up his courage for the eleven years they’d worked together. They spent every day together. In the field, they could read each other’s body language perfectly, finish each other’s sentences. Yet off duty, she still acted distant. Every time he edged toward telling her how he felt, she seemed to sense it and pull away.
“Lucia, I couldn’t work a job where you weren’t my partner,” he said finally.
She smiled, but there was sadness behind it. “You should do more than this, Etch. You could run things better than the brass we got now, for sure. You’re a good man.”
“No, I’m not. Just lonely.”
She said nothing.
“I know everybody in our beat,” Etch said. “I know their kids and grandkids. And I’ve still got no one. I just can’t—”
“Get close,” she supplied, when he faltered. “It’s like somebody stole that part of you—the part that lets you connect.”
There was no need to answer. She described him as perfectly as the day she’d named him “Etch.”
His heart pounded like a damn teenager’s. He reached over and rested his hand on her knee. She didn’t object. She laced her fingers on top of his.
Then Ana flew out the door, breathless. “Mom, can I borrow your car?”
Gently but firmly, Lucia brushed away Etch’s hand.
Ana took a step back. “Oh—”
“It’s all right, honey.” Lucia forced a smile. “Etch, did I tell you Ana is applying for special police?”
“That’s great.” Etch tried to sound enthusiastic, though his heart felt like crushed paper. “You thinking about civilian law enforcement some day?”
Ana studied him warily, then nodded. “Four years in the service, then college. Then apply to SAPD.”
She said it just like any twenty-one-year-old—as if life plans were carved in stone. It was hard for Etch to believe she was the same age as a monster like Frankie White.
“Uh . . . Mom?” Ana looked at the tequila bottle. “I thought you told me you’d stopped drinking.”
Lucia rolled her eyes. She was only drinking to commiserate with an old friend, she said. Everything was fine.
Car keys were provided.
Ana promised not to be out too late.
Etch tried not to resent the look Lucia’s daughter gave him—as if she thought he was making her mother drink. As if that was the only way Lucia would ever hold hands with him.
After Ana was gone, Lucia and he sat on the porch a while longer, but the moment for holding hands had passed.
A news break came on the radio, the Spanish DJ giving an update on Julia Garcia’s murder. The witness who’d provided the description of a possible suspect had now turned up missing herself. Police would not say if they had other leads.
Music came back on, a ballad about love in the desert.
“Who was it?” Etch asked.
Lucia frowned. “Who was who?”
“The guy who broke your heart. What’d you say: ‘stole a piece of your soul’?”
Lucia crossed her ankles. “That was a long time ago, Etch.”
She drank her tequila.
The song played through.
He was so close to Lucia he could feel her warmth, but she wasn’t with him anymore. Her thoughts were a million miles away.
For the first time, Etch felt the anger burning inside him. He resented Lucia’s past. He felt powerless, the way he’d felt watching the forensics team bring up the draped gurney with Julia Garcia’s body.
“I could do something about Frankie White,” Etch said.
Lucia set down her shot glass, leaned toward him. “Promise me you’ll never say that again. Not even a hint.”
“Lucia—”
“You become like them if you do that, Etch. It would eat you up. The only way to keep your soul from rotting when you deal with people like Frankie White is not to be like them. Don’t hate them. Just do your job.”
“Is that possible?”
Her eyes were intense, almost desperate. “It has to be.”
They sat on the porch swing in their funeral clothes, listening to love music from the Mexican desert while the phone rang cheerfully inside—Ana’s friends trying to reach her, optimistic young women all dying to chat about their wide-open futures.
• • •
ETCH WAS ON COMMERCE, THREE BLOCKS from the office, when he pulled over to take a call.
“Bad news,” Kelsey said. “Ballistics can’t match the bullets from Ana’s leg with the gun we found at Navarre’s house. Slugs are too badly mangled.”
“Caliber?” Etch asked.
“Yeah. Right caliber: .357. But the blood on the shirt isn’t Ana’s. Could be Arguello’s. They’re still testing . . .”
His voice trailed off, wiry and nervous.
“What else?” Etch asked.
“A body turned up in a South Side dumpster this morning. One