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paper,” Callahan pointed out, “and leave the knife.” He sighed again. “Not that it would’ve mattered. Whoever left this probably didn’t leave prints. We wouldn’t’ve found anything—at which point I would’ve called you back, and told you to be careful.”
    “Be careful,” Jenn repeated.
    “And to give us a call if you see anyone or anything suspicious.”
    “That’s it,” Jenn said. “Seriously. That’s all you can do? I mean, thank God no one was here—”
    “Whoever did this probably waited until he was sure that no one was here.”
    “Probably?”
    “Lookit, for a threat this vague—” he started.
    She interrupted, reading from the note,
“Next note gets pinned to your face
is vague?”
    “Yeah, it is,” he said. “Whose face? There’s no mention of the assemblywoman. Maybe whoever wrote this was targeting the dentist down the hall and got the suite number mixed up.”
    “Her name is clearly on the door,” Jenn pointed out.
    “Okay,” he said. “So when’s this pinning going to take place? Today? Tomorrow? Two months from now? Maybe you want us to post a guard in the hall, 24/7 … ? Of course, if we post a guard in the hallway of everyone in this city who’s received a threat from some crackpot, we’ll need to hire at least two million more uniformedofficers. You might want to check with your boss, see if she thinks she can’t find the funding to make
that
happen. Hey, I know, she could cut ammunition
completely
out of the budget, outfit both the Staties and the NYPD with swords, get one of those whetting stones for each department and boom—we’re done.”
    Jenn had had enough. “Are you?” she asked sharply. “Done? Because Assemblywoman Bonavita was fact-finding, okay? She asked a simple question—does the State of New York really need to spend
that
much money on ammunition? She had no idea that police training was constant and required that many bullets, and when she found out, she agreed—completely and absolutely—that this was
not
a line item that could be cut or even marginally reduced. She’s been vocal—throughout her campaign—about her support of New York’s need for additional first responders, both in the police and fire departments, and about the
supreme
necessity of giving them the supplies and equipment required for them to do their jobs. Which is what
you
should be doing—your job. Whether or not you think that the assemblywoman asked a stupid question, whether or not you believe that questions that upset the status quo should never be asked at all, whether you voted for Maria or for the idiot, I don’t care. Check it, Detective, at the door, and tell me what I need to do to keep my boss and my staff safe from
crackpots
who like to play with knives.”
    She’d stunned him into silence. Not so Ron and Gene, who’d expected her to blow—having seen it happen many times before. And oh, good, Hank the UPS man was standing in the open doorway, a package in his hands, grinning his handsome ass off. Gene went to sign for it, but he took his sweet time as they all just stood there, in her post-outburst silence, waiting to see what would happen next.
    The detective was looking around—at the campaign posters that still adorned the walls, at the big whiteboard that they used tokeep track of all of Maria’s special projects, at the clutter atop Jenn’s desk, at the radiator that clunked and hissed and made the office far, far too warm, and finally at her.
    At her shoes, at her legs, at her dress, at the necklace she wore at her throat, and finally at her face.
    And it was only then, as he met her eyes, that Detective Callahan laughed.
    And it wasn’t a nasty, you’ve-crossed-the-line-bitch laugh. It was genuinely amused—as if the mean, bored robot cop had been replaced by a real human boy.
    And when he finished laughing, he was still smiling, and that smile, with the accompanying warmth in his eyes, further transformed him, and he was no longer