“It all blurs, Decker. Like I said, you can direct these questions to the boys. First of all, they’re a hell of a lot younger than I am and their memories are much better. Second, you’re asking about their business, and they’re alive to tell you about it if they want to.”

“Just their business as it relates to Big Cal’s suicide. Did he have personal problems at that time?”

“I don’t remember Cal being upset personally, only by our failure to come up with a decent suspect. It’s not for not trying. Did you read our report cover to cover?”

“Absolutely.”

“So you see how many people we interviewed.”

“We’re rechecking as many as we can. One of my sergeants just went to Ohio to interview Darnell Arlington.”

“Yeah, Arlington definitely made the cut, but he was miles away. We thought about a murder for hire, but where would the kid come up with the money?”

“He was dealing drugs.”

“He was selling dime bags of pot, which barely supported his own habit. He wasn’t big-time, Decker, if that’s what you’re wondering. Little couldn’t have kept the bust a secret if it had been a serious dealer.”

“Still, it’s amazing that someone expunged the drug charge. It had to be someone pretty important to make that call.”

“Had to be, but it wasn’t me.”

“And it wasn’t Cal?”

“We were working Homicide, not Narcotics.”

“Have you ever worked anything in West Valley other than Homicide?”

“Of course…GTA, Burglary, Sex Crimes…” Lamar shrugged.

“I worked Sex Crimes in Foothill. Did you have Sex Crimes and Juvenile under the same detail?”

“Yep.”

Decker felt his heart thump. “So if there were bad boys in the district, you’d know about them?”

“We did when we worked the detail.”

“Did you ever have experience with Arlington in Juvey before the murder?”

Lamar drained his beer can. “This is going back some. I don’t recall ever running the boy in and that would make sense. Kid would have been about ten when we left Sex Crimes and went into Homicide. I do recall, when we worked the Little case, talking to several of Arlington’s buddies: one kid in particular—Leroy Josephson. He had the usual list of offenses—D and Ds, B and Es, vandalism, petty theft, misdemeanor battery, underage drinking—nothing over-the-top violent but he was going in the wrong direction. We ruled him out right away.”

“Do you remember why?”

“His alibi checked out as I recall. I remember him only because someone from South Central contacted me about five years after Little’s murder. Leroy was in the wrong area at the wrong time and caught a big one right through the neck that damn near decapitated him.” Lamar shook his head. “He was all of twenty-one.”