Two Cambodian boys who looked to be about five years old watched the detectives from beneath a bright porch light. An old woman sat in a chair behind the boys. Two teenage girls stood on either side of her, their waist-length hair hanging limp against their backs. Their jeans were tight. Their faces were angry. Their eyes were lined with makeup.

Coletti pulled his badge and announced himself. When no one responded, he looked at Mann, who’d come alongside him.

Mann considered playing dumb, but this was his case, too, and he didn’t have time to revel in Coletti’s inadequacy.

“Sues’day,” Mann said haltingly, directing his words at the old woman. “Soksabay che te?”

“How do you think she is?” one of the teenage girls snapped in response to Mann’s weak attempt to greet them in Khmer. “We lived with them. Now we hear they’re dead. Shot like dogs in one of your churches.”

Coletti ignored the blame in her voice. “Were you related to them?” he asked.

“They were our friends,” the girl said.

“So they don’t have any next of kin here?”

The angry girl shook her head no as Mann sized her up. She was seventeen, perhaps, but her eyes were much older. She was wearing a tight Bebe T-shirt that rode up at her hips, revealing smooth yellow-brown skin. A cell phone was clipped to her belt, and she was wearing designer sandals that showed off her French pedicure.

Her clothes said that she knew her way around these streets. Her understated makeup said she knew her way around men. Her tear-stained face said she knew at least one of the victims well.

“Were they shooting at Boran when they did that drive-by?”

She looked him up and down. “They were shooting at those nuts who hang on the corner. Boran wasn’t about that. He worked hard, minded his business, and looked out for his cousins.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mann said cynically. “That’s the stuff you tell the reporters when they come around. But you know a little bit more than that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mann looked at Coletti and nodded toward the girl with a knowing grin. His body language said he didn’t believe her.

Coletti jumped right in. “How ’bout we call up Immigration and start running names through the system, starting with yours?”

“Wait a minute, Mike,” Mann said, his voice filled with sympathy. “We don’t wanna be too hard on her. She just lost the man who bought her that nice jewelry.”

Her hand instinctively covered the tennis bracelet on her right wrist. Her face cycled through several emotions, from anger to self-consciousness to fear.

“You got five seconds, honey,” Coletti said, looking around impatiently. “After that, we bring INS in here and clear out this whole damn house.”