The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

And All Through the House Ed McBain

Evan Hunter, under the pseudonym of Ed Mcbain, created the iconic 87th Precinct series, the best and most famous series of police procedurals ever written, with a unique concept: The entire squad room was intended to be the hero, rather than a single police officer, though Steve Carella took center stage more often than not. Fifty-four novels succeeded Cop Hater (1956), the first book in the series. Under his own name, Hunter wrote The Blackboard Jungle (1954), the first significant book to deal with juvenile delinquents and gang violence in New York. “And All Through the House” was first published in Playboy, then issued as a chapbook for members of the Mystery Guild in 1984.

Detective Steve Carella was alone in the squad room. It was very quiet for a Christmas Eve.

Normally, all hell broke loose the moment the stores closed. But tonight the squad room and the entire station house seemed unusually still. No phones ringing. No typewriters clacking away. No patrolmen popping upstairs to ask if any coffee was brewing in the clerical office down the hall. Just Carella, sitting at his desk and rereading the D. D. report he’d just typed, checking it for errors. He’d misspelled the “armed” in “armed robbery.” It had come out “aimed robbery.” He overscored the I with a ballpoint pen, giving the felony its true title. Armed robbery. Little liquor store on Culver Avenue. Guy walked in with a .357 Magnum and an empty potato sack. The owner hit a silent alarm and the two uniforms riding Boy One apprehended the thief as he was leaving the store.

Carella separated the carbons and the triplicate pages — white one in the uppermost basket, pink one in the basket marked for Miscolo in clerical, yellow one for the lieutenant. He looked up at the clock. Ten-thirty. The graveyard shift would be relieving at a quarter to twelve, maybe a bit earlier, since it was Christmas Eve.

God, it was quiet around here.

He got up from his desk and walked around the bank of high cabinets that partitioned the rest of the squad room from a small sink in the corner opposite the detention cage. Quiet night like this one, you could fall asleep on the job. He opened the faucet, filled his cupped hands with water and splashed it onto his face. He was a tall man and the mirror over the sink was set just a little too low to accommodate his height. The top of his head was missing. The mirror caught him just at his eyes, a shade darker than his brown hair and slanted slightly downward to give him a faintly Oriental appearance. He dried his face and hands with a paper towel, tossed the towel into the wastebasket under the sink, and then yawned and looked at the clock again, unsurprised to discover that only two minutes had passed since the last time he’d looked at it. The silent nights got to you. He much preferred it when things were really jumping.

He walked to the windows on the far side of the squad room and looked down at the street. Things looked as quiet down there as they were up here. Not many cars moving, hardly a pedestrian in sight. Well, sure, they were all home already, putting the finishing touches on their Christmas trees. The forecasters had promised snow, but so far there wasn’t so much as a flurry in the air. He was turning from the window when all of a sudden everything got bloody.

The first thing he saw was the blood streaming down the side of Cotton Hawes’s face. Hawes was shoving two white men through the gate in the slatted rail divider that separated the squad room from the corridor outside. The men were cuffed at the wrist with a single pair of cuffs, right wrist to left wrist, and one of them was complaining that Hawes had made the cuff too tight.

“I’ll give you tight,” Hawes said and shoved again at both men. One of them went sprawling almost headlong into the squad room, dragging the other one with him. They were both considerably smaller than Hawes, who towered over them like a redheaded fury, his anger somehow pictorially exaggerated by the streak of white in the hair over his right temple, where a burglar had cut him and the hair had grown back white. The white was streaked with blood now from an open cut on his forehead. The cut streamed blood down the right side of his face. It seemed not to console Hawes at all that the two men with him were also bleeding.

“What the hell happened?” Carella asked.

He was already coming across the squad room as if someone had called in an assist officer, even though Hawes seemed to have the situation well in hand and this was, after all, a police station and not the big, bad streets outside. The two men Hawes had brought in were looking over the place as if deciding whether or not this was really where they wanted to spend Christmas Eve. The empty detention cage in the corner of the room did not look too terribly inviting to them. One of them kept glancing over his shoulder to see if Hawes was about to shove them again. Hawes looked as if he might throttle both of them at any moment.

“Sit down!” he yelled and then went to the mirror over the sink and looked at his face. He tore a paper towel loose from the holder, wet it, and dabbed at the open cut on his forehead. The cut kept bleeding.

“I’d better phone for a meat wagon,” Carella said.

“No, I don’t need one,” Hawes said.

“We need one,” one of the two men said.

He was bleeding from a cut on his left cheek. The man handcuffed to him was bleeding from a cut just below his jaw line. His shirt was stained with blood, too, where it was slashed open over his rib cage.

Hawes turned suddenly from the sink. “What’d I do with that bag?” he said to Carella. “You see me come in here with a bag?”

“No,” Carella said. “What happened?”

“I must’ve left it downstairs at the desk,” Hawes said and went immediately to the phone. He picked up the receiver, dialed three numbers, and then said, “Dave, this is Cotton. Did I leave a shopping bag down there at the desk?” He listened and then said, “Would you send one of the blues up with it, please? Thanks a lot.” He put the receiver back on the cradle. “Trouble I went through to make this bust,” he said, “I don’t want to lose the goddamn evidence.”

“You ain’t got no evidence,” the man bleeding from the cheek said.

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Hawes said, going to him. “What’s your name?”

“I’m supposed to shut up, how can I give you my name?” the man said.

“How would you like to give me your name through a mouthful of broken teeth?” Hawes said. Carella had never seen him this angry. The blood kept pouring down his cheek, as if in visible support of his anger. “What’s your goddamn name?” he shouted.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” Carella said.

“Good,” the man bleeding from under his jaw line said.

“Who wants this?” a uniformed cop at the railing said.

“Bring it in here and put it on my desk,” Hawes said. “What’s your name?”

“Henry,” the cop at the railing said.

“Not you,” Hawes said.

“Which desk is yours?” the cop asked.

“Over there,” Hawes said and gestured vaguely.

“What happened up here?” the cop asked, carrying the shopping bag in and putting it on the desk he assumed Hawes had indicated. The shopping bag was from one of the city’s larger department stores. A green wreath and a red bow were printed on it. Carella, already on the phone, glanced at the shopping bag as he dialed Mercy General.

“Your name,” Hawes said to the man bleeding from the cheek.

“I don’t tell you nothing till you read me my rights,” the man said.

“My name is Jimmy,” the other man said.

“Jimmy what?”

“You dope, don’t tell him nothin’ till he reads you Miranda.”

“You shut up,” Hawes said. “Jimmy what?”

“Knowles. James Nelson Knowles.”

“Now you done it,” the man bleeding from the cheek said.

“It don’t mean nothin’ he’s got my name,” Knowles said.

“You gonna be anonymous all night?” Hawes said to the other man.

Into the phone, Carella said, “I’m telling you we’ve got three people bleeding up here.”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” Hawes said.

“Well, make it as fast as you can, will you?” Carella said and hung up. “They’re backed up till Easter, be a while before they can get here. Where’s that first-aid kit?” he said and went to the filing cabinets. “Don’t we have a first-aid kit up here?”

“This cut gets infected,” the anonymous man said, “I’m gonna sue the city. I die in a police station, there’s gonna be hell to pay. You better believe it.”

“What name should we put on the death certificate?” Hawes asked.

“Who the hell filed this in the missing-persons drawer?” Carella said.

“Tell him your name already, willya?” Knowles said.

“Thomas Carmody, OK?” the other man said. He said it to Knowles, as if he would not allow himself the indignity of discussing it with a cop.

Carella handed the kit to Hawes. “Put a bandage on that, willya?” he said. “You look like hell.”

“How about the citizens?” Carmody said. “You see that?” he said to Knowles. “They always take care of their own first.”

“On your feet,” Carella said.

“Here comes the rubber hose,” Carmody said.

Hawes carried the first-aid kit to the mirror. Carella led Carmody and Knowles to the detention cage. He threw back both bolts on the door, took the cuffs off them and said, “Inside, boys.” Carmody and Knowles went into the cage. Carella double-bolted the door again. Both men looked around the cage as if deciding whether or not the accommodations suited their taste. There were bars on the cage and protective steel mesh. There was no place to sit inside the cage. The two men walked around it, checking out the graffiti scribbled on the walls. Carella went to where Hawes was dabbing at his cut with a swab of cotton.

