Eddie makes a noise somewhere between a choke and a growl. His lips thin. “Be right back,” he mutters. Rose gives him an encouraging smile and ushers him around the partition to the bar.

She climbs on a stool. From her perch, she can see Amy and part of Tania seated in the dining area. Eddie puts himself foursquare between her and the table he’s just vacated.

“What are you doing here?” he hisses. “Can’t you see this is a family place?”

Rose is taken aback by the vehemence. Amy waves shyly at her from the table.

“You leave Amy alone,” Eddie says in a menacing whisper.

“Why? Because there was only one thing wrong with the Dennis woman—she was alive?” Rose waves back at the little girl. “Just who tried to murder whom?”

“Stay the fuck away.” Eddie starts to turn back toward the table.

“Edward ‘Eddie’ Martinez. 1477 Palmetto. Arrested at seventeen for assault. Arrested again at twenty-two for assault and battery. Paroled this January. Parole officer, Carol Thompson.”

Eddie pivots, steps closer to Rose’s stool. She tenses, waiting for a beefy hand to smash her to the floor. Nothing happens.

“How do you know all that?” Eddie’s eyes dart up and down the bar as if one of the stools holds a pigeon.

“I ran your fingerprint,” Rose says.

“How’d you get—” He breaks off and stares hard at Rose. “You didn’t…”

“I did.”

Eddie looks like he might lose his breadsticks. “That’s gross.”

For a while neither speaks. Finally Eddie ends the silence. “I want it back.”

“You want what back?”

“My finger. I want it back.”

Rose laughs. “What would you do, have it bronzed? It’s too late to get it reattached.”

“It’s mine. I want it.”

Rose worked hard for that finger. It is evidence. It is more than that. It is art. “Well, you can’t have it.”

“Why not? It’s my fu—”

Rose looks pointedly over his shoulder to where Amy is building a fort with breadsticks and flatware.

Eddie drops his voice and leans in menacingly. “It’s my effing finger.”

“I need it for DNA evidence,” Rose says.

“Bullshit. You don’t need a whole finger.” Eddie is getting increasingly agitated. Rose’s interview is in danger of going off the rails.

She lowers her eyes, refusing to meet his glare. “You can’t have it because it’s gone,” she murmurs.

“Gone?” He slaps the bar with the wrong hand and grunts as the pain registers. “What did you do? Throw it in the garbage? You threw my fu—my effing finger in the garbage!”

“No,” Rose manages, her voice cracking slightly. “I ate it.”

Eddie slumps onto the stool next to Rose, their knees almost touching. “You are shitting me.” He starts to slap the bar again, then thinks better of it. “You really ate it?”