Someone called the cops.

One of them recognized Hanson, then stopped recognizing him when she realized he was under cover. Hanson gave his statement, sat in an ambulance to have himself checked out—the only thing that had pummeled him was the cheap tequila in the drink—and finally made it home sometime after midnight. Karen was already asleep. He stopped into the boys' room to give them a kiss goodnight, then curled up next to his wife and made himself forget about the feel of a strange woman's hand on his leg. In the morning, he stumbled in to work bleary eyed and preemptively disgusted at the amount of paperwork in his future.

Jo, on the other hand, glowed with happiness. He hadn't seen his partner walk with such a bounce in her step since—He couldn't remember when, honestly. This thing between her and Henry was good. He just hoped it was going to stay that way. He didn't know who the kid was that Henry had met the previous night, but nothing about their body language had suggested a date, so at least Hanson didn't have to grapple with having witnessed Henry cheating on Jo.

"Hey," she greeted with a smile that showed whiter teeth than he thought she'd had the day before. Her makeup looked more carefully applied, too. Hanson was no expert on makeup, but he'd listened to Karen complain enough about the challenges of getting a smooth lipstick line to appreciate when he saw one. "I hear things got interesting for you last night. You OK?"

She would have heard. Cops gossiped worse than Italian grandmothers, especially when one of their own was involved. Thing was, the details Jo knew were also as accurate as those grandmothers' perceptions of their grandkids.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he said, waving off her concern. "Just one guy tryin' to teach another some manners. I wasn't even in the building when the fists started flying." Hanson's attention turned inward as he considered the previous night's events. Jake and Ears—he really needed to learn the guys' names—were already on the suspects' list. Jake's temper bumped him up several notches of interest.

Jo musta misjudged Hanson's withdrawal because she wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a casual hug. "Let me know if you need anything." A glance at the top of his desk made her amend her offer. "Except someone to handle the paperwork. I have plenty of my own to suffer through."

"You're about to have more," Lt. Reece interrupted. "We just got a call from a construction company who found a body at their site this morning."

This was why Hanson wasn't keen on surprises: They almost always turned out to be grisly murders. In all his years as a cop and a detective, he sometimes let himself forget that he hadn't seen everything. Then he learned the hard way that he'd made that mistake because that's when the universe would throw a new kind of grisly at him, such as a person who'd had his head chopped off and then made the focal point of some kind of modernist street art.

As crime scenes went, the homicide was far from the worst Hanson had ever seen. He might even call it ineat/i, if not for the dripping paint and shattered glass that covered everything. With no evidence of a bomb involved, that meant the perp had taken the time after the murder to first clean up and then to redecorate. What kind of warped mind was capable of that?

He was stumbling when he got back to the precinct and was able to turn his attention to the stack of folders that had sprouted on the surface of his desk like a virulent fungus. All the witness statements from the bar. iAll/i of them. With a sigh, he grabbed the top one and began reading through it, searching for the lie, the misstep, the detail that would unravel the whole case.

One person—not Ears—flat out accused Jake of the murders. Five others were all certain they knew who'd done it, yet couldn't pinpoint a name. "Haven't seen him around for awhile, ya know?" someone had said. "He wasn't the kind of guy who leaves an impression," another supplied.

Three cups of awful departmental coffee, two stale Snicker's bars, and a nasty paper cut across his thumb later, his eyes were crossing and he had to take a break, so he ran the motorcycle's license plates. An address popped up. He knew where it was: a part of town that had been on the downhill slide for forty years, had made an effort to crawl back up through the early part of the aughts, then had its feet kicked right back out from under it when the housing bubble popped.

He went into Reece's office to tell her he wanted to check it out.

Reece leaned back in her chair and cast an appraising eye over him. Light from her computer monitor glinted off the rings on her steepled fingers. "Why do I get the impression that this has nothing to do with any of your open cases?"

Hanson grimaced. "The plates belong to someone who was at the bar last night," he countered. It wasn't a lie, nor was it a confirmation. Yet they both knew what he was asking: Permission to pursue a personal interest on work time after having used department resources to get the information. Reece could write him up over this. She wouldn't, but she could. Hanson was stepping over lines here that only his close rate allowed him to cross without risking his job.

She tapped her fingertips together, off-beat with the tick of the clock over her door. "You put in the extra hours last night," she said, considering. "Why don't you take a long lunch today? Treat yourself to something healthier than what our vending machine sells."

He blinked at her, thought briefly about arguing, then went to collect his coat. There were plenty of food trucks to choose from along the way.

The address belonged to exactly the kind of crumbling brownstone he expected to find, with the motorcycle in question parked on the street in front. The door to her building was locked and a few minutes of standing outside, trying not to look like a creeper who was intent on gaining illegal entry to an apartment failed to yield anyone willing to open the door for him. He was heading back down the steps when he caught a glimpse of movement in the third story window across the street. Reddish-blond hair, pasty Irish skin, a face that still did not look old enough to drink. The kid paused in front of the window, his gaze sweeping the street. Hanson dropped and pretended to tie his shoelace. When he looked up again, the shade had been pulled. It was a good quality blackout shade that afforded complete privacy for the person on the other side—which meant Hanson had to know what was going on.

