Chapter 2 of Players

Edie Collier's mother and stepfather lived in Felony Flats, a run-down neighbourhood in southeast Portland crammed with drug labs and ex-convicts. Summer Ziegler rode there in a cruiser driven by her friend Laura Killinger, who brought her up to speed on Southeast Precinct gossip before asking her how she was enjoying detective work and whether she'd solved any good cases.

Summer said, 'They haven't let me be the primary on anything yet. The kind of thing I've been doing, I spent yesterday afternoon tossing the hotel room of this addict who'd held up a convenience store. He had one change of underwear and about a hundred stacks of newspapers and back copies of the New Yorker.'

Laura said, 'The New Yorker? You definitely get a better class of criminal in Central Precinct.'

Summer said, 'I don't know if this guy had ever read any of the stuff in his room, but I do know he was dumb enough to pull a knife and wave it around when the clerk didn't open the till fast enough, put himself down for ten years' state time. I had to look through every one of his newspapers and magazines, to see if he'd hidden anything incriminating in them. All I found was a couple of used needles -- he probably stuck the proceeds of his robberies straight in his arm.'

Laura smiled. 'It's not as glamorous as it seems, huh?'

'I'm trying to get used to turning up after everything is over. Also, I'm amazed by the amount of paperwork. I knew there would be a lot, but we seem to spend most of our time on it. Writing up witness statements, processing preliminary complaint reports and supplemental reports and evidence submission slips, building case files . . . '

'So that's why you're dressed like a secretary.'

'Very funny. I was in court today, giving evidence about a case from four months back. Remember the bar-room argument between two brothers that ended in a stabbing?'

'Was it the one where the doer fled the scene on his motorcycle, and spun out on the Fremont Bridge, right in front of a cruiser?'

'That's it. He's claiming self-defence, but the prosecutor told me he has three good witnesses who say otherwise. Not to mention the brother.'

The court had been running late. Summer had sat around in a corridor for half the morning, and then for an hour after lunch, and when she'd finally been called she'd spent less than ten minutes on the stand, confirming that she had been the first officer on the scene and had given first aid to the victim, explaining that he had been conscious and alert, and had been able to tell her what had happened.

Summer remembered kneeling beside the victim on the bar-room floor, pressing a clean dishcloth against the wound in his belly to staunch the flow of blood, remembered his angry gaze and the way he'd grabbed her wrist when he'd told her that he'd been attacked by his younger brother during an argument over a watch he had inherited from their father. She'd called it in, discovered that the brother had just been in an accident and had been arrested for DUI. She'd arranged for him to be brought back to the bar, where she'd presented him to the detectives who had just arrived to investigate the attempted homicide.

She said to Laura, 'I never thought I'd say it, but I'm beginning to miss the action on the street.'

'It'll always be out here,' Laura said. 'The same old same old, no end to it. All that's changed since I last saw you is I've added another five pounds around my hips.'

Laura Killinger was a chunky woman in her early thirties, blonde hair twisted into a thick braid that hung halfway down the back of her uniform jacket. She and Summer had worked together as rookies in the North Precinct. After Summer had transferred to Central and Laura had moved to Southeast, they'd continued to meet up every so often for drinks or to play squash, or to go target-shooting at a range owned by a retired cop. They were good friends who felt that they could say anything to each other.

Summer told Laura, 'You have to stay away from those doughnuts.'

'Don't I know it. But just about every day some honest citizen drops off a box at the desk to show how much they appreciate the good work of Portland's finest. It would be churlish to turn one down.'

'Churlish?'

Laura was a crossword fiend, and liked to work obscure or exotic words into the conversation.

'To behave like a churl, which I believe is some kind of old-time farm worker. Speaking of which, how are your co-workers treating you, you being a shit-hot, hotshot young detective and all? I hear that when you reported for duty, your commanding officer said that he could smell the lycra in your superhero costume.'

While most cops in the Portland Police Bureau spent at least seven years in uniform before trying out for detective, Summer had made the grade after only five. She knew that she needed to prove her worth to her new colleagues, veterans who didn't much bother to hide their belief that she was an inexperienced officer who'd been fast-tracked because she was the kind of presentable young woman favoured by senior officers more interested in good PR than in clearance rates. It hadn't helped that the Oregonian had run a brief story on her promotion, emphasising her relative youth and rehashing the story of how she and two other cops had won Life Saving Medals after grabbing a would-be suicide straddling the railing at the mid-span of Broadway Bridge.