“Better put some peroxide on that,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Where’s that shopping bag?” Hawes asked.

“On the desk there. What happened?”

“I was checking out a ten-twenty on Culver and Twelfth, guy went in and stole a television set this guy had wrapped up in his closet, he was giving it to his wife for Christmas, you know? They were next door with their friends, having a drink, burglar must’ve got in through the fire-escape window; anyway, the TV’s gone. So I take down all the information — fat chance of ever getting it back — and then I go downstairs, and I’m heading for the car when there’s this yelling and screaming up the street, so I go see what’s the matter, and these two jerks are arguing over the shopping bag there on the desk.”

“It was all your fault,” Carmody said to Knowles.

“You’re the one started it,” Knowles said.

“Anyway, it ain’t our shopping bag,” Carmody said.

“I figure it’s just two guys had too much to drink,” Hawes said, putting a patch over the cut, “so I go over to tell them to cool it, go home and sleep it off, this is Christmas Eve, right? All of a sudden, there’s a knife on the scene. One of them’s got a knife in his hand.”

“Not me,” Carmody said from the detention cage.

“Not me, either,” Knowles said.

“I don’t know who started cutting who first,” Hawes said, “but I’m looking at a lot of blood. Then the other guy gets hold of the knife some way, and he starts swinging away with it, and next thing I know, I’m in the middle of it, and I’m cut, too. What it turns out to be—”

“What knife?” Carmody said. “He’s dreaming.”

“Yeah, what knife?” Knowles said.

“The knife you threw down the sewer on the corner of Culver and Eleventh,” Hawes said, “which the blues are out searching in the muck for right this minute. I need this on Christmas Eve,” he said, studying the adhesive patch on his forehead. “I really need it.”

Carella went to the detention cage, unbolted the door and handed the first-aid kit to Carmody. “Here,” he said. “Use it.”

“I’m waiting for the ambulance to come,” Carmody said. “I want real medical treatment.”

“Suit yourself,” Carella said. “How about you?”

“If he wants to wait for the ambulance, then I want to wait for the ambulance, too,” Knowles said.

Carella bolted the cage again and went back to where Hawes was wiping blood from his hair with a wet towel. “What were they arguing about?” he asked.

“Nobody was arguing,” Carmody said.

“We’re good friends,” Knowles said.

“The stuff in the bag there,” Hawes said.

“I never saw that bag in my life,” Carmody said.

“Me, either,” Knowles said.

“What’s in the bag?” Carella asked.

“What do you think?” Hawes said.

“Frankincense,” Carmody said.

“Myrrh,” Knowles said, and both men burst out laughing.

“My ass,” Hawes said. “There’s enough pot in that bag to keep the whole city happy through New Year’s Day.”

“OK, let’s go,” a voice said from the railing.

Both detectives turned to see Meyer Meyer lead a kid through the gate in the railing. The kid looked about fourteen years old, and he had a sheep on a leash. The sheep’s wool was dirty and matted. The kid looked equally dirty and matted. Meyer, wearing a heavy overcoat and no hat, looked pristinely bald and sartorial by contrast.

“I got us a shepherd,” he said. His blue eyes were twinkling; his cheeks were ruddy from the cold outside. “Beginning to snow out there,” he said.

“I ain’t no shepherd,” the kid said.

“No, what you are is a thief, is what you are,” Meyer said, taking off his overcoat and hanging it on the rack to the left of the railing. “Sit down over there. Give your sheep a seat, too.”

“Sheeps carry all kinds of diseases,” Carmody said from the detention cage.

“Who asked you?” Meyer said.

“I catch some kind of disease from that animal, I’ll sue the city,” Carmody said.

In response, the sheep shit on the floor.

“Terrific,” Meyer said. “Whyn’t you steal something clean, like a snake, you dummy?”

“My sister wanted a sheep for Christmas,” the kid said.

“Steals a goddamn sheep from the farm in the zoo, can you believe it?” Meyer said. “You know what you can get for stealing a sheep? They can send you to jail for twenty years, you steal a sheep.”

“Fifty years,” Hawes said.

“My sister wanted a sheep,” the kid said and shrugged.

“His sister is Little Bopeep,” Meyer said. “What happened to your head?”

“I ran into a big-time dope operation,” Hawes said.

“That ain’t our dope in that bag there,” Carmody said.

“That ain’t even our bag there,” Knowles said.

“When do we get a lawyer here?” Carmody said.

“Shut up,” Hawes said.

“Don’t tell them nothin’ till they read you your rights, kid,” Carmody said.

“Who’s gonna clean up this sheep dip on the floor?” Carella asked.

“Anybody want coffee?” Miscolo said from outside the railing. “I got a fresh pot brewing in the office.” He was wearing a blue sweater over regulation blue trousers, and there was a smile on his face until he saw the sheep. His eyes opened wide. “What’s that?” he asked. “A deer?”

“It’s Rudolph,” Carmody said from the detention cage.

“No kidding, is that a deer in here?” Miscolo asked.

“It’s a raccoon,” Knowles said.

“It’s my sister’s Christmas present,” the kid said.

“I’m pretty sure that’s against regulations, a deer up here in the squad room,” Miscolo said. “Who wants coffee?”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup,” Carmody said.

“I’d advise against it,” Meyer said.

“Even on Christmas Eve, I have to take crap about my coffee,” Miscolo said, shaking his head. “You want some, it’s down the hall.”

“I already told you I want some,” Carmody said.

“You ain’t in jail yet,” Miscolo said. “This ain’t a free soup kitchen.”

“Christmas Eve,” Carmody said, “he won’t give us a cup of coffee.”

“You better get that animal out of here,” Miscolo said to no one and went off down the corridor.

“Why won’t you let me take the sheep to my sister?” the kid asked.

“ ’Cause it ain’t your sheep,” Meyer said. “It belongs to the zoo. You stole it from the zoo.”

“The zoo belongs to everybody in this city,” the kid said.

“Tell ’im,” Carmody said.

“What’s this I hear?” Bert Kling said from the railing. “Inside, mister.” His blond hair was wet with snow. He was carrying a huge valise in one hand, and his free hand was on the shoulder of a tall black man whose wrists were handcuffed behind his back. The black man was wearing a red-plaid Mackinaw, its shoulders wet. Snowflakes still glistened in his curly black hair. Kling looked at the sheep. “Miscolo told me it was a deer,” he said.

“Miscolo’s a city boy,” Carella said.

“So am I,” Kling said, “but I know a sheep from a deer.” He looked down. “Who made on the floor?” he asked.

“The sheep,” Meyer said.

“My sister’s present,” the kid said.

Kling put down the heavy valise and led the black man to the detention cage. “OK, back away,” he said to Carmody and Knowles and waited for them to move away from the door. He unbolted the door, took the cuffs off his prisoner and said, “Make yourself at home.” He bolted the door again. “Snowing up a storm out there,” he said and went to the coatrack. “Any coffee brewing?”

“In the clerical office,” Carella said.

“I meant real coffee,” Kling said, taking off his coat and hanging it up.

“What’s in the valise?” Hawes asked. “Looks like a steamer trunk you got there.”

“Silver and gold,” Kling said. “My friend there in the cage ripped off a pawnshop on The Stem. Guy was just about to close, he walks in with a sawed-off shotgun, wants everything in the store. I got a guitar downstairs in the car. You play guitar?” he asked the black man in the cage.

The black man said nothing.

“Enough jewelry in here to make the queen of England happy,” Kling said.

“Where’s the shotgun?” Meyer asked.

“In the car,” Kling said. “I only got two hands.” He looked at Hawes. “What happened to your head?” he asked.

“I’m getting tired of telling people what happened to my head,” Hawes said.

“When’s that ambulance coming?” Carmody asked. “I’m bleeding to death here.”

“So use the kit,” Carella said.

“And jeopardize my case against the city?” Carmody said. “No way.”

Hawes walked to the windows.

“Really coming down out there,” he said.

“Think the shift’ll have trouble getting in?” Meyer said.

