The Kill Clause

Gregg Hurwitz

1

WHEN BEAR CAME to tell him that Ginny’s body had been found raped and dismembered in a creek six miles from his house, that her remains had required three biohazard bags to depart the scene, that they were currently sprawled on a pathologist’s slab awaiting further probing, Tim’s first reaction was not what he would have expected of himself. He went ice cold. There was no grief-grief, he’d learn, takes perspective, recollection, time to unfurl. There was just the news slapping him, dense and jarring like face pain. And, inexplicably, there was embarrassment, though for whom or what, he was not sure. The heel of his hand lowered, searching out the butt of his Smith amp; Wesson, which of course he wasn’t wearing at home at 6:37 in the evening.

To his right Dray fell to her knees, one hand clutching the door frame, fingers curling between the jamb and hinges as if seeking pain. Beneath the razor edge of blond hair, sweat sparkled on the band of her neck.

For an instant everything was frozen. Rain-heavy February air. The draft guttering the seven candles on the pink-and-white-frosted birthday cake that Judy Hartley held poised for revelation in the living room. Bear’s boots, distressingly carrying the crime-scene mud, blotting the aggregate porch, the pebbles of which Tim had meticulously smoothed on his hands and knees last fall with a square trowel.

Bear said, “Maybe you want to sit down.” His eyes held the same guilt and attempted empathy Tim himself had used in countless situations, and Tim hated him unjustly for it. The anger dissolved quickly, leaving behind a dizzying emptiness.

The small gathering in the living room, mirroring the dread emanating from the hushed doorway conversation, gave off a breath-held tension. One of the little girls resumed recounting Harry Potter Quid-ditch rules and was hushed violently. A mother leaned over and blew out the candles Dray had lit in eager anticipation after the knock on the front door.

“I thought you were her,” Dray said. “I just finished frosting her…” Her voice wavered hard.

Hearing her, Tim registered an aching remorse that he’d pressed Bear so hard for details right here at the door. His only way to grasp the information had been to try to contain it in questions and facts, to muscle it into pieces small enough for him to digest. Now that he’d taken it in, he had too much of it. But he’d knocked on enough doors himself-as had Dray-to know that it would have been only a matter of time until they’d known it all anyway. Better to wade in fast and steady and brace against the cold, because the chill wasn’t going to leave their bones anytime soon, or maybe ever.

“Andrea,” he said. His trembling hand felt the air, searching for her shoulder and not finding it. He couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as turn his head.

Dray bent her head and started to weep. The sound was one Tim had never heard. Inside, one of Ginny’s schoolmates matched her crying-confused, instinctive mimicry.

Bear crouched, both knees cracking, his form broad but huddled on the porch, his nylon raid jacket sweeping low like a cape. The yellow lettering, pale and faded, announced U.S. DEPUTY MARSHAL in case someone cared. “Darlin’, hold on there,” he said. “Hold on.”

His immense hands encircled her biceps-no small feat-and drew her in so her face pressed against his chest. Her hands clawed the air, as if afraid to set down on something for fear of what they might do.

He raised his head sheepishly. “We’re gonna need you to…”

Tim reached down, stroked his wife’s head. “I’ll go.”

The three-foot tires of Bear’s chipped-silver Dodge Ram hiccupped over seams on the roadway, shifting the broken-glass dread in Tim’s gut.

Composed of twelve square miles of houses and tree-lined streets about fifty miles northwest of downtown L.A., Moorpark was renowned for little more than the fact that it housed the state’s largest concentration of law-enforcement residents. It was a low-rent country club for the straight arrows, a post-shift refuge from the streets of the off-kilter city they probed and fought for most of their waking hours. Moorpark radiated an artificial fifties-TV-show feel-no tattoo parlors, no homeless people, no drive-bys. A Secret Service agent, two FBI families, and a postal inspector lived on Tim and Dray’s cul-de-sac. Burglary, in Moorpark, was a zero-growth industry.

Bear stared dead ahead at the yellow reflectors lining the center of the road, each one materializing, then floating downward in the darkness. He’d forgone his usual slouch, driving attentively, seeming grateful for something to do.

Tim sifted through the mound of remaining questions and tried to find one to serve as a starting point. “Why did you…why were you there? Not exactly a federal case.”

“Sheriff’s department took prints from her hand…”

From her hand. A separate entity. Not from her. Through his sickening horror, Tim wondered which of the three bags had carried away her hand, her arm, her torso. One of Bear’s knuckles was smudged with dried mud.

“…the face was tough, I guess. Jesus, Rack, I’m sorry.” Bear heaved a sigh that bounced off the dash and came back at Tim in the passenger seat. “Anyways, Bill Fowler was in the handling unit. He firmed the ID-” He stopped, catching himself, then reworded. “He recognized Ginny. Put in a call to me, since he knows how I am with you and Dray.”

“Why didn’t he do the advise next of kin? He was Dray’s first partner out of the academy. He just ate barbecue at our house last month.” Tim’s voice rose, grew accusatory. In its heightened pitch he recognized his desperate need to lay blame.

“Some people aren’t cut out for telling parents that-” Bear laid off the rest of the sentence, evidently finding it as displeasing as Tim did.

The truck exited and hammered over bumps in the off-ramp, making them bounce in their seats.

Tim exhaled hard, trying to rid himself of the blackness that had filled his body, cruelly and methodically, somewhere between the porch and now. “I’m glad it was you that came.” His voice sounded far away. It betrayed little of the chaos he was fighting to control, to categorize. “Leads?”

“Distinctive tire imprints heading out of the creek’s slope. It was pretty muddy. The deputies are on it. I didn’t really…that’s not really where my head was at.” Bear’s stubble glimmered with dried sweat. His kind, too-wide features looked hopelessly weary.

Tim flashed on him setting Ginny up on his shoulders at Disneyland last June, hoisting her fifty-three pounds like a bag of feathers. Bear was orphaned young, never married. The Rackleys were, for all intents and purposes, his surrogate family.

Tim had investigated warrants with Bear for three years on the Escape Team out of the district office downtown, ever since Tim’s eleven-year stint in the Army Rangers. They also served together on the Arrest Response Team, the Marshals’ SWAT-like tactical strike force that kicked doors and hooked and hauled as many of the twenty-five hundred federal fugitives hidden in the sprawling L.A. metropolis as they could get cuffs on.

Though still fifteen years from the mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven, Bear had recently begun referring to the date grudgingly, as if it were imminent. To ensure he’d have some conflict in his life after retirement, Bear had completed night law school at the South West Los Angeles Legal Training Academy and, after failing the bar twice, had finally wrung a pass out of it last July. He’d had Chance Andrews-a judge he used to work court duty for regularly-swear him in at Federal downtown, and he, Dray, and Tim had celebrated in the lobby afterward, drinking Cook’s out of Dixie cups. Bear’s license sat in the bottom drawer of his office file cabinet, gathering dust, preventive medicine for future tedium. He had nine years on Tim, currently apparent in the lines etching his face. Tim, who’d gone enlisted at the age of nineteen, had had the benefit of opposing stress with youthfulness when learning to operate; he’d emerged from the Rangers seasoned but not weathered.

“Tire tracks,” Tim said. “If the guy’s that disorganized, something’ll break.”

“Yeah,” Bear said. “Yeah, it will.”

He slowed and pulled into a parking lot, easing past the squat sign reading VENTURA COUNTY MORGUE. He parked in a handicap spot up front, threw his marshal’s placard on the dash. They sat in silence. Tim pressed his hands together, flat-palmed, and crushed them between his knees.

Bear reached across to the glove box and tugged out a pint of Wild Turkey. He took two gulps, sending air gurgling up through the bottle, then offered it to Tim. Tim took a half mouthful, feeling it wash smoky and burning down his throat before losing itself in the morass of his stomach. He screwed on the lid, then untwisted it and took another pull. He set it down on the dash, kicked open his door a little harder than necessary, and faced Bear across the uninterrupted stretch of the vinyl front seat.

Now-just now-grief was beginning to set in. Bear’s eyelids were puffy and red-rimmed, and it occurred to Tim that he may have pulled over on his way to their house, sat in his rig, and cried a bit.

For a moment Tim thought he might come apart altogether, start screaming and never stop. He thought of the task before him-what awaited him behind the double glass doors-and wrestled a piece of strength from a place he didn’t know he had inside him. His stomach roiled audibly, and he fought his lips still.

“You ready?” Bear asked.

“No.”

Tim got out and Bear followed.

The fluorescent lighting was otherworldly harsh, shining off the polished floor tile and the stainless-steel cadaver drawers set into the walls. A broken lump lay inert beneath a hospital-blue sheet on the center embalming table, awaiting them.

The coroner, a short man with a horseshoe of hair and a stereotype-reinforcing pair of round spectacles, fussed nervously with the mask that dangled around his neck. Tim swayed on his feet, his eyes on the blue sheet. The draped form was distressingly small and unnaturally proportioned. The smell reached him quickly, something rank and earthy beneath the sharp tang of metal and disinfectant. The whiskey leapt and jumped in his stomach, as if trying to get out.

The coroner rubbed his hands like a solicitous and slightly apprehensive waiter. “Timothy Rackley, father of Virginia Rackley?”

“That’s right.”

“If you’d like, ah, you could go into the adjoining room and I could roll the table over before the window so you could, ah, ID her.”

“I’d like to be alone with the body.”

“Well, there’s still, ah, forensic considerations, so I can’t really-”

Tim flipped open his wallet and let his five-point marshal’s star dangle. The coroner nodded weightily and left the room. Mourning, like most things, gets more deference with a little authority behind it.

Tim turned to Bear. “Okay, pal.”

Bear studied Tim a few moments, eyes darting back and forth across his face. He must have trusted something he saw, because he backed up and exited, easing the door closed discreetly so the latch bolt made only the slightest click.

Tim studied the form on the embalming table before drawing near. He wasn’t sure which end of the sheet to peel back; he was accustomed to body bags. He didn’t want to turn aside the wrong edge and see more than he absolutely had to. In his line of work he’d learned that some memories were impossible to purge.

He ventured that the coroner would have left Ginny with her head facing the door, and he pressed gently on the edge of the lump, discerning the bump of her nose, the sockets of her eyes. He wasn’t sure if they’d cleaned up her face, nor was he sure he would prefer that, or whether he’d rather see it as it was left so he could feel closer to the horror she’d lived in her final moments.

He flipped back the sheet. His breath left him in a gut-punch gasp, but he didn’t bend over, didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away. Anguish raged inside him, sharp-edged and bent on destruction; he watched her bloodless, broken face until it died down.

With a trembling hand he removed a pen from his pocket and used it to pull a wisp of Ginny’s hair-the same straight blond as Dray’s-from the corner of her mouth. This one thing he wanted to set straight, despite all the damage and violation stamped on her face. Even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have touched her. She was evidence now.

He found a single ray of thankfulness, that Dray wouldn’t have to carry the memory of this sight with her.

He pulled the sheet tenderly back over Ginny’s face and walked out. Bear sprang up from the row of cheap, puke-green waiting chairs, and the coroner scurried over, sipping from a paper cone filled with water from the cooler.

Tim started to speak but had to stop. When he found his voice, he said, “That’s her.”

2

THEY headed back to Dray in silence, the bottle sliding empty on the dash. Tim wiped his mouth, then wiped it again. “She was supposed to be just around the corner at Tess’s. You know, the redhead-pigtails? Two blocks away from school, right on Ginny’s way home. Dray told her to go there after school, so we’d have a chance, you know, her other friends, the presents. To surprise her.”.

A sob swelled in his throat, and he swallowed it, swallowed it hard.

“Tess goes to private school. We have an arrangement, us and her mom. The kids can stop by for play dates unannounced. There was no one expecting Ginny, no one to miss her. This is Moorpark, Bear.” His voice cracked. “It’s Moorpark. You’re not supposed to know your kid’s not okay when she’s four hundred yards away.” Tim faded off into a space between agonizing thoughts, a momentary respite from the distinct pain of having failed-as a father, as a deputy U.S. marshal, as a man-to protect his sole child’s existence.

Bear drove on and didn’t talk, and Tim appreciated him greatly for it.

Bear’s cell phone rang. He picked it up and spoke into it, a string of words and numbers that Tim barely registered. Bear flipped the unit shut and pulled to the curb. Tim didn’t notice for several minutes that they were stopped, that Bear was studying him. When he looked over, Bear’s eyes were startlingly severe.

Tim spoke through the sluggishness of his exhaustion. “What?”

“That was Fowler. They caught him.”

Tim felt a rush of emotions, dark and hateful and intertwined. “Where?”

“Off Grimes Canyon. About a half mile from here.”

“We’re going.”

“Ain’t gonna be nothing to see but yellow tape and aftermath. We don’t want to contaminate the arrest, fuck up the crime scene. I thought I’d take you to Dray-”

“We’re going.”

Bear picked up the empty bottle, jiggled it, then set it back on the dash. “I know.”

•They pulled down the long, isolated drive, gravel popping beneath the tires, winding their way into the heart of the small canyon. A converted stand-alone garage to a house that had long since burned down sat dark and slanted along a crescent of eucalyptus. The smudged side windows diffused a single spot of yellow interior light. Rain and wear had lifted the plywood from the walls, and the swing-down door was rotting in fat patches. To the side a rusting white pickup rose from the weeds, fresh mud caked in the tire treads and thrown up around the wheel wells.

A police vehicle sat diagonally across the overgrown concrete foundation of the extinct house, lights blinking. Like the other cars in the fleet, it was labeled MOORPARK POLICE, though all two-man crews were, like Dray, sheriff’s deputies contracted from Ventura County. Parked beside it was an unmarked, lights flashing from the sun visor. Without the accompanying scream of the sirens, the strobe action was disorienting.

Fowler met them at the truck, his mouth pursed over a lipful of tobacco. He was breathing hard, his eyes sharp and gleaming, his face flushed with excitement. He unsnapped his holster, then snapped it again. The detectives were not in sight. No yellow tape, no perimeter, no crime-lab guys working up forensics.

Before Tim could get out of the truck, Fowler was talking. “Gutierez and Harrison-they rolled from Homicide Bureau-they got a read off the tire tracks at the riverbank. I guess they’re factory-issue radials for Toyotas ’87 to ’89 or some shit. Crime lab found a fingernail at the scene-”

Tim buckled, and Bear laid a supporting hand across the small of his back, out of Fowler’s view.

“-chip of white paint under it. Automobile paint. Gutierez what-the-fucked it, ran it through for a ten-mile radius, only got twenty-seven hits, if you can believe it. We split up the addresses. This was our third stop. There’s hard-core evidence. The guy spilled in seconds. Cases just don’t work out like this.” He coughed out a single note of a laugh, then went pale. His hand dipped to his holster again, and he unsnapped and snapped the thumb break. “Jesus Christ, Rack, I’m sorry. I’ve just been…I should have come over myself, but I wanted to get my head down and help bust the piece of shit.”

“Why isn’t there a perimeter up?” Tim said.

“We, uh…we still have him. He’s inside.”

Tim’s mouth went dry. His fury narrowed, gathering like a parachute pulled through a napkin ring; with focus it seemed less likely to bleed into sorrow. Bear slid up next to him like a revving car at a stoplight.

“What about CSU? Did you even call them?”

Fowler grew suddenly interested in the ground. “We called you.” He toed a desiccated weed, which gave off a good crackle. “I know if my little girl-” He shook off the thought. “The boys and I just weren’t gonna let this one fly.” He unsnapped the thumb break again, slid his Beretta from the holster, and held the pistol out to Tim, butt first. “For you and Dray.”

The three men stared at the pistol. Bear made a noise deep in his throat that didn’t quite shape itself into a judgment one way or the other. Fowler’s face was still flushed and intense, a lightning bolt of a vein forking his forehead. Somewhere in his jumble of thoughts, Tim grasped why Fowler had contacted Bear on his cell phone, not the radio.

Bear shifted so he was close to Tim, beside him but facing opposite, his back to Fowler, his eyes staring out at the dark of the canyon. “What do you want here, Rack?” His fingers spread, then clenched into fists. “As a father? As a representative of the law?”

Tim took the pistol. He walked toward the garage, and neither Bear nor Fowler followed. He heard sounds issuing through the warped door. Murmuring voices.

He knocked twice, the ragged wood biting his knuckles.

“Hang on.” The voice belonged to Mac, Fowler’s partner and another of Dray’s deputy colleagues. Some shuffling. “Stand back!”

The garage door swung up on screeching springs. With inadvertent theatricality, Mac moved his large frame out of Tim’s way, revealing Gutierez and Harrison standing on either side of a scrawny man on a torn couch. Tim recognized the detectives now-local boys. Dray had worked with them when they were still patrolmen out of Moorpark Station; Homicide had assigned them the area, no doubt, because of their familiarity with it.

Tim’s eyes swept the interior, taking in a heap of blood-moist rags, a pair of little girl’s fingerprint-muddied cotton panties plugging a draft in the far wall, a bent hacksaw with the teeth worn down to nubs. He fought to get his mind around these objects, these inconceivabilities.

He stepped forward, his shoes slippery on the oil-stained concrete. The man was clean-shaven, his face razor-nicked at the jaw. He hunched over his legs, elbows tucked into his crotch, hands cuffed before him. His boots, like Bear’s, were caked with mud. The two detectives stepped away as Tim approached, straightening their poly wool suits.

Mac’s deep voice issued over Tim’s shoulder. “Meet Roger Kindell.”

“You see him, you puke?” Gutierez said. “This is that little girl’s father.”

The man’s eyes, focused on Tim, showed neither comprehension nor remorse.

“That this could happen in our fucking town,” Harrison said, as if continuing some previous conversation. “The animals are drifting north. Invading.”

Tim stepped forward again, until his shadow fell across Kindell’s face, blocking the dim light from the bare lamp bulb. Kindell sucked his teeth, then bent his face into the bowl of his hands, his fingers massaging the line of his scalp. His voice was loose, vowel-heavy at the ends of his words, and a touch guttural.

“I already tole you I did it. Lee me alone.”

Tim felt his heartbeat hammering in his temples, his throat. Controlled rage.

Kindell kept his face turned down into his hands. Black crescents stood out beneath his fingernails-dried blood.

Harrison uncrossed his arms, sweat shining on his ebony face. “Look at him. You look at him, son.” Still no response. In a flash the detective was on top of Kindell, hands digging into his throat and cheeks, knee riding his gut, bending his head back and up so he faced Tim. Kindell’s breathing flared his nostrils; his eyes were sharply defiant.

Gutierez turned to Tim. “I got a throw-down.” Tim glanced at the proffered bulge at the detective’s ankle beneath his pant leg, a crappy gun to be left on the scene clutched in Kindell’s dead hand. Gutierez nodded. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, my friend.”

Harrison pulled himself off Kindell, shoved his head to the side, and nodded at Tim. “You do what you need to do.”

Mac was playing lookout at the wide opening of the garage door, his head swiveling back and forth, checking the darkness despite the fact that Bear and Fowler were less than twenty yards away with a clear line of sight to the main road.

Tim turned back to Kindell. “Leave me.”

“You got it, brother,” Gutierez said. He paused beside Tim and slipped him the handcuff key. “We already frisked the piece of shit. Just don’t leave any of the wrong kind of marks on him.”

Mac squeezed Tim’s shoulder, then followed the two detectives out. Tim reached up, grabbed the dangling rope handle on the garage door, and tugged. The door creaked again, gained momentum fast, and slammed shut. Kindell didn’t so much as blink. Cool as a blade.

He took note of the Beretta in Tim’s hand, pointed down at the floor, and turned his head to the wall, as if expressing vague uninterest. His hair was cropped short, a grown-out buzz cut that resembled fur.

The question came out before Tim considered it. “Did you kill my daughter?”

The lightbulb in the lamp emitted an odd humming noise. The air wrapped around Tim, dank and tinted with the odor of paint thinner.

Kindell turned back to face him. His even features were set off by an unusually flat and elongated forehead. His hands rested together in his lap. He didn’t look as though he planned to answer the question.

“Did you kill my daughter?” Tim asked again.

After a thoughtful pause, Kindell nodded slowly, once.

Tim waited for his breathing to even out. He felt his lips trembling, fought them still. “Why?”

Same sluggish cadence to the words, as though they’d been slowed down. “Cuz she was so beautiful.”

Tim racked the Beretta’s slide, chambering a round. Kindell emitted a muffled sob, his eyes starting to stream. The first sign of any emotion. He glared at Tim defiantly, even as snot ran from his nose and forded his upper lip.

Tim raised the pistol. His hands were shaking with rage, so it took a moment for him to line the sights on the tall target of Kindell’s forehead.

•Bear leaned against his truck, massive arms crossed, eyeing the other four men.

“You don’t motherfuck around with a deputy’s family,” Gutierez was saying. A deferential nod to Bear. “Or a marshal’s.”

Bear didn’t nod back.

Fowler weighed in. “They don’t give a shit anymore. No sense of anything.”

“Amen to that,” Gutierez said.

“It’s like that guy who walked the sarin nerve-gas bomb into the day-care center. Ezekiel or Jedediah or whatever.” Harrison shook his head. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing.”

“How’s Dray doing?” Mac asked. “She all right?”

“She’s tough,” Bear said.

“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth,” Fowler said.

Gutierez again-“She’s gonna be better once Rack brings her back a little news.”

“You know Tim well?” Bear asked.

The detective shifted his weight from one shoe to the other. “Know of him.”

“Why don’t you leave his nickname to those of us who do?”

“Hey, come on Jowalski,” Mac said. “Tito don’t mean no harm. We’re on the same side, us out here.”

“Are we?” Bear said.

They waited, glancing at the closed garage door, bracing themselves for a gunshot in the silence. The crickets were at it, filling the air with nervous chirping.

Mac wiped his brow with a forearm, though the night was cool. “Wonder what he’s doing in there.”

“He’s not gonna kill him,” Bear said.

The others’ heads swiveled toward Bear, surprised. Fowler wore a shit-eating grin. “You don’t think?”

Bear shifted uncomfortably, then crossed his arms as if to lock down his posture.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Gutierez said.

Bear regarded him with unadulterated disdain. “For one, he’s not gonna want to be yoked to you jackasses for the rest of his life.”

Gutierez started to say something but took note of Bear’s flexed forearms and closed his mouth. The crickets continued to shrill. They all did their best to avoid eye contact.

“Fuck this. I’m gonna get him.” Bear drew himself up off his truck. Beside him even Mac looked small. Bear took a step toward the garage, then stopped abruptly. He lowered his head, eyes on the dirt, frozen between advance and retreat.

•Tim kept the Beretta trained on Kindell’s head, his body still and rigid, a shooter’s outline cut from steel. After a moment his gun arm began to quake. His eyes moistened; two jerking breaths racked his shoulders. With a sudden, stunning certainty, he knew that he would not kill Kindell. His thoughts, absent the focus of the task, pulled back to his daughter. He was overtaken with a sadness so stark and selfish and crushing that it seemed to defy the limits of his heart. It came on fierce and full-powered, like nothing he’d ever confronted. He lowered the gun and bent, fists on thighs, as it throttled through him.

When he regained awareness that he was still drawing breath, he straightened as best he could. “Were you alone?”

The same roll of the head, up, down, up.

Unremitting cramps in Tim’s chest kept him curled into an old man’s arthritic hunch. His voice rasped, weak and uncomprehending, “You just decided…decided to kill her?”

Kindell blinked hard and drew his bound hands over his face like a squirrel grooming. “I wasn’t supposed to kill her.”

Tim’s body snapped upright, his posture firming. “What does ‘supposed to’ mean?” No answer. “Was someone in on this with you?”

“He didn’t-” Kindell stopped, closed his eyes.

“He who? He didn’t what? Someone else helped you kill my girl?” His voice was shaking with fury and desperation. “Answer me, goddamnit. Answer me!”

Kindell remained still, impervious to Tim’s questions, the smooth ovals of his closed eyelids like veined eggs.

•The garage door flew up with a bang, spilling light across the weed-dense grounds. Kindell stumbled out, propelled by Tim’s shove, his hands now cuffed behind him. Tim caught up to him quickly, fisting the chain between the cuffs and pulling it up so Kindell’s arms locked straight behind him. Kindell grimaced but didn’t cry out.

Bear and the others silently watched them approach. As Tim neared, Kindell tripped and went down, his knees and chest taking the shock of the ground. His grunt sounded like a bark.

Kindell struggled to stand up. He bore no bruises or signs of punishment. “You asshoe. You uckin’ asshoe.”

“Better watch your mouth,” Tim said. “I’m your best friend right about now.”

Bear exhaled in a low, cheek-puffing rumble.

Fowler glowered at Tim like a woman scorned. Gutierez and Harrison looked equally displeased.

“Can we have a second here?” Fowler said, the skin tight around his jaw.

Tim nodded, then followed the three men a few paces away from Mac and Bear.

“He’s a piece-of-shit motherfucker,” Fowler hissed.

Tim said, “No argument here.”

Fowler spit a brown stream into the brush. “You’re gonna let pieces of shit like this run loose in our town?”

Tim looked at him with a steady gaze until he turned away.

“What the fuck, Rackley? We were doing you a favor here.”

Gutierez smoothed his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “This guy just killed your daughter. How can you not want to cap his ass?”

“I’m not a jury.”

“I bet Dray would have another opinion on the matter.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Juries suck,” Fowler said. “I don’t trust the courts.”

“Then move to Sierra Leone.”

“Listen, Rackley-”

“No, you listen.” Ten yards away Bear’s and Mac’s heads snapped to attention. “There’s an ongoing investigation here that you may have just fucked up in your eagerness to tie things up neatly.”

Harrison weighed in from above crossed arms. “It’s an open-and-shut.”

“He didn’t kill her alone.”

Gutierez blew air out through clenched teeth. “What the fuck is this?”

“Someone else was in on it.” Tim’s hand was jiggling back and forth, thumb tapping his thigh.

“He didn’t tell us that.”

“Well, then, it looks like you’ve exhausted your bag of detective tricks.”

Bear walked over, his boots creaking, leaving Mac with Kindell. He scowled at the others, standing protectively at Tim’s side. “Everything all right?”

“Your boy here is looking to complicate matters that aren’t complicated.” Gutierez glared at Tim. “You’re being emotional.”

“That’s for sure.”

“How do you know there was someone else involved?” Gutierez jerked his head at Kindell, still lying prone on the ground. “What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything outright-”

“Nothing outright,” Harrison said. “A hunch, huh?”

Bear’s voice issued so low Tim felt it in his bones. “You’d better mind your fucking mouth after what he’s been through tonight.”

Harrison’s smirk vanished instantly.

“This is precisely why we don’t kill people without a trial.” Tim regarded the three men. “Call CSU. Start your investigation. Gather evidence.”

Fowler was shaking his head. “This is a fucking mess. Kindell heard us talking. Planning this out.”

Gutierez made a leveling gesture with his hands. “It’s fine. We’ll move forward with standard procedure. If the scumsuck wants to whine to the public defender, it’ll be his word against ours.” He glared at Tim and Bear. “All of ours.”

Tim debated informing Gutierez that the last thing he intended to expend energy on this night was Gutierez’s anxiety, but he didn’t want to give anything up to him.

Behind them Mac helped Kindell to his feet.

“You were never here,” Harrison said. “We stick together on this, no matter what.”

Bear gave a cough of disgust. They walked back to the vehicles, their breath visible in the cold air.

“You’re a lucky little motherfucker,” Gutierez said to Kindell, who’d finally found his feet. He poked him hard where his chest met his shoulder. “Did you hear me? I said you’re a lucky motherfucker.”

“Lee me alone.”

Bear circled his truck, climbed in, and turned over the engine.

Mac cleared his throat. “Tim, man, I am so sorry about…everything. You send Dray my condolences. I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks, Mac,” Tim said. “I’ll tell her.”

He climbed into the truck and they drove off, leaving the four deputies and Kindell behind them, standing out from the night in carnival flashes of watery blue.

3

BEAR pulled up to the curb, and Tim moved to get out, but Bear grabbed his shoulder. It had been a silent ride home. “I should have stopped you. Stepped in. You were in no shape to make that kind of decision.” He squeezed the wheel.

“It wasn’t your responsibility,” Tim said.

“It’s my responsibility to do more than stand around while my partner maybe kills some mutt in a moment of justifiable rage. You’re a federal agent, not some yokel deputy.”

“The boys just got a little fired up.”

Bear struck the steering wheel hard with the heels of his hands, a rare display of anger. “Stupid pricks.” His cheeks were wet. “Stupid, stupid pricks. They shouldn’t have dragged you into it. They shouldn’t have jeopardized the investigation.”

Tim knew Bear was turning his grief to anger and throwing it at the nearest target, but he also knew he was right. Tim spoke to the words, because he knew if he touched the grief right now, he’d come apart. “Nothing happened.”

“It’s not done happening yet.” Bear wiped his cheeks roughly. “And we don’t know what those idiots did before we got there, how well they secured the scene. They weren’t looking for accomplices. They weren’t looking to build a case. It’s not like they were dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s for the DA. It’s not like they were expecting a trial.”

“They’re gonna have to be aboveboard now. After we’ve been there.”

“Great. So in addition to the case being tied to their competence or tremendous lack thereof, we are, too.” Bear shuddered hard, like a dog shaking off water. “Sorry, I’m sorry. You got enough on your plate.”

Tim managed a faint smile. “I better go check on my yokel-deputy wife.”

“Shit, I didn’t mean that.”

Tim laughed, and then Bear joined him, both of them still wiping their cheeks.

“Do you want me to…Can I come in?”

“No,” Tim said. “Not yet.”

Bear was still idling at the curb when Tim closed the front door behind him. The house was dark and empty. Two holes had been kicked through the living room wall, leaving jagged edges in the dry-wall. Though Tim had left Dray with two of her friends who’d come over to help with Ginny’s party, he was not surprised to find the house silent. When Dray was upset, she handled it alone. Another trait she’d learned from four older brothers and six years and counting on the job.

He passed through the small living room into the kitchen. The simple interior had been improved upon over the years by Tim’s meticulous attention. He’d torn up the floors and laid down hardwood in the halls and bedrooms and replaced the brass-plated and faux-crystal chandeliers with recessed lighting.

On the counter sat Ginny’s cake, uncut, the top puddled with wax. Dray had insisted on baking it herself despite her lack of prowess in the kitchen. It was uneven, sloping left, and the frosting had been applied and reapplied in a failed attempt at smoothness. Judy Hartley, their next-door neighbor and a recent empty-nester, had offered to assume baking duties, but Dray had refused. As she did each year on Ginny’s birthday, she’d taken the day off work to pore over borrowed cookbooks, determined and stubborn, pulling cake after cake out of the oven until she’d produced one she deemed acceptable.

Dray wasn’t there, though the cabinet where they kept the liquor stood open. The handle of store-brand vodka was missing.

Tim walked quietly down the hall to their bedroom. The bed, neatly made, stared back at him. He checked the bathroom-also no luck. He tried Ginny’s room next, across the hall. Dray was sitting in the darkness, the half-gallon bottle between her legs, the glow of a Pocahontas night-light discoloring one side of her face. On the carpet before her sat the cordless phone and her PalmPilot, the backlight still glowing.

Her face was gaunt, drawn in by grief. Three years ago she’d red-handed a fifteen-year-old kid fleeing a Ventura office building with an armload of laptops. He’d tried to throw down with a nickel-plated. 22, and she’d double-tapped him; when she got home, her face looked not quite so bad as it did now. Her head was bowed slightly, in thought or drunkenness.

Tim closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and slid down the wall beside her. He took her hand; it was sweaty and feverish. She didn’t look up, but she squeezed his fingers as if she’d been barely holding on for his touch.

He stared at Ginny’s twin bed. The wallpaper, unrestrained yellow and pink flowers now muted by the darkness, had been perfectly aligned so it didn’t mess up the repeat at the room’s corners.

Tim thought about Ginny’s last few minutes of life, then about where he might have been at the corresponding times. Putting his weapon away in the gun safe when she was snatched from the street. Driving to the store for pink candles when the dismemberment began.

That he couldn’t give Kindell’s partner a face was an added torment, another mockery of his imagined control over his world. The notion of kinship to this end was beyond sickening-two men bent on the destruction of a child, two men joined in ripping apart a young body. He pictured Kindell’s dopey face and wondered if there was a special place in hell for child-killers. He indulged himself in imagined tortures. He had never been a religious man, but the thoughts found their way out from the darker recesses of his mind, the shadowed corners hidden from the light of reason.

Dray’s voice, calm, but hoarse from crying, forced him from his thoughts. “I was here alone tonight, this night, sitting with Trina and Joan and Judy fucking Hartley, getting the other kids off home, waiting to hear about the positive ID, calling our relatives so they wouldn’t have to hear it from…or read about it in…” She raised her head sluggishly, bangs sweeping over her eyes. She took another slug from the bottle. “Fowler called.”

“Dray-”

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

He wouldn’t have thought his grief would have left room for shame, but there it was, undiminished. “I’m sorry.”

The distance between them he registered as an aching in his stomach. He remembered how they’d fallen in love, hard and terrifyingly fast. Neither of them had ever learned to need as adults-both had endured childhoods that had disappointed them, punishingly, for relying on anyone-yet there they were, fixed on each other with an unyielding, constant focus, staying up all hours talking and pressing against each other in the flickering blue glow of the muted TV, driving across town to meet for lunch because they couldn’t make it from morning to evening without each other’s touch. Every detail of the first months shone with clarity-how he’d steer and shift with his left hand so he wouldn’t have to let go of hers with his right in the car after dinner, a movie, a night walk on the beach; the soft noise she made when she smiled, just short of a laugh; the way her face hurt when she blushed after a compliment-pins and needles, she claimed-and she’d have to massage out the bunched cheeks above the grin with her fingertips until he finally started doing it for her. Just last week he’d pulled her in for a slow dance when Elvis came crooning on late-night reruns; Ginny had alleged nausea and retreated to her bedroom.

And now he was in the same room with his wife but could barely sense her through the darkness, which had grown soupy, infused with hurt and foulness and stopped-up grief.

He struggled to find words, to reconnect. “I got the call. We were three miles away. I had to go, to see.”

“Okay. So you went.”

He took a deep breath. “And he confessed.”

She was trying to soften her voice, but he could hear the frustration in it. “Tim, you’re the father of the victim. You were illegally called to the crime scene to commit a vengeance killing. Explain to me how him confessing to you is the least bit useful.” She lowered the bottle to the floor with a thunk. “That man took our daughter and violated her. Took her apart. And you went to him, you risked the crime scene and the arrest, and then you let him walk away.”

“I think he had an accomplice.”

Her eyebrows rose and spread. “Fowler didn’t mention that.”

“Kindell said he wasn’t supposed to kill her, as if there had been some previous understanding between him and someone else.”

“He could have just been saying he didn’t mean to kill her. Or that he knew it was illegal.”

“Maybe. But then he started to refer to someone else-a he-but he caught himself.”

“So why aren’t Gutierez and Harrison looking into that?”

“They weren’t aware of it, obviously.”

“Are they looking into it now?”

“They’d better be.”

Ginny’s bedside clock emitted a soft chime, announcing the hour; the sound struck Tim sharp and unexpected, a stab to the heart. Dray’s face seemed to crumble. She quickly took another pull off the bottle. For a moment they’d indulged the illusion that they’d set aside the personal, that they’d been two cops talking.

Dray wiped tears from her cheeks with her sweatshirt cuff, which she’d pulled over her hand like a girl. “So the crime scene is muddled up, and now there’s a possibility that the killer isn’t the only killer.”

“That’s about right, unfortunately.”

“You’re not even angry.”

“I am. But anger is useless.”

“What isn’t?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.” He wasn’t looking at her, but he heard her take another gulp from the bottle.

“All your training-Spec Ops and Combat Engineering and FLETC-you should have known to prioritize under pressure. You should’ve known not to go there, Timmy.”

“Don’t call me Timmy.” He stood and wiped his palms on his pants. “Look, Dray, we’re both wrecked right now. If we keep this up, it’s not gonna go anywhere we want it to.”

Tim opened the door and stepped out. Dray’s voice followed him out into the cool hall. “How can you be so calm right now? Like she’s just another victim, someone you never knew.”

Tim halted in the hall and stood, his back to the open door. He turned and walked back in. Dray’s hand was over her mouth.

He ran his tongue across the points of his teeth and back, waiting for his breath to stop hitching in his chest. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet it was barely audible. “I understand how upset-how destroyed you are. I am, too. But don’t ever fucking say that.”

She lowered her hand. Her eyes were shell-shocked. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He nodded and withdrew gently from the room.

•In the bedroom Tim spun the dial on his gun safe, then removed a Spec Ops-issue p226 nine mil, his favored. 357 Smith amp; Wesson, a hefty Ruger. 44 mag, and two fifty-round boxes of nine-mil and. 44. He kept a broader ammo range on hand for his. 357, as it was his duty weapon; he opted for the wad cutters over the copper-jacketed rounds and the duty 110-grain hollow-points. The service issued the S amp;Ws with three-inch barrels, as they were often carried concealed.

When he entered Ginny’s room, Dray still had not moved. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What a fucking thing to say.”

He knelt, placed his hands on her knees, and kissed her on the forehead. It was damp. The sharp smell of alcohol lingered about her face. “It’s okay. What’s that they say about rocks and glass houses?”

Her lips pursed, not quite a smile. “Don’t throw glass houses if you live in a rock.”

“Something like that.”

“You need to go shoot.” She wasn’t asking; she was offering.

He nodded. “Come with me?”

“I need to sit here for a while and look at nothing.”

He moved to kiss her forehead again, but she tilted back her head and caught his lips with hers. The kiss was hot and dry and edged with vodka. If he could have crawled into it and lived there, he would have.

The garage housed Tim’s silver M3 BMW-a car confiscated by the service under the National Asset Seizure and Forfeiture Program-and his workbench. Tim threw his ordnance in the trunk and backed out, careful to dodge Dray’s Blazer, parked in the driveway. He drove to the outskirts of town, then turned onto a dirt road and followed it up a few hundred yards.

He pulled the car onto a flat dirt apron and left it running, angling the high beams downrange, where a cable stretched between two stakes, about five feet off the ground. Tim removed a stack of targets, a mix of color-coded Transtars and old B-27s, and strung them along the cable. Then he sat in the dirt, jammed the Sig mags, and readied the speedloaders for the wheel guns. Six bullets locked into the cylindrical base of each speedloader, tips sticking up like fangs, spaced to correspond with the caliber holes in the wheel.

He was left-eye dominant but right-handed, so he drew from a high-ride right-hip holster. Shoulder holsters were discouraged by the service because the cross-draw presented a hazard on the firing line, but Tim preferred the up-and-out anyway, not liking the time given up on a cross-draw. They didn’t call shoulder holsters widow-makers for nothing. He started with the Sig, doing some quick-draw plinking at three yards to warm up his reactive shooting. Then he moved to seven yards. Then ten.

His shooting was remarkably precise, having been learned in urban-warfare courses and perfected in Malibu’s Maze at Glynco. The aptly named shooting course features pop-up and swinging targets that prospective deputies attack with live ammo through a confusion of strobing lights, blaring music, and amplified screams. The vibe is so invasive, the surroundings so surreal, that grown men have emerged weeping. Once outside, deputies subdue actors playing felons; a Juilliard dropout had once gotten a little too method with Tim, jawing off and sinking his teeth into Tim’s forearm, and Tim had knocked him cold.

His breath misting in the sharp February cold of the higher altitude, Tim shot and shot. When he’d burned through the nine-mil ammo, he switched to his. 357 and toed the concrete ledge at twenty-five yards.

He struck a modified Weaver, a forward-leaning fighting stance, his feet shoulder width with his left leg forward. The landscape reflected his mood-the barren stretch of dirt and rocks, the twinning cones of the headlights boring through the night, brief throws of light in a vast, dismal universe. The paper targets alone picked up the glow, floating rectangles of white, bobbing like fruit on a tree. The emptiness of the dark opened him up like a gutted beast, and he stared into the void. All that stared back was a row of eyeless, two-dimensional combat silhouettes, fluttering on the cable.

His right hand shot down, breaking his perfect stillness, and grabbed the pistol. As soon as the barrel cleared leather, he rotated it, punching it forward, his left hand already coming, grabbing his right at its junction with the butt. He lined the sights even as his arms were extending. His right arm locked, his left staying slightly canted. The trigger split the precise middle of the pad of his right index finger so he wouldn’t group high and right or low and left, and he applied quick, steady pressure through the double action, not anticipating recoil, not flexing too hard. The gun barked and a hole punched through the thoracic region of the Transtar, center mass. He fired five more times in rapid succession, regaining front sight focus between each shot almost instantly. The cordite still rising, he thumbed the left-side lever forward, releasing the well-lubed wheel. His left hand dug for the speedloader in his belt pouch as he tilted the gun back, the casings spinning to the dirt like brass hail. In a single smooth gesture, he angled the gun down and filled the wheel, the six new bullets sliding neatly into place. He got off six more rounds, Swiss-cheesing the five-ring of the Transtar before the empty speedloader hit dirt.

The wad cutters, ideal for paper punching, left behind satisfying gashes.

Mindlessly he repeated the routine, losing himself in it, distilling his rage into concise bursts of bullets and sending it outward. The anger departed slowly, like water leaving a tub; when it was gone, he tried to shape and fire away the residual sorrow in similar fashion but found he could not. He alternated static shooting with lateral-movement drills, firing until his wrists were aching, until the pads of his hands were chaffed from recoil.

Then he loaded the Ruger with long, slender. 44s and shot it until his thumb webbing bled.

•He came home a little after midnight to an empty house. The handle of vodka sitting on Ginny’s floor, significantly depleted, was the only trace of Dray. Her Blazer was still parked in the driveway, the hood cool.

Tim drove the six blocks to McLane’s, the semiauthentic Irish pub owned by Mac’s father, and parked among the Crown Vics and Buicks in the lot. The heavy oak door gave with a shove. Aside from a few hangers-on and the cluster of deputies and detectives in the back by the pool tables, the place was empty. Myriad mustaches. Antique police light bar mounted above the shelves of booze. Typical cop hangout. The bartender, a dandy with cuffed sleeves and a bristling Tom Selleck, looked up from drying glasses. “Sorry, pal, we’re closed.”

Tim ignored him, walking the length of the bar toward the circle of men in the back. Mac, Fowler, Gutierez, Harrison, and about five others. Dray was standing over them, bent at the waist, forearm cocked back ending in the accusatory point of her finger. For some reason she’d put on her uniform, even though policy was not to drink in the monkey suit. Enhanced with alcohol, voices were carrying.

“-dare you put my husband into that situation. Or at least you could have given me-your colleague-the courtesy of a phone call.”

“We thought he’d be able to handle it,” Fowler said.

“Because he’s a male?”

“No, because of, you know, the military stuff.”

“Military stuff, right. So he’s got no feelings.” She pivoted to face the detectives, swaying drunkenly. “What’d you find on the accomplice lead?”

Gutierez, the front man, addressed her like a politician-hands spread and calming, condescension masquerading as avuncular reassurance. “We’re looking into it. But we don’t think it’s as strong an angle as your husband does.”

“The conspiracy theorist,” someone muttered.

Fowler took note of Tim’s approach first, and then the others turned as well, everyone except Dray. “Let me tell you something.” Dray was slurring now. “You can throw shit at me all you want. But you say one more thing about my husband, I’ll knock your teeth down your goddamn throat.”

The bartender was out from behind the bar, following Tim, but Mac waved him off. “It’s okay, Danny. He’s with us.”

“Is he?” Gutierez said quietly. Two of the deputies eyed Tim and whispered something back and forth.

Tim addressed only his wife. “C’mon, Dray. Let’s get you home.”

Finally noticing him, Dray took a step and, losing her balance, sat down abruptly. Mac put an arm across her back to stabilize her, his hand resting on her shoulder. The others flanked her in their chairs protectively.

Mac’s free hand fluttered in a calming gesture. “Hey, Tim. No offense, huh? We thought it would be good for her to be out right now, given-”

“Shut up, Mac.” Tim’s eyes didn’t leave Dray. Her head was tilting. The others looked not many drinks behind her. Her eyes closed, she tilted her head into the cup of her hand. Tim bit down, the corners of his jaw flexing. “Andrea. Please let’s go.”

She moved to rise but only got so far as to lean heavily on the table.

Fowler picked up an empty shot glass, held it up like a scope, and eyed Tim through it. “Next time someone goes out on a limb for you, you might want to respect that,” he said, slurring slightly. “Me and Tito went out for you, man.”

Mac removed his arm from around Dray and stood up. Mac possessed effortless good looks, his hair tousled just so, day-old stubble touching his cheeks-Tim was all exertion and discipline by comparison.

“Listen guys, we’ve all had a long night here,” Mac said. “Let’s just take it easy.”

“Yeah, let’s go easy on the Medal of Valor winner,” Harrison said.

Gutierez snickered. Tim’s eyes shot over in his direction. Steeled by the others’ expectations and the row of empties on the table before him, Gutierez stared back. “Take a hint, pal. Your wife’s fine here. We take care of our own.”

Dray mumbled something angrily.

Tim turned and headed for the door. Behind him he heard a chorus of murmurs.

“-good at walking away-”

“-better keep moving-”

Tim reached the door and threw the dead bolt, which gave off a metallic clank. The bar fell silent. He walked back down the length of the bar, the few remaining drunks watching him from their stools.

He reached the cluster of deputies and turned to the bar, facing away from them. He removed his Smith amp; Wesson, still encased in its belt holster, and set it on the bar. His badge-heavy wallet followed. His jacket he hung neatly on a high-backed stool. He cuffed his sleeves neatly, two folds each.

When he turned, the deputies had sobered a few notches. He walked over to Gutierez. “Stand up.”

Gutierez shifted in his chair, leaning back, trying to look tough and unworried, and not succeeding at either. Tim waited. No one spoke. Another deputy took a sip of beer, set his bottle down on the table with a soft thud. Gutierez finally looked away.

Tim put his jacket back on, grabbed his gun and badge. He stepped around the table, but Dray was already rising to meet him. She leaned heavily on him, 135 pounds of muscle and gear.

He hooked an arm around her waist and navigated her to the door.

•He undressed her like a child, crouching to pull off her boots while she leaned on his shoulders. When he tucked her in, she threw the sheets back, sweating. He kissed her on her moist forehead.

She looked up at him, her face unlined and youthful in the dark. Her voice quavered. “What did he look like?”

Tim told her.

He wiped her tears, one cheek with one thumb, then the other.

“Tell me what happened. In the shack. Every detail.”

He told her, fighting back his own tears at times, wiping hers throughout.

“I wish you’d killed him,” she said.

“Then we would have lost our chance at the truth.”

“But he’d be dead. Gone from this planet. Eradicated.” More tears than Tim could keep up with. She took his hand, squeezing it in both of hers, letting her tears streak down her temples to the pillow. “I’m angry. So angry. At everything. Everyone.”

His throat was closing, so he cleared it once, hard.

“Are you gonna go to sleep?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

She drifted off for a moment, then opened her eyes. “Me neither.” She smiled sleepily.

“I’m gonna go watch a little TV. I don’t want to thrash around and keep you up.” He smoothed the hair gently out of her eyes. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He lay on the living room couch as if in a coffin, fully dressed, hands laced across his chest. He stared at the ceiling, trying to grasp the new realities of his life. He couldn’t get his mind around the monumentality of his loss. He was falling into darkness, with no idea of its depth. Canned laughter emanated from Nick at Nite at hypnotic intervals. He tuned out everything but its sound. Laughter still exists, he thought. If I need to remember that, I can turn on the little box and there it is.

Sometime around 3:00 A.M. Dray awakened him, trudging to the couch, trailing the comforter. She crawled on top of him and burrowed into his neck.

“Timothy Rackley,” she said, her voice soft and sleep-heavy.

He stroked her hair gently, then pulled it up and rubbed the soft nape of her neck. They slept entwined in a restless embrace.

4

TIM opened his eyes and felt dread descend on him before he could even put a name to it. He swung his legs off the couch and set his feet on the floor. Dray was in the kitchen, rustling.

He didn’t just remember his grief, he relearned it. For several minutes he sat on the couch, slumped forward, arms angled out in anticipation of his rise. Paralyzed with sorrow. Unable to bear a single movement. He focused on his breathing. If he could draw three breaths, then he’d be able to draw three more, and life could go on as such, in three-breath increments.

Finally he mustered the strength to stand. Walking back to the shower, he tried not to think about his daughter’s theatrical heaviness when he carried her along this same path from TV to bedroom at night. Her head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut, tongue stuck out the side of her mouth like a drunk cartoon character’s. Trying to steal a few extra minutes of tube time by feigning sleep.

In daylight her death had taken on a reality. It lived in the house with them, in the dust on the floors, the blankness of the ceilings, the soft, unanswered noises of his movement past her room.

After a scorching shower, he dressed and walked back to the kitchen.

Dray sat at the table, sipping coffee, her eyes swollen, her hair flat on one side. The cordless phone sat on the table beside her. “Well,” she said, “I just got off the phone with the DA. It looks like you guys didn’t screw up the case against Kindell.”

“Good. That’s good.”

They studied each other for a moment. She held her arms out like a child wanting to be hugged, and Tim walked into her embrace. She buried her head in his stomach, and he scrunched her hair in the back. She groaned.

He slid down into the chair next to her.

Black half-moons stood out beneath her eyes. “Motherfucking asshole prick cocksucking goddamned fucked-up pile of miserable shit,” she said.

“Yeah,” Tim said.

“They have Kindell at county. He’s got three priors-a weenie wagger and two lewd acts with a minor. All girls under the age of ten. Three slaps on the wrist. Last time out he pled. Judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. NGI bought him a year and a half at Patton, padded walls and warm food.” She spoke quickly, getting it out.

“And the case?”

“He completely clammed up at the station-wouldn’t talk no matter how hard they pressed-but there’s evidence all over his little shack. They got a blood match this A.M. from the…from the hacksaw…” She leaned over and gagged, her spine arching through twodry heaves.

Tim held her hair back gently, but she brought nothing up. She shoved herself upright in her chair, wiped her mouth, gave a great, halting exhale, then it was back to business. “The DA’s hammering him, filing special circumstances. The arraignment’s tomorrow.” She spun her coffee mug, then spun it again.

“We still have an accomplice out there who they need to track down.”

“Someone in on the kill who knew how to cover his tracks in ways Kindell didn’t.”

“Or a partnership gone bad, or a double-cross.”

“Or, as the DA seems to think, it was just Kindell in his truck, Ginny walking to Tess’s, and bad goddamned timing.”

“He’s not looking into this?”

“She assured me personally her office would continue to explore the possibility, but she doesn’t seem hot on it.”

“Why not?”

“A high-visibility case, a neat little package as it stands. And I’m sure Gutierez and Harrison are none too eager to spend sweat probing your leads.”

Tim considered the dried weeds outside Kindell’s, the soft dirt that could have borne footprints or the marks of a second set of tire tracks. He thought of all the traffic through there-him and Bear included-before CSU was called, obscuring evidence, polluting the scene. Guilt felt weightier heaped on top of intense sorrow.

“I keep thinking I’ll have to make arrangements. Like they always say.” Her face contorted as if she were going to sob, though she didn’t.

Tim poured himself a cup of coffee, focusing on the task, trying for a numb moment.

“Remember at the department picnic, when she was four?”

“Don’t,” Tim said.

“She was wearing that yellow-checked dress your aunt sent. A plane went overhead. She asked what it was. And you told her it was an airplane, and that people were up there flying in it.”

“Don’t.”

“And she looked up at it, gauged its size with a chubby little thumb, and do you remember what she said? ‘No way,’ she said. ‘They’d never fit.’” A tear tracked down Dray’s cheek. “Her hair was curly back then. I remember it like I could touch it.”

The doorbell rang, and Tim rose to answer it, grateful for the disruption. On the doorstep stood Mac, Fowler, Gutierez, Harrison, and a few other deputies from the bar last night. They all had their hats off, like salesmen feigning deference.

“Uh, Rack, we…” Fowler cleared his throat hard. He smelled of coffee and stale booze. He seemed to catch himself. “Is Dray here, too?”

Tim felt a tug at the back belt loop of his jeans. Dray went up on tiptoe and rested her chin on his shoulder.

Fowler nodded at her, then continued. “We all wanted to apologize. For in the bar. And earlier, too. It was a, uh, a real tough night for us all-not near as hard as for you, I know, but we’re also not used to…Anyways, we were way out of line at a time when you least needed it, and uh, well…”

Gutierez picked up for him. “We’re ashamed.”

“We’re on it now,” Harrison said. “The case. Full force.”

“If there’s anything we can do…” Mac said.

“Thank you,” Tim said. “I appreciate you coming by.”

They shuffled around a bit, then moved forward one at a time to shake Tim’s hand. It was a foolish, formal little ceremony, but Tim found it a moving one nonetheless. Dray held him from behind, trembling slightly.

The deputies headed back down the walk, and then the patrol cars pulled out one after the other. Tim and Dray watched the procession until the last car faded from sight.

The next forty-eight hours passed tediously and painfully, like a jagged kidney stone. Every action was weighty and frightful, full of hidden turns and dark corners. Calling family members and friends. Trying to get Ginny’s body released from the coroner. Receiving updates on the case the DA was preparing against Kindell. Even the smallest tasks left Tim and Dray drenched in exhaustion.

Kindell, understandably reticent about staying in custody, refused to waive time, demanding a prompt prelim. Dray learned that the public defender had filed a 1538 motion to suppress evidence. She hit the roof and called the DA’s office but was assured that the motion was not meritorious, that PDs filed them prophylactically all the time to keep appellate lawyers off their asses down the line. It wasn’t the worst thing that the PD was touching all the bases; he had a reputation for being a loose cannon, and the last thing they wanted was Kindell filing an Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Writ after the trial.

The phone rang constantly with calls from investigators, well-wishers, press, its jangle an unnerving marching-band tune for the parade of tin-foil-covered plates and eyes crinkled with sympathy. But despite the traumatizing details and petty tortures, the days were defined by a maddening eventlessness, all sound and fury and little advancement, like running on ice.

The incessant hammering of grief and stress left Tim and Dray with tattered and few resources. Though they tried to comfort each other, to embrace, to mourn together, their pain seemed amplified by the other’s distress and their own uselessness in the face of it. They both found themselves increasingly wrapped in their own private pain, unable to muster the strength to pull themselves out of it.

They began keeping a respectful distance from each other, like roommates. They napped frequently, though always separately, and they rarely ate, despite the array of filled Tupperware that packed their refrigerator, replenished almost hourly by neighbors and friends. When they did interact, it was in brief, overpolite exchanges, parodies of domesticity. The sight of Dray elicited in Tim a piercing shame that he was unable to be more for her right now. He knew that in his face Dray saw reflected back only the same devastation that weighed down hers.

The DA’s office was respectful about keeping them in the loop about the case, though also cautious about releasing many specifics. In conversations with her colleagues, Dray managed to piece together fragments of information about Gutierez and Harrison’s investigation, enough to grasp that they’d jettisoned the accomplice theory to focus their full energies on shoring up the case against Kindell.

Tim’s mind returned to Kindell’s shack with obsessive regularity, replaying each detail, from the slipperiness of the oil-stained floor to the sharp scent of paint thinner.

I wasn’t supposed to kill her.

He didn’t-

Eight words had opened up a chasm of doubt. The pain of not knowing almost equaled the pain of loss, because it played carnival-mirror tricks with Tim’s grief, magnifying it one moment, reshaping it the next. He was mourning without knowing the exact parameters of what he was mourning-Ginny was dead, but what she had gone through and who was responsible for it were blank canvases awaiting the latest incarnation, the latest projection of rage or horror. Kindell had proved enough to sate the appetite of the detectives and the DA, but Tim knew there were additional gutters to be flushed. The progression of atrocious events that had filled his daughter’s last hours remained out there, frozen in history, waiting to be reconstructed.

Wednesday night he and Dray went for a drive, their first outing together since Ginny’s death. They sat awkwardly in silence, trying to let the movement and crisp night air lull them back to compatibility. On their way home they passed McLane’s. Dray craned her neck, checking out the vehicles in the dark lot. “Gutierez’s rig,” she murmured.

Tim flipped a U-turn and pulled in the lot. Dray turned in her seat to watch him, more curious than surprised.

They found Gutierez in the back, shooting stick with Harrison. Gutierez nodded in greeting, then spoke in the same softened voice everyone used with them now. “You guys holding up okay?”

“Fine, thanks. Can we have a minute?”

“Sure thing, Rack.”

The detectives followed Tim and Dray out to the back parking lot.

“Word is you’re dropping the accomplice angle,” Tim said.

Harrison stiffened. Gutierez cocked his head slightly. “It didn’t yield.”

“Have you checked Kindell’s priors? Did he work with an accomplice on those?”

“We’re working very closely with the DA, and we’ve turned up no evidence of other people’s involvement. We’ve looked into everything. Now, you’re well aware that we can’t involve parents of victims in our cases-”

“A little late for that,” Dray threw in.

“You’ve got no distance from the case. No perspective. And to say you’re biased is something of an understatement. Now, I know what you thought you heard in there-”

“How did you find Ginny’s body?” Tim said. “So quickly. I mean, that creek bed is pretty remote.”

Harrison blew out a breath that clouded in the cool air. “Anonymous call.”

“Man or woman?”

“Look, we don’t have to-”

“Was it a man’s or a woman’s voice?”

Gutierez folded his arms, irritation starting to shift to anger. “A man’s.”

“Did you trace it? Was it recorded?”

“No, it went to the private line of the deputy working the desk.”

“Not 911? Not dispatch?” Dray said. “Who would know the private number?”

“Someone making sure their ass was covered,” Tim said. “Someone afraid to be implicated or ID’d. Like an accomplice.”

Harrison stepped forward, getting in Tim’s space. “Listen, Fox Mulder, I don’t think you have any idea how many anonymous tips we get. It doesn’t mean the guy was in on a murder. I mean, odds are a guy drifting through an out-of-the-way creek bed is up to something other than selling Girl Scout cookies. It could have been a guy with a rap sheet, a scared kid who didn’t want to get tangled up in a murder case. It could’ve been a bum sniffing glue.”

“Because bums whacked out on glue fumes are in possession of private phone numbers into the Moorpark Police Station,” Dray said.

“It’s listed.”

“A bum with a phone book,” Tim said.

“Hey, man, you missed your chance to take care of business. We gave it to you. And guess what? You wanted everything aboveboard. Well, fine. We can respect that. But that means it’s out of your hands now. You’re a biased party, the parents of the vic, and you’re to go nowhere near this case or we’ll slap you with obstruction. There’s no shooter on the grassy knoll. Your daughter died, and we got the sick fuck who did it. Case closed. Go home to each other. Grieve.”

“Thanks,” Dray said. “We’ll take that under advisement.”

They walked back to Tim’s car silently, climbed in, and sat.

“He’s right.” Tim’s voice was soft, cracked, defeated. “We can’t get involved. There’s no way we could go about this investigation fairly, objectively. Let’s hope Kindell sweats it and tries to talk for a plea. Or chokes on the stand and spills. Or that his PD trots out the accomplice theory as part of the defense. Something. Anything.”

“I feel useless,” Dray said.

A cop car pulled in swiftly and parked across the lot. Mac and Fowler got out, joking and chuckling, and headed into the bar.

Tim and Dray sat in the afterwash of the laughter, eyes on the dash.

•When Tim entered the kitchen Thursday morning, Dray looked up from the latest batch of thank-yous and condolence-card replies she was writing. Her eyes went to the pager in his hand, then to his Smith amp; Wesson, clipped to his belt. “You’re going to the office? Already?”

“Bear needs me.”

Light glowed yellow through the drawn blinds, falling across her face. “I need you. Bear’ll be just fine.”

The phone rang, but she shook her head. “Press,” she said. “All morning. They want a sobbing mother, a stoic father. Which do you want to play?”

He waited for the phone to quiet before speaking. “A tip came in from one of our CIs this morning. We’re planning a hot takedown. I have to go in.”

One of Bear and Tim’s confidential informants had caught wind of a deal going down that had Gary Heidel’s smell all over it. The Escape Team had been tracking Heidel, a Top 15, for the better part of five months. After being convicted for one count of first-degree murder and two counts of drug trafficking, Heidel had escaped during his transport from courthouse to prison. Two Hispanic accomplices in a pickup had pinned the sedan against a tree, shot both deputy marshals, and extracted Heidel.

Tim had known that Heidel would need money quickly, and so he’d turn to the one place guys like him got money quickly. Since Heidel’s MO was a distinctive one-he acquired diluted cocaine from Chihuahua and had mules drive it across the border hidden in wine bottles-it had been easier for Tim and Bear to press the street for related information. Finally their vigilance had paid off. If their CI had given Bear reliable intel, a forty-key deal was going down sometime that afternoon or night.

“You sure you’re ready to work?”

Tim’s eye flicked to the scattering of cards on the wood tabletop. Garlands in muted inks on taupe paper. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m going out of my mind. If I don’t work, I might do something stupid.”

