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Creed, but he wasn’t budging. She sat down at her desk and picked up the receiver.
    Garcia: “Why didn’t you answer your cell just now?”
    “Tony…uh—I—” She saw Creed grinning mischievously from his throne across the room. She turned her back to him and continued talking into the phone. “I had my hands full. I’m trying to get some office work done before you come by.”
    Garcia: “Relax. I won’t be by the cellar until this afternoon, after my meeting at the cop shop.”
    Swiveling her chair around, she saw Creed still sitting on the couch with his smug grin. She spun the chair back so she wouldn’t have to look at his mug. “You’ve got the files?”
    “Got them.”
    “Great. See you later.” She hung up.
    “Are you going to brief your partner about the case to which we’ve been assigned?”
    She got up from her chair and planted her hands on her hips. “Agent Creed, you are not my—” She stopped herself. If not partners, they were at least office mates, for better or worse. There was no harm in filling him in on the latest. Who was he going to tell? “You know all those college students who’ve been turning up dead in the river?”
    “The ones who killed themselves?”
    She wheeled a chair over to the couch and sat down across from him. “I don’t think those deaths were suicides, at least not all of them.”
    “Keep talking.”
    “I went out to a murder scene yesterday. Another Minneapolis drowning.”
    “In the Mississippi?”
    “A much smaller body of water,” said Bernadette. “A bathtub.”
    “Why do you think it’s related to the river deaths? If those were indeed homicides—”
    “I know, I know. Killing people in their own tubs is a much different MO.” She crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward. Surprisingly, she discovered she enjoyed hashing the case over with Creed. “Hear me out, though.”
    “I’m listening,” he said.
    “The victims have the same profile. They’ve all been white females attending the University of Minnesota or the University of Wisconsin. They’ve all had emotional problems…”
    “Which would make it easier for a killer to pawn the murders off as suicides.”
    “Exactly,” she said excitedly.
    “Why the switch from the river to a tub?”
    “Garcia and I discussed this,” she said. “I think the murderer is seeking a deeper thrill, a more up-close-and-personal method of execution.”
    He got up from his throne and walked back and forth in front of the couch. “You’re implying this is a sexual thing.”
    “What else would it be?”
    “Have you researched this…what should we call it?”
    “Water fetish. Drowning fetish.”
    “Yes.” He stopped pacing and pointed at her. “What do you know about it?”
    He seemed more alive than she’d ever seen him. It must be boring to be trapped in the world of the living, with nothing constructive to do, she thought. Maybe she could rope him into helping her. “I imagine there’re things on the Internet. I suppose I could ask Thorsson to lend a hand.”
    “Thorsson. That idiot. What’s he doing in town? Don’t tell me Milwaukee dumped him on Minneapolis.”
    She grinned, pleased that Creed was equally disdainful of the agent. “Because two of the deaths were in La Crosse, Milwaukee sent Thorsson and another guy to Minneapolis when the girl turned up dead in the tub.”
    “In case there was a connection.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Leave Thorsson out of it. You don’t need Thorsson.” He planted himself at his old desk. Sitting in front of him was a dusty computer screen that hadn’t seen any action for months. “What do you want me to do?”
    She thought hard before answering. When she’d first arrived at the St. Paul office, Agent Creed was gone on a scuba-diving trip. He’d come back from the Cayman Islands in a body bag. Even though they’d never partnered together while he was alive, could they work together now without killing each other? Garcia said Creed