"Yes, he had it with him all the time in case I needed to reach him."

"It wasn't on him when we found him, so I'll need the number." Sam dropped her arm from around Carmen's shoulders to write down the number as Carmen recited it for her.

"Could we call your family or his?" Freddie asked. "You'll want them to know what's happened before his death is reported on the news."

"I'll call my brother," she said, defeated as acceptance began to settle in. "He'll take care of telling Willie's family, and he'll come here to be with me."

"Where is he?" Freddie asked.

"In the D.R."

"If you'd like me to wait here with you until he arrives, I'd be happy to do that," Freddie offered, glancing at Sam.

After the night without sleep, they were running on fumes and would have to quit soon anyway. She gave a short nod to grant her approval.

"Do you want me to call your brother for you?" Freddie asked.

"Yes, please. I don't think I could say the words."

"I'll say them for you," he said.

Before she left, she took Freddie aside. "You came here hungry. Want me to have something sent over for you?"

He shook his head. "Thanks, but I've lost my appetite."

She could understand why. "When the brother gets here, go home. Meet me at HQ at zero seven hundred. You did good with her, Detective."

"Glad you thought so. I was dying inside."

"Me too."

He handed over her keys. "Where're you going from here?"

"The ballpark."

On the way to the Federals' stadium, which was named after a credit card company Sam had never heard of and could never remember the name of, she called dispatch.

"This is Lieutenant Holland. I need to speak to the officer in charge of patrol at the moment."

"Just a moment please, Lieutenant."

She waited on hold for a long time, listening to weird instrumental music that made her long for her earbuds. Finally, the call went through.

"Stahl."

If she hadn't been driving, she would've rolled her eyes to high heaven. "I asked for patrol, not the rat squad."

"What do you want, Holland?"

"I want to speak to the officer in charge of patrol."

"You got him."

"What're you doing there?"

"Covering for the lieutenant who worked all night on crowd control, not that it's any of your business."

"Oh that's right, you Internal Affairs types don't get the recall messages that the rest of us get. I hope you had a good night's sleep while our city was being torn apart."

"Is there a purpose for this call? If not, I've got better-"

"Be quiet and listen to me." Was it possible to hear a person's face turn purple? Sam smiled at the images that danced through her mind. "I need a thorough sweep of the entire Southwestern quadrant of the city, from Potomac Avenue to Independence. We're looking for a large quantity of blood. It would be hard to miss."

"And you expect me to devote our currently limited resources to a witch hunt for you?"

"We're looking for a murder scene, you stupid ass. Get patrol on it, or I'll get Farnsworth on you."

"That's right, all you have to do is snap your fingers, and he jumps. Are you sleeping with him, Holland? Because that would explain a lot-"

Before he could say anything else that would make her understand how someone could commit murder, Sam ended the call. "Fucking bastard." For insurance purposes, she placed a call to her superior officer and mentor, Detective Captain Malone.

"Holland? I heard you caught a homicide."

"What in the name of hell is Rat Face Stahl doing in charge of patrol?"

"Good morning to you too. He's filling in. We're extremely short-handed today after everyone worked all night."

"Why can't they work all day too? We are."

"Not everyone has your squad's dedication to duty, Lieutenant."

"Are you patronizing me, Captain?"

"Would I be foolish enough to patronize you? What can I do for you?"

She told him what she knew so far about the Vasquez murder, which wasn't much, and what she needed from patrol officers.

"I'll see to it. We're going to need to put our heads together about how to go public with this."

"That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. My next stop was going to be the ballpark, but if I go there we'll tip our hand and the team is apt to take control of the story. I'd really like to see their reactions when they hear the news. So I was thinking, I'll go over there and break the news to the team, while you all handle the media at the same time. And P.S., I'm going to take Agent Hill with me. He knows the owner, Jestings, and can smooth the way a bit."

"I like the plan, but I'd like the chief to sign off on it. Stand by, and I'll call you back in twenty minutes."

"Standing by. Can you send me to Archelotta?"

"Hang on."

The lieutenant of the IT division, also the only fellow officer Sam had dallied with romantically, picked up on the third ring. "Archelotta."

"Hey, it's Holland."

"How's it going? Heard you caught a homicide."

"Yeah, Willie Vasquez."

"No way. No fucking way."

