Mrs. Kelvin spoke sadly. “We keep telling them there was something going on in that apartment—we keep telling them that you knew about it. But they aren’t going to do anything. They’re just treating it like another black killing and they aren’t going to do a thing.”

I looked around at the group. People were watching me steadily. Not exactly with hostility—more as though I was some unpredictable species, perhaps an ibex.

“You know my cousin died last week, Mrs. Kelvin. He fell from a wharf under the screw of a freighter. There were no witnesses. I’m trying to find out whether he fell or was pushed. Your husband’s death makes me think he was pushed. If I can find out for sure and find out who did it, they’ll probably be the same people who killed Mr. Kelvin. I know catching the murderer is a small consolation in the midst of great grief, but it’s the best I can offer—for myself as well as you.”

“Little white girl going to succeed where the police failed.” The person behind me spoke softly but audibly and a few people laughed.

“Amelia!” Mrs. Kelvin spoke sharply. “No need to be rude. She’s trying to be kind.”

I looked around coolly. “I’m a detective and I have a pretty good record.” I turned back to Mrs. Kelvin. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

I shook her hand and left, heading back to the Dan Ryan and the Loop. It was after five and traffic scarcely moved. Fourteen lanes and all of it bumper-to-bumper within high concrete walls. Truck exhaust mingled with the damp still air. I shut the windows and wriggled out of my jacket. It was chilly on the lakefront but muggy in the expressway’s canyon.

I inched my way downtown and oozed off the expressway at Roosevelt Road. Main police headquarters are at State and Roosevelt, a good location, close to a lot of crime. I wanted to see if anyone there would give me any information about Kelvin.

My dad had been a sergeant, working mostly out of the Twenty-First District on the South Side. The brick building on 12th Street brought on a twinge of nostalgia—it had the same linoleum, the same cinder-block walls with yellow paint peeling away. A few harassed, overweight men behind the desk were processing everyone from drivers putting up bond for their licenses to women trying to see men brought in on assault charges. I waited my turn in line.

The desk officer I finally spoke to called inside on a microphone. “Sergeant McGonnigal, lady here to see you on the Kelvin case.”

McGonnigal came out a few minutes later, big, muscular, wearing a rumpled white shirt and brown slacks. We’d met a couple of years back when he was on the South Side and he remembered me immediately.