Flight

Two

Ten Years Later

1

Saturday, July 8, 2:15 P.M.

San Bernardino Mountains

“It’s in our jurisdiction,” the sheriff’s deputy said as he led the way to the wreckage. “I guess we had to give it to you because the deceased is a Las Piernas police officer.”

Frank Harriman didn’t respond. Nor did Ben Sheridan. However excited this green kid was to be associated with a crash investigation, they both knew that the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department homicide detective who had brought them here was more than happy to have this case off his hands. Cliff Garrett was currently waiting in his air-conditioned car at the top of the steep incline they had just hiked down.

As they made their way in the sticky afternoon heat, the young deputy had taken one horrified look at the prosthesis on the lower half of Ben’s left leg and started up to meet them. He had reached for Ben’s elbow, and Ben had told him in no uncertain terms that if he touched him, he’d find out just how well a one-legged man could do in an ass-kicking contest.

Frank had thought Ben was a little hard on the kid. Fifteen minutes later, he wished he had volunteered to referee.

“Jesus, what is that thing?” the deputy had asked, staring at the prosthesis. “It looks like a shock absorber getting it on with the end of a ski or something.”

“Does it?” Ben asked.

“Yes, sir, it sure does.”

Ben turned to Frank and said, “Garrett gave you a radio?”

Frank nodded.

“Call him and tell him there was no one here to lead us to the Cessna.”

“Oh, no!” the kid said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s my job.”

“Then do it,” Ben snapped.

The deputy didn’t seemed fazed by this; he shrugged and started down an uneven path. Two seconds later, he turned and said, “You going to be able to—”

“Don’t ask him that,” Frank warned.

“I used to go surfing in Las Piernas,” he said as they finally reached the shade.

When Frank said nothing, he added, “You probably don’t think a guy from the Inland Empire would know much about surfing, but I haven’t lived here all my life.”

“A rambling man,” Ben muttered.

“Exactly,” he said. “I’ve lived all over Southern California. Even San Diego.” He turned to Frank and asked, “You’re a homicide detective in Las Piernas?”

“Yes,” Frank answered, slapping at a mosquito, wondering why the shade wasn’t offering more relief from the heat.

“Really? You’re a detective?”

“Really. You want to call Detective Garrett from your department and verify it?”

“No, sir, it’s just—” Their guide stopped, taking a moment to look him up and down. “They let you — you know, wear hiking clothes on the job down there?”

“No.”

“But you can wear them when you’re not in your own jurisdiction?”

“No. Are you with the reserves?”

“Yes, sir, how’d you know?”

“In Las Piernas, that’s on the test for detectives. Identification of Reserve Officers.”

Deputy Whatever continued on as he mulled this over, giving them a little peace. A few minutes later, though, he let loose with a loud and pungent fart.

“For Christ’s sakes!” Ben said angrily.

“Sorry.” The kid grinned. “No charge for the bug repellent.”

Eventually, they could hear other voices up ahead.

“Deputy,” Frank said then, “I just realized that I am without one of the authorization forms I’ll need for this investigation to be taken over by Las Piernas. It’s vital that I have it. We can find the site from here — but would you please return to Detective Garrett and tell him that I need a Universal Transfer of Responsibility Form Eighty-five-dash-seven?”

“I don’t know if I should—”

“Maybe I should go,” said Ben. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it back here on my bad leg, but—”

“Don’t even think of it!” The deputy repeated the form number and took off.

“Universal Transfer of Responsibility Form?” Ben asked as soon as the deputy was out of earshot.

“I thought the ‘Eighty-five-dash-seven’ was a nice touch, myself. Which one is your bad leg?”

Ben smiled.

Frank called Garrett on the radio and warned him that the deputy was on his way. “You’d better take a long time finding that form, Cliff,” he said, “or I may require lots of cooperation from a certain San Bernardino homicide detective. You want to hike down here again to help?”

Cliff laughed and asked how the mosquitoes were, then agreed to keep the deputy busy.

They had no trouble finding the others; they followed the sound of their voices until they saw the coroner’s assistant, several sheriff’s deputies, and a tall, dark-haired woman in lightweight coveralls standing in a small clearing. Frank recognized the woman — they had worked together on a previous case. Was that the real reason Carlson had sent him out here?

“Hello, Mayumi,” he said to her. “How’s life with the NTSB?”

She turned and smiled. “Frank! Good to see you again.” She quickly sobered and said, “Sorry it has to be under these circumstances.”

“Thanks, but I never knew him, so—”

“Of course not,” she said.

This quick reassurance puzzled him. He glanced at the other men. They seemed a little tense. What was going on?

“You weren’t in the department in Las Piernas ten years ago, were you?” Mayumi was saying.

“No, I was still working in Bakersfield then,” he said, and saw the others visibly relax. What the hell was that all about?

“Where’s the wreckage?” Ben asked.

“Not far. I’m Mayumi Iwata,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m with the National Transportation Safety Board.”

“Forgive me for not introducing you, Mayumi,” Frank said. “This is Dr. Ben Sheridan. Ben’s a forensic anthropologist. He’ll be doing the work on recovering and identifying the remains.”

“Oh, yes, the coroner’s office told us you would be coming here with Frank.” She introduced them to the coroner’s assistant and the others. One of the older deputies, a man named Wilson, looked back in the direction of the road and asked, “Where’s the chatterbox?”

Frank and Ben exchanged a look.

“Frank sent him on an important errand,” Ben said.

Wilson laughed. “You have our undying gratitude.” He gave them the sign-in sheet for the scene, noting the time of their arrival, then reached into a canvas bag and brought out some gloves. “You’ll need these. There’s quite a bit of poison oak down there.”

“I begin to see why Cliff was so happy to hand this one off,” Frank said with a laugh, but noticed that Wilson suddenly seemed uneasy. Probably one of Cliff’s friends. Frank decided to stick to business. “Who was first on the scene?”

“I was,” Wilson said. “A couple hikers with a dog wandered through here. We don’t get many through this ravine, because most of the time the little creek that runs through here is dry. I don’t think they would have seen the wreckage if it hadn’t been for the dog.”

“Did the dog disturb the remains?” Ben asked.

“No, and the hikers didn’t either. The dog kind of scratched at the door of the plane. Hikers called him back, and I guess they — well, they freaked out when they realized what it was and came running out of here. We almost couldn’t find it again. Hadn’t been for the dog, I don’t know if we would have. We took statements from them and let them go on home — didn’t realize what a mess…” His voice trailed off, and he colored slightly. “Well, let’s take you on over there.”

Again, Frank felt as if the others were waiting for him to react to something, that there was more going on here than the little Carlson had told him.

He mentally reviewed the brief, unpleasant phone conversation he’d had with his lieutenant. Carlson had paged him just as he had settled into a deck chair at his cabin, cold beer in hand. Frank had objected to being called on a day off; Carlson told him he didn’t care who was up next on the roster, Frank was only a few minutes away from the scene. Besides, the lieutenant told him, Lefebvre, the presumed victim of the crash, had not only been a Las Piernas homicide detective, he had been involved in one of the old cases he had just assigned to Frank. The Randolph cases.

“What Randolph cases? I don’t have any Randolph cases.”

“You do now. Discuss this with no one. You and Sheridan have a very simple task today. Just let me know what you find in a careful search of whatever’s left of that plane.” He had added that Cliff Garrett would be by to drive them to the scene, then hung up.

Lefebvre’s name had seemed vaguely familiar to Frank. He supposed that someone who had worked with Lefebvre when he was with the department must have mentioned him, but he could not remember who might have done so or what had been said.

They picked up a couple of duffel bags, including one with supplies for Ben — courtesy of the San Bernardino Coroner’s Office — and began following Wilson.

“San Bernardino called us right away,” Mayumi said as they walked. “As you know, Frank, if a plane is missing, we start a file at that time.”

“When you say ‘missing’ — that might not be known immediately, right? The pilots of these small planes don’t always file flight plans, do they?”

“No. Eventually, though, family members or friends will report that a pilot didn’t return home on time or didn’t reach a planned destination. But you’re right, flight plans aren’t always required, and obviously one wasn’t filed in this case—”

Obviously? But before Frank could ask about that, Wilson said, “The file you start — is this data about the plane or the pilot?”

“Both,” Mayumi answered. “The plane’s registration number, manufacturer, model, and age are included, along with information about the pilot’s health, experience, drug or alcohol consumption, and possible state of mind. So are any flight plans, communications with control towers, checks on the weather conditions that day, and other data. When any wreckage is found, the registration number is checked against the list of missing planes — its file can be matched very quickly, especially if the plane is from the local area.”

“And this one was on your local list,” Ben said.

“Yes. When we checked this registration number against our records, we found that ten years ago, this plane went missing — and that it was owned and piloted by Detective Philip Lefebvre. That’s why we called Las Piernas right away.”

They climbed a small rise overlooking a dry gully. What remained of the Cessna lay below, so covered with leaves, pine needles, earth, and vines, Frank was amazed that the hikers had been able to see what their dog was after. Most of the left wing was broken off; Mayumi told them they had found it about twenty-five yards back. There were little numbered yellow flags on wires scattered in a pattern behind and near the plane; locations where debris had been found or from which measurements had been taken. “Lots of small hardware scattered along here,” Mayumi said. “Mostly from the wings and tail.” He half listened as she spoke. He was looking at the fuselage. He wasn’t thinking about small hardware.

He had brought a notebook with him, and he took it out now. He began making crude sketches, noting the position of the plane. He could tell that the scene had already been mapped and measured by the sheriff’s department and Mayumi. He didn’t care; he started sketching because the process helped him think.

He thought about Lefebvre and wondered who he had been and what those last few moments of life had been like for him. Peaceful or terrifying?

This is an NTSB case, he told himself. If a Las Piernas cop hadn’t been at the controls, his department never would have been called in. Frank might not have been the one to take that call if he hadn’t been up here — or maybe he was sent because he was with Ben. Given the age of the remains, a forensic anthropologist was needed, so Ben might have been called by the San Bernardino coroner anyway.

Mostly, though, the investigation would be Mayumi’s problem — figuring out what had happened, what had caused this crash. He knew that most of these light plane crashes were caused by inexperience, overconfidence, or other pilot error. What had been Lefebvre’s error?

The plane had landed on its belly and lay slightly askew. The right wing was buckled back, the right side of the cockpit caved in, the nose buried. The fuselage had taken a beating, but even so, it was relatively intact. Although it was dented and scraped, Frank saw no large tears or holes. There were stains where muddy water had reached the lowest portions of the wreckage.

He moved closer to the plane. Some of the covering vines had been cut away and a portion of a window cleaned. Mayumi assured him that they had both videotaped and photographed the scene before disturbing it. Frank cautiously approached the window and peered in.

He saw the body, or what remained of it, immediately. Directly in front of him, it sat at the controls. A seat belt was strapped across the headless form. One side of a bright blue nylon jacket was stained with large brownish-black patches of dried blood. Here and there, the jagged edges of broken ribs pierced the jacket, corresponding roughly to the impact from the right. The radius and ulna of one arm protruded from a sleeve; dark dried sinew still covered them. He did not see hand bones or a skull.

Once they knew remains were present, Mayumi was saying, they had called the coroner. Her voice seemed separated from what lay before him, as if she were the narrator of a documentary film.

With the help of Wilson and one of the other deputies, Frank pried the cockpit door open. A dry, musty smell greeted him. Ben stepped forward and shone a flashlight over the interior. Spiderwebs were everywhere. The material of Lefebvre’s pants had not fared as well as the jacket; mummified leg bones stuck out of a pair of boots.

“Luckily, it seems to have stayed fairly dry in here,” Ben said. “And I don’t see many signs of scavenger activity. No entry point large enough for most of them. Insects, spiders, mice… maybe a wood rat… that seems to be about it. We may want to look for a wood rat’s nest. Wish I had Bingle up here with me.”

“Bingle?” Wilson asked.

“Ben is also a cadaver dog handler,” Frank said. “Bingle is one of his dogs. He might be able to find bones carried off by other animals.”

“There has been disarticulation as the ligaments have decomposed, of course,” Ben said, absorbed in his study of the remains.

Wilson peered in, stepped back with a little shudder. “What I can’t figure out is, what tore his head off?”

“He wasn’t decapitated,” Ben said absently. “Nothing’s at the right level to act as a guillotine.” He slowly moved the flashlight beam across the floor. He paused as it lit a mandible — the horseshoe of lower teeth jutting up into space — then moved on. “There.”

A skull stared back at them. Gauzy webs filled the eye sockets, giving the appearance of pale eyelids. A long-legged brown spider, annoyed by the light, scurried out of the nasal passage.

“The skull wasn’t taken off,” Ben said. “It fell off after the neck muscles decomposed. Skulls only stay on upright skeletons on television.”

Ben kept moving the light, and they saw a dust-covered nylon bag stowed toward the back of the cabin. The spiders had been at work there, too. The bag was draped in cobwebs.

“Think anyone has been in here since the crash?” Wilson asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Frank said.

“So, you can see that we didn’t open this up before you got here, right?” Wilson asked.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, looking at him sharply.

Wilson turned red again. “I mean, you can see all the dust and everything — you can tell we didn’t go inside, right?”

“What are you getting at?” Frank asked.

“I’m just wondering — you know — about the money.”

“What money?”

“The money Lefebvre was paid for killing that witness. You know, the kid.”

2

Saturday, July 8, 4:46 P.M.

San Bernardino Mountains

Wilson’s remark led to questions, and then Frank remembered long-ago talk of the case, but not from Las Piernas. The story of a cop who had taken a bribe to kill a witness — and then supposedly disappeared — had briefly made headlines and television news in Bakersfield. But Frank had been a patrolman then, pulling long shifts in a department that was dealing with its own problems. In those days, he had thought of Las Piernas as nothing more than an extension of L.A., a place where any weird-assed thing could happen, and so he had paid little attention to the stories about Lefebvre.

No one at the scene was able — or willing — to tell him much. Mayumi didn’t have the complete NTSB file yet, but promised to send a copy to Frank as soon as she got back to her office in Gardena. Even Cliff Garrett claimed to only vaguely remember the case — which had taken place “downhill” ten years ago. “Bad news for the Las Piernas Police Department,” Cliff said, “but not our case. I had my own cases to worry about then, just as I do now.” Frank had said as much to himself when he remembered mention of the case, but he sensed that Cliff knew more and was simply dodging involvement.

Over the next few hours, Frank never heard more than a half-told tale that made little sense to him. Lefebvre, they said, had been a homicide detective in Las Piernas. He was supposedly paid a large sum (recollections varied on this point, the amounts ranging from ten thousand to two million dollars) to steal evidence and kill a witness — a teenager. He had killed the witness while the kid was in his hospital bed, supposedly under the watchful eye of the Las Piernas police. “Guess the wrong officer was watching him,” Cliff said. Lefebvre fled Las Piernas in his Cessna that night and hadn’t been heard from since. Until today, everyone thought he was drinking piña coladas on some distant beach, laughing at Las Piernas’s failure to catch him.

No large sums of money were found hidden in the wreckage of Lefebvre’s plane, and nothing that resembled stolen evidence was discovered. Carefully working their way through the wreckage — all the while taking photographs, making notes — Frank and the other investigators found little to go on. Among Lefebvre’s effects were his pilot’s logbooks, a wallet, a small notebook, a cheap ballpoint pen, a set of keys, and a badge holder with his police ID. Most of these items were in a zippered side pocket in the jacket. In an inside pocket, near where the heart had been, Frank found a business card–size piece of paper, too blackened by bloodstains to be read. He bagged it and marked it for the lab’s documents examiner.

No duffel bags full of cash. No luggage. Not even so much as a change of clothes or a toothbrush. The nylon bag held nothing but a set of rusting tools.

Mayumi confirmed that the last entry in the flight log was dated June 22, the night Lefebvre made his escape from Las Piernas ten years ago. There were no remarks of note, except that it showed that Lefebvre had filled the tanks before taking off.

“So it seems unlikely that he ran out of fuel,” she said.

“Any ideas on what caused the crash?”

She smiled. “Far too early to say.”

He looked through the wallet. It held a driver’s license, two charge cards, and forty-three dollars. There were also two credit card receipts. One was dated June 21 — the day before Lefebvre had left Las Piernas — from a restaurant called the Prop Room. The total bill was high enough to make Frank wonder if the restaurant was pricey or if Lefebvre had met with someone else the night before he disappeared.

The other receipt was dated June 22, from Las Piernas Aviation Services, for fuel for the plane.

He showed the fuel receipt to Mayumi.

“Hmm. That matches what he wrote in the log. Unless he developed a fuel leak, he had more than enough to make it over these mountains.”

Frank studied the photos on the license and the ID. Lefebvre stared back at the camera with dark eyes, his expression solemn and intense. His hair was dark and cut short. His cheekbones were high, the face slender. The nose was slightly crooked. A hard face, Frank thought. According to the driver’s license, ten years ago Lefebvre would have been forty-two. It showed his height as 6’1", his weight 170. Frank knew that weight and stature figures on licenses were notoriously incorrect — men made themselves taller, women, lighter — and that Ben would need time to measure and examine the bones to determine the dead man’s probable age and stature. He glanced between the photos and the skull, tried to match the skull with the face in the photos. He couldn’t. He handed them to Ben.

“Too bad he didn’t smile in the photos,” Ben said. “The skull has a chipped front tooth.”

“Maybe that happened when it fell off his neck and rolled across the floor.”

“No, the chip looks antemortem. Filed smooth by a dentist at one time.” He pointed to a crack on the right side of the cranium. “But this fracture is perimortem, I think — it shows no healing and was probably a result of the impact of the crash.”

With gloved hands, Frank gently turned to the last few pages of the notebook. The pages were a little moldy, but intact and legible. They were filled with neatly penned notes, apparently regarding several cases. There were phone numbers, dates, and other numbers that appeared to be house or apartment numbers. Nothing that looked like the combination to a safe with two million bucks in it, Frank thought, but you never knew. He went through the wallet more carefully, found nothing.

