up and put it in a plastic cup. She said nothing as she placed it in front of Hannah, who glanced at it for a microsecond before violently shoving it out of the way, and Lena watched as the pieces of fruit rolled away, underneath the sofa.

"Time for bed", she told Hannah, abruptly switching off the TV. Hannah began to cry again, which muted into full-blown screaming as Lena changed her into her pjs, her sleeping bag, and put her in the crib. She didn't bother saying goodnight. Hannah wouldn't hear her over her wailing anyway.

It only took two minutes for her to fall asleep; Lena counted the seconds as she made herself a cheese and cucumber sandwich. Hannah was tenacious but she was also tired, and a good sleeper. Lena didn't know how other mothers did it. She could barely cope as it was, and her kid at least tended to sleep through the night.

As she put her plate in the sink to wash it, her phone beeped and she saw that Louis had texted her, and she realised she'd forgotten to call him back yesterday.

Hey babe, the text read, you free tonight? X. She stared at it for a full minute, then left it on unread. She'd text him tomorrow, tell him she'd been working. Or maybe she should just text him this wasn't working out. Sex was one thing, hanging out and doing couple's stuff another. The idea of introducing him to Hannah filled her with repulsion. Not that Hannah would care.

She put her phone on the charger, switched on the TV and prepared herself for a night of mindlessly dumb tv, but as soon as she sat down her phone buzzed again. She stared at it from the sofa. If it was work she'd have to answer.

Reluctantly she dragged herself off the couch. Louis had texted her again, she saw, saying never mind, got an extra shift. Tmr maybe?, which, she supposed, was one problem solved. But just as she was putting the phone back down it buzzed yet again and she read the message, expecting it to be Louis again, but it wasn't..

Hey. Can we talk? Jeffrey.

She nearly dropped the phone at that. Can we talk. Like that.

What the hell was she supposed to say to that?

Yes. No. About what? Go away, leave me alone. Of course. Call me whenever. Come by. Here's my address. What was there left to say? He'd made it clear where he stood and for once, Lena could not blame him.

In the end, she did nothing of the sort, switched off her phone and returned to the sofa, but the sense of dread she'd felt would not go away.

Chapter 4

She awoke with a start again, though this time because her phone was ringing. She fumbled to get it off the charger. The screen told her the switchboard was trying to reach her, which probably meant this was an emergency. Someone had died. Her mind automatically leapt to Sunny. Heart pounding, she answered the call but with her brain still half asleep she didn't manage more than a bleary "hello?"

"Detective Adams?"

"Yeah", she said, getting up just a little too soon and banging her head on the ceiling. She swore. The voice on the other side of the line paused just briefly before asking: "the fuck are you doing?"

"Nothing", Lena said, making her way down the stairs so quickly she nearly fell. "Who's this?"

"Detective Lott, APD homicide. We found a body. We need you to come over."

"Whose body?"

"Address is 12 Furlough Drive. Use your GPS." She hung up, leaving Lena to stare at her phone with more than a little trepidation. The fact that they called her implied it was one of her regulars. Someone had died on her watch. Again.

An hour and a half later she pulled into the driveway of 12 Furlough Drive, waving her badge at a uniformed cop who let her pass, and she drove through a rickety fence down a dirt road with broad expanses on either side, dotted with rusting lantern poles. It took her a moment to realise she was driving through an abandoned parking lot.

At the end of the path another uniform waved her down,

"Detective Adams? They're expecting you. You'll need to park here."

"What is this place?", she asked as she got out.

"Cascada", the man told her. "Old waterpark. Shut down in the mid nineties." He pointed in the distance. "Broke my arm on one of those slides once. Place was a mess. They're waiting for you down at the main pool."

She thanked him then headed down the path, wondering where the hell she was going to end up now. In the distance, she saw a tall structure with a cracked blue ramp on it, paint peeling and sliding down in large flakes. At the back of her head she vaguely remembered a screechy TV jingle. Hank had sometimes taken them to parks like these, but not often. They hadn't been safe places for Sibyl and anyway, Lena had been the only one who enjoyed going down slides and riding roller coasters.

Cascada. Waterfall. She guessed it had been meant to sound idyllic and serene, but even in its heyday it couldn't have been any of that. When she crossed the wooden bridge over a muddy ditch that was once a lazy river she saw a jumble of blue concrete and once brightly coloured plastic, dirty from exposure and bleached by the sun. At the centre of the park lay a massive round pool, empty save for a muddy puddle in the middle with what looked like office chairs in it. The walls were covered in graffiti. She was unsurprised; if the rickety fence was the only thing that kept out the vandals this place would've been rife with thrill seekers and budding artists with cans of spray paint. They wouldn't even have to wait until dark.

In the distance she saw a small group of people clustered around next to a dull pink slide that had once been red. They turned to look at her with suspicion when she approached. They parted for her like the red sea to reveal a tall, thin woman with a blonde afro, squatting down on the floor. As she got closer Lena saw she was eying a severed foot that stood forlornly on a cracked tile, surrounded by weeds.

"Detective Adams, I presume?", the woman said, getting up. They shook hands. "Detective Dido Lott, homicide. Thanks for coming in."

"No problem", Lena said, feeling she was being tested. The foot was awfully close to where they were standing and she hadn't been warned. She'd seen severed limbs before, though, and she wasn't squeamish. "What's up with that?"

"Something about dipping in his toes", detective Lott said. She took a step back and Lena could see angry white letters that read DIPPING HIS TOES HA HA HA, with an arrow pointing down at the foot, neatly inked onto the concrete.

"Is that supposed to be funny?", she asked. Detective Lott shrugged.

"There's more." Lena followed her down to the rickety pool ladder; to her surprise, the other woman climbed in. Lena assumed she wanted her to follow. The ladder groaned as she climbed down, and as she jumped down from the last spur she wondered how she was getting out of the pool again; it was deep and the ladder only reached halfway. The bottom of the pool was covered in mud that had dried and cracked in the heat; it sloped up gently towards the other end of the pool. Detective Lott pointed at the mouth of the slide and said: "you recognise him?"

A severed head lay at the base of the slide, eyes vacant, mouth agape. It took her a moment; she stepped a bit closer, mostly to get a better look but at least partly as a silent fuck you to the cops waiting for her to faint or throw up. It took her a second to recognise him, but she saw the faint scar above his eyebrow, the strangely wide nostrils, the stubble on his head, shaved closely to hide male pattern baldness.

"Henry Ionesco", she said.

"Bingo", detective Lott told her. "Whoever did this helpfully provided his driver's license. It was underneath the foot. We ran him through the system. Saw that you visited him. What's up with that?"

She didn't wait for an answer but climbed nimbly out of the pool. Lena followed suit, though she struggled to get up on the ladder. Nobody offered her a hand. Christ, she thought, I get the message.

"Right", Lott said when Lena got to the top of the ladder. "What's his story?"

Lena shrugged, trying not to pant from the climb. "He works for a low level criminal outfit. Organised crime division's on it. You're better off asking them. I just visited him because he beat the crap out of his wife."

"I got that from dispatch, thanks", Lott said. "They mentioned you saw him yesterday?"

"No", Lena said. "I saw his wife on her way back from the grocery store. I didn't see him."

"You didn't follow through?"

She shrugged again. "We visit when we're called in, which is once or twice per week."

"Why didn't you make an arrest?"

"We usually do. It's just that his wife keeps walking into doors and cupboards." She waited for detective Lott to tire of this line of questioning. The domestic abuse division of SVU was not exactly a popular job and usually all she had to say was "fine, then YOU do it" to stop the criticism. Lott rolled her eyes, then turned around.

"Alright, let's go talk to the wife."

"I'll come", Lena said decidedly. Lott sent her an angry look.

"You're staying on your own turf."

But Lena knew how the game was played by now. Atlanta homicide cops were an insular bunch, terrified of others worming their way in. All she had to do was hold her ground: Henry and Sunny had been tasked to her, and while Henry was dead, Sunny wasn't.

At least, as far as she knew. She asked: "you checked the house, right? To see if she's okay?"

The look they exchanged told her they had done no such thing.

"They weren't - there wasn't any - ", one of the cops said. He was an older white man wearing a uniform stretched to beyond its limits, and he wore an old fashioned moustache. He looked like he belonged to a 1980s cop movie. A bad one. Lott groaned.

"Send over a cruiser. I'll be right there."

At least Lena had the advantage of knowing where Sunny lived; a police car stood forlornly in front of the house when Lena pulled up, but detective Lott was nowhere to be seen. Lena parked her car behind the empty cruiser and made her way up to the front door, where a young uniformed cop stood. To her relief she was talking to Sunny, who looked like she was high but very much alive.

"Thanks, I'll take over", Lena told the uniform. The woman - girl, really - blinked twice, told Sunny "thanks for your help" then went back to her car without looking back. Lena didn't blame her. Sunny took some getting used to.

"I know you", Sunny said, and Lena told her: "we've met before, yes. Can I come in?"

"You're a cop."

"Yes."

"Why are you here?"

"Let's talk about it inside, alright?" Lena stepped forward and Sunny, automatically, took a step back.

"I don't - I mean, Henry - we should wait until - "

"He won't mind", Lena said, which wasn't technically a lie. She just hoped detective Lott would hurry. She'd want to be there when they told Sunny that Henry was dead and though Lena wasn't inclined to do the woman any favours, she'd have half the squad breathing down her neck if she didn't.

She passed Sunny as she entered the house, which was as messy and full of junk as ever. A dog collar lay on the brown floor tiles of the hallway that had been all the rage in 1974. She also spotted a pile of used paint brushes discarded into a corner. A magazine. A flyer from a Thai takeout. An empty yoghurt container with accumulated dust clumps and loose hairs in it. The floor was sticky as she crossed it and there was a hole in the fake wood paneling. Henry and Sunny had never been particularly neat, but even for them this was bad.

She passed into the living room and heard the rustle of Sunny's dress as she followed Lena into the house. A cloyingly sweet smell hung in the living room, not the deep, bitter, chemical smell of a meth lab but the sickly stench of the stuff being smoked. Lena recognised it, though she could see no pipes or drug utensils; Sunny must have either discarded them when the patrol knocked on her door or finished a while ago. She didn't seem unusually absent-minded, Lena thought as they sat down, so either she'd been interrupted or she was building up tolerance. Or maybe Lena's mind was making up the smell just so she would have an excuse, a reason for Sunny's absent-mindedness, her messiness.

"Henry doesn't like it when I let people into the house", Sunny said, though she didn't seem at all nervous. Lena thought: no shit. Still, she asked: "And how do you feel about having people over?"

She shrugged and started picking at the hem of her scarf. She wore a floor length black dress, not her usual colour; she preferred red, orange, magenta, yellow; warm colours in wide, flowing fabrics. It had surprised Lena the first few times; Henry seemed like the type who preferred his women to be peroxide-blond and clad in tight spandex. Maybe the black was a coincidence. Maybe Sunny knew.

"Do you have any friends, Sunny?", Lena asked. "Friends who can come over if you're not feeling well?"

"Henry takes care of me", she said, eyes locked on an invisible spot in the distance. "He doesn't like it when I have people over."

"Okay", Lena said patiently. "But Henry's not always here, is he? You never visit a friend when he's at work?"

"I don't know a lot of people here", Sunny said, still picking at the hem of her scarf. "The neighbours don't like me."

"Have you ever talked to them?"

She shook her head. "I just know they don't like me."

Lena didn't imagine she was wrong. She asked: "so where's Henry now?"

"At work", Sunny said, but even Lena could tell something was off.

"We called his workplace", she said. "He didn't show up."

"Right", Sunny said, getting up and walking over to the window. She didn't bother to explain further. Lena asked: "Was he here last night?"

"I don't know", she said.

"He didn't come to bed?"

"He sometimes falls asleep on the couch", Sunny said. "And then he's gone before I wake up."

"What time did you wake up?"

"I don't remember."

"You didn't think it was strange that Henry had gone missing?"

"No."

For all her airheadedness, Sunny gave up remarkably little information. It might be because she wasn't really paying attention, but Lena wasn't convinced that it wasn't an act. Most people wanted the cops to think they were smart, but pretending to be stupid would pay off in the long run. So she pressed: "c'mon, Sunny, you don't notice when he gets back?"

Sunny stared at her, blinked twice, then said: "no."

"No? He's that quiet?"

"He never wakes me. He's good to me."

"He never wakes you, huh? You must be a pretty deep sleeper."

"What's this about?", Sunny wanted to know, and Lena suppressed a groan. Sunny had the uncanny ability to snap to it at exactly the wrong moment, which made Lena think it was deliberate.

She lied: "his boss called. He's worried because Henry didn't show up for work."

"You wouldn't be out here for that", Sunny said, narrowing her eyes, and before she could ask any further questions Lena told her: "I also wanted to check on you. I was worried you might have been in a fight again."

She seemed to accept the answer because she told Lena: "well, he's not here", then went into the kitchen. Lena followed. She was relieved that Sunny never offered her drinks when she came by; the kitchen was as much of a pigsty as the hallway. The sweet stench of decay hung in the air, too prominent to ignore for visitors but light enough that the inhabitants of the house would get used to it. Lena didn't understand why it didn't bother Sunny, or Henry. Or perhaps it had bothered Henry. The house seemed unusually gross now that he'd left.

She heard the doorbell ring and realised her time alone with Sunny was up, and part of her felt relieved. She told Sunny: "that'll be my colleague. I'll go get it."

She felt Sunny's eyes drill into her back as she walked away and repressed the urge to pull out her gun. The feeling that she was being fooled intensified.

Detective Lott was on the front steps, her hazel eyes set to indignant.

"She's in the kitchen", Lena said. Lott narrowed her eyes a bit more.

"You told her already, didn't you?"

"Of course not. I know how to work a murder investigation."

"That would surprise me very much", Lott replied. She tried to enter the house but Lena blocked her path.

"Before you go in", she said. "Sunny's a bit of an airhead. It's part drugs, part personality. Don't expect a straight answer."

"I'll manage, thanks", Lott told her curtly, and Lena sidestepped, repressing the urge to let the woman trip. Dido Lott was taller than her, anyway, and she looked like she might work out. All muscle and tendon, not a soft spot on her. It wasn't worth the headache or the bruises or the inevitable reprimand.

She didn't bother pointing out where the kitchen was as Lott opened the hallway cupboard and then the bathroom door by mistake and eventually had to follow Lena into the living room.

"Sunny?", Lena said. "Detective Lott's here. She wants to ask you some questions."

They were met with silence and for a fleeting second, Lena worried that Sunny might have done a runner when she saw the open back door, but then she spotted Sunny at the back of the yard, staring blankly at the unkempt hedge that fenced off the property.

"Sunny?", Lena called out, making her way over while trying not to step in dog shit. She didn't bother to warn Dido about it.

Where was that stupid dog, anyway?

"Someone was here", Sunny said when Lena had crossed the yard. Behind her, Dido swore. Lena ignored it.

"What do you mean, Sunny? Who was here?"

"I don't know", Sunny said, but she pointed at a flattened piece of hedge where two of the stems were set a bit further apart. Some of the smaller twigs and branches had snapped off and had been pressed into the dirt. Someone had created an opening here, but not just to crawl through. Someone had sat here for a while, enough to grind the twigs into the ground. It might be a lead, or it might just be that stupid dog. Lena reminded herself that this was not her case to work. She'd sooner become the lead singer for Metallica than a homicide detective for APD. That was a gig everyone wanted.

"It's probably just the dog", she told Sunny. "Come on, let's get back, alright?"

She ended up guiding Sunny back to the house by the elbow. Sunny kept looking back at the open spot with the flattened branches. Dido said nothing as they passed her, though Lena wouldn't have been surprised to see her breathing literal fire. Not that she cared. She had every right to be here. Heck, if Sunny turned out to have killed Henry she'd have a deeply unpleasant meeting with her boss to look forward to and she would like to come in prepared.

"Let's sit down, alright?", Lena told Sunny when they got to the living room. Dido followed them in, switched off her angry face and took the lead as Lena hung back.

"Miss Madigan - "

"Sunny", she said. "Nobody calls me miss Madigan."

"Sunny, I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Sunny looked around, as if she'd lost something. That, in and of itself, wasn't strange. Lena'd been the bearer of bad news often enough that she knew how it went. People knew why you were there and they'd do anything not to have to hear the bad news for a few seconds.

If it was fake then Sunny was a damn good actress.

"Where's Boulder?", she asked, and Lena guessed she meant the dog.

"We can talk about that later", she nudged, and Dido pitched in again.

"Sunny, I'm afraid I have some bad news."

"It's just that if Henry gets home - "

"Sunny, we found a body early this morning. We identified it as Henry's. I'm really sorry, Sunny, but he's dead."

Christ, Lena thought. There were better ways to break bad news. You built up to it, let the family have some time to come to the conclusion themselves. You didn't throw it on the table like a dirty dishrag.

Still, there was little to be done about it now. She watched as Sunny stared at Dido for a full minute.

"I'm really sorry", Dido repeated. She was clearly waiting for Sunny to say something. Lena sensed it might be a while.

Eventually, Sunny said: "Where's Boulder?"

"Boulder?"

"The dog", Lena clarified. "I don't know, Sunny. Was he with Henry?"

Sunny shrugged, then said: "Henry'll be so disappointed if Boulder's not here when he gets back."

"When was the last time you saw Henry?", Dido asked, trying to steer the conversation back on track, but Sunny resolutely said: "he's at work. I don't know why you're here."

"Sunny, Henry's dead", Lena said. "And we need you to help us figure out what happened."

Sunny shook her head, stared at her feet. "Boulder has never run away before."

"We'll look into it", Lena said. "I need you to tell me when you last saw Henry, alright?"

Suddenly, Sunny shot off the sofa, past Dido and Lena and into the hallway, tripping over a piece of junk as she struggled to get into her coat, though it was ninety degrees outside.

"Henry's at work", she said. "Boulder's probably just around the block. He never walks away but he gets confused sometimes. I'll have him back before - "

"Miss Madigan, I need you to get - "

She slipped past Lena and Dido with remarkable ease and yanked open the front door.

"Be right back!", she bellowed, sprinting down the street, her black dress flapping behind her in the breeze.

"Oh hell no", Dido said, sprinting after her. Lena followed at a more leisurely pace. Sunny had already disappeared from view by the time she caught up to Dido, panting on the corner of the street.

"The fuck did she go?"

"Into one of the backyards, probably", Lena said. Dido gave her the stinkeye.

"You couldn't have warned me?"

"About what? She's never done a runner before."

"Shit", Dido swore. "I'll put out an APB."

"Go for it", Lena said drily.

"You're being less than helpful", Dido snapped, and Lena shrugged. "It's not my investigation."

Dido grumbled something that might have been 'bitch', but Lena let it go. Instead, she told her: "I'd keep someone posted outside the house. It's probably just a legitimate freakout,"

"It's suspicious", Dido said. "Who the hell - "

"You wouldn't have gotten a straight answer out of her anyway. She's always like this", Lena said.

"I don't care. I still need to talk to her. This is suspicious as fuck."

Lena shrugged again. She didn't know what else to say.

From his spot, he watched them leave.

He'd seen the brown-haired detective before, though usually she was with a man. He liked looking at them; they were a good-looking pair, not glossy but head-turning nonetheless, striking. The tiny detective was a spitfire, he thought, though she often looked tired. The sort of woman men needed a few glasses of liquid courage to hit on. The tall man looked stern and brooding but he usually hung back. He looked to be a middle-easterner and the man had often wondered if he was a practicing muslim, not because it bothered him, but because he was curious and there was little else to do.

The other detective was new. She was taller, slim and muscular and hard-looking, with a blonde afro, wide-set hazel eyes with an epicanthic fold and a sour expression on her face. The tiny detective didn't like her and the feeling seemed to be mutual. The man instantly disliked the new woman. He felt protective of the tiny detective and had to remind himself that she was probably capable of handling herself. They left in separate cars, like angry teenagers. The man wondered if she'd get to participate in the murder investigation. She did know Sunny and Henry, after all. Maybe her partner would take the credit and use it to worm himself into the homicide squad. The man didn't know much about policing but if everything TV and movies told him was true then everyone wanted to work homicide. He wondered why, honestly. It hadn't been a lot of fun. He'd done it out of necessity, that was all.

He hoped the tiny detective would like being on the investigation. He wanted her to do well, he wanted to cheer her up. She looked like she needed cheering up. In a way, this had been his present to her.

He hoped she liked presents.

Chapter 5

Half an hour later Lena found herself in a meeting room in the brick-and-glass building over on Peachtree street that Major Crimes called home. Nobody had paid her any mind except for Dido, who was pissed at her.

"You're going to talk me through everything you have on these two", she said, and Lena shrugged. "Okay, but everything worthwhile is in their file. I update it pretty regularly."

Any cop worth their salt would have told Lena that that wasn't the point. There were always things you didn't put in your file: impressions you got, unsubstantiated suspicions. She wasn't stupid. Eventually her cooperation would be ensured by the higher-ups. She understood all that. Bureaucracy was easy enough to weaponise if you knew how to. But she'd be damned if she wasn't going to make Dido jump through a couple of hoops before spitting it out, if only because it hardly mattered. Did Sunny kill Henry? Probably. Probably not. Lena wouldn't have guessed she'd do it, but she wouldn't put it past her either. As for other suspects, Henry had enough shady shit going on that the organised crime division would have a field day with that.

Dido seemed to realise this too, because she shot up from her chair and told Lena "your ass stays in that chair until I get back."

"Did you forget that you don't outrank me?", Lena asked. "My partner's expecting me back soon."

"Though shit", Dido said before leaving the room. Lena sighed.

Ten years ago she would have had a conniption but that didn't fly here. Jeffrey Tolliver had let her get away with that but her new bosses wouldn't dream of it. At best she'd get a lecture about professionalism in the workplace, at worst she'd get demoted or fired, and the smug look on Dido Lott's face when that happened alone wasn't worth the release she'd feel if she'd let go.

In many ways working for Jeffrey Tolliver had been good, but it wasn't until she'd joined APD that Lena realised how many bad things she'd unwittingly picked up on the way too. He'd been adamant that she learn to control her temper. She'd never figured out quite how to do that until suddenly, he wasn't her boss anymore and whenever her temper flared, an alarm bell would begin to ring at the back of her head telling her to tone it down. Jeffrey would be proud of her if he knew. Or would have been, at least, once upon a time.

She remembered his text from the day before and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

She'd half expected Dido to return with a senior detective or a chief who'd tell her to cooperate, but eventually a middle-aged white guy showed up and she could tell from his drooping shoulders that he'd been passed over for promotion many times. His salt and pepper hair looked like Wham! forgot their hairspray that morning, his grey-and-burgundy tie was askew and only one of his shirtsleeves was rolled up past the elbow, as if he'd been about to mainline heroin. He had a smoker's yellow hue and even without getting close to him she knew he smelled like an overflowing ashtray. He sat down at the other end of the table from her, and Lena instantly knew that he didn't like Dido any more than she did. Sitting at either end of the table would mean Dido would have to keep her distance or she wouldn't be able to look both of them in the eye. He didn't bother introducing himself, so Lena didn't either.

"I need you to tell me exactly what you know about Henry Ionesco and Sunny Madigan and we're not getting out of this room until I get what I want."

"A 'please' would have been nice", the man said, which even Lena thought was insufferable, so she said: "look, why don't you just read the damn file and call me if you have questions?"

"Ah, man", the guy said. "You haven't even read the files yet?" He made a show of getting up. Dido snapped: "Sit your ass down."

"Or what?", he fired back, and Lena waited quietly for Dido to come up with something better than or I'll tell my boss.

"I need intel", she said eventually. "Who is Henry Ionesco?"

The man didn't answer but gave Lena the side-eye, and because she didn't like him any better than she did Dido she said: "a low level criminal who beats the crap out of his girlfriend for fun."

"Huh", the guy said. "You're SVU? Domestic violence?" Lena ignored him. "I don't know much about his work. That's not my territory. A few months back he beat her so badly she suffered a miscarriage, but she is refusing to press charges or talk to us."

"You hauled him in yesterday."

"No point in keeping him if she's just going to welcome him back with open arms", Lena said.

"I don't think we've met", the man told Lena, but she wasn't inclined to play his game either.

"No", she told him, "we haven't." Dido rolled her eyes.

"Detetive Lena Adams, this is detective Allen Danes. He works for organised crime. Allen, this is Lena Adams. She works with the domestic violence unit. You're pleased to meet each other."

"Are we?", Allen said, and though Lena couldn't blame him for acting like a dick she had better things to do.

"Henry Ionesco", she pressed. "About five foot five, shaves his head to hide a widow's peak and a bald pate. Has a couple of nazi tats but his heart's not in it. He's got a bad temper, surprisingly. He doesn't seem to have many friends outside of work; either he works or he's home. Sunny does drugs regularly, basically anything she can get her hands on. Henry I don't know, his last tox screen came back clean though he is a heavy drinker. Sunny likes Fleetwood Mac and painting. I don't know if she killed him. I didn't peg her as the murderous type before but she's nuts, so who the fuck knows. They've been a couple for about three years now. Henry's been living at this address since before then. Usually the neighbours call the police because they're fighting, sometimes because they're having annoyingly loud sex."

Allen opened his mind, presumably to say something lewd, but Dido shot him down with a "don't fucking think about saying anything or I'll have HR in here holding a blowtorch to your nuts before you've finished your sentence."

"Christ", Allen said, "you have no sense of humour."

"I know what you're like", she shot back. "And Detective Adams doesn't want to know what you're like, so shut the fuck up."

"How do you know what Detective Adams wants?", he asked, and Lena told them both: "knock it off. I have shit to do", which pissed them both off but at least made them stop fighting.

"Sunny Madigan", Dido said. "We need to figure out where she went. She might be holed up with friends or family."

"I don't think she has many friends", Lena said. "She doesn't go out much and nobody ever comes over. She's never packed her bags to stay at a relative's house either, which they usually do even if they come back. I'd have to look it up, but I don't think she has many living relatives."

"We'll check it out", Dido said grudgingly, still spoiling for a fight. "Anything else?"

"I'd give it a fifty-fifty chance that she ran because she's guilty. I've never been able to get a straight answer out of her, but all her answers are a little too convenient. It might be genuine confusion, or…"

"Or what?"

"Or she's faking the whole scatterbrained, child-of-nature thing."

"Any ties to Henry's workplace?", Dido asked. They both shook their heads.

"As far as I can tell she doesn't know what he does or even where he does it. I don't think she cares."

"We've never heard of Sunny Madigan other than that she'd Henry Ionesco's girlfriend", Allen added.

"Alright", Dido said. "We'll put that on the backburner." She scribbled something on a piece of paper. "Who else is there?"

"About fifty really bad guys", Allen said drily. "He works out of the Fairfield Auto Repair Shop, which, surprise surprise, doesn't fix up nearly enough cars to explain their revenue."

"So why haven't you guys pulled them in yet?", Dido wanted to know, which was a stupid question if ever there was one. Lena knew the answer before Allen even opened his mouth.

"You never cut down the tree unless you know how deep the roots run", Allen said, which was an imperfect analogy - you dug up the roots with the tree, ideally - but it got the point across. She frowned. "Well, how much longer do you need?"

He shrugged, crossed his arms, taking his time in answering. "That depends. They'll probably know we're investigating them as soon as you guys start talking to them."

"I can't put off - "

"I didn't say that", Allen said, a little too condescendingly. "But you need to tread carefully. Focus on Ionesco only. Ask general questions the way you would anyone else. Rule out other options first."

"That's not really how a murder investigation works", Lena felt compelled to point out. He shrugged. Dido told him: "I'll do whatever I very fucking well please, thanks."

"No shit", Allen said.

On some elementary level she understood both of them. Dido Lott was young and ambitious, a woman in a male-dominated field and too exotic looking to be white. She probably hadn't been on the force for too long. She was eager to prove herself and the way to do that was to put up a fight. Lena had been there too, and she'd done the same thing. Looking back she could see where she'd screwed up. Dido was making the same mistakes she had.

Allen Danes, on the other hand, was a veteran, someone who knew how to play the game, but part of the establishment, the patriarchy, bristling at a woman, younger and less experienced than him, telling him how to do his job, putting up a wall of resistance because he could though it wouldn't do him any favours whatsoever.

Except this pissing match was not going to solve anything and Lena wasn't sure whether she was the right person to break it up. More than anything, she wanted to get out of the room.

Then again, the prospect of being involved in a homicide investigation was tantalising. She didn't feel much guilt at Henry's death. It would have happened anyway. She'd seen people die who would be missed. Nobody would miss Henry. Hell, Sunny probably wouldn't notice he was gone until the money ran out.

She listened to Dido and Allen bicker for a bit, then sighed and got up. They stopped arguing.

"The fuck you going?", Dido asked her, and Lena said: "to talk to the neighbours. You wanna come?"

"Henry Ionesco is my case."

"Yeah", Allen piped up. "She peed on the folder so it's hers." Lena ignored him and told Dido: "Sure. Henry Ionesco is your case. Sunny Madigan, though, is still mine. Feel free to stay here with dollar store Denis Leary and argue whose dick is bigger, but I have a job to do."

Allen chuckled, but Lena didn't wait around to hear his reply. She wondered what he'd come up with. Bargain Bin Salma Hayek, probably.

As she'd expected Dido Lott came after her.

"You have no right to - "

"Where's your partner?", Lena asked.

"My partner?"

"We're cops. We work in pairs. Groups, sometimes. Why are you alone?"

"I don't - "

"Need anyone else?" Lena rolled her eyes. "HR must love that. C'mon, what'd you do with them?"

"They're reorganising", Dido said. "Not that it's any of your business."

"Okay", Lena said, resisting the urge to pick up the pace. Dido was taller than her and had no problems keeping up. She'd only make herself look like a fool.

"If you think this is your way in on the murder team - "

"God no", Lena said, a little relieved that it sounded convincing. "I know what they're like. I'm fine where I am."

"What, in domestic violence?", Dido spat. "Nobody wants to work domestic violence."

"Okay", Lena said again, because there was nothing like a little complacency to piss off people who were spoiling for a fight.

"What, you're telling me you wanted - ", Dido started up again, but Lena cut her off.

"You know what would be good? If you could talk a little bit less about why everyone around you is an asshole and a little bit more about the case. Which, once again, I am involved with, whether you like it or not."

By now they'd arrived outside; the heat slammed into her as soon as she opened the door. She ignored it and made her way to her car, Dido still on her heels.

"Where are you - "

Lena ignored her, got into the car and drove off, quietly fuming and wondering if she'd been this bad, once upon a time. Probably. This was just karma's way of biting her in the ass.

She wouldn't have been surprised to see Sunny had obliviously returned to the house, but when she got there nothing had changed. The patrol cop stationed outside the house shook his head when she approached him. The front door had been given a new lock, presumably to prevent Sunny from sneaking in; the only way to the backdoor was through the gate that bordered the street, though Lena supposed Sunny would have been able to sneak in via the neighbours' property if she really wanted to, but to what end?

And just where had that stupid dog gone?

Dido, possibly in trying to find a shortcut and cut her off, had missed a turnoff and pulled up behind Lena several minutes later.

"She here yet?", she barked at Lena when she got out of her car.

"Of course not", Lena said. "Did you take a wrong turn?"

Dido ignored her and marched towards the neighbours' house. Lena followed suit and told her: "why don't you let me take the lead?"

"No", she said curtly.

"I've spoken to them before."

"I don't care."

"And you have the interpersonal relation skills of a dingo."

Dido ignored her, though when the door was opened Lena beat her to it.

"Good afternoon", she said to the somewhat surprised-looking man who'd opened the door. The other neighbour. She hadn't met him before. "My name is detective Adams, this is detective Lott. We were hoping to talk to you about your neighbours."

"I saw it on the news", the man said, nodding his head at Henry and Sunny's dilapidated camelback. "What happened?" He shielded himself behind the door, cautious and reluctant, and Lena understood why. He was a young black man. They were cops. Quietly, she took a step back, hoping Dido would, for once, step in with a bit of subtlety.

"Yes sir", Dido said, remarkably deferentially. "Mr. Ionesco's body was found this morning. We were hoping you could tell us whether you might have seen or heard something."

The man behind the door shook his head. "Not really. Nothing unusual. I don't remember when I last saw him. Two days ago, I think? I remember you" - he nodded at Lena - "and your partner came and took him away 'cause they'd been fighting again."

Lena asked: "That's the last time you saw him?"

The man shrugged and avoided her eyes, then remembered himself and looked up. "Yes ma'am. I think so."

"Have you seen any other people come to the house?"

He shook his head. "No ma'am. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else at the house. Just the two of them."

When she asked him where he had been the previous night he told her he was at work, with a resigned look on his face, as if he'd expected to become the suspect by default. Normally, Lena would have asked a whole host of other questions about Henry and Sunny but most of them - their daily schedule, their usual activities - she already knew, so she thanked him for his time and he shut the door without replying.

"I needed to - "

"Ask him about their day. You already have that information. You need to read the fucking file."

Dido grumbled something inaudible, and Lena asked: "When is forensics coming in?"

"They're on standby", Dido said. "Warrant hasn't been signed yet. Courthouse is backed up."

A search warrant, in this case, was little more than a formality, but being caught without one was like being caught with your pants down. In Grant County, she would have told Jeffrey who would have gone to Judge Bennett's house and she would've signed halfway through making a casserole or while getting her hair done or wherever. Here, these things took time and showing up at a judge's private residence was the fastest way to never get anything done in this city ever again.

