Miami Assistant State Attorney C.J. Townsend felt her mouth go dry. She rubbed her lips together, to keep them moist and to hide her anxious expression from the cameras, sketch artists and reporters that monitored her every move. Her heart began to pound furiously in her chest. But she could not run, could not just get up and leave – that was not an option. So she forced her eyes to look straight ahead of her. She didn’t even glance at the man who sat at the opposite table across the gallery wearing an expensive Italian suit and a pained expression on his handsome face.

She knew he watched her, though, waiting for her reaction. For her, he wore a bemused smile beneath his feigned look of anguish, his fingers drumming patiently on the table before him.

‘State, are you ready to proceed?’ asked Judge Chaskel, perturbed that this case was once again his problem. He had run an almost-perfect trial. It should never have come back. Not for this reason.

‘I am,’ replied ASA Rose Harris, C.J.’s friend and colleague in the Major Crimes Unit at the State Attorney’s Office. After a moment she rose from her seat and said, ‘Please state your name for the record.’

‘Special Agent Dominick Falconetti, Florida Department of Law Enforcement.’

‘How long have you been so employed?’

‘Fifteen years with FDLE. Four years with the NYPD in the Bronx before that.’

‘Agent Falconetti, allow me to direct your attention to the year 2000. At that time, were you the lead agent on the case of The State of Florida vs. William Rupert Bantling?’

‘Yes, Ma’am. The department headed up a task force – the Cupid Task Force, it was known by. It was comprised of detectives from multiple South Florida law enforcement agencies. In 1999 the task force was formed in response to a series of abductions and brutal murders that took place on Miami Beach. The subject had been nicknamed Cupid because of what he had done to the hearts of his victims, and the name stuck. I was the agent assigned initially from FDLE, so I, ultimately, led the investigation.’

Rose Harris gestured to the man at the table across from C.J. ‘And that investigation ended with the arrest of a subject, namely William Rupert Bantling, on September 19, 2000?’

‘Yes,’ Dominick looked over where Rose had gestured, where William Rupert Bantling sat nibbling on his lip now, looking as if he might cry. ‘Mr Bantling was arrested by Miami Beach police officers over on the McArthur Causeway. The body of victim Anna Prado was discovered in the trunk of his vehicle.’

‘And Mr Bantling was subsequently brought to trial later that year for her murder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was the prosecutor in that case, Agent Falconetti?’ The tone of her voice hardened slightly.

Dominick hesitated just a moment and looked in C.J.’s direction. ‘Assistant State Attorney C. J. Townsend,’ he said softly. ‘She’d been the SAO Legal Advisor on the task force for more than a year.’

‘During the course of this trial, you became romantically involved with Ms Townsend, is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking awkwardly down at his lap, ‘we developed a relationship.’

‘And Mr Bantling was convicted after a trial, correct?’

‘Yes. Convicted and sentenced to death.’

Rose Harris had moved behind Bantling at the table. Now she placed a hand on his shoulder, and he bowed his head meekly.

‘But you came to discover that Mr Bantling was not guilty of this crime, was he Agent Falconetti?’

‘I don’t know that for certain,’ Dominick squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. C.J. felt his eyes searching the courtroom for hers, but she continued to stare straight ahead. Her legs had started to shake underneath the table.

‘You came to discover facts, Agent Falconetti, that caused you to question Mr Banding’s guilt, is that true? That he perhaps had been set up?’

‘I discovered facts that caused me to question some things, yes.’

‘That caused you to believe that Mr Bantling had been set up?’

‘Yes, I have wondered,’ Dominick finally said, his voice resigned, his eyes finally giving up the search and casting downward instead.

‘Show the court, please, what fact you discovered that led you to question the guilt of Mr Bantling – that led you to believe that he had been set up, as he had alleged all along?’ Rose Harris was like a dog with a bone. ‘Show the court the evidence you discovered, the evidence that had been withheld in the first trial, that evidence which told you an innocent man had been falsely accused and placed on death row!’

Dominick somberly nodded his head. He looked defeated, as if he wanted to cry himself. He reached down underneath the witness stand, his hands emerging seconds later with a black plastic garbage bag that was sealed with red evidence tape. Using latex gloves and a jagged knife, he slit open the tape and with a pair of evidentiary steel tongs, reached inside. The smiling, white rubber face of a clown emerged from the bag, the tongs holding it at a distance by its fuzzy tufts of red hair, its blood-red twisted smile dangling in front of the jury, twirling and spinning slowly back and forth, posing for every camera. An enormous collective gasp sounded through the crowd.

