“Bobby came to my office last night,” I said.

He had pushed his way past the cops filling the entryway and found me underneath my desk, trying to see if anything else of my cousin had been discarded there along with her bracelet. Despite the many good women who have worked for him in the last fifteen years, my presence at a crime scene still gives him heartburn.

“There you are, Vicki. One of the boys who’s smarter than he looks saw your last name on a sheet and brought it to me. Who’s Petra, Peter’s kid? What insane business did you involve her in? Does Peter know? He’ll turn your guts into sausage casing if you hurt his kid.”

“Not guilty, Bobby,” I said wearily, crawling out. “She’s working on the Krumas campaign. I don’t know why she came here or who she let in.”

I showed him the video footage and explained how she’d happened to have my front-door combination. He frowned over the photos, then demanded of the patrol units if they’d done anything to get the footage over to a video-technology team.

Once Bobby showed up, the tempo of the investigation accelerated. Aggressive cops became subdued and helpful, lethargic ones became energetic, and an evidence team magically appeared and began dusting the whole mess for prints, blood, any trace of anything. Bobby called the FBI, in case it was a kidnapping; they sent a special agent over around eleven, and I had to answer useless questions all over again.

In the middle of it all, I started getting calls from reporters, and a television crew parked outside my office. Brian Krumas himself called while I was talking to the FBI’s special agent. The candidate was at a high-end fundraiser in Hollywood, but of course his staff had heard about Petra’s disappearance. Krumas talked to Bobby and then to me.

“You’re Petra’s cousin, right? We met at the Navy Pier event, didn’t we? I’m giving you my private number, Vic, and I want you to call me the instant you have any news of her, okay?”