“It’s not that. She’s a great ADA. Maybe the best there is. But McKenney should have appointed a special prosecutor. Someone from outside the office.”

“Why?”

“To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. I was special prosecutor a few years ago when some Queens ADA was gunned down. Turned out to be a mistaken-identity thing, but the Queens DA made the designation as a matter of course.”

“I’m sure McKenney did it just so he can maintain some level of control over the investigation. Nothing better for him than Richard Trofino going to jail for murder, right?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t sound right to me. Especially if McKenney knew that she was thinking of challenging him for DA. That makes him a potential suspect.”

“I actually wasn’t thinking about that,” Gabriel says.

He looks like he’s contemplating it hard when a knock on the door startles me. Gabriel calls out that whoever is on the other side should come in.

A uniformed cop sticks his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, Lou, but we got something during the search of the apartment.”

It takes a second for it to register that the cop is referring to Gabriel as “Lieu,” as in Lieutenant.

“I’ll step out,” I say.

“No,” Gabriel says quickly as he follows the officer out of his office. “You stay. This’ll only take a second.”

Gabriel returns about a minute later. In his hand is a plastic bag. I can’t see what’s inside it.

“What’s that?”

“We might have caught a pretty significant break. Lauren left her cell phone in the apartment.”

“Her cell or her BlackBerry?”

He looks down at the bag. “It’s an iPhone.”

“She never used it. That’s why she left it behind. She only used her BlackBerry.”

He looks at me curiously, as if he can’t imagine someone who wasn’t glued to their iPhone. Or maybe it’s because he thought BlackBerrys no longer existed.

“For ADAs, all work communications have to be done on a BlackBerry,” I explain. “Phone, text, and e-mail. In fact, my BlackBerry was my only phone for quite a while. I finally bought an iPhone because I wanted to listen to music when I ran. I’m surprised Lauren even owned an iPhone, to tell you the truth. She didn’t when I was her deputy. And I’m sure she rarely used it.”

“And here I thought we found the Holy Grail. Her phone’s passcode protected anyway. So right now, it might as well be a paperweight.”

“Richard doesn’t know the code?”

“I don’t know. But you can bet we’ll be asking him.”