"Can you see if you can get a signal from his phone? It wasn't on him when we found him."

"Sure. Whatever I can do."

Sam gave him the number.

"I'll call you as soon as I have anything. Might take a while though. I heard cell service has been interrupted in some sectors because of the riots."

"We'll take whatever we can get."

"Gotcha. I'll be in touch."

As long as she had some time, she stopped for a sandwich and treated herself to a rare diet cola. If there'd ever been a time for a caffeine boost, this was it. Thirty hours without sleep was beginning to make her muzzy around the edges. While she ate in the car, she placed a call to her dad's house.

"We were wondering when we'd hear from you, Sam," her stepmother, Celia, said. "Long night?"

"Very long and not over yet. We're still at it."

"Lord. What an awful thing and all over a ball game."

Wait until Celia heard the rest of what'd happened because of a ball game. "My thoughts exactly. Is my dad handy?"

"Hang on just a minute, honey."

Sam smiled at the endearment. She enjoyed being mothered by the sweet nurse who'd married her paralyzed father on Valentine's Day. She thought about her own mother, who'd recently reappeared in her life. Her mother was looking to heal the rift that had festered between them since the day after Sam graduated from high school and her mom left her dad for another man. Some rifts could never be healed, or so she liked to think. As long as she went with that line of reasoning, she wouldn't have to deal with her mother's desire to spend some time together.

"Lieutenant," Skip said when he came on the line. "How goes it?"

"It's been better. After the city was torn apart last night, we found Willie Vasquez dead in a Dumpster behind Air and Space."

"Come on..."

"Sad but true. Stabbed through the heart."

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"Just had to tell his wife. Totally sucked."

"Always does, baby girl. I don't envy you that."

"First time I've ever caught a murder when the entire city had motive."

"That's a tough one, but I have faith in you. You'll get to the bottom of it. Poor Scotty. He'll be crushed."

"I know. Nick is getting him from school and taking him to the office for the afternoon."

"It'll help him to be with his dad."

"It's helping me to be with mine, even for a couple of minutes."

"Aww, kid, you sure know how to pull your old man's heartstrings."

Sam smiled at the gruffly spoken words, fortified by the sound of his voice and his reassurances. "I'll come by in the morning."

"I'll be here. Tell your boy to come see me when he gets home."

"I will."

"Let me know how I can help with this one."

"I'll do that too. Talk at ya later."

Malone called back ten minutes later than planned. By then Sam was on her way to dozing off in the car. "I talked to the chief," he said. "He gave the plan a green light. Hit me with a text when you're in with the team, and we'll call the press conference. We're deploying people all over the city in case there's more rioting, and we're sending Crime Scene to the ballpark. The minute you let us know you're with the team management, they'll descend on the locker room and anywhere else Willie might've been after the game. This way the team won't have time to prepare for their arrival. If they've got anything to hide, our guys will find it. Sound good?"

What it sounded like was a couple more hours before she could find a horizontal surface. "Yeah. I'm heading for the ballpark right now. I've got to wait for Hill, though, so give me half an hour."

"You got it."

"Also, before you go public, check in with Cruz to make sure Vasquez's family in the Dominican Republic has been notified."

"Will do."

Sam ended that call and placed another to Hill, who agreed to meet her at the ballpark's VIP parking lot. She drove to the ballpark, rehearsing what she would say to the team's owner and management as she drove. She glanced at the clock. Two-thirty. Nick would be picking Scotty up at school and breaking the unbelievable news about Willie. Sam would give everything she had, including the gold badge she'd worked so hard to earn, to spare the boy she loved from anything that could ever hurt him.

So this is motherhood. Her heart ached as she imagined how upset he'd be when he heard about Willie. Nick would take care of him this afternoon, and together they'd get Scotty through this.

Chapter Six.

Nick waited outside the gates to the Eliot-Hine Middle School, watching the flood of kids emerge at dismissal time. When Scotty let them know over the summer that he wished to live with them full-time, they'd had only a couple of weeks to apply for temporary custody from the commonwealth of Virginia's child welfare authorities and to figure out where to enroll him in school.

Nick and Sam had gone round and round about the pros and cons of public versus private school. Both of them products of public school, they'd leaned heavily in that direction from the beginning, but worries about security had them visiting a couple of the city's more prominent private schools.