“Thanks.” Jeffrey dry-swallowed four Advil as he walked back into the squad room.

Lena was taking off her bulky coat. She did her usual deer in the headlights when she saw him. He didn’t like the fear he saw in her eyes. Ninety percent of being a cop was dealing with angry men. If she couldn’t handle it from her boss, she wasn’t going to make it on the street.

He told her, “In my office.”

Lena followed him inside. She closed the door without being told. She started to sit down, but he stopped her.

“On your feet.” Jeffrey tossed the frozen bag of fries on his desk as he took a seat. The change in altitude made his nose throb harder.

“Chief—”

He jabbed his finger into the photocopies of her notes. “What is this bullshit?”

Lena sucked in a breath. She had clearly hoped that her earlier ass-chewing was over.

“Look at them.” He handed her the copies. “You’re a cop. You want to be a detective one day. Tell me what’s wrong with your notes, future detective.”

She stared at the neatly printed words, the carefully outlined steps of her various actions. “There are—” Lena cleared her throat. “There’s no mistakes.”

“Right,” Jeffrey said. “No run-on sentences, no stray marks, no cross-throughs, not even a misspelled word. You’re either the smartest fucking cop in this building or you’re the stupidest. Which one is it?”

Lena placed the copies back on his desk. She shifted on her feet.

“Which notes do you want me to keep, Lena? Which set do you want subpoenaed by Gerald Caterino’s lawyers? Or Bonita Truong’s, because her daughter was murdered when you told her to go back to the school on her own.”

Lena kept her gaze down.

“You’re gonna be sworn in under oath. Which set of notes is the truth?”

Lena did not look up, but she put her hand on the copies. “These.”

He sat back in his chair. The frozen bag of fries was leaving a wet mark on his desk. “Where’s your original notebook?”

“At home.”

“Get rid of it,” he told her. “If this is your choice, then you need to stand by it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me about your interview with Leslie Truong.”

Lena shifted nervously on her feet. “I asked her if she had seen anyone else in the area. She said she passed three women on her walk into the woods. They were heading toward the college. Two of them were wearing Grant Tech colors. The other wasn’t, but she looked like a student. Leslie didn’t recognize any of them. I really pressed her on it and—”

“And the man?”

“She thought maybe he was a student, too?” Lena briefly met his gaze before quickly looking away. “All she remembered was the knit cap. It was black knit, a beanie type. She couldn’t remember his features, or his hair color or eyes, or how tall he was or how big. She said he just looked like a regular guy, probably a student. He was jogging down the path.”

“Jogging? Not running?”

“That’s what I asked, and she said definitely jogging. He wasn’t acting suspicious or anything. She assumed he was a student out for a run.”

“She said student, meaning he was in that age group?”

“I asked, and she said she couldn’t say, except that he ran like he was younger. I guess older people, when they run, maybe they’ve got bad knees or they aren’t as fast?” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Chief. Is she … is she dead because I …”

Her eyes met his. This time, she did not look away.

Frank’s words came back to Jeffrey. He could crush her right now. He could say the thing that would grind her into dust, and she would never be able to do the job again.

He said, “She’s dead because someone murdered her.”

The overhead light caught the moisture in her eyes.

“The vast majority of policing is social work.” He had told her this before, but he hoped like hell this time the lesson had meaning. “I know what it’s like being on patrol. You’re writing tickets all day, looking for jaywalkers, bored out of your mind, then a dead body shows up and it’s exciting.”

Lena’s guilty expression confirmed he had hit on the truth.

“Excitement is great, but it gives you tunnel vision. You miss things. You make stupid mistakes. We don’t get a lot of leeway as police officers. We have to see everything. Even the smallest detail can mean the difference between life and death.”

“I’m sorry, Chief.” She promised, “It won’t happen again.”

Jeffrey wasn’t finished. “The reason I moved here from Birmingham is because I was sick of locking up one drug dealer for shooting another drug dealer. I wanted to feel connected to the people I was protecting. You can be a good cop, Lena. A damn good cop. But you need to work on that connection.”

“Yes, Chief. I will.”

Jeffrey wasn’t sure she would do a damn thing, but lecturing her for another ten minutes or ten hours was not going to change that. “Sit down.”

Lena sat on the edge of the chair.

Jeffrey’s nose had started to itch like he needed to sneeze. He put the frozen fries back to his face. “Tell me about the construction site.”

Lena sucked in a quick breath as she took her notebook out of her back pocket. “I talked to everyone on the site. They’re building a climate-controlled storage facility.”

Jeffrey nodded for her to continue.

“There’s, like, extra workmen from what you’d expect. Garage door installers and welders and security alongside the usual contractors and stuff. I was going to type this up, but—”

She offered him the notebook.

Jeffrey didn’t take it. “You’re the one who was there. Did any of the names stand out?”

“No, not really.” She glanced up, then back down. The guilt was back. “I was going to run all of the names through the database to check for records or outstanding warrants, but …”

He knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming, but said, “Out with it.”

“I know you told me to go to the site and get back here as soon as possible, but—” Lena looked up at him. “I drove to the Home Depot in Memminger.”

Jeffrey sat with the information. She had disobeyed his orders—again—but her instincts were good. Every contractor in the tri-county area relied on the undocumented workers who loitered around the Home Depot. Generally, the contractors picked them up in the early morning hours, worked them to the bone for slave wages, dropped them back off at the Home Depot that night, then went to church on Sunday and complained about how immigrants were ruining the country.

He asked, “And?”

“I don’t speak Spanish, but I figured they would talk to me.” Lena waited for him to motion for her to continue. “At first, they were scared because of my uniform, but then I made it clear I wasn’t going to hassle them, that I was looking for information?”

Her voice had gone up on the last word. She was worried she was in trouble again.

Jeffrey asked, “Did they talk to you?”

“Some of them did.” Lena had turned tentative again.

“Read the room, Lena. I’m not yelling at you.”

“It’s just that half of them said they’d worked on the storage construction site. They get rotated out depending on what’s needed, but they said it was weird because there was a gringo taking money under the table, too.” She paused, waiting for a nod. “They didn’t know his name, but everybody called him BB. And so I pressed, and this one guy said he thought it stood for Big Bit.”

“Big Bit,” Jeffrey repeated. Something about the name was setting off an alarm. “Like a drill bit?”

“I’m not sure,” Lena said. “But it made me think about Felix Abbott, because—”

“Fuck,” Jeffrey sat up so fast his nose ignited. “Felix admitted that he goes by the name Little Bit. There’s gotta be a Big Bit. And maybe Big Bit is Daryl, and maybe Daryl has access to a van. Where’s Felix now? Is he still in holding?”

Lena stood up because he’d stood up. “I checked on my way in. They’re getting him ready to bus to the courthouse. His arraignment is this morning.”

“Go get him. Rip him out of the back of the bus if you have to. Get his arrest jacket from the guard and put him in interrogation. Go.”

Lena banged open the door so hard that the glass shook.

“Frank?” Jeffrey didn’t see him in the squad room. He ran over to the kitchen. “Frank?”

Frank looked up. He was standing over the sink eating a bacon biscuit.

Jeffrey said, “Felix Abbott. Twenty-three. Skateboarder. Pot dealer.”

“Why’s his name coming up again?” Crumbs fell out of Frank’s mouth. “You looking at him for the attacks?”

“Should I be?”

“The family tree is nothin’ but an oily turd-filled toilet, but nah. The younger generation squandered the family criminal enterprises. Typical succession issue. By the time you hit the third generation, they don’t have the work ethic.” Frank coughed out some more crumbs. “I’d look at the kid’s father. One of his—”