was Puerto Rican. They might wonder why a legal U.S. citizen would live on their side of the tracks, and suspicious people were closed-mouth people.

Andrea was going to do her best to dodge the citizenship question by disguising the way she spoke Spanish. She practiced saying a word’s final s, which wasn’t pronounced in Puerto Rican Spanish, and tried to talk slower, enunciating each letter and emphasizing the r the way Mexican Spanish was spoken. She eventually started to feel more comfortable disguising her accent. Passing as Mexican.

They went out to Lucy’s car, and Lucy panicked for a moment when she realized the beer can was still in the front seat. She got in but waited to unlock the passenger door for Andrea until she’d hidden the can in the backseat. She finally let Andrea in, and they set off toward the apartment complex.

Rodeo Road changed to Airport Road, and the signs changed from Applebee’s and Bank of America to taquerías and carnicerías. This was the immigrant side of town, so unlike downtown in its crouched-over oldness. Here there were bright lights and sprawling strip malls. Here there were burrito trucks and ice cream vendors pushing their carts for miles. Most of the signs were now in Spanish, and piñatas filled the windows of the grocery store. This part of town was new, built up quickly over the past ten years. It seemed to be tacked onto Santa Fe’s southern edge. Lucy pulled up in front of the Hacienda Linda apartment complex. It was a two-story bland beige structure with steel and cement exterior staircases and breezeways. The cars in front had license plates mainly from Chihuahua. Lucy pulled into an empty spot.

“You ready?” she asked Andrea.

“I think so.” Andrea got out as easily as she could given her tight jeans and clicked her way up to the upper level.

Lucy watched Andrea approach the first apartment and knock on the door. A young woman with a toddler at her feet answered. Lucy couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the woman smiled and scooped the toddler up into her arms. Lucy took it as a good sign that the woman hadn’t slammed the door shut. She could hear Andrea and the woman laughing. Then Andrea, without a look back, stepped through the front door, which closed behind her.

“Oh hell,” Lucy muttered to herself.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Saturday Morning

Gil’s phone rang. It was Chief Kline. Gil let it go to voice mail; he didn’t want to get in another conversation about interviewing Geisler until he had a chance to talk to the DA, but the district attorney on call had yet to get back to Gil.

He decided he had stalled as long as he could. It was time to finally interrogate Rudy Rodriguez—and it would be an actual interrogation.

So far, every conversation Gil had had with the various people surrounding this case had been an interview, generally casual and relaxed. Interviews had a script for Gil to follow, but they allowed for a lot of ad lib. In an interview, you mostly played fair, but in an interrogation, you made whatever play would get you a confession.

An interrogation was less malleable. It was much like the work of an expert jeweler who starts with a rough stone, but a hundred small cuts later, that stone has the crystal brilliance of a diamond. Gil would be the one making those hundred little cuts. And they would be painful.

He grabbed a manila file folder off his desk and wrote Rodriguez’s name in the tab, then wrote the words CASE FILE followed by a random bunch of numbers. He grabbed some old police reports out of the recycling tray and then put the copier maintenance log and the printer manual in for good measure. When he was done, the folder looked packed full of incriminating information.

Holding the folder, Gil went back into the room with Rodriguez. “Are you ready for us to talk for a few more minutes?” Gil asked. Rodriguez nodded. This was part of the play. Ask the suspect’s permission to speak to allow him to feel in charge. Gil, who according to the script had to remain standing for the next part, said, “If you don’t mind, let’s change the focus of the interview, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Great. And thank you in advance for your cooperation,” Gil said, smiling. This kindness was a ploy as well, but a necessary one. A person confessed when he felt understood and respected. “It’s recently come to our attention that your