3rd Degree

Chapter 107

I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO to the hospital to be examined, but I wouldn't do it. Not yet. Joe Molinari and I went with the red-haired girl back to the Hall. We interrogated Annette Breiling for several hours, and then this revolutionary, this terrorist, this person who could shoot the vice president in cold blood, she cracked.

Annette Breiling told us everything we needed to know, and more, about the plot at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

It was four in the morning when we arrived in an upscale neighborhood in Kensington, a couple of towns over from Berkeley. There were at least half a dozen patrol cars there and everybody was heavily armed. The street was in the hills and had a view of the San Pablo Reservoir. Very pretty, sur-prisingly posh. It didn't look as if anything bad could happen here.

“He lives well,” said Molinari, but that was it for small talk. “Let's you and I do the honors.”

The front door was opened by the Lance Hart Professor of Romance Languages, Roger Lemouz. He had on a terry-cloth robe, and his curly black hair was in disarray. His eyes were glassy and red, and I wondered if he had been drinking that night, if Lemouz had been celebrating.

“Madam Inspector,” he said in a throaty whisper, “you're beginning to wear out your welcome. It's four A.M. This is my home.”

I didn't bother to exchange unpleasantries with Lemouz, and neither did Molinari. “You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder,” he said, then pushed his way inside.

Lemouz's wife and two children appeared, entering the living room behind him, which was unfortunate. The boy was no more than twelve, the girl even younger. Molinari and I holstered our guns.

“Charles Danko is dead,” I told Lemouz. “A young woman you know named Annette Breiling has implicated you in the murder of Jill Bernhardt, all of the murders, Lemouz. She told us that you were the one who set up Stephen Hardaway's cell. You delivered Julia Marr and Robert Green into the cell. And you controlled Charles Danko - you knew how to push his buttons. His anger seethed for thirty years, but you got Danko to act on it. He was your puppet.”

Lemouz laughed in my face. “I don't know any of these people. Well, Ms. Breiling was a student of mine. She dropped out of the university, however. This is a huge mis-take and I'm calling my lawyer right now if you don't leave.”

“You're under arrest,” Joe Molinari said, making the obvi-ous official. “Want to hear your rights, Professor? I want to read them to you.”

Lemouz smiled, and it was strange and eerie. “You still don't understand, do you? Neither of you. This is why you are doomed. One day your entire country will crumble. It's already happening.”

“Why don't you explain what we're missing?” I spat the words at him.

He nodded, then Lemouz turned toward his family. “You're missing this.” His small son was holding a handgun, and it was obvious that he knew how to use it. The boy's eyes were as cold as his father's.

“I'll kill you both,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”

“The army that is building against you is massive, their cause is just. Women, children, so many soldiers, Madam Inspector. Think about it. The Third World War - it's begun.”

Lemouz walked calmly to his family and took the gun from his son. He kept it aimed at us. Then he kissed his wife, his daughter, his son. The kisses were tender and heartfelt. Tears were in his wife's eyes. Lemouz whispered something to each of them.

He backed out of the living room; then we could hear running footsteps. A door slammed somewhere in the house. How could he hope to get away?

A gunshot sounded loudly inside the house.

Molinari and I ran in that direction.

We found him in the bedroom - he'd killed himself, shot one bullet into his right temple.

His wife and children had begun to wail in the other room.

So many soldiers, I was thinking. This won't stop, will it? This Third World War.