Padilla studied Katherine Torres and the civilians who still lined the street. Padilla wasn't a detective but he had seen enough crime scenes to understand this was bad. The first few hours after a homicide were critical; witnesses who knew something tended to step forward.

"That's bullshit. Workday like this, all these women and kids at home, they had to hear something."

"You think wits always got something to say, you've been watching too much television. I worked a case in L. A., some asshole stabbed his wife twenty-six times at eight P. M. on a Thursday night, them living on the second floor of a three-story building. This woman, her blood trail started in the bedroom and went all the way to the hall outside their front door, the woman dragging herself all that way, screaming her head off, and not one other tenant heard. I interviewed those people. They weren't lying. Forty-one people at home that night, having dinner, watching TV, doing what people do, and no one heard. That's just the way it is. These people who were killed in here, maybe all three of them were screaming their asses off, but no one heard because a jet was passing or some mutt was barking or the fuckin' Price Is Right was on television, or maybe it just happened too damned fast. That's my call. It happened so fast nobody knew what to do and it never even occurred to them to scream. What the fuck. You can't say why people do anything."

Alvarez seemed both pissed off and spent after that, so Padilla let it ride. The social workers got themselves buckled in, and started their car.

"Why you think they didn't kill the little girl?"

"I don't know. Maybe they figured she couldn't finger them, her being so little, but my guess right now is they didn't see her. The way her footprints lead back to her room, she was probably in there sleeping or playing when it happened and they left before she came out. We'll let the psychologists talk to her about that. You never know. We get lucky, maybe she saw everything and can tell us exactly what happened and who did the deed. If she can't, then maybe we'll never know. That's the way it is with murder. Sometimes you never know. I gotta get back to work."

Alvarez joined another detective and the two of them walked around the side of the house. Padilla didn't want to go back to work; he wanted to go home, take a shower, then drink a cold beer in his backyard with his wife while his children watched television inside, but, instead, he stood and watched.