She could take it no more. C.J. sprang to her feet, screaming. ‘He is not innocent! He’s guilty! He’s guilty!’

‘Order! Ms Townsend! As an officer of the court you know full well how to behave yourself in front of me. The jury will disregard that outburst!’ shouted Judge Chaskel.

C.J. sat back down, her face buried in her hands. She felt the man watching her, smiling at her downfall, wishing he could get a hold of the knife Dominick held in his hands, so he could make some new scars on her body. Maybe borrow the mask back for just an hour or so.

‘It was in Ms Townsend’s closet. Stuffed in a box at the top with some old Miami Beach police reports,’ finished Dominick.

Rose Harris let the shocked murmurs finish their ripple through the crowd. ‘Agent Falconetti, is Ms Townsend present in the courtroom today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please identify her for the record.’

Dominick raised his head. The clown mask still dangled from the tongs in his left hand. With his other hand, he pointed across the gallery where C.J. sat. The click and whir of cameras filled the air, following his finger. ‘That’s her. Sitting at the table.’

Rose nodded somberly. ‘Let the record reflect that Agent Falconetti has correctly identified the defendant, C. J. Townsend.’

‘Ain’t that special? You kiss your mother with that mouth?’ Officer Victor Chavez was in no mood. He was already cutting the bitch a break by not arresting her, and now she had the nerve to actually complain about it. God, sometimes he hated this job. ‘Now, you still need to move yourself out of here.’

‘Ain’t got no right. Jus’ makin’ some money. You want a blow, Officer? Twenty bucks. Maybe loosen your tight white ass right up,’ she cackled.

‘I’m gonna count to ten. If you’re still here, I’ll assume you want to crash at DCJ tonight.’ DCJ was the Dade County Jail and the last place he wanted to be on this fine evening. Spending two hours filling out paperwork in that shithouse for some ho’ who inevitably would be sprung first thing in the a.m. by an overworked, cranky judge.

‘Don’t want no jail, master cracker,’ she mumbled, her eyes half closed, and she finally stumbled off down the street, narrowly missing a speeding Mustang. A screech of brakes was followed by a horn and a number of loud expletives.

‘Kiss my ass!’ the hooker yelled back behind her as she wobbled down the block and out of sight.

Chavez watched her teeter off, just as the small radio pack on his shoulder crackled to life. ‘Alpha 816. Thirty-eight, thirty-five with a knife in an alleyway at NE 79th Street and Biarritz Drive, behind the Atlantic Cable Company. White male, fifties, gray beard. Complainant advises subject causing a disturbance.’

Thirty-eight was a suspicious person. Thirty-five was a drunk. Put the two together and you have politically correct cop lingo for homeless person. A bottom-feeder call, which of course meant that Victor Chavez would get it.

Victor looked around at the boring mess which was now his daily life. Chasing hookers off the street, nickel and dime junkies back into their holes, homeless people to their next park bench. When he was done doing that, he could expect to pull a husband off of his wife after pummeling her face in, and maybe respond to a car wreck caused by some overindulged idiot trying to find his way home off the Beach. It was barely one in the morning, and he had been on the job for just two hours.

Victor hated midnights. He hated being babysat by the Miami Beach PD’s powers-that-be practically every minute of his ten-hour shift. He hated shit patrols and vagrants pissing in the back seat of his car, and he wondered when-oh-when his penance would be paid and the account with his sergeant settled.

Ever since the Cupid case he had been stuck on midnights, denied overtime, and passed over for the prime vacation times. When was it supposed to end? He was almost at his end, though, that was for sure. He was going to have to sit down with Sergeant Ribero next week and demand a normal schedule, a normal career. Not this piddly babysitting-the-homeless-and-fruitcake job. That was not what he signed up for when he became a cop almost four years ago. If need be, he would go to the Hialeah PD, where his brother worked. Get a job as a cop and then maybe move up to detective after a few years. Fuck the fun of the Beach. It wasn’t fun anymore, anyway.

He clicked back on the shoulder pack to respond. ‘Alpha 816. QSL from 20th and Collins.’ The literal translation for QSL was ‘I receive,’ though in Victor’s case, it always meant ‘Shit rolls downhill and I’m at the bottom.’

No more. He could take no more. He actually had not even fucked up the Cupid case, when you thought about it. He had been the one to stop the son of a bitch as he tore over the McArthur Causeway with a dead girl in his trunk. Just one of the eleven women that the psycho had carved up. But in the eyes of his sergeant and the bitchy prosecutor, a carved-up dead body in a trunk meant shit. The stop – his stop – was ‘bad,’ and he had spent three long years trying to make amends. Well, no more.