“Maybe. Three inches out there already, looks like.”

Hawes turned to look at the clock.

Meyer looked at the clock, too.

All at once, everyone in the squad room was looking at the clock.

The detectives were thinking the heavy snow would delay the graveyard shift and cause them to get home later than they were hoping. The men in the detention cage were thinking the snow might somehow delay the process of criminal justice. The kid sitting at Meyer’s desk was thinking it was only half an hour before Christmas and his sister wasn’t going to get the sheep she wanted. The squad room was almost as silent as when Carella had been alone in it.

And then Andy Parker arrived with his prisoners.

“Move it,” he said and opened the gate in the railing.

Parker was wearing a leather jacket that made him look like a biker. Under the jacket, he was wearing a plaid-woolen shirt and a red muffler. The blue-woolen watch cap on his head was covered with snow. His blue-corduroy trousers were covered with snow. Even the three-day beard stubble on his face had snowflakes clinging to it. His prisoners looked equally white, their faces pale and frightened.

The young man was wearing a rumpled black suit, sprinkled with snow that was rapidly melting as he stood uncertainly in the opening to the squad room. Under the suit, he wore only a shirt open at the collar, no tie. Carella guessed he was twenty years old. The young woman with him — girl, more accurately — couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She was wearing a lightweight spring coat open over what Carella’s mother used to call a house dress, a printed-cotton thing with buttons at the throat. Her long black hair was dusted with snow. Her brown eyes were wide in her face. She stood shivering just inside the railing, looking more terrified than any human being Carella had ever seen.

She also looked enormously pregnant.

As Carella watched her, she suddenly clutched her belly and grimaced in pain. He realized all at once that she was already in labor.

“I said move it,” Parker said, and it seemed to Carella that he actually would push the pregnant girl into the squad room. Instead, he shoved past the couple and went directly to the coatrack. “Sit down over there,” he said, taking off his jacket and hat. “What the hell is that, a sheep?”

“That’s my sister’s Christmas present,” the kid said, though Parker hadn’t been addressing him.

“Lucky her,” Parker said.

There was only one chair alongside his desk. The young man in the soggy black suit held it out for the girl, and she sat in it. He stood alongside her as Parker took a seat behind the desk and rolled a sheaf of D. D. forms into the typewriter.

“I hope you all got chains on your cars,” he said to no one and then turned to the girl. “What’s your name, sister?” he asked.

“Maria Garcia Lopez,” the girl said and winced again in pain.

“She’s in labor,” Carella said and went quickly to the telephone.

“You’re a doctor all of a sudden?” Parker said and turned to the girl again. “How old are you, Maria?” he asked.

“Sixteen.”

“Where do you live, Maria?”

“Well, thass the pro’lem,” the young man said.

“Who’s talking to you?” Parker said.

“You were assin’ Maria—”

“Listen, you understand English?” Parker said. “When I’m talkin’ to this girl here, I don’t need no help from—”

“You wann’ to know where we live—”

“I want an address for this girl here, is what I—”

“You wann’ the address where we s’pose’ to be livin’?” the young man said.

“All right, what’s your name, wise guy?” Parker said.

“José Lopez.”

“The famous bullfighter?” Parker said and turned to look at Carella, hoping for a laugh.

Carella was on the telephone. Into the receiver, he said, “I know I already called you, but now we’ve got a pregnant woman up here. Can you send that ambulance in a hurry?”

“I ain’ no bullfighter,” José said to Parker.

“What are you, then?”

“I wass cut sugar cane in Puerto Rico, but now I don’ have no job. Thass why my wife an’ me we come here this city, to fine a job. Before d’ baby comes.”

“So what were you doing in that abandoned building?” Parker said and turned to Carella again. “I found them in an abandoned building on South Sixth, huddled around this fire they built.”

Carella had just hung up the phone. “Nothing’s moving out there,” he said. “They don’t know when the ambulance’ll be here.”

“You know it’s against the law to take up residence in a building owned by the city?” Parker said. “That’s called squatting, José, you know what squatting is? You also know it’s against the law to set fires inside buildings? That’s called arson, José, you know what arson is?”

“We wass cold,” José said.

“Ahhh, the poor kids were cold,” Parker said.

“Ease off,” Carella said softly. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“So what? That’s supposed to mean you can break the law, it’s Christmas Eve?”

“The girl’s in labor,” Carella said. “She may have the baby any damn minute. Ease off.”

Parker stared at him for a moment and then turned back to José. “OK,” he said, “you came up here from Puerto Rico looking for a job—”

“Sí, señor.”

“Talk English. And don’t interrupt me. You came up here lookin’ for a job; you think jobs grow on trees here?”

“My cousin says he hass a job for me. D’ factory where he works, he says there’s a job there. He says come up.”

“Oh, now there’s a cousin,” Parker said to Hawes, hoping for a more receptive audience than he’d found in Carella. “What’s your cousin’s name?” he asked José.

“Cirilo Lopez.”

“Another bullfighter?” Parker said and winked at Hawes. Hawes did not wink back.

“Whyn’t you leave him alone?” Carmody said from the cage.

Parker swiveled his chair around to face the cage. “Who said that?” he asked and looked at the black man. “You the one who said that?”

The black man did not answer.

“I’m the one said it,” Carmody admitted.

“What are you in that cage for?”

“Holding frankincense and myrrh,” Carmody said and laughed. Knowles laughed with him. The black man in the cage did not crack a smile.

“How about you?” Parker asked, looking directly at him.

“He’s mine,” Kling said. “That big valise there is full of hot goods.”

“Nice little crowd we get here,” Parker said and swiveled his chair back to the desk. “I’m still waitin’ for an address from you two,” he said. “A legal address.”

“We wass s’pose’ to stay with my cousin,” José said. “He says he hass a room for us.”

“Where’s that?” Parker asked.

“Eleven twenny-four Mason Avenue, apar’men’ thirty-two.”

“But there’s no room for us,” Maria said. “Cirilo, he’s—” She caught her breath. Her face contorted in pain again.

José took her hand. She looked up at him. “D’ lady lives ness door,” he said to Parker, “she tells us Cirilo hass move away.”

“When’s the last time you heard from him?”

“Lass’ month.”

“So you don’t think to check, huh? You come all the way up from Puerto Rico without checkin’ to see your cousin’s still here or not? Brilliant. You hear this, Bert?” he said to Kling. “Jet-set travelers we got here; they come to the city in their summer clothes in December, they end up in an abandoned building.”

“They thought the cousin was still here, that’s all,” Kling said, watching the girl, whose hands were now spread wide on her belly.

“OK, what’s the big emergency here?” someone said from the railing.

The man standing there was carrying a small black satchel. He was wearing a heavy black overcoat over white trousers and tunic. The snow on the shoulders of the coat and dusted onto his bare head was as white as the tunic and pants. “Mercy General at your service,” he said. “Sorry to be so late; it’s been a busy night. Not to mention two feet of snow out there. Where’s the patient?”

“You’d better take a look at the girl,” Carella said. “She’s in—”

“Right here,” Carmody said from the cage.

“Me, too,” Knowles said.

“Somebody want to let them out?” the intern said. “One at a time, please.”

Hawes went to the cage and threw back the bolts on the door.

“Who’s first?” the intern said.

Carella started to say, “The girl over there is in la—”

“Free at last,” Carmody interrupted, coming out of the cage.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Hawes said and bolted the door again.

The intern was passing Parker’s desk when Maria suddenly gasped.

“You OK, miss?” he said at once.

Maria clutched her belly.

“Miss?” he said.

Maria gasped again and sucked in a deep breath of air.

Meyer rolled his eyes. He and Miscolo had delivered a baby right here in the squad room not too long ago, and he was grateful for the intern’s presence.

“This woman is in labor!” the intern said.

“Comes the dawn,” Carella said, sighing.

“Iss it d’ baby comin’?” José asked.

“Looks that way, mister,” the intern said. “Somebody get a blanket or something. You got any blankets up here?”

Kling was already on his way out of the squad room.

“Just take it easy, miss,” the intern said. “Everything’s gonna be fine.” He looked at Meyer and said, “This is my first baby.”

Terrific, Meyer thought, but he said nothing.

