“If what you heard was about me and the river, it was true,” I said.

“You’re kidding.”

“I didn’t say it was smart, just that it was true.”

I moved my hand, self-consciously, to my hair. At the hospital I’d pulled it back in a ponytail that I’d doubled back up onto itself, so that it hung in a heavy but not-very-long loop on my neck. Touching it now, my hair felt not quite dry: It wasn’t damp but, rather, cool to the touch.

After my report was finished, it was time to request a new pager. The old one had been in my jacket, and my jacket was now in the river. I was grateful that my billfold and my cell phone had been elsewhere during the morning’s insanity.

Before I could go on that errand, my phone rang. It was Jane O’Malley, a Hennepin County prosecutor.

“Come on up,” she said. “The testimony’s been going faster than we expected. We’re probably going to get to you today.”

O’Malley was prosecuting a case that told a common, sad story: a young person with an ex-boyfriend who just couldn’t let go. But this was an old story with a twist: The missing person had been a young man. He’d left the Gay 90s, a nightspot popular with both gays and straight people, by himself and sober after dancing with friends. That was the last anyone had ever seen him.

Genevieve and I had investigated the case. Later, as the ex-boyfriend’s evasions and quasi-alibis grew increasingly thin, we’d been joined by a detective from Minneapolis Homicide. We never found the victim or his body, just a lot of his blood and one of his earrings in the trunk of the car his ex had reported stolen the following day and not disposed of very well.

As I crossed the atrium of the Hennepin County Government Center to the elevators, a familiar voice hailed me.

“Detective Pribek!”