Victor Chavez climbed into his squad car, happy he’d come to this decision. Happy to think that maybe, in a month or so, he would actually begin to like this job again. Let the chips fall where they may, he thought. Then he activated his blue lights and headed over to 79th and Biarritz to rustle some poor guy from the alley he probably called home.

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Miami Beach, where anything goes and the rich and famous – and not-so-famous – come to play. And, of course, be noticed. The beautiful girls with their fake breasts and tight low, low-cut shirts and warm brown tans, sans those annoying tan lines, naturally. The beautiful boys, their hard, sculpted bodies decked out in Lycra, leather, snakeskin, spandex. They all mixed and mingled, drinking Cosmopolitans and Chocolate Martinis or chic tropical drinks like Mojitos. The exciting sexual energy that hangs in the heavy air is almost palpable.

He closed his eyes for a moment and simply listened.

Just a few miles away from all the decadence, here he was in this rotting shithole. The floor of the alley was littered with trash and garbage, old beer cans and liquor bottles, discarded condoms and empty fast-food bags. Most of the streetlights had been broken out long ago, and the city just never bothered fixing them, because this was not the end of town where tourists spent their money. The alley was a refuge for drunks and dopers. Though, right now, it was empty. The Miami Beach cops had already made a pass through, shooing away the homeless and the undesirables.

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

He heard the sound before he saw the car. The crunching of tires on cement, as they rolled slowly over glass and garbage. The purr of the engine followed by the squeal of a car door. The squawk of a radio and the slam of the door, and then footsteps falling heavy on cement. The sound echoed down the alley and off the walls of the closed businesses that surrounded it, sounding larger than life. But the footsteps quickly faded in the distance as the person turned and walked in the other direction, ignoring the alley and what lay in wait.

His heart raced with excitement and he breathed in the very scent of the night. The humid air filled his lungs, the oxygen pulsing through his bloodstream, rushing to invigorate his mind. He waited patiently until the footsteps disappeared before he unwrapped himself from the shadows. He was careful as he came upon the car, his silent footsteps deftly maneuvering past the rusty cans and broken bottles. Inside his jacket, his latexed fingers found the blade and he fingered it lightly and smiled. Electric blue and red lights danced silently off the walls of the alley in an almost mesmerizing sequence.

Let the games begin.

‘Alpha 816. Location was Atlantic Cable Company. NE 79th Street and Biarritz Drive. White male with a knife; request for a unit to respond.’ The crackling static of the dispatcher’s voice filled the alley, but then just as quickly dissipated when he hit the button to respond, reminding him that he was alone.

‘Alpha 816,’ he said, ‘there’s no one here. I’ve also checked the parking facility and both businesses at that location, but they are also clear. The scene is secure.’

‘Alpha 816. Will advise,’ dispatch responded.

‘Alpha 816. I’ll be at twelve then.’ It was 1:30 in the morning, and ‘twelve’ meant that it was time for a dinner break. A nice, greasy burger to help him get through the rest of this shitty night was in order. Tomorrow was his day off – he’d just work it off with a few extra sets at the gym.

‘Alpha 816. I’ll have you at twelve until 0230,’ dispatch crackled back.

The radio went silent and he was alone again. He headed back to his squad car, thinking maybe he’d head back down to SoBe and The Diner on 11th and Washington for a bite. Maybe get a good look at the mamis while he ate. Watch as they sauntered into Mynt from their limos in leopard-print catsuits and leather minis.

He opened the car door and sat inside. He had left the car running while he walked through the mess in the alley, so that the AC would keep the car cool. Though it was November, the temperatures were still in the 80s; the humidity at 90 percent. It was enough to make even a nice Cuban boy like himself gasp for drier air.

In September, MBPD Chief Jordan had ordered newfangled laptops be installed in all marked Beach cruisers – a sign of how progressive the department was. Never mind that the Florida Highway Patrol and the Miami Dade PD had both had them for more than two years. They were supposed to speed things up – tag searches, drivers’ license searches, BOLOs (be on the lookout), wanteds, report writing, obtaining interstate criminal information and FCIC criminal warrants. The laptops scanned, e-mailed and had internet access to everything, including CJNet – the Criminal Justice Network. Broad-reaching technology that provided, in Victor’s opinion, the ability to retrieve almost too much information, and hence – when someone like himself fucked up and missed something – the perfect excuse for an ass-reaming by a member of the brass for not looking hard enough in the first place.

