The coffee was cold and so was his sweat. Shea did not feel his ribs or his arm anymore as the news broke for a commercial and he heard yet another siren outside.

Lieutenant Abe Glitsky sat at his desk in the homicide detail on the fourth floor of San Francisco 's Hall of Justice. After an hour of no sleeping he had given up and gone back downtown. He had been in since seven-fifteen, trying to get a handle on the madness, to coordinate the efforts of his department, which had already, previous to yesterday's incident, been up to its eyeballs in domestic-violence homicides, drive-by homicides, drug-related homicides, senseless, stupid homicides – the usual harvest of the urban streets.

Now, the workday not even officially begun, and not including Arthur Wade and of course the still unsolved murder of Mike Mullen, he already had two new verified homicides – victims of the street violence. These were a three-year-old white child who'd been burned to death in one of the duplexes that had gone up in the aftermath of the firebombing of the Cavern and a Korean store owner who had caught a brick in the head while he had been trying to defend his fresh-fruit and vegetable store in the lower Fillmore.

To say Glitsky had an open-door policy at work would have been a misnomer – in fact, his office had no door. There used to be a door. Then, one day, it was removed to be varnished or painted or something and had never made it back. So anyone who desired an audience with the lieutenant could simply walk into the large room that held the twelve desks of the homicide-detail inspectors, turn left and pass into his inner domain – a fourteen-by-sixteen-foot area set off by dry wall.

There were two windows. From his desk, looking right, was the double-door entrance to the detail, a not-so-early warning system that told him – if he was looking – who might or might not be coming through his doorway in the next moment or two. In front, his view was not the touristy one seen on postcards of Baghdad by the Bay. Instead it featured a foreground of the old, pitted and cluttered desks of homicide detectives, an unpainted concrete column stuck with official department announcements, wanted posters, joke faxes that made the office rounds, pictures of male and female prostitutes, the occasional morgue shot, yellowing newspaper articles… the column was the detail's unofficial bulletin board.

Beyond the desks and the column was a six-foot window of crisscrossed panes, thick with grime, through which – when the fog allowed – one used to be able to spy the artery of the 101 Freeway, pulsing with life, and beyond that, the rooftops south of Market. At last, on clear days, in the distance rose the glitter-dome of Nob Hill, with its fabled hotels, architecture, history.

Now, and for the past two years, the view through the soot-stained panes consisted of parts of the second, third and fourth floors of the new jail, a truly hideous committee-designed incarceration unit, whose rounded glass and chrome exterior was somehow expected to meld aesthetically with the hulking gray box that was the Hall of Justice.

Just outside the detail was a small reception area that due to budget cuts had not been manned – or womanned – in four years, so that anyone who took a notion to could waltz directly in – both to the open area and to Glitsky's own office.

Glitsky loved it on television where the buzzer sounded and the lieutenant said 'yes?' and the receptionist – usually a twenty-something knockout in full makeup and no uniform – informed him that the mayor or the district attorney or Mr Flocksmith was there for an appointment, at which the lieutenant, sighing, said, 'Keep him on ice for a mo, Marcia, then send him in.' He really loved it.

Chris Locke was in the doorway, through it, and standing in front of Glitsky's desk, knuckles down on it, hovering, before the lieutenant had a chance to look up.

'I'd like a few words with you, Abe, you got a minute.'

'Come on in, Chris. Make yourself at home.'

Locke was alone, which was unusual. Glitsky wondered if he had gone home and gotten any sleep. He was dressed in his coat and tie as he had been in the middle of the night.

Glitsky started to lean back in his chair, to look up at the district attorney. It occurred to him, though, that Locke enjoyed putting people in this position, so instead he stood – Locke was a big man but Glitsky had an inch on him. 'Coffee, Chris? Tea?'

Locke wasn't buying the hospitality. 'Abe, I'm confused.'

'So am I, Chris. All the time. But I've stopped worrying about it.'

Locke took his knuckles off the desk. He was, Glitsky thought, one of those people who didn't like to stand unpropped, and no sooner had he straightened up than he half-turned and rested his hind quarters on the front of the desk.

Glitsky went into his best at-ease, hands clasped behind his back.

'I always thought we got along' – Locke began – 'and then this crap you drop last night about Jerohm Reese. I take it you didn't agree with my decision to let him go, even though he had no chance in hell of turning into a conviction.'

'Perhaps.'

'What does that mean?'

'It's a seven-letter word that means "maybe," Chris. I thought letting Jerohm go, after we went to the trouble of finding him, then arresting and booking him and all, seemed a little, well, precipitous.'

Locke picked a piece of Scotch tape off the roll on the desk, working it between his fingers. 'This is really about the lieutenant thing, isn't it?'

He was referring to the test the city gave, and which Glitsky had taken a year ago, to determine eligibility for promotion to lieutenant. While the candidates had waited for the results Locke had invited Glitsky up to his office and said he was going to use his pull to get him bumped to lieutenant even if he failed the test. He had gone on to explain that 'people of color' were discriminated against by the testing process, that Glitsky was a good cop and deserved the promotion even if his grades didn't measure up.

Glitsky had felt insulted by the assumption that he wouldn't pass (he got a ninety-seven, second highest among the candidates). Also, he didn't like the obvious politics of it – a mixture of backass affirmative action and loading up the police department with lieutenants for whom the DA had done 'favors.'

'A little of that, Chris,' Glitsky was saying. 'But mostly just plain old Jerohm Reese. And now, of course, the rest of it.' Glitsky raised his head, indicating the world outside.

Rolling the tape between his fingers, Locke sighed. 'Anything about Reese going to help us now?'

'You mean like arrest him again? I doubt it. But I thought it would help last night if we got some understanding of what might have started this whole thing.'

'What started this whole thing, Abe, was lynching Arthur Wade. And what's going to end it is finding the guy that led that mob.'

'You really think so?'

'Yeah, I do, Abe. Other people do, too.'

Glitsky took a breath, letting it out slowly. New to his so-called leadership role, he was still mostly a street cop in his heart – a protector of victims, a collector of evidence, the man who made the arrests. All of his training and experience was in enforcing laws and policies, not in making or interpreting them. But now, as head of a department, he caught a whiff of a change and it didn't smell too good. 'Well, as I mentioned last night, Chris, we're investigating it.'

Locke stepped closer and leaned over the desk. 'I don't know if that's going to do it, Abe. If that's going to be enough.'