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“Address?”
    “603 Calle de Peru.”
    Now he remembered. He had responded to a call at this kid’s house last winter. This Vincent had called 911 when his little brother had some sort of coughing attack. Yeah, that was it. The little guy had cystic fibrosis.
    The mother had left the older brother in charge while she was working. But, to her credit, Danny remembered, she’d come running when her son phoned her. She was the one who told Vincent to call the police while she was on her way. The deputy and the mother had arrived at the tiny bungalow at about the same time. It had been raining. He recalled the sound of the heavy tropical raindrops falling on the tin roof, persistent background noise for the younger boy’s racking cough.
    The call had ended with a ride to the hospital emergency room, where the sheriff’s deputy had left the family of three. Danny was ashamed now that he had never followed up to see how they had made out. But, as he recalled it, that was the night before Colleen gave birth to Robbie. Yeah, he remembered clearly now. Looking at his healthy baby in the nursery bassinet and saying a silent prayer that his tiny son would never have to go through the agony that the little Bayler boy had gone through the night before.
    Now, the deputy regarded Vincent’s solemn face with respect and compassion.
    For an eleven-year-old kid, Vincent had a lot of responsibility. It couldn’t be easy having a brother as sick as that. Plus, there didn’t seem to be any father around. There was an air of sadness about the boy. Too sad and too serious for a young kid.
    Deputy Gregg could not know that Vincent was trying with all his might to keep the solemn expression on his freckled face as he answered the officer’s questions. He recounted how he had discovered the hand and then flagged down a jogger and asked him to find a telephone and call the police. The deputy noticed that the boy told his story with his fists clenched and stuffed into the pockets of his baggy shorts. But he couldn’t see that Vincent’s left palm was closed around the ruby ring the boy had twisted and pried from the severed hand before he called for help.

CHAPTER 6
    Showered, dressed, and made up, Cassie drove her Ford Explorer through the guardhouse and clicked her battery-powered opener to raise the security gates. On the way out to Biscayne Boulevard, she stopped for gas at the Texaco station that also served as a mini–grocery store. A working girl’s best friend, the convenience store had milk, juice, bread, snack food; it even stocked a decent wine selection. Cassie didn’t like to recall how many times she had stopped on her way home after a long day and picked up a bottle of Kendall-Jackson Merlot knowing that it would keep her company for the rest of the evening.
    As she inserted the nozzle into the gas tank, she thought with a pang about why she’d chosen this vehicle from the used-car lot. She had purchased the gold-colored SUV when she arrived in Miami because it was relatively cheap and would have space for the gear for all the things she told herself it would be great to take up. Scuba diving, sailing, golfing, weekend trips to the Keys. Things that Cassie hoped would lure Hannahdown to visit. Activities and trips that hadn’t materialized. Hannah had refused to come down. Cassie hadn’t had the desire to follow through on the planned activities on her own.
    “I’ll take a lottery ticket, Manuel,” she said as she paid the cashier.
    “You feel lucky, señora?” The cashier smiled as he handed her the ticket.
    “Yes, Manuel, so lucky. You wouldn’t believe how lucky I feel.” She tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
    At the beginning of the five-mile drive south from her condo to the office, Cassie passed a country club, a few churches, and a couple of shopping centers. Then the neighborhood took a decided turn for the worse as she drove by sleazy, no-tell motels. It wasn’t that Washington didn’t have any