“So who called you in?” I ask after a moment.

He answers with the nonchalance of a man discussing the weather on a sunny day. “Norm Johnston. The mayor. And the woman with the big mouth.”

Janine Fourman. I nearly smile at his apt description. “The Three Musketeers.”

“They gunning for your job?”

“They want the murders to go away.”

“Is that why they left you out of the loop?”

I cut him a hard look. “They left me out of the loop because they don’t want these murders scaring away the tourists.”

“I’m glad you cleared that up for me,” he says.

The sarcastic sneer in his voice pisses me off. I’ve known a lot of cops like him over the years. Veterans, usually. Older. They have experience, but they lack the humanity that would otherwise define them as good cops. The more they see, the less they feel. The less they care. They become cynical and bitter and apathetic. They give all cops a bad rap.

“So how long have you been chief?” he asks.

“Two years.”

“You a cop before that?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “I didn’t work at the Cut and Curl, if that’s what you’re asking.”

One side of his mouth curves up. “This your first murder?”

“Norm Johnston tell you that, too?”

“He said you were inexperienced.”

His candor surprises me. “What else did he tell you?”

He looks amused. “Are you pumping me for information?”

“Just the truth.”

“Telling the truth usually gets me into trouble.”

“I get the feeling you don’t mind.”

He looks out the window for a moment, then turns his attention back to me. “So what’s your experience?”

I lift a shoulder, let it drop. “I was a cop in Columbus. Six years in patrol. Two as a detective. Homicide.”

Even in the dim light from the dash, I see his brow arch. “They didn’t mention that.”

“Didn’t think so. What about you?”

“Narcotics, mostly.”

“Detective?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Since dinosaurs roamed the earth. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m one of them.” He smiles.

I resist the urge to smile back. “You look familiar.”

“I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.”

I’m not sure what he means. “Get around to what?”

“You’re not up on your pseudo-celebrities, are you?”

A vague memory tickles the back of my brain. A newspaper or television story out of Cleveland or Toledo about the murder of a cop’s family. Home invasion. A decorated cop going rogue . . .

I can’t hide my surprise when I look at Tomasetti.

“Yeah, I’m him.” He looks amused. “Lucky you, huh?”

Unable to meet his penetrating stare, I look back at the road. “Toledo? Last year?”

“Cleveland,” he corrects. “Two years ago.”

“I followed the story some.”

“You and half the state.”

I want to ask him if he did it, but I don’t. The general consensus among law enforcement was that John Tomasetti had snapped. He’d gone after the man responsible for the murder of his family and exacted revenge. No one could prove it, but that hadn’t kept the DA from putting him in front of a grand jury.