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one thought to what she’d been through with Manny until he saw the tear run down her cheek, and the urge to apologize hit him hard.
    “I’m sorry. I should never have—”
    “ No, I’m the one who brought it up. I had no idea. That must have been terrible.” She reached out to touch his arm. “I’m sorry, Gabe.”
    The intimacy shocked him, especially coming from her. If he were a better man, he wouldn’t have wanted more.
    “I don’t know about life after death, but I do feel Manny with me,” she confided. “In the little things. I’ll do laundry and start to hum a song that we used to like, out of the blue. Or when I’ve turned out the lights and am lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, I can sometimes smell his skin. Is that weird?”
    “ No, you miss him.” He shrugged. “It’s natural.”
    Although he missed Manny too, his cynical side didn’t believe the dead truly communicated with the living. His parents never did, or at least he never opened his mind to the possibility. As a kid, he felt detached from everything and everyone. All he had was the shock of his profound loss and a deep-rooted rage that never went away. If that was the dead reaching out to the living, he could do without the constant reminder.
    “They never caught who killed your parents?”
    “ No. It’s a cold case.” He shook his head. “I didn’t have any other relatives, so I was raised by the state. That’s where I met Manny. He got me through a really dark time. He became like family to me. I miss him, too.”
    “ Yeah, he told me about how you two met. He said it took a while for that chip you had on your shoulder to drop off.” She smiled.
    “ No, he knocked it off. We didn’t exactly see eye to eye at first.”
    “ But it didn’t take long for you two to become inseparable.”
    “ More like insufferable.” He grinned.
    “ But just so you know, he never told me anything about your parents. Guess he took that as private between you.”
    Cronan nodded. “Yeah, Manny was good at keeping secrets. But after what happened to my folks, I take each murder case real personal, probably more than I should. That’s why I don’t talk about it.”
    “ Is that your subtle way of telling me to keep my mouth shut?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Don’t worry, partner. This Ramirez knows how to keep a secret too. No one will hear your story from me.”
    He stood on the curb under a streetlight and waited for her to get into her vehicle, but Angel had something more to say.
    “Thanks for confiding in me, Gabe. I know that wasn’t easy.”
    Cronan shrugged and forced a smile. “You’re my partner, Angel.”
    “ For better or worse.” She waved and got in. “See you at the station.”
    After she pulled from the curb, he said, “Yeah, better for me. For you? Not so much.”
    Cronan headed for his vehicle and stuck to the shadows. The darkness helped him think—and remember.
    ***

Early Morning – Grand Central Police Station
     
    With the first forty-eight hours of any murder case being critical, other open cases took a backseat faster than a cheerleader did at prom. Cronan was hard at work after he’d made a quick run home to change, grab a bite to eat, and dose up with aspirin after pulling the first all-nighter in the new investigation.
    His DMV search for Olivia Davenport had turned up her current address. He posted the details on a white board he’d started to document the steps in their investigation. The board was positioned near his and Angel’s desk. An enlarged reproduction of Olivia Davenport’s DMV photo was clipped to the white board, and he’d started a timeline, using the time stamps for the messages left on Olivia’s cell phone yesterday, in an effort to retrace her steps.
    If Olivia had indeed missed a dinner date, they could use her DMV photo at restaurants and shops in the area to see if anyone recognized the blonde beauty. He had a feeling people would have remembered her if they saw