“You have a time of death?” I ask, noting that it’s new information to me that hours elapsed between Lauren’s murder and the police telling Richard she was dead.

“Yeah, one twenty-seven a.m.”

“Well, that’s rather precise.”

“Shot Spotter doesn’t lie.”

I’m less than a year removed from the DA’s office, but technology moves on. I have no idea what “Shot Spotter” is. Slightly embarrassed, I ask.

“It’s this new pilot program. A technology, really. Little microphones are placed throughout the city. The way it works is that these microphones have sensors that somehow ignore ambient noise, but when there’s a loud boom—like a gunshot—the information is immediately transmitted to the Shot Spotter manufacturer in California. They review it . . . I don’t know what kind of review they do, but their algorithms have some way of determining that it’s a gunshot, not a car backfire or whatever, and triangulate the location. There’s also a time stamp. It’s like DNA—infallible.”

“And what does this infallible technology say?”

“That Lauren was shot at one twenty-seven a.m., right where her body was found.”

“Wow. A brave new world of law enforcement.”

“New toys, same crimes. Just because we know the when doesn’t put us that much closer to the who or even the why. It could be that someone lured her out to her death, or it could be a random crime. Maybe she couldn’t sleep, went for a walk, and it’s a wrong place wrong time kind of thing.”

I nod, but Gabriel knows as well as I do that there’s no way the head of Special Vics was gunned down in a random act of violence. This crime was about someone wanting to murder Lauren Wright.

“Oh, and the murder weapon is a Glock 19,” he says.

“So, a cop gun.”

In New York City, cops are given a choice of three service weapons. The vast majority of police, including Gabriel, go with the Glock 19. The primary reason is that it’s the cheapest, and cops have to pay for them out of their own funds. It’s also the smallest, which appeals to the women on the force, but also to many of the men, because most cops carry their weapons when they’re off duty, and the Glock 19 is most easily concealed.

“Yeah, but I’m not aware of any cop having an issue with Lauren. I think it points to Richard.”

He’s saying that Lauren got the gun from a friendly cop, and Richard used it to kill her.

“I don’t think so. Lauren was always very by the book,” I say.