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handguns were found, no doubt deposited there by their owners who had used them in a variety of crimes. The park became known for prostitution, drug dealing, and shootouts in the 1980s. There had also been dozens of murders there over the years, including the one now assigned to Section One.
    I took Bernie for a short walk before meeting up with Leo, Alex, and Selfie at the perimeter of the park near a stand of trees where the murder of Carla Hodge had occurred less than forty-eight hours earlier. Alex went over the facts for Leo as they’d been told to us earlier that morning, while Selfie laid out the crime scene photographs on a picnic bench.
    “It looks like she’d gone jogging after work and came across our suspect,” I said to Leo after Alex finished telling him what he knew about the murder.
    “Was there a wallet or anything else found on the girl?” Leo asked.
    Selfie showed him one of the photos. “She had a fanny pack with her wallet, cell phone, and keys inside. There was thirty-eight dollars inside the wallet, so the motive wasn’t robbery. Her car was parked in the lot across the way.” She pointed to the nearby adjacent parking lot.
    “What about the cell phone? Was there anything of concern in the texts, calls?”
    Selfie shook her head. “There wasn’t much of anything, just some calls to her mother, nothing out of the ordinary.”
    “I think whoever did this was trying to make Hodge go with him,” Alex said. “It was an attempted kidnap and sexual assault. When she refused to go along, she was murdered.”
    What Alex had postulated was possible, but it was conjecture, not based on the facts as we currently knew them.
    I said, “I’m trying to understand why you think it was an attempted rape?”
    He shrugged. “Once you rule out robbery, what else did the girl have to give up but her body? No other motive makes any sense.”
    “Maybe our suspect knew the girl,” Leo said. “He might have followed her here.”
    “You mean, as in stalking her?” I asked.
    “I’m just speculating, but it could have gone that way.”
    What Molly had said earlier about Carla Hodge possibly being gay came to mind. It could have been that whoever killed her had taken an interest in her and had been rebuffed.
    Alex interrupted my thoughts. “I don’t think this was a crime of passion, more like a crime of lust.” He took a moment, glancing through the photographs Selfie had brought. He finally looked up from the photos, brushed a hand through his thinning hair, and said, “This case is already a giant cluster fuck. We’ve got a knife with the guts of a murder victim from ten years ago on its blade that somehow got out of an evidence locker and ends up here. How in the hell do we do anything with that?”
    Leo stared hard at my partner. “We work both murders like we work any other killings. We dig through what evidence there is, follow-up with the witnesses, and try to piece something together.”
    “Don’t patronize me. I know how to do basic police work.”
    Leo smiled. “Sorry. The way you were talking, I thought maybe you’d forgotten.” He went over and studied the photos, taking a couple of them over to where the body of the girl had been found.
    When he thought Leo was out of earshot, Alex said, “I think there’s a reason why Leo the lion has been working cold cases.”
    I looked at him, then back at Leo who had kneeled down on the ground with the photos, but I didn’t respond.
    “He’s dead wood.”
    “What?”
    “He’s way past his prime, on cruise control, heading toward retirement.”
    “I doubt that Leo Kingsley has ever been on cruise control, and he’s certainly not dead wood.”
    I walked away, ignoring my partner who went on a rant, saying something to Selfie about dinosaurs. When I got to Leo’s side, I saw that he was now on all fours and was wearing reading glasses. He had a couple of photos of Hodge spread out on the grass in front of him.
    “Anything interesting?”