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her.
    The noise. The chaos. Had it always been this
bad? Cars honking, sirens blaring, the shriek of bus brakes, and
the smell of diesel when the huge vehicle pulled away from the
curb? Construction, wood-planked walkways, jackhammers. How did
people stand it? How did they think? Function?
    The man beside her seemed oblivious to it
all.
    It was two o'clock in the afternoon. They
were driving through city traffic, Max Irving steering with one
light hand on the wheel. There were cars in front, cars behind, to
the left, the right. She tried to shut herself off, tried to block
out the noise of the traffic, to block out the past that suddenly
didn't seem like the past anymore.
    Confusion. So much confusion.
    "Here." Max startled her by tossing a folder
in her lap. She stared at the bold, black print: Sheppard Case.
    "Go on. Open it. That's why you're here,
isn't it?"
    Ivy opened it.
    The first thing she saw was an eight-by-ten
color glossy of the murdered mother. It was a close-up of her face.
Straight, chin-length blond hair, matted with blood, blue eyes open
wide. Lividity on the right side. Lividity occurred when the heart
stopped mixing plasma. The red cells settled like sediment in wine,
turning the skin anywhere from red to purple. From the photo,
anyone with a slight knowledge of forensics would be able to see
that the victim had been moved several hours after the death. So
the head shot, horrific as it was, wasn't taken simply for shock
value— although Ivy was fairly certain that's why Irving had not
only tossed it to her, but why he'd put it on top. Talk about
staging. She refused to play his game. She slammed the folder shut
and closed her eyes, resting her head against the headrest.
    "Not going to puke, are you?"
    "Certainly wouldn't warn you if I was."
    She may not have ever profiled an actual
case, but she'd spent the last ten years profiling everyone she
came in contact with, from bank teller to grocery clerk. Ivy had
honed her profiling skills until she'd gotten so good at judging
the book by its cover that she'd been in danger of becoming a
parlor trick at the psychology department's yearly Christmas
party.
    Irving was easy. A hotshot detective,
burnt-out but unwilling to admit it to himself. Used to have a
sense of humor, but didn't have time for such nonsense anymore.
Problems on the home front. Looking at him, a layman might conjure
up a trophy wife, one he ignored unless they were fighting about
his job and his lack of attentiveness. But Ivy had noted his
rumpled clothes, his air of distraction—an ongoing state that clung
to parents, especially single parents, who were juggling two
worlds: the world of work and the world of home.
    What she didn't understand was why he had it
in for her. "Why do you resent me so much?" She opened her eyes and
lifted her head. "Is it because I'm a woman?"
    "That has nothing to do with it."
    "Because I'm from Canada?"
    "Oh, come on. I don't want to get into
this."
    "I do." Anything to get her mind off the
past. Earlier she'd been too tired to fight with him. Now she
welcomed it.
    "I don't have anything against Canadians. I
just think we can handle this without your help."
    "You didn't handle it before."
    "I wasn't on the case before."
    Somebody cut him off. He laid on his horn,
then missed the light completely. "Shit," he said, slamming his
hand against the steering wheel. Apparently he wasn't as oblivious
as she'd thought.
    In the backseat, right behind his head, Jinx
decided it was time to complain by letting out a long, weird,
drug-laden meow.
    "You wanna know what bothers me?" Irving
asked, his voice and demeanor reflecting ever-increasing agitation.
"That cat. That damn cat. I don't think somebody who has to haul
her damn cat with her is going to know jackshit about a serial
killer. I don't think somebody who keeps flinching"—he snapped his
fingers in front of her face, she flinched and drew back in the
seat—"every damn time a horn honks is going to be able to handle