Ahnert nodded toward the house. “Come on in,” he said.

Louis followed Ahnert through the living room and into a dimly lit den. Louis paused at the doorway, struck by the smell of stale cigar smoke. The blinds were drawn and the television was on, tuned to a rerun of Barney Miller.

The walls were covered with framed pictures, lots of family portraits that showed a young Ahnert with his brunette wife and two kids, and then a succession of portraits capturing the kids as they grew. A second wall was given over to photographs of cops in various color uniforms and group photos of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. There was a portrait of a very young Ahnert in his uniform. He looked remarkably like his son Dave, the same eagerness there in the eyes.

Ahnert settled into a frayed green chair stained at the headrest. He picked up the remote and muted the sound but didn’t turn it off.

“Take a seat,” Ahnert said. “I don’t like looking up at people.”

Louis took the chair next to him. On the small table between them was the remains of a turkey sandwich and an ashtray that held a dead cigar and a book of matches from O’Sullivan’s Bar.

“Did you read my case file?” Ahnert asked.

Louis nodded. “Once through.”

“Then you see what I saw.”

“There’s more to a case than ink and paper. You were there. You spoke with people. You saw the crime scene. You must have gotten a sense of Kitty’s case.”

Ahnert snorted softly, looking toward the television. “A sense? What good are senses? It’s evidence that convicts, not ESP.”

Louis leaned forward. “Jack Cade asked about you.”

Ahnert’s eyes shot to Louis’s face. “Why would he do that?”

“You tell me,” Louis said. “He wondered what your ‘take’ on him was. Why would he care? What kind of relationship did you have?”

Ahnert picked up the matchbook. Louis hoped he wasn’t going to light the cigar.

“I didn’t care about him, and the relationship as you call it was non-existent,” Ahnert said. “I was a cop, he was a suspect. I never gave him any reason to think I wanted anything but the truth.”

“Did you get it?”

Ahnert looked back at the television again. “I’ve worked thirty-five years for this department, Mr. Kincaid. It was and is a good department, with good officers. We did everything right on that case. We did it by the book. We had everything we needed to charge Jack Cade and get him convicted.”

“I know. I saw the evidence. But I still have questions.”

Ahnert nodded, flipping the matchbook open and closed with his fingers as he stared blankly at the TV screen. “All right then. Go ahead and ask.”

“I read that Kitty’s father reported her missing around midnight the night she didn’t come home. There’s no missing person’s report in the file. Did you take one?”

Ahnert didn’t look at him. “Procedure was twenty-four hours.”

“Small town in the sixties, a minor girl?” Louis paused a beat. “So why didn’t you take a report?”

Ahnert didn’t answer. Louis was about to ask again when suddenly Ahnert pushed himself out of the chair and went to the far wall. He took down one of the framed pictures and held it out to Louis.

“This is why,” Ahnert said.

Louis took it. It was a color portrait of a teenaged girl with long dark hair, aged seventeen or eighteen. It was probably a class portrait, but the girl wasn’t wearing the usual prim blouse or sweater. She was dressed in a rainbow tie-dyed dress, a bright green headband tied across her forehead. She was wearing a collar of white beads. He’d seen the beads before. Amy, his baby-sitter, used to wear them, along with those big hoop earrings and heavy mascara that made her look like a very young Cher. What did they call those damn beads? Peace beads? Puka beads, that was it.

“That’s my daughter, Lou Ann,” Ahnert said. “She ran away from home on Thanksgiving night. Ran off to San Francisco to be a goddamn hippie. ‘Make love, not war,’ they said. Called me-her own father-a pig the night she left.”

Louis handed the photo back.

“Her mother died a couple years later,” Ahnert said, hanging the photo back up. “Lou Ann didn’t even send a card.”

“Kids can be self-centered.”

Ahnert didn’t answer. He came back and sat down in the chair, his eyes going back to the television. Louis waited, watching Detectives Fish and Dietrich mouth an argument.

“You thought Kitty Jagger was a runaway?” Louis said finally.

Ahnert gave a small nod. “When that call came in, I didn’t see much sense in pulling overtime to chase down an ungrateful teenager who was probably out smoking dope.”

Louis could feel his anger welling up inside. Willard Jagger reported Kitty missing one hour after she left work. If she had been abducted-or even gone willingly with someone-there was a good chance she was still alive when Ahnert got the call.

“You made a mistake, Detective,” Louis said. “She might have still been alive at midnight.”

Ahnert’s shoulders visibly tightened. “I don’t believe she was.”

It’s easier to believe that, Louis thought. But he said nothing. He should have known Ahnert would protect his procedure. And his case. Anything less would make him look incompetent. There was nothing left to try but a little fishing.

“Did you know Kitty?” Louis asked.

Ahnert’s fingers paused on the matchbook. “I knew of her.”

“Enough to believe she was a runaway,” Louis said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Ahnert didn’t look at him. “I knew she was Willard’s daughter. I had seen her around town.” He paused. “I found out more about her when we got into the investigation.”

“Like what?”

Ahnert’s eyes came back to Louis’s face and rested there for several seconds before going back to the matchbook.

“She lived with her old man, took care of him, just the two of them in that house over in Edgewood Heights.” Ahnert was staring at the TV again. “Edgewood was a part of town that no one paid attention to, kind of low class. I think because of that people maybe thought Kitty was too. There wasn’t the outrage that would have come with the murder of, let’s say, the prom queen or a big-shot’s daughter.”

Louis had the feeling Ahnert was including himself in that damnation.

“But there was a quick arrest,” Louis said.

“Folks were afraid Cade might start hunting in better neighborhoods.”

Louis sensed a softening in Ahnert’s voice. “Do you believe Jack Cade killed her?”

“Sheriff Dinkle felt we had our man,” he said.

“What about you?”

Ahnert hesitated. “I believe every piece of evidence should be examined and explained. Things that aren’t explained leave doubts. Doubts that don’t go away.”

Louis let Ahnert’s words hang in the air as they both stared at the television. A clock ticked somewhere in the room.

“Detective, what were the doubts?” Louis finally asked.

Ahnert seemed frozen in the chair, but his fist closed slowly around the O’Sullivan’s matchbook.

“Dinkle was a good sheriff. He just liked to keep things simple for the lawyers.”

Louis leaned forward. “Are you saying you withheld evidence?”

Ahnert shook his head. “Of course not. The lawyers had every piece of paper I collected.”

“Then what happened?”

Ahnert unwrapped his fist and looked down at the matchbook, taking a deep breath. “I just had a few more questions to ask and I wasn’t allowed to ask them.”

“Dinkle stopped you?”

Ahnert shrugged. “It was probably nothing. Nothing that would prove Jack Cade innocent. Just a few loose ends.”

Louis clenched his jaw. Excuses from a cowardly old cop.

“If you couldn’t ask the questions twenty years ago, let me ask them now,” Louis said. “What’s the harm? Dinkle’s dead. You’re about to retire-”

Louis heard a car pull into the drive. Ahnert stood up and went to the window, bending a slat in the blinds.