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fingernails, managing to infect them.
    There was a gasp and a thump behind him. Voskuil turned just in time to sidestep a scrawny young man, all waxy skin and brittle red hair, charging past him. Junkie, thought Voskuil in an instinctive diagnosis. Martinez, the new intern, was picking herself off the floor.
    “Stop him!” she shouted.
    The door guard tried to bash Red in the face with the butt of his weapon, but the guy was slippery. In one lithe move he ducked it and wriggled by.
    Voskuil craned his neck to see what happened next. His line of sight turned out to be perfect. Through the panels of the automatic doors, he saw the junkie dash a few strides over wet asphalt. Ten, maybe 15 feet. With the crack of a rifle shot, the runaway crumpled. A second shot rang out, convulsing the body. The coup de grace. Though he couldn’t see it, Voskuil had no doubt that Red’s brains had just sprayed the pavement.
    Voskuil noticed the child, thankfully too short to see what happened, anxiously gazing in that direction. She could recognize a gunshot, if nothing else.
    “It’s okay, honey,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”
    She smiled tentatively but a trickle of urine was already pitter-pattering on the linoleum between her shoe-tops.
    Voskuil sighed heavily. “Now look what you’ve done.”
    No use trying to call an orderly over to take care of it. None would be available. He tore off a yard of gauze and swabbed the floor with it. The girl would have to endure her wet clothes. He had neither the time nor the inclination to do anything about that.
    Voskuil glanced at the lineup outside his partition. While he’d been with the child five more cases had joined the queue. Long night ahead.
    Irritated, Voskuil returned to his review of the girl. Busy or not, he’d make time for a word with Gladden. That was some stunt she just pulled. At twenty yards he could tell that old bag was one cold night away from croaking in her sleep.  
    It’s the pity cases that get blood on your hands, he thought, and handed the child a towel. “Try to dry yourself off, would you?”
    It was definitely going to be a long night.  

    #
     
    A light rain drummed the Interceptor’s windows. The drive back to the station was virtually silent. Except for the chatter of the dispatcher, of course. Nic had stared into the opaque windshield until Winter prompted her to put on the wipers. The atmosphere outside was thick and gray.
    He was always spent at the end of a tour — they rarely had one without action — but today he was particularly glad that only the most serious of calls could keep him from clocking out.
    The riot had been a tough one.
    Worse, he saw, for Nic. Her face was stony, her eyes focused on the road ahead. She was seldom voluble, these days, but he’d never seen her this withdrawn. And they’d encountered, in the course of their eleven-month partnership, worse things than what happened to the teen in the Seahawks jacket.
    Of course, Winter hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger today.  
    “Nic,” he said, unable to bear it. She must have known from his tone where he was going with this because she immediately said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Okay,” he said. “If you ever do… Lemme know. Whenever.”
    She glanced over and he saw, in her slight, pained smile, a gratitude he savored. She nodded.
    They passed one of the ubiquitous billboards — huge red type stamped on a black background. The simple, unequivocal declarative: THERE IS NO CURE.
    We get it already, Winter thought. The truth is all around us.
    But people needed the reminder. If you forgot that simple fact at the wrong time, you’d break the rules. And that meant more death.
    The one thing we have plenty of, he thought. His bleak mood got bleaker.
    What a shitty day.

    #

    A high perimeter wall enclosed a collection of multi-story buildings that, in simpler times, had served as county courthouses.
    As they passed through the fortified gates,