“Understand. Not here to push. EMTs said they needed a few minutes to prepare the stretcher, grab some fluids. Thought we could use that time to cover a few basics. We got a full Amber Alert out for little Sophie, but I gotta be honest.” D.D. spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “We have no leads. As I’m sure Trooper Leoni knows, in these kinds of cases, every minute counts.”

At the mention of Sophie’s name, Trooper Leoni stiffened on the sofa. She wasn’t looking at D.D., or at any of the men in the room. She had her gaze locked on a spot on the worn green carpet, hands still tucked beneath the ice pack.

“I searched everywhere,” Leoni said abruptly. “The house, the garage, the attic, his vehicle—”

“Tessa,” Trooper Lyons interjected. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

“When was the last time you saw your daughter?” D.D. asked, seizing the opening while she had it.

“Ten forty-five last night,” the officer answered automatically, as if speaking by rote. “I always check on Sophie before reporting for duty.”

D.D. frowned. “You left here at ten forty-five for your eleven o’clock shift? You can make it from here to the Framingham barracks in fifteen minutes?”

Trooper Leoni shook her head. “I don’t drive to the barracks. We drive our cruisers home, so the moment we take the wheel, we start our patrols. I called the desk officer from my cruiser and declared Code 5. He assigned me my patrol area and I was good to go.”

D.D. nodded. Not being a state trooper, D.D. didn’t know these things. But she was also playing a game with Trooper Leoni. The game was called establish the suspect’s state of mind. That way, when Trooper Leoni inevitably said something useful, and her eager-beaver attorney sought to block that admission by claiming his client was suffering from a concussion and therefore mentally incapacitated, D.D. could point out how lucidly Leoni had answered other, easily verifiable questions. For example, if Leoni had been able to accurately recollect what time she’d called the desk officer, where she’d gone on patrol, etc., etc., then why assume she was suddenly mistaken about how she’d shot her own husband?

These were the kind of games a skilled detective knew how to play. Couple of hours ago, D.D. might not have used them on a fellow officer. She might have been willing to cut poor battered Trooper Leoni some slack, show her the kind of preferential treatment one female officer was inclined to give another. But that was before the state troopers had trampled her crime scene and placed D.D. squarely on the other side of their blue wall.

D.D. did not forgive. She did not forget.