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pathetic enough to make my day. This’ll be like catching fish in a bathtub.”
    Nikki was reminded of another seemingly absurd defense. She said, “There are a few... problem areas.”
    “Such as?” the D.A. asked.
    “Deschamps is supposed to have brutally murdered one woman, dumped her body in a trash bin, then moved on to a nearby club where he proceeded to pick up another woman and have sex with her.”
    “Well, you know what Mick Jagger says,” Wise smirked. “Some guys can’t get no satisfaction.”
    “Mick say anything about why a man would do a dump job in an alley, then come back later and stick around for the cops to show up?”
    “He returned for the ring,” Wise said.
    Nikki wondered how Wise had found out about the ring.
    Had Walden already brought him up to speed? If so, why had her boss expressed surprise at finding him there? More likely Wise had his own private source in Homicide; one member of the good ol’ boys’ club helping out another. She supposed she could learn a trick or two from the man, if she could stand being around him for longer than a few minutes at a time.
    “Then there’s the anonymous caller who sent the police to the alley,” she said. “Why didn’t he leave a name?”
    “Please,” Wise said impatiently. “You live in that part of town, look out of the window and see a body, maybe you call nine-one-one. But you sure as hell don’t give ’em your name, because in that neighborhood it doesn’t pay to get mixed up with the cops.”
    “Call wasn’t made from a private phone,” Walden said. “It came from a pay phone at a service station about a mile away.”
    “Sure would be nice if the police could locate the caller,” Nikki said. “Maybe he even saw who put the body in the Dumpster.”
    “The investigators are doing their best to find him,” Walden said. “Meanwhile, if we’re going to arraign Mr. Deschamps, we’ve only”—he consulted his wristwatch— “thirty-nine hours left. Opinions?”
    “Is there any doubt?” Wise said. “Full court press.”
    “Nikki?” Walden asked.
    She sighed. “He’s what we got. But unless some really solid evidence turns up—hair, fiber, eyewitness—I wouldn’t want to prosecute him.”
    “No chance of that,” Wise said.
    “You’re forgetting, Ray, you’re only the head deputy D.A.,” Walden said. “If you’d like to make that kind of call, maybe you should think about challenging me next election. Until then I’ll be the one deciding who prosecutes whom.
    Now why don’t we leave and let my new special assistant get back to work?”
    Walden turned to her. “By the way, Meg’s arranging an interview for you with the
L.A. Times.
” Meg Fisher was the office’s public relations manager. “She’ll let you know when.” He smiled and added, “I like the bare leg look.” Then he made his exit.
    “Nice to know what it takes to get ahead,” Wise said, looking at her legs.
    Her first inclination was to tug down her skirt. But the hell with that. “I suppose this means you’re not going to be wearing your socks tomorrow, huh, Ray?”
    Wise grimaced and limped from the room. Nikki replaced the headset and went back to work.

F IVE
    D etective Edward Goodman didn’t much care for his partner, Carlos Morales, but he didn’t dislike him enough to do anything about it. He figured that if he requested a new partner, he might just draw one he’d hate. Carlos was okay, so long as you didn’t pay any attention to the bullshit that came out of his mouth all day long or you didn’t try to buck him when he had his mind set on something.
    Presently, Carlos’s mind was set on building a case against Jamal Deschamps. This was fine with Goodman, because it would keep Carlos out of his gray hair while he looked into other possibilities. At the moment, his partner was rooting for clues at Deschamps’s apartment, allowing Goodman to join his cohorts and the crime lab team as they searched for truth at Madeleine