They would have discovered the body soon enough and it wasn't as if she could make a positive ID of the man who had fired the gun.

Not from a glimpse of a profile.

"Will this take long, Detective Jeffers?"

Jeffers offered her his most reassuring smile.

"Not long at all."

Time, after all, was a relative thing.

He stepped ahead of her quickly and held the door open.

Graham scowled at him.

Hand on the door, he waited until Jeffers walked out before following He'd had a feeling this was going to be a bad day when he'd woken up this morning.

There had been a crow right outside his window.

He was too much of a Navajo not to have a healthy respect for omens.

Caitlin walked out ahead of the two men, resigned to the ordeal.

With all her heart she wished that she had been just a little earlier

this morning.

Or a good deal later.

Or, at the very least, that Graham was somewhere in California, where

she had believed him to be.

Caitlin quickly discovered that a squad room was not a quiet place.

All sorts of people came and went in a continuous reshuffling of humanity.

Very noisy people.

Caitlin found it difficult to concentrate on the small, stark black-and-white photographs arranged before her.

A grim collection of lives gone astray.

It was difficult to concentrate because of the noise, because the faces

in the photographs were all beginning to look alike and because her thoughts perversely insisted on straying.

It was as if someone had fused a kaleidoscope to her mind.

With every turn of her head, with every pass of an unguarded moment,

another scene from her past would wink in and out.

Scenes with Graham, reminding her that once she had believed that her life had begun the first day that he had walked into it.

She sighed.

She'd been stupid, very stupid.

Seventeen seemed more than twelve years in the past.

It was more like an aeon.

Caitlin moved her shoulders, subtly stretching muscles that were

beginning to cramp.

It was no use.

She wanted to help, but she was getting nowhere.

Sighing again, she closed the book and placed it on top of the other

two that she had fruitlessly pored over.

It was getting late.

She had already given the police artist as much of a description as she

could recall.

There wasn't anything to be accomplished by remaining any longer.

She had to get back to the shop.

Back to- the shop and away from here.

She was all too aware that Graham was sitting just two desks away and that he had been watching her.

Graham glanced.

up from his desk as if the sound of Caitlin's sigh had caught his attention.

As if he'd had his mind on something other than her for the past

hour.

Try as he might, he couldn't seem to focus on anything beyond the woman sitting by the window.

Ben had disappeared about fifteen minutes ago, after placing the last book on the desk.

Munoz had said something about the desk sergeant wanting to see him.

So much for his shock absorber.

She was restless, he thought, studying her face.

And tired.

With an inner sigh of his own, Graham rose and made his way over.

He nodded at the pile of books with mug shots.

"No luck?"

She tried to pretend that she didn't know him, that he was a stranger like the other detective.

She wanted to be civil and this was the only way.

"Afraid not."

Caitlin pushed the last book back with the tip of her finger,

straightening it on the stack.

She raised her eyes to his face.

"Anything else you want me to look at?"

Graham slowly shook his head.

He had figured this would be an exercise in futility.

She had already said she'd only caught a glimpse of a profile.

Not exactly a sterling eyewitness, he thought, although, as he remembered it, she had an eye for detail that was better than most people's.

"I don't think there's much point in it, do you?" he said finally.

Why did she feel as if they were talking about something else?

As if there was something to talk about?

She knew there wasn't.

Caitlin shook her head.

"No, I don't."

She wet her lips as she glanced at the door.

She missed the effect that the small, meaningless gesture had on him.

"I'd like to go home, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind at all."

The deadly calm in his voice had her looking at him again.