Dray dropped her eyes. He knew she sensed his eagerness to get out of the house. “You should go, then. I think I’m just upset that I’m not ready yet.”

“You sure you’re okay? I could call Bear-”

She waved him off. “It’s like what you said to me that first awful night.” She mustered a faint grin. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

He paused for a moment in the doorway before leaving. Dray leaned over the card she was writing, her jaw set just slightly as it got when she concentrated. Early sunlight shone through the window, turning the edges of her hair pale gold.

“Of course I remember that day at the picnic, with her and the airplane,” Tim said. “I remember everything about her. Especially when she was bad-for some reason those memories bring her the closest. Like when she drew on the new wallpaper in the living room with crayons-”

Dray’s face lightened. “And then denied it.”

“Like I might have done it. Or you. Or that time she put the thermometer against the lightbulb to get out of going to school-”

She matched his smile. “I came back in the room, and the mercury was redlined at a hundred six degrees.”

“The princess tyrant.”

“The little shit.” Dray’s voice, loving and soft, cracked, and she pressed a fist to her mouth.

Tim watched her fighting tears, and he looked down until his own vision cleared. “That’s why I can’t…why I avoid it. When we talk about her, it’s too…vivid…and it…”

“I need to talk about her,” Dray said. “I need to remember.”

Tim made a gesture with his hand, but even he wasn’t sure what it was meant to convey. He was again struck by the ineffectiveness of language, his inability to digest his feelings and shape them into words.

“She’s a part of our lives, Tim.”

His vision grew watery again. “Not anymore.”

Dray studied him until he looked away. “Go to work,” she said.

5

TIM sped downtown, reaching the cluster of federal and courthouse buildings surrounding Fletcher Bowron Square. The squat cement and glass structure that passed for the Federal Building housed the warrant squad’s offices. Embedded in the front wall was a mosaic mural of women with square heads, which Tim had never quite grasped. The few times he’d taken Ginny to the office, she’d found the seemingly inoffensive mural unsettling; she’d keep her face turned into his side as they passed. Tim had always had a tough time deciphering her fears; also on her list were movie theaters, people over seventy, crickets, and Elmer Fudd.

He badged himself at the entrance, took the stairs to the second floor, and headed down a white-tiled corridor with spotty patchwork on the walls.

The office itself wasn’t much to look at, a haphazard throw of cubicles with metal schoolboy desks and fabric walls the color of Pepto-Bismol-laced vomit. For months admin had been promising the deputies a move to the more upscale Roybal Building next door, and for months it had been delayed. The bitching had reached a daytime-talk-show high, but it did little good; the deputies weren’t the first to note that federal bureaucracy moved like an arthritic tortoise, and, to be fair, shoddy office space had never been an impediment for deputies who preferred the street anyway. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings, crime stats, and most-wanted mug shots. John Ashcroft peered out from a portrait, all beady eyes and weak chin.

As Tim threaded through the cubicle labyrinth to his desk, the other deputies mumbled condolences and averted their eyes, precisely the type of reaction he’d come to work to avoid.

Bear approached him at a half sprint, filling the narrow space between desks. He was geared up-ballistic helmet under an arm, goggles around his neck, thin cotton gloves, a mike-mounted portable radio, two sets of matte black cuffs, a gaggle of hard plastic flex-cuffs fanning back off his shoulder, black steel-plate boots, a Beretta in a hip holster, a can of Mace, extra mags dangling from a shoulder rig on his right side, and a Level III tactical vest, more flexible than the old Christmas-platter trauma-plate specials, but still able to stop most rounds. Forty-plus pounds, not counting his primary entry weapon, a cut-down twelve-gauge pump-action smoothbore Remington, charged with double-aught buck and fitted with a fourteen-inch barrel and pistol-grip stock. Because of its absence of a shoulder stock, the shotgun kicked back thirty-five pounds of recoil to be absorbed by the arms; this was nothing for Bear, but Tim had seen more slender deputies get knocked ass over teakettle.

Like the rest of the Arrest Response Team members, Tim preferred the shoulder-mounted MP-5, which could better pinpoint targets. He thought Bear’s shotgun an unwise choice because it tied up both hands and presented penetration problems in a confined area, but Bear had grown partial to the Remington in his Witness Security days, and the shuck it gave when he racked a round could up a fugitive’s pucker factor considerably.

ART was composed of the best-trained deputy marshals. When the bell rang, they came off regular duty, threw on Kevlar, and enacted precision strikes to extract fugitives. Because of Tim’s Spec Ops background and his early record working up warrants, he’d been fortunate to make ART almost immediately after graduating the academy. During one fugitive roundup in his second month, his team had been hitting as many as fifteen hideouts a day, guns drawn on each entry. They kicked in the door half the time, and more than half the arrests were of armed men.

Bear hardly slowed as he reached Tim, and Tim turned and moved with him to keep from getting run over.

“We’re waiting on you. Downstairs. Now. We’ll have our pre-op briefing on the way over.”

“What happened?”

“Our CI dropped dime on a buddy who was supposed to mule a shipment of imported wine, clear it through customs, port of entry San Diego. His meet is with a guy who fits Heidel’s description.”

“Where?”

Bear’s gold marshal’s star flashed on its leather belt clip as he walked. “Martia Domez Hotel. Pico and Paloma.”

The mule would probably leave the drugs in a truck in the parking lot to eliminate the risk of getting caught with them in the room. At the motel he’d receive his first payment and get directed to the stash house, where the water would be extracted from the “wine,” leaving behind cocaine.

“How’d you pin location?”

“ESU. Heidel’s a smart bastard, been phone-swapping about every other day, but the CI coughed up his new number and it tripped a cell site right at Paloma and Twelfth.”

The Electronic Surveillance Unit had a unique set of tricks at its disposal when it came to tracking fugitives. Every cell phone emits a locating burst in its own distinct radio frequency, identifying itself to its network. If a top-clearance government agency like the Marshals Service or NSA is willing to commit outrageous resources, a nationwide cellular system can be programmed to pinpoint that burst to a local cell-system coverage area within a radius of less than three hundred yards. Because of the expense-a live cell-phone trace requires men and cars and global positioning satellite handsets-the obvious problems gaining legal clearance, and the reliance on private-sector telecommunication cooperation, the technology is used sparingly. They were going all out for Heidel.

“Martia Domez is the only hotel on the block, and the CI knew the meet was in a hotel Room 9,” Bear continued. “The meet wasn’t supposed to be until six P.M., but Thomas and Freed did a drive-by about twenty minutes ago and said someone’s already in the room. Two more men just showed up.”

“Either of them fit Heidel’s description?”

“No, but they look like the spicks who helped spring him. Thomas and Freed are sitting surveillance with the ESU geeks-I told them not to get eye-fucked, that we’d hot-ass over and take the mutts before Elvis leaves the building.”

Bear knocked the door open so hard it left a dent in the wall. The other deputies watched them with some envy as they headed out.

•The Beast waited for them downstairs. An old, retrofitted military ambulance, the Beast fitted twelve people on two opposing benches. Huge white letters stood out from the black paint-POLICE U.S. MARSHALS-almost exactly matching the T-shirts of the ART members. On all U.S. marshal-issue clothing and gear, POLICE appears in text larger than that proclaiming the agency name, because if given the choice in a high-heat situation, a deputy marshal doesn’t want to wait for the Average Citizen to remember what a deputy U.S. marshal is, and because POLICE is the international language for CAN SHOOT STRAIGHTER THAN YOU. The yellow lettering and embroidered badges also cut the odds considerably that the ART squad would be mistaken for a stickup crew.

Tim grabbed his gear from the trunk of his car, swung up into the back of the Beast, slapped a few fives, and sat between Bear and Brian Miller, the supervisory deputy in charge of ART and the Explosive Detection Canine Team. Miller’s best bitch, a black Lab named Precious after Jame Gumb’s poodle, nuzzled up to Tim’s crotch before Miller snapped her back into place.

Tim regarded the eight other men on the benches. He was not surprised to see both Mexican ART members present; knowing that Heidel’s two deputy-killing accomplices were Latino, Miller had pulled in the Hispanic talent as a preemptive strike against claims of racial retribution. A Cuban kid named Guerrera was sitting in for their regular number-three man, who was the brother-in-law of one of the deputies whom Heidel’s men had shot. Miller had taken every precaution to ensure a fair, lawful takedown and to make sure his men would survive the postop hernia-check scrutiny of the Los Angeles media.

There was some uneasy shifting on the bench opposite Tim. “Do me a favor. Don’t tell me how bad you feel about my daughter. I know you all do, and I appreciate it.”

Assorted nods and mumbles. Bear broke the awkwardness, pointing to Tim’s holstered. 357. “Hey, Wyatt Earp. When are you gonna get an auto and enter the twenty-first century?”

Bear’s little drill to show the others Tim wasn’t fragile. Appreciative, Tim played along. “The average gunfight lasts seven seconds, occurs within a range of fewer than ten feet. Do you know how many rounds are typically exchanged?”

Bear smiled at Tim’s mock-formal tone, and a few of the others joined him. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Four.” Tim removed the pistol and spun the wheel. “So the way I see it, I’m actually packing two spare bullets.”

The vehicle lumbered out of the parking lot, passing the Roybal Building’s metal sculpture composed of four immense human outlines that looked as though they’d been aerated by the crew that took down Bonnie and Clyde. The perforated men and the women with square heads left Tim with the strong impression that the government should stick to issuing budgets, not art.

Frankie Palton stretched his arm back over his head, grimacing, and Jim Denley snorted. “Your pimp beat you up?”

“No, the old lady brought home this goddamn Commie Sutra book, you know, all the sexual positions-”

Tim noticed that Guerrera’s MP-5 was set to three-round bursts, and he gestured with his middle and index fingers to his own eyes, then pointed at the gun’s knob. Guerrera nodded and clicked it to safety mode.

“-and she had me going in this goddamned Congress of the Cow last night, I shit you not, I thought I was gonna blow out my rotator cuff.”

Ted Maybeck leaned over and searched the floor at his feet. “Goddamnit. God dam nit.”

“What’s the fucking problem, Maybeck?” Miller said.

“I forgot my ram.”

“We have two battering rams and a sledge up front.”

“But not my ram. I brought that ram from St. Louis. It’s good lu-”

“Don’t say it, Maybeck,” Bear growled, looking up from loading his five-shot. “Don’t you fuckin’ say it.”

Tim turned to Miller. “What do we got?”

“Thomas and Freed are reconnoitering as we speak, getting the lay. ESU’s keeping an eye on the cell-phone signal, making sure it stays put. As we all know, Heidel is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If the four firearms he’s chosen to register are any indication, he prefers wheel guns. When we get him, don’t order him to put his hands behind him-he’ll probably have a pistol shoved in the back of his jeans. We want his hands on his head. According to witnesses, the two Hispanic males-”

“You mean Jose and Hose B?” Denley said.

“You fucking white guys,” Guerrera said. “Always an inferiority complex with your little glowworm dicks.”

“Big enough to fill your mouth.”

The two men extended their fists and bumped knuckles. If tactical precision was an ART requirement, the ability to generate repartee was not.

Miller’s voice rose to warning pitch. “The two Hispanic males have some gang insignia on the backs of their necks, and one might have a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his biceps. We don’t know for sure, but we’re counting on four men in the hotel room-Heidel, the two Hispanics, and the mule. Heidel’s got a common-law wife-fat bitch with limited English and several weapons violations. We couldn’t flip her last year, so she might be along for the ride. We have numerous statements from Heidel that he’s not going back to prison, so we can interpret that pretty easily.”

Heidel, like the majority of postconviction fugitives they tracked, had nothing to lose. He’d already had his day in court. If captured, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and that wouldn’t make him or his two deputy-killing buddies particularly docile takedowns. Once again the deputies would have to play by the rules even when the mutts did not. Mutts had no departmental guidelines, no deadly-force policy, no concern for bystanders or passersby. To fire they didn’t have to wait to get threatened with a gun or be in fear for their lives.

“We’re gonna go with an eight-man stealth, no-knock entry. No flash-bangs. Usual order through the door. LAPD’ll set a secondary perimeter, give us a nice visible uniformed presence, and we’ll have some cover rifles across the street. Guerrera, this ain’t Miami-the doors open in here, not out. Denley, remember you’re in Los Angeles. Through the door and straight back. Forget those vertical Brooklyn entrances.”

“Try to lose the Bobby De Niro accent while you’re at it,” Palton said. “No one buys that shit anyway.”

Denley jerked a thumb toward his chest. “You talkin’ to me?”

Tim cracked a smile, his first in days. He realized he hadn’t thought about Ginny in nearly five minutes-his first free five minutes since the incident. His return to the memory was jarring, but he felt steeled with the first bracings of hope. Maybe tomorrow he’d manage six minutes free and clear.

The Beast screeched over a curb and pulled into the back lot of a 7-Eleven. Two LAPD officers at his side, Freed crossed to them in a crouched under-fire run, though the motel was nearly two blocks away. One of the ESU geeks-matted hair, thick glasses, the whole nine yards-was right behind him, eyes glued to a handheld GPS unit, the faintly glowing readout showing that the locating RF pulse from Heidel’s mobile phone was not moving.

The ART squad exchanged greetings with the cops, and Miller thanked them for their presence and discussed where to set the perimeter. With ART huddled around, Freed unfurled a thick sheet of butcher paper across the hood of a nearby Volvo. On it he’d sketched a rough diagram of the hotel room’s interior based on a conversation with the manager and his own assessment of the lay of the roof and the locations of various vents and external pipes. They didn’t want to risk the visibility of taking a tour through a similar room. The blueprint was oddly elongated; a hallway led back from the front room to a bedroom and bathroom.

“The mule just showed up in a hoopty,” Freed said. His command of slang disguised the fact that he came from money, but his crisp enunciation still betrayed a private school education. “A kitted-up ’91 Explorer. Chrome rims, running boards, brush guards, curb feelers, air dam-the whole street-scum package. The back looks to be filled with boxes, but the windows are tinted, so we can’t ID if they’re wine crates or not. He’s been in there about five minutes. The two Hispanic males arrived in a Chevy, and we think whoever was waiting for them in the room came in a green Mustang. Plates check out to a Lydia Ramirez, Heidel’s girlfriend, so that’s a pretty good confirm.”

Maybeck was fondling the new battering ram, getting a feel for it like a pitcher with a new glove. “What do we got on the door?”

“It’s a circa-1920s building, so probably a metal door with a wood core. There’s no security screen to pop or anything.”

Tim took a look around. Empty 40s in brown paper bags. Weedy front yards. Broken windows. “They might’ve sold the doors when the neighborhood went to shit and the hotel switched ownership.”

“Double-check in case they’re hollow-core,” Bear said. “The last thing we need is you putting the ram through the goddamn door again.”

“Relax, Jowalski. That happened once, six fucking months ago.”

“Once was enough.”

Freed cleared his throat. “It’s a two-story building, room is center first floor, number nine. It’s got sliding-door access to a shitty pool in the back, and a back-facing bedroom window. Me and Thomas’ll cover the rear.”

Tim turned down the volume on his portable radio so he wouldn’t have to remember to do it on the approach. “Is the unit connected to the rooms on either side?”

“No.”

The adrenaline started to hammer pretty hard. The men had instinctively paired into their two-man cells, and they were bristling like fillies in the gate. Precious strained a bit on her leash.

Miller finished with the police officer and turned to his men. “All right, boys. Let’s Pearl Harbor his ass.”

•They shuffled along the outdoor walkway, stacked tight, guns low-ready across their chests, approaching from the hinge side of the door. Miller led with Precious, Maybeck hauling his ram close behind. Tim was in his customary position as the number one; Bear, his cell partner, would be through the doorway right after him. The other cells were pressed behind them. All black gear and weapons, their eyes bugged out with goggles, helmets low and sleek. More than a few fugitives had wet themselves after being surprised by a kick-in.

Bear was sweating heavy, holding the action back on the Remington, the ejection port empty and ready for when he wanted to jack the pump and make some noise.

Miller crept forward and tapped the far edge of the door frame. Precious went up on her hind legs, holding her paws back from the door, then followed Miller’s hand down across the bottom of the door and back up to the knob. If she smelled any explosive materials booby-trapping the door, she would have sat, but she just stood there panting. Miller took her off in a fast trot, clearing the way.

The door was particleboard, probably hollow, with cheap, white-metal hinges. Maybeck rested his hand on it, feeling its vibe. Deputy marshals and doors have a long-standing respect for one another.

Maybeck drew back the battering ram. A perfect moment of quiet. Then he swung it down, striking the locking mechanism. The dead bolt tore through the frame, the door banging in with a jagged Pac-Man bite missing at the knob. Maybeck flattened himself against the outside wall, and Tim swept past him, kicking through into the unknown, the heat of seven more bodies following him, all yelling.

“U.S. Marshals!”

“Down! Everybody down on the ground!”

“Policia! Policia!”

“Hands up! Get your fucking hands up!”

The mule’s head snapped up. He’d been counting hundreds into a wrinkled brown paper bag. Three cell phones lay on the dinged-up wood table beside the cash, one of them silently emitting the telltale burst.

Tim was aware of the shirtless male to his right-a Joaquin y Leticia tattoo inked across his left pectoral-but he went for the first immediate threat, shoving the mule over and getting him proned out. “Spread your arms! Spread your arms!”

The room shook with thundering boots and commands as the other ART members poured in, moving threat to threat. Tim frisked the mule quickly around the waist and sides to make sure he couldn’t get to a weapon immediately, then stepped over him and let Bear move up to take custody. Tim’s head pivoted with the MP-5, cheek mashed to the shoulder stock, sighting down the dark hall.

Two deputies were on Joaquin, four more spreading along the walls, MP-5s raised. One of them took over the mule for Bear, then Bear was at Tim’s back, one hand touching his shoulder, stutter-stepping after him into the dark hall. Behind them Joaquin struggled and cursed as the others finished clearing the front room.

“U.S. Marshals!” Tim yelled down the hall. “You’re surrounded! Step out into the hall! Step out into the hall!”

Two more men waited behind Tim and Bear, eager to penetrate the rear rooms. The hall stood dim and silent, a fifteen-yard stretch back to the open opposing doors of the bedroom and bathroom. No closets or corners behind which to seek cover-reasons veterans sometimes balked at hallways and called them fatal funnels.

Tim moved swiftly down the hall, men stacking up behind, still shouting commands. The place smelled of rotting carpet and dust. As Tim neared the two open doors, Heidel and Lydia Ramirez leaned barely out from either side, pistols lowered at Tim’s head. It was an impeccably timed move; Tim couldn’t get a shot off on one without the other’s opening up on him. The narrowness of the hall cut off Bear’s angle behind him.

Heidel’s face was pressed hard against the inside jamb of the bedroom door, so his voice came out slurred. “That’s right, motherfucker! Keep moving!” The gun flicked to Bear, still behind Tim. “You! Big guy! Back the fuck off.”

Heidel was sporting what appeared to be a Sig Sauer. He carried a wheel gun, a Ruger from the looks of it, in a shoulder holster under his left armpit.

“Come here, come here!” Heidel’s greedy hand bunched Tim’s shirt.

Bear chambered a round, his massive fists encompassing the shotgun like a pool cue. “Release that federal officer! I said release that federal officer!”

Without raising the MP-5, Tim thumbed the release, dropping the clip on the floor just before Heidel whipped him around the corner into the bedroom. Heidel slammed Tim against the wall and pressed the Sig into his cheek so hard it crushed his flesh against the bone. Heidel wore a Philly Blunt skullcap pulled low over his eyebrows. A wispy goatee, light blond, barely stood out from his pasty white skin. Another man, a big Hispanic male with a snake tattoo encircling his biceps, snatched the MP-5 from Tim with one hand and lifted Tim’s Smith amp; Wesson from the holster with the other. He looked at the MP-5’s empty receiver and threw the gun to the side in disgust, though it still housed a round in the chamber.

More shouting farther down the hall. Heidel stuck his arm out and fired blindly into the hall until the Sig’s slide locked to the rear. He threw the empty gun aside, drew his Ruger, then gestured for Tim’s Smith amp; Wesson, which he jammed into his empty shoulder holster as a backup. He shoved the Ruger up against Tim’s face.

“Anybody fucking moves, I’m wasting your guy!” Heidel yelled. “Come on, baby. Come on.” His girlfriend stepped across the hall into the bedroom, and Heidel slammed and locked the door. Tim rotated slightly into the grinding pain of the pistol to get the lay of the room and noticed the fire door connecting to the hotel room next door. Faulty intel.

Heidel yelled at the closed door, “Anyone comes through here, I shoot the fed! I’m not fucking around.” He turned, panicky, and shoved the big man toward the fire door. “Move it, Carlos.”

Carlos flung open the fire door and stepped through. Another bedroom, another long hall. Heidel pushed Tim forward, following Carlos’s trail. The big man had a revolver tucked in the back of his jeans, the pearl handle glimmering. Tim slowed a bit, falling back. Heidel and his girlfriend fired idiotically at the walls behind them.

“Move it, cabron,” Lydia screamed. She shoved him, and Tim faked a fall.

Carlos kept running, disappearing around the corner.

“Get up! Get the fuck up!” Lydia stood over Tim, unbound breasts swaying fat and free beneath a stretched-out man’s undershirt. Heidel was behind her, providing rear cover.

Tim pushed up onto his hands and knees, then rose. His holster hung empty from his belt. “Get him the hell up and moving!” Heidel shouted.

Tim crossed his arms, his left hand high on his biceps. When Heidel raised the Ruger to his forehead, as Tim knew he would, he snapped his hand over, grabbing the wheel tightly so it couldn’t rotate, and kicked the girlfriend in the stomach as hard as he could. She grunted loudly and dropped, maintaining her clutch on the pistol.

Heidel was yanking the trigger, not yet realizing that the cylinder couldn’t turn, the barrel digging into the middle of Tim’s forehead. With his right hand Tim reached across and pulled his own Smith amp; Wesson from its limp dangle in Heidel’s shoulder holster, then calmly fired a shot into Heidel’s chest. The back-spray of blood misted Tim’s face, and Heidel fell away, arms spreading out and up like a kid’s first pass at a snow angel. Tim kept his grip on the Ruger, still held up and backward, aimed at his own head. He pivoted quickly, saw that Lydia had found her feet, and he fired a shot through her chest and one through her face before her upswinging pistol arm reached horizontal.

She collapsed with a gurgle, a shudder of flesh and ripped cotton jersey.

Tim spun the Ruger and holstered it, keeping his Smith amp; Wesson at the ready. He ran down the hall, shoulder scraping a wall, and entered the front room just as Carlos banged through the sliding door onto the hotel’s pool deck. With the exception of Freed and Thomas, all the cover rifles were out front, and the LAPD’s secondary perimeter was a block away. Tim sprinted through the sliding door in pursuit, but Carlos was gone. Thomas was running toward Tim, shotgun at his side, while Freed kept rear cover by the pool. Having unexpectedly moved the length of four rooms and two hallways, Carlos had caught them off guard.

Without slowing, Thomas gestured to a still-swinging gate to Tim’s left. “Come on!”

Tim followed after him into a narrow alley. Puffs of smoke rose from the window of a restaurant kitchen, clinging to the walls. Carlos was halfway down the alley in a dead sprint for the traffic-heavy street ahead. Tim passed Thomas quickly. Carlos burst out onto the street and saw the LAPD vehicle at the far curb, the small crowd of bums and passersby drawn to the police perimeter, now pointing and shouting. Twenty yards behind, Tim cleared the alley just as Carlos froze up in surprise. The two young cops at the perimeter looked more shocked than Carlos.

Carlos reached for the revolver tucked in the small of his back, and Tim stopped running, raised his Smith amp; Wesson, and sighted on center mass. He double-tapped Carlos between the shoulder blades, then put his last bullet through the back of his head in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

When Carlos slapped the pavement, what was left of his head sent out a spray like a dropped melon.

6

WHEN TIM ARRIVED back at Room 9, two deputies were hauling Joaquin out. They’d hoisted him by his ankle and wrist cuffs and were carrying him horizontally, facedown. A length of nylon cord cuff ran around his ankles and back up to his arms. He continued to resist violently, jerking and trying to bite the deputies’ legs. The mule evidently had gone more peacefully.

Five LAPD patrol cars cordoned off the area, lights flashing. A sizable crowd had gathered; in the distance Tim spotted the panning dishes atop the first news vans to pick up the story. The chop of a copter was audible, though the visible sky was empty.

Bear sat propped against the outside wall, clutching his ribs, Miller and a paramedic bent over him. Tim felt his pulse quicken once again. “Everything all right?”

Miller opened a fist dramatically, revealing the flattened slug he’d just picked out of Bear’s vest. Tim exhaled hard and slid down the wall to plunk beside Bear.

“You’ve got nine lives, Bear.”

“Only seven left. The first I owe to you, this one to Kevlar.”

Freed, Thomas, and a cop milled around the hoopty, peering hun-grily through the tinted windows. Sweat stains on Freed’s T-shirt outlined the pattern of a bulletproof vest.

“What are they doing?” Tim asked.

“Waiting for the U.S. Attorney’s office to call back,” Miller said. “She’s tracking down a judge at home so they can get a telephonic search warrant for the car.”

“We stumble in on a Top 15 exchanging cash with convicted drug traffickers who then try to kill us, and that doesn’t constitute probable cause to search the fucking car?” Bear deteriorated into a coughing fit.

“I guess not anymore,” Miller said.

“You mean my night classes at the South West LA Legal Training Academy weren’t wellsprings of infallibility? How ’bout that?”

Tim shrugged. “We have the guys, we have the vehicle. Nothing’s going anywhere. They might as well wait another twenty minutes and cover their asses.”

They sat watching the commotion in the parking lot and the street beyond, a windstorm trying to quiet. The younger deputies were circled up by the door to Room 9, trying to joke off the bitter aftertaste of mortality.

“You could toss a cat through Motherfucker’s chest cavity.”

“Nice hit, nice hit.”

“Rack shot that fuck, he was DRT: Dead Right There.”

A few of them swapped high fives. Tim noticed that Guerrera was gripping his wrist hard to keep his arms from shaking.

“That’s the way to do it, Rack,” someone called out. “Fuckin’-A yeah.”

Tim raised a hand in a half wave, but his eyes were on the marshal’s Bronco, just pulling through the police perimeter. Marshal Tannino hopped out and approached in a jog. A stocky, muscular man who’d come up through the ranks, Marco Tannino had joined the service at twenty-one. His recommendation last spring by Senator Feinstein paved the way to his marshalship, one of the few appointments made on genuine merit. The majority of the ninety-four marshals were big contributors to Senate campaigns, trust-fund babies whose dads rubbed elbows with Beltway brass, or sycophantic bureaucrats from other government agencies. Much to the chagrin of the street deputies, one of the marshals out of Florida was a former professional clown. Tannino, on the other hand, had logged plenty of trigger time in his distinguished career, so he was respected from bottom to top in the district office and elsewhere.

He wore a focused expression, running a hand through his coiffed salt-and-pepper hair as Freed filled him in.

Miller squeezed Tim’s shoulder. “We need to get you a paramedic?”

Tim shook his head. The aftermath of the adrenaline kick had left his mouth dry and sour. The area smelled of sweat and cordite.

One of the police officers crouched over Tim and flipped open his black notebook. He started to talk, but Tim cut him off. “I have no statement.”

Tannino stepped in hard, his knee brushing against the cop so he had to stand to regain his balance. “Get out of here,” he said. “You know better than that.”

“Just doing my job, Marshal.”

“Do it elsewhere.”

The cop retreated inside the hotel room.

“How are you doing?” Tannino asked. He was looking Hill Street hip in his Harvey Woods sport coat, polyester slacks, and Nunn Bush wingtips.

“Okay.” Tim unholstered his Smith amp; Wesson, double-checked that the wheel was empty save the six casings, and handed it over to Tannino, not wanting to make him ask for it. The weapon was no longer his; it was federal evidence.

“We’ll get you a fresh one soon.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Let’s get you out of this mess. The media monkeys are banging the bars, and the scene’s gonna heat up.”

“Thanks, Marshal. I fired si-”

The marshal held up his hand. “Not now, not here. Nothing oral, ever. You know the game. You’ll make one statement one time, and it’ll be in writing. You did your job and did it well-now let’s jump the hoops and make sure you’re protected.” He offered his hand and pulled Tim up off the wall. “Let’s go.”

•The room was small and painfully bright. Tim shifted on the examination table, and the stiff paper beneath him crinkled. Bear and the other ART members had also been cleared to County USC Hospital and set up in separate rooms to simmer down.

A polite knock on the door, then Marshal Tannino stepped in. “Rackley. You left quite a trail back there.” He cocked his head, regarding Tim with his dark brown eyes. “The doctor told me you refused sedatives. Why’s that?”

“I don’t need to be sedated.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Not about this.”

“You’ve been through this before. With the Rangers, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have. I’d like to say just a few times.”

“There’s an Employee Assistance Intervention Team coming out. They’re available to talk to you, the other guys, your wife, whatever you want.”

“The Hug Squad, huh? I might take a pass.”

“You can do that. But you might want to consider it.”

“To be honest, Marshal, this doesn’t bother me very much. I had little choice. I abided by regulations. They tried to kill me. I shot them justly.” Tim moistened his lips. “There are other things I need to tend to. Things closer to home.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, too. Your daughter. There’s that guy who specializes in this kind of stuff-that high-profile shrink over at UCLA…”

“William Rayner.”

“He’s expensive, but I’m sure I could get admin to spring for-”

“We’re gonna feel our way through this one on our own, thanks.”

“Okay.” Tannino clicked his teeth a few times, watching Tim with concern. “How are you two doing with that stuff?”

Tim pursed his lips, then unpursed them. “I don’t know.”

Tannino cleared his throat, studied the floor. “Yeah. I’d imagine that’s just about right.”

“Is there any way…?”

“What, son?”

“Is there any way we could have one of our guys look into my daughter’s case? The sheriff’s detectives on it aren’t…” He stopped again, unable to meet Tannino’s eyes.

“We can’t put this office’s resources on the line for a personal case, Rackley. That’s not how we play. You know better than to ask that.”

Tim’s face reddened. “Yes. I do. I’m sorry.” He slid off the table. “I’m okay to go?”

“I’d like to buy you a little more time from the media. Three dead, a public shooting-it’s gonna be a circus. We’ll have to do things very methodically.” He looked at Tim as if unsure he was registering this. “Plus, your FLEOA lawyer is on his way over. He’ll help you with your statement, make sure you’re all lined out.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry about this crap. This is just the way things go down these days. But we’ll cover all our bases. You can’t turn a bad shooting into a good shooting, but you can turn a good shooting into a bad one.”

“It was a good shooting.”

“Then let’s make sure it stays that way.”

•Dray was curled up on the couch in the gloom of the living room when Tim returned. The blinds were drawn, as they’d been when Tim had left that morning, and he wondered if she’d bothered to open them all day. She was wearing ripped jeans and a sweatshirt from the academy and looked as though she hadn’t gotten around to a shower. At arm’s length from her repose sat a half-eaten bowl of cereal, beside two empty Coke cans that had been knocked over.

It was too dark for Tim to see whether she was asleep, though he sensed she wasn’t. He checked the clock on the VCR: almost eleven. “Sorry I’m so late. I got-”

“I know. I watched the news. I thought you might’ve been able to find a phone.”

“Not the way things went.”

With effort Dray propped herself up on her elbows, her face rising into visibility. “How’d it go down?”

He told her. A thoughtful frown appeared on her face halfway through.

“Come here,” she said when he was done. He crossed to her, and she made room on the couch between her legs. He sat, leaning against her, her body sleep-warm and firm. She’d been working her triceps last month, and they stood out like prongs on the backs of her arms. She played with his hair. She pressed his head to her chest, and he let her. As he relinquished control, it became clear how much he’d retreated into protective rigidity to drag himself through the past few days. He lay back, breathing Dray in, relishing her touch.

After a few minutes he turned and kissed her. They broke apart, hesitated, then kissed again.

Dray brushed his bangs back from his forehead, running a finger over the thin scar at his scalp line where he’d been struck by a rifle butt outside of Kandahar. He kept his hair combed down on the right side to hide it; Dray alone could study it without making him uncomfortable. “Maybe we could, I don’t know, go back to the bedroom,” she said.

“Are you hitting on me?”

“I think so.”

Tim stood and leaned over her, sliding his hands under her knees and shoulders. She let out an anomalous giggle and looped her arms around his neck. He exaggerated his trouble picking her up, groaned, and dropped her back on the couch. “You’re gonna have to lay off the weights.”

He’d intended it as a joke, but it came out sharply. Her smile dimmed, and he felt his insult bank and come back a vicious self-loathing. He crouched and cupped her face with both his hands, letting her read the remorse in his eyes.

“Come with me,” he said.

She stood, and they regarded each other. They hadn’t made love since Ginny was killed. Though it had been only six days, the fact hung disproportionately heavy between them. Maybe they were punishing themselves, denying themselves intimacy, or maybe they feared the closeness itself.

Tim felt first-date nervous, and he thought how odd to be so fragile at his age, in his house, with his wife. She was breathing hard, her neck sparkling with remembered sweat, and she reached out and took his hand, a touch awkwardly.

They walked back to the bedroom, pulled off their shirts, and began to kiss, tentatively, tenderly. She lay back on the bed, and he moved gently above her, but then her noises shifted direction and gained edge. He stopped, realizing she was weeping. Her fingers splayed, her palms finding the balls of his shoulders, and she pushed him back and off. He sat on the bed, naked and confused as she grappled with the sheets to pull them over herself. Ginny’s empty room across the hall silently made itself known, like a deep vibration.

Dray tucked one arm across her stomach and pressed her other hand to her trembling lips until they stopped. “I’m sorry. I thought I might be ready.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He reached out and stroked her hair, but shedidn’t respond. He put on his clothes quietly, unsure whether she perceived his dressing as an insult or as his move to gather his pride; he’d intended neither.

“I guess I just need some space.”

“Maybe I should go back to…?” He pointed down the hall, then retreated slowly across the room. He paused for a moment at the door, but she didn’t stop him.

•Tim slept lurchingly through a tangle of nightmares and awoke in a sweaty haze a mere hour later, his intake of dream images somehow affirming his suspicion that Ginny had died at the hands of two killers-one still an enigma.

He couldn’t trust the detectives’ competence. He didn’t agree with the DA’s take on the case. He couldn’t use the service. He couldn’t investigate the case himself.

He was desperate.

Desperate enough to look for help in the one place he swore he never would.

He glanced at the clock-11:37 P.M.

He jotted Dray a note in case she woke up, left the house quietly, and drove swiftly to Pasadena. He headed through the clean suburban neighborhood, his heartbeat and anxiety increasing with his proximity. He parked at the end of an aggregate concrete walk, the stones perfectly smoothed as they were on Tim’s porch. The windows sparkled-not a single smudge. The lawn was dead level and precisely trimmed, the sides lined to perfection by an edger or maybe even shears.

Tim headed up the walk and stood for a moment, taking note of the coat of paint on the front door, untainted by even one brush mark. He rang the bell and waited.

The footsteps approached evenly, as if timed.

His father opened the door.

“Timmy.”

“Dad.”

His father stood, as always, wedged between the door and the jamb, as if protecting the house from a Bible salesman’s assault. His gray suit was cheap but well pressed, the knot of his tie seated high and hard against his throat despite the hour. “How are you holding up? Haven’t talked to you since the news.”

The news. An engagement. A business deal. A daughter’s death.

“May I come in?”

His father inhaled deeply and held his breath for a moment, indicating the inconvenience. Finally, he stepped back and let the door swing open. “Would you mind taking off your shoes?”

Tim sat on the couch in the living room, facing the La-Z-Boy upon which he knew his father would eventually settle. His father stood over him for a moment, arms crossed. “Drink?”

“Water would be good.”

His father leaned over, plucked a coaster off the coffee table, and handed it to him before disappearing into the kitchen.

Tim looked around the familiar room, unchanged since his childhood. A scattering of picture frames covered the mantel, displaying the sun-faded stock photographs that had come with them. A woman at the beach. Three babies in a kiddie pool. A generic couple having a picnic. Tim was unsure if the frames had ever housed personal photos. He tried to remember if a picture of his mother, who’d wisely left them when he was three, had ever been on display in the house. He could not.

Ginny was the last of the Rackleys, the end of the lineage.

His father returned, gave Tim the glass, and offered his hand. They shook.

Easing into the La-Z-Boy, his father shoved the wood lever on the side and leaned back, the footrest kicking up beneath his legs. Tim realized he hadn’t seen his father since Ginny’s fourth birthday. His father had aged, not drastically but significantly-a faint net of wrinkles beneath each eye, a slight pucker cupping the points of his mouth, coarse white hairs threaded in his eyebrows. It distressed Tim. Another stark glance at death’s encroachment-slow this time, but equally unrelenting.

It struck him that when he was little, he hadn’t understood death. Or he’d understood it better. It had seduced him. He’d played war, he’d played cops and robbers, he’d played cowboys and Indians, but he’d played no game in which death had not been a participant. When his first Ranger buddies had died, he’d worn his uniform and sunglasses to the funerals and observed stoically, dark and tough. And he hadn’t been mourning for his friends, not really, because they’d just beaten him to it. First one to get a license, first one to get laid, first one to get killed. But with falling in love, losing a daughter, that had all changed. Death wasn’t seductive anymore. When Ginny died, he’d felt a part of himself break off and spiral down a void. The damage had lessened him. And left him more exposed to dread.

He found he had less and less stomach for death.

To steel himself he reached for the reliable joist of aggression. “You been shooting straight?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“No fraudulent checks, no running fake credit-card numbers?”

“Not a one. It has been four years now. My parole officer is quite proud, even if my son is not.” His father tilted his head for emphasis, then let his smile drop.

He leaned forward, the footrest sucking into the cheap fabric and disappearing. Crossing his legs, he laced his hands across his knee. He’d always exhibited an elegance that far outpaced the people and objects with which he surrounded himself. It was hard to square his well-filed nails with a life patched together from second-rate cons.

What he said next surprised Tim more than anything he’d ever said.

“I miss Virginia.”

Tim took a sip of water, more to stall for time than anything else. “You never saw her much.”

His father nodded, again with his head slightly tilted, as if he were listening to distant music. “I know. But I miss the idea of her.”

Tim found himself gazing at the photographs on the mantel. “She wasn’t just an idea.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

It took some effort for Tim to get the words out. “I need help.”

“Don’t we all.” His father uncrossed his legs and leaned back, his hands gripping the armrest, like Lincoln at the monument. “Money?”

“No. Information.”

His father gave a grave nod, that of a judge who’d seen it all before.

“I was wondering if you could put the word out about Ginny’s death. To your guys. You know people in all walks-maybe someone’s heard something.”

His father stood, removing a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. He wiped the condensation from Tim’s glass, wiped the coaster, replaced them on the coffee table, and sat back down. Tim wondered if his own impeccable neatness was an attempt to satisfy some deep-buried urge to please his father or simply a learned need to hold in order those matters in which order could be held. The house conveyed not a loving custodianship but the rigidity of the not deeply secure. His father had built it plank by plank, or so he’d always claimed.

“It was my understanding from the newspapers that there’s a clear suspect. This Kindell.”

“He is. But I have a feeling there’s more to the story.”

“It sounds like you’re being a bit emotional.” He regarded Tim, waiting for a response. When it became clear he wasn’t going to get one, he said, “Why don’t you dig around? You have confidential informants, colleagues. You deal with people on the wrong side of the tracks, I’d imagine. Aside from your father, I mean.”

“I’m reluctant to put myself too close to the case, given my clear bias. And I can’t use the service for a personal cause.”

“Ah. The superego speaks.” His father pursed his lips; he had a pronounced Cupid’s bow, a more handsome face than Tim’s. “So you’ll put me on the line, call in my contacts but not your own.”

“I’m compromised here, for obvious reasons. I thought if you came across something hard, a strong lead, we could turn it over to the authorities.”

“I don’t like the authorities much, Timmy.”

Tim forged through thirty-three years of hard-built instinct, opening himself up to the intense vulnerability that came in expecting something, anything from his father. “I’ve never come to you before. Ever. For a job, for money, for a personal favor. Please.”

His father sighed, affecting regretfulness. “Well, Timmy, things have been tight lately, and I only have so many favors to call in. I gotta spend them wisely.”

Tim’s mouth had gone dry. “I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.”

“But your important, you see, isn’t necessarily my important right now. It’s not that I don’t want to help you out, Timmy, it’s just that I have some problems of my own and some priorities of my own. I’m afraid I don’t have any extra favors to call in right now.”

“Any or any extra?”

“Any extra, I suppose.”

Tim bit the inside of his lip, took it to the verge of pain for a few moments. “I understand.”

His father traced the edges of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, as if smoothing a goatee. “The lawman come to the con man for help. I believe that’s what they call irony.”

“I believe you’re correct.”

His father stood up, smoothing his pant legs. Tim followed suit.

“Give my regards to Andrea.”

“I’ll do that.”

At the door his father straightened his arms, showing off his jacket. “Like my new church suit, Timmy?”

“I didn’t know you went to church.”

He winked. “Hedging my bets.”

7

ALL the medical examiner’s rooting through Ginny’s body produced no essential physical evidence. There was extensive vaginal tearing, but no signs of semen. A condom had been used-identified as a Durex Gold Coin from the lab workup of the lubricant residue-but no matching or discarded condoms had been logged at Kindell’s house or at the crime scene. On the seventh day the medical examiner finally released the body. Because of the severity of Ginny’s assault and the ME’s thoroughness, Tim and Dray had no choice but to arrange a closed-casket service, which suited them anyway.

They paid for the funeral from Ginny’s incipient college fund.

The service was mercifully brief. Dray’s four brothers showed early, tall and refrigerator-wide, packing flasks of bourbon. They circled up like a football huddle in the parlor, shot Tim criminating looks, and wept. Bear sat alone in the last pew, his head lowered. Mac came with Fowler and didn’t miss a single opportunity to be at Dray’s side. They kept their distance from Bear.

Dray wore a gray coat over a black dress, and carried herself gracefully despite her visible exhaustion.

Tim’s father appeared late, slender, well groomed, and smelling conspicuously of aftershave. He kissed Dray on the cheek-she received him warmly for once, clutching his hand-then nodded somberly at Tim. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Tim said.

After awkwardly reaching and rereaching for each other, they managed a dour embrace. Tim did his best to avoid his father for the rest of the service, and his father seemed to find the unspoken arrangement equally acceptable.

The burial itself took place at the Bardsdale Cemetery in a wet breeze that left the mourners’ clothes damp and uncomfortable. The mud collecting around the base of Tim’s dress shoes reminded him of that on Kindell’s boots-the stain of guilt. Tim contemplated whether he wore it now for withholding retribution against his daughter’s murderer.

His father left midway through the ceremony. Tim watched his solitary form make its way down the grassy hill, shoulders not squared with the resoluteness that ordinarily so defined his father’s posture, and his father.

On the drive home Tim jerked the car to the side of the road and hunched over the wheel, his breath hammering through him. He used to wake up this way a few times a month upon his return from Croatia, flooded with images of mass graves, but he’d not before experienced such claustrophia in the daylight. Dray reached over, rubbed his neck lovingly, patiently. The sensation of constriction departed as suddenly as it had started. He sat staring numbly at the road, the rise and fall of his shoulders still pronounced.

“I wanted to give her things I never had. A stable home. Support. I wanted to teach her ethics, respect for society-things I was never shown, things I had to find on my own. Now that’s gone. I lost the future.” He blew out a shaky breath. “What’s the point now? To make another mortgage payment? To get up for work another day, go to sleep another night?”

Dray watched him, wiping her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

They sat until Tim’s breathing returned to normal, then drove home in silence.

Waiting for them on the doorstep was the morning paper, still unread. The cover photo featured Maybeck and Denley throwing high fives outside Room 9 of the Martia Domez Hotel as two cops carried off a body bag on a stretcher. Both deputies were smiling, and Denley’s glove was smudged with blood, probably from checking Heidel’s pulse inside. The headline read: U.S. MARSHALS CELEBRATE DOWNTOWN BLOODBATH. Without a word Dray walked the paper to the curb and dumped it in the recycling bin.

In the middle of the night, Dray’s keening from the bedroom awakened Tim on the couch. He walked back to the bedroom and found the door locked. She answered his soft knock between sobs. “I just n-need…to do this alone for a while.”

He returned to the couch and sat, her sobs reaching him muffled through the walls.

To respect Dray’s need for space, Tim took to brushing his teeth and showering in the other bathroom, near the garage, entering the bedroom only to get clean clothes. On the coffee table beside the couch, he put an alarm clock and a reading lamp. Marshal Tannino had asked him to take a few days while things cooled down, so Tim tried to keep busy, working out, doing small repairs around the house, trying to limit the time each day he spent feeling sorry for himself or basking in his unrequited hatred of Kindell.

He and Dray ate at different times so as not to overlap in the kitchen, and when they passed each other, their eye contact was short and uncomfortable. Ginny’s absence loomed large in the house, a growing shadow that fell between them.

If Tim had bothered to turn on the TV or read the newspaper, he would have seen that the Heidel shooting had captured that hottest spotlight of all, the attention of the L.A. media. Highlights from the trial of Jedediah Lane-the right-wing extremist thought responsible for releasing sarin nerve gas at the regional office of the Census Bureau-occasionally bumped the shootings from the front page, but Tim’s story proved to have surprising staying power. Phone calls from the press trickled in at first, then reached a fevered pitch. Soon Tim could glean whether it was a press call based on how firmly Dray put the phone down. Tim raised the issue of getting a new number, but Dray, unwilling to concede another change no matter how small, wouldn’t have it. Mercifully, no media made the trek to their house.

Tim was to give a statement for the shooting review board the day before Kindell’s preliminary hearing. He awakened early and showered. When he entered the bedroom, Dray was sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap. They exchanged polite greetings.

Tim walked to his closet and gazed inside. His three suit jackets were center-vented so his pistol would never be exposed at his hip. All his shoes were lace-up; he’d learned the hard way about loafers his first time walking the fenders on a Protective Services detail on a muddy afternoon.

He dressed quickly, then sat on the bed opposite Dray to pull on his shoes.

“Nervous?” she asked.

He tied his shoelaces and crossed to the gun safe before remembering that he no longer had a service-issued weapon. “Yes. More about the prelim tomorrow.”

“He’s gonna be sitting there. In the same room as us.” She shook her head, mouth firmed with anger. “He’s all we have on this. Kindell. No accomplice, nothing else.” She stood up, as if sitting left her in too vulnerable a position. “What if they let him plea-bargain? Or if the jury doesn’t believe he did it?”

“It won’t happen. The DA will never let him plead out, and there’s enough evidence to convict him six times over. It’ll go smoothly, we’ll have ringside seats at the lethal injection, and then we can get on with things.”

“Like what?”

“Like finding the right place for Ginny. Like figuring out what parts of all this to let go. Like learning to live in this house together again.” His voice was soft and held longing. He could see his words working on Dray, cutting through some of the calluses the friction of the past days had built up between them.

“Two weeks ago we were a family,” Dray said. “I mean, we were so close, we were the ones they were jealous of. The other ones, with the bad marriages. And now, when I need you the most, I don’t even recognize you.” She sat back down on the bed. “I don’t even recognize myself.”

Tim thumbed the snap on his empty holster. “I don’t recognize us either.”

They shifted and waited, studying everything but each other. Tim searched for what he wanted to say but found nothing except confusion and an intense, unfamiliar need for assurance that unsettled him further.

Finally Dray said, “Good luck with the shooting board.”

8

REPORTERS CLUNG TO the courthouse steps like pigeons, trailing cords and setting up their field lead-ins. Tim drove past unnoticed and pulled through a gated entrance into the lot. Marshal Tannino’s office and those of his chiefs were arrayed along a quiet, carpeted hall behind the courthouse that felt more East Coast library than West Coast lowest bidder. The administrative offices were farther down the hall, past an immense antique safe from a late nineteenth-century marshal’s stagecoach escort team.

Bear was sitting on a chair in the small lounge, flirting with the marshal’s assistant and, from her weary expression of forbearance, doing a bad job of it. He stood quickly when Tim entered and ushered him into the hall.

“I’ve got to make a statement in three minutes, Bear.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“We had to take the phones off the hook. Too many-”

“I drove over to your house two nights ago. Dray said you were out shooting.” Bear studied Tim’s face. “She didn’t tell you I stopped by?”

“We haven’t been talking so much lately.”

“Jesus Christ, Rack. Why the hell not?”

A flare of anger that Tim smothered. “Look, I need to focus on my shooting statement right now.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Bear took a deep breath, held it for a moment. “You’re getting ambushed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been watching the news?”

“No, Bear. I’ve been dealing with more important stuff. Like burying my daughter.” Bear took a step back, and Tim inhaled deeply, then squeezed his eyes hard with his thumb and index finger. “I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”

“The coverage has been pretty ugly. There’s this high-five picture-”

“I saw it.”

Bear lowered his voice as a couple of DOJ suits walked by. “It’s getting play like the shot of the INS agent with the MP-5 in Elian Gonzalez’s face. On top of that, some Mexican Al Sharpton out of Texas has been beating the drum-”

“That’s ridiculous. Heidel was white, and half our team was Hispanic.”

“But the photograph is of Denley and Maybeck, and they’re both white. And all that matters is that fucking photo, not the facts behind it.”

Tim held up his hands, a gesture of patience and capitulation. “I can’t control press coverage.”

“Well, you’re not just repeating your statement in there. A few shooting review board members flew out from HQ. You’re gonna get the full-court press.”

“Fair enough. It was a high-profile shooting. There’s a process. I get it.”

“Listen, Rack, this thing gets out of hand, goes civil or criminal, I’m gonna represent you. I don’t care if I have to resign-I got your back.”

“I knew law school would turn you paranoid.”

“This is serious stuff, Rack. Now, I know I’m just a dumb-ass who took a few night classes, but I can rep you for free and get you a real attorney to cover the hard shit.”

“I appreciate that, Bear. Thank you. But it’s gonna be fine.”

The marshal’s assistant stuck her head into the hall. “They’re ready for you, Deputy Rackley.” She withdrew without acknowledging Bear.

“‘Deputy Rackley,’” Tim repeated, troubled by her formality.

“I just wanted to warn you.”

“Thank you.” Tim tapped Bear on the ribs. “How’s the bruising?”

Bear tried not to wince. “Don’t hurt at all.”

Tim started back for the lounge. When he turned around, Bear was still watching him.

The big brick of a tape recorder shushed hypnotically in the center of the elongated table. Tim’s chair, with its middling size and cheap upholstery, was no match for the high-backed black leather numbers his interviewers commanded on the opposing side. Tim jiggled the handle beneath his seat inconspicuously, trying to elevate it.

With painstaking detail they’d covered every inch of Tim’s account of his shooting of Gary Heidel and Lydia Ramirez. The Internal Affairs guy wasn’t so bad, but the woman from Investigative Services and the gunner from Legal were attack dogs in knockoff suits. Tim’s forehead felt moist, but he refrained from wiping it.

The woman uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her finger tracing something in the file before her. “You claim you emerged from the alley and saw Carlos Mendez reaching for his weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Did you issue a warning to Mr. Mendez?”

“The firing of warning shots is against agency regulation.”

“As is firing at fleeing suspects, Deputy Rackley.”

The Internal Affairs inspector shot her a look of irritation. He was an older guy, probably switched over to IA to log a few more years of service before retirement. Tim remembered he’d introduced himself as Dennis Reed. “This was not merely a fleeing suspect, Deborah. He was armed and intent on firing.”

She made a calming gesture with her hands. “Did you issue an oral warning to Mr. Mendez?”

“We’d been issuing oral warnings for the preceding seven minutes to no avail. Two people were already dead as a result of the fugitives’ failure to heed those warnings.”

“Did you issue another oral warning immediately before you fired on Mr. Mendez?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There was no time.”

“There was no time for you to issue a final command of any sort?”

“I believe that’s what I just said.”

“But there was enough time for you to draw your weapon and fire three shots?”

“The final two shots were irrelevant.”

If Reed’s smirk was any indication, he liked Tim’s answer.

“Let me rephrase my question. There was enough time for you to draw your weapon and fire the first shot but not to issue an oral warning of any kind?”

“Yes.”

She feigned immense puzzlement. “How is that possible, Deputy Rackley?”

“I’m a very quick draw, ma’am.”

“I see. And were you concerned that Mr. Mendez was going to fire at you?”

“My primary concern was for the safety of others. We were on a street filled with civilians.”

“So I can take that to mean that you weren’t concerned he was going to fire at you?”

“I thought he was probably going to shoot one of the police officers in front of him.”

“‘Thought,’” the lawyer said. “‘Probably.’”

“That’s right,” Tim said. “Only I used them in a complete sentence.”

“There’s no need to get defensive, Deputy Rackley. We’re all on the same side here.”

“Right,” Tim said.

The woman flipped through the file, then frowned, as if she’d just discovered something. “The crime-scene report indicates that Mr. Mendez’s weapon was still tucked into the back of his jeans when they assessed the body.”

“Then we should be grateful he wasn’t given the opportunity to draw it.”

“So he wasn’t trying to draw the weapon?”

Tim watched the wheels of the tape recorder spin their lethargic circles. “I said he wasn’t given the opportunity to draw it. He was, in fact, attempting to draw it.”

“We have mixed eyewitness reports regarding that fact.”

“I was the only one behind him.”

“Uh-huh. On the alley side.”

“That’s right.” Tim let out his breath through his teeth. “As I said, he was a clear-”

“Threat to the safety of others,” she said. His textbook recitation of the deadly-force policy inspired a note of disdain, almost parody.

The lawyer perked up in his chair, evidently sighting a lead-in. “Let’s talk about the ‘safety of others.’ Did you have target acquisition?”

Reed grimaced. “I’d say from the looks of the body, he had pretty damn good target acquisition, Pat.”

Pat ignored him, continuing to address Tim. “Are you aware that there were civilians in the backdrop when you took that shot? A whole crowd, in fact?”

“Yes. Those civilians were my concern. That’s why I elected to use deadly force.”

“If you had missed, your round would almost definitely have struck one of those civilians.”

“That’s highly debatable.”

“But what if you had missed?”

“Our pre-op briefing made clear the fugitives had nothing to lose, as it made clear their unwillingness to be taken alive. Mendez’s behavior, from the time he aided in taking me hostage, only reinforced this intel. He, like Heidel and Ramirez, was willing to kill any number of people to evade capture. It was a clear calculation: My chances of taking him out were vastly greater than the chances of his not killing someone once he got his weapon free and clear.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Deputy Rackley.” Pat slid his pen behind his ear and crossed his arms. “What if you had missed?”

“I shot a consistent twenty out of twenty on the pistol qual course as a Ranger, and I’m a six-time qualified three-hundred shooter as a deputy marshal. I wasn’t planning on missing.”

“Well, bravo. But a deputy marshal in the field has to be willing to consider every potentiality.”

Reed rocked forward and thumped his elbows on the table. “Just because he agreed to submit to questioning does not give you the right to drag him over the coals. There’s a subjective element to every decision to engage with deadly force. If you’d ever toted a gun, you’d be aware of that.”

“Excellent point, Dennis. I’ve heard packing heat greatly enhances one’s interpretation of the law.”

Reed pointed at Pat. “Watch your step. I’m not having you harass a good deputy. Not in my presence.”

“Moving on,” the woman said. “I understand you’ve had a recent trauma in your personal life?”

Tim waited several seconds to answer. “Yes.”

“Your daughter was killed?”

“Yes.” Despite his efforts, some of his fury crept into his voice.

“Do you think this event may have influenced any of your actions during these shootings?”

He felt the heat rise to his face. “This ‘event’ has influenced every single moment of my life since. But it hasn’t altered my professional judgment.”

“You don’t think that you may have been feeling…aggressive or…retaliatory?”

“Had I not been in fear for my life or concerned for the lives of others, I would have done everything in my power to bring those fugitives in alive. Everything in my power.”

Pat tilted back in his chair and made a little temple with his pudgy fingers. “Really?”

Tim stood up and placed both his hands palm down on the table. “I am a deputy U.S. marshal. Do I look like a soldier of fortune to you?”

“Listen-”

“I’m not talking to you, ma’am.” Tim didn’t remove his eyes from Pat. Pat remained tilted back in his chair, fingers pressed together. When it became clear he wasn’t going to respond, Tim reached over and turned off the tape recorder. “I’m done answering questions. Anything further, you can talk to my FLEOA rep.”

Reed rose as Tim exited, but Pat and the woman remained seated. As Tim walked away, he could hear Reed start laying into them. The marshal’s assistant stood as he passed her, heading for Tannino’s office.

“Tim, he’s in with someone right now. You can’t just-”

Tim knocked on the marshal’s door, then opened it. Tannino sat behind an immense wood desk. An overweight man in a dark suit was sprawled on the couch opposite, smoking a brown cigarette.

“Marshal Tannino, I’m very sorry to interrupt you, but I really need a moment.”

“Of course.” Tannino exchanged a few words of Italian with the man as he showed him out. He closed the door, then waved a hand at the cigarette smoke, shaking his head. “Diplomats.” He gestured to the couch. “Please, sit.”

Though he didn’t want to, Tim sat. His dress shirt was pinching him at the shoulders.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, Rackley. The press is bad. Now, I understand you weren’t one of the knuckleheads throwing high fives, but you were the shooter, and we both know shooters take the scrutiny. Deserved or not, the service got a black eye on this one. Here’s the good news: The shooting review board is convening next week at headquarters, and they’re going to clear you.”

“They don’t seem like they’re going to clear me. They seem like they’re looking for a scapegoat for a situation that doesn’t demand one.”

“They will clear you. All the written statements are in and check out. They just sent out a few board members to run your statement through the ringer in-house so steps won’t have to be taken out of house. We don’t want any FBI involvement here. Or some state DA looking to make a name.”

“What’s the bad news?”

Tannino puffed out his cheeks in a sigh. “We’re gonna put you on light duty for a while, get you off the street until the press calms down. In a couple of months, we’ll get you qualified on a fresh service pistol.”

At first Tim was not sure he’d heard Tannino correctly. “A couple of months?”

“No big deal-you’ll just do analytical work rather than fieldwork.”

“And while I’m putting my training to use making schedules at the operations desk, what is the unparalleled service PR machine going to be putting out about me?”

Tannino walked over and examined a Walker. 44 cap-and-ball sixgun that hung on the wall, encased in Lucite. A black plastic comb protruded from the back pocket of his suit pants. “That you’ve quite responsibly elected to enroll in an anger-management course.”

“Absolutely not.”

“That’s it. It’s a nothing thing. Then headquarters can stand behind your decision to engage with deadly force, and we’re a big happy family again.”

“What does this have to do with Maybeck and Denley high-fiving?”

“Absolutely nothing. But this is a bullshit perception game, as you’ll see if you’re ever so unfortunate as to reach my level. And the bullshit perception, because of that goddamn photograph, is that we’re a bunch of bloodthirsty, gung ho loose cannons. If we indicate the shooter is acquiring a heightened sensitivity to anger issues, we cut some of that perception, and the paper pushers at the Puzzle Palace can go back to their normal job, which is doing exactly nothing. In the meantime I get the pleasure of dealing with this on all fronts and of having to ask one of my best deputies-unjustly-to take some shit for us.” His grimace showed more regret than disgust. “The system at work.”

Tim stood up. “It was a good shooting.”

“Good shootings are relative. I know that what they’re asking is difficult, Rackley, but you have your whole career ahead of you.”

“Maybe not with the U.S. Marshals Service.” Tim unhooked his leather badge clip from his belt and laid it on Tannino’s desk.

In a rare display of anger, Tannino grabbed it and hurled it at Tim. Tim trapped it against his chest. “I am not going to accept your resignation, goddamnit. Not considering what you’ve been dealing with. Take some more time-administrative leave-hell, a few weeks. Don’t make a decision now, in these circumstances.” His face looked tired and old, and Tim realized how much it must have pained him to take the kind of company line Tannino himself had always despised and thought cowardly.

“I’m not going to do it.”

Tannino spoke softly now. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to. Everything else I’ll protect you on. Everything.”

“It was a good shooting.”

This time Tannino met his eyes. “I know.”

Respectfully, Tim laid his badge back on Tannino’s desk, then walked out.

9

ON TIM’S WAY home a white Camry emerged from the crush of midday traffic to inch alongside him. A flurry of movement drew his attention to the car’s backseat. A young girl wearing a yellow dress was pressing her face to the window in an attempt to horrify nearby drivers.

Tim watched her. She mashed her nose against the glass, pigging it upward. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She feigned picking her nose. Her mother looked over at Tim apologetically.

The car stayed more or less at his side, lurching and braking in time with him. He tried to focus on the road, but the girl’s movement and bright dress pulled his gaze back to her. Realizing she had Tim’s eye again, the girl fisted her straight blond hair out in Pippi Longstocking pigtails. She laughed openmouthed and unencumbered, as only children can. As she looked for a reaction in Tim’s face, her expression suddenly changed. Her smile faded, then vanished, replaced with uneasiness. She slid down in her seat, disappearing from Tim’s view, save for the top of her head.

