“And the killer turned out to be a brother driving a rice burner.”

“What’s your point?”

“The rank doesn’t want to risk being wrong,” Gaudet said. “And the easiest way not to be wrong is to do nothing.”

“So do you want a task force or not?” Murphy asked.

“Why not work the cases, just you and me, like always?”

“I want to be able to pull all the pieces together, not just some of them.” Murphy took a sip of beer. “Of the seven murders we think are connected, how many of the scenes have you and I been to?”

Gaudet counted on his thick fingers while his lips moved silently. “Four, counting this afternoon.”

“Exactly. So on the other three we don’t really know shit, do we?”

“We read the reports. We looked at the crime-scene photos.”

“You sound like Donovan,” Murphy said. “We read the initial reports, not the follow-ups, not the interview transcripts. We don’t know what records the investigators have pulled. We don’t see that stuff because those cases don’t belong to us. If we put together a task force we could collect and collate everything. We could have analysts look at every scrap of paper. We could look for patterns.”

“There you go with that pattern shit again.”

“Why do you think the cops in California didn’t catch the Zodiac Killer?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Because he killed in multiple jurisdictions, sometimes on the border between jurisdictions. Nobody was in charge of the overall investigation. Cops from different departments hoarded information and leads. They each had their own prime suspect. They didn’t share anything.”

“So what happened?” Gaudet said, his voice beginning to slur. They were each on their fifth beer.

“The killer took his secret to the grave.”

The door opened and two Second District detectives walked in. While Murphy had been rambling about the rank not giving him a task force, several assistant DAs had slipped into the bar. They stood in a tight group at the far end, talking loud and laughing hard.