At least the patrol cop was still stationed outside, she saw as they crossed the house to go talk to the other neighbour, who took his time opening the door. She leafed through her notebook as they waited. Sean Johnson. Even his name was bland.

"What did you make of the neighbour?", Dido asked.

"This one or the other one?" Lena was surprised to be asked for her opinion.

"The other one."

She shrugged. "He was nervous."

"Too nervous?"

"Young black guy opening the door to two cops? I don't think he was hiding behind the door because he's got a headless body in his hallway."

Dido shrugged. "He volunteered an alibi."

"We would've asked anyway."

"Yeah, but did he know that?"

The door finally opened and Sean Johnson stood before them, beaming like he was happy to see them.

"Good morning, Mr Johnson", Lena said. "We'd like to - "

"I saw you guys talk to Sunny." He nodded sadly. "How's she holding up?"

"We haven't seen her for a while", Lena said. "I was wondering if you had."

"I saw her sprint off this morning", Sean said, then, to Dido: "I mostly work from home."

"Did you see or hear anyone around the house yesterday?"

He shook his head. "No, just the two of them. I think I heard them last night. Might have been the night before. I get my days muddled up, sorry."

"Nobody else came by?", Dido asked. "No cars, visitors... "

"Not that I can think of, no", he said. "Henry came home from work, they argued for a bit but it wasn't too bad or too long, so I didn't call you guys." He shrugged. "Guess Sunny finally got enough of him, huh?" But then he seemed to realise how cavalier he sounded, so he added: "honestly, I would have helped if she let me, but she never wanted to - "

"We know", Lena assured him. "Were you home all last night?"

"Yeah." He seemed excited all of a sudden and pulled out his phone. "I live alone but I can prove it. I have a smartwatch that lets me download my location. It doesn't work if you take it off because it only registers when it detects a heartbeat." He showed them what Lena assumed would be a log, but she hung back. That one was for Dido to figure out if she was so adamant this wasn't Lena's case. Dido squinted at the phone for a bit, then said: "alright, thank you. We'll call if we have any further questions."

"Good luck", Sean Johnson said cheerfully, then closed the door.

"Idiot", Dido mumbled. Lena couldn't resist and asked: "So it checks out?"

"The log? Far as I can tell." She headed back to the car and pulled her phone out to check it for messages. "Warrant's in. Forensics are on the way."

Lena knew an invitation was not going to come, but she'd sensed Dido softening just a little bit and she said: "I'll wait."

"No, you don't."

She ignored it and slipped back into her own car, even though it was as hot as an oven. She switched on the engine and the airconditioning wheezed to life. Breathing a sigh of relief, she called Nour.

"Hey", he said as he picked up. "You still at the Ionesco place?"

"Yeah."

He sighed. "Freemans are trying to kill each other again. Third time in two days."

"You go get 'em, tiger."

He groaned. "When are you going to be back?"

"Fuck if I know." Outside, a van pulled up. "Forensics are here. Sunny did a runner."

"Really?" He chuckled wryly. "You think she offed him? I didn't think she had it in her."

"Me neither, yet here we are."

"Well, good luck with that." He hung up. Lena sighed and wondered what would happen if she left to get lunch.

Chapter 6

The head lay in the middle of the table, which surprised her just a little bit. She had never been on a decapitation case and she figured they'd put it at the end, in its usual place, though it made sense that they didn't; for one, it would roll off the little plastic block that they usually used. It had rolled to the side now as well, eyes downcast, the eyelids drooping. Henry Ionesco wasn't any prettier in death than he had been in real life. They'd put his foot beside him, like Hannibal Lecter making cooking preparations.

"Needed to clip his toenails, that one." The medical examiner, a man who'd introduced himself to Lena as Devin Ward, slid up to the table. She'd never met him before. He ignored Dido almost completely. Another person she'd rubbed the wrong way, apparently. Lena wondered just exactly how she'd gotten into the homicide department. Probably had a killer CV with loads of PhDs. She didn't look like the sort of woman who would have her wealthy and influential father put in a good word for her, nor did she come across as the type to fuck her way to the top, and she certainly hadn't gotten in by virtue of being a talented cop. The fact that she didn't have a partner just yet was telling; probably nobody wanted to work with her, and Lena understood why. She'd go mad. At least Nour wasn't ready to slit her throat at the drop of a hat.

Devin put on an apron, a pair of gloves and protective eyewear, turned on the tape recorder then picked up the head. "Alright, the date is August fifth, the time is two thirty-four pm, we're in Atlanta's finest medical centre for the deceased, basement room number four. Medical examiner Devin Ward here, accompanied by detectives Dido Lott and Lena Adams." He picked up the head. "The recently deceased is a thirty-eight year old caucasian male identified as Henrik Nicolae Ionesco, resident of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Cause of death unknown, but it is worth noting that Mr Ionesco is missing most of his body, with the exception of his head and his right foot." He paused.

"Hair was like this before death?", he asked, and Lena said: "Yes. A little shorter. Apparently it grows fast."

"The follicles shrink after death", Devin said. "So that might explain it." He tipped the head over, examining the bottom half. Lena glanced at Dido. Her face was steely but she didn't seem too discomfited. Pity. Lena would have liked to see her throw up, if only because it would humanise her.

"Blood is pretty much drained", Devin said, and Lena asked: "on purpose?"

"Beats me. You'd expect more coagulation, but the head could have been kept upright straight after death. You let gravity do its work. It's harder to cut the head off in the first place." He put his finger in what she assumed was either the trachea or the windpipe. "The cut's very clean. Nothing serrated, no incisions."

That surprised her. "He chopped it off?"

"In one go, from the looks of it. Pretty impressive." He traced his finger along the edge of the neck. "Must have cost a lot of pressure. It's very straight, too, at a 45 degree angle. Almost like - "

"A guillotine", Dido said.

"Jesus." How the hell did someone get their hands on a guillotine, Lena wondered, or who the hell spent their time building one?

Devin shrugged. "It's actually not a terrible way to go, provided it works the way it's supposed to. Shock and bloodloss will render the victim unconscious in seconds. There's no telling if that's how he died, though."

"What do you mean?", Dido asked, though Lena knew the answer.

"The head could have been removed post mortem", Devin said. "I can tell you it was removed not long after his death in any case, but obviously there's not going to be a lot of healing whether you do it when he's alive or already dead, so…"

"To what end?"

"That's your job", he said, putting the head back down and picking up a scalpel. "Let's see what else he has in store for us."

They left the building about an hour later and none the wiser. The only thing wrong with the head, Devin had said, was that it was ugly. Same with the foot; the only issue of note was that it was no longer attached to the owner. Tox screens would take a while and with Henry, there was no telling what they'd find or whether he'd taken it himself. Every time they'd arrested him they'd let him get tested. Sometimes there was booze, though not always a lot of it; they rarely found drugs, though it had happened. Henry seemed to be that rare person who could do coke or heroin or meth every couple of days or weeks and not get hooked. Henry was just a hothead.

The search of the house hadn't given them anything to work with either. Plenty of drug paraphernalia had been found but that was hardly surprising. No foreign prints, no blood. An unloaded firearm, serial number burned off with acid, with only Henry's prints on it; interesting but probably irrelevant to the case. Any killer careful enough not to leave traces was unlikely to leave a gun at the scene. Forensics were still combing out the yard, but aside from a lot of dog shit it hadn't yielded anything so far. And so far there had been no sign of Sunny.

Dido had been happy to let Lena take the lead during the autopsy - probably because she was feeling queasy - but once they were outside she said: "I got it from here. Go back to domestic violence."

She phrased it so awkwardly that for a moment, Lena felt confused. Dido took it the wrong way and added: "What, you thought you were just going to stay on this case? You're not in homicide."

"I'm aware of that, thanks", Lena snapped. "Neither will you be if you keep it up like that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Fucking figure it out yourself", Lena said, turning around and heading back to her car. But Dido was properly pissed off now, and she followed.

"People are lining up to get onto the murder squad. People with experience and degrees and a shitton more capable than you."

"That still doesn't explain how you got in then", Lena said, fumbling for her car keys. "You still haven't read the background info. I'm good enough to drag around town because apparently, you can't read."

"I had - "

"Better things to do. Yeah, so did I." She finally found the keys. "Get the fuck out of my way if you don't want to get run over."

"You wouldn't dare", Dido said indignantly, and Lena though: well, duh. She got into the car but just before she slammed the door shut, Dido said: "like DV is worth the time of the day. Fucking dumb bitches probably ask for it."

By then, Lena almost did run her over. Instead, she revved the engine and watched with some satisfaction as Dido jumped to the side, then sped off, almost bumping into an SUV. The driver blared his horn at her and though she couldn't blame him she gave him the finger, then let him pass as she seethed quietly in her car.

Fucking dumb bitches probably ask for it.

It was a thing she herself would have said, once upon a time. Hell, she probably had in a vain attempt to win the respect of her peers. She couldn't make her skin turn white and she couldn't grow a dick but she could take on the racism, the sexism, the cavalier they-asked-for-it-attitude. She regretted many things in her life, but this was in the top three.

Fucking dumb bitches probably ask for it.

Had she?

If she'd ever tell anyone her story they'd immediately say no. She hadn't wanted Ethan to beat the shit out of her, to knock teeth out of her mouth, to crack her ribs so that breathing hurt for months, to throw her onto the bed and fuck her as she pressed her face into the pillow so he wouldn't hear her sob, wouldn't see the grimaces her face made. None of that had been her choice.

And yet, time and time again, she'd piss him off. Not accidentally, but on purpose. Because she was a bad person and she deserved it. Because at least when he beat her, she felt something. Anything.

She felt tears prick the corners of her eyes and she wanted to slap herself. Ethan was out of the way but she'd brought all of this upon herself. And others, too. Thanks to her cowardice Sara Linton's body was rotting away in a dank grave somewhere.

She remembered Jeffrey's text from the day before and the stupid dream she'd had, and she felt rage boil at the back of her throat, simmering and scorching and toxic.

She was a fucking dumb bitch and she deserved it.

By the time she got home she felt drained more than anything. Hannah, tired from a long day of doing whatever toddlers did, was cranky and refused to eat, though at least picking up a grilled cheese sandwich from the floor was less work than scraping a bowl of oatmeal off the sofa. She tossed it into the trash after three attempts, scooped up her daughter and took her to the bathroom.

Watching Hannah play in the shower, at least, was soothing, though as she watched her daughter Lena felt another familiar sensation: guilt.

She'd seen enough psychologists by now to know that they would tell her she was making a false equivalency, that she needed to compartmentalise, but strip all of that away and all that was left was the fact that Lena had once tried to kill her own child and had only failed because her appointment at the clinic had run late, Jeffrey had called her back in and she hadn't been able to come up with an excuse on the spot. But it had been more than that. She'd fled from the decision she knew she was supposed to make. On paper, it was a terrible idea. Lena was about as maternal as a bowie knife. She knew nothing about babies. Worse, it would tie her to Ethan for the rest of her life.

And Jeffrey knew. All he had to do to make her life truly miserable was make a simple phone call and Hannah would be wrenched away from her, because Ethan always got what he wanted. She'd be in the care of people who didn't know her, who wouldn't know to put the toy bunny in the bed before the toy horse, who didn't bother to learn the words to I love the whole world so they could soothe her when she'd hurt herself, who would strip away who she was and make her into a monster like they had Ethan. And Lena would never see her again. She knew how it would go with their fancy lawyers who'd hold every single screw up she'd ever committed against her. And there was plenty to choose from.

Once again she felt ready to cry as she watched Hannah excitedly splash her fists on the water, her hair dripping wet. There were times when being a single parent was draining, but at least neither of them knew any better. They had each other - but for how long?

"C'mon, pumpkin", she told Hannah. "Time for bed." Hannah protested briefly as Lena turned off the shower and scooped her up in a towel but she gave up quickly, a sure sign she was truly tired.

There were books to be read and toys to be kissed goodnight - Hannah was demanding - but when she was finally down for the night and Lena checked her phone, there were three messages.

The first was from Nour, who wanted to know what she'd been doing tomorrow. His text was unusually curt and she couldn't blame him. She'd left him in the dark. The second text was from Louis, who had texted her an eggplant, a mouth and a thumbs up. It pissed her off but she felt bad about it too. Still, he was probably drunk and drunk people needed a firm answer, so she texted back "no".

At least he was clear about what he wanted, she thought, and she was unsurprised when he replied with a middle finger and the phrase "#fuckitybye". She sighed, feeling at least a little relieved. She'd had worse break ups.

The third text was also a simple one, from Jeffrey - again. It read Please?

It was an oddly conciliatory tone when compared to what he'd sounded like the last time they'd spoken.

If you could call it that.

She knew she shouldn't ignore him either way, but she wasn't sure what to text back. She had no desire to see him again. Too much history, too much baggage, too much guilt. And who knew what the fuck he wanted? If this was about Sara then he'd said all he needed to say. If it was about an old case, he could have asked Frank to give her a call. If he just wanted to reminisce he could fuck right off.

In the end, though, she didn't bother replying. It was what she'd do with angry exes as well: simply stop responding until you wear them out. He'd get the message, she hoped.

She put her phone on the kitchen counter and plugged it into the charger, purposely distancing herself from it lest she get any other awkward texts today. Instead she switched on the tv. Nothing much was on and she settled on a rerun of Homeland, but after a few minutes her mind began to wander.

Fucking dumb bitches probably had it coming. Was that true? Was this some sort of cosmic payback for all the screwups, the lies, the cut corners and vitriol, the things she'd said she'd regretted? She'd never been one for organised religion, but if God did exist then the bastard was an old testament kind of God. A wrathful bully, one who'd never get enough or let go. Like Ethan, who was in prison plotting all the myriad ways to get back at her. To get her back. She knew how he ticked by now. He didn't love her, not exactly, but she was his property. She could leave only if he discarded her and he wouldn't do that because she wanted him to. She was his to play with, like a toy, without rights and without a voice.

Eventually, she texted Nour that she'd be back at work tomorrow, hoping she wasn't lying, then went to bed, knowing it would be a long time before she fell asleep.

Chapter 7

"Right", Nour said. "What? No. No, we haven't - " He rolled his eyes at Lena, though his tone stayed pleasant and conciliatory. It was why she usually let him handle phone calls from above.

"Well, as you can see from our log we've been there twice per week on average since they were handed over to us", Nour said, then moved the phone away from his head as the person on the other end of the line evidently shouted at them. "Yessir. Multiple times." Pause. "We did, sir, it's just - " He moved the phone away again as the shouting started up and mouthed the words 'fuck you' at it.

"I'm going to get a coke", Lena said, knowing better than to offer him any but feeling guilty nonetheless. She left the car and made her way to a shop across the road from where they were parked, then leaned against a fence in the shade as she waited for Nour to finish. Eventually, he got out of the car and made his way over. He eyed her drink enviously.

"When's Eid?", she asked. He sighed.

"Two more days and please don't bring it up."

"What'd he have to say?"

"Nothing worth listening to." Nour fanned himself. "The usual. Something about success rates, etcetera."

"Some newspaper's picked it up?"

"Probably." Nour checked his watch. "I'll get Maddie to talk to him. We should really check out how Eddie and Teddy are doing."

"We haven't had any calls for weeks."

"Exactly." She knew what he meant. Either one of them had gotten fed up and left, or someone was dead. They had loads of families under their umbrella just like this, but no time to check up on them. Considering the twenty minute long shouting match they'd just gotten from their boss's boss they'd have to make time. It pissed her off, like so many things about this job did. Due to a lot of different factors, Domestic Violence departments weren't successful in general no matter where they were and they were usually ignored, yet every time some clueless journalist got wind of that the higher ups would shit themselves and yell at them, then forget about them completely. No wonder Lena had been stuck in this department. It was the only place that was always hiring.

"We should get going", Nour said, clearly antsy despite his better judgement. With a sigh she tossed the can into the trash.

Eduardo and Therese - Eddie and Teddy - Godschalk lived in an outpost that was still part of Atlanta's metropolitan area, though only barely, and she wondered if Nour had picked this place because he was looking forward to a long drive. Not that it mattered; after only a few minutes on the road she got a panicked phone call from Major Crime.

"We have a mr. McAlaster here to talk to you", the woman on the other end of the line said. She sounded a bit frantic.

"I don't know who that is", Lena said bluntly.

"He wants to talk about the Ionesco case."

"Then call - "

"Detective Lott isn't available right now", the woman said. "We saw that you and detective Danes had - and we hoped you might - " She seemed flustered. Lena felt compelled to ask: "and where is detective Lott?"

"I couldn't say", the woman said. Lena suppressed a sigh.

"Alright", she said. "I'll be right over."

Nour wordlessly dropped her off at the Peachtree station. She didn't bother to apologise. It wasn't as if she had a say in things.

"She's not answering her phone", the desk sergeant had told her, so it made sense that the first person she saw in the hallway was Allen Danes, who didn't seem surprised to see her there either.

"I was about to go in", he said, and she asked: "Go in where?"

"James McAlaster."

"Who?"

He seemed amused. "Big timey crime boss."

"And he's here because…"

"Well, he owns the garage Henry Ionesco used to work for when his head was still attached to his body."

She frowned. "Then why the hell is he here?"

"Best guess?" Allen put his hand on the doorknob. "He has nothing to do with it and wants us to know it."

"Why would he think we'd believe him?"

"Mob killings aren't that flashy, detective", he told her. "Gruesome and bloody, yes, violent, yes, but there usually isn't a grand post-mortem display of…" He waved his hand in the air. "Whatever. Let me do the talking."

Lena considered protesting, but organised crime was far outside her comfort zone. She'd met the odd crime boss; they lawyered up and clammed up. She'd never met one who'd walk into the station voluntarily. Criminals tended to avoid police stations when possible.

"I'd have expected him to invite us over to his house", Allen said. She frowned. "And you'd have gone?"

"Sure. Contrary to popular belief these guys aren't out to kill as many cops as they can. That's just bad practice. It'll get everyone worked up. And in this day and age where any shred of evidence and every brainfart is recorded, logged and registered, it's not at all helpful." He glanced back. "I didn't think they'd call you."

"They can't find detective Lott."

He chuckled. "Well, she'd better be dead in a ditch somewhere or she's in deep shit." He pushed open the door and walked in; she caught it before it slammed in her face.

"McAlaster!", Allen bellowed. "Nice to see you again." He sat down at the table with a flourish; Lena stayed back, leaning against the far wall.

"Detectives Allen Danes and Lena Adams entering the room", Allen said, leaning forward eagerly. The men across the table were unimpressed. They looked normal enough; Lena would never have guessed mob boss and mob lawyer from a distance. They were dressed in drab suits, arms crossed, on their faces the kind of scowl you could find on any middle-aged white guy like them. She wouldn't even guess who was the mob boss and who was the lawyer if Allen hadn't been addressing the man on the right.

The man on the left said: "Aren't you going to finish?"

"Right", Allen said. "Interview of Mr James Phineas McAlaster, also present in the room is mr. Simeon Northrup, attorney at law for mr. McAlaster. I'm sure he'll appreciate us pointing out that mr. McAlaster came to see us of his own volition." He leaned back again. "What can we do you for, sir?"

McAlaster pointed at Lena. "Who's she?"

Allen glanced back, as if he'd forgotten she was there.

"That's detective Adams."

"I don't know her."

"Why, you know every cop in this town for some reason?"

They said nothing in return, which was probably the smartest move.

"She's on Mr Ionesco's homicide investigation", Allen said. Lena noticed he conveniently let out the fact that she wasn't actually on the homicide squad.

The lawyer cleared his throat. "Mr McAlaster is here to offer his assistance to your investigation into mr Ionesco's death."

"Really?", Allen said, sounding more surprised than he probably was. "Why, did he have anything to do with it?"

"Mr McAlaster is greatly saddened by the passing of Mr Ionesco", the lawyer said. To her surprise, McAlaster himself added: "call me crazy but I liked the guy." He seemed relaxed, completely at ease. There was no point in being combative, so she asked: "what was he like?"

He pondered the question for a few seconds. "Energetic. Had a bit of a temper, but usually kept it under control. He was a hard worker. Loved that pretty wife of his. How is she?"

"How long has he been working for you?"

"Couple of years. I'd have to look at my employment records." He smiled beatifically. They all knew there were no employment records. She asked: "was he a good employee?"

"Sure. Like I said, he worked hard. Would always come in when I needed him. Just did what he was told to do."

"Everyone liked him? He had no enemies?", Allen asked, which was a stupid question. He was a criminal. Of course he had enemies. MacAlastar shrugged.

"Not at work. I can't vouch for his private life."

"We'd like to talk to your people", Allen said. MacAlastar smiled beatifically.

"I suspected you would. I've asked them all to come in tomorrow eveniong. I'll have his employment records for you then." Plenty of time to get the record straight and to falsify a few documents. Still, she wondered, why go through all that trouble?

After they'd sent him on his way Allen said: "I don't think he has anything to do with it."

"Me either", Lena admitted. "Too much effort. You gonna go?"

"Tomorrow? Of course. That's how we play. You?"

"Not my case", she reminded him. He checked his watch.

"Guess it is now", he told her as he moved away. "Miss Lott's not gonna be the primary for much longer."

Sure enough, the doors at the end of the hallway flew open and Dido stormed in, nostrils flared. Lena noticed with some satisfaction that her fly was undone.

"The fuck is he?", Dido snapped. Allen gave Lena a cheesy grin and disappeared into the building, leaving them alone in the hallway, so she said: "halfway down Peachtree, probably."

She swore, then jabbed her finger at Lena. "You are not - "

"Oh, fuck you", she said, turning around and walking towards the exit. Dido followed her.

"This is my case."

"Then pick up your damn phone." She paused. "Where the fuck were you, anyway?"

"None of your damn business", she said, though she sounded defensive. Lena shrugged.

"Okay, but your boss is going to want to know why you didn't pick up." She opened the door to the parking lot. "I was called in here because they couldn't find you. Don't like it, take it up with the receptionist and pick up your fucking phone next time."

Dido followed her as she headed towards her car. To Lena's surprise, she said: "Does he know?"

"Does who know what?", Lena said, fumbling for her keys.

"My boss. Does he know - "

She found her keys and looked up. Dido looked worried. Lena was disinclined to feel sympathetic.

"I didn't tell him, but I'm guessing someone did."

"You mean Allen."

"Or the receptionist. Or anyone who got it from either of them." Cops were gossipy; a police station was like a hive, always buzzing.

"I was - ", Dido started, then paused. Lena ignored her and got into her car. Dido could sort out her own affairs. She wasn't looking to be dragged into this messy case. It wasn't worth the headache, she decided.

She dialled Nour as she drove away. He picked up on the second ring.

"Sorry", she told him. "Got dragged into the Ionesco mess again. His boss showed up unexpectedly and they couldn't find the primary."

He grunted something unintelligible and she winced. "I'm going to check up on Sunny. I'll meet you after, alright?"

"Yeah, yeah", he said and he hung up, leaving Lena with a knot in her stomach. She hoped he'd come around. Tomorrow was Eid. Maybe he just needed some food.

A patrol car was parked outside when she got to Sunny's house. Yellow tape was still on the front door, though the house wasn't, in all likelihood, a crime scene. Lena would have objected, but chances were Sunny would just give it a puzzled look before either peeling it off or using the backdoor.

"No sign of her", the patrol cop said as she moved towards the front door. Lena thanked him, though, surely, she'd have heard if there had been. She cut the seal on the tape and went in.

The stench of rotting food seemed to be even stronger, though she no longer smelled meth in the air. Everything else was as it had been left. Laundry - some dirty, some clean - still took up half the sofa. A fine layer of dust covered the TV screen, though Sunny had drawn the shape of a heart in it. The coffee table was strewn with wrappers, beer cans, paint brushes and, for some reason, a teddy bear, and Lena was reminded of the time Sunny had lost her baby.

It had been a lovely evening and Lena had been about to go home when the call came. It had been her second week on the job and already she'd been at their house three times. There had been so much blood, though Sunny hadn't passed out. She'd sat on the filthy living room floor surrounded by debris, sobbing like a little girl while Henry, out of sheer incompetence, had tried to pick a fight with Nour. Nour had promptly cuffed him and loaded him into the back of his car while Lena had stayed with Sunny, trying to console her, secretly wishing Nour had let her take care of Henry. There was a reason they hadn't. Women like Sunny, women in a vulnerable position, tended to mistrust men. The theory was that they'd feel safer with a woman. Unfortunately Lena didn't necessarily feel the same way.

But Sunny wasn't here now and Lena wondered just how worried she ought to be.

She heard footsteps behind her and was only a little surprised when she turned around and found Dido, standing in the living room. She suppressed a groan.

"I just - ", Dido started. Lena gave her the silent treatment, more to unnerve her than anything else, and made her way over to the dining table, digging into her pocket for a set of rubber gloves.

"I couldn't find my phone this morning", Dido said. "Left it in my car. My phone's also my alarm clock, so I overslept."

"I don't care", Lena said.

"It's not my fault", Dido said, crossing her arms.

"By definition, it is", Lena told her in spite of herself. She moved aside a Moon Pie wrapper and found a credit card, in Henry's name, with a fine line of powder on the side. She should run a credit check, she realised. Dido would run one too if she had half a brain, but she would never share it with Lena. She picked up the card and put it in a ziploc bag.

"What's that?", Dido said.

"Credit card", Lena said curtly.

"Why are you - "

"It has white powder on it." She sealed the bag and walked over to Dido. "Forensics missed this. You might want to check out why." She shoved the card against Dido's chest, hard, and made her way out without a second glance.

"Why would forensics miss this?", Dido said, following Lena outside.

"You do the math", Lena told her. She was fed up with this weird woman. "I need to get to the station."

"They couldn't have missed it", Dido said, ignoring her words. Lena could almost hear the cogs turn. "Either they missed it, or someone came into the house."

"Bingo", Lena said, still walking towards her car. Shame she'd parked it across the street or she would have been gone now.

"But the house is sealed - "

"So check the seals."

"You didn't - "

"Not my case, remember?" She dug around for her keys. Behind her, someone bellowed: "Detective!"

They both looked up. The neighbour - not the nervous black man but the instantly forgettable one - was waving at her and she walked over, because there wasn't a single thing Dido had not messed up so far and Lena, in spite of herself, was curious.

"I saw someone at the house last night", the neighbour said. He seemed excited to talk to them. Lena understood why; he lived alone, worked from home. He must have been lonely. He didn't strike her as the type with many friends; he was too eager to talk to them. She asked: "what did you see?"

She'd expected him to give a statement, but instead he whistled and to her surprise, Boulder the overweight pitbull waddled up behind him and threw himself down on the floor like the trek from the back of the house to the front was up and down mount Everest.

"He just showed up in the yard last night", Henry said. "Someone removed his collar."

"Really?", Lena said, bending down. Boulder wheezed excitedly, lifted his head briefly at her as if to say: "you can pet me all you want, I'm going to take a nap", then put his head down on the tiles and went to sleep. He looked fine. He looked like he always had.

"Nothing on him", the neighbour said. "I got some dog food from the corner shop. He ate it and went to sleep. Probably just wandered around the neighbourhood for a few days.

"Probably", Lena said, though she had her reservations. In an increasingly gentrified neighbourhood like this someone would have called the police for a pit bull on the loose, even if it was a pit bull like Boulder, who might as well have been a lawn ornament.

"Wasn't sure if it was worth calling you guys for", the neighbour said. "Mind if I keep him? Until Sunny gets back, I mean?"

"We should probably - ", Dido, behind her, said, but Lena cut her off. "Sure. No problem. Make sure to return him if Miss Madigan makes it back."

"Will do", he said cheerfully.

When she left the house Dido followed her excitedly.

"We should have taken that dog into custody", she said.

"Sure", Lena replied. "Get his prints, put him in an orange jumpsuit. Gen Pop is going to love him." They actually would. Dido frowned.

"No, I mean - ", she straightened up as she realised Lena was joking, then said: "Ha. Very funny. We should at least - "

"It's a dog", Lena said. "He licks his butt six times an hour. He's been in the neighbour's house since yesterday. You're not going to find anything there. But be my guest, go back and drag him into your car. It's not my case."

"No, but - " She glanced back at the house. Lena took the opportunity to get back into her car but before she had a chance to close the door Dido stopped her.

"You don't think we should have a - "

"A what?"

Dido's phone started to ring, and as she answered, her hand still on the car door, Lena wondered what had changed. An hour ago she'd been ready to throw Lena out of the window and now she was following her around like a lost puppy.

She was about to yank her car door out of Dido's hands when Dido told her: "They found the rest of Henry."

Chapter 8

The body was sitting at a bench in the middle of a busy intersection, and when Lena walked up forensics had already erected a big tent over it. They seemed as puzzled as anyone.

"Call came in at around ten this morning", one of the guys said to Lena. "Came in from the office across the road. They didn't go check but called us when he hadn't moved for a few hours. God bless bored office workers, right?" They ignored Dido completely. Presumably they'd met before and it had not gone well. Dido elbowed her way to the front, but the guy in the white suit stepped aside and kept talking to Lena, presumably because he knew it would piss her off. To her surprise, Dido did nothing but hung back instead, looking disappointed.

"Right", Lena said, slightly awkwardly. "Was it an anonymous call?"

"Nah", the man said. "Dispatch'll have their name." He pointed at the corps. "Head's missing. I'm told you have it?"

"Already refrigerated", Lena said, glancing at the corpse. "How come it took them so long to call it in?"

The forensics guy shrugged. "Beats me. Probably thought it was some sort of weirdo. Best to ignore those."

That would never have happened in a small town, Lena thought as she moved up to the body. Back in Grant County at least six bored people and busybodies would have called them in before the hour was out. Here, not so much. She scanned the area for cameras; she couldn't see any, but they were at a busy intersection downtown full of high rise buildings with glass panes, housing banks that only wanted your money if you had plenty of it. They were bound to have some footage. Whether or not they were willing to part with it was a different matter.

"Camera's, right?", Dido said. "You're looking for cameras."

Lena ignored her as she bent over the body. In spite of the sweltering heat she didn't smell any decay as she got closer. A balloon had been clumsily taped to the top of the neck, with a wig, a hat and a cheap Trump-faced mask from a dollar store.

"Trump", Dido said. "Might be a political statement."

"Or it might just be whatever they had lying around", Lena replied, wondering why she was bothering or why Dido hadn't told her to piss off again. She straightened up and asked the forensics guy: "I don't smell decay."

"I haven't taken a core temp yet", he said. "But the fact that he's so rigid might mean he was frozen. Rigor mortis should have been gone by now and there's something that may or may not be freezer burn on his fingertips." He pointed at the hands.

"He was holding up a newspaper at first but it sagged. Might be because he was frozen in that position and then thawed."

Lena frowned. "Someone froze him like that on purpose?"

The forensics guy shrugged. "Beats me. Where you want him?"

"Send him to Devin Ward", she replied. "He has the rest of him." She stood up. The forensics guy said: "this is weirding me out."

"Where's the paper?", she asked him. He pointed towards his van.

"Managed to salvage it before the wind and a bunch of pigeons made off with it."

"Pigeons don't use newspaper material for nesting", Dido pointed out, and Lena groaned internally. The forensics guy did too, but out loud. She followed him towards the van where she gloved up as he took the paper out of a plastic bag, then put down a sheet on the floor for her to unfold it. Carefully, she put it down. It was a New York Times from two days ago that said absolutely nothing.

"We'll comb it for hairs, microfibers, that stuff", the forensics guy said. "Especially the sports pages."

She smiled politely at his joke, but as she turned another page something caught her eye. She unfolded the pages. There was a yellow post-it note in the middle of an editorial about PISA rankings that read: DON'T KNOW WHY YOU'D WANT THIS BACK BUT HERE YOU GO.

"Hmpf", the forensics guy said. "What a fucking weirdo."

"What a fucking idiot", Devin said as he stared at the fully clothed body on the table. The balloon, possibly because of the cool air in the morgue basement, had begun to shrink and the mask was sagging. "What the hell is he thinking?"

"Not sure I want to know", Lena said.

"Well…" Devin gloved up. "Let's do pictures. You staying here?" He looked around, but Dido was milling about on her phone. He whispered: "please don't leave me alone with that one."

"Man up. She's not going to kill you", Lena said. "And if she does you'll be in the right place." But in spite of herself she felt drawn to the case. It had been so long since she'd had a proper challenge. Dido seemed to have all but given up and it wouldn't be long before her boss found out she'd overslept, hadn't answered her phone, and then the case would be taken away from her. If she was lucky that was all that would happen. Lena sighed. "Fine. Let me text my partner to say I'll be late."

She was halfway through an apologetic text message to Nour, ignoring the beeping of Devin's digital camera, when she heard him say: "what the fuck?" She looked up.

Another post-it note had been stuck to the balloon, under the mask where they couldn't see. It read WHAT AN AIRHEAD.

"Jesus fucking Christ", Devin said. "I know what killed him. It was a really terrible sense of humour."

At the end of the room, Dido edged closer. Lena tried to resist the temptation to block her view - not that it would have mattered; Dido was a lot taller than she was - and focused on the corpse. The blonde wig, a cheap, synthetic one, had slid down over the balloon now that it no longer had the mask to hold it in place. It looked like something out of a horror movie, like any moment a homicidal clown would jump out of one of the freezers.

"Man", Devin said. "This is going to make a great story around the family dinner table next Christmas." He removed the hat and the wig, photographed the post-it then took that off too. Finally he put a large sheet of paper underneath the neck and began to peel back the tape. Flecks of dried blood gathered on the paper along with a single hair, thick and stubbly.

