The first seven had been no big deal, gross-out-wise. Nothing whodunit about them, either. Like nearly every Central case, the victims were all black or Mexican and the same for the victimizers. When he and Pierce showed, the only other white faces at the scene would be uniforms and techs.

Black/brown cases meant tragedy that never hit the papers, charges that mostly got filed and plea-bargained, or, if the bad guy ended up with a really stupid public defender, a long stay in county lockup, then a quick trial and sentencing to the max allowable.

The first two calls had been your basic bar shootings, juicehead perpetrators drunk enough to stick around when the uniforms arrived—literally holding the smoking guns, putting up no resistance.

Milo watched Schwinn deal with fools, caught on to what would turn out to be Schwinn’s routine: First, he’d mumbled an unintelligible Miranda to an uncomprehending perp. Then he’d pressured the idiot for a confession right there at the scene. Making sure Milo had his pen and his pad out, was getting everything down.

“Good boy,” he’d say afterward to the suspect, as if the asshole had passed a test. Over-the-shoulder aside to Milo: “How’s your typing?”

Then back to the station, where Milo would pound the keys and Schwinn would disappear.

Cases Three, Four, and Five had been domestics. Dangerous for the responding blues, but laid out neatly for the D’s. Three low-impulse husbands, two shootings, one stabbing. Talk to the family and the neighbors, find out where the bad guys were “hiding”—usually within walking distance—call for backup, pick ’em up, Schwinn mumbles Miranda. . . .

Killing Six was a two-man holdup at one of the discount jewelry outlets on Broadway—cheap silver chains and dirty diamond chips in cheesy ten-karat settings. The robbery had been premeditated, but the 187 was a fluke that went down when one of the stickup morons’ guns went off by accident, the bullet zipping straight into the forehead of the store clerk’s eighteen-year-old son. Big, handsome kid named Kyle Rodriguez, star football player at El Monte High, just happened to be visiting Dad, bringing the good news of an athletic scholarship to Arizona State.