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killed her?
    She squeezed her eyes shut, imagined herself pistol-whipping Lassiter, demanding the truth, threatening to blow his brains out. Would he talk? Revenge fantasies, her shrink had told her, were unhealthy. Yeah, well so is losing your sister.
    Amy placed a white patch on the end of the push rod, dipped it in solvent, and cleaned the barrel of powder residue. She imagined it was the very residue of the bullet that entered her father’s brain. Next, she dripped oil on a clean cloth and wiped down the gun, inhaling the wet steel smell that somehow reminded her of the taste of gin.
    She would meet with Lassiter. Could he really get the State Attorney tohelp? And if he did, would that be proof that Lassiter wasn’t involved in Krista’s disappearance?
    “The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
    A cover-up. A conspiracy. Not out of the question. A network of old pals who looked out for one another, covered one anothers’ asses.
    An official investigation was something she hadn’t expected. She doubted, after all this time, that the authorities would be interested. She considered for a moment the implications if Lassiter was on the up-and-up. If the State Attorney opened an honest inquiry, could he discover what happened to Krista? Could he gather enough evidence for a prosecution?
    A trial was not what she had been planning. That was a secret she would have to keep from Lassiter. She had not come to Miami to prosecute the man who murdered her sister. She had come here to kill him.

9      Never Lost, Just Hard to Find
    Twenty minutes after leaving the video store, I parked in front of City Hall, a waterfront art deco building that in the 1930s had been the terminal for Pan Am’s seaplanes. I took a shortcut through the adjacent boatyard, dodging several oily puddles at the entrance to Scotty’s Landing, a ramshackle fish joint next to the marina. A few yards away, sailboats were docked, halyards pinging in the wind. A three-quarters moon hung over the bay.
    I spotted Amy at a redwood picnic table, closest to the water.
    “Thanks for meeting me.” I slid onto the bench across from her.
    “Who’s the guy you found?” Small talk was not in the lady’s repertoire.
    I told her about Charles Ziegler and Charlie’s Girlz and the porn video I watched. A shudder went through Amy’s body, and I gave her a moment to compose herself.
    Then I told her Krista was last seen heading to a party at Ziegler’s house. I didn’t mention that I’d met the guy for about a minute, because that would have meant coming clean about my one-nighter with Krista. Amy had no need for the information, and I had no desire to take any more crap from her.
    “Let me tell you my plan,” I said.
    “Thanks, but I don’t need your plan. I’ll confront Ziegler myself.”
    “No, you won’t. He’s a big deal in this town. He’ll have lawyers, layersof people to get through. Besides, we’ve got nothing on him. There were lots of men at his parties. We may have only one chance to talk to Ziegler, and we need to do our homework first.”
    She nailed me with a cold, hard, insurance investigator’s look. “Just what homework do
we
need to do?”
    “We should pay a visit to Alex Castiel, the State Attorney.”
    “The guy you claim is a friend.”
    “We play basketball in the lawyers’ league.”
    “That’s it? You dribble to each other?”
    I didn’t explain that “dribble to each other” made no sense, basketball-wise. “Castiel has a staff of investigators,” I said. “He works with cops. He can subpoena witnesses.”
    “Just how good of friends are you?” Suspicion laced her voice, or maybe that was her normal tone.
    “A long time ago, I did a big favor for him.”
    “What kind of favor?”
    “The secret kind. What I’m saying, he owes me.”
    It was true. I’d been carrying the guy’s IOU for a long time, never intending to use it. But then, I’d never been accused of making a teenage girl vanish