The deal was that he’d get a lieutenant’s salary, avoid the executive obligations that normally went with the job, and be allowed to work cases. As long as he functioned solo and stayed out of everyone’s hair.

That chief was gone and the new one seemed intent on shaking things up. But so far Milo’s situation had escaped scrutiny. If the current regime was as results-oriented as it claimed, maybe his solve rate would afford him some grace.

Or maybe not. A gay cop was no longer the official impossibility it had been when he’d joined the force, but he’d broken ground during colder times and would never fit in.

* * *

His door was open and he was reading a preliminary investigation report. His black hair needed a trim, cowlicks reigning, the white sideburns he called his skunk stripes bushing and trailing a half inch below his earlobes.

A spruce-green sport coat hung from the back of his chair and puddled onto the floor. His short-sleeved white shirt looked defeated, his skinny yellow tie could’ve passed for a mustard stain. Gray cords and tan desert boots topped off the ensemble. The unshielded ceiling bulb was vaguely pink and graced his acne-pitted cheeks with a phony sunburn.

He hooked a thumb at the spare chair and I unfolded it and sat. He handed me the prelim and some crime scene photos.

The report was the usual detached affair, recorded on the scene by Detective I S. J. Binchy. Sean was a former bass player in a ska band turned born-again Christian, a compliant kid who Milo sometimes enlisted for grunt work.

Nice kid, decent speller. The only new thing I learned was that a freeway cleanup crew had found the body at four-fourteen a.m.

The first photo was a frontal of the corpse, lying on its back, face up, as the coroner’s photographer click-clicked from above.

Night-bleached face, hard to make out details. A close-up shot showed the gaping mouth and half-closed eyes I’d seen so many times before. Hollowness behind the irises. The right cheek was slightly convex, but it wasn’t the distortion you’d see with a small-caliber bullet dancing around in the head.

A pair of lateral views revealed a dark, star-shaped entry wound, surrounded by a black halo of powder, just in front of the left ear, and a ragged exit, much larger and slightly higher on the right temple, that showcased bone and red-meat muscle and the oatmeal of brain matter.

I said, “Through-and-through shot.”

“Coroner thinks contact shot, or just short of contact, full metal jacket, no larger than a thirty-eight, no supplementary load.”

His voice was remote. Keeping his distance from this victim.

The next photo was a close-up. “What about these cheek abrasions?”