“Meaning what?” I asked.

“A pill press,” she said. “We figure that’s what left those lined impressions in the back seat of the Caprice.”

“So the theory from outside the liquor store last night?” I said. “About Carilla and the old guy in the back of the car?”

“Works out perfect for this,” Remy said. “That might be what the old guy was after. Plus, I asked the night shift guys to hit the Caprice with Luminol. In case the shooter cleaned up after Carilla ran out of the car.”

“And?” I asked.

“And this is what they found.” Remy showed me a picture on her phone.

The photo was shot in the dark and showed smears of a bright blue color across most of the back seat of the Caprice, where someone had cleaned up. Except there was a rectangular void across the middle of the back seat with no chemiluminescence.

“So something was on that seat when the old guy shot at Carilla,” I said. “Something the shooter took with him?”

“Exactly,” Remy said. “Abe thinks it was a pill press. A desktop unit. The same folks who used to run Oxy up here a couple years ago . . . a lot of ’em are now running other pills. Seemingly legal, but not.”

“Fakes of legal drugs,” I said.

Remy nodded. “Filler mostly. Stamped with a die that makes it look like real pharmaceuticals.”

Remy grabbed her tea drink, and we turned toward the precinct.

“You’re talking about a small tabletop pill press?” I asked. “The kind you set up on a dresser in a bedroom?”

“Exactly.” Remy nodded.

“Rem,” I said. “You know I go out with the narco squad once in a while, right? On raids. Neal and I over there have been buddies since the academy.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Well, I haven’t done it in six months, but I’m on a text chain with those guys. They seized a pill press last month. It’s probably still in the evidence room.”

Remy saw where I was going. “We can test this theory,” she said.

“Exactly.”

I texted my buddy in narco and asked for a heads-up to the guy who ran the evidence room.

We came in through the front of the precinct then. Passed through the lobby, but didn’t go upstairs. Headed instead down to the basement.

When we got to Evidence, I saw Ed Udall, who had to be seventy this year and still working. He’d been eligible to retire when I was a rookie.

“Ed,” I said. “You get a heads-up about a pill press we wanna check out?”

“What business is it of yours?” he asked. Classic Ed, which is to say hard-ass. “Not your case, Marsh. Not even your department.”

I explained how Remy and I wanted to test out a theory, and Ed made a couple calls, even though narco had already given him the green light.

Ten minutes later, Ed wheeled out a pill press on a rolling cart.