Thinnes left the room, slamming the door. Outside, he stopped and crumpled the papers he was carrying and tossed them at a wastebasket. The balled paper teetered on the rim and tipped out onto the floor. Thinnes whirled and faced the see-through side of the two-way mirror through which Ferris, Swann, and Viernes were watching the drama in the interview room.

Oster was studying his hands, recleaning his immaculate fingernails.

Leon fidgeted, twisted around to look at the clock over his head and around again to stare speculatively at the mirror. "Now what?" he said, finally.

"Sorry," Oster told him. "I can't talk to you. Thinnes is the boss. And you refused to sign that we've given you your rights."

A long silence pa.s.sed before Leon said, "Can I ask you a question?"

"You understand your rights?"

"Yeah."

Oster waited.

"Get the paper back in here," Leon said. "I'll sign it."

Oster shook his head. "I'd like to do that, but Thinnes is probably halfway Downtown with it by now." He shook his head again. "I'm not supposed to talk to you."

"I just want to ask you something."

"What might work," Oster said, as if he was working it out as he went along, though he wasn't, "is if you just wrote something out."

"Like what?"

"Just that you understand your rights and I'm not forcing you to say anything against your will."

Leon seemed to be thinking about it.

"Hey, kid," Oster added. "We'll get through this."

Leon licked his lips and nodded. "Okay."

Oster shuffled through the papers Thinnes had left on the typewriter stand, locating one that was blank. He handed it to Leon along with a pen. Leon held it up as if not sure what to do with it, and Oster quickly removed the extra papers and the typewriter from the stand, putting them on the floor near the wall. He pushed the stand over in front of Leon. "There you go, son."

Leon put the paper down and looked at it, then at Oster. "What do I say?"

"Well..." Oster fumbled in his pockets and "found" his Miranda card. "What if you just copy this? It about covers everything."

Leon took it. Read it. Shrugged.

On the other side of the view-through window, Ferris said, "He's not stupid enough..."

Thinnes and Viernes smiled.

Swann laughed. "You want to put five bucks on that, Ferris?"

Ferris looked in at Leon and said, "No."

Leon was copying the card. When he finished, he asked Oster, "I just sign it?"

Oster said, "Hold on a second." He crossed to the door and opened it, stuck his head out. He looked them all over quickly and said, "Viernes," motioning "come in" with a jerk of his head and backing into the room. Viernes followed him in and closed the door. Leon looked alarmed. Oster told him, "Go ahead, son."

Leon jerked a thumb at Viernes. "What's he doing here?"

"Just witnessing your signature."

Leon glared. The two detectives waited.

Out in the squad room, Swann ventured an opinion: "He's got too much invested to back out now."

Thinnes agreed. "If he signs, you go find the ASA. And tell him to bring his statement forms."

Inside the room, Leon was signing the paper. Oster nodded. Solemnly. Like a father approving a son's work. Then he took the pen from Leon and printed "witnessed" below Leon's signature. He wrote the date and signed his own name. Viernes took the pen and did the same.

"Now," Oster said to Leon, "what was it you wanted to ask me?"

Leon was still glaring at Viernes. "Does he have to be here?"

Oster shook his head. "Not if you don't want him here." To Viernes, he said, "Could you wait outside?"

"Sure."

Viernes closed the door quietly on the way out. As he resumed his place in the audience, Swann, who'd just left the squad room, reentered it with the ASA in tow.

The a.s.sistant state's attorney's name was c.i.p.areli or c.i.p.arini. Something Italian. Thinnes could never remember. Everyone called him Columbo because he wore a ratty-looking raincoat and was a lot smarter than he seemed.

Columbo said, "Detective Thinnes, are you looking for me?"

"We have a guy about to confess to murder," Thinnes said. "We'd like you to take his statement in a few minutes." He and Viernes moved aside to make room for Swann and Columbo in front of the viewing window.

"What's he said so far?" the ASA asked.

"Nothing, but he will."

"Watch and learn," Ferris told him.

Thinnes tried to catch Ferris's eye, to let him know he should shut up, but Ferris was too busy trying to impress Columbo with his wit to notice.

"Like the chief always says," he gushed, "these guys ain't rocket scientists."

The usually easygoing Swann said, "Lucky for you, Ferris." Ferris was even getting to him.

Inside the little room, Leon said, "What's gonna happen to me?"

On the other side of the gla.s.s, Thinnes said, "That depends on you, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Inside the interview room, Oster said, "That depends on you, son." He might have been a priest counseling a penitent. "You left enough evidence around so we got you dead to rights. With this new DNA test, there's no way you're gonna get out of it, and Thinnes is probably getting a court order right now for a sample of your blood. The only way he wouldn't go for murder one is if there was extenuating circ.u.mstances. But n.o.body knows the circ.u.mstances but you. And you're not talking."

"What's extenuating circ.u.mstances?"

"It's like an excuse-you know, a reason. Like it was an accident or something."

"Like she laughed at me an' I got mad and went nuts?"

"Like that. Is that what happened?" Oster seemed completely sympathetic. Only the sweat pouring off him gave any hint he wasn't totally sincere. He wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief as he waited for Leon to answer.

