There was no crime scene unit on-site, so in order to maintain the chain of evidence, I handed off the woman’s jacket to one of the officers who’d responded and had an evidence bag large enough in his cruiser to hold it. Then I signed off on it so he could deliver it to our lab.

++++

Back home again, I was hoping to slip into the shower and get changed before Tessa saw all the blood on my clothes, but she was in the living room reading when I came through the front door.

She stared at me.

“It’s not my blood,” I explained helpfully.

“Okay.”

“The guy’s doing alright. There was a car accident.”

“Oh. Did you run him over?”

“No.”

“’Cause if you did I’m gonna find someone else to teach me to drive.”

“We’re good. I’m going to get cleaned up. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

But before I could even make it to the hallway, she asked if I’d heard from her mom.

“She wasn’t going to turn her phone on this weekend,” I said.

“I know, but . . .”

“No, I haven’t heard from her. But I’m sure she’s fine.”

++++

After the murders in Detroit, Julianne Springman had not bothered to change her name.

For a while, she’d toyed with the idea of taking on a new identity, but then she realized that if Julianne Springman suddenly disappeared it might seem suspicious since, as a CSI tech, she’d been on the team that was investigating the homicides in Detroit—and the authorities still hadn’t identified who Dylan Neeson’s partner had been.

Even though she’d been painstakingly careful to cover her tracks and mask her involvement with Dylan’s crimes, no one catches everything, and it was best to simply merge into the background rather than draw any undue attention to herself by suddenly dropping off the radar screen.

In her exit interview and debrief with her lieutenant, he’d asked her the reason she was leaving the force. She told him truthfully that it was to pursue photography. She didn’t tell him what kind of photography that would be, but at least she could answer the question without lying.

The other officers at her precinct had told her they’d miss her and wished her well and said they understood. She could infer, however, even in their well-wishing, that some of them were envious of her. With the amount of violence in Detroit—taking into account the high crime rate, the low clearance rate, and the average salary—being an officer there was not an ideal career choice for someone who’s trying to move up in the world and stay alive doing it.

Anyway, that was over and done and she had moved on, camera in hand.