Hocus

Jan Burke

The fifth book in the Irene Kelly series

Copyright © 1997 by Jan Burke

To Siblings Without Rival

Tonya, Sandra, and John

and

Tommy, Susie, and Michael

Hocus

(H

k

s) vt.

1. To play a trick upon; dupe, hoax.

2. To drug (a person), especially for a criminal purpose.

Origins

EVEN BEFORE HE STARTED KINDERGARTEN, he had figured out that his favorite superhero flew with strings. Now, just over four years later, he wished he had been wrong. They could use a hero with a cape. Escaping into his imagination, he pictured someone with true superhuman powers coming to save them. A soft moan brought him back to the dark room. He hated the way the room smelled: musty and metallic. Whatever form their hero took, he needed to get there quickly. His friend was hurt — a broken arm, maybe. His father would have known.

Best not to think about his father.

Their mothers wouldn’t miss them yet. It was hard to know what day it was, but he didn’t think a week had gone by. And maybe the bad guy knew where their mothers were. Maybe their mothers would never come for them. He almost started crying again.

Don’t be a wussy, he told himself. Don’t.

He thought instead about his friend. If anything happened to his friend, he didn’t want to live. No one else would ever understand him, no one else would know what this had been like.

Intermittently, over the last few hours, his friend had been moaning softly, but now he stopped and held himself silent — they could hear the door opening. Someone was coming down the stairs. The boy trembled, afraid their tormentor had returned. His friend reached out and held his hand.

The voice was not the voice of their captor. This man was calling out something about the police, but that didn’t fool the boys. Not this time.

They stayed silent. The man’s clothes were as dark as the room, and he was carrying a flashlight. He said something about Jesus when he saw the bodies of their fathers, the pools of blood. He kept moving the flashlight, and finally it lit the boys’ faces. The man drew in a sharp breath, then said very gently, “Hi. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now. I’m a policeman.”

“A real one?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” the man answered, slowly drawing nearer, holding the light up high so they could see him.

“So was the other one,” his friend whispered, but later, neither boy would tell anyone what he meant by that.

1

I TOLD THEM I WAS GOING to try to get some sleep, but I don’t think I fooled anyone. None of us would sleep that night. I hadn’t even tried. I was still wide awake, sitting in a chair across the room from the too wide bed, staring at it as if it were a stranger in my house; thinking too much; repeatedly, relentlessly recalling that the last thing my husband and I had done together was to part in anger. I do not know of any potion as bitter as the realization that one may have lost all opportunity to ask forgiveness.

Hours earlier I had been more complacent about making apologies. Frank didn’t show up for dinner, but I figured work had held him up. After all, a homicide detective’s schedule is not one you can set your watch by. As a reporter, my own hours are fairly irregular. This was not the first night one of us had eaten across from an empty place setting.

I didn’t have much of an appetite. I sat there, wondering how a week that had begun so gloriously had so quickly gone to hell. On Monday Frank had been instrumental in breaking a major case: his work had led to the identification of two members of Hocus, a group that had been on a destructive rampage in Las Piernas for several weeks. On Tuesday he had discovered the whereabouts of the suspected ringleader of the group, one of two men who were then taken into custody.

Wednesday, life made an about-face. A story about the arrests appeared in the Las Piernas News Express, an article that painted homicide detective Frank Harriman as a hero. That might have been cause for celebration, except the article didn’t give much credit to the other cops who had worked on the case, and worse, it included details apparently leaked straight out of classified police reports. It didn’t take long for a department that had been patting Frank on the back to start pointing a finger at him, the only cop married to an Express reporter.

The Hocus story had been written by our crime reporter, Mark Baker, an ace who does his own work and has no need to consult with me. It never would have been my story anyway — because I’m married to a cop, crime stories are off-limits. But most members of the police department and the district attorney’s office are cynical about the press to begin with, and few would buy any of Frank’s explanations about our ground rules. Frank’s pressures at work quickly became pressures at home.

Perhaps peace would have been restored in our household if that were the only difficulty we faced, but problems rove in packs, it seems. Trouble arrived in a trio this time and left us silent and distant throughout Thursday, shouting at breakfast on Friday.

Friday afternoon, tired of worrying over the magnitude of our current rift, I had called his office. Big of me, I thought.

My noble intentions were wasted. He wasn’t in. I called his pager. No return call.

I tried a second and a third time, to no avail.

At home, while cooking too much dinner, I considered the possible explanations for his lack of response. One was that he didn’t have the pager with him. Unlikely, but possible. Another was that he hadn’t found time to call back. Maybe. Most likely, I decided, he was ignoring me.

By eight o’clock the leftover chicken was in the refrigerator. The dogs, Deke and Dunk, had been walked and fed. They lay at my feet but watched the door. Cody, my big tomcat, more attuned to my mood, was restless, prowling from room to room, tail snaking and snapping in displeasure. He went into the guest room, where the lights were out, and yowled. When I went in to see what his problem was, he sped out of the room, waited for me to settle into a chair, and then repeated the performance in the kitchen. We toured the house in this fashion. I had just about decided that I could make a nice pair of booties from his pelt when the phone rang.

I ran to catch it before the answering machine picked up.

“Irene?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes. Hi, Pete.” Not a good sign, I thought, to have his partner make the call.

“Is Frank there?”

“I thought he might be with you,” I said. My worries started to shift direction.

“No. Christ, I thought he’d be back by now.”

“Back from where?”

“Riverside.”

“Riverside?”

“He drove out there this morning. He had to talk to a guy out there. A witness.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I stayed here,” he said, and I could hear the edge of uneasiness creeping into his voice. “I had a lot of other stuff to follow up on. You know.”

Might as well face it, I thought. “He’s being kept out of the office because of the leak on the arrests, right?”

“Yeah, probably because of the leak. You know, if you’d just get that other reporter to name his source—”

“If that didn’t work for Frank, why the hell would it work for you?”

“I guess you guys fought about that this morning, huh?”

I sighed. “Did he tell you what we had for breakfast, too?”

“He said he left without breakfast.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t get all hot and bothered about it, Irene. Frank and I have been partners longer than you’ve been married.”

This is one of Pete’s favorite things to say to me whenever I object to his sticking his nose into our business. Before I could reply, his wife picked up the extension.

“Pete Baird, you are ten pounds in a nine-pound bag,” Rachel said. “What’s this, Irene? Frank isn’t home from Riverside?”

“No,” I said, suddenly feeling as if I were admitting that he might not want to come home. But Rachel was on a different track entirely.

“Something’s not right, Pete. Use the other line to call the department. Ask when he last checked in.”

As Pete hung up I asked, “What do you mean, something’s not right?”

“You sure he hasn’t been trying to call you? You been on the phone?”

“No. The only time I’ve used the phone was to page him earlier today. Who was this witness?”

“The witness? It was—”

Before she could name him, I heard Pete shouting to her in Italian. I couldn’t make out what he said, but he was obviously telling her not to talk to me about the case. The clean part of her response, also in Italian, was, “I’ll tell her if I want to,” and something to the effect of, “Here’s a nickel; with that you can buy twice as many brains as you’re using right now.”

To me, quite calmly, she said, “It’s nothing to worry over. The man he went to see, he’s an informant. Frank and Pete have talked to him before. He’s not a prince, mind you. Just a junkie. Never been involved in anything big. Never hurt anybody.”

I finally used a nickel’s worth of brains and saw exactly what she was trying to avoid saying to me.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Irene, don’t do that to yourself.”

“You think something went wrong out in Riverside. That something has happened to Frank—”

“Wait,” she said. “Pete’s trying to tell me something.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand, so that I heard only the muted sounds of their brief discussion. There was a stretch of silence, then she said, “Look, I’m going to come over, okay?”

“He didn’t check in, did he?”

“Listen to me, Irene. For all we know, Frank is sitting in some bar, drinking with the local cops and thanking them for their cooperation, right? So I’m just coming over to keep you company, so that you don’t drive yourself crazy thinking about what might or might not be making him late. Pete’s going to go down to the office and get the informant’s address and phone number. Pete can find out who Frank talked to in the Riverside PD.”

“Tell Pete I want to go with him.”

“What are you, nuts? That department is not exactly singing praises to the Express right now. They aren’t going to let you walk in past the front desk. I’ll be honest with you. They think of you as some kind of Mata Hari right now. They’re sure you seduced a story out of your husband the cop. Pete told me that Frank was actually happy to get out of the building today. I guess their lieutenant has really been leaning on him. He’s got almost everyone convinced that the only way the Express could have learned the details of the arrests is through Frank.”

Rachel was at my front door not much later. She took one look at me, divined what I had been imagining, and said, “Look, I’m not going to bullshit you. Even though I think it’s the least likely possibility, Frank might be in trouble. Might be. You can’t do anything about it one way or the other, so making a nervous wreck out of yourself does nobody any good at all.”

Rachel retired about a year ago — while in her early forties — from working homicide in Phoenix; she’s now a PI. I figured she knew this kind of worry from both sides: former cop, cop’s wife.

“If it were Pete—” I began.

“I’d be concerned,” she said. “But not as upset as you are. Not until I had more reason to be.” She paused. “It’s harder if you’ve had a fight, maybe.”

“I’d say I owe it to Frank to keep my mouth shut for now,” I said. “But you probably know more about it than I do. Sounds like he’s told Pete quite a bit. Come on in and tell me what you already know.”

Once we were seated and the pets had settled in around us, she said, “Okay, I know Frank was upset about the article. That’s understandable, but I’m with you. Frank and Pete don’t have any right to try to ask you to do something that’s going to get you in trouble at work.”

“Frank has risked that much for me now and then. It’s more than just getting in trouble; it’s much worse than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I understand why Frank’s upset. To him, finding out who talked to Mark looks like an easy thing for me to do.”

“This Mark guy is a friend of yours, right?”

“Yes, he’s a friend.”

“So just ask him to tell you who the source is—”

“But I can’t do that,” I protested. “In part, because Mark is a friend. If he’s promised anonymity to a source, I can’t use our friendship to get him to break his promise.”

“So you’re saying it’s an ethical issue?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose your editor would be too pleased with you, either.”

I nodded. “He’d have a right to be angry. To fire me.”

“I think Frank understands that. He’s just frustrated.”

“I know, I know. But he made this into a question of loyalty: where’s my loyalty — with him or the Express?”

“Ah, I begin to see.”

“It made me furious. I was a reporter when we first got together. We’ve talked about this, talked it over before we got married. We had a whole system worked out, a way to avoid this problem. I’ve never taken anything he’s told me about a case into the newsroom — not unless he’s told me it was okay.”

“And he doesn’t talk about your work at the paper with the cops — not even with Pete, no matter what that little troublemaker says.”

I quieted down. “I know. I know he doesn’t.”

After a long silence she said, “Just like you know he doesn’t have any interest in his old girlfriend.”

“Oh, hell. Does Pete know about that, too?” I sighed. That meant Pete was up on two out of three of our recent problems. Frank was usually more discreet, even with Pete. “What did he tell you, then?”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you tell me your version of it?”

Before I could reply, the phone rang. I hurried to answer it. It was Pete.

“Have you heard from him yet?” I asked, all irritation forgotten.

“No, not yet. He hasn’t answered any of our pages. Riverside PD hasn’t heard from him since he called to let them know he was going out to talk to the junkie. Junkie hasn’t been paying his phone bill, so there’s no way to call his place. Riverside is on its way out to talk to the guy, find out when Frank left. Is Rachel there?”

I handed the phone to her.

So Frank wasn’t out drinking with the Riverside cops. Pete must not have told them that his partner had a fight with his wife. If he had, he might not have convinced Riverside to send a unit out to the junkie’s house. Then again, Pete could make such a pain out of himself, they might issue an APB for Frank just to get Pete off their backs.

I looked at a clock. Quarter after nine.

Rachel’s half of the conversation didn’t take long and was in Italian. I couldn’t understand more than a few pronouns and endearments, but her tone of voice would have been understood in any language: she was trying to calm him down, to ease his worries. Mine escalated in direct proportion. I started to pace.

“So,” she said when she hung up, “you were going to tell me about this old girlfriend.”

“Former fiancée,” I said. “Frank moved from Bakersfield to Las Piernas to be with her. She’s with the highway patrol.”

She waited.

“You know all this, and I don’t want to talk about it anyway. I want to know what’s going on with Frank.”

“Of course,” she said. “But we don’t have any way of knowing what’s going on with him, do we? So we can sit here and stew and let you wear out the rug pacing, or we can distract ourselves.”