He knew better than to go tearing across the street. Normally, cops did this kind of surveillance in pairs to keep each other safe. Since he didn't have his partner—and wasn't going to call her—he shoved his hands in his pockets and took a stroll down the street. He needed to make himself look as non-threatening as possible. When he got to the end of the block, he crossed and began strolling back the other direction. This side of the street had shops on it, so he ducked into a bodega and bought himself a pack of gum. Anything to cut the power of the onions from the gyro he'd grabbed. A little farther down, he stopped to examine the pictures plastered across the window of a hair salon.

The building he wanted turned out to be a martial arts studio, which was handy because it meant the door from the street into the lobby was unlocked. He let himself in, then stopped to study the names on the mailboxes while he waited for someone to enter or leave the residences. It was a wait of only minutes until a woman juggling a crying toddler on one side and a baby carrier on the other came through. Hanson held the door for her and got an exasperated smile in response. He remembered those years way too well. Best thing about the boys getting older was when they both developed the power to walk on their own and the listening ability to go more-or-less where directed.

Five flights of stairs—no working elevator—brought him to the apartment he wanted, and once he had a number, he had a name, courtesy of the mailboxes. Richard Jensen. No other names posted. Probably lived alone, yet busily engaged in an argument with someone. One person had an American accent with hints of upstate New York in it; the other had a deeper voice and an accent that sounded a lot like Henry's. That was interesting. Since he had no warrant or probable cause to be here, Hanson chose to stand against the wall and eavesdrop. Perks of the job.

"...can handle it myself," Hanson heard the American yell, just as he settled into place against the faded brown wall.

"What you need to handle is getting yourself out of town," answered the Brit. He wasn't yelling. "This guy is igood/i. He's made quite a name for himself recently."

The hallway was dingy, cracked plaster, peeling paint. A general scent of mold and non-repaired water damage filled the air. Hanson's nose itched. He spotted three other apartment doors and an exit to a fire escape at the end of the hall. The exit door looked like it might have been painted shut. This wasn't the kind of place he could imagine anyone living unless they had no other options.

"Yeah, that explains why you came ito/i town. Shouldn't you be leading the way in not being here?"

"He's not after me."

Suddenly suspicious, the American demanded to know, "Why not?"

Footsteps echoed across the wooden floor. That Hanson could hear them showed how thin the walls were. "He's only interested in kids."

Hanson's teeth came down hard into the wad of gum in his mouth. What the hell had he stumbled into here? Some kind of pedophile ring? Sex trafficking?

"I'm not a kid!" the American protested.

But that wasn't the protest of someone trying to run a ring; it sounded more like someone trying to escape from one. One thing was for sure: Richard Jensen was in trouble. Did Henry know about this? Was Henry iinvolved/i in this?

Did Jo know?

"No, but you look like one, and that's what he's after." There was a crash and the wall shook as if someone had been slammed into it. Hanson flinched in sympathy. Flakes of ceiling plaster rained down on him. "Get out of town."

"Why do you care if I keep my head?" Richie demanded.

In one sentence, Hanson's preliminary picture unraveled. Only hours removed from seeing the corpse of a person who had been beheaded, Hanson heard the question as if it had been selected just to shock him. The remains of the gyro churned in his stomach. He focused his cop willpower on keeping the food where it belonged, and told himself that what he'd heard was just an ill-timed figure of speech. There was no way the kid had meant it that way.

"It's my responsibility to care," the Brit answered. He had to be standing right inside the door now because his matter-of-fact tone wouldn't have carried through even these thin walls otherwise.

Silence, then a response that carried an edge of menace. "I already have a teacher."

"iHad./i I seem to recall you leaving his tutelage. That was last century, wasn't it? Look, unlike the rest of the way our lives work, when it comes to teachers, there must be more than one."

"And you've decided to step up. Since when?"

"Since about 90 minutes before I got on the plane yesterday. And right now what I want is a hot shower and a place to lay low for a few months—and for you to get out of town. This benefits both of us."

"You decided to become my teacher because I have a second bedroom? Now that..." The rest of what he was going to say was swallowed as Richie walked deeper into the apartment.

Hanson's waffling about whether to stay and keep listening in case the guys came back within range was decided for him when his phone buzzed. He started down the stairs before answering it, not wanting to risk his voice carrying back into the apartment.

"I hope you've enjoyed your lunch," Lt. Reece said.

Already? Hanson glanced at his watch. He had been gone long enough to meet the terms of Reece's loophole, though not by much. The only reason she would call him back in so soon was…

"We have a second body," she continued. "A floater. Someone tried to dispose of this one, which means our guy is either getting smarter or sloppier, depending on what order these people were killed in." It occurred to Hanson to question why Reece thought the two deaths were connected, then he decided not to. Not right now. He'd find out soon enough, anyway. "Detective Martinez is already on her way to the scene. How quickly can you join her?"

She told him where. Hanson calculated how fast he could get there if the traffic cooperated. Then he calculated how fast he could get there if he walked. He decided to split the difference and err on the side of sirens being successful in getting the other drivers to move out of the way. He gave her a number, then thumbed off the connection and proceeded to his car.