Ten minutes later, she remained sprawled on the bathroom floor. The decorative tiles were from the seventies, dozens and dozens of tiny beige, brown, and harvest gold squares. Looking at them made her want to puke all over again. Counting them, however, was a pretty decent meditative exercise. She inventoried tiles while she waited for her flushed cheeks to cool and her cramped stomach to untangle.

Her cellphone rang. She eyed it on the floor, not terribly interested, given the circumstances. But then she noted the caller and decided to take pity on him.

“What?” she demanded, her usual greeting for former lover and currently married Massachusetts State Police Detective Bobby Dodge.

“I don’t have much time. Listen sharp.”

“I’m not on deck,” she said automatically. “New cases go to Jim Dunwell. Pester him.” Then she frowned. Bobby couldn’t be calling her about a case. As a city cop, she took her orders from the Boston turret, not state police detectives.

Bobby continued as if she’d never spoken: “It’s a fuckup, but I’m pretty sure it’s our fuckup, so I need you to listen. Stars and stripes are next door, media across the street. Come in from the back street. Take your time, notice everything. I’ve already lost vantage point, and trust me, D.D., on this one, you and I can’t afford to miss a thing.”

D.D.’s frown deepened. “What the hell, Bobby? I have no idea what you’re talking about, not to mention it’s my day off.”

“Not anymore. BPD is gonna want a woman to front this one, while the state is gonna demand their own skin in the game, preferably a former trooper. The brass’s call, our heads on the block.”

She heard a fresh noise now, from the bedroom. Her pager, chiming away. Crap. She was being called in, meaning whatever Bobby was babbling about had merit. She pulled herself to standing, though her legs trembled and she thought she might puke again. She took the first step through sheer force of will and the rest was easier after that. She headed for the bedroom, a detective who’d lost days off before and would again.

“What do I need to know?” she asked, voice crisper now, phone tucked against her shoulder.

“Snow,” Bobby muttered. “On the ground, trees, windows … hell. We got cops tramping everywhere—”

“Get ’em out! If it’s my fucking scene, get ’em all out.”

She found her pager on the bedside table—yep, call out from Boston operations—and began shucking her gray sweatpants.

“They’re out of the house. Trust me, even the bosses know better than to contaminate a homicide scene. But we didn’t know the girl was missing. The uniforms sealed off the house, but left the yard fair play. And now the grounds are trampled, and I can’t get vantage point. We need vantage point.”