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“I have to tell you this,” Williamson said. “When my mother hears about what happened last night, this morning, with the cops… God!”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of filing a formal complaint,” Matt sa

id, “honestly, I’m not. But for what it’s worth, from what I’ve heard, the officers who responded to the ‘Disturbance, House’ call were just going by the book. If they had any indication that something-anything-was going wrong, had gone wrong, in the apartment, they would have taken action.”

Williamson looked at him but didn’t respond directly.

“What am I supposed to do if my mother wants to come here?”

“Well, right now she can’t have access to the apartment. Not today, and probably not tomorrow, either. Tell her that.”

“Jesus Christ!” Williamson said.

“I’d be happy to go with you, Mr. Williamson,” Detective Lassiter said. “If you think it would make things any easier. And I’d like to talk to her, too. That doesn’t have to be right now. Your call.”

“It couldn’t do any harm,” Williamson said. “And maybe, if you were there…”

“If you’ll give me your cellular number, Sergeant, I’ll call and let you know how things went,” Detective Lassiter said.

Matt wrote the number on a small sheet of notepaper and handed it to her. She tore it in half and wrote two numbers on it.

“I guess you have the Northwest number, right?” she asked. Matt nodded. “My cellular and apartment,” she said.

“Thank you,” Matt said.

Under other circumstances, Olivia, my lovely, I would be overjoyed that you shared your telephone numbers with me.

Come to think of it, Olivia, despite the circumstances, I am overjoyed that you have shared your telephone numbers with me.

Mrs. McGrory was not in her living room as they passed through, but Matt could hear her voice in the next room. Only her voice, which suggested she was on the telephone.

He decided he had already thanked her and it would be better not to disturb her when she was on the phone.

When they went downstairs and through the front door, he saw that the press was gathered behind the POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape, and that the moment they saw them- two detectives, with badges showing, escorting a so-far-unidentified white male-video cameras rose with their red RECORDING lights glowing, and still camera flashbulbs went off.

“Where’s your car?” Matt asked.

“Halfway down the street,” she said, and pointed.

Matt touched the arm of one of the uniforms.

“I want to get Detective Lassiter and this gentleman to her car, down the street, and I don’t want the press to get in the way.”

“No problem,” the uniform said, raised his voice, and called, “Dick!”

Dick was a very large police officer of African-American heritage.

He and the other uniform led the way through the assembled journalists, one on each side of Detective Lassiter and Mr. Williamson.

Sergeant Payne brought up the rear, which gave him a chance to decide that Detective Lassiter had a very nice muscular structure of the lower half of the rear of her body.

As he walked back to 600 Independence, ignoring questions from the press about the identity of Mr. Williamson, he realized he didn’t really have much of an idea of what he was supposed to do now.

He remembered something he had been taught at the Marine Base, Quantico, while in the platoon leaders program: reconnoiter the terrain.

He spent perhaps ten minutes walking around the outside of the big old house, even going up the rear stairs, and then into the basement. He saw nothing of particular interest.

When Matt returned to the front of the house, two uniforms were carrying a stretcher with Cheryl Williamson’s body on it down the pathway to a Thirty-fifth District wagon.