Victor smiled. “We’ll wait for the suits.”

Holland studied the sixty-inch TV screen, which was divided into nine pictures, each showing a webcam feed from a room in the house. In the living-room picture, he could see himself looking at the screen. “You need a security system inside your house?”

“You never know,” Victor said, “when the riffraff might show up unannounced.”

Rivas faced him. “Where’s your Mercedes, Mr. Banerjee?”

“My Mercedes?”

“1959. License 9AKR321. Registered to you. We have a photo of it entering the gate at Spring Lake Park the night of Elise Durand’s murder.”

Victor shrugged. “Basement parking garage.”

“Why don’t you show me?”

Holland stepped close to Rivas. “You want to call for a couple units from the SFPD before you do that?”

“Be a little complicated now,” Rivas said.

Holland nodded. “Up to you.”

Rivas guided Victor by the shoulder. As they turned to leave the room, Rivas saw Victor and Russell exchange a look. Rivas called back to Holland, “Keep your boy in front of you.”

Holland patted the top of Russell’s head. “This guy? He’ll be fine.”

Rivas and Victor left the apartment and walked down the corridor. On the elevator, Rivas tapped the button for the basement garage and stepped behind Victor. The doors closed. Rivas felt the whoosh and the floor drop out from under his feet as the elevator descended. In his ear, his grandmother suddenly whispered, “Ready now, Danny?”

Her voice unnerved Rivas. Did Victor hear it? He leaned against the elevator to steady himself. Then, as if in a dream, he watched Victor drop his shoulder against the control panel, tripping the emergency stop. The car lurched. Off-balance, Rivas reached out blindly. Victor dodged under the detective’s outstretched hand and kicked into Rivas’s lower leg, snapping it like a dry stick. Rivas sucked in a sharp breath and fell against the elevator wall. Victor swung his elbow and struck the bridge of Rivas’s nose, breaking bone and flinging Rivas’s head backward. Shifting his weight, Victor swept a foot against Rivas’s heels, collapsing the detective onto the floor. Rivas lay still, his face covered in blood.

Victor jumped toward the fallen man. Sixty seconds or so before security personnel noticed the stopped elevator.

Ten already gone.

Hands cuffed behind him, Victor reached into Rivas’s pockets for the keys. By feel, he awkwardly inserted the metal shaft into the keyhole and released the cuffs.

Thirty seconds.

Victor removed his belt and wrapped it around Rivas’s legs. He yanked it tight.

Forty seconds.

He pulled his phone out of Rivas’s front pocket, tapped at the phone screen, and found the websites for the building’s security cameras.

Fifty seconds.

The elevator display showed they were on the twenty-ninth floor. On his phone he located the security camera for the hallway on the twenty-ninth floor. It was empty.

Sixty seconds.