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dude’s wearing magic gloves that are invisible to the naked eye, there’s no logical explanation for why he isn’t leaving a trace of his identity on what now is four notes. Even in cases where there’s no usable ridge detail, people who don’t wear gloves leave something. A finger mark. A smear. A partial print from the side of the hand or the palm.”
    â€œSurveillance videos in all four cases?” Win asks.
    â€œDifferent clothing, but looks like the same guy to me.”
    â€œYou mind if I ask you something?”
    â€œProbably.”
    â€œWhy did you become a teacher and then quit?”
    â€œI don’t know. Why are you wearing a gold watch? You fix some rich person’s parking ticket, maybe let him off the hook for driving two hundred miles an hour in his Ferrari or something? Or maybe you really are a bank robber.”
    â€œMy dad’s. Before that, his dad’s, before that, Napoléon’s—just kidding, although he was fond of Breguets,” Win says, holding out his wrist to show her. “According to family legend, stolen. Some of my esteemed relatives in the Old Country could have auditioned for The Sopranos. ”
    â€œYou sure as hell don’t look Italian.”
    â€œMother was Italian. Father was black, and a teacher. A poet, taught at Harvard. I’m always curious why people want to be teachers, and it’s rare I come across one who felt the calling, went to all the trouble, then quit.”
    â€œHigh school. Lasted two years. The way kids are these days, I decided I’d rather arrest them.” Opening cabinets, returning various bottles of chemicals, dusting powders, crime lights, camera equipment, her hands nervous and awkward. “Anyone ever tell you not to stare? It’s impolite. You stare worse than a baby,” she says, sealing the bank robber’s note in an envelope. “Last resort would be to swab for DNA. But no point, in my opinion.”
    â€œIf he’s not leaving sweat, not likely he’s leaving DNA, unless he’s shedding a lot of skin cells or sneezing on the paper,” Win says.
    â€œYeah. Try wasting state police lab time on that one. Two years now I’ve been waiting for results on that girl who got raped in the Boneyard. The cemetery near Watertown High School. Not about bones. About smoking joints. Three years I’ve been waiting for results on the gay guy who got beaten to a pulp on Cottage Street. And forget all the hair salon breaks, what’s going down in Revere, Chelsea, on and on. No one’s going to take anything seriously until people start getting murdered right and left,” she says.
    They step out on the truck’s diamond-plate steel platform; she shuts the vertical rear doors, locks them. He walks her to her unmarked Taurus, dull paint job, lots of dings on the doors, and she gets inside, waiting for him to stare at her leg, waiting for him to ask some stupid question about how she drives with a fake foot. But he’s subdued, seems oblivious, is gazing off at her two-story brick police department, old and tired and much too small. As is true of most departments in Lamont’s jurisdiction, no room to work, no money, nothing but frustration.
    She starts the car, says, “I’m not going near the Janie Brolin case.”
    â€œDo what you gotta do.”
    â€œBelieve me, I am.”
    He leans closer to her open window, says, “I’m working it anyway.”
    Her hand shakes a little as she adjusts the fan, and cool air blows on her face. She says, “Lamont this, Lamont that. And you snap to attention, do whatever she says. Lamont, Lamont, Lamont. No matter what, she gets what she wants and everything turns out great for her.”
    â€œI’m surprised you’d say that after what she went through last year,” Win says.
    â€œAnd that’s the problem,” Stump says. “She’ll never forgive you for saving