I sat down. “Her name is Cecilia Parker. Frank’s mother wishes he would have married her instead of me.”

“Even now?”

“Well, no, maybe not. I don’t know.”

“Cecilia lives in Bakersfield?”

“Yes. She moved back there, and Frank stayed here. They both came from Bakersfield, originally. He was a detective in Bakersfield, met her, and they got engaged. She wanted to take a job here. So he followed her, even though it meant that he had to go back to uniform here.”

“Then she changed her mind about living here?”

“Right. She didn’t give it much of a chance, I guess. At least, that’s how he tells it.”

“From detective to uniform — that’s not easy on anybody,” she said. “Pete told me that Frank made detective in Las Piernas in record time, but still — he gave up a lot to move here. He must have been steamed when she wanted to go back.”

“I don’t know all the details. I know he liked it here, wasn’t in a hurry to go back.”

“But his family is in Bakersfield? His mom and his sister, right?”

The question came close to another area of trouble, and I wondered briefly if Rachel knew that when she asked. That would make Pete three for three. But just in case Frank hadn’t mentioned that problem, I decided she’d have to be more direct.

“Yes,” I said, “Frank’s mom wants him to move back to Bakersfield. And she’s close to Cecilia’s mom.”

“Hmm. I begin to understand. So why did this Cecilia call?”

How much should I tell her? “Just to talk to him about his family, people they knew in Bakersfield. And to tell him that she had some of his things.”

“What kind of things?”

“I don’t know. Records, books, a few papers, I guess. Apparently, she’s splitting up with a live-in boyfriend. Told Frank she ran across some of his stuff when she was packing up to move out. Invited him to come up to dinner some night so she could give it back to him.”

“Invited him to dinner?”

I smiled at her look of surprise. “I see Pete didn’t relate the entire story.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know that Frank’s married now. It hasn’t been so long….”

“Rachel, you weren’t listening. Bea Harriman and Cecilia’s mom are friends. I’ve met her mom. Trust me, Frank’s mom has told her that their hopes have been dashed.”

“Oh.”

“I figured Cecilia could mail his stuff to him, or leave it with his mom. Frank said she wouldn’t do that, and besides, he got the feeling that she needed him. That sent me over the edge. So he tells me I’m treating him as if he isn’t trustworthy. I told him that I trusted him, but I didn’t trust her. He didn’t buy it. I thought it over today, and I guess I decided he was right. Two to tango and all that.”

“What?”

“Worst case, she wants him to come back to her, right?”

“Maybe. Or maybe just un chiavata al momento. You know, a quickie.”

“Whatever. He’d have to want it, too, right?”

Her look of skepticism made me laugh.

“Men!” She said it like a swear word.

“We’re back to what you said a while ago, Rachel. I do trust him. The rest — that’s her problem.”

Rachel shrugged.

“Besides,” I added, “she touches him, I’ll punch her perkies inside out.”

She laughed. “That’s more like it!”

We passed some time posing theories on Cecilia’s motives. I kept glancing at the clock. Rachel tried hard to keep me distracted.

At 10:25 the dogs suddenly clambered to their feet, tails wagging, and scrambled toward the front door.

“He’s home!” I shouted, exactly like a little kid, feeling just that excited and twice as relieved. I hurried down the hall and threw open the door.

The man who stood there was a fearsome sight. Tall, clad in black leather, scar faced. His head was shaved and he wore an earring. His tattooed arm was raised in a fist, but only because I had pulled the door open before he could knock, and the look on his face was astonishment, not aggression.

“Oh, it’s you, Jack,” I said to my next-door neighbor.

The dogs, who consider Jack Fremont their alternate owner, were rubbing up against him, rolling on the ground, panting in delight.

“Well, at least the dogs are happy to see me,” he said, reaching to pet them. “As far as you’re concerned, though, I’m clearly a big disappointment.”

“Sorry, Jack. No, of course not. I — come on in.”

He was puzzled but followed me back to where Rachel waited.

“Hi,” he greeted her. “Pete and Frank out on a case tonight?”

I briefly explained the situation.

“Maybe he’s still steamed after that fight you two had this morning,” he offered.

“Damn it to hell, does everyone in the city know about that?”

“Possibly,” he replied. “After all, you were shouting at each other in the driveway.”

I turned red. “Sorry if we awakened you,” I muttered.

It was the last thing I said for a while. They discussed a variety of subjects. Jack spent a lot of years as a rover, Rachel as a cop; between the two of them there was no shortage of stories. I think Rachel was relieved to share the burden of distracting me, but that part of it was pretty much a sham all the way around. I could think only in sets of a few words at a time, and I didn’t say them aloud: Please be safe. Please come home. Please call. Please don’t be hurt.

This rapidly turned into praying. Sort of. I worried that maybe that was a sham, too. Every time I pray, I end up telling myself that I have no business praying, especially not if I am going to swear and doubt and misbehave in as many ways as I do. This has become a routine between me and the Almighty, like letters that say, “I think of you more often than I write.” I’m sure I will hear about it later.

Rachel and Jack kept exchanging glances and trying to get me to do more than mumble and look between the clock and the front door. At one point Jack came over and sat beside me. Although we hadn’t known each other very long, he had helped me deal with more than one crisis, and he was also one of Frank’s closest friends. I thought about this, and the fact that I wasn’t the only person in that room who was worried, and found myself joining their conversation again.

At eleven-thirty the phone rang. Rachel was still sitting next to it and answered it on the first ring.

“Yeah, Pete. It’s me,” she said, watching me stand up.

She turned away from me. That’s when I knew the news would be bad.

2

“JUST TELL ME,” I said when I saw she was searching for some way to carefully phrase news that had obviously shaken her.

I hadn’t interrupted while she’d sat hunched over the phone, resting her forehead in her hand, talking to Pete. Not even when she’d quickly switched to Italian. I’d stood there, arms folded to prevent myself from grabbing the phone, hands clenching my elbows so hard that it hurt, even as she’d scribbled notes on a scratch pad, asking Pete to slow down, repeat things.

Now I wanted to know what was going on, no matter how difficult it was for her to tell me.

Jack stood up beside me. “Is he okay, Rachel?”

“Nobody really knows.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I snapped.

Jack took my hand.

“Sit down, Irene,” Rachel said in a strained voice. “I’ll tell you everything Pete told me.”

I sat, and Jack sat down beside me, still not letting go of my hand.

“Riverside sent a patrol car out to the junkie’s place,” she began. “Two officers — a rookie and his TO — his training officer. Frank’s car was nowhere in sight, but they knew this was where he was headed. So they went up to the house. Some shack of a place the junkie was renting — kind of isolated, I guess. Only one light on in the whole house. They knock on the front door, and it just swings open. The junkie is in there, shot to death.”

“No….”

“Frank wasn’t in there,” she went on quickly. “Just the junkie. They saw signs of a struggle. The rookie got on the radio, the TO looked around. No sign of Frank.”

“Frank is missing?” I asked, knowing that was exactly what I had just heard but hoping that someone would tell me I had heard wrong.

“Yes,” Rachel said.

“Someone has taken him?”

She hesitated. “There are other possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe he’s gone missing for reasons of his own.”

“No. Not Frank.”

“Irene is right,” Jack said. “You know that as well as I do, Rachel. He wouldn’t leave the scene of a crime.”

“Which makes me wonder if he made it there,” Rachel said. “Look, all I’m saying is, we can’t jump to conclusions.”

I barely heard what she was saying. Like Jack, I would never believe that Frank would voluntarilyleave the scene of a homicide. The death of that informant meant Frank was in danger. Whether he failed to arrive before that informant was killed or was forced to leave afterward, he was in trouble.

A mixture of fear and blind rage jolted and twisted right through me, and I felt like screaming or hitting something just to get it out of my system. The thought of anyone harming Frank—

The thought of anyone harming him made me come to my senses. I didn’t scream or cry or use my fists. I took a deep — if shaky — breath and promised myself that I could go into hysterics at some future date. Even revenge would have to wait.

Think.

“What’s this junkie’s name?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Pete never told me. Just calls him ‘the junkie.’ They try to protect informants, so they don’t usually refer to them by name.” She paused, then added, “Not that I would have wished the guy dead, but the fact that they found the body there gives me hope for Frank.”

“Because if someone—” It was so hard to make myself say it. I took a breath and tried again. “Because if someone was going to kill Frank, he would have done it right away. Left two bodies behind, not one. He might have a reason to keep him alive.”

“He or she or they. We don’t know. And again, maybe Frank left the scene because that’s what he had to do to be safe. We don’t know.”

The dogs came to their feet again, barking this time. The doorbell rang. Jack got the dogs to be quiet, and I looked through the peephole, wondering who the hell wouldn’t just knock after midnight.

The Las Piernas Police Department, as it turned out. Or its representatives, anyway. As I opened the door for Reed Collins and Vince Adams, I figured I was lucky. Although I hadn’t always been on good terms with either of them, they liked Frank. I could think of others who might have drawn this duty and made life more unpleasant.

“Hello, Irene,” Vince said. “Mind if we come in?”

“Not at all.”

They were walking ahead of me, blocking my view of the end of the hallway, but I knew exactly when they saw Jack. Their steps slowed, and they seemed suddenly wary. Reed was the first to ease a little. “You Frank’s neighbor?” he asked.

“Yes. Jack Fremont.”

Rachel called out a greeting to them as they shook Jack’s hand.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, anything to drink?” I asked.

“No. No, thanks,” Vince said.

Reed watched me for a second, then said, “Yeah, I could use a cup. Thanks.”

“Anybody else?”

Rachel and Jack shook their heads.

As I moved to the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye I saw Vince make a questioning gesture to Rachel, who gave a quick nod.

Yes, I know my husband is missing, I wanted to shout, but busied myself with grinding beans and measuring out water instead.

Cody came in, snaked around my legs, then went over to Reed. He sniffed Reed’s shoes, then rubbed against him, too. Reed reached down and lifted the big lug into his arms. “You’re not going to scratch me, are you?” he asked, apparently aware of Cody’s reputation.

“Don’t trust all that purring,” I said. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, thanks.”

I stared at the coffeemaker as if it were really important for me to keep an eye on it, as if an automatic coffeemaker were some delicate instrument that might require my attention in order to operate properly. In fact, what was so wonderful about it at that moment was that it did exactly what it was supposed to do. I needed something to be normal.

I reached for a couple of mugs, not wanting to test the steadiness of my hands with a cup and saucer. Reed put the cat down. As I handed him his mug he said, “You know why we’re here.”

A statement. I nodded.

“Is there a room where we can talk?”

“Just a minute—” Rachel began, but I shook my head.

“They’re here because they want to find Frank,” I said. I turned to Reed. “We can go into the guest room, or sit outside.”

“It’s a little chilly out, down here near the water,” he said. “The guest room would be fine.”

“Do you want us to leave?” Jack asked me, earning a dark look from Rachel.

“No. Please stay. I mean — if you’re tired, don’t let me keep you. Same with you, Rachel. If you need to go home to Pete—”

“Pete’s on his way to Riverside,” she said. “I’d be up anyway. I can never go to sleep until I hear his car—” She clasped a hand over her mouth. Tears started welling up in her eyes.

“Hear his car pull into the driveway?” I asked. “Yes, I’m the same way. It’s good to have you here with me, Rachel. But I’ve never seen you cry, and this would be a stinking time to start.”

“I’m not crying,” she said. “I thought I was going to sneeze for a minute. That’s all.”

I nodded and walked off toward the guest room, Reed in tow. I could hear Vince ask Rachel something in a low voice and heard her reply loudly, “Did you see her face? Did you? Of course she didn’t call the newspaper, you clueless pinhead!”

If Vince said something back, I didn’t hear it. He followed us into the guest room.

I motioned Reed and Vince to the two chairs in the room and then sat on the edge of the bed. With three of us in there, it was pretty crowded. The door creaked open, and we turned toward it in expectation. Cody came sauntering in, then jumped on my lap. I was going to have a friend in the room after all.

Vince stood up, closed the door, and leaned against it, arms crossed. He ignored a look from Reed. Reed sighed and took out his notebook. The warm-up speech — how sorry they were to be in this situation, were doing everything they could but needed help from me — was quick and painless. It gave me a little time to pet Cody, to try to go numb. Reed did the talking. Once he had my (previously undreamed-of) permission to allow my phone line to be tapped, he worked his way to the questions.

“When was the last time you saw Frank?”

