She had it pulled back and wrapped in some sort of knot at her nape- a twist, he thought his sisters called it. He wondered how long it was and whether he’d ever see it hanging loose. The moment she turned her head to look at him, he caught his breath. Her eyes, which had been hidden by her sunglasses earlier, were a pure grass green, and tilted at the edges, like a cat’s. She was one hell of a good-looking woman, although not pretty in the insipid tradition preferred by fashion these days. Her mouth was a little too wide, her lips a bit too full to be conventional. She reminded him vaguely of that red-haired movie actress whose name he could never recall.

“Detective Casey will be joining us here at the Southwest District,” the captain told Cruz. “She’s being transferred in.”

Silently wondering how that information was supposed to affect him, Cruz quizzed, “What district are you transferring from?”

“The Northeast.” She stared at him steadily. “Know anybody there?”

He thought for a moment then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

The room was silent for a moment, before Captain Ritter cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t want to tie you up the rest of the day, Detective Martinez, so I’ll get right to the point. I wanted to talk to you about that string of drive-by shootings you’ve been working on.”

Cruz nodded. “I think some were the work of rival gangs establishing turf, and others were probably retaliatory shootings. Of course, I don’t have much yet. The cases just recently got dropped in my lap.”

“I had a meeting with the police commissioner yesterday,” Ritter informed them. “The department has reason to believe that there’s a large-scale supplier who’s putting automatic assault weapons in the hands of these kids. There have been several other cases recently in which similar guns have been involved. Homicides, robberies, that attempted bank holdup at the First National?” His tone questioned whether Cruz had heard of it. He inclined his head, indicating he had. “We’ve seen more assault weapons used in crimes in the last few months than in the entire previous year.”