As I spit, straighten, and rinse my mouth I wonder: Can I really do it? Draw that knifelike edge across an exposed throat?

For a second, I stare into the oval of the mirror mounted over the small sink and smile weakly at my pale reflection.

Of course, I can.

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 23

December 5

Sophia Russo was a looker, Rivers would give her that.

She had agreed to meet them at the station rather than at her apartment, and she now walked into the small conference room with Mendoza. After a quick introduction, she peeled out of a coat trimmed in faux fur and removed her sparkly knit cap. A blond ponytail fell to her shoulders. “Cold out there,” she said with a mock shudder as Rivers got to his feet.

“I’ll take those,” he said and, before she could argue, grabbed her coat and hat to hang them on a rack near the door, his back to the table where the women were getting seated and to the camera mounted high on the wall. As he appeared to smooth the wrinkles from the coat and stuff the cap into a pocket, he deftly slid his hand deeper into the opening to retrieve whatever he could find—in this case, a small lipstick tube that he folded into his hand unnoticed by either Mendoza or Russo or the camera’s wide eye.

Once back in his chair, he scooted his seat closer to the table, where, beneath the tabletop, he slipped the lipstick into his pocket.

“Would you like some coffee? Or a water?” Mendoza asked.

She replied, “Maybe a Diet Coke?”

Mendoza made a quick call and nodded as Rivers poured two cups of coffee from the carafe into mugs that had been left on a tray in the middle of the table.

Within minutes, a soft tap on the door announced the arrival of Dorrie Kahn, the receptionist and senior secretary for the department. She swept in and, in her usual efficient if brusque manner, handed Mendoza a can of diet soda. “All we got is Pepsi,” she said with her perpetual scowl. In Dorrie’s world, there just weren’t any good days. “I’ve been trying to talk them into Coke forever, but the powers that be aren’t listening.” Lips pursed, she shot Rivers a sharp glance as if he were somehow to blame. “But then, do they ever?”

“Pepsi’s fine,” Sophia said.

Dorrie smiled tightly, then left the way she’d come, her high heels clicking loudly in the hallway outside the investigator’s room.

Mendoza passed the can to Sophia, who quickly cracked it open.

“I don’t really get the whole cola-war thing,” she said, smiling as she took a sip.

On the surface, Sophia seemed innocent enough. If she was nervous at being questioned by the cops, she hid it well.