“You need some hot water?” Hawes asked.

“That’s for the movies,” the intern said.

“Get some hot water,” Carmody said.

“I don’t need hot water,” the intern said. “I just need someplace for her to lie down.” He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe I do need hot water,” he said.

Hawes ran out of the squad room, almost colliding with Kling, who was on his way back with a pair of blankets he’d found in the clerical office. Miscolo was right behind him.

“Another baby coming?” he asked Meyer. He seemed eager to deliver it.

“We got a professional here,” Meyer said.

“You need any help,” Miscolo said to the intern, “just ask, OK?”

“I won’t need any help,” the intern said, somewhat snottily, Miscolo thought. “Put those blankets down someplace. You OK, miss?” He suddenly looked very nervous.

Maria nodded and then gasped again and clutched her belly and stifled a scream. Kling was spreading one of the blankets on the floor to the left of the detention cage, near the hissing radiator. Knowles and the black man moved to the side of the cage nearest the radiator.

“Give her some privacy,” Carella said softly. “Over there, Bert. Behind the filing cabinets.”

Kling spread the blanket behind the cabinets.

“She’s gonna have her baby right here,” Knowles said.

The black man said nothing.

“I never experienced nothin’ like this in my life,” Knowles said, shaking his head.

The black man still said nothing.

“Maria?” José said.

Maria nodded and then screamed.

“Try to keep it down, willya?” Parker said. He looked as nervous as the intern did.

“Just come with me, miss,” the intern said, easing Maria out of the chair, taking her elbow and guiding her to where Kling had spread the blanket behind the cabinets. “Easy, now,” he said. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Hawes was back with a kettle of hot water. “Where do you want—” he started to say, just as Maria and the intern disappeared from view behind the bank of high cabinets.

It was three minutes to midnight, three minutes to Christmas Day.

From behind the filing cabinets, there came only the sounds of Maria’s labored breathing and the intern’s gentle assurances that everything was going to be all right. The kid kept staring at the clock as it threw the minutes before Christmas into the room. Behind the filing cabinets, a sixteen-year-old girl and an inexperienced intern struggled to bring a life into the world.

There was a sudden sharp cry from behind the cabinets.

The hands of the clock stood straight up. It was Christmas Day.

“Is it OK?” Parker asked. There was something like concern in his voice.

“Fine baby boy,” the intern said, as if repeating a line he’d heard in a movie. “Where’s that water? Get me some towels. You’ve got a fine, healthy boy, miss,” he said to Maria and covered her with the second blanket.

Hawes carried the kettle of hot water to him.

Carella brought him paper towels from the rack over the sink.

“Just going to wash him off a little, miss,” the intern said.

“You got a fine baby boy,” Meyer said to José, smiling.

José nodded.

“What’re you gonna name him?” Kling asked.

The black man, who’d been silent since he’d entered the squad room, suddenly said in a deep and sonorous voice, “ ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.’ ”

“Amen,” Knowles said.

The detectives were gathered in a knot around the bank of filing cabinets now, their backs to Carmody. Carmody could have made a run for it, but he didn’t. Instead, he picked up first the shopping bag of pot he and Knowles had been busted for and then the valise containing the loot Kling had recovered when he’d collared the black man. He carried them to where Maria lay behind the cabinets, the baby on her breast. He knelt at her feet. He dipped his hand into the bag, grabbed a handful of pot and sprinkled it onto the blanket. He opened the valise. There were golden rings and silver plates in the valise, bracelets and necklaces, rubies and diamonds and sapphires that glittered in the pale, snow-reflected light that streamed through the corner windows.

“Gracias,” Maria said softly. “Muchas gracias.”

Carella, standing closest to the windows, looked up at the sky, where the snow still swirled furiously.

“That’s not a bad name,” Meyer said to José. “Emmanuel.”

“I will name him Carlos,” José said. “After my father.”

Carella turned from the windows.

“What’d you expect to see out there?” Parker asked. “A star in the East?”

An Early Christmas Doug Allyn

Like the New York Yankees during the Mickey Mantle era and the Boston Celtics when Bill Russell and John Havlicek played, Doug Allyn has had a stranglehold on the prestigious Reader’s Award given annually by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It is a poll voted on by readers of the magazine for their favorite story of the year, and ten of his stories have come in first, and over twenty have been in the top three. “An Early Christmas” was selected as the favorite story of the year in 2009; it was published in the January issue.

Jared snapped awake to the sound of laughter. On the bedside TV, Jay Leno was yukking it up with a ditzy blonde celeb. Jared sat up slowly, dazed and groggy from too much brandy, too much sex. Fumbling around, he found the remote control, and killed the tinny TV cackling, then looked around slowly, trying to get his bearings.

A bedroom. Not his own. Sunny Lockhart was sprawled beside him, nude, snoring softly with her mouth open, her platinum hair a tousled shambles. At fifty-one, Sunny had crow’s feet and smile lines, but her breasts were D-cup and she made love like a teenybopper. Better, in fact.

Gratitude sex. The best kept secret in the legal profession. After settling cases involving serious money, clients were often elated, horny, and very, very grateful to the guy who made it happen.

Thanks to Jared’s legal expertise, Sunny Lockhart was financially set for life, a free and independent woman of means. Unfortunately, she was also crowding fifty. Too old for Jared by a dozen years. And he had to be in the office to meet with a client at nine sharp.

Damn. Time to go.

Stifling a groan, Jared slid silently out of Sunny’s rumpled bed and began gathering up his clothes.

Roaring down the shore road in his Mercedes SL500 through a gentle snowfall, Jared set his radio on scan, listening to the momentary snippets of songs flashing past. Mostly Christmas carols or country. Finally caught a tune he liked. Back in Black, AC/DC. Cranking the volume, he slapped the wheel on the back beat, getting an energy surge from the music.

Couldn’t stop grinning. Wondering if he could arrange a weekend getaway with Sunny. Getting hot and bothered again just thinking about it.

He paid no attention to the rust-bucket pickup truck rumbling down the side road to his left. Until he realized the truck wasn’t slowing for the stop sign! The crazy bastard was speeding up, heading straight for him!

Stomping his brakes, Jared swerved over onto the shoulder, trying to avoid a crash. Knowing it was already too late!

Blowing through the intersection at eighty, the pickup came howling across the centerline, sheering off at the last second to slam broadside into Jared’s roadster, smashing him off the road.

Airbags and the windshield exploded together, smothering Jared in a world of white as the Benz plowed into the massive snowdrift piled along the highway, then blew through it, hurtling headlong down the steep embankment.

Fighting free of the airbag’s embrace, Jared wrestled the wheel, struggling to control the roadster in its downhill skid. He managed to avoid one tree, then glanced off another. For a split second he thought he might actually make it — but his rear fender clipped a towering pine, snapping the car around, sending it tumbling end over end down the slope.

Bouncing off tree trunks like a pinball, the Benz was being hammered into scrap metal. The side windows shattered inward, spraying Jared with glass fragments. For a heart-freezing instant, he felt the car go totally airborne, then it slammed down nose-first into the bottom of the gorge with stunning force.

A lightning strike of white-hot agony flashed up Jared’s spine, driving his breath out in a shriek. Freezing him in place. He was afraid to breathe, or even blink, for fear of triggering the godawful pain again.

Christ. He couldn’t feel his legs. Didn’t know what was wrong with them, but knew it was serious. Total numbness meant his back might be broken or—

“Mister?” A voice broke through Jared’s terrified daze. “Can you hear me down there?”

“Yes!” Jared gasped.

“Hey, I saw what happened. That crazy bastard never even slowed down. Are you okay?”

“I... can’t move,” Jared managed. “I think my back may be broken. Call 911.”

“Already did that. Hang on, I’ve got a first-aid kit in my car.”

Unable to risk turning his head, Jared could only catch glimpses in his shattered rearview mirror, a dark figure working his way down the steep, snowy slope, carrying a red plastic case. Twice, the man stumbled in the roadster’s torn tracks, but managed to regain his balance and press on.

As he drew closer, the mirror shards broke the image into distorted fragments, monstrous and alien... Then he vanished altogether.

“Are you there?” Jared gasped, gritting his teeth. Every word triggered a raw wave of pain.

