"You grew up around Buffalo, didn't you, Mr. Kurtz?"

He didn't react, but he felt the skin tighten on his face. O'Toole knew his personal history from the dossier on her desktop, and she'd never ventured into his pre-Attica history before. What'd I do?

He nodded.

"I'm not asking professionally," said Peg O'Toole. "I just have a minor mystery—very minor—that I need solved, and I think I need someone who grew up here."

"You didn't grow up here?" asked Kurtz. Most people who still lived in Buffalo had.

"I was born here, but we moved away when I was three," she said, opening the bottom right drawer of her desk and moving some things aside. "I moved back eleven years ago when I joined the Buffalo P.D." She brought out a white envelope. "Now I need the advice of a native and a private investigator."

Kurtz stared flatly at her. "I'm not a private investigator," he said, his voice flatter than his gaze.

"Not licensed," agreed O'Toole, evidently not intimidated by his cold stare or tone. "Not after serving time for manslaughter. But everything I've read or been told suggests you were an excellent P.I."

Kurtz almost reacted to this. What the hell is she after?

She removed three photographs from the envelope and slid them across the desk. "I wondered if you might know where this is—or was?"

Kurtz looked at the photos. They were color, standard snapshot size, no borders, no date on the back, so they'd been taken sometime in the last couple of decades.