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instinctual desire to protect Paul? To protect myself? I don’t know, I sincerely don’t.
    But I didn’t say anything to my partner and the moment passed.
    I kept my thoughts to myself and shook as I cried.

Chapter 20
    I WAS STILL WIPING MY EYES when a pair of clunky black shoes appeared in front of my rubber boots.
    I tilted my head up and saw my boss, Lieutenant Pete Keane. Irish, fair-skinned, baby-faced, and near-skeletal. The overseer of the Bronx Homicide Task Force could have passed for an aging altar boy if not for the flat nail heads of his hard gray eyes.
    “Lauren,” he said. “Came in when you heard the bad news, huh? I’m really glad you did. Saves me a call. I want you to be the primary investigator on this. You and Mike’ll be the perfect team. You’re my go-to guys, right?”
    I stared at Pete Keane. Things were happening at warp speed. I was hardly reconciled to the fact that Scott was dead, and now my boss wanted me to be in charge of the case?
    I wondered suddenly if Keane had learned about our affair. Jesus. Maybe he suspected I knew something about Scott’s death and was testing me. Was that it?
    No, I thought. That was impossible. Nobody knew at work. Scott and I had gone to painstaking lengths to make sure of that. Besides, nothing except flirting and a few meals had even happened between us. Until tonight, of course.
    Actually, it felt like just about every conceivable thing had happened between me and Scott tonight.
    It was only that Pete Keane liked me for big cases, I realized after a paranoia-dissipating breath. There were detectives on our squad who were senior to me, but I, his “lady lawyer cop,” as he liked to call me, was a perfectionist. I put my law school training to work in the Homicide squad. I went methodically by the book, was completely thorough, completely organized, and I had a very high success rate. Bronx assistant DAs practically fought to take my cases because they could just about read my reports aloud for their prosecutions.
    In a big-daddy political-shitstorm case like this, it would be all about reports, I realized. The ones that would have to be sent up the chain of command on practically an hourly basis.
    I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there. I needed time to think, to sift through the pieces of my blown-apart life.
    I felt the knot in my stomach twist like a corkscrew. In the end, it all came down to my inability to come up with a plausible excuse for not taking the assignment. For the moment, words failed me.
    “Whatever you want, Pete,” I found myself saying.
    My boss nodded.
    “Scott Thayer,” he said, shaking his head wearily. “Goddamn twenty-nine years old. Unbelievable. You guys know him at all?”
    Mike blew on his coffee, shook his head.
    My boss turned to me.
    “How about you, Lauren?” he said.
    How could I deny Scott? I thought. Only hours before, he’d stared into my eyes as he stroked my hair in his bed. Now he was lying there cold on stone, the expression of pain on his face reserved only for those who die completely alone.
    The number 4 train screeched past on the elevated track on Jerome Avenue behind us. The blue-white light of its sparks snapped against the dark faces of the surrounding tenements.
    “The name sounds familiar, I think,” I lied as I peeled off a rubber glove.
    My first lie, I thought, looking out at the sea of NYPD blue and the flashing firefight of emergency lights.
    I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be my last.

Chapter 21
    “GIVE ME WHAT YOU GOT SO FAR,” Keane said. “Commissioner just got off the Whitestone. I need smoke to blow up his ass — and keep it coming. What’s your initial read on the crime scene? Impressions — anything at all?”
    “Massive lacerations and contusions to the face,” Mike said. “And one bullet wound under the left jaw. Maybe more, but we’re still waiting on the ME so we can roll him.”
    “Caliber?”
    “Medium. A thirty-eight, maybe,” Mike