"That looks planted", Lena said. Devin shrugged. "Might be. Don't know what else we'll find. It's a lot harder to keep an entire corpse with clothing clear than it is to keep a head and tape tends to pick up all sorts of things you don't want it to pick up."

Lena was not convinced. "Is it even a human hair?"

"Can't tell from this angle", Devin said. "I'll put it under a microscope. Might be dog or cat. First things first." He ripped off the last bit of tape with a bit too much vigour, and the balloon burst. To their surprise, a piece of paper fell out.

"Man", Devin said. "This is getting stranger by the minute." He photographed the paper, then carefully unfolded it. Lena saw what it was before he was even done.

"Birth certificate", she said. Devin nodded. "Of one Henry Ionesco." He glanced over at the rest of the body. "As if there were any doubt." He bagged the certificate. "Did he have any other distinguishing marks?"

"Couple of nazi tats", Lena said, feeling a shiver run down her spine as she said it.

"Charming", Devin said. "You think you can ID him if I get - "

"Sure." She'd seen those tats plenty of times. The first thing Henry did when he got home was take off his shirt.

Behind her, Dido still said nothing and Lena turned to her. "You don't want to get any closer?"

She'd expected Dido to say no, but instead she took a few steps towards the table, gingerly clutching the collar of her shirt, and Lena was torn between hoping she'd vomit and pass out and hoping she would just go away and disappear. She made up her mind to go talk to someone in the homicide division. As much as she quietly enjoyed being in on the investigation she'd be out on her ass if she didn't.

"Right", Devin said, ignoring Dido completely. "Diaz, get him undressed, will you?" He began to gather supplies as the mortuary worker quietly photographed and stripped away layers of clothing.

Henry Ionesco had always been short, not much taller than Lena herself and certainly shorter than Sunny, but now that his head was gone his body looked almost comically fragile, more like an old man's than like a child's, his skin sallow and waxy underneath the unforgiving lights.

"Nice", Diaz said sarcastically as he noticed the massive tattoos. Devin asked: "so what did his family say?"

"Nothing", Lena told him. "He had no siblings, his parents are long dead and we didn't manage to get in touch with his one living relative, an uncle who lives in - I kid you not - Uganda."

"Missionary?"

"Yeah. Don't think they're very close."

"Guess not", Devin said, testing out the sternum saw. "Right. Let's get to it."

"My boss wants to see you", Dido said.

The autopsy over, Lena was walked out of the building with Dido once again trailing her like a lost puppy. She frowned.

"Why?"

"I don't know", she said. "He wants to see me too, probably because you or that shithead from Fraud ran your mouths."

So they were back to animosity, Lena noted. She said: "I didn't run my mouth to anyone."

"No?"

"I didn't have to." She paused when she got to the exit. The elevators were to her right; they'd take her up to the first floor, where homicide worked. Or she could just leave, go back to work, leave this weird woman alone with her problems, leave missing persons to deal with Sunny and someone more capable to take on Henry, go grovelling to Nour and get back to hysterical spouses and wailing children before the day was out. She sighed, then pressed the elevator call button. Justin Isherwood, who ran the homicide department, was not her boss, but one call to the head of the SVU and she'd still have to show up. Best to get it over with. Besides, she was curious what he'd have to say. As far as she knew, for once, she hadn't done anything wrong. Unless he was out to start a turf war she couldn't think of anything he'd want to nail her for and she could handle turf wars.

"Fine", she told Dido, who frowned. "What, right now?"

"Best not to keep him waiting", she said. Dido fidgeted.

The floor was empty when she got to it; she saw a few unfamiliar faces frowning at computer screens, but almost every desk was empty. Atlanta's murder rate was high at the best of times and with this weather, hers wasn't the only department that was extra busy.

Determined not to go on the defense straight away, she knocked on Isherwood's door at the end of the room. Of course it was closed. Jeffrey's door had always been open. She'd thought that was a good thing until that door had shut behind her.

She tried not to think of it as she waited for Isherwood to ask her in. He took his time; eventually she heard a blithe "yes?", took a deep breath, and went in.

"Lena Adams, Domestic Violence", she said. "I was told you wanted to see me."

"Uh, yeah", he said. He was eating a sandwich and his mouth was full. Lena's stomach grumbled at the thought. He looked behind her. "Lott, close the fucking door."

Dido obeyed. He said: "with you on the other side."

She looked startled; her eyes darted to Lena in a silent plea for help, but Lena ignored it. The door shut.

"So", Isherwood said. "She driving you nuts already?"

She said nothing. In her experience no good could come from answering a question like that honestly.

"She's very smart', Isherwood said. "Majored with honours in Socioogy, has a PhD in criminal psychology from Emory. The brass really wanted to take her on. She's only been here for two months. I tried to sic her onto one of the oldtimers but Ben had a heart attack last week ago and by God, I can't swear that she wasn't the reason he did." He leaned back, pointed a finger at Lena. "She tells me you're up in her case. You don't work homicide."

"I know", Lena said. "Henry Ionesco and Sunny Madigan are our regulars. I've only done follow up. We're still on the lookout for Sunny."

"You think she did it?"

"I don't know."

He narrowed his eyes. "C'mon, detective, this isn't a court hearing. What does your gut tell you?"

"She might have", Lena admitted, not sure how much she should say or in which direction this conversation was about to go. She didn't know Isherwood. The number of people she knew in APD was severely restricted and homicide was not her turf. She hedged her bets: "And she might not have. There's no telling. She's consistently shown erratic behaviour."

"Like going back to a man who beat her?", Isherwood asked, and Lena tried to keep her face straight as she answered: "that's not necessarily erratic. Victims of domestic viol - "

"Oh, I know", Isherwood said airily. "But you think she's unreliable?"

"Yes."

"So she might have done it?"

"Or she might not have. As I said, I can't tell and Ionesco was involved in some unsavoury - "

"So here's the deal", he interrupted her. "The moment he died and she ran off this became a homicide investigation and you, detective Adams, are not on homicide."

"I've known them for - "

He raised his hand to stop her. Exasperated, she shut her mouth and with some difficulty let him finish.

"I know you worked for Jeffrey Tolliver out of Grant County", he said. "I gave him a call. Wanna know what he said?"

"Not particularly", she snapped, and she hoped he wouldn't see how her heart was racing. Isherwood feigned surprise and said: "Really? You don't think he had good things to say about you?"

"I don't care", she snapped. "I don't work for him anymore."

"Why not?"

"Does that matter?"

"It does to me."

"Why?"

"Indulge me."

"It's a long story."

Any chief she'd ever worked for would've pressed her, but Isherwood just gave a wry chuckle as she tried not to glare at him with all the fury she was feeling.

"I've known Tolliver for a long time", he said. "Bit of a horndog. Is that why you left? Because he - "

"He and I did not have sex", she said, making sure to look him in the eye.

"And he didn't try to get a little frisky - "

"No. Never."

"I heard about what happened to his wife", Isherwood said, and she said nothing, though she had to resist the temptation to look away.

For a moment, they were silent. It seemed to take forever. She was just about to clear her throat and tell him she had to get back to work, but then he said: "for what it's worth, he told me that he regretted hiring you and to watch my back around you."

She was unsurprised. Disappointed, infuriated, but unsurprised. She clenched her jaw. Isherwood continued: "and then he called me back a few minutes later and told me he was being too harsh, that you, I quote, had the makings of a good cop but needed to get your ass in line." He cocked his head as he looked at her. "So what do I make of that?"

"Make of it whatever you want", Lena said curtly. He chuckled condescendingly. "So you two really didn't - "

"Fuck? No."

"Hm", he said. "Anyway. I understand you have some experience with homicide investigations?"

"Yes." She didn't feel the need to elaborate. She was still pissed he'd talked to Jeffrey behind her back. For Christ's sake, she hadn't even applied to be on the homicide squad, so what the fuck was he doing, poking around?

"How about I call your boss, ask him if he can spare you for a few days while we sort this out, and maybe you can show detective Lott the ropes?"

Lena glanced at the door. "Have you run this by her?"

"Of course not", he told her. "I do whatever the fuck I please."

"Well, so does she."

"Not if she knows what's good for her." He leaned forward, looked her in the eye. "I cannot hire you permanently. I cannot fire her. But she's been here for a few months only and already the rest of the team hates her fucking guts."

I can't imagine why, Lena thought, though she managed to stop herself from saying so out loud. Isherwood continued: "The top brass likes her because she ticks a bunch of boxes and meanwhile they're saddling me with the problem because I have a staff member who cannot work with anyone, who thinks she knows everything and won't hear otherwise. You know the case, you know the victim and you know his wife. You take her with you, see if you can find miss Madigan. I'm swamped here. I can't spare anyone else. If this gets any bloodier I'm pulling people from elsewhere. As long as it's just Ionesco and Madigan it's all yours."

She was torn between telling him to go fuck himself and saying thanks. She did not want to be saddled with Dido and she wanted to tell Isherwood what she wasn't here to do his bidding. At the same time, anything was better than another day with the Freemans.

"You'd have to ask SVU if they can spare me", she told him because it was the most neutral thing she could come up with. He shrugged. "Won't be a problem."

"We're kind of swamped too." She hoped he wouldn't reconsider, but his mind was already elsewhere.

"Send Lott in and wait outside, will you?"

She spent a few minutes sitting on a bench outside of his office, wondering how many people had sat in that exact same spot and how nervous they had been. The bench had no back or armrests and the soft leather was cracked. She listened to the hum of the air conditioning; at the onder end of the room, a middle-aged white guy was making a phone call in hushed tones. The conversation inside the room was quiet; when Dido opened the door a few minutes later she looked almost relieved, though the first thing she said when she saw Lena was "well, I guess you got what you wanted."

"Look forward to working with you too", Lena said, getting up. "Come on. Let's go."

Chapter 9

"Alrighty", Devin said, and he pointed towards the pictures that he'd neatly aligned in front of him. "Mr Ionesco. Cause of death: blood loss."

"No shit", Lena said. Henry had been reunited with his head on the photographs, though it lay at an inch or two from his neck. He didn't look like he cared; the boorish expression on his face was one of boredom.

"The cut from the head matches the cut from the neck exactly", Devin continued. "Which means it was cut off in one fell swoop."

"Still thinking guillotine?", she asked. He shrugged. "Could be a sword I suppose, but he'd have to be a very, very good marksman with a very sharp tool."

"They do it in Saudi Arabia", Dido pointed out. It was the first thing she'd said since they'd met up that morning. "They use a Sulthan. It's very quick."

"I thought of that", Devin said, "but then you'd still expect the cut to be at an angle and it isn't. Plus, it's pretty hard to subdue someone, make them kneel and hold still at the same time. I mean, I guess you could knock them out first, but with a guillotine you wouldn't need to, you'd just have to hold them still for a second or two while you drop the knife. You don't need an accessory to help you out.. And with a sword you'd expect a slight uptick at the end of the incision, when there's no weight to support the body anymore so the skin stretches out a little."

"So", Lena said, trying to think out loud. "Assuming he has a guillotine - presumably that isn't something you can buy off the internet."

"You can probably find blueprints", Devin said. "Not even sure you'd need the dark web for that."

"Right. But still, I'd imagine it takes some skill to build it well. Plus, he'd need private space. At least a free standing house, with a basement if he's in the city."

Devin pointed at the next picture. "The clothes he was wearing fit him well except for the trench coat." She glanced at the images; cheap faded jeans, a black tank top. His standard uniform. The wifebeater in his wifebeater. The trench coat, though, was far too big.

"I checked the make", he said. "Chinese manufacture, at least fifteen years old. Mostly synthetic. It's the sort of stuff you'd find in a thrift shop. We're still running samples, but I wouldn't be surprised if we found a lot of them."

"We could check with thrift stores", Dido suggested. "See if they remember anyone buying a trench coat specifically."

"Good. You do that", Lena said, not because it was a good idea but because it would keep Dido occupied for a while. Calling a thrift store to ask them "hey, has anyone bought an ugly coat from you in the past week or so?" would probably get you a few giggles and not much more, especially because if their killer was smart he would've purchased a bunch of items so the coat wouldn't even stand out. Or maybe he'd bought the coat for himself.

"The wig's more recent", Devin said. "Also Chinese manufacture, either last year or this year. It still smells of plastic, so I think it was bought specially."

"We should check costume stores", Dido said. "In the area around where the body was found."

Good luck with that, Lena thought. The area was full of banks and financial businesses; not exactly the kind of place where you'd find a cheap ass costume shop. Atlanta had plenty of those but there was no telling where the killer had made his purchase. Still, she said: "Sure. Have you checked CCTV yet?"

"Uh", Dido said, and Lena groaned internally. She'd given Dido very specific instructions before going home.

"I asked", Dido said defensively. "They said they'd get back to me."

"Fine", Lena said curtly. 'I'll get back to you' meant 'whenever I fucking feel like it'. There was no gain for them there. She'd have to waltz in, badger them a little so they'd give in just to get rid of her.

"You want me to - "

"Yes, I want you to call them right now and tell them to get their ass in gear. We have shit to do."

Dido grumbled something and left the room. Devin watched her go, then sighed.

"They stuck her on you, didn't they?"

"Don't ask", Lena grumbled. "What else did you find?"

"Nothing specific. No blood on his shoes anywhere. He wasn't hosed down or anything. Perp probably never took his clothes off." He picked up a stack of printed pictures and leafed through them. "No defensive wounds either, but his blood alcohol level was pretty high so he was probably drunk as a skunk and pretty pliable. We also found traces of thebaine."

She racked her brain. "That's oxy, right?"

"A-plus for detective Adams." Devin sat down behind his desk. "Not sure what else to tell you. He was drunk and high and he died quickly."

That told her little. She sighed. "Anything else?"

"I got that hair analysed. Dog hair, probably belonged to a pit bull mix."

Boulder, she thought. Fucking Boulder.

"They have - had a dog. A pit bull, I think."

"A grey one?"

"Yeah."

"Well, mystery solved then." He frowned. "I thought pitties were good guard dogs, though."

"Not this one", she told him. "What else?"

Devin put on his reading glasses and opened his computer. "Well, we found a bunch of stuff. DNA, hair, fibers - it's a goldmine. Except we don't know where it came from. The coat might have come from goodwill and might still have loads of stuff on it. That might have rubbed off on his clothing. I've asked forensics for samples from the house so we can check 'em against his girlfriend's, but they're still working on it. Should be done in a couple of hours. I'll give them a call if they take too long." His eyes darted over to the door. "Lest you sic her on me."

"Thanks", she told him. "Anything else?"

"He was in remarkably good shape for a substance abuser", Devin said. "That's all I got."

Dido was still on the phone when Lena left the morgue.

"Yes, I understand, but - " she was saying. Lena said nothing and walked towards the exit. Dido followed her.

"I know, but It's imperative - " She paused for a few seconds, then said: "they hung up on me."

"Oh, for fuck's sake", Lena snapped. Dido said: "You told me to be nice to them."

"At first. I told you to be nice to them at first and then get mad at them." She entered the parking lot. The sky was overcast. The sun wasn't out in full force today; instead, they got humidity so thick she could almost taste it. Brooding weather. Nour would be busy today.

"I tried", Dido said defensively. "But they wouldn't budge."

"They will", she said, angry that they were wasting their time.

"Do we get a subpoena?"

"No", Lena said, knowing she should explain but not inclined to share how she planned on getting the footage.

She got behind the wheel. Dido followed her, awkwardly crawling into the passenger's seat of her Toyota. She scooted over towards the door as if trying to maximise the distance between herself and Lena. Lena wondered if she was pissed, afraid, or both.

Either one she could live with.

She drove down to the bank, illegally parked her car on the curb and waved her badge at the doorman who came rushing up.

"You can't - ", he started. She cut him off. "So call security. We need a word anyway."

That stumped him long enough that he let them walk into the lobby, where she asked the receptionist to get her the head of security.

"He's busy", the receptionist said.

"Don't care", Lena told her. "I'll wait."

The woman sent Lena a sour look that didn't impress her and pressed a few buttons on her phone.

"Hi, Steve. APD are here to see you. They say it's urgent." She paused, snickered at something Steve said while not-so-subtly giving Lena furtive looks. Lena tried not to roll her eyes. The woman was acting like a middle schooler. The way she looked she probably wasn't much older.

Steve came down moments later and Lena thought: oh, they're definitely fucking.

"Detectives Adams and Lott", she said, holding up her ID by way of greeting. "We've requested your security footage from yesterday and the day before. Apparently someone at your office is dragging their heels." Steve was a guy in his late thirties who pretended to be in his late twenties. His suit was ill-fitted to his bulky frame.

"Do you have a court order?"

Lena shrugged. "It's a formality."

"Because without a court order - "

"Dude, a guy was murdered and his body sat outside your door without anyone noticing. If I go to a judge and ask them to give me a warrant, they'll sign it without reading it twice and God only knows what kind of shit could turn up. Or you give me the footage I want and I leave you alone."

He was well over a foot taller than she, but he shrunk back from her immediately and she thought to herself: for a head of security at a big bank he's a major pushover. It made sense, though. Steve had probably been given this job by a wealthy relative and enjoyed playing cops and robbers. Banks were usually stingy with giving out security footage, even if it concerned the outside of the building, because it might record their clients entering and leaving. Intuitively she sensed that Steve wouldn't be very susceptible to flattery. It would boost his ego for sure, but he wouldn't budge because it would make him feel better to turn her down. Instead, she went at it like a pit bull in the full knowledge that the receptionist was watching.

"I'd have to talk to - "

"You've had a day to talk to your boss. I'm fed up with waiting. I have a murder to solve." She snapped her fingers, got intentionally close to him. "Get me what I want and I'll be out of your hair. Or tell me to fuck off and I'll be here with a warrant and I'll be leaving with a lot more than you want me to."

She could see him waver, but he wasn't quite there yet. She sighed, turned to Dido and said: "Go outside. Make the call."

Dido opened her mouth, probably to ask what call she meant, but then it seemed to sink in - thank God - and turned and headed for the door. Lena hoped to God she wasn't actually calling any judges, though if she were it'd be a while before she got through. Atlanta's bureaucracy moved slowly.

Steve finally caved. She could almost see him deflate as he said: "alright. Fine. You wait here. I'll be back in fifteen minutes." Dido, almost at the door, halted in her steps.

"Make that ten", Lena said for good measure, and she ignored him as she sat down in the lobby. If there had been any magazines she would have picked one up and pretended to read it.

When he was gone and the receptionist was busy answering phone calls, Dido said: "how did you know how to do that?"

"Do what?"

"Get in his face like that."

"Fuck, I don't know", Lena said, but then she admitted: "he's definitely fucking the receptionist. I figured he'd want to make an impression on her, show her how powerful he is. If I'd asked nicely he would've said no because it would make him seem like the end guy. He's not, though, and this way he gets to bitch about me to his girlfriend after we leave, maybe get a sympathy lay in the break room later."

"But how did you know that would work?"

"I don't know", Lena said irritably. "I just do." She'd been on the job long enough to intuitively understand what would and would not work .

What she wouldn't tell Dido, though, was that it was easier if she pictured the man as Ethan, imagined it was him she was barking orders at. She wasn't even sure why she'd done it; they hardly looked like each other, and Ethan wouldn't have been deterred so easily. Worse, she never could've talked to Ethan like that, out of fear. On the rare occasions where she had he'd make her regret it. For a minute it had felt good but every time it happened, she would inevitably feel worse afterwards.

She straightened her back and told Dido: "you're a cop. You have to be able to read people."

"How?", Dido said, angrily jutting out her chin. "I keep hearing that, but - "

"There's not exactly a manual", Lena said, wondering why she had to explain all of this. "You just… Do it."

"But how - "

"Christ", Lena groaned, but then Steve came back in, carrying a USB drive and a sour expression.

"Here", he said, defiantly tossing the disk to Lena. She caught it with one hand. "The last 24 hours."

"Is it timestamped?", she asked, not about to go through hours of footage only to have to guess at the time frame. Steve nodded.

"Have fun", he said sourly. Lena told him: "thanks for your cooperation", then turned and walked out.

The tape was remarkably grainy and low-res, and as they watched it at Dido's desk she wondered if maybe Steve had given them a bum copy.

"I haven't seen surveillance vids this bad since the nineties", she told Dido. Dido straightened her back. "You think they gave us a bad copy on purpose?"

Lena shrugged. "Could be. They probably don't want us to know who their clients are. Banks like to be able to say they offer full privacy. Or maybe they're just cheap and have a dodgy security system." She fast-forwarded the tape until the body showed up on the bench in front of the bank, then reversed and slowed down.

"This is so weird", Dido said. Lena ignored it. Of course it was weird.

They stared at the empty bench for a little while; then, suddenly, a man popped up with a stuffed body bag over his shoulder.

"That's pretty audacious", Dido commented, and Lena wondered why she was so talkative all of a sudden. She tried to focus on the tape, but the turn of events the day was taking had thrown her a bit. And it was true. Walking through downtown Atlanta with a dead body slung over your shoulders was pretty cocky.

The man was of average height, heavy set, wearing dark clothes and a baseball cap. That was all she could make out. Come to think of it, she wasn't even sure it was a man.

She froze the frame, got a few stills, then moved on to watch the rest of the clip. The man - or woman - put the body down on the bench without too much effort.

"Must be pretty strong", Dido said, though that told them very little. Lena countered: "True, but the head is one of the heaviest parts of the body. Without it it's a lot lighter. And Ionesco was a short, skinny dude to begin with." She pulled out a notepad. Dido peered over her shoulder as she wrote down check weight in autopsy report, and then, before she could help it, the thought popped into her head: Sara Linton would've known.

She blinked, trying to get the sudden flashback out of her mind, not sure what had brought it on. She rarely thought of Sara Linton. She hated the suffocating sense of guilt that came with it.

"So", Dido said when they'd finished watching. "Now what?"

"We go back to Steve, thank him again for his cooperation, ask him if he knows who this person is and subtly remind him not to perjure himself", Lena said. For good measure they watched the tape again. Nothing new happened. The killer walked into the frame, put the body on the bench, and then Henry's body sat there as dawn slowly crept up. She was just about to switch it off when Dido said: "pull it back a little."

"Why?", Lena asked, though she did as told.

"There!", Dido said excitedly as she scrolled through the video. She paused it. The man's baseball cap had sagged a little and even on the grainy video they could see long-ish strands of red hair fall out.

"He's a ginger", Dido said. Lena added: "he might be a she."

Dido shrugged. "Whatever. 'They' have red hair."

It was hard to argue the point.

"So", she said. "Age and sex unknown. Aside from that we're looking for a slightly overweight person, about five feet seven, I guess? With bright, long-ish red hair." She screencapped the image and sent it to her phone. "Let's go back to Steve."

This time around Steve was less reluctant to help. If anything he seemed to have been chewed out by someone because he looked deflated. He gave a half glance at the picture and said: "You guys should probably talk to HR." He pointed at the elevator. "I'll take you."

Lena and Dido exchanged looks. Dido looked puzzled. Lena shrugged, but felt excitement surge through her. They wouldn't be taken up to HR for nothing.

HR turned out to be a small office with two women in it, one of whom stormed off as soon as they entered the room. The other woman stayed put. She did not get up as Steve sourly introduced her as Hella Martinez; when he'd left she gave them a shark-like smile and told them: "well, this is quite something, isn't it?"

"It certainly is", Lena said. Apparently HR people were all the same. That anything-but-reassuring, venomous grin had met her during her sparse forays into the office occupied by Internal Affairs.

"We have a picture", Dido said. "We were hoping you'd take a look at it." She pulled the image up on her phone as the woman said nothing. She didn't seem very surprised to see the image and Lena realised they'd probably reviewed the security footage themselves and had likely given the man heads-up. So much for going in stealth, though it couldn't be helped. It seemed unlikely that the bank would risk helping a criminal and whatever had happened and whoever he was, dragging a decapitated corpse through downtown Atlanta was suspicious enough for them to wash their hands off of it.

"Doesn't ring a bell", the woman said, though she'd only glanced at the picture very briefly. "Obviously we're very much willing to help the police but it doesn't ring a bell." She glanced at the picture again. "No, sorry. This is not one of our employees."

Next to her, Dido gave a frustrated sigh. Dead end. Lena felt the frustration too, but she knew better than to give into it.

"Now what?", she asked as they left the building. Lena shrugged. "We go home, meet again tomorrow. See if there's any news. If not, we'll talk to the commune."

"The what now?"

Lena sighed. Dido wasn't much of a reader, that much was clear. She got into her car and said: "Go home, read the file. Please."

"Why, are you going to quiz me tomorrow?", Dido said snidely. Lena didn't bother replying, but slammed the door shut before Dido could get in and drove off. Dido could find her own way back.

She picked up Hannah from daycare and thought about the case as she drove home to her tiny apartment. Hannah, from the backseat, prattled agitatedly in her infant babble, and Lena wondered idly what the hell she was trying to say and whether she was even expecting an answer from her mother. She used to think that mothers understood their children perfectly and sure, she knew Hannah better than anyone else, but what exactly her daughter thought and wanted and required was a mystery to her most of the time. She supposed she could ask Art whether that was normal, but what if Art said no? Besides, Art had ten children. She obviously liked them. Art got children. Lena probably wouldn't even have thought about it if her birth control hadn't failed. Her instincts were letting her down.

She wondered, too, about Sunny's childhood, or at least she did until she drove up to her apartment and she saw Jeffrey sitting on her porch.

"The fuck does he want?", she said to no-one in particular, and then their eyes locked; if they hadn't she would have driven off. Now, she had no choice but to get out of the car and face him.

Thankfully the parking space right in front of her apartment was taken up by a tall, stocky guy with a U-haul trailer, dragging boxes into the apartment next to her. New neighbour? She ignored him. Her heart pounded as she got out and unbuckled Hannah from her seat.

The heat was still sweltering and intense despite the overcast skies. Brooding, seething weather. She felt static in the air as she reluctantly walked up to her door. He got up as she approached.

"Hi", he said clumsily. She stopped in her tracks.

"What are you doing here?", she asked, not sure whether she should be angry with him for showing up unannounced or happy that he wasn't yelling at her at least. He tucked his hands into his pockets.

"I wanted to talk to you", he said. "And you weren't answering my texts or taking my calls."

"You could have taken the hint", she said. He shrugged.

"Can I come in?"

Part of her wanted to show him the door but carrying Hannah, half asleep in her arms, her work bag and Hannah's daycare bag was beginning to hurt her deltoids, and she hesitated.

"I have to put Hannah to bed", she said, and he told her: "I'll wait."

She felt uneasy at having him in her apartment. He waited in the kitchen, in the dark, as she carried Hannah towards her bedroom.

"Sorry kid", she whispered as she put Hannah down in her crib. She didn't bother to change her into her pajamas. It was past eight. Hannah should have been in bed an hour ago. Another failure on her part. Judging from the green stains on the collar of her shirt she'd at least had dinner.

She lingered in the bedroom as Hannah rolled over, grabbed her toy rabbit and went to sleep. Despite the heat outside it was cool inside the room, and she pulled a blanket over Hannah's shoulders.

What the hell did he want?

She realised she couldn't stall forever and so, reluctantly, she got up and walked back into the living room. Jeffrey was leaning against the stove, his arms crossed over his chest. Lena did the same on the other side of the room.

"She's getting big", Jeffrey said. "Still looks just like you."

She realised he was stalling, too, and she wondered why. Evidently he wanted to talk to her and he wasn't yelling at her, which was an improvement from the last time she'd seen him. But his presence unnerved her. She'd left for a reason. They hadn't separated on good terms and she'd resigned herself to not making up. Worse, she couldn't blame him for that. That was all on her. Yet here he was, in her kitchen, arms crossed, telling her her daughter looked just like her, as if he didn't know who Hannah's father was.

She supposed she could have brought it up, but instead she asked: "how the hell did you know where I live?"

"I have a couple of friends at APD", he said. "I pulled some strings."

Someone at HR was going to get yelled at, Lena decided. He said: "look, I needed to talk to you. I tried texting and calling, but that didn't work so I came here."

"Why?", she asked again. Why did she always feel like a sullen child around him? Why did she, after everything that had passed, still feel deferential?

Instead of answering her question, he looked around at the apartment. "You've got a… Decent place here."

"Chief - "

"I guess you don't have to call me that anymore", he said, the corner of his mouth curling up slightly. Lena didn't bother to reply. Calling him Jeffrey to his face seemed weird, even after everything that had passed. She repeated: "What do you want?"

"I, uh…" He seemed distracted, but then he said: "I came to tell you Ethan's dead."

That, at least, caught her attention. She felt her lips part in surprise. If she'd expected relief, it didn't come. Ethan was dead. He was gone. She'd never see him again.

There were a million questions she could have asked, but she wasn't sure she wanted answers.

Jeffrey took her silence for confusion and said: "His lifestyle finally caught up with him."

She cleared her throat. "Paroled to Jesus, huh?"

He shrugged. "I thought you'd be happy."

She would have thought so too. It really shouldn't have surprised her as much. Killing a cop's wife was a certain death sentence for people in prison. If anything, she should have been surprised it hadn't happened sooner.

She wondered what, exactly, had happened to him. Had someone smothered him in his cell? Had he been beaten to death after some made-up claims about causing trouble? Had someone paid off a gang to shank him in the showers? Had they maybe toyed with him a little bit? And why had his own gang not come to his rescue?

She was torn. Part of her wanted to know. Part of her wanted to have been there, to have seen it. Part of her wanted to have watched him suffer, cheered it on. And part of her still wanted to have rushed in there to stop it. She wanted to smack herself in the face but undeniably, the feeling lingered.

Was she ever really free? What if his family found out about Hannah?

She swallowed hard and instead of thanking Jeffrey or kicking him out or telling him to fuck off out of her life like he'd done with her, she asked: "why are you telling me this?"

"I thought you'd want to - "

"No. I mean, why are you telling me? Why not the prison warden?" He was the criminal, she was the victim. Customarily they'd have given her a heads up. She'd rather have had that call from a prison warden who didn't know her and wasn't staring her right in the face, gaging her reaction, like Jeffrey was now.

He said: "I told them I'd give you a call."

She straightened her back and told him: "well, thanks for letting me know I guess."

"I needed to talk to you about something else too", Jeffrey said, looking away, and because she could feel his resolve waver she said: "There's nothing left to say."

"Actually, there is", he said, then, hesitatingly, he added: "I haven't been completely honest with you."

"About what?", she asked in spite of herself, torn between wanting to hear it and wanting to throw him out. He had not been this complacent with her since Sara's death and in many ways, she preferred angry Jeffrey.

Instead he pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down, as if he needed the support. He gestured at the other chair for her to sit down too, but she'd be damned if she let him boss her around in her own home. Obstinately she stayed where she was.

"I went to see Ethan", he said. "While you were… On the run. I knew you'd been to see him so I figured I'd check him out. And… Well, you know what he's like. He pushes your buttons."

She knew like no-one else. Realisation began to dawn.

"You pissed him off."

"Yeah", he admitted. "I'm not proud of what I said - "

"What did you tell him?"

"I'd rather not - " He caught himself. "It doesn't matter. It was low and mean and I shouldn't have said it."

"What does that have to do with anything?", she asked, confused about the point he was trying to make.

"He told me about… I don't know, this stupid fantasy he had. He was going to get out of prison and he'd take you somewhere, on vacation. He was so sure of it, that you'd be waiting for him once he got out, and that you'd swan off together to some faraway romantic holiday resort. And that pissed me off. So I told him to send me a postcard, and… Well, he'd told me to watch my mailbox." He shrugged, looked her in the eye briefly, then looked away. It left her speechless; for a few seconds, she was too stunned to speak. Eventually, she said: "He told you to check your mailbox."

"Yes."

"Because you pissed him off."

"Yes."

Finally, it clicked. She'd never understood it, why he'd done it. She figured the bomb had been meant for Jeffrey, because Lena liked Jeffrey and looked up to him. Because she'd lied and used him as a willing stooge to put Ethan away, get him out of her life. Sara was collateral, an accident. But it had never made sense. Lena didn't care about Sara Linton. Ethan did not make mistakes, he did not have accidents. But it hadn't been an accident, it had been a deliberate choice. Sara Linton was dead not because of Lena, but because Jeffrey hadn't been able to resist a dick measuring contest with a white supremacist. If you really wanted to hurt people you went after their loved ones. Ethan had done just that, but it hadn't been her he'd wanted to hurt.

If Jeffrey'd been any closer to her she would have punched him in the face. Instead, she said: "And you let me think it was my fault."

He looked up at her, sensing her anger. "I'm not saying it wasn't", he snapped. "But I think we're both - "

"Oh, fuck you", she said, exasperated, which pissed him off enough that he got to his feet.

"We wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for you", he said sharply, but she fired back.

"I didn't ask you to come. In fact, I specifically told you not to."

"You needed help", he insisted. "Christ, Lena, the sheriff called me - "

"So fucking what? I distinctly remember telling you to piss off in no uncertain terms. You could've - "

"And then what?", he snapped. "You'd have been dead, Lena."

Part of her knew he was right, but she was beyond reason now.

"I told you to leave that shithole. You don't know what that place is like. I do. And you took your damn wife. You walked right into that. That's on you."

"Oh, fuck you", he finally snapped. "I've been bailing you out since day one."

"I never asked you to do me any favours", she told him. "And you let me believe I killed Sara when it was your own damn fault."

"It wasn't - "

"Yeah, I know", she bit back at him. "I'm a rule breaker. I fuck up. I never learn. I lie and I don't listen and I cheat. I'm a horrible person and a terrible cop. But guess who taught me?"