“This morning, when he left for work.”

“About what time was that?”

“About seven-thirty.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A suit. Gray suit. White long-sleeved shirt. A dark red tie.” One I bought for him. He looked good in it. He looked good no matter what he wore. “I’m sorry, what were you asking?”

“Shoes?”

“Yes, he had shoes on.” I felt my face turn red. “Sorry. That’s not what you meant. Black leather shoes.”

“Was he armed?”

“Yes, he had his shoulder holster on, his gun in it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I watched him dress.” I looked down at Cody. “I — I saw him put the shoulder holster on. The gun was in it.”

“Did you talk at all this morning?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief silence.

“What did you talk about?”

“Personal matters.”

They waited. So did I.

“Could you be more specific?”

“No. Contrary to your lieutenant’s opinion, we don’t tell other people what we talk about privately.”

Vince snorted.

“Vince, get me a refill, would you?” Reed asked, lifting his mug.

Vince gave him a stubborn look, got one back, and relented. When Vince had gone, Reed said, “Look, Pete told us you two had a hellacious fight this morning.”

“As Frank has said so often, Detective Baird has a big goddamned mouth.”

Reed sighed. “Yeah, he does, and he sticks his nose into everybody’s business. And right now, we are all just as worried as Pete is about Frank. Pete may be his partner, but the rest of us are sick about this, too. I figure there’s only one person on the earth who’s more worried than we are right now, and that’s you. Help us. Don’t let Vince and his attitude get in the way.”

So I told him, in a nutshell, about the argument — not all of it, I admit. But I told him about two out of three bones of contention. If he already knew about the third, a Harriman family secret, he would have to give me some hint of that knowledge before I talked about it. My own connection to that family might be only by marriage, my opinion about such secrets contrary to the Harrimans’ own — none of that mattered. I owed it to Frank to keep my mouth shut.

Reed kept his face completely impassive. If he agreed with Frank about asking Mark Baker for his sources, Reed never let any judgment show. If he thought Frank was crazy to let his wife know the former fiancée was beckoning, he kept it to himself. If he knew the family secret, he wasn’t letting on.

Vince came back in with the coffee. Cody put his ears back and hissed at him.

Reed tried, but for all his former composure, now he couldn’t hide a smile. Vince told him to shut up, and he laughed aloud. He took a sip of coffee, thanked Vince, and got back to business. He repeated some of what I had said about the fight, asked me if that was correct. I nodded. Vince went back to leaning on the door.

“Did Frank tell you anything about what he’d be working on today?”

“No.”

“Did he call or communicate with you at any time today?”

“No.”

“Did you try to contact him?”

“Yes.” I told them about the attempts at paging him.

“He didn’t call back?”

“No.”

“Did he try to reach you?”

I looked away. “Not that I know of.”

“Didn’t page you?”

“I don’t carry a pager.”

“Nothing on your answering machine or voice mail?” Vince asked.

“No.”

“Is that typical?” Reed asked.

“No. But we had been fighting.”

“Is this what typically happens when you fight?”

“Look, I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I’m not sure Frank would want me to talk about our marriage in this way. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

Vince acted as if he would argue, but Reed made the slightest of gestures to him, a small movement of his fingers, and Vince subsided. Catching this interaction awakened me to the fact that I had been seeing teamwork all along. Reed was playing a role, so was Vince.

“Did you know that Frank planned to go to Riverside today?” Reed asked.

Still smarting from kicking myself, I said, “I’m not saying another word.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What the hell are you two imagining? That I let someone who might harm my husband know where he would be? That I — that I arranged for this to happen?”

“Of course not….”

“Oh, no,” I mocked. “Of course not!”

Reed shifted in his chair. Vince’s mouth became a hard line.

“Just trying to help Frank, right, Reed? Who sent the two of you out here? Lieutenant Carlson? What about you, Vince? You come into this house and ask me if I had made my own husband’s disappearance a news story?” I was shouting by then.

“Look, we’re just trying to learn what we can about the situation,” Reed coaxed.

“Get out.”

“Listen, Irene—”

“Get out of here. Both of you!”

The dogs were barking, I realized, and wondered if it was because they had heard me shouting. Rachel knocked on the door. “Are you okay, Irene?”

Before I could answer, the doorbell rang again.

I heard Rachel answer it, heard the low sound of men’s voices. Vince and Reed exchanged puzzled looks.

A moment later there was a knock on the guest room door. Vince moved away from it, opened it slightly.

“Step back, Vincente,” she said with a grin. “You boys are in for a surprise.”

He stepped back, and Rachel pushed past him. A short, skinny kid in a suit walked in, carrying a briefcase and rubbing his nose with the back of the other hand. He had mouse brown hair and a baby face and moved with the awkwardness of those who are still growing, although I doubted he was. If he was older than he looked, he was starting the second half of his twenties. His eyes, though, were alert and curious, and as he nodded at me I wondered how often he had been underestimated.

He was followed by a big man, a man as tall as Frank — about six four — but lankier. He strolled in with a slow, easy gait. He had a strong face, rough-hewn but not unpleasant. His hair was cut very short. It had been dark once but now was turning gray. His eyes were slate blue.

With Rachel, Vince, Reed, me, and the two newcomers bunched in there, the guest room was crowded. I wanted out.

The big man spoke first. “Mrs. Harriman?” He drawled it out. Pure Texan.

I nodded.

He flipped open a badge holder. “Detective Thomas Cassidy.”

Cody ran over and bit his ankle.

3

CASSIDY GAVE ONLY THE SLIGHTEST WINCE, then picked up the cat and scratched him gently beneath the chin. Cody started purring. Fickle little feline has always been too easy.

“This is Detective Henry Freeman,” Cassidy went on, nodding toward the skinny kid.

“Shit. Tex and the Dweeb,” Vince grumbled. “We’ll never find Harriman alive.”

I felt as if I had been kicked. Hard.

“Christ, Vince,” Reed said, looking over at me. “Shut up.”

“What time is it, Hank?” Cassidy asked the kid, all the while looking at Vince.

The kid pulled back the sleeve of his suit coat and looked at an instrument that appeared to be the Swiss Army knife of watches. Apparently one of the things it could do was tell time, because the kid said, “It’s twelve thirty-four, sir.”

“Note that as an entry in the AD, would you, please, Hank?”

“Yes, sir,” Hank said, grinning as he pulled out a notebook.

Vince took the bait. “What the hell is an AD?” he asked.

“Asshole Diary,” Cassidy replied. “Twelve thirty-four A.M. is a little early to make an entry, grant you, but it would have happened sooner or later. I’ve been keeping track, and I swear I come across at least one asshole a day. The frequency alone is pretty wondrous. Y’all must be breeding with each other. How big is the average litter of assholes, Vince?”

“Screw you, Cassidy.”

“Oh, no, thanks. That’s finding out the hard way. You know what, Vince? What’s really startling is the new and amazing ways y’all strive to perfect your craft. Take that remark you made a minute ago. Insulted at least three people in a few short words. Yep, I’d say you were a perfect asshole.”

“You write in that notebook and I’ll break your fingers, kid. Call Carlson, Reed,” Vince said.

“No need to do that,” Rachel said. “He’s in the living room. Why don’t we all move out there? It’s a little stuffy in here.”

I wasn’t looking forward to facing Carlson. Given all the pressure he had put on Frank lately, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control my temper with the lieutenant. As it turned out, there was an even higher-ranking cop in my living room. Captain Bredloe.

Bredloe stood up when he saw me, walked over, and put an arm around my shoulders. “Irene… I got here as fast as I could.”

“You have news about Frank?” I asked, scared to hear the answer. What would bring the captain out to my house?

“No, nothing yet, I’m sorry.” Bredloe nodded toward Vince and Reed. “These guys treating you okay?” Vince looked a little pale all of a sudden.

“Sure,” I said, wondering if Bredloe had heard me shouting at them as he’d walked up to the house.

“That’s good,” he said. “They won’t be able to stay, though.” He glanced over at Carlson.

“I won’t be able to stay, either,” Carlson said, standing up. “I know this must be upsetting for you, Ms. Kelly. We’re making every effort to find Frank.”

I was just as perfectly polite. “I’m sure you are. Thanks.”

“Vince, Reed, let’s go outside,” he said. Reed followed him, but Vince lagged a little, moving closer to me while Rachel introduced the captain to Jack.

“Thanks, Irene,” Vince said. He looked down at his shoes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Earlier — what I said — that was crap. I don’t know what got into me. I’m sorry….”

He was upset, and this time I saw it for what it was. He was worried. Not about the possibility of Bredloe calling him on the carpet, or what I might tell the paper, but about Frank.

“Damn,” I heard Cassidy mutter behind me. “I guess I’ll have to look for a new one before midnight, Vince.”

Vince smiled a little and said, “If anyone can find one, Cassidy, you will.”

Vince left, and the rest of us took seats in the living room. Jack and Rachel were apparently going to be included in any discussion. She stayed near the phone. Jack was sitting cross-legged on the floor, petting the dogs, keeping them calm. I moved to my great-grandfather’s armchair. It’s big and old-fashioned and doesn’t match any of the other furniture in the living room. Frank likes to sit in it. I held on to the armrests.

Bredloe cleared his throat. “Irene, I brought Tom Cassidy and his partner, er….”

“Freeman, sir. Henry Freeman.”

“Yes, of course. Detective Freeman. I brought them here because they are specialists. Cassidy has worked extensively not only in kidnapping cases, but as a hostage negotiator.”

“So you believe Frank is a hostage?” I asked.

“It’s the most likely possibility, as far as I’m concerned. Other people in our department will work other angles.”

Other angles. Most of which implied that my husband was irresponsible at best, criminal at worst.

There was a snapping noise, and all eyes went to Henry or Hank or whatever he was called. He noticed our attention and looked sheepishly toward Cassidy.

“Hank, you’re making more noise than a turkey eating corn out of a metal bowl,” Cassidy said. “You setting up?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll try to be more quiet.”

“Setting up what?” Rachel asked.

“My computer.” His briefcase turned out to be the carrying case for a notebook computer.

“What about this informant?” I asked. “The one who got shot out in Riverside. Could he have any connection to this?”

“That homicide is not in our jurisdiction, of course,” Bredloe said. “Riverside has been very cooperative with us so far, and we’ve tried to share information with them. Normally, I wouldn’t be discussing an informant with anyone, but the man is dead — telling you about him certainly won’t bring him to any greater harm. Did you bring the file, Freeman?”

“Yes, sir.”

Freeman typed something into the computer, then began reading from a screen. “The victim’s name is Dana Ross. Address — 234 Burnett Road, Riverside. No phone. Aged twenty-eight.” He paused, frowning.

“Something wrong?” Cassidy asked.

“Sorry, sir. He looks older than twenty-eight in the photograph. Dissipation from drug abuse, I suppose.”

“I expect you’re right about that,” Cassidy said. “Go on, please.”

Freeman rubbed his nose. “Do you want me to read his record?”

“Please just summarize it.”

“Several drug arrests, one burglary conviction. Served as an informant on two previous occasions. This would have been his third.”

“Three certainly wasn’t a charm for the late Mr. Ross,” Cassidy said. “And this latest contact?”

“I have my notes from my discussion with Lieutenant Carlson.” Freeman tapped a key or two, then read, “Mr. Ross called the Las Piernas Police Department’s Homicide Division from a public pay telephone in Riverside at twenty-three hundred hours—”

“Hank,” Cassidy said in a low voice.

Freeman colored slightly, then cleared his throat. “He called at eleven P.M. The call was taken by Detective Matsuda, who was on the homicide desk. Ross claimed to have information on the Novak case, but insisted that he would talk only to Detective Harriman. He was asked if Detective Harriman should be paged, and said no. He refused to talk to Detective Matsuda.”

“Novak is one of Pete and Frank’s cases,” Rachel said. “A junkie in Riverside mentions a case Frank is working on?”

“Yes,” Cassidy replied. “But Ross used to live here, so perhaps it’s not so strange.”

“Did Ross specify a time?” Rachel asked.

“No,” Freeman said. “Ross’s message was that he would be home between 0900 and” — he caught Cassidy’s frown — “I mean, nine in the morning and one in the afternoon.”

“Didn’t Jake think it was strange that Ross wouldn’t talk to anyone but Frank?” I asked.

“It isn’t unusual for an informant to have one or two connections to the department and to refuse contact with any other officer. No one questioned Ross’s request,” Freeman said, “because Detective Harriman was his contact on each of the two previous occasions.”