By the time he got home, Tim’s shirt was spotted through with sweat. He entered the house and slung his jacket over one of the kitchen chairs. Dray was sitting on his couch, watching the news. She turned, regarded him, and said, “Oh, no.”

Tim walked over and sat beside her. Not surprisingly, the chirpy KCOM news anchor, Melissa Yueh, had taken up the shooting. A graphic of a gun appeared in the upper right corner of the screen, in front of a shadowy outline of two hands high-fiving. Tim’s own personal logo. Beneath it stretched SLAUGHTER AT THE MARTIA DOMEZ HOTEL in block letters.

“Did it go as bad as you look?” Dray asked.

“They want to let drop I’ve enrolled in an anger-management course, then desk-jockey me till the storm blows over. It lets them cover their asses without admitting to liability or guilt.”

Dray reached over and laid a hand on his cheek. It felt warm and immensely comforting. “Screw them.”

“I resigned.”

“Of course. I’m glad.”

An attractive African-American reporter came on-screen, soliciting the takes of passersby on the shooting. An obese man with a skimpy goatee and a backward Dodgers cap-the archetypal Man on the Street for the market and time slot-offered his opinion gladly. “The way I see it, a guy’s running from the cops like that, he deserves to get shot. Drug dealers, cop killers, man, I say we execute ’em before the judge’s gavel drops. That U.S. Marshal guy, I hope he gets away with it.”

Great, Tim thought.

Next a woman with vivid green eyeliner added, “Our children are safer with drug dealers like that out of the picture. I don’t care how the police get them off the streets, as long as they’re gone.”

“Look at those people,” Tim said. “No idea what issues are in play.” The bitterness in his voice surprised him.

Dray looked over at him. “At least you have a few allies.”

“Allies like that are more dangerous than enemies.”

“They may not be the most well spoken bunch, but they seem to have a grasp of justice.”

“And no grasp of the law.”

She shifted on the couch, arms weaving together across her chest. “You think the law adds up to justice, but it doesn’t. There are cracks and fissures, loopholes and spin. There’s PR, perception, personal favors, and cluster fucks. Look at what just happened to you. Was that justice? Hell no. That was a big, self-cleaning machine clanking forward, squashing you beneath it. Look at how the investigation went into Ginny’s death. We’ll never know what really happened, who was involved.”

“So you’re mad at me because…?”

“Because my daughter got killed-”

“Our daughter.”

“-and you were in a position-a unique position-to see justice served. And instead, you served the law.”

“Justice will be served. Tomorrow.”

“What if he’s not executed?”

“Then he’ll rot in prison the rest of his life.”

Dray’s face was flushed, frighteningly intense. She ground a fist into an open hand. “I want him dead.”

“And I want him to talk. To cough out what really happened when he’s on the stand. So we can know if there’s someone else out there, someone else responsible for our daughter’s death.”

“If you had just shot him, instead of asking him, then we’d never have been burdened with this mystery. This unknown. It’s awful. It’s awful not knowing and thinking someone out there, someone who we could know or could see on the street and not ever guess…”

Her face creased, and Tim moved over to embrace her, but she pushed him away. She rose to head back to the bedroom but paused in the doorway. Her voice was cracked and husky. “I’m sorry about your job.”

He nodded.

“And I know it was more than a job.”

•The early-morning rain had vanished, leaving behind a moist, stifling heat that permeated the courthouse. Tim’s head throbbed with exhaustion and stress. He’d spent the night fidgeting on the couch in a kind of unsleep, sweating off his frustration about the shooting review board and obsessing about the upcoming hearing. He pictured the little girl in the Camry, her arms pale and thin. Ginny’s face at the morgue when he’d drawn back the sheet. The wisp of hair trapped in the corner of her mouth. Her fingernail they’d found at the crime scene, loosed in some desperate act of clawing or crawling.

His own mind had become hostile, a treacherous terrain. There was less and less of it he could inhabit peacefully.

Dray sat beside him, rigidly forward, her arms crossed on the bench back in front of them. They’d arrived early and sat in the last row, awash in an unspoken dread. When Kindell had been led in by a young sheriff’s deputy and the shoddily dressed public defender, he’d looked neither as menacing nor repugnant as Tim had remembered. This disappointed him. Like most Americans, he preferred to see evil embodied unequivocally.

The DA, a sharp, well-put-together woman in her early thirties, had sat with Tim and Dray for a few moments before the preliminary hearing had begun, offering further condolences and assurances. No, she wasn’t making a case for an accomplice, since that could open up the door to a reduced sentence for Kindell. Yes, she was going to nail Kindell’s ass to the wall.

Despite her prudish name-Constance Delaney-she was a tiger of a prosecutor, with a stellar track record. She opened strong, fending off the defense’s motion to reduce the high bail set at arraignment. She artfully examined Deputy Fowler, working to establish probable cause to bind the case over to trial, while trotting out as little of her case strategy as possible. Fowler spoke clearly, without sounding coached. He left out Tim and Bear’s presence at Kindell’s dwelling without committing anything to the record that could be contradicted. CSU’s delayed arrival to the crime scene did not arise.

Kindell sat erect, attentively watching all the proceedings, his head swinging back and forth from Delaney to Fowler.

It wasn’t until the cross that things came unwound.

“And of course you had a warrant to search Mr. Kindell’s property…?” The public defender shuffled closer to the witness stand, the sheaf of yellow legal-pad pages swaying in his hand. Delaney propped her chin on her fist, jotting notes.

“No. We knocked and introduced ourselves, asked him if we could take a look around. He clearly gave oral consent for us to search the area.”

“I see. And that’s when you discovered”-a few moments as the PD shuffled through the sheets of paper-“the hacksaw, the rags stained with what was later identified to be the victim’s blood, and the truck tires with tread that matched that at the scene of the crime?”

“Yes.”

“You discovered all of these things after he gave you consent to search the property?”

“Yes.”

“With no search warrant?”

“As I said-”

“Just yes or no, please, Deputy Fowler.”

“Yes.”

“At which point you began arrest procedures?”

“Yes.”

“You’re entirely certain, Deputy Fowler, that you Mirandized Mr. Kindell?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Was this before or after you cuffed Mr. Kindell?”

“I suppose during.”

“You suppose?” The public defender dropped a few of the sheets and crouched to pick them up. Tim was beginning to suspect that his bumbling-lawyer routine was just that.

“I read him his Miranda rights as I was cuffing him.”

“So he wasn’t facing you?”

“Not through all of it. He was turned around. We generally handcuff suspects from behind.”

“Uh-huh.” The PD’s pencil poked at his upper lip. “Are you aware, Deputy Fowler, that my client is legally deaf?”

Delaney’s hand slipped from her face, slapping the table and breaking the perfect silence of the superior court. Judge Everston, a small, pucker-faced woman in her late sixties, bristled in her black robes as if she’d been shocked. Dray’s hand pressed over her mouth so hard her nails left red imprints in her cheek.

Fowler stiffened. “No. He’s not. He understood everything we said to him.”

His stomach churning, Tim recalled Kindell’s uneven voice, its lopsided cadence. Kindell had responded only when spoken to directly and when he’d been watching his questioner. Tim’s chest tightened painfully, a vise closing.

The PD turned to Judge Everston. “Mr. Kindell lost his hearing nine months ago in an industrial explosion. I have his treating physician in the hallway, who I’m prepared to call as a witness to testify that he is legally deaf, and two independent complete audiology reports showing bilateral deafness here.” He raised a manila folder, promptly scattering the papers it held, then retrieved them and handed them to the judge.

Delaney’s voice lacked its usual confidence. “Objection, Your Honor. The reports are hearsay.”

“Your Honor, as those records were produced directly to the court from USC County Medical pursuant to a subpoena duces tecum, they are exceptions to the hearsay rule as official records.”

Delaney sat down. With a stern frown, Judge Everston reviewed the file.

“Mr. Kindell is able to read lips, Your Honor, though only minimally-he’s never received professional instruction in this area. If he was being cuffed during the admonishment, he would have been facing away from Deputy Fowler’s mouth. Any questionable chance he might have had to comprehend his Miranda rights was surely eliminated. His confession was made without any clear knowledge of his rights.”

Delaney broke in. “Your Honor, if these officers made a good-fai-”

Judge Everston cut her off with a wave of her hand. “You know better than to come at me with ‘good-faith effort,’ Ms. Delaney.” Judge Everston’s mouth tightened, wrinkles ringing her lips. “If Mr. Kindell is really deaf, as counsel has indicated, there would seem to be a clear Miranda problem.”

The public defender rocked forward on his shoes. “Further, the defense requests that all physical evidence found at my client’s house be suppressed, as the search was in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Dray’s voice, small and strained, escaped from beneath the hand she held cupped over her mouth. “Oh, God.”

Delaney was on her feet. “Even if the defendant is legally deaf, he can still give legally binding consent to search, and the evidence should not be suppressed.”

“My client is deaf, Your Honor. How on earth could he give knowing and voluntary consent for a search-and-seizure request he didn’t even hear?”

Kindell turned, craning his neck to locate Tim and Dray. His smile was not malicious or gloating, rather the pleased grin of a child allowed to keep something he’d just stolen. Dray’s face was drawn and bloodless and, Tim was fairly certain, a match of his own.

“What other physical evidence do you have, Ms. Delaney, linking Mr. Kindell to the crime scene and the crime?” Judge Everston’s bony finger emerged from the folds of her robes, pointing at Kindell with thinly veiled disdain.

“Aside from what we recovered at his residence?” Delaney’s nostrils flared. Her skin had reddened in blotches spreading down her neck to the high reaches of her chest. “None, Your Honor.”

Something escaped Judge Everston that sounded remarkably like “Goddamnit.” She glowered at the PD. “I’m calling a half-hour recess.” She exited, taking the audiology reports with her, not seeming to notice that half the courtroom forgot to rise.

Dray leaned over as though she were going to vomit, digging her elbows into her stomach. Tim’s shock was so heightened it actually set his ears humming and pinched his vision at the sides.

The recess seemed to stretch on for decades. Delaney glanced back at them from time to time, her pen tapping nervously on her pad. Tim sat numbly until the bailiff entered and called for order.

Judge Everston hoisted her robes as she took the bench, her short stature apparent until she settled into position. She studied some papers for a few moments, as if mustering the strength to proceed. When she spoke, her tone was heavy, and Tim knew immediately she was about to impart bad news.

“There are times when our system, with its protections of individual rights, seems almost to conspire against us. Times when the ends justify the sordid means, and we must shut our eyes and take our medicine, despite the fact that we know it will kill a little part of us to serve a greater health. This is such a case. This is one of the sacrifices we make to live with liberty, and it is a sacrifice paid unjustly and by an unfortunate few.” She tilted her head regretfully toward Tim and Dray in the back row. “I cannot in good faith allow evidence which will clearly be overturned in an appellate court. As the audiology reports are unequivocal about Mr. Kindell’s bilateral deafness, it strains my credibility to believe that a deaf man with no formal training in lip-reading comprehended the intricacies of his Miranda rights or the oral consent he was asked to grant. It is not without considerable despondency that I hereby grant the motion to suppress evidence, with respect to the alleged confession and any and all physical evidence recovered from Mr. Kindell’s residence.”

Delaney shakily found her feet. Her voice quavered slightly. “Your Honor, in light of the court’s rulings suppressing the confession and the evidence, the People are unable to proceed.”

Everston spoke in a low tone of disgust. “Case dismissed.”

Kindell grinned sloppily and raised his hands for his cuffs to be removed.

10

THE rain had resumed, as if to match Tim’s mood, and around dusk it had kicked up fairy-tale strong, battering the screen doors and palm fronds in the backyard. The windows rattled from occasional thunder. Tim sat quietly on the couch, staring at the blank TV that reflected back only the raindrops streaking down the glass sliding doors to his side. Dray worked on a scrapbook at the kitchen table behind him, trimming and inserting pictures of Ginny in a fury of scissors and pages.

Moving only his thumb, Tim clicked the remote, and the picture bloomed. William Rayner, UCLA’s ubiquitous social psychologist, appeared in the left box of a split-screen news interview with KCOM’s anchor, Melissa Yueh. The live feed featured him seated in a somber library, legs crossed. His silver hair and well-manicured white mustache added to his slightly dated but handsome appearance. On the bookshelves behind him stretched rows of his latest nonfiction bestseller, When the Law Fails. A consummate performer with as many enemies as admirers, Rayner was a Men Are from Mars cultural critic, in a camp with Dominick Dunne and Gerry Spence. “…excruciating feeling of impotence when someone like Roger Kindell is not brought to justice. As you know, such cases strike a personal chord with me. When my son was murdered and his killer set free, I fell into a terrible depression.”

Yueh gazed on with an expression of fudge-thick empathy.

“And that’s when my interest veered in this direction,” Rayner continued. “I conducted countless interviews, countless studies. I began speaking to others about how they view these shortcomings in the law and about how these shortcomings undermine efficacy and fairness. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions. But I do know that when the law fails, the very fabric of our society is threatened. If we don’t believe that the cops and courts will see to justice, what alternative does it leave us with?”

Tim pressed the remote, and the TV blinked off. He sat in silence for a few minutes, then hit the button again. Yueh had now turned her attentions to Delaney, who looked uncharacteristically flustered. Tim hit the “on/off” button again and watched the raindrop shadows play across the blank screen.

“How could Delaney not have found out the guy was deaf?” Dray said. “I mean, he was deaf. It’s not like overlooking his eye color.”

“She was working off his old case file. He wasn’t deaf then.”

Another angry snip of the scissors sent a strip of paper fluttering to the floor. “He’s been arrested four times. You don’t think he knows his rights? He’s an expert on his rights. And why didn’t Fowler wait for a warrant? What am I saying?-of course he didn’t wait for a warrant. Of course he wasn’t careful about reading the rights or getting oral consent. He never thought Kindell was going to make it to trial. The case wasn’t dismissed because Kindell was deaf-it was dismissed because the last thing on any of your minds at the crime scene was securing the arrest properly, taking things slow and right.” She slammed the scissors down on the table. “Damn that judge. She could have done something. She didn’t have to throw everything out.”

Tim still did not turn to face her. “Right. Because the Constitution works selectively.”

“Don’t be smug and detached, Timmy.”

“Don’t call me Timmy.” He set the remote on the coffee table. “Come on, Dray-this isn’t productive.”

“Productive?” She laughed, a one-note bark. “I’m entitled to be unproductive for a day or two, don’t you think?”

“Well, I don’t feel like being in your line of fire right now.”

“Then leave me.”

He was glad he’d stayed turned away, so she couldn’t see his face. It took a moment for him to respond. “That’s not what I’m-”

“If you were going to go to Kindell’s house that night, then you should have killed him. Killed him when you had the chance.”

“Yeah, if only I’d snuffed Kindell, then our mourning process would be complete.”

Dray’s face tightened. “At least we’d have a little closure.”

“Closure’s a sham invented by talk-show hosts and self-help authors. Besides, Dray, you have a gun of your own. If you’re so unhappy with my decision, why don’t you go kill him?”

“Because I can’t now. There’s no opportunity. Plus, I’d be the first suspect. It’s not like how Fowler silver-plattered it for you. His weapon, at the scene. You plant a gun, claim things got violent, and that’s it. No phantom accomplices to plague us, no Kindell out there for the rest of our lives.” She slammed the scrapbook closed. “Justice served.”

Tim’s voice came low and even, and it held a stunning cruelty. “Maybe if you’d picked Ginny up from school on her birthday, you wouldn’t have so much blame to throw around.”

He didn’t see the strike until the fist was closing from the right. The blow knocked him off the couch, then Dray was on him, throwing wild punches. He kicked her away and rolled to his feet, but she bounced off her soft landing on the couch and charged him again. She led with a right, but he hooked her wrist with his left hand, locking her elbow with his right. Her momentum slammed her into the bookcase. Books and picture frames rained down on them. Something shattered.

Dray found her feet quickly and came at him. She fought like a well-trained deputy, which was, of course, logical, though this particular capability of hers had never before occurred to him. He tied her up in a wrist-lock hug so as not to inflict real damage on her, pinning her arms between them. They stumbled back, smashing him into the wall. He felt his shoulder blade punch through the drywall but held on. He pressed her backward, hooking her ankle with a foot and bringing her down hard on her back on the carpet. She struggled and cried out as he lay on top of her, his hips twisted to protect his groin, head lowered and pressed to hers so she couldn’t bite his face or head-butt him. He was an ice-cold fighter, all logic and strategy, against which blind rage didn’t stand a chance.

Dray was thrashing and cursing a blue streak, but he kept his head lowered, repeating her full name like a chant, urging her softly to calm herself, to breathe deep, to stop struggling so he could release her. Her face was hot, sticky with sweat and tears of rage.

The storm had subsided, giving way to a shower. Only Tim’s murmuring, punctuated by Dray’s expletives, broke the soft pattering on the roof. Five minutes passed, or twenty. Finally, convinced her anger had spent itself, he released her. She stood. He gingerly touched the skin around his eye, swollen from the sharp blow she’d dealt him. Breathing hard, they faced each other across a wash of shattered glass and fallen books.

The doorbell rang. And again.

“I’ll get it,” Tim said. Not taking his eyes from Dray, he backed slowly to the door and opened it.

Mac and Fowler stood on the doorstep, arms crossed. Mac was wearing Fowler’s smaller deputy hat perched atop his head like a beanie, and Fowler wore Mac’s, the brim down over his eyes. An old trick for responding to domestic-violence calls-get ’em laughing.

Fowler tilted back the hat and saw that no one was amused. The cast of his face changed as he regarded the damage in the house. “We, uh, got a complaint from Hartley next door. You guys fighting?”

“Yeah,” Dray said. She wiped the blood from her nose. “I was winning.”

“We have everything under control now,” Tim said. “Thanks for stopping by.” He started to swing the door closed, but Fowler got a foot in.

Mac peered past him at Dray. “Are you okay?”

She made a limp gesture with her arm. “Dandy.”

“I’m serious, Dray. Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“None of us wants a report filed,” Fowler said. “Can we leave you two without you going at it again?”

“Yes,” Dray said. “Absolutely.”

“All right.” Fowler looked from Dray’s face to Tim’s. “I know you’re going through some hard-core shit right now, but don’t make us come back here.”

Mac’s gaze shifted to Tim, his expression changing from concern to anger. The scene didn’t look good, Tim knew, but he couldn’t help resenting the accusatory edge in Mac’s eyes.

“We’re not kidding, Rack,” Mac said. “If we hear so much as a yelp out of this house, I’m hauling you in myself.”

They shuffled back to their car, hunching in the rain. Tim closed the door.

“It’s not my fault I didn’t pick her up.” Dray’s voice cracked. “Don’t fucking lay that on me. There’s no way I could have known.”

“You’re right,” Tim said. “I’m sorry.”

She wiped her nose again, leaving a dark stain on her sweatshirt sleeve, then walked past him out the front door. Standing out in the rain, she turned to face him. Her hair was pasted to her cheeks, her chin smeared with blood, and her eyes were the most exquisite shade of green they’d ever been. “I still love you, Timothy.”

She slammed the door so hard that a painting slipped from the wall at Tim’s side, the frame breaking on the hard tiles of the entry.

He walked back through the wrecked living room, grabbed a chair from the kitchen table, and spun it around to face the rain splattering against the sliding doors. He sat, leaning forward until his forehead pressed against the cool glass. The storm had resumed with added fury. Stray palm fronds littered the backyard. Ginny’s bicycle lay on its side on the lawn, one of the training wheels spinning listlessly in the wind. The darkness seemed to have a malignant consistency, drawing itself around the house like a shroud, but Tim recognized the perception as little more than his own self-flagellating need for gloomy, second-rate imagery.

The wheel continued to spin, its rusty shrilling audible even over the sound of the rain. Its banshee cry underscored each betrayal of the past two weeks. It was as though an altered light had been cast across Tim’s life, revealing its order for precisely what it was: scaffolding lending false form to chaos. He had no daughter to assure him a future, no vocation to moor him, no wife to confirm his humanity. The stark unjustness of his losses struck him. He’d done everything to uphold his contracts with the world, and yet he’d been set adrift.

He lowered his face into his hands, inhaling the moisture of his breath. The chair made a screech when he shoved back. He drew in a deep lungful of air, and it hitched twice, caught on the raised edge of a sob.

The doorbell rang.

He felt an overwhelming relief. “Andrea,” he said. He jogged across the living room, almost slipping on a book.

He threw open the front door. A man’s shadowy form stood at the far edge of the porch, rain tapping down on his slicker. A dark green southwester curled down around his face, hiding it in darkness. His posture was slightly stooped, almost indiscernibly so, an indication of age or the dawn of some illness. A strobe of light flickered across him, illumination lent by an unseen lightning bolt, but it revealed only the band of his mouth and chin. A rush of thunder permeated the air, sending its vibration up through Tim’s feet.

“Who are you?”

The man looked up, water falling in tendrils from the sloped brim of his vinyl hat. “The answer,” he said.

11

“I’Mnot big on pranksters, well-wishers, or rubberneckers,” Tim said. “Take your pick-the grieving father, the bloodthirsty deputy marshal. You’ve seen him now. Go back to your news station, your Rotary Club, your church, and tell them you gave it the college try.”

He moved to shut the door. The man raised a fist, ungloved and callused with age, and coughed into it. There was an immense fragility in the gesture that made Tim pause.

The man said, “I share your disdain for those types. And for many more.”

Despite the rain and the fluttering of his clothing around him, the man remained still, standing there like a PI cut from a dime novel. Tim knew he should close the door, but something stirred within him, akin to curiosity and compulsion, and he heard himself saying, “Why don’t you come in and dry off before you get on your way?”

The man nodded and followed Tim in, stepping over the fallen books and pictures without comment. Tim sat on the couch, the man on the facing love seat. The man took off his hat, rolled it like a newspaper, and held it in both hands.

His face was textured with age and sharply intelligent. Two vivid blue eyes stood out as the only points of softness in his rugged features. His hair, black given over to steel, he wore short and well trimmed. He displayed the kind of gaunt, confused musculature of a man whose body had changed rapidly with age; Tim imagined he’d once been a hulking presence. His hands rasped when he rubbed them together, trying to work some of the cold out of his broad fingers. Tim put him in his late fifties.

“Well?”

“Ah, yes. Why am I here? I’m here to ask you a question.” He paused from rubbing his hands and looked up. “How would you like ten minutes alone with Roger Kindell?”

Tim felt his heartbeat notch up a few levels. “What’s your name?”

“That’s not important right now.”

“I don’t know what kind of games you’re playing, but I’m a federal deputy.”

“Ex-federal deputy. And that’s beside the point. This”-his hands flared, indicating the room around them-“is just speculative talk. No more. You’re not plotting a crime or even commissioning one. The question is hypothetical. I have neither the means nor the intention to carry anything through.”

“Don’t con me. I don’t mind cruelty, but I hate a con. And believe me, I know every one in the book.”

“Roger Kindell. Ten minutes.”

“I think you’d better leave.”

“Ten minutes alone with him. Now that you’ve had time to think. Your marriage is on the rocks-”

“How do you know that?”

The man glanced at the sheets and bed pillows heaped beside Tim on the couch, then continued. “You’ve lost your job-”

“How long have you been watching me?”

“-and the man who murdered your daughter has been set free. Say you could get your hands on him now. Roger Kindell. What do you think?”

Tim felt something within him yield, giving way to anger. “What do I think? I think I would love to beat Kindell’s face into an unrecognizable pulp, but I’m not some jackass cop bent on street justice or a backwater deputy who can’t see farther than the end of his gun. I think I want the truth about what happened to my daughter, not just reckless vengeance. I think I’m tired of seeing individual rights trampled by people who are supposed to be upholding the law on the one side, and seeing mutts and pukes hide behind those rights on the other. I think I’m furious watching a system I spent my life fighting for fall apart on me and knowing there’s no better alternative out there. I think I’m tired of people like you who poke and pry and criticize and offer nothing.”

The man didn’t quite smile, but his face rearranged itself to show he was pleased with Tim’s response. He deposited a business card on the coffee table between them and slid it over to Tim with two fingers, like a poker chip. When Tim picked it up, the man rose from his seat. There was no name on the business card, just a Hancock Park address in plain black type.

Tim set it back down. “What is this?”

“If you’re interested, be at this address tomorrow evening at six o’clock.”

The man headed for the door, and Tim hastened to keep up. “If I’m interested in what?”

“In being empowered.”

“Is this some sort of self-help crap? A cult?”

“Christ, no.” The man coughed into a white handkerchief, and when he lowered his hand, Tim noticed specks of blood on the cloth. The man crumpled it back into his pocket quickly. He reached the front door, turned, and offered Tim his hand. “It’s been quite a pleasure, Mr. Rackley.”

When Tim didn’t shake his hand, the man shrugged, stepped out into the rain, and quickly disappeared into the haze.

•Tim did his best to straighten up the living room. He realigned the books, repaired one of the broken shelves with wood glue and C-clamps, then patched the holes in the walls with squares of drywall, which he fastidiously sized and inserted. His back felt out of whack from his fight with Dray, so he hung upside down a few moments from his gravity boots in the garage, arms folded across his chest like a bat, wishing he had a cityscape view rather than one of the oil-spotted garage floor. He unhooked himself from Dray’s pull-up bar, cracked his back, then returned inside and vacuumed up the shattered glass, going over the area twice to make sure he picked up all the slivers. Though he tried to ignore the business card on the coffee table, he was aware of it the entire time.

Finally he returned to the table and stood over it, studying the card. He ripped it in half and tossed it into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink. Then he flicked off the lights and sat staring out at the rain working on the backyard, turning the neat garden to mud, scattering leaves across the lawn, pooling in black puddles.

Dray didn’t acknowledge him when she returned home hours later, and he didn’t turn around. He wasn’t even sure she saw him in the darkness. Her steps were heavy and uneven down the hall.

Tim sat a few minutes more, then rose and retrieved the ripped business card from the trash.

12

TIM did a drive-by without slowing. A large Tudor house, not quite a mansion, loomed behind a wrought-iron fence. Beside the detached three-car garage, a Toyota truck, a Lincoln Town Car, and a Crown Vic were parked next to a Lexus and a Mercedes. Two of the three chimneys issued smoke, and light seeped around the drawn curtains of the downstairs windows. A gathering. And a demographically mixed one at that. The luxury cars had been there when Tim had taken his last drive-by a few hours ago, but the American metal had arrived more recently.

The house had checked out as belonging to the Spenser Trust, and further digging, predictably, had yielded little. Trusts are notoriously difficult to trace, as they aren’t filed anywhere-the paperwork exists only in a lawyer’s or accountant’s file cabinet. The trustee, Philip Huvane, Esq., was a partner in an offshore law firm on the Isle of Wight. Tim’s contact with the IRS had said he couldn’t get back to him with more specific information until tomorrow, and he wasn’t optimistic he’d have anything useful even then.

Tim turned the corner and drove around the block. A conservative, moneyed community located south of Hollywood and west of downtown, Hancock Park is Los Angeles’s best stab at East Coast sophistication. The enormous houses Tim watched fading into the dusk had been built mostly in the 1920s by rich WASPs, after the infiltration of the middle class had made Pasadena less palatable. Despite the imperious brick mailboxes and staid English exteriors, the houses still feel a touch gritty and oddly free-spirited, like a nun smoking a cigarette. In Los Angeles there’s a new twist to every habit.

When Tim came up to the house again, he pulled into the drive. He pushed a button on the call box, and the large gates swung open. He put the Beemer in park, preferring to leave it outside the gates in case he needed to make a hasty retreat, slung a black bag over one shoulder, and walked to the front door. Oak, solid core. Doorknob probably weighed ten pounds.

Tim adjusted his Sig, ensuring that it remained snugly tucked into his jeans over his right kidney, handle flared outward to precipitate a fast draw. He’d looped a few rubber bands around the fore end of the grip just below the hammer so the pistol couldn’t slip beneath his waistband. It didn’t sit on him as well as his. 357.

He raised the knocker, a brass rabbit that looked uncomfortably elongated, and let it fall. It sent an echo into the house, and the murmur of conversation inside ceased.

The door swung open, revealing William Rayner. Tim covered his surprise quickly. Rayner wore an expensively tailored suit, much like the one he’d had on in the television interview last night, and he held a gin and tonic, from the smell of it.

“Mr. Rackley, so glad you decided to come.” The man offered his hand. In person his face had a decidedly mischievous cast. “William Rayner.”

Tim pulled the proffered hand aside with his left and tapped Rayner’s chest and stomach with the knuckles of his right, checking for a wire.

Rayner regarded him with amusement. “Good, good. We value caution.” He stepped back, letting the door swing with him, but Tim didn’t move from the porch. “Come now, Mr. Rackley, we certainly didn’t invite you all this way to beat you with pipes.”

Tim entered the foyer warily. It was a dim room, heavy with original oils and dark wood. An ornately carved newel post marked the base of a curving staircase carpeted with a brass-pinned runner. Without another glance at Tim, Rayner walked ahead into an adjoining room. Tim circled the foyer before following.

Five men-including Rayner-and a woman awaited him, sitting in elaborate armchairs and on a seasoned leather club sofa. Two of the men were twins in their late thirties with hard blue eyes, thick blond mustaches, and Popeye forearm bulges covered with reddish-blond hair. They were unbelievably sturdy, with action-figure bulk, barrel chests, and sharp-tapering lats. About average height-maybe five-ten. Though they were nearly identical, some ineffable quality gave one a harder, more focused orientation. He was holding a glass of water but sipping it like a scotch. Probably spoke fluent Twelve-Step.

A slight man with too-thick eyeglasses in fat black frames sat perched on the couch. His features were rounded and yielding, like those of a cloth doll. His Magnum, PI, shirt screamed out in the muted furnishings, as did the sheen of light from his bald, pointed head. He had no chin to speak of and an extremely slight nose. His upper lip bore the signs of a repaired cleft palate. His small hand swept up from between the cushions of the couch, knuckling his glasses back up the almost nonexistent bridge of his nose. Beside him sat Tim’s visitor from last night.

The woman sat in one of the armchairs directly facing Tim, framed perfectly by the fireplace behind her. She was primly attractive; a thin button-up sweater showed off a lean, feminine build, and her glasses looked as if they’d been plucked off the face of a 1950s secretary. She wore her hair up, neatly styled and fixed in place by a pair of black chopsticks. The youngest of the group, she looked to be in her late twenties.

All around them rose bookcases, stretching from the floor to the twenty-foot ceiling. A sliding library ladder hooked onto a brass bar that ran the length of the far wall. The books were organized by set and series-law publications, sociology journals, psych texts. When Tim saw the rows of Rayner’s own books, he recognized this as the library from which KCOM had broadcast Rayner’s interview last night-it only looked like a set. His books all bore titles reminiscent of network movies from the eighties-Violent Loss, Thwarted Vengeance, Beyond the Abyss.

A honey-hued writing desk occupied the far corner; on it stood a sculpture of Blind Justice with her scales. This hokey prop seemed a cut below the other furnishings, perhaps because it was placed for TV. Or for Tim.

The woman smiled curtly. “What happened to your eye?”

“I fell down the stairs.” Tim dropped his bag on the Persian rug. “I would like to state for the record that I have not consented to anything, that I am only here regarding a meeting about which, at present, I know nothing. Are we agreed?”

The men and the woman nodded.

“Please respond orally.”

“Yes,” Rayner said. “We are agreed.” He had a con man’s easy charm and quick grin, qualities Tim recognized all too well.

As Rayner slid behind Tim to close the door, the woman said, “Before anything else, we’d like to offer our condolences for your daughter.” Her tone rang genuine, and it seemed to include some personal sadness. Had the circumstances been otherwise, Tim might have found it moving.

The man whom Tim recognized from last night rose from his chair. “I knew you’d show up, Mr. Rackley.” He crossed the room and took Tim’s hand. “Franklin Dumone.”

Tim felt him for a wire. Dumone gestured to the others, who unbut-toned or pulled up their shirts, exposing their chests. The twins’ compact, gym-tempered torsos struck a contrast to the formless flesh of the man in the loud shirt. Even the woman followed suit, pulling aside her sweater and white blouse and exposing a lace bra. She met Tim’s glance unflinchingly, mild amusement playing across her lips.

Tim removed an RF emitter from his bag and walked the perimeter of the room, scanning the wand across the walls to check for any radio frequencies that indicated the presence of a digital transmitter. He paid particular attention to the electrical outlets and a grandfather clock beside the window. The others watched him with interest.

The device emitted no tones suggesting they were being recorded.

Rayner had been watching Tim with a little grin. “Are you done?”

When Tim did not respond, Rayner nodded to the severe-looking twin. With a quick flick of his hand, the twin removed Tim’s G-Shock from his wrist. He tossed it to his brother, who dug in his shirt pocket, came up with a tiny screwdriver, and removed the watch’s backing. With tweezers he extracted a minuscule digital transmitter, which he pocketed.

The man in the bright shirt spoke in a high-pitched, wheezy voice complicated by a number of minor speech defects. “I turned off the signal when you pulled through the gate-that’s why you didn’t pick it up just now.”

“How long have you been listening to me?”

“Since the day of your daughter’s funeral.”

“We apologize for the intrusion into your privacy,” Dumone said, “but we had to be sure.”

They’d been party to his shooting review board, his confrontation with Tannino, and his and Dray’s intimate exchange of blows last night. Tim fought to regain his focus. “Sure of what?”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

Tim made no move to the couch. “Who are you, and why have you been gathering intel on me?”

The twin tightened the final screw and tossed the watch back at Tim, hard. Tim caught it in front of his face.

“I assume you know of William Rayner,” Dumone said. “Social psychologist, expert on psychology and the law, and notorious cultural pundit.”

Rayner raised his glass with mock solemnity. “I prefer celebrated cultural pundit.”

“This is his teaching assistant and protege, Jenna Ananberg. I myself am a retired sergeant from Boston PD, Major Crimes Unit. These two are Robert and Mitchell Masterson, former detectives and task-force members out of Detroit. Robert was a precision marksman, one of SWAT’s top snipers, and Mitchell worked as a bomb tech in explosive ordnance disposal.” After a reluctant pause, Mitchell nodded, but Robert, who’d snatched the watch from Tim’s wrist, just stared at him.

Robert’s aggressive bearing and the sharpness of his face reminded Tim of the Green Beret who had trained him in hand-to-hand. He’d taught Tim a close-quarters front-move, a downthrusting punch to the opponent’s groin, tight and viciously hard, timed with the twisting sink of the hips to give it more force. It could shatter the pelvis like a dropped dinner plate. The Beret claimed that if the punch was correctly aligned so the knuckles struck the top of the pubic bone, it could knock a man’s dick clean off. His smile when he’d related the fact had a particular gleam that told of strange appetites and vivid memories.

Robert and his brother were dangerous men, not because they gave off anger but because they exuded a fearlessness that years of training and combat had attuned Tim to distinguish. They shared a graveyard gleam in the eyes.

Dumone continued, “And this is Eddie Davis, aka the Stork. He’s a former sound agent and forensic locksmith for the FBI.”

The little man waved awkwardly before rewedging his hand between the couch cushions. Given the weather, the sunburn on his nose was as mystifying as his nickname.

Dumone paced behind Tim, and Tim pivoted slightly to keep him in view. “And this, fellow members of the Commission, is Timothy Rackley, a former platoon sergeant who used to wear the Rangers tab. His military training includes Close Quarter Combat School, Night Movement School, SERE School, HALO School, Jumpmaster School, Pathfinder School, Land Nav, Sniper School, Demo School, SCUBA, Urban Warfare, Mountain Warfare, Jungle Warfare. Did I leave any schools out?”

“A few.” Tim noticed an antique mirror hanging on the far wall, and he crossed to it, taking a letter opener from the desk on his way.

“Would you like to name them?”

Tim touched the tip of the letter opener to the mirror. The gap between the point and the reflection indicated all was normal; a one-way would have showed none. He returned the letter opener to the desk. “I’ve always thought credentials are overrated.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Tim bit the inside of his lip, his impatience growing. “When it comes down to it, everyone bleeds just about the same.”

Robert, who’d risen to lean cross-armed against a bookcase, snickered. Dimpled finger marks on his T-shirt sleeves showed he’d stretched them first to get his biceps through. Neither twin had spoken yet; they were busy posturing and exuding menace. Their intensity was displayed in the flush of their cheeks. Tim knew their type from his Ranger days: competent, vigorous, and fiercely loyal to what they thought their ideals were. Not afraid to get mean.

Dumone turned back to the others and continued, “In his three years with the U.S. Marshals Service, Mr. Rackley has received three Outstanding Performance Ratings, two Distinguished Service Awards, and the Forsyth Medal of Valor for saving a fellow deputy’s life, one Mr. George ‘Bear’ Jowalski. The September before last, Mr. Rackley kicked through the wall of a crack house, retrieved Mr. Jowalski’s injured body while taking fire, and carried him to safety. Isn’t that right, Mr. Rackley?”

“That’s the Hollywood version, yes.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Spec Ops for the army?” Dumone asked. “Bump up to Delta?”

“I wanted to spend more time with-” Tim bit his lip. Rayner started to say something, but Tim held up his hand. “Listen to me carefully. I will leave if you don’t tell me why I’m here. Right now.”

The men and Ananberg exchanged looks, seeming to reconcile themselves to something. Dumone settled heavily into a chair. Rayner took off his jacket, revealing an elegant shirt with flared sleeves and gold cuff links, then hung it across the back of an armchair. He stepped in front of Tim, ice jiggling in his glass.

“There is one thing we all share, Mr. Rackley. Everyone in this room, including you. We all have loved ones who have been victimized by perpetrators who managed to evade justice due to loopholes in the law. Procedural defects, chain-of-possession mishaps, warrant irregularities. The courts of this country, at times, have trouble functioning. They’re backed up, choked with statutes and new case law. Because of this we’re forming the Commission. The Commission will operate within the strictest legal guidelines. Our criteria will be the Constitution of the United States and the Penal Code for the state of California. We’ll review capital cases in which defendants have gotten off due to technicalities. The three responsibilities with which we will be concerned are those of judge, jury, and executioner. We’re all judge and jury.” His eyebrows drew together, forming a single silver line. “We’d like you to be our executioner.”

Dumone used both arms to help himself out of the chair. He headed over to a collection of bottles on a shelf behind the desk. “Can I get you a drink, Mr. Rackley? Christ knows, I need one.” He winked.

Tim looked from face to face, searching for some hint of levity. “This is not a joke.” He realized his remark sounded closer to a statement than a question.

“It would certainly be an elaborate one and a considerable waste of time if it were,” Rayner said. “Suffice it to say, none of us have a lot of time on our hands.”

The ticktock of the grandfather clock was slightly unnerving.

“So, Mr. Rackley,” Dumone said, “what do you think?”

“I think you’ve all been watching too many Dirty Harry movies.” Tim dropped the RF emitter wand into his bag and zipped it up. “I want nothing to do with vigilante retribution.”

“Of course not,” Ananberg said. “We would never ask you to engage in such activities. Vigilantes are outside the law. We’re an adjunct to it.” She crossed her legs, lacing her hands over a knee. Her voice was soothing and had the practiced cadence of a newscaster’s. “You see, Mr. Rackley, we have an immense luxury here. We can concern ourselves exclusively with the merits of a given case and the culpability of the defendant. We needn’t stand on procedural formalities or permit them to get in the way of justice. Courts regularly have to make rulings irrelevant to the merits. They’re not always ruling on the case itself-they’re ruling preemptively to deter illegal or improper government conduct in the future. They know that if they overlook warrant limitations or Miranda rights even once, it can set a precedent that will open the way for the government to act without regard for individual rights. And that is a valid and compelling concern.” She spread her hands. “For them.”

“Constitutional guarantees will still function,” Dumone said. “We’re not in conflict with them. We’re not the state.”

“You understand firsthand how complex Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure issues have grown,” Rayner said. “It’s gotten to the point that good-faith efforts by the police fall short. The system’s rough patches aren’t due to crooked cops who feel they’re above the law, or bleeding-heart knee-jerk judges. These are men and women like you and me, of good conscience and fair temperament, who are seeking to uphold a system that’s increasingly undercut by its neurotic fear of victimizing the accused.”

Robert finally chimed in with a smoker’s voice, his hands flaring in disgust. “An honest cop can’t even fire a shot without being waylaid by an internal investigation, shooting board…”

“Maybe a criminal and civil case on top of that,” Mitchell said.

Dumone spoke coolly, mitigating some of the twins’ sharpness. “We need those people, and we need the system. We also need something else.”

“We’ll be tied not to the letter of the law but the spirit.” Rayner gestured to the sculpture of Blind Justice on the desk. Their prop.

Tim noted how carefully orchestrated the presentation was. The affluent milieu, designed to impress and intimidate him, the arguments laid out succinctly, the language heavy on law and logic-Tim’s language. The speakers hadn’t so much as interrupted one another. Yet despite their skillful maneuvering, they also evinced circumspection and righteousness. Tim felt like a buyer annoyed with the salesman’s pitch but still interested in the car.

“You’re not a jury of their peers,” Tim said.

“That’s right,” Rayner said. “We’re a jury of intelligent, discerning citizens.”

Robert said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a jury, but lemme tell you-they ain’t your peers. They’re a group of sorry-ass individuals with nothing better to do on a workday and no brains to fabricate an excuse to duck duty.”

“But you’d be lying to say you don’t have biases. Your system is flawed, too.”

“Isn’t everything?” Rayner said. “The question is, is our system less flawed?”

Tim took this in silently.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Rackley?” Ananberg said.

Tim didn’t budge. “Do you have an investigative arm?”

“That’s the beauty of our system,” Rayner said. “We’ll address only those cases that have already gone to court-cases in which suspects were let off due to procedural technicalities. These cases tend to have exhaustive evidence and reports already in the dockets, court transcripts, and case binders.”

“And if they don’t?”

“If they don’t, we won’t touch them. We’re aware of our limitations-we don’t consider ourselves equipped to deal with more complex investigation and evidence gathering. If the proof isn’t all there, we happily defer to the court’s decision.”

“How do you get the court files and case binders?”

“The court files are public record. But I have several judges-close friends-who send me materials relevant to my research. They enjoy seeing their names in the acknowledgments of my books.” He worked something off one of his cuff links with a fingernail. “Never underestimate vanity.” A self-aware grin. “And we have certain arrangements-untraceable arrangements-with temps, mailroom workers, clerks, and the like, positioned advantageously in DA and PD offices. We get our hands on what we need our hands on.”

“Why do you only review capital cases?”

“Because our capabilities for punitive action are limited. We can impose either a death sentence or nothing at all. Because of this we don’t concern ourselves with lesser charges.”

Robert settled back against the wall and flexed his crossed arms. “Our rehabilitation program is not yet under development.” He ignored Dumone’s unamused glance, his eyes on Tim, dark stones in the leathery flesh of his face.

Ananberg said, “An added benefit is, we serve as a corrective for all those death-penalty biases. The majority of those sent to death row by America’s traditional courts are underprivileged minorities who can’t afford proper representation-”

“Whereas we’re an equal-opportunity exterminator,” Mitchell said.

“Do you know, Mr. Rackley, one of the overlooked benefits of legal punishment?” Tim found Rayner’s rhetorical questions to be another indication of his not-so-subtle condescension. “It removes from the victims and victims’ families the moral obligation of retaliation. In doing so it prevents society from deteriorating into feuds. But when the state defaults on its ability to inflict punishment for you, you still feel it, don’t you? The moral necessity to see justice done for your daughter? You’ll always feel it-believe me. The twitch of a phantom limb.”

Tim walked over, got in Rayner’s space just enough to imply aggression. Robert pushed himself up off his incline against the wall, but Dumone backed him down from across the room with the briefest flutter of his hand. Tim took note of all these dynamics and plugged them in to the dominance hierarchy he was evolving in his head. Rayner didn’t give the slightest indication of being intimidated.

Tim gestured at the others. “And you collected them through your work?”

“Yes. I conduct extensive subject analysis in the course of my research. It’s helped me determine who would be responsive to my ideas.”

“And you took an interest in me when my daughter was killed.”

“Virginia’s case caught our eye, yes,” Ananberg said.

Tim was impressed by her decision to refrain from euphemism and refer to Ginny by name. This small, knowing touch also added credibility to Rayner’s claim that everybody present had lost a family member.

“We were having a hard time finding candidates,” Rayner said. “Your particular set of skills and ethics is remarkably rare. And the other remotely similar candidates we were considering fell too much into the rule-follower camp, which made them unlikely to partake in a venture such as this. We started looking at candidates whose lives had been marred by some personal tragedy. Especially those who’d had loved ones killed or raped by assailants who navigated through a faulty system to find their way back onto the streets. So when Ginny’s story hit the news, we thought, here is someone who understands our pain.”

“We didn’t know, of course, that Kindell would get off again,” Ananberg said, “but when that happened, it pretty much sealed our decision to approach you.”

“We’d hoped to recruit you as a deputy marshal, when you still had access to your tracking resources,” Rayner confided. “We were disappointed by your resignation.”

“I never would have done anything to undermine the service,” Tim said. “I still wouldn’t.”

Robert scowled. “Even after they betrayed you?”

“Yes.” Tim turned back to Rayner. “Tell me how it started. This…idea.”

“I met Franklin when I was in Boston for a law and psychology conference about three years ago,” Rayner said. “We were on the same panel-I had lost a boy, Franklin his wife-and we had an immediate affinity for each other. We went out to a meal afterward, found ourselves a few drinks in and theorizing openly, and the idea of the Commission was hatched. The next morning, of course, we dismissed our conversation as hypothetical banter. The conference ended, and I came back to L.A. A few weeks later I had one of those nights-you know the kind of night to which I’m referring, Mr. Rackley? The kind of night when grief and vengeance take on a life of their own? They become tangible, electric.” Rayner’s eyes drifted.

“Yes.”

“And so I called Franklin who, as fate would have it, was having a night similar to mine. We revisited the idea of the Commission, again in the safety of the night, but this time it took. It seemed less frightful in the cold light of the next morning.” His eyes regained their sharp focus, and his tone became more brisk. “I had tremendous resources at hand for selecting members of the Commission. In my studies I looked for law-enforcement officers with unusually high IQs, who were sensitive to authority and policy but were also independent thinkers. Now and then someone would strike me as particularly right for the Commission. And Franklin could run background checks, contact them, bring them into our circle.” He flashed a pleased little smile. “The hesitation you’re displaying now, Mr. Rackley, affirms our opinion that we want you on board.”

“Think of the collective experience and knowledge we have assembled in this room,” Ananberg said. “All the different ways we’ve spent time with the law, learning its curves and contours, flaws and strengths.”

“What if you disagree on a verdict?”

Rayner said, “Then we’ll throw out the case and move on. Only a unanimous verdict will stand in the Commission. Unanimity is required for any policy shift as well. That way, if any of us grows uncomfortable with anything, we have veto power.”

“Is this the entire Commission?”

“You will be the seventh and final member,” Dumone said. “If you elect to join.”

“And how is this little enterprise funded?”

Rayner’s mustache shifted with his grin. “The books have been good to me.”

“You’ll draw a humble paycheck,” Dumone said. “And, of course, all expenses will be covered.”

“Now we’d like to clarify one point,” Ananberg said. “We do not advocate cruel and unusual punishment. The executions are to be swift and painless.”

“I don’t go in for torture,” Tim said.

Ananberg’s lipsticked mouth pulled to one side in a smirk, the first break in her icy facade. Everyone seemed comfortable with letting silence fill the study for a few moments.

Tim asked, “What’s the status of your personal cases?”

“Franklin’s wife’s killer disappeared after being acquitted,” Rayner said. “The last reports of him were from Argentina. The man who killed the Stork’s mother is currently incarcerated for a later offense. Robert and Mitchell’s sister’s murderer was later shot and killed in an unrelated incident, and Jenna’s mother’s killer was beaten to death in a gang killing over a decade ago. That’s the status of our-how did you put it?-personal cases.”

“And the man who killed your son?”

Bitterness passed through Rayner’s eyes, then vanished. “He’s still out there, my son’s killer. Walking the streets. Somewhere in New York-Buffalo when last I heard.”

“I bet you just can’t wait to vote him guilty.”

“I wouldn’t touch my own case, actually.” Rayner looked offended at Tim’s expression of disbelief. “This is not a vengeance service.” His face firmed with a stalwart pride common to maudlin World War II movies. “I could never be objective. However…”

“What?”

“We’re going to call upon you to be. I’ve selected Kindell’s case for the Commission. It’ll be the seventh and final one we examine in our first phase.”

Tim felt himself flush at the thought of another crack at Kindell. He hoped his longing wasn’t too clear on his face. He gestured at the others. “How about theirs?”

Rayner shook his head. “Yours is the only personal case we’re going to examine.”

“Why’d I get so lucky?”

“It’s the only case that precisely fits our profile. An L.A. crime, a lot of media heat, the trial botched due to a procedural violation.”

“L.A. is key from an operational perspective,” Dumone said. “We’re only comfortable dealing with cases in this area. Our strongest contacts are here.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time here, me and Mitch,” Robert said, “smelling the street, figuring out how to operate-operate invisibly. You know the drill. Well-placed contacts. Phone lines. Car rentals. Back routes around town.”

“You must have well-placed contacts in Detroit,” Tim said.

“We’re known there. In Hell-A nobody’s anybody until they’re somebody.”

“Once we start traveling, dealing with other court systems and police bureaus, it really opens us up,” Dumone said. “Not to mention the trail it leaves. Airline tickets, hotels.” His eyes twinkled. “We dislike trails.”

“Something tells me there’s another angle,” Tim said. “Like Ginny’s case being a carrot you can dangle in front of me. That’s why it’s the ‘seventh and final’ one.”

Rayner seemed pleased-Tim was talking his language. “Yes, of course. No need to pretend. We do need an insurance policy of sorts, to make sure you’re not doing this just for revenge. We want to ensure that you stick around, that you’re committed to our cause. We’re not here merely to serve your agenda-there’s a greater social good at stake.”

“What if I don’t think the other executions are justified?”

“Then vote against all six of them, and we move to Kindell.”

“How do you know I won’t do precisely that?”

Dumone’s head was tilted back at such an angle to suggest authority and mild amusement. “We know you’ll be fair.”

“And if you’re not equally fair, just, and competent when we’re deliberating the Kindell case,” Ananberg said, “we’ll ask you to recuse yourself or I’ll personally vote against execution. You won’t muscle a guilty past us.”

Dumone settled back in his chair. “It serves you, too. To delay Kindell’s case until last.”

“How do you figure?”

Rayner said, “If we ruled to execute Kindell first, you’d be the most obvious suspect.”

“But if we rule to kill him after two or three other high-profile executions, the suspicion will be shifted off you,” Dumone said.

Tim reflected for a moment, silently. Rayner watched him with shiny eyes, seeming to enjoy this all a bit too much.

“We know about your accomplice theory,” Rayner said. “And rest assured-I can obtain information that you can’t get access to-from all sides of the case. The public defender’s notes from his interview with Kindell, media investigator reports, maybe even police logs. We’ll get to the bottom of your daughter’s murder. You’ll get her the fair trial she never received.”

Tim studied Rayner for a moment, his stomach knotting with anxiety and excitement. Despite his aversion to Rayner, he couldn’t deny that some connection existed-to another father who had lost a child. To someone who actually took Tim’s accomplice theory seriously because he understood what it meant to be plagued.

Tim finally crossed to one of the armchairs and sat. On the low table before him was an American Psychological Association journal titled Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. On the light brown cover, Rayner was listed as the principal author of two articles.

Keeping his eyes on the journal, Tim said quietly, “I just need to know who killed my daughter. Why she was killed.” Hearing himself express this deep-rooted imperative so starkly-as a plea directed out at the unfair universe-gave it a sudden reality and pitifulness. His eyes moistened. Quickly following came a stab of self-disdain for revealing emotion here, in front of these hardened strangers. The childhood lesson his father had drummed into his head: Never give up the personal-it will return as a weapon wielded against you.

He waited until his face felt less heavy before raising it. He was surprised to see how uneasy his grief made Robert and Mitchell. They’d grown fidgety, uncomfortable, suddenly real-their own remembered pain cutting through the barriers, washing the aggression right out of them.

“We understand,” Dumone said.

Robert said, “You get to serve your personal cause-pursuing your daughter’s killer or killers-and the bigger legal issues…”

“-illuminated-” Mitchell said.

“-by the hell you went through. The rest of us don’t get that.”

“Why did you choose L.A.?” Tim asked.

“Because this city has no notion of accountability, of responsibility,” Rayner said. “As you’re aware, L.A.’s court rulings, especially for media-intensive cases, seem to go to the highest bidder. Justice isn’t administered by the courts here, it’s administered by box-office grosses and a well-oiled press.”

“O.J. Simpson just bought a one-point-five-million-dollar house in Florida,” Mitchell said. “Kevin Mitnick hacked in to the Pentagon, now he’s got a talk radio show out of Hollywood. LAPD’s got a scandal a week. Cop killers and drug dealers land record deals. Hookers marry studio moguls. It’s got no memory, Los Angeles. There’s no logic here. No rhyme. No reason. No justice.”

“The cops here,” Robert said, with surprising vehemence, “they don’t give a shit. There’s so many murders, so much indifference. This town just chews people up.”

“It’s seductive, and, like most things seductive, it burns you with indifference. Kills you with apathy.”

“That’s why this city.” Robert crossed his thick arms again. “L.A. deserves it.”

“We want the executions to serve as crime deterrents,” Rayner added, “so they’ll have to be high-profile.”

“So that’s what this is?” Tim glanced around the room. “A grand experiment. Sociology in action. You’re gonna bring justice to the big city?”

“Nothing quite so grandiose,” Ananberg said. “The death penalty has never been a proven deterrent.”

“But it’s never been deployed in this fashion.” Mitchell was standing now, gesturing concisely with flattened hands. “Courts are clean and safe, and-due to the appeals process-their rulings lack a sense of threatening immediacy. Courts don’t scare criminals. The thought of someone coming unexpectedly in the night will. I know there are certainly methodological complications with our plan, but there’s no denying that murderers and rapists will be aware there’s another level of the law they may have to answer to-it’s not just the court game. They might hop through a loophole, but we’ll be out there, waiting.”

Mitchell demonstrated the commonsense logic and unaffected eloquence of a self-taught thinker; Tim realized he’d underestimated the man’s intelligence at first glance, probably due to his intimidating physical presence.

Robert was nodding emphatically, in aggressive agreement with his brother. “The streets of Singapore look pretty graffiti-free to me.”

Rayner’s chuckle drew a sharp look from Ananberg.

“Correlation is not causation.” Ananberg wove her hands over a knee. “My point is simply that we shouldn’t expect some sort of drastic social impact. We’re acting as the mortar between the cracks in the law. No more, no less. Let’s be frank about what we’re doing. We’re not saving the world. In a few specific cases, we’re serving justice.”

Robert set down his glass with a thunk. “All me and Mitch are saying is, we’re here to kick a little ass and dispense a little justice. And if it trickles back to the motherfuckers that there’s a new sheriff in town…well, hell, that won’t break our hearts either.”

“It beats whining and building memorials,” Mitchell added.

The playfulness gone from his eyes, Dumone turned to Tim. “The twins and the Stork will be your operational team. They’re there merely to provide you support. Use them as you see fit, or not at all.”

Now, finally, Tim understood the hostility he’d elicited in the twins from the first moment, their blatant jockeying with Tim before the others. “Why would I be in charge?”

“We lack the operating skills that someone with your unusual combination of training and field experience brings to the table. We lack a subtlety of execution needed for this first phase of, uh, executions.”

Rayner said, “We need a primary operator who’s extraordinarily levelheaded on the front line.” One of his hands circled, then settled in his pocket. “These executions need to be carefully orchestrated so the occasion of a shoot-out with law enforcement never arises. Ever.”

Dumone freshened his glass at the small bar behind the desk. “As I’m sure you’re aware, there are a truckload of ways things can go south. And if they do, we need a man who’ll keep his head, who won’t gun his way out of trouble. The Stork is not a tactical operator.”

The Stork’s smile was flat and generically curved, like a slice of watermelon. “No, sir.”

“And Rob and Mitch are good aggressive cops, like I was when the sap was still rising.” Dumone’s smile held some sadness; something was hidden beneath it, perhaps the blood-spotted handkerchief. He tipped his head toward Tim deferentially. “But we haven’t been trained to kill, and we’re not Spec Ops-cool under fire.”

“It’s been a long, frustrating haul closing in on a viable and receptive candidate,” Rayner said wearily.

Tim took a moment with this, and they let him. Rayner’s eyebrows were raised, anticipating Tim’s next question. “How do you protect against someone breaking all these elaborate rules you’ve set up? There’s no controlling authority.”

Rayner held up a hand in a calming gesture, though no one was particularly agitated. “That is one of our primary concerns. Which is why we have a no-tolerance policy.”

“Our contract is exclusively oral, of course,” Ananberg said, “as we don’t want to set anything incriminating down in writing. And this contract includes a kill clause.”

“A kill clause?”

“Legally speaking, a kill clause sets forth prenegotiated conditions detailing what will occur should a contract be terminated. Ours goes into effect the instant any member of the Commission breaks any of our protocols.”

“And what are those prenegotiated conditions?”

“The kill clause dictates that the Commission be immediately dissolved. All remaining documentation-which we go to every effort to keep to a minimum-will be destroyed. With the exception of tying up loose ends, there will be no future Commission activity of any kind.” Rayner’s face hardened. “Zero tolerance.”

“We’re well aware that the Commission places us on a slippery slope,” Ananberg said. “So we’re anxious to ensure that there will be no sliding.”

“And if someone withdraws?”

“Go with God,” Rayner said. “We presume that what passes here remains here, as it is equally incriminating to whoever elects to leave.” He grinned a smirky grin. “Mutual assured destruction makes for a nifty little insurance policy.”

Tim did not return the grin but studied the practiced lines around Rayner’s mouth. William Rayner, vehement proponent of the insurance policy.

Ananberg said, “The Commission would go on brief hiatus until we found an appropriate replacement.”

Tim leaned back in the armchair so he could feel his Sig pressing into the small of his back. He gauged his angle to the door-not good. “And if I decide against joining?”

“We would hope that, as someone who’s lost a daughter, you would appreciate our perspective and leave us to our work,” Rayner said. “If you were to contact the authorities, be advised there is no incriminating evidence on site. We will deny ever having had this conversation. And to say our collective words are greatly respected in the legal community is something of an understatement.”

All eyes were suddenly on Tim. The ticking of the grandfather clock punctuated the silence. Ananberg went to the desk, turned a key, then removed a dark cherry box from one of the drawers. Tilting it, she opened the hinged lid, revealing a gleaming Smith amp; Wesson. 357-service make-nestled in the felt interior. She closed the box and set it on the desktop.

Rayner lowered his voice so it seemed he was addressing only Tim. “When people endure such a…bureaucratic betrayal as the one the courts handed you, as the one the U.S. Marshals Service handed you, they contend with it in different ways, most of them bad. Some get angry, some get depressed, some find God.” One of his eyebrows drew up, almost disappearing beneath the line of his hair. “What will you do, Mr. Rackley?”

Tim decided he’d had his fill of questions, so he kept his eyes on Dumone. “How do they feel about taking a backseat? Operationally?”

Dumone’s and Robert’s fidgeting broadcast that this was well-covered ground.

The Stork shrugged and adjusted his glasses. “I got no problem,” he said, though no one had asked him.

“They’ll deal with it,” Dumone said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“They understand the necessity of bringing in a high-demand operator, and they’re reconciling themselves to the change.” Dumone’s voice gathered edge, and Tim could hear the tough Boston cop in it.

Tim looked at Mitchell, then Robert. “Is that true?”

Mitchell looked away, studying the wall. Robert had a slight upper lip, so when he smiled, his mouth was a sheen of teeth and hair. His voice came slick and sharp, like a scalpel. “You’re the boss.”

Tim turned back to Dumone. “Call me when they’re reconciled.”

Dumone’s shoes shushed across the rug as he approached. He stood over Tim, gazing down at him. His face, a blend of wear and texture, held in it a dark-tinted element of calm that Tim thought might be wisdom. “We’d like an answer now.”

“We need an answer now,” Robert said. “Either this proposal strikes a chord with you or it doesn’t. There’s no thinking about it.”

“This isn’t a gym membership,” Tim said.

“Our offer terminates the minute you walk out that door,” Rayner said.

“I don’t negotiate like this.”

Now Mitchell-“Those are our terms.”

“All right, then.” Tim stood and walked out.

Rayner caught him outside near the gate. “Mr. Rackley. Mr. Rackley!”

Tim turned, keys in his hand.

Rayner’s face was red with the cold, and his breath was visible. His shirt had come untucked. He looked less smug out here, away from his first-among-equals reign in the library. “I apologize for that. I can be a little…firm sometimes. We’re just eager to begin our work.” He moved to rest his hand on the trunk of Tim’s car but stopped, his fingertips hovering an inch off the metal. He seemed to have a tough time manufacturing his next words. “You are our top choice. Our sole choice. We took a great deal of care in selecting you. If you don’t sign on, we have to start the search over-a long process. Take more time if you need it.”