He hit the button on the pad to write yet another useless report on what he had not found in the alley and the MBPD badge screensaver disappeared. When he read the words that stared back at him in bold-faced capital letters, glowing white in the darkness of his squad car, he was at first puzzled. Within a moment, though, they became all too clear to him. But by then it was just too late.

Victor’s head slammed back, pinned fast against the seat. Then the man wrapped his arm around Victor’s throat, pulling him up and his head back through the cut plexiglas. The knife sliced through the back of Victor’s uniform, but did not cut him. Instead, it pinned his shirt to the back of the vinyl seat, so that Victor’s head hung off the neck rest, his face staring up at the roll bar on the roof of the car, his throat exposed. Victor’s body jerked about, and instinctively, his hand went for his gun, snapped in a holster to his right side, but the man in the back seat had already anticipated that. While one hand squeezed Victor’s larynx closed, the other reached down past him to the SIG-Sauer P-226 at his side. Within seconds, the gun was his, and Victor’s one hand flailed uselessly in search of it, as his other desperately tried to pry the fingers from his throat. His legs began to shake and kick out, and the horn beeped loudly when his foot hit it. The laptop toppled off the stand to the floor of the squad car. He writhed violently, trying to free himself from the seat, but the angle was awkward and the knife held him fast.

Then the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer pressed hard against Victor’s right temple, and the latexed hand slowly released his throat.

‘Shhh,’ he whispered.

The heavy weight of cold metal against Victor’s head instantly stopped the struggle. He listened to Victor’s frantic panting, and could almost hear the thought as it sprang from Victor’s head.

‘You won’t make it. I’ll blow your head off before your leg is even halfway to the seat.’ He knew all about the surprise Victor had strapped to his left ankle. Victor’s scared eyes darted furiously about, but he could not see the face behind him.

The police radio next to the officer’s head squawked to life. ‘Alpha 922, Alpha 459. 1530 Collins. Forty-one down. Possible three thirty-two. Black male unresponsive on the side of the road. Fire rescue responding.’ The radio crackled with assorted responses from other units in police jargon. Units that were, at that very moment, racing across the Beach to the scene of the emergency. Unfortunately for Victor, it just wasn’t his emergency.

‘What … do … you want?’ Victor stammered. His voice was choked, and the man knew that big, bad Victor was about to cry.

‘Don’t cry just yet, Victor. We’ve got some things to discuss first.’ Behind the seat, the man pulled out another knife from underneath his jacket. This one was special. He brought it around the left side of Victor’s head to where Victor could see it now.

Victor Chavez’s eyes grew wide with fear. He felt the wet warmth of his own piss spread across the front of his pants. He kicked his legs out again furiously, uselessly.

‘Okay, Victor,’ the man said and smiled. ‘Now open wide.’

‘Is that you?’ murmured Dominick groggily in the darkness. He nudged her gently as he rolled over, facing her, his eyes still closed.

‘Sorry it woke you. I’ve got it,’ C.J. said softly, her fingers finally finding the beeper and pressing the button to turn it off.

‘Are you on duty this week?’ he murmured, his arm reaching out under the covers for her.

But she pulled away and swung her legs out of bed, pulling her hair, still damp with perspiration from the nightmare, back off her face. She didn’t want him to know she’d had another. ‘That’s me. I’m the lucky winner.’

Beeper duty, as it was called, was part of her job, assisting police officers after 5:00 p.m. with questions about probable cause, searches, warrants, and arrests. It was the policy of the State Attorney, Jerry Tigler, that prosecutors be available 24/7 to help cops with their cases, particularly since – unlike District Attorney’s offices and complaint rooms in other major metropolitan cities, which operated around the clock with prosecutors handling complaints – the Miami SAO shut down pretty much at five. So the county was divided up logistically into two response regions – north and south – and every one of the 240 felony prosecutors in the office saw week-long felony beeper duty more than a few times a year.

The office’s A, B and C prosecutors, those assigned to trial divisions and responsible for prosecuting first-, second- and third-degree felonies, handled the more generic felony questions: Do I need a warrant to search this guy’s house if his wife lets me in? Do I need to tell the parents of a juvenile that I’m questioning their delinquent son about a robbery I know he committed last year? Can I search a car if I think the driver’s got a 357 under the seat? Some questions were more basic than others, some more involved. The tricky ones were when a cop regurgitated a series of facts and events, and then asked the sleepy-eyed prosecutor if he had enough probable cause to make an arrest. Tricky, because probable cause – an elusive and difficult-to-quantify amount of facts needed to justify the arrest of a person – was a cop’s decision to make on a scene, not a prosecutor’s. Was it more probable than not that a crime was committed and that this is the guy who committed it? Tricky, because officers, on occasion, were known to stretch the facts to fit the crime. Or, alternately, to delete a few crucial ones.

