"Really, a few days, then."

He could tell what the Chief was thinking. Last thing they needed was a cop with a gun set on revenge. If he didn't play it right, he'd end up on forced leave for a month, all paid, of course, just to get his ass out of the way. He said, "Maybe, okay. But not right now. Maybe after the funeral." Choked up saying that last word.

The Chief waited a moment while Bleeker cleared his throat. Then, "If you're up for it, there's, ah, something here. You can talk to a few people for us. A college kid is missing, a Somali from the Cities. His roommate doesn't know where he is, didn't come in last night. That's unusual for him. This is a very good student, very nice guy, not some whackdoodle muslim. Everybody agrees. Unless he's hiding it well."

That was how they got us every time. "So when was he last seen?"

"By the roommate, maybe eight or nine that night. A friend from Minneapolis came to visit, and they went out."

Bleeker had to white knuckle the steering wheel on a patch of unplowed road, thick with freeze, to keep all four wheels down. "That's not even a full night. What's the big deal?"

"This guy didn't have a car. His friend did. The way the roommate described it, we think it's the car Erik and Cindy stopped."

Bleeker's mouth went dry and he swallowed, got stuck, coughed. Heard the voice on talk radio say, "…losing what makes our country so great, and I don't want to live in that sort of America. I want it like it's always been."

It wasn't right. You didn't put the dead cop's lover on the case. You just didn't. Were they that hard up for people who knew how to talk to the Africans? Hell, Bleeker didn't even know the language except bits and pieces. He'd only learned the etiquette and culture by trouncing all over it, making every possible mistake until a Somali man who worked at a local soy processing plant had taken the time to explain it to him over a few weird dishes at a tiny Somali restaurant above an import shop downtown Bleeker had known nothing about. Since then, Bleeker had said the right things, showed the proper respect, and started getting some answers. And that made him the police department's "expert".