“I intend to.”

Tim pulled out into the street. When he glanced into his rearview mirror, Rayner was still standing in front of the house, watching him drive off.

13

AS TIM TURNED into his cul-de-sac, he spotted Dumone leaning against a parked Lincoln Town Car at the far curb, arms crossed, like a waiting chauffeur. Tim pulled up beside him and rolled down his window.

Dumone winked. “Touche.”

Tim glanced around to see if any of the neighbors had taken note of them. “Touche yourself.”

Dumone gestured to the backseat with a tilt of his head. “Why don’t you come for a ride?”

“Why don’t you get off my street?”

“I wanted to apologize.”

“For being rude?”

Dumone’s laugh was worn, and it crackled around the edges like an old LP. “Christ no. For underestimating you. That hard-sell, tough-cop bit. At my age I should know better.”

Tim’s lips pressed together in a half grin.

Dumone jerked his head again. “Come on. Hop in.”

“If it’s just the same, why don’t you take a ride with me?”

“Fair enough.” When Dumone pulled his frame into Tim’s passenger seat, he let out a textured groan like a bellows collapsing. He removed a Remington from his hip and a small. 22 from an ankle holster and set them in the center console. “Just so you can listen without being distracted.”

Tim drove a few blocks, pulled into the deserted back parking lot of Ginny’s old elementary school, and killed the lights. Dumone’s chest jerked with a held-in cough. Tim gazed out the windshield so he could pretend for Dumone’s sake he didn’t notice.

“This that school where those three teenagers went on that shooting spree?”

“No,” Tim said. “That was at the other Warren, a high school south of downtown.”

“Kids shooting kids.” Dumone shook his head, grunted, then shook his head again.

For a while they watched the unlit school in silence.

“When you get on in life,” Dumone said, “you start viewing the world a bit differently. Your idealism doesn’t die, but it’s mitigated. You start thinking, hell, maybe life’s just what we make it, and maybe our job is to leave this place a little better than it was when we came in. I don’t know. Could be all old-man disconnect. Maybe that poet was right, that youth holds knowledge and everything we learn as we get older takes us away from it.”

“I don’t read poetry.”

“Yeah. Neither do I. The wife…” Even in the dark his eyes shone jarringly blue, the blue of newborns and summer skies and other things discordant and mawkish. He worked at a hangnail, his head down-bent, skin texturing in rough folds beneath his chin. He reminded Tim of an old lion. “You see, Tim-is it all right if I call you Tim?”

“Of course.”

“To try to find meaning, give meaning, to shape things and people for the better, you have to navigate through a gray zone. And to do so you need ethics. You need to be even and just. You are both.”

“What about the others?”

“Rayner is vain, and dumb in the ways vanity makes you, but he’s also brilliant. And he’s extremely competent at reading people and cases.”

“And Robert?”

“You have a problem with Robert?”

“He just seems a little”-Tim searched for the most displeasing adjective he could conjure-“nonlinear.”

“He’s a great operator. Loyal to a fault. Some of his connections are a touch loose, but he always falls in.”

“He and his brother don’t seem particularly eager to play betas to my alpha.”

“They need to learn from you, Tim. They just don’t know it yet. They felt their operating skills were sufficient. They didn’t see a need for you, but me, Rayner, and Ananberg made clear we weren’t willing to free them up or even review cases without someone like you in place. We need this thing to run not just well but seamlessly. And you’re really the only candidate within our reach who has the skill set to make that happen.”

“How did you determine that?”

Dumone’s lips set in a manner to suggest mild annoyance. “Rayner found you after Ginny’s death-he’d been putting together profiles of all-stars in the L.A. law-enforcement community. Running psych assessments and whatever other mad-scientist crap he gets up to at that office of his. Once he zeroed in, the boys went to work gathering intel as best they could. The more we saw, the more we liked.”

“Who’s to say ‘the boys’ will fall in under my command?”

“Because I’ll tell them to.”

“They’re afraid of you.”

“No. Respectful. Intimidated, maybe. I met them right after their sister’s death, helped them find a way through some of their grief. Not the grief-group couch-lay crap, but the real deal. How I handled it. Cops. How cops deal. You help someone when they’re raw like that, they never forget. They’re always grateful. And they might look up to me a bit more than I deserve. They’re different from you, different from me, even. They need guidance. I keep them close at hand, keep an eye on them.”

“Sounds like a case of keeping your enemies nearer.”

“An overstatement,” Dumone said. “They’re solid men.”

“For what you’re proposing, they need to be more than that.”

“No. They need a leader.” He coughed again, moistly, into a fist. “A new leader.”

“That might not be a role I want.” Tim reached for the keys and turned the engine over.

“I know. That’s why I chose you.” Dumone sighed heavily but without theatricality. “What none of the others understand is that joining the Commission for you would be a sacrifice, not a release. You’d have to be willing to renounce your values, your righteousness. You’d be vilified by precisely the kinds of organizations and individuals you’ve always valued.” He reached over and tapped two knobby fingers against Tim’s chest. “And even worse, you’d feel a hypocrite in your own heart. But in calmer moments, when flag waving and slogans no longer seem quite so weighty, you’ll also realize that you took direct action that had direct results. It’s tough to lead the way when you’re standing on a soapbox, even if that soapbox is platinum or sterling or made of the wood of the True Cross.” He shifted noisily to face Tim, bearing his weight on his hip. “If you do this, there will be fewer girls raped, fewer people murdered. And maybe at twilight, in our final reckoning, that’s all we’ll really have to hold on to.”

It struck Tim that in the respect Dumone so naturally commanded, in his gravity and acumen, resided a deep moral authority, and that any hope for justice apart from and beyond the law resided precisely in such integrity embodied in like individuals.

“When someone is mugged, raped, killed, society is the victim,” Dumone continued. “Society has a right to assert its position. We don’t represent the victims, we represent our community. We can be that voice. What you want to try to accomplish, it can be done here.” He smiled, warmly, and it attenuated the pain in his eyes. “Something to think about at least.”

•“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Dray leaned over the table, her eyes the same cornered-cat intensity they were when she lifted weights or ran. A piece of popcorn fell from the fold in her sweatshirt; she’d just gotten back from a Meg Ryan movie with Trina, the most girlie of her friends and the only one with whom she indulged her occasional appetite for maudlin movies and pedicures and other things she thought unbefitting a POST-certified female range master with a hundred-fifty-pound bench press.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Tim leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms.

The wind kicked up outside, whooshing off the east side of the house, making the dimly lit kitchen seem a small and quiet place of shelter.

“Have you talked to Bear about this?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not talking to anybody.”

“Why me?”

Tim felt a sudden pressure in his face. “Because you’re my wife.”

Dray grabbed his hand. “Then listen to me. These people are preying on your pain. Like a cult. Like some screwed-up self-help group. Don’t let them make your decisions. Make your own.” Her tone held an anomalous note of pleading.

“I am making my own. But I’d rather act within some context. With some element of order. Of law.”

“No. The institutions we’re part of are the law. What they’re creating, in there, is not.”

“And what you and Fowler were advocating? That was lawful?”

“At least it was authentic. At least I don’t need a roomful of fat men to tell me what to do.”

Tim pursed his lips. “They’re not all fat.”

But Dray’s face held no levity. “I never told you this, because you’re vain enough already. And even though I love it, your vanity, I don’t think it needs any help. But the pride you took in being a deputy marshal, it was infectious. I love the way you talked about it, like a calling, like you were a priest or something. And I bought into it, that energy. The marshals who have no hidden agenda, not like the Feebs or the Company. The marshals who are there for the raw enforcement of federal law. Upholding individual constitutional rights. Keeping abortion clinics open. Escorting black first-graders to school in desegregated New Orleans.” Her face held an atypical note of shyness before it returned to a harder cast. “And so this thing with this house in Hancock Park, I just can’t believe that you, who swore to uphold and protect the courts, would consider it.”

“I’m not a deputy anymore.”

“Maybe not, but this…Commission”-she nearly spat the word out-“it has no checks and balances. If you want some outlet for your rage, at-at Kindell, at Ginny, at yourself, I understand that. Believe me, I do. But take a real one. Go shoot Kindell and face the music. Why build all this…scaffolding around it?”

“It’s not scaffolding. It’s justice. And order.”

Dray’s expression shifted to a weary exasperation, a look he had grown to anticipate and dread. “Tim, don’t be impressed with straw ethics and ten-cent words.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “So if no accomplice pops up and you rule against Kindell, you get to kill him.”

“Justly. He’ll have had a trial-one that focuses only on his guilt, not procedure. And if we uncover evidence that an accomplice was involved, I could always elect to leak that information into the right hands and have Kindell and the accomplice prosecuted. Remember, there’s no double jeopardy, since Kindell never went to trial. It’s not about getting him killed, it’s about having Ginny’s murder addressed.”

“And where will this magical evidence come from?”

“I’ll have access to the PD and DA investigative reports. And Kindell probably shared with his PD what went down that night. Let’s just hope it’s indicated somewhere in the notes.”

“Why not go to the PD directly?”

“There’s no way a PD would betray confidentiality to me. But Rayner’s got the inside line on that file. And that file might get us closer to the accomplice.”

“It sure as hell isn’t the straightest distance between two points.”

“We never had the option to take the straightest distance. Not judiciously.”

“Well, I’ve been poking around the case a bit already. Peeks took the anonymous call the night of Ginny’s death-he was the deputy working the desk. And he said the caller sounded highly agitated, really upset. It was his gut that it wasn’t an accomplice or someone who could be in on it. Just a hunch, but Peeks is pretty buttoned-down.”

“Any description of the voice?”

“Nothing helpful. You know, male adult. No accent or lisp or anything. Might’ve just been what it was.”

“Might’ve been a good performance.” Not until he felt the wave of disillusionment did he realize how much he’d been hanging on his accomplice theory. “Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted. Maybe it was just Kindell.”

Dray took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. “I’ve been debating having a little chat with Kindell.”

“Come on, Dray. The PD would have advised him strenuously not to say a word about the case-a new confession could open him up again.”

“Maybe I could get him to talk.”

“What, are you gonna beat it out of him?” He was all reason and circumspection right now, but the thought had occurred to him with alarming frequency.

“I wish.” She grimaced. “No. Of course not.”

“All talking to Kindell will do is alert his accomplice-if there is one-that we’re looking. And then the accomplice will know we’re coming, and he’ll cover his tracks or disappear. And you’ll wind up with a restraining order slapped on you. What we have going for us is the fact that no one knows we’re exploring this.”

“You’re right. Plus, if you idiots end up taking him out, I’d be a key suspect if word leaked I’d visited him.” She laced her fingers and reverse-cracked her knuckles. “I ordered the preliminary-hearing transcripts from Kindell’s previous cases.”

“How did you do that?”

“As a citizen. They’re public record. Evidently the stenographer doesn’t type up the actual trial transcripts unless the case gets appealed, but the prelim hearings should be enough for me to get a handle on the specifics. I debated contacting the LAPD detectives who worked the cases, seeing what they had in their logs, but there’s no way they’d talk to me. Not after interfacing with Gutierez and Harrison, and not given who I am.”

“How long will it take to get the transcripts?”

“Tomorrow. Court clerks don’t quite snap to when it’s not an official request.”

“It looks like we’re both being unofficial.”

“You can’t put this in a category with what you’re considering. Don’t even try.”

“Everything’s imperfect, Dray. But maybe the Commission can be closer to justice than what we’ve gotten. Maybe it can be that voice.”

“You really want to rededicate your life to this? To hate?”

“I’m not doing it because of hate. The opposite, actually.”

She drummed her fingers on the table, hard. Her hands were small and feminine; her delicate nails recalled the girl she had been before she put on a sheath of muscle and enrolled in the academy. Tim had met her only after she’d become a deputy. At his first Thanksgiving with her family, when her older brothers had proudly and with some silent element of warning shown him Dray’s high-school yearbook, he’d hardly recognized the pixie face in the photos. She was now bigger and more powerful, and she’d taken on a toughened sexuality. The first time they’d gone to the range together, Tim had watched her from the shade of the overhang, her hips cocked, holster high-riding her hip, a squint drawing her cheek high and tight beneath a water-blue eye, and he’d thought for not the first time that she’d been spun from the daydream of some sugar-buzzed, comic-book-gorged adolescent.

Her lips were pursed, perfectly shaped, and chapped. Gazing at them, he realized that he wanted them not to be dry from crying, and in that he felt the depth of his continued love for her. He had told her about Rayner’s proposal because she was the second leg on which he moved forward through life, and that reality, that trust that had been forged and built upon through eight solid years of their marriage, held true regardless of circumstance or even estrangement.

“Come here,” he said.

She stood and trudged around the table as he scooted his chair back. She sat in his lap, and he leaned forward, pressing his face to the bare fan of skin revealed beneath the back collar of her stretched T-shirt. Warmth.

“I know you feel like you’ve lost so much so quickly. I do, too.” Dray shifted in his lap so she was looking down at him across the bulge of her shoulder. “But there’s more we can lose.”

Tim ached with an uncharacteristic fatigue. “I’m tired of sleeping on the couch, Dray. We’re not helping each other here.”

She stood abruptly and walked a half turn around the kitchen. “I know. I’ve got all this…all this anger. When I pass the bathroom, I see her on her stool brushing her teeth, and in the backyard I see her trying to get that damn kite untangled, the yellow one we got her in Laguna, and every time I get that ache, I’ve got a need to blame someone. And I don’t want us to keep on tearing at each other in the middle of all this. Or worse, I don’t want us to go numb around each other.”

Tim rose and rubbed his hands. A childish urge gripped him-to scream, to yell, to sob and plead. Instead he said, “I understand.” His throat was closing, distorting his voice. “We shouldn’t stay on top of each other if we’re winding up hurting each other in small, spiteful ways.”

“But a part of me feels like we should. I mean, maybe that’s something we need to do. Hate each other. Slug it out. Fight and scream until the blame’s gone and there’s just…us.”

He could see in her eyes that she knew otherwise, that she was just trying to convince herself. “I can’t fight that kind of fight,” he said. “Not against you.”

“I can’t either.” She shook her head, roughly, like a child. The chair creaked when she sat again. She dipped her head and let out a sigh. “If you’re gonna do this thing, with those men, you’re gonna need a safe house. Because I’m not getting implicated in it.”

“I know.”

“That crew sounds pretty geared up on surveillance.”

“They are. And I don’t want their eyes on you or this house. I’m gonna be in it pretty good with the criminal element, too, and I won’t put you one inch at risk if one of my targets catches wind of me coming.”

She sighed, the heel of her hand sliding from cheek to forehead. “So where’s that leave us?”

They faced each other across the kitchen, both of them knowing the answer. Tim finally mustered the courage to say it. “We need some time off anyway.”

A tear arced down her cheek. “Uh-huh.”

“I’ll get my things together.”

“Not permanently. It’s not permanent.”

“Just enough for us to catch our breath. Get some perspective back on each other.”

“And for you to kill some people.” She looked away when he tried to meet her eyes.

He packed in twenty minutes, amazed at how little he had amassed over the years that he held to be essential. His laptop, some clothes, a few toiletries. Dray followed him silently from room to room like a heartsick dog, but neither of them spoke. With a stack of shirts draped over his arm, he stood in the threshold of Ginny’s room. Moving out of the house where his murdered daughter grew up seemed to constitute some formal trespass, and he feared the unknown emotional consequences it might bring.

As he loaded up his car, Dray watched him from the porch in her bare feet, shivering. The after-scent of a neighbor’s barbecue lingered in the air, smoky and domestic. He finished and walked over and kissed her. Her mouth felt both moist and dry.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” He cleared his throat once, hard. “We have a little over twenty grand in our savings account. I’m gonna take out five probably, soon. But don’t worry, I’ll leave the rest until we figure out what to do.”

“Of course. Whatever.”

He got in his car and shut the door. The clock on the dash read 12:01. Dray knocked on the window. She was shivering hard now, her whole body shaking.

He rolled down the window.

“Damn it, Timothy.” She was crying now, openly. “Damn it.”

She leaned over, and they kissed again, a quick one on the mouth.

He rolled up the window and backed out into the street. It wasn’t until he turned the corner that he remembered it was Valentine’s Day.

14

TIM WAS WAITING in his car across the street with a brick of hundreds in his lap when the manager shuffled inside the four-story building on the corner of Second and Traction, holding a cluster of keys on a jail-style ring and a steaming double-cupped coffee bearing the ubiquitous Starbucks logo. As part of the rejuvenation push for downtown, the civic promoters had given a face-lift to economy housing. This area of Little Tokyo housed artists, recovering druggies, and other people at the fringe of economic sanity. In a building like this, Tim could pay cash up front without raising any eyebrows. Plus, since it was a subsidized property, all utilities would be included with the rent; that would leave him fewer paper trails with which to contend.

The plates on his car-good through September-he’d pulled from a smashed-to-hell Infiniti at Doug Kay’s salvage yard. During his years in the service, Tim had been particularly good about routing seized and totaled vehicles to Kay, precisely so he could cash in on a favor like this if the shit hit. His tires had been replaced by the previous owner-they were a widely used Firestone brand, nothing factory-specific and traceable.

A new Nokia cell phone bulged in his shirt pocket. He’d rented it just up the street, in a shop where little English was spoken. He’d plopped down a healthy security deposit and paid out two hundred in cash for a month of unlimited domestic minutes, and because of this, the wizened, diminutive store owner had been less meticulous about eyeing the false name with which Tim had signed the contract. International calling was restricted. Tim selected the option to block Caller ID on outgoing calls.

The J-town crowd was mixed, Caucasian and East Asian, with a few blacks thrown in for good measure. Tim could dissolve right into the melting pot here and benefit from the kind of who-gives-a-shit anonymity to be found only on downscale city blocks.

Tim crossed the street in a jog, lugging his first load of clothing, and slipped through the building’s front door. The manager-gay, going by his right-ear pierce and JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS T-shirt-an ex-aspiring actor from his upright carriage and stagy comportment, fussed with the locks to the manager’s office while juggling his coffee and pinching a stack of mail between his elbow and love handle. He finally found the correct key, shoved open the door with a knee, dumped the mail on the desk, and collapsed into a stuffing-exposed office chair as if he’d just braved Everest’s north face without oxygen.

He mustered a smile when Tim entered, turning down the volume on a small-screen TV that took up half his desk. A KCOM Menendez brothers retrospective flickered on silently. “Can’t resist true-crime stories,” he stage-whispered.

“Neither can I.”

The drab room, in all likelihood a converted janitor’s office, had been livened up with a few framed headshots on the walls. Beside a toothy Linda Evans, John Ritter gazed out with woeful earnestness. Next to them hung a few more posed eight-by-tens of actors Tim did not recognize, but who he guessed were former stars by their exuberant use of exclamation points and trite exhortations about following dreams and staying real. The photos were all signed with Sharpie pens, the inscriptions made out to Joshua.

Joshua followed Tim’s eyes to the photos and shrugged, feigning diss-missiveness. “A few colleagues of mine. From my days on the stage.” He flared his arms, theatrically but with an element of self-deprecation that Tim appreciated. “I bowled them over at the Ahmanson with my Sancho Panza.” He seemed disappointed by Tim’s blank look. “It’s a supporting role in a musical. Never mind. What can I help you with?”

Tim adjusted his armload of shirts and the bag slung over his shoulder. His coiled laptop cable was sticking out of his back pocket. “I saw from your sign outside you have apartment availability.”

“Apartment availability. Yes, well. So formal.” When Joshua smiled, Tim realized he was wearing lip gloss. “I can rent you a single on the fourth floor for four twenty-five a month. To be honest, it could use some freshening up, maybe a throw rug or two-let’s make it four even.” He shook a jeweled finger in Tim’s direction jokingly. “But I’m not going any lower.”

“That’ll be fine.” Tim set down his things and counted twelve hundreds on the desk between them. “I assume this will cover the first and last months and the security deposit. Fair?”

“Fairer than springtime. I’ll get the paperwork together-we can deal with it later.” Joshua slid out from behind the desk as Tim gathered up his possessions. “I’ll show you the apartment.”

“The key’s fine. I can’t imagine the place has got too many bells and whistles that need explaining.”

“No, no, it doesn’t.” Joshua cocked his head. “What happened to your eye?”

“I walked into a door.”

Joshua returned Tim’s gentle smile, then grabbed a key from a pegboard hook behind him and offered it across his desk. “You’re in 407.”

Tim shifted his shirts so he could take the key. “Thank you.”

Joshua leaned back in his chair, knocking the John Ritter frame askew. He adjusted it quickly, then stopped, embarrassed. A can of shaving cream fell from Tim’s unzipped bag and rolled across the floor. Weighed down with his things, Tim made no move to pick it up.

Joshua smiled sadly at him. “It wasn’t supposed to work out like this, was it?”

“No,” Tim said. “I suppose not.”

•The key fit a Schlage single-cylinder knob lock. There was no dead bolt, but Tim didn’t mind, since the door was solid-core with a steel frame.

The square of the room had a single large window that overlooked a fire-escape platform, bright red and yellow Japanese signs, and a busy street. Aside from a few worn patches, the carpet was in surprisingly good shape, and the alcove kitchen came equipped with a narrow refrigerator and chipped green tile. All in all, the place was bare and a touch depressing, but clean. Tim hung his four shirts in the closet and dropped his bag on the floor. He removed his Sig from the back of his pants and placed it on the kitchen counter, then pulled a small tool kit from his bag.

With a few twists of a Phillips-head screwdriver, he removed the entire doorknob. He drew out the Schlage cylinder from its housing and replaced it with a Medeco-another item he’d scrounged up at Kay’s salvage yard. Because of their six tumblers and the uneven spacing, angled cuts, and altered depth of the keys, Medecos were Tim’s locks of choice. Virtually impossible to pick. The new cylinder came with only a single key, which Tim slipped into his pocket.

Next he connected his PowerBook to the Nokia and accessed the Internet through his home account. He’d leave the apartment’s phone jack dormant, thereby avoiding any records linked to a landline and an address. He was not surprised to see that his password no longer worked at the Department of Justice Web site, but he wouldn’t have used the site extensively anyway, as he knew that all traffic was closely monitored and recorded. Instead he ran Rayner’s name through a Google search and came up with a smattering of articles and promotional Web sites for Rayner’s books and research.

In clicking around he discovered that Rayner had grown up in Los Angeles, gone to college at Princeton, and received his Ph. D. in psychology from UCLA. He’d been involved in a number of progressive experiments, for which he’d been widely praised and criticized. In one of them, a group dynamics study he’d run with students at UCLA over spring break in 1978, he’d separated his subjects into hostages and captors. The pseudo captors had grown so identified with their roles that they’d begun abusing the hostages, both emotionally and physically, and the study had been called off amid a storm of controversy.

Rayner’s son, Spenser, was murdered in 1986, his body dumped off Highway 5. The FBI, monitoring a truck-stop pay phone as part of a mob sting, inadvertently recorded a panicked trucker, Willie McCabe, describing the murder to his brother in the course of seeking advice on whether he should turn himself in. The wiretap warrant, of course, did not extend to McCabe, so his incriminating comments were deemed inadmissible in court.

It occurred to Tim that Rayner had strong secondary motivations for not now focusing his vigilante energies on McCabe-having his son’s killer on the loose elevated his cause and gave it a sales hook. Plus, Rayner, and his connection with McCabe, was too public. He’d be a leading suspect in the event of foul play.

After McCabe’s case was dismissed, Rayner had begun to focus on the legal aspects of social psychology. One journalist went so far as to refer to him as a constitutional expert. Rayner and his wife, like an alarming majority of couples who lose a child, split within the first year after their son’s death. Tim couldn’t deny the sense of distress provoked by the possibility of his and Dray’s bolstering the divorce statistic further.

Rayner had really come into his own after his son’s death, publishing his first bestseller-a social-psychology study packaged as a self-help book. Tim found a review in Psychology Today bemoaning the fact that Rayner’s books had grown thinner and more anecdotal each time out. It certainly hadn’t hurt his sales. Another article stated that Rayner had become less involved with his teaching, though it did not make clear whether that had been his decision or the university’s. He was now an adjunct professor who taught two occasional yet wildly popular undergraduate courses.

Tim logged on to the Boston Globe Web site next and ran a check on Franklin Dumone. He was not surprised to find that in his thirty-one years on the job, Dumone had been an extremely capable detective, then sergeant. Because of the arrest record of the Major Crimes Unit under his tenure, Dumone had grown to become something of a local legend. He’d retired after he’d arrived home one evening to find his wife beaten and strangled. Her alleged killer had been someone who’d just gotten out of a fifteen-year stint in the pen; Dumone had been his original arresting officer, catching up to him with a still-alive five-year-old girl in the trunk of his car. The killer’s prison sentence, like so many others, had merely provided time for notions of revenge to evolve.

The Detroit Free Press’s Web archives housed only a few articles involving the Masterson twins, most of them fluff pieces on twins or siblings in law enforcement. They’d been top-notch dicks and solid operators within their specialty units but had maintained a fairly low media profile until their sister’s rigor mortis-ed body had been found pressed into the sand beneath the Santa Monica Pier. She’d moved to L.A. just a few weeks previous. In interviews Robert and Mitchell were quite outspoken about their belief that the Santa Monica police had handled the investigation incompetently. When her accused killer’s case was dismissed after evidence was tainted by sloppy chain of custody, their responses grew even more vitriolic. The fuel behind their antagonism toward L.A., which they’d expressed so vehemently at Rayner’s, was glaringly evident.

Another burst of newspaper articles followed several months later, when they won a $2 million settlement against a tabloid for going to press with illegally obtained-and gruesome-crime-scene photos.

Tim called trusted contacts at six different government agencies and had them each run a member of the Commission. The background checks came back clean-no wants, no warrants, no past felony charges, no one currently under investigation. He was amused to find that Ananberg had been arrested during high school on a marijuana-possession charge. Because of his technological prowess, the Stork had been accepted into the FBI despite his failure to meet physical qualifications. Deteriorating health had forced him into an early retirement eight years ago, at the age of thirty-six. A buddy at the IRS told Tim that Rayner had paid seven figures in federal taxes each year for the past decade.

No one, aside from Tim, was currently married-that would leave matters less complicated. Dumone, the Stork, and the twins had no current addresses, which didn’t surprise Tim. Like him, they’d dug themselves in somewhere, safe and protected, before embarking on a project like the Commission.

At a discount furniture store up the street, Tim purchased a mattress and a flimsy dresser and desk. The store owner’s son helped him unload the items from the delivery truck and get them upstairs. The kid moved gingerly, clearly having strained his shoulder on a recent delivery, so Tim tipped him handsomely. Then he bought a few more essentials, like sheets, pots, and a nineteen-inch Zenith TV, and unpacked what little he’d brought.

Flipping through the L.A. Times obits, he found a Caucasian male, thirty-six, who’d just died of pancreatic cancer. Tom Altman. That was a name Tim could live with. He cross-indexed the name with a phone-book he borrowed from Joshua, and found a West L.A. address. On his way over he stopped at a Home Depot and bought some heavy-duty gloves and a long-sleeved rain slicker. Dumpster diving could be a messy affair.

His concerns proved unnecessary, however. The house was empty, and the trash cans, hidden behind a gate in the side yard, weren’t too filthy. He found a stack of medical bills under a used coffee filter, Altman’s Blue Cross subscriber number-the same as his Social Security number-featured prominently on each form. As Tim had fortuitously hit the cans just after the midmonth billing cycle, further digging revealed a utilities bill, a phone bill, and a few canceled checks, all of them presentable. On his way to Bank of L.A., he stopped at the post office and retrieved a change-of-address form, useless in its own right, but official-looking when filled out and presented atop a stack of other documents.

The woman at the bank was pleasant enough when he explained he’d misplaced his driver’s license. His Social Security number and current bills sufficed, and, feeling grateful that Altman had been considerate enough to leave behind a solid credit rating, he left with paperwork confirming his new checking and savings accounts and a rush-processed ATM card that doubled as a Visa.

These he took with him on a pleasant late-morning drive to Parker, Arizona, a grenade toss from the border, where he presented his information and explained to the peevish DMV clerk that he’d misplaced his California license but had been looking into getting an Arizona one anyway, as he summered in Phoenix. He spent the four-hour drive back marveling at the massive emptiness composing the majority of California and thinking how the sun-cracked barrens were a pretty damn good metaphor for what his insides felt like since Bear had showed up on his doorstep eleven days earlier.

Nightfall found Tim sitting on the floor of his apartment with his back to the front door, watching the neon lights blink through the wide window and throw patterns on the ceiling. He attuned himself to a cacophony of new sensations-thin, susceptible walls, conversations in foreign tongues, the back-kitchen stench of day-old fowl. He missed his simple, well-tended house in Moorpark and, more glaringly, he missed his wife and daughter. His first night in this new place confirmed what he’d already known: that nothing would be the same. He’d fallen into a new life, like a second birth, like a death, and with it came a sensation of suspended numbness, of underwater drifting. In this small womb of a room, linked to the outside world by no record, no trail, no necessity to leave, he felt at last safe from whatever corrosiveness the outside world was brewing and preparing to hurl in his face. From here he felt strong enough to begin his counterassault.

He gazed at the three major items he’d purchased-mattress, desk, dresser. There was no comfort in their arrangement, no lessening of what they were, things-in-themselves, rectangular practicalities that sat on carpeting. He thought of the gentler touches a woman-even Dray with her tomboy sensibilities-could bring to a room. Some softening of the lines, some notion that a space was to be lived with, not merely in.

He thought of Ginny’s head-thrown-back hysterics at the Rugrats, the sense of joyful-yes, joyful-anticipation he got when he could sneak off work early to pick her up at school, like a date, and how he’d sit in his car and watch her for a few appreciative moments before getting out and claiming her. Ginny painted the world with child excesses-openmouthed smiles, floor-shaking tantrums, vividly colored candy and clothing. He realized how gray and inert she’d left the world with her departure, and how he was all abstinence and temper-ance-he was all lesser shades.

He was unsure he could abide a world that weathered her absence so easily.

He blinked hard, and tears beaded his eyelashes. Loneliness crushed in on him.

He found himself holding his phone, found himself dialing his house.

Dray picked up on a half ring. “Hello? Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“I thought you would’ve checked in last night. Not today.”

“I’m sorry. I haven’t stopped moving.”

“Where are you?”

“I got a little place downtown.”

He heard the air go out of her. “Jesus,” she said. “A place.” The line hummed, then hummed some more.

He opened his mouth twice during the ensuing silence but could not figure out what needed to be said. Finally he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Not really. Are you?”

“Not really.”

“Where do I get you if I need you?”

“This is my new cell-phone number. Memorize it. Don’t give it to anyone: 323-471-1213. I’ll have it on twenty-four/seven, Dray. I’m ten digits away.”

He heard the receiver rustle against her cheek and wondered what expression she was wearing. He thought about the phone nuzzled in close to her face, then about him here in this cold apartment.

“I already talked to some of our friends,” she said. “But we should tell Bear together. I thought we could have him over tomorrow. At the house. One o’clock?”

“Okay.”

“Timothy? I, uh…I…”

“I know. I do, too.”

She clicked off. He snapped the phone shut and pressed it to his mouth. He sat, dumbly inert, phone against his mouth for the better part of twenty minutes, trying to figure out if he was actually going to follow through with the preparations he’d been laying.

He rose and turned on the TV to cut his lonesomeness, and Melissa Yueh’s familiar voice filled the room.

“-Jedediah Lane, the alleged fringe terrorist, was released today to much fanfare. He was standing trial on charges of releasing sarin nerve gas at the Census Bureau, a terrorist act which claimed eighty-six lives. The Census Bureau attack was the biggest act of terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11, and the largest perpetrated by a U.S. citizen since Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 assault on Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building. Despite the fact that his courtroom antics provoked the judge on several occasions, Lane was found not guilty by the jury. The prosecutor claimed that Lane benefited from having had much of the physical evidence against him suppressed. Lane’s post-trial comments have unleashed a whirlwind of anger in the community.”

The screen cut away to a shot of Lane being escorted through a crush of news reporters, ducking lenses and mikes. “I’m not saying I did it,” he mumbled in a quiet, almost affable, voice. “But if I did, it was to assert the rights upon which this nation was founded.”

Back to Yueh’s expression of barely concealed disgust. “Tune in Wednesday at nine when, in a KCOM special event, I’ll be interviewing this controversial figure live. Watch it as it happens.

“In related news, construction continues on the memorial honoring victims of the Census Bureau attack. A one-hundred-foot metallic sculpture of a tree, the monument was designed by renowned African artist Nyaze Ghartey. Located on Monument Hill overlooking downtown Los Angeles, the tree will be lit at night, each branch representing a child who died, each leaf an adult victim.”

An architect’s sketch showed the tree looming large on the federal park, light emanating in the trunk’s interior sending beams out through myriad holes in the metal hide. It was Christmas-tree hopeful. Very gaudy, very over-the-top, very L.A.

“Ghartey, who generated some controversy during the trial as an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, is the uncle of one of the seventeen child victims of the sarin nerve-gas attack, eight-year-old Damion LaTrell.”

A school photo of a boy wearing overalls and a forced smile flashed on the screen.

Tim turned off the TV and grabbed his Sig from the kitchen counter. The door closing behind him sent a hollow echo down the hall.

He parked around the corner from Rayner’s. The wrought-iron gates were more show than security; Tim slipped over them easily due to a vanity break to accommodate the dipping bough of a venerable oak. The front doors and windows were well secured, but the back door had only a simple wafer lock that he picked easily with a tension wrench and a half-diamond pick.

He prowled the downstairs, keeping his Sig tucked into his pants. Beside the stairs was an impressive conference room, complete with banker’s lamps and leather chairs arrayed around an obnoxiously long table. A solemnly rendered oil of a boy roughly the age Spenser, Rayner’s son, had been when he was killed, hung on the far wall. The portrait had an eerily posthumous affect, as if it had been done from a photo. A TV was suspended from the ceiling in the far corner of the room.

After getting the lay of the other first-floor rooms, Tim entered the library. He found the cherry box in the desk and claimed the. 357 nestled within.

He headed upstairs.

•Tim clicked on his Mag-Lite and shone the harsh beam on the two lumps beneath the covers of Rayner’s bed. The Mag-Lite, which packed four D cells in its hefty metal shaft, provided one part illumination, three parts intimidation. Tim sat backward on a chair he’d moved silently from its place in front of the bathroom vanity, his feet on the plush velvet seat, his ass atop the back. His Sig and the. 357 flared out from either side of his jeans like linebacker hip pads.

The larger form shifted and raised an arm to the light. Rayner’s squinting face appeared when the expensive sheets slid down to his pajamaed chest. Confusion predictably turned to panic, then he was fumbling in his nightstand drawer and pointing a shaking revolver in Tim’s direction.

Tim clicked off the flashlight. A silence. Rayner reached over and turned on the lamp, illuminating the nightstand telephone with a sleek accompanying recording device Tim had seen previously only in the homes of Secret Service acquaintances. Rayner’s face, sweaty and tense, relaxed. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me. I thought you’d call.”

Tim’s eyes went to the recording device by the phone, positioned to capture his acceptance call. If Tim ever got inconvenient, Rayner could edit the recording however he pleased and drop it in the wrong hands. Not-so-mutual assured destruction.

At Rayner’s voice the bulge in the bed beside him wriggled up out of the sheets. Her face was sleepy and full, her dark hair lank and down across her eyes. Though Rayner’s face was colored to the ears, she didn’t look the least bit scared or embarrassed. A bit pleased, maybe, which didn’t surprise Tim from what he knew of her. Rayner was still frozen with shock, gun clutched in both hands like an unruly garden hose.

“These are my conditions,” Tim said. “Number one: I get uncomfortable-the least bit uncomfortable-and the deal is off. I walk. Number two: I have full operational control. If anyone on my team starts stretching their britches, I reserve the right to slap them back into place. Number three: Stop pointing that gun at my head.” He waited for Rayner to comply, then continued. “Number four: My privacy is to be respected. As you can see, it doesn’t feel so nice when the shoe’s on the other foot. Number five: I’ve already taken the. 357 you tempted me with the other night, and I’m keeping it. Number six: First meeting of the Commission will be in the conference room downstairs, tomorrow night at twenty hundred hours. Inform the others.”

He slid off the chair.

“I could’ve…could’ve shot you,” Rayner said.

Tim walked over to the foot of the bed and opened his fist. Six bullets plinked down on the comforter at Rayner’s feet.

Heading back down the stairs in the darkness, he couldn’t help but crack a smile.

15

PULLING INTO THE driveway of his-Dray’s-house felt like a return to comfort. Tim threw the car into park and sat for a moment, admiring the perfect alignment of shingles he’d hammered row by row onto the roof, the uncracked concrete blocks of the walkway that he’d reset and resmoothed after last year’s tremors. Tad Hartley, mowing his lawn next door in jeans and his trademark FBI windbreaker, raised a hand in silent greeting, and Tim felt like a liar when he waved back.

He got out of the car, walked up the front path, and rang his own doorbell-a weird sensation.

Dray’s voice came with her footsteps before she opened the door. “Shoot, Bear, you’re early. I wanted to-”

She pulled the door open and did a poor job blinking back an upset expression. “What are you doing, Timothy? You’ve been entering this house through the garage every day for the last eight years.”

He had a difficult time deciding where to look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to…I didn’t know what to do.”

She stepped back. She was wearing her uniform-probably working a P.M., which meant she’d report to briefing at three. “Very well, Mr. Rackley. Won’t you please come in?” She moved quickly back to the kitchen, leaving him to trail. Once she was out of sight, he tidied up the newspaper sections strewn across the couch.

“Can I get you a drink, Mr. Rackley?”

“Dray. Point taken. And yes, water.”

She entered, bearing the glass on a plate she held up like a cocktail tray, a dishtowel over her arm like a waiter’s service napkin. They both started laughing.

Their smiles faded. Tim rubbed his hands together, though he wasn’t cold.

Dray handed him the water and sat opposite him on the love seat. “I got Kindell’s court transcripts yesterday. They’re fat as hell-I was up half the night reviewing them.”

“And?”

“Nothing of interest on the weenie wagger. But both of his lewd acts were with an accomplice-rare for child molesters, from what I know-so that puts a bit of fuel behind your theory.”

“The previous accomplices?”

“Both in the clink. They didn’t get to cop out with the cuckoo plea. They were the brains both times out-there to arrange and watch the show. Both white-collar-one guy was an accountant. Kindell’s the freak, not a capable planner.”

“So we have an accomplice who wanted in on the fun, but Kindell took it too far.” Hearing his own words brought on a wave of nausea, which he fought away.

“Right. Which might explain why the guy sounded so upset when he made the anonymous call. He was in for a show, not a murder.”

“An ethicist.”

“And calling the private line to the station, covering his ass on the call-that matches a planner profile. More organized.”

They sat with their respective thoughts for a few moments. Tim still hadn’t adjusted to the seesawing emotion that each new development in Ginny’s case brought. It occurred to him he might not ever.

When he looked up, Dray’s face had shifted to sadness. “I know we agreed to take some time apart, but I didn’t sign on for this,” she said. “The vanishing act. The secret phone number. The move downtown. We went through this kind of stuff enough when you were a Ranger.”

“This isn’t us having to be apart because I’m deployed somewhere. This is us saving this marriage by taking a break from it.”

He could tell from the set of her mouth that she knew he was right. She’d put on the faintest touches of makeup, something she normally reserved for weekend evenings, and Tim found it delightful and desperate all at once. Especially since he knew she’d wipe it off before heading to the station.

“Being alone in this house.” She shook off a chill. “And the quiet. And the nighttime.” She had a tendency to tick off on her fingers points she wasn’t listing by number, an endearing break from the usual precision of her demeanor.

“It’ll get easier,” he said gently. “You’ll get used to it.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Don’t want to what?”

“Get used to living without you. And…” She wedged her legs beneath her. “Maybe I don’t want to get used to Ginny being gone. A part of me wants to carry that…that pain all the time, because it keeps her with me at least. And if it fades, then what do I have? Last night I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t remember what color her school shoes were. Those stupid Keds she wanted so bad. So I was up at four in the morning, digging through her closet, her things.” She pursed her lips. “Red. They were red. Someday I won’t remember that anymore. Then I won’t remember what her favorite cartoon is, or what size pants she wore, and then I won’t be able to remember what her eyes looked like when she smiled, and then I won’t have anything left of her.”

“There’s got to be a middle ground. Between comfort and disregard.”

“But where is it?”

“I think we each have to find that for ourselves.”

Across the five-foot stretch of carpet, they studied each other.

The doorbell rang. After the second ring, Dray broke off her gaze and answered the door. Bear gathered her up in an immense hug. She tapped his ribs. “How’s the side?”

“It’s nothing. But you two…” Bear thunked into Tim with a hug. Tim braced himself for the double back pat, which came like a tank cannon firing. Bear shoved him away. “Where the hell have you been? I left you two messages yesterday.”

“We’ve…we’ve been having some problems.”

Bear’s body seemed to settle like an old piece of machinery shuddering off. “Oh, no.”

He trudged over to the love seat, which left Dray nowhere to sit but beside Tim on the couch. Tim and Dray took each other’s hand, nervously, then released it. Bear watched these proceedings with dread.

“We’re…uh, separating, Bear. For a while.”

Bear blanched. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He slapped the side of his leg, then crossed his arms, fixing them with a ponderous stare. He seemed to take note of Tim’s black eye, but he didn’t comment. “I leave you two alone for a few days and this is what you get yourselves into. Separating. That’s great. That’s just great.” He stood, agitated, then sat back down again. “Is there anything to drink in this house?”

“No,” Dray said. “We’re…we’re out.”

“Fine. Fine.” His big hands rose, then clapped to his knees. “So maybe you can explain this to me. What does ‘separated’ mean? I’ve never understood it. You’re either married, or you’re divorced. What is ‘separated’?”

“Well,” Dray said. “I-”

“How do you get out of ‘separated’? It’s not like ‘separated’ people suddenly find themselves together again. Do they? It seems like ‘separated’ is chicken-shit terminology for ‘divorced.’ Is that what this is?” Red blotches were starting to bloom beneath his stubble-dense face and throat.

“Listen, Bear, when you lose a child-”

“Don’t you throw statistics at me, Dray. I don’t give a shit about statistics. You’re Dray and you’re Tim and you’re my friends and you get along as good as any husband and wife I’ve ever seen.” He was breathing hard, pointing hard. “If you think you don’t need each other now more than ever, you’re crazy.”

“Bear,” Tim said. “Calm down.”

“I’m not going to-”

“Calm. Down.”

Bear took a few deep breaths, then tilted his head and flared his hands as if to evince a newfound tranquillity. “All right,” he said. “All right. Who am I to tell you what to do? I guess you guys would know if you need…whatever. I guess you would know.”

Tim took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. “A thing like this, with Ginny, it comes in, and it changes the fabric of things. And you feel like there’s a tear or a crack and you try and smooth it over but you can’t. And the more you work on it, the more it unravels or fissures and you can’t keep working on it because it’s just ruining what you had before.” He moistened his lips, then snuck a quick look at Dray. “What you had before, it’s this beautiful thing that you don’t want to see defiled, and so maybe you’d rather walk away while there’s still some of it intact because you can’t stand to see it…”

Dray had her fist pushed up against her mouth, holding something in. Bear, stuffed into the too-small love seat, looked utterly crestfallen.

Tim rose and rested a hand on Dray’s soft blond hair, let it drift until he touched the edge of her cheek.

As Tim headed back down the walk to his car, shoulders aching as if some great weight had been lowered or lifted, Tad Hartley paused from trimming his shrubs to offer another wave.

•Sitting at his flimsy, window-facing desk with little to do beside wait for his eight o’clock meeting, Tim studied the foreign street scene below, losing himself further in grief’s endless folds and wrinkles.

A C-section delivery with a complicated post-op course had left Dray horizontal for the first three weeks of Ginny’s life. Tim had been the one up in the night, rocking Ginny back to sleep or preparing her bottle when she cried. He’d explained away the tree monster outside her window when she was three. He’d negotiated with a kindergarten bully, crouched on one knee beside his trembling daughter.

He’d made the world a safe place for Ginny. He’d taught her to trust it.

And she shouldn’t have.

Every time he thought he’d familiarized himself with its contours, grief surprised him; it was ever bountiful, ever yielding. He released himself to it, letting it spread through him, noxious and painful and-finally-deadening.

After forty-five minutes he condemned himself as self-indulgent and useless, so he hauled himself out for a jog. Unaccustomed to the smog and exhaust, he wound up on a street corner, bent at the waist, hacking like a coal miner with a three-pack habit. It was with immense relief that he showered and headed over to Rayner’s. The Commission, he realized with equal parts happiness and disquiet, gave him something to look forward to.

It gave him purpose.

Rayner was back to his usual socially lubricated self when he met Tim at the door. No hint of resentment about Tim’s intrusion last night. After receiving Tim warmly, he led him into the conference room where the others waited. Ananberg spun in her chair to face him, legs crossed beneath a short but professional navy blue skirt.

Wearing another tropical shirt, this one a blend of greens and blues, the Stork rose to greet Tim. His hand was puffy and moist, his grip limp, and his pate and nose were peeling, despite the fact that it hadn’t been sunburn weather for months. “I’d like to welcome you to the Commission, Mr. Rackley.” Up close he looked even more odd, with his tiny chin, soft features, and twisted upper lip.

Mitchell was leaning back in the big leather chair, his Nikes resting on the edge of the table’s marble surface. Robert mirrored him on the other side.

Dumone walked over and regarded Tim with a surprising expression of pride. For a moment Tim thought he might embrace him and was relieved when he offered his hand. He gripped Tim’s right arm at the elbow when they shook. “I knew I could count on you, Tim.”

Two garbage-can paper shredders stood at either side of the door like footmen. The confetti visible through their clear basins displayed that the machine cross-cut vertically and horizontally. No square of paper was bigger than a thumbnail.

Two pitchers of water and a set of glasses waited on the sidebar.

Tim’s eyes went to the table, where framed pictures had been set in front of seven of the chairs. An old black-and-white of a woman with a seventies-style haircut was propped in front of the seat in which Dumone had been sitting. The same photo sat before Mitchell and Robert, that of a stunning blonde in her late teens on horseback. Tim walked around until he arrived at what he assumed was his own chair. Ginny looked out from within the thin silver frame with a goofy, slightly uncomfortable grin. Her second-grade photo, the one the L.A. Times had run. Seeing it in this new and unrelated setting was jarring. Tim picked it up, regarding it as if he’d never seen it before.

“We took the liberty,” Dumone said.

Tim acquiesced to the manipulation, letting his sorrow re-form as anger; this provided him more traction. His mind went to Kindell, awakening each morning in the garage shack marked with Ginny’s blood, cooking dinner for himself, breathing the air with impunity. He thought about having ten minutes alone in a room with him, and the stains he’d like to leave on the walls.

Robert nodded at Ginny’s picture. “I know it seems a little weird and…”

“-ritualistic-” Mitchell said.

“-but the pictures are good to have around. They help us keep our eye on the ball.” Robert’s eyes were drawn back to Ginny’s photo, and his face relaxed into an expression of bitter sadness, the first break in his rock-hard facade.

“We are very sorry about your daughter,” Mitchell said. “It was an awful thing.”

Grief shared, grief compounded. “Thank you,” Tim said quietly.

Rayner signaled Dumone. “Why don’t you swear him in?”

Dumone cleared his throat uncomfortably and began reading from a yellow legal pad. The oath was a brief encapsulation of the points they’d already covered in their conversation two days ago in Rayner’s library. Tim repeated each point after Dumone, ending with the kill clause, then sat and pulled his chair in to the table. “Let’s get to work.”

With a shudder the paper shredder devoured Dumone’s sheet of paper. Dumone pulled his hands back from the feeder, a humorously chary motion. “Hungry little bastard.”

Rayner removed the creepy portrait of his son from the wall, revealing a Gardall safe with an electronic keypad on a circular dial and an inset baffle near the top that allowed items to be deposited when the door was locked.

Blocking the others’ view with his body, Rayner punched in the code and tugged the steel handle. He stepped aside, revealing a weighty stack of black three-ring binders within.

A charge moved through Tim, quickening his heart.

One of the binders was Kindell’s. One potentially held the key to the accomplice. A name. The secret of Ginny’s fate.

Rayner gestured to the open safe. “These are the relevant case binders I’ve compiled, the cases of the past five years that have generated the hottest debate in legal circles. I’m culling more for our next phase, but for now we’ll focus on these seven. Feel free to jot notes as we review the cases”-he nodded to the paper shredders by the door-“but no documents are to leave this room. Each binder is magnesium-lined, so in the event the authorities come, I can drop a lit match through the safe’s baffle and we’re evidence free. The safe has a three-hundred-fifty-degree, one-hour fire label, so it’ll contain the blaze until it’s burned itself out. If anyone tries to hacksaw his way in, the handle shears off.”

Ananberg said, “Now, before we start, I want to explain the process-”

Robert inhaled deeply, a half-joking show of exasperation. “The procedure hound howls again.”

Ananberg turned to address Tim. “Before you joined, Franklin and I moved that we come up with a procedure-nothing rigid, but a floor plan for our meetings. By acclamation we agreed I’d work out a rough idea of how we’re going to comprehensively review each case. In place of arraignment, we’ll first discuss what crime the defendant is alleged to have committed. Rayner and Dumone will lead the discussion. Since we already have to give up any pretense of being unbiased from the media, we’ll talk through the case in broad strokes and lay out major arguments. If it looks like a guilty vote is a reasonable possibility, we’ll return and move systematically through the files. Since William has managed to obtain files from both the DA and the PD, we have access to everything from discovery, whether it was eventually ruled admissible or not.”

Tim tore his eyes from the bottom binder in the safe, focusing on Ananberg’s words.

“We’ll move through the police investigation, then to the interview reports with investigators from both the DA’s and PD’s offices so we’ll be familiar with all angles both sides were considering in forming their respective arguments. From there we hit the forensic reports, then we assess evidence that came out in trial, including eyewitness testimonies. Everyone reviews every document before we vote-doesn’t matter how long it takes. Since I’m the procedure hound, as Robert so ingeniously dubbed me, I’ll be in charge of researching case precedent, which we’ll use as a touchstone.”

“Thank you, Jenna.” Rayner nodded once, slowly, with the proud air of a father at his daughter’s piano recital. He removed the top binder from the safe and sat, resting a spread hand on the cover. “We’ll start with Thomas Black Bear.”

“The gardener who slaughtered the family up in the Hollywood Hills last year?” Tim asked.

“Allegedly, Mr. Rackley.” Ananberg tapped a pencil against the arm of her glasses.

“Get off his dick, Jenna,” Robert said. Sitting beside Tim, he smelled faintly of bourbon and cigarettes. His face was more textured than his brother’s, a trellis of wrinkles supporting his eyes. The nails of his left-hand thumb and forefinger were yellowed from nicotine, the knuckles stained.

“What’s the evidence?” Tim asked.

The crime-scene diagram and evidence reports went around the table. An eyewitness had placed Black Bear, an immense Sioux, at the house earlier that morning, overseeing the removal of a dead sycamore from the front yard. Black Bear had no alibi for the two-hour span during which the crimes had been committed. He said he’d been home watching TV, a dubious claim given the detectives’ discovery that his set was broken. Motive was hazy; nothing had been stolen from the house, and the victims hadn’t been assaulted in a fashion suggesting a sexual predator or thrill killer. The parents and the two children-eleven and thirteen years old-had been murdered with gunshot wounds to the head, execution style.

After intensive questioning, Black Bear had signed a confession.

“Reads to me like some kind of drug hit,” Robert said, flipping through the file. “The father’s Colombian.”

“Because all Colombians are drug lords,” Ananberg said.

“Black Bear’s got a colorful rap sheet, but no drug or assault charges,” Dumone said. “Mostly small-time. Stolen cars, B and E, public drunkenness.”

“Public drunkenness?” Robert kept an eye on Ananberg. “Damn Injuns.”

The forensic report at his elbow, the Stork jotted a few notes, then stopped and worked a cramp out of his hand. A pill appeared magically in his palm, and he popped it without water and kept writing.

“How’d he get off?” Tim asked.

“The prosecution’s whole case rode on the confession,” Rayner said. “It was thrown out after it was determined that Black Bear was illiterate and spoke little English.”

Dumone added, “They sweated him in the interrogation room for nearly three hours, and he finally signed. The defense argued he didn’t understand what he was doing, that he was worn down and just wanted to get out.”

“Wonder if they turned the heat up,” Robert said. “In the room. We used to do that. Get ’em cooking at around eighty-five degrees.”

“Or the coffee,” Mitchell said. “Gallons of coffee and no bathroom breaks.”

The Stork placed his plump hands flat on the table. “Nothing conclusive in the forensics.”

Ananberg asked, “No prints, no DNA?”

“No blood was found on his person or property. A few prints were picked up around the exterior of the house, but that doesn’t mean much, since he was their gardener.” The Stork’s hand darted to the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses back into place. “No fibers, no footprints in the house.”

“He did disappear after the trial,” Mitchell said. “That hardly bespeaks innocence.”

“Hardly establishes guilt either,” Ananberg said.

Tim flipped through the pictures of the family members. The shot of the mother-a candid-had caught her standing in a garden, bent at the waist, laughing. Attractive, well-defined features, layered hair thrown back in a ponytail, bare feet in the grass. Her husband had probably taken the shot-the woman’s expression and the camera’s attitude toward her made it clear that the photographer had adored her.

Tim slid the picture down the table to Robert and waited for his reaction, anticipating he’d comment about her looks. But when Robert raised the photo from the table, his face eased into an expression of sorrow and tenderness so genuine that Tim felt a stab of guilt for estimating him so cheaply. The photo trembled slightly in Robert’s grasp, blocking his face, and when it lowered, his eyes were edged with a cold resentment.

They reviewed the rest of the binder, and then, at Ananberg’s behest, they returned and moved systematically through the entire case, examining the documents and arguing the merits. Finally they voted: Five to two not guilty.

Robert and Mitchell cast the dissenting votes.

Rayner rubbed his hands together. “It seems the shadow of reasonable doubt falls protectively over the defendant.”

The razor edge working Tim’s nerves eased, leaving him with either a keen disappointment or a clammy relief-he was unsure how to interpret the moisture left on his back and neck from the anticipation.

Rayner replaced the binder in the safe. Robert expressed his frustration at the verdict with a not-so-subtle sigh and strenuous reshuffling of paperwork.

Tim checked his watch-it was nearing midnight.

“Next case.” Rayner flipped open an immense binder overflowing with scraps of paper and newspaper articles and announced, “This is a case with which we’re all familiar, I’m sure. Jedediah Lane.”

“The militia terrorist,” Ananberg said.

Robert smoothed his mustache with a cupped hand. “The alleged militia terrorist.”

Ananberg scowled at him, and he threw a wink in Tim’s direction.

The Stork ran a hand over his bald head. “I’m something of a media hermit, so I-I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the case.”

“The guy who walked a briefcase of sarin nerve gas into the Census Bureau downtown,” Robert said.

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

“Know where he left it?” Robert’s eyes were past angry, almost gleeful. “Near the main AC duct on the first floor. Eighty-six deaths. Including a bunch of second-graders on a civics field trip. He just walked in, walked out without a trace.” His flattened hand drifted in a gesture of evanescence, of stealthy malice.

“One of our own goddamned citizens,” Mitchell said. “After 9/11.”

Dumone flipped through the arrest report. “FBI obtained a search warrant for his house after a neighbor came forward and reported seeing Lane exit his residence that morning with a similar metal briefcase.”

“That was enough for a search warrant?” Ananberg asked.

“That and Lane’s history of membership in fringe organizations. The judge went for it, issued FBI a warrant, but wouldn’t grant night-service authorization. The problem was, the investigators were shaking a list of other leads. Everyone and their aunt was calling in with sightings, suspects, theories. They got hung up with a militia guy in Anaheim who was stockpiling M16 ammo. When they finally got back to serve Lane’s warrant, they received no response to their knock and notice. The door was double-barred from the inside. When they went through the door with a battering ram, they knocked over a table in the entry, breaking, among other things, a clock. Do you know what time the broken clock showed?” Dumone set down the binder, flipped it closed. “Seven-oh-three.”

Mitchell grimaced. “Three minutes late.”

“That’s right. Night-service authorization kicks in on the hour. Sharp.”

“Foolish,” the Stork muttered. “Why didn’t they wait till morning?”

“They never checked the warrant. Probably assumed it was standard. Keep in mind, they had a handful of them.”

“What did they find in the house?” Tim asked.

“Maps, charts, diagrams, notebooks, pressure containers holding traces of what was later determined to be sarin gas, lab equipment consistent with the generation of chemical weaponry.”

“Thrown out?”

“All of it. The prosecutor tried to convict based on the eyewitness report and a few beakers later found in Lane’s vehicle, under a valid warrant. It wasn’t enough.”

“Did he take the stand?” Ananberg asked.

“No,” Rayner said.

“Since the acquittal he’s received a number of death threats, so he’s gone underground,” Dumone said. “Some of his fringe buddies packed him off to a safe house.”

“Then he’s probably on a ranch somewhere, barricaded behind a bunch of militia wackjobs,” Mitchell said. “Those boys don’t tend to be short on ammo.”

“Endless civil claims are brewing, but since there’s no way to hold someone in custody on civil charges, there’s a lot of speculation Lane might just Osama bin Laden his ass off into a secret desert enclave.”

“Oh, Lane’s planning to resurface. On his way out of town, he had this to offer the press.” Rayner aimed a remote control at the suspended TV, and the screen blinked to life. Wearing a starched button-up shirt and a sharply pressed pair of slacks, surrounded with a cadre of bodyguards, Lane addressed a pack of reporters on a browning lawn outside his house. He kept his hair military-short and precisely side-parted. Stubble curled from his sideburns, pronounced and patchy on his sallow cheeks, a lapse in his otherwise clean grooming.

“Whoever committed that terrorist act against the government’s totalitarian socialistic agenda is a patriot and a hero,” Lane said. “I’d be proud to have released the sarin gas, because in doing so I would have been championing American freedom and sovereignty against a fascist citizen list-the same kind of list used by Hitler to carry out raids and round up citizens, the same kind of list that propelled him to power. The blood of those eighty-six federal workers will save countless lives and protect the American way of life. While I’m not saying I was or was not involved, I will say that such actions are not at odds with my mission as a citizen of this nation under God against the New World Order.”

A reporter’s adrenaline-high voice cut in as Lane’s men pushed a path through the crowd toward an awaiting convoy of trucks at the curb. “Does that mean your mission will continue?”

Lane paused, his jaw cocked. “If you’d like to know more, watch my interview Wednesday night on KCOM.”

Rayner clicked off the TV.

“He left out the fact that seventeen of those eighty-six ‘federal workers’ were children under the age of nine,” Tim said.

Robert said, “If Motherfucker’s gone underground, at least the interview gives us a when and where we can find him.”

“If the when and where aren’t security cover smoke,” Tim said.

“For someone who claims to loathe the biased, leftist press, he does get his face time,” Dumone said.

“Like most intelligent people seeking to change public policy or make a political statement, he’s a press whore,” Ananberg said. “Even if he wouldn’t admit it.”

Rayner rested a hand on his chest and bowed his head, a self-deprecating grin touching his lips. “Guilty.”

“Lane has already sold his book rights to Simon amp; Schuster for a quarter million dollars, and I believe several stations are vying for TV-movie-of-the-week rights,” Dumone said. “Thus the expert plug for his interview.”

Robert grimaced. “The City of Angels.”

“The money could provide Lane ulterior motive to allude to committing the crimes, even if he didn’t.” Ananberg’s voice lacked conviction, but Tim respected her for raising the point.

She ceded under a barrage of facts and evidence.

After several more hours of discussion, Ananberg led them through the case from arraignment to verdict. By the time they finished, the morning sun was creeping across the hardwood floor of the foyer.

The vote went much more smoothly this time around.

16

THE STORK BOBBED in the driver’s seat of the overheated Chevy rental van, peering across at the KCOM building at Roxbury and Wilshire. He’d toned down his shirt for the low-profile drive-by, but Tim still wasn’t pleased about having his distinctive mug pointed out the window. The Stork fidgeted continuously, shifting in the seat, polishing his watch face, one knuckle or another endlessly assisting his glasses on their Sisyphean climb up the barely existent bridge of his nose. He was an incessant mouth-breather, and he smelled like stale potato chips. Tim contemplated how he’d come to be here with this bald, lisping man prone to peeling sunburns and too-bright shirts.

They stared at the fifteen-story building, rising up in planes of concrete and glass to shade a bustling stretch of Beverly Hills. A window washer hung suspended from cables about a hundred feet off the ground, swaying and wiping, his silhouette standing out from the late-morning sun’s brilliant reflection off the panes. An enormous front window on the ground floor housed a panoply of plasma-screen televisions broadcasting KCOM’s current offering, a talk show exhibiting couches, ferns, and women of various ethnic backgrounds sharing a common unpleasantly vigorous demeanor. Since the TVs ran on closed circuit, showing the sets even during commercial breaks, they drew a small crowd of voyeurs and Rodeo Drive tourists hungering for table scraps of behind-the-scenes showbiz.

