“Teasdale was right, you know,” Jose said, still looking at the glass. He heard Frank say something in reply, but not exactly what. Jose surveyed the small houses with their neat yards that lined Bayless Place.

Once you had your street taken over by assholes like Skeeter, you were in for trouble. Even if you got rid of Skeeter, the damage was done. He had shown that Bayless Place could be had. Blood in the water. And there was always somebody else out there, circling, watching, searching out the cripples, the easy pickings. That’s why Teasdale had seemed so angry. Teasdale knew what would come next. What for certain would come next.

Jose felt a weighted despair. Getting looked at that way went with the job. They pay you to be the thin blue line between society and the animals. But the Skeeters roamed free and the Edward Everett Teasdales stayed off the streets and made sure they locked their doors.

“You ready to go?” Jose asked Frank.

He’ll live. He might not be able to do anything useful with that left arm, but I suspect he wasn’t trying out for Olympics gymnastics before he was shot.”

Dr. Sheresa Arrowsmith, a stocky woman with a glossy ebony complexion, was an expert on gunshot wounds. “Didn’t plan it that way,” she’d explained to Frank and Jose when they had met her years before, “but you work trauma in the District, you get a lot of practice digging out slugs.”

“Officer on the scene said it looked like he took it in the shoulder.”

Arrowsmith nodded. “He did. But the bullet was tumbling when it hit him. It may have ricocheted off something in the car… may have been one that went through his friend’s head.”