"I can talk to a lawyer when I want?"

"Anytime you like. But you want to tell me about this. I can feel it. And I've heard that talking about these things can be a great release."

On the other side of the window, Thinnes said, "Good thing he didn't say for who."

Inside the room, Oster told Leon, "...good for the soul, even."

Thinnes said, "What if you haven't got a soul?"

"Shut up, Thinnes," Viernes said suddenly. "This is good."

"Better than a soap," Columbo agreed.

"Shut up, you guys!" This from Swann. "He's giving it up."

Oster glanced at the mirror, telling Thinnes to pay attention on the other side. Thinnes got his notebook and pen. And took notes while Leon talked.

"What's going on here?" Rossi's face was redder than usual. Embarra.s.sed to be out of it in front of so many of his d.i.c.ks, Thinnes thought. He let someone else answer.

"Oster just got a murder suspect to give it up," Swann volunteered.

"Nice work. Which case?"

"The Jolene Wilson murder," Thinnes said.

Rossi nearly did a double take, then said, "Why wasn't I kept up to speed on this?"

"The paperwork's on your desk," Thinnes told him. "If you'll excuse us, we'd like to get this guy's statement before he has a chance to think about what he just told Oster." Thinnes handed Columbo a page from his notebook.

"What's this?" the ASA asked.

"Questions Oster needs to ask this guy while you're getting his statement."

"Aren't you coming in?"

"And louse up a perfectly good confession? Oster's doing fine. If I go in there, Leon's gonna get belligerent and clam up. Trust me."

Columbo shrugged. "I'd have thought you'd want to be in on the kill."

Thinnes looked sideways at Rossi and said, "I set it up. That's enough for me. Just make sure you don't blow it."

Three hours later, they had the whole story on paper and Mr. Mark Leon was on his way to 26th and Cal. Columbo came into the squad room, looking like a man who's won the lottery, and headed for the coffeemaker.

Two minutes later, Oster followed along, dragging his a.s.s. He put his paperwork on a table and sat next to it, resting his head on his hand. Columbo brought his coffee over, and Oster asked, "Are we done?"

Columbo tapped the papers. "This is pretty good." He turned to Thinnes and said, "But he didn't name the guy he got the gun from."

"We'll wait till ballistics gets finished with it," Thinnes told him. "See if it was used in any other felonies. If it was, we'll have a little more leverage."

"This guy's no rocket scientist," Oster added. "He's got no priors, so chances are this is his first real f.u.c.kup. Probably got the gun from a friend or bought it from a neighborhood gang-banger."

"And we don't want to deprive you of the opportunity to get in on this fish hunt," Thinnes told Columbo.

"Fish hunt?"

"Shooting 'em in a barrel," Oster said. "After you've laid out just what the consequences are of all Mr. Leon's told us, I'm sure he'll be happy to give us his friendly local gun dealer. Also his neighborhood pushers and his grandmother if she cheats at bingo."

Forty-Three.

Rossi had taken to calling the victims of Thinnes's two unsolved homicides the Downtown Indian and the Uptown Indian, as if they were some kind of joke. But even he couldn't fault the investigation of either murder. Convincing evidence just wasn't available. Thinnes was prepared to wait for it-no statute of limitations.

In addition to the Wilson case, Thinnes and Oster did clear three other homicides during the weeks following Thanksgiving. Two were routine cases where the shooter was known and clearing them was a matter of canva.s.sing the neighborhood, taking witnesses's statements, and writing up reports. The multiple offenders in one of the shootings gave such wildly conflicting stories that interrogating them was a piece of cake. Getting confessions was easy. There were no witnesses to the third killing, and the suspect wouldn't talk at all. But there was plenty of incriminating physical evidence-s.e.m.e.n, saliva, fingerprints, bite marks. And the victim's blood was all over the suspect's shoes. The only hard thing about it was the reams of paper the detectives had to fill out-days' worth. Few of the sob-sister reports about the national murder epidemic ever mentioned how expensive it was in terms of police overtime.

On Friday, Thinnes came in during the day to tie up some of the loose ends on the Wilson murder. Ferris was the only Violent Crimes detective in the squad room. "Hey, Thinnes," he said, "we got the tox report back on your John Doe-or maybe I should say John Buck."

That brought to mind something that had been niggling at the back of Thinnes's mind ever since he first spotted the unidentified corpse. John Buck. Evanger's unsolved case. Same MO.

"Thanks, Ferris." He walked away, leaving the other detective to wonder about his lack of response to the slur. He took the tox report to a table with a phone and put in a call to records, looking the report over while he waited for someone to answer.

No trace of drugs or alcohol in the victim's system.

When a voice from the phone said, "Records," Thinnes said, "Thinnes, Area Three. I need a case report on a John Doe homicide." He paged through his notebook for the RD number, gave it to the clerk, and waited while he went to find the report.

When the clerk came back on the line, he said, "Sorry, not here."

"Who's got it?"

"Search me. Not here. Not signed out."

"Well, look around. I dropped it off three weeks ago."

"Why didn't you say so?" He went away again, then came back on the line. "Bingo."