“If the new metal detectors at the entrance are any indication,” the Stork said, “they’re gearing up to turn this place into a high-tech fun-land by the Wednesday interview. Entry control points, IR sensors, metal-detector wands. The whole ten yards.”

“Nine yards.”

“Yes, well.” He shifted his weight deliberately from one side to the other, as if breaking wind. “Heck of a lotta security.”

“News orgs are all about confidentiality and scoop. They’re notoriously difficult to penetrate. CNN used to come in with stories ahead of Army intel.”

“What’s CNN?” the Stork asked.

Tim studied him to see if he was joking. “A news station.”

“I see. I can help you more if you tell me what you’re planning here.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t need more help. I just need you all to do your respective jobs.”

“Okeydokey.”

As they pulled past the building, Tim armed some sweat off his forehead. “Listen…Stork-”

“No origin.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name has no origin. At least none that’s exciting. Everyone asks, everyone wants a story, but there isn’t one. One day, third or fourth grade, a kid on the playground remarked that I looked like a stork. Perhaps he intended it to be hurtful, but I don’t believe I look like a stork-I mean, truly resemble a stork-so I took it as neutral. The name stuck. That’s it.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask.”

“Oh.” The Stork strummed the padded wheel with the heels of his hands. “Fine, then. That. Okay, not that it’s any of your business, but it’s called Stickler’s syndrome.” His voice slipped into a drone as he launched into a rehearsed speech. “A connective-tissue disorder that affects the tissue surrounding the bones, heart, eyes, and ears. Among other things it can cause nearsightedness, astigmatism, cataracts, glaucoma, hearing loss, deafness, vertebrae abnormality, hunchback, flattening of the nasal bridge, palate abnormalities, valve prolapse, and vicious arthritis. As you can see, I have a relatively mild case. I can’t type, I can’t shuffle cards, and I’m nearsighted to twenty over four hundred, but I could be curled in a wheelchair deaf and blind, so I try not to bitch. Does that satiate your curiosity, Mr. Rackley?”

“Actually,” Tim said, “I was just going to ask if you could turn down the heat.”

The Stork made a soft popping sound with his mouth. He reached over and rotated the dial. “Righto.”

They finished their turn around the block and came up on the building again. Tim tracked a bike courier at the crosswalk, heading for the shipping and receiving dock at the northeast corner of the ground floor. She had a KCOM decal on her helmet and a Cheesecake Factory bag in the bike’s front basket.

“Slow down,” Tim said.

The courier biked up the ramp and flashed an ID card at an obese security guard with a clipboard, who lazily wanded her down with a metal detector, then tugged open the roll-up gate. Heading back into the dock interior, she slotted her front wheel into a bike rack by the service elevator, yanked the bike seat free of the frame, and tucked it protectively under an arm. Just before the guard slid the rolling gate down, Tim saw the courier punch a code into a numeric keypad beside the elevator. An extended metal frame shielded the pad from view; her hand disappeared to the wrist by the time her fingers reached the keys.

The Stork eased the van over to the curb in front of a pharmacy and medical-supplies store that displayed a wheelchair and a bevy of aluminum walkers in the front window. They sat watching the closed, corrugated dock gate and the security officer rolling something he’d dug out from his nose between his thumb and index finger.

“Do you think the bike-courier cards are strictly ID, or do they double-function as access-control cards for movement within the interior?”

“They’d be strictly ID, I’d bet,” the Stork said. “Access-control cards are usually only issued to high-clearance people, not mailroom gofers. Corporations are very strict about them. If they’re reported missing, they’re immediately deactivated.”

“Fine,” Tim said. “Forget the access-control cards. If I gave you a prototype of a regular ID, could you manufacture a fake one?”

The Stork snorted and flopped his hand in a dismissive wave. “I engineered a microphone that could fit in a pen cap and pick up a whisper at a hundred yards. I think I can deal with duplicating an overglorified library card.”

Tim indicated the dock gate with a slight tilt of his head. “The bike rack’s just past the checkpoint, near the service elevator.”

“Probably a Beverly Hills zoning law-they don’t want the sidewalks cluttered up.” The Stork popped a pill into his mouth and swallowed it effortlessly without water. “If you want to get a pistol through, smuggle in a dismantled Glock. They’re mostly plastic. Only the barrel has enough ping to set off a detector-make a key chain out of it and stuff the rest down your shorts. The firing pin doesn’t have enough metal to get picked up.” He studied Tim curiously, awaiting confirmation.

Instead Tim said, “We need to get a better angle on that keypad.”

The Stork pointed at the narrow street running parallel to the north edge of the building. “A window on that side would look directly in on it.”

“Give a drive by.”

The Stork pulled out and eased down the street. There was indeed a window, but it was largely blocked by a decrepit truck.

Tim barely turned his head. “Keep moving, keep moving.”

The Stork drove down the block and pulled over again.

“The truck’s in the way, and it’s a narrow sidewalk. The only way we could see in would be to press up against the glass, which would be more than conspicuous.”

The Stork said, “Then we wait for the truck to move.”

“It’s a parking-permit street-no meters in need of refreshing-and the truck has a permit dangling from the rearview. There are reservoirs of leaves collected around the front wheels from the last rain four nights ago. I’d bet that’s the resting place for someone’s old rig.”

“I’ll get it moved.”

“How?”

The Stork grinned. “I just will.”

“Even if you get that truck moved and we get binocs on the window, there’s no clear sight line to the keypad. It’ll be blocked by the courier’s body when he’s punching in the code.”

The Stork’s mouth shifted and clamped. “Let me work on that.”

“Also work on getting into the security phone lines-tap in to however many phone junctions it takes. I’d like you to monitor all developments.” Tim had already asked Rayner to nose around his media contacts to get a read on the security politics, but the more information sources he had, the better.

“How many minutes to pickup?”

Tim glanced at his G-Shock. “Seven.”

The Stork dug an eyedropper out of his pocket, removed his immense glasses, and applied the drops. When he put his glasses back on, still blinking against the liquid, his eyes looked like those of an agitated turtle. Tim felt the pull of empathy, followed quickly by an urge for comradeship, for unity in their common cause.

“It hit you hard?” Tim asked. “When your mother was killed?”

The Stork shrugged. “I’ve learned not to expect much from life. If you never expect things to go right, you’re less upset when they go wrong.”

“Then why are you doing this? The Commission?”

“Honestly? For the money. A nice little salary on top of my FBI pension. That may sound awful to you, but I don’t have anything in this life but money. I’ve never had many friends. I’ve never played baseball. I’ve never had sex with a woman. I’m just an outsider, looking in at this other life I see in movies and advertisements. After a while I just checked out. I don’t watch TV anymore, any of that stuff. I read. Mostly older stuff. Now and then I’ll rent black-and-white movies when I can’t sleep. I have trouble sleeping. My breathing…” He gestured to the knot of scar tissue beneath his nose, then folded his hands peacefully in his lap. “The zeitgeist alarms me because it reminds me of all the things I’m missing.”

He removed his glasses again and rubbed his eyes. The lenses were concave, thick at the edges. “There’s a reasonable chance I may be blind someday. I don’t mind having extra money to buy books, to travel around and see things. Different oceans. Arctic snow. I took a helicopter ride around the Grand Canyon last May, and it was divine.” He tapped his chest gently with his fingertips. “It’s all more than I should do, given my heart condition, but it’s my one pleasure.” The glasses slid back on again, and his turtle eyes blinked at Tim. “I like money. It doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“No, I don’t think it does.”

They sat awkwardly for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rackley. I don’t have much occasion to talk to people, so when I start…” He cleared his throat moistly. “Perhaps we should get moving.”

Tim reached into the backseat and removed two magnetic logos the size of garbage-can lids. He stepped out and stuck one on either side of the Chevy, where they proclaimed PERFECT TINT WINDOW WASHING.

The Stork pulled back down the narrow street, past the loading dock, and looped around the front of the building. Tim’s watch blinked from 12:59 to 1:00 precisely as Robert stepped out the maintenance door on the west side, rags hanging from the pockets of his overalls, baseball cap askew.

It took him fifteen steps to reach the van-already Tim had the side door rolling open-and he ducked in as the Stork pulled away. They rode in silence for several blocks. The Stork stopped the car on a deserted street, just behind Tim’s parked Beemer.

Robert coughed into a fist, then spit out the window. He tapped a cigarette out of a crumpled pack he pulled from his shirt pocket. He snapped open the lid of a Zippo with an American-flag decal. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes,” the Stork said.

Robert lit up and blew a gust of smoke up at the driver’s seat. It wreathed the head of the displeased Stork like a laurel. The Stork tried to hold in a cough, but it hiccupped out of him.

Tim looped his arm around the headrest so he was facing Robert. “The fourth and tenth floors are empty, right?”

“Yeah, they are. The dot-coms that used to rent them went the way of the dodo.”

“Are there still infrared-strobe motion detectors in place?”

“Both floors are rife with ’em-SafetyMan casings. They’re off during the day because of the occasional maintenance guy or mover, but I’d imagine they go hot after five, six o’clock.”

“Tomorrow, before we throw you back up there as a window washer, we’ll figure out a way to slide you past security-as a maintenance guy, maybe-to breach the interior. I’ll need those IR strobes made bad-operating. Stork?”

“I’ve dealt with SafetyMan before,” the Stork said. “I’ll size some mirror fragments to fit the casings. Robert can get ’em in tomorrow during working hours when the strobes are deactivated. When they reactivate at night, the mirrors’ll bounce the IR beam back on itself and you’ll be able to do the lindy hop down the hall.”

“The lindy hop?”

“It’s a lively swing dance, Mr. Rackley. Named after Charles Lindbergh.”

“Right. Thanks for your help.” Tim’s eyes flicked to the door, in case the Stork didn’t catch the hint.

The Stork tossed Robert a tiny, flat camera, which he slid into his T-shirt pocket, and then the Stork hopped out, climbed into a second rental van parked at the curb, and motored off.

In the back Robert was changing out of his overalls, throwing on a pair of jeans. “Weird dude,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the departing van. “He’s a solid operator, but you don’t exactly want to drink beers with the guy.”

“He’s all right,” Tim said. “A little soft, but he’s had a tough time, I’d guess.”

Robert stuck a pencil behind his ear and slid a clipboard into a copy of Newsweek. He bent over to relace his sneakers, the Lee insignia popping out on its leather tag in the back of his fitted true-blue jeans. “So why’d you send him packing? Who cares if he overhears?”

“Give me the intel dump.”

Robert stared at him, irritated, then inhaled sharply so the cigarette’s cherry flared. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t have to answer your questions.”

“Look, I’ve done everything you asked, like a good little soldier. Now I’m not giving you shit until you tell me what the plan is.”

“Fine. Then I drive off right now and you can explain my absence to Dumone and Rayner and carry out the mission by yourself.”

Robert leaned back and tapped ash out the window with a flick of his thumb, a sharp, efficient gesture. His movements were uniformly tense, anger simmering, violence barely contained. Tim didn’t know or trust his steadiness or that of the other operators-no small part of why-on a high-risk mission that carried the potential for collateral damage and civilian injury; he preferred to keep them focused on specific, isolated tasks.

Finally Robert said, “Maybe you should show a little respect. I got the shit you asked for. And then some.”

“So give it to me.”

Robert shot a jet of smoke in Tim’s direction and began. “The skeleton is steel, walls are concrete with plaster overlay, the floors are twenty feet high and supported by metal ceiling joists and metal posts, twelve to a floor. Each floor is a rebar-reinforced poured-concrete slab base, nine inches thick, with a polished finish. The roof is plywood and tar, and it houses twenty-one air diffusers with fans and fifteen three-by-seven skylights with metal bars securing entry. Gas-fed AC and heat-pump units with shutoff valves located in the ground-floor maintenance area. Electrical power enters the building from the southwest corner, heads into an electrical closet through a main disconnect, and gets routed from there. The closet wiring’s a mess-more fucked up than a nigger’s checkbook.”

“Lovely,” Tim said, but Robert had already moved on.

“Each floor has roughly five electrical-distribution panels around the interior perimeters, rated from two-to three-hundred-amp service. Emergency power is provided by battery, but there are two high-capacity backup generators. Fire enunciator is located at the northeast point on each floor-zoned single-partition system, monitored locally via phone line, FireKing-manufactured panel. Extensive smoke-and flame-detection devices, fire extinguishers, fire hoses in the stairwell. The elevator does go down to the underground garage-my guess is they bring Lane in there in an armored car. The building core is very well protected-no outside windows into the inner rooms, so we have dick on a sniper angle if that’s what you’re thinking…?” Cocked eyebrow, pause. “Windows don’t open. Garbage chutes located to the right of the service elevator on each floor. The doors on the way to the stairwells are metal, push-handle, and they all have mag strikes. Flip-style light switches are to the left of each door, interior side. Stairwell’s vacuum-sealed, no floor-to-floor access-you get locked out there, you’re going all the way down to the first floor. The stairwell door locks are single-cylinder handle-turns that autolock, and they open into a rear kitchen on odd floors, a conference room on evens. Interview recording usually takes place on the third floor, but-clever fuckers-they’re building a replica of Yueh’s set on the eleventh floor. The switched locale is a secret security precaution-I spotted construction workers with bulges at their hips moving set backdrops across the floor.”

Tim made a mental note to confirm that.

“They’ve started installing metal detectors on several floors today, I assume to have them good to go by the time Lane arrives. Access-control-card checkpoints on every floor to breach the inner rooms, guard booths to boot before the editing and interview suites. And there’s a brunette on the seventh floor with an ass like Jennifer Lopez who almost made me plummet to my death when she dropped her keys.”

“All right,” Tim said. “Good job.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that.” Robert hopped out and slammed the door behind him.

•Mitchell was just leaving Rayner’s house when Tim drove through the gates in the rental van and parked beside his own car. Mitchell ignored him, climbing into his truck. He was backing up fast when Tim knocked the side panel with a fist. Mitchell hit the brakes.

“What?”

Tim pulled a pencil from behind his ear and pointed at the eraser. “Can you make me a contained explosive charge this size?”

“What for?”

“I need something I can hide inside a small item.”

“Like in a watch?”

“Right, like in a watch.”

Mitchell’s mouth shifted and clamped. “It’ll be tricky. I’d have to build a minuscule, custom-made detonator.”

“What’ll you use? C4?”

“C4? And why don’t we throw around a few sticks of dynamite or fire off an ACME cannon while we’re at it?” He shook his head. “Leave the pyrotechnics to me. We’ll need a sensitive primary explosive, like mercury fulminate or DDNT.”

“And you’re thinking an electronically initiated receiver?”

“Yeah, but that’ll be the problem. There’s not much space-especially if you’re wiring this shit into the existing circuitry of a watch- so I doubt I can fit anything that’ll pick up a specialized electrical transmission from any sort of distance. Maybe I can get you a couple hundred yards’ range on a remote-control device.”

“A couple hundred yards would be fine. And the charge can’t send out shrapnel. We can’t hurt any bystanders with the explosion.”

Mitchell ground his teeth. “Ya think?” He started the truck rolling again, and Tim had to step back so the tire wouldn’t run over his foot.

•Tim drove to the Moorpark firing range to break in the. 357, practicing his draw, getting a sense of the new metal. It felt like home.

When he left, he inadvertently drove several blocks toward his and Dray’s house before realizing his mistake and turning around. Passing a park where he used to take Ginny, he broke out in a clammy sweat. He detoured, heading past the long drive leading to Kindell’s garage. The . 357 fit snugly in his old hip holster. He removed it and pressed it to his thigh, felt its heat even through his jeans. The fact that he had again moved from grief to anger was not lost on him.

Anger was easier.

After driving downtown, showering, and cleaning his gun, he stretched out on his bed and finally checked the Nokia’s messages. Two, both from Dray, over the past couple hours.

She sounded discouraged on the first. “I’ve been hitting walls in every direction on the accomplice angle. I finally caved and called the LAPD detectives who worked Kindell’s priors-they were actually really kind, had heard about Ginny…” She cleared her throat, hard. “They still wouldn’t give me specifics, but they took a turn through their case logs and assured me there weren’t any trails or red flags. Almost all of what they had, they said, would be in the court transcripts, which I already have. I played the guilt card with Gutierez and Harrison, pressed them pretty hard, and they rousted Kindell for us one last time. Said he’s not talking-his lawyer made real clear that keeping his mouth shut is what’s gonna keep him out of jail. He’s a regular constitutional expert now, even ordered them off his property unless they were gonna press charges. We’re not gonna get anything from him. Ever.” A deep sigh. “I hope things are panning out better on your end.”

The sadness expressed in her voice on the first message gave way to irritation on the second, since Tim hadn’t gotten back to her. He tried her first at the office, then at home, finally leaving a vague message saying he had nothing to report on his end and explaining he’d wanted to wait until he was alone to talk to her. Hearing her voice, even on a recording, set the hook of his grief more firmly.

He took a moment to consider how lucky he was to have so much to do.

He relieved Robert at four o’clock. Robert slid out of the coffee-shop booth, leaving a clipboard full of notes and charts on the table, hidden in the Newsweek. Tim sat and glanced through his jottings. Calendar of movements, times the trash went out, security positions. It was impossible to deny Robert’s proficiency.

Tim sipped coffee and watched who came out of which exits and when. Just before five he crossed the street, passing the immense window full of suspended TVs, and entered the lobby-a large marble cavern with a grotesquely baroque chandelier, oddly dated given the building’s exterior. Just inside, a newly positioned guard directed a perfunctory glance at Tim’s license-thank you, Tom Altman, RIP-before letting him pass. A huge screen, composed of sixteen close-set TVs, formed the west wall. No side doors, no open stairs, no pillars behind which to hide. About twenty yards in from the revolving doors, a massive security console greeted visitors.

Tim took note of the cameras at each corner of the ceiling before acknowledging the security guard with a nervous smile. “Yeah, hi, I, uh, I was wondering if I could fill out a job application form. For, you know, maintenance or whatever.”

“Sorry, sir, there’s a hiring freeze right now. You might want to try ABC. I’ve heard they’re looking.”

Tim leaned forward on the counter for a moment, taking in the bank of bluish-white screens the guard was monitoring. The angles were largely south-facing, capturing the faces of visitors as they entered. Tim searched them for blind spots. “Thanks anyways.”

“No problem, sir.”

Tim turned and headed out. The security lenses above the revolving doors represented the sole cameras devoted to recording people as they exited. Tim kept his head lowered when he pushed through onto the sidewalk.

He took a new post in the window booth of a deli next door to Lipson’s Pharmacy and Medical Supplies. Munching on pastrami, he recorded the order of the office lights blinking out on the eleventh floor.

17

THE SURVEILLANCE WAS continuous over the next forty-eight hours, an endless cycle of coffee and leg cramps. Meanwhile, public outrage against Lane continued to grow, and death threats kept pouring in. KCOM had begun promoting the interview almost around the clock-ads graced buses and taxi tops, and commercials launched on KCOM’s affiliated radio station supplemented the aggressive TV campaign.

The entire city seemed to be holding its breath, awaiting the event.

Tim observed the intensifying circus atmosphere with equal parts awe and concern-the security machinations, gleaned through the Stork’s wiretapping and Rayner’s rooting, were ever shifting. Tim’s plan nearly had to be scrapped several times, the first when KCOM’s legal department started making noises about retracting the live aspect of the interview, wanting to prerecord Lane at an unspecified time as a security precaution. Next Lane wanted to shift the meeting to a secret location, for his own safety and cachet, but Yueh was understandably uncomfortable with this, given Lane’s history and notorious hatred of the media. With the support of the brass, KCOM security finally threw down a veto, preferring to deal with variables contained in-plant rather than opening up a new locale. For this concession Lane extracted the promise that the interview would remain live, so his gospel couldn’t get misrepresented or chopped up in edit. KCOM marketing and Yueh herself were more than happy to comply-putting a live spin on Event TV had already served to up the PR ante. To exploit the hype further, an added fifteen-minute viewer-call-in segment at the end ensured that Lane could respond to the Angry Public.

The next dogfight predictably involved jurisdiction-LAPD, KCOM security, and Lane’s crackpot bodyguard team were locked in a protracted and bellicose set of negotiations over everything from employee-and public-safety concerns to personnel screening. LAPD predictably forbade nearly half of Lane’s crew from entering the building; the hired replacements, once selected by Lane, would be vetted extensively.

Tuesday night found Tim in the Chevy van’s passenger seat, parked on the narrow street on the north side of the KCOM building, staring at the still-lit window that would have provided a view of the service elevator and the numeric keypad had the run-down truck not remained, infuriatingly unbudged, blocking any useful vantage. The last courier usually arrived between 7:57 and 8:01 P.M.; Tim’s watch showed 6:45.

In his lap he held a stack of photographs, each containing a shot of a KCOM employee, identified by name on the back. Black-op flash cards.

Humming the theme to The Roy Rogers Show, the Stork continued to fuss over what appeared to be a parabolic microphone attached to a small calculator. He fiddled with some wiring, set it down, and pulled a can of red spray paint from the center console.

“What are you doing?” Tim asked for perhaps the fifth time.

The Stork slid out from the driver’s seat. He darted across the street in an approximation of a crouch that he probably thought inconspicuous, but that in reality made him look like a constipated hunchback. He disappeared behind the dilapidated truck and moments later emerged on the far side, bent down, spraying the curb fire-engine red.

He dashed back to the van, leapt in, and sat, recovering his breath. He removed a cell phone from his pocket-yesterday Dumone had brought them all matching Nextels so they’d be operating on the same network-and flipped it open. He dialed 411 and at the prompt asked for Fredo’s Towing.

He spoke in a deepened voice. “Yes, hello. This is KCOM security, over at Wilshire and Roxbury. I have a truck parked here in a red zone we need moved ASAP. Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

He closed the phone and leaned back in his seat, pleased with himself.

“Smart idea, but even if the truck’s moved, we’re not gonna be able to see through the courier’s back to read the code he’s punching in.”

The Stork raised the cone-shaped piece of equipment he’d been tinkering with earlier. “That’s why I brought Betty.”

“Betty?”

“Betty trains a laser on the windowpane. She can pick up every vibration in the glass.”

Tim shook his head, still not understanding.

“Every number on a keypad emits a slightly different frequency. These frequencies will cause a windowpane to vibrate almost undetectably. Betty reads these vibrations and translates them back to numbers for me.”

“How about other, stronger vibrations? Won’t they interfere?”

“It’s pretty quiet now,” the Stork said. “That’s why we’re doing this at eight o’clock. No gates rolling up, no loading going on at the dock.”

Tim gestured at the piece of equipment. “And you…you designed it?”

“Her. And I wrote the computer program she utilizes.” The Stork sniffed, and his glasses slid a notch down his nose. “Let’s just say they didn’t let me in the FBI for my bench press.”

The tow truck arrived twenty minutes later and hauled off the truck, leaving the Stork a clear angle to the window. The courier arrived earlier than expected-7:53-but the Stork had Betty propped against his door and locked on the glass before the courier entered the code on the keypad. By the time the service-elevator doors slammed shut behind the courier, Betty’s small screen had rendered the code: 78564.

The Stork stroked the top of the parabola and whispered something to it.

“I have to say, Stork, pretty impressive.”

The Stork put the van back in drive and eased out from the curb. “If my aim was to impress you, Mr. Rackley, I would have brought Donna.”

•Rayner pulled Tim inside as soon as he opened the front door. “Good, good. You’re back. Come-we got the tapes you asked for.”

When Tim entered the conference room, Mitchell’s head snapped up from his work. His hair looked slightly frayed; he needed a haircut. Hunched over a phone book, he was tinkering with the explosive device. It lay dissected on the yellow cover, its tiny components spread beside it like electronic innards. Breaching reports were scattered across the table, the pages sporting Mitchell’s chicken-scratch calculations for determining overpressure. Mumbling to himself, Mitchell pried open a coil with the tip of a screwdriver.

Robert and the Stork were still out on surveillance, but the others were present.

Ananberg, cat-languid and smug, arched an eyebrow at Tim by way of greeting. She pointed to a stack of tapes with her pencil. “There’s the rest. View ’em at your leisure.”

“Thank you.”

Dumone tossed Tim the remote. Tim aimed it at the TV, and the video unfroze-a Melissa Yueh interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger from last April, about the prospects of his running for mayor.

One of Tim’s cell phones vibrated-the Nokia, left pocket, not the Nextel supplied by Dumone. He checked Caller ID and turned it off-for Dray’s protection he didn’t want anyone to hear him talking to her.

But Ananberg took note of his expression, pressing a pencil against her lips. “Trouble on the home front?”

Tim ignored her, shifting the tape into slo-mo with another click of the remote. Arnie’s laugh, viewed at eight frames per second, made him look like a man seeking to devour something. He slapped his knee, turned his head, revealing a shaving nick and the tan plug of the earpiece. The lighting made his skin look glossy.

Mitchell watched the screen, trying to figure out what Tim was looking for, tapping his tweezers against the phone book.

Rayner smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Now that we’ve done all the legwork, why don’t you let us in on your plan? We don’t know anything at this point. How are we even supposed to know when it happens?”

“Oh, believe me,” Tim said, eyes still on the screen, “you’ll know when it happens.”

•Parked in the driveway, Tim stared at the house numbers nailed just beneath the porch light, beside the front door: 96775. Years ago he’d pencil-sketched their placement before nailing them to the wall, using a framing square turned at an angle to calculate the slant. The 9 had lost its bottom nail and had swung upside down; it was now a misaligned 6.

He replayed Dray’s last message on his cell phone.

“Well, since you’re too hard to get right now, I’m leaving this on your voice mail. Don’t think you can disappear and work things out at the same time. Since I don’t know where you live, I can’t stop by and try to talk some sense into you, but I’m only gonna wait so long. Come over and let’s talk. I’m working a full schedule again, so call first to make sure I’m around.”

Her voice, hurt veiled thinly with anger, matched his mood. One part of her message in particular stuck in his head: I’m only gonna wait so long. Before she moved on? Before she came looking for him? Because of the demands of the operation, he’d put himself out of touch with her at the worst time. He could hardly be surprised that his remoteness had raised resentment in her.

He slid his wedding band off and eyed the house through it, telescope style. A succinct composition of all he’d allowed to get fucked up. His hand felt naked without the ring, so he put it back on.

He rang the doorbell twice. No answer. He’d sneaked away from Commission duties to come here. The empty house confronted him with just how much he missed his wife and how large a hole her absence left. He was angry with himself for not taking more care to make sure she was home.

He entered through the garage and wandered through the house, not quite sure what he was looking for. He stared at Dray’s bottles arrayed on the counter of the master bathroom. Sitting on their bed, he picked up her pillow and inhaled her scent-lotion and hair conditioner. He painted over the new drywall he’d patched into the living room walls. He found his hammer in the garage and fixed the house number out front, swinging the 9 back into proper position and tapping the nail lightly until it came flush with the metal. When he returned to the kitchen, his head was buzzing.

He left Dray a Post-it on the fridge saying he loved her. He was almost to the door when he turned around and left another on the bathroom mirror telling her the same thing.

18

“MY NAME IS Jed. Using my full name, Jedediah, an anti-quated name, is an attempt by the government-controlled leftist media to distance me further from the average American, to make me a zealot.” On the cluster of closed-circuit TVs suspended in KCOM’s ground-floor window, seventeen televised Jed Lanes folded seventeen sets of hands and leaned back in seventeen plush interviewee chairs. An eighteenth screen reflected back the crowd itself, an array of irate and perversely curious faces.

Rolling his bike before him to split the crowd, Tim shouldered his way through the onlookers and picketers glued to the building’s immense front window. Melissa Yueh had Lane on set upstairs and was warming him up to go live inside the half hour. As a publicity stunt, KCOM programmers had elected to air the pre-interview banter on a closed-circuit network to the crowds gathered outside the building. Another link in the chain trailing back to the limited broadcast of Tim McVeigh’s execution.

The chants had only just quieted down, so Lane’s words could be heard, but disdain and outrage emanated from the crowd like heat. LAPD kept up a strong but unintimidating presence, the dark blue uniforms interspersed among the viewers and protesters at regular intervals. Just inside the lobby, KCOM security guards were checking IDs closely before moving visitors and employees through two airport-style metal detectors.

The minuscule detonator was wedged up beneath Tim’s bike seat. He had stuck nine flat magnets to the side of the chain stay and secured a tubular remote device the size of a lighter to the right pedal’s toe clip, disguised as a reflector. In addition to wearing eyeglasses, he’d let his scruff grow into a short beard and mustache, and he’d wedged a piece of Big Red at the gum line behind his bottom lip to alter the shape of his chin. A backpack slung over one shoulder, fake ID card flapping from the waist of his khakis, gold cross dangling from a necklace, he turned the corner and headed for shipping and receiving. A flick of his arm brought his watch out from cover: 8:31.

He picked out Robert’s picket sign among the others across the street: CHILD KILLER FANATIC. Something was wrong-the sign’s flip side, the slogan reversed, was to serve as the go-ahead. Robert continued to chant and follow the circling picket line, but Tim noted his tension in the thick cords of his neck.

Robert tilted his sign toward the shipping and receiving dock. Two new security guards had taken over in the wake of Lane’s posse’s entry. One patted down a courier at the base of the ramp, the other holding the bike to the side. They waved the courier through but kept his bike outside, despite his protests.

Plan A aborted.

Tim crossed the street and ditched the bike up against a garbage can after removing the hidden devices. He stood still for a moment, mind racing. On the ground by the trash can was a discarded guest pass, dated today. He smoothed it against his thigh. Joseph Cooper. That would do. New guards, after all, provided as many opportunities as disadvantages. Readjusting the backpack on his shoulder, he walked down the street and ducked into Lipson’s Pharmacy and Medical Supplies. The sole worker rustled with boxes in the back. “Be there in a minute!”

Seconds later Tim rolled out in the wheelchair previously displayed in the window, his backpack hooked over the seat back. His full-fingered biking gloves, which he’d worn down on a belt sander last night to give them a tatty authenticity, doubled nicely as protective padding against the fast-turning wheels. They also ensured a print-free entry.

Tim zipped over the crosswalk and headed straight at the new guards, flashing the guest pass when the taller one raised a meaty traffic-cop hand. “Hey, guys. I’m consulting with some editors up on eleven this week. I tried to get in at the entrance, but they told me to come around here today. Couldn’t get me through the metal detector with this baby”-he patted the side of the wheelchair lovingly-“but they said you could wand me down here.”

After shooting his colleague a quick, uncomfortable glance, the guard waved the wand near Tim, but the detector went apoplectic with all the metal from the wheelchair. Tim kept his hands on the tops of the wheels, hiding the detonator and remote wedged into the spokes. The other guard searched Tim’s backpack, digging through the clothes inside as if kneading dough. Tim was thankful for their awkwardness and evident fear of offending him-they hadn’t even asked him about his outfit.

He smiled shyly at the detector’s frenzied beeping. “It happens, man. You should see me at an airport. They practically call in the national guard.” He shot a wink. “Would you mind givin’ me a roll up the ramp?”

To his credit the guard patted him down first-and well-checking the small of his back and running his hands down the lengths of Tim’s legs. In his thoroughness he even removed a silver dollar from Tim’s pocket and studied it before returning it. Tim’s long-sleeved Lycra biking shirt hugged his chest, making him acutely aware of the thin layer of perspiration covering his body. The intensity reminded him of spinning up for a live op or kicking doors with the service.

Finally the guard nodded and shoved him brusquely up the ramp. “Elevator code’s the first five numerals of your floor-access code. They gave you that, right?”

“Yup. Thanks, bro. Appreciate it.” Tim eased his way over to the service elevator, punched in the code Betty had retrieved, and forced a smile at the guards while he waited. His muscles relaxed a notch when a ding announced the doors’ opening. He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he rolled inside and threw a sigh after the doors banged shut.

The elevator was a typical service cattle car-mesh walls, high ceiling, bolted hatch. A TV monitor pointed down from the right corner. “-any idea the crap the Clinton-Gore regime left us to sort through,” Lane was saying. “Them and their fuckdamned socialist associates, subverting and destroying our cultural institutions.” He had a booted foot up on the edge of the news table.

“When the interview goes live,” Yueh said, “you’re going to have to watch your language.”

“Of course I will,” Lane said. “I don’t expect I live in a free country.”

Tim hit the button for the tenth floor, then removed the detonator and remote from the spokes and collected the flat magnets from where he’d stuck them behind the seat back. The wheelchair accordioned neatly, and he leaned it against the wall. He tugged off his Lycra shirt and replaced it with a nondescript blue button-up, then removed a dry-cleaned shirt from the backpack, the wire hanger slightly bent from the guard’s groping.

He stepped out onto the empty tenth floor and shitcanned the folded wheelchair and backpack down the garbage chute to his right. As the elevator doors slid closed, he pulled the silver dollar from his pocket and held it out into the narrowing gap, trapped between his index and middle fingers. The doors slammed shut on it and stopped, the connectors just shy of engaging. He checked his watch again: 8:37. The service elevator wasn’t due for use again until the graveyard janitorial shift rode up to the sixth floor, around 9:15. In case there was an emergency response before then, he preferred to have the car out of commission.

Slinging the dry-cleaned shirt over his shoulder, the plastic wrap rustling against him, he poked his head out in the back hall. Infrared motion strobes every ten yards along the ceiling, virtually no blind spots. A perfect opportunity for Robert to hang Tim out-if he hadn’t rendered the strobes bad-operating as promised, Tim would be trapped by a screaming alarm on the tenth floor of a building stuffed with cops, guards, and private-militia goons. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out into the line of the first two lenses. The green pinpoint dots atop the units shone steady-no blinking to indicate either strobe had been tripped.

The first door he encountered was a facing push-handle as Robert had reported; the floor had been designed to protect mostly against inward-moving intrusions. Tim removed the stack of flat magnets from his pocket and worked the top one off with his thumbnail. It was thin and silver, shaped like a stick of Wrigley’s. He went up on tiptoe and located the mag strikes by the intruding shadow that interrupted the lit seam at the top of the door. He slid the magnet between the two mag strikes until he felt it pulled; when he released it, it snapped into place, covering the top strike.

He pushed the door open and passed through the jamb, glancing up at the magnet clinging to the top mag strike, ensuring that the connection hadn’t been broken. He moved from the hall through an enormous room filled with partially dismantled cubicles; they rose shadowed from the darkness like an elephant graveyard, a requiem odeum for the dot-com bubble burst. It turned out he encountered only five more doors; the three leftover magnets he stuck behind the print tray of a discarded Hewlett-Packard.

He leaned against the stairwell door, listening for the footsteps of Susie-Take-The-Stairs, the exercise-minded receptionist from eleven. 8:42. She was running late for her nine o’clock shrink appointment five blocks over; she’d called this afternoon to confirm. Tim waited, controlled his breathing, faked patience. He had an 8:49 checkpoint upstairs, needing to pass Craig Macmanus in the west-east-running hall as Macmanus headed back to his office to answer the emergency page the Stork was going to send his way. By 8:45 Tim figured Susie-Take-the-Stairs had either canceled her appointment, decided to stay on site for Lane’s interview, or taken the elevator.

Whistling casually, he popped open the door to the stairwell and stepped on the tenth-floor landing. The door swung shut behind him and locked. As if on cue, the door opened one floor up, and he heard the cushioned tap of Reeboks heading down the stairs. He hugged the railing, raising the dry-cleaned shirt high on his shoulder so it blocked half his face.

Susie swept by, a blur of curls and nylon. “Hi! Bye!”

Tim murmured a greeting and kept moving. By the time he reached the eleventh-floor landing, he had the hanger out from the shirt and untwisted, bent into an L terminating with the hook. He slid the hook beneath the narrow gap at the bottom of the door and rotated it until he felt it grab the handle inside. He tugged and got a satisfying click. Easing the door open, he entered the empty back kitchen.

The TV on the counter showed Melissa Yueh leaning over Lane as a tech affixed a mike clip to his shirt. “Just relax and make eye contact with me, not the camera. We’re gonna get you your earpiece in a few minutes here so the producer can talk to you while we’re live.”

Several of Lane’s militia groupies stood in the background, bodyguards with oversize arms and no idea where to put them. They were working hard at looking tough, trying to ignore the cameras and doing a bad job of it. A feisty production assistant moved them out of the shot, and they shuffled clumsily under his command, cattle driven by a sheepdog.

Tim triple-folded the hanger and stuffed it and the shirt into the trash bin beneath the sink. He pulled a Baggie, a plastic earpiece, and a single thread of dental floss from his back pocket. He pried open the earpiece, nestled the tiny detonator within the wiring, and snapped it shut. Dropping the earpiece into the Baggie, he then sealed the bag, knotted the top, and tied the dental floss around it. He swallowed the Baggie, holding the end of the floss. The floss pulled taut, holding the Baggie midway down his throat. He waited for his gag reflex to cease, then strung the floss between two of his molars.

Grabbing two small bottles of Evian from the fridge, he stuffed them into his back pockets and stepped into the hall. 8:46.

A stiff-postured LAPD cop and a tired KCOM guard sat on stools in front of a metal detector that led into the main corridors. Tim nodded and stepped through. The detector beeped loudly.

“You carrying a cell phone, keys?”

Tim shook his head.

The guard slid off his stool and wanded Tim, starting at his feet. When the wand reached his throat, it gave off an intense beeping. The guard stared at the gold cross resting on Tim’s Adam’s apple, rolled his eyes at the cop, and waved Tim through.

Tim turned into the men’s room just past the guard station and ducked into a stall. Plucking the dental floss from between his molars, he gagged up the Baggie. It slid out, slick with saliva. He removed the earpiece, dropped it into his pocket, and flushed the Baggie. He stepped back out into the hall at precisely 8:49.

Craig Macmanus, all jaw and toothy grin, was barreling down the hall with a coworker, glancing at his beeper and winding up a joke about bicycling nuns. Tim timed the lowering of his head to fake-check his watch and brushed against Macmanus’s side, lifting the ID and access-control cards clipped to his leather-weave belt.

“Oops. Sorry, Craig.” Tim kept moving, not turning for a face-to-face. His hands worked quickly to remove Craig’s ID card from the clip and replace it with his fake. The hall was completely empty, save three TVs suspended at intervals from the ceiling. Tim reached the forbidding double doors at the hall’s end and flashed Macmanus’s access-control card at the pad. The red light blinked green, and he stepped into the inner sanctum.

Here in the interview suite, impervious to binoculars and the probing eyes of window washers, Tim was on his own. Lane and Yueh were positioned at an immense wooden table, Charlie Rose style, and PAs were scurrying about, adjusting lighting and wincing under Yueh’s orders. A black digital clock suspended above Yueh’s head counted down to airtime-less than five minutes. The guard in the small booth to Tim’s right was munching a powdered doughnut without apparent appreciation for caricature. Tim flashed his ID card, and the guard gave it a cursory glance, leaving a sugary thumb whorl over Tim’s dour photo.

A tech wearing headphones fussed with a control board, the cables and wires threading back beneath a folding table to his side. Tim headed in his direction, brandishing one of the Evian bottles.

“Someone called over for water?”

The sound tech waved him off, barely looking up. Tim spotted an open metal briefcase on the table, a few pieces of gear nestled within its gray foam filling, including Lane’s earpiece; as he’d guessed, Lane’s men, extensively experienced with death threats, had brought all their own equipment for Lane’s use.

“I’ll just leave it here.”

Another arm wave, this one vicious.

As Tim set the bottles on the counter, he quickly swapped earpieces.

“Live in two,” someone shouted.

“Diffuse the fill light!” Yueh shrieked. “You’ll have my pores looking like potholes.”

One of Lane’s no-neckers, his forearm decorated with a bald eagle tattoo, swept past Tim, heading for the metal briefcase. As Tim walked toward the door, he gestured for the guard to wipe powdery residue from his chin. Back in the sterile hall, he got Yueh screaming commands in stereo, her voice moving through the walls and shrilling from the monitors overhead. The first note of the KCOM jingle announced the show’s start, granting the building blissful respite from her stridency.

By the time Tim reached the front elevator, this one smooth and slick with a TV screen embedded in the brushed-stainless-steel panel, Yueh’s on-air honeyed tone was pinch-hitting. “…haven’t seemed to express much remorse over those children and men and women who died.” Her brow furrowed slightly, approximating genuine puzzlement.

Tim stood to the front of the car, in the security camera’s blind spot. The interior was exclusively metal-no mirroring through which a second camera could be monitoring.

“Those people were working for a fascist, tyrannical cause. The Census intrusion is a communitarian strike against principled individualism, against the free, independent, constitutional republic that men like me are fighting to reestablish. A list of our citizens, available to whoever digs through a federal filing cabinet…” Lane snickered, his fingers rasping across his patchy beard. “Do you think our Founding Fathers had this in mind? How much we make? What ethnicity we are? Where we live? There’s a war going on in this country, in case you haven’t noticed, and the Census is more ammunition for our so-called leaders. They’re launching a full-scale offensive against American sovereignty and rights-God-given rights, not government-granted rights.”

“Census data isn’t available to other branches of the government, Mr. Lane. Surely you’re exaggerating the-”

“Did you know, Ms. Yueh, that the Census list was used in 1942 to round up Japanese-Americans and throw them in internment camps?”

Her smile clicked on like a flashlight, but the split-second delay showed she’d been caught flat-footed. Tim couldn’t resist a smirk. Score one for the bad guy.

He slid his thumb along the silver remote device in his pocket. It had a flip top like a lighter, which hid a single black button. He’d estimated its range conservatively-it would extend at least ten strides from the building’s front doors.

Lane continued imparting gems of wisdom. “Democracy is four wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. Liberty is the sheep with an M-60 telling the wolves where to stick it. The government is impinging on us, our rights, nibbling away at us, nibbling away. That attack on the Census Bureau was justice being administered.”

The elevator doors dinged open in the lobby. From janitors to bean counters, KCOM workers were gathered together, watching the interview on the massive screen on the west wall. One woman stood frozen in place, Jamba Juice straw inches from her open mouth. Scanning the lobby crowd were four uniformed LAPD officers and-from the preponderance of fanny packs-quite a few undercovers.

Tim walked the path he’d mentally charted out, keeping to the edges of the cameras’ fields of vision.

Lane’s voice boomed off the marble floor and bare walls. “At its least harmless, the Census is an apparatus to serve the expansion of the welfare state. In this country, today, we pay a higher percentage of our earnings in taxes than serfs once did.”

“Serfs didn’t have inco-”

“And the federal bank is an even bigger perpetration of treason by our usurping government.”

Yueh’s face hardened into her trademark expression, the one used in commercials describing her as “hard-hitting.” “You’ve done everything here but answer the first question I asked. Are you at all sorry that seventeen little boys and girls are dead, that sixty-nine men and women are dead?”

Lane’s smile sprang up fast and crooked. “‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants.’”

Tim crossed the lobby, hand jammed in his pocket, thumb working the lid of the remote device like a rabbit’s foot. “‘Patriots and tyrants,’” he muttered. He tucked his chin to his chest as he neared the revolving doors and their attendant lenses overhead. A quick spin and he was out on the pavement.

Neither Yueh nor Lane relaxed their postures; they remained squared off, predators gauging vulnerability.

The crowd outside surged and ebbed. People had red ribbons pinned to their jackets. Someone was murmuring in rage. A man wearing a fuzzy hat with earflaps watched the TVs in the front window, his mouth agape, his cheeks glistening with tears. Tim counted his steps from the revolving doors. Four…five…six…

Melissa Yueh’s face loomed seventeen times in close-up. Her jaw was set, her eyes shone coal-dark and pissed-the first show of the substance beneath her persona. “You’ve avoided answering my question again, Mr. Lane.”

In the quiet of the street two blocks down, the now-unmarked Chevy van coasted silently to the curb. Tim flipped up the lid on the remote device, rested his thumb on the button. A woman keened softly in the arms of a man.

Lane seemed to gather a sudden, fierce energy. His body tightened and he leaned forward, seventeen images moving in concert, his finger jamming down into the table so hard it bent and whitened. “All right, bitch. Am I sorry they died? No. Not if it brings attention to-”

Tim clicked the button, and Jedediah Lane’s head exploded in mosaic.

19

RAYNER’S conference room was all postsweat chills and high energy. Robert and Mitchell paced on opposite sides of the conference table while the Stork, kneading out a cramp in his left hand and basking in an almost postcoital glow, sat calmly between Rayner and Ananberg.

Ananberg wore the sleeves of her thin black sweater pushed up to her elbows, her collar tips peeking out with J. Crew perfection. Tim caught her staring at him a few times, her dark, shiny eyes flashing quickly away.

Dumone stood with one hand resting paternally on Tim’s shoulder-which Tim allowed and even didn’t mind-the other holding a remote with which he slow-advanced the explosion of Lane’s head on the overhead TV.

First Lane’s eyeballs ejected from their orbits. The skin covering his scalp and face balloon-swelled, then split, his mandible blown off in a single piece. Then his entire head seemed to dissipate at once, to crumble with the slow-motion horror of an avalanche starting. Lane’s body remained stiffly in the seat, perfectly headless, tie still set firmly against the collar, one finger vehemently stabbed down into the table.

The camera did a Blair Witch swing, catching scrambling techs, militia goons, and Melissa Yueh watching with an expression of unadulterated wonder, a plasma splat of gray matter clinging to her cheek just beneath a mascara-heavy eye.

Dumone froze the screen. Ananberg inhaled sharply, her chest jerking a bit, her lips parting. She caught herself quickly, her usual seen-it-all complacency again taking hold of her features, an expression of icy amusement. Rayner’s face was white, save for disks of color at the heights of his cheeks. He propped his elbows on the table, resting his chin on the bridge of his laced fingers, and exhaled loudly.

Robert passed Mitchell, and the two slapped hands. “Motherfucking genius.”

Mitchell’s face, softer than Robert’s, was flushed with excitement. “Brilliant. I’d forgotten-the slightest explosion in the external acoustic meatus can induce massive intracranial pressure. Open a head right up.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Right there.” Robert strode over and grabbed Tim in a forceful embrace, giving him a faceful of rough shoulder fabric laced with nicotine. He shook Tim once, hard, and set him down. Though Robert was a good several inches shorter than Tim, he was undeniably more solid, his thick arms and legs seeming part of a single, immutable block.

Tim took a step back, away. “What’s next? A victory lap, then we douse Rayner with the Gatorade cooler?”

His comment was lost in the excitement; Dumone alone took note, fixing Tim with his solemn blue eyes.

Rayner clicked through the channels. News updates all around.

“-perhaps from a rival militia group or an FBI operative-”

The Stork raised his arms like a traveling preacher. “It has begun.”

“This will certainly raise public visibility,” Rayner said. “And contribute to the execution’s deterrence potential.”

Robert cracked a pleased smile. “Yeah, I’d say blowing Motherfucker’s head off during prime time will sure as shit get the message out.”

“It’s sufficiently high-profile that now we can back off and do safer, isolated hits,” Dumone said. “Everyone will still know it’s us.”

Robert finally sat, his knee hammering up and down, his hands curling the thick phone book.

The Man on the Street-this incarnation a puffy-jacketed one with a goatee-offered his opinion to an out-of-frame reporter. “I say good riddance, man. A scumsuck like that, sneaks through the law on some”-his next two words, presumably too colorful for the airwaves, were bleeped out-“got the death penalty he deserves. I’m a father of three children, and I don’t want some guy like that out there, who we all know killed a bunch of kids.” He leaned toward the camera now, in hi-mom posture. “Hey, I say whoever smoked the guy, if you’re out there, good job, man.” He flashed dueling thumbs-ups before the camera cut away.

“Well,” Ananberg said, “now we have our moral sanction.”

“Don’t be a snob, Jenna,” Rayner said. “We don’t just want to hear from judges and slick media commentators.”

“Yes, how we loathe slick media commentators.”

Rayner ignored the barb. “I’ll have a full media report ready by the time of our next meeting. Friday evening, shall we say?”

Tim glanced at the painting of Rayner’s son, behind which the safe and Kindell’s case binder waited. Rayner followed his gaze and winked. “Two cases down. Five to go.”

“You boys did well,” Dumone said. “You should feel great.”

“Right,” Tim said.

•Robert and Mitchell were waiting by the Toyota truck. As Tim passed, he took note of the tiny clean circles on the otherwise-dirty back license plate, right around the screws, indicating a recent change. Robert caught his arm and gave a squeeze. It seemed as if a good clench could snap Tim’s humerus.

“Let’s go for an unwinder,” Robert said.

The Stork stood for a moment, as if waiting for an invitation to be extended, then climbed into his van and drove away.

Tim stood by his car.

“Come on,” Mitchell said. “The post-op drink. A tradition we dare not break.”

Robert held up the phone book he’d taken from inside, letting it fall open to the section he’d marked with a thumb. LIQUOR STORES.

Robert stepped aside, and, after a hesitation, Tim slid across the front seat to the middle. The brothers climbed in on either side of him, the doors slamming in unison. Mitchell drove fast and skillfully. Tim sat hunched in the middle, the breadth of two sets of Masterson shoulders leaving him little torso space. Deltoids poked into him unforgivingly on the turns, pounding from Tim’s subconscious his relief that Robert and Mitchell were-ostensibly-on his side.

Mitchell stopped at a liquor store off Crenshaw and headed into the store. He emerged with a brown paper bag, about two six-packs wide, which he threw in the back. He pulled off his black Members Only jacket, rolled a pack of Camels in his white T-shirt sleeve, and climbed back in.

“That was a hell of a bang you built,” Tim said.

Mitchell kept his eyes on the road. “I know a few things.”

He drove the speed limit, threading through downtown. When he turned off Temple, Tim realized where they were going. They arrived at a grand metal gate, the sole break in the ten-foot fence surrounding Monument Hill. Three parallel wires ran atop the fence at one-foot intervals, emitting a low hum. Mitchell rolled down the window, removed an electronic access-control card from the glove box, and held it out the window before the post-mounted pad of the proximity reader. The card emitted a series of blips as it searched for the matching frequency, and then the gate clicked open with a resonant shifting of inner bolts.

Mitchell tapped the access-control card against his thigh. “The keys to the city. A little gift from the Stork.”

They left asphalt behind, driving up the well-worn dirt path, the Census Memorial’s one-hundred-foot silhouette breaking the purple-black sky above. On the radio Willie Nelson was crooning about all the girls he’d loved before.

When Mitchell put the truck in park, neither he nor Robert made to get out. It was dead quiet up here, just the darkness and the wind whistling through the monument.

“You did a fine job,” Robert said slowly. “But we don’t like being kept out of the loop like that.”

Tim sat crushed between them, keeping his unease from showing, deciding whose throat he’d throw an elbow into first if the situation got ugly, which it looked like it might.

Robert tossed the phone book into Mitchell’s lap. “Show our friend your trick.” He nodded at Tim. “You’ll like this. Come on, Mitch. Let’s see it.”

A faint scowl etched Mitchell’s face. He picked up the phone book and balanced it on the points of his upturned fingers, a magician’s show of its three inches of thickness. Then he gripped it along the cut side in both hands, his thumbs a few inches apart. He flexed, and the book buckled. His arms began to shake. Veins stood out on his neck. His eight knuckles went white. A split snaked through the cover, a thin white river on a yellow sea. His lip was curled, a fringe of flesh and mustache, his teeth exposed like a snarling dog’s. His breath came harder. The muscles popped up on his forearms, distinct and stone-hard, peaks on mirrored mountain ranges. His entire torso was quaking.

A sound escaped Mitchell-deeper than a cry, more controlled than a grunt-and the book gave with a pleasing whoosh, ripping apart, the rent edges layered with brief ledges of page like compressed sandstone in a cliff wall. He tossed the two chunks of phone book on the dash, red draining from his face, and took the sweat off his forehead with a wipe of his T-shirt. He and Robert glanced at Tim from either side with a certain schoolyard smugness.

Mitchell kneaded one forearm, then the other. Lightly freckled and covered with blond hair, they were nearly as thick as Tim’s biceps.

“Whatever blows your dresses up, ladies.” Tim’s shirt was sweat-pasted to his lower back, but he kept his voice casual and unimpressed. “Now that the arts and crafts are over, what do you say we have that drink and call it a night?”

After a tense pause, Mitchell smiled, and Robert followed his lead. They climbed out, the truck creaking with relief, and stood on the hilltop. Industrial-tire imprints crushed the dirt into patterns. The ground up here was malleable, the dirt auburn red, like finely milled clay. A scattering of sawhorses and pallets broke up the head-high piles of metal sheets. Thick plastic drop cloths snapped in the breeze.

Nyaze Ghartey’s concept-a metallic tree, each branch representing a child killed, the crown outstretched protectively like an umbrella-had seemed to Tim pompous and distastefully abstract, but he had to admit now that there was a certain resonance to the sculpture. The framework of the piece was largely complete, though the metal planes had fleshed out only about two-thirds of it. Wood scaffolding covered the structure from top to bottom; the design itself emerged, organic and mysterious, a darker self lurking within the ordered rectangles. The leaves, metal and Bernini-thin, seemed mid-flutter on the branches.

Half a quotation had been chiseled into a flat-sided boulder at the front of the monument: AND THE LEAVES OF THE TREE WERE FOR

To its left a turned-off Sky-Tracker spotlight, the type that shot a mile-high beam of beckoning light at movie premieres and cheesy car sales, sat dormant. Tim could barely make out the small hatch in the trunk of the tree through which the spotlight would slide and illuminate the tree from the interior with the proverbial thousand points of light.

An ambitious task, to outdo the Hollywood sign, but a task accomplished.

Tim walked over and pulled three Buds from the bag. He handed one to Mitchell and offered another to Robert, who shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, rustling in the bag himself and coming up with a Sharp’s.

Robert popped the top and took several deep gulps, draining half the bottle. He gazed at the tree before them. “I usually don’t like modern crap,” he said. “But this, this is all right.”

“It’s like Braque,” Mitchell said. “All planes and different perspectives. Do you know Braque?”

Robert and Tim shook their heads, and Mitchell shrugged off the reference self-consciously. Robert circled slowly, his boots kicking up puffs of dust, drawing close to his brother’s side as if by genetic pull. Mitchell lit two cigarettes and handed one to Robert, and they smoked and stood side by side, solid and immobile like two inverted triangles of hammered steel, sucking Camels, Mitchell with his sleeve-cuffed pack of cigs, Robert with his jacket collar turned up, both of them humming along to “Georgia on My Mind” beneath bristled mustaches as if no one had bothered to show up and tell them the seventies were over. Mitchell’s face, though less severe than Robert’s, held a certain acuteness, a sharpness of perception that Tim had not previously seen. The brothers were beside each other, but Mitchell’s elbow was in front of Robert’s, and he stood square-shouldered while Robert’s shoulders tilted slightly toward him in a vague hint of deference.

Robert raised his beer, and the three bottles clinked, a somber toast.

“A glowing tree is nice, but it ain’t gonna solve dick,” he said. “I’ll tell you what would make a good memorial. One guilty and unconvicted fuck swinging from each branch. That’s what I’d like. That’s the kind of memorial we oughta build for those victims.”

“Water the tree with the blood of retribution,” Mitchell said.

He and his brother laughed at the formality, the bad poetics.

The twins’ standing to either side of Tim made him claustrophobic, not just because of their bulk and proximity but because their sameness was disorienting. Mitchell sat on the dirt. Robert and Tim followed suit.

“It wears you down,” Robert said, “seeing good people take it from the wrong end, seeing the motherfuckers reign supreme, no remorse, no hesitation, no…”

“-accountability,” Mitchell said.

“Yeah. A part of me decided after our sister died that I wouldn’t lie down no more, and so now I’m standing up, even though it’s not what I would of stood up for before. Lesser of two evils and all that. And I’ve made my decision, and it’s the right one, and I’ll tell you what-I won’t lose a second’s sleep over the pieces of shit we execute. Not a fuckin’ second. We gotta stay firm and committed, guys like us. Not give in to cunts like Ananberg.” Robert tilted his face back and shot a stream of cigarette smoke at the moon, patches of dirt coloring his denim jacket at the elbows. “I guess I see things clearer now, about what needs to get done. It’s like we’re stuck in this…in this…”

“-conundrum-” Mitchell said.

“-where we’re fucked if we do and we get fucked if we don’t.”

“They say the worst cynics are frustrated idealists,” Tim said.

Mitchell drained his beer and popped a new one. “You think we’re cynics?”

“I don’t know what you are.”

The wind kicked up, making the scaffolding groan, sending red puffs up off the ground.

“We couldn’t wait to get started,” Robert said. “It’s the waiting that kills you. You find out that your little sister was brutally murdered, and then you’re…”

“-mired-”

“-in nothingness. Waiting for the investigation, waiting for a suspect to be produced, waiting on forensics, the first court appearance, then the next, then the next…” Robert shook his head. “It’s what we hate most of all.”

“Now, finally,” Mitchell said, “we don’t have to wait anymore.”

Tim mused on this silently.

“Let us in more next time around,” Mitchell said. “We can handle it. We’ll win your trust.”

The phone-book intimidation tactic hadn’t yielded, so they’d moved to Plan B: ingratiation. Tim was no more swayed by it. “We’ll see.”

Robert leaned forward abruptly. “What, our work wasn’t good enough for you?”

“Your work was fine. Excellent, even.”

“Then we want in on the kill. You can’t deny us that. We won’t be denied.” Mitchell shot Robert a sharp look, but he didn’t catch the hint because he was watching Tim closely. “We can help you with your daughter’s case,” he continued. “With Kindell. Before we vote even, me and Mitch can pay him a little visit. Rattle his cage, bend his elbow, pop a testicle or two. We’ll get you whatever answers you want. Who knows-we could even have a hands-on chat with that prick public defender of his.”

Tim stared at them in disbelief, trying to order his thoughts. “That’s exactly the opposite of how we need to conduct ourselves.” If their faces were any indication, the anger in his voice was startling. “This is not a proceed-at-any-cost operation. It’s not about rashness and lawlessness. Neither of you have the first idea what the Commission is actually about, and you’re wondering why I’m reluctant to cut you into the action.”

To Tim’s surprise neither brother matched his anger. Robert dug at the ground with a stick. “You’re right,” he said softly. “It’s just that your little girl’s case, Virginia’s case, really”-his cheeks drew up in a half squint, half grimace-“really tore us up. It about broke my fuckin’ heart.”

Robert’s reaction was completely genuine-it had none of the manipulation Tim had sensed in so much of the brothers’ previous maneuvering. The expression of empathy surprised him so thoroughly that his anger deflated at once, leaving him with only the sorrow he saw mirrored back at him from both faces. He got busy playing with his bottle cap so his eyes would have something to look at.

“Now and then, no matter what you’ve seen, a case sails through all the chinks in your armor and strikes home.” Mitchell’s throat gave off a rattle when he spoke. “At least our sister lived a few years before getting taken. Not like your little girl.”

Robert’s face, lit with the distant glow of downtown, was stone-hard with either rage or sclerosed sorrow. “I saw her picture on TV, that clip they ran. The one of her in a pumpkin costume, too big, kept falling down.”

“Halloween 2001.” Tim’s voice was so soft it was barely audible. “My wife tried to stitch the costume. She’s not very domestic.”

“She was a great kid, Virginia,” Robert said with an almost aggressive adamancy. “I could tell, even just from what I saw.”

Tim understood for the first time that the brothers weren’t simply justifying their desire to kill criminals, but that they’d taken Ginny’s death personally, as they took each of the Commission’s cases personally. Their sister remained frozen in time, locked in a hellish script, to be rekilled in their minds every time a murderer escaped justice. While this made them flawed participants for a cause that called for objectivity and circumspection, Tim couldn’t deny a certain gratitude for their brute emotionality. He grasped at last the note of affection, even admiration, hidden in Dumone’s voice when he spoke of them. They mourned with a hurt-animal purity uncomplicated by law or ethic. Maybe they mourned as Tim and Dumone wished they themselves were capable of doing.

Robert’s words drew Tim from his thoughts. “She had the look, man,” he continued, “the one that the motherfuckers must get after, like she was too pure to stick around this shitty planet too long.” He drained his beer and hurled the bottle. It shattered against a pile of stacked metal sheets. “Beth Ann had that look, too.”

He tipped his face down into the waiting points of his thumb and forefinger, and he stayed like that, squeezing his eyes, silent. Mitchell leaned over, hooked his brother’s neck with a hand, and pulled him forward until the tops of their heads were touching, just above their foreheads.

Tim watched them, his face numb with dread. “It doesn’t get any easier,” he said. He had intended it as a question.

Robert pulled his head back. His eyes were red from being rubbed, yet they held not tears, but rage. The dark scaffolding creaked behind him in the wind.

Mitchell leaned back, propped on two elbow-locked arms, his face barely visible in the darkness. “The average sexual assault by an anger-excitation rapist lasts four hours,” he said. “Beth Ann wasn’t so lucky.”

After that they drank in silence.