The air inside the plane was hot and close. Frank moved outside the wreckage, found a large, flat rock in the shade, and sat thinking while Mayumi continued examining the crash site and Ben and the coroner’s assistant finished inventorying and removing the remains. He tried using his cell phone to call Carlson, but couldn’t get a signal in the ravine.

When they were on their way back, he tried again. The call was routed to the Wheeze — Louise Oswald, division secretary. Frank suppressed a sigh of impatience when her voice came on the line. The Wheeze never had to search hard for a sense of her own importance.

She told him that the lieutenant was in a meeting, but would speak to him when he returned. “He asked me to tell you,” she said, lowering her voice, “not to discuss this case with anyone — repeat, anyone — until then.”

“In that case…” he said, and disconnected. He knew she would undoubtedly make him pay for that later, but it gave him some small satisfaction on a day that was damned short of it.

By the time he took Ben home and drove to headquarters, it was after nine that evening. Frank looked up at the building that housed the Las Piernas Police Department, sought a particular window, and found it. The light was on in Carlson’s office.

“That better be you and not the cleaning lady, you asshole,” he muttered, and pulled into the parking garage.

He first stopped by the property room to turn in the box of Lefebvre’s effects he had signed for at the scene and completed a set of chain of custody forms.

Then he went upstairs to Homicide. The Homicide Division was an open room with a dozen battered desks pushed up close to one another. Computers competed for space with aging office equipment. The walls were beige, or what had once been beige. Paint was low on the city budget priorities. A wide hallway led to interrogation rooms. Four enclosed offices stood along the wall opposite the hallway door. The lights were on in one of the offices.

Frank nodded a greeting to a couple of detectives who were talking to a crying middle-aged woman. Her face was heavily swollen on one side. He did not pause near them, but went straight to Carlson’s office. He entered without knocking, shutting the door behind him.

Carlson, startled, pushed away from his desk. His chair rolled back with the sudden movement — so far back, he was more than an arm’s length from the desk. He had to use his feet to scoot the chair back into place.

“Sit down, Frank,” he said, red-faced.

“No thanks,” Frank said quietly.

Carlson was uneasy. He had once seen Frank Harriman knock a man out cold — without ever raising his voice before throwing the punch. And there were other reasons he sometimes questioned Frank’s stability.

“Sit down, Detective Harriman — please,” Carlson said.

Frank knew that Carlson wasn’t one of those people who found it hard to say “please” — he just found it hard to mean it. Frank let him sweat it for a moment before he took a chair. “I don’t like being set up,” he said.

“You weren’t—”

“I don’t like being set up under any circumstances, but walking into that situation less informed than San Bernardino and the NTSB — hell, less informed than a reserve officer—”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry, that couldn’t be helped.”

Frank didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “There was no reason to keep me in the dark. And Ben Sheridan should have been informed—”

“Never mind Sheridan. Here…” He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a thick stack of files, and held it out. Frank didn’t move. Carlson set the stack down on the desk. “You’ll have to take them eventually. I’m assigning Lefebvre’s case to you.”

“That looks like more than one case file to me.”

“As I told you earlier today, you have the Randolph cases, too. We believe they are all related.”

Frank still didn’t move to take them. “Before today, Lefebvre’s name was nearly meaningless to me. I vaguely recalled hearing a news story about him years ago. Don’t you think it would have been better to let me know that this was not only high profile, but also that someone as notorious as Whitey Dane had a connection to the case?”

Carlson shrugged. “So the killer is a man we’ve been after for a long time. If Lefebvre hadn’t murdered Seth Randolph and stolen the evidence against Dane, you might not have remembered Dane’s name either. He would have been locked away years ago. As a matter of fact—”

“As a matter of fact, you decided to send me to that scene without breathing a word about any of this. For God’s sake, why not send someone who knew the background on the case? I know you saved a little mileage on a pool car, but—”

“I didn’t decide to send you just because you were nearest the scene!”

Frank watched as Carlson struggled to control his temper. After a moment, Carlson said, “Even if you had been in Las Piernas, you’re the one I would have sent up to the mountains precisely because you are one of the only detectives in Homicide who has been with this department less than ten years. I needed at least one person who would be able to approach that wreckage without a lot of preconceived notions about the pilot of that plane.”

“This is ridiculous. The other detectives in this department can be trusted to be professional.”

“Where Lefebvre is concerned, no. Not anyone who was around here then. Lefebvre’s name is universally despised in this department — and the sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll see why you must be the one to take the case. None of the others could have viewed the scene objectively — including Pete Baird.”

“With or without Pete, I deserved to know what I was walking into.”

Carlson shifted in his chair, making sure he had a firm grip on the desk before doing so. “Yes,” he said, “in retrospect, I concede that’s true. At the time — perhaps I allowed my own dislike of Lefebvre to influence my response to the situation.” He sighed. “To tell you the truth, I would have been happy if Lefebvre stayed missing. Now this will all be raked up again.” A sudden suspicion came to him. “You haven’t discussed this with your damned wife, have you?”

Frank leaned forward just slightly. Carlson leaned back. He kept his grip on the desk.

“I don’t think I could have possibly heard you correctly.”

Carlson looked down at his desk again. “I want to reiterate that this is not to be discussed with the press.”

“Who around here has ever leaked anything to the press?”

Carlson colored. Not so long ago, he had received a formal reprimand for discussing a sensitive investigation with the Express. He had evidently counted on the fact that Frank’s marriage to a reporter would always make him the first person the department suspected of leaking stories to the paper. Fortunately for Frank, Carlson’s efforts to divert suspicion for the leak had backfired.

Carlson cleared his throat. “I’m only saying that I dread what this department will inevitably be put through as a result of reopening old wounds. I gather you understand my concerns?”

“I’ve got a few of my own. Once everybody up there realized I didn’t know jack shit about my own case, they didn’t have much to say. What little I heard from them doesn’t make sense, and now—”

“The basics are simple. We believe Lefebvre stole evidence and killed a teenager who was a witness in a capital case. Word on the street was that he was paid handsomely to ruin the case — half a million dollars.”

“Half a million, huh? Nice to have an official figure.”

“You found it?” Carlson said eagerly.

“Only if he spent all but forty-three bucks of it gassing up the plane.”

Carlson looked ludicrously crestfallen. “What do you mean?”

“I mean either Lefebvre stashed it somewhere, had a confederate, or never had it in the first place. From what I saw today, I’d say he never had it.”

“Perhaps it was stolen from the plane—”

“Doesn’t seem likely.” Frank described the scene.

Carlson sat brooding. He began making a low, tuneless humming noise, a sound he made whenever he was inwardly debating something. He was unaware that his coworkers referred to this as “Carlson’s thinking noise.” The office joke was that it would have driven everyone crazy if he’d made it more often.

“Cliff Garrett said that Lefebvre was a department hotshot,” Frank said by way of interrupting the humming.

“He was a fine detective,” Carlson agreed. “One of the best.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was in uniform then. Not very likely I’d be fraternizing with a detective.” He shifted in his chair — undoubtedly he had suddenly recalled that Frank often socialized with uniformed officers.

Harriman was silent, studying him. Carlson had never spent much time on the street, and Frank suspected he hadn’t been very useful during the time he was in uniform. Hell, he wasn’t very useful now. “So you didn’t know him at all?”

“He was a loner,” Carlson said, shrugging. “Afterward, we realized how much he had really held himself apart from others in the department.”

“So he had enemies — even before the kid’s death?”

“Not really. He was someone we were proud of,” Carlson said. “If you want to know why, take a look at his record.” He smiled smugly. “In fact, your wife seemed to be rather fond of him.”

“Is there something you’d like to come right out and say?”

“No, not at all,” Carlson said, quickly losing the smile. “She was a crime reporter then, and naturally she wrote about him. A lot. I’m sure she was devastated when you told her he was dead.”

“I haven’t told her.”

“I suppose Louise conveyed my level of concern about the sensitive—”

“Setting aside your dire warnings about discussing the case, I haven’t had the chance to talk to Irene today. She’s up in Sacramento, covering a political story. She won’t be home until tomorrow. But you were talking about Lefebvre — at least, I think that’s who you were talking about.”

Carlson went back to making his thinking noise, then abruptly said, “You don’t believe Lefebvre ever had the money. Why not?”

“He wasn’t a stupid man, right?”

“Not at all.”

“So, being a cop, he’d know you could trace his movements if he used his credit cards, right?”

“Certainly.”

“And so this man who supposedly has a half a million in cash, who knows you can put a trace on his credit cards, buys gas for a plane on one and only pulls forty-three bucks out to cover his other expenses during his great escape?”

“But if he hid the cash in Las Piernas—”

“He’s coming back here, where his face has already been on television and all over the newspapers?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“There’s no sign that he stopped off anywhere between here and that mountainside, right?”

“Right,” Carlson said. “We checked every possible landing strip in the local area. But we don’t really know when that airplane crashed, do we?”

“Not definitely, but the logbook and other indicators say it was the night he left town. No one saw him after that?”

Carlson shook his head.

“Even if he was dumb enough not to take all of the money with him,” Frank said, “he would have carried a couple hundred, don’t you think? How long can a man hide out on forty-three bucks? What’s he planning to do, write a book called How to Lie Low on Pennies a Day?”

“You mentioned the possibility of a confederate.”

“Same argument. Why does he take off with only forty-three dollars?”

“Perhaps he anticipated we would catch up with him, thought he might be questioned, and decided that this would make him appear to be innocent.”

Frank shrugged. “Even two hundred out of this rumored half-million would have looked innocent.”

Carlson had been frowning, but now a slow smile came over his face.

“What?” said Frank, mistrusting any of Carlson’s smiles.

“Read the files. The ones for Lefebvre and the Randolphs.”

“Lieutenant, just because — listen, he could have asked for a wire transfer to a foreign bank account. I’m just saying he didn’t have it with him, that’s all. After this beginning, I don’t think — I’m requesting that you put someone else on this case.”

“Your request is denied.”

“Shouldn’t this go to IAD?”

“We have discussed this with them. For the time being, this will proceed as a homicide investigation. Unfortunately, the two members of IAD who originally investigated the case have retired — and one is deceased.”

“Natural causes?”

“Yes,” Carlson said, narrowing his gaze. He apparently decided that Frank was not being flippant and continued. “Because all the current IAD investigators were involved in the Dane case, they will be assigning someone new to IAD to handle their part of the investigation — someone like yourself, who was not with the department at the time. Until then, you are in charge of investigating Detective Lefebvre’s death. Naturally, if you discover evidence implicating him — or any other member of this department — in wrongdoing, we will make that available to IAD.”

Carlson lifted the stack of files and held them out again. “Read these. If you still want someone else to take over the case — you may talk to Captain Bredloe on Monday morning with my blessing.”

“I may talk to him on Monday morning with or without it.” Frank took the files and walked out. He noticed that the other detectives had left. He sat down at his desk and locked the files away without looking at them, knowing Carlson was watching him.

Carlson stepped out of his office, locked it, and marched over to Frank, briefcase at his side, walking with his typical stiff-assed gait. What does this guy do to relax? Frank wondered. He pictured Carlson at home, practicing drills in the living room while his CD player blasted The Complete Works of John Philip Sousa.

“I don’t want to be accused of letting you walk into another situation without fair warning,” Carlson said. “So there’s something you should know before you step into the captain’s office on Monday.”

Frank stood, forcing Carlson to look up at him. “Oh?”

“There are times, Detective Harriman, when you fail to show me the level of respect you owe a superior.”

Frank didn’t answer.

“You’ve felt safe in doing so, because the captain has always been something of a protector of yours, hasn’t he? Perhaps you should know, then, that I’ve already told him you were my choice for the Lefebvre case. He said he was in complete agreement and asked me to give you the other cases as well.”

He turned on his heel and walked out.

Frank listened to the fading sound of Carlson’s soldierly footsteps on the old linoleum.

He glanced toward Bredloe’s office, sat back down at his desk, and unlocked it.

3

Sunday, July 9, 12:03 A.M.

Las Piernas

He pulled into his driveway, feeling tired and depressed. He never liked working on cases involving the murders of children. Adding a police commissioner and a homicide detective into the mix made this set of cases even less appealing. The cases were all cold; memories would be hazy. Physical evidence was an even bigger problem.

He looked at his watch. Irene had probably already gone to bed in her hotel room in Sacramento. He wished he had called her earlier, from work. He wanted to hear her voice, to listen to her talk of ordinary things.

As he stood on the porch, he was surprised to hear the dogs scratching at the inside of the front door. He had left the two of them in the care of his next-door neighbor; Jack usually kept them at his house whenever Frank and his wife were away. He hadn’t told Jack that he would be coming back early; Jack would have expected both Frank and Irene to be gone overnight. He wearily wondered what sort of havoc the mutts might have wreaked in the house while he was gone.

But although they greeted him warmly, the two dogs — a shepherd and a Lab mix adopted from the pound — didn’t act as if they had been cooped up all day. The cat was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean he was hiding — Cody had probably staked out a place on the bed. Not so long ago, Frank would have come home to an empty house. He smiled to himself, thinking that these were the least complicated strays Irene had brought into his life.

As he made his way down the hall, he saw that a light was on in the living room. His steps slowed — there was no way in hell he had left that light on.

The dogs passed him, trotting back without a care. He relaxed a little, then followed them.

He saw the cat first — the gray giant blinked at him from the armchair.

Then he saw his wife, asleep on the couch, and felt the tension that had been with him since that afternoon ease a little. He quietly moved closer.

She slept on her side, a strand of her dark, straight hair falling over her face. She wore a short, silky, dark blue kimono — if her eyes had been open, he thought the color might have come close to matching them. The kimono fell about mid-thigh on her long, slender legs. He followed their curve and smiled to himself, seeing that this enticing ensemble was completed by a pair of everyday white cotton socks — a toe peeked out of a hole in the left one.

He moved closer still, until he was next to her. He wondered if he should call her name, so as not to startle her. He stayed silent.

She must have sensed his presence, though, because she opened her eyes and smiled drowsily up at him. “Surprise,” she said sleepily.

“Yes,” he said, gently brushing the strand of hair away. “When did you get in?”

She turned her face to his palm and kissed his hand. “About nine. Caught a late flight. I was trying to wait up for you.”

“How’d you know I’d be home tonight?”

“Ben called. I asked him if he wanted to leave a message, but he said he’d talk to you on Monday.”

“Hmm,” he said, bending to taste her mouth. She reached up to pull him closer, making the kiss longer, slower. He stroked his hand along the back of her leg, down to her ankle — and took a sock off.

She pulled away and said, “Damn!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The socks.” She was blushing. “My feet got cold. Real sexy, right?”

He was already pulling the second one off. “I’m the one with too many clothes on.”

“You’re right,” she said, reaching for his belt.

Just after dawn, he awoke with a start from a nightmare in which he was trapped in a small, vine-covered Cessna, unable to get out. Not even Lefebvre had been in such a situation, he knew, but the dream had disturbed him. He tried to fall asleep again, but his thoughts continued to turn to the cases. He watched the room lighten as he debated whether he should try to catch a little more sleep or just get up.

Irene stirred next to him. “Frank? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just a dream. Go back to sleep.”

But she turned to study his face and asked again, “What’s wrong?”

He hesitated, then said, “None of this goes to the newspaper, okay?”

She nodded.

“Do you remember a man named Lefebvre?”

Her eyes widened. “Phil Lefebvre?”

“Yes. Used to work Homicide.”

“Yes! Have they found him?”

Again he hesitated, mentally kicking himself for going about this wrong.

“He’s dead,” she said, reading his silence.

“Yes.”

He saw her look of dismay and said, “I’m sorry — I didn’t know you were close.”

“Not close, really. I don’t think anyone was close to Phil — well, I shouldn’t say that. He was just — intensely private.”

“But you liked him.”

“Yes. Better than anybody else I met in the PD in those days.” She was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I guess down deep, I hoped he was still alive. What happened to him?”

“His plane crashed in the San Bernardinos.”

“I thought they looked for it.”

“They did, but the wreckage of small planes that crash in remote areas isn’t always easy to see. I was talking to the NTSB investigator about it. She said they estimate that there are over one hundred and fifty missing small aircraft in the Sierra Nevada mountains alone.”

“To think that he’s been up there all this time…”

He felt her shudder and pulled her closer. After a moment, he asked, “Did you cover the story of his disappearance?”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “Not once he was accused — in absentia — of killing Seth Randolph.” She looked up at him. “You know about that?”

“I’m learning more. Carlson has assigned the Randolph cases to me.”

“Wow. That’s—” She mentally calculated. “Ten years ago. Why do you keep getting assigned to cold cases?”

He shrugged. “Everybody in Homicide has been handling old investigations lately. The murder rate is down.”

“I know, I know. We’ve run stories on it. Everyone’s arguing over where the credit for that should go.”

“I’m just saying that the department has more time to reinvestigate the old ones and we have more tools now — new technologies to help solve them.”

“But there are new cases — you and Pete just seem to be getting more than your fair share of the old ones.”

“You can probably guess why.”

“You’re getting them because you’ve been clearing them — you’re good at it.”

“We’ve been lucky with the DNA on a couple of them.”

“Save the humility for your speech at the department awards banquet.”

He laughed.

Her brows drew together. “You don’t get these cases because you’re good at them, right? You get them because Carlson wants you to fail.”

“If that’s true, this time he’ll get what he wants. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be working a ten-year-old case in which all the physical evidence has been stolen — and apparently ninety percent of the department has a personal ax to grind with the alleged thief.”

“Lefebvre didn’t steal it.”

“I’m not saying he did — but what makes you so sure he didn’t?”

“It wasn’t like him. Totally unlike him. Except for flying that plane, the guy had no life outside of the department.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know him that well.”