“Almost. Stay still.” The voice came from somewhere behind the wreck. Jared couldn’t see him at all.

“You’re Jared Bannan, the real estate lawyer, right?”

“Do I know you?”

No answer. Then Jared glimpsed the twisted figure in the mirror again. Climbing back up the track the way he’d come.

“Wh — where are you going? I need help!”

“Can’t risk it.” The figure continued on without turning. “Your gas tank ruptured. Can’t you smell it? Your car could go off like a bomb any second.”

“But—” Jared coughed. My god. The guy was right! The raw stench of gasoline was filling his nostrils, making it hard to breathe.

“Wait! Come back, you sonofabitch! Don’t leave me! I have money! I’ll pay you!”

At the mention of money, the climber stopped and turned around. But in the tree shadows, Jared still couldn’t make out his face.

“That’s more like it,” Jared said. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars. Cash. Just get me out of this car and—”

“Ten grand? Is that what you’re worth?”

“No! I mean, look, I’ll give you any amount you want...” A flash of light revealed the climber’s face for a split second. Definitely familiar. Someone Jared had met or... His mind suddenly locked up, freezing with soul-numbing horror.

The flash was a flame. The climber had lit a cigarette. “Oh, Jesus,” Jared murmured softly, licking his lips. “What are you doing? Wait. Please.”

“Jesus?” the climber mimicked, taking a long drag. “Wait? Please? Is that the best you can do? I thought shyster lawyers were supposed to be sweet talkers.”

Jared didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He watched in growing terror as the smoker tapped the ashes off, bringing the tip to a cherry glow. Then he flipped the cigarette high in the air, sending it arcing through the darkness, trailing sparks as it fell.

Jared’s shriek triggered another bolt of agony from his shattered spine, but he was beyond caring. He couldn’t stop screaming any more than he could stop the cigarette’s fiery fall.

Leaving his unmarked patrol car at the side of the highway, Doyle Stark trotted the last hundred yards along the shoulder to the accident scene. A serious one, by north country standards. A Valhalla County fire truck was parked crossways across one lane of the highway, blocking it. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies, Hurst and Van Duzen, were directing traffic around the truck on the far shoulder. Van flipped him a quick salute and Doyle shot him with a fingertip.

Yellow police line tapes stretched from both bumpers of the fire truck to stakes planted in the roadside snowdrifts. The tapes outlined a savage gap in the snowy embankment, over the top and on down out of sight.

Detective Zina Redfern was squatting at the rear of the fire truck, warming her mittened hands in the heat of its exhaust pipe. She was dressed in her usual Johnny Cash black, black nylon POLICE parka over a turtleneck and jeans, a black watch cap pulled down around her ears. The woman took the term “plainclothes officer” literally.

Even her combat boots were the real deal, LawPro Pursuits with steel toes. With a Fairbairn blade clipped to her right ankle.

“Sergeant Stark,” she nodded, straightening up to her full, squared-off five foot five, one forty. “Whoa, what happened to your eye?”

Six foot and compactly built, with sandy hair and gray eyes, Doyle was sporting a white bandage over his left brow.

“Reffing a Peewee pickup game,” Doyle said. “Ten-year-olds watch way too much hockey on TV. What happened here?”

“A car crashed through the embankment, tumbled all the way to the bottom, then blew up and burned down to the frame. What’s left of the driver is still inside. Beyond that, I’m not sayin’ squat. I need you to see this with fresh eyes.”

“Fair enough,” Doyle nodded, picking up the edge in her tone. Zina had worked in Flint four years before transferring north to the Valhalla force. She was an experienced investigator, and if something was bothering her about this...

He swiveled slowly, taking in the accident scene as a steady stream of traffic crawled past on the far shoulder. Wide-eyed gawkers, wondering what was up. Doyle knew the feeling.

Two sets of broad black skid marks met in the center of the lane, then followed an impossible angle to the torn snowbanks at the side of the road. “Who called this in?”

“A long-haul trucker spotted the wreckage as he crested the hill, around ten this morning. We caught a real break. The wreck’s not visible from the roadside. If we’d gotten a little more snow during the night, the poor bastard might have stayed buried till spring. I marked off a separate trail away from the skid track,” she said, leading him to a rough footpath up and over the berm. “There are footprints that... well, take a look for yourself.”

Clambering to the top of the drift, Doyle stopped, scanning the scene below. A ragged trail of torn snow and shattered trees led down the slope to a charred obscenity crouched at the bottom of the gorge. A burned-out hulk that had once been an expensive piece of German automotive engineering.

The charred Mercedes Benz was encircled by a blackened ring of torn earth and melted slush, its savagery already softening beneath a gentle gauze of lightly falling snow.

Joni Javitz, the Joint Investigative Unit’s only tech, was hunched over the car, dutifully photographing the corpse. Even at this distance, Doyle could see the gaping mouth and bared teeth of the Silent Scream, a burn victim’s final rictus. A few patches of skull were showing through the blackened flesh...

Damn. He hated burn scenes. The ugly finality and the vile stench that clung to your clothing for days. In Detroit, cops called them Crispy Critters. But here in the north, no one in Doyle’s unit joked about them. There’s nothing funny about a death by fire. Ever.

Working his way warily down the slope, Doyle noted the uneven footprints in the snow of the roadster’s trail. “Did the trucker climb down to the car?”

“The trucker didn’t stop,” Zina said. “He spotted the wreck and a little smoke. Wasn’t sure what it was, but thought somebody should take a look.”

“It was still smoking at ten o’clock? Any idea when this happened, Joni?”

“My best guess would be around midnight, boss, give or take an hour,” Javitz said without turning. Tall and slender as a whip, she had to fold herself into a question mark to shoot the wreck’s interior. “The car and the body are both cool to the touch now, but they’re still ten degrees warmer than the ambient temperature. The State Police Crime Scene Team is already en route from Gaylord. They should be here anytime.”

“Okay...” Doyle said, swiveling slowly, taking in the scene. “We’ve got a hot shot in a Benz roadster who runs off the road at midnight, crashes and burns. Tough break for him. Or her?”

“Him, definitely,” Joni said.

“Fine. Him then. And why exactly am I here on my day off?”

Wordlessly, Joni stepped away from the car, revealing the charred corpse, and the deep crease in the driver’s-side door.

“Wow,” Doyle said softly, lowering himself to his haunches, studying the dent more closely. “Metal on metal. Red paint traces. No tree did this. Which explains the second set of skid marks on the highway. Somebody ran this poor bastard off the road...” He broke off, eyeing a small circle of dark red droplets, scattered like a spray of blood near the trunk.

“Plastic pellets?” Doyle said. “Any chance they’re from the taillights?”

“Nope, the taillight lenses are Lexan,” Joni said. “These pellets are definitely polypropylene, probably from a plastic gas container. A small one, a gallon or two. Like you’d use for a chain saw or a lawn mower. The can was definitely on the ground outside the vehicle. I’ve already bagged up some residue to test for accelerants.”

“I didn’t see any skid marks from the other vehicle until the last second, just before it struck the Benz,” Doyle mused. “From the depth of these dents, both cars must have been traveling at one hell of a clip. So car number two runs the stop sign at high speed, nails the Benz dead center, hard enough to drive it through the snowdrifts...”

“He’s damned lucky he isn’t down here too,” Zina said.

“Maybe it wasn’t luck,” Doyle said, staring up the incline toward the highway. “If he hadn’t hit the Benz, he definitely would have blown through the berm himself. And there’s not much traffic out here at night. So, either he ran that stop sign, drunk, asleep, whatever, and the Benz had the million to one bad luck to get in his way or...?”

“He wasn’t out of control at all,” Zina nodded, following Doyle’s gaze up the hillside. “You think he drilled him deliberately?”

“Tell you what, Detective, why don’t you hoof it back up the hill and check out that side road for tire tracks or exhaust stains in the snow. See if car number two was sitting up there, waiting for the Benz to show.”

“Jesus,” Joni said softly. “You mean somebody rammed this poor bastard on purpose? Then climbed down with a gas can and lit him up?”

“I don’t like it either, but it works,” Doyle agreed grimly. “Have you identified him yet?”

