I dressed carefully to see the police again, choosing a blue vintage belted sweater and a gray pencil skirt. My new motto—when in distress, distract—was wearing thin. There was a bruise on my temple that crept out from my hairline, and I was a little too relieved to discover it could be mostly hidden under makeup. Apparently I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as no one else knew. I put on the silver bangle from my father and pulled up my boots and trudged back to the Lower East Side with a heavy heart. It was a cold day with a biting wind and I kept having to stop and turn my face back from it, or else it actually made my eyes well up with tears. By the time I got to the police station on Pitt Street, I was sure I was a mascara-streaked mess. I’d planned to stop in the foyer and fix myself up before I went upstairs, but Bruxton was there, dragging on a cigarette in front of the door.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” he drawled. The sunlight accented his harsh edges but showed them to his advantage. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms the night before, but I appreciated him coming clean with me, even if I still resented him.

“Your charm never wears thin,” I said. The corner of his mouth twitched and he offered me a cigarette. I hesitated for a moment before accepting. With everything that was going on, having the occasional one couldn’t be that bad.

Bruxton gave me a hard once-over after he gave me a light. “How’d you get that bruise?”

“Bruise?” I wiped under my eyes. “It’s probably mascara. The wind is making me tear up.”

“No, this.” He touched my temple so tenderly I stepped back in surprise.

“I was sleepwalking and I tripped,” I improvised. “Does it look bad?”

“Not terrible. You sleepwalk a lot?”

“Only when I’m under stress.” He gave me a strange look but dropped the subject. It was a lie I had a lot of experience telling, after all. The marks and bruises I got from my mother had to be explained when I went to school. Sleepwalking? One teacher was so skeptical that she called Child Services, but after talking to a credulous counselor who assured me that it was not unusual at all to have developed sleep problems after my father died, I realized I had an ironclad excuse. Only those closest to me knew I rarely managed to get into a deep sleep.

“You want coffee?” Bruxton asked. We walked to the cart on the corner. “My partner told me old lady Decarno’s news.” His tone was casual. “How’d you happen to hear it?”