Summer said, 'What it was, Ryland Nelsen asked me if I was wearing lycra. I'd just left his office after reporting to him, and he came to the door and asked casually -- like Peter Falk playing Columbo? Asked me, was I wearing lycra under my nice new suit.'

'Sexual harassment, no question,' Laura said.

'One of Ryland Nelsen's patented gotchas was what it was. I was standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what he meant, with the other detectives in the unit grinning at me -- they knew what he was up to. Then he asked me if I'd ever outrun a speeding locomotive or jumped a tall building with a single bound.'

'Or had you ever been mistaken for a bird or a plane.'

'That's a good one, he forgot to ask that. I said something dumb, like, "I don't know about a locomotive, but I'm definitely slower than a speeding bullet," and he told me that he was glad to hear it, because the Robbery Unit was no place for superheroes. Any time he smelled lycra, he said, I would be in trouble.'

'Funny guy. So when you're done with the Robbery Unit, where else do you plan to put your superpowers to good use?'

In the Portland Police Bureau, new detectives spent their first year rotating through three different areas of assignment.

Summer said, 'I've put in for gang enforcement and homicide, but just about everyone wants to work homicide.'

'So they'll probably give you child abuse and sex crimes instead.'

'Because I'm a woman?'

'Because you know how to talk to people. Because everyone knows that if some drunken son of a bitch has locked himself in his house with his wife and kids, you're absolutely, positively the person who can talk him out of there.'

'I only did that the one time.'

'Shit, girl, everyone knows you're the uncrowned queen of domestic disturbances. What are you going to do in homicide? None of those dead bodies can talk back to you.'

'No, but witnesses can. And the point of my rookie year, as my mentor reminds me every time I bitch about the paperwork, is that I'm supposed to be learning all kinds of new skills.'

'This mentor of yours, is he cute?'

Laura had just come out of a divorce, and was, as she put it, on the prowl again.

Summer said, 'Andy Parish? He has a cute moustache. He's also forty-eight, happily married, and already a grandfather.'

'I can go for older men. I remember having this terrific crush on my English teacher at high school.'

'Stop by some time and I'll introduce you. Andy will be more than happy to show off photographs of his brand-new grandson to a fresh victim. There are a couple of cuteish guys on the thirteenth floor, but in my opinion not cute enough to break the fraternization regs.'

Laura poked the onboard computer that sat between her and Summer, checking for new updates from the dispatcher. 'If you're still allowed to fraternize with mere uniformed police, we could go cruising some time. Hit Binks or the Horse Brass Pub, play pool, drink beer, and check out the action.'

'I think I'll take a rain check.'

'Still not over your lawyer guy?'

'I'm over him, it's my mother who's still heartbroken. She really was hoping he was the one.'

'So if you're over him, come hunting with me.'

'What it is, I need to get on top of my new job. And I guess I'm not quite ready for the singles scene again.'

'I don't blame you. It's brutal out there,' Laura said, and made a left turn. 'This is the street you want. One hundred fourteen, right?'

'Right.'

They crawled along until they spotted it, a shabby cinder-block bungalow behind a chain-link fence. After they had stepped out of the cruiser, Laura said, 'How do you want to work this?'

Neither of them had done a next-of-kin before. The closest Summer had come was assuring a woman injured in a head-on collision that the paramedics were looking after her boyfriend, while the boyfriend sat dead behind the wheel of his car with the engine block where his legs should have been.

She said, 'I guess I should do the talking.'

'No problem.'

'It shouldn't be, unless the mother or stepfather turn ugly.'

