am paused at her desk just long enough to dump her purse in a drawer, lock it, and strip off her winter jacket; then she headed swiftly toward McCord's office, stopping uncertainly just inside the doorway.

He was standing behind his desk, facing the wall, with his hands shoved into his hip pockets and his head bent, as if he were looking at the computer on his credenza—except the screen was dark and his torso was so taut that the brown leather strap of his shoulder holster had tightened across his back, wrinkling the broadcloth of his shirt.

The file with her recap of Valente's arrest records was lying open on his desk, and his leather bomber jacket was flung over a chair—another sign that something was alarmingly out of the ordinary.

Sam decided to interrupt him and quietly said, "What's up?"

"Close the door," he said flatly.

Sam closed the door, her unease escalating. McCord never closed the door to his office when they were alone in it. Everyone on the third floor could see into his office because the upper half of the walls facing the squad room were glass, and Sam had sensed from the beginning that McCord was a good enough administrator to realize that frequent closed-door meetings between Sam and him would be noted and widely misconstrued—to the detriment of her future relationships with coworkers.

With his back still to her, McCord said, "Does the name William Holmes mean anything to you?"

"Of course. He was the victim in Valente's manslaughter conviction."

"What do you remember about that manslaughter case, based on the official information in our file?"

Sam's foreboding began to increase when he didn't turn around while she answered him. "The victim, William Holmes, was an unarmed sixteen-year-old male with a clean record who quarreled with Michael Valente in an alley over an unknown subject," Sam responded. "During the quarrel, Michael Valente—seventeen-year-old male with a long juvenile record—shot Holmes with a forty-five semiautomatic belonging to Valente. A patrol officer, Duane Kraits, heard the shot and was on the scene within moments, but Holmes died before the paramedics arrived. Officer Kraits arrested Valente on the scene."

"Go on," he said sarcastically when she stopped. "I want to be sure you read the same things in that file that I did."

"The M.E.'s report listed cause of death as a forty-five-caliber slug that ruptured the victim's aorta. Ballistics confirmed the slug came from Valente's unregistered forty-five semiautomatic. Valente's prints were on the weapon. The tox reports showed no sign of drugs or alcohol in Holmes or Valente."

Sam paused, trying to imagine what other salient points he wanted her to recount, and she mentioned the only items that came to mind. "Valente was represented by a court-appointed attorney and he pled guilty. The judge in the case took Valente's age into consideration, but nailed him because of his priors and the unprovoked viciousness of Valente's act."

McCord turned around then, and Sam mentally recoiled from the menacing glitter in his steel blue eyes. "Would you like to know what really happened?"

"What do you mean—'what really happened?"

"I spent a half hour with Kraits today. He's retired and he lives alone with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and his memories of 'the good old days on the force.' He was already half-tanked when I got there, and he was especially happy to talk to me about his true part in the Valente manslaughter bust because—in his words—he's 'a real big fan' of mine. It seems the report he filed about Holmes's death was a little skewed because his captain needed it that way, and in 'the good old days' cops stuck together and did favors for each other. Can you guess who his captain was?"

Sam shook her head.

"William Trumanti," he bit out. "Now, guess who the victim was."

"William Holmes," Sam said unhesitatingly.

"William Trumanti Holmes," McCord corrected acidly. Too restless to sit, he ran his hand around the back of his neck and leaned against the credenza. "Holmes was Captain Trumanti's sister's only child. Since Trumanti had no other siblings, young William was the last possible branch on their little family tree. Are you starting to get the picture here?"

"Not yet."

"No, of course not," he said, his jaw clenched so tightly that the thin scar on his cheek stood out. "You weren't around in his fucking 'good old days.' Let me fill in the blanks for you. I've already verified the important points by phone with another retired cop from Trumanti's old precinct. Here's what the file didn't include: William Holmes was a punk—who used to get hauled in along with his pal, Michael Valente. When that happened, his uncle had him turned loose and kept his record clean. From time to time, Captain Trumanti—who was Lieutenant Trumanti back then—also saved young Mr. Valente's butt."

