The front desk at Harborview Police Department smelled like coffee and old paper. Rain streaked the glass, blurring the gray slips of bulletin-board notices and the Wanted posters curling at the corners. A kid had scrawled "KEEP OUT" in green marker on a box of evidence tape. Officer Baines was halfway through a crossword when the door slammed open hard enough to rattle the fluorescent lights. Katharine Russell filled the doorway like an accusation. She wore black—always black—the coat soaked along the hem, hair pinned tight, face like a cliff. In her hand she gripped a cassette in a yellowed plastic case. She didn’t look like someone who took the long way around anything. She looked like someone who’d run. "My girl—listen," she said the way a person hands over a weapon. Baines blinked, tried to file her under "town trouble," then noticed what she was holding. He pushed his clipboard aside. "We don't—" He caught himself. Harborview had a long memory for people with grief in their pockets. He pointed at a small interview room. "You can wait in there. Detective Berg is—" "Don't put that thing near the door." She jabbed the cassette toward him, voice thin. "It's not for waiting. It's for listening." The room smelled of lemon oil and tired carpet. Miles Berg took the cassette with the careful, blasé expression he used for every piece of evidence: a new bruise on a familiar pattern. He