His jaw was set, and she could sense him struggling to regain control. Through clenched teeth, he said: "Whatever. I thought you should know."

"Well, thank you so much for deigning to tell me", she said venomously.

He gave a frustrated sigh and a wave of his hand as if to dismiss her, and he turned towards the door.

Good, she thought, and she was about to tell him to fuck off to where he'd come from when he stopped and asked: "this isn't about - "

He couldn't bring himself to say it.

"No, it's not about that."

He winced. And they called her childish. She said: "What, you don't like being reminded? It's a bit late for that.?"

He stared daggers at her, but didn't say anything else so she told him: "I can handle it."

"You say that a lot", he replied. "And most of the time it isn't true."

"Yeah, but what do you know?", she told him. "I can handle it. It wasn't the first time."

"I bet", he snapped, so she added: "And it certainly wasn't the best. Piss off. We're done talking."

"You don't get to - "

"Talk to you like that?" She brushed past him, yanked the door open. "It's my own damn house, asshole, and I don't work for you anymore. Fuck off."

"Gladly", he snapped, but the malice was gone and he just looked tired as he brushed past her. She watched him get into his car, arms crossed and eyes burning with anger and frustration. Above her, fittingly, a lightning bolt sparked through the air. Jeffrey said nothing as he got into his car, and as her eyes traced him driving off they met the eyes of the U-haul guy, standing hesitantly next to his trailer.

"Is everything alright?", he asked.

"Mind your own fucking business", she replied, and she slammed the door behind her.

Chapter 10

Of course Dido was late again, and Lena sat waiting in her car in the parking lot behind Peachtree station, the engine running because she wasn't about to bake herself to death. She hadn't slept that night, lying in bed staring at the ceiling instead and replaying the conversation over and over again, feeling her anger increase with every minute of it. Anger at Jeffrey, sure, but at herself too. Part of him wished she'd kneed him in the groin and part of her wanted to call him up and apologise. The tired, worn look on his face was unlike the face he'd been putting up before, when she was still around. She knew he was hurting. Part of her still wanted to please him. And then she remembered what he'd said and, more importantly, what he hadn't said, and then she wanted nothing more than to punch him and throw him out all over again. The only thing she could make up her mind about was that her bridge to Grant County had now definitively been burned and for the rest, she vacillated between anger at herself and anger at Jeffrey. And she had a two hour drive to Athens to look forward to with Dido, who was no doubt a stimulating conversationalist, and that was assuming Atlanta's massive traffic flow would cooperate, which it rarely did. And the trip, in all likelihood, would result in fuck all.

To distract herself she took out her phone and used it to log onto the police database. Sunny had grown up in a former hippie commune, something Lena had known for a long time but never had a reason to check out. Back in Domestic Violence, her main goal had been to prevent Henry from beating the shit out of her. Who Sunny was and why she was the way she was did not fall within her reach, not unless drugs or other illegal affairs were involved. Now that Sunny was missing it was time to go back. She'd put out a state-wide APB the day of Sunny's disappearance and she'd called the Sheriff in charge of the county where the commune was located. He'd promised to do a drive-by, and though she hadn't heard from him she took that to mean that Sunny hadn't been there.

"Sorry", Dido said, yanking open the car door. Lena sighed and irritably drummed the steering wheel.

"I was just - ", Dido started, but Lena cut her off. "I don't care. Learn how to work a fucking alarm clock."

"I read the file", Dido said. Lena ignored it and started the car, wondering if she expected a medal for doing something she should have done on day one.

They were silent as Lena drove onto the freeway, narrowly dodging a pickup truck with the Confederate flag proudly on display in the rear window; when the driver began to push forward, inching his front bumper dangerously close to hers, she lightly tapped the brakes just to spook him. It worked. She saw him give her the finger via her rearview mirror, and she had to resist the urge to pull over, whip out her gun, and shoot one of his tires. Or worse. Dido muttered something incomprehensible but didn't press the issue, probably because she detected Lena's mood. Good, Lena thought. The drive would still be long, but at least it'd be quiet.

It wasn't until they'd passed the halfway mark that Dido said: "So I know I probably should have checked, but…"

"She's not there", Lena said curtly.

"How do you know?"

"Because I notified the Sheriff's department."

"Did he ever call back?"

"No."

"Then how - "

"Because if she'd been there he'd have arrested her. It would have been an easy arrest and it'd look good on the books. He'd be an idiot not to try it at least."

"But what if - "

"If the commune had been so impenetrable that he wouldn't be able to he would have told me as much on the phone."

Dido paused. "That makes sense", she said. Lena didn't bother to reply. Of course it made sense. Unlike Dido she knew what she was doing.

They were quiet again for a while until Dido, possibly to break the tension, suddenly said: "There's a car seat in the back."

"What of it?", Lena snapped.

"Nothing", Dido said, sounding disappointed. "I just… Didn't know you had a kid."

Lena rolled her eyes while trying to keep them on the road, which proved to be nigh impossible. As if she went around introducing herself as Hannah's mom. And why did Dido care?

"So how old - ", Dido began again, but Lena cut her off.

"We don't have to talk", she said. Subtext: shut your fucking mouth. She hoped Dido would get it. Lena had never had any trouble in letting people know she was pissed off but Dido wasn't exactly quick on the uptake.

Dido frowned. "Sorry. Just trying to - "

Lena turned up the volume of the radio.

Once they'd cleared the Atlanta freeways, though, traffic lessened, and she was glad of it as they drove through the countryside. They were heading north and Grant County was down south but nevertheless, it all seemed eerily familiar. Derelict structures covered in Kudzu, pickup trucks in varying states of disrepair, the roadside mom and pop stores advertising coke and fresh bait, even the odd peanut tree here and there. It sent her back down memory lane, and she remembered the conversation she'd had with Jeffrey. It hadn't really been gone from her mind but the landscape forced her to reflect on it again. Had she mishandled it? Probably. Then again, she felt white hot rage at the thought of what Jeffrey had held back.

She supposed she should have been charitable. He'd lost his wife, it was hard enough as it was and if he needed to blame Lena, then maybe she should have let him. Except she had let him, and it had made her life a living hell.

The singer on the radio crooned something soothing about love and understanding and the chipper, upbeat melody made her want to throw stuff, so she punched in the dials until she got to something that suited her mood. A couple of times Dido seemed to want to open her mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Lena almost felt sorry, though not enough to apologise.

Sutton County was a small, sparsely populated place and the Sheriff's department was run out of a rickety prefab building that reminded Lena of the ramshackle structures her old high school used to have out back. Those had been freezing in winter and unbearably damp in summer.

"Well, that looks trustworthy", Dido commented, and in spite of herself Lena said: "It does, actually. Rural areas around here are poor. It'd be worse if they'd have a glitzy brand-new building with shiny new cars out front."

"Right", Dido said, and Lena hoped she felt suitably chastised. Lena might be living in a big city herself now but she'd be damned if she'd let Dido get away with crap like that. Small towns had a hard enough time as it was.

Yet when they entered the building she had to admit it looked a lot nicer than she'd expected. It was clean and well lit, and the floors underneath her feet felt sturdy. Judging from the chill in the air, their airconditioning worked just fine.

"May I help you?", a uniformed white guy with a crew cut asked her. Those, at least, seemed to be ubiquitous.

She showed him her ID and said: "We called ahead. Sheriff Barley is expecting us."

Crew Cut guy looked sceptical, but just then another man pulled up behind him, slapped him on the shoulder jovially and said: "ah, Detective Adams! Nice to finally see you. Though here, please." They followed him down the hallway, Dido trailing in her wake and clearly nervous, though Lena wondered why.

"Have a seat", the Sheriff said. "Can I get you ladies anything?"

"Coffee'd be nice", Lena said before Dido could turn it down for the both of them, and he bellowed: "Francis! Three cuppas please!" He gave them a broad smile and leaned back in his seat expectantly. He was tall and stocky, though he looked bigger than he was. Lena suspected this was deliberate; the bigger you looked, the more intimidating you were, so you puffed out your chest and put your beer gut on full display. The guy looked bored and she wouldn't be surprised if he would try to yank around the two ladycops from the Big City to get his kicks in for the day. To make matters worse, Dido fidgeted in her seat like an anxious teenager.

"Thanks for seeing us", Lena said. "I take it you haven't heard from Sunny?"

"Nope", he said just as Francis brought in a tray with three cups of coffee. "Sorry. Didn't get around to calling you back yet." Francis put the cups down with a mistrustful glance at the pair of them.

"Thanks kid", the Sheriff said. "'Preciate it." He turned his attention back to Lena. "We've checked in on the commune, asked them to let us know if she shows up."

"Are they reliable?"

"Sure", he said. "I mean, they keep to themselves but we can usually count on them if there's trouble. Kid went missing couple of months back and they were right there with the rest of the county combing the backwoods." He picked up his cup. "Kid was found alive, by the way. Playing games in a friend's basement." He chuckled. Lena wanted to tell him not to lean on the rustic stereotype too much.

"Have you been out there?", she asked. He nodded. "Sure. Twice, actually, but they hadn't seen her."

"Could they have been hiding her?"

"Theoretically, sure. Don't see why they would, though. They said they haven't seen or heard from her in years. She must not have liked it there very much."

Knowing Sunny it was equally possible that she'd just forgotten they existed at all, Lena thought. She said: "Have they ever had legal troubles?"

"Only back in the sixties and seventies", he said. "They were a big group back then, noisy parties, lots of drugs. We did a lot of raids back there. Locals didn't trust them. Old man Sandford sold them his land, took the money and moved himself and his wife out to Florida and left the rest of the town to deal with the mess. Lots of back and forths, mutual property destruction, bunch of fisticuffs, you get the idea. Eventually most of them left and the people that remained stopped getting high and started getting to work once they realised food wasn't gonna magically appear on the table." He smiled as if it had been a fond memory, though he was too young to have been on the force in the seventies. "They've been here for so long most folks just see them as part of the community."

Lena didn't buy it, not for a second. In her experience peaceful co-existence wasn't something that often occurred. She'd guess it was more like a stalemate where both parties were only stopped from harassing each other for fear of getting in legal trouble. Often that was the best you could hope for. The fact that the Sheriff was talking about it so casually told her he probably didn't care as long as they wouldn't make him work for it.

When they'd left the building Dido said: "that's weird."

"What is?"

"The commune doesn't have an address." She frowned, squinting at her phone. "Just some coordinates."

"That's not weird", Lena snapped. "That's the way things are outside the big city sometimes." She stomped off towards her car, Dido in tow.

"So I guess I should just enter the coordin - "

Lena got in her car and slammed the door shut.

Normally the Sheriff's department would have given them an escort out to the site, but he hadn't offered and she hadn't asked. There was a risk involved here; she had no idea what sort of place she'd be walking into. But it also had a major advantage: no interference from the Sheriff, who, from what she gathered, was mostly interested in keeping everything off his plate.

"We're thirty minutes out", she said. Dido nodded, evidently still too afraid to say anything, and Lena would have felt sorry if she'd liked her any better. They drove on, the silence only punctured by the GPS telling them to turn left or right until they hit the end of a dirt road, blocked off by a rusty cast iron gate. It was locked.

"That doesn't seem very hippie-ish", Dido commented. Lena rang the bell. She'd half expected something rusty that needed a firm tug on a ragged rope, but this was a state of the art intercom system; when she turned her head she saw cameras mounted covertly among the trees. After a few seconds a reedy voice came out that said: "May I help you?"

"Detectives Lott and Adams", Lena said. "We called ahead."

The man who came to pick them up was tall and thin, though he had a paunch. He looked to be in his early sixties. He was cleanly shaven but his hair was a frizzy mess, and the pale, skinny legs that stuck out from under his oversized khakis had been slathered in a fresh layer of sun screen so thick it was practically dripping down. He wore a clean polo shirt and fanned himself with a hat.

"Good morning!", he said jovially. "Sorry about the security. We're very welcoming, it's just the dogs run away if we leave the gates open."

"That's alright", Lena said. The man was lying. You didn't need to lock a gate and install an intercom and cameras to keep a bunch of dogs from running away. And some guard dogs they were; she hadn't heard a single bark as they'd approached.

The man dragged open the gate to let them pass. "Which one of you is Detective Adams?", he asked.

"That's me", Lena said, hoping to keep the sour mood out of her voice. "This is detective Lott."

"Pleased to meet you in person, detectives", the main said. He opened his arms as if to embrace them; Dido, behind her, took a step back and Lena resisted the urge to do the same.

"Welcome", he said, "to El Dorado." He dropped his arms. "It ain't much, but we like it here. Can I give you guys the tour?"

"Sure", Lena said before Dido could tell him they only needed information on Sunny. What people told you usually said something about what they chose to hide.

"You sure picked a hot day", the man said as he went ahead of them down the driveway. At the end, she could see a collection of low wooden buildings. She said: "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"Right", the man said. "How rude of me. It's Pat, Pat Malone." He laughed. "Sorry. We don't get a lot of strangers around here anymore. There used to be a time when half of the faces I'd see every day were strangers."

"I'd imagine the gate keeps those out", Lena asked. He laughed again, though a little less cheerfully this time, as if he'd only just remembered she was a cop. "Yeah. Didn't used to be like this in the sixties and seventies."

"Since when have you been living here?", Lena asked, because asking people to talk about themselves was a surefire way to get them to let their guard down.

"I was born here", he said proudly. "My parents were one of the first to come here. Stayed until the very end. I hope to do the same." They'd reached a clearing with a collection of low buildings. He pointed them out to her.

"That's the kitchen, that's the mess hall, and those " - he pointed at a collection of smaller buildings underneath the shade of the trees - "are our cabins. That's where most of us live. Guess we got a little tired of communal living after all." He chuckled again. "We used to have barracks too. Sometimes we still use it for guests but it's mostly just storage space now." He pointed towards the back of the clearing, where she could see a path.

"Through there is the old farm. Guy who used to own this land used to live there, but it was pretty run down so we pulled up these cabins here in the eighties. Farmland's still in use though. We use the farm itself for storage and office space. One day we'll renovate it, we just never seem to get around it."

"Farming, Is that how you guys generate revenue?", Dido asked, and Lena made a mental note to tell her not to use complicated words if she didn't know people would understand them.

"Yeah", the man said. "We sell organic produce, mostly to farmers' markets in Athens." He didn't specify any further. Something told her Allen Danes would have a field day with this outfit.

"Let's go in there", the man said, pointing at the kitchen building. "Get out of the sun."

They settled at a long, wooden table, Dido and Lena on the one side as Pat rifled around in an ancient refrigerator.

"Thirsty weather", he commented as he rattled around. "I'd offer you ladies coffee, but it's far too hot for that." He returned with bottles of pastel coloured sodas that Lena would have objected to on principle except that she was thirsty.

"Thank you", she said as he uncapped it and shoved it her way. He offered one to Dido too; Lena kicked her under the table, hoping she wouldn't say no again, and told the man: "Thanks. It's been a long drive."

"I bet", he chuckled, as good-natured and superficially kind as the Sheriff had been, and she began to understand this wasn't so much a matter of putting up with them as being in cahoots with them. "Not sure why you wanted to come here. I mean, you're welcome of course, we don't have any secrets here, but Sunny hasn't been around for years."

"I understand", Lena said, trying to glance unobtrusively at the label of the drink she was holding. Pat caught her and said: "rose lemonade. We've got violet, mint and lavender as well. We brew it here on location. It's one of our best-selling items these days actually."

"Right", Lena said, not sure why on earth she'd want to drink flowers, but she didn't want to appear rude and took a sip. It tasted the way roses smelled. It was weird. Dido, next to her, did the same and sniffed.

"It's good", she said, and to her surprise it wasn't a lie. She put the bottle down and asked: "So do you know Sunny Madigan?"

"I used to", Pat said, leaning back, clearly eager to settle into the story. "She was born here. I've known her since she was a baby. It's the way it used to be here, we'd all be family, raise each other's kids, and all that. I babysat her sometimes."

"Who are her parents?"

"Holly Madigan's her mother. I don't know who her father is. Holly was pregnant when she arrived here. She passed away a couple of years back. Cancer. Didn't take long. Sunny didn't show up to the funeral even." He shook his head. "Honestly, I hadn't expected her to but I hoped I was wrong."

Knowing Sunny, she might have forgotten it altogether. It was possible she skipped it because she didn't want that kind of negativity in her life, or because she didn't have money for gas, or because she'd gotten the date wrong, or because she hadn't noticed her mother had died at all. Pat shook his head sadly.

"Holly went pretty quickly", he said. "She liked it here. We took her in and she worked hard. She liked to be left alone. That rubbed some people the wrong way, but she was stubborn. She waltzed to her own tune, you know? She let Sunny roam free most of the time."

"Did Sunny go to school?"

"Not at first. We still tried homeschooling the kids in the eighties and early nineties, but Sunny was the youngest by far and when the older kids had left… Well, it seemed easier to send her to school. She didn't like it, though. Spent a lot of time playing truant."

"Where did she go?", Lena asked him. He shrugged.

"Honestly, I have no idea. We'd drop her off at the bus stop and she'd just wander off."

"On purpose?"

"You mean, did she forget the time or did she just decide to wander off? I couldn't tell you." He leaned back, less chipper now. "Between you and me…" He hesitated. "I don't like to speak ill of the dead. Holly wasn't a bad person. She was just… She needed a place to stay and she worked hard while she was here. She was sharp. She had acumen. She started dealing with local companies, selling our produce to restaurants and bars." He gestured at the place around him. "The people who founded this place were idealists, but ideology will only get you so far. It's not gonna feed you, clothe you, keep you warm. The seventies, people would just come and hang out here, do some drugs. Free love, and all that. But they'd leave us with the mess. When they went home we were left with the debris. We put up with it because that's what we believed in." He paused. "When I say we, I mean my parents' generation. But I remember being hungry, not having enough clothes, having shoes with holes in them. I remember my parents were always busy trying to provide. The glamour kind of wore off as the seventies progressed. They got a little better at it in the eighties, but they were idealists. We were always struggling, and by the time the Reagan administration was over we'd been stuck in a rut. We weren't starving, but we weren't exactly thriving either. Everything was a struggle. Plenty of new blood, because people were still looking for a place to stay, but either they stayed here for a few months only and left when they got their life back on track, or we kicked them out because… well." He shrugged, then sat up straight and folded his hands in front of him. Lena wondered why he'd stayed if life had been so hard. Probably because it was all he knew. Besides, the job market would be unforgiving to a guy who'd spent his entire life in a commune without formal education.

"And then Holly showed up, told us she was pregnant, that she'd work hard if we gave her shelter, and boy did she deliver." He laughed bitterly. "The moment that baby was out she dropped it into the lap of someone else and went to work. She did so much. Didn't care if it was manual labour or administrative tasks. She'd do whatever needed to be done, as long as she didn't have to look after the baby. We thought it was weird but like I said, we looked after each other's kids here." He spread his arms, pointing out the room. "We'd just keep them in here and try to teach them what we thought they needed to know and for the rest, we'd try to keep the place running. And it was nice to have a baby. We hadn't had a baby in a while."

"And Sunny did well in the group?", Lena asked

"No", he said, and she was surprised by his candour. "She was in trouble a lot and by God, I can't tell you whether she was doing it on purpose or by accident."

That, at least, sounded familiar. Lena asked: "What kind of trouble do you mean?"

He sighed. "I don't know. Minor stuff mostly. She'd forget to lock the pig pen and the pigs'd get out, and we'd all scramble to get them back in and she'd just stare at it all. Wouldn't laugh, wouldn't help, she'd just… Watch it until her mind wandered. Or she'd break other kids' toys, either on purpose or by accident, and they'd kick her ass for it. She'd still do it again. She'd wander off. One time she nearly burned down this house because she'd put on a kettle and went somewhere else." He shook his head. "Honestly, I wish I could tell you if she did it on purpose. It just… Seemed a little too convenient sometimes, you know? But she didn't seem to get any pleasure out of it either."

That just confirmed Lena's impression that Sunny was either Stupid Machiavelli or just plainly unaware of anything that went on around her. She asked: "school never called?"

"Oh, all the time", Pat said. "Holly dealt with that herself. And by 'dealt with', I mean she told them she didn't care and that it was their problem." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Holly began picking up steam by then, started to focus on organic food, which was kind of a budding movement back then. Made deals with greengrocers and butchers in Athens, made us focus on a few specialty products. Before then we'd just kind of done a lot at once. She made us focus. We dropped the livestock. No more pigs to set free. She installed greenhouses, distilleries. These days we mostly get by on this stuff" - he pointed at the lemonade bottles - "artisanal drinks, sauces, herb mixes and spreads, that kind of thing. They have a pretty decent markup." He seemed neither proud nor resentful of the fact, Lena thought. She asked: "When did Sunny leave?"

Pat pondered the issue for a minute or so. "I'm not sure. She must have been, what, sixteen? Seventeen? It took us a while to notice she was gone, to be honest." He smiled apologetically. "She'd disappeared before, but it was always for a few days, maybe a week. When we'd ask her where she went she wouldn't tell us, she'd say she didn't know or deny she'd been gone. We never pressed the issue. Didn't seem worth the effort. One day we noticed she'd been gone for so long that we notified the Sheriff's department. They made a few calls and she showed up a week or so later in Macon, staying with some guy. We asked her if she wanted to come back, she said no." He sighed. "Maybe we should've pressed it, I don't know, but Holly was the one who had parental authority and she said to let her be." He didn't say they were relieved to be rid of her. He didn't need to. Lena understood the idea. Sunny was exasperating.

Beside her, a phone began to vibrate and Dido excused herself, walking outside as she picked up. Pat asked: "So how's the lemonade?"

"It's pretty good", she allowed. "You said Sunny didn't attend her mother's funeral?"

He shook his head. "I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. They were never close. I just thought… It's her mother, you know?"

Lena knew enough about human nature to understand that that didn't necessarily mean anything, especially not to Sunny, to whom very little had apparently mattered. Or so she appeared. This visit was making her none the wiser, except that Sunny had probably always been like this and that she wasn't the only one who thought something wasn't adding up.

Pat asked: "So would you ladies like a tour of the facilities?", just as Dido returned, but Dido shook her head. "That won't be necessary, sir." She turned to Lena. "They found Sunny's head."

As Lena hurried to the car she felt anger rise up in her throat. Dido, behind her, began: "so we should - "

Lena turned on her heels and cut her off.

"You do not say you found a decapitated corpse in front of their family, you fucking idiot!"

Dido halted to, opened her mouth, closed it, then settled for an indignant: "but he's not her family."

"He watched her grow up."

"He doesn't even like her!"

"I don't fucking care, Dido", she said, yanking the car door open. "You tell him to excuse us, tell me to meet you outside, and tell me then."

Dido glanced back and said: "he'll get over it." Nervously, she shifted on her feet. "I mean - "

"You're a moron", Lena said, and she got back into the car. Dido did too. Pity she was fast or Lena would've made her walk back and call the sheriff's department for a ride.

She wasn't even right. Pat had been shocked. Of course he had been. It would've been worse if he'd been close to Sunny, but most people would be shocked by the casual announcement that someone they knew, watched grow up, had met a violent death.

"Look", Dido said, "It's a time sensitive matter, I thought we should - "

"Bullshit", Lena told her. "You just didn't think things through." She stepped on the gas pedal and watched the meter climb as they sped out of the dirt lane that led to the commune. "Tell me what they said exactly."

Dido seemed to consider that for a few seconds and Lena wondered if she was going to waste any more time insisting she was right, and suddenly the thought popped into her head: was this what it had been like for Jeffrey to work with her for years?

If so, he had been a lot more patient than she was.

And then last night's argument got back into her head and she felt even more pissed off. Anger simmered at the back of her throat. If she hadn't had her hands on the steering wheel she would've punched Dido in the face.

"Well", Dido said hesitantly, "they found her head. It was wearing - "

"Where?"

"Where what?"

Lena groaned, and Dido inexplicably gave a nervous laugh. "Oh, right. "Outside a banquet hall on Mariposa Ave. There's a little gazebo in the parking lot where they take wedding pics sometimes. Someone put it in there. Obviously, I mean - "

Lena frowned as she tried to focus on Dido's words. "What else?"

"She was wearing a mask and a white hood. Forensics sent a pic."

"Show it to me." Dido obliged and Lena glanced at the screen of her phone as she drove. What she saw unnerved her.

She couldn't see Sunny's face; it was hidden by an eerie, pale mask, plain and featureless but for an elongated, upturned red nose and a small, puckered rosebud of a mouth, painted bright red. A white hood was draped over the head, which sat on top of two severed feet at the bottom of a cast iron statue of a plump-looking bird, right in the middle of the gazebo. It unnerved her, though she tried not to show it as she asked: "So how do they know it's her?"

"There was a drivers' license", Dido said. "They haven't checked to see if it's actually her head - "

"Then you definitely shouldn't have told that guy back there", Lena snapped. Dido looked contrite and didn't reply.

"What else?", Lena barked at her, and she said: "Nothing. The weird mask, the driver's license, the hood, the head and the feet. Forensics are combing through the scene. They'll send it to the morgue when they're done."

"Any witnesses?"

"Uh", Dido said unintelligently, and Lena stepped on the brakes so hard the tires squealed. Instead of the shouting match she felt coming up she snatched the phone from Dido's hand and dialled the number. Dido stared at her feet as Lena waited for the officer on scene to tell her that there were no witnesses, that the medical examiner at first glance suspected the victim had been dead for at least a day, that he couldn't tell her whether the head had been removed postmortem and that the owner of the venue was very cooperative and had already handed over his security footage.

When she hung up, Dido said: "Look, I'm sorry I - "

"Shut up", Lena said. "Unless you want to walk back."

They drove on in frustrated silence.

Chapter 11

The head and feet had already been brought to the morgue by the time they got to the crime scene, so Lena sent Dido into the sweltering heat to talk to the owner of the banquet hall while she braved the freezing cold of the hospital basement where the morgue was situated.

"Well, fuck", Devin said when his assistant brought the head out of the freezer and put it on the table. "We get two feet this time?"

"Evidently", Lena told him, pulling out the picture of the crime scene. Devin glanced at it briefly. "Well, that's just fucking creepy. And I thought the Trump mask was bad."

"It was."

"Yeah, but this is some downright absurdist shit." He gloved up; Lena waited until he was done taking pictures, helped hold the ruler, put a plastic sheet underneath the head as he lifted it.

"Right", he said. "Let's see what we got." He removed the hood, photographed it separately, then bagged it. The messy shock of unkempt, dark blonde hair told Lena that this was, indeed, Sunny's head, even before Devin peeled back the creepy mask.

"What the hell is this even supposed to be?", he asked as he took pictures. Lena shrugged. "Beats me."

"It looks like an unfinished Pinocchio or something." He turned it around, glanced at the inside. "There's another note."

At this point, she wasn't even surprised. Devon peeled it back and opened it. It read: UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT CARRIES THE FROWN.

"Ha ha", Devin said sourly. "Very funny." He photographed the note, then put it in a separate bag.

"That's Shakespeare, right?", Lena vaguely remembered. "Kind of."

"One of the Henries", Devin nodded. "Can never remember which one." Lena stared at Sunny's face. Her eyes had rolled up, like she was fed up with their conversation.

"So what'd you do with Miss Lott?", Devin wanted to know. "Did you dump her at the crime scene?"

"I got fed up with her", Lena said curtly. Devin laughed. "Only took you, what, two days?"

"Three. Well, less than that." She sighed, not wanting to elaborate but at the same time feeling compelled to. "She just doesn't have any feeling for the job."

"Allegedly", Devin said, "she has a PhD from Emory and that's why they hired her."

"It's not really a job you can learn by reading a book", Lena pointed out. Devin shrugged, then asked: "So you're working homicide now?"

"Only for the time being", she told him. "Until this case is solved."

"So I guess you can rule out Sunny as a suspect", Devin said. "Seems unlikely she cut her own head and feet off."

"I wouldn't put it past her", Lena muttered. Devin picked up one of the feet. It had sparkly blue toe nail polish on it that was chipped at the edges.

"Very eighties", he commented. He inspected the cut at the top of the foot. "Very clean cut again."

"The guillotine?"

"Probably. It's too smooth for an axe." He put the foot down, inspected the other one. "I've been doing some research. Detective Lott was right, they use broadswords in Saudi Arabia and those are pretty effective, but it takes practice."

Lena didn't want to ask how one was supposed to practice decapitation. Devin helpfully supplied the answer: "they practice on animals first. Poor sheep. Anyway, they're very good and usually remove the head in one fell swoop, but you would still not expect it to be so straight. Plus, you'd expect an uptick at the end, a tiny bit of skin that stretches out when the sword goes through, even when the subject is lying neck-down on a hard surface, like one of those old-fashioned chopping blocks. Guillotines don't have that uptick. The wound's too clean for an axe or a hand-held knife." He turned the other foot around. "Assuming he did the head first - and there's no way to tell - he might have chopped the feet off with the same device. The cut's clean and straight here too and if she was already dead, she wouldn't be struggling or moving about."

"How hard would it be to build a guillotine?", Lena wondered. Devin shrugged. "You could probably find a manual online. They're not that hard to make. You could probably fashion a decent one from some plywood, a couple of cement blocks and sheet metal. With enough speed and weight the blade wouldn't even have to be very sharp." He stretched his arm towards the ceiling. "If you angle the blade, rather than making it straight, and you add weight and drop it from, say, three meters up, then it'll go through a lot more than just a human neck. The problem is ensuring the blade doesn't snag but falls straight down. But even so, it's a pretty basic device. You'd need a pair of good, smooth guide rails but that's a matter of precision." He dropped his hand and pointed at the head. "Give me an hour and I'll be able to give you a time of death."

Lena was still thinking about the fucking guillotine when she left the morgue. It was such an outrageous thing to do. The perpetrator obviously liked his theatrics, that much she understood, but still - getting a few weird masks at the dollar store and writing a few bad jokes on a piece of paper was a whole different ball game from building an actual, honest to God guillotine. It seemed like a lot of work. Drugging the victims or tying them down and chopping off their heads with an axe seemed easier. Was it too visceral? Was that the problem? The guillotine only required the killer to pull on a rope and then let go - or maybe it worked with a switch, a button. An axe would take effort. A knife would take them up close and personal. You'd get blood on your hands, your face, your clothes. It was messy. But so were decapitations to begin with. If he'd wanted to kill them and avoid the mess, why not just strangle them? Hang them, if needs be?

It didn't make one bit of sense.

She was so lost in thought that she almost missed Nour as she passed him in the hallway and truth be told, she would rather have kept walking, but he'd spotted her before she spotted him, dragging Yvette Freeman through the hallway by her upper arm. Judging from her cramped shoulders and the hands behind her back he'd handcuffed her. Her make-up was running down her face and there was a large piece of gauze stuck to her forehead.

"The fuck you've been, Lena?", he asked as he approached her. She opened her mouth to ask him what was going on but he cut her off. "Yvette here shot her lovely husband."

"I didn't - I was - " Yvette squeaked. Lena felt lost for words. She'd known the Freemans were escalating, but not that fast.

"He'll be fine. Thanks for leaving me to deal with the mess", Nour said snidely. "Have fun swanning around at Homicide."

"I didn't - "

"Choose to be there?" He scoffed. "What are you, a middle schooler? They made you do it?" Yvette squirmed, so he yanked her back. "You could've called."

Lena wanted to tell him hey, I got roped into this too, but he was right. She should have told him. It had been Eid the day before. Thanks to her he'd probably had to work anyway.

She opened her mouth to apologise, but right at that moment Yvette decided Nour was probably distracted enough and she made a beeline for the door, slamming Lena into the wall as she did so. Her hand flew up and snagged on an idiotically sharp sign on the wall, and by the time Nour had tackled Yvette, Lena was holding her hand, staring at the blood dripping steadily from the cut.

"I'm sorry", Nour said reluctantly. Lena didn't bother to reply. She wondered what else this week had in store for her.

"Well", Nour said, "at least you're at the hospital."

Behind her, to make matters worse, she heard: "Leelee! What the fuck are you doing here?" And then Tex DeWitt was beside her, smirking at Nour while also digging around in his pockets for God only knew what. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Friend of yours?", Nour asked, and Lena said: "no" just as Tex said: "more like acquaintances. We have coffee sometimes. That's not a euphemism. She doesn't want me to call her Leelee. I don't blame her. It doesn't suit her at all, but it got stuck in my head. She punched me in the face the first time we met. I deserved it, though. She'll probably end up doing that again." He focused on Yvette. "So. Rough day, huh?"

Nour blinked and stared. Lena couldn't fault him for that. Tex was a lot to take in, both because of the verbal vomiting and the fact that he was nearly seven feet tall. She told him: "You should get back to the station. We'll talk later, alright?" Tex peered over and said: "ouch. Nasty gash. Did she do that?" He pointed at Yvette, who still struggled as Nour dragged her though the hallway. Lena didn't answer. The wound on her hand was gaping. She'd probably need stitches and a tetanus booster. She'd be lucky if they didn't want to shoot her full of antibiotics too. Hospitals were disgusting places.

"You should probably get that looked at", Tex commented, then perked up as he added: "I can do it for you if you like."

"No thanks", she said acerbically.

"You sure?", he said, pulling a set of keys out of his pocket, frowning as if he hadn't expected to find them there. "It's Grady's ER. They'll make you wait for six hours and bill you eighteen thousand bucks for a few stitches and a tetanus shot." He put the keys back into his left pocket, then dug around in his right for whatever he was looking for. "But it's up to you." He grinned at her. "Did you forget I finished med school?"