“That’s not what I meant. We were friends, and I knew things about him, but I didn’t know him. No — don’t give me that look. What I mean is, Phil was one of those guys you could never really get to know. If you followed him around all day, day after day, you might get some idea of how his mind worked, and know that he was absolutely devoted to his job, or begin to see this — this sort of quiet sense of humor he had. But you would never get a word out of him about his past, or learn if he had the hots for someone, or much of anything else about the man underneath all of that.”

He was silent, thinking over what she had said, when she added, “There were two times when he seemed really happy to me and when I actually thought, ‘He does think of me as a friend, because he’s letting me in on this.’ Once, when he took me flying.”

“Oh, Christ — you went up in that little Cessna with him?” He thought of the wreckage he had seen — of both pilot and plane — and felt his stomach clench.

She bristled at his tone, then seemed to realize the direction of his thoughts. “I know you’ve just seen the worst possible results of being in that plane, but, Frank, I swear to you, he was a terrific pilot. He flew in the military and had lots of hours flying solo in that Cessna. He was careful, and safety conscious. He wasn’t a hot dog.” She paused, then said, “I got to know Phil when I was caring for my dad — when I was first starting to realize that my dad wasn’t going to recover from the cancer. I had some really rough days with that, and on one of those, I ran into Phil. It was one of his rare days off. He took one look at me and said, ‘Meet me at the airport.’ And he took me up. It was great. He was so in love with flying, it was contagious.”

“So — do I want to know about the other time you saw him happy?”

She hit him with her pillow. “You’re as bad as Vince Adams and those other clowns in Homicide.”

“I am one of the other ‘clowns,’ remember?”

“No, you are not. Vince was always so sure that I had something going on with Phil. He made remarks. It was bullshit, but it pissed me off — you know what I think Vince’s problem is?”

“Forget about Vince. Tell me about this other time Lefebvre was happy.”

She fell silent, all the fight of the moment before draining away. “The only other time,” she said quietly, “was at the hospital. He had waited there for hours while they operated on Seth Randolph. After that, he kept waiting — the doctors weren’t sure the kid was going to pull through, but Phil never left his side. At first I thought it was Phil’s dedication to the job. You know — if Seth came around, he wanted to be there to ask questions. Anyway, I was there when the doctor told him that he thought Seth was going to live. He was so happy — I was there, Frank, and I saw his face. I saw how he looked when the doctor said that. Lefebvre didn’t want that boy to die, and he never could have murdered him. Whoever says that is full of crap.”

“Maybe something changed—”

“I was there,” she repeated. “I don’t know why Seth was so important to him, but if you had seen them together, you’d be as certain as I am that Phil Lefebvre would never have hurt him, let alone kill him.”

“Is that the position the Express took?” he asked.

“No. I was pulled off those stories. John Walters was news editor then, and he thought I was too close to Phil to be objective. It made me madder than hell, but around that same time my dad took a turn for the worse — to be honest, I was too busy with him to think of anything else.”

“When was the last time you saw Lefebvre?”

“The day he left town.” She frowned. “Was that the day his plane crashed?”

“Probably.” He watched the play of emotions on her face, then asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It will be in the reports you have. I was interviewed — some might say grilled — by the LPPD about my last conversation with him.”

He sighed with impatience.

“All right, all right. He seemed upset. But not so agitated that I thought he was about to kill the kid whose life he saved! And I just remembered something else — something I told Vince Adams about a dozen times, and he ignored me. Phil said he would meet me for lunch the next day, which shows he planned to come back right away, right?”

“Yes, but he told other people he was flying out to see Matt Arden for a few days.”

“What did Arden say?”

“He said Lefebvre had called him, but just to talk about old times and to ask how he was doing. He said Lefebvre hadn’t mentioned any plans to see him.”

She fell into a brooding silence. He let it stretch, caught up in his own thoughts. He wondered how well anyone had really known Phil Lefebvre.

“Did you know Elena Rosario?” he asked Irene.

“Who?”

“Narcotics detective who was with Lefebvre the night they found the Randolphs. She quit the department right after Lefebvre went missing.”

“No,” she said, “not really.”

He would have asked more, but the phone rang.

“Harriman,” he answered.

“Frank — good to have you back.”

“Hello, Pete. How’d you know I was home?”

“Partners have no secrets, right?”

“Who told you — Carlson?”

“That asswipe? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Then Cliff called you.”

“Cliff and I go way back, you know?”

“Terrific.”

Pete missed the sarcasm. “So he told me you and Ben found Lefebvre. I hope you pissed on his bones before you packed them up.”

Frank was silent.

“Listen,” Pete said uneasily, “no need to take that wrong. I want to help you out here. I called to invite you to breakfast. Me and some of the other guys who were around back then thought we’d bring you up to speed.”

“It’s Sunday. I didn’t get yesterday off, and I don’t want to spend Sunday working.”

“But—”

“Cold cases, Pete. They can wait.”

“Well, we’re all together here at the Galley.”

“All? Who’s with you?”

“Vince, Jake, Reed — a couple of other guys. Why don’t you come on down and join us? Then the rest of the day is yours.”

“The day’s already mine.”

“Frank, c’mon,” he said. “Let’s get this over with and behind us, okay?”

Irene was tracing her hand along his spine. He looked down at her; her hand stilled.

“I don’t know, Pete,” he said, and the hand began moving again.

“Frank, I’m asking this as a personal favor.”

Frank covered the phone, but before he could say anything, she was out of bed and putting on the blue kimono.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She looked back, shrugged, and said, “Me, too,” before walking out of the room.

He heard her turn on the shower.

“Frank?” he heard Pete say.

“I can’t be there sooner than an hour,” he said into the phone.

“Aw, for God’s sake, Frank. It’s only ten minutes from your place.”

“An hour. And next time, partner, call me first — not last.” He hung up and hurried down the hall, wondering if her temper had led her to lock the bathroom door.

But she opened it before he reached it and said, “Get a towel.”

He laughed. “What a relief — if you didn’t grab a towel for me, I guess you weren’t too sure of me.”

She smiled, slipped the kimono off, and stepped into the shower.

So he had been wrong, he thought, but couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it.

4

Sunday, July 9, 9:00 A.M.

The Galley Restaurant

They were all detectives, he realized, as he walked toward the table. A half dozen of them. They stopped talking when they saw him approach. There was a moment when, just as they looked up at him from their cups of coffee, their faces reflected how angry they were. He was surprised by the intensity of it and certain it wasn’t because he had kept them waiting. Five of them — Pete Baird, Vince Adams, Reed Collins, Ned Perry, and Jake Matsuda — worked in Homicide with him. Vince and Reed were partners, as were Ned and Jake. Although they had their disagreements here and there, Frank thought of all five of them as friends — the closest of these his own partner, Pete. During an average week, he spent more waking hours with Pete than he did with Irene.

He knew little about the sixth man — Bob Hitchcock — although he had seen his name in the case files he had read last night. Hitch was a heavyset man, with sagging jowls and small eyes. His hair was cut short, bristling gray over his round head. A few times, Frank’s team had played against Hitch’s in the amateur ice hockey league they were in, but Hitch never got much ice time. He had come over to the house once, when Frank and Irene had held a barbecue after a hockey tournament — but he hadn’t stayed long. Pete had once told Frank that Hitch used to be a good player, but he was out of shape now.

Pete broke the silence, smiling and saying, “Frank! You made it. Pull up a chair.”

Hitch smiled — a phony smile, Frank thought — and came awkwardly to his feet. He held out a hand that looked like five sausages attached to a water balloon. “You may not remember me, Frank. I’m Bob Hitchcock. Most of these guys call me Hitch.” Although his palm was damp, his grip was firm. Frank forced himself not to wipe his hand off before he sat down next to Pete.

Hitch gestured toward the table, where the remains of their breakfasts congealed unappetizingly on heavy white ceramic plates. “We waited for you like one hog waits on another,” he said, and gave a little laugh.

“You still working Narcotics?” Frank asked.

“Surprised you remember that,” Hitch said, pleased. “No, I’m in Auto Theft now. I’m close to retirement, so it’s kind of nice to just be able to spend the day taking phone calls and saying, ‘Gee, that’s too bad — yeah, here’s the police report number for your insurance.’”

A waitress came by and cleared away the dirty plates. She asked Frank if he wanted to order something. Eyeing the plates, he asked for a cup of coffee.

Another silence fell.

“You wanted to talk to me about Lefebvre?” Frank asked.

“Don’t even say that name,” Vince snarled.

Frank leaned lazily back in his chair. “Then this will take less time than I thought it would.”

Vince leaned forward, but Jake Matsuda held up a hand. “You weren’t in Las Piernas when it happened, Frank,” he said quietly.

“Which, I’m told, is exactly why I got the call. Were you in Homicide then, Jake?”

He shook his head. “I was in uniform. In fact, I spent some time guarding Seth Randolph’s room. But even if I hadn’t — we all suffered because of what Lefebvre did. The Randolph case was high profile. Seth Randolph was a young hero, as far as everyone in town was concerned. We got attached to him, too. He was a good kid—”

“And he was going to help us nail the biggest bastard in town,” Pete said.

“Yes,” Jake said, “but even if Whitey Dane hadn’t been a part of it, the public had sort of adopted Seth.”

“We all felt that way,” Ned Perry said. “The department had adopted him, too. Like Jake, I was in uniform back then. My unit was dispatched to the marina on the night Trent Randolph and his daughter were murdered. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. When Lefebvre came off of that yacht with that kid, we thought we had three dead. No one thought Seth would make it, and when it looked as if he might — well, we were all rooting for him. The kid had guts — he had fought off Dane. And he was willing to testify against him.”

“Which is something a hell of a lot of grown men weren’t willing to do,” Pete said.

“People who were going to testify against Dane seldom made it to court,” Vince said. “If they didn’t change their minds about what they saw or suddenly lose their memories, they had a way of disappearing.”

“But this time, it was a cop who took the payoff,” Pete said. “And he killed this kid.”

“How do you know he killed Seth Randolph?” Frank asked.

Pete made a sound of exasperation. “I thought you read the files.”

“You’ve had ten years to think about it. I’ve had less than twenty-four hours. Humor me.”

“He was the last person to go into Seth Randolph’s room before the kid’s body was discovered,” Vince said. “The guard reported that Lefebvre was in there for a long time.”

“The guard that had been talking to nurses all evening? The one Lefebvre had reprimanded in front of the nurses on the previous evening?”

“You did read the files,” Pete said.

Frank nodded.

“Not everything,” Vince said. “Or you’d know that Lefebvre signed out the evidence and returned the box with nothing but a watch in it.”

“What do you suppose that was about?” Frank asked.

Vince shrugged. “Who knows? The guy was the biggest fuckin’ fruitcake on the force.”

“He acted crazy?”

Vince hesitated, then said, “Naw, he was just odd, you know? A loner. Never went out for so much as a beer with anyone in the department. Never saw him with women, even though sometimes women came on to him. God knows why. Ask your wife about it.”

“Damn it, Vince!” Pete said. “See if you can rent some sense from somebody. Frank — ignore him.”

“No insult intended,” Vince said with a smile. “Besides, Frank, that was before the two of you got together. She wasn’t supposed to be a nun all those years, right? I mean, some women have a thing for—”

“Shut the fuck up, Vince,” Pete said.

“Nothing to get upset about,” Vince said. “Ugly as he was, women went for him. Remember that TV reporter who was practically stalking the guy? Even Hitch’s partner wasn’t immune to him.”

“Rosario the Lesbo?” Hitch said. “You gotta be kidding. The other guys in Narcotics used to call her ‘Twenty Below,’ because that’s how cold you felt if you tried to get next to her. But you seem to have been real interested in everybody’s sex life, Vince. Weren’t you getting any back then?”

Pete laughed. “No, he wasn’t. I remember, Vince — you were splitting up with Blond Bitch Number Three then, right?”

“Oh, man,” Hitch said, “I remember that one, too. San Onofre.”

The others laughed, even Vince. Hitch turned to Frank. “You ever see that nuclear power plant on Interstate Five?” He cupped his hands in front of his chest. “She had a pair of knockers that made those twin domes look like anthills.”

“I thought we were here to talk about Lefebvre,” Vince said, and had to put up with another round of laughter.

“So Lefebvre worked in a department where everyone hated him?” Frank asked.

“No,” Pete said. “You’re getting the wrong idea. Nobody hated him until after he killed Seth Randolph.”

“Nobody?”

“He could be a little abrupt,” Hitch said. “He pissed a few people off.”

“But we all thought he was a good cop,” Pete said.

“Good?” Ned Perry shook his head. “We thought he was great.”

“He’s right,” Reed said. “You’d have to be a priest — a very old priest — to have as many sinners confess to you as Phil did. And Phil wasn’t physical — he never so much as touched ’em. He had a brain, too.”

“He got a little too smart with that brain,” Pete said.

“I was just starting in detectives when this whole thing broke,” Reed said. “I used to really admire him. Until he took that payoff, he won the department all kinds of praise. That made it worse, really.”

There were nods of agreement from everyone but Hitch and Vince.

“Not that I don’t just live to see you guys,” Frank said, “but I was having an enjoyable Sunday morning until Pete called. Okay, so I came down here. But nothing you’ve told me is big news to me — except the part about Vince’s ex.”

Everyone but Vince laughed.

“The point,” Pete said, “is to let you know what this means to us. It’s going to be bad enough that the guy’s name is before the public again. This is going to rake up a lot of ill will. The department doesn’t need it.”

Frank eyed him skeptically. “There’s more to it than that.”

“No, there’s not. Look, Cliff said you didn’t find the payoff money, and he thought maybe you had some questions — were leaning toward trying to clear Lefebvre’s name.”

“Now we’re getting warmer.”

“So you haven’t recovered the money,” Hitch said. “That doesn’t mean he was innocent. Everything else pointed to him — the fact that he was the last one to see the kid, the fact that he was the last one to handle the evidence. Those two facts alone are enough to make it clear that he’s the killer. You don’t settle this quickly, you make life miserable for all of us. No one is going to be happy with you if you start making this out to be something more than it was. It will just give the Express an excuse to make us look bad.”

Vince, Pete, and Ned voiced their agreement at length. Jake and Reed stayed quiet.

“What if he was innocent?” Frank asked.

“He wasn’t,” Vince insisted. “Get that through your head, Harriman.”

Frank turned to Matsuda. “You feel that way, Jake?”

“I don’t think it’s at all likely that anyone other than Phil Lefebvre killed that boy, Frank. And I think Hitch is right — no good will come of bringing it all up again.”

Frank looked at Reed, who was resolutely staring into his coffee cup. “You, too, Reed?”

Reed shrugged, still not meeting his eyes.

Pete, on the other hand, returned his stare, reading him. “Aw, shit,” he said.

Frank smiled. “Thanks for your concern,” he said to the group.

“Shit,” Pete said again as Frank stood and dropped a couple of dollars on the table.

“You’re not going to—” Vince began, but fell silent when Pete grabbed his arm in warning.

“Not going to let you pressure me?” Frank said. “No, I’m not.”

“Look,” Ned Perry said, “no one wants you to compromise an investigation. We’re just asking you not to drag it out unnecessarily.”

“Believe me,” Frank said, “until this morning, I didn’t feel any particular urgency about this set of cases.”

He walked away. Behind him, he heard Pete say, “Shit.”

5

Monday, July 10, 10:00 A.M.

Las Piernas Police Department

Homicide Division

Frank looked through the file on Lefebvre until he found the phone number for Lefebvre’s parents, in Quebec. The coroner’s office had obtained dental records and identified the remains from the wreckage as those of Las Piernas Police Detective Philip Lefebvre, aka Philippe Jean-Michel Lefebvre, age forty-two. Cause of death to be determined, but preliminary findings indicated massive injuries received in the crash.

Frank hated this part of the job — notifying parents that their son was dead. That Lefebvre was an adult son who had been missing for ten years would not, he knew, make it any easier for them to hear of his death. He was further dismayed to read a note near the phone number: the Lefebvres refused to communicate in English.

He rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. He couldn’t use just anyone to translate the news of Phil Lefebvre’s death to his parents. It was hard enough to give someone that kind of news in a language you both knew. He looked for the number for Lefebvre’s sister, Yvette Nereault.

Same notation.

“Hey, Pete — we have any French speakers in the department?”

Pete shrugged and said nothing. Pete had been shrugging at him all morning. He was ready to shove Pete’s neck down into his shoulders to save him the effort for the next one. He sighed and said, “I’ve got to make a next-of-kin notification here. Lefebvre’s parents are French-Canadian.”

Pete stayed busy with some paperwork on his desk.

“Great. Very considerate of the family. Maybe someday someone will have to call your elderly mother in Rome, New York, and ask her to get one of her English-speaking neighbors to come over — so that we can tell her in Italian that we hated her son so much, we talked about pissing on his bones.”

Pete flushed red, but still said nothing.

Frank picked up the file and locked his desk, deciding he’d try calling Lefebvre’s sister anyway, and make the next-of-kin call from a more private phone. As he was leaving, Reed Collins called out, “Frank.”

It was the first time anyone had spoken to him all day. The others frowned at Collins for breaking the silence.

Reed ignored them. “Try Mike Tran in Gang Prevention.”

“Thanks,” Frank said.

“Don’t thank me yet. For all I know, Vietnamese French and Canadian French may not be anything alike.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

He suffered another setback when he learned that Tran was on vacation. He decided to go outside the department and called Guy St. Germain — a friend who had grown up in Montreal. Guy said he’d be glad to help and invited Frank to come to his downtown office.

A former pro hockey player, Guy had then followed a family tradition and gone to work in banking. Frank had met him through Irene — he dated Irene’s best friend, so the couples went out together fairly often. And Guy had been aiding Frank’s efforts to learn to play ice hockey — a game he’d been unaware of while growing up in Bakersfield.

“What a sad business you are in,” Guy said as Frank settled into a soft leather chair in the banker’s office.

“Notifying the families is one of the worst parts of the job,” Frank agreed.