Before driving over to the Southeast Precinct, Summer had checked out Edie's stepfather, Randy Farrell, on the computer, and confirmed her suspicion that he had a record. White male, black hair, brown eyes. Five foot seven, one hundred forty pounds -- not a big guy, but he had thirty pounds and a couple of inches on her. His D.O.B. made him fifty-four years old. No scars or other identifying marks, no FBI number . . . Most of his crimes were minor -- housebreaking, receiving or attempting to sell stolen goods -- and he'd been given plenty of second chances or through plea agreements had received probation instead of jail time, which made Summer suspect that he was some detective's confidential informant. But he'd served time in the gladiatorial arena of state prison at Salem after having been convicted of conspiracy to rob, and with no less than three charges of assault to his name it looked as if he was quick to use his fists. She remembered that he'd sat right behind his stepdaughter in the courtroom, arms folded across the front of his denim jacket, hair lacquered back from his temples, sucking on a permanently sour expression; remembered how he'd bulled up to her in the busy corridor outside the courtroom after Edie Collier had been sentenced, asking her how she liked sending a young girl to jail, turning on his heel and stomping off after she'd advised him to take it up with the judge. Randy Farrell's wife, Edie's mother, had a record of violence, too: threatening behaviour and several charges of assault, including one on a high-school teacher that had gotten her a year's probation, plus one charge of public drunkenness and three DUIs; her driver's licence had been suspended after the last, two months ago.

Anticipating trouble, Summer was happy to have Laura at her back as she walked up to the bungalow. It was dusk now. Lights were burning in a couple of the bungalow's windows, but Summer had to lean on the doorbell for more than a minute before she saw movement behind the three stepped panes of frosted glass in the front door. When it opened, Summer straightened her back and held up her badge, saw from the corner of her eye Laura move her right hand towards the Glock holstered on her hip. But the man who stood in the doorway was a skinny scarecrow, barefoot in a dressing gown that hung open over a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his face sallow and sunken and sporting the makings of a black eye. It took Summer a long moment to recognize in this ruin the man she'd faced down outside the courtroom just six months ago.

He stared at Summer without seeming to recognize her, stared at Laura, and said, 'Whatever you're selling, I don't need it.'

Summer asked if she could speak with his wife.

'What kind of trouble has she gotten herself into now?'

'She isn't in any trouble that I know of, Mr Farrell. Could you have her come to the door?'

'Lucinda ain't in any fit state to talk to the police. Why don't you come back tomorrow?'

'It's about her daughter, Mr Farrell. If she can't come to the door, you should let us in. We need to talk with her.'

Randy Farrell's attitude, a junkyard dog defending its turf, evaporated. 'This is about Edie? What happened? Is she hurt, in hospital somewhere?'

'Let us in, Mr Farrell. We need to talk to your wife.'

'Oh Jesus,' Randy Farrell said, and closed his eyes for a moment.

Laura said, 'We don't want to talk about this out here, Mr Farrell, in full view of your neighbours, and I'm sure you don't want to either. So why don't we go inside?'

'I guess,' Randy Farrell said, standing aside. 'But I should warn you, Lucinda's more than half in the bag, and she ain't taking prisoners.'

Summer and Laura followed him down a narrow hall stacked with cardboard cartons. The air was hot and close, and stank of cigarette smoke and greasy cooking.

'In there,' Randy Farrell said, with a wave of a hand towards an archway filled with the flicker of TV light.

Lucinda Farrell slumped on a plastic-covered couch, a blown-up bear of a woman in a pink sweatshirt and grey sweatpants, clutching a tall glass half-full of ice cubes to her bosom as she watched Oprah on the big TV across the room. A fifth of vodka, a gallon jug of orange juice, a washing-up bowl heaped with popcorn, and an ashtray full of cigarette stubs crowded a bamboo coffee table. When Summer stepped into the room, Lucinda Farrell looked at her and said with shrill but forceful scorn that cut through the laughter and applause of Oprah's audience, 'I got nothing to say to any cops, so why don't the both of you march straight on out of here.'

Randy Farrell said from the archway, 'Take it easy, why don't you? They got something to tell you. About Edie.'

'Edie? Fuck her. Fuck you too, for letting in these fuckers.'

Summer switched on the ceiling lights and in the sudden glare crossed the room and punched off the TV and took a position directly in front of the woman on the couch. Laura was standing just inside the archway, ready to block Randy Farrell if he tried to cause trouble. Summer said, 'How about we start over, Mrs Farrell?'

The woman stared at Summer. Bleached hair dry as straw stuck out around her pugnacious face. 'My daughter ran out on me four months back. Anything she did, it isn't my problem, she's over eighteen now. So how about you say what you got to say and get out.'

Summer waited a beat, making it clear that she was doing this in her own time. 'Mrs Farrell, your daughter was found badly injured this morning, in woods near a town by the name of Cedar Falls. I'm very sorry to have to tell you that she died on the way to hospital.'

'Jesus Christ,' Randy Farrell said softly.