She asked him: "you deal with corpses, right?"

"It's a line of sutures, not fucking rocket surgery." He screwed up his eyes. "I mean brain surgery. Rocket science. Brain science. Whatever. You get the point." He leaned over, yanked a wad of gauze from a random cart that lined the hallways, grabbed her hand before she knew what he was doing and pressed the gauze against it. "Maybe not bleed all over the floor while you make up your mind."

She hesitated, briefly. She supposed he was right. She'd probably be handed off to some med student to practice with. Not that it mattered. Her hands were so scarred by now that nobody would notice an extra line.

"Alright", she relented. Tex grinned at her. "Great. Wait here. I'll grab a suture kit."

When he'd sped off, all flapping tail coats and excited gestures, she leaned against the wall and checked the clock. Four PM. She couldn't wait for this day to end.

But if her work day ended she'd have to be home, and home would still be full of the fight she'd had in there the day before. She knew herself well enough to predict that she'd see Jeffrey every time she looked at her kitchen counter, because he'd been leaning against it. The apartment was small enough that looking elsewhere was not really an option.

She lifted the gauze from her hand. Immediately, blood welled up. When she pressed it back down again she felt a sharp sting.

Great.

"Got it", she heard Tex say behind her; when she turned, she saw him wave a plastic box. She felt a shudder crawl up her spine at the thought of him stringing her flesh back together.

Nonsense, she told herself.

"C'mon", he said. "Let's go down stairs."

"What, down to the morgue?" She looked at her hand. "It's not that bad."

"Ha ha", Tex said. "It's clean and it's quiet. Cleaner than this place, probably." It came out as cleaner'n's place prolly because he spoke so fast.

She felt worn out all of a sudden. In no mood to put up a fight she shrugged and let him lead the way, down the stairs, into the basement, down to a small office in the back. Devin was nowhere to be seen, thankfully. The office was boxy and windowless. An ancient desk stood forlornly in the middle. Tex flicked the light switch and the fluorescent lights stuttered to life, bathing the room in chilly, animose light.

"Have a seat", Tex told her as he began to unpack the box. She obeyed, cradling her hand like a wounded bird.

It would be so easy to just ask him a random question. Ask him about his weekend, or why morgues were always in hospital basements rather than, say, the third floor. He'd no doubt talk for half an hour on end, barely pausing to take a breath, and he probably wouldn't expect her to listen. Somehow, she couldn't even bring herself to do that.

Tex spread out a paper sheet across the desk, then told her: "put your hand up here, please."

Part of her wanted to tell him to fuck off, but she obeyed nonetheless and put her hand down on the sheet, feeling the hard surface of the desk underneath her hand.

"Right", Tex said. "Let's see." He lifted the gauze; immediately, tiny droplets of blood welled up and rolled down onto the sheet.

"Hm", he said, pressing the gauze down again. "Let's keep pressure on it for a little bit longer. Shouldn't take long."

"Can't you just - "

"I need to see what I'm doing. Also, if I close it up now you'll have a hematoma the size of lake Michigan. No fun. Trust me. Doesn't look like you need too many stitches. Two, maybe three - I think two - you want a particular colour of suture thread? I didn't check. They let kids choose these days. As if that makes it any better. I never understood that. Apparently having bright pink wire jut out of your skin is less traumatising. They have Frozen-themed suture kits, even. You into that movie? I can get you - "

"Black is fine", Lena cut him off. He gave her his trademark grin. "Okay. Pity. I'd have liked to see you with a big-ass band-aid of a princess and a moose on it. That'd be funny."

She didn't bother to reply to that.

"Anyway", he said. "You want a local anaesthetic? It's only a couple of sutures and that shot'll probably hurt as much as the stitches, but it's up to you."

Annoyed, she closed her eyes. Even better.

"Whatever you want", she said. "I don't care."

"I wouldn't risk it", Tex said. "I might have to stick you twice anyway if I try. I'd just wing it if I were you. Plus you have a shitton of scars on your hand so you'll probably feel it less anyway." He removed the gauze, then, out of the blue, asked: "So you seem even more out of sorts than usual."

"I didn't think you were that perceptive", she said, because the best way to focus a guy's attention away from her was to get them to talk about themselves. She'd fully expected him to go along with it, but he wasn't fooled so easily. He pressed: "Is it just, like, a bad day at the job, or - "

"Yes, and I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay." He took the gauze off. Blood still seeped out, but at a much slower place. He said: "Alright, I'll clean the wound and then we'll get to the sewin' part." She hissed as he dabbed iodine on the wound, then looked away when picked up the thread and needle.

"Big pinch", he mumbled, and to her own surprise and possibly to distract herself, she said: "I had a fight with someone."

"Huh", Tex said. She shuddered as the thread went through her hand. The pain wasn't too bad, but the feeling sent chills of revulsion down her spine. "What about? Did you punch him in the face?"

"I wish", she said, then hesitated. "He lost his wife because… well, because he was trying to help me. And I felt guilty about it for so long. Then he showed up at my house yesterday, and told me that it wasn't completely my fault after all. He did something stupid and, well, he kept that from me." Maybe it was the fatigue she was feeling, but she felt ready to cry.

"The dead wife, would that be Sara Linton?", Tex said. That surprised her.

"You knew her?"

"There's only a handful of medical examiners in this state with a medical degree", he told her. "Me, her and some guy up north. We weren't close but yeah, I met her a couple of times." He pierced the skin around the cut again. She sucked on her teeth as the pain hit her. "I heard she got herself blown up. Wasn't it some white supremacist movement?"

"Did Art tell you that?"

"Not sure. Why would that be your fault? You don't strike me as a skinhead."

Possibly because the pain was impairing her brain function, she told him: "I used to date one."

That made him laugh. She would have been offended, but it was a laugh without menace or insult. Instead she just felt stupid. "Well, can't say he wasn't thinking outside the box."

"It's not funny", she told him, feeling a little insulted. He grinned. "Well, you can be the judge of that. Why'd you date him?"

"I didn't know he was a skinhead when I met him", she said.

"Did he tell you he was reformed? Put his past behind him?"

He said it without malice, but she felt insulted anyway. Tex said: "I'd heard rumours about Sara's death, that her husband had had some professional altercations with a clan of neonazis and that they put a bomb in his mailbox, either to kill him or to kill her to hurt him. That's funny, I never linked that to you."

"Funny is not the word I'd use", she snapped. Tex shrugged. "Sorry." When he stuck the needle into her hand again it felt like a personal insult.

To her surprise, he said: "I'm guessing you didn't date a neonazi just because he was hot."

She wasn't sure how to reply to that, which Tex took as an invitation to continue. "So this is not really my area of expertise, but those guys, they're all about control, right? That can't have been a lot of fun. You don't strike me as the type who lets a guy walk all over her."

"I didn't think I was either", Lena said. She wasn't sure what else to say. Wasn't sure why she was talking about it, even. She never had before.

"Did he hit you?", Tex asked. She looked away and gave a tight nod.

"Well, that sucks", Tex opined, and she quietly agreed with him. He asked: "so is that guy Hannah's father?"

"Hannah doesn't have a father."

"Fair enough", he said. "So why did you have a fight with whatshisname?"

"Jeffrey Tolliver."

Tex frowned, then exclaimed: "Oh, him! I remember that guy. He's hot. Was he your boss? What was that like?"

"It was fine", she said. "Until it wasn't."

"I met him once, not sure why or when. Wondered why they were together. I think they might've had a fight on the way over. Not sure why he was there but he was giving her the cold shoulder, and she was ignoring him. Seemed like a lovely marriage."

She wasn't sure what to tell him. It seemed wrong to gossip about them, especially with someone who had apparently known Sara. It wasn't as if she could defend herself.

"He adored her", she said eventually. "They had a lot of fights, though."

"And you know this because…"

"Because I spend a lot of time riding around in a car with him and he'd complain about it. Or call her to talk it out."

"Oof", Tex said. "Managerially speaking, that is a nightmare."

In retrospect he was probably right. Jeffrey and Sara, at their worst, had done nothing but argue and pick fights and Lena had spent many a car ride trying and failing not to listen to Jeffrey's phone calls, which he never bothered to have out of ear shot. Or he'd complain to her. She'd sometimes wondered if he went home and did the reverse, complain to Sara about her. He probably would have said no if she'd asked, and he would have meant it, but Sara Linton's dislike of her had gone further than just clashing personalities.

She told Tex: "I liked working for him."

"So why'd you quit?"

"Because he blamed me for Sara's death", she told him. "And I blamed myself, too."

"And yesterday he showed up to tell you that hey, sorry, it wasn't you after all?"

"Not just me", Lena said. "He wouldn't have gotten involved if I hadn't gotten myself into that mess."

"What mess?" He cut the thread and, to her relief, began to unwrap a big piece of plaster.

"It's a long story", she said.

"Did you ask him to help you?"

"No", she said. "I told him to fuck off. I knew he wouldn't, though."

"He wanted to be the hero", Tex deduced.

I bet you get a lot of guys trying to save you, Art had told her once. She hadn't been wrong. Lena had to wonder just how much of the problems those guys caught were on her bill. Was she culpable? She hadn't asked him to help her. The Sheriff had done that. Would she have been able to get out of that mess without his help? She desperately wanted the answer to be yes, but there was no way of knowing. If he'd left her alone Sara might still have been alive. Or Lena might have been dead and Sara might still have gotten herself blown up. It was impossible to tell, but she desperately wanted to know the answer.

"It wasn't that simple", Lena said. Tex shrugged. "Is it ever? Did you ask him to come or not?"

"No, but - "

"Did you tell him to leave, to mind his own business?"

"Yes, but I knew - "

"Then that's on him", Tex said decidedly, sticking the bandaid into place. "There. All set. When was your last tetanus jab?"

"When I was pregnant." She got up hastily. "I really don't - "

"I think they recommend boosters every ten years", Tex said. "So you're probably good." He laughed when he saw her face. "I just stitched you up without anaesthesia and that's what bothers you?"

"It doesn't bother me", she said irritably. It was a lie. She hated getting shots and God knew she'd had plenty of practice. Tex cheerfully tossed the suture kit into the trash and said: "I'll come with. What're you working on?"

"A double homicide, actually", she said, relieved to be talking about something else for a change.

"I thought you worked DV", Tex said as she followed her out of the hallway and up the stairs. "Did they make you switch or did you ask for it? I'd imagine homicide is a bit - "

She halted in her tracks.

"What?", Tex said when he saw her face.

"You're basically an encyclopedia", she said, digging around for her phone. He grinned and patted himself on the head.

"I get that a lot. WikiTex. Why?"

"One of the victims was wearing this weird mask", she said. "We haven't identified it yet." She pulled up the pictures from the crime scene and leafed through them until she found one of the weird, blank mask with the puckered lips and the red, upturned nose. In spite of everything she felt a twinge of surprise when Tex blinked and immediately said: "Wow. That's… That's incredibly obscure. That's a Laetare mask. Where the hell did he get that?"

"Beats me", she said. "What's a Laetare mask?"

"Right", Tex said, clearly settling in for a lecture, and she braced herself. "So I don't know the finer points, but… This is a mask that's worn by the carnival goers of Stavelot. They have an annual carnaval and the residents, they dress up in all white costumes including a white hood, and they put this mask on. They call themselves the blanc-moussis. You'd have to ask Art what that means exactly, but I think it's something like 'white clad'. It dates back to the Holy Roman Empire. Around 1500 the local prince or whatever banned the monks of the Stavelot abbey from participating in the carnival, so the locals dressed up as monks to support them and when that was banned, they made the costume a bit more subtle and it's never gone away. They have a parade before the start of Lent where they walk in a queue to the main square, dance a rondeau and hit people on the head with inflated pig bladders. They also shoot a shitload of confetti into the air which environmental groups just - "

"Where the hell even is Stavelot?", she cut him off.

"Belgium. It's in the Ardennes, not far from Malmedy. South-east." He pointed at her phone. "Show me that picture again."

She did as she wondered why hitting people on the head with pig bladders was a part of someone's cultural heritage. And what the hell did it have to do with their case?

"Okay", Tex said when he saw the picture again. "That's interesting."

"That's one word for it", she said. Tex ignored her.

"So, the head placed directly on top of the feet reminds me of Hieronymus Bosch."

"Who?"

"Medieval Dutch painter", he said with an impatient hand wave. "You've seen his work, I can guarantee it. He painted a lot of weird shit, most of it focused on heaven and hell, and he has a bunch of details in some of his paintings where he has, like, an egg with feet and sometimes a face." He pulled up his own phone and kept talking as he typed in a command. "I could be wrong, but it reminded me of that straightaway, particularly because Bosch is from the same timeframe, roughly speaking. Late 15th, early 16th century. Might be a coincidence, but it's interesting." He showed her a picture on his phone of an egg with legs, a creepy face poking out. "So Bosch's most famous work is a triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights, with Hell on the left side, Heaven on the right and the Garden of Eden in the middle. Or something. I'm not an art historian. It's just a weird coincidence."

She did not like that word, coincidence, but she had to admit that the image was eerily reminiscent.

"So", Tex said as he put his phone away. "Anything else you need me to overanalyse?"

"Thanks", she told him briefly, remembering her hand. "For the - you know."

"No problem", he said, leaping up the stairs as if eager to get away from her. "See you around! Keep that dry and elevated!" He disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds later. "Oh, and get the stitches taken out next week. Or come down here and I'll do it for you." And then he was gone, leaving Lena alone, wondering how the hell she'd ended up knee deep in Medieval art.

Dido, at least, seemed somewhat apologetic and for once, she'd listened.

"I spoke to the owner", she said. "He didn't see anything, but he went over the footage with me. Gave me a copy, even." She seemed proud, and Lena wanted ask her if she was expecting a pat on the head. Instead she said: "and?"

"There's not a lot to go on. Perp parked his car in front of the gazebo to block the view, left the head behind, drove off. Plates are fake and the tape is in black and white. From what I can see it looks like the same guy as the other footage."

That was fuck all to go on. She asked: "What kind of car?"

"A Toyota. A Camry, I think. Light coloured, probably silver."

"Any of those reported missing today?"

She dawdled, and Lena knew she hadn't gotten around to it yet, but rather than get into another shouting match that she didn't have the energy for she said: "fine, I'll check it out. What else?"

"Nothing", Dido said. "He shows up, he drops off the head and feet and he's off again. All we see is a heavy set guy with a baseball hat and a scarf over his face. Same wavy hair as last time. Forensics combed the scene but found nothing. They're still at it, I can ask if - "

"They'll let us know", Lena said curtly. Dido looked at the bandage on her hand, but said nothing.

They were back at the Peachtree station, poring over details. Isherwood was expecting them in his office in half an hour and Lena already knew they weren't going to tell him anything he wanted to hear. The best they could do now was make sure they knew as much as possible. Dido, next to her, kept bobbing her leg up and down. The pressure for Lena was less intense - the worst they could do was send her back to DV - but she wasn't looking forward to being scolded. Reluctantly, she said: "I know where that mask is from."

"Really?" Dido seemed surprised, then seemed to realise that was not a good look and looked contrite, so she continued: "it's a Laetare mask. They use it in the annual carnival of Stavelot, which is in the Belgian Ardennes."

Dido frowned. "Belgium? Donald Trump I could see, but Belgium?"

"Beats me", Lena said. It bothered her because it was so random. She opened a tab on her computer and looked up a clip of the festivities on YouTube. A parade of people, mostly men, dressed in all white, paraded through a long-suffering street of a bleary town; they marched in a circle to the tune of a melody that Lena knew would be stuck in her head for the rest of the day. A confetti gun plasted confetti at their faces, hidden behind the unnervingly blank masks with the puckered lips and the upturned nose.

"Jesus fucking Christ", Dido said, and for once she agreed. "What the hell is this?" She pointed at a man holding an extra large doll version of the blanc-moussis. "Where do we even begin with this?"

"We don't", Lena told her. She closed the browser window and looked up the Bosch painting instead. Dido began to nod as soon as the Garden of Earthly Delights came up on the screen.

"I knew I'd seen that somewhere", she said. "The head on the feet, I mean." She shook her head. "Alright, so Bosch isn't quite as obscure as that other thing, but still - why the medieval art?"

"No point in wondering about that now", Lena told her. "Unless you want to go all profiler on it."

Dido grumbled something. That, at least, Lena got. Profiling had been hot shit with the bureau in the seventies and eighties, but it had never been more than educated guesswork and had often been wrong. Lena had little patience with it but the worst thing cop shows had given the world was that everyone on the street now assumed that the police could crack just about any case with DNA and that everything about a crime scene was a clue to the perp's personality. It wasn't that glitzy. Diligence got you more than TV shows would have it.

Dido had told her she'd run the plates and they'd come up fake, so Lena checked with DMV to see how many silver Toyota Camrys had been reported stolen. Her heart sank a little as she scrolled through the list. The cars that had been listed were either too old or had a different colour. She checked beige, as well, just to be sure, but there were even fewer of those.

"Pull up the footage of the license plate again", she told Dido, and Dido obeyed silently. Lena could sense she was about to be thrown under the bus in their upcoming meeting, and she had to exert a fair amount of self-restraint not to walk out of the room immediately. She scrolled through the pictures until she got what she wanted. The shot was blurry, but the license plate was clearly visible. On a hunch, she changed the last digit, an E, to an L, and entered it into the system. Immediately a silver Camry popped up on her screen. Dido, next to her, sat up in surprise.

"What did you do?"

"There's tape you can use on license plates", Lena said curtly. "If you're careful, you can change an E to an L or vice versa, or to an F, or whatever. If it's low key enough nobody'll notice. It's an old trick."

"But that car's not been reported missing", Dido pointed out, and Lena saw realisation dawn on her face. "Because it's his own car."

"Easier than using stolen plates or stealing a car", Lena told her. She clicked the DMV link. "Car belongs to a Mr James Herriman." She googled him - Google would often tell her more than the stodgy police systems - and immediately, his LinkedIn popped up.

"Holy shit", Dido said, and though Lena stayed quiet she felt the same sense of excitement.

The guy whose picture was listed had wavy red hair, though it had been somewhat tamed for the professional-looking headshot that he'd put on his page. James Herriman stared at the camera with something that she guessed was supposed to be confidence but that read as disdain. He wore a suit and a tie in a colour scheme that Lena would not have thought was even legal. The combination of pallid skin, bright red hair and flabby cheeks was unfortunate.

"Investment banker at Albrecht Fenimore", Dido read. "That's where the first body was left."

Lena didn't need a reminder. Still, it all seemed awfully coincidental.

Still, she got up, grabbed her coat and said: "alright, let's give the boss an update and check him out."

Dido trailed behind her as they went into the office; Lena knocked, and Isherwood waved them in through the window. He was slumped in his chair, messing with his phone and didn't look up when they entered.

"Afternoon, ladies", he said. "I need a status update. Needed it an hour ago, actually." He sent a pointed look to Dido and ignored Lena. She wasn't sure how to take that. She glanced at Dido - she was the one working homicide, she should be the one to elaborate. Isherwood looked up from his phone.

"For God's sake, please. Either one of you speak."

"We found a lead", Lena said, giving up. "Two things. First of all, perp likes his European art. Sunny's head was found wearing a white hood and a very specific mask that references a carnival in the town of Stavelot."

"White hood means Clan", Isherwood said, back to his phone. "Don't overcomplicate things."

She pulled up her own phone and showed him a picture of the Laetare mask. That, at least, raised a few eyebrows.

"Wow. Point taken. What else?"

"The head was positioned on the feet, which were cut off at the ankles. It might be a coincidence but it might be referencing - "

"A Bosch painting?"

She didn't stop to wonder why she was apparently the only one who'd never heard of this guy. Instead, she said: "it might be irrelevant. The plates on the car of the security footage were fake, but the guy driving it was the same guy who left the corpse outside the bank. Average height, heavy-set, long wavy hair, wearing a beige trench coat. The bank's security footage is in colour, and we can see his hair's red. This is where it gets interesting. The licence plate has been messed with. Part of it was taped off with reflective tape, changed an E into an L. If we look at the plates that way we get a car registered to a Mr James Herriman, who works as an investment banker at Albrecht Fenimore, which is - "

"- the bank where the first victim was dumped", Isherwood completed. "Tell me the car is of the same make."

"Silver Toyota Camry", Lena said. "Same as on the security footage."

"Any connection to the victims?"

"Not that we know of. He doesn't live in the area. We're still in the process of determining whether the bank is connected to Henry Ionesco's place of employment."

"Or Sunny Madigan, presumably."

"She doesn't really have a lot of connections to the outside world", Lena pointed out. "Certainly not with an investment banker. We'll look into it, but Ionesco seems to be a more promising connection."

"Alright", Isherwood said, somewhat mollified. "Not bad, Adams. You need an arrest warrant?"

"Yes, sir." Legally, they were more than covered. The only issue now was catching him off guard. She said: "he's probably gone home for the day, so we should - "

"He works for the China desk, according to his LinkedIn", Dido said. "So he's probably working night shifts."

"Right", Lena said, taken aback somewhat. She knew nothing about investment banking. Isherwood pulled up another eyebrow. She said: "His hours might be listed on the website or in his email signature. I'll see what I can find."

"Sooner rather than later, I'd think", Isherwood said. "I'll send a cruiser to his home, see if he's there. You two visit his office." He got up from his chair with a surprisingly fluid movement and grabbed his jacket. "I'll call the judge on my way home, see if I can get a search warrant of his place."

Chapter 12

They drove to the office in silence. Dido seemed jumpy; excited, nervous. Lena felt the same way, though she tried not to let it show. She'd missed this, the tension, the elation when you found a clue, when another piece of the puzzle fit. And reluctantly, she had to give Dido just the tiniest bit of credit when it came to the idea of the night shift. They'd checked his office hours on their way to the bank and sure enough, Herriman's hours were listed. He started his shift at six pm. It was now half past six, meaning the day shift would have left and the bank would be mostly empty. Lena tried not to wonder at what time she'd be picking up Hannah today, or what they'd charge her. If things were going the way she thought, she'd be pulling an all-nighter.

She parked the car in front of the bank, not bothering to find a proper parking spot, and marched into the building like she'd done the day before, waving her badge at the night watchman. He let them through silently and when she asked him on what floor the China desk was, he told her to head to the sixth.

"You think he's gonna give them a call?", Dido whispered when they crossed the lobby to the elevators. Lena glanced back. The night watchman had sat down in his seat again and was watching them cross.

"Probably', she said, turning back. "Can't be helped."

"Is that why you asked for the China office instead of - "

"Yep."

"Right", Dido said. She seemed proud of herself for getting that and Lena wanted to ask her if she wanted a pat on the head, but left it off, not wanting to be distracted.

The elevator ride was quiet except for Dido nervously tapping her foot. She'd have to get that jitteriness under control, Lena thought, though she felt nervous as well. No, not nervous. Unnerved. This was all coming together a bit too neatly and aside from that, why would an investment banker kill a small time crook who transported drugs and sold stolen car parts and his weird wife?

"Remind me to give Allen Danes a call when we're done here", she told Dido.

"I'm not your - "

"Unless you'd prefer to do it yourself?"

Dido said nothing. Lena told her: "When we get in there, just walk up to him and ignore everyone else. Tell him he needs to come with us. When he asks why, tell him it's better not to make a fuss. Don't cuff him on the work floor unless he resists. We'll do it outside."

"Why?"

"Because these people have money and money means lawyers. You tell him to his face in front of everyone that he's a murder suspect, he'll sue you for defamation and emotional distress. Won't go anywhere but it'll cost you tens of thousands in lawyer fees and it'll be a drag. Let the rest of the floor think you're getting him because of a family emergency and he won't have a leg to stand on."

"Yeah, but we have to tell him - "

"We can do that out of earshot", she told Dido, just as the elevator doors pinged open.

"Let me take the lead, alright?", Lena said, and for once Dido didn't protest.

The elevator opened straight onto the open-plan work floor with cubicles strewn about, and she saw about ten faces watching her: nine men, all of them white, all of them in their late twenties or early thirties, and one young-looking Asian woman for whom Lena felt sorry immediately. Herriman was in the middle of the floor. He was taller than she'd imagined and his red hair made him stick out like a sore thumb. She wasn't sure if she recognised him from the video, but that hardly mattered now.

She walked up to him, ten pairs of eyes tracing her every move, and said: "Mr Herriman? We need you to come with us, please."

Immediately, she could tell they'd hit the jackpot. He seemed nervous, which most people would be when the police came to get him, but he avoided eye contact. Oh, he was definitely up to something.

She lowered her voice and said: "not here, please."

"Oh", he said. He took a step back, and she realised what he was going to do even before he realised it himself; by the time he'd turned on his heels to make a run for it, she was already in gear, cuffs in hand, and kicked his feet out from underneath him, then dove on top of him as he tumbled neatly in between the cubicles. The rest of the floor stared at it silently. She guessed they must not like him very much.

He was a big guy, though, and heavy, and though Lena was pretty strong he was about twice her weight he kept bucking and scrambled to get away.

"You wanna help out, Detective Lott?", she said, pissed she had to even ask. Dido hesitated, then sat down on his torso, which was a crude but effective way to get him to lay still long enough to get cuffs on him. He yelped as she tightened the cuffs, though his wrists were fleshy enough that it shouldn't have hurt him.

"James Herriman, you're under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Henri Ionesco and Sunny Madigan", she told him. "We're going to get off you now. We're both armed and we will use our weapons if you try to run away again. Understood?"

He gave a tight nod, and she stood up.

"Get up." He scrambled to his feet and stood still, finally, snorting like an angry bull, and she guessed he'd been using.

I'm going to search you now. Am I going to cut myself on anything?"

He grumbled, and she gave a yank on the cuffs. "Excuse me?"

"I said no, you fucking spic bitch."

Casual racism was one thing he had in common with Henry Ionesco, she thought wryly as she patted him down. She found a baggie of white powder in his coat pocket and waved it at him.

"Let me guess", she said. "Icing sugar?"

"That's not mine", Herriman said stupidly. This was going to be easy.

"Duly noted", she told him. "Get moving." She pushed him towards the elevators, but he began to resist again.

"I want a lawyer."

"Of course you do. You can call him at the station. Move."

"What a charmer", Isherwood said.

They were standing outside the interrogation room, looking at the monitors at James Herriman, Ivy League educated banker, picking his nose with gusto. A no doubt overpaid lawyer was on her way and apparently, this had lulled Herriman into a false sense of security. Periodically he'd raised his middle finger at the camera and though he hadn't said anything, Lena didn't think it'd be very hard to get him to talk. They just needed to move quickly.

"How about I tell him his lawyer is on the way and sit in with him?"

"You think that'll be enough?"

"Sure. He just wants to rub our faces in just how much we're going to get creamed." She checked her phone. It was half past eight. Hannah would be asleep. She felt a pang of guilt.

"Alright", Isherwood said. "Can't hurt, I suppose."

"Did we get the warrant yet?"

"Matter of time", Isherwood said. "He lives alone. I have eyes outside his place. If anyone tries to mess with it until we get in we'll know."

She pointed at the folder he was holding. "Can I borrow that?"

Herriman looked up when she entered the room and sat down across from him.

"Your lawyer is on her way", she said. Herriman crossed his arms and grinned.

"Good."

She ignored him and leafed through the file.

"I know enough that I shouldn't be talking to you", he said immediately.

"Then don't", she replied without taking her eyes off the folder.

"You didn't read me my Mirandas", he told her. "That's the first of your problems."

"Miranda Rights are usually read at the start of an interview", she told him, making sure her voice sounded dull with boredom, though her heart was racing. "TV gets that wrong."

"Have you seen my wrists?", he said, holding them up as far as the cuffs would allow. "This is police brutality."

She shrugged. "Okay."

"You're going to lose your job."

"Poor me." She leafed around in the file, which looked to be budget calculations. "Guess I'll go work at McDonalds."

"What, you don't believe it?"

"If you say so."

He leaned back. "You people don't know what the fuck you're talking about anyway. I've never heard of Henry whatever and Sunny… whatever."

"Really?", Lena said, finally lowering the folder. "Because we have plenty of evidence to place you at the crime scene."

That was another thing TV got wrong often: cops could lie to suspects all they wanted. She bet Herriman didn't know that either.

"Like what?", he said. She noticed he didn't deny it. Neither did he say what most people said, which was "I have never killed anyone." He was definitely guilty of something. Still, it didn't sit well with her.

On a hunch, she asked him: "Have you ever been to Stavelot?"

The confusion on his face seemed genuine enough. "Where the fuck is that?"

"Never mind", she said, opening the folder again. Herriman said: "evidence like what? I don't know those fucking people."

"I thought you weren't allowed to talk to me", she said. He raised his voice: "you fucking bitch, what fucking evidence?!"

"Which evidence", she said. "I'm sorry, I feel disinclined to share."

"You can't just - "

"Well, you were going to get me fired anyway. I'll take my chances."

The door opened and Isherwood called out to her.

"Detective Adams, a word please."

She got up, winked at Herriman, and left the room.

"We got the warrant", Isherwood said as the door closed behind him. "I sent Lott over there to supervise." He nodded in Herriman's direction. "What do you make of him?"

"He's an idiot", she said. "But I think he's going to tone it down as soon as the coke wears off. Any lawyer worth their salt is gonna shut him up the moment they walk into the room."

"You think you can get him to talk?"

She paused, and said: "I can get him to talk. I'm not sure I can get him to confess."

"Why not?" Isherwood asked it without malice, though surely he must be hoping for a shoe-in that would put an end to this deeply weird case. "The evidence puts him at the scene. Just lean on that."

She was torn. She wanted to tell him her gut feeling said they had the wrong guy, but all she had was a hunch. If this had been Jeffrey Tolliver she would've had no problems sharing that. Jeffrey had always insisted she needed to listen to her intuition. Isherwood, though - she didn't know him that well, and he was the head of APD's prolific homicide unit. It wasn't a job you got without having a certain amount of political instincts, and political animals were rarely straight shooters. They cared about their numbers, not necessarily about the truth, and odds are he would laugh her out of his team forever if she told him her intuition insisted they had the wrong guy. Instead, she told him. "I kind of believe him when he says he doesn't know Henry or Sunny. At least, I believe him when he says he doesn't know their names."

"That doesn't mean he didn't kill them."

"I think he's definitely up to no good", she said. "I'm just… Something's not right here. I can't put my finger on it." She glanced at the door. "Let me try again. I'll see how far I get."

"I'll join you when the lawyer gets here", he said, and she understood why. She'd need backup. The head of the squad would make it clear that he wasn't about to throw her under the bus and that they were taking this seriously. Herriman might not get it, but the lawyer definitely would.

She told Isherwood: "kick my ass for something. Doesn't matter what, as long as he hears it."

"You think he's that stupid?"

"I think he'll believe whatever's convenient to him."

Isherwood chuckled. "Alright", then shouted: "for fuck's sake, Adams, one more time and you're out on your ass!" just as she opened the door. She tried to look contrite as she sat down again. Herriman grinned at her.

"I heard that."

She shrugged again, trying to seem insecure, then opened the folder again.

"I'll have a quarter pounder", he said, licking his lips. He was just getting better and better. She didn't respond and waited for him to ask about the evidence she'd mentioned. Sure enough, after only a few seconds of silence he piped up with: "You got nothing to hold me on."

"For the first twenty-four hours, we don't have to have anything to hold you on."

"Fuck, I'm not staying here for an entire day. I got shit to do."

"We all got shit to do, James." She flicked another page, biding her time. He did not take well to silence.

"You dumb bitch", he told her. "You think you can just get me to confess to shit I didn't do?"

"I'd rather you confess to shit you did do", she replied, still not taking her eyes off the folder, though if he'd been paying attention he would've noticed she'd been scanning the same pages over and over again. He snorted.

"Lady, I did nothing wrong. I make shitloads of money. That make you jealous?"

She didn't answer him and wondered whether he bragged as much as this when he wasn't high on coke.

"I got more money than I know what to do with", he said. "I'm gonna use it to sue your entire department, and when I'm done and you're out on your ass, I'm gonna hire you to fuck me. I'll be the only one in the world willing to give you a job."

She wanted to tell him she'd rather clean dumpsters at McDonalds, but then the door opened and Isherwood came in along with a pissed-off looking woman in an expensive pantsuit.

"Detective Adams, this is miss Derrin. She's mr Herriman's attorney."

"Nice to meet you", Lena said. "Mr Herriman was just propositioning me. Why don't you join us?"

The pissed-off expression intensified.

"James, I told you not to talk to them."

Herriman rolled his eyes. "Whatever, man. They can't use it against me if you're not here."

"Oh boy", Isherwood chuckled. The lawyer sat down and said: "I'd like some time alone with my client, please."

"I'd like some time alone with Charlize Theron, but that's not happening either", Isherwood said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs at the ankles like he was at a neighbourhood barbecue. "But you got nothing to worry about. Aside from insisting he get detective Adams fired, using a few racial epithets and trying to get her to work for him as a prostitute, he's said very little of use."

Steam was practically coming out of the lawyer's ears now, and Lena would've felt sorry for her if she hadn't known how much a lawyer like that got paid to deal with this bullshit.

"Whatever", Herriman said. "You can't prove I said any of that."

"There are cameras", they all said at the same time.

"Yeah, but you're not allowed to record - " He looked at his lawyer for support, then shrunk back in his seat. "Oh."

"Yeah", Isherwood said. "So we have possession of a class A drug, resisting arrest, insulting an officer…"

"None of which is enough to hold him here unless you have a more serious charge", the lawyer said, "so let's start there."

