“You mean shit!” My anger returned, making my voice husky. “Can’t you tell the difference between your head games and reality? Nancy was killed. Murdered. Instead of helping the police find the murderer, you slandered me and got them on my butt.”

“They don’t care about Nancy, anyway. They don’t care about any of us down here.” She got to her feet, her eyes flashing. “They respond to political pressure, and as far as Jurshak is concerned, South Chicago might as well be the South Pole. You know that as well as I do. You know the last time he got a street repaired down here—it sure as hell was before you left the neighborhood.”

“Bobby Mallory is a good, honest, thorough cop,” I said doggedly. “Just because Jurshak is twenty kinds of asshole doesn’t change that.”

“Yeah, you don’t care, either. You proved that pretty good when you moved away from here and never came back until I pushed you into it.”

The pulse beside my right temple started throbbing. I pounded the desk hard enough to knock some of the papers to the floor. “I busted my ass for a week trying to find your old man for you. Your grandparents insulted me, Louisa blew up at me, and you! You couldn’t be content with manipulating me into going to look for the guy and then spinning me around a few times. You had to lie to the police about me.”

“And I thought you’d give a fuck,” she yelled. “I thought if you didn’t care about me, you’d at least do something for Nancy because you played on the same team together. I guess that proves how wrong I was.”

She started for the door. I caught her arm and forced her to face me.

“Caroline, I’m mad enough to beat the shit out of you. But I’m not so mad I can’t think. You fingered me to the cops because there’s something you know that you’re scared to talk about. I want to know what that is.”

She looked at me fiercely. “I don’t know anything. Just that someone had started following Nancy around over the weekend.”

“And she called the police and reported it. Or you did.”

“No. She talked to the state’s attorney and they said they’d open a file. I guess they have something to put in it now.”

She gave the smile of a triumphant martyr. I forced myself to speak calmly to her. After a few minutes she reluctantly agreed to sit back down and tell me what she knew. If she was telling the truth—a big if—it wasn’t much. She didn’t know whom Nancy had seen at the state’s attorney’s office, but she thought it could have been Hugh Mclnerney; he was the person they dealt with on other issues. Under further probing she admitted that Mclnerney had taken statements from them eighteen months ago about their problems with Steve Dresberg, a local Mob figure involved in garbage disposal.

I vaguely remembered the trial over Dresberg’s PCB incinerator and his alleged sweetheart deal with the Sanitary District but didn’t realize she and Nancy had been involved. When I demanded to know what role the two had played, she scowled but said she and Nancy had testified to receiving death threats for their opposition to the incinerator.