But gradually, over decades now, she’s felt that era end. Whether it’s the professionalism that’s expected of her or the fact that the world is actually moving at a faster clip, she doesn’t know. But if there’s one improvement to the Samhattan police force she’d like to recommend to Chief Barbara Pollen, it’s that officers (and detectives) ought to be given baseball bats and private rooms where dozens of breakable objects waited to be destroyed.

Venting is good.

Getting things off your chest is good.

But breaking things is often best.

And she still feels this way, despite what happened in the interrogation room in Chaps, the reason she was transferred to Samhattan in the first place.

Hell, she doesn’t want to think about that today. She can’t. Not with what happened to fourteen-year-old Tammy Jones last night. And while murder isn’t the rarest of city crimes (even in a smaller city like Samhattan), the early reports from the coroner’s office are baffling.

Bare hands.

No time for old regrets with potential fresh ones on the table.

McGowan needs to act fast. She understands this clearly. Faster than she’s ever worked before. And as goes the report: Well…no. Right? There’s simply no way what she saw, in person, and still carries now in her jacket, was the result of bare hands. Still: no evidence of any weapon at all. She stood in the same room Jones was killed. Stood above the mess that was made.

“Not unless her head was dropped from the parking structure by bare hands,” she says out loud, taking a left on Stein Street.

McGowan mostly works alone. It’s not that she prefers it that way (in fact, she dreams of an assistant, anyone to take care of the administrative duties while she focuses on connecting the dots), it’s just that Samhattan is only so big. Sure, it’s got rich areas and poor areas and a reasonable downtown and dozens of different restaurants with cuisine from around the world, but it’s also got a cemetery smack dab in the center of it, and no city with that could ever boast to be much of a vacation destination. There seems to be one of everything in town: one mechanic, one doctor, one basketball coach, one big, fat cemetery.

And one detective.

She passes the graveyard now. Thinks of the impending funeral of a fourteen-year-old girl with a ton of promise both on and off any court.

“Tammy Jones,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

Passing the trees that block the view of the tombstones, she’s infused with a sudden urge to solve the case now, this second. Immediacy, she believes, is what an artist means by “inspiration.” It’s not pretty. The unsinkable drive to get a thing done.

This is what got her to cross that line in Chaps.

“I’m gonna do it, Tammy,” she says, almost in rhythm with the blinker as she approaches Fifth Street. It’s no small thing to her: the fact she’s maintained her enthusiasm for this job two years in means a lot to Carla McGowan. The way other officers talk (and you ought to hear Chief Pollen), it’s as if nothing matters, nothing gets solved, the sun will one day die, the world is going to turn to ice, and hey, it’s just one little case in one little town in one little country at one meaningless moment in time. It’s dispiriting as hell, truth be told, and it gets under her skin, makes her want to bust desktops in the precinct, pull ribbons from the typewriters, grab her co-workers by their badges.