“No, Charlie, you listen,” she said, her neck rolling as her finger pointed in the air almost reflexively. “I’ve seen people get run outta this department by the old boy network. I’m not gonna watch them run you out, too.”

“There’s only one place I’m running,” Mann said with a mischievous smile.

She could hear the flirtation in his voice, and her cinnamon skin flushed red.

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said with a grin, the seductive tone in his words relaxing her finger and steadying her rolling neck. He was the antidote to her attitude. The bass in his voice brought out the soprano in hers. When she spoke again, the acidic tone was gone. It was replaced by something velvety and smooth that the men she supervised never heard. It was a tone she saved just for him.

“I’ve got some studying to do before I go to work,” she whispered. “I’m going in early today, but when I get off, I’m going home and run myself a hot bath. Then I’m going to wait for you to come over and investigate the scene. I want to see if you’re as good at solving cases as you think you are.”

“You’re crazy,” Mann said.

“You like it,” Jackson said, biting her bottom lip and grinning. “Now remember, don’t let them get to you, especially that damn Coletti.”

“Be nice, Sandy. Mike Coletti’s going to have a special place in my life now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I guess you didn’t hear,” Mann said as he approached the door to internal affairs. “Commissioner Lynch made us partners.”

Sandy Jackson usually knew just what to say and when to say it. This time, however, she couldn’t do anything but sit there with her mouth agape, trying to imagine how her man could work with someone like Coletti.

As he disconnected the call and walked into internal affairs, Charlie Mann read the apprehension in Jackson’s silence. He couldn’t imagine working with Coletti, either.

By five o’clock, Coletti was standing outside police headquarters, gazing across the street at the abandoned hospital that had been converted into condos.

He wondered if the young professional residents with their hybrid cars and doctorates knew that the building and nearby playground had once been home to rats and homeless drug addicts. He doubted that they would care. After all, the city had given them thousands in property tax breaks to become urban pioneers. In the face of such a windfall, what did a few rat turds matter?

His own presence there was a little more difficult to figure. With his matted hair and worn-out sport coat, Coletti wasn’t much to look at. Yet Mary Smithson—a woman who seemed to have more in common with the Birkenstock-clad crowd across the street than with him—had asked him to meet her there.