“Ms. Warshawski, we know you left Beth Israel to return to the nun’s apartment four nights ago.” It was the white guy from Bomb and Arson.

When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Well?”

“Is there a question?” I said.

“What were you doing at the nun’s building four nights ago?” he said, his voice tight from the effort not to lose his temper.

“I was in the hospital four nights ago,” I said.

When the HIV nun had escorted me back inside, she’d flashed her hospital ID at the security guard and stopped to chat briefly with one of the nurses. No one looked at me, a rookie nun, new to the HIV/ AIDS service, head lowered. No one on the fifth floor had commented on my absence, either, when I slipped back into my room or the next morning, so I didn’t think it had been noticed.

“You were seen entering the Freedom Center building,” the woman from OEM said. “What were you doing there?”

“I was seen?” I echoed. “That’s an old, old ploy. I need more than that to persuade me I was at Kedzie and Lawrence instead of in my hospital bed.”

The OEM woman pulled a set of stills from her briefcase and laid them on the small round table in the middle of the room. We all took turns looking at them. They were time-stamped, and they showed a woman whose dark hair held a few white streaks wearing jeans and a white shirt. They were shot from behind, so you couldn’t see where her hair had been shaved back from her temples. Nor could you see that she was using the edge of her plastic lenses to snap the tongue back in the front-door lock.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like this person is wearing a jacket marked ‘V. I. Warshawski.’ And I think I’d remember if I’d been there. You have some shots showing me leaving, some where I could see my face? I don’t recognize myself from behind.”

There was a momentary silence. I’d left wearing a nun’s veil, my face down, two other sisters and my cousin holding me close. They had the shots, but they probably didn’t know what to make of them.

“Look, Warshawski, this isn’t supposed to be an antagonistic meeting,” the Latino guy from Bomb and Arson said. “We assume you’re on the same team we are.”

“And what team would that be, Detective?’

“That you want to catch Sister Frances’s killer,” he said.

“Oh, I definitely want to do that,” I agreed.

“Then why don’t you tell us what you were doing at her apartment?” That was the FBI’s Lyle Torgeson.

I yawned. “I wasn’t at her apartment.”

“Let’s forget four nights ago,” Torgeson said. “The night of the fire … You agree you were there that night? … Tell us why.”