The prosecutor’s legal function was to come in after an arrest was made and prosecute the offender. To allow each office to operate without the constant threat of being sued, the Florida legislature conferred qualified immunity on the police for their discretionary actions in policing, and to the State Attorney’s Office and individual prosecutors for their discretionary actions in prosecuting. But the two were not interchangeable, and Tigler’s office policy often forced a prosecutor to walk that fine, treacherous line between giving out friendly advice at three in the morning and actually playing cop.

Specialized crimes were handled by specialized prosecutors, which required specialized beepers. Sexual batteries were responded to by Sex Bat prosecutors; felony domestic violence crimes by DVU prosecutors; major drug cases by Narcotics prosecutors; major fraud questions by Economic Crimes (ECU) prosecutors; and all homicides were rotated between the office’s Division Chiefs and the senior trial attorneys in Major Crimes. And the media cases, the O. J. Simpsons in their white Broncos – those readily apparent to even a rookie five minutes out of the academy as a mess just waiting to happen – were handled exclusively by Major Crimes. The elite ten prosecutors assigned to Major Crimes handled a smaller caseload compared to other prosecutors and Division Chiefs, but they were the most sensational of homicide cases, their facts horrific and brutal, their issues complex and involved. Most, if not all, of their defendants faced death as their ultimate penalty, either by lethal injection or electric chair. C.J. had been with the office twelve years, assigned to Major Crimes for the past seven.

No one ever had a major fraud question at three in the morning, but there certainly were enough homicides in the city to consistently chime a homicide beeper in the middle of the night. And another Jerry Tigler policy was that every homicide had to be responded to on the scene. So when the beeper went off, you knew you were not just getting up – you were going out. As a Major Crimes prosecutor, C.J. saw homicide beeper duty at least once every eight weeks, and as the Assistant Division Chief of Major Crimes, she was assigned to permanent beeper duty for all police shootings and use-of-force cases. An added bonus. Thoughts of a transfer to ECU often drifted into her head after a 3:00 a.m. beep.

‘Uh-oh. You better stay down and cover your eyes,’ she said before flicking on the light switch. Dominick groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.

As she dialed the number, he asked, ‘What are you on? Homicide duty?’

‘Both this week,’ she replied as the phone rang in her ear. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll probably have to go to the scene, whatever it is.’

The line picked up in her ear and a male voice answered, ‘Nicholsby.’

She recognized the name. Miami Beach Homicide. ‘Detective, this is ASA C. J. Townsend. I just received a beep —’

‘Yeah, yeah, Ms Townsend. I just called Criminal Intake. They said you’re the prosecutor handling homicides tonight. You’re Major Crimes, right?’ The detective’s voice sounded more anxious than she expected, given that a dead body at four in the morning was nothing unusual for a homicide detective. C.J. had learned that pretty much nothing fazed most homicide detectives. In fact, they usually liked to have a little fun with the more squeamish prosecutors in the office, loading up on the grisly details of their cases right before sitting down to lunch.

‘Yes, that’s right, Detective,’ she replied. ‘I’m on homicide and also on police shooting duty. What have you got, a homicide or a police shooting?’

‘Well, it’s a homicide.’ He hesitated slightly. ‘But this one’s a little more than that.’

‘Is it a multiple?’

‘Nope. Just one – but it’s … well, it’s pretty bad.’ In the background she heard the continued high-pitched sounds of multiple police sirens approaching. From the number responding, it sounded like a pretty big scene. She heard Nicholsby suck in a deep drag on his cigarette before continuing. ‘I’ve got a dead cop down here on the Beach, Ms Townsend, and he’s one helluva mess.’

Dominick Falconetti could immediately tell by the change in her voice that the news was not good. He unburied his head from under the pillow. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

She looked at him. His chestnut eyes squinted up at her in the harsh bedroom light, his salty brown hair tousled on the top of his head. She shook her head. ‘It’s a cop,’ she said quietly.

‘A shooting? Where? What department?’