"Mr Herriman has been informed of the fact that he is currently in custody on the suspicion of the homicide of mr Henri Ionesco and Miss Sunny Madigan."

"I don't even know those people!", Herriman said again.

"So you keep saying", Lena told him. "But somehow, I don't believe you."

"I don't fucking care if you believe me", Herriman said, but she could tell the coke was wearing off. His bravoura had shrunk and he was beginning to see how much trouble he was in. She pressed on: "We have evidence to put you at the scene of the crime. We have a search warrant for your house. As soon as - "

That got his attention.

"No", he said emphatically, then turned to his lawyer. "They can't search the house, can they?"

"I'd like to see a copy of that warrant, please", the lawyer said stiffly. Isherwood slid a folder over to her, and she opened it. Herriman watched, his face tight with panic. Lena exchanged a look with Isherwood. Something was wrong. His phone began to buzz, and he excused himself, leaving the room.

"So James", she said. "What's at your house you don't want us to find?"

"Nothing", he said. "I just don't like people going through my things, is all." His tone was now more deferential, less antagonistic. He'd been caught doing something, or was about to, and she really wanted to know what it was. She'd bet anything that was Dido on the other end of Isherwood's phone call.

"James, I'm going to recommend again that you do not talk to the detectives. Let me do the talking. If they ask a question, let me decide whether you should answer first. Okay?"

He nodded. His leg bobbed up and down and he kept staring at the camera in the corner of the room.

She was about to ask him where he'd been that morning, but then the door opened again and Isherwood reappeared. "Detective Adams, outside please."

She followed him out the door.

"Did he say anything else?"

"Nothing of note. Lawyer's got him to shut up so it's a waste of time from now on anyway." She sensed he was holding something back. He said: "Lott called. She found something."

"A guillotine?", she guessed, but he shook his head.

"No. It's worse than that."

Chapter 13

When Lena got to the scene the fire department were just taking the girl out of the hole she'd been in. She was crying hysterically but her throat was parched, probably from lack of water, and hoarse, probably from screaming for help that hadn't come. All Lena heard was a gutteral wheeze. Dido stood beside her, looking a little shell shocked and not particularly useful, which was a good thing because Lena would've strangled her if she'd approached the girl with all of her usual tact. Instead, she approached them herself.

"Ambulance on its way?", she asked one of the firemen, and he nodded. "They're five minutes out. We were closer by."

The basement was small, with a roughly hewn floor of poured concrete. Clearly, Herriman had done it himself and by the looks of things he wasn't a great handyman. A white rope light snaked around the ceiling, casting the empty room in an unforgiving, pale glow. The basement was bare except for a discarded plastic water bottle in the corner and a mattress, still in its plastic wrapping. On the wall above the mattress sat a metal ring, bolted to the wall and what looked like fingernail scratches in the soft chalk. Worst was the hole in the middle of the room. It was round, no more than two feet in diameter, and locked with a metal lid that was now cast aside. There was a chain around the girl's slim ankle that slithered back into the hole she'd come out of, and as the firemen debated how to get it off Lena approached the girl. She wore a dirty tank top and nothing else, and was wrapped in a tin foil blanket; though the sweltering weather didn't really call for it there was a chill in the air of the basement they were in, and Lena wondered whether that was all in her head.

She sat down next to the girl. It was impossible to tell how old she was, though Lena guessed early twenties at the most. She stank of stale urine and sweat, the kind of sweat that comes from living in sheer terror. She was trembling so hard that the blanket was rustling.

"Hi", Lena said cautiously. The girl didn't respond and stared ahead, eyes unseeing, at the concrete wall. Though she knew an answer was likely not forthcoming, she said: "Can you tell me your name?"

The girl said nothing. She had long, straight, black hair, dark skin. Her slanted eyes and round face told Lena she was likely of Asian descent, if not actually from Asia. Human trafficking? Lena'd never seen it when she was in Grant County and in Atlanta, it would've gone to different departments, different governmental outfits. This girl would not be their case, and Lena surmised she would not be able to help them.

Still put her hand on the girl's back, feeling the girl's muscles tighten in shock, then relax somewhat.

Lena said: "My name is Lena. Can you tell me your name?"

No answer. She tried: "Can you understand me?"

The girl stared ahead at the blank concrete wall, eyes set to infinity, her blanket rustling as she shook. Only when two of the firemen approached her did she move; she shuffled backwards, dropping the blanket, clearly afraid of them.

"It's okay", Lena hushed. "They're just trying to help. It's okay. Just look at me. Don't look at them." She turned the girl's face away from the firemen as they bent down over the lock that locked the chain around her ankle. It didn't take much to get it off; a few snips with the bolt cutter and the girl was free. Crying, she rubbed her ankle. Lena could see open spots, reddish and pink, like a sore, circling the girl's leg.

"Ambulance's here!", someone called down from upstairs, and the firemen looked relieved. She could understand why. They didn't feel much more at ease around the girl than did around them.

She stepped back as the ambulance staff came in, crowding the girl, asking the same questions that Lena had. Still no response and unwittingly, Lena's mind flashed back to her own attack, all those years ago. They'd asked her different questions - whether she knew where she was, could she hear them, could she tell them which day it was - but they hadn't registered, they'd bounced off of her like rubber. She'd just wanted them to go away so she could die.

She turned on her heels and left the dank basement, giving herself exactly three seconds to calm down and to breathe away the tears that were now pricking the corners of her eyes.

Dido followed her up the stairs, through the hallway with its luxurious marble flooring. The house wasn't big, but it was coated in ostentatious opulence. Herriman had wanted people to know he was rich, though he hadn't been able to buy good taste. She spotted a Bosch reproduction in the hallway, above a metal and glass side table that held some folders, several loose keys and another ziplock bag, this one empty. She paused momentarily. On the bottom right of the painting, in the section she presumed represented Hell, a naked man sat, his hand speared to a wooden board. She swallowed. Her back still turned, she asked: "did we find anything else?"

"Baggies of coke. I mean, I assume it's coke. White powder. Couple of pipes and bags with a residue, too. Forensics said it's probably meth, that's kind of a no-brainer. And a handgun, but he bought that legally."

"Right", Lena said. It didn't really matter anyway. Keeping and imprisoning his own personal sex slave was enough to send him to prison for a long time and that was assuming they wouldn't find any more bodies in his suspiciously unkempt and uneven yard.

She walked back to her car, and Dido asked: "where are you going?"

"Back to the station."

"Should we - " Dido paused, and Lena knew what she wanted to ask. For once, she didn't mind.

"You don't want to get in the way of the ambulance staff", she said. "I'm calling vice before I leave and they'll send someone down to the hospital. They're best equipped to handle this. Our job is finding out who killed Henry Ionesco and Sunny Madigan and I doubt we'll find the evidence here and if we do, forensics'll figure it out for us, so we need to get back in there and lean on him."

"Right", Dido said. She glanced back at the house. "It's just…"

Lena waited.

"They put her in a hole in the ground. It wasn't a cell. It was a hole. She could barely move, it was so small. He put her in there, let her stand in her own filth, closed it off for God knows how long… I just don't get why."

"It'd be worse if you did get it", Lena said. "It's not our job to figure out why he did this. We need to connect him to Henry and Sunny."

"Yeah, but - " She looked back at the house, then back at Lena. "Don't you care? Don't you - "

"Of course I care", Lena snapped. "I'm fucking furious. I'm just not going to stand here with my thumbs up my ass feeling sorry for her because that's not going to do anyone any good." She opened the car door and said: "get in the damn car."

Dido hugged herself when she got into the passenger's seat, and for a while Lena thought she was going to bring up the girl in the hole again. She felt sorry for losing her temper, though not enough to apologise.

"I don't think he killed them", Dido said. She stared at her feet as if she was expecting to get chewed out again. Internally, Lena groaned. She wanted this stupid case over with. A shoe-in would've been nice, they had enough to tie him to the scene. All that remained now was to figure out how he'd known them and why he'd killed them. That'd probably be enough for a conviction. And yet the gnawing feeling she'd felt before hadn't left, either. James Herriman was a pervert, a sadist, a rapist beyond a shadow of a doubt. It wasn't that he didn't have it in him to kill.

She asked Dido: "why?"

Dido shrugged like a surly teenager. "I went over the footage again while they were searching the house."

"And?", Lena said impatiently.

"A Camry's not a particularly big car and Herriman's a tall guy." She took a deep breath. "He's, what, six foot three or thereabouts? A Camry is about five feet high. It would've been just to his chest. Instead it's up almost to his shoulders."

"He could've been stooping", Lena said, though she felt her heart sink. Dido shook her head.

"Maybe, but… It didn't look like it in the video."

"Fine", Lena said, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice even though she'd been feeling much the same. "You go check the CCTV footage from the bank. I'll see if Allen Danes has got anything."

Dido frowned, and Lena reminded her: "He was going to talk to Henry's boss and colleagues, remember?"

"Oh, right", Dido said. Clearly she'd forgotten. Lena would've yelled at her but she probably should've thought of this sooner herself. She checked her watch. It was half past ten. She was going to put in an all nighter this way. She thought of Hannah, stuck in day care, wondering where she was. She wasn't cut out for this anymore. It simply wasn't possible, no matter how much she wanted to. She missed this, but she needed to take care of Hannah and she was failing. Daycare had called twice. She'd presumed they'd call more often if Hannah had been injured, but that was as much credit as she was willing to give herself as a parent. Her daughter needed her, not some sort of stranger who would feed her and dump her in a crib and close the door for the night only to charge her a stupefying amount of money for it.

She waited until Dido had disappeared onto the floor to check the video footage, then sought out a secluded corner of the hallway before calling the daycare facility.

"She's asleep", the night nurse told her in clipped tones. "I'd really appreciate it if you'd let us know you'll be working late in advance, miss Adams."

"I know", Lena said, sounding almost pleading. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"I should point out to you that repeated violations of our terms of service entitle us to terminate the contract."

"I know", Lena repeated. She wouldn't know what to do if they kicked her out. "I'll talk to my boss. It won't happen again. I just need a few more hours and then I'll be there."

The woman on the phone huffed, then said: "She's been asleep since eight. Please be here when she wakes up." Then, she hung up. Lena suppressed the urge to throw her phone against the wall as hard as she could, then went back onto the floor, found Dido at her desk, scanning the footage.

So much police work was about making calls. It had taken her aback when she first started and her ear had sometimes literally been burning from cradling the phone for so long, but she was used to it now. She called Isherwood, gave him a brief update on the house, then called Allen Danes, who was sure to be even more insufferable to be called at this hour. Financial crime guys were used to working office hours. But to her surprise he picked up at the third ring.

"Allen's Creative Accountancy Firm, how may I help you?"

"Hi, it's Lena Adams", she said, trying not to sound too annoyed and only making it halfway there. "I was wondering if you got anything out of - "

"Mr Ionesco's compadres?" He sounded like he was drunk. It wouldn't have surprised her. "Not really. They've all been drilled by the boss. Henry was a good guy, or so they say. Worked hard, didn't complain, and, I quoth, loved that little wife of his. Third guy who said that I wanted to punch in the teeth."

"So nothing of note?"

"Well, you'll be the judge of that. The report's in the system. Filed it an hour ago." He seemed proud. She ignored it. "Did they mention a James Herriman?"

"Doesn't ring a bell. I can do a search - " She heard the clatter of a keyboard. "No, name doesn't show."

"How about Albrecht Fenimore?"

He gave a low whistle. "No, and I'd be surprised if it did. They're a big international investment bank. They do property, not the kind a small time crook would buy. More like big skyscrapers in Shanghai. They've been developing their Latin American and Asian portfolios lately. Not something Henry Ionesco or his boss would be mixed up in. Why?"

"We have a suspect", she told him grudgingly. "He works for Albrecht Fenimore and he and his car were spotted at the scene where they left Sunny and Henry's body parts. He was keeping a quite possibly underage girl imprisoned in his basement and he had a bunch of coke stashed as well." She left out the Bosch painting, which bothered her more than she was willing to admit.

"Sounds like a charmer." Allen Danes clearly did not care. "Well, have fun nailing him." She asked: "Did you get a list of clients?"

"Not without a warrant. I can call them if you like, ask if they know the guy, but they'll say no regardless of whether it's true and I won't be able to prove anything. It's not a joint that keeps security cameras or detailed administration."

"Alright", she sighed. She thanked him and hung up. Someone would need to go over James Fenimore's finances, see if the garage showed up. Or maybe Henry was where he'd gotten his drugs.

Maybe Henry wasn't the perp at all.

"Here", Dido said, showing her a still of the video. "He's behind his car so you can't quite see, but - "

"That's not enough to go on", Lena said. "All you can see is his head. Might be distorted perspective."

Dido zoomed in.

"The posture looks like him", she insisted, "but he's too short." She forwarded the grainy footage a few seconds. It was too unclear to make out his face, but she saw what Dido meant. When he crossed in front of his car he was standing up straight, and the car rose up to just below his shoulders. Fenimore was taller than that. Lena groaned.

"So whoever did this stole Fenimore's car to make it look like him", she surmised.

"Right", Dido said, sounding surprised herself. "So we're looking for - "

"The same damn thing we've been looking for for two days", Lena added. "A portly redhead, about five ft six. Unless the red hair is - "

"A wig", Dido said. "And he could've padded his clothing. He couldn't have changed his height but that wouldn't stand out so much on video.

"He wanted to be filmed, that's for sure", Lena said. "Your boss is not going to like that."

Isherwood was, indeed, less than pleased, though he took it better than she'd expected. He was still outside Herriman's interrogation room, where he was now being grilled by someone from Vice and what looked to be an FBI agent. She'd expected as much; kidnapping, especially across state lines, and human trafficking were both federal crimes. Soon they'd bundle him up and lean on him hard. From the look on his face he'd realised as much. The coke must have worn off.

"Is he cooperating?", she asked.

"He's just about getting to the point where he's realising he probably should", Isherwood replied. "We've had 'that isn't mine' in six varieties already but even his lawyer is telling him to cough it up."

"You think she knew about the girl in the basement?"

"No. She's just a corporate lawyer that Albrecht Fenimore keep on their payroll for cases like this. I suspect she's gonna go home in a couple of hours, they'll fire him and she won't be back."

"He looks like he has a rich daddy who'll pick up the slack."

"No doubt", Isherwood mumbled. "So what now?"

"We go through his finances, talk to his colleagues, see if we can tie him to Henry and Sunny."

"The garage - "

"I called Allen Danes. Herriman's name didn't come up and it's unlikely they're doing business with Albrecht Fenimore, but we'll go there and wave his picture around."

"What'd Danes have to say?"

"That their boss had drilled them on what to say."

"That seems suspicious."

"Danes didn't think so. Henry's boss sought us out, not the other way around. Danes thinks that's his way of showing he's not involved, that he's cooperating."

Isherwood shrugged. "Well, Danes would know. He's been up there since the dawn of mankind." He glanced back to where Dido was silently standing. "Alright, you two get home and get some sleep. I need you to start talking to people in the morning."

"We can - " Dido started, but Lena cut her off. "Alright, will do. Thanks, boss."

On her way ouf the building, Dido said: "Shouldn't we stay for as long as they're still talking to Herriman?"

"We'll watch a transcript", Lena said. "The feds'll claim him soon enough. Good luck getting anything out of him with them around."

"We should also go to the hospital, see - "

"For what?" She dug around in her purse. "That girl needs medical help. You're not a doctor. Let her rest, check in with her in the morning. You're not going to get anything out of her anyway." She got to her car, Dido still trailing her. She knew the feeling. Dido was hooked now, wanted to finish, wanted to keep pushing, the adrenaline tricking her into thinking she wasn't tired.

"You know, next time Isherwood asks you anything, open your damn mouth", she told Dido.

"He was asking you."

"You want him to take you seriously or not?" She got into her car. "Go home. Get some sleep. I'll be here at eight and we can go over some stuff." She didn't wait for a reply, closed the door and started the engine.

Hannah was awake when she entered their apartment, and though Lena was bone tired she was grateful for it. It was past one and the block where she lived was quiet, the perpetual hum of the big city little more than static in the distance. Hannah's eyes were wide open, but Lena knew she'd fall asleep as soon as her head would hit the bed, and as Lena put her down on the changing table to take off her shoes she leaned her head against Lena's chest and let out a big sigh.

"I know, baby", Lena said. "I'm sorry."

"Wah beh", Hannah mumbled from behind her pacifier. Want Bed. Lena hadn't changed her out of her pajamas, and she lifted the girl, carried her to the bedroom, then sat with her for a while as Hannah flopped over onto her stomach and stared at her, or straight through her - it was hard to tell in the dark - until her eyes fluttered shut.

It was Thursday. She was supposed to have the weekend off. She hadn't planned much, but she'd wanted to take Hannah out for an early morning stroll while it was still cool out, then let her play in a small paddling pool that just about fit her porch while Lena sat and read a book. Maybe get ice cream somewhere. But that wasn't going to happen either. This case wasn't going to be over before the weekend. Hannah was okay at daycare, but the more time she spent there the less time she'd spend with her mother.

Reluctantly she left the room, closed the door and contemplated whether or not to take a shower. She was tired, but the stink of the long day clung to her, the dust at the farm and the grime of the stark basement that was surely all in her mind.

As she stood in the cramped shower cubicle, she thought of the girl that had been pulled from the hole in the ground and wondered where she was now. Had she been able to take a shower? Was someone with her? Did she speak English, or know where she was? She thought of Sunny, of the head balanced carefully on the feet, and the Bosch painting and the Laetare mask. And then of Jeffrey, who hid things from her and expected her to be grateful for it.

The world had lost its mind, she thought as she shut off the shower and towelled herself off. She went to bed, predicting another sleepless night, but she was out before she knew it.

Chapter 14

It took her a while in the morning to remember the days before; she woke up, feeling uneasy but not sure why. When she finally did remember she did what she did best: hit the treadmill and run until she felt like her lungs were bursting in the stifling air in the apartment. This time, she avoided the TV. Miraculously the police hadn't gotten wind of the Laetare-Bosch-Guillotine homicide, other than that a body had been discovered outside of the bank, and she wasn't sure how interested they were in human trafficking. She'd rather not find out. She glanced at the kitchen counter where Jeffrey had been standing the day - no, two days - before, and pumped up the speed of the treadmill some more.

At least Hannah was in a complacent mood; uncomplainingly she ate half a banana and placidly chewed on a couple of pieces of toast before methodically dropping the remains on the floor, saying 'yuck' with every piece. Lena watched her without a word. At least it was easier to clean than oatmeal.

When she was almost at the daycare - Hannah, in the back seat, kept singing Itsy Bitsy Spider but never made it beyond the first line - her phone rang, and she picked it up with a harried: "I'm almost there, give me a minute."

She'd expected it to be Dido, but to her surprise it was dispatch. That was unusual. Dido was the primary on the case, not Lena. They patched her through to Isherwood, which was even more unusual, and as she had him on the phone she asked: "What's going on?"

"We found another set of remains", Isherwood said. Lena braced herself and asked: "Sunny's, I assume?"

"We don't know", he said. "Presumably."

"Where?" They'd had an abandoned pool, a bench downtown, a banquet hall. She wondered where the hell she'd be sent to now. But when Isherwood mentioned the address she frowned.

"That's Henry and Sunny's house", she said. Isherwood hemmed in affirmation.

"You'll see when you get there."

She wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it wasn't this.

The body was in the backyard of Henry and Sunny's house and considering the fact that the head and feet were missing, it seemed likely that it was Sunny's, even more so because of the blue paint stains on the hands. There were no theatrics this time, just a body, head- and footless, slumped on the patchy lawn and half covered by a plastic sheet. The neighbour - the one who took in the dog, not the skittish one - stood a little forlornly on the porch as they approached.

"He found the body", the cop guarding the house told her as they approached. "Called us about an hour ago."

"Thanks", she told him as they approached the neighbour. Dido hung back and Lena wasn't sure why. The neighbour wasn't particularly intimidating. He seemed a little subdued by what he'd found this time, hands buried in his pockets.

"Hi", he said as they approached. "Detective Adams and Detective Lott, right?"

"Right", she said. "We hear you found the body."

He nodded. "Saw it when I woke up this morning and opened the window." He pointed at his own house, which had a window to the side. "The tarp had kind of half been blown off, and I just saw an arm and… Well, I thought - " He shrugged. "I called you guys."

"Are you sure it wasn't there when you went to bed?", she asked. He thought about it for a few seconds.

"I don't think so", he said. "I mean, it was dark and I wasn't really paying attention so I'm not sure, plus it was pretty dark outside, but I don't think I saw anything, no."

"What time did you go to bed?"

"Around eleven, I think. That's when I usually go to bed."

"And you didn't hear anything suspicious?"

"No, but I'm a pretty heavy sleeper."

"You still have the dog?"

"Boulder? Sure." He laughed uneasily. "But he's not exactly a good guard dog, so I wouldn't take his word for it."

"What time did you get up?"

"Around seven, I think, but I didn't open the curtains until after I got dressed. That must've been about seven thirty, seven forty five ish, I think."

Behind her, Dido wandered off towards the body. Apparently mundane work like establishing timelines wasn't high on her list of priorities.

She asked him a few more questions, then went after Dido, who stood at some distance staring at the body. She didn't seem queasy - she hadn't been with Henry's head and foot - but, more than anything, puzzled.

"It's just so… Bare", she said. "No masks, no costumes."

"Not necessary if she's in her own backyard", Lena said. "Maybe that's the point." She wasn't convinced either.

Dido looked back at the neighbour. "What did he have to say?"

"Nothing", she said. "Didn't see or hear anything."

"Right", she said. Lena looked down at the body again. It didn't sit well with her, the way Sunny - what remained of her, in any case - had been dumped on the patchy lawn, between the dessicated dog turds and the weeds, wrapped in a musty old plastic sheet. She looked small, like a child, and almost inhuman without the head and feet.

"So what's next?", Dido asked.

"Check the other neighbour", Lena said. "And then we go back to Herriman, see if we can connect them to Henry and Sunny."

"It seems unlikely", Dido said.

God only knew what they'd find in Herriman's house, but it hadn't been him in the footage. Someone was trying to frame him, someone who had access to his car and who knew he liked Bosch. That someone was also connected to Henry and Sunny somehow.

"What do we do with the neighbour?", Dido asked. Lena presumed it was because she knew that the person who finds the body was usually on the suspect list. Except this guy had literally been living next door. Lena didn't want to rule him out but his story seemed plausible enough. Sunny and Henry's yard was hardly Ford Knox; anyone could've snuck in during the night, dumped the body and left.

"Neighbour's alibi is his watch", she told him. Like last time he had been more than willing to show her the GPS timestamp on his phone, which put him fast asleep, in his own bed, between eleven and about seven. Sure, there were things to check out - she had no idea exactly how detailed those GPS locations were - but Herriman's case was more pressing. Isherwood had told her that morning that a second hole in the ground had been found in his house. Thankfully it had been empty, but God only knew whether that was because the occupant hadn't arrived yet, or because they were dead.

She told Dido: "I asked him if he knows James Herriman. Said the name rang a bell but that could just be because he'd read about him on the news this morning."

"I thought he saw the body as soon as he woke up?"

"He says he went downstairs to eat breakfast, then went back upstairs to change and didn't open the curtains until he was done."

Dido sighed. Apparently she was disappointed the case wasn't being handed to her on a platter. Lena told her: "Alright. You go talk to the other neighbour. I'll stay with forensics and then we need to go back to the bank to see if we can connect - "

"The girl we found yesterday", Dido said. "I was just wondering…"

"I called the hospital this morning", Lena told her. "Physically she'll be fine. She was dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition, but they can fix that."

"Bet she's gonna be pretty fucked up in the head for a while", Dido said. Lena rolled her eyes.

"Alright, first of all: you can call the hospital yourself and ask how someone's doing. They don't mind. Second of all, 'fucked in the head?' Are you serious?"

"Oh, I'm sorry", Dido snapped. "She'll suffer from PTSD for the forseeable future because someone temporarily inconvenienced her in their basement." With that, she turned on her heels and stomped towards the neighbour, leaving Lena with Sunny's body.

Later, when they were in the car and driving towards the bank, Dido asked: "so can we just call the hospital and ask them how someone's doing?"

"Depends", Lena said. The question surprised her. Apparently it'd been on Dido's mind more than she would have guessed. She explained: "people have a right to privacy and they can't violate HIPAA, but they'll usually tell you whatever's relevant to the case."

"What if you need more information?"

"You ask specifically what you need to know. If blood type's relevant, ask for blood type, that sort of thing." Doctors and nurses were notoriously guarded when it came to letting cops near their patients. As a cop, Lena resented this. As someone who'd been on the other side as well she knew to appreciate it.

"But what if you need to see someone's medical file?"

"You go to a judge and ask them for permission to see the medical file, but you're not likely to get that. Too much stuff that's both irrelevant and too private."

"So that girl - If I call the hospital - "

"Depends on who you get. They'll want to know if you're actually on the case and they might ask for your badge number to verify you're legit, or they'll call you back at the station."

"Because - "

"Because some unscrupulous journalists sometimes say they're cops to get information. But if you call, typically, they'll tell you whether someone lived or died or what their odds are. More if you're working a case, though they don't always care about that."

"Did they figure out who she is yet?"

"Phuong Tranh something", Lena said.

"That's a Vietnamese name."

The things Dido did and did not know continued to surprise her. She said: "there was a Vietnamese doctor who recognised the language. He spoke to her for a little while. She was a bit incoherent but they got her name. They called the embassy. They'll try to figure out if she has any family before they send her back."

"What if she doesn't want to go back?"

"Then she can apply for a - "

"She's never going to get permanent residency", Dido said. "Assuming she's the typical human trafficking victim."

"Yeah, well she's pretty fucked in the head so she probably deserves it, right?"

"I didn't mean - "

"Bullshit", Lena snapped. "If you didn't mean it like that then don't say it like that."

"I just meant that something like that will mess with her mind and - "

"There's nothing wrong with her", Lena said. "It's the guy who put her in the whole who is fucked in the head. And probably in a lot of other places too in the forseeable future."

"Oh, you're advocating prison rape now?" Dido crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm not advocating anything. I don't condone rape. But I sure as shit feel a lot more sorry for some people than I do for others when it happens." She stopped at a red light. "You got a problem with that, you can walk."

"I didn't mean to say she was - "

"And yet you did." She waited impatiently for the light to turn green. "Did that dumb bitch have it coming, too?"

"All I meant was - "

"What you meant was that you're impervious. Shit like this doesn't happen to you because you're smart, right? Because you'd never trust a guy who told you he could get you a job somewhere. Because you've never been wooed by a guy who beat the shit out of you then told you it'd never happen again. Because you'd never be alone in a dark alley, or with a guy you couldn't handle. Right?"

For a few seconds, Dido said nothing. Mercifully the light turned to green and Lena sped up, feeling fury course through her veins. Why, why did she let this stupid woman, this idiotic kid, get to her so much? She knew nothing about the stuff and any of the charitable assumptions she sprinkled around should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet she found it hard to. Apparently Lena had had it coming. Maybe she was fucked in the head, too. Malfunctioning, like a cheap knockoff toy hurled at the wall during a tantrum and then discarded in the junk drawer until someone thought to throw her out. A reject. Refuse.

Eventually, Dido said: "I know what happened to you."

"Congratulations", Lena said. She stepped on the brake at full force; the car behind her honked. "Get out."

"What?"

"I've had it with your bullshit. Get the fuck out. Walk the rest of the way. Keep walking for all I care."

"You can't be serious."

"Unlike you I say exactly what I mean."

She had no earthly means to force Dido out of the car short of pulling out her gun, and they both knew it. She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not moving until you get out."

"I just thought I should let you know - "

"That you fucking googled me. Yeah, thanks. So does everyone who fucking meets me. Good to know that the first and only bit of research you've done in the past couple of days is completely irrelevant to the case. Get out."

"No", Dido said obstinately, then added: "And if Isherwood finds out about - "

"Isherwood is an inch away from firing your ass already. I don't work for him. He doesn't care what I do and he sure as shit doesn't trust you. You wanna take that chance, be my guest."

"Don't pretend you're not trying to get into the homicide squad", Dido said. Lena laughed bitterly.

"I'm not after your job, you moron. I have a one year old and no one else to take care of her. Where the fuck am I going to find a nanny I can afford when they drag me out of my bed at three AM?"

That shut her up.

"Yeah", Lena said. "I didn't think so. Nobody's interested in your fucking opinions. Learn to do your fucking job first."

Dido said nothing. She looked ready to burst into tears, though she didn't get out of the car. Fuming, Lena started the engines again. They didn't speak until they got to the bank.

Chapter 15

Unlike last time, the bank was more than cooperative. Lena sensed James Herriman had not been popular - which didn't surprise her in the slightest - and that he probably would've been fired anyway. His manager told her as much: that his behaviour had been increasingly erratic, that he was often late, that he was rude to the others and that he was underperfoming. When Lena asked the man if he'd known about Herriman's coke habit he'd shifted in his seat and said no, and he'd known that she knew that he was lying.

The man she spoke to was well dressed, and even her untrained eye could see that his suit was bespoke, though he took off his jacket fairly soon after entering the board room. She sat on one side of the table along with a grey-haired matron who'd been working Vice for several decades. The manager sat on the other side. A corporate lawyer had taken her place at the head of the table. So far the woman had contributed nothing, which told her that they were ready to throw Herriman under the bus as long as it didn't cost them. Dido sat next to her, under strict instructions not to say anything unless the building was on fire and she was the only one to notice. So far, she had complied. Lena had told her to take notes that she occasionally could glance at to make the lawyer and the manager nervous, but it hadn't been necessary.

She asked: "So how did Mr Herriman come to work for you?"

"He studied finance at Emory", the manager said. "He came to us when he was about to graduate."

"Why did you pick him for the job?"

"He was the best candidate on offer", the manager said, shifting in his seat. Another lie. For a banker, the man had a lousy poker face. She asked: "So you didn't hire him because he hails from a rich family?"

"His family has been a customer of our company for many years", the manager answered. Or non-answered. She understood suddenly that he wasn't nervous or a bad liar; he was just trying to tell her what she needed to hear without creating a liability for himself or the bank. That could have been a problem in a possible court case except that Herriman's malperformance had been meticulously recorded in his employment records and the bank was freely dishing the details.

"Alright", she said. "So you hired him because he was the best guy for the job and because he already knew your bank because his family put their money here?"

"Some of their finances are handled by us, yes", the man said. "Unfortunately I can't go into details."

"Fair enough", Lena said, not because she agreed but because she'd never get them without a court order and if she played it smart, Vice would get them for her. "So he has been working here for how long?'

"About four years, I believe." He seemed to mull it over. "Four to four and a half years, yes."

"And was he causing problems from the get-go?"

"No", the manager said. "At first, he was a good employee. Diligent, willing to learn and moderately successful. But as time passed he appeared to be more erratic. Some of his coworkers found him to be increasingly arrogant." No surprises there.

But the bank didn't know about the girl, didn't know about Sunny or Henry, didn't know the company Henry worked for. Allen Danes had confirmed as much, so she was willing to believe it.

After the manager had left, Dido asked: "okay, so what do we do now?"

The vice woman sent Lena a curious glance across the table. Lena supposed she should have asked Dido to come up with the answer herself, but she lacked a good teacher's patience, so she said: "You're going to ask everyone about their alibis."

"Everyone?"

"According to the manager they hated his guts. They'll probably have to log onto the network, use key cards to enter the building, that shit. Make a list, ask them, then verify. Don't skip anyone, even if you think they're in the clear. Make sure." She got up. Dido asked: "Where are you going?"

"Autopsy", she said. She nodded at the veteran from vice, then left without saying goodbye.

Devin was happy to have a little bit more to work with this time. Lena watched him work, feeling strangely detached from it all. She remembered the last time she'd spoken to Sunny. It seemed like it had been years ago. Tomorrow was the weekend. Before Hannah, she would not have minded coming in on Saturdays and Sundays; in fact, she would have relished it. There was nothing for her at home. At work was where she felt alive, like she mattered. Now, all she could think of was Hannah, being at day care six days in a row, and the bill they were going to send her for it. She wanted nothing more than to sleep until Hannah woke her up, have a lazy breakfast in their pajamas, shower together, load Hannah into her pram and go for a walk, maybe visit a playground if the weather wasn't too hot. Get ice cream that she would smear all over her face and into her hair and watch her pick fights with other, bigger toddlers at the playground. Lena wasn't sure who she'd gotten that from. It could go either way.

"Unidentified female, presumed to be the body of Miss Sunny Madigan, aged, thirty-five", Devin told his dictaphone. "Both head and feet are missing, hands are present and have been fingerprinted. Aside from the missing head and feet, no other injuries are present. The body appears to have been exsanguinated, possibly due to decapitation." He turned over the hands. "There is a blue-ish residue present on both hands." He looked at Lena, and she helpfully provided: "Sunny liked to paint. She painted a bunch of blue flowers on the side of the house before she disappeared."

"Was she any good?"

"No", Lena said, not bothering to oversell it. Sunny had been a shitty painter and she didn't feel obligated to lie about that.

"Alright", Devin said. He used a scalpel to scrape off some of the blue skin for chemical analysis, a procedure which would cost a lot of money and that would tell them what they already knew. Still, she had to be done. If Sara Linton had taught her anything, it was that forensic science was all about being thorough. If you ever wanted to use anything you found during an autopsy in court, you'd have to make sure it was airtight or lawyers would poke holes into your carefully crafted case, and so Devin measured and weighed and photographed everything, labelled vials and tissue samples carefully, logged everything he did on his dictaphone. Her phone rang when he was almost done; she excused herself before she answered. It was Dido, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Are you still at the autopsy?", she asked.

