“Let’s just be clear,” Everest said. “Over the next few days, if you hinder my client in any way or violate his right to privacy, I’ll file for sanctions against this department.”

Mahler switched off the recorder as he stood up. “Counselor, your problem is you’re playing too shallow. You’re in on the ball. In a day or two, we’re going to find evidence connecting your client to three murders, and then you’ll want to be deep, or this thing right here is going over your head.”

(ii)

(TUESDAY, 2:04 P.M.)

Two uniformed officers sat in the plastic molded chairs beside Frames’s desk. They were large men, their duty belts jammed with the tools of their trade: handgun, spare magazines, OC, Taser, radio, handcuffs, and baton. The small chairs and limited space crowded the men. They sat uncomfortably, legs splayed, their feet shoved under the desk.

Pruitt, the one closest to Frames, looked around the room. “Not exactly the CSI set, is it?”

The other officer, Timsen, peered into his paper coffee cup and searched for a space on Frames’s desk to discard it. “It’s what we get for working in a time of tight money.”

“A few more rounds of budget cuts, and they’ll move our offices to an abandoned middle school.”

“No. They’ll put us in one of those empty big-box stores. Discounts on city services—that’s us.”

Frames tried to bring the meeting to order. “Can we talk about what you got from the canvass?”

The two officers seemed to notice Frames for the first time. “How’d you get in here anyway, Steve?” asked Pruitt. “You didn’t exactly distinguish yourself in Field Training.”

Before joining VCI, Frames had worked four years as a uniformed officer. He was comfortable knowing, as Pruitt pointed out, he was not the best young officer in Field. But he believed he had something in his favor. Because he was confident in his abilities, he never acted blindly to prove them to himself.

“Mahler as much of a hard-ass as everyone says?” Timsen asked.

“He is when guys like you jerk him around,” Frames said.

“Then you can tell him we caught kids with weed in their tent,” Pruitt said. “They’d just lit up a doobie when we showed. Scared the shit out of them. One started crying.”

“We don’t care about that now. What we need to know is, did anyone see or hear anything connected to the murder of the young woman at Violetti Gate.”

“That’s the trouble,” Pruitt said. “You get up here, and you forget what real police work is.”