Sam leaned forward in her chair. "Michael Valente and Holmes were friends?"

"They were best friends. In fact, they were childhood chums. Unfortunately, Holmes was not pals with Valente's older cousin, Angelo. The night Valente 'quarreled' with his pal and killed him—it was because William had just carved Angelo to pieces. Valente went looking for him, and young William was waiting for him—stoned out of his mind, still covered with Angelo's blood, and armed with a forty-five semiautomatic. That piece didn't belong to Valente, it was Holmes's, and Valente's prints were on the barrel, not the grip. Now do you have the whole picture?"

Sam sensed he needed to vent some of his fury. "I'd rather hear it from you."

"Trumanti wanted vengeance for his sister, and he fixed it so a seventeen-year-old kid got railroaded right through the system and shipped off to prison. Valente was no angel, but he wasn't a pusher, he wasn't a user, and he hadn't been in any trouble for quite a while. And," McCord added emphatically, "he sure as hell wasn't guilty of first-degree manslaughter."

He ran his hand around his nape again and flexed his broad shoulders, as if trying to loosen the tension in his body. "If he'd had a decent lawyer, he'd have gotten off with self-defense, and if the judge wouldn't completely buy that argument, he'd have gotten second-degree manslaughter with probation. Instead, Trumanti, Kraits, and the good old boys at the local precinct set Valente up; then they sent him away for four years. But that was just the beginning," he added scathingly.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, but she already had an ugly premonition of where he might be heading.

"What do you remember about Valente's next few busts?" Leaning forward, he shoved the recap file across the desk to her. "Here, refresh your memory."

Sam automatically reached for it because he'd ordered her to; then she drew her hand back because she didn't need to look at the file. "For the first few years after Valente was released, his record stayed clean. There was a flurry of arrests for really minor stuff—speeding a few miles over the limit—possession of a controlled substance which turned out to be a prescription for a painkiller."

"And after that?" McCord prodded.

"About ten years ago, the charges became serious ones. The first one was attempted bribery of a city official—Valente attempted to bribe a building inspector who was going to write him up for some building code violations. There were several other, similar attempted bribery charges brought against him after that, and then the scope and number of the charges became much larger as time went on."

McCord dismissed that information with a look of withering scorn. "My second appointment today was with that building inspector Valente allegedly tried to bribe. Mr. Franz is in a nursing home now, and he's a little worried about what God is going to think of some of the things he's done in his life. He unburdened himself in five minutes."

"What did he say?"

"Valente never tried to bribe him, nor did he try to bribe the two other guys who claimed he did in later cases that were filed. Trumanti put them up to it."

Straightening, he walked over to the table piled high with thick folders of information on the other court cases filed against Valente. He picked up a file and dropped it in disgust. "I can already tell you why all these cases ended with either 'Charges Dropped', "Case Dismissed for Insufficient Evidence,' or' Not Guilty,' according to your recap. It's because they're a pile of crap. Fortunately, by the time they were being filed, Valente could afford his own attorneys to defend him instead of having to rely on the kind of public defender who let him plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter. I would also bet you that Trumanti was either directly or indirectly responsible for at least half of these accusations."

"What do you mean 'indirectly' responsible for them?"

"Trumanti built a few little fires with those early fraudulent charges, but he also created plenty of smoke, and prosecutors tend to believe the old adage 'where there's smoke there's fire.' They'll start hunting on their own for the blaze that escaped them the last time." He picked up another file and tossed it aside in contempt. "After a few years, Valente actually made himself into a bigger and bigger prosecutorial target."

Sam lifted her hands in confusion. "How did he do that?"

"By making a habit of annihilating his opposition in court, not just beating them. When I read the pleadings and transcripts in these files, it was obvious that Valente's battalion of attorneys have two assignments from him when they go into court. Their first assignment is to beat the charges, but their second is to beat the shit out of whoever is running and prosecuting the case. When I read the files, I could not believe some of the remarks Valente's attorneys made on the record. In every case, his attorneys started out by spanking the prosecutors—belittling them for things like spelling errors, grammatical errors, typos, being two minutes late—minor mistakes that, in their hands, begin to take on the taint of incompetence. In several of the transcripts the judges actually started going along with them and reprimanding the prosecutors.

