I was in the women’s room, washing my hands for the fifteenth time, when the police arrived to take possession of what was left of Darby. I’d been in there a while, washing and washing again, trying to rinse away the shock and revulsion, with little luck. I checked myself out in the mirror. The light wasn’t good in here, but even in dimness, I looked like a woman who’d just found a dead body in a box. You couldn’t mistake my shell-shocked expression. After a few more breaths, duly braced, I headed for the door, then thought better of it. I turned and went back to wash my hands again. The door squeaked open behind me and Detective Marta Pena walked in. I turned to face her. She nodded. I nodded back.

Her star hung from a silver chain around her neck. From the bags under her dark eyes, it looked like she’d been up for days. “You okay?”

“Sure. Why? Don’t I look it?”

The look she gave me told me no, but she was polite enough not to say anything. Instead, she eased her notebook out of her pocket and flicked the top of the ballpoint nestled between the pages. “Tell me about the dead guy in the box.”

“His name’s Vincent Darby, and up until about twenty minutes ago, he was high on my list of suspects in the death of Tim Ayers.”

At the mention of Tim’s name, Marta’s eyes locked on mine and her face went deadpan, like a rock, like one of those presidential visages carved into the stone of Mt. Rushmore. As far as she was concerned, Ayers’s case was closed. She was wrong, of course, and I’d argued as much, but it was obvious she didn’t appreciate having it brought up again.

“Darby worked for a guy named Nick Spada, who specializes in life settlements.”

She sneered. “Not exactly a high-risk line of work.”

“Nick Spada and Darby held Ayers’s end-of-life policy.”

I waited to see if the connection sank in. I could tell by the narrowing of her eyes that it was beginning to.

“I’ve been digging into Darby hard. He refused to tell me he was living on a boat just three slips down from Tim’s, or that he argued with him before he died. I believe that argument was about Tim’s run of good luck, the fact that he was still alive when his doctors told him he shouldn’t be. If that’s true, that ropes Spada in.” I leaned against the sink, arms crossed. “I think Nick Spada killed two people, maybe more. Maybe even Peter Langham, whose house Darby was living in. I need to check on that next.”

“So Darby being here?” she asked.

“Is a warning. We’re dealing with a psychopath.”