"It's the new recipe. Mac would kill me if he heard I served his brown cold." I took a pull from my bottle. The ale had a rich, full flavor, a little nutty, and it left a pleasant aftertaste lingering in the mouth. Make what jokes you will about trendy microbrews. Mac knew his stuff.

Murphy made a face. "Ugh. Too much taste."

"Wimpy American," I said.

Murphy almost smiled. "Homicide got wind that there was a link between the killing in Italy , the one here by the airport, and the one this morning. So they pulled strings and hogged the whole thing."

"How did they find out?"

"Rudolph," Murphy spat. "There's no way to prove anything but I'll bet you the little weasel heard me on the phone with Butters and ran straight over there to tell them."

"Isn't there anything you can do?"

"Officially, yes. But in real life people are going to start accidentally losing reports and forms and requests if I try to file them. And when I tried to apply some pressure of my own, I got put down hard." She took another angry drink. "I could lose my job."

"That both sucks and blows, Murph."

"Tell me about it." She frowned and looked up at my eyes briefly. "Harry. I want you to back off on this case. For your own sake. That's why I came over here."

I frowned. "Wait a minute. You mean people are threatening you with me? That's a switch."

"Don't joke about it," Murphy said. "Harry, you've got a history with the department, and not everyone thinks well of you."

"You mean Rudolph."

"Not just Rudolph. There are plenty of people who don't want to believe you're for real. Besides that, you were near the scene of and may have witnessed a felony. They could put you away."

Obviously my life was too easy already. I swigged more beer. "Murph, cop, crook, or creature, it doesn't matter. I don't back off because some bully doesn't like what I do."

"I'm not a bully, Harry. I'm your friend."

I winced. "And you're asking me."

She nodded. "Pretty please. With sugar."

"With sugar. Hell, Murph." I took a drink and squinted at her. "How much do you know about what's going on?"

"I had some of the files taken away before I could read them." She glanced up at me. "But I can read between the lines."

"Okay," I said. "This might take a little explaining."

"You aren't backing off, are you?"

"It isn't an option."

"Stop there then," Murphy said. "The less you tell me, the less I can testify to."

Testify? Hell. There should be some kind of rule about being forced to dodge several kinds of legal land mines at the same time. "This isn't a friendly situation," I said. "If straight cops go into it like it's normal business, they're going to get killed. I'd be really worried even if it were SI."