"Once Valente's attorneys have embarrassed their opponents and made them look foolish, they get nastier and nastier, until they're on a tirade using terms like 'incurable stupidity' and 'inexcusable negligence' and 'gross incompetence.' "

He stalked back to his desk and sat down. "Attorneys like Valente's that cost two thousand dollars an hour or more do whatever they need to do to win a case. Period. They do not waste their time or their clients' money exacting revenge, but Valente's attorneys do it every time, and they obviously do it on his orders. Valente doesn't call them off until he's got the prosecutors' faces in the mud and his foot is planted on their heads. Then, and only then, does he let them up."

"I really can't blame him for wanting a little petty revenge."

"There's nothing 'petty' about his revenge. Prosecutors who are made to look like fools in big cases like Valente's can pretty much kiss their career ambitions good-bye. But prosecutors also have long memories and they can carry very big grudges. Moreover, every time Valente sends a few of them running for cover with their tails between their legs, there are a dozen more who are dying to step up to the plate and prove their own mettle by being the first and only one to successfully take Valente down."

He picked up a pencil lying on his desk and then tossed it aside with the same impatience he'd tossed aside the file folders. "When I took over this case, I thought Valente was nothing but a big shark who'd been chewing through our legal nets for years, I wanted to harpoon him for the same reason the prosecutors did. I'm no different from them."

"That is completely untrue!" Sam said so forcefully that surprise erased some of the anger on his face.

"How am I different?"

"You believed he was guilty of everything he'd been accused of when you took this assignment. Some of those prosecutors had to know they were making a mountain out of nothing."

Instead of replying, he shook his head at something else he was remembering: "The day Trumanti summoned me to One Police Plaza and told me he wanted me to head this investigation as 'a personal favor,' I sensed there was something almost obsessively vindictive about his attitude toward Valente. Besides cursing him out in every breath, Trumanti kept telling me that nailing Valente was his dying wish. I think the old man has actually convinced himself Valente is guilty of everything, beginning with Holmes's 'manslaughter.' " He glared at the top of his desk. "When I told him I was about to hand in my retirement notice, he told me if I nailed Valente on first-degree murder, I'd retire as a captain."

"Did that have anything to do with why you took the case?"

"If I had any real desire to make captain," he said with a disdainful smile, "I'd have simply managed my career a little differently." Nodding toward the table again, he added, "When I started going through that pile of crap over there, I noticed that the prosecutors were out of control with some of those charges. Even I could tell they couldn't make them stick. Valente's no Mafia kingpin with a network of minions doing his dirty work so it can't be traced to him. He runs a legitimate multinational corporation. With the kind of intense scrutiny he's always under, his corporation must be squeaky clean, or else some prosecutor somewhere would stick him with something. The most they've ever found were some minor internal accounting irregularities like you'd find at any big corporation."

He was quiet for a moment, looking to his left at the chalkboard where they'd kept track of the circumstantial evidence they had been compiling against Valente: then he shook his head and gave a short, grim laugh. "I think it's safe to conclude that Valente didn't kill Logan Manning, nor did he hire someone to do it for him."

"What makes you so certain?" Sam asked, suppressing a pleased smile.

"Because, if Valente was willing to commit murder, he'd have targeted Trumanti a long time ago." He stood up then, still looking at the chalkboard, and he said of Valente, "Now there is a man who lives by the saying 'Never Complain, Never Explain.' No wonder you liked him."

Sam stood up, too. "What are you going to do now?"

"Among other things, I'm going to find out who really killed Manning. We'll start all over tomorrow morning, looking at alternative suspects and theories." Walking around his desk, he picked up his jacket and shrugged into it. "Get your coat," he told her. "I'll take you home."

He'd never offered to do that before. McCord had a car, but in decent weather Sam walked home; otherwise she took the subway. She started to decline, but she didn't do it. She told herself it was because he'd had a difficult enough day without her adding rejection of a nice offer to it. The truth was that he looked so weary and disheartened that she ached for him