Chris took them down; all three were sealed in with brown paper, nothing taped to the backs. I told him to hang ’em back up, and he did.

“You go through the file cabinet,” I said. “I’m sure they checked everything, but maybe Casey had a system where he filed things under names that didn’t match their contents.”

He checked each drawer. Every one was empty.

I said, “Damn. Pat must have confiscated them.”

“I’ll out take the drawers and see if anything’s taped in back, in the cabinet itself.”

That seemed a little desperate to me. Casey would have wanted easy access to that particular file and that made for a lot of trouble getting to it. Maybe it lay under the bottom file drawer, though. All you’d have to do is pull the drawer out and underneath would be the secreted file.

But no.

Nothing.

I fared little better. I did find a secret compartment but only family photos were within, Casey’s late wife, his kids when they were…kids. I collected these and dropped them in my suit coat pocket. The grown versions of those youngsters would be coming in for the services, in a few days. Shannon would get the complete police funeral with honor guard and a sea of blue in attendance.

There’d be an End of Watch call, officers from Casey’s division gathering around a car’s police radio as a dispatcher issued a call to Lt. Shannon with silence the response. A second call would go out and get the same silent response. Then an officer who’d worked with him—probably Chris or maybe Ben Higgins—would respond that Lt. Shannon could not answer because the officer had fallen in the line of duty.

I swallowed and abandoned the roll-top search. Chris had finished the file cabinet as well, with equally unsuccessful results. We started in on the bookcase and went through every page of every book. We occasionally found a random piece of paper—a receipt from Coliseum Books, a bookmark, a slip of paper with a grocery list or some work reminder on it.

Nothing worth finding, really, just the routine detritus of a life lived.

I sat on the couch with Casey’s body outline next to me. Chris stood in front of me, eyes avoiding the ghost of his partner.

“Fool’s errand?” he asked.

“Too early to know.” I sighed. “We’re going over ground the forensics guys, and for that matter Pat Chambers, have already gone over good. We have only one advantage.”

“What?”

“You.”

The young cop gestured to himself, frowning, then said again, “What?”