At the bottom of the stairs, Nate stopped at a vending machine next to the front desk. He nodded at the duty officer and fed some change into the machine, waiting for it to thrust out his Snickers bar.

“Hey, did you check the video surveillance at the hospital clinic?” Kia asked.

Nate unwrapped the Snickers and took a bite, speaking around a mouthful of nougat and chocolate. “I tried. I checked the computer it should’ve been stored on, but there was nothing there. Looks like they never even started recording.”

Without it, building a case against Julia would be hard. Even though the pills had been found in her purse, a clever lawyer could claim a pharmaceutical rep had given them to her or that someone else had put them in her bag. But he couldn’t tell Kia that without compromising his case.

“You know, Julia was at home that night. I checked her home video surveillance log. She entered the house at six thirty and was there all night. There’s no way she could’ve taken those pills the night in question.”

Nate grunted, still chewing.

“Maybe someone put those pills in her purse,” Kia suggested.

“She’ll have to prove it.”

He knew he sounded flippant and rude but couldn’t help himself. He was too on edge lately, stressed and testy, a far cry from his usual sunny self.

“You okay, Nate?” Kia asked.

“Never better.” He finished his Snickers and moved toward the roll-call room, where the staff were given their orders every morning. The daily board, hanging crookedly on the far side of the room, summarized the criminal activity and arrests for the past seventy-two hours.

Kia sighed, knowing not to push him, and hurried to catch up. “I went out to Violeta’s yesterday. Did you know she and Ben have a son?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Cute little guy, Lucas. Violeta’s mom was with him. She wouldn’t let me in. Actually, she wouldn’t even open the door for me—kept it on the chain. I thought it was weird, so I ran her in the system. She’s a model citizen. Not even a driving ticket on her record. Her husband, though, now deceased, was killed by police in a drug bust when Violeta was a kid. I don’t see her talking to us anytime soon. If we want any more information about Ben, we’ll have to find him ourselves.”

“Do you think Ben lives there?”

“Maybe. Only way to find out for sure is to get someone sitting outside the house, though. And we don’t have resources for that.”

“Do we have anything else matching Ben to either Martinez or Williams?”