‘No, not a police shooting.’ She took a breath. She knew this would be hard for him. It was always hard on a cop to hear that one of their own just took one for the team. They took it personal, even if they didn’t know the guy. ‘It’s a homicide, Dom. On duty. I’m sorry. I don’t know anything else, not even an ID.’

Dominick sat upright in bed. ‘Holy shit. A cop? What the hell – how? Where?’

‘That was Nicholsby with the Beach,’ she said, up and moving now toward the closet. ‘He didn’t say how, he just said to get down there.’ She emerged from the walk-in, a pair of tan pants in hand, buttoning a cream silk blouse.

Dominick rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran his hands through the top of his hair. ‘I’ll come with you. Just let me get dressed,’ he said, watching as she pulled on her pants, then sat on the bench at the foot of the bed to put on her shoes.

‘Now why would you come with me? Beach Homicide is there. They’ll handle it.’

‘Because a dead cop means FDLE will probably be called out to assist anyway. Because it’s four in the morning and you’re headed to what I’ll bet is a real crappy part of the Beach.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Because I don’t want you to go alone at this hour.’

She stopped putting on her shoes and smiled at him across the foot of the bed. ‘Thanks, but an escort’s not necessary, Prince Charming. I can handle myself. Besides, there will probably be about a hundred other Glocks attached to blue uniforms swarming all over that crappy part of the beach. It sounded like a pretty big scene. Sleep. Maybe the call won’t come and you can actually get eight hours tonight.’ She headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

He knew it was useless to argue with her. C.J. was an independent and headstrong woman. And even though plenty of things had happened in her life that could spook her from being alone at four in the morning, he knew she would do what needed to get done, silently bulldozing aside any fear she might encounter along the way. They had been together for three years, and remarkably, he found her to be stronger now than when they had first met. In his years in law enforcement, he had seen many a victim get swallowed up by their crime, too paralyzed by fear to even open their doors, to live their lives, always mistaking the backfire of a car for the blast of a shotgun and ducking for cover. But not C.J. It was as if she challenged her fears to defy her every day, not just by walking out the door, but by then driving herself to a job where she would surround herself with the worst criminals society had to offer up, taking on more cases, more tragedy. Like a parachute jumper who has had a bad accident when the chute doesn’t open, instead of walking away from the sport, C.J. simply jumped from a higher altitude each time.

‘A dead cop, huh? Jesus! The Beach must be a zoo. And Nicholsby didn’t say who or how?’

‘No. He was very tight-lipped. And he sounded pretty anxious, though, so I’d better go.’ She leaned over him on the bed. Their lips touched, a soft, lingering kiss. Hers were cool and she tasted minty. His hand wrapped around the back of her neck, his fingers lost in her dark-blonde hair, pulling her closer to him. The other gently touched her face, his thumb lightly rubbing her cheek. He still missed her whenever she left. He still worried whenever she left.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly in his ear. ‘I’ll call you when I know more.’ She rose to leave. ‘It’s Saturday. I’ll pick up bagels on my way home.’

‘Be careful, please. Call me when you get there, and stay on 95.’ I95 was an interstate that carried Fort Lauderdale to Miami, a thirty-mile trip. Many a bad thing had been known to happen to those who ventured off the wrong exit, lost in the middle of the night.

‘Yes, Dad,’ she said lightly, heading for the bedroom door. ‘Go back to sleep. Tell me what it feels like over breakfast. And don’t forget to let out Lucy.’ Lucy was her deaf basset hound, who, at the moment, was curled into a very tight brown ball right next to Dominick, where C.J. had been not five minutes earlier. She patted Lucy’s head. ‘Opportunity knocked, huh, Lucy girl? The bed never even got cold.’

‘Where exactly are you going, anyway?’

‘Some alley off of 79th Street.’ She blew a soft kiss at him. ‘Love you,’ she whispered. ‘See you soon.’

The bedroom door closed softly behind her and then she was gone.

A dead cop. Jesus Christ! One of his own.

