“Was he one of yours?” I asked.

She nodded. “Everyone from Central Office on down wants to know why I didn’t know he was an escape risk.”

I nodded and frowned.

Had I taken this job in part so I could see her every day? Would I continue to do it once she left?

She was in the final stages of finishing her law degree at Florida State, and would soon be one of the state’s toughest prosecutors.

“What brings you my way today?” she says.

“Stone has asked me to look into what happened yesterday.”

Before I had finished my sentence, she was shaking her head.

“That’s the one thing I won’t help you with. I can’t.”

She had witnessed firsthand the darkness and violence my relentless and obsessive investigative techniques had brought into my life.

“I know you haven’t forgotten what Atlanta was like,” she added. “So you must just be blocking it out. But I can’t.”

I understood and appreciated her concern, but things were different now. I was different. I was older. I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t in a bad relationship.

I had moved to Atlanta in 1986 to work the Atlanta Child Murders. I had only been eighteen at the time. Most of the work I had done on that case and the Stone Cold Killer case that followed was in my early twenties. It was now 1995. I was twenty-seven years old, far, far better equipped to deal not just with homicide investigations but life itself. Or so I believed.

“This is nothing,” I said. “A simple—”

She let out a harsh laugh. “Nothing is ever simple with you, John.”

“I really think this can be. I’m just taking a quick look into it. I thought with you and Merrill here to keep me honest I’d—”

A quick knock at her door stopped me.

It was Tom Daniels.

“Yes?” she said as he stuck his head in the door.

“My name is Inspector Daniels.”

“Your mother named you Inspector?” she said. “Sort of limited your career options, didn’t it?”

“Cute,” he said. “I think you know. I’m the Inspector General of the DOC.”

“What can I do for you, Inspector General?”

“It’s a private matter. Can I talk to you alone?”

She shook her head.

“Fine,” he said. “We can do this in front of—”

When he came around and saw it was me, he shook his head and said, “Should’ve known.”

“Are you following me?” I said.

Ignoring me, he dropped into the seat next to mine.

“I’m looking into the death of the inmate yesterday,” he said to Anna. “Ike Johnson. Is he yours?”

“Is he my what?”

“Is he your . . . Was he assigned to you? Are you his classification officer?”

“I was.”

“What can you tell me about him?”