I signaled our waitress, Loretta, for a beer, then planted myself across from Cindy with a worn-out smile. “Hey... ” “Hey yourself.” She smiled back. “Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen.”

A TV blared above the bar, a broadcast of Chief Mercer's news conference. “We believe it was a single gunman,” Mercer announced to a flash of photographers' bulbs.

“You stay for that?” I asked Cindy, taking a welcome swig of my ice-cold beer.

“I was there,” she replied. “Stone and Fitzpatrick were there, too. They filed the report.”

I gave her a startled look. Tom Stone and Suzie Fitzpatrick were her competition on the crime desk. “You losing your touch? Six months ago, I would've found you coming out of the church as soon as we arrived.”

“I'm going at it from another angle.” She shrugged.

A handful of people crowded around the bar, trying to catch the breaking news. I took another chug of beer. “You should've seen this poor little girl, Cindy. All of eleven years old. She sang in the choir. There was this rainbow-colored knapsack with all her books on the ground nearby.”

“You know this stuff, Lindsay.” She gave me a bolstering smile. “You know how it is. It sucks.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “But just once, it'd be nice to pick one of them up... you know, brush them off, send them home. Just once, I'd like to hand one back their book bag.”

Cindy tapped her fist affectionately on the back of my hand. Then she brightened. “I saw Jill today. She's got some news for us. She's excited. Maybe Bennett's retiring and she's getting the big chair. We should get together and see what's up with her.”

“For sure.” I nodded. “That what you wanted to tell me tonight, Cindy... ?”