He felt incredibly angry. Angry and outraged and inexplicably sad all at the same time. Even though he had no idea who this cop was or how he had died – hell, chances were he probably didn’t even know the guy, there were that many cops in Miami – but still … one of his own had lost the battle. In the kitchen’s bright track lights, he shook his head in disgust while he waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

There existed a unique camaraderie among law enforcement officers. As early as a rookie’s first week in the police academy, the groundwork for the ‘us against them’ mentality was already carefully being laid by highly experienced, and therefore, highly pessimistic sergeants and lieutenants. Field Training Officers – FTOs – and fellow cadets became a rookie’s only friends for a grueling and intense nine months, and the academy’s maxim was ‘prepare for the worst.’ And so you do. You shoot at moving paper bad guys every day and are instructed to call for back-up if you have to as much as sneeze in a bad hood. You practice raids on mopes’ houses where, inevitably, a few innocent hostages are sure to be found inside, and no paper target escapes without coming under heavy fire. Then, after dropping thirty rounds of ammunition and being beaten blue by the Redman in Defensive Tactics, you cap off the day having a few beers with the boys. Your life revolves around the job: You eat, sleep, breathe and socialize with other cops. You speak cop, 24/7, and your trained cop eyes now see bad shit everywhere, just waiting to happen. And no one knows you better than your partner. Death defied on your behalf by someone not even related to you breeds unwavering and unconditional loyalty to the men wearing the blue jacket. When one fell, every cop felt the hit, somewhere deep inside.

As a cop who originally launched his own career assigned to the crappiest house in the South Bronx, Dominick had felt that hit too many times. And, unfortunately, he had seen too many jackets fall with his own eyes.

He had moved up to detective within twelve months. Homicide in another six, but they still wouldn’t let him out of the Bronx, no matter how many asses he kissed. He was good at what he did, finding answers. Probably too good. But after a few years, the bad guys all started to look the same, even when they weren’t bad, and he knew it was time to go. On a cold, rainy, and particularly miserable New York day, he had pulled out his US map, closed his eyes and hoped his finger fell somewhere where even the criminals wore short-sleeved shirts. It landed on Miami – a bustling, metropolitan city, but with a more exotic and tropical flair. He’d gotten several offers with large departments – Miami-Dade PD, the City of Miami PD, Miami Beach PD, Broward Sheriff’s Office – but as a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement he would be doing more than just changing the scenery. He would be refocusing his career. At least that’s what the FDLE Commissioner had told him sixteen years ago when he had offered Dominick a job as a Special Agent.

Florida’s equivalent to the FBI, FDLE used highly specialized and experienced agents to work major statewide investigations – those that crossed police department and county jurisdictions – and to assist both the feds and the locals with their more involved cases. State resources provided cutting-edge crime labs in each of the department’s five regions, easily equaling the FBI’s at Quantico. They were not a primary response agency, but rather an investigative agency, which promised Dominick no more midnight search warrants. Of course, that was the sales pitch. Then the Regional Director at the FDLE Miami Regional Operations Center took one look at Dominick’s resume and promptly assigned him to the Violent Crime Squad, working homicide investigations. And although that didn’t necessarily mean working vampire’s hours every night, it also didn’t mean leaving with the Fraud Squad and the five o’clock whistle.

The coffee pot chortled to a stop and the rich aroma filled the air. Lucy meandered out of the bedroom, sniffing for a handout. Dominick poured himself a cup and tossed Lucy a Pupperoni stick. She let out a happy howl and lay down, nibbling the treat at his feet.

The job had its dangers. Every cop knew that, accepted it. They put on the vest at the start of every shift – a cumbersome and constant reminder of the potential perils. The problem was, no cop ever really thought his badge would be the next number called to the frontlines. His number forever 10-7’d out of service on the radio by a somber Chief, a bugler playing Taps in the background. When the bullet came, Dominick supposed, even for a cop it was a total surprise.

Lucy followed him out to the balcony, curling up again at his feet while he leaned on the railing and somberly sipped his coffee. The black waters of the Intercoastal churned twelve stories below him, gently lapping against the seawall. A light breeze blew, tinkling the wind chimes. It was beginning to cool off, you could feel it now, just barely, in the air. Winter was almost here. Time for crowded beaches and traffic and two-hour waits at restaurants. He could almost hear the simultaneous mad squeal of tires as the snowbirds peeled out of their icy driveways up north and headed down to the Sunshine State.

Across the Intercoastal, behind the many condos and cheap hotels and high-rises that dotted Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale, slivers of pink and orange would soon begin to slice across the dark sky. Another magnificent Florida sunrise was just ahead.

Dominick sipped at his coffee and just waited for the phone to ring.

As she came over the causeway, she immediately saw the flashing blue and red lights, converged on what looked to be at least a two-block radius behind a closed Chevron station. This must be pretty bad. In her twelve years with the office, twenty cops had been killed in the line of duty in Miami. And the intense reaction that followed was always the same: No one will rest until someone has paid. That included uniforms, detectives and prosecutors, from every house in every department in every jurisdiction. Official commands became personal vendettas.