•After Mitchell dropped him at his car, Tim drove back to his apartment cautiously, watching his signals and abiding the speed limit. The radio was abuzz with talk of the execution. From the faces of other drivers, he could tell who was listening to the news and who was discussing it on their cell phones. He even thought he sensed a different mood in the air, as if the city itself had received an adrenaline jolt, absorbed by osmosis from the fallout caused by Lane’s death. The night seemed exciting and excited, alive with the animation of risk and high stakes. A proximity to death always brought with it an attendant heightening of the senses.

Joshua was struggling across the lobby with an ornately carved picture frame. He paused when Tim entered, setting it on the floor. Blue TV light flickered in his tiny office, as always.

“Wait, wait!” he shrieked, as if Tim were fleeing. “I have paperwork for you.” He leaned the frame against the wall and disappeared into his small office, reappearing with a rental agreement made out to the ever-reliable Tom Altman.

He waited as Tim reviewed it, a finger bearing an immense agate stone coming to rest on the side of his chin. “Cute beard.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you hear about the guy who got his head blown up on the news?”

“There was something about it on the radio.”

“Right-winger.” Joshua’s hand rose to his mouth, shielding a stage whisper. “One down, fifty million to go.”

Upstairs Tim entered his apartment, taking note of the deadness of the air within. It took him about ten minutes with lukewarm sink water and a razor to eradicate his emergent beard.

He opened the window, then sat cross-legged on the floor and thought about what, at age thirty-three, he had in his life. A mattress, a desk, a gun, bullets. A car with fraudulent plates previously owned by a drug runner.

He cleaned his gun again, though it was already clean, oiling, polishing, punching the bore brush through the holes in the cylinder. Each punch of the brush he accompanied with a word describing what he could have done to Kindell in the garage. Murder. Slay. Execute. Sacrifice. Destroy. Slaughter.

The Lane execution had not just righted a judicial wrong, he reminded himself, it had brought him one case closer to Kindell. And to the secret of Ginny’s death.

After checking the Nokia, he was surprised by the keenness of his disappointment that he had no messages. Dray had not called since he’d left the notes at the house, which stung like hell. It also meant she’d gathered no further information on the case. When he called, he got the machine. He called back just to hear her voice again, then hung up.

He found himself dialing Bear’s number.

“Where the hell you been, Rack?”

“Sorting things out, I guess.”

“Well, sort faster. The disappearing act isn’t sitting so hot with Dray. Or with me.”

“How is she?” Only now did Tim grasp his true motivation for phoning Bear. Tim Rackley, Master of High School Social Dynamics.

“Ask her yourself,” Bear said. “And while we’re at it, what’s your new phone number?”

“I don’t have one yet.” Tim walked over near the open window. “I’m calling from a pay phone. Still lining out a more permanent place.”

“I want to see you.”

“Now’s not the greatest-”

“Listen, either you can agree to see me, or I’ll come track your ass down. And you know I will. What’s it gonna be?”

A breeze, contaminated with heat from the alley-backing kitchen below, swept away the dusty smell of the room, if only temporarily. Tim breathed in the amalgam of cool and breath-hot air. The distant touch of a headache cramped him at the temples.

“All right then,” Bear said. “Yamashiro, early dinner, tomorrow at five-thirty.”

He hung up before waiting for Tim to agree.

Tim lay on the mattress, enveloped in darkness. When he dozed off, he dreamed of Ginny. She was laughing at him, petite fingers covering her child-spaced teeth.

He couldn’t figure out why.

20

YAMASHIRO,a japanese restaurant perched atop a hill in East Hollywood, looks down over its steep-sloped front gardens to the distant neon flash of the Boulevard and Sunset. Through the miasma of smog and car exhaust spread low along the Strip, Britney Spears threw a five-foot gaze from a building-side banner ad, all wide grin and vacant eyes, a Dr. T.J. Eckleburg for the aught decade.

About two years back, Tim and Bear had collared a fugitive who’d injured Kose Nagura’s wife in a jewelry-store heist, and the restaurant manager had shown his gratefulness in the form of ceaseless imploration for them to dine at his restaurant free of charge. Despite their discomfort at the place’s specious high-class ambience and raw-fish fare, they tried to take him up on his offer at least once every few months to avoid insulting him. Besides, the drinks were good, the view from the hilltop bar was the most spectacular in all of L.A., and the building-an exact replica of a grand Kyoto palace-had a certain majestic appeal.

Tim wound his car up the precipitous snaking drive to the restaurant and left it with the valet. As usual, Kose seated him at the best table immediately upon his entering, a four-top at the restaurant’s southeast apex, where glass wall meets glass wall, providing a panoramic view of the smoldering billboard-and smog-draped buildings below-a view of the L.A. that the Mastersons deplored. The crass money-and fame-grubbing sprawl of middle-class aspiration for stardom, an asphaltopolis that raised child stars as tall as buildings and rewarded greed and ruthlessness, a town where rapists and child-killers could gorge their appetites in like company.

Tim played with the straw in his water glass, waiting for Bear, rehearsing all the dumb things he knew he was going to say in hope of discovering better wording. A couple to his left was holding hands across the table, casually, as if their easy-found affection were something to be taken for granted, something found everywhere, like frustration, like smog, like aspiring actors. He sensed the deep tug of his need to be with his wife. He reframed his thoughts, deciding what he would impart to Bear, the messenger. A white flag, perhaps.

Bear appeared, a large form in gray polyester pants and a just-mismatched blazer, stretching past one of the sliding shoji walls leading from the inner courtyard. Tim stood, and they embraced, Bear holding him for an extra beat before sliding into his chair.

Tim nodded at Bear’s rumpled suit. “You’d better hurry up and get that thing back on the body. The wake’s at seven.”

“Clever.”

“Court duty?”

“Yup. Tannino found out I bet against Italy in the World Cup last year, so he stuck it to me. Two days before I can go out-of-pocket again.” Bear’s face seemed to move and settle into an expression of weariness. “There’s no way for me to say this, so I’m just gonna spit it out.” He paused. “If you don’t knock off the strong, silent routine, Dray’s gonna figure out she’s fine without you.”

“What does that mean?”

“While you’ve been MIA, Dray’s been going through Ginny’s stuff, getting out of the house, seeing friends. She doing this on her own. You sure you want her to?”

“Of course I don’t want her to. But we don’t know how to do it together.”

“Doesn’t seem like you’re knocking yourself out trying.” Bear picked up the paper-hat-folded napkin, then set it back down. “Are you having an affair?”

Tim fought to find impassivity. “Bear, I understand you’re trying to help, but this isn’t really-”

“What? My business? Let me tell you what is my business. You may not embarrass your wife. It’s your right to embarrass yourself all you want, but Dray’s been through enough. You’re not gonna drag her through more.”

“Bear. I’m not having an affair.”

“I talk to Dray every day. And I’m getting a weird vibe from her when your name comes up, like she doesn’t trust what you’re up to. Plus, if you hadn’t Houdinied on her, I hardly think she’d need-” He stopped. Pulled the napkin from the table and smoothed it across his lap, eyes lowered and regretful.

“She’d need…?”

Bear’s hands paused. “Mac. She’s had some really bad nights. Mac slept over a few times-not like that, just on the couch-to see her through.”

“Mac?” Tim snapped his chopsticks apart and frictioned off the splinters. Hard. “Why didn’t she call you?”

“Because I’m still your partner first and foremost. Mac’s one of hers. And that’s the wrong damn question. The correct question is, why didn’t she call you?”

“What’d you tell her?”

“What do you think I told her? That she was being a fucking idiot, that she should have swallowed her pride and called you, like you should have swallowed your pride and called her.” Bear took no note of the glances from neighboring tables. He shook his head, disgusted. “You’re both stubborn, spiteful people who will die alone.”

Tim continued to work the chopsticks back and forth, harder. “We decided we needed to take a little time off. We were tangling up in each other.”

“Have you really not seen her in five days?”

Tim felt a sudden heat in his cheeks. He took a sip of water, got a mouthful of lemon. “That doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

The waiter came up, and Bear ordered quickly for both of them without looking at the menu, naming the spicy shrimp simmered in sake, crab cakes, and seven-spice mussels. He’d been coming here more than once every few months, that was clear. Probably taking the occasional date.

When the waiter left, Bear fixed Tim with an apologetic stare. “Look, I’m just saying you should call her. You need each other. And she needs you-that house went from full to empty in a hurry. Can’t really blame her for wanting someone around in the wake of all this, even if it is Mac sleeping on the couch. And while we’re at it, when are you coming back to work?”

Tim looked up, surprised. “I’m not coming back, Bear. You know that.”

“Tannino’s wondering why he’s having so much trouble reaching you. He’s pulled me into his office twice this week to make clear he hasn’t accepted your resignation.”

“He doesn’t have a choice.”

“What are you doing, Rack? What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I’m just dealing with things on my own for a while.”

For the first time Tim could remember, he didn’t recognize the look in Bear’s eyes. “Let me add to the list of things that I will make my business. You can’t embarrass me. Not as your partner. And you can’t embarrass the service.” Bear leaned back, crossed his arms. “I know you’re up to something. I don’t know what, but I’ll figure it out if I want to.”

“You’re overreacting. There’s nothing going on.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have a phone.” Bear’s voice was firm, driving. “So what was the bulge in your pocket when you hugged me? It hasn’t been that long.”

Tim had instinctively grabbed his cell phones so as not to leave them unattended in the car with the valets. An unforgivable oversight. “Picked it up this morning. 323-471-1213. Don’t give the number to anyone.”

“Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

“There’s still a lot of fallout from the shooting, media hounding me, so I’d just as soon stay under for a while.”

“Really? I haven’t seen anything lately. Everyone’s whipped up about the Lane assassination now. You hear about the guy who pulled that off? They’re snake eyes on leads-guy must have been an ice-cold professional.” He shook his head. “Cranium ventilation. They always can find a new trick.”

Tim shrugged. “It’s not so bad. One less mutt on the street.”

Bear’s forehead furrowed into a wrinkled pane.

Tim looked down, played with his straw. An emotion rippled through him that took him a moment to identify. Shame. He realized he was giving off nervous energy, so he dropped the straw, placed his hands on his knees.

Bear pointed at him with a chopstick. “Don’t let Ginny’s death eat you away. Don’t let it corrupt you. There’s enough ignorance out there. The one person I don’t expect it from is you.”

The waiter arrived with their food, and they ate in silence.

•A funeral procession passed by while Tim idled at the stoplight at Franklin and Highland. The hearse led, somber and dignified, and a convoy of rain-polished cars followed-Toyotas, Hondas, and the obligatory drove of SUVs. Seized by an impulse, Tim pulled out behind the last car and followed the line of vehicles to the Hollywood Forever Memorial Park. He parked a block and a half away. By the time he’d made his way through the solemn front gate and over the first grassy hill, the ceremony was under way.

He watched from a distance, the mourners arrayed in black and gray, diminutive like figurines. When the sun managed to knife through the smog, Tim donned sunglasses to cut the glare. The presumed widower shovel-turned a scattering of rocks and dirt into the open grave, and, despite the distance, Tim could hear it patter on the unseen casket. The man collapsed to a knee, and two young men stepped forward quickly, chagrined, to help him up. He managed as best he could, a patch of mud weighing down his wind-flickering trouser leg, the sun glimmering off his cheeks.

A murder of crows swept in and blanketed an overlooking sycamore, where they looked on, sleek and inauspicious. Tim waited several minutes for the birds to depart, but they didn’t, so finally he turned his back and headed down the too-green slope toward his car.

21

“…KCOM’S HAVING A field day, with around-the-clock updates and polls. On Hardball, Chris Matthews hosted Dershowitz, two senators, and Mayor Hahn for a roundtable discussion, and a particularly vivid argument brewed on Donahue yesterday morning during a segment titled, ‘The Lane Slaying: Terrorism or Justice?’”

Rayner shuffled through his sheaf of notes while the others sat in varying degrees of attentiveness around the table, waiting for his media recap to conclude. Like mirrored objects, Robert and Mitchell sat on either side of the table, each shoved back in his chair, each with his legs loosely crossed, sneaker resting on opposite knee. Their languid postures suggested boredom; at last an attribute they shared with Ananberg. The Stork listened intently-Tim noted he had a tendency to blink frequently when concentrating-and Dumone, leaning back in his chair, statue-still, hands laced across his stomach, took it all in with a silent, almost magnanimous patience.

Rayner at last reached the final page of his report. “The footage of the execution is making the rounds on the Internet via a chain e-mail with an mpeg attachment-it’s the topic of choice in a wide range of chat rooms. A family-values activist appearing on Oprah this afternoon expressed concern about the impact the footage has had on children. She drew a comparison to the Challenger exploding on live TV or the planes hitting the World Trade Center.”

“Except those were regrettable events,” Robert said.

Mitchell’s grin flashed beneath his thick mustache. “It’s adult content, all right.”

“And now the big news,” Dumone said. “I have it on good authority that LAPD recovered an undisclosed amount of sarin nerve gas in the trunk of Lane’s car. In a canister prepped for aerosol delivery. A briefcase in the passenger seat contained diagrams of KCOM’s air-conditioning system, with the ducts labeled based on ease of accessibility. It seems not unlikely that Lane was planning on leaving a little gift for the government-controlled leftist media on his way back into hiding.”

“Why hasn’t that information been made public?” Tim asked.

“Because it shows LAPD’s ass. Particularly after September 11, intel and enforcement communities aren’t rushing to the public to point out their oversights and blind spots. Especially regarding a suspect who’s so obvious. Another atrocity was avoided only because of dumb luck.”

“And us,” Robert added.

Rayner smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “The public knows nothing about that, but still the polls are overwhelmingly in our favor.”

“We didn’t do this for the polls,” Tim said, but Rayner didn’t appear to hear.

“Three morning talk shows over the past two days featured call-ins regarding variations of the same question: Was Lane’s assassination an undesirable event? ‘No’ scored seventy-six, seventy-two, and sixty-six percent. The proper news shows’ pedestrian interviews were fairly well split between tacit approvers and indignant citizens. A significant minority expressed their disgust that such a thing had occurred, regardless of the character of the victim. One commentator referred to it as ‘pornographic.’”

“How do you get all this stuff?” Mitchell asked. “I don’t see you watching TV twenty-four/seven.”

“Media breakdowns on topics relevant to my research are faxed to me twice daily.”

Ananberg ran her hands over her thighs, smoothing her skirt. She wore a striped dress shirt with well-starched cuffs, cut like a man’s, which oddly made it more feminine, and a sweater arranged in a country-club loop just below her neck. The frames of her glasses peaked out at the top corners. “Grad students,” she said. “The ultimate workhorses. And you don’t even have to groom them.”

“So far my sense of it is, no one knows what to make of us yet,” Rayner said. “So I’d like to raise the obvious consideration at this point, one which I’m sure we’ve all given some thought to. Do we make our position-though not our identities-public?”

“Absolutely not,” Dumone said. “Too much of an operational risk.”

“We want more from Lane’s death than public euphoria. It may be more effective to take credit and explain how we arrived at the decision.”

“I think it’s cowardice not to,” Ananberg said. “No responsible state-no entity I respect or trust-commits secret executions. It was a public act. I say we leak some sort of communique that states how we determined his guilt. ‘We citizens who have empowered ourselves thus, made the decision on the following evidence-’”

“We do not submit the defendant to the mob in this country,” Dumone said. “Our judges and juries don’t grovel for societal support. They make rulings.”

Rayner said, “We could release some equivalent to the minutes-”

“Any sophisticated document would be laden with clues for the press and the authorities,” Tim said.

“No,” the Stork said. “No way we make a statement. Too great a risk.”

“It’s irresponsible not to give the public our rationale,” Rayner said. “Without it they’re left with nothing but the aftermath of a lynching.”

Dumone said, “Lane’s death was all about restraint, precision, circumspection. The public will be able to distinguish it as an execution, not a hit.”

“Who cares if it’s distinguished?” Robert said.

“The difference,” Dumone said sharply, “is everything.”

Rayner said, “A communique would clarify matters precisely.”

“If you’re with us, toot your car horns on your morning commute,” Tim said.

“It wouldn’t be that vulgar, Mr. Rackley. We’re trying to force meaningful dialogue from a recalcitrant public here. How does society feel about criminals who get off through loopholes? Should the system be amended? Was Lane’s execution justice?”

“Yes,” Robert said.

Tim felt a familiar pull-instinctive resistance in the face of Robert’s unequivocality.

“We know it. Anyone who studies the record knows it. That’s good enough for me,” Mitchell said. “And those who don’t get it now will after the next execution. We’ll soon establish a pattern. We don’t need to turn over potentially damning evidence.”

“You’re going to be in high demand, I’m sure, for talking-head appearances,” Dumone said to Rayner. “And, if you’d like, you can always steer conversation in the appropriate direction. Keep dialogue on track-without giving anything up. But we’re not exposing ourselves at this stage. We can revisit the issue later.”

Ananberg leaned back in her chair, thin arms woven across her chest in an inadvertently prudish show of frustration. Rayner tilted his head, his expression one of concession.

Rayner’s financial supremacy and facility with armchair social theory ostensibly put him in the driver’s seat, but it was ever clearer that Dumone was the on-the-ground chief. When Rayner talked, the others listened; when Dumone spoke, they shut up.

“Can we get to voting?” Robert asked. “I didn’t exactly come down here to talk about missives and Oprah Fuckin’ Win-”

Dumone fanned a flat hand, a gesture that was at once soothing and firm, and Robert cut off midsentence. Robert offered his brother a face-saving smirk as Rayner opened the safe and removed another binder from the stack. It hit the table with a slap.

“Mick Dobbins.”

“Mickey the Molester?” Robert said. He shot Ananberg a look. “Listen, sugarbritches, Mickey the Alleged Molester just don’t have the same ring.”

Dumone held the binder before him in one hand like a psalm book, letting it fall open. “Groundskeeper at Venice Care for Kids. Indicted on eight counts of lewd acts with a child, one count of murder one. Before the incidents, he was beloved by kids and staff.” He passed the detective progress reports to Tim. “IQ seventy-six.”

“Does that preclude capital punishment right off the bat?” Tim asked.

Ananberg shook her head. “Two independent psychiatric evaluations failed to classify him as mentally retarded. I guess it doesn’t just come down to IQ, it has to do with level of functioning and other stuff.”

The remainder of the papers were segmented and passed around the table.

“Seven girls, ages four to five, claimed they were molested by him,” Dumone said.

“How?” Tim asked.

“Genital and anal touching. Some digital insertion. One girl claimed to have been sodomized with a pen.”

“Intercourse?”

“No.” Dumone shuffled through the pages, glancing at the lab results.

“How’s this a capital case?” Ananberg asked.

“Peggie Knoll was admitted to the hospital with high fever, shaking chills. Evidently it was a bladder infection-by the time they caught it, it had turned into a kidney infection. She died of”-he flipped open the hospital report-“overwhelming urosepsis.”

“Did they do a rape kit?”

“No. Knoll never claimed to have been molested. It wasn’t until after her death that the seven girls came forth, said they and Knoll were molested, put Knoll’s molest a few days prior to her hospitalization. The DA backtracked-paraded out a few expert witnesses who said if a molest-especially anal-vaginal-occurred in that time frame, it was a proximate cause of the bladder infection.”

“How did Dobbins get off?” the Stork asked. He blushed deeply, hiding his face by sliding his glasses farther up his nose. “The trial, I mean.”

“The jury found him guilty, but the judge was underwhelmed with the merits and threw the case out for insufficiency of evidence.”

“They’re overturning juries now,” Robert said with disgust.

“There was a decided lack of physical evidence,” Dumone said. “Nothing in Knoll’s medical records. The search of Dobbins’s apartment turned up nothing. The case detective noted a stack of pornography in a bathroom cabinet. Several issues of the magazine Barely Legal.”

“I know it well,” Ananberg said. Six sets of eyes fastened on her. Mitchell looked distinctly annoyed; Tim alone wore a half smile.

“Pornography don’t mean shit,” Robert said. “What else? What about the medical reports on the other girls?”

The Stork raised his hand, his eyes, shiny through his glasses, focused on the sheet in front of him. “Medical examinations were inconclusive. No tearing, no scarring, no bruising, no bleeding, no trauma associated with penetration.”

“But penetration was just digital,” Mitchell said. “That would cause less trauma.”

“On a five-year-old girl, something would still be detectable,” Ananberg said.

“How long after the alleged molestation were the girls examined?” Tim asked.

The Stork flipped a sheet over. “Two weeks.”

“Plenty of healing time.”

“Especially if there were just superficial tears or light bruising,” Mitchell added.

“No DNA, no nothing?” Ananberg asked. “Anywhere?”

Rayner shook his head. “No.”

“So the whole case hung on the girls’ testimony? Do you have the interrogation tapes?”

Rayner pulled two tapes from his briefcase. “I got hold of them a few weeks ago.” He crossed the room and slid the first one into a VCR hidden in a dark wood cabinet. “The supervising DA and I were in Ivy together.” Off the others’ puzzled expressions, he added, “My eating club at Princeton.”

The tape quality was poor; the recording jerked a bit, and the lighting washed out the interview room to whites and yellows. A young girl sat on a plastic chair, her heels resting at the seat’s edge, her knees drawn up to her chin.

The interviewer-presumably a Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect social worker-sat on a low footstool, facing the girl. “…and so he touched you?”

The girl hugged her legs, clasping her hands midway up her shins. “Yes.”

“Okay, you’re doing a good job, Lisa. Did he touch you somewhere you didn’t want him to?”

“No.”

A frown appeared on the social worker’s face, a barely noticeable furrowing between her eyebrows. Her voice was soft and reassuring. “Are you sure you’re not scared to answer, sweetheart?”

Lisa rested her chin on her knees. Her head bounced a few times before Tim realized she was chewing gum. “Not scared.”

“Okay. Then I’ll ask you again…” Calm, drawn-out sentences. “Did he touch you somewhere on your lower body?”

A tiny voice, almost inaudible. “Yes…”

The social worker’s face softened with empathy. “Where? Can you show me on these dolls?” Two puppets appeared almost instantly from the social worker’s bag, complete with shiny polyester genitalia.

Lisa studied them tentatively before reaching out to take them. She made the male puppet hold hands with the little girl puppet, then looked up at the social worker.

“Okay…then what?”

Lisa arranged the puppets in an embrace.

“Okay…and after that?”

Lisa chewed her gum thoughtfully for a moment, then put the male puppet’s hand on the little girl’s chest.

“Very good, Lisa. Very good. And that’s how Peggie told you she was touched also?”

Lisa nodded solemnly.

Rayner looked troubled. He exchanged a glance with Ananberg, who shook her head, unimpressed. “Let’s watch the rest of the interviews first,” he said.

Occasionally fast-forwarding, they made their way through the following six interviews, each of which featured similar questioning techniques by the same social worker.

When the last girl finished tearfully recounting her molestation, Rayner stopped the tape. “It was a damn witch-hunt. No wonder the judge threw out the verdict.”

“What are you talking about?” Robert said. “Every one of those girls said they were molested. They even acted it out on the dolls.”

“The social worker asked leading questions, Rob,” Dumone said. “It’s fine for us, trying to pull a confession, but kids are more impressionable. They parrot.”

“How were the questions leading?”

“For starters, there weren’t any general questions,” Ananberg said. “Like ‘What happened?’ The social worker was prompting, implanting all the information through closed, suggestive questions. So ‘Did he touch you below the belt?’ turns into ‘Where did he touch you below the belt?’ And she was conditioning the girls, rewarding them for the answers she wanted to hear-smiling, saying ‘Good,’ telling them it’s okay.”

“And frowning when she didn’t like what she heard,” Rayner added. “If a girl gave the ‘wrong’ answer, she was subjected to repeated questioning-and the interviewer’s tacit disapproval-until she made something up.”

Tim glanced through the files at the badly photocopied detective notes. “The girls were in the same circles. Parents knew each other. After the first accusation, there were meetings between the families, conferences at school. Cross-pollination. These recorded interviews happened later. The witnesses weren’t exactly working from a clean slate.”

“And who knows how many other opportunities there were to have memories implanted and reinforced?” Ananberg added. “Other kids, media…” She spun her hand in a double loop, a gestured et cetera.

“What about the dolls?” Mitchell said.

“Same criticisms apply,” Rayner said. “On top of which, anatomically correct dolls are not recommended to be used with very young children.”

“Only with the elderly,” Ananberg said.

Robert fixed her with a piercing stare. “This isn’t a fucking joke.” He gestured to his brother. “Not to us.”

“I don’t think she meant anything,” Dumone said.

“No, he’s right.” Ananberg ran her hand through her dark brown hair. “I’m sorry. Just trying to defuse the tension in here. It’s a, uh, tough topic.”

“If you can’t handle tough topics, maybe you’re in the wrong place.”

“Robert. She apologized,” Tim said. “Let’s keep moving.”

Ananberg returned to her usual briskly professional tone. “According to the Ceci and Bruck study published in 1995, questioning young children with anatomically correct dolls is less than reliable.”

Mitchell glanced up from the court file. “Who cares about the dolls? According to this, the guy confessed.”

“The confession was persuasively called into question by the defense,” Rayner said. He strode over to the VCR and switched tapes.

The cold light of a police interrogation room. The camera caught some glare from the backside of a one-way mirror. Mick Dobbins sat hunched in a metal folding chair while two detectives worked him. Despite his solid frame and broad shoulders, his orientation was distinctly youthful. His arms hung loose and heavy between his spread knees, and his left sneaker was untied, his foot turned on its side. One of his overalls straps had come undone; it swayed at his side like a yoyo waiting to be snapped up.

The detectives had the lights going hot, one of them always staying just out of Dobbins’s view, to his side, behind his back. Dobbins kept his head hung but tried to follow the detectives with his eyes, which peered nervously through the sweat-matted tangle of his bangs. His low-set ears protruded from his oddly rectangular head like opposing coffee-mug handles.

“So you like girls?” the detective asked.

“Yeah. Girls. Girls ’n’ boys.” When Dobbins spoke, his mild retardation was immediately apparent in his low register and plodding cadence.

“You like girls a lot, don’t you? Don’t you?” The detective raised a foot, placed it squarely on the small patch of metal chair exposed between Dobbins’s legs. Dobbins lowered his head more, tucking his chin into the hollow of his shoulder. The detective leaned forward, his face inches from the top of Dobbins’s head. “I asked you a question. Tell me about them, tell me about the girls. You like them? You like girls?”

“Y-y-yeah. I like girls.”

“Do you like touching them?”

Dobbins wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a rough, frustrated gesture. He muttered to himself. “Chocolate, vanilla, rocky road-”

The detective snapped his fingers inches from Dobbins’s face. “Do you like touching them?”

“I hug girls. Girls and boys.”

“Do you like touching girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“I like touching girls. I…”

“You what?”

Dobbins jerked at the sharpness of the detective’s tone. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Strawberry, mocha almond fu-”

“You what, Mick? You what?”

“I, uh, uh, I sometimes pet them when they’re upset.”

“You pet them, and they get upset?”

Dobbins scratched his head above one ear, then smelled his fingers. “Yeah.”

“That what happened with Peggie Knoll? Is it?”

Dobbins cowered from the voice. “I think so. Yeah.”

After double-checking the file, Rayner paused the video. “That’s really the essential segment.”

“That’s no confession,” Tim said.

“Pretty weak,” Mitchell agreed. “I’ll grant you it wasn’t a confession, but I don’t think we need a confession here. I think the other evidence holds.”

“What other evidence?” Ananberg asked. “Seven impressionable children regurgitating implanted memories? A girl who died of an infection that was never conclusively linked to a molestation that was never proven to have occurred?”

“So let me get this straight,” Robert said. “We have seven little girls who testify individually that they’ve been molested by a retard groundskeeper, we have each of them acting out with puppets the sick shit the freak perpetrated on them, we have them each saying he molested their friend who’s now dead from a resulting infection, we have him on tape saying he likes to pet and hug little girls, and you don’t think this is an open-and-shut?”

Tim pictured Harrison outside Kindell’s, arms crossed. It’s an open-and-shut.

“No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”

Robert directed his scowl down the table. “Stork?”

The Stork’s rounded shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t really care.”

“If you’re gonna sit in this room,” Tim said, “you’d better care.”

“Fine,” the Stork said. “I think he probably did it.”

“Franklin?” Rayner asked.

Dumone shrugged. “We’re thin on physical evidence, especially with no indication of vaginal or rectal damage on any of the girls and nothing concrete linking the bladder infection and the molest.”

“Dobbins has got no criminal history,” Ananberg said. “No felonies, no misdemeanors.”

“That don’t mean shit,” Robert said. “A puke can start anytime.”

“It just means he’s never been caught for anything before.” Mitchell exhaled hard through his nose, irritated. “Sounds like you’ve made up your minds already. Why don’t we take a nonbinding preliminary vote to see if we’re just wasting our time in continuing our assessment here?”

Ananberg looked to Rayner with an arched eyebrow, and he nodded.

The vote went down four to three, not guilty.

The Stork looked typically indifferent, but Robert and Mitchell were having difficulty keeping their frustration out of their faces.

“We’re here to pick up the slack when the courts screw up,” Mitchell said. “When we fail to act, there’s no other recourse.”

“Acting is not always the right decision,” Tim said.

Robert’s eyes remained locked on the photograph of his deceased sister. “Tell that to the seven little girls who were molested and the dead girl’s parents.”

“The seven little girls who said they were molested,” Ananberg said.

“Listen, bitch-”

Dumone rocked forward in his chair. “Rob-”

“You might think you have the answers in here, with your studies and your Freudian bullshit, but you haven’t so much as set high heel on the real streets, so don’t you fucking tell me you know shit about who’s done what.”

“Robert!”

“Until you spend some time with these pieces of shit, you don’t know how they tick.” Robert jerked his head toward the TV. “That fucker just smells guilty.”

Dumone was standing now in a half crouch above his chair, hands on the table, arms elbow-locked, bearing his weight. “Believe it or not, your sense of smell isn’t the criterion for our voting. You can argue the merits, argue the cases, or you can hop a Greyhound back to Detroit and stop wasting our time.”

The room froze-Rayner’s glass halfway to his mouth, Ananberg midturn in her chair.

Dumone’s eyes burned with an uncharacteristic fury. “Do you understand me?”

Mitchell’s face was drawn. “Listen, Franklin, I don’t think-”

Dumone’s hand shot up, a crossing guard’s signal aimed in Mitchell’s direction, and Mitchell stopped cold.

Robert’s expression softened, his head ducking slightly under the heat of Dumone’s glare. “Shit, I didn’t mean it.”

“Well, don’t pull that crap in here. Do you understand me? Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” Robert raised his head but could barely meet Dumone’s eyes. “Like I said, it was nothing. I was just pissed off.”

“‘Pissed off’ has no place in our proceedings. Apologize to Ms. Ananberg.”

“Look,” Ananberg said, “I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

“I do.” Dumone kept his glare leveled at Robert.

Robert finally turned to face Ananberg. The emotion had burned itself out of his face, leaving behind an eerie calm. “I apologize.”

She laughed nervously, a single note. “Don’t worry about it.”

Silence descended over the table.

“Why don’t we take a little break before we tackle the next case?” Rayner said.

Tim stood on the half circle of Rayner’s back patio, gazing out at the elaborate back gardens. A few motion-sensor lights had kicked on when he’d stepped from the house, shining golden cylinders into the night and illuminating flurries of winged insects.

He heard the screen door rattle open and then close, and he smelled Ananberg’s perfume-light and citrusy-when she was still a few steps behind him.

“Got a light?”

Her hand hooked around his side and slid into the front pocket of his jacket. He grabbed her wrist, withdrew her hand, and turned. Their faces were inches apart. “I don’t smoke.”

She smirked. “Relax, Rackley. Cops aren’t my type.”

“That’s right. Teacher’s pet.”

She seemed genuinely pleased. “A sense of humor. Who’da thunk it?”

Her hair, fine and dark, looked as though it would be silken. Ananberg was Dray’s opposite-petite, brunette, flirtatious-and she evoked in Tim a distinct discomfort. He turned back to the dark sprawl of the gardens. Rows of box shrubs zigzagged before fading into darkness.

Ananberg pulled a cigarette from her pack, stuck it into her mouth, and patted her pockets fruitlessly. “What are you looking at?”

“Just the darkness.”

“You like playing Mr. Mysterious, don’t you? The brooding routine, the strong, silent thing. I think it gives you distance, comfort.”

“You got me all figured out.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” She set her hands on her hips, studying him. Her curt amusement was gone. “Thanks for sticking up for me in there.”

“You don’t need sticking up for. I was just speaking my mind.”

“Robert can be pretty aggressive.”

“Agreed.”

“Does that concern you?”

“Absolutely.” Tim gave a glance back at the lit windows of the house. Dumone, the Stork, and Robert were waiting at the conference-room table. He scanned the side of the house, spotting Rayner in the kitchen pulling a bottled water from the fridge. Mitchell stepped into view, near his side, and Rayner drew him near, hand resting on his shoulder, whispering something in his ear. Tim glanced back over at Dumone and wondered if he knew that Rayner and Mitchell were swapping secrets two rooms over. Tim had assumed the two disliked each other-the egghead and the redneck enduring each other only as necessary instruments to help attain their respective aims.

“Dumone can keep him in line. Him and Mitchell.”

Tim chewed the inside of his cheek. “Your acuity threatens him. And your consistency.”

“Does it threaten you?”

“I think it’s exactly what we need.”

“Maybe so. But it feels petty, somehow. Even to me.”

“How so?”

“You see”-her eyes got shy, darted away-“I think it’s great that you’re seeking an idea of justice that you can hold in your hands. It’s courageous, almost. But for me that’s like believing in God. I think it would be fun. It would certainly be reassuring. But I stick with my statistics and little dogmatic regurgitations because I know the rules of that game.”

A thoughtful noise escaped Tim, but he didn’t respond. He worked his cheek, studied the dark shapes of the bushes.

She stood by his side, gazing at the garden as if trying to figure out what he was looking at. “That was something else you pulled off. The Lane hit.”

“Team effort.”

“Well, you had to front the lion’s share of the nerve.” She shook her head, and again he smelled her fragrance, thought about her hair. “Robert’s right on one count-I’m about as far from the street as you can get. I’m glad I’m on this side of things. Discussing, reviewing, analyzing. I could never do what you do. The risk, the danger, the courage under pressure.” She slapped him lightly on the arm. “Are you smiling at me? Why?”

“It’s not about courage. Or the thrill.”

“Why do you do it, then? Fight wars. Enforce the law. Risk your life.”

“We don’t talk about it, really.”

“But if you did?”

Tim took a moment to consider. “I guess we do it because we’re worried no one else is willing to.”

She pulled the unlit cigarette from her mouth and slid it back into the pack. “Not all of you.” She padded back to the house, head down, dodging snails on the patio.

The wind picked up, bone-cold and wet, and Tim slid his hands into his pockets. His fingertips touched a scrap of paper, which he withdrew, puzzled. A phone number and an address, written in a woman’s hand.

He turned, but Ananberg had already disappeared back into the house. After a moment he followed.

•All six members of the Commission were seated, awaiting Tim’s return. Centered perfectly before Rayner, like an awaiting plate of dinner, was a black binder.

The fourth, Tim thought. Then two more, then Kindell’s.

Lost in a blissful contentedness, the Stork was folding blank sheets into paper airplanes and humming to himself-the theme from The Green Hornet. Dumone sat cocked back in his chair, a fresh-poured bourbon chilling the V of his crotch.

Rayner leaned over, spreading a hand on the cover. “Buzani Debuffier.”

Blank looks all around, except Dumone, who grimaced. “Debuffier’s a big, mean, Santero. Goes about six-six on a bad day.”

Tim slid into his chair. “Santero?”

“Voodoo priest. They’re Cuban mostly, but Debuffier’s a Haitian mix.”

The Stork’s humming reached an annoying pitch.

“Would you shut the hell up?” Robert said.

The Stork stopped, his puffy little hands midfold. He rode his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a knuckle, blinking apologetically. “Was I doing that out loud?”

Tim reached for Debuffier’s booking photo. A displeased man with a shaved head stared back at him, the whites of his eyes pronounced against pitch-dark skin. He wore a flannel, ripped to expose his bare shoulders. His deltoids stood out, ridged and firm, as though he were straining against the cuffs. From the look of his build, he was probably making some pretty good headway. “What’s the case?”

Dumone flipped open the binder and paged through the crime-scene report. “Ritual sacrifice of Aimee Kayes, a seventeen-year-old girl. Her body was found headless in an alley, draped in a multicolored cloth, raw salt, honey, and butter smeared on the bleeding neck stump. The top vertebra had been removed. LAPD’s ritual-crimes expert found these details to be consistent with Santeria sacrificial rites.”

“They sacrifice people? Regularly?” the Stork asked.

“Only in James Bond movies,” Ananberg said, reaching for the medical examiner’s report. “The Santeros mostly kill birds and lambs. Even in Cuba. I did an anthropology study on them in college.”

“So what gives?” Robert asked.

“We’ve got a Froot Loop, that’s what gives.”

Dumone’s chuckle turned into a racking cough. He lowered his fist from his face, then drained the last of his bourbon. “The ritual-crimes expert testified that, based on the specifics of the sacrifice, Debuffier probably believed that the victim was a threatening evil spirit.”

“Stomach contents included sunflower leaves and coconut.” Ananberg looked up from the pages. “The meal before the slaughter. If she eats, it shows the gods approve of her for sacrifice.”

“I’m sure she found that slender consolation,” Rayner said.

The Stork waved a hand before his yawning mouth. “I’m sorry. Past my bedtime.”

Robert slid a glossy crime-scene photo across the table. “This should wake you up.”

“What links Debuffier to the body?” Tim asked. “Aside from the fact that he’s a voodoo priest?”

Dumone tossed the eyewitness testimonies at Tim. “Two eyewitnesses. The first, Julie Pacetti, was Kayes’s best friend. The two girls were at the movies a few nights before Kayes’s abduction. After the show Pacetti went to the bathroom and Kayes waited for her in the lobby. When Pacetti came out, Kayes claimed Debuffier had just approached her and asked her to go for a ride with him. He’d frightened her, and she’d refused. When the girls went out in the parking lot, Debuffier was waiting in a black El Camino. He saw that Kayes was not alone and took off, but not before Pacetti got a good eyeful.”

“A six-foot-six bald Haitian,” Mitchell said. “Not exactly inconspicuous.”

“The second witness?” Tim asked.

“A USC girl returning from a party saw a man fitting Debuffier’s description pull Kayes’s body from the bed of a black El Camino and drag it into the alley.”

Ananberg whistled. “I’d say that’s pretty damning.”

“She ran a few blocks, then phoned 911 at”-Dumone checked the report-“three-seventeen A.M. With a physical description of the suspect and the car, the cops got to Debuffier before daybreak. They found him outside his house, scouring the bed of his El Camino with bleach.”

“Anything in the house?”

“Altars and tureens and animal hides. There were bloodstains on the basement floor, later determined to be from animals.”

“Crazy motherfucker,” Robert said.

“Not so crazy he can’t resort to premeditated criminality to maintain his blood lust,” Rayner said.

“Can I see the witnesses’ rap sheets?” Tim said.

Rayner slid them down the table, and Tim reviewed them as the others spoke. Neither witness had any felonies or misdemeanors-nothing a DA could drive a wedge under to get leverage for embellished testimony.

“…urged no bail, but knowing that Debuffier was broke, the judge just had him surrender his passport and set bail at one mil,” Dumone was saying. “The American Religious Protection Association came parading into town, claiming he was being harassed, and posted his bail. Within a day both witnesses were found murdered, stabbed in the jugular-another Santeria sacrificial rite. Cops looked into it, got zip. Good clean hits this time around-evidently he’d learned his lesson. Since the witnesses are dead, their statements to police become hearsay, case dismissed. The ARPA reps left town a little more quietly than they came in.”

A palpable sense of disgust circled the table.

Rayner put on his best musing face. “It’s a sad, sad day when the system itself provides motivation to commit murder.”

Tim thought Rayner’s assessment evinced a misplacement of accountability, but he elected to dig back into the file rather than comment. An exhaustive review of the remaining documentation didn’t turn up any compelling evidence suggesting Debuffier’s innocence.

The Commission’s vote went seven to zero.

22

TIM PARKED MORE than a mile away from the graveled drive leading to Kindell’s converted garage. The air out here was sharp and fresh, tinged with the scent of burned sap and ash from the long-ago fire that had claimed the accompanying house. Tim stayed off the gravel, his boots quiet on the dirt. He held his. 357 low to his side, forefinger resting along the barrel outside the trigger guard. A slanted but still-standing mailbox loomed up out of a crumbled bank of earth. The night felt flat and oddly static, as if it were receding, airless; every sound and movement seemed dulled by its residency within the vastness.

Tim was surprised to see no light up ahead. Maybe Kindell had moved away, scurried off after the trial to inhabit a new dark corner of a new town. If so, he’d taken with him his remembrance of that night-the snatch, the kill, the sawing, the man who had been with him before, planning, eager to partake of Tim’s daughter.

The moon shone almost full, an imperfect orb visible through the skeletal branches of the eucalyptus. Tim approached the house silently, freezing when he heard a clattering inside. Someone had tripped, knocking a pan, a lamp to the floor. Tim’s first thought was of an intruder, another intruder, but then he heard Kindell cursing to himself. Tim stayed wolf-still, gun lowered, standing equidistant between two eucalyptus trunks.

The garage door swung open with a bang. Kindell stumbled outside, tugging at an unzipped sleeping bag that he’d wrapped around his body like a toga, bobbling a dying flashlight that gave off the faintest yellow-eye glimmer.

Tim stood in plain view less than twenty yards from Kindell, hidden only by the darkness and his own immobility, which matched that of the tree trunks rising around him and the dead weight of the night.

Shivering violently, Kindell shoved open a rusting fuse box and tinkered inside. His other hand, clutching the ends of the sleeping bag at his waist, looked thin and impossibly pale, matching nothing in the night save the bone-whiteness of the moon.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit.” Kindell slammed the fuse-box lid, slapped at it, then stood shaking and miserable and unmoving, as if paralyzed by hopelessness. Finally he trudged inside, one end of the sleeping bag trailing him like the train of a gown. Kindell’s suffering, however petty, evoked in Tim an immense gratification.

Tim waited until the garage door creaked down, whoomping closed against the concrete, then eased up to the pair of windows. Inside, Kindell was curled into the fetal position on the couch, huddled inside the unfurled sleeping bag. His eyes were closed, and he breathed deeply and evenly, his head rocking slightly on the bunched pillow. His shivering had calmed.

Kindell would never help in identifying his accomplice-this had been made perfectly clear to Dray. If the answers were to be found anywhere, they were in the papers stuffed in Rayner’s safe.

Kindell had torn apart Ginny’s precious body and now was sleeping contentedly, the truths about her last wretched hours hidden safely inside his skull like personal, horrid keepsakes. Her pleas, the panic smell of her sweat, her last scream. The other face she’d seen beside Kindell’s, grinning through wet lips, lascivious in the eyes, not yet anticipating that the turn of events would move from depraved to deadly.

Acid washed through Tim’s stomach, seething and curdling.

Numbly, mechanically, Tim set his stance, placed both hands on the pistol, and sighted just above Kindell’s ear. His finger slid on the metal and hooked inside the guard, coming to rest against the trigger. He felt the pre-shoot calm descend over him, a precise unmotion. He stood for a moment, watching the delicate rise and fall of Kindell’s head through the alignment of the sights.

He floated away, seeing himself from above in his mind’s eye. A figure hidden in darkness, gun aimed through a greasy window. Through a confused and solitary childhood, Tim had clung to a desperate belief that there was something that shone in the human spirit that elevated it above meat and bone. With frantic hope and blind knowing, he’d fought his father’s code year after strenuous year, and yet here he stood, seized in the grasp of his own want and rage, bent on satiating his own needs at any cost. His father’s son.

He lowered the gun and walked away.

Replacing the pistol in the back of his waistband, he sat on the weedy concrete of the charred foundation, facing the freestanding garage. The tremendous responsibility the Commission, a by-all-accounts-illegitimate body of justices, had elected to shoulder struck Tim anew. To deem who was society’s scourge, to condemn justly, to be the voice of the people-these were responsibilities that could not be taken too seriously. And they demanded an impeccability of character, for the law was not to be meted out but acted; it was not a promise but a code.

He vowed to uphold that code even when the last binder moved from Rayner’s safe to the table, even as he picked through paperwork detailing the dismemberment of his daughter. If he didn’t honor it, he was no better than Robert or Mitchell or his father, selling fraudulent burial plots to lonely widows.

Something rustled to his right in the weeds, and his pistol was drawn and aimed as quickly as he turned his head. Dray’s form resolved from the dark, clad in black jeans, a black sweatshirt, and a denim jacket. She approached, unbothered by the gun, and sat beside him. Another ghost, another watcher in the night. Sliding her hands into the pouch pocket of her sweatshirt, she flicked her head toward his gun, then the garage. “Second thoughts?”

“Every minute.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” She propped her elbows on her knees, pressed her hands together, and rested her chin on the ledge of her thumbs. She seemed to remember something and quickly put her left hand back in her pocket. The collar of her jean jacket was up; she looked like Debbie Gibson with an attitude problem. “Saw your handiwork on the news. You’re creating quite a buzz.”

“We aim to please.”

“Funny, I never would have thought street justice was your style.”

“It isn’t. But my old style was found wanting. At least to some people.”

“How’s the new one fit?”

“A little tight in the shoulders, but I’m hoping I’ll adjust.”

“You tailor the suit to the man, not vice versa.”

He reached over and patted her down casually with one hand. She wasn’t hiding a weapon beneath her bulky sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?”

“Just keeping an eye on things. I like to have the creep under my thumb.”

The dim flashlight bobbed inside the garage, then a fierce rattling broke the silence.

“What the hell’s going on in there?” Tim said.

“I rerouted his mail to a drop box. I got his credit-card numbers, his telephone, gas, and power account numbers, then I canceled everything. It’s petty and small, but it makes me feel better.”

Tim extended a fist to her, which Dray matched. They knocked knuckles, a modified high five they used only on the range or the softball diamond. Dray leaned into him slightly, touching at the hip, the elbow. He pressed his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. They sat for a bit in silence.

“You get anything new on the case?”

She shook her head. “I’ve pretty much run out the leads. I wanted to see if you’d gotten your hands on that case binder.”

“No, it’ll be a while, unfortunately.”

“We’ll have to wait, I guess.” Her face crinkled. “It’s wrecking me. The waiting. Bracing to find out something even more awful, or maybe to not find out anything at all.”

They stared at Kindell’s shack for a few moments. Tim bit his lip. “I hear Mac’s been hanging out at the house.”

The gap opened up again between their hips. Her mouth tensed. “The house was empty and haunted.”

“You trying to hurt me, Dray?”

“Is it working?”

“Yes. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Believe it or not, everything I’m going through isn’t about you. Mac is staying on the couch because I’m scared of the dark right now, like a little girl. I know, pathetic, but you’re certainly not around to help me with the problem.”

“Mac has a thing for you, Dray. Always has.”

“Well, I don’t have a thing for Mac. He’s staying as a friend. No more.” She reached over and took Tim’s hand, keeping her left hand wedged in her pocket.

A sudden dread gut-checked him. “Take your hand out of your pocket, Dray.”

Unwillingly, she withdrew her hand. Her ring finger was bare. A deep-lit pain took hold in Tim’s chest and spread out and out, brushfire-fast. He turned away, looking at the house of the man who had consumed his daughter, but Kindell had quieted within and could provide no distraction.

Dray’s lips quivered ever so slightly, the pre-quake warnings of anger, of self-loathing, of sorrow-a triple cocktail with which Tim had recently grown familiar. Her face, gloomy and frozen in a halfcringe, matched nothing he’d ever known of her. She knuckle-scratched the top of her nose, a gesture she made when distressed or deeply sad. “I feel like you don’t want me anymore, Timothy.”

“That’s not true.” His voice rose a bit with the inflection, but it was just him and Dray and a deaf man at thirty yards.

“It’s too hard for me to wear it right now. I’ve looked at that ring every day of our marriage, first thing when I wake up, and it always made me grateful.” Dray seemed small and vulnerable sitting in the darkness, her arms hooked across her knees the way Ginny used to hold hers when she watched TV. “Right now it just reminds me of your absence.”

He plucked up a weed by its roots and tossed it. Its mud-caked cluster of roots hit the foundation a few feet away with a satisfying splat. “I have to see this through. The Commission. Get my hands on that case binder. I can’t do that if I’m living at home, in plain sight. It puts me at too much risk. It puts you at too much risk. I need to protect Ginny at least in her death, so the men who did this…” When he raised his hand to wipe his nose, he saw it was trembling, so he lowered it into his lap and squeezed it, squeezed it hard.

“Timothy.” Her tone approached pleading, though for what, he did not know. She started to reach for him but withdrew her hand.

It took another minute or so before he could trust his voice again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t said her name in a while.”

“It’s okay to cry, you know.”

Tim bobbed his head a few times, an intimation of a nod. “Right.”

Dray stood up, dusted off her hands. “I don’t want to not see you right now,” she said. “I don’t want to not have you in my life. But I understand why you have to do this for you, for us. I guess we just wait and hold on and hope what we are is strong enough.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her hand, her bare finger. The hole that had opened up in his chest continued to dilate, claiming his lungs, his voice.

Something fluttered nearby, settled, and began to chirp.

Dray turned and started the long walk back to the road.

•Halfway home, Tim pulled over and sat, hands on the wheel, breathing hard. Though it was February-cold, he had the AC on high. He thought of his waiting apartment, its barrenness and bleak functionality, and realized how ill equipped eight years of marriage had left him for being alone. He pulled Ananberg’s address out of his pocket and studied the edge-ripped slip of paper.

Her apartment building in Westwood was security-intensive- controlled access, double-locked glass front door, security cam in the brief stretch of tile that passed for a lobby. Turning from the camera, Tim ran a finger down the directory beside the call box outside and was not surprised to see the numbers listed by last name, not apartment number. He punched the button and waited as the metal speaker harshly projected a buzz.

Ananberg clicked on, sounding wide awake though it was nearly four in the morning. “Yeah?”

“It’s Tim. Tim Rackley.”

“First and last name. How wonderfully unassuming. I’m in 303.”

A loud buzzing issued from the heavy glass door, which Tim yanked open. He took the elevator up. The third-floor carpet was clean but slightly worn. When he knocked lightly on Ananberg’s door, he heard soft footsteps, then the sounds of two locks and a chain being undone. The door swung open. Ananberg wore a thigh-length Georgetown T-shirt. One hand held a thick-necked Rhodesian Ridgeback at bay by the collar, the other gripped a little Ruger, the muzzle of which she was using to scratch her leg.

“You should check the peephole. Even if you just buzzed someone up.”

“I did.”

He knew she was lying, as he hadn’t seen the darkness of her eye through the lens. The dog moved forward and nuzzled his nose moistly into Tim’s cupped hand.

“Impressive. Boston usually hates people.”

“Boston?”

“I inherited him from an ex-boyfriend. Harvard asshole.”

She turned and headed back into the oversize studio. Past the kitchenette, diminutive dining table, and TV-facing couch, two bureaus cordoned off the sleeping area, which was no more than a full-size bed wedged beneath the room’s single large window. She snapped her fingers, and Boston trotted to a fluffy disk of a dog bed and lay down. The pistol she slid into the right bureau’s top drawer.

She stepped closer to the bed, leaving them a few steps’ space. They eyed each other across a frayed throw rug. Crossing her arms, she lifted her T-shirt off over her head. Her body, thin and wonderfully shaped, was unexploited by weights or vigorous training. Modest, firm breasts rose above the in-curve of her stomach. Her gaze held the sapient matter-of-factness of examining nurses and prostitutes. It was frank and distressingly genuine, a sad, doleful ritual in a sad, doleful apartment.

Tim’s eyes strayed uncomfortably to the single place mat on the dining table, the T-shirt puddled by the box of Kleenex on the floor. He understood more concretely that she’d been touched by death and loss, as had they all.

“I’m afraid you misunderstood me. I can’t…” His hand described an arc of some sort but failed to extract better words. “I’m married.”

“Then why are you here, Rackley?” She pulled a cigarette out of a pack on her nightstand and lit it.

“I need a favor.”

“I offered to give it to you, or hadn’t you noticed?” She winked at him, and he returned her smile. She stubbed out her just-lit cigarette in a candle on the bureau, fell back on the bed, and pulled a blanket across her body neither shyly nor modestly.

“I’d like you to get me the public defender’s notes from the Kindell file. As a good-faith gesture. I know you have access to it. It’s too hard to wait without…something.”

“I can’t break policy. Bring it up at a meeting, we’ll take a vote.”

“We both know Rayner will never let that fly.”

Her eyes never broke from his; for a moment it seemed they were looking straight into each other. He knew that his suffering lay exposed and vulnerable, and there was little he could do to shield it from her gaze. He cleared his throat softly. “Please.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m making no promises.” Reaching over, she clicked the bedside light down a notch. “Come here.”

He walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. She hooked an arm around his waist and tugged him until his back was propped against the curved wooden headboard. She poked him until he shifted slightly left, then raised his arm and adjusted it out of her way. Content, she burrowed into his side, her head at the base of his chest.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

She strung a delicate arm across his stomach, and he was taken by how thin it was at the wrist. “You love her, huh?”

“Deeply.”

“I’ve never loved anyone. Not like that. My shrink says it’s the result of an early loss. My mom, you know. I was fifteen, just entering sexuality. It’s all linked, death and sex. Fear of intimacy, blah, blah, blah. That’s probably why I like being with Rayner. He takes care of me and doesn’t make me feel too much.”

“How was she killed? Your mother?”

“A motel-room murder/rape. There were lots of headlines and prurient speculation. Sort of glamorous, come to think of it. I came home from school, and my dad was sitting there in the kitchen, waiting for me, the smell of formalin coming off his clothes from the ME’s. To this day, I smell formalin…” She shuddered.

Tim stroked her hair, which was even finer and softer than he’d imagined.

“He looked utterly broken, my dad. Just…defeated.”

“What happened with the case?”

“They caught the guy a few weeks later. The jury was, for the most part, white trash, unemployed, and utterly incompetent. They ruled ‘not guilty.’ The evidence was so overwhelming that the Post speculated openly about bribery. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just plain inanity, like most things are.” She shook her head. “Defense attorneys with deep pockets and jury consultants. Not technically a loophole in the law, more like sanctioned corruption.” She made a noise of disgust deep in her throat. “They say it’s better for one hundred guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be put to death. How long does that sententious bullshit bear weight? After the one hundred guilty men commit one hundred more murders? A thousand?”

“No,” Tim said. “It holds weight when the one innocent man is you.”

She grinned faintly. “I know that. I know it-I just don’t always feel it.” Her face felt warm and comforting against his chest. He kept listening, kept stroking her hair. “My dad sold real estate, but he was on a mortar crew in Korea, and some of his old platoonmates had become cops. One night a few of them and my dad rounded the guy up, took him for a drive to a warehouse in Anacostia. I’m fuzzy on details, but I know that when they found the body, they had to print it to make the ID because there wasn’t much left in the way of dentals.”

Tim remembered how Rayner had claimed that her mother’s killer had died in a gang beating, and he wondered if he knew the real story. That depended on how deep the intimacy ran between Rayner and Ananberg.

“I remember when my dad came home that night and told me what he’d done. He sat at the edge of my bed and woke me. He smelled of grass and his knuckles were split and he was shaking. He told me. And I felt nothing. I still feel nothing.” Her voice was quieter now, muffled against Tim’s chest. “Maybe I’m just not wired that way or I’m missing that gene, the conscience gene. Maybe when I get to the gates of heaven or whatever you Christians believe in, they’ll turn me away.”

She shook off a shiver, then turned her face up to him. She pressed her lips together, working up the courage to ask something. Her voice shook a little when she finally did. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

He nodded, and her face softened with relief. She settled back into him. Soon enough her breathing grew regular, and he sat with the warmth of her face against his chest and stroked her hair. After twenty minutes he slid carefully out from under her and slipped out so silently Boston didn’t even raise his head.

23

TIM pulled up to Dumone’s apartment a little before 7:00 A.M. A graceless stucco complex that exemplified bad seventies architecture, the building was less than a block off the 10 at Western. Next door, the ampm threw off fumes of gasoline and shitty coffee. The just-risen sun gave out a pale straw light to which Tim felt unfamiliarly attuned. He still had not slept.

His surprise at Dumone’s early-morning cell-phone summons was surpassed only by the fact that Dumone had given him his home address rather than picking a public spot to meet. Had Tim not felt a strong intuitive trust for Dumone, he would have speculated about an ambush.

Tim walked down the concrete walk that threaded along the building. A whistle called out, and there was Dumone, waiting for him behind a dusty screen door. They shook hands, Dumone’s mouth twitching in response to the formality of the greeting, and he stepped aside and allowed Tim to enter.

It was a ground-floor, single-bedroom job that smelled of stale carpet. A budget laminate bookcase and desk housed awards, plaques, and a few guns encased in glass. Dumone swept his arm grandly around the interior. “Get you something? Pellegrino? Mimosa?”

Tim laughed. “Thanks, I’m fine.”

Dumone gestured for Tim to sit on the couch, then sank into a dusty brown La-Z-Boy. His eyes seemed unusually shadowed, his skin stretched tight across his temples.

Tim raised his hands, let them fall back into his lap. “So?”

“I didn’t really call you here for a reason. Just wanted to see you.” Dumone raised a handkerchief and coughed into it, and again Tim noticed faint specks of blood on the cloth.

“You okay? Want me to get you some water?”

Dumone waved him off. “Fine, fine. I’m used to it.” The handkerchief settled in his lap, clutched in a knuckle-thick hand. “Early on, when I was first married, I worked construction some weekends. The job didn’t pay so hot, the wife and I had just gotten hitched. Extra dough, you know? They had me swinging a sledgehammer, knocking down plaster in these old houses in Charlestown. The ceilings-” He coughed again, one finger twirling in the air, indicating the ceiling, holding the strain of the story. “Asbestos. Of course, we didn’t know then.” He shook his head. “Not good. I was invincible anyway, dodging bullets by day.” He smiled, and again his eyes gathered that gleam that said he was astute enough to find amusement in all matters.

“We were all invincible once. And smarter.”

“Yes,” Dumone said. “Yes.” A wistfulness touched his features. “I’m sorry that I haven’t known you longer, Tim. Rob and Mitch, hell, those two are like sons to me. The kind of sons you worry about a little-you smooth down their hair and send them out into the world hoping to God they’ll do okay. And they have,” he added quickly. “They’ve done real fine. But you. I hardly know you well enough, but I’d guess you’d be the kind of son you’d want to pass things on to, if you had anything worth passing on.”

“That’s quite a compliment,” Tim said.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“I’ve enjoyed meeting you, too. Our…friendship…” “Friendship” seemed an odd word for whatever they shared. “I’m glad you’re in there steering the ship during our meetings.”

Dumone nodded, a thoughtful frown on his face. “I suppose someone has to.”

They sat not much longer, enduring the awkward silence.

“Well,” Dumone said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

24

THE nextel chirped annoyingly, pulling Tim from the sweaty daytime sleep into which he had finally drifted. He rolled over on his mattress and grabbed the phone.

Robert’s Marlboro voice came too loud through the receiver. “Motherfucker hasn’t left the house since we got here last night. Spends all his time tinkering around in that basement downstairs, where they found all that voodoo shit.”

Tim rubbed his eyes hard, knowing it would leave them red and bloodshot but not caring. “Uh-huh.”

“His house is over by the garment district downtown. How far away are you?”

“About a half hour,” Tim lied.

“All right. Well, the Stork got us tapped in to his phone lines from a junction box up the street. Debuffier’s mother just called to remind his ass not to forget their lunch. Noon at El Comao. Know where that is?”

“Cuban joint on Pico near the Federal Building?”

“That’s the one. So he’ll be peeling out of here in about twenty minutes. I thought you’d want to swing by, take a sneak-and-peek through the house with us. Mitch is gonna bring some explosive sheet along in case we decide to set a charge now.”

“I made clear you were doing surveillance only,” Tim said.

“I know, I know, but we’re all getting the sense that Motherfucker stays bedded down. We just thought it wouldn’t hurt to have some explosives on hand, in case the…”

Mitchell’s voice in the background: “-optimal-”

“-opportunity arose. It might be our only window for a while.”

“No way. You just started surveillance yesterday. All we’re doing today is taking a look through the interior to get the lay.”

“All right, fine. We’ll just take a gander, then. Motherfucker’s at 14132 Lanyard Street. Oh, and Rackley? How are you gonna know where to find us?”

“I’ll find you,” Tim said.

“We’re blended into this block like a panther in the jungle, my friend. We’re-”

“Let me guess. Service van with tinted rear windows.”

A long silence.

“I’ll see you soon.” Tim hung up, slid his gun into his waistband, grabbed the Nextel but not the Nokia, and headed for the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. Backtracking, he retrieved a pair of black leather gloves from the bag beside his mattress. With lead stitched into the lengths of the fingers and positioned strategically across the bands of the knuckles, the gloves could put horse-kick power behind a simple punch. Tim threw them into his pocket and headed downstairs to his car. Once he got to within a mile of Debuffier’s house, he pulled over and idled at the curb.

