The heat had started to clear a little, and the trees with their banana leaves shimmied a little with the cool breeze. If you waited long enough, the heat on anything went down. You got used to living like that in the city. I grabbed my purse from the back seat and locked my car, wondering if it would be impounded if I was arrested, and stepped into the station. The station was a good-looking building downtown that might have once rivaled Doheny’s mansion for opulence. Above the entryway, a gold statue of Lady Justice welcomed entrants with a blind blank stare: her eyes had been gouged out. I blinked, looked again—but no, just the usual blindfold this time. A few anemic trees gave the illusion of landscaping outside the front doors. Healthier-looking blue agave cracked apart the dry brown soil, bursting from the ground like heads of buried pineapple.

Inside was less striking than the exterior: an open floor plan of rows and rows of identical cubicles. Justice is a bureaucracy like any other. I made eye contact with every blue I passed and smiled, as though I weren’t the least bit concerned to be there. How I imagined a woman who hadn’t murdered anybody would look at a police station.

I gave MacLeish’s name to the bored-looking receptionist and waited while she picked up the phone and let him know he had a woman at the front. I tried to ignore the way she eyed me, as though she could smell the sex for money on my skin, and looked past her to the small square of the station floor I could see. After a moment, I caught a flash of a face I recognized. Escobar and I realized it at the same moment. His jaw dropped and he caught my eyes and held them, but before either of us could move, MacLeish appeared behind the secretary and gave me a warm smile.

“Jo,” he said, friendly as I could’ve hoped for. “What a pleasant surprise. How can I help you?”

My mouth had gone dry. I peeled my gaze away from his partner, whose eyes were darting between us, and tried not to feel triumphant just yet. “Turns out, I do have some information that may interest you.”

MacLeish escorted me past the receptionist, past Escobar, who said, “William, what are you—” but then we were beyond him and into a small room at the very back of the station, a fluorescently lit room with a single plastic table and two uncomfortable chairs. An interrogation room straight out of central casting.

“Are there cameras behind that one-way glass?” I asked, thinking of Jackal and his recording equipment as MacLeish pulled a chair out for me.