He stepped out to the echoes of distant voices, phones, clinical footfalls, page announcements, rattling gurneys. A single nurse sat charting at the nearest station, ten yards away.

Empty hallway. No sign of Angela.

On a rainy Thursday evening, just before seven, on his way out of the hospital, Jeremy encountered the raincoated bulk of Detective Bob Doresh.

Doresh was hanging by the main elevators, near the candy machines, rubbing his heavy jaw and munching on something. When he saw Jeremy, he pocketed a colorful wrapper and trotted over. “Got a minute, Doc?”

Jeremy kept walking and motioned for Doresh to accompany him.

“How’ve you been doing, Doc?”

“All right. And you?”

“Me?” Doresh seemed offended by the common courtesy. As if his job gave him the right of total privacy. I’ll ask the questions…

“I’m fine, Doc.” He wiped a speck of chocolate from his lips and blinked several times. “Well balanced and nourished. So everything’s copacetic with you.”

“I’m surviving.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Doresh. “Especially considering the alternative.”

They passed the marble wall engraved with the names of hospital benefactors, pushed through the glass doors, walked through the covered breezeway that led to the doctors’ parking lot. The convenient lot. After Jocelyn, there’d been talk about moving the nurses closer, but nothing had materialized.

Doresh said, “Nice to keep dry.”

Jeremy said, “What’s up, Detective?”

“I’ll get right to the point, Doc. This is going to sound like one of those movie cliches, but where were you last night, let’s say between ten and midnight?”

“At home.”

“Anyone with you?”

“No. Why?”

“Just routine,” said Doresh.

For a moment, Jeremy thought he’d go along with the script. Then something snapped, and he barked, “Bullshit,” and moved well ahead of Doresh.

The detective caught up. Chuckled loudly, but there was no humor to the sound he emitted. The warning growl of a big, watchful dog.

Those eyes. Regarding Jeremy with what seemed like new respect. Or maybe it was contempt.

Doresh said, “You’re right, it’s total bullshit. I’m not going to waste my time driving over here and making small talk. So tell me this: Is there any way you can verify being home by yourself last night? It would help both of us if you could.”

Jeremy suppressed the reflexive why-the-hell-should-I? “Not for an entire two hours there isn’t. I got home late- around eight-thirty, took a walk in my neighborhood for an hour or so. Someone may have seen me, but if they did, I didn’t notice. After that, I returned home, showered, had a drink- scotch. Johnny Walker, if you care- and called out for some dinner. Twenty-four-hour pizza place. I ordered a medium, half-cheese, half-mushrooms. It was delivered around ten-fifteen. I gave the boy a five-dollar tip, so he’ll probably remember. I ate three slices of pizza- the rest is in my refrigerator. The scotch made my mouth dry, and the pizza didn’t help, so I drank water. Three eight-ounce glasses. I read the papers, watched TV- if you’d like I can name the shows.”

“Sure,” said Doresh.

“You’re kidding.”

“Anything but, Doc.”

Jeremy rattled off the list.

“That’s a lot of TV, Doc.”

“Normally I’d be reading by candlelight,” said Jeremy, “but I just finished the entire Great Books Compendium and Chaucer and Shakespeare, thought I’d give myself some downtime.”

Doresh studied him. “You’ve got a sense of humor. I didn’t see that before.”

The situation didn’t exactly warrant it, idiot.

The doctors’ lot came into view, and Jeremy walked faster. Rain pebbled down on the roof of the breezeway, poured down the sides, like glycerine drapery.

Doresh said, “What’s the name of the pizza place?”

Jeremy told him. “Who got killed?”

“Who said-”

“Spare me,” said Jeremy. “I went through hell, and you didn’t make it any easier. Now you’re still bugging me instead of finding out who killed Jocelyn.”

Doresh’s eyes narrowed, and he moved in front of Jeremy, blocked Jeremy’s progress. “Making people feel good isn’t my job.”

“Fine. So let’s cut to the chase. You’re here because something happened. Something similar enough to Jocelyn to want to take another look at me.”

Doresh’s eyes dropped to the ground. As if the truth disgraced him. As if crime was a personal failure.

He said, “Why not, you’ll read about it in tomorrow’s paper. Yeah, something very much like Ms. Banks happened.” He drew the lapels of his raincoat tight across his chest but left the coat unbuttoned. “What happened was a woman, a prostitute, over in Iron Mount. A girl known to the department for a while, drugs, soliciting, the usual. In that sense, not like Ms. Banks, at all. But the wounds…”

Jeremy said, “Dear God.”

Doresh moved out of his way.

Jeremy said, “Iron Mount. That’s not far from The Shallows.”

“Not far at all, Doc.”

“A prostitute… you really think-”

“From time to time, I do think,” said Doresh. He smiled at his own wit. “That’s all, Doc, have a nice day.”

“I left several messages for you, Detective. A photo your guys took from my house-”

“Yeah, yeah. Evidence.”

“When will I get it back?”

“Hard to say. Maybe never.” Doresh’s shrug was so casual Jeremy fought not to hit him. “Better get going, Doc. Have my work cut out for me.”

That night, Doresh sat in Jeremy’s dreams, a raincoated Buddha, and the taste of slightly off, greasy harbor shrimp bit his tongue. In the morning, he got up early and retrieved the newspaper. The headlines were soaked with economic woe and the felonies of politics, the Clarion’s histrionic journalists exulting about wars-to-be, injustice and indignity.

He found what he was looking for on page 18.

The woman’s name was Tyrene Mazursky. Polish surname notwithstanding, she’d been black, forty-five, a drug-addicted streetwalker with the extensive police record Doresh had cited.

Also a mother of five.

Iron Mount was a scrofulous warren of misshapen streets and afterthought alleys as narrow as they’d been since the city’s horse-and-carriage, slag-and-smelt origins. Jeremy had been there exactly once: a very long time ago, as an intern, doing a home visit on a kid everyone was sure was being abused.

Drunken mother, junkie father, the five-year-old boy barely in the first percentile of height and weight, speech and vocabulary testing out as that of a two-year-old. One happy family plus some unnamed addict pals, living in a railroad flat above an auto body shop, far from the waterfront but close enough to where the Kauwagaheel River cut inland from the lake and swamp stench permeated the rotting plaster walls.

Jeremy did his thing, wrote it up. So did a terrified social work intern, but it turned out that despite their character flaws and bad habits, the boy’s parents were doing a pretty good job of tending for the kid, who had picked up a viral liver infection with ensuing bowel blockage that choked off his nutrients and retarded his growth.

Surgery and IV antibiotics worked wonders. Counseling for the parents proved a good deal less miraculous, and three weeks after the kid’s last surgical follow-up, the family cut town.

Iron Mount. Due east from The Shallows, a place that made The Shallows look like horse country.

He put down the paper, forced coffee down his throat, and thought about Tyrene Mazursky, savaged.

The wounds.

Five orphans.

He wondered how a black woman ended up with a Polish name, felt an inexorable sadness at the mysteries of Tyrene Mazursky’s life.