Guy shut the office door and took a seat behind a large desk. “I’ll use the speakerphone — even though you may not understand the language, it’s better if you hear the tone of the other’s voice, I think.” He dialed the number. Three tones sounded, and even before the English explanation was spoken, Frank knew what they meant.

“Disconnected. Hell, I could have saved you the trouble.”

“You’ve had all the trouble,” Guy said. He tried the sister’s number.

A man answered. Frank heard Guy ask for Yvette Nereault. A rapid exchange occurred in which he thought he heard the word “California.” Then he heard Guy say something about the Las Piernas Police Department.

“The Las Piernas police?” he heard the man ask in English.

“Oui—” Guy answered, but before he could say more, the man hung up.

“What happened?” Frank asked.

“I asked for Yvette Nereault and was told that she was not at home, but the man who answered was her husband. I asked when she would be back and he said not for a week, that she was in California. I said that I was calling on behalf of a friend who was with the Las Piernas Police Department, who needed urgently to contact her. You heard what happened after that.”

Frank sighed. “This family is understandably upset with the department.”

“Why?”

“Strictly between us?”

“Of course.”

Frank gave him a brief summary of the case.

“Phew!” Guy said. “So they must believe in his innocence.”

“I’m not so sure their faith is misplaced. And the notes on the case indicate that persistent inquiries were made of the family during the first year or so after Lefebvre disappeared — some members of the department thought Lefebvre would hide out in Canada.”

“So they feel harassed and have no love of the Las Piernas police.”

“Right. But I need to do my best to tell them that we’ve found him. Are you willing to try again?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we can convince him to get in touch with his wife and ask her to call us — to let it be her decision.”

Guy dialed the number again. He spoke very rapidly when Nereault answered, and Nereault allowed him to go on at some length. Frank heard him mention Montreal and then the Buffalo Sabres and, from Nereault’s disbelieving and then excited tone, realized that Guy was gaining ground. He also realized that however excellent Detective Tran’s French might be, unless he had played pro hockey, he wouldn’t have made such a hit with Nereault. Eventually, Frank heard Guy mention “Detective Harriman” and then Philippe Lefebvre.

“So you didn’t work for the department when my brother-in-law disappeared?” Nereault said in perfect English.

“No. I was working in another city then.”

“Philippe is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Frank answered.

There was a long silence.

“Yvette knew it. She knew it then. Her parents — that was another matter.”

“Can you tell me how to reach them?”

“Do you know a spiritualist?” Nereault said. “Sorry — that was in poor taste. They have been dead for eight years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I can’t say that I miss them. And even Yvette has come to see that they were not — well, that does not matter. Whatever one thinks of them, it is a shame that they died thinking their son was a crooked cop. But to tell the truth, for many years, they had thought worse of him than that. Philippe had been dead to them for a long time, you know.”

“No, I didn’t—”

“And now you tell me he is really dead. Who killed him?”

“His plane crashed in the mountains.”

“Who killed him?” Nereault asked again.

“I’m trying to learn the truth about what happened to him,” Frank said. “If someone killed him, I’ll do my best to find out who it was.”

“I’ll tell you who it was,” Nereault said. “It was one of you. One of your Las Piernas Police Department fellows, that’s who. You should watch your back, Detective Harriman, especially if you are going around saying that Philippe might have been innocent.”

He spoke in French to Guy for a while, then said, “You may be surprised to learn that my wife is not far from you at the moment. She is in Las Piernas.”

“What brings her here?”

He hesitated, then said, “She would not want me to discuss her business with you.”

Frank waited.

“Let’s say she is visiting a friend. A good reason to be there, no? A woman named Marie. You can ask for Marie at a place near the airport. A little restaurant called the Prop Room.”

“The Prop Room?” Frank asked, remembering the receipt among Lefebvre’s effects. He knew of the place and had seen it mentioned in the files on Lefebvre, but he had never been there himself.

“Yes,” Nereault was saying. “And if she acts upset, you have to tell her you threatened me with torture before I would say a word. And you better bring your hockey defenseman friend with you. She likes speaking this language even less than I do.”

“Want to have an early lunch near the airport?” Frank asked Guy when Nereault had hung up.

“Actually, I’m very curious about this place. A friend tells me it’s the only place in town where one can find genuine French-Canadian cuisine.”

During the drive to the restaurant, Frank said, “After he spoke to me in English, he spoke to you in French again.”

“He asked if I thought you were an honest man. I told him yes. He said that Las Piernas is not healthy for honest policemen, and that if I am really your friend, I would encourage you to go into another line of work, so that you could live to see your children.”

“Very dramatic, but not an accurate picture of the Las Piernas Police Department.”

“You’re right, of course. But perhaps from his perspective—”

“Yes, I understand that. I can’t blame him for being down on the department. But saying Lefebvre was framed is one thing — saying he was murdered is another.”

“Yes, it is something else entirely,” Guy said, and seemed lost in thought.

A large woman stood near the door, clutching a handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes as they approached, then said, “You are from the police?”

“I am, yes,” Frank said, and started to pull out his badge. But she had already turned her back on them and motioned to them to follow her through the restaurant. Although it was just after eleven, the place was already starting to fill up. She seated them at a relatively quiet booth near the back. “Yvette said to ask you to have your lunch. She will sit with you a little later.”

Guy ordered a hearty stew and ate it with gusto. Frank ordered a sandwich, but as he looked around at the aircraft paraphernalia decorating the walls, he thought of the wreckage in the mountains, of Lefebvre spending one of his last evenings here, and lost his appetite.

“I would think,” Guy said, observing this, “that by now a dead man wouldn’t stop you from eating.”

“Most don’t,” Frank admitted.

“But this one is different?”

Frank traced his right thumb over the knuckles of his left hand. “Yes, I suppose so. Every now and then a case bothers me more than others. Maybe this one bothers me because Lefebvre was in the same line of work.”

His pager went off. He saw that it was Ben Sheridan’s number. He excused himself from the table and went outside to return the call.

“My search group is going up to the mountains again next weekend,” Ben said. “We’re going to take the dogs to the crash site.”

“Didn’t the coroner’s office call you? The identification is in. They got it from the dental.”

“I know, I was there. I spent the morning going over the remains with the coroner. The trauma from the crash caused Lefebvre’s death, but the NTSB will have to tell you what caused the crash.”

“So why are you going up there?”

“Two reasons. First, it’s a good training opportunity for the dogs. And the other — a hunch. I suspect scavengers carried off some of the smaller bones and anything else that was small and loose and of interest to them. And almost anything that can be carried off is of interest to a wood rat. So if there’s a wood rat’s nest nearby, who knows what we might find in it? Maybe there will be a key to a safe-deposit box built into it.”

Frank smiled to himself, imagining Carlson’s face if he told him Lefebvre’s accomplice was a wood rat. “Call me if you find anything, but as you know, I have my doubts about this payoff story. It may be nothing more than a rumor.” He was about to hang up, when he thought of the chilly atmosphere in the squad room and said, “You don’t have anybody from LPPD in your group, do you?”

“No, not at the moment. Why?”

“Do me a favor. If anyone asks — especially Cliff Garrett — you’re just looking for bones, okay? I’d rather not start a treasure hunt up there.”

“Sure. I’m with you — no need to have dozens of people digging up the wilderness.”

When he walked back into the restaurant, a woman was sitting in his place across from Guy. Yvette Lefebvre Nereault was tall and slender, and looked to be in her late forties. Although her features were nowhere near as plain as her late brother’s, Frank could see the family resemblance. Especially in her dark, intense eyes, which were, at the moment, red-rimmed and puffy from crying. Still, she regarded him steadily as he approached, and he began to wonder if Lefebvre had looked at suspects in that same way. If so, it was not difficult to see why Phil Lefebvre had had success in getting confessions.

Guy introduced them to each other, and when she didn’t budge, scooted over so that Frank could share his side of the booth.

“So my husband the bag of wind told you exactly where to find me, eh?”

“I appreciated his help.”

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “I’m sure you did.”

“Did he tell you why I was trying to reach you?”

She looked away for a moment, her lower lip trembling. She drew a steadying breath. “He said you found my brother.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, perhaps the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and every other law enforcement group between here and Hong Kong can sleep better tonight. Their enemy is dead after all.”

Frank said nothing. She stared hard at him, then said, “So, is it true? My husband said you believe in Philippe’s innocence.”

“I told him I am not sure of his guilt.”

“Not quite the same thing, but at least you are honest with me about it.”

She spoke to Guy in French for a moment, then said to Frank, “He tells me your wife knew my brother. What is her name?”

“Irene Kelly.”

“Irene Kelly,” she repeated slowly. A small smile of private amusement briefly crossed her face. “I know this name. In fact, at one time…” Her voice trailed off, and the look of amusement was gone. “It’s nothing.”

“Did he mention her to you?”

But Yvette’s attention strayed to the large woman who had met them at the door. The woman walked up to the table, and Yvette introduced her as an old friend, Marie, and indicated that she should sit down beside her. “Ten years ago Marie was a waitress here. Today she owns this place.”

“The food was excellent,” Guy said. “I haven’t eaten so well since I was last in Montreal.” Seeing her look between Frank and his nearly untouched sandwich, he said something quickly in French. It caused both Marie and Yvette to look at Frank with expressions of disbelief.

“C’est vrai,” Guy said.

“What did you tell them?” Frank asked warily.

“That my brother’s ghost troubles you and has taken your appetite,” Yvette said.

Frank felt his headache returning.

“Holy God, it’s so!” Marie said, turning white. “This table — this is the very one where he sat with her, that last night.”

“With her?” Frank asked even as Yvette shot her friend a quelling look. “Who was here with him?”

Marie said nothing.

“Who?” he asked again.

Marie crossed her arms. She looked away.

“If he didn’t kill Seth Randolph,” Frank said, “let me help you clear his name. We already know he ate here the night before he died. I read the file — the owner of the restaurant was questioned, and so were the staff. Everyone said that Lefebvre ate here often, and was probably here that night, but no one could recall anything remarkable about it.”

Marie glanced at Yvette, then said, “I was mistaken. He was here alone.”

“If you know something—”

“I don’t.”

“All right — perhaps he was here earlier in the week with someone else,” Frank said, not believing for a moment that Lefebvre had dined alone on that last night. “What did this woman look like?”

“There is no time for this,” Yvette interrupted. “I am only here a few more days. Will I be allowed to arrange for a funeral for my brother? Or will you make me wait another decade to bury him?”

Frank gave her the information she would need to contact the coroner. “If you would like me to take you there—”

“No… no, thank you,” she said.

“Where can I reach you while you are here?”

“Marie can always reach me.”

He waited. She returned his stare, then slowly she began to smile.

“You know, Philippe used to be the only one who could get me to say what I did not want to say to him.” She hesitated. “Do you have a good memory?”

He nodded.

“If I give you a phone number—”

“Yvette!” Marie warned.

“If I give you a phone number, you must promise not to write it down. Not anywhere. I would not want the people I am staying with to be bothered — or worse — by the Las Piernas Police Department.”

“All right.”

She gave him a local number.

He gave her his card. “My pager number is on there. Please let me know if I can be of help. And please let me know when and where the services will be held.”

“So that he can be buried with full police honors?” she asked bitterly. “I should take him back to Quebec. He never should have left.”

“Why did he live here, so far away from the rest of the family?” Frank asked.

She hesitated, then said, “He never got along well with my father. He left home when he was eighteen and went to college in the U.S. He was born here, you know. A U.S. citizen. Whenever he was angry at Philippe, my father used to call him ‘L’Américain.’”

“Yvette and Bernard were born in Quebec,” Marie said proudly.

“Bernard?” Frank asked.

“My younger brother,” Yvette replied. Turning to Marie, she said something in rapid French, speaking angrily and in a low voice.

Marie blushed. “Excuse me,” she said, and stood up.

“Marie! Pardon…” Yvette called to her, but the other woman walked away.

Frank glanced at Guy, who gave a small shrug.

“I didn’t know you had another brother,” Frank said to Yvette. “If you’ll let me know how to reach him—”

“Bernard died a long time ago,” she said softly. “A hunting accident.”

Frank waited, and silently willed Guy to do the same.

“Philippe came home from college for Christmas that year,” she said, reminiscing. “And Bernard — Bernard had missed him and never let him have a moment’s peace. Bernard and I were both excited — we had not seen Philippe for two years. When Bernard begged to be allowed to join Philippe and a few of his friends on a hunting trip, my father said no, but Philippe took him along anyway.” She shook her head. “It was nothing new for Philippe to defy my father. And Bernard had gone hunting with Philippe many times before. But this time — the others said that one of the laces of Bernard’s boot became loose. That is how I lost my younger brother, you see? Because of a bootlace. Bernard leaned his rifle against a fallen log, then placed his boot on the log to retie the lace. Only — the log moved a little. The gun fell and went off, and he was killed. Philippe did everything he could to save him, but there was not the slightest chance he could have done so.”

“How old was Bernard?” Guy asked.

“Sixteen.”

“The same age as Seth Randolph,” Frank said.

She looked sharply at him. “So… you see it, too — penance, non? A way to redeem himself.” But in the next moment she smiled cynically. “If the police are right, what a Judas my brother must have been!”

6

Monday, July 10, 12:30 P.M.

Aboard the Cygnet II

Las Piernas Marina South

Whitey Dane sensed the presence of his chief assistant and lowered the newspaper. The other man had not cleared his throat or cast the slightest shadow over the page Dane had been reading. After twelve years in his service, Myles would never have been guilty of such a disturbance of his boss’s peace. At twenty-eight years of age, Myles’s manners were far more refined than those of the teenager who had indentured himself to Dane those dozen years ago.

“Everything to your satisfaction, Mr. Dane?” he asked.

“Yes, Myles, thank you. You may take the rest away.”

Built like a linebacker, Myles nevertheless moved gracefully and silently as he removed the fine bone-china plate and crystal wineglass. The tall, dark-haired man was dressed entirely in white. All the assistants who cared for Mr. Dane when he was on his yacht wore white. Their sailing clothes were spotless.

Myles nodded at another assistant — a younger man, but also of hefty build. The young man quickly and thoroughly rid the linen tablecloth of any crumbs. Myles glanced around the cabin to make sure his master — for he thought of Mr. Dane as his master — did not want for anything that might be necessary for his comfort, then left.

When he was sixteen, Myles had eluded Mr. Dane’s security guards and approached a surprised and not especially pleased Mr. Dane. Although Dane, not quite as slow as his guards, was training a gun on him by then, Myles asked for his help. Mr. Dane listened and soon relieved Myles of a major burden — his drunken, abusive father — and made it possible for Myles’s mother and two younger brothers to leave the rathole they were living in. Myles moved into Dane’s mansion.

Dane had simply used Myles as muscle at first, which Myles was pleased to provide. But one evening, after he had given a year of loyal service to his eccentric employer, Dane had called the brawny street kid into his library, where he sat before a warm fire, reading a book that Myles would later realize contained a play by George Bernard Shaw. Mr. Dane had looked up from his book and stared at Myles. An elderly member of the staff had once told Myles that Mr. Dane could see more with one eye than anyone else could see with two. Myles hadn’t understood that when the old man said it, but he did when Dane studied him that evening. Mr. Dane said that he had decided to play Pygmalion. At that point, Myles had had no idea what Mr. Dane meant. That was before he acquired what Mr. Dane referred to as “polish.” Myles had also acquired a measure of pride in himself, and a devotion to Dane no dog could have matched.

That afternoon Myles did not betray his concern over Mr. Dane’s lack of appetite, although he knew Mr. Dane’s chef would be nearly inconsolable. Myles’s years in service to Mr. Dane had taught him to read the most subtle indicators of his master’s moods, and Mr. Dane’s almost untouched luncheon was a sign far from subtle. He knew the reason for Mr. Dane’s pensiveness, of course.

Myles handed the plate and glass to an underling. He took time to wash his hands, carefully drying them and checking his manicure before returning to his master’s side.

Mr. Dane had not returned to reading his paper. He was standing now, looking toward the open sea. Without averting his gaze, he made a little sign to Myles, who in turn signaled the others to leave. This was speedily accomplished, but it was some time before Mr. Dane spoke to him.

“Myles — you have had an opportunity to read the Express today?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dane reached into his vest pocket and removed his Hamilton watch. He opened it, wound it carefully, and replaced it before saying, “Then you know which article most interested me?”

“Yes, sir. The one about the wreckage of a plane.”

“Oh, not just a plane.”

“No, sir.”

“‘Identity of the pilot withheld pending notification of the next of kin,’” Dane quoted.

“They’ve found him, sir.”

“Presumably. His plane, anyway.”

“Shall I check to see if progress has been made on the identification, Mr. Dane?”

“Later, perhaps.”

Myles waited. He knew not to rush Mr. Dane.

“Tell me, Myles — do you anticipate any problems?”

“Difficult to say, sir.”

“That is not the answer I wished to hear.”

“Which is what makes it difficult to say, sir.”

Dane smiled. “Why, Myles! Unexpected wit.”

“I apologize if I seemed… impertinent, sir.”

Dane waved this away. “What is your evaluation of the situation?”

“That we need to monitor events, sir. Until now, we worried that he might be able to bring some pressure to bear. We have probably long been out of danger. Ten years—”

“There is no statute of limitations on murder,” Dane said testily.

“No, sir. But as we did then, we may rely on certain individuals who will have access to any…”

“‘Recovered evidence’?” Dane sneered.

“To any object or obstacle we may wish to have removed.”

“Are we as sure of our situation now as we were then?”

“More certain than previously, sir.”

Dane raised an eyebrow.

“Much more certain,” Myles said.

Dane brooded for a time. “I don’t share your level of confidence, I’m afraid. Too many of our acquaintances have been convicted of crimes I’m not so sure they committed. Not that they were innocents, mind you — and admittedly their operations were less subtle and clever than ours — but our failure to discover how they were trapped disturbs me greatly.”

Myles remained silent.

“You do realize, Myles, that I would feel so much more at ease if the dismissal of charges ten years ago had come through our efforts and not those of some unknown?”

