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justice and order and meaning in the world—something I never had as a child—that terrible acts did not occur in a vacuum; that people who committed them were caught and punished. I wanted her to know that the killer who had created such sorrow in her life would suffer, too; that at least one man cared enough about her father to avenge his murder.

CHAPTER 3
     
    I woke up, heart hammering in my chest, sweat streaming down my back. I quickly closed my eyes, but could not erase the image of Latisha Patton, her eyes as lifeless as a puppet’s, the side of her head blown off, her right arm extended, and her fingers splayed, rigor keeping them stiff until I arrived at the scene. As if she was reaching out to me, imploring me to help her.
    I glanced at my alarm clock: 3:15. I popped two Ambien, thrashed on the bed for about twenty minutes, until I finally dropped off.
    I awoke a few hours later, feeling feverish and exhausted. I lay on my back, head on my pillow, arms clasped behind my neck. When I began to see that corner of 54th and Figueroa again, I blinked hard. I mumbled to myself, “Enough!” If I was to keep my sanity, I had to get it out of my head. If I was going to make any headway with the Relovich homicide, I had to focus. I couldn’t afford to be crippled by the Patton case. I forced myself to exchange the images of one homicide scene for another, to contemplate the smudges of blood on Relovich’s floor, the blood splatter pattern on the wall, the broken window in back. A few minutes later, my alarm began to beep. I jumped out of bed, showered and shaved, and gulped down three Tylenol. When I finished dressing, I opened the door of a wooden cabinet, reached into the back, pulled out my .45-caliber Beretta Cougar, which was encased in a leather shoulder holster, and slipped it on.
    When I worked patrol I always carried a backup gun: a hammerless .38-caliber two-incher Smith & Wesson Airweight, which I kept in an ankle holster. But when I made detective, I stashed the gun in a drawer. I didn’t want to be sitting across from a timid witness, cross my legs, and have the pistol peeking out from underneath my pant legs. Most cops, when they left the street and made detective, abandoned their backup guns. Some became so blasé that they even left their serviceweapons in their desk drawers when they left the building for interviews. I was always the more paranoid type. When I started working as a detective trainee and exchanged my uniform for a suit, I purchased a little two-shot .22 caliber derringer that I kept in my pocket as a backup. I reached into the cabinet, pulled out the derringer from a dusty corner, balanced it on my palm for a moment, then jammed it into my right front pocket.
    By seven, I was walking toward Little Tokyo. It was sunny and clear and the sky, not yet veiled with the inevitable sand-colored scrim of smog, was a radiant blue. The office workers were at home, and the streets were deserted. There was an anomalous sense of calm, a welcomed respite from the usual downtown frenzy. I could even hear the occasional chirping of a bird. It felt good to start out a day with the distraction of something important to do.
    I knew that people who passed me on the street wouldn’t have guessed that I was a cop. I wore a muted green Zegna suit, pale blue Egyptian cotton shirt, and Armani silk tie. Few detectives who worked downtown paid full price for their clothing; most, like me, shopped at the handful of fashion district wholesale outlets that sold LAPD officers suits at a discount. I bought my suits at Glickman’s Menswear, a small shop on Santee Street. The owner, Murray Glickman, a stooped over man in his eighties, was so surprised and pleased that a homicide detective was a member of the tribe that he provided me with designer clothing that he normally wouldn’t sell for the cop discount.
    During an argument, Robin once had claimed that I dressed so well to overcompensate for the fact that I had