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anywhere if you can’t even fight me.”
    Above her, the moon shone through the window. She wanted it to eclipse, to hide her in darkness, but it kept glowing through the car window, watching as she withered inside.

MAIA LEE ARRIVED AT SAPD HOMICIDE SATURDAY MORNING, JUST IN time to watch two detectives and a uniformed cop subduing one of Santa’s elves.
    “Serial murderer-rapist,” Lieutenant Hernandez explained, ushering her past. “Seven warrants in Missouri. Department store actually did a background check for once.”
    The elf was doing pretty well for himself. His green felt sleeves were torn and his green tights were rolled up to his knees. A broken plastic handcuff dangled off one wrist. The uniformed cop had his legs and the detectives had his arms, but the elf was still managing to scream obscenities, spit, occasionally bite.
    His mean little eyes locked onto Maia as she passed, but she’d been ogled by too many incarcerated sociopaths to feel bothered. She had worse problems.
    She followed Hernandez through the cubicle jungle.
    “Sergeant DeLeon’s office.” Hernandez pointed toward a glass door at the back of the room. “Quietest place to talk.”
    Inside, a big Anglo detective was sitting at the desk, flipping through files.
    Before Maia could go in, Hernandez caught her arm. “I won’t be going in, Miss Lee. But just so you know, I’ve already done as much for you as I can.”
    Hernandez had aged in the last few years.
    Maia had met him several times before, thanks to Tres’ incredible luck getting tangled in murder cases. She liked the lieutenant’s calm manner, his quiet professionalism. He was one of those men who had never been a father, but had clearly missed his calling.
    He was still handsome, impeccably dressed, but his hair had turned the color of wet porcelain. He’d lost too much weight. The lines had deepened around his eyes.
    People didn’t age incrementally, Maia decided. They went along fine for years, then hit some invisible dip and
boom
: a decade caught up with them overnight.
    “I’m not asking for help,” she said. “Just an open mind until we locate Tres.”
    “That may be difficult. Your boyfriend—”
    “My client.”
    “—your
client
made the wrong choice at exactly the wrong time. My best sergeant is in the hospital dying. The prime suspect is on the loose. Navarre is aiding and abetting.”
    “Supposition. You never saw them together.”
    A shout went up across the room. One of the detectives got a pointy-toed elf shoe in his face. His gun rattled loose in his shoulder holster.
    “Miss Lee,” Hernandez continued, “you know Sam Barrera, the old man—”
    “I know Sam.”
    “He wasn’t easy to interview. Kept talking about a man with a bloody shirt in the kitchen. Kept asking if ‘the agent’ was okay. Finally we showed him some photographs. He ID’d Ralph Arguello.”
    “You’re proceeding on the testimony of an Alzheimer’s sufferer?”
    “It was enough for a warrant, Miss Lee. We searched your friend’s house, found a .357 and a bloody shirt stashed behind the laundry room wall. By lunchtime, forensics will have those items matched to Ralph Arguello.”
    Maia bit back a curse. She wanted to strangle Tres, which in itself was not an unusual feeling, but damn it. Damn it.
    She felt her blood pressure rising. A black oily ball started rolling around in her stomach.
    Not now,
she told herself.
    The last few days, it had gotten worse. It struck at the most inconvenient times—left her curled on the bathroom floor or hunched over the steering wheel on the side of the highway. The doctors had promised her it would not get this bad so soon.
    “Miss Lee?” Hernandez said.
    “I’m fine.”
    “You don’t look fine,” Hernandez said. “Do you want some water?”
    “No . . . thank you.”
    In Ana DeLeon’s office, the big Anglo detective was still sitting behind the desk, poring through paperwork. He had a buzz of rust brown hair, a rumpled