“Yes, sir.”

Eventually, Dane sighed. “I don’t think I’ll sail today after all,” he said. “Being in this marina makes me think of that bastard Trent Randolph. What a damned nuisance that man’s death turned out to be!”

“Yes, sir,” Myles said. “May I do anything more for you before asking for your car?”

“No, thank you, Myles.”

Mr. Dane was unhappy. Myles vowed to be extra vigilant in matters connected to the discovery of Lefebvre’s plane.

He would do just about anything to receive one of Mr. Dane’s smiles.

7

Monday, July 10, 12:30 P.M.

Las Piernas Police Department

Homicide Division

Frank told Carlson that the next-of-kin notification had been made and watched the other man hurry over to the Wheeze with ready-made press releases. As he returned to his desk, he noticed that most of the other desks were empty. Pete and Vince were still in, but neither acknowledged his presence.

Their silence no longer bothered him. In his present mood, he welcomed it. He reread the file on Lefebvre and the reports taken on the night of the attack on the Amanda. He focused on Elena Rosario’s report, which told of Lefebvre attacking a door with an ax in order to rescue Seth Randolph, the reports of Lefebvre’s movements on those last two days of his life, the autopsy report on Seth Randolph.

Each reading raised more and more questions in his mind. Lefebvre’s family members could have easily distanced themselves from him when the accusations were made, but they had been fiercely loyal. Even Lefebvre’s parents were uncooperative with the Las Piernas police when he disappeared.

He looked at Lefebvre’s photo, wishing he had the power to read the man’s character from it. There was so little to go on. That, he realized, said something on Lefebvre’s behalf — if he had been a bad cop, where were the signs of it?

Where were the tales from anywhere in his past to indicate that he would be inclined to take a bribe? To arrange the killing of such a key witness, would Dane dare to approach someone he had never dealt with before? Nothing in the Internal Affairs investigation indicated that Lefebvre would have been ready to cross the line — no reprimands, no signs of dissatisfaction with his job, none of his partners from his days in uniform saying they suspected him of being on the take. Instead, it seemed the worst accusation anyone could make was that he was a loner.

But was he? He had been friendly to Irene. And despite Marie’s denials, Frank was certain that Lefebvre had met a woman at the restaurant on the evening before he died.

Frank focused on the events of that day — June 21. Several witnesses said that at the press conference, Seth suddenly seemed upset. No one knew why. The press conference ended, and the room was cleared — but Lefebvre stayed behind. That night Lefebvre the loner dined with a woman at the Prop Room. A date or a business connection? Was the woman an emissary from Whitey Dane? Did she hire Lefebvre to kill Seth that night?

After thinking it over, Frank discarded that idea. Lefebvre would not hold such a meeting in a public place, let alone in one where he was so well known. He had paid for the meal with a credit card — knowing such transactions could be traced.

There was some connection between the woman and Yvette. At lunch today, Yvette was the one who had prevented Marie from naming the woman — Yvette had protected the woman’s identity. But the only woman whose name had been mentioned in connection with Lefebvre was… Irene.

Had Irene been afraid to reveal just how close she had been to Lefebvre?

He thought of Yvette’s recognition of Irene’s name, that look of amusement.

He dialed Irene’s work number. The line rang once, twice, three times, then went to her voice mail. He hesitated, suddenly aware that he was about to ask her if she had lied to him. He hung up.

He sat for a long moment with his hand on the receiver. Maybe he’d ask to be taken off the case after all.

He glanced down at the photo of Lefebvre, then looked around the office. Vince was staring at him. Some of the others had returned, but they ignored him. If he bailed on this case, would any of these men take the time to find out what had really happened to the Randolphs and Lefebvre?

He turned back to Lefebvre’s record.

Money was widely assumed to have motivated Lefebvre to murder Seth. But instead of the multiple reports of a payoff that Frank had expected, the files showed only one anonymous tip. Reed had taken the call and noted that the voice was mechanically disguised. Anyone with an ax to grind could have made that call. He began to see why the numbers he had heard up in the mountains were so varied — the rumors about the payoff amount had probably originated in-house. He had seen this sort of thing many times before, squad-room know-it-alls making sly remarks to one another, innuendos that soon were believed to be fact. This case had all the ingredients needed to excite the gossips — a fallen department star, envied for his success, supposedly turned into a hired killer for Whitey Dane — rumors must have been flying.

But Frank was more and more convinced that there had been no payoff. Nothing in Lefebvre’s financial records indicated money trouble or even big spending habits. He was at top pay for a detective. As in his military days, he saved more than he spent. He owned a small condo, which he had bought for a song. His only other big expenditure had been the purchase of the Cessna, and Internal Affairs documents showed that Lefebvre had saved over years to buy it and had chosen it carefully. The man had been conservative with his money, lived simply, and was not burdened by debt.

Lefebvre was not at all the typical target for bribery or a hired hit. A large enough sum might tempt any man, but given what he had learned about Lefebvre, it was hard for Frank to imagine that Lefebvre would have been the easiest person for Dane to approach. Why not bribe one of the lower-paid guards? Or send in a professional killer dressed as a hospital staff person?

He was struck by the degree to which the investigation had always focused on Lefebvre; apparently, no other suspect had been considered. He could easily see how this had happened, but still thought the investigators guilty of poor detective work.

His phone began ringing with calls from reporters. Someone must have tipped them off about who was handling the investigation. He gave a polite but standard “no comment on open cases” to all of them and referred them to the department’s public information officer. After the sixth call, he picked up the files and moved to the break room. Once his voice mail was full, the calls would transfer to the Wheeze’s desk.

He poured a cup of coffee and began looking through the coroner’s and lab reports. The physical evidence in the Seth Randolph case was of little use; the autopsy had not provided any surprises. The boy had been held down and suffocated with a pillow, and judging from the direction of the pressure, it was likely that the killer had been right-handed. Seth’s hands had been too injured from the previous attack to allow the boy to defend himself — no skin from the attacker had been found beneath the boy’s fingernails.

Trace and fingerprint evidence were inconclusive. Many people had been in and out of the hospital room during the previous twenty-four hours, including Lefebvre.

Frank also noted that Seth’s computer files had been erased. He would have to ask Henry Freeman, the department’s computer expert, if there was any chance that the files could be recovered. He knew that sometimes this could be done, that the erased files might actually still “reside” on the computer’s hard drive, but he wasn’t sure what was involved in locating and restoring them.

He finished his coffee and went back to his desk. As he sat down, Frank glanced at Vince Adams, who was now involved in completing paperwork. At the time of Seth Randolph’s murder, Vince would have been paying alimony for an ex-wife and child support for four kids. Frank recalled what Pete had said at breakfast — in addition to the payments to his first wife, Vince was beginning divorce proceedings with his third wife. Attorney fees and court costs, setting up a separate household — and the costs from the two previous marriages already on his back. He would have had all those expenses, and at a lower salary grade than the one he had now. Were there others in the department who might have found Whitey Dane’s offer too tempting to refuse?

He became aware of some new tension in the room and followed the gaze of the other detectives. The Wheeze was coming toward his desk with a skirt-stretching stride, and he found himself thinking that she could teach Carlson how to march. Maybe the two of them could form a private drill team.

Some of his amusement must have shown on his face, because she raised her brows. They had been recently re-dyed, he noticed, a process she went through every few weeks. Now, as always on the first day or two after she had them done, her brows were alarmingly dark — a cue for Pete to stalk behind her, doing Groucho imitations behind her back.

The Wheeze was a tall, brittle woman in her mid-fifties, slender and conservatively dressed. She wore her (also re-dyed) ash-blond hair pulled back into a chignon. He supposed that if her mouth had been a little less wide, her eyes a little less hard, she might have been a handsome woman. Irene had met her once at an office party and said, “When none of you are watching, she goes into Bredloe’s office, tries on his hat, and sits in his chair.”

Looking up at her now, Frank thought she probably strapped on the captain’s gun while she was at it.

She was carrying a small stack of pink telephone message notes by the fingertips of both hands, as if she were parading a consecrated host through the squad room. She snapped them down on his desk without saying a word, turned on her heel, and headed back toward the captain’s office.

“Walks on water,” Pete muttered.

“Easy for her,” Frank said. “It freezes under her feet.”

Pete gave a muffled snort of laughter and grinned at him — then looked up to see Vince scowling at them. Pete said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” then stood up and walked out of the room.

Frank sorted through the slips. Most were calls from reporters — one television reporter, Polly Logan from Channel 6, had called eleven times. Frank knew the obnoxious woman and smiled to himself when he thought of the Wheeze doing battle with Logan. The smile faded when he came across a message from Yvette Nereault. She had called to say that Lefebvre’s funeral would be held on Wednesday morning.

He stood up and walked toward Bredloe’s office. As he approached, he could hear the murmur of voices through the captain’s half-open door.

“He can’t see you right now, Detective Harriman,” the Wheeze said.

“I’ll wait, then,” Frank said.

She started to object, but Bredloe’s deep voice called out, “Frank? Come in — you should see this.”

Frank entered the office and shut the door behind him to keep the Wheeze from eavesdropping. He discovered the captain was alone — the low voices were coming from a small television.

An aerial shot of the mountainside where the wreckage had been found was on the screen. There was little to be seen — it was basically a shot of the trees above the ravine. As the reporter’s helicopter hovered, he spoke of how difficult it would be for searchers to spot the Cessna.

The scene suddenly changed to a hospital room, and Frank was startled to realize that he was seeing Seth Randolph and Philip Lefebvre on one of the last days of their lives. The sound had been cut out, so he could not hear what Lefebvre was saying to someone else in the room. He was hovering near Seth, who looked pale and frightened. Over the brief shot, a news anchor’s voice said, “When asked if any evidence in connection with the murder of Seth Randolph was recovered at the scene of the crash, the Las Piernas Police Department refused to comment.”

“They’ve shown that same ten-second clip a dozen times,” Bredloe said, turning the set off. “Must be the only one they saved.”

He walked slowly toward the windows along one wall of the room. He was a tall man in his late fifties, about six foot eight, and built like a bull. Unlike Carlson, Bredloe had worked patrol in the toughest parts of the city before he made detective. While there had been times when Frank disagreed with Bredloe’s decisions, he had always respected him, not just because of his experience, but because he believed that Bredloe did all he could to make the department the best it could be.

After a moment of silently staring out over the city, he seemed to remember that Frank was in the office. “Have a seat,” he said, and returned to his own chair. “Lieutenant Carlson tells me you want to be taken off the Lefebvre case. If that’s true…?”

Frank hesitated briefly, thinking of Irene, then said, “No, sir.”

“No?”

“If you had asked me on Saturday night, when I spoke to Lieutenant Carlson, I would have told you I didn’t want it. But I’ve changed my mind.”

“Why?”

Because too many cops wanted me to join them for breakfast the next day, he thought. To Bredloe, he said, “I’m not sure you’d like my answer.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Yes — I apologize.”

Bredloe waited.

“Because of the possibility that Lefebvre looked guilty but wasn’t.”

Bredloe seemed ready to object, but apparently thought better of it. He stood and began to pace near the windows. He took three or four turns before he said, “You won’t find a lot of support for that theory in this department.”

“Believe me, sir, I know.”

With a small smile, Bredloe nodded toward the squad room. “It has been a quiet day out there.”

“I don’t imagine that was true any time I stepped out of the room.”

The smile broadened. “No, it did get a little noisier then.”

Frank said nothing.

“I have no doubt you can cope with a little friction. After all, you’ve dealt with that sort of heat before now. Selfishly, I depended on your ability to do so when it was decided that you should be the one to handle this investigation. That wasn’t the only consideration, or even the first consideration, but I won’t deny it was a factor.”

Frank shrugged. “Thanks for the faith, but popularity contests aside, I may not be able to learn much. Ten years—”

“I don’t expect miracles.”

Frank was silent.

“If you had already decided to stay with the case,” Bredloe asked, “what brought you into my office?”

“Lefebvre’s funeral arrangements.”

Bredloe frowned, and Frank suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake in bringing Lefebvre’s funeral to the captain’s attention; perhaps the captain, like the others in the department, wanted only to distance himself from the pariah — dead or alive. Deciding it was too late to turn back now, Frank recited the information on the note.

When he finished, Bredloe turned back to the windows, staring out with an unseeing look. “Is the family asking for—?”

“No. Not a thing. They — they’re quite bitter toward the department, sir.”

“Yes, I remember how difficult they were. Refusing to speak English, even though they obviously understood it. They clearly hated us. And yet you are invited to attend Lefebvre’s funeral.”

“I asked to be invited,” Frank said.

“Still—”

“I’m sure they expect me to give the information to the rest of the department, so that any of his friends who want to attend—”

“He had no friends in this department,” Bredloe said calmly.

“So I’ve been told. But I don’t want to assume anything.”

“No, of course not. Ask Louise to send out a memo. I’ll have Public Relations prepare a press release. Thank you for keeping me informed.”

It was said in a tone of dismissal. Frank stood to leave. He had his hand on the doorknob when Bredloe said, “Matt Arden, perhaps.”

Frank turned back to him. “Matt Arden?”

“Friends in the department. Matt Arden was one. On the other hand, I always thought Matt lied to us.”

“About what, sir?”

Bredloe looked toward him. “About Lefebvre’s plans to visit him.”

“I’m fairly sure he did lie, sir.”

Bredloe seemed startled by this response. “What makes you say so?”

“Lefebvre had no reason to tell you he was on his way to see Arden if he intended to disappear.”

“It gave him an excuse to be out of town.”

“He could have told you he was going somewhere else, to see someone unknown to the department. Made up a name, a place. Instead, he told you that he would be with someone you knew. Someone you could easily contact. Why didn’t he just disappear? Why not leave you waiting for him to return to his condo or make you search for his car? Instead, he tells you he’s flying his own plane — and he does take off in it. If you were planning to kill a witness in a capital case, would you act that way?”

“No,” Bredloe said. “But—”

“Would you make sure the guard saw you go into Seth Randolph’s room just before you killed the boy?”

Bredloe shook his head, then said, “But Lefebvre made sure no one saw him leave.”

“What if the boy was already dead when he went in?”

“Then why not tell someone?” Bredloe said angrily. “Why not summon help immediately? Why flee?”

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted. “This gets into pure guesswork. But maybe — maybe he felt he needed time or thought he was being framed.”

“Framed!” Bredloe shouted. “By someone in this department?”

“All right, all right,” Frank said, making calming motions. “Let’s back up a few steps. Arden lied to you. Why?”

The captain fell silent.

“There were three of you who heard Lefebvre say that he was going to visit Arden, right?”

“I don’t recall,” Bredloe said.

“According to the file, you, Lieutenant Willis, and Pete Baird were in the room when he called in, and you heard him say he was going to spend time with Arden.”

“Yes — now I remember. On the speakerphone in Willis’s office.”

“Right. Anyone else in the room with you?”

Bredloe frowned in concentration. “I don’t think so. Why?” he asked warily.

“I’m just wondering who or what scared Arden into lying.”

“Scared Arden? Are you implying—”

Frank held his hands up. “I’m implying nothing, sir. I’m just saying that Arden, who had spent years in this department and probably knew Lefebvre better than any of you, was extremely uncooperative when it came to helping you find Lefebvre.” A sudden thought struck Frank. “When you said Matt Arden lied, you meant — you thought he knew where Lefebvre was — that he was helping to hide him.”

“Yes,” Bredloe said.

“You thought a man with Arden’s reputation was hiding a man who had murdered a witness?” Frank asked incredulously.

“We could understand how that might have happened! Lefebvre was his protégé, really almost like a son to him.”

“But he made this protégé of his out to be a liar — and none of you questioned it at the time — or spoke up if you did.”

“We thought Matt was lying. We had him watched for months, thinking he’d lead us to Lefebvre.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No.”

“I’m not saying I blame you for suspecting Lefebvre, Captain. Other evidence made him look bad — it still does. But you’ve had your doubts, haven’t you?”

After a long silence, Bredloe said, “Yes. Yes, I suppose I have. But there was so much to indicate Lefebvre — believe it or not, at first I couldn’t accept the idea that he was guilty. But the evidence against him was overwhelming.”

“I’m just getting my feet wet on this one, Captain. I have a long way to go. Like you, I think Arden lied — but for a different reason. I think he was scared into lying. And I want to know who or what scared him.”

“Scared Matt?” Bredloe said with a small laugh. “That in itself is unbelievable. Matt Arden is probably the toughest old son of a bitch I know. Even now — and he has to be almost eighty.”

Frank hesitated, then said, “With your permission, sir, I’d like to personally invite him to Lefebvre’s funeral.”

“I can’t see any harm in that. Louise can give you his number.”

“I’d prefer to get it out of the files, sir, or through the DMV.”

“Detective Harriman—” Bredloe said angrily.

“And I’d ask, sir, that you keep our conversation absolutely confidential. In fact, I’d prefer the others thought I whined to you about the silent treatment, or asked to be taken off the case, or better yet — that I told you I had no hope of learning anything more.”

Bredloe rubbed at his forehead, as if trying to relieve a headache. “For now, I will not discuss this with anyone. But I will use my own judgment about this case, Frank. If you are right, then of course we must consider that someone else has Seth Randolph’s blood on his hands, that someone else allowed Dane to escape punishment for the murders. And if that someone is in this department, I’ll want a full-scale investigation of the matter.”

Frank looked up Matt Arden’s number in the file and dialed it. He got a phone company recording saying that the number was disconnected or no longer in service. But he remembered that it had been ten years since the number was entered in the file and thought the area code might have changed. He checked with information — and discovered he had guessed right. He redialed.

On the fourth ring, an answering machine picked up the call. A gravelly recorded voice said, “This is Matt. Can’t come to the phone. Leave a message….” There was the sound of someone fumbling around in the background and a muttered, “How do I record the damned beep on this thing?” and finally the beep itself.

