“Sometimes,” he said, “we can only go with what we have.”

As far as his statement to Ricci went, Erickson had been candid: There wasn’t much of anything helpful to be found outside in the way of evidence.

Not on the grounds per se.

Accompanied by the detective, Ricci and Thibodeau had again walked back to the greyhound exercise pen and kennel, both empty now with the dogs taken into temporary care by the ASPCA. They had reinspected the sides and rear of the shop, then strode along the periphery of the bordering woods. Finally they went out front to the parking area to take a look at Julia Gordian’s Honda Passport, and the muddy vestiges of tire prints the cops had already lifted the previous day.

They were standing over by the Honda in the rain when Ricci noticed a car parked among a group of police cruisers a yard or two farther down the lot—a Ford Cutlass, standard-issue plainclothes unmarked in precinct requisition lots. Its window was open slightly more than a crack, a man in a navy blue suit working on a laptop computer in the front passenger seat.

Ricci looked more closely and saw something on the armrest beside the man. It raised a thought.

He broke away from Erickson and Thibodeau and hastened over to the car.

“Got a minute?” Ricci said, crouched under his umbrella. He motioned his head back toward the Passport. “I’m with Erickson.”

Surprised by the sudden interruption, Navy Blue glanced out at him, pushing the computer screen down out of his angle of sight.

“You one of those guys from UpLink?” he said.

Ricci nodded, came up close to the window, and shot a look inside at what he’d recognized as a pad of graph paper on the armrest. But he had no chance to catch more than the briefest glimpse of the sketch on its top page before Navy Blue reached over and turned it facedown where it lay.

“This is a crime scene,” he said. “I’ve got important things to do.”

“Like I said,” Ricci said. “Not more than a minute.”

Navy Blue continued to regard him from inside the Cutlass, his expression at once standoffish and warily curious.

A grunt. “Something I can call you besides Man From UpLink?”

“Name’s Tom Ricci.”

Navy Blue sat a moment, pushed the button to lower the window about halfway.

Ricci figured that was all he would need.

“I’m Detective Brewer,” the cop said. He still sounded suspicious. “Go ahead and make it quick.”

Ricci did, but not in the way Brewer expected. Before the other man could react, he thrust his free hand through the window, turned Brewer’s laptop toward him, and raised the lid so he could see it.

Brewer flinched in his seat.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” He pulled the computer back around, snapped it shut.

Ricci’s face was calm.