Lucinda Farrell leaned forwards and with the frowning concentration of a small child sloshed a good three fingers of vodka into her glass. She added a splash of orange juice, sucked down half the drink, and said to no one in particular, 'So that's that.'

'Mrs Farrell, the Sheriff's office in Cedar Falls would like you to make a formal identification -- '

The woman flapped a hand. 'She was dead to me when she left this house. I told her so, she said she didn't give a fuck, and she hasn't been back since. So why should I give a fuck now?'

'You need to do the right thing by your daughter,' Summer said.

'I already done all I could by her,' Lucinda Farrell said flatly, and drained the rest of her drink.

Summer tried to talk her around, but the woman retreated into stubborn silence, clutching her glass in her swollen paws and glaring at a spot somewhere beyond Summer's left shoulder. At last, Summer said, 'I'll come back tomorrow. We'll talk about this again.'

'Switch on the fucking TV on your way out. I wanna see Oprah ask Demi Moore about her toyboy.'

Summer ignored her request, and in the hallway asked Randy Farrell if Edie's biological father lived in Portland.

'He died in a car accident way before I met Lucinda. Edie kept his name, but if she has a father -- Jesus, had one -- it would be me.'

Summer said, 'I'll have to come back tomorrow, Mr Farrell. I have to talk to your wife again.'

'Won't do any good.'

'The local police need her to ID her daughter. It's a formality, but it has to be done before they can release the body. And at some point your wife will have to think about funeral arrangements.'

Randy Farrell shook his head. 'Lucinda meant what she said about Edie being dead to her. She never once tried to find her after she ran off, never once visited her when she was in jail . . . '

'Talk to her, Mr Farrell. Tell her that she needs to do the right thing by Edie. I'll come by tomorrow morning, see if she's change her mind.'

'When Lucinda sets her mind to something, that's it. Edie was the same way.'

Randy Farrell looked at Summer and said, 'How she ended up, out there in the woods. You have any idea how she got there?'

'I'm sorry, Mr Farrell. It isn't my case.'

Before setting out for the Southeast Precinct, Summer had called the Cedar Falls Sheriff's office and talked briefly with Denise Childers, the detective in charge of the case. The woman had been friendly enough, but hadn't given anything away.

Randy Farrell said, 'She didn't have any reason to leave Portland I knew of. You should ask her boyfriend what she was doing out there.'

When Summer had been given this job, she'd believed that she wouldn't get much out of it. If she messed up, she would confirm Ryland Nelsen's unvoiced suspicion that she was a hotshot promoted beyond her experience and capability. And if she did okay she'd probably be landed with every next-of-kin notification the Robbery Unit had to deal with: it was the kind of dirty, thankless task that male cops liked to pass on to their female colleagues because, according to them, women had better people skills. Now, though, she felt a twinge of interest and said, 'Do you have a name and address for this boyfriend?'

Randy Farrell stared past her for a moment, then said, 'I think it was Billy something.'

'Do you have a last name? An address?'

Randy Farrell shook his head. 'I never met the guy, and I only talked to Edie one time after she took up with him. She told me she and him were living out of his van. I wasn't too happy, hearing that, but she said she was doing fine.'

'When did she leave home?'

'First week in February, after she and her mother had a big bust-up.'

'And she ran off to be with her boyfriend?'

Randy Farrell shrugged.

'How long had she known him?'

'Let's put it this way, I'd never heard of him before she ran off.'

'Does he have a job?'

'I wouldn't know.'

'They were living in his van. Where did they park at night?'

'Somewhere over near the airport I think.'

Laura said, 'I'll ask the guys in the Northeast Precinct to keep a look out. Mr Farrell, do you know if they had a regular spot where they parked at night? Up in Piedmont, maybe? Maywood Park?'

'Somewhere near the airport, that's all I know.'

'How about you tell me something about this van,' Laura said.

'Make, colour -- anything at all.'

'Like I said, I never met him, and I never saw his van either.'

Summer said, 'Take your time, Mr Farrell. Anything you can remember could be a big help.'

'I remember that she was happy, when I saw her. She had plans, she was thinking of going back to school . . . What will happen to her if no one takes care of her?'

Summer said, 'If no one claims her, the state will serve as sponsor.'

'Yeah, that's what I thought. And they'll bury her in a cardboard coffin without a marker. She doesn't deserve that.'

