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dress shirt, a brutish face. Queasily, Maia tried to remember where she’d met him before.
    “Kelsey,” Hernandez offered. “Lead investigator on the shooting.”
    Maia willed herself to stay upright. “Ana’s old partner.”
    “Yes.” Hernandez said it without enthusiasm. “He’s a good cop.”
    “He hates Tres.”
    Hernandez held her eyes, trying to send a message she couldn’t decipher. “As I said, Miss Lee, the help I can offer in this situation is limited.”
    “You run the department.”
    “For three more weeks. I retire at the end of December. In the meantime, the brass want this case resolved decisively. An officer has been shot. It’s a miracle she lived the night and not at all certain she’ll survive. Ralph Arguello is our prime suspect. Your friend Mr. Navarre just threw himself into our line of fire.”
    “You’re telling me not to expect justice?”
    “I’m telling you nothing of the sort, Miss Lee. Just listen to Kelsey. Take his warning seriously. And realize that whatever breathing room I can give you, I already have.”
    Hernandez turned and made his way through the rows of cubicles.
    The rabid elf, now on the ground with a cop foot against his neck, spat at the lieutenant’s polished black shoes as he passed.
    •                           •                           •
    EXCEPT FOR THE MAJOR EYESORE NAMED Detective Kelsey, Sergeant Ana DeLeon’s office was a nice workspace. Mahogany desk. Two cushy chairs. Walls painted a cool shade of avocado. Her corkboard was pleasantly cluttered with family photos, department memos and silver
milagro
prayer charms.
    Definitely a woman’s office.
    Maia was impressed it could maintain that aura considering the amount of testosterone that must burn through here every day.
    Kelsey sat behind DeLeon’s desk with his feet propped up. He had files stacked high all around him, desk drawers overturned on the carpet nearby. He was reading through a homicide casebook. The fingers on both his hands were laced with faded white scars, as if he’d long ago lost a fight with a wildcat. “Sit down, Miss Lee.”
    “Making yourself at home?”
    Kelsey raised an eyebrow. “I’m doing my job.”
    Maia nodded toward the stacks of files. “What were you searching for?”
    “Just being thorough.”
    “
Very
thorough, it looks like.”
    Kelsey flipped a page in the homicide book. He chose a photo and slid it across the desk. “Franklin Muriel White. Nineteen eighty-seven. Twenty-one years old when he got turned into that.”
    The photo was a black-and-white autopsy head shot. The face, badly mutilated, had once belonged to a blond Anglo. Beyond that, Maia couldn’t tell much. Savage blows had destroyed the features. Maia had seen worse, but not many times.
    “A tire iron,” Kelsey told her. “First hit laid him out cold. Back of the head, just above the left ear. Probably would’ve been enough to kill him. The other six to the face—those were just dessert.”
    Kelsey watched her for a reaction. His eyes reminded Maia of a rich man’s son she’d once defended in court—a boy who liked to set sleeping derelicts on fire.
    “Eighteen years ago,” she said. “What were the leads?”
    “Forensics got a DNA sample—blood under the victim’s fingernails. Probably the killer’s. Unfortunately all they had in ’87 was RFLP testing. You needed a big sample to work with. There wasn’t enough blood.”
    “And now you’ve got PCR,” Maia said. “So as time permits, you rotate your detectives through the cold case squad looking for old evidence in storage that you can retest.”
    “Hernandez tell you that?”
    “It’s standard practice, Detective. Every department in the country is doing the same thing. Why
this
case, and why did it get DeLeon shot?”
    Kelsey studied her impassively, then tossed her another piece of paper from the murder book—an old-fashioned carbon copy of a patrol