“Frank is the only one who has talked to this guy?”

“Affirmative,” Freeman said. I heard Cassidy sigh.

“Pete knows him,” Rachel said. “He never told me the guy’s name, but he said he knew the junkie that Frank drove out there to see.”

“Pete has met him,” Cassidy agreed. “And Frank filled him in on anything Ross said. But I noticed that any report on a conversation with this informant had Frank’s signature. I talked to Pete just before he left to go out to the scene, and he said Ross would only open up for Frank. Wouldn’t give information to anyone else.”

“Any reason why?” I asked.

Cassidy hesitated, then said, “He trusted Frank.”

“He had every reason to,” I said angrily.

“Pardon?” he said, clearly surprised at my reaction.

“Frank would not murder an informant, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No one here believes that he would do any such thing,” Bredloe said firmly. “I have complete faith in Frank. If he did use his gun, it was with good reason. If he shot that man, it was in self-defense, or to protect another person’s life.”

I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear someone from the department say they had faith in Frank. I found myself on the verge of tears again.

Jack must have realized I was too choked up to talk. “Of course, anyone who knows Frank knows that,” he pitched in, and tried to ask more questions about what was going on in Riverside.

He was politely stonewalled. I listened to the others converse while I tried to calm down. I knew I’d never get the full story from the police about what had transpired at the junkie’s house, what they had found there. Pete might tell me eventually, if Rachel and I leaned on him hard enough. Frank was in danger — I couldn’t wait for “eventually.”

I grew antsy. I needed to act, to do something. The house started to feel too small, too crowded. If I sat around, I’d go crazy.

“Well, I need to get going,” Bredloe was saying.

“It was very kind of the three of you to come by,” I said.

“Oh, I’m the only one who’s going. I’d like to leave Cassidy and Freeman here. Detective Cassidy has a few other things to talk to you about.”

I felt a growing sense of panic but didn’t say anything. When Bredloe stood I grabbed my jacket and said, “I’ll walk you out to your car.”

“I’ll walk out with you, too,” Jack said, making me want to kick him. “I need to get something from my house.”

Outside, Jack said a quick good-bye to Bredloe and went next door. I reached in my jacket pocket and felt the comforting weight of my car keys.

“I want to thank you,” I said to the captain. “Your faith in Frank means a lot to me.”

“Frank earned that faith,” he said. “I came out here tonight to reassure you that I’ll stay personally involved in seeing that he comes home to you safe and sound.”

“Thank you.”

“This is not going to be easy on any of us, Irene. We have to respond to what has happened in a number of ways, looking at a variety of possibilities.”

“ ‘Variety of possibilities.’ By that you mean Frank may be dead, he may be hurt, he may be—”

“I am going to remain hopeful,” he interrupted, “and assume that Frank is a hostage and that whoever has him has nothing to gain by harming him. If so, sooner or later, someone will make an offer.” He paused, then added, “Hostage negotiations are tricky. You know that from your own days on the crime beat. Cassidy is good at what he does, but we’ll need your trust and cooperation.”

I thought of the many times I had witnessed Bredloe’s intervention on Frank’s behalf. More than once I had seen his personal concern for the people who worked for him. I didn’t want to lie to him, so I said, “I trust you. I’ll try to cooperate whenever I’m given any reasonable request.”

He smiled. “You phrase that so cautiously. Well, right now, you need to be cautious.” He opened his car door and started to get in.

“Captain Bredloe—”

He waited.

“I have covered hostage situations. I learned a few things. A group or an individual who takes a cop hostage is likely to be playing for high stakes. If they want to exchange Frank for a prisoner, or ransom, you’re not going to meet their demands.”

“You can’t think about this in those terms—”

“I’m trusting you, remember? The truth.”

He drew in a deep breath and sighed. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Irene, Cassidy has a very high rate of success—”

“None of the hostages were cops, were they? The guy has saved bank tellers, right? I mean, that’s great, that’s important. But he hasn’t ever been in this situation, right?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Right.”

“And you can’t give in at all in this case, because you can’t run the risk that every twisted son of a bitch who watches the nightly news will get the idea that kidnapping cops is a rewarding occupation, right?”

He didn’t answer.

“Damn it to hell,” I said, and turned away.

Jack returned just as Bredloe was starting his car.

“When you get back into the house,” I said in a whisper, “take Rachel aside and tell her I’m going down to the paper.”

“What?”

“I can’t stay here, doing nothing. I’ve got friends at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. I’m going to call them from the office, try to find out what’s going on out there.”

“Irene—”

“Please, Jack! I need someone to be here in case Frank calls — someone he can trust. Rachel may have to leave, and besides, I don’t want to put her in the position of getting Pete in trouble. This way, she can honestly say she had no idea I was going to leave.”

“I don’t like this,” he said. “Call me as soon as you get to the paper, let me know you got there safely.”

I got into my car. “Thanks, Jack. Sack out in the guest room if you get tired.”

“How long are you going to be gone?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He made some sort of additional protest, but I didn’t really hear what he was saying. I had started the noisy Karmann Ghia. I whipped out of the driveway, hoping I’d be at the end of the street before Detective Thomas Cassidy could figure out that I’d left.

4

TRAFFIC WAS SPARSE at just after two in the morning, so even though I wasn’t as careful as I usually am when I’m driving near closing time, I noticed the car that was following me. I wasn’t exactly sure when the dark sedan had first appeared, but by the time I was within a few blocks of the paper, there was no doubt in my mind that I was being tailed. I tried to get a better look at my pursuer, but when I slowed he slowed. I couldn’t make out the color of the car, let alone who was in it.

I made a series of unnecessary turns, cut through the parking lot of the downtown senior center, and turned into a little alleyway near the main library. I doused my lights and waited to see if the sedan was still with me. After a few moments I had the attention of a couple of homeless guys but no one else, so I pulled out and drove on to the paper.

Although the newsroom would be empty, there were plenty of cars pulling into the parking lot at the Express. This was the hour when the drivers from the circulation department arrived. The first copies of the morning paper would already be off the presses; trucks were being loaded. I didn’t know any of the people I saw walking toward the building, so it took me a moment to see the man who was just standing outside his sedan, arms folded, staring at me.

“Don’t put me in your diary for this, Detective Cassidy.”

He moved off the car and walked over to me. “No, Mrs. Harriman — or do you prefer to be called Ms. Kelly?”

“Irene.”

“Okay, Irene, just call me Tom or Cassidy — either one will do. I don’t think anybody but my mama calls me Thomas these days. Anyway, this doesn’t make you an asshole. In fact, after listening to some of the stories the captain told me about you, I would have been disappointed if you didn’t try a stunt like this.”

“Glad to give you the satisfaction of being right. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going into the building.”

“Certainly,” he said, and started to follow me.

“Wait a minute. The Las Piernas Police Department is not invited to come along.”

“You aren’t safe here,” he said, moving to block my way. “If I could figure out what you were likely to do, so could someone else.”

“Frank’s the one in danger, not me.” I dodged around him, started for the building again. “Why should anyone care if I….”

I came to a halt.

“What is it?” he asked sharply.

“Over there,” I said, pointing to a Volvo parked in along the back wall of the building, away from the other cars. “Frank’s car. He’s here!”

I started running toward it.

“Wait!” Cassidy shouted, grabbing on to me and nearly causing us both to fall to the pavement.

“Let go of me!”

“Irene, please wait.” We had drawn some attention by then. A couple of the truck drivers were looking our way. I stood still. Cassidy pulled out his badge holder and held it over his head. “Y’all just go on about your business. The lady’s fine.”

They hesitated. “I’m all right,” I called out. “Really.”

Slowly they left.

“Now, let’s go take a look,” Cassidy said. “I’m anxious to see it, too, but I want us to go about this cautiously. Together. And we aren’t going to touch that car. You with me on this?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go, then.”

The closer we got to the Volvo, the worse I felt about it being there. Frank wouldn’t drive to the newspaper in the middle of the night. He would come home. If he didn’t want to go to the house for some reason, if he were in trouble and needed my help, this was the last place he’d try to meet me.

“Easy,” Cassidy said. “Take it easy. Stay back here a minute.”

He crouched down and slowly moved up to the car. He peered inside, then swore under his breath and stood up. He covered his eyes with one hand.

I hurried over, looked into the car.

Empty.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning to take a closer look. “Why are you so upset?”

“Don’t touch it,” he said. Then, standing behind me, he gently took my shoulders and crouched down again, moving me with him. He pointed up through the rear passenger window. “The mirror.”

Something was written on the rearview mirror in small, neat letters. It looked as if the writer had used a sharp-tipped black felt pen. The parking lot wasn’t brightly lit, but there was enough light to read the words:

HOCUS HAS NEWS. WE KNOW WHERE TO FIND YOU.

“Hocus? Oh, no. No….”

“Shh, shh. Hush. We don’t know a thing, really.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “We know he’s been taken by Hocus! We know he arrested two of them for conspiracy to commit murder!”

“These fools are getting too big for their britches,” he said easily. “That’s how Frank caught on to them in the first place. Now, we’re going back to my car, and I’m going to call for some help.”

“Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we look in the trunk?”

“You have keys to the Volvo with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you give them to me?” When I hesitated, he said, “You know that Hocus has used explosives, right?”

I nodded.

“I think we should wait until the bomb squad gets here and checks the car out first. It would be just like Hocus to think it was funnier than hell to blow the damned newspaper to kingdom come.”

“But if Frank is in there….”

“If you’re going to get locked in a trunk, a Volvo’s one of the better ones to be locked in. They have a hole for skis. He’ll have plenty of air. Trust me.”

Although I had seen the ski slot in the trunk, I thought he was probably bluffing about the air supply. It didn’t matter. “If he’s in there, Cassidy, he’s dead anyway.”

“Don’t go talking that kind of talk, now.”

“I don’t think he’s dead. He’s alive.”

“You got a feeling about that?” he said, steering me toward his car.

I did, but hell if I was going to talk to him about it. “No, logic. Someone went to a lot of trouble today. They lured my husband out to Riverside, to a house the police here knew he was going to. They took him from there, then brought his car all the way back here. They left a message for me in his car, left his car in a place where I was likely to find it. Perhaps not this soon, but by Monday morning.” I looked up along the roof of the Wrigley Building, which houses the Express.“They undoubtedly knew the security cameras for the parking lot wouldn’t catch their faces on videotape if they parked along the back wall of the building. If they were just going to execute Frank for arresting their leader, they wouldn’t have needed to go to so much trouble. And they’d be crowing about it by now.”

He stopped and studied me for a moment. “Not bad. I’m with you — Frank has value to them as a hostage. On the other hand, the violence by this group has been escalating, and they think of themselves as tricksters. If I think like a trickster, I say the car could be booby-trapped.”

When we reached his car I said, “That was you following me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sorry if I scared you.”

He called Bredloe at home.

“I’m on a cellular phone, here, sir,” he began. “At her place of employment…. Yes, we can go into that later, on a land line. Her husband’s car is here in the parking lot, with a message from our prankster friends…. Yes…. I’d prefer not to go into the possibilities on an unsecured line, sir, but thought you’d want to get things rolling. I want to keep an eye on the car so that nobody bumps into it until your brother brings the dogs.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir. Exactly…. Thank you.”

As he started to dial another number I asked, “Bredloe’s brother is bringing dogs? What’s that all about?”

“A little code that we’ll have to stop using after tonight, I suppose…. The bomb squad is part of the sheriff’s department. They use dogs to sniff out explosives….” He spoke into the phone. “Hank? Get everything you can on the pranksters…. Yeah, I Know. Bredloe will help.”

I remembered my promise to Jack and asked Cassidy to pass word along to him that I was okay.

By the time he finished the call, a black-and-white pulled into the parking lot. Cassidy asked the officers to keep everyone away from the Volvo until the bomb squad arrived.

He turned to me. “You all right?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go into the building and use a phone in there, okay?”

The night security man was already quite excited because he had seen the cruiser pull into the lot. When Cassidy showed him his detective shield, the guard pulled in his stomach and started hitching up his belt.

Before he could snap a salute or sing the police auxiliary anthem, I told him to expect the parking lot to be besieged by law enforcement. He decided to call the editor, Winston Wrigley III.

Wrigley and I have a strained relationship in the best of times, and between two and three in the morning is never going to rank as one of the best of times. After a minute or two of listening to him bawl me out, I handed the phone over to Cassidy.

