“Right. Check something out. Good idea. Me, too, I need to check something out, too. Maybe it’s the same thing.”

She turned to look at him. “I doubt it,” she said after a moment.

“Maybe not. Of course, there’s only one way to know, right?” He drove on, his frustration building through the silence. “So, are you gonna talk to me about that shit back there? We are partners, after all, right?”

She said nothing.

“Look, I know I’m the new guy, but how are you gonna know if I can contribute if you won’t even talk to me?”

“Fine,” she said, her tone challenging. “Why don’t you tell me about the scene back there?”

“Is this some sort of a test?”

“Yeah, it’s a test.”

“That’s fucked up. I don’t have to prove shit to you.”

“Suit yourself.” She lapsed back into silence.

He drove on, going over the scene in his head. He was determined not to give her the satisfaction of rising to her bait. Seventy-five percent clear rate or not, who the fuck was she? “McAfee was wrong about one thing,” he said after a while, trying to sound conversational.

She looked at him but said nothing.

“Whoever did that wasn’t just settling a score. It wasn’t some simple beef with the North End boys, or even with the Salvadorans in MS- 13.”

“What makes you so sure?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Too messy. Too involved. If the wops or a rival mick gang felt disrespected or was settling a score it would’ve been cleaner. They would’ve taken him out quickly and gotten the hell away. Double tap to the head-like they did to Bags-or maybe even a drive-by when he was out in the open. No way they’d spend the kind of time they needed to do the damage we saw back there. And if MS-13 wanted to make a point, they would have used machetes on him. It’s their thing.”

She shrugged, as though the observations were beneath acknowledgment.