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“I can’t imagine what,” Olivia said. “When are you going to call Lieutenant Washington?”

“I don’t have anything to tell him yet,” Matt argued. “And if he had something to say to us, he would have called.”

Inside a double glass door was a barren room with shiny tile walls. There were several metal doors and a small window in the walls. Next to the window was a buzzer button and a sign reading, RING BELL FOR SERVICE.

Matt pushed the button. There was a buzzing sound, and a moment later the small door opened inward, and the face of a plump middle-aged woman appeared in the opening. She had what looked like a police uniform on, but Matt saw neither badge nor weapon.

“Can I help you?”

“Good evening,” Matt said, and showed her his identification. “I’m Sergeant Payne, this is Detective Lassiter, and we’d like to see Chief Yancey, please.”

“Can’t right now, he’s in court.”

She pointed to her left, to a single door in the shiny tile wall.

“Well, then, may I please speak to the supervisor on duty?”

“That’d be Sergeant Paul.”

“Do you think I can see Sergeant Paul?”

“You want to see him, or just speak to him?”

“I’d really like to speak to him in person,” Matt said.

“He’s on patrol. I’ll give him a call.”

“Thank you very much.”

Ninety seconds later, her face appeared again.

“He’s still working a DUI. Says it will take him fifteen minutes to get here.”

“Thank you. Should we wait here?”

“If you went in the courtroom, you could sit down,” she said. “I’ll tell him where you are.”

“Thank you very much.”

Matt opened the single steel door in the tiled wall for Olivia, then followed her in.

They found themselves at the head end of a fairly large courtroom, right by the judge, who, sitting on his bench a few feet above them, looked down at them in what was certainly curiosity and possibly annoyance.

“Go along the wall,” Matt quickly ordered Olivia, and he followed her past a railing dividing the bench area-which had tables for the accused and their counsel-from the spectator area, which was furnished with benches not unlike church pews.

Behind the last row of benches was an open area, fairly crowded with people-Matt thought they looked like the accused and their counsel-and behind that a set of double doors.

They found seats in the next-to-the-last row and tried to look inconspicuous.

There were a number of police officers in the courtroom, most of them on the bench side of the barrier. Two of them stood out. One was a short, trim man in a neat, white shirt uniform. On each of his collar points was a colonel’s eagle. In the Philadelphia police department, that was the uniform insignia of a chief inspector. Inspector Peter Wohl, on those rare occasions when he wore a uniform, wore a silver leaf, the same insignia as that of a lieutenant colonel.

When the man wearing the colonel’s eagles looked at them with unabashed curiosity, Matt decided he had to be Chief Yancey, and had the unkind thought that the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia police department probably outnumbered the Daphne police department, and that Captain Quaire only got to wear the insignia of a captain.

The second police officer who stood out looked, Matt thought, as if he could be Jason Washington’s younger brother. He was an enormous, very black sergeant. He was quietly talking on a cellular phone, which almost disappeared in his massive hand.

It didn’t take either Matt or Olivia long to figure out what was going on. This was Municipal Court, primarily occupied with misdemeanor level violations of the law, primarily traffic offenses.

And it was a smooth-running operation. The clerk called a case number. The accused, sometimes accompanied by his counsel, or his mother and/or father, approached the bench. One of the uniforms then detached himself from the knot of fellow police officers and stood facing the bench. The clerk read the charges, and the judge asked how the defendant pled. If the defendant pled “guilty,” sentence was immediately dispensed. If the defendant pled “not guilty,” the arresting officer testified, the defendant (or his counsel, but not, Matt noted with a smile, his mother and/or father) was permitted to cross-examine the uniform, and when that was done, the judge immediately decided guilt or innocence and handed out the sentence.