“This is Detective Frank Harriman with the Las Piernas Police Department. Please call me as soon as possible.” He left his pager number and hung up.

He looked up to see that although the squad room was more crowded now, he was still on the receiving end of the scowl-a-thon. He saw Bredloe leaving his office — even the captain frowned at him as he went by. Frank shrugged it off — Homicide was never a goddamned sunshine factory on the best of days.

He felt restless, though, and made a sudden decision. He gathered the files before locking his desk. He headed down to his car, where he looked up Lefebvre’s old address on a Thomas Guide map of the city.

He had seen the place where the man had died. Now he wanted to see where he had lived.

8

Monday, July 10, 3:15 P.M.

Las Piernas Police Department

Hidden in the shadows of the parking garage, hunched down behind the front seat of his van, the Looking Glass Man stared into the rearview mirror — but not at an angle that would reflect his own face back to him. He watched Frank Harriman, who sat in his car with the dome light on. The Looking Glass Man had intentionally parked across the aisle from Harriman’s car when he learned that the detective was handling the Lefebvre case.

Harriman troubled him. He felt a moment’s fury toward Bredloe for assigning Harriman to the case.

Harriman wouldn’t rush things. He would be thorough. And he was just a little too good at his job to make the Looking Glass Man feel safe. Perhaps it would be best to simply remove Harriman from the equation.

The Looking Glass Man had been fortunate this afternoon, lucky enough to be in the homicide room when Harriman had gone in to talk to Bredloe. Harriman had aggravated Captain Bredloe, and the Looking Glass Man doubted Harriman had done so by talking about funeral arrangements. The others knew about the funeral before Harriman had left Bredloe’s office, of course. The Wheeze, miffed that Harriman had shut the door to a realm she considered her protectorate, had immediately gone among the other detectives and told them that Harriman was trying to get the captain to provide an honor guard for Lefebvre’s funeral.

This had caused some outrage — sadly, the expressions of it had not allowed the Looking Glass Man to make out Bredloe’s occasional muffled shouts while he stood near the wall of Bredloe’s office.

Still, he thought he understood why Bredloe was upset. He was upset as well, though not for quite the same reason. Trying to discover what Harriman was up to, what line of investigation he was using, meant following him here. That alone had put some pressure on the Looking Glass Man to act hastily.

He smiled to himself now, acknowledging that over the years he had become adept at handling such pressure. He preferred to plan in advance and had any number of contingency plans ready and waiting. But if he had to think on his feet, he could do so.

The dome light in Harriman’s car went out, and the man heard the Volvo’s engine start. He was preparing to follow Harriman when his pager vibrated.

He shielded the pager’s light from view and read the number on it. It was not a phone number, but a code. After checking it against a list of similar codes in his electronic organizer, he broke out in a cold sweat.

Anxiety overtook him, his fears rising like a buzzing swarm of bees inside his head. He held his hands to his temples, lowered his face between his knees to keep from fainting. A neatly bundled stack of newspapers on the floor of the van — papers he had planned to take to the recycling center after work today — caught his eye. He calmed immediately.

Under other circumstances, he would have mentally enumerated the reasons he found pleasure in seeing the bundle: (1) the papers faced the same way, with the folds neatly aligned; (2) the lengths of twine that bound them were exactly the right length to hold them neatly without creasing them; (3) the papers were stacked in order of date of issue, oldest to newest, with the most recent on top, and within each day’s issues the sections were in the proper alphabetical order; (4) it represented his good intentions, because recycling was the socially and environmentally correct thing to do.

During that moment of high-pitched anxiety, though, this particular bundle brought him more than pride in good citizenship — it brought him inspiration. For the front page of last Saturday’s edition of the Las Piernas News Express carried a local news story that made him think of a place. He had already considered going there to further test a device he had recently made. It might hold the answer to his current problem.

He would have to act quickly.

Fortunately, not entirely without preparation.

9

Monday, July 10, 3:55 P.M.

Lake Terrace Condominiums

As he drove toward Lefebvre’s condo, Frank called several local television stations, asking if they had any footage of the press conference in Seth Randolph’s hospital room. None had much more than what he had seen in Bredloe’s office. Since no one actually went looking for tapes when he called, he thought he might be talking to the wrong people — getting the brush-off from production assistants who didn’t want to be bothered with his request.

He needed help from someone inside the business. He thought of a friend of Irene’s, Marcia Wolfe, a news editor at an L.A. station. He remembered that she used to work for Channel 6 in Las Piernas. He gave her a call.

“Try Polly Logan.”

Frank groaned. “I’ve been trying to avoid her.”

She laughed. “I know, she’s got more bad miles on her than a Baja road race, but she knows you’re married to Kelly, so she’ll leave you alone.”

“She has some history with Irene?”

“Yep, but I’m not even going to go there.”

“Okay, but why should I talk to Logan? She’s just a face, right?”

“And a very expensive face it is — and I’m not talking about what they pay her. Somewhere in Beverly Hills, a plastic surgeon thinks of her every time he starts up his Rolls. But aside from all that, if there’s anyone who has footage of Lefebvre, it’s going to be Polly. I know for a fact that she has a personal collection on the guy.”

“A personal collection on Lefebvre?”

“She had a major crush on him. Never took her camera off him if she could help it. I started out over at Channel Six, and believe me, I saw so much of that guy’s mug, we began sending crews out with her just so we could verify that more than one detective worked for the LPPD.”

He thanked her and called Logan.

“Yes, I can help you,” she said. “But what will you do for me in return?”

“You know I can’t discuss the case itself with you,” he said. “Lieutenant Carlson—”

“That pompous twit — never mind. I suppose you’d be in trouble if he knew you had called me about the tapes?”

“Probably.”

“Well, we’ll have to be discreet, then. This will take some time, and I’m about to leave on an assignment. How can I reach you later?”

He gave her his cell phone number.

“It might be late,” she warned. “How late can I call?”

“Anytime,” he said, envisioning Polly Logan thinking of his number as a personal hotline to the LPPD Homicide Division. Maybe he’d have to get a new cell phone.

The condo was in a large, gated complex, but Frank had no difficulty following another car through before the electronic gate rolled closed. He figured that “gated community” ran second only to “one size fits all” when it came to phrases that offered Americans a false sense of security.

He drove along the street that formed the outer circle of the complex, then made a series of turns that took him past a shallow, artificial lake with a fountain in the center. He passed an empty tennis court and then a fenced playground, where a half-dozen small children were playing on swings, a sandbox, and a slide under the watchful eye of young mothers. Not far from them, some slightly older children, perhaps fourth or fifth graders, were playing basketball.

He parked in a visitor’s space near the playground, then walked some distance through the complex, until he found Lefebvre’s street. He could have parked closer, but he wanted to get a feel for the place. He wondered if Lefebvre had ever taken walks like this one — or had he simply parked in his garage and gone up to his bed each night?

He should look up real estate records, he supposed. Get the names of people who had lived here for ten years or more. The files he had read indicated that not many of Lefebvre’s neighbors knew anything about him; those who did knew two things: he was quiet and he was a cop. Frank decided he would ask around, anyway.

He had a hard time imagining a man as private as Lefebvre in such a place, with shared walls and a condo association. But perhaps it was all he could afford — at the time Lefebvre had bought his condo, a modest single-family dwelling in this part of Southern California went for the price of four houses in almost any other state.

Perhaps Lefebvre had done more of his living away from home. There was his love of flying — Frank decided he would try to talk to pilots and workers at the airport, people who might have been closer to Lefebvre when he was relaxed and enjoying himself.

He came to a building that was somewhat set apart from the others, at the end of a cul-de-sac. The address matched Lefebvre’s. He was walking along a shrubbery-lined sidewalk, toward the last unit near the back, when a skinny, dark-haired boy rounded the corner at a run, pointed at Frank, and shouted frantically, “Stop him!”

Startled, a second passed before Frank realized that the boy was pointing toward the ground near his feet, and looked down just in time to see a small reddish-brown mop of fur scurrying toward him.

A guinea pig.

He blocked the rodent’s path with a judiciously placed shoe, apparently confounding it, because it came to a halt. He scooped it up just as the boy came up to him. Frank thought he was probably about eight or nine. For reasons he couldn’t name, the kid seemed familiar. The boy stopped as suddenly as the guinea pig had and held up his hands, looking at Frank with pleading brown eyes.

“You’ll be able to keep hold of him?” Frank asked as the animal began squirming, making high-pitched beeping noises.

“Oh, yes,” the boy said softly, taking it from him. The guinea pig calmed immediately.

The boy started to walk away, then turned and said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He walked a little farther, then came back a few steps and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Won’t tell anyone what?”

“About My Dog.”

“Your dog?” Frank asked, looking around. “Is he loose, too?”

The boy shook his head and sighed. “My guinea pig’s name is My Dog. I’m not allowed to have a dog, and so—” He shrugged.

Frank kept himself from laughing — an effort he made because the kid was so serious. “So what is it I’m not supposed to tell?”

The boy studied Frank, then said, “You don’t live here, do you?”

“No,” Frank said.

“We can’t have pets,” the boy said.

“But you do.”

“No, if we could have real pets, I would have a dog. I mean — I love My Dog, but he’s not a dog. And I’m not even allowed to have him.”

“I have two dogs,” Frank said.

The boy studied him again, then said, “Why are you wearing a gun?”

Frank’s jacket was closed, so he was surprised that the boy had noticed the weapon. “I’m a policeman.”

“Let me see some identification,” the boy said — then added, “Please.”

Frank smiled and pulled out his badge and ID. Without touching the holder, the boy studied them carefully.

“Have you come to arrest me?” he asked.

“No — oh, you mean because of the guinea pig? No.”

The boy’s brows drew together, and he seemed to silently debate something with himself. But then he shook his head and said, “I am not allowed to talk to strangers.” He began to walk away.

“Wait—” Frank called. “Have we met before?”

The boy shook his head again, then hurried around the corner. Frank followed slowly and caught a glimpse of the kid climbing the stairs at the end of the building two at a time. He heard a door close. Lefebvre’s old unit.

Those brown eyes, that serious face.

He climbed the stairs faster than the boy had and rang the bell.

He heard muffled voices and footsteps approaching the door. He heard the latch and waited for the door to open.

It didn’t. He realized that he had heard it being locked, not unlocked.

He knocked again. There was no sound from the other side of the door.

He moved to the top stair and sat down. He pulled out his cell phone and called the number Yvette Nereault had given him — the one she made him promise not to write down. The phone rang in the apartment, but there was no answer, not even from a machine. He hung up, and the phone in the apartment stopped ringing. He tried again. Again the phone in the apartment rang. Again it stopped when he hung up.

He considered annoying the hell out of Yvette just by making the phone ring or camping out on the stairs, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He pictured the kid hiding in the condo, afraid of him. And thought of all the harassment the department had already given this family. He had no warrant, no real reason to be here. He began the walk back to his car.

Where had he seen that kid before?

The boy’s eyes made him think of Lefebvre — was the kid Yvette Nereault’s son? No — he talked of living here, not in Quebec, and he did not have her accent. Perhaps some other relation to her? Living in Lefebvre’s home — he made a note to check property records to see who owned the condo now.

Maybe he was just seeing Lefebvre everywhere. Besides, it wasn’t as if the boy was Lefebvre in duplicate — many of his features weren’t at all like Lefebvre’s. Lucky for the kid, Frank thought wryly.

As he rounded the building, the sensation of being watched made him look up at the rear windows of the condo. He saw the kid staring down at him, his face solemn. Frank waved to him, but the boy didn’t wave back.

10

Monday, July 10, 5:02 P.M.

Las Piernas Transit Center

After more than ten years of escaping detection — years of constant vigilance — after thousands of hours spent developing contingency plans and making complicated preparations — the Looking Glass Man began to fear that his elaborate plans would all fall apart here, at a bus station.

He needed nothing more than a frequently used pay phone. The contempt he felt for the persons he encountered at the downtown terminal was increased when he failed to find a working phone that was not already in use.

He glanced at his watch, tried to calm himself. Bredloe routinely put in long hours and could often be found in his office as late as ten o’clock. No need to panic. If he could not find a phone here, then he could go elsewhere — to a shopping mall or even the airport — to find one that would suit his purpose.

He walked out of the building and found a less popular bank of phones situated closer to the parking lot. The parking lot’s toll booth was nearby, and the phones were within view of the attendant — he thought this might account for the fewer signs of vandalism on these phones.

Although the attendant was busy with the rush-hour exodus from the lot, the Looking Glass Man did not want to take unnecessary chances, and turned his back to the attendant’s booth, so that the logo on his coveralls — Las Piernas Security — faced her. The heat of the day had not subsided, and the coveralls were warm. The wig he wore beneath his billed cap made his own hair damp with perspiration — his scalp began to itch unbearably. So did his upper lip, but he dared not scratch at his small, false mustache for fear of dislodging it. Even the sunglasses were a nuisance, but he consoled himself with the thought that he would not need to wear the disguise much longer.

The one item he would have been pleased to wear — gloves — would have been far too conspicuous. He would now have to touch surfaces a great many other hands had touched. This caused him more discomfort than the itching of his scalp.

His plans were complex, and in many regards experimental, and yet he did not fear failure. Thus far, with the exception of this minor problem of finding a usable pay phone, every step had been carried out with remarkable efficiency. In fact, if all went well, when he was ready to leave, he would not even be required to pay for parking — he would be within the “first thirty minutes free” allowance and save one dollar. A pleasing thought, indeed.

He removed a small device from one of his capacious pockets. Shuddering slightly, he picked up the receiver with his bare hand and fit the device over the mouthpiece. Trying not to think of the contaminants on the push buttons, he dialed a phone number. He pictured Captain Bredloe’s cell phone ringing, imagined the captain supposing that his wife, Miriam, was calling. Wouldn’t he be surprised!

“Captain Bredloe?” he asked when the call was answered.

“Who is this?”

“I have information you need.”

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say—”

“This is a private telephone. Call 555-5773 if you have information for the police.”

“Please don’t hang up! This is about Lefebvre.”

The captain said nothing, but the Looking Glass Man knew that he had the other man’s attention. “I don’t want the same thing to happen to me that happened to Lefebvre,” he went on. “That’s why I want to talk to you and only you. I need protection, Captain…”

“I’ll put you in touch with the detective who’s handling the case,” Bredloe said. “He can offer you confidentiality and protection if you need it.”

“No! You or no one — I can trust no one else in the Las Piernas Police Department. Do you want to know what really happened to the Randolphs? Come to the Sheffield Club tonight at six-thirty. Come alone.”

“If you have something we should be interested in, you’ll have to get it to me another way.”

“I’ll prove to you I know what I’m talking about. There was only one item left in the box of evidence — a watch.”

There was the briefest hesitation before Bredloe said, “You could have read that in the newspaper.”

“No. You know that information wasn’t released. The Sheffield Club, six-thirty.”

He disconnected, then removed the device that had altered his voice from the mouthpiece. He placed it in a plastic bag so that it would not contaminate his clothing with bacteria from the phone. He took out a small packet containing a disinfectant hand cleaner and used it to wipe his hands. He noticed that the shiny plated surface surrounding the phone’s keypad reflected his image, and could not resist wiping a small portion of it so that he could better see himself. He lowered the sunglasses and marveled at his changed appearance.

Reluctantly, he turned away and walked back to his van.

11

Monday, July 10, 6:20 P.M.

Las Piernas Beach

When it came to self-control, Irene thought irritably, Frank Harriman was a damned black belt. Usually, this wasn’t much of a problem between them — she was well aware that she held the record for getting him to lose his temper, and vice versa — although she would have readily admitted to having a much shorter fuse. Once, when they had snapped at each other in front of his mother, Bea Harriman had said disapprovingly, “You should have known what you were getting into when you married an Irishwoman, Frank.”

He had smiled at Irene in a way that had made her suddenly blush from head to toe and said softly, “Oh, I knew.” They had said quick good-byes to his mother, left the house, and less than an hour into the drive home, rented a motel room.

Now, as they ran together along the beach, she grinned as she recalled that evening, but when she glanced over at Frank, he seemed lost in his own thoughts — and they didn’t seem to be happy ones.

Throughout dinner, he had been tense, alternating between seeming ready to talk to her about something and not meeting her eyes. Not at all like him.

She thought she knew what his problem was. Just before he came home, she had received a call from Rachel, Pete Baird’s wife. Rachel let her know that Frank had been getting snubbed at work. Irene was angry that his coworkers were so childish, but was also surprised that he had let it get to him — that wasn’t like him, either.

Once or twice, she had looked up from her plate and caught him studying her. Then he would quickly look away. Talk to me, you big lug, she thought. But he didn’t.

She was tempted to goad him into saying something, but she decided he didn’t need more hassles at home and resolved not to push him this evening. She would just try to help him relax.

The beach run with the dogs was a ritual they followed on any evening when they were both home, and it usually would have helped him to relieve tension. But as this evening’s run came to an end, he seemed more ill at ease than before.

Wondering which tactic to try next, she headed up the wooden stairs that led from the beach to their street, Frank and the dogs behind her.

“Have you ever been to a place called the Prop Room?” he asked.

She stopped and looked back at him. “The French-Canadian place near the airport?”

For some reason, her response seemed to trouble him. “Yes,” he said. “Have you ever been there?”

“No. A couple of guys at the paper said it’s great, though. Want to try it sometime?”

“I had lunch there with Guy today. He came along as a translator.”

“Oh. Is this about Phil?”

“His sister knows the owner. We met with his sister today.”

Now she was sure she understood what was wrong with him. “Oh, no — you had to give the notice?” She knew he hated that part of the job, telling a family of the death of a loved one.

“Yes.”

“I thought Phil’s sister was in Canada.”

“She’s down here for a while.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe they didn’t give that task to someone who knew Phil.”

“Probably better that they didn’t. The people in the department who knew him aren’t exactly weighed down by fond remembrance. Besides, it’s my case.”

“Still, I’m sorry — that must have been difficult for you.”

