Nicole had a little boy, twelve years old. Serena wondered what had happened to him with his father dead and his mother doing twenty-five years for his murder. He was a cute kid, pretending to be tough, but you could see his heart breaking as he clung to his mother's arm in the photo. He would be nearly nineteen now.

Serena's cell phone rang. It was Maggie.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself," Maggie said. She added after a pause, "Stride told you, right?"

"He did. I'm really sorry."

"He couldn't understand why I didn't report it."

"Men never do."

"Even telling him now made me feel so fucking dirty," Maggie said.

Serena understood. It wasn't just about telling someone. It was about Maggie telling Stride. Leaving herself naked in front of him.

"Want to join me down at Sammy's? We could talk."

Someone slid a pepperoni pizza into one of the ovens. The tangy aroma filled the restaurant, and Serena realized she was hungry.

"I don't want to talk anymore," Maggie said. "I just want to catch this son of a bitch."

"Sounds like you're sailing that Egyptian river called Denial."

Serena waited for Maggie to fire back, but she didn't. "Yeah, I know, but being angry about it is better than locking myself in my bedroom. I called to tell you I have more dirt about Eric's visit to the Ordway."

"What is it?"

"I was able to reach their floor security attendant. The reason Eric was almost kicked out of the theater is that he kept trying to find a woman who worked there. He thought she was an usher. He wouldn't say what he wanted with her, and they started getting creeped out. They told him to sit down or they'd toss him out."

"Do you know who the woman was?"

"No, Eric didn't know her name."

"All right, I'll check it out tomorrow. You sure you don't want pizza?"

"No, thanks."

Through the restaurant window, Serena saw a tall man in a tan trench coat cross the street toward her. "That's okay, your nemesis is about to join me."

"Who?"

"Abel Teitscher."

"Why are you seeing him? You're not a spy, are you?"

"I want to talk to him about Nicole Castro."

"Yeah, Archie told me she called. I think you're wasting your time. Nicole tells everyone she was framed, but we had her dead to rights."

"Like you?"

"Yeah, okay, I see your point."

"I'll talk to you when I get back. Call Tony. Get some help."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a pushy bitch?"

"Everyone."

Serena hung up and closed her laptop. Abel Teitscher entered the restaurant, and his head swiveled over his long neck, looking for her. She waved at him. He nodded back at her but didn't smile. He was earnest and bleak, like the city in January. She had met him a few times in Jonny's office at City Hall, and although there was bad blood between Jonny and Abel, she felt sorry for him. She knew the story of his divorce and knew he kept people away with a prickly armor. He was smart, bitter, and lonely. Once upon a time, she had been the same way.

They shook hands. He had a solid grip. As he sat down, he smoothed his coat underneath him without taking it off. That sent her a message-he wasn't staying. She could see he was suspicious of what she wanted.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "We could order something."

Abel shook his head. Serena sighed. She could smell the sausage now, blending with the pepperoni, and it was driving her crazy.

"You're a runner, aren't you?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Me, too. You've got that runner's look."

She was being kind. His face reminded her of the desert floor in Death Valley, leathery and cracked. His gray hair was trimmed to half an inch and squared off on top of his head. He looked old, but also lean and tough.

"What can I do for you?" Abel asked. "If this is about Maggie, you know I can't say a thing."

"It's not about Maggie."

"Oh?" He looked surprised.

"I was hoping you could tell me about Nicole Castro."

"Why?"

"I have to go down to the Cities tomorrow," Serena explained. "Nicole asked me to meet with her."

"She told you she was framed?"

Serena nodded.

"That's bullshit."

"You sound pretty harsh. Wasn't she your partner?"

"That's why I'm harsh. I don't like being lied to. Plus, she tells everyone that I planted evidence against her, which is a crock."

"Just give me some background," Serena said. "If it really is just bullshit, fine, but at least I'll know that going in."

Abel leaned back against the wooden wall of the booth. He worked a toothpick between his molars. "Look, Nicole was a good kid. She and I worked together for five years. She was a lot younger than me, but we got along. I'll tell you the truth, I wasn't all that keen about having a black partner. My experience is that black women assume you're going to treat them with disrespect, so you have to be careful about everything you say. I don't do a very good job of watching my mouth. You've probably figured that out."

Serena smiled.

"Nicole was just as nervous having a middle-aged white guy as a partner. We had our arguments from time to time. Having a partner is like being married, you know that. But we did okay."

"How did her problems start?" Serena asked.

"To begin with, she was married to a son of a bitch. The kind of guy that thinks the world owes him a living because he's got a good-looking face. Nicole denied it, but I know he hit her a few times."

"So what happened?"

Abel took off his glasses and stared at the ceiling. "It was just bad, bad luck. Nicole was coming back from Superior on the Blatnik Bridge on a Saturday night. There was a guy on the Minnesota side who had parked his car and was running around on the bridge deck in a winter coat. This was July. Nicole blocked off traffic and got out of her car to talk to him. He told her he had a bomb strapped to his chest, and he was going to blow up himself and the bridge."

"Oh, shit."

"She tried to talk him into keeping his hands in the air, but he wouldn't listen. He kept saying he was going to do it, he was going to set off the bomb. When he unzipped his coat and began to reach inside, Nicole shot him twice in the head."

Serena understood what Nicole had gone through in those few seconds on the bridge. She had faced the same situation in Las Vegas, when a man decided to commit suicide by cop by pointing a gun at her and Jonny. That time, she was the one to pull the trigger.

"Sounds like a good shooting," she said.

"It was, but then the second-guessing started. It turns out the guy was mentally ill. There was no bomb."

"It's not like she could take the chance."

"You know that, and I know that. But tell that to the people who weren't up on the bridge. There was more, too. A lot of people said they heard this guy shouting racial slurs at Nicole. So some politicians got the idea that she shot him because he was a racist."

"Great."

"There was an investigation. Nicole went on leave, and it was six months before they cleared her and got her back on the job. Six months. Unbelievable. She went to pieces sitting at home, watching the television stations chew her up night after night. She had a nervous breakdown."

"So what happened with her husband?"

"The son of a bitch started having an affair with a young cocktail waitress. Eighteen years old."

"Was Nicole back on the job at that point?"

Abel nodded. "Yeah, she said she was okay, but she was fragile. Therapy wasn't working. She didn't have much of a caseload, too. Stride was nervous about her getting in over her head too quickly, so she mainly pulled cold cases. He was right. She was coming apart. You'd hear her on the phone with her husband, and it was crazy, like you were listening to a stranger. Hell, I heard her threaten him myself. Nicole said she'd kill him if he didn't break off the affair."