"Yes." She waited impatiently.

"Right. Well, I, uh, I talked to the team members here and they all seem to have alibis, so…"

"They seem to?", Lena snapped.

"Yeah, I uh - " Dido took a breath. "First I asked them, made a list. Most of them were working the nights both Sunny and Henry disappeared, 'cause it was a weeknight. Some of them were home with their partners. I know they make for crappy alibis, but I got the key card data from the company like you suggested. They work at night so the only way in or out of the bank is by using one of those electronic key cards, otherwise the door doesn't open. Everyone who told me they were working was inside the building and everyone else was at home. One guy was out with two friends and they both corroborated the story. I got security footage of the main and secondary exit from the bank, too. They have a fire escape as well, but there are no cameras there. Iit has an alarm that's set to go off. I asked security to check the alarm and it hasn't been disabled, so it's unlikely that that exit was used." She paused. "Also, nobody's heard of the company Henry works for, so…"

Dido had managed to surprise her again. Lena was a little taken aback that she'd thought to check the alarms on the fire escape. It wasn't something she'd have thought of in her early days, that was for sure.

"Alright", she allowed, knowing she should probably pay her a compliment. "Meet me back at the office. Isherwood's going to want an update."

"It's like Alice in Wonderland", Dido said. "Curiouser and curiouser."

Lena had never read it, so she ignored the remark. They were in the mostly empty squad room, ogling a whiteboard where Lena had tried and failed to draw out a map. Mostly, the board was empty. She'd written down SUNNY AND HENRY on one side and JAMES HERRIMAN on the other, and a big question mark in the middle. Someone had killed Sunny and Henry and was trying to frame Herriman for it, yet ostensibly there was nothing to link them. They couldn't ask Sunny or Henry and Allen Danes had ruled out Henry's workplace as a possible connection to the bank, so it was Herriman they needed. Except, as Isherwood had told them ten minutes earlier, Herriman had fashioned a noose out of a bedsheet and had hung himself in the early hours of the morning. Uncharacteristically he had been successful, so now there was little else to do but guess. It was possible the killer would strike again, but equally possible that he wouldn't.

"Maybe he just thought these two were annoying", Isherwood had said. Mulling it over, Lena paged through the file on her computer and asked: "What was that neighbour's name?"

"Who?"

"The guy who found the body. Who took in Boulder."

Dido blanked.

"The dog."

"Oh, him."

"Yeah, him. What's his name?"

Dido looked at her hands, and Lena rolled her eyes though she obviously didn't know either. It took her a minute to find it.

"Sean Johnson", she said. "Aged thirty-six, lives next door. Lives alone, but his alibi is his smartwatch with GPS tracker." She paused. "That can't be hard to fake."

"Why would he - "

"Because they were fucking terrible neighbours and he seemed just a little bit too eager to talk to us." She had to admit it was flimsy. "Look, I'm not saying he definitely did it, but we've got nothing else to go on. We might as well look into it."

"He's the one who found the body", Dido provided. "Didn't hear anything at night."

"That's plausible enough", Lena said. "Hard to verify either way."

"How about the other neighbours?"

"Staying with friends. They left after Henry's body was found."

"That's shady."

"Yeah, but they've been in Tennessee since then. Friends vouched for them."

"Do we have any other way of checking that?" Friends were unreliable witnesses, especially if you couldn't prove otherwise.

Lena said: "Ask them what time they left and we'll check their license plate, see if any traffic cameras picked them up."

Dido sighed, nodded, then picked up the phone. Lena tuned out as she verified that the neighbours had been where they said they'd been. It was a long shot anyway. Probably they were just nervous about being black and living next to a murdered couple. Probably Sean Johnson was just an annoying guy who lived alone and worked from home and seized any chance he got to socialise.

She googled his name and eventually found his LinkedIn, though she had to add 'Atlanta Metropolitan' to her search before she found him. He was an independent IT consultant. Her heart skipped a beat when she scanned the list of companies he claimed to have worked for. Albrech Fenimore was on the list. Almost five years down, but there it was; he'd worked with them, or for them - she wasn't sure how those contracts worked. She kicked Dido, who was still on the phone, and turned the laptop screen towards her.

"I'll call you back later", Dido said. She squinted as she looked at the screen.

"That's the other neighbour, right?"

"Worked as an independent contractor for Albrecht Fenimore", Lena said. "Five years ago, but it's something."

"Okay", Dido said, evidently not sure whether or not enthusiasm was merited. "And now?"

"Now we go to talk to the bank again", Lena said.

"Why aren't we going straight to Johnson himself?", Dido asked. "What if he gets away?"

"Look, all we know is that he worked for a bank that also employed James Herriman. There's no guarantee they knew each other. Johnson worked there in 2016, according to his LinkedIn page, though he doesn't say which month. Herriman started there in August, so they might have missed each other altogether."

"So why not - "

"Because if it IS him, we don't want to spook him. We want to have as much as we can without alarming him. If he's our guy we want to make it clear to him that he's got no other options but to confess."

"But what if he does a runner?"

"He hasn't so far." She picked up her phone. "I'll ask dispatch to do a drive-by, see if he's still at home. But honestly, some guys just want to be caught."

Dido mumbled something, but just then dispatch picked up and Lena told them to get a cruiser over to Sean Johnson's house to check his whereabouts.

The bank manager, like last time, was helpful enough. He hadn't been at the Atlanta office in 2016, he told them, but a quick search in the bank's internal system revealed that Sean Johnson had done some programming for them - in August, the same month James Herriman had started his job.

"But it's unlikely they met", the manager told her. "Independent IT contractors do most of their work from home. He was probably here only once or twice."

"How does that work?", Lena asked. "If you hire a guy like that, I mean. Presumably you meet beforehand?"

"Well, we put out an advert specifying what we want and they make us an offer. We call in the ones we like best and discuss payment, and then we pick one of them. They do the work, we pay them. Sometimes they're here for a couple of hours if it's stuff that can't be installed from a distance." He checked his computer. "There was nothing remarkable about his performance. He delivered what he offered, and he did it on time. His work was average and so was his price. My predecessor - who hired him - was a little miffed that he went over the agreed amount of hours, but nothing major. It wasn't that big a deal. He was just… Unremarkable, I guess."

That was familiar. She asked: "Was James Herriman involved in IT or decision making about IT in any way?"

"Only inasmuch as he used the same software everyone else did and that some of the software we use was developed specially for us by Mr Johnson."

That wasn't a lot to go on.

She thanked him for his time, feeling disappointed even though none of this was unexpected. The choice she had to make now was to either abandon this incredibly tenuous lead and go back to the drawing board, or to pursue it, knowing that it was probably a coincidence. Sean Johnson had worked with dozens of companies; one two month job six years ago said little.

Predictably, Dido asked: "So what's next?"

"It's your case, you tell me", Lena told her as she got in the car.

"Right", Dido said. "But - " She paused. "Maybe we should look at Herriman's finances?"

"Vice're probably all over them", Lena said. "Why?"

"Well, what if he did meet Johnson, somehow, and asked him to work for him? Y'know, on the side?"

"For what?"

"He had a pretty impressive IT setup at home", Dido said. Lena was surprised she'd even noticed. She'd seemed too preoccupied with the girl. "Alright", she said. "Let's go do that."

They drove over to Marietta St, where Vice was located. The desk sergeant sent them up to the second floor to talk to Lissey Stevenson, the woman they'd met at the bank. Her office was a cluttered mess, though she seemed not to care when they walked through her door.

"Detectives", she said without taking her eyes off her computer screen. Her two-fingered typing reminded Lena of Jeffrey, but this time she had more than enough to distract herself as she explained the situation. But the woman shook her head, without ever taking her eyes off the computer screen.

"No Sean Johnson in his admin. You could ask Herriman's daddy-

but he's pretty lawyered up, so…"

"Could you check again?", Dido asked, which Lena could've told her was useless. The woman rattled some more on her ancient-looking keyboard, though she might have been playing tetris voor all Lena could tell. Again, she shook her head.

"How's the girl?", Lena asked, both to distract her and because she didn't want to seem uncaring. Lissey Stevenson shrugged.

"Doped up. She's flying home tomorrow. Vietnamese police will take her home." Her tone was callous and dismissive, which at least explained why she'd been able to work Vice for so long. Lena wondered if they were making the girl fly back to her homeland alone, and what would be waiting for her there. Was there family? Would they be happy to see her? Would they care, would they help her, or would they treat her like a piece of trash? Would she be desperate enough to put her trust in someone else who may or may not put her in the same predicament?

"Thanks for your help", she said dully, and the woman replied "sure thing, hon" in a saccharine tone dripping in sarcasm.

"Bitch", Lena muttered underneath her breath as they left the office. Dido asked: "so do you believe her?"

"She'd be in a shitton of trouble if she lied and it got out, so yeah, I do." She marched back to the car. Back to the drawing board. Literally. There had to be something. She didn't want to go talk to Sean Johnson with nothing to back up her hunch. She wanted something concrete, something to beat him on the head with, to force down his throat, to make him feel just how fucking tiresom this stupid goose chase had been. She'd gladly have pulled her gun on him to make him confess to make this deeply stupid case go away.

Then, on a whim, she dialled Allen Danes' number.

"Who are you calling?", Dido asked, but Lena ignored her. He picked up at the fifth ring, probably because he enjoyed making people wait.

"Detective Adams! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I was just wondering", she said. "Imagine I'm an independent contractor. I work for a company. One of the employees asks me to do something for them on the side. Would I do it?"

"Depends on your contract", Allen Danes said. "Often firms don't like it when the tech guys use the stuff they write both on and off the work floor. Should be in the contract, but those are not easy to get for third parties."

"Okay, but if I wanted a side hustle and it was lucrative enough, how would I avoid being caught?"

"Well, it's unlikely you'll be caught in the first place because corporations don't have access to the private finances of their employees, so you'd probably just do it anyway. Unless someone ratted on you or you were stupid enough to tell someone, it would probably never come out."

"And if it was something illegal?"

"What kind of illegal are we talking about?"

"Not sure", she said, wondering how much she should give away. "Say you wanted to look at child pornography, or you wanted to go onto the dark web for all sorts of shenanigans - "

"Well, if you're a reputable business you wouldn't get into that. The risk is way, way bigger than the payoff would probably be."

"Yeah, but for the sake of argument - "

"Is this about the Herriman case?"

"Yes", she said reluctantly. He chuckled. "What kind of theory are you concocting?"

"He had a pretty major IT setup, apparently. He wasn't a tech guy himself. I was wondering if someone set it up for him and …"

"...And then found out what he was doing and…?"

"James Herriman didn't kill Sunny Madigan and Henry Ionesco", she told him. "He did plenty of other shit, but someone tried to frame him for the murders. I'm trying to figure out who, and if I know why then - "

"You don't think you're going about this backwards?" He laughed again, and she wanted to punch him. Ten years ago she would have snapped at him to not tell her how to do her fucking job, but she didn't have the time or the energy to enter into another round of back and forth bitching, so she pressed on: "Imagine I'm a contractor. I work for you even though my company doesn't allow - "

"I didn't say they wouldn't allow it. I say they might not - "

"But for the sake of argument, let's say I'm not allowed to work for you. I'm worried about being caught so I want to be careful. What do I do?"

"Well, first of all, you register under a different name", he said. "A one-man shell company, if you please. It'll cost you a few bucks to register but you could potentially bill your client, especially if he's asking you to do something illegal because then he's in no position to complain."

"But if I do something illegal for him that goes both ways", she pointed out.

"Yeah, and therein lies the rub. You got dirt on him, he got dirt on you. You think that's what happened? That still doesn't explain how the two victims got involved."

There wasn't really a way for her to get what she wanted to know without spelling it out for him, so she said: "this is a long shot, but Henry and Sunny's neighbour is a bit… Odd. We know he worked as an independent contractor for Albrecht Feniman. He's an IT specialist. He started there the same month as Herriman, but he worked from home so it's unlikely that they met. It's the only connection we have."

"So you figured he maybe did a side hustle for Herriman, it went sour, so he got him out of the way by killing his neighbours and framing him. Okay, but why the neighbours? Were they just an unlucky coincidence? And why all the theatrics?"

Too late, she realised she should have put her phone on speaker so Dido could have listened in. These were the questions she should have been asking, questions that needed to be asked, that her partner could've bounced off of, thought out loud, talked themselves to a conclusion step by step. Instead, she stared out of the window with a bored expression on her face, and Lena's faint sense of guilt faded like a doused flame.

She said: "The theatrics, I don't know. I do know they were abjectly terrible neighbours. I don't know if that's why they were killed, but people have been killed for smaller reasons, plus as their neighbour he had the opportunity. But I need to connect Herriman to the neighbour. I need a reason why he would frame Herriman."

"Aside from the whole torture, imprisonment, rape thing?"

"He probably didn't know about that."

"Unless he abused the neighbour too."

"Not likely. We only found images of girls on his computer, plus the neighbour is a lot older than his preferred age bracket."

"Fair enough", Danes said. "What's the neighbour's name?"

They'd arrived at Peachtree station; she got out of the car and entered the building, pressing the button to the second floor, where financial crimes was located.

"Sean Johnson", she said. Danes groaned. "He couldn't have picked a more original name? I'll see what I can find. Give me a couple of hours."

"I'm on my way to your office right now", she said. That seemed to take him off guard.

"My office? Lady, I have shit to do."

"So do I", she reminded him. "This has gone on for long enough, the press is going to catch wind of this any moment now and I want the whole damn thing solved before they do or before he kills someone else. I'll sic Isherwood on you if I have to." She hung up as she entered his office. He didn't look particularly busy; he was still slumped in his seat and had his phone to his ear when she came in. She didn't waste any time holding the door open for Dido.

"Theoretically, if Sean Johnson registered as a shell company, how hard would that be to find?"

"Not very hard", Allen Danes said. "If you know the right people at Commerce."

"Do you?"

"Oh, I might, or I might not." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't like being pushed around, detective Adams."

"You want me to tell your boss you were twiddling thumbs while someone else gets killed?" She sat down on his desk, gave his phone a push towards him. "Go ahead. I'll listen in. It'll save you the time of having to explain it."

He squinted his eyes at her. "Hey, have you ever watched Brooklyn 99?"

"Make the damn call, Danes."

He chuckled condescendingly, probably because he knew she had him there but didn't want to let on, then lazily picked up his phone and dialled the number.

"I'll do it", he said. "But only because I'm curious now."

She knew better than to tell him off, and waited impatiently as he chit chatted to the guy on the other end of the line before finally asking about Sean Johnson.

"And?", she asked when he hung up.

"Sean Johnson works under his own name but also sort of semi-anonymously as White Stoat IT Solutions." Allen Danes opened his computer and she could tell that he, in spite of himself, was curious too. He typed the name into the search engine; she bent down to read the screen.

"White Stoat IT solutions, Atlanta, GA. He has a website, so let's see…" He entered the search command, and a barebones website popped up, an image of a white ferrety creature snaking along the top. It listed a number of services, though not in great detail, and gave little contact details. It was enough to fly under the radar to a casual observer but to Lena, it seemed shady as hell.

"It doesn't list who he worked for", Alan Danes said as he browsed through the website. "That's an indication that his clients probably valued privacy, so he'd have to have word of mouth to keep him going."

"Right", Lena said. "So is there any way of figuring out who he worked for?"

"Well, you could subpoena his finances but you'd need something better than what you have to get them."

"I know. So how - "

"Well, can you get access to Herriman's financial statements?"

"Vice has them."

Danes grinned. "Who?"

"Detective Lissey Stevenson", Dido helpfully provided. Danes' grin spread further across his face into a Cheshire Cat grin.

"Ah, yeah. Tread carefully there. Apparently someone dropped a house on top of her when she was in Munchkinland and she's been in a foul mood ever since."

"We know", Lena assured him. "Thanks for your help. We'll ask her."

"No bother", he said. "I'll do it for you." He picked up the phone again and winked her her. "She likes me. Or doesn't hate me as much as she hates everyone else." He waited for a second until she picked up, then said: "Detective Stevenson, how are - " He frowned. "Nice to talk to you too. Could you do me a favour and share Herriman's files with me?" He paused again. "You ARE supposed to do that, sweetpea. No, just click - " He rolled his eyes. "It's really not that hard, Lissey. You just click the export-button and then you download it as an excel file." He put his hands over his eyes. "No, they want us to do that now. No. No, my fax machine's bust and then you'd have to print it. Just click - "

Lena tuned out, glad she didn't have to deal with detective Stevenson. Dido asked: "So have you ever watched Brooklyn 99?"

"No, why?", she said defensively. Dido shrugged. "No reason. It's a funny show."

Lena ignored that. Back in Grant County she'd worked with Jeffrey and Frank for close to a decade without ever telling them what her favourite TV show was and as far as she was concerned that wasn't about to change.

"Okay", Allen Danes was saying on the phone. "That's right. Just email - " He lifted the phone away from his face. "Well, fuck you too Lissey." He put his phone down on his desk. "She hung up on me. She had a lion, a tin man and that fucking kid in those red shoes to chase down the yellowbrick road."

"Did she get you - "

"Yep." He opened his email; sure enough, there was a message from detective Stevenson with an attachment and no text. He opened the attachment.

"There was no Sean Johnson", Lena said. "We already checked that."

"Right. Let's see…" He used the search box and typed in White Stoat. Sure enough, it lit up: a credit card payment of five thousand dollars had been made to White Stoat IT solutions, specified only as 'Home IT station'.

"Shoulda used cash, buddy", Danes said.

On a whim, Lena asked: "What's the billing address for White Stoat?"

Danes clicked back onto the website. "12 Furlough Drive."

"That sounds familiar", Lena said. She was about to ask him to Google it when Dido said: "That's the address of the pool where we found Henry's head."

Chapter 16

"Should we call for backup?", Dido asked nervously as they drove down.

"We have backup", Lena told her. "They know we're here. Wear a vest. That's as far as we'll need to go."

They were driving out to Furlough Drive on a hunch. They'd sent a squad car over to check Sean Johnson's house, but he wasn't answering the door and his car was gone. They could've waited for him to get back but it was time to get it over with. That didn't mean she wasn't feeling uneasy about it, though. The pool complex was a mad, labyrinthine chaos of tubes and basins and tall weeds. It was a bad hiding place because it traced back to him quite easily, but it offered tons of shelter and it was perfect for ambushing a bunch of cops.

"How thoroughly did you guys search the place when you found the head?", she asked. Dido said: "I don't know. I left it to forensics, but they didn't have the manpower to tear the place apart. It's huge." She was clutching the handle above the door, clearly nervous. She looked queasy. Lena prayed she wasn't going to hurl all over the car.

"Remember, we're just going to talk", she said. "If he asks, we can say we're looking for clues about the case and we went here because that's where Henry's head was found."

Dido shook her head. "I don't like this", she said. "It's too convenient. I feel like we're walking into a trap."

Silently, Lena agreed, but the tenuous connection they'd found wasn't enough to warrant a major SWAT intervention, and anyway, that would do them no good in a place like that. They'd need an army battalion to effectively comb through the site.

"Gates are open", Dido said when they approached, and Lena felt her neck hairs stand on end as she drove through the abandoned parking lot. A single car was parked in front of the entrance. Sean Johnson's car: an unassuming silver Nissan Sentra. It stood besides the park's old front gate, an arch of two dolphins touching their noses. She parked her car at some distance, on the other side of the dolphin gate, and killed the engine.

"Dispatch knows we're here", she says. "There's vests in the trunk of the car. I need you to follow my lead. Don't spook him. Don't get too close. Don't pull out your gun but make sure your holster's open. Be alert. Run for cover if you need to."

"We should wait for patrol to - "

Lena got out of the car, reminded herself she'd faced tougher perps than Sean Johnson, then resolutely walked through the gate.

Though it was surely all in her mind, the place appeared even more derelict than last time. It was as if the weeds had doubled in height, the graffiti was more plentiful and more offensive, the faded plastic even paler and dirtier. She followed the winding concrete across the bridge over the lazy river, which led her to the park's central pool. There was nobody to be seen. Sean Johnson could be anywhere. He could be lying in wait for them in the tall grass, or hidden in one of the slides, laughing his ass off or taking aim at them.

Suddenly, she felt Dido's hand on her shoulder, and she stopped in her tracks. Dido said: "over there."

"Where?" It took her a while to see it. In the distance she saw a diving tower, the sort that has diving boards up at three and ten feet from the water and concrete slabs at higher altitudes. At the very top she could see a man, lying flat on his stomach. Whether or not he could see them was unclear from such a distance; she was amazed Dido had spotted him in the first place.

"Shit", she hissed, dropping down to hide behind the tall grass. Dido followed suit but said: "You think he didn't see us already?"

"I'm not taking my chances", Lena said. "Take cover and follow me."

She crouched further down the end of the bridge, then went behind the pool where Henry's head had been so they could approach the diving tower from behind. As they got closer she could see clearly that the man on top of the diving tower was Sean Johnson, lying on his stomach, staring at the murky bottom of the pool. He appeared not to pay them any attention, though that didn't mean he hadn't noticed them.

Hoping to catch him by surprise they went around the back. Lena wondered how deep the pool was. She guessed at least fifteen feet, most of it now empty. Add the thirty or so feet of the top platform to it and they were looking at a significant drop. No way was she going up there.

They were almost at the platform when, out of nothing, Johnson called out.

"Detectives! Good of you to join me. I have to say that was quicker than I anticipated." He sat up, looking down at the weeds. Quietly, she swore. She guessed he'd heard them, but wasn't exactly sure where they were.

He said: "Will you guys please come up here? I don't want to have to shout." He raised his hands in the air. "I'm unarmed. You guys are not. You can stay by the side of the ladder, I'll stay by the edge of the platform. You'll have the upper hand, I promise."

Somehow, she doubted that, but still she stood up, carefully watching his movements, and said: "why don't you come down?"

"Nah, I'm good", he said. "I'm not gonna hurt you or detective Lott, I promise. You guys did nothing to piss me off. I just need a word with either one of you and then you can take me in, I promise."

"We can't", Lena said. "Ýou see why that wouldn't work, right?"

"It'd be perfectly safe", he told her. "Is it the structural integrity of the thing you're worried about?" Her heart skipped a beat as he jumped up and down. "See? Tough as a rock. The ladders are pretty firm too. Trust me, I come up here all the time."

"Why?", she asked, hoping to keep him talking, but he didn't fall for it.

"Come up here and then we can talk." He sat down again, legs dangling over the edge. "I mean, detective Lott is still hiding, so I guess it'll be you, right? That's okay with me. I feel like I've known you for a while."

"What do you mean by that?", she asked, but he shook his head. "Come up here if you want to talk. Take out your gun if it makes you feel better, though there's really no reason. I'm not interested in hurting you or escaping."

"I've heard that before", she said, and he chuckled. "Fair enough, but I'm not coming down, so…" He sat down at the edge of the platform, and she told him: "Sean, I need you to move away from the edge."

"I'm not gonna jump", he told her. "If I wanted to jump I would've done it before you guys got here."

She trusted him about as far as she could throw him, but it was hard to argue the point so she said: "Sean, please come down."

He whistled something and picked at his fingernails.

"Shit", Dido said. "Now what?"

"Give me cover", she told Dido. "You see him move, shoot him."

"You're going up there? Are you insane?!"

"Jury's out", she said wryly, then turned and told Johnson: "Alright, I'll come up, but I need you to do something for me."

"Sure thing, detective Adams." He seemed remarkably cheerful for a man who was about to be arrested, which made her think he had other ideas. Whether those involved jumping down the ramp and ending his own life or something more nefarious, she did not know. But there was nobody else here to take care of it.

"I need you to stand up in the middle of the ramp with your hands in the air. My partner is armed. She will shoot if you make a move. Do you understand?"

"I understand", he said calmly.

"This is not protocol", Dido hissed at her and she said: "Yeah, no shit." As if someone sat in an office thinking up unlikely scenarios just in case a homicidal maniac showed up on top of a tall diving tower in the middle of an abandoned waterpark.

She had to holster her gun to climb the ladders. They were firm enough, but the plastic footholds were cracked and gone in places, making the rungs slippery. It made her even more nervous. She climbed the ladder up to the first platform and tried not to look down into the empty pool as she started on the second one. Her foot slipped on the second rung, and she banged her hip into the side of the ladder, the cuffs she wore on her belt clanging loudly against the metal.

"You alright, Detective?", Johnson called out, and she said "yes" through gritted teeth. Her hip throbbed as she climbed up. When she got to the last ladder she finally glanced down. They were up high, higher than it had looked from the ground. Dido, still crouched in the tall grass, seemed impossibly tiny. She swallowed hard, prayed it would be worth taking the risk, and set out to climb the last ladder.

Johnson was still in the middle of the ramp when she climbed up, his hands in the air, standing perfectly still. She kept her distance, moving to the side so she could feel the metal rail in her back. The last thing she wanted was to take a step backwards and accidentally fall off. The rail moved slightly when she leaned against it, like it might give way any time now, and she shuddered. Johnson, watching her carefully, said: "would you prefer it if we sat down?"

"Go ahead", she told him, though she had no plans to do so herself. Johnson said: "I thought it might make you feel better. I'm not going to hurt you, don't worry."

"Why don't you tell me why you're up here?", she asked. He seemed to be amused by the question.

"That's interesting", he said. "Actually, I've been coming here for a while. Nobody's ever around except for a few urbexers." He began to lower his hands, but she told him: "keep your hands up."

"My arms are getting kind of tired", he told her. She put her hand on her holster; he got the message and kept them up, rolling his shoulders in an exaggerated fashion. His bland face seemed as pleasant as ever, but something told her she wasn't going to forget it so easily this time.

"Boulder died this morning", he said. "The dog, I mean."

"What happened to him?", she asked. Hastily, he added: "I didn't kill him. He was just… Old, I guess. Pitties aren't always the healthiest breed, and besides he was pretty fat. He was fine last night, and when I got up this morning he was dead. I think it happened in his sleep." He didn't seem particularly sad about it. "It just made me think, you know?"

"About what?", she said. He took a step backwards, and she told him: "Don't move."

"I'm not going to jump", he repeated, and again she asked him: "then why are we up here?"

"I figured you're gonna put me away for a long time", he told her. "I thought I'd get some air while I could. Enjoy the view."

"Why am I gonna put you away, Sean?"

He chuckled. "You remembered my first name! That's nice."

"Answer the question, please." She wasn't sure whether to push him hard or to cajole him. He seemed unimpressed either way.

He told her: "I think we both know the answer, right?"

"Sean, what did you do?"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, yeah, I get it. You need a confession. Let's wait for the others to join us, shall we?"

She hadn't noticed, but a small cluster of uniformed cops was now surrounding the diving tower, their weapons all aimed at Sean. It wouldn't be easy to hit him from down there, but it'd be possible.

"Hold your fire!", she shouted down. They didn't reply, their eyes trained on Johnson. He took another step backwards.

"Sean, step away from the edge."

"I'm not going to jump", he said. "I would've done it already if I wanted to do it. I don't think I'd want an audience." He peered down. "And anyway, the water would make it risky. Might be enough to break my fall."

"You'd still be hurt." The water was only a foot or two deep.

"Oh, I'd break a bunch of bones. I have no illusions about getting away, don't worry. I'm just saying, there's better ways to off oneself."

"Stop moving", she told him. "Tell me what happened with Sunny and Henry, Sean."

"Well", he said, and he sighed heavily. "I killed them."

It didn't come as a surprise but still her heart skipped a beat. She said: "tell me what happened."

"Mind if we sit down?'", he said, though he didn't wait for her to answer him. Moving slowly so as not to startle anyone, he sat down on the concrete, then told her: "please sit down. It's awkward enough as it is."

She hesitated, then crouched down in front of the metal rail, hand still on her weapon. He studied her carefully.

"That can't be comfortable. C'mon, sit down."

"Sean, what happened with Sunny and Henry?"

He chuckled again, only this time the sound was bitter. He said: "they were insufferable. I don't think I have to tell you that. I watched you and detective Al-Jaseem come to their door over and over again. Weren't you frustrated?" He didn't wait for the answer. "I was. And them made so much noise. The fights, the sex, just… everything. They treated their dog like crap." He shook his head, as if that were the worst of it. "I used to love Fleetwood Mac and then they ruined it for me." He looked sad. "Truth is, I don't really know how it happened. It just sort of did."

He'd built a guillotine. The whole thing had taken planning and dedication; it certainly hadn't just happened, as if on accident. She asked: "So that's why you killed them?"

"I bet you've seen my financial statements by now, right?", he said. "I'm going under. Can't afford my house anymore. I loved that house. I was so proud when I got it. How's James Herriman?"

"Dead", she told him. "He committed suicide."

Johnson nodded. "Good. He was an asshole."

"Did you know about - "

"The girl in the basement? Nah, I heard on the news. I would've called you guys if I'd known it was that bad. No, I installed his home IT system. Got him on the dark web. He said he wanted to start dealing in cryptocurrency. That was some bullshit, you don't need the dark web for that. So I started digging. I found out - " He swallowed. "He likes them young. It was awful. I really wish I hadn't seen that. When I told him he just kind of laughed it off and told me it was my fault for showing him how to do it."

"Why didn't you call us?", she said. He shrugged. "I was the one who helped him get onto the dark web. He paid well and I needed the money and then he told me I was basically an accessory, and he could afford better lawyers than me. And then I got home and heard Sunny and Henry go at it, and I just figured - "

"That you'd kill them and blame Herriman for them."

He nodded.

"It was harder than I thought", he said. "You know how I did it?"

"You built a guillotine", she said. He seemed surprised that she'd figured it out.

"Can they really tell that from an autopsy? That's impressive." He looked behind her and said: "there's a barn of some sorts near the end of the terrain, behind the staff room. That's where I put it. They stored a bunch of old halloween decorations there. I figured if anyone came across it they'd think it was part of the decor."

"Why a guillotine?"

"I don't really know", he said. "Work's been slow for a while. I had a lot of time to myself. I used to like history, so I just started reading wikipedia pages. I read about the French revolution for a bit and then, well, one thing led to another. I built it a few months ago. Chopped a couple of melons in half to see if it'd work. I didn't think I'd have the guts to use it on people."

"How'd you get them to go along with it?"

"Henry was out in his yard this one evening", he said. "He kept calling for Boulder, even though the dog was inside. He was high. He didn't do a lot of drugs, but now he was just… Or maybe he was just blackout drunk. And then Sunny'd locked him out and she didn't want to let him back in. He was kicking up a fuss, and I just… I had enough, you know? So I went up to him, offered to let him sleep on my sofa. He didn't take a lot of convincing. He passed out almost straight away. I duct taped his legs and his arms together, put a bag over his head, then drove him off to this place. I don't think that's what killed him. His heart was still beating when - " He swallowed again. "I mean, I'm not stupid, I knew it'd be bloody, I just didn't expect it to be so bad, you know?"

She did know. The human body contained a staggering amount of blood and she could only imagine how fast it would leave the body if the head was removed in one fell swoop.

"His body just flew backwards when the blade dropped. I hadn't expected that. I found blueprints online, but nothing said that might happen", he said. "He almost took me out, too. Took me ages to clean up. I had to paint over the floor." There was regret in his voice, as if that was the worst part. She asked: "And Sunny?"

He shrugged. "Pretty much the same. She wandered around the neighbourhood sort of aimlessly. I stole some meth from her house when she was gone, then asked her in, asked if she wanted to get high. She didn't even notice they were her own drugs. Or maybe she didn't care, maybe she figured I was going to be her new provider now that her old one was dead."

That surprised her. "Sunny knew it was you?", she asked.

"Not sure", Johnson said. "She was kind of hard to talk to. She saw me, but she's always been incoherent. And I had the smartwatch to back me up in case of emergency, but I didn't think she'd go to the cops. And I didn't think you'd believe her."

That stung. Lena would've looked into it, at least. Then again, he was right. Sunny was blurry at best. Would Lena have bought it if Sunny had told her Henry had been taken by their unassuming, instantly forgettable neighbour? Probably not. But she would have checked.

She asked: "You had an alibi. You had the watch."

He laughed. "Honestly, that was super easy to fake. I didn't think it'd keep you at bay forever. I figured eventually, you'd figure out it was me. I just tinkered with the software so I could set the date on the thing, change it around. So I was actually home on the fifteenth, not the sixteenth, except my watch thought it was the sixteenth. And if I'd had a friend I could've just asked them to wear it. But I didn't want you to suspect me straight away, so I thought this might just put it off for a few days."

"What happened with Sunny?" Her legs were beginning to hurt from squatting down for so long, but she didn't want to startle him by getting up.

"Pretty much the same", he said. "She took the drugs. I gave her some alcohol too, just to make sure. She was out pretty quickly. I taped her up, took her to this place." He swallowed. "She woke up. Henry slept right through it, but she woke up. She saw the guillotine, she didn't fight me. I kind of wish she had, but she just looked at me all confused."

I bet, Lena thought. Sunny barely knew where she was most of the time. She'd been high. With the halloween paraphernalia around her, she'd probably thought she was having a nightmare.

"I thought I knew what to expect the second time around", he said. "I used a plastic sheet, I tied the body down, but it was still… Such a mess, you know?" He scooted back a little bit further. She opened her holster and said: "Sean, don't move."

"Did you like the puzzle?", he asked her. "The masks and stuff?"

"Why did you put them there?"

