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and friends are here. There are some other reasons…”
    “Ah, a boy,” I guessed.
    Teagan laughed bitterly. “It always comes down to a boy, doesn’t it?”
    I shrugged. “Well, make sure you research the school where the district tries to place you. I can help you if you want.”
    Teagan smiled. “I’d like that, Zach.” Her eyelashes fluttered several times and it looked like her eyes were beginning to water.
    “The pollen is up,” I said, pointing at her eyes. “Bet the school’s doctor could write you a prescription for allergies.”
    The tablet beeped, telling Teagan that my order was ready. She shook her head slightly and stood up. “For a detective, you’re totally oblivious.”
    Huh? I opened my mouth and then closed it as the girl walked toward the counter to get my plate. What’s wrong with her?

    The sky was still pissing rain, so I instructed my Jeep to drop me off at the employee entrance of the NOPD Easytown Precinct station. Giant drops of water splashed against my hat as the car sped off toward my parking spot halfway across the lot. If it’d been any weather except rain, I’d have walked the distance. Lord knows I needed the exercise.
    I wanted to pay a visit to Chuck Wolfe’s spouse. It was important to eliminate her as a suspect—or maybe add her to the top of the list. I wouldn’t have time to drive out there before my scheduled appointment with Paxton Himura, though. They lived all the way out in Leonidas, on the far west side of town. To make better use of my time, after lunch I went to my office at the station to organize my notes and begin typing up my initial report on the case.
    Technically, the NOPD granted me forty-eight hours to turn in the initial report, but Chief Brubaker liked to get the report as early as possible. Given the climate in the precinct regarding the murders surrounding the sex clubs, I figured sooner was better than later.
    The pressure from the mayor’s office made more sense to me now that I knew Councilman Jefferson was one of the johns who got caught up in the lockdown. Teagan had alluded to the fact that it would be a public relations nightmare for everyone down at city hall if something happened to one of their people at the clubs.
    My notes on the case weren’t that in-depth, so I’d be able to write up the initial report quickly. Truth be told, there were more questions than answers. Besides the locations and total lack of usable evidence, we didn’t have much else to go on. The murders didn’t happen on any particular day of the week, so it wasn’t as if the killer was stopping by after work.
    “Hold on,” I said aloud.
    “You got something, Forrest?”
    I glanced up at Alfonso Cruz, the district’s other homicide detective who shared the office with me. He typically worked the short-notice daytime calls and I got the overnight deliveries. Guess which one of us was busier. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Give me a second.”
    I pulled out the reports on the other three recent murders in the Easytown sex clubs. Each of them was in the unsolved and no-motive pile. I placed them on my desk in order from oldest to newest.
    Mark Barilla, the first victim, had died by poisoning three weeks ago. He had a one-man party in his room at The Stud Farm, a sex club that specialized in homosexual intercourse with both sex bots and human prostitutes. After they’d had sex, the victim was smoking marijuana with the robot he’d hired. Somehow, oleander leaves were mixed in with the pot.
    Oleander is a common flowering bush in Louisiana and, as it turned out, worldwide in the milder climates. In the US, they sold it at home improvement stores for homeowners to plant as shrubbery, but all of its parts are deadly. The victim smoked the oleander, which caused respiratory paralysis and then, if the robot’s video recording was to be believed, the john died within five minutes of ingestion. It had originally been ruled an accidental death, but Chief