Grabbing another soda and a stale bagel left over from yesterday, she stopped to brief Chief Farnsworth before heading out to meet Freddie on Capitol Hill. A crush of reporters waited for her outside the public safety building. When she saw how many there were, she briefly considered going back to ask a couple of uniforms to help her get through the crowd. Then she dismissed the idea as cowardly and stepped into the scrum.

“Sergeant, how close are you to naming a suspect?”

“How was the senator killed?”

“Who found him?”

“What do you think of the headlines in today’s paper?”

That last one made her stomach roil as she could only imagine what the papers were saying about the detective the department had chosen to lead the city’s highest profile murder investigation in years. She held up a hand to stop the barrage of questions.

“All I’ll say at this time is the investigation is proceeding, and as soon as we know anything more, we’ll hold a press conference. I’ll have no further comment until that time. Now, would you mind letting me through? I have work to do.”

They didn’t move but also didn’t stop her from pushing her way through.

Rattled and annoyed, Sam got into her unmarked department car and locked the doors. “Fucking vultures,” she muttered.

Outside the Hart Senate Office Building, she dropped two quarters into the Washington Post box and tugged out the morning’s issue where a banner headline announced the senator’s murder. In a smaller story below the fold, a headline read, Disgraced Detective Tapped to Lead Murder Investigation. Sam released a frustrated growl when the words appeared jumbled on the page as they often did during times of stress or exhaustion. Goddamned dyslexia. Taking a deep calming breath, she tried again, taking the words one at a time the way she’d trained herself to do.

The story contained a recap of the raid that had led to the death of Quentin Johnson and stopped just short of questioning her competence—and the chief’s.

“Great,” she muttered. “That’s just great.” Tossing the paper into the trash, she took the elevator to the second floor where Freddie enjoyed a glazed donut while he waited for her.

“Did you see the paper?” he asked, wiping the sticky frosting from his mouth with the back of his hand.

She nodded brusquely, and before he could get into a further discussion about the article, she brought him up to speed on the possible break-in at Nick’s, the autopsy and the phone records. Gesturing to the door to Senator O’Connor’s suite of offices, she said, “Let’s get to it.”