He looked away, as if uneasy with her kindness.

“Was it hard on her?”

Frank shrugged. “She had already assumed he was dead, and her husband passed the word on to her before I met with her, but — yes, I think it was hard on her.”

She came back down the stairs and looped her arm through his. He seemed, for the briefest moment, to want to move away from her — but just as she wondered if he thought it was too hot out to walk arm in arm, he seemed to make some silent resolution and put his hand over hers.

She was puzzled. Had she done something to make him angry? But this wasn’t really anger, it was — what? She didn’t know.

They walked in silence, but when they were almost back at the house, he said, “Lefebvre dined at that restaurant the night before he left town.”

“The night before he died?”

“Presumably, yes. The night before Seth Randolph was killed.”

She called to the dogs, who had loped beyond the house. Where was he going with this?

“The owner of the restaurant said a woman dined with him that night.”

She looked up at him then — studying him. Understanding began to dawn.

“It was the day of the press conference — that evening,” he was saying. “It’s so close to the time he disappeared, I thought it might be important. Or if it isn’t — well, I’d like to know that it isn’t.”

She quickly left his side to put the dogs in the backyard. She turned around, her hands on her hips. “Rachel said the other guys in the department weren’t talking to you today.”

“They weren’t,” he said, apprehensive now.

“Oh, yeah? So why am I hearing an insinuation?”

“What insinuation?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t fuck with me, Frank.”

“Lower your voice.”

“Answer the question,” she said, twice as loud.

“Let’s go inside. Let’s not have this discussion out here on the front lawn.”

“You started this discussion in the great outdoors, we can finish here.”

“Irene—” he pleaded, glancing at the house next door. “Do you really want Jack and all the other neighbors to have to listen to this?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if they pop popcorn to enjoy with the show!”

“Damn it, Irene—”

“You’re wondering if I had dinner with Phil after the press conference. You’re wondering if I’ve — if I’ve what? Cheated on you before we were together? No — no, that’s not it. You aren’t that crazy.” She considered his questions, not one by one, but as a whole, their direction. “You keep talking about the night before he disappeared. You think — you think Phil and I had some kind of secret, right? About what, Seth Randolph?”

He looked away. “I made a mistake.”

“A mistake? My God… you thought that I’ve known something about the murder of a sixteen-year-old boy and kept it to myself for ten years? You could believe that of me? Jesus, why am I even trying to talk to you!”

“Irene—” He took hold of her arm, but she shook him off angrily. “God damn it,” he said. “Irene, it’s my job.”

“Oh, really? I have a job, too, so I guess I’ll phone in a story—”

“Come on, be reasonable!”

“So now I’m the one being unreasonable? Bullshit! We have rules, Frank, and you’ve broken them. Don’t expect me to shrug that off.”

“Look—”

“No, you look. A little while ago, I could have sworn I was talking to my husband as his wife — but come to find out I’m secretly being questioned by the Las Piernas Police Department regarding a murder case! Next time let me know who’s talking to me — the flaming asshole who works for the PD or the flaming asshole I married.” She stormed into the house, slamming the front door behind her.

Her anger squeezed the breath from her, made the house feel too small. The phone was ringing, Frank’s pager was beeping, and she kept right on walking, kept right on going, until she was out in the backyard, on the damned patio he had built, seeing the damned garden he had planted. She heard him come in through the front door. She needed to get away from him, from this house, this yard. She kept moving, along the side of the house to the gate, then, taking the dogs with her, headed back to the beach.

Deke and Dunk, at first cowed by her anger, now seemed unable to believe their luck.

She couldn’t believe her own.

12

Monday, July 10, 6:20 P.M.

The Sheffield Club

Downtown Las Piernas

Bredloe was parked five blocks away from the Sheffield Club when his cell phone rang. For a moment, he feared it was the anonymous caller, making a last-minute change in arrangements or canceling altogether. But it was one of the sharpshooters.

“We’re in position, Captain.”

“The dogs are out?”

“Yes.”

“I hope the members of the bomb squad were discreet.”

“Yes, sir. Sheriff’s department dog handlers showed up dressed as security guards — even had a van made up. No explosives were found.”

Bredloe mentally reviewed his hasty preparations: The bomb squad had checked for explosives. Tactical officers were in place in key locations outside the building, and two marksmen were positioned within. A helicopter unit was ready to join in on any pursuit. Other units were standing by. And he was wearing his Kevlar vest.

“You weren’t seen?” he asked the marksman.

There was slight hesitation before the SWAT officer answered, “I can’t be one hundred percent certain on that, sir. But no, sir, we don’t think we were seen.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Lieutenant. We’re probably on a wild-goose chase here anyway. Civilians have been cleared from the building?”

“We sent the last of the construction crew home an hour ago.”

“And no sign of our caller?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“I’m on my way, then.”

Bredloe stepped onto a plywood ramp that led away from the covered wooden sidewalk, ignoring the handbills that had been plastered everywhere. The narrow passageway from there to the building had been opened only four days ago, and would probably be closed again soon. The Sheffield Club was an active construction site, and only a brief moment of recent limelight had made it accessible to the public.

He didn’t know how the anonymous caller had obtained his cell phone number, but he was even more concerned about the fact that he knew about the watch — the caller had been right, it was a detail of the Lefebvre investigation that had not been released to the public. Perhaps the caller had learned of it through a careless comment by a property room clerk, or more seriously, a deliberate leak within the department. He felt almost certain that the caller himself was not a member of the department, because he had asked Bredloe to come here alone.

An urgent invitation to come alone to an empty building? Only an amateur — someone who had watched too many B movies — would have issued it. No one in his department would believe for a moment that someone who had reached his rank would truly come alone. And so he had felt relieved, because the invitation must have been from an outsider. Annoying that the man — if indeed it was a man, for the voice had been altered — had discovered his cell phone number. Obviously the caller had some contacts within the department.

He thought of the caller’s distorted voice, tried to remember all that he had said, the phrases he had used. Bredloe had tried to see if it could be traced. It was — to a phone booth outside the downtown bus station. By then, the caller was long gone.

He might have ignored the call, considered it a crank, had it come at any other time. But the phone had rung not long after he had taken a look at some of the documents and evidence in the Randolph cases. He had been made uneasy by Frank Harriman’s questions, uneasy enough to begin suspecting that someone in his department had framed Lefebvre.

He was convinced that the call was a crude trap, and had set a more sophisticated trap of his own. While he doubted anything would come of it, he still found himself hoping the caller would follow through. These days, most of his time was spent pushing papers, dealing with department politics, and coping with personnel problems — like the ongoing conflict between Carlson and Harriman. It was good to be involved more actively. He knew the tactical commander and others thought he had lost his mind, but that was just too damn bad. All his “political” work in the department was paying off — if, on rare occasions, he chose to do something on a whim, they had to live with it.

Reaching the entrance to the building itself, Bredloe pushed gently at the brass handle on the old oak door. The door, which should have been locked, opened easily. He hesitated, wondering if the caller had unlocked it earlier in the day, if the construction crew had erred, or if his own team had been a little careless.

He stepped inside, standing still while he let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Although the late summer afternoon was still warm and bright, little warmth or light filtered into the old building.

The Sheffield Club, founded by one of the city’s leading families before the turn of the century, had once been a private establishment for the city’s wealthiest merchants. It had survived the 1933 earthquake that flattened much of downtown, but by the 1950s, the club had found other quarters, and the building had been sold to the first of a long series of practical businessmen who saw no need to preserve its original charm.

Now the Sheffield Club was the pride of the Historical Preservation Commission, which had found a local investor willing to spend the money needed to restore it — and to retrofit it to meet current earthquake standards.

Bredloe’s wife, Miriam, was on the commission, so he had received constant updates on the project over the dinner table at home. Although it appeared to be little more than a brick shell at the moment, he knew that workers in the building had made several discoveries. While replacing the flooring in the building’s entry hall, they had uncovered an elaborate, sunshaped mosaic depicting a golden chariot pulled by winged horses and driven by a half-clad muscular young man. Miriam had shown her husband a photograph of it one evening and assured him that the fellow could be none other than Apollo, but Bredloe pointed out his resemblance to Hector Sheffield, one of the wilder Sheffield sons — a fellow he had learned about while helping her prepare a lecture on the shadier side of Las Piernas’s history.

Hector-Apollo had not been the only discovery, though. Just last Friday a press conference had been held on the second floor of the three-story building to show off another treasure — a mural on the north side of the second-floor gallery that surrounded the entry, a richly colored painting of a mythological figure whom Bredloe had continued to refer to as Neptune, even after Miriam told him the name of the work — according to a tarnished brass plate not far from it — was “Poseidon.” Until a few weeks ago, the ancient god of the sea and the plate bearing his Greek name had been hidden beneath some cheap paneling. When they attended the press conference, Miriam had been so relieved that her husband did not recognize a resemblance between the god and any reprobates from earlier generations of the Sheffield family, she didn’t correct Bredloe’s stubborn use of the Roman name.

He had felt completely at ease strolling around the Sheffield Club with his wife on Friday.

But on Friday, Lefebvre’s body had still been waiting on a mountainside, silent and undiscovered. On Friday, no one had come into his office hinting that Lefebvre had been framed. On Friday, he would not have agreed to meet an anonymous caller at the Sheffield Club, with or without the precautions he had taken today.

He knew it was not just the coolness of the air inside the building that was sending a chill down his spine.

“I’m here,” he announced, his voice reverberating in the darkness. He turned on his standard-issue police flashlight. Its beam glinted off the golden floor tiles. Bredloe wanted to be sure the two marksmen who had hidden themselves on the second-floor gallery knew where he was — and did not mistake him for the caller. He thought it highly unlikely that the caller was in the building.

Still, if need be, the flashlight could also serve as a weapon — it was heavy enough to inflict damage on an attacker. He held it in his left hand, away from his body — unwilling to let it serve as a personal bull’s-eye for someone aiming a gun. Bredloe kept his right hand near his own revolver.

Had the caller been scared off?

He heard a sound.

Upstairs, Bredloe thought, somewhere along the gallery. He knew the marksmen were there, but they would be silent. Was the caller up there? He didn’t like the idea of a potential enemy standing somewhere above him. He took a small step forward and moved the flashlight, directing the beam upward, near where he thought he had heard the sound. Eerie shadows cast by scaffolding loomed before him, mixed with strange gray reflections as the light played off plastic sheeting draped here and there in the entry hall. He thought he saw a face, then realized it belonged to Neptune.

“I’m here,” he said again, and heard the question echo back to him, his voice sounding loud in the emptiness.

There was no answer. He took a cautious step out onto the mosaic.

Instantly, the area was flooded with light. He crouched low, gun unholstered, then realized he had set off some sort of motion detector. Security cameras were catching his foolish reaction. If the cameras had audio capabilities, he thought, they must be picking up the sound of his heart thudding in his chest.

He heard a brief, faint, rustling noise and saw a paper airplane sailing down from the second-floor gallery, making a vertical loop before gliding to a stop near Apollo’s golden curls.

Bredloe stayed where he was, angry now. “All right, Tactical, so he hasn’t shown. Is this your idea of a joke?”

The snipers slowly moved into view. “Is there a problem, sir?” one of them asked.

The lights went out again, apparently because no further motion was detected.

“Sir?” the SWAT officer called.

“You knew about these motion detectors?” Bredloe called up in the darkness.

“Yes, sir.”

He wasn’t going to let them know he had been riled. “Nothing. Return to your posts. Let’s give him a little more time.”

He heard them moving.

He waited. The building was silent.

The airplane still lay on the tile. It annoyed him to think that a situation this serious could be reduced by those hot dogs into fun and games. He walked out to the center of the mosaic, causing the motion detectors to light the entry again. Keeping his eyes on the upper level, he bent to pick up the airplane, setting the flashlight down just long enough to tuck the paper into his jacket pocket. As he picked up the flashlight, the lights above him went out again, which puzzled him — he was still moving, so the detectors should have kept them on.

Suddenly he heard a mechanical sound from somewhere on the scaffolding, and then a loud bang behind him. He caught a brief glimpse of shadowy objects falling from above, like bats suddenly stirring from a cave, and tried to move out of their path — but the first of the bricks struck hard on his back and shoulders, making him shout in pain. He heard the tactical team shouting from above as he moved his arms up, trying to shield his head, but this only caused his forearms to be broken and his fingers smashed, so that he fired the gun even as his hand lost its grasp on it, and dropped the flashlight almost in the same instant. He doubled over, crying out for help, stumbling forward, and still the awful rain continued, bruising and breaking him. One glancing blow to his head hit hard enough to bring him dizzily to his knees, the next felled him completely, so that he sprawled against the white wings of Apollo’s horses, staining them with his blood, and lost consciousness as tiles of the sun god shattered all around him.

13

Monday, July 10, 7:25 P.M.

St. Anne’s Hospital

Pete Baird met Frank at the entrance to the waiting room. He looked shaken, and Frank was afraid that he had arrived too late.

Pete had been paging him, leaving messages on his home answering machine. Frank had heard Pete’s voice on the machine as he had followed Irene into the house, saying, “Bredloe’s at the emergency room at St. Anne’s — he might not make it,” and Frank had hurriedly picked up the call. Only twenty-five minutes had passed since then — but maybe it had been twenty-five minutes too many.

Pete must have read the fear on his face, though, because he quickly said, “No — we haven’t had any more news yet.”

“He’s still in surgery?”

“Yeah. It’s not looking good. Head injury and all kinds of bone fractures and cuts and bruises and God knows what else. Head injuries worry them the most. Miriam hasn’t even been able to see him yet — she’s really shaken up.”

Frank looked across the room and saw Bredloe’s wife, pale and silent, staring toward the doors that led to the surgery center. Next to her was Chief Ellis Hale himself, who sat stone-faced while one of his aides tried to calm a distraught Louise Oswald. Not far from them, several men from the division huddled together, speaking in low voices. Lieutenant Carlson, Jake Matsuda, Reed Collins, and others. They had seen him enter, but he had not been met with scowls or coldness — not even from Carlson. Like Pete, they had apparently decided to cease hostilities for the moment.

Frank turned back to Pete. “Was Miriam with him when it happened?”

“No — I thought she might have been, when I first heard it was the Sheffield. Captain had his picture in the paper over the weekend, ’cause he went with her to some shindig they had there on Friday. So I figured she had taken him back to the building for some reason — but that turns out not to be the case.”

“What happened?”

“The captain had a whole operation set up down there, and on short notice.” He described the precautions Bredloe had taken.

“So what was this anonymous caller meeting him about?”

“He wouldn’t tell anyone. According to the Wheeze, she came back from running an errand for him at a little after five o’clock, and he was on the cell phone with someone then. She locked her desk up and was ready to call it a day when the captain asked her to get Tactical on the line — one of many calls.” He paused, eyeing Frank speculatively. “She said he’d been acting weird ever since he talked to you.”

“Like everybody else in the department, the captain was upset about the Lefebvre case,” Frank said. “Now that you’ve remembered I’m working it, are you going to stop talking to me?”

Pete shrugged. “I wish you’d face facts, but — no, I was ready to call a truce anyway. Besides, Rachel found out I wasn’t speaking to you, and — let’s just say I thought I was going to need to check in here myself.”

“Remind me to thank your wife the next time I see her. But tell me more about what happened to the captain. Any idea who called him?”

“No. Pay phone at the bus station — too many prints to make it worthwhile dusting for them. The lab found one little area on it that had been wiped down and figured that the caller cleaned up after himself.”

“So Bredloe gets a call and just trots off to the Sheffield Club?” Frank asked. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“No, but that’s just item one on a long list of things we haven’t figured out. We’re not even sure what happened after he was there. First, he keeps setting off the motion detectors and cameras in the entryway — all of which, we learned, was just installed today. So because of the lights attached to the motion detectors, it goes bright and dark and makes the marksmen’s work more difficult — they hardly adjust their eyes to darkness and suddenly it’s bright again. Then the captain says something that makes no sense to the marksmen — is this ‘their idea of a joke.’ Next thing they know, there’s this sound, and a pile of bricks falls down on him from some scaffolding.”

“The building had been searched, though—”

“All done by remote.”

“What? Remote-control bricks?”

“No — but there was this gizmo beneath the pallet they were on. Kinda like a miniature jack. Small, but strong enough to tip the pallet. It straightens up and suddenly the bricks are at an angle and falling. Lab hasn’t had much time to study it, but they think it’s homemade — not something commercially available.”

“So with luck they’ll be able to track down the sellers of the components.”

“Right. And track the buyer from there.”

“The cameras didn’t catch anyone setting up that device?”

“Well,” Pete said uneasily, “that’s another problem. Those cameras and motion detectors just arrived today — at the end of the day. Battery operated. And guess what was being taped on the machine? Nothing, that’s what. It was a dummy setup. I mean, the monitor worked, but the tape machine didn’t.”

“What did the security company have to say for itself?”

“You mean ‘Las Piernas Security’? There is no such security company. No one ordered those cameras or lights or monitor.”

“The construction crew allowed this phony company to have the run of the place?”

“Did a very good job of faking city papers, they claim. Apparently there had been complaints about building security all along.”

“Not hard to see why.”

“Something else — nobody can figure this out — there was a little remote-controlled fan.”

“What?”

“This other little gizmo reacts to a signal and turns a small fan on. But we can’t figure out what the fan was supposed to do.”

“So no one saw the cameras being installed?”

“Saw it, paid no attention. And although we got a description on the installer, it was pretty vague. White male, medium build, thirty to fifty — yeah, I know, but the age guesses were all over the place — light brown hair, brown eyes, mustache. About all we have to go on, though.”

“What was the range on the remotes?”

“Not all that far — lab says he was probably less than a block away the whole time.”

They became aware of a small commotion and saw a doctor wearing scrubs walking toward Chief Hale and Miriam Bredloe. He escorted the two of them to another room. All conversation in the waiting area stopped. When they returned, it was clear that the captain’s wife had been crying. The chief’s expression was grim.