He shrugged. "I just figured I'd make it a little bit more interesting, y'know?"

"You wanted to send us on a wild goose chase", she said. He seemed surprised by that.

"I didn't want to waste your time", he said, eager to clear up the misunderstanding. "Only, I know you guys like a good puzzle, so - "

"We like solving cases", she said. "And we don't actually like it when someone goes around killing people."

"I was surprised they let you on the investigation", he told her. "I mean, I'm sure you're good at it, I just thought, you're in domestic violence. Did you like it? I saw you and your partner come by so often and you two just looked super annoyed. I thought you'd be relieved. I know you wouldn't tell me, but come on."

She wasn't relieved, far from it. Two people were dead on her watch. It felt like the umpteenth failure on her part.

"So the Laetare mask, the Trump mask - "

"I just thought that was funny", he said. "I mean, it looks bizarre. Did it take you long to figure out what it was?"

She ignored the question. "How did you know we were onto you?"

"The other detective", he said. "She has lousy pokerface."

Big surprise there. Lena suppressed a groan. Sean Johnson grinned at her, as if they were sharing a joke. Then, he scooted back a bit further.

"Sean, I need you to slowly move over here, alright?"

He shook his head.

"Yeah, sorry. I lied." He glanced down. "Seems like a terrible idea now, I have to tell you, but I couldn't figure out how to guillotine myself and still talk to you. Besides, I'm not sure I'd have gone through with it, you know? It's different if you've seen it in action." He scooted backwards again. "Sorry. But prison doesn't really seem appealing. You think I'd have gotten the death penalty?"

The question was designed to throw her; she figured it out a millisecond before he hurled himself off the ramp. Without thinking it through she lunged forward, grabbing his leg just as his back went over the edge. She slid forwards, towards the edge. For a moment she thought he would drag her down and they'd both plunge to their deaths, and her heart skipped a beat.

But then her other hand grasped the metal rail that lined the platform. It groaned, but it held. Her arms felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets, even though Sean Johnson was not that heavy for a guy.

"Let go!" He screamed at her. "Fucking bitch, let go!" He tried to kick his legs, but between the concrete and her grip he couldn't move much.

Sweat was beading on her forehead, but she held on. She was going to hold on for as long as she could. The rail groaned again, and she thought of Hannah, who was fifteen months old and liked her toy bunny and strawberry ice cream and was never going to know her mother. The muscles in her arms felt like they were about to tear.

Think, she told herself. The clanging of feet on metal told her help was on the way, but it was a long way up and she might not hold long enough. Sean Johnson began to squirm, and she felt her fingers slip.

In a last-ditch effort she threw up her leg. She couldn't see behind her, but if she could only wrap it around the rail she could buy herself some time. She kicked her leg, but she missed. Her fingers, still wrapped around Johnson's jeans, began to slip even more, and she knew she had only seconds left, if that. She kicked again. If she missed, she would have to let go of either Johnson or the railing, and she might not get to pick.

Briefly, she thought she'd missed again, but then the back of her leg wrapped itself neatly around one of the iron bars. Gingerly, she let go of the railing and used her left hand to grapple for her handcuffs. Johnson kicked again, but this time she was prepared; she switched arms, giving her fatigued left arm a bit of relief, then used it to wrap the cuff around his skinny ankle.

"What the fuck - " he said, but before he knew what was happening properly she'd yanked his leg to the side and hooked the other side of the cuff around the railing, and then he was stuck, dangling off the side of the tower, upside down, in like a fucking Bosch painting. Panting, she rolled onto her back. Her arms felt like jelly. Finally, other people appeared on the platform, and at the back of her head she thought: I should get out of here. God knows how long this thing is going to hold. Her heart was still pounding, and she felt vaguely surprised that she hadn't been reduced to a puddle of bone and jelly in the murky water at the bottom of the pool.

Dido's face appeared above her.

"Are you alright?", she asked.

"Fine", she said curtly, rolling over to her side in an attempt to get up, but her arms wouldn't cooperate. Dido reached out her hand to help her up, and Lena had no option but to take it.

"Christ", Dido said. "I thought for sure he was going to take you with him."

"So did I", Lena replied, surprised by her own candour. She glanced down. She really didn't feel like she could climb the entire way down. Her arms still felt numb. She shook them, hoping to get some sense of sensation back.

"You're bleeding", Dido said. Lena glanced down. Sure enough, the bandage around the cut on her hand was soaked. She groaned.

"Oh, great."

"I'll get one of the paramed-" Dido said, but Lena cut her off. "Don't bother." She took out one of the rubber gloves she kept in her pocket and put it on to stop herself from bleeding all over everthing. "I'll take care of it."

Sean Johnson was quiet as she climbed down. Her legs felt shaky as her feet finally got to solid ground again, and she looked up. From down there it didn't seem quite so high up. Johnson was sitting on the platform. He didn't appear to put up a fight. She imagined he looked disappointed but that might have been projection. It was hard to tell from down here.

She told Dido: "There's a shack behind the former staff break room somewhere at the back of the grounds. That's where the fucking guillotine is, or so he says. Check it out, get forensics on it."

"Okay", Dido said. "Do you need me to give you a ride?"

Lena turned and said nothing as she made her way back to the parking lot.

"Hey!" Dido caught up with her. She hesitated, then said: "What you did up there…"

"... Was stupid", Lena said dully.

"You saved his life."

"Not sure it was worth it." She glanced up. "He killed two people in cold blood and wasted a lot of our time. He confessed so he'll probably avoid the death penalty, which means he'll spend the next fifty or so years on the taxpayer's dime in a state penitentiary."

"That's how the justice system works", Dido said. "And if you didn't think his life was worth saving, why did you?"

"I didn't really think it through", she said. Dido bit her lip, then said: "I don't think I could've done that."

In all honesty, neither did Lena, but then again she hadn't really known what she was capable of until someone put her in that spot. She wasn't in the mood for another fight, so she just said: "Go find that guillotine. Call Isherwood, give him an update. Tell him I'll come in to debrief after I get this checked out." She held up her hand. Dido asked: "can you drive?"

She ignored it, and as other cops began to flood the scene she walked in the opposite direction, towards the parking lot.

Chapter 17

Tex was always happy to see her.

"You caught him? That's great. So did he put up a fight? Christ, you ripped straight through your stitches. All of them. Well, your heart's in it, that much is clear." He dabbed at the cut with a piece of gauze. Lena watched him dully. If she'd expected to feel elated or vindicated, like she had in the past when she'd solved a case, then she was sadly mistaken. She'd talk to Isherwood, he'd tell her thanks, bye, and she'd be back in DV tomorrow, dragging the same people out of each other's hair over and over again until one of them decided to kill the other one, and there'd be more blood on her hands. Literally and figuratively, in this case.

She'd called Tex because she didn't feel like waiting hours in a hospital waiting room and yeah, someone might have called ahead and told them she was coming, and she'd have gotten preferential treatment because she was a cop and she'd just solved a crime, and she would have gotten an actual doctor instead of a nervous student, but it seemed like a hassle. With Tex, at least, she didn't have to talk. He'd do it for her, and he'd be happy to see her because, for some unfathomable reason, he still liked her. Probably because he didn't know her that well.

"I was wondering if he killed anyone else. I'm amazed the press hasn't gotten wind of it yet."

"They will", she said flatly. APD would put it out there themselves because a crime had been solved, within a few days no less, without anyone but two lowlives getting killed and that would make them look good. Her name would be in the paper, maybe. More stuff for people to find when they googled her. Perhaps she should be grateful. Maybe it would finally drive out the story of how she got the other scars on her hands.

"You don't seem thrilled", Tex said, and she told him: "I nearly got myself killed while trying to arrest an idiot who definitely wasn't worth dying for, and he killed two people and wasted a bunch of my time. Why am I supposed to be happy about that?"

"Pfft", he said. "Party pooper. C'mon. Surely this has put you on the radar of the homicide department?"

"I can't work homicide", she said. "I have a toddler at home and no partner. What am I going to do if they call me in the middle of the night? Tell them 'sorry, I don't have a babysitter'?"

"Hm", he said. "I don't know, get a daycare? One that offers nights? They have to exist, right?"

"I can't afford those on my salary." She didn't bother mentioning that working homicide would often mean working sixty or more hours per week, time she'd spend away from Hannah. It wasn't worth the hassle.

"Hm. That's stupid", Tex said. "Childcare in this country is a freaking nightmare. I think. I know fuck all about kids." He aimed a lamp at her hand, then, enthusiastically, said: "Right, let's do this thang! They only had pink suture thread left. You cool with that?"

"You're lying", she told him. He grinned at her. "C'mon, let me have my fun. Nobody'll see. Hannah will love it."

"Hannah's favourite colour is black", Lena said, which made him laugh.

"Oh, man. You two really are kindred spirits."

"Can you at least use an anaesthetic this time?"

"Sure. Pussy." He winked at her and began to fill a syringe. "So does Isherwood want to keep you on, you think ?"

She shrugged. "He says he has no room."

"It's a tough gig to get", Tex said. "Then again, there's plenty of work for Atlanta homicide cops."

"There's plenty of work for Atlanta cops, period", Lena countered, then winced when he stuck the needle into her flesh.

"True", Tex said. "But still, if you managed to impress him... Maybe when Hannah's older you could see if he has an opening."

"They hired Dido because she has a PhD", Lena said. "Something tells me I don't quite fit the bill."

"Yeah, and how well is she doing?"

"Not great", Lena said. "I don't think she has any feeling for the job."

"Maybe that's why he hooked her up with you."

"There are plenty of experienced homicide cops to - "

"Yeah, but if she's been here for a few months and she's still fucking up that's not working, is it?"

Lena shook her head and looked away. Her hand felt warm and stung. "Honestly, I don't get her. The first time I met her she tried to waltz right over me, and now she's just like some sort of meek lap dog. Dumb and useless."

"Ouch", Tex said. "You don't mince words." She shrugged.

"It's true. She takes no initiative - "

"Did you yell at her when she did?"

Lena said nothing, and Tex laughed.

"Did she try your patience?"

"Yes, and it just got worse as we went along."

"Maybe you made her nervous."

Lena tried not to roll her eyes, and failed. "Look, if I'm making her nervous then how the fuck is she going to stare down a bunch of bad guys?"

"Well, to be fair", Tex said. "You're pretty terrifying."

That surprised her. Nobody had ever been afraid of her, not without her having to put in an effort first. Tex laughed out loud when he saw her face.

"Sorry", he said, "but you kind of are. You have a fantastic death stare. And you know how sometimes someone says something mean to you and you don't think of a good comeback until you get home? I don't think you have that problem. Plus, you punched me in the face when I pissed you off. Hard."

"I'm not terrifying", she said, which surely proved the point because it was a terrible comeback. "And you don't seem afraid of me."

"Yeah, but I've known you for a while and I've never been on your bad side for very long." He picked up the pink suture thread. "I think Detective Lott saw you, decided the way to deal with you was to put up a tough facade, which made you think she was a bitch so you were extra mean to her and nobody has ever taught her how to do her job and she's not intuitively good at it, but you didn't know that, so every time she did something stupid you basically burned her village to the ground and ate her firstborn - "

"Tex - "

"I like my metaphors. Indulge me", he said. "And then she got progressively more nervous and you got progressively angrier with her until she just did what you said and hoped you'd go away."

"That's not - "

"That's exactly what happened." She looked away as he threaded the wire through her skin. Was she really that evil?

As if on cue, Tex said: "I mean, I'm not saying she didn't deserve your ire. She's not new to the job and obviously the top brass likes having her there, because having a sciency person there makes everything more legit, but if it's not working by now then maybe she should've drawn her own conclusions." He snipped the thread. "What does Isherwood think of her?"

"I didn't ask", she said. "I assume the same. He told me she ticks a few boxes, whatever that means."

"It means he can't fire her", Tex said. She told him: "He did a background check on me."

"Did he? Who'd he call?"

"My old boss."

"Ah, he said. "Jeffrey Whatshisname."

"Tolliver."

"What'd he say?"

"That he regretted hiring me and that I was a shitty cop", Lena said. It still hurt, though it shouldn't have.

"Well, that explains why he kept you on for ten years", Tex said. "And I'm assuming you quit, because APD wouldn't have hired you if you'd been fired."

"We had sex", she told him. For once, he said nothing, so she continued: "It wasn't my idea."

With uncharacteristic trepidation, Tex asked: "Do you mean - "

"It wasn't rape", she said. "I let him. He was mad at me. He'd been mad at me for months. He blamed me for Sara's death. I blamed myself, too. I'd been his punching bag for so long, and then I was in his office late at night and he just kind of threw me down on his sofa - "

"What kind of man has a sofa in his office?", Tex asked. "In hindsight, that should've been your first clue."

"I thought it'd be cathartic", Lena said, staring at her feet so she wouldn't have to see Tex's face. "I thought, maybe if I let him do this, he'll lay off of me."

"I'm guessing he didn't?"

"I don't know. I knew it was a mistake as soon as it was over. I went home, I picked up Hannah and I drove to Art's place. I asked her to help me find another job, one where I didn't need references. Art only knows people in APD and the FBI and I obviously wasn't going to make the Feds, so… It was either back in uniform or work domestic violence, and domestic violence seemed the safest option." She looked up, willing herself to see Tex's response. She'd been stupid. Inconceivably stupid and naive, like a smitten schoolgirl, only she'd never wanted Jeffrey in that way. She'd looked up to him like an idol. Like a demigod. She'd wanted him to like her, she'd wanted to be like him. She'd wanted to be with a man like him. The thought that he was good looking had never once crossed her mind and even before Sara's death, she would've been shocked if he'd made a move. He never had. He'd never copped a feel or stolen a look, as far as she was aware, and God knew the man got around.

"Art put things in motion. I called in sick the next day. He didn't call me or text me. The day after that, I had a new job and I put in my resignation, packed my things and left." She'd still been renting Jeffrey's house. More than once, she'd wondered why he hadn't thrown her out if he'd wanted to hurt her. What he had done was worse.

"Out of curiosity", Tex said, "was he any good?"

She rolled her eyes. Tex laughed.

"Well, maybe it's a good thing you left. Not the way you did, obviously - I mean, I've never slept with my boss personally, and I don't think he'd be into it because he still thinks the gays are out to - anyway, after all the shit you went through in that butthole town, maybe it's good to start somewhere new. Somewhere people don't know you." He put a bandaid over the cut. She hadn't noticed he was done. "Were you ever going to be anyone other than the woman who got crucified?"

"Depends", Lena told him. "I was that spic bitch cop as well."

"See? If you tell people 'it was that spic bitch cop' here in Atlanta they've only narrowed it down to a couple dozen people."

He had a point. Still, it didn't sit well with her.

"I feel like I fled a crime scene", she told him. She'd never been good at facing her problems. Tex shrugged.

"So you got away with it. You got a good job, you got your kid. Just block whatshisname on your phone. What do you care what some guy out in the boondocks thinks of you?" He patted her hand as if to tell her she was done. "Some people just don't thrive in small towns. You can work hard to fit in, or you can find a place that you belong." He got up. "C'mon, shoo. I got corpses to mutilate."

Dido was nowhere to be seen when she got to the station. Courtesy would dictate that they went to debrief together, but Lena didn't feel particularly courteous to Dido and so she didn't bother calling her when Isherwood beckoned her into his office.

"So", he said. "I hear you nearly went for Olympic diving gold in an empty pool?"

"I didn't really think things through", she admitted. Isherwood laughed. "I gathered as much. I'm happy you got him. Please don't do that again, though." He sat down, pointed at the chair opposite his desk. Reluctantly, she sat down.

She didn't quite know what to make of Isherwood. He was, in all ways, an ordinary-looking guy, tall-ish and neither muscular nor stodgy. As the chief of a department he was supposed to come to work in uniform but all she ever saw him in were navy pants and a white, button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His short hair looked artfully ruffled and his neatly trimmed nails made Lena suspect he took care of his appearance more than he let on. Being unimpressive and accessible was his entire schtick, which was an odd choice for the head of the most prestigious department in the police force of the state's largest city. She wasn't surprised he knew Jeffrey Tolliver. They weren't that different, but they weren't the same either. Lena'd heard Sara call Jeffrey 'Slick' once or twice and the nickname had not surprised her. Isherwood wasn't slick, he wasn't as good-looking, but he was jovial and cunning. He had to be, in his position. Something told her to watch her back around him.

She briefly outlined the evidence, the case, knowing that she'd have to type up the report anyway. Or maybe Dido would. Maybe that would finally be something she could do right.

When she was finished, Isherwood asked: "So can I ask you something? What do you make of Miss Lott?"

She thought about it for a second, but decided he wasn't going to hire her anyway; she might as well be honest.

"I don't think she's cut out to be a cop."

"Why not?"

"You need a certain degree of intuition. I don't think she has that."

"And you do?"

She shrugged. "I would hope so. I've had more experience for sure."

"If you learned through experience", he said, "What makes you think you're better than her? She's only been here for a few months."

"I was in uniform for a few years", Lena told him. She felt a lot calmer than she thought she would. "If anything teaches you to rely on your senses, it's being out on the street."

"Yeah", Isherwood said. "I can't really demote her and the brass likes her, so that's no good."

She shrugged. It was not her problem.

"Did you at least try to teach her?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to - "

"Your intuition didn't tell you that?"

"I guess not", she told him. "I'm used to working with people who don't need teaching."

"Like Jeffrey Tolliver", he said. "But he taught you."

"Yes."

"Hired you straight out of the academy, a rookie."

She didn't reply.

"What if he'd just dunked on you for every screwup you made?"

She wanted to tell Isherwood that Jeffrey had done just that often enough, but it didn't seem fair. He had taught her. Then again, had she ever been as clueless as Dido?

"I told you I can't hire you", Isherwood said. "It wasn't a lie. I don't have room for you."

"I know", she said.

"But I do have someone who's retiring at the end of the year. I can put forward a replacement. I know you can't work those shifts right now because of your daughter, but I could put in a good word for you and you'd have six months to find a babysitter. But you'd have to make it worth my while."

She wondered how the hell he'd known that, and at the back of her mind it began to dawn that Dido was no longer at the crime scene; she'd been here when Lena was still getting her hand stitched up but Lena didn't know how long she'd stayed. Slowly, she said: "I'd have to work with detective Lott."

"And you'd have to show her the ropes. Not just yell at her for stuff she doesn't know yet." Isherwood leaned forward. "From what I gather, you're good at piecing stuff together. You're good at getting people to talk. You know how to work a homicide investigation."

She jutted out her chin and asked: "Did Jeffrey Tolliver tell you that?"

"I trust Tolliver about as far as I can throw him", Isherwood said. "I spoke to his second in command. I didn't think he liked you at first, but then I figured he's just one of those perpetually moody guys. He thinks quite highly of you."

He'd spoken to Frank. She was too taken aback to reply; she hadn't thought Frank had anything positive left to say about her. He certainly hadn't been that friendly after Sara's death.

Then again, had he really been different from before? Frank was a grouchy asshole with a soft streak. She just hadn't thought it pertained to her.

She swallowed and said: "I'm not sure Detective Lott wants to work with me."

"She doesn't", Isherwood said. "But I don't really care what she thinks. I can't get rid of her. I need someone to show her the ropes. She needs to step up her detectin' game. You need to find a way to teach her, preferably without you two bashing each other's heads in."

What he was essentially saying, Lena realised, was: keep her on track so the rest of my team can do their jobs.

"So what happens after?", she challenged him. "I teach her how to do it. Let's say she manages. Then what? Thanks and fuck off back to DV?"

If she'd expected him to be offended, she was wrong. He laughed.

"That depends." He leaned forward. "Look, this is APD's homicide department. The homicide rate in Atlanta is sky high. There's a lot of pressure. You need to perform. It's a high pressure job. I understand if you don't want it, but if you do I'll do my best to put you on the team, but if you keep up then you can stay."

She pondered the question for a while. It would mean long hours, hours away from Hannah. And where the hell was she going to find someone to take Hannah in at all hours, at low cost? She'd chosen to have Hannah, or at least, she hadn't taken appropriate measures to stop it from happening. That wasn't Hannah's fault. Hannah should be her first priority. And working with Dido was not exactly something she looked forward to. Partners were supposed to have your back at all costs, yet Dido seemed like the sort of person who would shove her into the path of a bullet rather than take a bullet herself.

Then again, what kind of example was she setting if she settled for less? And this investigation had annoyed the shit out of her, but that was because it had been so weird, so frustratingly dense and useless. And she could always tell him she hadn't been able to make things work.

"Alright", she told him. "I'll try to make arrangements."

Epilogue

The weekend quietly stretched ahead of her when she woke up on Saturday morning to Hannah, blaring like a bullhorn. She checked her alarm; it was six thirty. She groaned, but as she dragged herself out of bed she found that she didn't actually mind that much. She'd seen so little of Hannah over the past week, and God only knew what the future held in store for her.

"Mama!", Hannah wailed. Her face was scrunched into a mask of terror and sadness, but her eyes were dry. Another Oscar-worthy performance. Still, when Lena scooped her out of her crib and she nuzzled her face against her neck, she relented.

"C'mon, pumpkin", she said. "Let's have breakfast."

They spent the day doing nothing adventurous - a trip to a mall because Hannah could do with a couple of new t-shirts - but it was just the sort of sedated fun she needed. Despite her clinginess in the morning Hannah had reverted to her own grouchy self, a haughty look on her face that Lena saw every time she looked in the mirror as she sat in her stroller and commanded Lena to go a certain way or get her a certain thing. They got ice cream cones. Hannah only spilled about half of it on herself. Thankfully Lena had had the foresight to get her blue ice cream and she was wearing a blue shirt.

Tired and sticky they returned to the tiny apartment. The weather appeared to be a little less smothering and there was a slight overcast in the sky. A thunderstorm might be just what they needed. Maybe it would clear the feverish atmosphere from the city - though at least for the weekend, that was not her problem. As she sat on the tiny, fenced porch in front of her apartment, cradling a coke with far too many ice cubes, she allowed her thoughts to wander.

People said that having a child changed you. It was hard to argue with that. At the same time, Lena often wondered if she'd changed enough. So much had happened. It felt like there was supposed to be some grander lesson she wasn't taking in. She hadn't felt like herself in years, but at the same time she kept walking into the same traps she'd fallen into before. She was brazen, impulsive. Yesterday's stunt could have ended much worse than it did; the muscles and joints in her arms still burned as a reminder that she'd let down Hannah once again. She'd have been an orphan, like Lena.

With a shock, she'd remembered the conversation she'd had with Jeffrey. Ethan was dead. No doubt he'd found himself in the crosshairs of a few bored guards who'd never known Sara Linton and didn't particularly care about her. She hoped he'd suffered like he'd made her suffer. She was glad he'd never known Hannah. Regardless of whether he'd known about her existence or whether his cryptic messages to her over the years had been just him fucking around with her, he'd never seen his daughter and now he never would. But it begged the question: what would she tell Hannah when she was old enough to ask who her father was? The truth seemed out of the question. Sorry, your mother had a bad couple of years where she drank too much and let some asshole with swastikas tattooed on his chest beat the crap out of her and then her birth control failed and you happened. Lena wondered if it made her weak that she didn't want Hannah to think that badly of her; surely, if she were a good, strong person she'd own up to her mistakes? She glanced at Hannah, pouring water out of plastic cups into a bucket with Frozen characters on it, the tip of her tongue between her lips in utmost concentration. Things were easy when they were little, she thought, but Hannah wouldn't always be satisfied with 'your father isn't around'.

She wondered how Sunny and Henry would have fared as parents. Maybe they would've changed. Probably not. Lena and Nour would still have been called out to the house every week, only this time there would be a baby involved. Statistically that child would not grow up to be an upstanding citizen. And that was provided Sunny remembered to feed it and bathe it and change its nappy, which wasn't a given. Henry, though - he would have been devoted. Aggressive, and not necessarily a good dad, but he would have given it a go. Despite everything, Lena was sad that they had died. They should've just split up and moved their own way and there wouldn't have been a problem - at least, not for her department. There would still be noise complaints. Allen Danes would keep digging at Henry's workplace. But that was different. That was petty shit. None of this had been worth being led to the slaughter, wrapped in tape, while some idiot with too much time on his hands got to badly execute his fantasies.

She quietly shook her head and got up to get another coke, but just as she did she heard screeching tires, followed by a loud crash and an ominous silence. When she turned to look she saw two cars out in the street, in front of her building, wrapped around each other in a way that no cars should.

"Shit", she swore, and she pulled the gate of the porch shut so Hannah wouldn't get out before she sped over to help.

The silver car on the right was an older model Honda, and she saw a young black woman behind the wheel. There was blood on her face, but her eyelids were fluttering. Lena went over to check her pulse and she groaned. Opposite her, the door to the other car - a shiny black Mercedes - opened, and an even younger white guy stumbled out. There was a gash on his forehead, and even from two yards away Lena could see his pupils were the size of the planet Jupiter.

"Aw, shit", he said, looking at his car. His eyes moved over to the woman in the first car and he began: "You dumb fucking bitch." He lunged forward and Lena braced herself. She wasn't armed, but the guy was so unsteady that she could take him even in shorts and flip flops. But there was no need; he tripped over his own feet and tumbled face down onto the asphalt.

"Shit", he swore. "Fucking cunt. You did that." He made to get up.

She hadn't seen the other cop appear, but suddenly he was there, on top of the guy putting handcuffs on him.

"Get off me, man", he whined. "I didn't do nothing."

"Good", the cop said. "Keep it that way." He made no move to remove the cuffs. When he looked at Lena she recognised him as the U-haul guy. Her new neighbour. Weirdly, she hadn't pegged him as a cop. Her instincts were usually pretty good.

"Hi", she said. He nodded at her and said: "Did you call it in yet?"

"I don't have my phone with me", she told him, and he pulled out his own phone to dial 911. She focused on the woman, whose eyelids fluttered again and then opened. She jolted in her seat and Lena pressed down on her shoulders to keep her from moving.

"It's alright", she hushed. "You were in a car accident. You're going to be fine but I need you to hold still." She checked the back seat, but it was empty; no car seats, and the seat belts were neatly fastened. The car was pristine. No kids. She breathed a sigh of relief.

The woman's breathing was increasingly fast, and Lena knew she was beginning to panic so she asked: "What's your name?"

"D-Danisha", she stuttered.

"Hi Danisha", Lena told her. "My name's Lena. I need you to hold still now, alright? An ambulance is on the way and they'll make sure you're alright."

"I-I'm fine", she stuttered. "I just - I need to get out, I need to - "

"You're fine, but you really need to hold still now, alright?" She tried to put on her most soothing voice, though calming people down had never been her forte. "The ambulance guys, they don't like it when you move about too much. They want to check for injuries first."

"H-how's the car?", she stuttered, and Lena turned to look. She was no expert but it looked unsalvageable.

"I can't really tell", she said. "I'm not a mechanic, sorry." She smiled. "But you should see the other car."

"He came out of nowhere", Danisha said, and she began to cry. "I was just - I was just driving, and he - "

"I know", Lena said, though she had no idea what had happened exactly. "I know. We'll sort it all out later, don't you worry about it."

"My dad gave me this car as a graduation present. He's going to be so pissed - "

"I'm sure your dad cares more about you than about the car, so let's make sure you're okay first, alright?"

The other cop came up to the window, still holding his phone, and Lena told him: "I can't see any injuries apart from a head lac. She briefly lost consciousness but she seems alert now."

"Who's he?", Danisha asked. Her voice was shrill and whiney, but she seemed less closer to having a total freak-out.

"He's a cop", Lena told her. "He lives around here. We're just helping out until the ambulance gets here."

"My dad's going to be so mad at me", Danisha said, and she began to cry. "I really liked this car."

"Your dad will be relieved you're okay", Lena said calmly, and as she said it she hoped it was true. If it were Hannah, she'd be relieved. Pissed about the car, too, but she'd try not to let on.

"I saw it happen", the other cop said. "He plowed into her at close to eighty. She's lucky he didn't hit her straight in the front."

"Fucking lies, man!", the guy on the ground shouted. Danisha began to cry again and Lena tried to hush her.

"Don't worry", she said. "There were plenty of witnesses. We'll sort it all out later."

Danisha nodded, in spite of Lena's insistence that she keep still.

When the ambulance finally came, Lena stepped away from the car and watched as the fire brigade cut open the door and lifted out the woman. Mercedes guy was hauled up and unceremoniously stuffed into the back of a police car, where he sat loudly spitting and cursing, though with the doors shut nobody heard him.

"Think she'll be okay?", the other cop asked her. Evidently he wasn't on duty and didn't know the other cops who'd showed up to help; he hung back and looked a little lost. Lena shrugged.

"I don't know. She seemed okay. Guess we'll find out."

"That other guy was a dick, though."

"He drove a Mercedes and he was high. He doesn't seem like the most sympathetic person to begin with."

He smiled politely, and she told him: "Can you finish up here? My kid's alone on the porch. I need to check on her."

"Right", he said, "sure." Then, just when she was about to leave, he asked: "You're my neighbour, right?"

"Yep", she said, but she didn't wait around. She needed to check on Hannah.

Hannah, of course, had barely noticed she was gone. She was still absorbed in her water game, though now the bucket had been upended and most of the water was on Lena's porch instead of in the pool. Lena supposed she could have mopped it, but in the end she decided the sun would take care of it. Feeling drained all of a sudden she sat down, kicked off her flip flops and considered dinner. Even calling out for pizza seemed like too much of an effort. Hannah was probably going to accept a grilled cheese sandwich cut into tiny pieces - but that was assuming she still had cheese and bread, and that was not a given. She sighed, but made no move to get up. From afar she watched the spectacle on the streets slowly dissolve as the emergency services left one by one. When the last cruiser drove off her new neighbour made his way back to the apartment as well. She hoped he'd leave her alone, but he seemed eager to talk. Just her luck. Her previous neighbour had been an overly nervous, high-strung college student who hadn't given her the time of day and that had suited Lena just fine.

"They took her to the hospital", he said as he approached. "They wouldn't tell me how they thought she was."

Well duh, she thought. The woman might have internal bleeding in her head or abdomen, which had to be ruled out first. Still, she said: "At least she was alert. That's a good sign."

"Right", he said. "They took the other guy into custody."

"Good." She crossed her arms, hoping he'd get the message and leave her alone. Instead, he hesitated, then reached out his hand.

"I should introduce myself", he said. "I'm Jackson."

"Lena", she said, reluctantly shaking his hand. He glanced at Hannah, and finally took a hint.

"Well, have a nice evening, I guess", he said, disappearing into his own apartment.

"You too!", she called out after him, and she wondered why she wasn't more eager to talk to him. He seemed friendly enough.

She was still pondering dinner when he reappeared, this time wearing his civvies. She was struck by how different he looked. Cops were generally good at recognising other cops even without their uniform, but Jackson looked different somehow. It was the way he carried himself, with caution rather than swagger. He looked guarded and uneasy, which was strange considering how big he was; easily six foot three, and though he had broad shoulders they drooped, like someone had grabbed him by the neck and lifted him. She couldn't pinpoint his accent but he wasn't from the south. That much was clear.

"Hi", he said cautiously when he saw her, still out on her porch, then opened the gate to walk out, but before he did she asked: "You're new in town, right?"

"What gave it away?", he said, giving a lopsided smile. "The U-haul?"

"That and the accent", she said. "Which precinct are you working?"

"Ninth", he said, and she winced. The ninth was one of the toughest precincts, and it was cruel to drop a rookie in there. Or maybe he wasn't a rookie; his demeanor at the scene of the accident had been that of an experienced beat cop. Maybe he was just new to Atlanta.

He asked: "You? Where do you work?"

Obviously he had her pegged as a cop. She told him: "Right now I'm working DV."

"You're a detective?"

"Inasmuch as DV needs detectives, sure." She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly aware of the fact that she was wearing only a tank top and a pair of far too short sweat shorts. "Still better than working the ninth."

"Yeah, I got the impression it's a tough neighbourhood", he said.

"They didn't tell you when you started?"

He shook his head. "I guess they were afraid I'd change my mind." He shrugged. "Still better than working DV." When he saw her face he added hastily: "I mean - I didn't mean - "

"Don't worry", she said darkly. "It sucks. I'm only there because they had an opening."

"Really?" He leaned against the porch fence. "For how long have you been working there?"

"Couple of months", she said. She thought of what Isherwood had said. "I might transfer out of it soon. Not sure yet."

"To where?"

"Don't know. Something'll come up."

"I hear APD's pretty flexible."

"Better than my previous workplace."

"Where was that?"

"Oh", she said. "Nowhere interesting. Just some shithole town down south." She was somewhat surprised to hear herself reference Grant County that way. To her, it had been a veritable metropole when she first started working there. Only now that she'd been in Atlanta for a few months did she realise how ludicrous that was. Heartsdale was a small Southern town like any other. People would claim they still cared about each other, that they looked out for one another. And that was true, but only if you belonged. Lena had never belonged. She wondered why she hadn't made the leap sooner. The anonymity of big city life suited her just fine. People didn't give a fuck about her here either, but at least they didn't pretend they did.

She asked him: "So where are you from?"

"Oh, just some shithole town in Iowa", he said, a coy smile playing on his lips, and she asked: "Why did you leave?"

"It's a long story", he said. "You?"

"Same."

He looked back at his front door. "I, uh…" He seemed uneasy again all of a sudden. "Listen, I've been cooking, but I forgot I don't have a freezer anymore so I made way too much… If you haven't cooked yet…"

Lena suppressed a smile and asked: "What did you make?"

THE END