“The car’s registered jointly to Jared and Lauren Bannan, Valhalla address.”

“Jared Bannan?” Doyle echoed, surprised. “Damn. I know this guy. I’ve played racquetball against him.”

“A friend?”

“No, just a guy. He’s an attorney, a transplant from downstate, works mostly in real estate.”

“A yuppie lawyer?” Zina said. “Whoa! Want me to cancel the Crime Scene team?”

The door to the classroom was ajar. Doyle raised his fist to knock, then hesitated, surprised at the utter silence from within. Curious, he peered around the doorjamb. A tall, trim woman with boyishly short dark hair, was addressing the class. Soundlessly. Her lips were moving, the fingers of both hands flickering, mediating an animated discussion with a dozen rapt teenagers, who were answering with equally adept sign language, their lips miming speech, but with no sound at all.

It was like watching an Olympic fencing match, silvery signals flashing too quickly for the eye to follow.

The woman glanced up, frowning. “Can I help you?”

“Sorry to intrude, ma’am. If you’re Doctor Lauren Bannan, I need a few minutes of your time.”

“I’m in the middle of a class.”

“This really can’t wait, ma’am.”

“My god,” Lauren said softly, “are you absolutely sure it’s Jared?”

“The identification isn’t final, but he was carrying your husband’s identification and driving his car.”

“Jared wore a U of M class ring on his right hand,” she offered. “Did the driver...?”

Doyle nodded. They were in Doctor Bannan’s office, a Spartan ten by ten box at Blair Center, the county magnet school for special-needs students. Floor to ceiling bookshelves on three sides, Doctor Bannan’s diplomas and teaching awards neatly displayed on the fourth wall. No photographs, Doyle noted.

“I didn’t see a wedding ring,” Zina said. “Did he normally wear one?”

“We’re separated,” Lauren said. “God. I can’t believe this.”

“Are you all right, Mrs. Bannan?” Doyle asked. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

“No, I’m... just a bit shaken. Do you have any idea what happened?”

“Your husband was apparently sideswiped on the shore road a few miles outside of town. Hit and run. His car went over a steep embankment, probably late last night. Midnight, maybe. He was pronounced dead at the scene. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

Lauren’s mouth narrowed as she visibly brought her emotions under control. An elegant woman, Doyle thought. Slender as a willow with dark hair, a complexion as exquisite as a porcelain doll.

But not fragile. She took the news of her husband’s death like a prizefighter rocked by a stiff punch. Drawing within herself to camouflage the damage.

After a moment, she took a deep breath, and carefully straightened her jacket.

“You said someone ran Jared off the road. What happened to the other driver?”

“We don’t know yet, ma’am. Do you know why your husband might have been on that road last night?”

“No idea. Jared and I separated last year. Except for conferences with our attorney, I rarely see him. Why?”

Zina glanced the question at Doyle, who nodded.

“Judging from the skid marks, the collision may not have been accidental, Doctor Bannan,” Zina said. “Do you know why anyone would want to harm your husband?”

“Whoa, back up a moment,” Lauren said, raising her hand. “Are you saying someone deliberately rammed Jared’s car?”

“We aren’t certain yet, ma’am,” Doyle said. “But the evidence does lean that way. At this point we’re treating it as a possible homicide.”

“For the record, would you mind telling us your whereabouts last night?” Zina asked.

Lauren glanced up at her sharply. “I was at home all evening. Alone. What are you implying?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” Doyle put in. “It’s strictly routine. We’re not the enemy.”

Lauren looked away a moment. “All right then. If you have questions, let’s clear them up now.”

“You said you separated last year?” Zina asked. “Have you filed for divorce?”

“We filed right after we separated. Last spring. March, I think.”

“Do you have children?”

Lauren hesitated. “No. No children.”

“Then help me out here, Mrs. Bannan. Without children involved, you can get a no-fault divorce in sixty days, and I’m speaking from experience. Was your husband contesting the divorce?”

“Only the property settlement. Jared earns considerably more than I do, so he felt he was entitled to a larger share. He kept coming up with new demands.”

“Michigan’s a community property state,” Doyle put in. “A wife’s entitled to half, no matter who earns what.”

“My husband is an attorney, Sergeant, though most of his work is in real estate. Fighting him in court wouldn’t be cost effective. We had our final meeting last Tuesday. He made an offer and I took it.”

“But you weren’t happy about it?” Zina said.

“Divorce seldom makes anyone happy.”

“You’re newcomers to the area, right?” Doyle asked. “When did you move north?”

“A little over two years ago.”

“Why was that? The move, I mean?”

“Why?” Lauren blinked. But didn’t answer.

That was a hit, Zina thought. Though she had no idea what it meant.

“I knew your husband in passing,” Doyle offered, easing the silence. “I played racquetball against him a few times.”

“And?” Lauren said, with an odd smile.

“And what? Why the smile?”

“Jared was the most competitive man I’ve ever known. Did he beat you, Sergeant?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. Twice.”

“And did he cheat?”

“He didn’t have to. He was quicker than I am. Why do you ask that?”

“Jared could be a very sore loser. I beat him at tennis once and he smashed his racquet to splinters in front of a hundred spectators. I filed for divorce a week later.”

“Over a tennis match?” Zina asked, arching an eyebrow.

“It was such a childish display that I realized that Jared was never going to grow up. And I was tired of waiting. I wanted out.”

“And now you are,” Zina said. “Will the accident affect your financial settlement?”

“I have no idea. Money always mattered more to Jared than to me.”

“Money doesn’t matter?” Zina echoed.

“I was buying my freedom, Detective. How much is that worth? Can we wrap this up? I have a class in five minutes.”

“You might want to make other arrangements, Doctor,” Doyle suggested. “Give yourself a break.”

“Working with handicapped kids is a two-way street, Sergeant. It keeps your problems in perspective. The last thing I need is to sit around brooding.”

“You’re not exactly brooding, ma’am,” Zina noted. “If you don’t mind my saying, you’re taking this pretty calmly.”

“I deal with problems every day, Detective. Kids who will never hear music or their mother’s voices, kids with abusive parents. Last week I had to tell an eight-year-old her chemotherapy regimen had failed and she probably won’t see Christmas. So this is very hard news, but...” Lauren gave a barely perceptible shrug.

“A thing like that would be a lot harder,” Zina conceded, impressed in spite of herself.

“And yet the sun also rises,” Lauren said firmly. “Every morning, ready or not. Are we done?”

“Just a few final questions,” Doyle said quickly. “Your husband had a string of traffic citations, mostly for speeding. Was he a reckless driver?”

“Jared never hit anyone, he had great reflexes. But every trip was Le Mans for him. I hated that damned car.”

“Was he ever involved in conflicts with other drivers?”

“Road rage, you mean? His driving often ticked people off, but he never stopped to argue. It was more fun to leave them in the dust.”

“Which brings us full circle to question number one,” Doyle said. “Can you think of anybody who might wish to harm your husband?”

Lauren hesitated a split second. Another hit, Zina thought, though not as strong as the first.

“No one,” Lauren said carefully. “Jared was a charming man, as long as you weren’t playing tennis against him or facing him in court. If he was having trouble with a client, his office staff would know more than I do. He’s with Lehman and Greene, downtown.”

“How about you, ma’am?” Doyle asked. “The Benz is jointly owned, so it’s at least possible your husband wasn’t the intended victim. Have you had any problems? Threats, a stalker, anything like that?”

“No.”

“What about your students?” Zina asked. “Your schedule includes mentally challenged students as well as hearing impaired. Are any of them violent? Maybe overly affectionate? Seems like there’s a lot of teacher-student hanky-panky in the papers.”

Lauren met Zina’s eyes a moment, tapping on the desk with a single fingernail.

“You two are really good,” she said abruptly. “Usually the male plays the aggressive ‘bad cop,’ while the female plays the sympathetic sister. Reversing the roles is very effective.”

“Thanks, I think,” Zina said. “But you didn’t answer the question.”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, Detective Redfern, some of my students have behavioral problems that keep them out of mainstream schools. But none of them would have any reason to harm Jared. Or me. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like a minute alone before my next class. Please.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Doyle said, rising. “I apologize for the tone of our questions. We’re sorry for your loss, Doctor Bannan.” He handed her his card. “If you think of anything, please call, day or night.”

