“A creep with a long rap sheet took them to the wrong fence. I know you’re familiar with the name Malcolm Sabado. He was on the list of your sister’s associates you gave us, and you said you’d seen him on the street.”

“He had all this?” I stared at the table. My face was burning. Demented as it sounded, I’d been hoping that it had been my sister who’d hit me with the closet door. That would have indicated that she was close by, which would have meant something to me, however tenuous our connection had become. Instead, I’d inadvertently covered up for a drug dealer, little Mal Sabado, several inches shorter than Claudia or me, with bones as delicate as a girl’s. What an idiot I was.

Renfrew was quietly sympathetic as I spilled the story to her. She took copious notes. “CSU is printing the apartment again,” she said. “I’ll make sure they do the closet door.”

She left the room for a few minutes and I put my head into my hands. My temple was throbbing under the bruise. I could picture Mal’s face when I’d seen him. Maybe she moved? he’d asked me with that creepy little grin of his. I’d confirmed that she hadn’t. I may as well have escorted him to her apartment and let him root around. You could never trust a junkie, I knew that; the craving for a fix was never far from their minds, and that need superseded all others. I rested my fingers on the silver bangle on my wrist. Claudia knew how much it meant to me, but that hadn’t mattered to her.

“You want some more coffee?” Renfrew asked when she came back. I shook my head. “I keep meaning to mention that I love that bracelet. You’re always wearing it.”

“It was a gift from my father.” It was dawning on me that the woman missed nothing. She had seen the bracelet when she first went to the apartment, when it was sitting on the scarred top of the dresser in the bedroom, and then it had appeared on my wrist. I unclasped it and handed it to her. “There’s an inscription.”

“‘For Lily, With Love Always, Dad,’” she read aloud. “It’s a beauty. Nice to have a memento like that from your dad.” She handed it back to me, then reached behind her neck, unclasping a necklace and handing it to me. It was a gold heart the size of a quarter and just as flat. I turned it over. The engraving read Straight Shooter. “My dad gave it to me when I joined the NYPD. He was a cop, too.”

“It’s lovely.” I returned it to her. “He must be so proud of you.”