The Wheeze moaned loudly and Frank heard the chief snap, “Get that fool woman out of here,” to the aide. The aide complied, hustling her away so quickly, she didn’t seem to notice Frank’s presence as they went past him.

With Miriam, Hale was all solicitude, gently guiding her to a seat next to him, speaking to her in soothing tones. Frank was relieved to see her grow visibly calmer.

“She doesn’t have any friends or family with her?” he asked Pete.

“Her sister is driving down from Tulare, so it may be a few hours before she’s here. We asked about friends, but to be honest, I think she was still in a state of shock then. The chief has been good to her, and she knows we’re all here for her, too.”

Another half hour passed. Miriam Bredloe gradually began looking around the room. She saw Frank and beckoned him to come nearer. He approached as the chief watched him with apparent interest. Frank nodded a greeting to him. The two men seldom came in contact with each other.

“Thank you for coming here,” Miriam said. “Is Irene with you?”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not,” he said uneasily. She’s mad as hell at me.

Miriam Bredloe turned to Hale and said, “Detective Harriman’s wife shares my love of old buildings. She’s written stories about the commission’s work for the Express and has done a great deal to help us save a number of Las Piernas’s treasures from the wrecking ball. We’ve become friends.”

“You don’t say,” the chief murmured, seeming to regard Frank a little more closely. Frank wondered if Chief Hale was among those who thought wrecking balls represented progress, or if he thought Irene must be the type of woman who kissed up to the boss’s wife — an idea that would have made Frank laugh out loud under any other circumstances.

“My husband was going to meet an informer in the Sheffield Club tonight,” Miriam said. “Louise — not that I think she’s very sensible in a crisis — but Louise seemed to think you’d know which one it was.”

“Me? I’m sorry, Miriam — I don’t. I wish I did.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed. “I guess Louise was mistaken.”

“Louise sometimes…” Glancing at the chief, Frank decided not to finish the sentence.

“You don’t have to explain,” Miriam said. “This isn’t the first wild idea she’s had.”

“Harriman,” the chief interrupted, still studying him. “You’re handling the Randolph cases, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Frank said, surprised not only that Ellis Hale knew such a detail, but also that he didn’t refer to it as the “Lefebvre case.”

Hale frowned and glanced toward Carlson, but said nothing more.

“Your sister is on her way?” Frank asked Miriam.

“Yes, but I don’t think she’ll make it down here much before midnight.”

“Harriman,” the chief said, “perhaps you should call your wife and tell her that Miriam here could use another female — a sensible female — by her side tonight.”

“If Mrs. Bredloe would like that, sir — certainly.” He wondered if Irene would answer the phone if he called.

“Oh, yes,” Miriam said. “Thank you.”

“One other thing,” the chief said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Trent Randolph was a man I thought of with respect, and he was a friend of this department. When I think of what he might have been able to do as a commissioner had he lived…” His brows drew together, deepening his frown. “I was supposed to meet with him before he left for that trip to Catalina with his children. I was forced to reschedule — and Trent offered to cancel the trip so that we could meet that same day. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I’d agreed to that offer. But I told him to enjoy his weekend with his kids and set up a meeting for that Monday. I never saw him again.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not half as sorry as I am, that’s for damn sure. When Trent’s son was murdered…” He faltered and fell silent, suddenly looking tired. Several moments passed before he seemed to shake off his memories and the mood he had fallen into. The chief glanced at Carlson again, then said to Frank, “Your father was in law enforcement, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. Bakersfield PD.”

“Then no one needs to explain to you the importance of resolving this matter quickly.”

“The matter of Lefebvre’s guilt or innocence?”

“Don’t mention that name to me!” the chief snapped.

Taken aback, Frank said nothing.

Miriam straightened in her chair. She stared at the chief in disbelief and said, “Ellis, I wouldn’t have expected that from you.”

The chief’s face flamed red. He seemed more embarrassed than angry, but Frank found himself wishing that Miriam had not come to his defense.

“Call your wife, Detective Harriman,” Hale said brusquely, then stared at him, as if daring him to react to this curt dismissal.

It rankled, but he wasn’t about to let Hale know that. Keeping his voice cool and even, he said, “Yes, sir,” and walked away.

He had to walk outside the building to get a signal for his cell phone. He called home and got the answering machine — not a good sign.

“Irene? It’s Frank. Are you there?” He waited, but she didn’t answer before the machine cut the call off. He had left a note for her, telling her where he was and asking her to listen to the messages Pete had left on the answering machine. He wondered if she had even seen the note — or bothered to read it. Maybe she had been too busy packing.

As he tried to decide what to do next, his cell phone rang. The caller ID display on the phone showed his home number. “Irene?” he answered.

“How’s Bredloe doing?”

“Not good. There may be brain damage, and he might not even—” The words seemed to sink in for the first time as he said them. He suddenly felt his throat tighten and couldn’t go on.

The silence stretched, then she said, “Do you need me to be there?”

“I know you hate hospitals, but Miriam’s here with nothing but — nothing but flaming assholes from the department around her.”

“That is an emergency. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

They didn’t talk about their argument, though he could tell she was still angry with him. But long after the others — including the chief — left, they stayed with Miriam. Frank was glad Irene was there to comfort her — and to help him keep his own hopes up.

Those hopes suffered a setback a little before ten o’clock, when he first saw Bredloe.

The captain had been moved into the intensive care unit. He had not regained consciousness. Frank tried to tell himself that he had seen crime victims survive more terrible injuries, but he had not known those individuals personally or seen them before they were hurt. He could not reconcile the Bredloe he knew, always a strong and healthy man, with the pale, stitched, and bandaged one lying so still on this hospital bed, attached by tubing and wiring to machines and medications.

The doctors seemed to think that their work to save the captain’s life had gone well and were optimistic about his chances for survival, even if they avoided predicting what impairments the head injuries would cause.

An orderly handed Miriam a large plastic bag, explaining that it contained the clothing her husband had been wearing when he was admitted. Frank watched as she peered into the bag, then reached to support her as she nearly fainted.

“Let Frank look through it for you,” Irene suggested as he guided Miriam to a chair.

But Miriam shook her head and began sorting what remained of the bloodstained and battered clothing from inside the bag. She separated the contents, placing them on the chair next to her own, then tenderly folded each item before putting it back in the bag. The pants were completely ruined, obviously cut away by ER doctors hurrying to treat his wounds. His shirt had not fared much better. She was smoothing the stained but relatively intact suit coat when she paused, then reached into an inside pocket. She removed what Frank at first thought was a document of some kind. She held it up, a puzzled look on her face.

“What in the world was he doing with this?” she asked.

As Frank drew closer, he saw the reason for her question. What he had thought to be a document was a fancy paper airplane.

14

Monday, July 10, 10:01 P.M.

A Private Home in Las Piernas

The Looking Glass Man double-checked all the blinds and curtains. He secured all three dead bolts on the front door, pausing to polish his fingerprints from their gleaming brass surfaces. He did not do this because of concerns regarding evidence — it was perfectly natural that his own fingerprints would be found in his own home. He simply did not like to see any sort of smudge on the locks.

Satisfied with these and other safeguards, he moved to the back of the house, to the large walk-in closet off his bedroom. The light was already on — triggered by a motion detector in the bedroom itself. He took a moment to survey the perfectly polished and aligned shoes, to admire the shirts on their hangers — all facing the same way, each buttoned up to the second highest button on the front. They were arranged by color, lightest to darkest, and each was spaced exactly three-quarters of an inch from the shirt next to it, so that they never touched and therefore never wrinkled or creased a neighboring shirt. He glanced at the side of the closet that held his more casual clothes and adjusted the neatly ironed pair of blue jeans so that it was more precisely centered on its hanger.

The switch for the closet light was in the “on” position. It was always in this position. He pushed slightly on one side of the switch plate, which, like the switch itself, was nothing more than camouflage. The plate swung away to reveal an alarm keypad. He entered a code and heard a series of bolts click in the ceiling above him. He moved a small step stool to the middle of the closet floor.

He pulled down on the access door to the attic, which was unlocked. He did not place a lock on the door because he did not wish to draw attention to it. He returned the step stool to its place, then lowered the ladder built into the access door. Carefully, he climbed until he could reach the true barrier to the attic: a heavy, steel-plated hatch. He lifted it, reaching for the switches for the lights and ventilation system inside the attic before climbing higher.

He smiled to himself, just as he always did when entering this room. He still used other sites as needed, but after the Randolph killings he felt it had become imperative that he acquire a permanent residence over which he was the only landlord, the only man with keys to the front door.

The element of risk did not excite him. He disliked risk. That was why he needed a special house, a house that would seem like any other house from the outside. He had patiently waited for a house in this tract, where every fifth or sixth home was of a style with a high-pitched roof. It was, in fact, the very neighborhood where Wendell Leroy Wallace had once lived. Wallace had been a man with the kind of genius that the Looking Glass Man admired. Like Wallace, he needed a place to build unique devices.

Not that anyone looking at the house from the street would be aware of the extraordinary activities taking place within it. Even from the inside — unless one knew where to look — the house seemed average.

Far less important to him than the house itself was this attic room. He bought this house because of the pitch of its roof. He ran the numbers in his head — the pitch of the roof was 12/12 — the attic was fifteen feet high under the ridge and sloped steeply to zero at the walls — a lovely space of eight hundred square feet where the headroom was over seven feet. He found construction nearly as fascinating as destruction.

He ate and slept and bathed in the house, but these were activities he could have carried out in any house. Some said a man’s home was his castle, but he preferred to think of his home as a moat, a large defense system protecting the real castle — this attic with its hidden treasures.

He had done almost all of the work on the attic himself, a fact that pleased him for many reasons — one being that his participation reduced the need to eliminate more than two skilled workmen after they had completed their part of the project. It had not been difficult to arrange the deaths of a roofer and his helper at their next job site. People expected roofers to fall off roofs in the same way they expected race car drivers to crash.

He regretted the necessity, of course. He did not enjoy killing. Murder was always a last resort, to be avoided if at all possible. The roofers — although they did fail to obtain the proper building permits for the work done on his property — weren’t really criminals. Even though that permit business technically made them lawbreakers, he counted them among the innocent. Until today, only six of his victims had been innocent. Bredloe made the seventh.

He cringed, realizing that he was guilty of an inaccuracy. Bredloe was still clinging to life, and Bredloe could not, therefore, be counted as a murder victim. Not yet.

Careless thinking. Careless thinking easily led to careless actions. He did not have a perfect record. He knew this. It was the source of most of his unhappiness.

He pulled the ladder up after him, secured the access door and hatch, and reset the alarm from a pad inside the attic. Should anyone enter the house while he was up here, he would have plenty of time to destroy any incriminating materials. The mere thought of finding it necessary to do so made him shudder.

He took his newest notebook from its hiding place in one of the small safes in the attic floor — the compartment under the loose carpeting in the northeast corner of the room — and placed it on the immaculate desk in the middle of the room. He selected a mechanical pencil from a line of three of them in the top drawer of the desk.

He closed his eyes for a moment, mentally reviewing the events of the day. He had been forced to act hastily — haste was not the same thing as carelessness, merely an invitation to it. He must make certain that any errors were corrected. This was his first opportunity to reflect on all that had happened today…

He had been paged while watching Harriman. The page had not been sent by a human caller. Years ago, he had made a change in the software used in the property room. The people who worked in Property were like most people who used computers. They used them in the same way they used their refrigerators and television sets — as long as the computer functioned and did what they expected it to do, they did not investigate its inner workings.

So when he made the small change in the program, it went unnoticed. The property room staff was totally unaware that whenever anyone asked for evidence from certain cases, the property room computer sent a message to his own computer. And when his computer received the message, it dialed his pager number and left a code indicating which evidence had been requested and the name of the person making the request. Today it had indicated that Bredloe was looking at the evidence the department had gathered against Lefebvre. When he realized which evidence in particular the captain had studied, his sense of alarm had increased.

It would not be easy, he had realized, to lure Bredloe away from the office. An intensive investigation would be launched into any attack on the captain of the Homicide Division. Seeing the newspaper article about the unveiling of the mural had reminded him of the Sheffield Club, and suddenly he had known where he would ask Bredloe to meet him. The Looking Glass Man had attended the event — not knowing at that time how useful it would be.

It had not been difficult to gain access to the building. The disguise had been effective. He already knew that security at the site was lax. No one on that job would question someone who was carrying equipment into the building. He had entered unnoticed while most of the workers were washing up and putting their tools away.

He was able to install the cameras and lights within thirty minutes. It was the end of the workday — the Sheffield was already nearly empty. While he ran cables to a monitor — which would only appear to be taping what was seen by the cameras — he checked to make sure no one was nearby. Then he used a pallet jack to position the load of bricks and put the remote-controlled lift in place beneath the pallet itself.

He made sure that the ramp from the publicity event was still accessible and that Bredloe would be able to enter through the front doors. The most difficult aspect to arrange was the single whimsical note — the paper airplane. He had worried that the small fan — a second remote would trigger its operation — would be discovered before he was ready to launch the plane. He dared not try a test launch there, and feared the plane would not perform as he hoped it would — in the science of paper airplane flight, every room was different, with drafts and thermal factors that could ruin everything.

Though he had installed the fan that afternoon, the plane had been ready to go since Saturday, when the department grapevine was buzzing with rumors about Lefebvre’s plane being found. He had intended the paper plane for Frank Harriman, a final little touch to be used at some future date if necessary — but the Looking Glass Man had decided to use it now, curious to see if Harriman would make the connection between it and the Cessna. But today’s flight had not, after all, been such a bad experiment.

With everything in place, he had made a single phone call — at that dreadful bus station! — and the captain was on his way.

He had been pleased with all the mechanical aspects of the plan and could not help but feel a sense of pride in his quick thinking. He was not so foolish as to believe his problems were over now. But he had been able to contain the damage that might have been done. He sighed, saddened that his work on behalf of justice require the sacrifice of a man like Bredloe. This, he decided, must be how a victorious general felt in the aftermath of battle — exhilarated by the achievement but mournful over the loss of life among his troops. Like a general, he must concentrate on the ultimate and worthy objective. Some lives might be lost, but many others would be saved. By his own reckoning, he had already saved hundreds of lives, spared all kinds of suffering and deprivation.

Yes, he thought, I am a general. At war with Judge Lewis Kerr.

The Looking Glass Man acknowledged that he was driven by hatred, not of a race or nation — that kind of hatred he found abhorrent — but rather of a single individual. He did not consider this hatred an imperfection, and his hatred of Judge Kerr did not make him unhappy. On the contrary, he knew his anger toward Kerr fueled all the finer fires of his existence. At its onset, that anger had been a remedy for pain, and seeking relief, he had fantasized Kerr’s death at his hands a thousand times over. Each hour, it seemed, brought some new vision of Kerr’s demise: a delivery of food poisoned with undetectable substances, a prescription that had been altered, household “accidents” — an electrical problem or a small but smoky fire — a shove into traffic or down a flight of stairs. He had seen so much murder in his career, it was not difficult to consider methods that might end another man’s life.

These visions of Kerr’s death brought a certain measure of delight, but none seemed to correspond with the Looking Glass Man’s notions of a fitting punishment, and so he hesitated to implement any of them. Sadly, he would only be able to kill Kerr once and must not squander his chance.

Over the years, though, as his anger burned on — hollowing him, hardening him — he became glad for the reluctance that had made him delay the pleasure of slaying Kerr — for in that time he learned of a magnificent opportunity, a perfect event to bring matters to an appropriate close, an event that was now not so far away. A plan had slowly emerged, and he prepared. He learned his craft, honed his skills. And took comfort in the good he was doing while he waited.

He had bided his time in the service of justice. It had become a challenge, a true challenge, to make certain that the worst criminals set loose by Kerr’s idiotic rulings were later caught again and prosecuted successfully. It mattered not at all to the Looking Glass Man that the criminals were never guilty of these later crimes, that these later crimes were ones he himself had planned. No, that was the joy of it! He wrote the script, managed the stage, set the props, and ultimately, directed the action. If someone else got the credit for capturing these lowlifes, it didn’t trouble him. After all, the arresting officers were just another set of players. The last thing he wanted was the limelight.

And so certain anonymous tips nearly always led to arrests, and then convictions, because he orchestrated events to ensure the best outcome. He did his best to ensure that the evidence was in place, that witnesses would be present, that anything that had gone wrong in the first trial would not go wrong in the second.

He frowned as his thoughts strayed to Trent Randolph and to Seth and Amanda. He thought of Lefebvre and suddenly shivered. Was there some divine message here? A warning from the cosmos, perhaps? Some reason Lefebvre’s body had been found now, of all times, when he was within reach of his long-awaited goal?

Lefebvre! Even now, Lefebvre caused him trouble.

He stood and walked over to a short row of file cabinets, precisely positioned in an area that would support their weight. The drawers of the cabinets were labeled by date. He unlocked one and pulled the second drawer open. He did this every day — came to this room, opened a file cabinet, and read from a file. Sometimes he could read one in a day; other files took several days to complete. He read them in order, oldest to newest, and back again. This ritual kept him focused on his calling.

He had been collecting information on Kerr for years now. He doubted Kerr himself had such meticulous records of his own actions. Tonight’s reading was the final section of a lengthy transcript of court proceedings. It was a case in which Kerr dismissed all charges against a man who had asked his ex-wife and young son to drive with him to visit the child’s paternal grandparents — then taken them to a remote area and shot and killed them both. Judge Kerr claimed the evidence against the man was gathered in an improper search. The transcript was just the sort of thing the Looking Glass Man needed to read right now, because it reminded him of why he must fight this good fight. He carefully replaced the file and went back to the desk.

He opened the notebook to a new page, ready to begin to write up this latest event. He would start with the moment his pager went off, when he was in his van watching Harriman look at maps in his car. He placed the tip of his mechanical pencil in the middle of the first square, then lifted it again as a new question occurred to him.

Where had Harriman been all afternoon?