When he handed Eric his coffee, John felt only marginally better. He’d showered—a cold one designed to knock the Ava from his brain—and slept for all of an hour and a half before he had to head back in to the precinct.

He felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket and pulled it out. Lucia’s name showed on the screen. He hit the side button to lock the screen and slid the phone back into his pocket. It wasn’t that he minded talking to Lucia. They were on speaking terms.

He just needed to wait until his mind wasn’t so crowded with the case he was working so he could focus.

“Everyone else make it back?” John looked around the room.

Eric nodded. “Rhys and Mason are on their way up. Nate and Zaragoza caught a homicide. Guy was mugged and left in an alley. No witnesses or video, so they’ll get crime scene on it and then come back to get into this with us, if they can.”

They spent the next hour poring over tips that had come in on the precinct tip line. There wasn’t anything that looked like it would lead to more than a waste of time, but they had to chase the threads to be sure.

John looked up from his desk when Erica Cross, one of their technicians in the city’s somewhat small crime lab entered. She was a short African-American woman and not someone you’d notice on the street, but she was sharp as hell. Most people figured that out within a few minutes of talking to her. She followed every rule by the book and often worked miracles with the limited budget they had for the city’s lab.

Rhys was the first to speak. “What have you got, Erica?”

Eric, John, Rhys and Mason all stood, watching Erica as she stopped in the walkway between the cubicles.

“The hair’s not real.” She held up photos with evidence labels on them—blown up shots of the hair samples they’d found at the latest two jewelry store scenes.

“Hair that’s been dyed these bright punk colors can look pretty fake. I think the tech that collected this at the scene probably didn’t think anything of it, but I put it under the scope and it’s synthetic. A cheap wig.”

“Anything we can trace?” John asked. Not that he expected the answer to be yes, but sometimes you had to ask the question, even when you knew the answer.

“Nope. You can get it at any costume store, a lot of the big chain stores, a hundred stores online—”

“I get it,” John said, putting a hand up to stop her.

“Anything else?” Rhys asked.

Erica shook her head. “We’re going through the footage from the scene. Nothing we didn’t know. Officer Hall went in and was shot immediately. Like the witness said, the suspects started fighting right away. The one who shot Hall aimed the gun to fire another shot, but one of the other perps shoved him away and the shot misfired. We’ve got that bullet and the casing, but so far nothing is turning up in any of the databases.”

So their firearm wasn’t used in any crimes other than this one. At least no other crimes in a jurisdiction that would enter the information into one of the databases they relied on. Or it had been used, but the information wasn’t entered into the system yet.

They’d been told by the witness that the suspects began to argue as soon as the one had shot Officer Hall. They’d left, still shouting at each other, one guy practically dragging the shooter out the door.

Erica left, and the four detectives looked at each other. They went to the conference room and took seats, knowing without needing to say anything that they needed to pore through the evidence again.

John ran his hands down his face. “All right, we know these guys are covering anywhere that might have tattoos or piercings. They have fake dyed hair sticking out of their masks. We’ve been assuming they’re goths or punks or whatever because of their clothes and the hair color, but what if that’s all fake?”

Rhys nodded. “It ups the organization level of these guys a little. I mean, they not only covered everything, they purposefully left fake clues, they’re only hitting stores that won’t have a guard and that are less likely to have high-quality or hidden security cameras.”

“I feel like we just found out Santa’s not real,” Eric said.

Connie entered the room, carrying a tray of sandwiches. “Got food. I saw Erica in the hallway. She told me about the hairs.”

The young officer set down the tray and grabbed a sandwich for himself, then looked up like maybe he’d done something wrong by assuming he was staying.

Eric laughed and slid a chair closer to him. “Sit.”

Connie gave a nod and sat, looking around the table. John remembered when he’d been like that. Glad for any time he was able to spend in Major Crimes. He still loved his job a lot of the time, but cases like this got to him. The ones they couldn’t close stayed with him. That feeling when you weren’t able to get justice for a victim never went away. It ate at you day in and day out.

This was fast looking like it might be one of those cases, and the fact it involved a cop getting shot meant not closing it would burn even more.

Eric gestured to Connie. “You know Officer Hall?”

Connie’s face fell, and he nodded. “Our shifts overlap a few days a week, so I see him coming and going in the locker room sometimes. He spotted me at the gym a couple of times, too. He’s a good guy. Has a couple of cute kids he’s always bragging on.”

They all nodded as they ate. No one said anything, but they didn’t need to. It was unspoken that they’d move heaven and hell to get justice for Hall. When a victim was a cop, everything cranked up a level. Knowing it was a cop with kids, a young guy just on the force, really sucked. There were no more eloquent words for it. It just plain sucked.

Gerald Osborn entered. “I smell food.”

Eric pushed the sandwiches toward the end of the table where Gerald stood. “You have to work for it.”

Gerald nodded and sat as he grabbed one of the hot sandwiches from the deli around the corner.

“I heard we have fake hair.” Gerald’s words were spoken around a mouthful of food.

“Is there anyone Erica didn’t tell?” Eric wondered.

John snorted. “As far as she’s concerned, she just gave us our first lead in a week.”

“Not far from the truth,” Rhys said.

John couldn’t argue with that.

Zaragoza poked her head into the room. “Hey guys, Nate wanted me to see if you need anything. He’s going through missing persons reports for our victim in the alley. Said I should see what you need.”

With a body found in an alley, it takes time just to make an ID, and there often aren’t a whole lot of friends and family to interview. It was the nature of the thing. People who lived on the streets without a permanent address turned up in alleys. It didn’t mean they didn’t deserve just as much attention from the Major Crimes division to get justice for them, but it meant they often didn’t have leads to run down right away.

“Heard it was a mugging gone wrong?”

Zaragoza nodded, and John could tell she was thinking. She was the type of person who thought before she spoke. It would serve her well in their job.

“Young guy, wallet was there but cards and license and money are gone. Doesn’t look like he had any reason to be in the alley other than a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. No track marks or anything. Doesn’t have the look of a coke head. He was in nice clothes. Maybe we’ll find out different, but I bet he was cutting through on the way to a bar or something, and someone jumped him. He fought back and got a bullet for his trouble.”

“Here,” he said, pushing a sandwich her way. “Eat while you can. This is your first homicide, right?”

She took the sandwich and sat in an empty chair next to him, unwrapping the waxed paper that surrounded it.

“Don’t rush anything,” John said, “and stay focused on the victim. Remember that you’re doing all this for him, for his justice, not for yourself or your career or any of that.”

She nodded, listening as she chewed. Officers who moved up from patrol already knew one of the most important lessons in policing; eat while you can, when you can.

“Keep in touch with your ADA about the case and don’t be afraid to reach out and ask them if you have questions about your case or your evidence. Assistant district attorneys are there to help you out. They want a case to stick, so don’t be afraid to use them. Nate’s got good experience though too, so he’ll help you through this.”

She was nodding again when the conference room door opened, and Nate stuck his head in. “Marisol, we’ve got a missing persons filed on a guy matching our description.”

Zaragoza shoved the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and balled up the wrapper, tossing it in the can.

John was envious. Getting an ID on their victim so quickly was a great break in their case. He’d kill for a break in the jewelry store case right now.