'For laughing during a fire drill. I wonder how many white kids laughed.'

'Now, Gus. Don't go hatin on white kids.'

'Fuck that school,' said Ramone. 'I've about had it with that bullshit, too.'

'Easy, soldier,' said Regina, brushing hair off his forehead and kissing him behind his ear. 'Your heart's gonna get to fluttering, you're not going to be able to sleep.'

They wrapped their arms around each other, and he felt his breathing slow. And holding her, smelling the scent that was only hers and feeling the buttery skin of her cheek against his, he thought, This is why I am married to this woman.

This is something I will never have with anyone else.

The passing of Asa Johnson made the second page of Metro in the next morning's Washington Post. The event carried more weight than the usual one- or two-paragraph mention given black victims under the Crime or In Brief headings, informally called the 'Violent Negro Deaths' by many area residents. Johnson, after all, was not a project kid. He was a middle-class teenager, and a young one at that. What made him newsworthy was that his age at death was part of a disturbing trend.

In the middle of the summer, a six-year-old boy, Donmiguel Wilson, had been found gagged, bound, and asphyxiated facedown in a bathtub, dead for several hours in an apartment in Congress Heights. That horrific event had made the Post's front page. The random shooting of Donte Manning, nine years old, while he played outside his apartment house in Columbia Heights, had also warranted extra press, and outrage, back in the spring. The year's murder rate was down, but juvenile murders were higher than they had ever been.

The statistic dogged both the mayor and the D.C. police chief. It wasn't just the bad press that bothered them, though that, of course, added to their anxiety. Everyone, even the most hardhearted, felt a chill when a child was murdered for no other reason than the fact that he or she had been born and raised in the wrong section of the city. Any time a kid was killed, police, officials, and citizenry alike were reminded that they lived in a world gone terribly wrong.

Still, Asa Johnson's death, not yet officially classified as a murder, did not draw the type of attention or prioritization afforded white victims or black preteens. There were other murders to investigate as well. Several bodies, in fact, had dropped in the past couple of days.

Rhonda Willis had caught one of them, a shooting victim found overnight in Fort Slocum Park, a few blocks west of the community garden on Oglethorpe Street.

'You wanna ride out there with me?' said Rhonda, seated at her desk in the VCB. It was early in the morning, not yet nine. Gus Ramone and Rhonda Willis were pulling eight-to-fours for the next two weeks.

'Sure,' said Ramone. 'But I need to talk to Garloo first.'

'Go ahead. We already got an ID on my decedent. I'm gonna run his name through the system, get some background.'

'Let me do this and I'll be ready to go.'

Garloo Wilkins was in his cubicle, reading something on the Internet. He closed the screen as Ramone approached. It was either sports or porn sites for Garloo. He was into fantasy baseball and mature women with big racks.

Wilkins's desk was clean, with his files aligned neatly in a steel vertical holder to the side. There were no religious icons, family shots, or photos on his corkboard, except for a Polaroid, taken from an evidence file, of a local go-go keyboardist and murder suspect fucking a young female from behind, smiling as he stared into the camera. The musician had been questioned but never charged due to lack of evidence and witnesses. It had not been one of Garloo's cases, but the whole of the unit had been angered by the suspect's ability to evade arrest, and the photo was a reminder that he was still out there, having fun and breathing free air. Also on Garloo's desk was a lighter lying atop a pack of Winstons. The lighter had a map of North and South Vietnam on it. Wilkins was ex-army but had been too young to serve in that war.

'Bill.'

'Gus.'

Ramone pulled someone's chair over and had a seat. 'What's shaking on Asa Johnson?'

Wilkins reached over and pulled the file out of the holder. He opened it and stared at some unmarked paperwork. Ramone eyed the top sheet. There were no notes scribbled upon it. Usually a well-worked case had notations written in the margins and greasy fingerprints staining the manila. This one was bone clean.

Wilkins closed the file and replaced it. He had recorded nothing in it, but the handling of the file added to the drama he was trying to project. Apparently he had some news.

'We got a probable time of death from the pre-autopsy notes. The ME says between midnight and two a.m. Gunshot wound to the left temple, exit at the crown.'

'What about the slug?'

'Came from a thirty-eight. Clean enough to get markings. We could match it if we found the weapon.'

Ramone nodded. 'Any foreign substances in the blood?'

'None. There was powder residue found on the fingers of his left hand. I'm assuming he raised that hand in some kind of defense before he was shot.'

'Okay. That's forensics. What about on the investigative end?'

'Canvasses turned up goose eggs. Except for that old lady, thought she heard the snap of a branch. So no witnesses whatsoever. Yet.'

'Anything come up off the tip line?'

'Nada.'

'What about the tape of the man who called in the body?'

'I've got it,' said Wilkins, pulling a cassette dub from an envelope in his top drawer.

'Mind if I listen to it?'

Garloo Wilkins and Ramone walked back to the audio/video room. On the way they passed Anthony Antonelli and Mike Bakalis arguing over Redskins trivia.

'Art Monk had the most yards receiving in eighty-seven,' said Bakalis.

'It was Gary Clark,' said Antonelli. 'Hell, Kelvin Bryant had more yards that year than Monk.'

'I was talking about wide receivers,' said Bakalis.

'Clark was a wide receiver, dumbass.'

Ramone went into the room with Wilkins, fitted the tape in the machine, and hit 'play.' He listened to the voice of the man calling in the body, and the dispatcher, who was unsuccessfully trying to get the man to identify himself. Ramone rewound the tape and listened to it again.

'What are you hearing?' said Wilkins, seeing a look of discovery, or maybe recognition, pass across Ramone's face.

'I'm just listening for ambience,' said Ramone.

'No caller ID,' said Wilkins. 'It's gonna be harder than my dick to find this guy.'

'Uh-huh,' said Ramone.

'And you know how hard that is,' said Wilkins, grinning to reveal a row of horse teeth. 'So hard a cat can't scratch it.'

'Okay,' said Ramone, not hearing Garloo's words of wisdom but listening intensely to the familiar voice coming from the machine, those long Maryland O's of the P.G. County working-class white boy, the slight slur brought on by alcohol.

'We find the dude who made the call, maybe we got a wit. Shit, maybe he's the hitter,' said Wilkins.

'Your words to God's ears,' said Ramone. He listened to the recording a third time, removed it from the player, and handed it to Wilkins. 'Thanks.'

'What, you thought you were gonna recognize the guy's voice or somethin?'

'If you play it backwards at a slower speed, he confesses,' said Ramone.

'Wouldn't that be nice,' sang Wilkins, channeling Brian Wilson. It actually made Ramone smile.

'What now?' said Ramone.

'I'm going to visit the Johnson home today. Check out the kid's room and shit.'

Don't fuck it up, thought Ramone. With those ham hock hands of yours.

'I guess I'll get a list of the kid's friends from his father,' said Wilkins.