AS SOON AS CROSS WALKED out of Chief Pittman’s inner office, a senior homicide detective named Patsy Hampton slipped in through a side door that led to the attached conference room. Detective Hampton had been instructed by Pittman to listen in on everything, to evaluate the situation from a street cop’s perspective, to advise and to counsel.

Hampton didn’t like the job, but those were her orders from Pittman. She didn’t like Pittman, either. He was wound so tight that if you stuck coal up his ass, in a couple of weeks you’d have a diamond. He was mean and petty and vengeful.

“You see what I’m dealing with here? Cross knows how to push all my buttons. In the beginning he would lose his temper. Now he just ignores what I say.”

“I heard everything,” Hampton said. “He’s slick, all right.” She was going to agree with Chief Pittman, no matter what he said.

Patsy Hampton was an attractive woman, with sandy blond hair cut short, and the most piercing blue eyes this side of Stockholm. She was thirty-one years old, and on a very fast track in the department. At twenty-six, she’d been the youngest homicide detective in Washington. Now she had much loftier goals in mind.

“You’re selling yourself short, though. You got to him. I know you did.” She told Pittman what he wanted to hear. “He just internalizes it pretty well.”

“You’re sure he’s meeting with those other detectives?” Pittman asked her.

“They’ve met three times that I know of, always at Cross’s house on Fifth Street. I suspect there have been other times. I heard about it through a friend of Detective Thurman.”

“But they don’t meet while any of them is on duty?”

“No, not to my knowledge. They’re careful. They meet on their own time.”

Pittman scowled and shook his head. “That’s too goddamn bad. It makes it harder to prove anything really damaging.”

“From what I’ve heard, they believe the department is holding back resources that could clear a number of unsolved homicides in Southeast and parts of Northeast. Most of the murders involve black and Hispanic women.”

Pittman tensed his jaw and looked away from Hampton. “The numbers that Cross uses are complete bullshit,” he said angrily. “They’re dogshit. It’s all political with him. How much financial resource can we put against the murders of drug addicts and prostitutes in Southeast? It’s criminals murdering other criminals. You know how it goes in those black neighborhoods.”