“Dr. Wilson? This is Jaime Berger with the district attorney’s office. We need to check on your neighbor, but we can’t do that if you don’t let us into the building.”

“No,” the voice came back. “You get some other real police cars here, maybe I’ll think about it.”

“That probably made things worse,” Marino said to her. “He’s been in there smoking weed, I guarantee it. That’s why he opened his damn window.”

Lucy was inside Marino’s car, and the high-intensity red and blue flashing lights started bouncing off glass.

“I’m unmoved,” the voice came back again, even more resolute. “Anybody can buy those.”

“Let me talk to him,” Berger said, shielding her eyes from the rapid bursts of blinding blue and red.

“Tell you what, Dr. Wilson,” Marino said into the intercom. “I’m going to give you a number I want you to call, and when the dispatcher answers, you tell him there’s a guy outside your building who says he’s Investigator P. R. Marino, okay? Ask him to verify it, because they know I’m right here right now with Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger.”

Silence.

“He’s not going to call,” Berger said.

Lucy trotted back up the steps.

Marino said to her, “How ‘bout doing me another favor while I stand here and babysit.”

He asked her to return to his car and radio the dispatcher. She asked him what happened to his portable radio, or were police not bothering with portable radios anymore. He said he’d left his in the car and maybe she could grab it for him while she was requesting an unmarked backup unit and an entry tool kit, including a battering ram. She said it was an old door and they probably could pry it open with a Gorilla Bar, and he said he wanted more than just a Gorilla Bar, and that he wanted the prick doctor who was stoned on the second floor to get an eyeful of a Twin Turbo Ram like they used to bust in doors at crack houses, and maybe then they wouldn’t need to use it because the asshole would buzz them in. Marino told her to request an ambulance, just in case Eva Peebles needed one.

She wasn’t answering her phone or the intercom. Marino couldn’t tell if any lights were on inside her apartment. The window that her computer was in front of was dark.

He didn’t need to give Lucy radio codes or any further instructions. Nobody needed to teach Lucy a damn thing about being a cop, and as he watched her duck inside his car, he felt a tug from the past. He missed the old days when the two of them rode motorcycles together, went shooting, worked investigations, or chilled out with a six-pack, and he wondered what she was carrying.