Zina hesitated in the doorway.

Lauren raised an eyebrow. “Something else, Detective?”

“That kid you mentioned? What did she say when you told her the cancer had come back?”

“She... asked her father if they could celebrate an early Christmas. So she could re-gift her toys to her friends.”

“Good god,” Zina said softly. “How do you handle it? Telling a child a thing like that?”

“Some days are like triage on the Titanic, Detective,” Lauren admitted, releasing a deep breath. “You protect the children as best you can. And the battered women. And at five o’clock, you go home, pour a stiff brandy and curl up with a good book.”

“And tomorrow, the sun also rises,” Zina finished.

“Every single day. Ready or not.”

In the hallway, Doyle glanced at Zina. “What?”

“I hate having to tell the wives. The tears, the wailing. Rips your freakin’ heart out.”

“The lady’s used to dealing with bad news.”

“She’s also pretty good at dodgeball. She echoed half of our questions to buy time before she answered. Or didn’t answer at all.”

“She’s got degrees in psych and special ed. She’s probably better at this than we are. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Her clothes were expensive but not very stylish. She’s a good-looking woman, but she dresses like a schoolmarm.”

“She is a schoolmarm. What are we, the fashion police now?”

“Nope, we’re the damn-straight real poleece, Sarge. I’m just saying a few things about that lady don’t add up. If a toasted husband can’t crack your cool, what would it take?”

“You think she might be involved in her husband’s death?”

“Let me get back to you on that. Who’s next?”

“She said Bannan’s office staff would know about any threats.”

“Argh, more lawyers,” Zina groaned. “I’d rather floss with freakin’ barbed wire.”

The offices of Lehman, Barksdale, and Greene, Attorneys at Law, occupied the top floor of the old Montgomery Wards building in downtown Valhalla. Old town, it’s called now. The historic heart of the village.

The new big box stores, Walmart, Home Depot, and the rest, are outside the city limits, sprawling along the Lake Michigan shore like a frontier boomtown, fueled by new money, new people. High tech émigrés from Detroit or Seattle, flocking to the north country to get away from it all. And bringing most of it with them.

But Old Town remains much as it was before the second war, brick streets and sidewalks, quaint, globular streetlamps. Nineteenth-century buildings artfully restored to their Victorian roots, cast-iron facades, shop windows sparkling with holiday displays, tinny carols swirling in the wintry air. Christmas in Valhalla.

Harbor Drive offers a marvelous view of the boat basin and the Great Lake beyond it, white ice calves drifting in the dark water all the way to the horizon, to infinity, really.

Few of the locals give it a glance, but the two cops paused a moment, taking it in. They’d both worked the concrete canyons of southern Michigan, Detroit for Doyle, Flint for Zee, before returning home to the north. Beauty shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Totally rehabbed during the recent real estate push, the offices of Lehman and Greene were top drawer now, an ultra-modern hive of glass cubicles framed in oak with ecru carpeting. Scandinavian furniture in the reception area, original art on the walls.

Doyle badged the receptionist, who buzzed Martin Lehman Jr. to the front desk. Mid thirties, with fine blonde hair worn long, thinning prematurely. Casually dressed. Shirtsleeves and slacks, loafers with no socks. No tie either. New age corporate chic.

“How can I help you, Officer?”

“It’s Sergeant, actually. I understand Jared Bannan works here?”

“He’s one of the partners, yes. He missed a deposition this morning, though. Is there a problem?”

“Maybe we’d better talk in your office, Mr. Lehman. Wait here, Redfern. I’ll call you if we need anything.”

“Hurry up and wait,” Zina sighed, leaning on the reception counter as Doyle and Lehman disappeared down the hallway. “Is there a coffee machine somewhere?”

“Over in the corner, I’ll get—”

“Don’t get up,” Zina said. “You’re on the job, I’m just hanging around. Can I get you a cup?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” the receptionist said.

“My treat,” Zina winked. “Working girls should look out for each other, don’t you think?”

“Jared dead? Good lord,” Marty Lehman said, sinking into the Enterprise chair behind his antique desk. “We played golf last Saturday, I can’t—”

He caught Doyle’s look.

“We flew down to Flint, there’s an indoor course there,” Lehman said absently. “It doesn’t seem possible. Jared had so much energy... Had he been drinking?”

“Did he drink a lot?”

“Not really. He loved to party, though, and... look, I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

“Join the club, Mr. Lehman. Your partner was apparently the victim of a hit and run that may have been deliberate. What kind of work did Mr. Bannan do here?”

“Real estate cases, mostly. He was a fixer. He brokered deals, arranged financing, resolved legal problems. One of the best in the state. We were lucky to land him.”

“But since at least one party’s unhappy in most business deals—”

“You know that I can’t discuss Jared’s cases with you, Sergeant. Attorney/client privilege applies.”

“I’m not asking for specifics.”

“Even so, our firm’s reputation for discretion—”

“Listen up, Mr. Lehman! Somebody rammed your buddy’s car off the freaking road, into a ravine. Where he burned to death! Do you get the picture yet?”

“My god,” Lehman murmured, massaging his eyes with his fingertips.

“I’m not asking you to violate privilege, but we could use a heads-up about any problem cases or clients that could have triggered this thing.”

“That’s not so easy. Jared specialized in difficult cases.”

“Define difficult.”

“Property cases where the parties are in conflict, foreclosures, or the disposal of assets during a divorce. Jared loved confrontations. He’d needle the opposition until they blew, then he’d file a restraining order or sue for damages, generally make their lives miserable until they settled.”

“So he was what? A hatchet man?”

“The best I ever saw,” Lehman admitted. “The slogan on his office wall says Refuse to Lose. He rarely did.”

“That kind of attitude might make him a few enemies.”

“It also made a lot of money. Real estate law is a tough game, and Jared’s a guy you’d want on your team. Even if down deep, he scared you a little.”

“Were you afraid of him?”

“I had no reason to be, we were colleagues. But in court or in negotiations, he was a ferocious opponent. No quarter asked or given.”

“I get the picture,” Doyle nodded. “Can you give me a quick rundown of any seriously unhappy customers?”

“Butch Lockhart would top the list,” Lehman said, bridging his fingertips.

“The Cadillac dealer? Used to play linebacker for the Lions?”

“That’s Butch. Jared represented Butch’s ex wife, Sunny, in a suit over their divorce settlement. He got their pre-nuptial agreement voided on a technicality and Sunny wound up with half of everything. Fourteen million for a six-year marriage.”

“Wow. I’m guessing Butch is unhappy?”

“He threatened, and I quote, to ‘tear Jared’s head off and cram it up his ass’ during a deposition. Looked angry enough to do it too. Naturally, Jared got the blowup on video. Butch’s lawyers settled the same day. But there’s more. Jared and Sunny Lockhart...”

“Have been celebrating?”

“Banging his clients was almost a ritual with Jared,” Lehman sighed. “And Sunny lives in Brookside. Jared may have been coming from her place last night.”

“Is Butch Lockhart aware of their relationship?”

“I would assume so. Jared and Sunny haven’t been subtle about it.”

“Noted,” Doyle nodded. “Who else?”

“He recently brokered a deal for the Ferguson family. The three sons wanted to sell the family farm, the father didn’t. Jared managed to get the old man declared incompetent. Mr. Ferguson threatened to kill him in open court, which pretty much clinched the case. Personally, I think the old man was dead serious.”

“We’ll look into that. Any others?”

Lehman hesitated, thinking. “Jared had a divorce case slated for final hearings next week. Emil and Rosie Reiser. They own the Lone Pine Boatworks on Point Lucien.”

“What’s the problem?”

“There’s some... friction over the timing of the closing. Emil Reiser bought the boat yard ten years ago, built it up, married a local girl. They’re splitting up and cashing out, but their daughter is very ill. Emil wanted to put everything on hold, but Jared has a buyer lined up who won’t wait. The wife wants out immediately. Jared promised to make it happen.”

“How?”

“I’m sorry, but that definitely falls under attorney/client privilege.”

“Are you trying to tell me something, counselor?”