Randy Farrell paused, then told Summer, 'I know who you are. You're the one arrested Edie just before Christmas. You were in uniform then, but I don't forget a face. Listen, it's okay, I'm not blaming you for what happened to her, but how about cutting me a break?'

'If you want to help Edie, Mr Farrell, you should persuade your wife to go make the ID.'

'You need someone to make the ID? How about you take me to Cedar Falls,' Randy Farrell said. 'I'll take care of whatever arrangements need to be made, too. I have money.'

'Perhaps I should come by tomorrow and talk to your wife again.'

''It won't make no difference. But I want to do right by Edie, even if Lucinda doesn't.'

Summer saw that the man was genuinely upset. 'I'll tell the police in Cedar Falls about your offer, Mr Farrell. That's the best I can do right now.'

'I was like a father to her, you understand? I helped raise her for more than ten years, I want to do right by her now . . . You tell them that. Also, you should explain that I have cancer of the liver and I can't drive on account of my medication, the side effects. I get these blackouts. So you tell them, if they want someone to ID her, either you take me, or they'll have to come get me.'

Summer took out one of her cards and handed it to him. 'If you remember anything you think might be useful, anything at all, give me a call and I'll pass it on to the detective in charge of the case. But right now, Mr Farrell, maybe you should go look after your wife. I think she's more shaken up than she lets on.'

Outside, Laura Killinger hitched up her Garrison belt and said, 'Edie Collier was brought up by those two, and all she had on her sheet was shoplifting? She must have been some kind of saint.'

#####

Later that evening Summer's mother said, 'Who do you think did it? Her mother, her stepfather, or both of them together?'

Summer said, 'Actually, I don't see either of them doing it.'

'You think this boyfriend has something to do with it?'

'It's possible.'

'If he exists,' her mother said.

'You think Randy Farrell made him up? Why would he do that?'

'To divert your attention from the obvious suspect. Lucinda Farrell claimed that her daughter hadn't once come back home after she'd run off. But what if she had? You have a mother and daughter who don't get on, the mother drinks heavily, she has a bad temper, she was convicted of assaulting a teacher . . . Suppose she attacked her daughter in some kind of drunken fit? She beats her so badly that it looks like she's killed her, and she and her husband dump the body in the forest. They drive off, but the girl isn't dead. She comes around, but she's hurt, she can't find her way out of the forest, and she ends up walking in circles or in the wrong direction until she collapses.'

Summer said, 'Stranger things have happened, but Cedar Falls is two hundred miles south of Portland. It's a long way to go, to dump a body.'

'It would explain why Randy Farrell didn't want you to talk to his wife. It would explain Lucinda Farrell's reaction to the news of her daughter's death. And isn't it true that nine times out of ten in a murder case, the victim knew the person who killed them?'

'Yeah, but in most domestic homicides you find the doer standing over the body. Or sitting in the next room, watching TV and drinking beer. One time, a friend of mine found this guy working on his roof, nailing shingles with the hammer he'd just used to kill his wife after she'd told him to stop what he was doing and take her shopping. It's possible that Lucinda Farrell killed her daughter, that she and Randy Farrell conspired to get rid of the body. But why was Edie Collier found so far from Portland when there are plenty of places where you can dump a body right here in the city? The rivers, one of the parks . . . or any back alley or vacant lot, come to that.'

Summer and her mother, June, were sitting at the long pine table in the shabbily comfortable kitchen of June's house, where Summer had been living ever since Jeff Tuohy, her lawyer guy, had moved to Washington, D.C. and she'd had to move out of the apartment in The Pearl that she couldn't afford to rent on her own. Summer was eating a late supper, spaghetti in a marinara sauce that she'd picked up from the local Italian place, a glass of red wine. Her mother was working on her third gin and tonic, smoking a cigarette, and playing at detective. She was a professor at the University of Portland, an anthropologist who specialized in pre-Columbian Native American littoral communities. A tall woman in her mid-sixties, with a handsome, lined face, grey hair held in a loose ponytail by a large wooden clasp, she was wearing blue jeans and a baggy blue sweatshirt that had belonged to her husband; she'd taken to wearing his clothes after he had died of a heart attack last year.

