After a blurry length of time, Roz told me the story of Rosco’s finest hour.

“So we’re all out in the sticks, searching for this dangerous escaped convict- this is four-thirty or so in the morning, and it’s still pretty dark. Rosco’s got a scent, and he runs until he stops at this tree. Then he doubles back, and runs around the tree again. He’s all excited.

“We think this guy’s up the tree, so everyone runs over and points their weapons and flashlights up at the branches. But there’s no one there. Rosco’s still circling the tree, barking at me, and I can’t figure what he wants. The BCA guys are getting kind of pissed, like Rosco’s screwing up. They want me to pull him back onto the trail, and I have to tell them: you don’t lead these dogs, you follow them. Then Rosco jumps up with his front paws on the tree and barks again, like to say, I’ve done my job, now you take over, stupid.” Roz peered at me, owlish from drink. “You know what it was?”

“The guy was hiding in the tree?”

“That’s right. In the tree,” Roz said, squeezing my arm for emphasis. “He’d climbed up into the branches to look around, and the tree was dead and the trunk hollowed out, and when he was climbing back down, he either slipped or he decided to hide in there.” She sipped at her beer. “He couldn’t get back out, and just about froze to death in the night. He was unconscious. But they thawed him out and put him on trial, and sent him to prison for life.”

“A happy ending,” I said.

“Yeah,” Roz said. “What time is it?”

“Little after nine,” I said.

“I don’t think I can drive,” Roz said.

“’Kay,” I told her.

“Dammit, this whole thing was supposed to be me giving you a ride home,” Roz insisted.

“’S all right,” I told her.

In the end, Roz’s girlfriend, Amy, ended up taking a cab downtown in order to drive her home. Amy assured me it was no trouble to give me a lift, too. She didn’t recognize the address I gave her. But Roz did.

“You live in a housing project?” she said, incredulous.

A loose-limbed teenage boy ambled by in the hallway of the 26th floor of the north tower. His eyes met mine and flicked away; he went on to the apartment at the end of the hall. I was in front of 2605, where I’d knocked on the door, but gotten no answer. I tried again.

Then Cicero opened the door, wet-haired, a towel held half-crumpled in one hand. His shirt was damp where he’d obviously pulled it on hastily, without adequately drying the skin underneath.

“Is this a bad time?” I said.

“No, no,” he said. “Come on in.”

Inside, a smell of Ivory soap and steam had drifted into his living room. I said, “Sorry, I’m empty-handed tonight.”

“You don’t have to bring me anything to come over here,” Cicero said. “But am I right in guessing that while you didn’t bring a bottle this time, you haven’t been abstaining tonight? I thought I detected a semiliquid s in your-”

A knock on the door interrupted him. Cicero rolled to the door and opened it partway.

“I burned my arm,” a female voice said.

Cicero rolled back, and his patient entered. She was a thin white woman with lank brown hair, dressed in a disjointed ensemble of spaghetti-strapped satin camisole over sweatpants, and she held a wet paper towel to her arm.

“How’d this happen, Darlene?” Cicero asked.

“Cooking,” she said, and looked at me. But I saw her eyes, and knew from her pinpoint pupils that drugs were probably at the root of whatever kitchen accident she’d had.

Cicero turned to me. “Sarah, would you mind waiting in the other room?”

I nodded agreement and withdrew into his bedroom. If I knew him, this would take longer than just cleaning the burn and putting a topical salve on it; I doubted he’d missed her contracted pupils any more than I had, and he would probably follow treatment with advice on where to seek drug-dependency counseling.

The blinds of the window were up, as always, and the lights of Minneapolis lay below; I went over to look down. Cicero ’s voice and Darlene’s were faint through the bedroom door. Other than that, nothing. It was surprising how thick the walls of this building were. There were people around us, but I heard none of their activities. Other than hearing Fidelio bark once, my visits here had been like coming to someplace high atop a mountain. Normally, it was peaceful. Tonight, it was unnerving.

Roz had been a great distraction, as had the noise and crowd of the bar and the war stories we’d told each other. But now the question I’d been pushing from my mind came back to me, unappeased. What would happen if the BCA found Stewart’s blood in my car?

To be questioned as a primary suspect in Royce Stewart’s death had been painful. To see the distrust in the faces of some of my colleagues, and the perverse approval in the eyes of others- that had been distressing. But ultimately, I’d always had an escape clause where Shorty was concerned. I’d always known that if I were arrested or indicted, Genevieve would come back and tell the truth. I’d still be a conspirator in Shorty’s death, but not an accused murderer.

Now an unhappy possibility had arisen. Was it possible that Genevieve’s confession wouldn’t be enough? If all the physical evidence pointed to me, and so did all the witness testimony from Blue Earth, would a grand jury weigh Gen’s unlikely claim of guilt against the preponderance of evidence, and send me to trial instead? Once that happened, there would be very little to keep a jury from convicting me.

When I’d first been questioned by detectives from Faribault County, lying to protect Genevieve had seemed natural and right. Now I wondered if I hadn’t dug for myself a deeper hole than I’d ever realized.

The bedroom door opened, and I turned from the window.

“Hey,” Cicero said from the doorway, “sorry about that.”

“It’s your job,” I said.

“Are you hungry?”

I realized that I was. “How did you know that?”

“Med school,” Cicero said. “We’re taught to catch malnutrition early. What did you have for dinner?”

“Four whiskey sours, three beers, and half a basket of potato wedges,” I admitted.

“If there’s a more balanced meal than that, I haven’t heard of it,” Cicero said. “Let me make you some coffee and see what I’ve got in the way of food.”

I frowned. He was far from rich; I wasn’t even sure he was solvent. “You shouldn’t waste your food on me,” I said.

“Enjoy it and it won’t be a waste,” Cicero said.

He fixed me a tomato-and-avocado sandwich with a cup of coffee; we went back into his bedroom while I ate.

After I was mostly done, Cicero asked, “So, why were we drinking tonight?”

“Why is it that doctors always say we when they mean you?” I asked him.

“It suggests empathy,” Cicero said. “You weren’t celebrating, were you?”

“No,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, really.” I lifted the mug of coffee as if it would protect me from his curiosity.

“Like hell. What’s wrong?”

I licked a drop of tomato-stained mayonnaise from my finger. “That was a really good sandwich,” I said.

“Thank you. What’s wrong?”

I sighed. “It’s complicated,” I said. “It has to do with what my husband went to prison for, and… I just thought I was doing the right thing, and now I’m not so sure. Maybe you can understand that. What am I saying, of course you can.” I gave him a knowing look. “That’s how you lost your license, isn’t it? Assisted suicide. You helped a terminally ill patient to die, right?”

Cicero lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“It wasn’t hard to figure out,” I said. “Compassion. It’s your fatal flaw.”

“Sexual misconduct,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“I lost my license for sexual misconduct with a patient.”