“I don’t know. Maybe evaluating different devices with some future use in mind?”

She made a face. “Let’s hope that’s not the reason.”

Hardwick shifted in his chair. “You got anything else, sweetheart?”

“Yes. The headless body recovered at the scene has been positively ID’d.” She paused for one dramatic beat. “Lex Bincher. For sure.”

Hardwick was staring warily at her.

She went on slowly, “The head … is still missing.”

Hardwick’s jaw muscle twitched. “Christ! This is like some shit in a horror movie.”

Esti screwed up her face. “I don’t understand how this gets to you so much. That story about how you and Dave met—that incident involved a woman who got cut in half, right? I heard you laugh about that, tell sick jokes, right?”

“Right.”

“So how come when this head thing comes up, you get all disturbed-like?”

“Look, for Christ’s sake …” He raised his hands in surrender, shaking his head. “It’s one thing to find a chopped-up body. A body in ten pieces. You’re a cop long enough, you work the inner city long enough, that kind of thing is going to happen. It just is. But there’s a big difference between finding a cut-off head and not finding it. You get what I mean? The fucking thing is missing! Which means somebody is keeping it somewhere. For some reason. For some God-awful use he has for it. Believe me, that fucking thing is going to turn up when we least expect it.”

“ ‘When we least expect it’? I think you see too much Netflix.” She gave him one of her affectionate little winks. “Anyway, that’s all the new stuff I have for now. How about you? You have anything?”

Hardwick rubbed his face hard with his palms, as though he were erasing a bad dream, trying to give his day a fresh start. “I managed to locate one of the missing witnesses—Freddie, the one whose testimony put Kay in the Axton Avenue apartment house at the time of the shooting. Officially, Frederico Javier Rosales.” He shot a glance at Gurney. “Any chance of getting some coffee?”

“No problem.” Gurney went to the machine on the sink island to get a fresh pot going.

Hardwick continued. “We had a friendly talk, me and Freddie. We focused on the interesting little gap between what he actually saw and what Mick the Dick told him he saw.”

Esti’s eyes widened. “He admitted that Klemper told him what to say on the stand?”

“Not only did Klemper tell him what to say, but he told him he damn well better say it.”

“Or else what?”

“Freddie had a drug problem. Small dealer supporting a big addiction. One more conviction would give him an automatic hard twenty, no parole. When a skell’s in that kind of spot, a prick like Mick has a lot of leverage.”

“So why’d he open up to you?”