It helped keep me from thinking about what we’d done. Or the fact that I hadn’t heard from Lou since Chinatown. She hadn’t come to the office; she hadn’t called. I didn’t bother calling her first. If I called and she didn’t pick up, I’d know for sure she was ignoring me.

In the picture the papers ran—the same headshot she’d given me, that I dug out from a drawer—a big blue flower perched fatly behind Ellen’s right ear. A dahlia. A cheap mall headshot from a time when she had hopes of being an actress who stayed vertical. There was a soft halo of light around her head that wasn’t doing her hairstyle any favors, and you could see where her lipstick was smeared along the corner of one tooth. Make him pay, I thought, staring at those dark eyes, her stretched-mouth smile. Make him pay. I ripped the photo in two and buried the pieces in a notebook on my desk.

The last time I’d seen that smile, her teeth couldn’t stop chattering, and she’d looked from me to Lou, waiting for one of us to say that everything was all right, waiting for either of us to say anything.

I was shredding the very last of Ellen’s files, resisting the urge to read them again, when I heard the tinkle of the chime on the door, bringing with it a waft of frying beef from Seven Galbi. Then a voice, almost familiar, asking Jackal’s name. I stopped shredding, my stomach tensing.

Leaning forward, I could see a sliver of two men, one in sunglasses. Cops. A thunderbolt quaked through me, a shot of pure adrenaline I felt mostly in my crotch.

“She’s in there,” I could hear Jackal say. His voice was smooth, bored, but he’d spoken louder than he needed to—warning me.

I stared down at the shredder—what was in there would have to stay put. The only thing left of Ellen on my desk was the notebook holding her picture. There was no time to get rid of it and probably no safer place to keep it. I sat down at my desk and smoothed my hair with tremoring hands.

The two blues appeared in my doorway. Neither offered a hand in greeting. The one in sunglasses was the squarehead I’d seen in the parking lot a few days before—back in that magical time when I’d been worried only about finding the money for the Lady, getting back the police bribe, kids’ problems. If he recognized me, he gave no sign of it. He flashed his badge, introduced himself as Detective MacLeish—as though I’d forgotten—and his younger partner as Sergeant Escobar.