Litvinov submitted quietly to arrest when the Santa Monica police used their battering ram to knock his motel room door off its hinges. Dagmar was sorry to hear it: she had hoped he’d resist and be shot full of holes.

Unless the Russian pleaded guilty, there would be a trial, and Dagmar would testify. And so she was asked to come to the police station and give a statement.

Murdoch was interviewing someone else, so Dagmar was given a ten-ounce foam cup of coffee and a white and red plastic stir stick and then asked to wait on a chair of shiny tube steel and gray plastic. She did so.

The North Hollywood Station was quiet on a Wednesday morning. Doubtless the drunks and other flotsam of the previous night were sleeping it off or being processed somewhere else.

Find out who knew Charlie was staying at the Fig, Dagmar thought, and you find the bomber.

Phones rang. Detectives answered. Fingers tapped keyboards.

She called AvN Soft and asked for Karin, Charlie’s secretary.

“Hi,” she said. “This is Dagmar.”

“Hi, Dagmar,” Karin said. “Charlie still isn’t in.”

“Do you know where he’s staying?”

“Yes,” she said. Then she added, “I’m not sure if I can tell you without his permission.”

Apparently she hadn’t heard the news that morning. Dagmar lacked the energy to tell her.

“That’s all right,” Dagmar said. “I was wondering if anyone besides you knows where he’s at.”

She could hear the uncertainty in Karin’s voice.

“I haven’t heard that he’s told anyone else,” she said.

“You haven’t told anyone?”

“No. The only reason I know myself is that I have to drive down every few days to bring him paperwork he needs to sign.”

“Okay, I just wondered. Thanks.”

After she ended the conversation, she considered Karin. She’d been Charlie’s secretary since the early days of the company and, like Dagmar, was in her early thirties. She seemed to be deeply competent, and Charlie had always praised her.

Karin had just returned from maternity leave. She had bleached-blond hair, a rectangular butt that jutted out like a Lego block beneath her jackets, and wore a nursing bra. She just didn’t seem bomb-thrower material.

Well, she thought. That leaves me as the only remaining suspect.

She didn’t seem to be prospering as a detective.

A door opened and Murdoch came out with Joe Clever and a woman in a gray pantsuit. Joe Clever seemed a little more wild-eyed than usual.

“If you can wait for a few minutes,” Murdoch said, “we’ll have your statement printed for you, and you can check it.” He looked up at Dagmar. “Miss Shaw? Can you speak to us now?”

Joe Clever grinned. “Hi, Dagmar.” He gave a thumbs-up. “We make a good team, don’t we?”

“We sure do, Andy,” Dagmar said. Joe Clever’s expression clouded.

Finding out Joe Clever’s real name had been an unanticipated bonus of this adventure. She could find out where he lived.

Let him misbehave again, and she’d send Richard the Assassin to throw bricks through his windows.

Dagmar went with the detectives into the interview room. It had functional furniture and an official poster telling suspects of their rights. The metal desk was bolted to the floor and had shiny steel loops for handcuffs. There was an antiseptic smell.

Murdoch introduced the woman, who was a detective from the Santa Monica PD. Dagmar, Murdoch, and the woman were given lapel mics, and as they spoke, a computer turned the words into letters and projected them on a monitor.

Dagmar simply answered questions. She still wasn’t processing very well and felt that her answers, while factual, lacked the concrete specificity that she preferred in her prose.

She reported that she’d seen Austin killed, and that she’d turned to the players-“programmed” them, in Murdoch’s words-to hunt for Litvinov.

The woman detective, who didn’t talk much, seemed surprised at all this.

Dagmar went on to state that Andy Claremont-which was Joe Clever’s real name-had located Litvinov the previous night and called her that morning, and that she’d called Murdoch right away.

She said that she had no reason to believe that Austin Katanyan had anything to do with the Russian Maffya.

The interview didn’t take very long. At the end, a printer in the squad room printed out the interview, after which Dagmar corrected the occasional spelling error and signed it.

“We got to him just in time,” Murdoch volunteered. “The accomplice who visited this morning seems to have dropped off Litvinov’s new ID. With that, Litvinov could have walked across the border into Tijuana and then flown from there to…” He shrugged. “To somewhere else. There are biometric scanners at the border that might have ID’d him, or they might not-and even if they did, he might have been in Mexico before the border patrol could react.”

“Do you know who the courier was?” Dagmar asked.

“We’re forwarding Mr. Claremont’s video to the Organized Crime Task Force, along with the sound recordings. We’ll get Litvinov’s cell phone records, so that might help us as well.” He paused, and then added, “We found a motorcycle in the parking lot that we think was stolen, probably by Litvinov. It wasn’t the same motorcycle that was used in the murder-but that one was probably stolen, too, then abandoned.”

Dagmar jumped again as her phone rang. She chided herself for being too nervous and glanced at Murdoch to see if he’d noticed.

His face retained the same bland professionalism it always wore. To give her privacy, he turned and ambled toward the coffee machine.

Dagmar looked at the display and saw that it was Karin.

“This is Dagmar,” she answered.

“Dagmar,” Karin said, “they say Charlie’s been in a bombing.”

She looked up at Murdoch’s bland back. “Who says?”

“The FBI. They’re here. They’re taking everything from Charlie’s office.”

Dagmar was astonished. “Why are they doing that?”

Distress flooded Karin’s voice. “They won’t say!”

“Have you called our lawyers?”

“Lawyers?” Karin sounded as if she’d never heard the word before.

“Call the firm’s attorneys,” Dagmar said. “If they’re taking company property, there needs to be an inventory. And probably a warrant-I don’t know.”

“Okay. Should I do that now?”

“Yes,” Dagmar said.

Karin clicked off. Dagmar looked at her phone and saw the AvN Soft number glow for a moment, then vanish as the screen went to black.

She tried to work out what to do next. Rush to the office to prevent the FBI from taking Charlie’s things? Tell Murdoch what had just happened? Do nothing?

Try to play detective and solve the crime?

It had to be admitted that this last approach hadn’t worked well so far.

Murdoch was stirring white powder into a cup of coffee with one of the red and white stir sticks. Dagmar holstered her handheld and approached him. He looked up.

“My boss has been killed,” she told him. “Charles Ruff, you might remember him. In a bombing.”

She realized as the words left her lips that Karin hadn’t actually given her all this information, and there followed a thrill of fear as she realized that Murdoch might trip her up.

But then, she thought, Karin wouldn’t remember what she’d said and what she hadn’t. And there wasn’t anything wrong with Dagmar’s knowing what she knew.

She was safe.

The crinkles around Murdoch’s eyes softened and then reformed themselves, something Dagmar took to be an expression of interest.

“Is this the bombing downtown?” he asked. “In the Fig?”

“I…” Dagmar hesitated. “She didn’t say. She only said that the FBI turned up at the office.”

His eyes held hers for a moment, and then he looked down and gave a long sigh.

“Well,” he said, “if it’s the Russians, the FBI might be the best agency for it.” His tone suggested that he made this statement against his better judgment. He made a vague gesture with the hand that held the stir stick.