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“how’s the Frau ohne Schatten? ”
    The old Lee Campbell would have smiled at this. But now his friend just raised an eyebrow, his face devoid of mirth. “Oh, some things never change, you know. Brisk as ever.”
    Lee had come up with the nickname for his mother after seeing the Strauss opera in college. Chuck, who had some German ancestry on his mother’s side, found it amusing, having experienced Fiona Campbell’s relentless cheerfulness firsthand. They used to joke about how she was really the original Frau ohne Schatten —woman without a shadow. But now the shadows had fallen heavily over his friend.
    Campbell turned to leave, but he swayed and caught himself by grabbing the door frame.
    “You okay?” Chuck asked, reaching a hand out to him.
    Lee waved him off. “Fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.”
    Morton didn’t believe him, but he kept silent. He recalled Lee’s Presbyterian stoicism only too well from their days on the rugby field, and still remembered the day Lee refused to leave a tournament game after breaking his nose on a tackle. Blood spurting from his nose, he insisted on finishing the game; he muttered something about “setting an example.” Chuck called it masochism, but he would never say that to his friend.
    “Can I speak with the pathologist doing Marie’s autopsy?” Lee asked.
    “I don’t see why not. I’ll be in touch,” he added.
    “Right,” said Campbell. He paused at the door to Chuck’s office, as if he were about to say something else, but then turned, opened the door, and was gone.
    Morton leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his stiff bristle of blond hair. Then he stood, picked up his mug, and headed out of his office toward the coffee station. The mug—a gift from his daughter—proclaimed him as “World’s Greatest Dad,” but today he didn’t feel like the world’s greatest anything.
    When he got to the coffee station, he saw that a few beat cops were gathered in the corner, heads lowered, talking quietly, and he heard one of them snicker. Then another one said, “Yeah—real mental , I guess.” They all laughed—until one of the conspirators saw Chuck and nudged the others with his elbow, at which point they abruptly stopped laughing. Rage gathered in Chuck’s chest, constricting his throat and making his forehead burn. He was noted for his even temper most of the time, but when he lost it, he truly lost it.
    “What the hell are you looking at, Peters?” he bellowed.
    Everyone in the station house stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He advanced on the group of subordinates, who shrank from him, averting their eyes as he approached.
    “Let me tell you something,” he said, his voice lowered to a steely calm. “If you don’t get back to work right this minute, some heads are going to roll around here. Do you understand me?” he said, addressing himself to a young sergeant, Jeff Peters.
    “Yes, sir,” Peters replied, his blunt face sulky. He was short and black-haired and built like a prizewinning Angus.
    Chuck felt his face redden. “I didn’t hear you, Peters!”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you, O’Connell—do you have anything to say to me?”
    “No, sir.” Danny O’Connell was a tall, skinny redhead who followed any lead that Peters set. Chuck knew this, and knew that the rest of them were just playing along. One of the rules of group dynamics—which functioned in station houses exactly as it did in high school locker rooms—was to make fun of others to deflect the possibility that others might make fun of you. Peters was the ringleader, as usual, and Chuck knew he had a mean streak. He came from an unstable home, had a drunken failure for a father, and was angry at the world. Chuck put his face close to Peters’s face, so close that he could smell his wintergreen aftershave.
    “Or maybe you wanted to transfer out of Homicide? Because that could be arranged.”
    “No, sir.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “Yes,