"Now, that was an interview and a half," Sloan said when they'd finished and Plain and his friend had gone. They had an hour of tape.

Lucas rubbed his forehead. "I was feeling almost sympathetic there, toward the end. Two arty parents, rich dipshits, get divorced. Each one takes a kid. The kids don't see or speak to each other for fifteen years, then they run into each other, virtual strangers, good-looking, one is a model and the other one is working in photography, both running with the same crowd. If they hadn't been brother and sister, you'dexpect them to fall in bed."

"Yeah, but"

Lucas nodded. "Then there's the other thing."

"What's that?"

"He says his sister quit modeling and now is a professional potter, big in the art world. I've met a couple of potters."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Sloan said. He had an exaggerated idea of Lucas's love life.

"I'll tell you one thing about potters," Lucas continued. "They pick up this clay, and they throw it around, and they beat it and twist it and turn it a few years of that, and they've got arms and hands like wrestlers."

"Alie'e was strangled," Sloan said. "Be interesting to talk to the sister."

Alie'e's boyfriend, a guy who insisted his only name was Jax, came through Homicide's front door a few steps before Jael Corbeau came in with her lawyer. Lucas had to decide which interview to watch, and he went with Corbeau.

Sloan took the statement, with Lucas and Swanson sitting in; Lucas tried not to stare, but Jael Corbeau was somebody to stare at. Not immediatelynot a flash thingbut after a minute or so, he found it hard to stop looking at her. She had the same angular face as her brother, but was blond. And she had tracks on her face, scars; they did something unnatural: made it hard to breathe.