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attractive personality, but the three of us do have a history.”
    She followed a raindrop down the windowpane with her finger. “Your pal Downing has had an interesting career in homicide, you know.”
    â€œWell, I guess so. Especially if he’s been tracking the Primenyl killer all these years.”
    She turned suddenly. “That’s what he told you?”
    â€œBrenna, help me out here. What am I supposed to know but obviously don’t?”
    At Molly’s desk, Brenna shrugged into her coffee-stained oxford shirt and started to button it. When she finished, she rolled the cuffs one, two, three times until her hands finally peeked out of the sleeves.
    â€œPrimenyl was a badly compromised investigation,” she said, sipping from the same glass of chardonnay she had nursed through dinner. “All kinds of problems. Downing was one of the best product-tampering investigators in the country. That’s why he got to lead the task force even though the feds were involved. But something went way wrong for him on Primenyl.”
    Christensen pulled his faded Pitt sweatshirt over his head.
    â€œHe made some big mistakes early on, senseless mistakes,” she said. “Word is the investigation never recovered.”
    â€œI don’t follow. What kind of mistakes?”
    â€œTwo things, but I don’t remember all the specifics. First there was that business about the lot numbers. The killer apparently bought a bunch of bottles from the same shipment, probably off the same store shelf, then took them home, loaded them with bad capsules, and delivered them to a half a dozen other stores. If Downing had spotted the matching lot numbers on the first few tainted bottles, they might have identified Primenyl as the poison source three days earlier. Product-tampering 101, but Downing overlooked it.”
    Christensen recalled a vivid image from the recent newspaper stories about the enduring mystery of Primenyl.
    â€œDid you read the big tenth anniversary piece the
Press
ran on Primenyl a couple weeks back?” he asked. “It said it was like a neurologist looking at a brain scan and missing a tumor the size of a baseball. That was Downing?”
    Brenna nodded. “Downing and company did identify Primenyl as the source, but only after the coroner kept finding undigested capsules—”
    â€œThey got the bottles off store shelves in record time or something, didn’t they?”
    â€œOnce they figured it out,” she said. “But that didn’t make up for the time they wasted. Or help the four people who died during the delay.”
    â€œWhoa.”
    â€œDowning booted the big one, plain and simple,” she said. “No one ever really figured out why.”
    â€œAny theories?”
    Brenna shook her head. “It was a monster case—emotional, lots of pressure. Who knows? Maybe rage overtook reason.”
    How much did she really know? Time for a quiz. “They ever get close to a suspect?”
    â€œI’ve only heard it thirdhand.” She finished the last of her wine.
    â€œHeard what?”
    â€œThey built a strong circumstantial case within a week of the first death, but Downing made some rookie error on the search warrant. They found some pretty incriminating stuff during the search, but Dagnolo wouldn’t touch it. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that. Can you imagine the publicity if the Primenyl charges got kicked on a technicality?”
    She sifted the clothes pile on his desk and picked out her panties. “The one case they couldn’t afford to screw up,” she said. “Biggest damn case they ever handled.”
    Now Christensen was at the window, peering across the backyard and down the driveway to the street. He glanced at his watch as he clasped it around his wrist. Melissa was due home from her date ten minutes ago.
    â€œSo, what did they find?”
    â€œA typewritten list.”
    â€œOf