June Ziegler, the daughter of an English war bride who had married a US Army captain and emigrated to the States after World War Two, liked to cook an English Sunday roast once a month, followed every twist and turn of the real-life soap opera of the British Royal Family, and devoured old-fashioned mystery novels set in English country houses, with intricate clockwork plots that were resolved when the detective gathered all the suspects in the library and showed them how clever he was. Although she still voiced her disapproval at Summer's choice of career five years after the fact, the one thing she and her daughter could talk about without getting personal were the stories Summer brought home from work.

Now, June blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling and said, 'Perhaps the Farrells have some connection with the place where their daughter was found.'

Summer smiled. 'They beat her up so badly that they believed they'd killed her, and then they were overcome with a fit of sentimentality, took her to a favourite spot?'

'When people are stressed, they often return to familiar territory.'

'It's more likely that Edie Collier took off with her boyfriend on some crazy jaunt, wandered into the forest and got herself lost.'

'Assuming there is a boyfriend.'

'Or maybe she was hitchhiking and chose the wrong vehicle to climb into, managed to escape after some kind of assault, and then got lost.'

'Perhaps the mother or the stepfather grew up in Cedar Falls.'

Summer said, 'The thing is, neither of them can drive.'

'Lucinda Farrell lost her licence and Randy Farrell told you he wasn't allowed to drive because of his meds. It doesn't mean that they can't drive.'

It was a good point, annoyingly enough. Summer watched her mother mash her cigarette stub into the ashtray, and said, 'When are you going to give those up?'

'I hope I haven't yet reached that point in life where I have to think of giving things up.' 'You'll reach that point a lot sooner than you think if you keep on smoking.' 'It's a good deal less dangerous than associating with criminals every day.'

'I associate with a better class of criminal now that I'm a detective,' Summer said, remembering Laura Killinger's remark. 'I could even shake hands with some of them without having to put on gloves first.'

'I forgot to mention, I met Ed Vara the other day. He asked after you.'

'Your lawyer friend?'

Summer was instantly wary, wondering if this was leading up to yet another of her mother's attempts to get her back in contact with Jeff. He'd phoned Summer a couple of times after he'd moved, and she knew that he'd phoned her mother once or twice too, but as far as she was concerned, their relationship had been heading for the rocks long before he'd decided to move to Washington, D.C. Summer had met Jeff Tuohy when he'd been working for the Public Defender's office -- Jeff had political aspirations, and it was a good place to earn brownie points. They could talk to each other about their work, and Jeff was easy on the eye, smart and funny, and touchingly idealistic. But he was also ferociously ambitious, and by the time they'd taken the big step and moved in together he was working sixteen hours a day, leaving the housework and cooking to Summer. And then, because of volunteer work he'd done for a congresswoman's successful election campaign, he'd been offered a job on her permanent staff. Summer hadn't been ready to give up her job in Portland, move clear across the country and get married, become a homemaker . . . she'd already had enough of cooking and cleaning for him. Jeff had offered to turn the job down, but Summer had known that his heart was set on it and that if she'd asked him to stay their relationship would have lasted about one more week. So that had been that for Summer and the lawyer guy, but Summer's mother still nursed a small hope that they would get back together, and every so often she gave it an airing.

But what June Ziegler said now was, 'Ed told me that he's looking for a contract investigator.'

'I thought he mostly took civil-rights cases. What does he need an investigator for?'

'I thought you might like to discuss it with him.'

'I have a job.'

'Doing paperwork and running trivial errands.'

'That's exactly what contract investigators do. They're fact-checkers and skip-tracers. They sit at their desks and comb through phone books and databases.'

'The reason I mentioned it, Ed's coming over for dinner Saturday. Don't look so alarmed, darling. My English colleague is coming too, and some other people.'

'I guess I can give him the names of some recently retired cops who might be interested.'

Her mother shrugged, and lit another cigarette.

Summer said with fond exasperation, 'I'm not your little girl any more.'

'Of course you are. And if you don't mind me giving you some advice, I think you should talk to the Farrells' neighbours. Perhaps they saw the girl recently. Or perhaps her parents took a long car trip a few days ago.'

Summer used a heel of bread to mop up sauce. 'That's what I'd do if it was my case. But it isn't. It belongs to the Cedar Falls Sheriff's office.'

'So you're going to forget all about it because of some nonsense about jurisdiction?'

'Not exactly,' Summer said. 'As a matter of fact, I've already talked to the detective in charge of the case. What I have to do now is figure out how to get Randy Farrell to Cedar Falls.'

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