Hayley Marx was a fellow officer in Hollywood, the closest thing I had to a friend in the Department. We used to eat dinner together twice a month, but now our schedules conflicted. We kept meaning to make time, but never got around to it. She looked great, her tall frame svelte in a black pantsuit. She’d grown out her blond hair so that it now brushed her earlobes, softening her face.

The man she was with was the last guy on earth I wanted to see. Detective Scott Oliver worked Homicide under my father’s leadership. Once, they had been colleagues, and there remained festering resentment over my father’s promotion, further aggravated by my idiotic fling with Oliver. It was over almost before it started, but I was told by sources close to both of us that he wasn’t thrilled. God only knew why. I wasn’t a day at the beach.

Scott was a sharp dresser. He had on a black jacket, black T-shirt, and khaki pants. His face was handsome in that middle-aged-man rugged way, and his thick hair had silvered at the seams. Ordinarily, his penetrating stare would have put me under, but at the moment, I was preoccupied with other things.

“Decker!” he barked out.

“Oh my God!” Hayley gasped. “You all right, Cin?”

I started babbling. “We were sitting at the intersection when a Jeep just smashed into her.” I realized I was sobbing. “I don’t know if we should move her out of the way—”

“First just calm down!” Oliver told me.

“Okay, okay—”

“Because we can’t move her until Traffic and Homicide get here. It was a hit-and-run, right?”

“Yes.”

“We heard it go over the box; I’m sure others heard it, too. Just hang for a moment.” Oliver turned to Hayley. “I’ve got some crime tape in the trunk of my car. Can you get it for me?”

“I’ll go with you,” I told her.

“No, you stay here and tell me exactly what happened.”

Another cruiser had arrived: two more guys from my division— Bader and Guensweit. With others there, it made it easier to tell the story; the crowd mitigated the queasy feeling. Scott told the uniformed officers to rope off the body while he took me aside and pushed me for details.

“I told you, I only remember the last four digits of the license plate number, Scott. It happened so fast—”

“Just let me get a physical picture, okay?”

“Okay.”

He sighed, making me feel like an errant child. Hayley said, “It’ll be okay, Cin—”

“Can you not interrupt, Marx?” Oliver’s eyes went to my face. “So you’re heading eastbound, stopped at a light.”

“Yes … exactly where the car is parked now. We haven’t moved it.”

“So where was the Jeep coming from?” Oliver asked.

“I told you I don’t know. There were no cars on either side of us. The Jeep just came out of nowhere and ran the light.”

“Then it came up from behind you?” Oliver asked.