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schedule that accommodated someone else. It was a chance to get back to a life as free and alone as Tommy Sanchez’s. All he had to do was nothing—just let enough time pass.
    When he finally dialed a number, it was not to Records but to the Organized Crime Unit, an outfit he’d served in several years ago before coming to Homicide. The voice that answered gave him that peculiar feeling of stepping back to a place he had left long ago, and finding that not only was everyone else the same, but so was their view of him.
    “Hello, Suzy—this is Gabe Wager.”
    “Gabe! I mean Sergeant Wager—how are you?”
    “Fine. How are things over there?”
    “Oh, golly, don’t ask. It’s budget time again—you know what that means.”
    “I sure do.” And he also knew of the pressures the new city administration had brought for reorganizing the unit. That would make the budget narrative and its justifications all the more important. “Is Sergeant Johnston in?”
    “Sure—just a minute.”
    Which was about how long it took before he heard the equally familiar voice, “Gabe! How’s it going? Hey, what about the Gold? Six and one and a win over the Outlaws! That’s playoffs, man!”
    Things had not changed much at all, and Wager slipped into his familiar reply: “That’s fine, Ed. It sure is.”
    “It really makes a difference to have a decent line, doesn’t it? Gives the quarterback all day to throw.”
    “Right.” Wager could still remember being called one of the front four, while Johnston spoke of himself as the quarterback. Sonnenberg, the unit commander, had been the coach. They were all supposed to go out and score against the bad guys. “What I called about, Ed—”
    “And the running! Jesus, the running’s really something this year!”
    “Right, it’s real good. Ed, do you have anything on a couple of kids named Sanchez? John and James. Brothers—late teens, early twenties, maybe. They work rodeo and probably do some ranching. Hired hands, most likely.”
    “Rodeo? I don’t think we’ve got a thing on rodeo. What kind of ranch work do they do?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Does it have to do with horses? Track betting? We got a Sanchez who’s doing a little off-track action.”
    “What’s his first name?”
    “Emory. He’s got a place out in Lakewood.”
    “That doesn’t sound like it.”
    “Well, if I knew the crime category you wanted, I could look it up faster. That’s how we reference our files now, by crime category: arson, embezzlement, extortion, fraud, gambling—”
    “Try anything to do with horses and cows.”
    “Cows? They race cows now?”
    “Ranches sell cow meat. Maybe there’s something going on there.”
    “You usually find that with the processors, Gabe. We’ve got that listed under three headings: Fraud, Quality, and Weights and Measures.”
    “I’d appreciate a search, Ed.”
    “It’s going to take a while. That’s a lot of categories to cover. You have any other names? We can run the names through real quick.”
    “Just John and James Sanchez.”
    “Sanchez, John.” Sergeant Johnston wrote it down. “Sanchez, James. I’ll start with them. But like I say, it’s going to take a while. We got budget hearing coming up and Suzy’s all tied up in that.”
    “I understand.”
    “You’re still over in Homicide?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll let you know what we find.”
    He thanked Johnston and thumbed his way through the directory of state offices. Ed was right—if the boys’ names weren’t on file somewhere, there was damned little to go on. DPD had the state’s largest collection of contact cards, and he already knew they weren’t there. And though there were ten million ways to reference and cross-reference material, an office only had time and space for a few methods, so that meant calling a lot of offices. The computer was supposed to improve on that, and it had in a few areas. But for some reason, Wager often found himself working outside those