“Come on down,” Cassidy drawled, a little more heavily than usual, I thought, “but be careful. Y’all might get yourselves launched outta here like a roman candle. Up to you. I gotta get going now. I cain’t talk to you and keep your building from blowing up at the same time.”

When he hung up, the security man was bug-eyed. “Should I evacuate the building?”

“Probably be a good idea. The bomb squad will be here any minute now. In the meantime, maybe you could ask folks to stay away from that end of the parking lot.”

John Walters, who had recently been promoted to managing editor, arrived about the same time as the explosives experts did. His concern that subscribers would be unhappy if their morning papers were not on their driveways before breakfast time did not count for much with the bomb squad. He paced back and forth on the perimeter, where the delivery drivers and press operators waited.

John scowled every time he saw me, but he hadn’t spoken to me yet. I took that to mean that even if nothing was found in the car, there was bound to be at least one type of explosion that morning.

Cassidy ambled over to him, spoke with him for a moment, and John stopped pacing. He slumped a little, looking toward his shoes, but I doubted he could see them over the curve of his belly. He glanced back at me, but this time the look was different. Sympathy. An offering I refused by fixing my gaze on the car.

Since the only way to get sympathy from John was to have something really awful happen to you, I preferred seeing him upset. I wasn’t exactly cool and calm myself. Although we were some distance away, I could see that the explosives experts had their specially trained dogs out. The two animals worked in a team, cautiously sniffing the exterior of the car. One of the dogs showed some interest in the trunk, but when the handler brought over the other one, the two dogs moved along.

“If the dogs detect any kind of explosive, they signal it very clearly,” Cassidy said, now back at my side. “I don’t think they found anything just then.”

I nodded. As I watched the officers go through other checks, using mirrors on long extensions and other devices, I could feel the weight of each passing moment, every delay seeming to decrease the odds of finding Frank.

“Cut it out,” Cassidy said next to me.

“Cut what out?”

“You’re winding yourself up tighter than an eight-day clock.”

“Forgive me. I’m sure if your wife was missing and the bomb squad was inspecting her car while terrorists did as they pleased with her, you’d just be sitting around whistling Dixie.”

For a moment I imagined that I had made him angry. After putting up with his irritating calm, I’d have found it a refreshing change. But I was wrong — he smiled and looked away from me, an expression of private amusement on his face.

“Come on, Ms. Kelly,” he said, “they’re gonna let us take a look-see.”

We moved to the next barrier — yellow police tape surrounding the part of the parking lot where the Volvo stood.

The bomb squad was packing up, and Cassidy was directing the uniformed officers who had been working crowd control to let people back into the building. John was avoiding me for the moment, talking to the production and circulation managers, undoubtedly trying to figure out what this interruption was going to do to press and delivery schedules. Photographs, which had been taken at several points, were now taken from closer angles. A fingerprint technician was already dusting the door handles and other surfaces. Most of the attention was on the open trunk.

As we drew closer, my sense of dread became so acute that the trunk seemed to become a gaping maw, Jonah’s whale come to swallow me whole. Police interest of this kind was like John’s sympathy — it could not be associated with anything good.

Cassidy took hold of my elbow at some point; I guess I had slowed without realizing it. I heard voices around me, introductions, comments, even Cassidy’s drawling version of my name. He was repeating it.

But they were all far away. I was in an incomprehensible world, a world composed solely of the large, dark bloodstain on the carpet in the trunk of my husband’s car.

5

I WAS ABLE TO AVOID FAINTING or screaming or going into hysterics, but the tears refused all orders not to fall. Next to the stain, an orderly display of three items caught my eye: a pager, a cellular phone, a gun in a shoulder holster. I knew they were Frank’s even before Cassidy steered me away from the car and into the building.

The big marble-and-brass lobby was empty; the security guard was outside, engrossed in watching the police action. Cassidy seated me on a bench and asked for directions to the nearest vending machines. I managed to point the way. I sat there, trembling, hoping I could stop quivering before he came back. I couldn’t. He handed me a cup of hot coffee and made me drink it while he watched.

John came in, took in my tearstained face, and snapped, “Get her another cup of that stuff,” as if Cassidy were his to command. Cassidy didn’t make a fuss about it. The minute he stood up, John sat next to me, even took my hand and patted it in an awkward gesture of reassurance. I wasn’t reassured, but it was so weird to have John do something like that, I dried up.

“You going to be okay, Kelly?”

I nodded.

“Can I do anything for you?”

I shook my head.

“Mark’s here. I’ve asked him to cover this.”

“Keep him away from me,” I said, hating how shaky my voice sounded.

“But, Kelly—”

“I just can’t talk to him now, John. Maybe later.”

“Before deadline?”

I choked out a laugh.

“You don’t blame Mark for this, do you, Kelly?”

Did I? Maybe. It was wrong, I knew. But what if Mark’s story had triggered what happened? I thought of the bloodstain. No, I told myself, it’s wrong to blame Mark.

I closed my eyes tightly, because that was as close as I could get to being left alone. “Don’t make me sort this out right now, John. Please.”

“No need to pressure Ms. Kelly,” Cassidy said, causing me to look up again as he came back into the room. He handed me the cup of coffee, glanced over at John, and sighed. “I expected more of you, Mr. Walters.”

John rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll talk to you later, Kelly.” He started up the stairs, then paused. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked again.

“Yes, don’t worry. I’ll be upstairs in a few minutes.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have let you see the car,” Cassidy said when John was out of earshot. “Bredloe will probably have my butt for that. I just figured it was easier to let you see the car now — otherwise I might find you breaking into the impound yard trying to get a look at it.”

“You were right,” I said. I sat up a little straighter, tried to make my voice steady when I asked, “What do you think that bloodstain means?”

“Hmm. If I sit here and speculate, I’m taking up a fool’s hobby. We don’t know if it’s human blood, for starters. Could be blood from a steak, just put there to scare you.”

“If it’s human….”

“Then we have to figure out how many humans left it there. If it came from one human, then we have to figure out which one it most likely belonged to. When you’re worried and thinking that it’s your husband’s blood, a few drops would seem like a lot of blood. We need to try to measure it, learn how long it’s been there, and so on. Lots of questions, Irene, and I’m anxious for the answers, too — but they have to come from the lab guys. Let’s you and I concentrate on other questions.”

I soon learned that he meant I would concentrate and he would ask questions. Most were similar to the ones Reed had asked me at the house, but the process of being questioned seemed much different with Cassidy. He spoke slowly, softly, and acted as if he were concerned rather than suspicious. He didn’t ask for details about my argument with Frank. He wanted to know what credit cards Frank had with him, in case Frank’s missing wallet was being used to finance an escape. Most of all, though, he was interested in conversations about Hocus.

“Frank make any comments to you about these people he arrested?”

“Not much. He said he thought they were young, probably in their late teens or twenties. He thought they were from fairly affluent families — said something about demographic studies showing that bombers are often young white males from upper-middle-income households, as I recall, although I might not have that right. He thought they were a bad combination of intelligent and spoiled. And angry, but he wasn’t sure why. He was pleased about the arrests, mainly because he hoped Hocus would slow down, maybe even come to a halt.”

“He figured Lang was the key man.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it wasn’t a statement, either. Richard Lang and Jeffrey Colson were the two members of Hocus who were jailed.

I hesitated, then said, “No. That conclusion wasn’t his, no matter what the story in the Express said. Frank didn’t deny that Lang could be the ringleader, but he had doubts. Lots of doubts.”

Cassidy rubbed his lower jaw, then stared off into space.

I waited for the next question, then realized there wasn’t going to be one for a while. “I’m going to go upstairs,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, still lost in thought.

The newsroom was empty. John was in his office. Mark Baker was still outside. In a couple of hours more of the staff would arrive. I hurried to my desk and logged on to the computer. I asked for all the files on Hocus. Although I had followed the stories about it as closely as anyone else in the city, I wanted a refresher course. I needed to fight the feeling of helplessness that threatened to overwhelm me, and one weapon I had at my disposal was information.

I opened the earliest file and thought back to Hocus’s first trick.

We should have seen trouble coming when almost everyone in town got a pleasant surprise on their bank statements. It wasn’t the kind of surprise you’d dream about or even specifically hope for — no one had a million dollars irreversibly transferred into their account from a Swiss bank; nothing like the $100 “bank error in your favor” card in Monopoly. Then again, it wasn’t the kind of surprise that would give you nightmares. Not one to make you cross your fingers, hoping the payees on your last fifty checks liked just looking at them and wouldn’t try to cash them any time soon. No, for the customers of the Bank of Las Piernas, it averaged out to be about an eight-buck windfall.

The message appeared at the bottom of each statement, politely informing the BLP customers that all service charges for that month were waived.

Assuming themselves to be the beneficiaries of an advertising promotion of some sort, the depositors were pleased and looked upon the bank with new regard. “They really have a heart,” people were heard to say. Publicly the bank’s personnel nodded and accepted their customers’ gratitude. Privately there was a panic.

If I hadn’t known Guy St. Germain, a vice president at the bank, I wouldn’t have been aware that BLP had not sanctioned the fee waiver. He told me what had happened only after I swore six or seven times that I would never write anything about it for the newspaper or tell anyone else. The electronic break-in was a great secret at BLP. In the beginning the bank was unwilling to let its depositors know that hackers had found their way into the bank’s computer system.

“You can’t follow some sort of electronic trail?” I asked.

“No, mon amie,” Guy said in his soft French Canadian accent. “It’s not as if they took money. It wasn’t transferred from the depositors’ accounts into some other place. The hackers just managed to cancel the command that levies the charges on the accounts. Our computer security people have figured out how they got in; they attached a line to one of our executives’ computers and listened in on his modem. They were able to record high-level access codes. They used the codes to break in on their own.”

“You’re sure the executive’s not involved?” I asked.

Guy nodded. “This man is not a computer whiz. He has a top level of access because of his position, not his abilities. He wouldn’t have known how to change the program.”

“But still—”

“He’s also a real outdoorsman,” Guy continued. “Likes to go rafting, hiking, do all of those things where a person can’t be reached by phone. I understand — he has a high-pressure job, and this allowed him to be free for a few days. He was rafting on the Green River in Utah on the days of the electronic break-in, and the calls were definitely local, not long distance.”

“Hmm. Perfect timing.”

“Yes. Someone was very good at homework, don’t you think?”

“No chance that this fellow had a grudge? Maybe hired someone else to do the programming?”

Guy shook his head. “He had nothing to gain. We think it was just a prank.”

“A costly one.”

“Yes. That is the shame, although few people would see that. No one has much sympathy for bankers.”

I understood his point. Most people wouldn’t stop to think that the bank counted on those fees for its operations expenses. It wouldn’t go broke from this prank, but somewhere the bottom line would be affected; fees would go up, or there would be less money to lend.

“It could have been worse,” Guy said. “Much worse. And our security is better now.” He paused and smiled. “Who knows? Perhaps we will gain something from the good publicity about waiving the fees.”

The second prank was not hidden from the public eye. A few weeks after the bank incident, all street-sweeping ticket records were deleted from the municipal computers. When the city’s computer department reached for a separately stored backup file, it was found to be blank, with the exception of one text file: “All street-sweeping fines are forgiven. We are Hocus.”

“That’s an odd name,” Lydia Ames observed when I came into the office with the story. She’s the assistant city editor at the Express and has been a friend of mine since childhood.

“A perfect name,” said John Walters.

“They think of themselves as magicians?” she asked.

“You’re thinking of hocus-pocus,” I replied. “I made the same mistake, until I looked the word up in the dictionary. Hocus is a verb. It means to play a trick on, to dupe. It may be where the word ‘hoax’ comes from.”

“The cheering will be heard citywide,” John said with a scowl. “No one likes parking tickets. But I like tricksters even less.”

“I had the same reaction,” I said, “right after I decided what I was going to do with the money Hocus saved me on tickets.”

The next action came about a week later. All outstanding library fines were eliminated from the city library’s computer system. The message “All fines are forgiven, courtesy of Hocus” appeared briefly on the screens one Monday morning. As the city investigated this new breach of security, the bank — given the promise that the information would remain confidential — let the Las Piernas Police Department know that Hocus had taken credit for the fee waiver at the bank.

At first, citizens cheered the news about the library fines as heartily as they had cheered the earlier announcements. No one liked fines. But the library was more forthcoming than the bank or the municipal court — already strapped by budget cutbacks, it couldn’t afford the loss of revenue. Libraries would be closed on weekends until further notice.

