Dayne suddenly called out loudly, “Ugh. I hear a swoop. I don’t want any swoops here, gentlemen. I want clean diction and pure pitch. I want silver and silk. I do not want swoops.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw Christine in the hallway. She was watching Dayne and the boys, but then she looked my way. Her face was principal-serious for just a moment. Then she smiled and winked.

I walked over to see her. Be still my heart.

“That’s my boy,” I said with mock pride as I came up to her. She was dressed in a soft gray pantsuit with a coral-pink blouse. God, I loved seeing her now, being with her, hanging out, doing nothing — the works.

Christine smiled. Actually, she laughed a little at me. “He does everything so damn well.” She didn’t hold back, no matter what. “I was hoping you might be here, Alex,” she whispered. “I was just this very minute missing you like crazy. You know that feeling?”

“Yes, that feeling and I are well acquainted.”

We held hands as the choir practiced Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Everything felt so right, and it was hard to get used to.

“Sometimes … I still have this dream about George being shot and dying,” she said as we were standing there. Christine’s husband had been murdered in her home, and she had seen him die. It was one of the big reasons she was hesitant about being with me: the fear that I might die in the line of duty, and also the fear that I could bring terror and violence into the house.

“I remember everything about the afternoon I heard Maria was shot. It eases with time, but it never goes away.”

Christine knew that. She had figured out the answers to most of her questions, but she liked to talk things through. We were both that way.

“And yet I continue to work here in Southeast. I come to the inner city every day. I could choose a nice school in Maryland or Virginia,” she said.

I nodded. “Yes, Christine, you do choose to work here.”

“And so do you.”

“And so do I.”

She held my hand a little tighter. “I guess we were made for each other,” she said. “Why fight it.”

Chapter 33

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I was back in the write-up room at the Seventh District Station, working the John Doe homicide. I was the first one in there.

Apparently no one had noticed Frank Odenkirk as he was leaving the airport. His clothing still hadn’t been recovered. The M.E. reported that he had definitely been sodomized after he was killed. As I had suspected, there was no semen. The killer had used a condom. Just as with the Jane Does.