Rhyme persisted, “I offered to meet you elsewhere. But you declined.”

“I didn’t think you would actually come.”

Rhyme stopped. He said to Thom and Pulaski. “I’d like a word with the corporal in private.”

The two men wandered back toward the van.

Poitier’s eyes swept the criminalist’s legs and body once more. He began, “I wish—”

“Corporal,” Rhyme spat out, “don’t play these fucking games with me.” The shame had finally solidified into the ice of anger.

The officer blinked in shock.

“You gave me a couple of leads that don’t mean shit without the forensics to back them up. They’re useless. You might as well’ve saved your goddamn phone card money.”

“I was trying to help you,” he said evenly.

“You were trying to purge your guilt.”

“My—?”

“You didn’t call me up to help the case. You called me so you could feel better about doing a lousy job as a cop. Hand off some useless tidbits to me and you go back to quote waiting for the Venezuelan authorities like you’d been told.”

“You don’t understand,” Poitier fired back, his own anger freed as well. Sweat covered his face and his eyes were focused and fierce. “You make your salary in America—ten times what we make here—and if that doesn’t work you go take another job and make just as much money or more. We don’t have those options, Captain. I’ve already risked too much. I tell you in confidence certain things and then…” He was sputtering. “And then here you are. And now my commissioner knows! I have a wife and two children I am supporting. I love them very much. What right do you have to put my job at stake?”

Rhyme spat out, “Your job? Your job is to find out what happened on May ninth at the South Cove Inn, who fired that bullet, who took a human life in your jurisdiction. That’s your job, not hiding behind your superior’s fairy tales.”

“You do not understand! I—”

“I understand that if you claim you want to be a cop, then be one. If not, go back to Inspections and Licensing, Corporal.”

Rhyme spun around and aimed toward the van, where Pulaski and Thom were staring his way with troubled, confused faces. He noticed too a man in one of the nearby windows, peering their way. Rhyme was sure it was the assistant commissioner.

Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

AFTER LEAVING THE RBPF HEADQUARTERS, Thom steered the van north and west through the narrow, poorly paved streets of Nassau.

“Okay, rookie, you’ve got a job. I need you to do some canvassing at the South Cove Inn.”

“We’re not leaving?”