“Pretty shitty thing that happened,” Carla says.

Chuck nods.

“The worst,” he says.

He looks up the street, and when he looks back at her, it feels, to Carla, like it’s only him and her in the entire city. Then: a memory. For her. Something meaningful—no, something bordering on profound. It’s like déjà vu but less vague. Whatever memory she’s attempting to retrieve is a big one. Or maybe it’s just that thoughts carry more weight when they’re still out of reach.

She reaches this one, grabs it, and thinks:

When you started, two years back, Chuck Larson mentioned something about something happening to the girls’ basketball team. No shit. He did. He said something about it being swept under the rug. Do you remember? Yes, you were at one of those awful police parties at Dander Hall and he said something about how there was only so much room for files and so much time for studying them and then he said something you’ve never forgotten, Carla McGowan, he said:

“Some crimes are better forgotten.”

Chuck eyes her funny.

“What’s that, Carla?”

“Chuck,” she says. And she wonders if running into this man is why she took Fifth Street today at all. Subconscious, indeed. “Do you know of any history with the girls’ basketball team? Anything that happened a while ago? Anything funny like that?”

Chuck stands up straight enough so that part of his face is obscured now. McGowan leans forward to get a better look at him. Is Chuck Larson about to lie to her? Why does it feel like he is?

She feels that rush again. That urgency. That artist’s inspiration.

“Chuck? Why do I get the idea I’ve made you nervous?”

Chuck looks to her and a quick splash of anger crosses his face. The look of someone who knows more than you do, McGowan thinks. The look of someone who’s dealt with whatever this is a lot longer than you have.

“Easy, Carla. Just because you’re good at what you do doesn’t mean I’m not.”

“Didn’t say that. Asked if you knew about anything tied to the girls’ team. Samhattan High basketball.”

She recalls the interrogation light hanging in that Chaps station. The feeling of urgency then too. She can almost see the line she crossed, now, but at the time, lines ceased to exist.

“Something, maybe,” Chuck says. He says it quick. Like he’d decided it was now or never. And how close was he to never? And how close was McGowan to never hearing it?

“Maybe?” she asks. “How much of a maybe? Is that ‘maybe’ a fifty-one percent yes?”

“Yes,” Chuck says. Quick again.

McGowan reaches across the car, opens the passenger door.

“Get in, Chuck,” she says.

He looks up and down the street.

“If there’s one street that isn’t going to change with or without you for ten minutes, it’s Fifth,” she says. “Get in.”

And so the oldest member of the Samhattan police force seems to shrink in size, to give in to something, as he folds up on himself, and gets into the car.