She found a spot behind an empty, flashing cruiser in the gas station parking lot, and headed into the crowd of uniforms that sat up ahead. Miami Beach PD, and Metro-Dade PD were on scene, and C.J. spotted a few Florida Highway Patrol cruisers as well. Behind the station was a large empty field surrounded by a six-foot chain link fence. Past the field, yellow crime scene tape was being strung around the back of a closed AC business, cordoning off the alley that sat behind it.

The jabber and squawk of dozens of police radios crackled around her. She approached a circle of MBPD cops, who were chatting among themselves at the edge of the field. The first string.

She flashed her badge. ‘Anyone know where I can find Nicholsby, Beach Homicide? I’m with the State.’

The circle silently parted, allowing her to pass through. A small unnamed street ran beside the AC business, running perpendicular to the alley. C.J. could see an MBPD cruiser parked up in the alley, its blue and red lights silently spinning atop the car. They bounced off a high wooden fence that ran behind the back doors of the AC shop and the Atlantic Cable Company next door. Flanking the other side of the alley, behind barbwire-topped chain link fencing were three huge satellites and a reception tower, that belonged to the cable company.

One young cop nodded grimly behind him. ‘That’s Nicholsby over by the car, talking with Crime Scene.’

‘Thanks.’ At the lip of the alley on the other side of the yellow tape, stood two investigators in blue wind-breakers, ‘Crime Scene’ written across their backs in bold fluorescent yellow lettering. Between the two, a middle-aged detective in a polo shirt and khakis puffed away on a cigarette. In his early fifties, with sagging eyes and sagging shoulders, he looked like he needed a drink.

C.J. extended her hand. ‘Detective Nicholsby? C. J. Townsend. State Attorney’s Office.’

‘Townsend. You got here quick.’

‘What’s going on?’ She looked to the cruiser.

‘’Bout four this morning, somebody called in about a cop maybe sleeping in his car. Dispatch sends out a uniform, this rookie, Schrader. He opens the front door to wake the guy, and …’ Nicholsby’s voice trailed off. ‘Crime Scene’s photo’d outside, but we’re waiting for the ME. He lives up in Coral Springs someplace.’

The cruiser sat just in the lip of the alley. The driver’s door was open only slightly, and the edge of a white sheet spilled out. The windows appeared strangely opaque. Even the windshield.

‘What’s with the windows?’ she asked. ‘Is that tint?’

‘They’ve been painted.’

‘Painted? With what?’

‘Blood. The sick fuck painted the inside of the car with the poor guy’s own blood. That’s why no one called it in at first. They couldn’t even see in the car. Maybe thought the cop was on a snooze break and had left his lights on, put on a cover so no one could bust up his nap.’

‘Listen,’ Nicholsby said, grabbing her softly by her arm and spinning her attention away from the car and onto his face. His eyes were dark, intense. He almost looked frightened. ‘This is bad, Ms Townsend.’

‘I’ve seen bad before, Detective,’ she said, shrugging back slightly from his touch.

‘No,’ he said, not yet letting go of her, ‘I mean this is really bad. The worst I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot. A few of my guys have not yet recovered.’ He looked away from her and nodded behind him. A young cop in a Beach uniform was throwing up into the bushes that dotted the edge of the field. ‘Probably going to have to visit the department shrink over this one.’

She pulled away from his touch and stared him straight in the eye. ‘Thanks for the warning, Detective. I’ll be fine.’

‘Okay,’ he shrugged, finally releasing her arm. ‘Be my guest. The ME should be here any minute.’

‘Who is the cop? Do we have an ID yet?’

‘No. There was a mix-up with the sign-out on the cruisers tonight. Car 8354 was supposed to go with Gilroy, Vincent Gilroy. But that ain’t him.’

‘What about his badge?’

‘Jesus Christ!’ she exclaimed, panting, her fingers draped across her mouth.

‘I told you it was bad,’ said Nicholsby.

‘No, no,’ she murmured, her voice low, almost a whisper, speaking to herself, as much as to him.

A voice from the parking lot of cop cars called out just then. He was running toward them, a white piece of paper in hand. ‘Detective! We’ve got an ID. We heard from the property clerk who assigned the cars tonight. He just got home from some bar. Looks like dispatch inverted the numbers on the car assignments by mistake on the paperwork. Gilroy was supposed to have 8354, but he’s got 8534.’

‘So who’s supposed to have 8354?’

Before the uniform could respond, C.J. spoke. Her voice was weak, shocked with disbelief. ‘Chavez,’ she said quietly. ‘I know who he is. Victor Chavez.’