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reelection?”
    “Marginal. But I haven’t started campaigning yet. My guess is most people haven’t given much thought to the city council races.” Nor, both Wager and Elizabeth knew, would they until just before voting. Often just one minute before, which was why most council incumbents didn’t begin their races until late. “I meant to ask, how’s your cousin doing?”
    Wager sighed. “I don’t know—haven’t had a chance to talk with Aunt Louisa for a few days. I ought to call her.” Hocks’s death wasn’t the only reason he hadn’t called her. It was also a duty he wasn’t eager to remember, and when he did, something more important always came up. Perhaps because he looked for it. But now he could almost feel the woman’s teary voice at his ear, and it was best over and done with. He picked up the cordless telephone resting on the end table by the couch. A woman’s unfamiliar voice answered, and Wager asked for his aunt.
    “Who wants to talk to her?”
    “Gabe Wager. Her nephew.”
    “Just a minute, please.”
    “Gabe? You heard about Julio?”
    The half-strangled sound of his aunt’s voice warned him, but the sudden numbness in his mind did not want to accept it. “No. What?”
    “He’s dead, Gabe. They shot him. My son—” The voice broke into a hoarse gasp. Then heavy, lurching sounds twisted at his guts.
    “I’ll be right over, querida .”

5
    E LIZABETH CAME WITH him. It wasn’t Wager’s idea, but she insisted and Wager figured it couldn’t do any harm and might even do some good—it promised to be one of those times when women needed other women more than they needed a man. In fact, it was Elizabeth who reminded Wager that they should call his mother and tell her the bad news. From there, Wager knew, the word would go to the rest of the family and, forgetting any differences or jealousies, they would gather around Aunt Louisa to offer words or touches or just presence.
    His mother, of course, wanted to know if Wager had caught the murderer yet.
    “No, Mom. I just heard about it. I wasn’t on duty when it happened.”
    “You’re going to, right? I can at least tell Louisa you’re going to?”
    “Whoever’s on duty’s working on it right now, Mom. I tell you that.”
    “No, you—you should be the one, Gabe. Es una cosa de la familia .”
    A family thing and another detective’s case—two damn good reasons why Wager should not become involved in the homicide. But he could never explain that to his mother. And to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself, either. “I’ll be working on it, Mom.”
    He had telephoned in a request to the duty clerk before they left Elizabeth’s, and by the time his Camaro nosed into a parking place along the crowded curb near his aunt’s home, the reply, heralded by his call letters, came back on his radio.
    “The report came in at seventeen fifty-three, Detective Wager, location West Thirty-fourth and Eliot. At eight-twelve responding officers called for a homicide detective. Detective Golding was on duty; he’s at the scene now. I’ve advised him you would be in contact.”
    “Thanks.” Golding would be busy at the crime scene for at least another two or three hours; Wager led Elizabeth up the narrow concrete walk to the shadowy front porch. The small dormer window that was Julio’s was dark.
    A man about Wager’s age answered the door—Cousin Frank, Wager’s mother’s brother’s son, and one of the kids in Wager’s memory who used to play baseball with him in the streets of the Auraria barrio. When they had been kids and when there had been a barrio. He, too, had aged more than Wager thought he should.
    “Hello, Gabe. Been a long time.” He looked genuinely glad to see Wager.
    They shook hands formally, and Wager introduced Elizabeth. “Aunt Louisa here?”
    “In the living room. Cindy and Greg went down to the hospital to identify … ah … the body.”
    It took Wager a second to remember that