maze of cubicles and desks to the front of the district house. Darrell turned out to be the red-haired man who’d brought coffee to the conference room. He barely came up to Risa’s chin, was whipcord lean, and from her few seconds of observation, was never still.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he was saying as they approached his glassed-in cubicle, turning away from the woman, waiting impatiently for his help, to answer the phone. Risa knew from her time on the force that the glass would be bulletproof. If the woman were waiting for a copy of an accident or police report, it would be slid to her through the small horizontal opening where the glass met the counter. The precautions had never seemed overly cautious to her. There were a lot of crazies in the world, and a full moon seemed to draw every one of them to the police station.
“Philadelphia Police Department, Seventh District, will you hold please?” He stabbed his finger at a button and answered yet another call. Then he twirled toward them on his wheeled office chair and beamed. “Nate, I took a message for you while you were in conference. From your not-so-secret admirer.” He opened up the door to the cubicle to hand him a note. “Your person of interest is in interview one. And you’ll want this for your guest.”
Nonplussed, Risa took the visitor badge he handed her. It had a photo ID on it, although she hadn’t posed for one. With one glance she noted that an old department photo had been affixed to it. Distractedly she observed that her unsmiling persona from seven years ago looked almost impossibly young.
The rest of her focus was on Nate’s admirer. He’d given the note one quick glance before shoving it into his pocket. But she didn’t think it was her imagination that a slight flush of color was spreading beneath the stubble on his jaw.
After shooting them both a blinding smile, Darrell was back in his glassed cubicle, wheeling to the phone to answer it. “How may I direct your call?”
“Thanks, Darrell.” Nate’s mouth quirked at Risa’s expression as she fell into step beside him. “Radar, we call him around here. Like that character from the old M.A.S.H. reruns? Has a knack for knowing what we want before we do sometimes.”
“That must come in handy.”
They went down a corridor with doors on each side. Nate placed his hand on the knob of the first door on the right, hesitated. “I’ll take the lead on this.”
Hardly earth shattering. “All right.”
“With the runaround Crowley gave us when we were trying to pick him up, I don’t expect him to fall all over himself being helpful. But if I’m not getting anywhere and you see an opening, a different direction that might work, feel free to jump in. We’ll play off each other.”
He’d managed to surprise her, but there was no time for a response. Nate was pushing the door open into the room. She followed him inside.
Sam Crowley had crimped brown hair, a square jaw, and the pumped-up body so many ex-cons exited prison with. His hands were laced tightly on the table in front of him, but nerves showed in the way his knee bounced under the table. And the door had barely opened before he started talking.
“Hey, do I need a lawyer? I can’t get this guy to say one way or another.” He jerked his head at the uniformed officer standing in the corner of the room. At Nate’s nod, the officer went out the door.
“I don’t know, Sam, do you?” Nate’s voice was mild enough as he and Risa sat across from the man at the table. “I imagine you’ve got one on speed dial after your last run-in with the law, right?”
Crowley’s lips tightened. “Can’t ever let a guy get clear of it, can you? One mistake, and I’m paying for it the rest of my life. Does that seem fair? I’m cooperating here. Came in on my own free will, and all that.”
That claim took some imagination, given the fact he’d been dodging them for the better part of twelve hours, but apparently Nate was willing to let it pass. “We appreciate your cooperation. Good citizens like you make our job easier.”
The man looked at him suspiciously, but Nate’s expression was impassive. “Yeah. Well. Honestly, I got nothing to tell you. I was on my way to meet a friend of mine. You talked to her. Heather Bixby? And she called