Both sides of the street were lined with garment sellers’ stalls, elongated rooms jammed into the same structure like piano keys. Many of the booths had roll-up, storage-style doors, opening the entire storefronts to the sidewalks. The district had a Third World feel to it-drab functionality and cheap, raw product offset by bright colors and excess. A young boy burrowed into a chest-high heap of Dodgers shirts. Enormous spools of fabric were propped against walls, doorways, tables. A mound of moccasins spilled out onto the curb. The air smelled of candy and burnt churros.

Wheelbarrows, parked trucks, and exhaust crammed the street. A guy with comb-mark-stiff hair strutted past, wearing a sweatshirt with a peeling Versace emblem, his pinky intertwined with that of a girl holding a purse proclaiming Guci-marked down one c.

Bastard offspring of the city of varnish.

The guy threw Tim the stink-eye, probably figuring he was checking out his girlfriend, so Tim looked away to defuse matters. A young man with a bushy beard came by, T-shirts draped over his arm. He caught Tim looking and held up a sample. The shirt featured Jedediah Lane’s head midexplosion, under a bloodred caption that read TERRORISM BLOWS. Tim studied the photo as if it contained some inscrutable secret or the power to pardon. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the caption referred to Lane himself or Lane’s assassin. At the vendor’s approach, Tim shook his head, and the man moved on.

With laughing Mexican colors and a robust husband-wife team working the register, the stall beside Tim’s car drew his attention. It exclusively featured wedding-cake ornaments. Tim sat staring at the plastic brides and grooms of all shapes and ethnicities, feeling his temperature starting to rise, wondering how a marriage between two people who loved each other madly could feel as though it were slipping away.

With relief he saw that he’d passed the requisite ten minutes to put him at Debuffier’s at the specified time, and he drove off. He parked several blocks away and strolled around the corner. Chipped-stucco houses rose humbly behind cheap metal fences. Two kids with basketball players’ numbers shaved into the backs of their heads zipped past on elongated skateboards, catching air off a buckle in the sidewalk left over from the last earthquake. Rusted cars languished along the curb on both sides of the street, and-to Robert’s credit-there were a handful of service vans, which made sense given the block’s apparent demographics. The decals and signs were varied and colorful. Armando’s Glass Works. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning. The Martinez Bros Carpet Care. Several of the eponymous entrepreneurs were spending their Saturday sitting on browning lawns, petting Rottweilers and drinking Michelob from the can. The unusually brisk wind carried the sweet-rot smell of lukewarm beer and old wood.

On the north side of the street, Debuffier’s house loomed larger than its neighbors, a sprawling wooden abomination of no discernible architectural style. The porch’s arched entrance should have lent a warmth to the house, but the wood was fragmented, the splintered ends jutting out to add sloppy denticulation to the mouthlike hole. The roof, even more perplexing, was a cacophony of styles-here pitched, there hip-and-valley. Sitting importantly back from the street behind a lawn long since gone to dirt, the house itself was not so much large as complex-a collision, most likely, of the labors of rival builders over virtually unrelated phases of building.

Most of the parked vans’ side windows were tinted. Tim crossed to the north side of the street, opening up a better angle from which to glance back into the van interiors through the windshields, but the majority of the vans were partitioned. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning looked most suspect. From how low it was sitting on the shocks, it was housing either heavy equipment or a few full-grown men. The Caucasian name didn’t help either.

Tim walked over, pretending to fumble in his pockets for the keys. He paused at the driver’s door, waiting. The clicking of the doors’ automatic locks told him he’d bet right. He slid into the seat, facing forward, and pretended to adjust the radio despite the fact that the neighboring yards were all empty. The van smelled of sweat and stale coffee, and the dash was high; Tim wondered if the Stork had trouble seeing over it when he drove.

He moved his lips only slightly when he spoke. “Not bad, boys.”

A crumpled VanMan Rental Agency receipt was wedged in the cup holder, beside a Big Gulp. Tim could just make out the name on the top line, written in the Stork’s shaky hand: Daniel Dunn.

Danny Dunn, Tim thought. An appropriate alias.

Robert’s voice, peeved and cracked from dehydration, lofted over his shoulder. “How the hell did you find us?”

“Just sniffed you out.” Tim removed his lead gloves from his back pocket and slid them on. “Have you switched the car out?”

“Yessiree,” the Stork said. “I brought the van first thing this morning.”

“Where’s the car you sat in last night?”

Robert’s gruff voice again. “I peeled out and returned it, then bused back. Relax-we’re all clear.”

“Good.”

“Debuffier left early for lunch, so let’s get on it.” A set of keys tapped Tim on the shoulder, and he took them and started the van. “His house is on a double lot, so it backs on the street one over. Pull around the block and park there-much quieter.”

“There’s a gap in the back fence begging to be utilized,” the Stork said.

“Where’s Mitchell?”

“Over there. He’ll meet us at the back door in five.”

Tim eased around the block. “Good vehicle,” he said. “Silent. Ordinary. Forgettable.”

“I’m glad you’re pleased with my selection, Mr. Rackley.” The Stork sounded incredibly proud of himself, almost gleeful. “I even took back the first van they rented me because it gave off a distinctive rattle.”

“Kind of like you,” Robert said.

Tim parked a few feet away from the triangular gap in the fence. The street was dead quiet, so he got out and pulled open the rear doors. Already wearing latex gloves, the Stork and Robert burst from the back, inhaling deeply and fanning their shirts. Robert ducked through the fence gap immediately. The Stork shouldered a black bag by the strap, staggering under its weight. Tim took the bag from him, slammed the rear doors, and ushered him through the fence.

Mitchell was crouching at the rear door, Robert at his side. Mitchell’s eyes lit on the Nextel’s bulge in Tim’s pocket, and he stood up violently. “Turn off the cell phone. Now.”

Tim and the Stork froze. Tim reached down and turned off the phone. “You have electric blasting caps on you?”

“That’s right.”

If Mitchell had electric blasting caps, Tim’s cell phone should have been nowhere in the vicinity. When induced, Nextels, like most mobiles, kick out an RF signal just prior to ringing, responding to the network and identifying themselves as operational. The induced current, sufficient to ignite an electric blasting cap, can set off a boom ball before the phone even chirps. Tim understood now why Robert hadn’t suggested they maintain phone contact during the entry.

Tim’s eyes went to the explosive sheet at Mitchell’s feet, a twenty-pound roll of place-mat-thick PETN, pentaerythritetetranitrate being a bitch to pronounce but easy to rip or cut, a stick of gum to C4’s Bubblicious. It peeked out from Mitchell’s det bag, olive drab, the shade of death.

“Can’t you follow instructions?” Tim tried to keep anger from his voice. “I made extremely clear you were to do nothing but surveil.”

“And we haven’t. I happened to have the bag with me-”

“We’ll deal with this later.” Tim nodded to the door. “What’s the situation here?”

Mitchell returned to his anthropologist’s crouch by the knob. “It’s a tough one. Outswinging with a latch protector, so we can’t work the credit-card slide.”

The Stork set his hands on his hips, then gestured Mitchell aside with an impatient flick of his hand. “Move.”

Adjusting his glasses, he leaned forward for a closer look at the lock. He brought his face to within inches of it, tilting his head like a predator inhaling scent. He spoke softly, with a singsong cadence, a girl talking to her favorite doll. “Restricted-keyway tumbler lock with reinforced strikes. Aren’t you a pretty one? Yes, you are.”

Tim, Robert, and Mitchell’s exchange of amused looks was cut short when the Stork reared back, his eyes still intently focused on the lock but his hand extended as if beckoning a waiter. His plump fingers snapped. “Bag.”

Tim swung the bag down to his feet. The Stork’s hand rustled within and removed a can of spray lubricant. He inserted a thin extension tube into the nozzle and directed the spray toward the cylinder. “We’ll just lubricate you up, won’t we? That’ll make things easier for us.”

Next he reached for a pick gun. The tool, with its pull-handle trigger that set a thin protruding tip in continuous motion, resembled an electric hand drill or an elaborate sexual device. Fisting the unit, the Stork slid the tip into the lubed lock and initiated it, working a complicated angle through a precise series of clutchings and readjustments. He set his ear to the door, presumably to listen to the pins jumping above the shear line, his other hand gripping the knob. His mouth was shifted to the right, clamped down on his lower lip. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was in the company of others.

“There you go, darling. Open up for me.”

There was a shift in the noise of the pins, a click indicating a sudden symmetry or resonance, and the Stork’s other hand moved lightning-fast, twisting the knob, which gave up a half turn.

He looked at the others with a satisfied and slightly worn-out grin. Tim half expected him to light up a cigarette. The Stork’s smile faded quickly as he leaned forward, setting his shoulder against the door.

“Wait,” Tim said. “What if there’s an ala-?”

The Stork shoved the door open.

The insistent beeping caused Tim’s mouth to go dry, but the Stork calmly walked over to a keypad on the wall and punched in a code. The alarm ceased.

They entered, pistols drawn, and listened for any signs of movement in the large chamber of the house. Mitchell and Robert had matching Colt. 45s, single-action semiautos that require cocking before the first round can be shot. They fire with only three pounds of trigger pressure instead of the fifteen a double-action demands. The big-bore guns were powerful, hairtrigger, and illegal, not unlike both brothers.

“How did you lift the code?” Tim whispered.

“I didn’t. Every alarm company’s got a reset code.” The Stork pointed to the emblem at the base of the keypad. “This one’s an Iron-Force-30201.”

“As simple as that?”

“Yessiree.”

They stepped through a small room containing a broken washing machine and into the kitchen. Food-caked plates and soggy boxes. Mustard yellow linoleum peeling up at the edges. Endless empty rum bottles and a thin layer of crumbs covering the countertops.

A faint tinny echo sounded somewhere in the house, slightly animated, almost vocal. Tim’s hand shot up, flat, fingers slightly spread, a point man’s patrol warning. The others stood perfectly still. A minute of silence passed, then another. “Did you hear that?”

“No, nothing,” the Stork said.

“Probably the pipes knockin’.”

“Let’s get moving,” Tim said, his voice still lowered. “Stork-get back outside. A two-tap horn alert if he happens to come back early.”

“He did leave early.”

“That’s why you’re gonna keep an eye out for us.” Tim waited for the Stork to scurry outside. “Safe the house and meet back here in two minutes. I’ll take the upstairs.”

“Look,” Robert said, not bothering to whisper, “we’ve been on the house all night, all morning. There’s no one else-”

“Do it,” Tim said. He disappeared through the doorway toward the front of the house, moving through several rooms stuffed with oddities-boxes of auto calendars, overturned tables, stacks of bricks. A pile of bright fabric curled around the base of the stairs; Debuffier had probably bought it on garment row. Tim searched the upstairs rooms, which reeked of backed-up plumbing and incense. All the mirrors had been covered, draped in swatches of colorful cloth. Debuffier either fancied himself a vampire or feared his own reflection; from his booking photo, Tim would’ve put money on the latter. Each room was empty and uninhabited; the master bedroom was probably downstairs. Tim took care not to leave footprints where dust had collected more heavily on the floor.

Robert and Mitchell were waiting for Tim in the kitchen.

Tim’s watch showed 12:43. “Clear?”

“Except for the basement door,” Mitchell said. “Solid steel set in a steel frame. Locked.”

“We’ll get the Stork on it in a minute.” Tim snugged the. 357 against the small of his back. “Let’s take a slower turn through the ground floor. Focus on details so we can draw up a full blueprint of the place later.”

Another sound, a metallic moan, this one undeniable. Tim felt his stomach constrict, his mouth cotton. He inched in the direction from which the sound had come, through the other doorway, the twins just behind him.

“What was that?” Robert asked.

Mitchell adjusted the strap of his det bag, which was slung over his shoulder. “Sounds like a furnace straining.” His tone was unconvincing.

Tim turned the corner into a back hall that dead-ended in a bathroom and came face-to-face with the enormous steel rise of the basement door. Its placement within the drywall indicated that it had been newly installed. Tim tapped it lightly with a knuckle-solid and thick as hell. Leaning forward, he placed his ear to the cold steel but got back nothing except the quiet hum of the water heater. The hall was dark-pink, flowery curtains had been pulled shut over the single window overlooking the side yard.

“Robert, run out and get the Stork. Tell him I want through that door into the basement.”

12:49. If Debuffier had left early, he’d have been gone an hour now. His transit time to the restaurant was at least ten minutes, so he’d likely be home within ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how much he disliked spending time with his mother. As Tim waited tensely, Mitchell sized up the door with a breacher’s imprecise precision, spread fingers pressing into the steel as if it would give.

Struggling under the weight of his bag, the Stork returned with Robert. He thunked down the bag, gave one glance at the large bolt of the door lock, and proclaimed awfully, “That’s a Medeco G3. I’m not tangling with her.”

Another sound, paradoxically guttural and high-pitched, issued faintly through the door. Tim noted from the sheen of sweat across Mitchell’s forehead that the sound was having the same unnerving effect on him.

Half-moons of sweat had darkened Robert’s T-shirt under the sleeves. “Probably just some mumbo-jumbo crap. A tied-up lamb or some shit.” His thumb flicked nervously back and forth across his forefinger, as if trying to make a cigarette materialize.

“I could blast the door,” Mitchell offered.

“No way,” Tim said.

Mitchell had one of the blasting caps out of his pocket and was working it in his hand. “I want to know what’s down there. That’s where they uncovered all the weird shit on the house search.”

The Stork’s mouth shaped into his crescent of a smile. “I could let Donna have a look around.”

Robert’s and Mitchell’s brows furrowed with humorous synchronicity. “Donna?”

“Bust her out,” Tim said. “Whatever she is.”

“Whoever she is.” The Stork removed a shoebox-size unit with a protruding black-plastic-coated rod and a blank liquid-crystal TV screen the size of a Post-it. The rod, a flexible fiber-optic minicam, had a fish-eye lens embedded in the tip. He clicked a switch, and the screen reflected back their three drawn faces in a washed-out blue light.

“Big deal,” Robert said. “It’s a Peeper-we’ve all used ’em. It’ll never fit under the door. Gap’s not big enough.”

“That’s not Donna.” The Stork extracted a tiny Pelican case from the bag and laid it lovingly open. Inside was an incredibly slender rod, almost a black wire, that ended with a wafer-thin rectangular head. “This is Donna.”

He removed the Peeper’s protruding rod and screwed Donna in its place, pausing to knead a knot from one arthritic hand. The head slipped under the door effortlessly, and they caught an up-close glimpse of a dead mouse bunched on the splintering wood of the top stair. The screen blinked out, then back on. “Come on, baby.” He looked up at them apologetically. “She’s a little finicky.” His hands were shaking, and he flexed and unflexed them, grimacing. He tried to clutch the thin rod and exhaled hard in frustration.

“We got it from here,” Tim said. “Leave her with us, go post out back. Remember, two-tap the horn.”

“But-”

“Now, Stork. We’re unprotected in here.”

With a sad parting look at Donna, the Stork hoisted his bag and retreated. His footfall was so silent that when he turned the corner, it was as if he’d vanished.

Robert and Mitchell crowding around him, Tim worked the wire, trying his best to angle the unseen lens. They took in the basement in vertiginous flights as the lens swept back and forth. The screen blinked off again.

“Goddamnit, Donna,” Tim said, “work for me.” As soon as he realized, with needling embarrassment, that he’d personified and pleaded with a minicam, the screen bloomed anew, and he found himself thinking that maybe the Stork had something. His prognostication of a bleary future-himself and the Stork double-dating twin upright vacuums bedecked with wigs-was quickly interrupted by the steady basement view his firmer grip on the wire granted.

A stretch of stairs, maybe ten, leading down into a cold concrete box of a room. Urns and drums were scattered about, as well as dribbles of red and white powders. From atop a mound of melted wax protruded a chorus of still-lit candles, reflected back in a mirror leaning against the wall. In the middle of the room sat a refrigerator/freezer, the freezer compartment above. Feathers were strewn across the floor, lending it a fuzzy, organic texture like a tight-stretched hide. A single wobbly and scarred table held a few more candles, two headless roosters, and an incongruous pencil sharpener. It was hard to picture Debuffier sitting down here puzzling over the Sunday crossword.

Robert exhaled tensely. They all started when the sound-now even more clearly a moan-rose again into faint audibility. The jerk of Tim’s hands brought the inside of the door into view, along with the thick steel bolt thrown through hasps drilled into studs on either side. No kicking down that door.

Relinquishing Donna to Mitchell, Tim stood, frustrated. He fingered aside the clingy pink curtain and peered into the side yard. Partially in view, the Stork was flattened against the far fence in a position of cover halfway to the van. Hiding.

Tim snapped back from the window. “Let’s go, let’s go.” He yanked Donna out from under the door, tucking the entire unit under his arm like a football. The det bag already looped over his shoulder, Mitchell followed Robert down the hall. Their best evac path was through the kitchen and out the back door.

Leading the twins, Tim entered the kitchen just as Debuffier’s shadow fell across the laundry room through the window of the back door. With a violent flare of his hand, Tim gestured a retreat, but the key had already hit the lock. Robert and Mitchell ducked into a closet, and Tim rolled beneath the kitchen table just as Debuffier yanked the door open and stepped inside.

An empty rum bottle, knocked by Tim’s shoulder, tilted, but he snatched it, stretched over himself in an awkward, twisting supine position. A grumbling filled the kitchen as Debuffier fussed over the alarm, presumably to see why it didn’t go off. Then he crossed the kitchen, his enormous legs drawing into upside-down view, size-seventeen black loafers halting mere feet from Tim’s head. A stack of mail hit the table with a slap. Debuffier wore no socks; the dark strips of his ankles were just visible between his shoes and the frayed bottoms of his jeans. Tim’s breath pushed a flurry of crumbs into a two-inch roll beneath the table.

Debuffier’s hand swung down into view, holding-of all things-a carton of pencils. Then he trudged out of sight, down the dimly lit back hall. Tim heard the enormous basement door swing open, then closed. The dead bolt slid home, then Debuffier’s footsteps down the stairs came rumbling silently through the kitchen floor into Tim’s cheek.

Tim rolled out just as Robert and Mitchell were emerging from the closet.

“Let’s di-di-mau,” Robert hissed.

Before Tim had time to turn, the sound came up through the floor-boards as if suddenly enhanced, liberated, an echoing, distinctly human groan. The three men froze in the kitchen.

Tim wanted to say, “We go”-the words were almost out of his mouth when they evanesced, and Robert and Mitchell fell into silent line behind him, heading into the house interior.

Tim had Donna unwound and ready by the time they reached the door, and he slid her through the gap. Debuffier had draped black sheer cloth over the mirror and tied a white handkerchief over his head. Wearing overalls with no undershirt, he stood with his back to the door, stooped slightly, his enormous shoulders rippling with some unseen motion. Whirring. Pause. Whirring. Pause.

Tim barely had time to realize that he was sharpening pencils when a tinny human voice echoed in response, it seemed, to the whirring. “God no. God, God no.”

All three men stiffened, but there was no one else in sight in the small screen. Tim swung the lens, taking in the entire basement, but it was empty, save the tureens and bricks and feathers now kicked up and swirling. They remained on all fours above the small TV screen, blind men searching for a dropped penny.

Debuffier turned, his face powdered in white streaks. Testing the point of a pencil with the pad of one huge finger, he crossed to the refrigerator and swung open the top door of the freezer. A woman’s head, framed perfectly by the box of the freezer, gaped out at the room, her mouth stretched wide and screaming. Alive. Sweat-darkened wisps of hair lay pasted down across her forehead. What appeared to be open sores dotted her face. Her head had been fit through a hole cut into the partition between fridge and freezer.

Debuffier slammed the top door shut, muffling the piercing screams, and opened the refrigerator door. The woman’s body was curled into the lower unit, shivering and naked, also covered in small circular wounds. From her clawing feet to the abbreviated stretch of her neck, she seemed to hang suspended in the deadening white glow of the refrigerator light, the formaldehyde float of a primordial creature on a scientist’s shelf.

Debuffier bent over, reaching for the soft flesh above her collarbone with the pointed end of the pencil. He shifted his massive weight, blocking their view of the woman, then the screaming ratcheted up a level, the sound numbed, like the woman’s head, in the tomblike box of darkness, disassociated from the body, the inflicted torment, the world.

Robert stood up, trembling, in full-body drench. He drew his gun and aimed at the lock. Before Tim could respond, Mitchell grabbed Robert’s wrist and said in a harsh whisper, “No. We don’t get through that lock with a bullet.”

As Robert came increasingly unwound, Mitchell seemed to grow more collected; nearly two decades’ experience defusing live bombs served him well in the face of an active horror.

Sweat streaked in great droplets down Robert’s temples. “We do not walk away.”

“No,” Tim said. “We don’t.” He turned and snapped his fingers, his voice a loud-whispered rush of urgency. “Ten-second hold, boys. Focus. New game plan, new priorities. I call 911. We blast through the door. We neutralize Debuffier, nonlethally if we can. We secure the victim. Then, if we have the luxury, we consider our own position.”

Mitchell dug through the det bag, his razor knife out, a blasting cap having magically appeared, held between his teeth so his hands were free. He pulled the explosive sheet out and unrolled it a few turns. Working with rapid efficiency, he sliced out a disk of PETN, leaving behind a cookie-cutter hole.

Tim jogged into the kitchen before turning on his cell phone, so as not to trip Mitchell’s blasting caps. Stretching his T-shirt across the receiver, he spoke in a scratchy voice. “I have a medical emergency at 14132 Lanyard Street. In the basement. Repeat: in the basement. Please send an ambulance immediately.” He snapped the phone shut, turned it off, and headed back down the hall.

The screaming reached an unbelievably high pitch, drawn thin and fine like a silver wire. Unshaken, Mitchell dug a can of spray-on glue from the bag, misted the back of the disk, and slapped it on the door over the lock.

“God oh God stop please stop.”

Robert was moving from foot to foot in an odd kind of hot-coal dance, as if alleviating the burn from the screams, his face colored with rage and excitement. “Move it move it move it move it move it.”

Mitchell ripped off a strip of explosive sheet and dropped the blasting cap from his mouth onto it. As Tim stretched the protruding wires down the hall, Mitchell finished priming the sheet, sandwiching it around the blasting cap and sticking it to the door. Driven by the screams, Robert and Mitchell followed Tim around the corner, Mitchell clutching a nine-volt in the vise of his fist. Tim handed off the wire ends to him.

Robert was breathing too hard, his nostrils flaring. “Do it. Do it. Do it.”

Tim had to dispense with his whisper now, to be heard over the woman’s screams. “Now, listen. We need to do this right. I’ll be the first through the-”

“Please. Please. Oh God please.”

Robert seized the wires from Mitchell and touched them to the battery. Tim had time only for an instinctual reaction, opening his mouth so his lungs could vent and flex air, preventing the possibility of rupture in the face of the overpressure. The house seemed to jump with the explosion, drywall dust clouding the air, and already Robert was up and running for the stairs, weapon drawn.

“Shit!” Ears ringing from the sharp-edged ping of metal rent, Tim stood and followed Robert in a sprint. Robert had already thrown the door open and disappeared through the haze of dust down the stairs, no backup, no strategic entry. Tim heard the blast of three erratic shots, and he shouldered hard against the now-jagged door frame at the top of the stairs, his elbows locked, his. 357 downpointed, Mitchell closing fast from behind.

Robert swept down the stairs as if floating, his gun raised. Debuffier had swung the refrigerator door all the way open so it was bent back against its hinges, revealing the stretch of curled and terrified flesh within; he crouched behind it, using it as a shield. A chunk of drywall from the blast had landed on the second-to-last step, enough to send Robert into a stumble. Debuffier sprang up, nimble and catlike, and rushed Robert, a blur of size and lean, dark muscle. Robert’s mass blocked Tim’s angle on a shot, so Tim continued his charge down the steps. Debuffier reached Robert before he’d regained his balance and swatted the pistol from his grip. Debuffier seized him, his massive hands nearly encompassing Robert’s rib cage, and hurled him up the stairs at Tim.

Robert’s shoulder connected hard with Tim’s thighs, sending him into a cartwheeling fall down the final three steps. Tim’s. 357 clattered off the side of the stairs, striking the concrete with a clang, and a numbness rang through his shoulder and hip that would later mean pain. He kept in his roll, trying to come up on his feet but landing jarringly on his knees, still hunched in a somersault crouch. The thick stock of Debuffier’s leg broke his vertical field like a pillar, and Tim swung hard and sharp for the knee, angling for a break but instead connecting with the dense muscle of the thigh. His lead-weighted fist landed with the solid pop of a dinner plate dropped flat on a bed of water, and Debuffier howled. A fist rose like a too-large sun, connecting with Tim’s crown. Tim felt the skin of his head pinch against the bone, saw a brilliant burst of light, heard Mitchell’s boots thundering down the stairs behind him, then he was up in the air, Debuffier’s hands crushing him at the shoulders, his feet dangling, a marionette under the appraising and pitiless eye of an Italian puppeteer. Debuffier’s breath wafted coconut and sour milk across Tim’s face.

Tim drove his head forward into Debuffier’s chin, heard a pleasing crack, and the hands relaxed, for just an instant. Tim felt himself lowered a few inches, his feet finding the ground again, and, as Debuffier’s hand reared back to deliver a paralyzing blow to the head, Tim rotated in, Green Beret style, a downstriking punch to the groin, quick and hard like a bear river-plunging for fish. The lead band across the back of his glove seemed to draw his fist down faster, harder, lending it a crushing momentum, and the line of his knuckles connected with the hard ridge of Debuffier’s pubic bone.

There was a single instant of perfect balance and stillness, then the world flooded back into motion-Robert yelling, a shrill banshee wail echoing within the metal box of the mostly closed freezer, the shattering yield of Debuffier’s bone as a skin-muffled crunch announced the instant and comprehensive fragmentation of his pelvis.

Debuffier’s animal bellow of pain found resonance in the concrete walls and came back from the four corners of the room compounded. The freezer door was mid-swing, the woman’s petrified expression flashing into view. His face an in-twisted vortex of pain, Debuffier half stood, one knee brushing the floor but not bearing his weight, his eyelids stretched so wide that the top curvature of his eyeballs was visible. His hands hung loose and open around his hips, frozen, as if contemplating how best to grasp a balloon filled with broken glass.

Mitchell thundered down the last few steps, but Robert had already found his pistol and was standing in full Weaver, head cocked, one eye closed.

Debuffier raised his hand. “No,” he said.

The bullet took off his index finger at the knuckle before sucking his head in around the hole opened up at the bridge of his nose. His body smacked concrete, a widening pool spreading beneath his head with oil-slick deliberateness.

A tureen lay on its side, draining soapy water.

Robert stood over him, feet spread, and discharged two more bullets into the pulpy mess of his head.

“Goddamn it, Robert.” Tim limped over to the refrigerator and swung open the freezer door. The woman’s face stared back, weak with terror, broken bits of lead visible in several of her sores. He saw where Debuffier had drilled holes in the sides of the freezer to provide ventilation. A weight belt had been fastened around her neck, tight beneath the chin, making her unable to duck out of the hole. One of her eyes had been punctured-it oozed a cloudy liquid that caked her lower lid.

She was weeping. “Oh, no. There are more of you. Oh, my God, I can’t.”

“We’re here to help you.” Tim reached for the weight belt, but she shrieked and turned for his hand, gnashing wearily. Mitchell and Robert were at Tim’s back, radiating horror and breathless silence.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a U.S. de-” Tim stopped, struck by the illegitimacy of his presence. “I’m going to get you out and help you.”

Her face seemed to melt, wrinkling at the forehead. She cried in soft barks with her voice alone, not producing any tears. Tim reached slowly for the weight belt and, when she made no movement toward his hand, uncinched it.

Robert and Mitchell had the lower door open. When they touched her, she shrieked again, but they guided her quickly down and out and laid her on the floor. The smell of pus, panic sweat, and day-old meat rose from her body. Lying limp on the concrete, arms jerking, legs quivering, she began to keen-deep, split-open moans.

Robert took three staggering steps toward the corner and leaned against the wall. He was crying, not loudly or with force, but matter-of-factly. Tears forged tracks through the drywall dust that had collected on his cheeks.

Someone had probably reported the explosion or gunshots; police units were likely en route already, in addition to ambulances.

Mitchell was holding the woman’s head tenderly in both hands, trying to smooth her stiff hair. He spoke to her with an eerie calm. “We killed him. We killed the motherfucker who did this to you.”

She began to convulse violently, limbs thrashing on the concrete, and Mitchell cradled her head so it wouldn’t bang against the floor. Just as quickly as it had gone into motion, her body went limp, save her right leg, which continued to twitch, one broken toenail scraping concrete. Mitchell was up in a crouch over her, ear at her mouth, fingers checking for a neck pulse. He applied a sternal rub, digging his knuckles into her breastbone, and when he got no response, he began chest compressions.

The woman’s head rocked slightly with Mitchell’s movement, her good eye slick and white, a porcelain egg. Tim stayed nearby, on his knees, ready to take over, though he knew, from some until-now-unrealized sense he must have acquired on blasted fields and in evac helicopters, that she was beyond reviving.

A few paces away, Robert was muttering to himself, fists clenching in quick, furious pulses. Streaks of sweat stood out on his shirt.

Mitchell stopped, arms bulging to stretch his sleeves. He stood and laced his fingers, bringing his hands to his belt. The more furious the activity, the calmer and more focused he grew. “She’s done. I’ll have the van waiting by the back fence.” He turned and headed up the stairs.

Robert ran over to the woman. “No. Take over, Rackley. Take over.”

Tim dutifully worked on her, but her mouth was cold and vacant against his, her body board-stiff, yielding upward around the union of his hands like cardboard pressed into carpet. Her lips had gone blue. He checked her carotid pulse again and got back only the dense coldness of marble.

Robert’s face was moist, a blend of sweat and smeared tears, and a high shade of red that looked as if it stung.

Tim got up, retrieved his pistol, and tapped Robert gently on the forearm. “Let’s clear out.”

Robert wiped his mouth. “I’m not leaving her.”

Tim placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but Robert knocked it off. The wail of a distant siren reached them.

“There’s nothing more we can do here,” Tim said. “We go now. Robert. Robert. Robert.” Robert’s head finally snapped around. He blinked hard and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Tim squatted and fixed him with a calm, steady gaze. “I’m not asking anymore. Move.”

Robert rose dumbly, a child following instructions, and made his way up the stairs.

The woman’s head was tilted back on the hard concrete, her jaw stretched open. Tim gently pressed her mouth closed before stepping over Debuffier’s humped body and moving upstairs. Mitchell had wisely cleared the equipment from around the twisted metal door. As Tim stepped out into the backyard, he heard vehicles screeching up to the front curb. Just past the gap in the fence, the van was waiting, door slid open, and he stepped up and in.

The twins sat in the rear, backs against the walls, Robert’s face flushed and combat-shocked, Mitchell’s shirt stained where he’d held the woman’s head. Tim yanked the door shut behind him, and they pulled out from the curb.

“You ever jump into the fray like that again,” Tim said, “I’ll shoot you myself.”

Robert didn’t show a flicker of response.

The Stork, sheet-white and sitting on a phone book to see over the high dash, glanced back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…couldn’t go in. I was too scared.” Grimacing, he clutched his heart, bunching his shirt. “I got the car and waited for a sign, for someone to come out.” He fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a blue pill, and popped it.

“You did fine,” Tim said. “You followed orders.”

Robert clenched his sweaty bangs, his hair protruding in tufts between his fingers. “We could have gotten there earlier.”

“No,” Mitchell said.

“We could have…could have cut surveillance shorter. Just gone right in last night. She was there. She was in there the whole time.”

Tim looked over at Robert, but Robert wouldn’t meet his eyes-he was looking everywhere, nowhere.

“Don’t play ifs,” Mitchell said. “That’s a no-win game. It’s throwing yourself against a rock.”

A series of cracks in the road made the van thrum with metallic urgency.

Robert bowed his head forward, then smacked it back against the wall of the van, so hard it dented the metal out in a crater. His voice was still strained, his throat wobbly and constricted. “Christ oh Christ. She looked so much like Beth Ann.”

He leaned over and threw up into his fist.

25

AS TIM PULLED through Rayner’s front gate behind the van, he was not surprised to see Ananberg’s Lexus with its Georgetown license-plate frame. The gate whirred, rotating closed behind them, folding them protectively into the large rise of the Tudor stage set. Robert stumbled out first, trudging for the house, and the Stork followed, his face drawn and bloodless. Mitchell seemed almost to glide behind them, steady and light on his feet. Tim parked and brought up the rear, a sheepdog herding toward the stone front step, but before they could arrive, Rayner opened the door, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, Ananberg up on tiptoe behind him.

Rayner seemed not even to notice the walking-dead appearance of the crew advancing on him. He started to speak but had to clear his throat and start over. “Franklin’s at the VA hospital. He’s had a stroke.”

•They sat spread out evenly across the chairs and sofas of the study, as if needing a buffer from proximity. Tim and Rayner had played unelected spokesmen, swapping information with flat, toneless, just-the-facts-please-ma’am sentences.

Robert hurried to get down a few bolstering bourbons. He drank without hesitation, pausing only to suck ice. A different type of postop drink. The Stork drank milk through a straw-Tim guessed his palate abnormalities made drinking from a glass difficult for him. The Stork had settled down significantly now that the immediate threat had passed; his odd detachment seemed to make him impervious to trauma.

Ananberg kept glancing at the still-moist stain on the front of Mitchell’s shirt.

Robert looked exceedingly weary. He shook his head, his eyes glazed with grief. “I can’t believe the old man had a stroke.”

Tim thought of his morning meeting with Dumone, the quiet apartment filled with the smell of stale carpet.

Rayner sat leaning forward in his charcoal glen-plaid suit, gold cuff links peeking out from the sleeves. The thin white band of his mustache looked fake. “I got the news and called over about an hour ago. The nurse wouldn’t put him on to talk. I guess he wasn’t in full control of his faculties and speech. No visitors tonight. I’m getting him transferred to the VIP floor at Cedars first thing tomorrow. We can have more control there.”

“Of his mouth?” the Stork asked.

“Of his care.” Rayner’s annoyed gaze lingered on the Stork. “Franklin has an older sister, but he asked she not be contacted. He doesn’t want her flying out, fussing over him.”

“Unmarried,” Ananberg said, by way of explanation.

The ensuing silence was broken only by ice clinking against glass and the slurp of milk through the Stork’s straw.

“I think we could all use some time. What do you say we take the rest of the weekend off, meet Sunday night?” Rayner said.

Robert’s eyes were focused on absolutely nothing, as if they were peering down an endless well. An alcohol blush had bloomed on his face; now that he’d started drinking, Tim wondered if he’d be able to stop.

Mitchell sat with his hands folded in his lap, the points of his thumbs touching. His arms he held tight to his sides, giving him a compact, focused bearing. His eyes had narrowed, almost to a squint, as though he were running net-explosive-weight calculations in his head. He was supremely calm, almost relaxed.

Tim looked uneasily from one brother to the other, his anger and disgust growing. “Take some time off? This isn’t a church committee-we have matters to discuss.”

Rayner cleared his throat, clasped his hands piously. “Let’s not start pointing fingers here. I know the execution went badly-”

“No,” Tim said. “The execution did not go badly. It aspired to go badly.”

“I have to agree with Tim’s assessment,” Ananberg said. “This was a mess.”

“You weren’t there,” Robert said.

“That’s exactly irrelevant. This blows up, we all go to jail.”

“Look. Things were complicated. We didn’t mean for it to go down that way, it just happened.”

“Well,” Ananberg said, “who happened it?”

All eyes settled on Robert, except Mitchell’s, which tracked the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Robert tilted his glass at Tim. “Rack fucked up, too.”

“Amen to that,” Tim said. “I should have set firm ROEs. We have strict procedures in place here. We need strict procedures in the field. There are gonna be some new rules.”

“Like what?” Mitchell asked.

“Not now,” Rayner said. “We’re in no shape to talk about anything.”

“When we come back, we’re discussing this,” Tim said. “At length.”

Rayner stood and flared his hands down the fabric over his thighs, smoothing wrinkles. “Monday at eight.”

When Rayner passed him, Tim was surprised to see genuine grief in the downturn of his mouth.

•The TV was murmuring in Joshua’s office, so Tim decided to forgo the elevator and sneak up the back stairs. His apartment waited. Mattress. Desk. Dresser. He pulled the child-size desk chair to the window and sat with his feet up, breathing exhaust through the screen, listening to someone yelling in the Japanese restaurant across the alley. It was remarkable how much angrier anger seemed when conveyed in an Eastern tongue.

He checked his Nokia voice mail-two messages. The first was Dray. Her voice, recognizable to him in so many indescribable subtleties, moved right through him. She was doing her best to soften her tone, make it more feminine, which meant she was regretful and wishing to convey affection.

“Tim, it’s me.” A long, crackling pause. “There are, uh, some forms here that need joint parental signatures. To cancel Ginny’s medical insurance. Dissolve what’s left of her college fund. Crap like that. If you could…If you could stop by sometime, that’d be great. I’ll be around tomorrow. Or I could leave them on the kitchen table, if you want, and you could do it when I’m at work. But I’d rather that…that…” A sigh. “I’d really like to see you, Timothy.”

Bear’s startlingly gruff voice broke Tim’s momentary lapse into happiness.

“Rack. Bear. How about a fucking phone call?”

He got Dray’s machine, so he left a message, then called Bear. Bear said he’d like to see Dray, too, so Tim agreed to meet him at the house tomorrow at noon.

He got into bed, since he had little else to do. Because of the brightness of the downtown street and the inadequate city-issue blinds, darkness didn’t really happen in his apartment. Night was a slightly altered attitude toward the hours, no more. It lacked lethargy.

As a preemptive strike against the images he’d found beneath the coroner’s sheet, Tim tried to imagine Ginny in a peaceful pose, but everything came back trite and inauthentic. In life she’d never reclined peacefully in dandelion fields; there was little reason for her to do so now. His mind returned again and again to Debuffier’s bullet-split face, to the death they’d dealt him and the lives he’d be unable to take in the future. There was a cheapness to the killing; it lacked righteousness. It was like gaining a fortune through inheritance.

Lane was dead and Debuffier was dead and Ginny couldn’t have cared less.

After a while Tim found the emptiness of the room bad company. When he turned on the news, Melissa Yueh’s face peered out, gleeful and tainted with a red, almost sexual excitement. “The city is heating up again after another execution of a suspected criminal, Buzani Debuffier. Debuffier was shot and killed immediately after apparently committing a violent torture/murder.”

“Violent torture/murder” seemed redundant to Tim, but then he wasn’t selling ratings. Footage rolled of guys in Scientific Investigation Division windbreakers poking through the debris at Debuffier’s. “…LAPD won’t disclose if they believe the case is related to the Lane assassination, but inside sources indicate that bits of rare explosive wire were found inside devices at both scenes-”

Feeling his stress ratchet up another notch, Tim flipped the channel. Leave It to Beaver flickered out at him in black and white. June scrunched Beaver in a hug, and the Beav closed his eyes. The scene was cloying to the point of repugnance, but Tim left it on.

He fell asleep to it.

26

TIM SLEPT LATE and showered long. The khakis and button-up shirt he’d hung in the bathroom to steam out the wrinkles actually smoothed out decently.

He dressed in the living room, near the comforting murmur of the television. After a commercial featuring a bronzed and exuberant woman astride an elaborate exercise machine, Rayner appeared on a plush talk-show couch looking particularly unaggrieved-perhaps his sorrow over Dumone’s stroke had been feigned after all. Or perhaps he couldn’t help but perk up when he saw himself reflected back in the lens of a camera. He was, of course, commenting on Debuffier’s death, waxing poetic about vengeance and duty and this travesty we call justice.

The pervasive theme of the show was that Debuffier had gotten what he’d had coming to him. With a few exceptions, the audience was energetic and sanctimonious, and the host, a Geraldo rip-off in an illadvised maroon suit, claimed that the “counteroffensive against murderers” was inciting Americans to take back the streets. When a caller proudly related that his cousin in Texas, inspired by the Lane hit, had “shot a burglar dead” the day before yesterday, the news received whoops and cheers.

Rayner cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, it seems to me-and I’ve discussed this with several sources close to the investigation-that the person or persons behind these executions aren’t seeking to promote wholesale vigilantism. They’ve chosen these cases quite specifically-cases in which the justice system appears to have failed. I’d guess their motivation is to open up discussion about these shortcomings in the law.”

Tim watched Rayner’s betrayal with the horrified anticipation of a first-day-on-the-floor med student at a thoracotomy. Rayner’s need to issue a communique had been thwarted, so he’d chosen to tackle the issues as a commentator rather than leaving the Great Unwashed to think independently about the Commission’s efforts. His tedious media analyses had been nothing more than preparation for future orchestration. Before long he’d be feeding information to handpicked journalists to spin coverage. Maybe he’d done so already.

The TV host’s arms spread wide, bent at the elbows, microphone dangling like a baton. “Or they’re just kicking ass and taking names.”

Rayner’s eyes were unaffected by the tight smile that flashed on his face. “Perhaps. But I think these executions-however misguided-are part of a dialogue. They’re indicative of a growing sentiment in Americans today. We’re simply fed up with the law. We don’t believe that the law owns justice anymore, that the law will work for us.”

A hefty man in a Cleveland Browns sweatshirt called out, “Yeah! Screw the courts!”

Off Rayner’s expression of pained forbearance, Tim clicked the remote. One channel over, John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted was holding forth on Crossfire. Tom Green solicited passersby to target-shoot at crime fliers of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted. Howard Stern implored viewers to wager guesses about the respective lengths of Lane’s and Debuffier’s penises.

Tim felt sick by the time he turned off the TV.

He used his socks to dust off a pair of oxfords, which he laced loosely in anticipation of blisters. He deliberated over belts. Only when he pulled cologne from his dopp kit did he realize he’d been dressing up to see Dray.

He stopped by Cedars-Sinai on his way to Dray. The Beverly Hills-adjacent medical center rose glittering and imperious between Beverly and Third, a reassuring architectural display of order and competence. Tim got tangled up on Gracie Allen Drive before finding Lot #1 off George Burns Road. Trusty Tom Altman, aided by a smiling Arizona license, had little trouble talking his way past reception. After passing a woman wearing a mink over a hospital gown and an octogenarian with a Yiddish accent singing “Anything Goes” and raising his bathrobe for each glimpse of stocking, Tim found Dumone’s room on the VIP floor.

He tapped the slightly ajar door with his knuckles before entering. A disgruntled expression on his pale, crumpled face, Dumone sat shored up by a clutch of pillows. Blanketing the nightstand to his left were flowers and gift baskets.

Tim couldn’t resist a smile, and Dumone joined him, his grin pulling up only the right side of his face. “This place is all marble and plants and pillow fluffers. I feel like a pit bull at a poodle show.”

Tim crossed, and they regarded each other warmly for a moment. “You look like hell.”

“Don’t I know it. Look at this crap Rayner sent over.” Dumone’s hand rooted around one of the gift baskets and emerged with a foil-wrapped bag of coffee. “Guatemalan Fantasy. Sounds like a blue movie.”

The droop of his face slurred his words, just slightly. To his side a monitor blinked at intervals. His left arm lay limply in his lap, hand coiled. An IV ran into his good arm, and an oxygen tube fed his nose.

The wardrobe stood open just enough to reveal Dumone’s hung shirt and slacks, his Remington dangling in a shoulder holster.

“They let you keep your revolver?” Tim asked.

“Once I explained who I was, showed ’em my conceal-and-carry. I told them my weapon goes nowhere without me. They agreed sweetly, then took all the bullets, the bastards. They’re used to negotiating with old-school producers. A simple cop like me doesn’t stand a chance.”

He jerked forward, seized by a violent coughing fit, hand held up to stave off any impulse Tim might have to help. Finally he quieted, his breath rasping. He took a moment before speaking again. “Rob and Mitch wanted to come by, but I put the hold on them. Wanted to talk to you first, get the lay.”

“Are you feeling-?”

Dumone cleared his throat loudly, cutting him off. “Threw a clot. Had it on the radar, was just a matter of time. Let’s talk shop. I’m not much good at the other.”

He listened quietly and attentively, nodding from time to time, his mouth set slightly to the side. When Tim finished filling him in, Dumone pulled in a deep, halting breath and exhaled shakily. “What a shit storm. You gotta get things back on track.”

“First and foremost I have to get the ROEs more clearly defined.”

Dumone nodded, the oxygen tube rustling against his chest. “It’s all about the rules. They’re the only thing that separate us from vigilantes and Third World thugs. How we go about our actions is the entirety of who we are. Without perfection we’re a lynch mob.”

“Robert and Mitchell are hungry for more operational control, but after this I’ve got no choice but to pull them back. Robert entirely.”

“How about Mitch?”

“He’s more poised under pressure than Robert, but he’s also straining at the bit. He brought explosives to a surveillance job, for Christ’s sake. And Rayner’s being oddly indulgent of them.”

Dumone’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know why that would be-there’s no love lost there from either side, last I checked.”

“Well, Rayner’s content to-”

“You’re in charge. You. Not Rayner. Rayner bribes us with a room in a nice house, but that does not put him in the driver’s seat. My vote goes with you. If you have to roll heads, roll heads. Tell Rayner to get his mug off the news. Have Rob ride the bench after that bullshit. Use Mitch if you need him. Run the show according to your judgment, and work things slowly back to a good balance.” He coughed jerkily, squinting through the pain. “Rob and Mitch give you jaw, send ’em to me.”

“Thanks.” Tim nodded and rose. “Enjoy your coffee.”

“You kidding me? If I can’t stir it into hot water, I don’t trust it.”

Tim rested a hand on Dumone’s shoulder, and Dumone gripped him at the wrist. It was a brief gesture but an intimate one.

“You’re at a crossroads, Deputy.” Dumone winked. “Lay down the law.”

•Bear’s rig was already hogging the curb when Tim pulled up. He parked across the street. The murmur of voices from the backyard reached him halfway up the front walk, so he circled, lifted the latch on the side gate, and stepped through.

Fowler, Gutierez, Dray, and about four other deputies milled around the Costco picnic table, surrounding Tim’s paint-splattered boom box, which was throwing out Faith Hill from back when she still twanged. They were all fisting beers, and their heads turned in unison toward Tim. Mac, sleeves double-cuffed to show off muscular forearms, was leaning over the grill, dousing a clumsily arrayed mound of charcoal with too much lighter fluid. Bear sat sideways on the deck chair with the snapped straps, waiting for Tim by himself, exuding loyal outrage. He was wearing a jacket, despite the fact that it was the first sunny afternoon in two weeks, and a baseball cap with an embossed gold star.

Tim’s hands moved before his mouth could, gesturing out through the gate. “I should go. I didn’t realize you were having a party.” He prayed that the hurt indignation in his voice wasn’t as apparent to them as to his own ears. He felt foolish in his nice clothes.

“Oh, come on, Rack. There’s no reason to be like that. Come in. Have a burger.” Mac wore a we’re-all-friends-here frat-boy smile. He’d propped a large, flat cardboard box against the side of the grill, as if tempting the gods of conflagration. Next to it lay a basketball.

Dray approached fast, talking low so only Tim would hear her. “I’m so sorry. Mac took the liberty of inviting everyone back from the station. I didn’t know you were coming.”

He felt the impulse to peck her on the lips in greeting. Her aborted lean told him she’d resisted the pull of the same habit.

“He seems awfully at home here,” Tim said.

A shadow flicker of remorse crossed her eyes. “He knows this is our home.”

“Does he?” Tim looked away. “I’ll just sign the forms, then get out of here and leave you to your thing.”

“It’s not my thing.”

Mac threw a lit match on top of the charcoal briquettes, then studied them with disappointment. He added more lighter fluid.

“Where’s the paperwork?” Tim asked.

He followed her inside, nodding to the others. Bear stood and followed them inside, walking through the circle of deputies just to make them move out of his way.

“Could you grab another jar of pickles?” Mac called after them.

Dray grimaced and slid the door shut behind them. They turned and watched Mac leaning over the charcoal briquettes, examining them. A burst of orange flame leapt up, and he reared back, face flushed, then shot a handsome smile over at them to cover his embarrassment.

Dray headed into the kitchen, rubbing her bare ring finger uncomfortably. “The forms are in here.”

Tim turned to Bear. “Why don’t you give us a few minutes?”

“Oh, sure, great. I’ll be outside with Wile E. Coyote.” Bear closed the sliding door behind him a little harder than necessary, in case Tim had missed the point.

When Tim entered the kitchen, the forms were laid out neatly on the table. He sat and signed where they were marked. Dray was at the sink, straining against the pickle-jar lid, elbow pointing out. She gave the lid a good glare before subjecting it to hot water from the tap. “No update? On Ginny’s case? Kindell?”

“Nothing yet. I’m working on it.”

“I see you made the news again. You and your posse.”

“I don’t want to discuss that. Not unless we’re alone.”

“This time with a victim in the middle of it. Signs of a confrontation. Narrowly avoiding police. Aren’t you worried it’ll get out of hand?”

“It did get out of hand.”

Dray gave the jar a half turn under the faucet. Steam rose from the sink. “Why don’t you get out before it does again?”

“Because I made a commitment to this. I need to see it through.”

“They say men think logically, women emotionally. The way I see it, neither are very good at either.” She turned to face him. “Tim, you have to realize you’re off track here. Whatever it is you think you’re involved with, what you are involved with is crap.”

“We hit a snare, but we’re working it out.”

“Tell that to Milosevic and his pig-faced cronies when you’re sitting next to them at The Hague. I’m sure they’ll empathize.”

“Point taken, Dray. I’m very aware of where we don’t want to end up.”

“Bear’s dialed into the fact that you’re up to something dicey. Don’t think he’ll let you get in too deep before he pulls you out.”

“He’ll get tired of that routine,” Tim said. “Just like you’re getting tired of it.”

She turned back to the sink. “You’re still wearing our wedding band.” She threw off the question casually, but he could hear the hopefulness hiding in her voice.

He shifted uncomfortably, something prying at the cage of his ribs. That he was unable to put the ring aside as she was made him feel deeply vulnerable. “I can’t get it off over my knuckle.”

The lid still didn’t give, so she started banging it against the counter, angrily. Tim crossed and tried to take it from her, though she didn’t relinquish it immediately, not from stubbornness, Tim guessed, but because she wanted to keep banging something. She finally let go and stood with her head down and her arms loose at her sides.

Tim turned the lid, and it gave with a pop. He offered the jar back to her. The Great Deliverer of the Pickles.

She set the jar on the counter. “When Ginny died, we started talking different languages, you and I. And what if we never find our way back? What a fucked-up love story this makes. Happy couple, trauma, separation. I don’t know about you, Timmy, but I give it a thumbs-down for predictability.”

“Don’t call me Timmy.”

She was already walking out. She appeared in the backyard a minute later. Mac said something to her that Tim couldn’t make out through the window.

Dray said, “Get your own fucking pickles.”

Mac made a shrug at the guys and went back to the burgers. Tim would have left out the front door if Bear weren’t waiting for him out back, like a passive-aggressive dog.

When he stepped outside, the cardboard box was open on the patio, parts strewn about. Mac was now up on Tim’s ladder, struggling under the weight of a basketball backboard. With a shoulder he pinned it against the wood paneling where the wall peaked to meet the chimney. He smiled when he saw Tim, two fat nails protruding from his mouth like iron cigarettes. His eyebrows were slightly singed. “Bet you never thought of this, huh? The patio makes a perfect little court.”

Tim stared at the pristine strip of wood at the chimney’s edge; he’d painted it with a three-fourths angular liner brush so he wouldn’t stain the bricks.

Mac pounded the nail through the backboard, and the wood panel beneath split. Tim felt his teeth grind so hard his skull vibrated. Dray was sitting backward on the picnic table, feet on the bench, her head lowered into her hands, her face hidden by the drape of her bangs. Beside her, Bear watched the proceedings with the horrified absorption of a rubbernecker at a particularly grisly car wreck.

Another volley of bangs, and then Mac called out, “Is it straight?”

Fowler and Gutierez paused from dribbling on the patio to flash him thumbs-ups. “Good enough.”

The backboard was at a four o’clock tilt.

Tim walked over and stood before Bear and Dray, one foot up on the cooler.

Dray gestured limply to Mac but couldn’t muster words.

“I’m on my way,” Tim said.

“I’m following,” Bear said.

“You can’t leave me stuck here.”

“He’s your guest, Dray,” Tim said.

The other deputies were at the rear fence line, smoking and speaking in lowered voices.

Dray’s face was drawn and weary, and the dark pockets beneath her eyes looked like bruises. Tim remembered when they first met, at a fire-department fund-raiser. She’d been wearing a yellow dress dotted with tiny blue flowers. The straps crossed in the back, showing off a diamond patch of skin just below her nape. She’d walked past him, pursued by a fire chief-older guy, as all her exes were-and she’d sent a breeze of jasmine and lotion his way that had on him the kind of effect usually reserved for shitty romantic comedies and Pepe Le Pew. Later that evening he’d caught her out in the parking lot getting a sweater from her car, and they’d spoken for about forty-five minutes in the intimate space between vehicles. He’d kissed her, and she’d gone home with him, and for months afterward firefighters from Station 41 had fixed Tim with cold, aggressive glares every time their paths crossed, a reprisal he gladly endured.

Only in hindsight had he realized how noteworthy Dray’s feminine getup had been that night; she’d not worn the dress since, nor anything yellow, nor especially anything with little blue flowers. Now she looked tired and world-weary and unspecifically pissed off, like a stoic dust-bowl mother with a child hanging from her neck and three more behind her, around her, waiting to be fed.

“I lied to you, Dray,” Tim said. “I’m not wearing my wedding band because I can’t get it off over my knuckle. I’m still wearing it because I can’t not.”

Her lips parted slightly. Her chest rose beneath her tank top and stopped with a held breath. Her eyes were brilliant green in the sunlight and as large as he’d ever seen them.

Mac’s voice rose, disrupting them. “…so we called the Milpitas guys the Mil-penis guys,” he was saying, recounting his week at EOB SWAT training, his fifth time through the program and in all likelihood the fifth time he’d fail. “Good little rivalry. I shot a two sixty-two on the test.”

“In your fucking dreams you shot a two sixty-two,” someone said.

Mac’s finger made the sign of the cross on his barrel chest. “It was pretty funny. They had this bull dyke on their squad-”

Dray was on her feet. “Why’d you use that word?”

Mac stopped, glanced at Gutierez and Fowler for support. “I don’t know. Because she was, I guess.”

“Why? Short haircut, good build? Working hard on the job?” Her arms were crossed, and Tim knew from her expression that she was all about the fight right now and not the content, and so they’d be at it for hours. “I field that shit all day, and you can bet your ass she does, too.”

Bear signaled Tim with a jerk of his head, and Tim followed him out through the side gate. Bear pointed to his truck, and they both climbed in and sat for a moment. They could still make out Dray’s voice, the fricatives and raised syllables.

“On the warpath, ain’t she?” Bear said.

“It’s a thickheaded way for her to beat up on herself.”

Bear fingered one of the schisms in the heat-cracked dash, then wiped his moist palms on his slacks. He was giving off discomfort like a scent, fiddling with the hockey puck of a watch strapped to his wrist. Tim waited, knowing Bear didn’t like to be pushed when it came to words.

“Look, Tim. This is a tough thing to ask you. It’s about the killings. This vigilante stuff.”

Tim felt an icy band of sweat spring up on his forehead, just at the hairline.

“I know you quit and all, but…we’d like your help apprehending the guy.”

Tim made sure he breathed a few times before he answered. “Why’s the service involved?”

“There’s some talk the guy could be a fugitive-his fuck-all attitude, probably. Like he’s got nothing to lose. Mayor Hahn’s going ballistic on this one. He tapped Robbery-Homicide, Chief Bratton is leaning on us to pull together a fugitive list from their profile, we already have FBI up our asses-Tannino says fuck ’em all, if we’re doing the work anyway, we might as well try to get the collar ourselves, carve us a bigger piece of the pie at budget time.”

“Makes sense.”

Bear’s hand rustled in his jacket. “Just give this a listen for me, would you?”

“I’m not really-”

The microcassette recorder peeked out from Bear’s fist like a trapped canary. He flipped it and punched the side button with a thumb. Tim heard his own barely disguised voice issue forth. “I have a medical emergency at 14132 Lanyard Street. In the basement. Repeat: in the basement. Please send an ambulance immediately.”

Bear clicked it off. He stared at Tim expectantly. Tim got busy studying the front lawn through the window.

“Personally, I don’t buy the fugitive angle.” Bear’s tone was driving, knowing. “I’m thinking the guy’s former military or PD. He’s got the radio formality, repeating key information.”

Tim recalled being impressed with himself at the time of the call for refraining from spelling out the street name using a phonetic alphabet. Somewhere beneath his guilt and fast-hardening shame shone his admiration for the meticulousness it took to be a competent criminal. A single lapse in a high-heat moment-the location repeat-had narrowed the ground Tim was standing on considerably. A helpful tip from a friend and partner, granted from a position of plausible deniability.

“This jackass”-Bear shook the recorder-“is usurping the law, stealing it from the same people who are gonna track him down. That’s liable to piss people off-understandably so, if you ask me. If I was this guy, I’d be pretty concerned. I’d make sure I knew exactly what I was into.”

Tim waved his hand, palmed some sweat off his forehead, then looked at his watch. “Shit. I’m late for a…meeting.” In his split-second hesitation yawned another void he’d later fill with worries. Bear’s eyes seemed cold-another of Tim’s concerns, trickling in, seeking the emptiness.

“What meeting? You don’t have a job.”

“Exactly. It’s an interview. Private security gig.” Tim pushed open the door and stepped out onto the curb.

“That’s good.” Bear’s face held a not-so-subtle warning. “A lot of people need looking after these days.”

27

“WE’RE JUST FINISHING up the media recap, Mr. Rackley,” Rayner said when Tim entered the conference room. Rayner stood at the head of the table, a thick manila folder laid open before him on the granite surface, press clippings protruding messily.

“If you ever pull a move like you pulled this morning on TV without our collective and express approval, I’ll-”

“You’re not in charge here,” Rayner said. “Why should I have to listen to you?”

“Mutual assured destruction. That’s why.” Tim stared at Rayner until Rayner looked away, then slid into his chair. “Your comments were unsubtle and reckless. Don’t do that again, or anything like it. If something shows up in the press, I’ll know if it smells like you. Before we act, we agree on matters here. That’s an inviolable rule.”

The others were present, but without Dumone there seemed an imbalance. Some element of gravitas had been lost. Before, they’d been a commission; now they were just six pissed-off people in a room.

They all kept their picture frames turned in like mirrors; the Stork alone positioned his facing away from him. To Tim’s right, Dumone’s wife peered out from her still-present frame, gazing at the empty black chair before her. Not for the first time, Tim thought about what cheap props the photos were. Facile, like a gimmick for one of Rayner’s chat shows.

Ananberg observed Tim silently from the seat beside him. She looked spent, strung out on an adrenaline hangover. They were all beaten up-Robert in particular. He still hadn’t raised his head. It had been a hellacious twenty-four hours, between the Debuffier execution and Dumone’s stroke. Only the Stork and Rayner, shielded by their inherent yet opposite superficialities, remained imperviously alert.

Rayner took a sip of water. “I’d like to finish the media recap now.” A shuffling of papers. “On CNBC last night-”

“The instant we became aware that Debuffier had a live victim in hand, the sole objective should have been rescuing her and saving her life.” Tim spoke with Dumone’s resolve and authority, and, as when Dumone spoke, the others were silent. “The only valid reason to kill Debuffier would have been as a necessary tactic to extract the victim, which it was not. I had injured him nonfatally-”

Robert spoke slowly and vehemently. “I shot Debuffier because it was the quickest way to get to the victim.” He finally pulled his head up, revealing his face.

“No. You shot him because you wanted to play hero.”

“We voted he should be executed,” Mitchell said. “He was executed.”

“There was no longer a need to execute him. He was committing a crime that could have put him away. We could have secured him and turned matters over to the proper authorities.”

“Then we would have had to stay with him and gotten caught,” Robert said.

“We do not kill people to avoid getting caught,” Tim said. “If covering your own ass is your primary objective, you don’t belong here.”

“Come on,” Mitchell said. “The guy had a torture victim captive in his basement, for Christ’s sake. What are the odds that we’ll stumble into a situation like that again?”

“These are not predictable situations. We never know what we’re going to stumble into.”

“Then you should be grateful I thought to come prepared, since you sure as hell weren’t. You were busy riding my ass for bringing my det bag. Without it we wouldn’t have gotten through that door.”

A laugh escaped Tim. “You hold that to be a well-planned, well-executed mission? You think you can take control operationally? With that?” He turned to Rayner-who wore a worried, atypically passive expression-and Ananberg, looking for support.

“We met our mission objective,” Mitchell said.

“The outcome isn’t the only thing that matters,” Ananberg said.

