She hears Hurt in his own interview. “We were both threatened,” Hurt says. “I was out cold for a few minutes. He grabbed Fisher’s firearm,” he says. She repeats this over and over herself. Grabbed. Ambushed. Reached for my weapon. It was what she was trained to do. She’s not sure who she’s convincing anymore. Other than herself.

It feels like the longest day of her life. Longer than when she crashed her car, which she mostly doesn’t remember. She can’t remember her own ride in the ambulance; she remembers the days in the hospital bed as faded, gray. Without the blur of booze, the drip of narcotics, this day feels sharp, long, torturous.

It’s midnight before the chief, Bill Whittaker, tells her she did a good job and that she should go home, that she should rest, and that he’s recommending time off.

She is stunned when he says it was a good job. She’d thought for sure he was calling her in to fire her.

“You broke this wide open,” Whittaker tells her. He’s a man in his fifties who looks like he was thin in his twenties but now bears the barrel chest of administrative work. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and has a buzz cut like someone from an earlier decade.

“And Miller?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Didn’t survive the surgery.”

She feels a chill up the back of her neck, into her hair, tingling. “He’s dead,” she says.

“Good job,” Whittaker says.

“Sir,” she says.

“We’ll see this through,” Whittaker says. “But for now, you should take some time.”

“I can’t,” Kateri says. “The Jenkins arraignment is tomorrow morning.”

“It’s not a suggestion, Fisher,” he says.

“Oh.”

She stands and undoes her belt, releases her firearm, and leaves it on the table.

“You can be at the arraignment,” he says. “But Hurt will close the case.”

She can’t tell Shannon. She can’t leave him with the knowledge that Bear has been shot dead—by her—the night before he sees the judge. She calls Brewer to plead with him not to tell Shannon. But when she reaches him on the third try, close to one in the morning, he tells her he quit the case.

“When?” Kateri asks. She remembers Shannon saying, Tell Bear I fired you. She sits in her office in the dark, just the glow of her computer and the light from the hallway.

“This afternoon,” Brewer says. “I can’t work with that kid,” he says. “And he doesn’t want me. Trust me, he says it was mutual. What the fuck happened up there?”

Kateri leans into her hand. “What have you heard?” she says.

“Standoff. Shots fired.”

“I may need you for questioning,” Kateri says.

“Well, fire away,” Brewer says, “but I don’t know anything.”

“I thought he was your friend,” Kateri says.

Brewer laughs. On the phone, his voice is low, gravel but sharp. It’s a sexy radio voice. A good phone voice. “Bear Miller is no one’s friend,” he tells her.