Parents of kids with homework projects were the first to howl, and others quickly joined in. A fund-raiser was held, and the library reopened on Saturdays. Now the local citizenry seemed to understand that damage could be done.

The people of Las Piernas began to ask the same questions that computer security personnel had asked all along. Who were these people? How many of them were there? What was Hocus trying to prove? How had they managed to break into these computer systems? And perhaps most important, what would they do next?

In those days all the actions Hocus took had fit with its name. Pranks. No one was taking revenues, they were just preventing the collection of revenues.

Computer experts were called in, and any organization using computers did its best to heighten security. We waited for the next trick.

When it came, we were taken completely by surprise.

An animal rights group was blamed at first. In the immediate chaos that followed the release of every creature in the city animal shelter, the body of the night manager lay undiscovered for over three hours.

If you open a birdcage or two, even let out a couple of snakes, not much is going to happen. Set twenty or thirty cats loose and then release just over two hundred dogs not long afterward, and you’re going to see some action. Let a horse be the grand finale, and people will definitely notice.

The birds flew off, and the snakes were never found again. The horse was old and skinny and didn’t go much farther than the first open field he came across. The cats apparently had enough lead time to climb trees or make themselves scarce. The dogs were another story.

Social beings that they are, the dogs must have decided these adventures were more fun when shared, and most of them gathered into packs as they set off through the streets. Some packs announced their freedom as they ran.

Most of the police activity in those early hours centered on rounding up animals, especially those dogs that had been quarantined for viciousness.

Two men were on duty that night: the night shift manager and an animal control officer. The animal control officer had gone out on an emergency call that turned out to be bogus. Before he could return, the police were contacting him by radio about the calls they were getting.

For all the pandemonium on the streets nearest the shelter, the shelter itself was eerily quiet. The night manager didn’t seem to be on the premises, and a second truck was gone. At first, everyone thought he was out catching dogs. The truck was found much later, abandoned under a freeway overpass.

The shelter actually ended up with more dogs than it started out with — if not necessarily the same dogs — since the previous inmates had picked up some sympathizers along the way. It was only after the dogs had been caught that anyone could spend much time at the shelter itself, trying to figure out what had happened.

A woman LPPD officer saw drops of blood on the ground and followed the trail they made to a building at the back of the shelter. They led to the area where the dogs were put to sleep. The door to one of the chambers used for large dogs was open, but as she stepped closer she saw that the chamber had been recently used. The body of the night manager was inside, along with a note:

HOCUS SET THE CAPTIVES FREE.

Hocus’s first murder.

6

THE DREAM HAD BEEN PLEASANT. He could still see her face, feel the whiskey warmth of her skin, her softness. He had already forgotten what had happened in the dream, was not sure if they had made love, but drowsily he thought perhaps they had, as his awakening was the slow, reluctant awakening of the sated.

Moments passed, and still sleep beckoned. He was not without pain, nor was he immune to disturbing thoughts. His head hurt. He was bruised. She was not with him. He didn’t know where he was, or with whom, or why he had been taken. He recalled, in fleeting images, a struggle, shots fired.

But in each case — from the aching where the first blow had been struck to the sensation of being lost — no sooner was any discomfort a part of his awareness than a billowing tide of lassitude swept over him, languor robbed him of his ability to react as anything more than a distant observer. Too tired, he thought, closing his eyes — too tired. He smiled to himself. Easier to dream….

Some long-practiced ability to sense trouble urged him awake again, and for a brief moment he opened his eyes. The room caromed wildly above him. He closed them again.

“God, I hate the smell of blood,” a voice was saying.

Other words drifted by.

“Pale.”

“Not yet….”

“…make it?”

“Nothing to worry about,” someone said.

He thought perhaps there were things to worry about, but they slipped the grasp of his mind and swam away from him.

The conversation between the others went on, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to understand what they were saying.

The dreaming began again.

He was standing on the gravel drive, looking at the house.

He remembered coming out this way with his father, back in the late 1950s, in the old blue Buick sedan they had owned then — the one with a metal dash and fierce, toothy grille. From the passenger seat he watched the blur of dark green leaves and smooth, gray trunks of orange and lemon and grapefruit trees go by.

He had been in the area many times since then, of course, but today, standing on the drive, he was remembering a time when his father had needed to bring some papers to Riverside. The girls had had to stay home. “Just boys, this time,” his father had said.

It was a long drive from Bakersfield and a hot one. Frank didn’t care. His dad was a cop, and they didn’t often get this kind of time together.

With the windows down, he could smell the heady fragrance of the groves. They passed dirt driveways that began at the road, marked by tin mailboxes with red flags announcing who had mail, who didn’t. And down at the other end of each drive, there was almost always a modest white wood frame house.

The memory came back to him in the dream more vividly than it had in real life. In real life he had stood watching the house, wondering why he was feeling so spooky all of a sudden. Hell, the house looked haunted. The paint was peeling off the trim in large, curling flakes. The house was surrounded by a porch; the porch railing had supports broken out of it, leaving it gap toothed and sagging. Dead vines formed a thick and thorny gray lace that shielded the front door from view. Screens were torn or missing.

The ramshackle house sat on a large lot. Tall, dry grass grew in straw-colored clumps. A gnarled, leafless orange tree held two barren branches up to the cloudless sky as if in a gesture of despair.

He thought of the place as it might have looked thirty years before, of a bright red bougainvillea adding color to a white house surrounded by fruit trees.

He shook his head. He supposed a generation or two of heirs had carved up the original owner’s citrus grove and sold it off piecemeal. Nothing else could explain the odd mixture of lots and buildings that made up this street. A handful of trees remained here and there, but the groves were gone. The development that followed had been random. Train tracks ran along the far side of the street, parallel to the back fence of the industrial park that stood on the opposite side of the tracks. All that could be seen of the buildings beyond were windowless concrete walls and loading docks. He wondered if the industrial park had replaced a packing house.

As he stood on the gravel drive, a freight train came slowly rumbling by, horns sounding, echoing loudly off the concrete buildings. He watched it, read the names on the boxcars. AT&SF… Southern Pacific… Cotton Belt. Where was it going? Where had it been? Conrail… Golden West… GATX…. It slowed, stopped, began backing up, apparently switching or adding cars. As the head end passed him again, an engineer saw him and waved. Surprised, Frank waved back.

When he could no longer see the engineer’s face, he straightened his suit and turned back to the house. A mockingbird sang half a dozen verses of a borrowed two-note song, then fell silent.

He paused, listened. Nothing. Gravel crunched and grated as he walked up the drive.

He had never known any trouble from Ross, he told himself. And if Ross had information on the Novak case, he wanted to hear it. The Novak case had been a real pain. Absolutely no breaks in it so far. Probably all kinds of witnesses, but everybody too scared to talk. Nobody knew anything. It angered him. Novak had been a small-time dealer with all the wrong kinds of ambition; whoever executed him had probably saved the state a lot of money by ending his miserable life. But a murder was a murder, and as much as he hated the Novaks of this world, it bothered him more that people would aid a killer with their silence.

The porch steps creaked. When he came to the front door he halted, stepped to the side. It was open. Just a crack, but open.

“Ross?” he called.

“Come on in, Frank,” he heard Ross call. “It ain’t locked. I seen you comin’.”

He thought of every other time he had met with the junkie: the nervousness, the triple-locked doors.

He pulled out his gun.

“Come out here, Ross,” he called.

Silence.

“Come out here, or I’m going back to Las Piernas. We’ll talk another time.”

He heard the porch creak behind him and whirled.

A man in a gold lamé cape and a full set of purple-sequined tails stood on the other end of the porch. He took off his glimmering top hat and bowed.

“Want to see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?” he asked.

“No. Drop the hat and hold your hands—” He sensed a movement behind him but did not quite turn in time to ward off the blow to the back of his head.

He blacked out for a moment, not feeling the fall to the porch until he hit it with his face. His gun clattered away from him, but he could smell powder. Had he fired it? Hit the magician? No, one of the men pinning him to the porch was wearing purple and gold. Dizzy, half-stunned, he struggled beneath them, but they held him down. Soon his hands were tied behind his back.

“You didn’t hit him hard enough!” the magician said.

“It won’t matter.”

He felt fear, cold and real, clearing his head.

“He almost shot me!” the magician complained. “What if someone heard it?”

“Get his gun, goddammit,” the other said. The cape lifted.

He struggled again, felt the jab of a needle in his neck.

“Keep wiggling around,” the voice said, “and it will only work faster.”

He was hauled roughly to his feet and shoved into the house.

Ross was inside, cowering in a corner.

“Oh, God!” he wailed when he saw Frank. “You two are fuckin’ nuts! He’s a cop!”

“Shut up,” the magician said.

Ross started crying but said nothing more.

The pain from his head was not so bad now, but he could feel his own blood, warm and wet on his neck and back, could taste it in his mouth. He was dizzy, but it wasn’t so bad to be dizzy, he thought.

“How much time?” the voice behind him asked.

The magician pulled out a pocket watch. “Any minute now,” he said, and looked toward the tracks.

A train. Even through the fog that was settling on his mind, he thought of the train. He started to move toward the door. He was yanked back, hard.

He heard the train. These sons of bitches were going to kill him, he thought hazily. Well, screw them. They weren’t going to put him down without a fight.

He stumbled forward, pulling his captor off balance, then rolled the young man over his back. A surprised young man, he noted, grinning at him as he lay on the floor.

“Stop it!” the magician yelled, waving the gun.

Frank kicked at the man on the floor but missed him completely. He tried again and lost his own balance, crashing into a lamp and coffee table and God knew what else before the man who had been on the floor was grabbing him again. Frank struggled, but he was growing clumsier now.

“Follow the plan!” the captor yelled. “Kill him!”

Frank fell to his knees, too dizzy, too sleepy, to stand. The magician looked lost.

The captor let him fall to the floor. He marched over to the magician and took the gun.

Frank heard the shot — loud, louder than the train.

Just like falling asleep, he thought. He felt cold. He allowed himself to wish she were holding him. He imagined her arms around him and wondered if she would ever forgive him for getting himself killed.

7

MARK BAKER DIDN’T SEE ME at my desk when he came into the newsroom. He made a beeline into John’s office. I’m not sure if it was my chickeny side or my rebellious nature at work, but in either case I wasn’t willing to contribute to the story on my husband’s disappearance — so I staged one of my own. I slipped out of the newsroom and made my way downstairs.

Cassidy wasn’t in the lobby, and I didn’t see him among the cops who were still huddled around Frank’s car. I looked across the lot and saw him leaning against my Karmann Ghia.

“I’m going home,” I told him when I reached the car.

“See you there,” he said, an announcement I was less than happy about, but I was in no mood to argue. I got into my car as he watched. I rolled down the window.

“Cassidy?”

“Hmm.”

“Should I wait here? This is where they left the message for me. Does that mean they’ll call here?”

“I’ve thought about that. I don’t think they’ll have any trouble finding you.”

“But our home phone number is unlisted….”

“I’ll bet you thought your bank account number was private, too.”

“Oh.” I looked over at the Volvo.

“You okay to drive?” he asked. “I’ll take you home if you’d like.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’ll make it.”

“Sure,” he said, and sauntered off toward his sedan.

As I drove home I thought of the other information I had gathered on Hocus. The murder of the animal shelter officer had generated a hue and cry for their arrests, but Hocus received less criticism over its next set of targets.

The Express received an anonymous call, a male voice saying that Hocus was going to clean up a few neighborhoods. Within a twenty-four-hour period, four houses exploded, killing twenty-one people — a total that was not finalized for several days, because it’s hard to count bodies when they’re in pieces the size of stew meat. Fifteen of them were at one address, a party cut short.

Normally this kind of terrorism would have resulted in outrage, but this time Hocus actually gained some supporters. It seemed a long list of neighbor complaints had been filed about each of the doomed houses — complaints about drug dealing, noise, and the constant stream of unsavory visitors in and out at all hours. In general, the neighbors of the victims figured that Hocus had done them a favor. If they had any objections, they were only to the occasional peripheral damage done by the explosions — broken windows, pictures falling from walls. Asked about the loss of human life, one man had shrugged and said, “Pest control.”

The police, for all their problems with the dealers, weren’t so happy with Hocus’s solution. Frank had been assigned to what became known as “the party house,” the site with the highest body count. He wasn’t in good shape when he got home from that one. Sometime after playing with Deke and Dunk, a long run on the beach, and a Macallan on the rocks, he started talking about it. “Going to take a team of forensic anthropologists to figure out how many people were in there, let alone who they were. I’d bet money we end up with half a dozen John and Jane Does. Explosives guys say it was C-4, something in the living room, where most of the people were. Some of the bodies in the outer rooms weren’t so badly damaged. There was one that reminded me—” He halted, shook his head. “Just a young girl, high school age. The others were all in their twenties.”

