I WAS STILL SAVORING the discovery of the knife when my cell phone rang. It was Chief Anthony Tracchio, and his voice was unusually loud.

  “What is it, Tony?”

  “I need the two of you in my office, pronto.”

  After a short volley of useless quibble, he hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, Conklin and I walked into Tracchio’s wood-paneled corner suite and saw two well-known people seated in the leather armchairs. Former governor Connor Hume Campion’s face looked swollen with rage, and his much younger wife, Valentina, appeared heavily sedated.

  The front page of the Sunday Chronicle was on Tracchio’s desk. I could read the headline upside down and from ten feet away: SUSPECT QUESTIONED IN CAMPION DISAPPEARANCE.

  Cindy hadn’t waited for my quote, damn it.

  What the hell had she written?

  Tracchio patted his Vitalis comb-over and introduced us to the parents of the missing boy as Conklin and I dragged chairs up to his massive desk. Connor Campion acknowledged us with a hard stare. “I had to read this in the newspaper?” he said to me. “That my son died in a whorehouse?”

  I flushed, then said, “If we’d had anything solid, Mr. Campion, we would have made sure you knew first. But all we have is an anonymous tip tha............