"Okay," Murphy said. She didn't look happy. She drank her beer in a long pull and set the bottle on my mantel.

I put my hand on her shoulder. She didn't snap it off at the wrist. "Murph. This looks bad already. I have a hunch it could get worse, fast. I have to."

"I know," she said. "I wish I could help."

"Did you get the information on that cell phone?"

"No," she said. But as she said it, she passed me a folded piece of paper. I unfolded it with my fingers and read Murphy's printing: Quebec Nationale, Inc, owner. No phone number. Address a P.O. box. Dead end.

A dummy company, probably, I thought. The Church mice could have it set up to do a lot of the buying and selling for them. Maybe dead Gaston had been from Quebec instead of France .

"Got it. Thanks, Murph."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Murphy said. She picked up her jacket from where she'd tossed it on my couch and shrugged into it. "There's no APB out for you yet, Harry, but I'd be discreet if I were you."

"Discreet. That's me."

"I'm serious."

"Serious, yep."

"Dammit, Harry." But she smiled when she said it.

"You probably don't want me to call you if I need help."

She nodded. "Hell, no. That would be illegal. Keep your nose clean, walk the straight and narrow."

"Okay."

Murphy paused and asked, "I don't think I've seen you without that coat outside of summer. Where's your duster?"

I grimaced. "Missing in action."

"Oh. You talk to Susan?"

I said, "Yeah."

I felt Murphy's eyes on my face. She got it without being told. "Oh," she said again. "Sorry, Harry."

"Thanks."

"See you." She opened my door, kept her hand near her gun, and then warily padded on out.

I shut my door after her and leaned against it. Murphy was worried. She wouldn't have come to me in person if she weren't. And she'd been extra careful with the legal stuff. Were things that dicey in the CPD?

Murphy was the first head of Special Investigations not to get her rear bounced onto the street after a token week or three of unsolvable cases. Generally speaking, when the administration wanted someone off the force, they'd get promoted to running SI. Or at least working in it. Every cop there had some kind of failing that had landed them what everyone else considered to be a cruddy assignment. It had, by and large, created a strong sense of camaraderie among the SI officers, a bond only made tighter by the way they occasionally faced off with one kind of nightmarish creature or another.