My curiosity had been piqued, but I didn’t question him. Frank is, on the whole, a quiet man. I get him to lose his temper now and then, but this wasn’t one of those situations. It had taken him a while to work up to talking about that day at all, and experience had taught me that what he needed in these times was a listener, not an interrogator. I set aside any impulse to hound him for information.

Later, when the paper ran a photo of the young girl — a soft, gauzy shot from her high school yearbook — I thought I knew why this girl’s death bothered him more than others. I had seen the high school graduation photo of his sister, Cassie; if you had dyed her hair blond and updated her makeup, she would have, in many ways, resembled the victim. Cassie was alive and well and married with kids; the woman at the party house might never have made much of her life, but she had been denied the opportunity to try.

While other detectives interviewed the neighbors, Frank and Pete sought the victims’ friends and fellow addicts. Fear made some of the small-time dealers a little more talkative. “Any strangers looking to make a buy this past week?” Frank and Pete would ask. “Anyone new come around here trying to score?” They were able to get help in identifying a couple of John Does who had been killed in the party house, but not much more.

I learned details of some of these interviews from dramatic presentations offered free of charge by one of the most natural mimics I know: Pete Baird. Pete loves to gather a small audience and tell stories, gesturing and taking on the parts of all the players. More than once, Rachel and I heard the day’s events replayed in this way.

The tenant of record at the party house was a man known as Early — he got his nickname for his ability to score new smoking materials before his competitors, which might have accounted for the number of people at his house on the day it exploded. Early’s pals provided a lot of material for Pete’s act. Frank served as an instant reviewer. If Pete got it wrong, Frank would grumble or silently shake his head. (“Oh, so you come up here and tell it, then,” Pete would say, an offer Frank was too smart to take.) If it was fairly accurate, Frank would smile or laugh. A good way to relieve some of the day’s tensions.

After studying the rubble that had once been Early’s home, the county’s bomb experts were able to determine that the plastic explosives used to demolish the house had probably been packed into a television set. That knowledge, and a discussion Frank had with a space cowboy by the name of Fawkes, led to the first real break in the case.

I recalled Pete’s portrayal of that interview:

“So picture this guy. Tall, pale dude, but he hunches his shoulders. Has long, stringy brown hair, parts it in the middle. Pointy beard with a mustard stain in it.” That Pete is clean shaven, short, olive-skinned, and bald made no impact on our ability to visualize Fawkes.

“Skinny guy,” Pete went on. “Wearin’ a black T-shirt and jeans that smell like he’s got toadstools growin’ in his underwear.”

Frank shook his head.

“You couldn’t smell that guy? You must have a cold,” Pete said. “Irene, reach over an’ feel his forehead. Running a fever?… No? Hmm. Well, okay, so the jeans don’t smell that bad. Bad, but not that bad.”

Frank didn’t object. The play proceeded. When Pete delivered Frank’s lines, his back was straight, his voice low. When he became Fawkes he rocked a little as he spoke, curling imaginary hair along a pair of fingers, gazing off into space. He began with Fawkes.

“ ‘It’s weird, man, I don’t know about all those other people who were at Early’s party, that’s bad. But Early, whoa — I think it was Early’s karma, because of the TV set he stole from my relatives.’

“ ‘What relatives?’ Frank asks him.

“ ‘Well, you know, Early, like, uh, stole it. Early was always stealing stuff. He ripped me off, man. Stole my backpack.’

“ ‘Who’d he steal it from?’ ”

A look of consternation. “ ‘From me, dude.’ ”

Frank laughed. Pete grinned and went on.

“Frank stays calm. ‘No, I meant the TV. You said he stole it from relatives of yours?’

“ ‘Maybe. I dunno.’

“ ‘Why don’t you tell me what you do know,’ Frank says.

“ ‘Oh. Well, this guy. He drives a gray van. Musta been a cheap store — only had one of them magnet signs on it. He stops at Early’s neighbor’s house, and opens up the van. In the neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor comes out, asks what’s happening. Guy says he’s got a TV to deliver. The neighbor says, “I didn’t order no TV,” so the delivery guy asks, can he come inside and make a phone call to his boss. Neighbor says okay. The dumb-ass driver leaves the van open. And while the dude is in there calling his boss, Early sneaks over and rips off this big ol’ TV that’s sittin’ in the back of the van.’ ”

Pete straightened his back again to do Frank’s part. “ ‘What did the deliveryman do when he got back?’ ”

Slouching again. “ ‘That was weird. He just looks in there, smiles, and drives off.’

“ ‘You get a look at the name of the appliance store?’

“ ‘Yeah, ’cause it’s my name, man. I mean, not my whole name, just my last name. First name was different.’ ”

Puzzled. “ ‘Fawkes?’ ”

“ ‘Yeah, only he was Guy Fawkes. I mean, not him, the place. Guy Fawkes TV — hey, you think it’s a relative of mine? Maybe they would give me a job. What do you think?’ ”

I looked over at Frank. He was smiling.

The description of the van matched up with one that had been spotted near one of the other exploding houses. On that street, a member of the local neighborhood watch had seen a gray van pull up. The driver, a young, clean-cut man, left the van open as he walked around the corner, glancing between a clipboard and house numbers as if looking for an address. As she watched, her troublemaking neighbor had come out of his house and stolen a television out of the van. When the young driver came back some time later, she came out to tell him what had happened.

“Would you please call the police?” he asked politely, but drove away while she was making the call.

The police communications computer kept a record of the call, but with no appliance store making a complaint, the matter didn’t rate much attention. Frank went back to the neighbor; her description of the driver matched Fawkes’s. “Would you like to know the license plate number?” she asked.

He told her he would.

The plate turned out to be stolen off a pickup truck, not a match with a gray van.

Frank called every magnetic sign maker in the county, without luck. On a hunch he called the pickup truck owner, asked if he knew where the plate had been stolen.

“Sure,” the man said. “In the El Dorado Shopping Center, in Orange. I was in picking up some signs for a big construction job. Parked in an alley while I loaded them. Young man in there helped me carry them. Took four or five trips. He was the one who noticed it was missing. I had just washed the truck that morning, and I know the plate was on then. That sign place was my first stop, so I know it happened there.”

The description of the young man who helped him did not match that of the deliveryman. Still, Frank drove across the county line and down to Orange to talk to the sign maker. As it turned out, he immediately remembered Guy Fawkes TV. The kid at the counter who took the order hadn’t studied much history, but his boss, an Englishman, had nearly refused to make the sign. Guy Fawkes, after all, had tried to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

The young man at the counter had protested that this must be mere coincidence; the order had been placed by a polite man who paid cash in advance. The man had even helped one of the other customers carry several armloads of signs out to his truck.

At Frank’s request, the sign maker went through his files. He had a phone number for Guy Fawkes Appliances, one his shop had called when the order was ready. The number was traced to an address down on Bay Shore Drive in Las Piernas, not a part of town you would have figured for housing terrorist gangs. The phone was still connected. The owner of the house and the name the phone was actually listed under were the same: Richard Lang.

Lang hadn’t lived in Las Piernas very long. He’d paid cash for the house, which had been for sale by owner. He’d told the previous owner that the cash had come from an insurance settlement he’d received from a car accident. Nobody had questioned that story.

The neighbors claimed that Lang had a live-in girlfriend and a frequent male guest who matched the description of the deliveryman. When, after several days of surveillance, the woman never showed, Frank’s boss started pushing for an arrest. Frank wanted to wait, but Carlson didn’t want to risk losing a murder suspect. Lang had no criminal record. Carlson figured he would break under pressure and give them the information they needed to arrest anyone else.

Armed with warrants, police searched the house. They found books on explosives and minute traces of C-4 in the van. The two men, Richard Lang and Jeffrey Colson, were arrested without resistance. Like Lang, Colson had no prior arrests. Both had served in the military, though, and had met while in the marines. Lang had worked with explosives during his military career. In lineups Lang was identified by the counterman at the sign shop and Colson by the neighbors he had encountered at two of the sites.

Frank wasn’t satisfied. “If we had found the computer equipment,” he told me, “I’d be feeling better. But at least we have part of the group in custody. Maybe the lieutenant’s right. Maybe they’ll talk.”

But Carlson had underestimated the ability of the two suspects to take the first sentence of the Miranda warning to heart. Lang and Colson had not been willing to talk about their friends. Lang had simply said, “Hocus will take care of me.” Although they had made no phone call, a lawyer had appeared. Lawyer or no, bail had not been granted.

When Mark Baker’s story appeared, Frank started voicing other misgivings about the arrests. He began to wonder if Lang was a sacrificial lamb. “Maybe the information is coming to Mark from Hocus itself. Lang and Colson don’t strike me as leaders. What if they drove out to Orange not to make it tougher to find them, but easier? Maybe they knew the sign maker was British. Knew he’d be someone who’d remember ‘Guy Fawkes Appliances.’ ”

“Maybe,” I agreed, “but the sign maker could be a coincidence. There are lots of people who know about Guy Fawkes who aren’t British.”

“Coincidence?” he asked.

“Okay, maybe not. But I’m not sure Hocus is Mark’s source. Maybe it’s someone in your department. Maybe someone who would like to make you the sacrificial lamb.”

I could tell by his face that he had already considered this possibility; the thought obviously depressed him. As if he couldn’t accept contemplating that kind of betrayal, he said, “Hocus would prefer the publicity. Makes more sense to assume Mark has been contacted by them.”

We were soon too busy arguing about other things to spend much time on whose theory was superior. The biggest argument started after a phone call from his sister, Cassie, who lives in Bakersfield. She called to say that Frank had really been on her mind lately, and she just wondered if he was all right.

“He could use some cheering up,” I said. “He’ll be sorry he missed your call.” I told her about the case and his problems in the office. “This has been tough on him from the moment he went out to the crime scene,” I told her. “Fifteen victims at one house. It was pretty grim.”

“Yes, we heard about that up here,” Cassie said.

“In fact, when they showed the photo of the young girl who died, I was hoping Frank didn’t have the case. She reminded me of Diana. Didn’t look exactly like her, of course, but—”

“Diana?” I asked. “Who’s Diana?”

There was a long silence, then she said, “You’d better ask Frank.”

“Cassie!”

“Ask Frank,” she said. “I’m sorry, Irene. I’ve got to go.”

She hung up.

I waited until after dinner that night. I didn’t rush him. He played with Deke and Dunk, worked in his garden. He washed up and came into the kitchen, where I was scrubbing a pan. He put his arms around me and pulled me back against him, nuzzled my ear.

“Who’s Diana?” I asked.

I felt the brief tension in him before he relaxed a little and said, “Roman goddess of the hunt. Are you and Jack talking about mythology again?”

“No,” I said, turning around to face him. “Not that Diana. The Diana who looks like the girl who died at the party house.”

“Shit.” His arms dropped away, and he took a step back. He wouldn’t look at me.

“Who is she?” I asked again.

“Cassie. Cassie told you, right?”

“Never mind who told me.”

“It had to be Cassie. My mother never would have told you.”

“Probably not. Your mother doesn’t like me—”

“That’s not true.”

“Not the point, anyway.”

“No,” he said. He sighed. “Christ. Everything at once.”

“Is this another old girlfriend?”

He hesitated, finally looked right at me. He shook his head. “No. Can you give me a minute? I need to make a couple of calls.”

“A couple of calls? Jesus, Frank….”

“Please.”

Desperate. Under other circumstances I might have been moved by it, responded to him more gently. I was fresh out of gentle. “Go ahead, make your damned calls. But I’m not letting go of this, Frank.”

He went into the bedroom to use the phone. That he sought privacy from me only irritated me all the more. I sat in the living room, in the corner of the couch, arms folded. Deke, Dunk, and Cody steered clear of me. I let the dogs out at their request, and Cody disappeared into the guest room. I couldn’t blame them. I probably looked like I wanted to kick somebody.

When Frank finally came out of the bedroom, he was holding what I at first took to be a scrap of paper but then realized was a photograph. He held it out to me. More curious than furious, I uncrossed my arms and took it from him.

