It was something about being on a homicide investigation. Some odd combination of excitement and terror that didn’t make any sense but kept following him, just as it did a few years back when he left his uniform behind and started working narcotics.

He turned the corner and gazed up the tree-lined street. It looked like the murder had occurred in the middle of the block in what appeared to be a near-empty parking lot. Four patrol units had barricaded the street with their cars. While two cops were stringing crime-scene tape from tree to tree, another five were asking onlookers to back down and move to the corner on Hollywood Boulevard.

You’ll see why it’s so fucked up when you get there . . .

It seemed more than odd that so many cops had arrived on foot this quickly. The number of bicycles parked on the sidewalk didn’t fit either. But as Matt cleared the trees and glanced across the street, he caught the sign in the storefront and knew in an instant why Grace had been so rattled.

It was an LAPD community station.

The murder had been committed in a parking lot directly across the street and within fifty yards of the station’s glass doors. The only barrier between the two locations was a wrought-iron fence about six feet high and a hedge bordering the parking lot. Matt read the sign painted beneath the LAPD logo on the storefront window.

Because We Care.

If you couldn’t find a safe spot outside a police station in Los Angeles, where could you?

He tried to let the thought go, but still, this was the City of Angels, and the answer had a certain sting to it. One that he knew would make the late-night news and embarrass the department.

He turned away and spotted a cop with a clipboard standing by the entrance to the parking lot. Digging his badge out of his pocket, he signed in, then ducked beneath the yellow crime-scene tape. A photographer was already on scene, ripping off rapid-fire shots of a black SUV, the white-hot light from his flash unit pulsating all over the vehicle and what was obviously ground zero. The truck from the Scientific Investigation Division was already here as well. Large blue tarps were being stretched across the perimeter to block the scene from the television cameras that were beginning to assemble on the corner.

When Matt heard someone call out his name, he turned back and saw his new partner hurrying toward him.

“You think it’s him?” Cabrera said with his eyes locked on the SUV.

Matt shrugged. “Who?”

“The stickup guy. The three-piece bandit. You think he finally shot somebody?”

“It’s a little soon, isn’t it?”

“I’m just saying . . .”

Matt gave him a look. “I know exactly what you’re saying. We just got here, Cabrera. Who the hell knows?”

It was a bad exchange for a first exchange with a new partner, and Matt knew it. He turned back to the SUV, his heart pounding in his chest as he stepped around the shell casings littering the asphalt. There was something unusual about them but it didn’t cut through, the condition of the SUV too mesmerizing. It looked like every window in the vehicle had been shot out. Three rounds had pierced the driver’s-side door. Still, he couldn’t see who was inside the car. When he finally got close enough to ease his head through the window, he got the view he had been looking for in all its harshness, then flinched before he could catch himself.

What was left of the victim appeared to be stretched across the front seats on its back. In spite of the multiple gunshot wounds to the face, chest, and shoulders, in spite of the blood splashed all over the body and interior of the car, in spite of the blanket of shattered glass the corpse was wearing from head to toe, Matt’s best guess was that the victim underneath was male. Still, it was only a guess.

He felt Cabrera move in beside him and thought he heard his partner sigh as he got his look and took the blow.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said in a low voice.

Cabrera glanced at him, then back at the dead body. “Sorry for what?”

“What I did back there. What I said.”

“Forget it,” Cabrera said.

Matt nodded, his eyes fixed on the corpse.