“No? Isn’t that our argument? The ends justify the means?”

Robert was gazing at the table, fingers drumming the granite; Mitchell had become the mouthpiece.

“The means are the ends,” Tim said. “Justice, order, law, strategy, control. If we lose sight of that when we operate, the whole thing comes unwound. Results do not override rules.”

“Look, what happened, happened-there’s no need to go pulling pins on a sweat grenade now. Robbie got a little fired up and jumped the gun on our basement entry-”

“He was unpredictable, dangerous, and off his game.” Despite the heat the argument was generating, Tim had yet to raise his voice, a restraint Dray abhorred in him.

“People fuck up sometimes.” Robert seemed unsettled and highly agitated. “No matter what happens, an operation can spin out of control. We’ve all had that happen.”

“Calm down, Robert,” Mitchell said sharply-the first severe note Tim had heard either twin use with the other.

“The guy was poking holes in her.” Robert’s voice, unusually high, shook from the memory.

“We can’t act emotionally during a live operation,” Tim said. “An untimed entry like that gets us killed five times out of ten. We lose our angle, our element of surprise, tactics, strategy-everything.”

Mitchell leaned forward, his jacket bunching tight at the biceps. “I understand.”

Tim turned his stare to Robert. “He doesn’t.”

Robert rose to a half crouch above his chair. “What’s your fucking problem, Rackley? We killed the prick. Instead of riding my ass for going in two seconds early, why don’t you think about what we did accomplish? Think of the puke off the streets, put down, never again eyeing a sister, a mother, a girl at a bus stop.”

Even across the table, Tim picked up a hint of alcohol on his breath. “The point of this, of us, is not merely to kill. Do you understand that?” Tim waited impatiently, glaring back at Robert. “If not, get out.”

Tim found himself thinking about what angle he’d take on a jab if Robert came across the table at him. Mitchell rested a hand on Robert’s shoulder and pulled him gently back down into his chair. The Stork’s head was bent; he rubbed his thumbnail with the pad of his forefinger, an annoying, repetitive gesture that called to mind autism.

Robert’s voice was so low it was barely audible. “Of course I get it.”

Tim fixed him with a stare. “Why the face?”

“What?”

“You shot him in the face. That’s a highly personal kill shot.”

“Your blowing up Lane’s head I would hardly label dispassionate,” Rayner said.

“Lane’s head shot was strategic to ensure the safety of those around him. This was specifically not. You’re supposed to aim at critical mass. If the gun kicks high, you still get the neck. A chest shot has more stopping power, too, especially with a big guy.”

Rayner’s eyebrows were raised, frozen in an expression of distaste or respect.

“So I shot Motherfucker in the face. What are you saying?” Robert was flushed, the muscles of his neck pulled taut.

“You’re not starting to enjoy this, are you?”

Robert stood up again, but Mitchell yanked him back down. He stayed in his chair, eyeing Tim, but Tim turned to face Mitchell. “And what’s this about a rare explosive wire linking the explosives?”

“It’s media horseshit. I use standard wires. There’s no way they could link them.”

“Well, someone in forensics knows the two executions are linked and leaked that fact, with a slight skew, to the media. How do they know? And so quickly? It had to be the explosive.”

Mitchell grew finicky under Tim’s glare.

“That wasn’t a commercial blasting cap, was it, Mitchell?”

“I don’t use anything commercial, not for a key component. Don’t trust it. I make all my own stuff.”

“Great. So could forensic analysis determine that the initiation portion of your homemade blasting cap was similar to the earpiece device? This is LAPD bomb squad we’re talking about, not some Detroit Scooby-Doo with a magnifying glass.”

“Maybe.” Mitchell looked away. “Probably.”

“Who gives a shit anyway?” Robert said. “It doesn’t affect anything.”

“I give a shit, because if it happens and we didn’t plan it, that’s bad news. There’s a reason we voted against a communique”-an angry eye toward Rayner-“not that we’d want to claim this mess anyway. The bomb squad matching the two explosives is going to bring the heat, and we don’t have room for missteps.”

Tim leaned back in his chair, weathering the Mastersons’ aggressive stares. “Let me make something else clear, since you two seem so eager to run and gun: You don’t have what it takes to lead this kind of operation.”

Robert and Mitchell coughed out identical snickers. “Mitch blasted the door,” Robert said. “I was the number-one man through.”

“And I was the one who jumped in and saved your ass when you missed three shots, tripped down the stairs, and got tossed like a Nerf ball by Debuffier.”

The muscles of Robert’s face had tightened, compressing his cheeks into sinewy ovals.

“I run the show operationally,” Tim said. “My rules. Those were the conditions. And since it’s clear none of you have given any thought to defining our operational rules, how’s this: You have none. I’m the sole operator on a kill mission. You will not be on-site when a hit goes down. That’s just how it is.”

“Let’s talk about this,” Rayner said. “You’re not solely in charge here.”

“I’m not negotiating these terms. They stand, or I walk.”

Rayner’s lips tightened, his nostrils flaring with indignation-the spoiled prince used to getting his way. “If you walk, you’ll never get to review Kindell’s case. You’ll never know what happened to Virginia.”

Ananberg looked over at him, shocked. “For Christ’s sake, William.”

Tim felt his face grow hot. “If you think for a minute that I’d stay here and participate in a venture of this severity to get my hands on a file-even a file that could help solve my daughter’s death-then you’ve underestimated me. I will not be blackmailed.”

But Rayner was already backpedaling into his polished-gentleman persona. He hadn’t dropped his guard before, but the picture beneath it was as nasty as Tim had imagined. “I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort, Mr. Rackley, and I apologize for my phrasing. What I mean is, we all have aims we’re seeking to forward here, and let’s keep our eyes on the ball.” He cast a wary glance at the Mastersons. “Now, how would you like to handle matters operationally so you’re comfortable?”

Tim took a moment, letting the pins and needles leave his face. He met Mitchell’s eyes. “I still may need you. And you.” He nodded at the Stork, as if the Stork gave a damn. “For surveillance, logistics, backup. But I handle target neutralization alone.”

Mitchell’s hands flared wide and settled in his lap. “Fine.”

Ananberg’s eyes tracked over one chair. “Robert?”

Robert ran a knuckle across his nose, studying the table. Finally he nodded, glaring at Tim. “Affirmative, sir.”

“Excellent.” Rayner clapped his hands and held them together, like a delighted Dickensian orphan at Christmas. “Now, let’s get back to the media recap.”

“Fuck the media recap,” Robert growled.

The Stork clasped his hands and raised them. “Here, here.”

Rayner looked like the teacher’s yes boy who’d just had his test tubes stomped by the class bully. “But the sociological impact is certainly relevant to-”

“Bill,” Ananberg said. “Get the next case binder.”

Rayner huffily pulled his son’s crestfallen image off the wall and punched buttons on the safe, issuing a steady stream of words under his breath.

“Wait,” Mitchell said. “Are we voting without Franklin?”

“Of course,” Rayner said. “The binders don’t leave this room.”

Robert said, “Then conference him in.”

“He could be overheard talking in his room,” Ananberg said. “And we don’t know if those phone lines are secure.”

“He gets exhausted pretty quickly,” Rayner said. “I’m not sure if he has the focus or stamina right now to pay these deliberations the meticulous attention they demand.”

“I say we wait for him to recover,” Tim said.

Rayner faced them, his hands trembling slightly. “I spoke to his doctor at length today. His prognosis… I’m not sure that waiting for hisrecovery is the wisest idea.”

Robert blanched. “Oh.”

Mitchell got busy scratching his forehead.

Shock turned to sadness before Tim could get a handle on it. It took him a moment to regain his composure, then he nodded at Rayner to move ahead.

Rayner grabbed a binder and tossed it on the table. “Terrill Bowrick of the Warren Shooters.”

On October 30, 2002, three seniors at Earl Warren High had gotten into a sixth-period altercation with the starting lineup of the school basketball team. They’d retreated to their vehicles and returned with ordnance. While Terrill Bowrick stood guard at the door, his two coperpetrators had entered the school gymnasium, where they’d fired ninety-seven rounds in less than two minutes, killing eleven students and wounding eight.

The coach’s five-year-old daughter, Lizzy Bowman, who’d been watching practice from the bleachers, had caught a stray bullet through her left eye. Greeting Angelenos on their doorsteps Halloween morning was a front-page photo of her father on both knees, clutching her limp body-a reverse Pieta for the new millennium. Tim remembered vividly how the coach’s jersey had borne a blood imprint of his daughter’s face, a crimson half mask. Tim had set down the paper, dropped Ginny off at school, then sat in his car in the parking lot for five minutes before walking to his daughter’s classroom so he could see her again through the window before leaving her.

The two gunmen, lean stepbrothers bound by a perverse codependence, had claimed there had been no premeditation. Their father was a pawnbroker-they’d been transporting the weapons between two of his stores, just happened to have dueling SKSs and four mags in the trunk when they’d lost their cool. Second-degree murder at worst, their defense lawyer claimed, maybe even a push for temporary insanity. A foolish argument, but good enough to get past your average foolish jury.

The prosecutor, unable to play the brothers off against each other and faced with wrathful media and a community hell-bent on vengeance, had realized he could roll Bowrick with a grant of immunity. Bowrick, a second-time senior who’d just stumbled across the threshold of his eighteenth birthday and thus was sweating heavy, could testify that they’d planned the shooting in the preceding weeks, thus establishing premed and giving the prosecution an express train to murder in the first. The stepbrothers, also not Oppenheimers in the classroom, were legal adults as well.

The prosecutor slid the immunity grant past the media by pointing out that Bowrick was the least culpable co-conspirator and that his participation had been the least egregious. He slid it past his division chief by making clear that Bowrick, a twig of a kid with a lame arm and a limp, could play to jury sympathy and that all the evidence to prove up the premed was circumstantial. By providing independent corroboration, Bowrick could shore up the case.

After Bowrick testified, the brothers were convicted and fast-tracked for capital punishment. Bowrick walked with a plea to a lesser charge-accessory after the fact-and was granted a deal for probation and a thousand hours of community service, no time served.

“So that’s what a school shooting buys you these days.”

Mitchell joined in Tim’s disgust. “About the same sentence you’d get for spray-painting graffiti on your neighbor’s shiny new Volvo.”

“Let’s bear in mind that he was only an aider and abetter,” Robert said. His eyes, glassy and loose-focused, betrayed the slightest identification with Bowrick, the outsider.

“Maybe he didn’t fire the weapon because he couldn’t hold it properly with an atrophied arm,” Tim said.

“And regardless, Robert,” Rayner said, “an aider and abetter is subject to the same sentence as those who actually perpetrate the crime.”

“Less the gun enhancements,” Robert said.

“No one needs the gun enhancements. It was a capital-punishment case.”

Robert tilted his head, a gesture of concession. “Right,” he said. “That’s right.”

“The case precedent is pretty clear on this one,” Ananberg said, “particularly for accomplices of this type. Aiders and abetters have gotten dinged on special circumstances for everything from lying-in-wait allegations to multiple-murder allegations.”

Bowrick’s booking photo sat faceup to Tim’s right, the border nudging his knuckles. Despite Bowrick’s attempt to approximate good posture, the flare of his dishwater-blond bangs barely notched the five-foot-eight line painted on the wall behind him. A jagged half-coin pendant dangled from a thin gold necklace. Sullenness pervaded his features. He didn’t have the confidence to give off surly; his was the pasty-white face of hope beaten down to unhappy submission. He was sullen like a kicked dog, like the kid picked last, like a deflowered girl after her lover’s too-hasty departure.

Ananberg backed them up, and Rayner led them through the case from the beginning. They started by scouring the evidence reports-admissible and inadmissible. Their evaluative capabilities had drastically improved as they’d grown more familiar with Ananberg’s procedure, leading to sharper focus, more incisive arguments, and a wider exploration of potentialities. The deliberations were all the more impressive given the divisiveness at the meeting’s outset.

When the final document had made its way around the table, Tim slid it into the binder and glanced up at the others. “Let’s vote.”

Guilty. Unanimous. Ananberg, who’d cast her vote last, crossed her hands on the table, her expression oddly content.

“There is one major complication,” Rayner said. “After he went state’s evidence, Bowrick went into hiding.” He spread his hands, Jesus calming the seas. “The good news is, he didn’t go into witness protection. Not formally. But he was getting death threats, his property vandalized. After someone tried to burn down his apartment, he switched his name and moved away. Only his probation officer knows where he is.”

“I’ll find him,” Tim said quietly.

“If he’s still under the thumb of his PO, he’s still laying his head somewhere in L.A.,” Robert said.

Mitchell’s fingers strummed on the table. Stopped. He looked at Rayner. “Can you pry where he’s staying from the PO?”

“Too messy,” Tim said before Rayner could respond. “Too many trails leading back to us.”

“We know he’s logging community-service hours,” Robert said. “Why don’t we run a check on what programs are up where, give a glance?”

“I said I’ll find him,” Tim said. “Without stoking any fires. I’ll take care of it quietly. You all sit tight and keep silent.”

Rayner was standing at the safe, his back to the others. Before Tim could move to rise, Rayner turned and let another black binder drop on the table. Tim’s eyes went past him to the last black binder in the safe. Kindell’s.

He wondered if Ananberg had even attempted to get him the public defender’s notes from Kindell’s binder.

Rayner followed Tim’s gaze behind him to the open safe. He smiled curtly, reached back, and closed it. Tim continued to find Rayner’s petty power plays galling, despite their transparency.

“What do you say we tackle one more case now while our brains are warmed up?”

Tim checked his watch. 11:57.

“I got nowhere to go,” Robert said.

Ananberg’s laugh, sharp and short, rang off the wood-paneled walls. “I don’t think any of us has anywhere to go. Tim, do you have to get home?”

“I don’t have a home, remember?”

Robert’s mustache shifted and rose. “That’s right. None of us do, do we, Mitch?”

“No home, no family, no records. We’re ghosts.”

The Stork emitted a wheezy little laugh. “No taxes either.”

“Ghosts.” Mitchell grinned. “We are ghosts, aren’t we? We just come out of our graves now and then to take care of business.”

Tim nodded at the binder. “What’s the case?”

Rayner folded his hands atop the binder and gave a magician’s pause. “Rhythm Jones.”

“Ah,” Mitchell said. “Rhythm.”

It would be difficult to live in L.A. County and not have at least a passing awareness of the Rhythm Jones-Dollie Andrews case. An exrapper of modest acclaim, Jones was a small-time dealer with a propensity for turning out girls. His first name derived from the fact that he was always bouncing, as if to a private beat. According to street lore, his mother had named him in the crib. As an adult he threw off a sloppily endearing vibe, all fat smile and bopping head. Usually he wore a Dodgers jersey, hanging open to reveal the RHYTHM tattoo stenciled in Gothic across his chest.

For a few chance weekends in his twenties, he’d spun vinyl with the East Side DJ set, but he’d quickly found himself back in his hometown, South Central. Three years and two hundred pounds later, he was the go-to man for shitty rock and petite white girls who’d hook for a twenty or a spoonful of liquid nirvana. He was a notoriously vicious sex addict; his charges had been known to hobble into emergency rooms, towels crammed down both sides of their pants to stanch the bleeding.

He’d been indicted on two counts of possession for sale and one count of pimping and pandering, but due to a combination of dumb luck and cowed witnesses, he’d never been convicted.

Until Dollie Andrews.

Andrews was an off-the-bus Ohioan who’d taken the archetypal Hollywood header, from waitressing actress to back-alley blow-jobber. But she’d finally gotten her dream: After her body had been found smeared into Jones’s ratty couch, punctured with seventy-seven knife wounds, her modeling eight-by-tens had been released to a ravenous press, and her short-cropped towhead curls and the just-right width of her hips had etched her persona posthumously into the zeitgeist.

Jones had been found sleeping off a PCP high one room over; he claimed complete amnesia regarding the past two days. None of Andrews’s blood had been found on his body, his clothes, or under his nails, though a crime-scene technician had discovered traces in the pipes beneath the shower drain. The weapon, bearing a clean set of ten-point prints, had been recovered from a trash can outside. Motive? The prosecutor had argued sexual rejection. One of Andrews’s colleagues had captured her on camcorder wholesomely proclaiming she’d never give it up for black meat. In certain boxcars composing the train wreck of public opinion, this was known to pass for virtue.

To Jones’s immense disadvantage was the egregious ineptitude of his lawyer, an acne-faced kid just out of school whom the overburdened public defender had thrown to the wolves on the nothing-to-gain case. Given the circumstances under which the body had been found, several witnesses who claimed Jones had been stalking Andrews for weeks, and the unanimous testimony of two medical examiners that the stabber had been a forceful, right-handed male around five feet ten, Jones had been convicted by a jury after less than twenty minutes of deliberation.

The verdict had brought out the Leonard Jeffrieses and the Jesse Jacksons, who had proclaimed that, as a non-professional-athlete black male accused of killing a white woman, Jones wasn’t being given a fair shake. The resultant political pressures had accelerated Jones’s Writ for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, which was granted.

Verdict overturned.

Meanwhile, some jackass in long-term record storage had misfiled the evidence and exhibits, which left the prosecutor with no forensic reports, no photos of the body to flash at the jury during the second trial, nothing more than the testimony of four white cops.

Verdict, not guilty.

The case files were discovered the following Monday, mistakenly filed under “Rhythm.”

Jones slipped out of sight, lost somewhere in the faceless obscurity of L.A. slums, protected from the heat of further inquiry by the generous parasol of double jeopardy.

As Rayner finished reviewing the specifics of the case, Tim’s eyes were drawn to the picture of Ginny, propped on the table before him. He glanced again at the other photos in sight-Ananberg’s mother, Dumone’s wife, and the Stork’s mother, an imperious-looking, heavy-set woman with an expression of disgruntled impatience common to pugs and Eastern European immigrants. This was their purgatory, Tim realized, to oversee deliberations about L.A.’s most vile crimes and criminals, to play silent chorus to a seedy drama. This was how Tim had chosen to honor his daughter.

“…reasonable doubt,” Mitchell was saying. “It’s not no doubt. There’s never no doubt.”

But Ananberg held strong. “If someone were planning to frame him, it would be the perfect way. He’s a known drug abuser with countless enemies. Get him when he’s high as a kite, hack up a body in his living room, and voila.”

“Sure,” Robert said. “Forensic stab patterns are a breeze to fake. Especially seventy-seven punctures.”

Rayner’s head snapped up from the court transcript. “Oh, come on. We all know facts can be tailored. The public defender failed to produce a single expert witness for the defense.”

Robert’s hands were both spread on the table, white from the pressure. “Maybe there wasn’t one who could represent the defense’s version of the facts in…in-”

“-good faith,” Mitchell said.

“Please,” Ananberg said. “Expert witnesses are like whores, but more expensive.”

Rayner’s head jerked a bit at the simile.

Tim watched Robert closely. Robert’s fuse, for obvious reasons, was considerably shortened by murderers of women. Tim reflected on the firmness of his own conviction about Bowrick’s guilt and realized he held the same defensive rage for killers of children. Anger guarding trauma, ever vigilant. And-for purposes of the Commission-ever polluting.

“The verdict was overturned only because the evidence was misfiled and could not be presented.” The Stork flipped through the forensic report with one hand, and with his other he rubbed his thumb across the pads of his fingers, swift and ticlike. “It’s fairly conclusive.”

“This case was thrown out the first time around due to incompetent counsel,” Ananberg said. “By definition that means no respectable defense was mounted. There could have been considerations available that were never explored. Plus, the evidence is hardly damning-they found no blood whatsoever on his person. Seventy-seven stab wounds and no trace of blood on him? He was wacked-out on angel dust-I doubt he had the clarity of mind to burn his clothing and exfoliate with a loofa.”

Mitchell spoke very slowly, as if monitoring himself. “We have a body in his living room, a weapon bearing his fingerprints, and traces of the victim’s blood in his shower drain.”

“It is remarkably compelling physical evidence,” Tim said.

Ananberg regarded him, surprised, as if he were breaking some heretofore unspoken alliance.

“What the fuck do you want?” Robert said. “Live footage of the murder? If that evidence hadn’t been lost, this guy would’ve already been fried.” His voice was rising, his face starting to color. “He was caught dick deep at the crime scene, which happened to be his house. You’re overthinking this one, Ananberg.”

“He’s a pretty street-smart guy. And it’s such a stupid crime scene…” Ananberg shook her head. “The evidence doesn’t seemdamning to me. It seems convenient.”

They moved through the formal procedure swiftly, as it was obvious there would not be a unanimous decision. The vote went four to two; Rayner sided with Ananberg against the others.

“For fuck’s sake,” Robert said. “You’re letting the prick off the hook because of a bunch of stupid liberal bullshit.”

“This has nothing to do with politics,” Tim said.

Robert threw up his hands, bouncing forward in his chair so its arms knocked the table. The framed picture of his sister fell facefirst to the marble with a clap; Rayner’s water slopped over the side of the glass. “The guy’s a fucking sleazebag.”

“Which, last I checked, is not a capital offense.” Ananberg placed her hands palms down on the table, a vision of resolution. “I’m just not convinced he did it.”

Robert ran a hand through his bristling red-blond hair, leaving a flared Mohawk path like a dog’s raised hackles. He cocked back in his chair. His voice, low and muttering, held a startling element of malice. “If he didn’t, a nig like that’s guilty of something else.”

Tim leaned forward, chair creaking, willing his voice not to betray the full measure of his rage. “Is that what you believe?”

Robert looked away, his jaw clenched.

“Of course not,” Mitchell said.

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to your brother.”

When Robert turned back, Tim noticed that his eyes were strikingly bloodshot, pink veins radiating out from his pupils, leaving wakes in the white-sea haze of his sclera. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just after this thing, with Debuffier…I mean, the guy fucking kept her in a refrigerator.” He grabbed the fallen frame in front of him and smashed it down against the table once, twice, three times. His face dissolved, and he raised a hand to his eyes. Broken glass was spread across the table. His hand, cut from the glass, left a bloody smudge above one eyebrow. Mitchell reached over and kneaded the thick muscles of Robert’s neck.

“Dumone is like a father to me,” Robert said. His lips were trembling. Tim waited for him to break, but he remained stubbornly on the edge between composure and grief.

“You need some time off from this,” Rayner said. “To get your perspective back.”

“No, no. Back to work. I need work.” When Robert looked up, his eyes were scared. “Don’t you do that to me.”

“You’re a liability to our aims,” Tim said. “You’re sitting it out for a while.”

Robert remained bent over the table, shoulders drawn forward and around so his trapezius muscles pulled high and hard around his neck. His head was raised, tilted up from his hunch like a pointing dog’s, his eyes bright. “You’ve been trying to cut me and Mitch out from day one. You of all people should understand our needing to be involved. To do more. Don’t tell us to sit back and let others handle it. You’re giving us the same bullshit answers your dad threw back at you when you went to him for help.”

Rayner jumped in angrily. “That’s enough, Robert.”

Off Tim’s expression, Robert looked away uncomfortably, maybe even a touch ashamed. “Yeah, that’s right, you forget. We know about when you went to him for help, and he turned you out. We were listening.”

Tim felt his pulse beating at his temples. He sifted through the anger, searching out a sharper vexation. “I was told you’d been listening to me since the day of Ginny’s funeral.”

Mitchell strummed his short-cut nails on the table. “Dumone already apol-”

“I went to see my father three days before that.” Tim faced the Stork, who was only now perking up to pay attention. “So how were you listening to me at my father’s?”

“Yes, well, I’m afraid I was mistaken when I told you that before. I ended up doing it a few days earlier. Broke in when you were at work and your wife went to the grocery store.”

Tim studied him closely, then Robert. He decided to believe them for the time being. “Listen,” he said, “we already have a guilty vote in on Bowrick. I’m handling it alone, as I pointed out earlier. Robert, you take some time off-and I mean off-and catch your breath. And be advised, when you come back, I’m not tolerating another word of your racist bullshit. Is that clear? Is it?” He waited for Robert to nod, a barely discernible tilt of his head.

“Then we’ll move to Kindell,” Rayner said. “And I’ve already embarked on the tedious process of selecting a second set of cases for our next phase.”

“One step at a time. Right now I need you all to leave.”

Rayner’s mustache twitched in a half smile. “It’s my house.”

“I need to sit alone with Bowrick’s file. Would you rather I ran copies and took them home?” Tim stared from face to face until the others rose and shuffled out of the room.

Ananberg lingered behind. She shut the door and faced Tim, sliding her arms so they were folded across her chest. “This is coming unglued.”

Tim nodded. “I’m going to slow things down, see what I can get on Bowrick, see how Dumone fares. I can handle this operation largely on my own. If I need to use Mitchell, I’ll stick him on surveillance and keep him well clear of any situation that might go hot.”

“Robert and Mitchell won’t settle for being your spy and errand boys for long. They’re obsessed. They’re all about black-and-white logic, no mitigating circumstances.”

“We need to keep phasing them out operationally so they’re permanently on the sidelines before we embark on the next phase of cases.”

“And if things don’t move the way we want them to?”

“We invoke the kill clause and dissolve the Commission.”

“Can you make this work without Dumone?”

Tim looked up at her. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m handling Bowrick myself. I can make sure it’s done right, then move on to Kindell.”

“You must be eager to get to Kindell.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Ananberg removed a thrice-folded document from her purse and slid it down the length of the table. It stopped when it hit Tim’s knuckles.

The public defender’s notes.

“Rayner had me run a copy of this at the office. I accidentally made two. Put it in your pocket, do not look at it until you get home, and don’t ask me for anything else.”

Tim resisted the overwhelming urge to flip through the pages. As much as it pained him, he wedged the public defender’s notes into his back pocket. When he looked up, Ananberg was gone.

The sudden silence rankled him, and he tried to soothe his unease. He couldn’t risk Rayner’s walking in here and finding him examining the purloined documents, and he couldn’t leave abruptly after saying he was going to stay to study Bowrick’s file. He had to play it cool-he owed Ananberg that much.

He dimmed the lights overhead, then propped Bowrick’s photo up against Ginny’s frame. He stared at Bowrick’s discontented face for a long time before flipping open the binder.

28

THE notes from Kindell’s case burning a hole in his jeans, Tim left without finding Rayner to announce his departure. As he pulled out of the driveway, the house loomed behind him, dark and falsely antiquated. It wasn’t until the wrought-iron gate swung closed behind his car that he realized he’d imbued the building itself with an ineffable quality of emotion, something like sadness and menace mixed together.

He drove a few blocks, then parked and flipped through the public defender’s notes on Kindell. His excitement quickly gave way to disappointment. A summation of the lawyer’s pretrial talks with Kindell, the typed notes were poorly organized and incomplete.

Some of them were chilling.

The victim was the client’s “type.”

Client claims to have taken an hour and a half with the body after death.

Tim’s stomach lurched, and he had to roll down the window and breathe in the crisp air before mustering the courage to continue.

A single sentence on the fifth page slapped him into shock. In an attempt to jar himself back to lucidity, he found himself reading it over and over, trying to attach meaning to the words so they’d make sense again.

Client claims he carried out all aspects of the crime alone.

And then the sentence beneath: Had spoken to no one regarding Virginia Rackley or the crime until the handling unit arrived at his residence.

Through an all-enveloping numbness, he finished scanning the report, turning up no new information.

Kindell would have had no reason to deceive his public defender, nor his public defender to lie in his confidential record-keeping. Unless the case binder revealed additional facts-perhaps buried in the public defender’s investigator reports-then Tim had been off the mark all along. Gutierez, Harrison, Delaney, his father-they’d been right.

Tim’s conviction about an accomplice had grown into an addiction that had shielded him from the full brunt of Ginny’s death. If Kindell had in fact been Ginny’s only murderer, then Tim’s options were concrete, as finite as the sagging walls of Kindell’s shack. There was little left for him to do but confront Kindell however he decided and face the reality of his child’s death.

Dray had gone to sleep-the answering machine picked up on a half ring-and he left her the news, coding it in case Mac happened to be around.

Held in the trance of a sudden exhaustion, he drove home and fell into a blissful, dreamless block of sleep. He lay on the mattress for a few minutes upon awakening, watching the motes swirl and drift in the slant of morning light from the window, his mind returning obsessively to the last black binder awaiting him in Rayner’s safe.

If it didn’t miraculously yield compelling evidence for an accomplice, he realized with some satisfaction, then he’d deal with Kindell soon enough.

He just had to get to Bowrick first.

He showered, dressed, and headed out for a cup of coffee. He sat in a corner booth at a dive of a breakfast joint one block down, flipping through the L.A. Times. The Debuffier execution had grabbed the headline again, but the story contained little about the actual investigation. Man on the Street reared his ugly head again, claiming, “You don’t need the law to tell you right from wrong. The law told that voodoo bastard he was in the right, but he wasn’t. Now he’s dead, and the law says that’s wrong. I say it’s justice.” Tim noted with some alarm how clearly Man on the Street was articulating his own supposed position.

Another article announced that a moral-watchdog group was protesting a vigilante game Taketa FunSystems had put into development called Death Knoll. The player had a choice of automatic weapons with which to outfit his video-screen counterpart before setting him out on the streets. It featured tomato-burst head shots and limb-severing explosions. A rapist got you five points, a murderer ten.

A back-page story about two immigrants shot in robberies took the edge off some of Tim’s hypocritical indignation.

He returned to his apartment and sat in his single chair, feet on the windowsill, phone in his lap. For reference he’d smuggled out three pages of notes he’d taken from Bowrick’s file. For inspiration he logged on to the Internet and found the L.A. Times photograph of the coach clutching his dead daughter outside Warren High School. For a long time he looked at the man’s face, twisted with anguish and a sort of shocked disbelief. Tim was struck, now, with the heightened empathy that fear fulfilled provides.

And he was struck also with the alarming needlessness of it all.

He rubbed his hands, studied his three pages of notes, and formulated a strategy. Bowrick had skillfully arranged his own relocation to duck threats and possible attempts on his life; he was going to be hidden smart and well. Normally Tim’s tracking resources were virtually unlimited. Each government agency, from the Treasury Department, to Immigration, to Customs, controlled an acronymous computer database or eight-EPIC, TECS, NADDIS, MIRAC, OASIS, NCIC-but they were all inaccessible now. To obtain information about Bowrick, Tim couldn’t call his rabbis at other agencies, his CIs, or his contacts inside companies. He couldn’t talk to anyone in person, nose around any locations, or leverage any snitches. He’d have to street-smart his way through, like a criminal, which he supposed he was.

He started with Bowrick’s last-known, reached the apartment manager, and pretended to be a bill collector. A long shot, but Tim knew to start with the ground-ballers. No forwarding information. But he did get the date Bowrick moved out: January 15.

Posing as a postal inspector investigating mail fraud, he called the gas, power, water, and cable companies and presented a gruff voice and a false badge number. He was amazed-as always-at how easy it was to elicit confidential information. Unfortunately, all Bowrick’s listings were for addresses prior to January 15; he had been smart and registered everything under his new name, whatever that was. Telephone was usually the most current listing, but the address Pac Bell had was for his last-known, and the number had long been disconnected.

Giving Ted Maybeck’s name and badge number-he figured Ted owed him one for throwing the infamous high five-Tim tried to talk his way through the DMV bureaucracy but got nowhere. DMV staff was either incompetent or tough; those displaying the latter trait were also well schooled on privacy policies. According to the case binder, Bowrick had no car of his own-his mother used to drop him off at school, which, Tim recalled, had made him the object of derision among other seniors. In fact, the majority of the student character testimonies had been scathing-all except for that of one girl, an Erika Heinrich, who’d pointed out the vicious bullying that Bowrick and the now-deceased gunmen had received at the hands of the basketball team.

Dead ends all around. Tim had fallen into the pursuit as if he were working up a warrant, and the sudden halt brought him quickly to frustration. He slid open the window and leaned into the slight breeze. He hadn’t realized how stifling the room had grown with the rising sun and his own body heat. He closed his eyes and thought about the police report, waiting for a piece of information to rise out of place and trip his thoughts. None did.

Tim thought of the slump of Bowrick’s shoulders, his caged-rat unappeal. He tried to imagine having a child capable of such destruction. Could even a parent love someone so cruel and odious? Could anyone?

Tim sensed a shift in instinct, a puzzle piece sliding and dropping into place. The jagged half-coin pendant that he’d seen in Bowrick’s booking photo-a lover’s necklace. Each party wore one piece of the same coin. Erika Heinrich’s character testimony suddenly stood out all the more. The one sympathetic account. The girlfriend.

Tim logged on and entered Erika Heinrich into Yahoo People Search and got two hits-a seventeen-year-old in Los Angeles and a seventy-two-year-old in Fredericksburg, Texas. The grandmother? One of Tim’s former saw gunners in the Rangers was from Fredericksburg, so Tim knew it was a predominantly German community-maybe that explained the k in the first name.

He located the more eligible Erika’s phone number on the screen and dialed. When a woman answered, he tried his best salesman voice, and it came out surprisingly well. “Is this Erika Heinrich?”

A voice edged with irritation. “This is her mother, Kirsten. Why, what’d she do now?”

“I’m sorry, we must have the names crossed in our database. I’m calling from Contact Telecommunications to let you know you’re eligible for-”

“Not interested.”

“Well, if you have family out of state, our rates are extremely competitive. Two cents a minute state-to-state, and just ten cents a minute to Europe.”

A weighted pause, broken only by mouth breathing. “Two cents a minute long-distance? What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Can I ask who you’re with now?”

“MCI.”

“And for local?”

“Verizon.”

“Well, we beat both MCI and Verizon by nearly four hundred percent. There’s simply a once-a-month twenty-dollar charge for-”

“Twenty-dollar charge? See, I knew you guys were all full of shit.” She hung up.

Tim had no phone book in his apartment, Joshua was out, and the corner telephone booth’s had been ripped from its cord. Two blocks down he located another booth, this one with the book intact. He flipped through and found the nearest Kinko’s, then picked another a bit farther away from his apartment. He called and got their number for incoming faxes, a service they provided for people without fax machines willing to abide the buck-a-page fee.

Back upstairs he called MCI and got a male customer-service rep. He hung up and called back twice before he got a woman. He softened his voice, trying his best approximation of pitiful. “Yes, hello. I’m hoping you can help me with a…with a somewhat embarrassing personal problem. I’ve just…um, been separated from my wife, our divorce papers went through last week, and, uh…”

“I’m sorry, sir. How exactly can I help you?”

“Well, I’m still responsible for paying my wife’s…” He let out a sad little laugh. “My ex-wife’s bills. Her lawyer just sent along her telephone bill, and it seemed…well, it seemed unreasonably high. I don’t mean to imply my wife is dishonest-she’s not-but I’m worried her lawyer is monkeying around a bit with the numbers. You know how lawyers can be.”

“I was divorced once myself. You don’t have to tell me.”

“It is…it is hard, isn’t it?”

“Well, sir, it’ll get easier.”

“That’s what people keep telling me. Anyway, I was wondering if you could fax me the telephone bill for review, just so I can make sure these numbers are accurate. If they are, of course, I’ll happily reimburse my wife, it’s just that-”

“If some lawyer’s giving you the markup, you want to know.”

“Precisely. My wife’s name is Kirsten Heinrich, and she’s at 310-656-8464.”

The sound of fingers flying across a computer keyboard. “Well, as much as I’d like to help you, I’m not permitted to turn over her records to unauthorized…” More typing. “Sir, this account is listed under Stefan Heinrich.”

“Yes, of course. That’s me.”

“Well, technically it’s still your account, so until she changes the name, I am authorized to grant you access to billing information. Which fax number would you like me to send your last statement to?”

“It’s actually my local Kinko’s-I lost my fax machine along with my new Saturn-and the number is 310-629-1477. If you could send the last several bills, that would be most helpful.”

With Verizon, Tim claimed to be Stefan Heinrich from the outset and asked for the last three months of bills to be faxed over so he could review what he believed were some false charges.

He ate lunch alone at Fatburger, giving the faxes an hour to trickle through the various bureaucratic chains of command, then drove over to Kinko’s and picked up the stack. Back at his apartment, he hunched over the pages with a yellow highlighter, looking for triggers, his tongue poking his cheek out in a point.

Bowrick’s move had occurred less than two months ago, and Tim prayed he and Erika had, in fact, been a couple and that they were still in touch. He’d seen men forsake their cars with their telltale Vehicle Identification Numbers, their pets with registered pedigrees, even their own children to go into hiding, but they could always be counted on to contact their girlfriends. Drawn back to the bang, like a dog to his vomit. With a loner like Bowrick, the chances were even better.

The first two bills gave Tim nothing, and he felt a dread settle over him in anticipation of having to call every number in the entire stack, but then he noticed a recurring regional number matched with a recurring time. Roughly 11:30 P.M. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He looked closer and saw that there were also calls made to the same number, less regularly, around 7:30 A.M.

Clever, clever Bowrick.

Bowrick knew that if someone was determined to find him-a reasonable possibility, given that he was partially responsible for one of the most publicized mass killings in Los Angeles history-that his pursuer could trace calls originating from people closest to him. So instead of having calls ring through to his apartment, he’d set contact times where he could be reached out-of-pocket.

Tim called the number and let it ring and ring, since he guessed it was a pay phone. After the seventeenth ring, a man picked up. He spoke with a strong Indian accent. “Stop calling, please. This is a pay phone. You’re driving my customers away.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but my girlfriend was supposed to pick up. I’m sort of worried she’s not there, so I want to cruise over and look for her. Would you mind telling me where you’re located?”

“You will buy something and not just poke around?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Corner of Lincoln and Palms.”

Tim knew already, but had to ask to clear the Politically Correct censor he was surprised to find lurking in his head. “And your store isa…?”

“7-Eleven.”

He hung up, checked his watch: 8:11 P.M. He was surprised to find he’d been going for nearly thirteen hours. The time had passed in a blur, unbraked by thoughts of wife and daughter, ethics and accountability. Just satisfying work, a blend of instinct and focus.

He had a little over three hours until Bowrick’s possible scheduled Monday-night phone call but decided to drive over to stake out the territory. The 7-Eleven sat on a busy cross street, so it was easy for Tim to remain inconspicuous. He parked on the far side of Lincoln at a meter, where he had a clear angle to the store entrance. The meters weren’t in operation after six o’clock, so he didn’t have to worry about traffic officers.

He entered the 7-Eleven and bought a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew and a tin of Skoal. Caffeine and nicotine-two bad habits forged on stakeouts. Debuffier peered out from a grainy photo on a tabloid front page by the register, beside another shot of his oversize body bag. The headline shrieked ANGEL OF GOD TAKING OUT THE TRASH. The pay phone was in the back, between a single bank of outdated video games. A pock-faced kid was getting jiggy on the Centipede ball.

Tim settled back into his car and waited, keeping an eye on the twin glass doors that strobed in and out of view between passing trucks and cars. So his concentration wouldn’t be compromised, he kept the Nextel off; the Nokia he’d left at home. He worked his way through half his dip, spitting into an empty Coke can. A hypnotic state of dulled focus, similar to that elicited by distance running and vacation photos, overtook him. His ass grew numb. His reflection in the rearview showed that the black eye Dray had given him two weeks ago was in no rush to vacate his face, though it had considerately faded to a wide bluish smudge.

Eleven-thirty came and went with no sign of Bowrick. Tim waited until 1:15 A.M., just to be stubborn. He finally pulled out from his spot, his lower back throbbing, his gums sore from Skoal, vowing to wear a weight belt and chew sunflower seeds the next day.

At home he set his alarm clock for 5:30 so he could get back across town in case Bowrick had slid his call time to Tuesday morning. He slept, woke, and returned to his post, stopping only to buy a Polaroid camera and a weight belt, which he notched around his waist for added back support. The meters went live at 7:00 A.M., and within fifteen minutes he had to loop around the block to avoid being cited by a traffic officer.

He sat spitting sunflower-seed shells into yesterday’s Big Gulp cup until 10:15 A.M. He had Bowrick’s occasional 7:30 A.M. call figured as a prework check-in with the girlfriend, so it was likely Bowrick would be tied up on a job for the next few hours. Tim left, ate a quick sandwich, and sat stakeout from 11:30 to 2:30, in case Bowrick decided to make a lunchtime stop. Tim returned again at 4:30 and sat a long post-workday shift, through the 11:30 P.M. target time until 1:00 in the morning.

Exhausted and dejected, he headed for home. Gripped by insomnia, he sat up, studying the marked phone statements. Erika Heinrich’s most recent bill listed calls only through the first of the month-what if it was outdated? The call pattern could have shifted in the past three weeks. Tomorrow was Wednesday-one of Bowrick’s regular call days, so Tim vowed to give it another twenty-four hours.

When Tim finally turned on his Nokia, he had only two messages from the past two days. The first was a couple minutes of monotone rambling from Dray, expressing her disappointment that the public defender’s notes hadn’t turned up any new leads. All day, he was alarmed to realize, he’d tucked his thoughts of Ginny beneath some defense mechanism in his mind, hidden from sight. The emotional sting returned even harsher, like a fresh wound slapped, shattering the respite he’d found in its hiatus.

In the next message, Dray let him know that Marshal Tannino had called again-apparently for the second time this week-concerned about Tim and wanting to check in on him. Ananberg had called the Nextel last night around 3:00 A.M. Her message simply said, “Tim. Jenna.”

He was pleased that the rest of the Commission hadn’t bothered him, as he’d requested. Having Robert and Mitchell out of the way for the time being was a relief. He replayed Dray’s first message twice, looking for places where her voice cracked around the edges, indicating want or longing.

He sat at his small desk, studying his wallet-worn photo of Ginny, feeling his thoughts percolate, blur, disregard their boundaries. Later he tried to sleep but failed. He was on his belly, watching the alarm clock when it clicked to 5:30 and emitted its galling buzz.

He sat the stakeout straight through the day, leaving only to piss twice and grab a burrito from a stand up the street. His head, displeased at its lack of stimuli, swam in hangover haze. The air felt more exhaust than oxygen, and the sea breathed no hint that it was hitting sand ten blocks away.

At the stoplight ahead, a vendor of dubious naturalization was selling tiny U.S. flags for ten bucks a pop. America-land of ironic opportunity.

Afternoon eased into dusk, dusk to night. When 11:15 rolled around, Tim loosened his weight belt one notch, letting the cramping tighten his lower back and push him to alertness. Twenty minutes later he was still sitting upright, eyes trained on the store entrance. At 11:45 he started cursing. Midnight came, and he turned over the engine and threw the car into gear.

He was just pulling out when Bowrick rounded the corner.

29

BOWRICK SPENT A good forty minutes on the 7-Eleven phone before emerging, spitting once on the sidewalk and walking back up Palms. Tim had pulled the car over on Palms in anticipation of Bowrick’s heading back in the direction from which he’d arrived. He’d assumed Bowrick would show up on foot due to his history without a car; his new residence couldn’t be far away.

Bowrick walked with a distinctive slouch, shoulders humped, hips tucked slightly like a spanked dog’s, favoring his right leg. His black-and-white flannel hung open, fringing his thighs like a skirt. Tim waited for him to turn the corner onto Penmar before following on foot. Two blocks down, Bowrick lifted the latch on a waist-high fence and slipped into a ragged front yard with an oval of dirt that used to be a lawn. The house itself, a prefab with tract-home simplicity, sat slightly crooked on the lot, its Ty-D-Bol turquoise clapboards water-warped and misaligned. By the time Tim strolled past, Bowrick had disappeared through the front door.

Tim retrieved his car, parking a few houses up from Bowrick’s, and sat pretending to study a map. After about five minutes a tricked-out Escalade pulled up and honked despite the late hour. Bowrick emerged holding a small duffel bag and hopped into the car. As it passed Tim, he caught a glimpse of the driver-a Hispanic kid in a wife-beater tank top with orange fire tattoos on his shoulders and neck.

Probably off to do a late-night drop.

Tim waited until the sound of the engine faded, then grabbed the camera from his backseat and approached the house. He searched the front yard for dog shit and, not noticing any, hopped the fence. Six strides, then he flattened himself against the side wall and pulled on latex gloves. The neighboring houses were a good thirty feet away, not because the yards were ample but because Bowrick’s house was so small it couldn’t fill even its modest plot. Tim edged over and peered through the window. The house, basically a single large room, recalled Tim’s apartment in its bare functionality. A desk, a flimsy bureau, twin bed, sheets thrown back. Tim made his way to the rear and peeked through the bathroom window to ensure that the house was empty. The back door housed a mean Schlage and two dead bolts, so Tim returned to the bathroom window, popped the screen, and wormed his way through, coming down with his hands on the fortunately closed toilet seat.

No toothbrush in the toothbrush holder. No toothpaste.

Tim slipped into the main room. Two folded shirts and a pair of socks waited on the bed, as if Bowrick had set them there to be packed, then decided against them.

Bowrick was clearly gone for an overnight, probably longer.

Tim pulled the chair out from the desk, placed it in the middle of the room, and stood on it. It took eight Polaroid shots to provide panoramic documentation of the interior. Tim set the hazy white photos on the bed to resolve, crossed to the desk, and began rifling through the drawers. Bills and a checkbook belonging to David Smith. Five twenties hidden under a paper tray in the top drawer said Bowrick wasn’t gone for good.

A tacky shrine had been set up on an overturned crate in the corner. Fake gold cross, a miniature oil painting of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, a few burned-down candles. Its presence in Bowrick’s house served only to reinforce Tim’s distrust of men who turned their moral compass over to a God who tolerated Joe Mengele and Serb death squads. He cut short his condemnatory thoughts, recognizing he’d come to the case with prejudice. He refocused on taking in information before filtering it.

Tim searched the closets, drawers, mattress, cupboards beneath the sink. Two hard hats-one cracked-and Carhartt overalls were mounded on the closet floor. The carpet curled up from the wall seams, and he pulled it back farther to see if it hid a gun safe embedded in the floor. No weapons in the house. Largest blade was a steak knife on the brief run of counter tile that passed for a kitchen. Two doors, two windows-great kill zone.

He meticulously replaced everything to its original position. He smoothed his footprints out of the carpet, left the second desk drawer halfway open as it had been, adjusted the bottom right corner of the comforter so it drooped to touch the ground just so.

The Polaroids had dried on the bed, and he checked the room against them. He’d replaced the sole Bic pen too close to the edge of the desk. The top sheet needed to be folded over just under the pillows. A Car and Driver magazine on the bureau required a quarter rotation to the right. He retouched and reskewed until everything in the room perfectly matched the photographs again.

Then he slid out the bathroom window, replaced the screen, and eased back out onto the sidewalk. He contemplated calling the Stork, but the man’s distinctive looks made for dangerous stakeout material. He called Mitchell from the car, but Mitchell kept his cell phone turned off even when unnecessary, as was the habit of any smart EOD bomb tech. He reached Robert with his next call and had him hand the phone off to his brother, which he did angrily.

“I’ve just left Bowrick’s place.”

“Holy shit, you found him alrea-”

“Listen to me. He lives at 2116 Penmar, but I believe he headed out for a few nights. I’ve been on it for the past three days, and I need to sleep. I want you to head down here and keep an eye on the house-very low-profile. Just you. Alone. Do not get spotted. And don’t bring weapons. Do you understand me? No pistol, no nothing. Just sit on the house and alert me if he returns. I’ll be back at nine hundred tomorrow to take over for you. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll keep the Nextel on.”

Tim felt slightly euphoric, as he always did on the trail. To celebrate he debated allowing himself the indulgence of returning Dray’s call, the thought calling forth a crisp picture of his daughter’s room waiting still furnished across the hall. With the image came the bristling of imbedded thorns, a sudden crashing return from the salve of numbness. Now that he was off task, his thoughts became his enemies again; it was as if, finding nothing else on which to teethe, they turned cannibalistic. His mind nosed around his vulnerabilities, moving deliberately from Ginny to Dray to Robert to all other things that had recently spun from his grasp. When he emerged from his thoughts, he was a few blocks from his building. He anticipated stepping into the apartment’s empty embrace and how different it would feel from his house, which would smell of wood and lingering barbecue and ketchup-stained paper plates in the trash can. Thoughts of the myriad compelling security and safety concerns managed to put a pretty good damper on his yearning for a spontaneous visit.

He took a pull off the bottle of water left over from lunch, but it didn’t help dissolve the sourness at the back of his throat. It remained, firm-rooted and dry-most likely the aftertaste of death and murder, both of which he’d been steeped in for the past month. Maybe he needed something stronger to wash it away.

A neon martini glass beckoned from a dark-tinted window, and he jerked the Beemer left into a parking lot and coasted up to the white valet stand.

The thrumming bass from the car pulling out and the all-black attire of the couple whisking in indicated that Tim had accidentally arrived at a club rather than a bar. He disliked hip in most of its variations, but it was too late now, and besides, a drink was a drink.

As he got out of his car, a kid with slicked-back hair presented a ripped stub from an effluvium of bad cologne, then slid behind the wheel and screeched around the corner. Tim looked at the five blank spaces in front of the club and turned a befuddled glance at the remaining valet. “Is there some reason you can’t leave the car right here?”

The valet coughed out a snicker. “Uh, yeah. It’s a ’97.”

A bouncer manned a maroon rope in front of the door. He was fit, half white, half Asian, and handsome as fuck. Tim disliked him instantly, blindly.

Tim approached and flicked his hand at the dark door, from which issued cigarette smoke and a tune heavy on beat and metallics. The bouncer kept his head tilted back as if in a constant state of boredom or appraisal. “Get in line please, pal.”

Tim looked around at the empty entrance. “What line?”

“Over there.” The bouncer pointed to a red roll-up carpet-some night promoter’s brainchild-that stretched to the right of the rope. Tim exhaled hard and stepped over onto the carpet. He made for the rope, but the bouncer didn’t move.

“You want me to wait here?”

“Yes.”

“Even though there’s no one in line?”

“Yes.”

“Is this Candid Camera or something?”

“Man, you are clueless.” Something vibrated on the bouncer’s waist, and he took a long look at a row of colorful, belt-adhered pagers. He squeezed the banana yellow one and glanced at the backlit screen. “How’d you get your black eye?”

“Freak badminton accident.”

The guy’s head rolled to its usual back-tilted perch on his wide neck. “You gonna start trouble at my club?”

“If you keep me out here, I might.”

The guy’s laugh smelled like gum. “I like your style, pal.” He unclipped the rope and stepped aside, but not far enough that Tim didn’t have to lean to get past him.

Tim entered and spotted a stool at the bar. As he headed over, a guy in clay-colored jeans with endless pockets eyed him derisively. “Nice shirt, pops.”

Behind the bar a translucent rise of shelves glowed phosphorescent blue. Tim ordered a twelve-dollar vodka on the rocks from an attractive redheaded bartender wearing a rubber vest with a zipper teased down to reveal cleavage.

A couple of girls were grooving up on a light box out on the dance floor. The crowd swelled and ebbed around them, wafting Tim’s way the smell of designer cologne and clean sweat. A couple lay sideways in a booth, licking each other’s faces, e-ravenous for sensation. The surge of sex and exuberance charged the air, approaching-storm strong, and in the middle sat Tim, immobile and square, watching the proceedings like a chaperon at a mixer. He found his glass empty and gestured to the bartender for a fresh one.

A girl beside him leaned curve-backed, elbows propped on the bar, facing the noise. He accidentally caught her eye and nodded. She smiled and walked off. Two guys in rumpled shirts sidled up in her place, their faces ruddy and moist from the dance floor, and ordered shots of tequila.

“…my old boss Harry, you could smell the burnout on him. He was your classic dump truck, barely followed up any leads for his clients. When I started in the public defender’s office, he had a guy in custody for a murder two, said his alibi was this bartender he was hitting on all night, a hot girl with red hair somewhere off Traction. Didn’t know where. Harry stopped by a few places, found shit, they convicted his client the next week. Fifteen to life. A few months later we come in here-God knows why, Harry’s brother-in-law invested in the joint or something-and guess what?”

The guy pointed behind the bar at the redhead in the zippered vest. “There she is. And she remembers the client. Only problem is, our boy got shanked in the yard at Corcoran two days before.” He exhaled hard. “There’s only justice for the rich. If you have a house to put up for ten percent of bail, can get your ass out of custody and working on your own case, your alibi, you’re all set. If you’re broke and you can’t remember, if your PD can’t find the hot redhead bartender somewhere off Traction…well, then.” He threw back another shot. “I come in here now, when I’m close to burnout. It reinvigorates me, inspires me to cover every damn angle.” The bartender served another round of shots, and he slid a once-folded twenty toward her. “She’s my muse.”

His friend said, “It’s a stupid fucking job we do.”

This declaration was followed by a clink of glasses, thrown-back shots, sour-faced head shakes. The talker caught Tim watching and leaned over to offer a sweaty hand.

“Name’s Richard. Why don’t you join us for a shot?” His slur was just noticeable above the pumping music.

“No thanks.”

“No offense, but I don’t see any better options around for you.” Richard turned to his friend. “Oh, well, Nick, guess our friend here doesn’t want to join us. Guess he’s busy being his own man.”

“I’m not big on public defenders.” Alcohol had loosened Tim’s tongue-he remembered anew why he rarely drank.

“Don’t see why not. We get paid shit, we burn out young, and we represent mostly reprehensible pricks. That’s a pretty appealing package, no?”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been on the other end of the equation you’re bitching about. Seen people walk free who shouldn’t have.”

“Lemme guess. You’re a cop. Shoot first and ask questions later.” Richard snapped off a drunken salute. “Well, Officer, I’ll tell you, for however many cases you’ve seen go down wrong, Nick and I here have got you beat. I got a kid today-”

“I’m not interested.”

“I got a kid today-”

“Take your hand off me, please.”

Richard stepped back while Nick got busy securing their next round. “When this kid was sixteen, he broke into his cousin’s house to steal a VCR.” He held up a finger. “One strike. Goes to a high school football game, talks some shit after, tells a teacher’s kid he’s gonna beat the crap out of him if he catches him talking to his girlfriend again. Strike two. Threat of immediate assault with intent to commit GBI. That’s grievous bodily injury-”

“I know what GBI is.”

“Now, the third strike, the third strike, my friend, can be any felony. This kid goes into Longs Drugs and steals a toilet-paper holder-a goddamn toilet-paper holder. That’s 666, petty theft with a prior. It’s a wobbler, but they file it as a felony. Guess what? Strike three. Twenty-five to life. No negotiation, no judicial discretion, nothing. It’s fascism.”

“His dad used to beat him. He didn’t really mean to shoot up his school.”

Richard sighed. “Not so simple. Not so specious. But you do have to look at the individual. Then the angles and distances between him and his surroundings become measurable. What those angles compose is what constitutes perspective. And perspective is exactly what you need to pass judgment on an individual’s actions.” Though his words were running together drunkenly, Richard was still articulate as hell. A practiced drinker.

“How about passing judgment on an individual?”

“Leave that to God. Or Allah, or karma, or the Great Pumpkin. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone is evil. It matters what they’ve done and how we deal with it.”

“But we have to carry out our judgment on individuals.”

“Of course. So what determines the strictness of punishment? Irredeemability? Lack of contrition? Unfitness to participate in society? No one so much as examined these factors for my client today. This kid is screwed. He’s gonna have to punk for some gangbanger for the rest of his life over a thirty-seven-cent fucking toilet-paper holder.” Richard’s voice wavered, either from rage or grief, and his face contorted once, sharply, presaging a sob that never came. Instead he grinned. “That’s the reason for our little party tonight, my friend.” He raised a shot glass. “Celebrating the system.”

His buddy put a hand on his shoulder and steered him down onto the barstool.

“It goes both ways,” Tim said.

Richard looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and drooping. “Yeah, yeah, it does.”

“I’ve seen guys walk through loopholes I’d never even dreamed of. Chain of custody. Speedy trial motions. Search and seizure. It’s not justice. It’s bullshit.”

“It is bullshit. But why can’t we have good procedure and justice? So the court spanks the cop for”-his hands fluttered, seeking a phrase-“illegal search and seizure or whatever, and next time around the cop does his job right, with respect for civil liberties. The trial goes clean. Guy gets convicted, receives a fair sentence. Then it’s right all the way around-we have our cake and eat it, too.”

Nick slumped forward, his forehead thumping against the bar. Tim thought it had to be a joke, but Nick remained there. Richard didn’t notice. He leaned in, his breath carrying a sickening combination of breath mints and tequila. “Lemme let you in on a little secret. PDs don’t like their clients, generally. We don’t want to see them go free. We want them to get convicted.” He held up a wobbly finger. “However. More important than that, we want tough guy cops like you and hard-on DAs to respect the Constitution, the Penal Code, the Bill of Rights. And everyone chips away at them, these rights, slowly over time. Detectives, prosecutors, even judges. But not us. We’re fucking zealots. Zealots for the Constitution.”

“Jews for Jesus,” Nick muttered from his facedown slump on the bar.

“And we protect…we protect that thing, that stupid, distant, abstract fucking piece of parchment, despite the scum we represent, despite the crimes they may have committed or may commit after we get them off because some dumb-ass cop doesn’t fulfill the oral announcement of intent to search after the knock and notice and puts us in the fuckdamned position of having to point it out and let some mouth-breathing reprobate walk out the fucking door, in all likelihood to do whatever he’s done again.”

Richard tried to stand but fell back onto the stool. Nick was making raspberry noises against the bar.

“We fight fascism in the petty details.” Richard pivoted to face the bar, letting his hands slide up, covering his face. “And it’s awful. And we lose sight of the prize, the aim, sometimes, because we just wallow in this…in this…” A jerking inhalation led to a sob, but when he lowered his hands, he was smiling again. “We need a shot. Another shot.”

“Trying to break the Breathalyzer record and win a Kewpie doll?”

“What, are you gonna arrest me, Officer? Drunk and disenfranchised?”

“If I do, I’ll be sure to Mirandize you.”

“Funny, that’s funny.” Richard laughed hard. “You’re okay. I like you. You don’t talk much, but you’re okay. I mean, for a cop.” He leaned heavily on the bar, his shirtsleeve soaking up spilled alcohol. “Lemme let you in on a little secret. I’m leaving my office. Going across the street to federal-believe it or not, federal sentencing is even more draconian. I’m gonna go throw myself against that wall for a change.”

“Why do you do it?” Tim asked. “If you hate it so much?”

Nick raised his head, and his face looked startlingly sober. “Because we’re worried no one else will.”

Richard drummed the bar with his forefingers. “And it makes us pretty unpopular. Didn’t used to be that way, not with Darrow and Rogers. The greats. Now a PD’s just a knee-jerk apologist. A pushover. A softie. Dukakis. We’re Dukakises. Dukaki.”

“And Mondale,” Nick said. “We’re Mondale, too.”

“And guys like me feel like guys like you are running the show these days,” Tim said.

“Are you kidding me?” Richard spun around on the barstool, twirling a full rotation before stopping himself. His head jerked back with a hiccup. He looked distinctly nauseous. “Have you been watching the news? This vigilante business-it’s meeting with general societal approval.”

“The people who have been executed are hardly-”

Richard bellowed out a bad imitation of a game-show buzzer, tilting from the stool onto his feet. “Wrong answer.”

“Right. Just have faith in the system. The system you just described to me from your angle and I described to you from mine. Why should we hold on to that faith? Why shouldn’t someone try something better? Take matters into their own hands?”

Richard clutched Tim’s arm, and for the first time his voice was soft and cracked, not giddy or deadened with tired irony. “Because it represents such hopelessness.”

He leaned over and vomited on his shoes.

A girl two stools over looked down at her splattered capris and screamed. The smell rose from the puddle, rank and heated. Richard grinned, his chin stained with puke, and raised his arms, Rocky style.

The bartender was cursing a blue streak, and a gym-enhanced security bozo was closing fast, barking into a radio. The bouncer from outside plowed through the crowd and grabbed Richard.

“All right, asshole, I told you before, you get hammered in my club again, you’re fucking finished.” He threw a full nelson on Richard, bending his head forward and making his arms stick up like a scare-crow’s. The other guy seized Nick’s shoulder and jerked him back off the bar.

“Take it easy,” Tim said. The bouncer slammed Richard against the bar. Tim’s hand shot out and grabbed the bouncer’s thick neck, thumb digging into his sternal notch. The bouncer gagged out a sound and froze. “It wasn’t a suggestion,” Tim said.

He waited for the bouncer to release Richard. The other guy let go of Nick and stepped wide, eyes on Tim, looking for an angle. Several people were watching, but for the most part loud music covered the sound of the commotion. The dance floor remained a swirl of oblivious motion.

Tim removed his hands, holding them up in a calming gesture. The bouncer took a quick step back, coughing.

Tim said, “I don’t much like to fight, and I’m sure you could kick my ass anyway, so what do you say we just do this the easy way. These guys are going to pay their tab-” he nodded at Nick, who fumbled a few bills out of his pocket and onto the counter “I’ll walk my acquaintance out of here, and you’ll never hear from us again. Sound good?”

The bouncer glowered at him.

“Okay.” Tim shouldered Richard and half dragged him to the door, Nick scurrying close behind. They stepped outside, and the cool air hit them like a chest-high wave.

“That asshole,” Richard slurred, rubbing his elbow.