He fanned them out on his skinny lap, faceup, like fortune-teller’s cards. Close-ups of the dead girl’s bloody, scalped head. Intimate portraits of the lifeless face, splayed legs . . .

“This,” he said, “is why we get paid. The other stuff clerks could handle.”

The first seven murders had gotten Milo to think of himself as a clerk with a badge. He didn’t dare agree. Agreement seemed to infuriate the sonofa—

“You thought you were gonna get some fun for yourself when you signed up to be a Big Bad Homicide Hero,” said Schwinn. “Right?” Talking even faster, but managing to snap off each word. “Or maybe you heard that bullshit about Homicide being for intellectuals and you’ve got that master’s degree and you thought hey, that’s me! So tell me, this look intellectual to you?” Tapping a photo. “You think this can be figured out using brains?”

Shaking his head and looking as if he’d tasted something putrid, Schwinn hooked a fingernail under a corner of a photo and flicked.

Plink, plink.

Milo said, “Look, I’m just—”

“Do you have any idea how often something like this actually gets closed? Those clowns in the Academy probably told you Homicide has a seventy, eighty percent solve rate, right? Well, that’s horseshit. That’s the stupid stuff—which should be a hundred percent it’s so stupid, so big fucking deal, eighty percent. Shit.” He turned and spit out the window. Shifted back to Milo. “With this”—plink plink—“you’re lucky to close four outta ten. Meaning most of the time you lose and the guy gets to do it again and he’s saying ‘Fuck you’ to you just like he is to her.”

Schwinn freed his fingernail and began tapping the snapshot, blunt-edged index finger landing repetitively on the dead girl’s crotch.

Milo realized he was holding his breath, had been doing it since Schwinn launched the tirade. His skin remained saturated with heat, and he wiped his face with one hand.

Schwinn smiled. “I’m pissing you off. Or maybe I’m scaring you. You do that—with the hand—when you’re pissed off or scared.”

“What’s the point, Pierce?”

“The point is you said I learned a lot, and I didn’t learn dick.”

“I was just—”

“Don’t just anything,” said Schwinn. “There’s no room for just, there’s no room for bullshit. I don’t need the brass sending me some . . . fly-by-night master’s deg—”

“Fuck that,” said Milo, letting out breath and rage. “I’ve been—”

“You’ve been watching me, checking me out, from the minute you started—”

“I’ve been hoping to learn something.”

“For what?” said Schwinn. “So you can add up the brownie points, then move on to an ass-warming job with the brass. Boy-o, I know what you’re about—”