It was a color snapshot of an attractive teenage girl with honey-colored hair, standing next to a camera-shy younger boy. Nothing about the girl was shy. She was wearing an orange miniskirt with a wide, white belt, white go-go boots, and a lime green sleeveless turtleneck. If that hadn’t been enough to place the photo in the late sixties, her pale lipstick, eyes lined doe style, heavy mascara, and ankh necklace would have helped.

I had seen lots of photographs of the boy — it was Frank. And despite a certain resemblance, the girl clearly wasn’t Cassie, who’s not only dark haired, but younger than Frank. This blond girl was older by several years.

“A cousin?” I guessed.

He shook his head, took a deep breath, then looked right at me as he said, “My sister.”

“Sister? You have another sister?”

“Had. She died.”

Questions are a specialty of mine, and I had lots of them, but I couldn’t seem to get a single one out. Maybe it was sort of a circuit overload, like when everyone tries to call after an earthquake. Zillions of questions trying to be first in line. Shock pushing them all to the back. I sat there gaping at him.

He took back the photo, stared at it. “I wanted to tell you a long time ago, but—”

“You had another sister?”

“Yes. Diana.”

“You never told me—”

“Like I said, I wanted to—”

“But you didn’t.”

“I made a promise. To my mom.”

“Your mother made you promise not to tell me about your sister?”

“Uh, not exactly you personally, although… well, it’s not you. Even before I met you, we didn’t talk about her.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Diana had problems,” he said, looking at the photo. But the look on his face didn’t match the words.

He misses her, I thought. It made me settle down a little. “What kind of problems?”

“Drugs. Alcohol. God knows what else. And her problems became the whole family’s problems. It was a strain on all of us. No one ever knew what she’d do next. Dad would tell her to come in at ten, she’d get home at three in the morning. Mom would be worried sick, Dad would be pissed as hell. Cassie and I had to listen to the shouting match that would follow. Diana was rebellious as all get-out.”

“You think that’s all it was? Teenage rebellion?”

“No, no,” he said, lightly rubbing his thumb along the edge of the photo. “That’s one of the easy answers. Just like — what is it that people always say? You know, the families? ‘Fell in with the wrong crowd.’ Well, in part that was true. Her crowd couldn’t have been more wrong. Assholes, if you ask me. She was proud to hang out with that bunch, and embarrassed about my dad being a cop. Embarrassed.” He shook his head. “She was always trying to prove to her friends that she was cool, even if….”

I waited, but he didn’t finish the sentence. “Where were you keeping this photo? I’ve never seen it before.”

“In an envelope, taped to the back of the dresser.”

“Hiding it from me?”

“No. From my mom. She doesn’t know I have it.”

“Shit, Frank. You’re almost forty and you’re squirreling things away from your mother. You got a pet frog in there, too?”

“Very funny,” he said, turning red. “She — ah, Christ, forget it,” he said, and stood up.

“Hold on, hold on.”

He didn’t move. I didn’t move.

“Sit down, Frank. Please.”

He stayed standing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just confused by all of this.”

He relented then. After a moment he said, “I’m sorry, too.” He reached over and took my hand. “I never meant for this to happen this way. I wanted to tell you. But this is something that my family hasn’t talked about for years, and I knew I wasn’t going to get my mom to give in overnight. My mom set this policy a long time ago, not long after Diana died. ‘Don’t talk about her. It’s too painful for your father.’ ”

It wasn’t hard for me to imagine Bea Harriman choosing this way to protect Frank’s dad. Wisely I kept that observation to myself.

“I think it was too painful for her,” Frank went on. “Diana was her favorite, her firstborn. Cassie and I were closer to my dad. Diana was my mother’s darling. Dad always said that when Diana was the only one — before I came along — he spoiled her, too. I never saw it. They were both pretty strict with Cassie and me.”

“Diana was how much older than you?”

“Four years. Mom just let her have her way, even then. It was easier than fighting her. Diana was strong willed. By the time Cassie was born, Mom had an infant and a toddler to contend with, and that was more than enough. Everything fell on Mom’s shoulders — Dad wasn’t home much. He worked graveyard shift for a lot of years. Wouldn’t come home until after we were getting ready for school. He’d be asleep when we came back. Trying to make ends meet, he’d catch as much overtime as he could. Gradually he cut back, took on better shifts, but by then Diana was past taming.”

“You weren’t close to her?”

He lifted one shoulder in a small shrug.

“What happened to her?”

He tensed, took his hand away. But after a while he said, “One night, she wanted to go out with some friends. My dad tried to forbid her to leave the house. Like I said, she was only sixteen, but she had already been through a couple of drug treatment programs. Cost more than my folks could afford, really, but they were getting desperate by then. My mom had convinced my dad to change his shift, so that he’d be home to help deal with her. Didn’t really help. Diana would be okay for a little while, then… I don’t know.”

He stared at the picture as if he might find an answer there, some way to explain Diana. Just when I started to wonder if I should prompt him to continue, he started talking again.

“I can remember that night so clearly. It was summer. Our air conditioner was busted, and so we had all the windows and doors open. My mom and Cassie were at the store, and Dad was reading the newspaper, but keeping an eye on Diana. She was angry. She was pacing around in the living room, acting fidgety. I knew something was up, so I tried to distract her. I thought maybe I could keep her out of trouble. So I asked her to teach me to dance. She played along, but the whole time, she was watching for someone. I wasn’t much of a dancer. She laughed. I started dancing goofier on purpose, trying to make her laugh more.”

He looked up from the photo.

“Useless kid’s stuff. Diana’s friends drove up and honked for her. They were whooping and yelling, sounded like they were already high or drunk or both. She started to go out the door, my dad stood in her way. She yelled, ‘Fuck you, pig.’ Screamed it at him. You know, like he wasn’t her dad, like he was arresting her at a war protest or something. Her own dad. I couldn’t believe she would talk to him like that.”

He shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “My dad was furious. I could see it. Whenever you really made him angry, he’d get real quiet.”

Just like you do, I thought, but said nothing.

“My dad moved out of her way, and said, ‘You go out that door, Diana, don’t bother coming back.’ It was just something he said because he was hurt, the kind of thing parents say when they’re upset. He didn’t mean it. She looked over at me, and — I don’t know, I guess I’ve always wondered if she would have stayed if I hadn’t been there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just that she had to prove something then, couldn’t let her kid brother see Dad face her down. She smiled at me and said, ‘Guess you’d better find a new dancing partner, Frankie,’ and left.” He paused, then said, “It got late and she wasn’t home. I was in my bedroom, I heard my mom and dad arguing. I guess my dad was putting on a jacket to go looking for her when the doorbell rang. I heard my dad open the door, and then… he made this sound… I hadn’t ever heard anyone make that sound before. I ran out of my room. My mom was wailing by then, but I was still more worried about him. They were holding on to each other. My dad was sobbing. I had never seen him shed a tear, and here he was, weeping.”

He stared off into space for a moment, caught up in his memories. When he spoke again his voice was soft and low, distracted. “A uniform — one of my dad’s friends was there. Probably his best friend on the force — his first partner. Gray-haired old guy by the name of Nat Cook. The other guys called him ‘Cookie.’ Cookie was crying, too, but quietly. He saw me, held out an arm, and I went to him. I was just bewildered. Cookie was too choked up to talk to me. I knew it was about Diana. I knew she had to be dead. If she had been hurt, they would have been rushing off to the hospital, but they were just standing there.

“I was the only one who wasn’t crying. I kept thinking that I needed to be strong for my dad. I knew that he was blaming himself, thinking that the last thing he said to her was that she shouldn’t come back.”

“How did it happen?”

“The car — they were all drunk. Driver, too. I guess they were crossing some tracks, tried to beat a train. Plowed through a lowered gate arm at the railroad crossing, didn’t make it across. Killed everybody in the car. Engineer said he didn’t even get a chance to try to brake. They all said it was quick, but I don’t know….”

This time he fell silent.

“Ever do your crying for her?” I asked softly.

He didn’t respond for a moment, then shook his head. “No, not really. I loved her. It wasn’t that. It was just that I was a kid and I thought about it the way a kid would, you know? I had to be strong. That was what I kept telling myself. After a while, I couldn’t cry for her. Not long after the funeral, the whole family was pretending she never existed. My mom gathered up all the photos of her and locked them up in the attic. Even photos of the family that had her in them. I stole this one out of the pile. Never let my folks know I had it. I just didn’t want to forget what she looked like.” He paused. “I sometimes wonder if Cassie really remembers Diana. Like I said, my mom asked us to promise not to talk about her. I have an aunt that has never forgiven my mother for that, but everyone else just went along with the program.”

I took his hand again, gave it a squeeze. He moved closer to me, took me in his arms, and held me. “I know it wasn’t right to keep this from you, Irene. But I just couldn’t say, ‘Hey, by the way, did I ever tell you that I was one of three children, not two?’ ”

“I think you might have figured out another way to bring it up, Frank. I understand the subject is painful, but I guess it’s hard for me to accept that we’ve known each other all these years without… well, you’ve explained it, but it’s still hard to accept.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

“When we were engaged, didn’t your mom—”

“She made me renew my promise.”

I sat up a little. “What?”

“Irene, if you asked me whether this was a healthy way to deal with things, I’d say no, it’s not. But I’d also say it’s too late. It’s the way she chose. Diana was her daughter. I’m her son. I had to respect her wishes. And by now… I don’t know if she could deal with it. It would just open old wounds. She was upset enough when I told her I was going to tell you tonight.”

I found myself unable to argue with him, at least at that moment. But I also felt — rightly or wrongly — pushed outside. That in-law feeling. For that evening, I decided, I could rise above my petty troubles, could comfort him, could see that his problems were greater than mine. Still, the notion that he was keeping secrets from me was not so easily set aside. Needlelike, it jabbed at my nobler intentions, became a small injury that would not heal.

Before we went to bed that evening, I picked up the picture of Diana and handed it to him. “You’d better put this back in its hiding place,” I said, avoiding his eyes when I said it.

Avoidance. What a great deal of effort it soon requires.

8

THAT’S THE FINEST DOG I ever did see,” Gus Matthews said, squeezing the boy’s shoulders. “I tell you, Brian, this boy of yours knows dogs.”

Frank’s father made a noncommittal grunting sound, trying to get his partner to drop the subject. His boy, if encouraged, would bring home every stray within a ten-mile radius.

“I think she’s part Lab and part retriever,” Frank said.

“Is that so? Let me see her walk with you,” Gus said.

Frank pulled gently on the dog’s makeshift leash — a length of his mother’s clothesline, cut for the purpose. He’d thought to ask permission to use the clothesline after the fact, just before his younger sister finked on him. But his mother had seen his excitement over the dog and merely said, “If your father lets you keep this dog, the first walk will be to the shopping center. You’ll take your allowance and buy a real leash. And a new clothesline.”

The dog, who had followed him all the way home from the baseball field without a leash, needed no encouragement to do his bidding with one. Seeming to know that she was facing some sort of test, she walked perfectly beside him.

“Oh, sure,” Gus said. “You really do know dogs, Frank. That is definitely a Lab/retriever. Definitely. Have you named her yet?”

The boy turned red, then looked over to his father, a touch of defiance in his voice when he said, “Dad named her.”

“Well, Brian?” Gus asked.

“Trouble,” Harriman answered. “The dog’s name is Trouble.”

Gus’s effort to hold back his laughter was doomed. Brian watched his son stand there with the dog while the other man guffawed. The boy’s back and shoulders were straight; his eyes never left his father’s. One hand stroked the dog’s head.

The kid was lonely.

The thought struck Brian so suddenly, he almost said it aloud. The Harrimans had lost their older daughter a few months back. Brian had been miserable with it, and so had Bea, his wife. Cassie, the youngest child, had clung to Frank. Frank had been quiet. Frank was always quiet.

“It’s a gift, I tell you,” Gus was saying. “Frank, you ought to think about working the K-9 unit. Would that interest you?”

“I want to work homicide,” Frank answered.

Both men looked startled. “Twelve years old and you want to work homicide?” Gus asked.

He nodded. “I know I can’t start there. But I’m going to be a detective.”

“Get a load of that, Harriman. You’re raising a suit. Well, Frank, you know what? You’d make a hell of a detective. If they were all like you, we wouldn’t have any unsolved crimes in Bakersfield, would we?”

Frank shrugged.

“You can keep the dog,” Brian said, and paused as his very quiet son let out a loud whoop of elation. “C’mon, Gus. We’re taking Frank and his dog to the pet store. When he makes detective, I don’t want you tellin’ everybody at work that he used to drag strays around on a clothesline.”