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When Olivia Lassiter, then just shy of her twenty-first birthday, and a junior at Temple University, majoring in mass market communications, had told her parents that she had taken, and passed, the entrance application for the Philadelphia police department, and that she intended to drop out of college to enter the Police Academy, their reaction had been the opposite of unbridled joy.

Her father, a midlevel executive with an insurance company, had spoken his mind. “You’re crazy. You have gone over the edge! You should be locked up for your own protection.”

Her mother, a buyer for John Wanamaker amp; Company, had said more or less the same thing, then tried tears approaching hysteria, and said she was throwing her life and “the advantages Daddy and I have given to you” away.

Olivia had dropped out of Temple and entered the Police Academy and graduated and did a year working a van in the Ninth District, and then a second year in the Central City Business District. Truth to tell, she hadn’t liked either job, and there had been a strong temptation to accept her father’s offer to go back to college, get her degree, and make something of herself.

But that would have been admitting she’d made a mistake. And she hadn’t been quite prepared to do that. She had been on the job just over a year whe

n a detective’s examination was announced. She took it, and passed it, ranking just high enough to get promoted-among the last few promoted from that list-eighteen months later.

That had put her in Northwest Detectives. From the first day, she’d liked being a detective, even though she was aware she was conducting a lot of investigations-of recovered stolen automobiles, in particular-that none of her new colleagues on the squad wanted to do.

It took her several years to pay off her car note and the furniture note, but that happened, too, about the time she realized she was no longer regarded by the squad as the “rookie broad,” but as one of them.

She knew that she was not very popular with some of the wives and girlfriends of the guys on the squad-they seemed to suspect that the first order of business every day was to jump Detective Lassiter’s bones-but there was nothing she could do about that, even if it was unfair as hell, and untrue. She had no interest, that way, in any of the guys.

She had taken the sergeant’s exam, placing so low on the list that her chances of promotion were about as good as those of her being taken bodily into heaven. Her ego had been a little damaged-she hadn’t thought she would do that badly-but it really hadn’t bothered her. She liked the squad, she liked Northwest Detectives, and a promotion would have meant not only leaving the Detective Bureau but almost certainly being put back in uniform. Since she had been on the job, she had compiled a long list of uniform sergeant’s jobs she really would have hated.

The bottom line there was that she liked what she was doing and had no reason to feel sorry for herself. She had wondered idly about going someplace else as a detective, and had snooped around Special Victims and Major Crimes and Intelligence enough to know that she was better off with Northwest Detectives. The District Attorney’s Squad was a possibility to think of, and so was Special Operations, and for that matter even Homicide.

Olivia thought of herself as a realist, and understood that her chances of getting assigned to Homicide-even in ten years-were practically nonexistent.

But now this had been dumped in her lap, this detail- however long it lasted-to Homicide. There was no question at all that Opportunity Had Knocked, but there was a big question about how to deal with it. If she played it right, there was a chance-slim, but a chance-that it would help her get into Homicide. Maybe not now. But later.

And if she screwed up somehow, in any way, she knew she could kiss any chances of getting into Homicide farewell forever.

Olivia had just turned onto North Broad Street when her cell phone buzzed. She fumbled in her purse for it and finally pushed Answer.

“Lassiter.”

“D’Amata. You know who I am?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I want you to start thinking of me as the senior Homicide investigator on this case,” D’Amata said. “Not just some ordinary Homicide schmuck.”

“Okay. You want to tell me why?”

“Because when I told our beloved leader, Sergeant Payne, that I wanted to go with you to take the Williamson mother’s statement, he said sure, but tell her to introduce you as ‘the senior Homicide investigator on the case.’ ”

“He say why?”

“Our orders, Detective Lassiter, are to keep the Williamsons stroked. I think it’s a good idea. Our leader is as smart as a whip.”

“Okay. Whatever you say. I’m on North Broad, six blocks from City Hall, en route to Mother Williamson’s. You need the address?”

“Yeah.”

“404 Rockland. It’s just south of Roosevelt Boulevard.”

“I know where it is. I’ll meet you there. On the street. Either I wait or you wait, okay? Payne wants us together.”

“See you there.”

Olivia pushed the End button and dropped the phone back into her purse.

Sergeant Matthew Payne, she thought, was very likely going to cause some sort of problems for her vis-a-vis making the best of her opportunity to try to get into Homicide.