"Any chance someone in the car is this Harrington?"

"Don't know yet. Ran a 10-27 on both, but so far no match on driver's licenses."

"Speculation?" I asked as we stepped up to the driver's door.

"Looks like a murder-suicide."

"Let's keep our fingers crossed that we find a note." Not to be macabre, but one could only hope. A murder-suicide was a closed case. It meant there wasn't a killer on the loose. Time was not of the essence.

I looked into the window, seeing two figures shrouded in shadows cast from the police spotlights behind them.

The driver, a white male, was slumped across the center console, his left arm hung down at his side, his fingertips extended toward the floorboard, where I saw a black semi-auto and below that a square of white paper, the note I hoped. The back of the man's head seemed oddly shaped, as though someone had taken a club and caved in his skull. A fifteen thousand candlepower light beam from my Stinger told me I was looking at the exit wound. "Jesus," I said, aiming the flashlight upward. Bits of flesh, hair, and skull were spattered on the headrest and headliner of the car.

It didn't matter how long I worked Homicide, each time I saw a body ravaged by violence, I was always besieged with a helpless feeling, wondering what would have happened if a patrol car had taken a right instead of a left. What if they'd shone their spotlight down a particular street, seen the car parked... what if...

No use going there, I thought, as I turned my attention to the female. From where I stood, I couldn't see her face, and I walked to the other side of the car and peered in, and saw the dark bloodstain on the chest of her lavender sweater, from the looks of it, expensive cashmere.

As I aimed my flashlight, my gaze followed the light beam up to her blood-spattered face to her full lips with a coating of bright pink lipstick, her blond hair, and then her brown eyes, wide open in an unseeing stare. A myriad of emotions swept through me. My pulse seemed to slow in my veins. "Oh my God," I whispered.

"What's wrong?" Rocky asked.

I took a step back as I made the connection between the woman and the name of the registered owner of the car. "I know her."

"You do?"

I nodded, swallowed past a lump in my throat. "I, um, haven't seen her in a couple of years..." Even now her face brought back a lot of memories, and with it hurt, bewilderment... how could I have been so wrong?

"Who is it?"

Little Miss Perfect. The name came unbidden and I felt a stab of guilt at even thinking it at a moment like this. Aloud I said, "Eve Tremayne. She... was a college friend. Genevieve is her grandmother, I believe." I knew her simply as "Gran."

Rocky was quiet a moment, then said, "I'm sorry."

"We weren't close," I lied. To remember otherwise hurt too much, and I forced myself back to the interior of the car, looking for missed clues, anything that would explain this tragedy. It didn't matter what I felt about her, what our relationship was -- that we had been best friends. What mattered was that she had been murdered, and for the time being, I was responsible for her. I was a cop. What had happened was in the past and I could deal with it... my gaze caught on a square of white on Eve's lap beneath her right hand. I bent down to get a better view, wondering if it was a suicide note.

"Find something?"

"Maybe." On closer inspection I realized it was only a facial tissue with the perfect lip impression in bright pink, her favorite color. The box of tissues it had come from was wedged beneath the driver's body in the center console. And that's when it struck me how odd this was. "If someone's going to blow you away," I said, thinking of Eve and our last parting -- my anger and hurt -- her nonchalance while she applied her lipstick as she stared at me over her makeup mirror... "I'd think the tensions would be a little too high to worry about appearances."

"Your point being?"

"Would she take the time to apply lipstick if she was about to be killed?"

"Well, I wouldn't," Rocky said, aiming his flashlight at her lips, "but only because that shade doesn't go with my outfit."

I smiled, knowing he was trying to cheer me in the only way he knew how. "Yeah," I said, nodding at the front of his coat. "It's hard to find a color that goes with aged mustard."

"That's chartreuse to you." He looked down, smoothing out his lapel. "What the hell color's chartreuse anyways?"

"About the same color as crawdad guts."

"That'll teach me to use words I can't spell," he said as we worked our way around the car again, trying to see if there was anything we'd overlooked. The light moment didn't last, however, because I couldn't stop the unbidden memory of the last time I'd seen Eve -- not something I wanted to replay. And with that thought came my father's constant words: "Why can't you be more like her?"

I hated that he had compared me to Eve. Everyone idolized her. She fed the homeless, helped out at the shelters, gave to her church.

To my father -- and everyone else -- Eve had been perfect, and what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. But I knew...

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