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going to help her in her new life. She was going to do work hardly any rookie ever did, and all because she was an Uptown girl. Yet for once it wasn’t because of her family’s influence. Oddly, it was because of Skip herself; because she had expertise no other rookie had. The irony of it made her head spin.
    Duby called her back. “You’ve got a phone call.”
    “Here?”
    “Obviously here, officer. You’re detailed here. Take it in homicide.”
    The detective bureau was divided into crimes against property and crimes against persons. You had to go through property crimes to get to the room homicide shared with robbery. It was roughly the size of an amphitheater and decorated with a single picture—a poster of a snake crawling on a naked woman. Homicide’s desks were clustered neatly at one end of the room, Robbery’s at the other. There was no one at either end.
    Shrugging, Skip chose a desk at random and asked for her call. “Officer Langdon? About time. This is Dolly.”
    It was a man’s voice. Skip wondered how in hell she could get a trace when she was the only one in the whole place. No way that she knew of.
    “I saw you,” she said. “Did you see me?”
    “You didn’t see me, honey. I was shit-faced over at Maidie Blanc’s.”
    Skip sighed and stopped worrying about the trace. “Cookie Lamoreaux. Très amusant.”
    “Awful about Chauncey. I heard you saw it.”
    “Word travels fast.”
    “Actually, I had the inside track. I’ve got a houseguest saw it too. Old buddy from California here to do a film on Mardi Gras.”
    “Oh, that asshole.”
    “Hey, he speaks well of you. Says you saved his ass.”
    “He nearly cost me mine.”
    “He’s got something for you.”
    “I’ve got something for him too.”
    “I’m putting him on, okay? I said I’d make the introductions.”
    “Hi,” said a new voice, quite a pleasant one—a little businesslike, but a little friendly too. “This is Steve Steinman. I saw your name tag and Cookie said he knew you. Weird, huh? I didn’t know it was such a small town.”
    “In some ways it’s a village.” (Some ways that she hated like tarantulas.)
    “Thanks for helping me today.”
    “No problem. It’s my job.”
    “Listen, I think I got film of the thing. I thought maybe you could tell me who to show it to. The names of the investigating officers.”
    Skip’s ears started to ring. “You’ve got it on film? The murder?”
    “I’m not sure yet. It’s being developed. I won’t get it till ten o’clock or so.”
    “Tonight?”
    “Uh-huh. Should I just drop it by the cop shop?”
    “It’ll be a madhouse around here. Why don’t you bring it by my house? I’ll take it in first thing in the morning.”
    Sure. After she’d watched it six or eight times.
    “Why not? Cookie says you’re okay. Says you’re the only cop in town he’d trust.”
    “He was drunk when he said that, right?”
    “Guess so, come to think of it.”
    “That’s Cookie.”
    She gave him her address.

The Night
1
    GRATEFULLY, AFTER IT was all over, Bitty took the pills Dr. Langdon offered. She had still not had a drink. The pills were enough for now; or they would have been if she hadn’t had to wake up every time they wore off. When she woke, her chest and belly felt hollow, as if all her vital organs had been ripped out of her, as if all the booze and pills in the world couldn’t fill such an emptiness. She cried until her head ached and her eyes burned. Yet there were more tears in her. That was all that was left there. No heart, no guts, certainly no liver. Just tears.
    She knew how she’d feel in the morning—as if her body were a bell and someone had struck it, dooming her to shriek eternally. Shrieking sad, yet too sad to shriek. Immobile. Cold.
    She took another pill and soon she felt warm and hardly any other way at all, not even hollow. Numbness, for a long time, had seemed better than life. She was numb now, and would be till morning—so numb she was