“We both know the rules, Sergeant. I’ve already said more than I should.”

“Fair enough. Lockhart, Ferguson, and Reiser are on the list. Who else?”

“Those are the top three. I’ll scan through Jared’s files, and flag any others that seem problematic.”

“What about Bannan’s wife? She said they’re divorcing. Amicably?”

“No divorce is amicable, but they’re both professional people. The discussions were very chilly, but civil. I’m handling — was handling — the paperwork for them.”

“For both parties?” Doyle asked, surprised. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“The only dispute was the terms of the settlement, and they hammered those out in meetings that I refereed. We wrapped it up last week.”

“To everyone’s satisfaction?”

“Jared was certainly satisfied. Lauren’s harder to read. Jared and I have been friends since college. I could tell you the juicy details on every girlfriend he ever had, up to and including Sunny Lockhart. But I can’t tell you a thing about his wife. He never talked about her. I do know that a few years ago, they had... a serious problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“That I truly don’t know. But Jared had a very successful practice downstate, and we didn’t recruit him, he called me up out of the blue. Said he wanted to make a fresh start.”

“Trying to save his marriage?”

“Jared never took marriage all that seriously.”

“How seriously did his wife take it? Should we be looking at her? Or a boyfriend?”

“Can’t help you there, Sergeant. As I said, I simply don’t know the lady well. I was surprised when I met her. She’s a handsome woman but not Jared’s type at all. He liked them hot, blonde, and bubbly and Lauren’s the opposite. Cool, intelligent, and very private. I’ve seen more of her during the settlement conferences than I did the whole time they... sweet Jesus.”

“What?”

“Their settlement isn’t finalized,” Lehman frowned. “We ironed out the details but nothing’s been signed or witnessed.”

“So? What’s the problem?”

“It’s void. All of it, even Jared’s new will. As things stand, Lauren’s still his wife and sole heir. She gets everything.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“I really shouldn’t—”

“Just a ballpark figure. Please.”

“Very well. Property and investments would be... roughly two and a half mil. And Jared had a substantial life insurance policy. I’d put the total estate in the neighborhood of five million.”

“Nice neighborhood,” Doyle whistled.

“I’m afraid that’s really all I can tell you for the moment,” Lehman said, rising. “I’ll fax you the information on any problem clients by the end of business today.”

“I’d appreciate it, counselor. About Bannan’s death being a possible homicide? That stays between us.”

“God. I don’t even like to think about it, let alone tell anyone else.”

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Lehman. I’m sorry about your partner.”

“So am I, Sergeant,” Lehman said, shaking his head glumly. “So am I.”

Zina was waiting for Doyle on the sidewalk. “What’d you get?” she asked, falling into step as they headed for the SUV.

“A lot. Bannan was having an affair with Sunny Lockhart and half of his other clients, his life’s been threatened at least twice recently, and his widow stands to inherit five million. How’d you make out with the receptionist?”

“Same basic story. Bannan wasn’t doing her but he certainly could have. He was a killer negotiator who loved ticking off the opposition. He also got into a major shouting match with his partner last week.”

“With Lehman? About what?”

“The receptionist wasn’t sure, those flashy glass offices may look wide open but they’re soundproof. The Reisers had just left, and Mrs. Bannan was waiting in reception. The argument could have been about either of them.”

“Or something else altogether.”

“Whatever it was, she said Bannan and Lehman were shouting loud enough to rattle the glass.”

“Too bad they didn’t break it. What else?”

“Bannan’s clients loved him, in every sense of the word, especially the ladies. I’m feeling a little wistful that he never gave me a call.”

“You hate lawyers.”

“Only defense lawyers. What’s next?”

“Let’s take the Lockharts separately, before they have time to cross-check their stories. I’ll charm Sunny, you dazzle Butch.”

“Can’t I just beat it out of him?” Zina said. “The Lions sucked when Lockhart played for ’em.”

“You’re kidding?” Butch Lockhart grinned hugely, not bothering to conceal his delight. “That mouthy sumbitch is dead? For sure?”

“I’m afraid so,” Zina said, eyeing him curiously. They were in Lockhart’s office, a glass cubicle five steps up from the showroom floor that overlooked a gleaming row of Cadillacs that stretched the length of a football field. Lockhart loomed even larger than his playing days, fifty pounds heavier now, a behemoth in a tailored silk suit, tinted glasses, tinted dark hair. A smile too perfect to be real.

“What kind of a car was he driving?” Lockhart asked.

“A Mercedes roadster.”

“Better and better. A smart-ass yuppie buys it in his Kraut car. If he’d been driving a Caddy, he could’ve survived the accident.”

“Actually, we don’t think it was an accident,” Mr. Lockhart. He was clipped by a hit and run driver. Would you mind telling me your whereabouts between ten and midnight, last night?”

Lockhart stared at her, blinking, as the question penetrated his bullet skull. “Whoa, wait a minute, Shorty. Why ask me? What the hell, you think I killed him?”

“You did threaten to tear Mr. Bannan’s head off in front of witnesses—”

“Maybe I would have, if I’d run into him in a bar after I’d had a few. But I didn’t. And if I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t need a car to do it. It’s bad enough I had to take crap from that punk while he was alive, I’ll be damned if I’ll take any more now that he’s toast. Especially from some backwoods taco bender. Get the hell out of my office.”

“Actually, I’m not Latin, sir, I’m Native American,” Zina said, rising. “Anishnabeg. And you’re not required to answer questions without an attorney. No problem, I’ll be happy to clear your name another way. How many red Cadillacs do you have in stock.”

“Red? What are you talking about?”

“The vehicle that struck Mr. Bannan’s car left red paint scrapes on his door. I can just scrape paint samples from every red vehicle on your lot, then ship ’em to Lansing to see if any of them match. I’m sure your body shop can touch up the scratches, good as new.”

“Touch ’em up?” Butch echoed, standing up, towering over her. “Look, you little beaner—” He broke off, staring at the gleaming blade of the boot knife Zina slid out of her ankle sheath.

“I see two red Caddies out on your showroom floor,” she continued calmly. “I’ll just scrape some paint samples on my way out. Unless you’d like to be the sweet guy I know you really are, and tell me where the hell you were last night. Mr. Lockhart. Sir.”

“He was banging his new girlfriend,” Zina sighed, dropping into the chair at her desk. “A high school cheerleader, no less.” They were in the Mackie Law Enforcement Center, a brown brick blockhouse just outside Valhalla, named for a trooper killed by a psycho survivalist during a routine traffic stop.

Covering a five-county area, “the House” is shared by Valhalla P.D., the Sheriff’s Department, and the Joint Investigative Unit. Amicably, for the most part.

“How old is the girl?”

“Eighteen. Street legal but just barely. She confirmed Lockhart’s story. I politely suggested she might want to try dating guys her own age. She told me to stick my advice in the trunk of her brand-new Escalade. Paid-up lease, thirty-six months.”

“She’s eighteen and he’s what? Forty?”

“Men are pond scum. I may have to switch to girls. What’d you get from Lockhart’s ex?”

“Bannan was with her last night. They ate a late dinner, then thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. She fell asleep afterward. Her best guess is, he bailed out sometime after eleven. She has no alibi, but no motive either. He made her rich and she was in love with the guy.”

“Or in heat,” Zee said. “Scratch both Lockharts then, who does that leave?”

“Old man Ferguson can’t be too happy about being declared incompetent. And the Reisers, who have some kind of a beef over their scheduling. Plus pretty much everybody Jared Bannan ever met. The guy loved ticking people off.”

“You’re forgetting the widow. Five mil’s a helluva motive, Doyle, and she definitely ducked some of our questions.”

“Lehman said their relationship was pretty chilly. What did you make of her?”

“Same as you. She’s smart, has great legs, and she’s about to have five mil in the bank. Hey, maybe I will switch to girls. You want me to reinterview her while you run down Ferguson?”

“No, let’s try the Reisers first. If we hurry, we can get there before the boatworks closes for the day.”

The Lone Pine Boat Yard was on the tip of Point Lucien, an isolated peninsula jutting into Grand Traverse Bay. A narrow, two-lane blacktop is the only access.

“Not much development out here,” Zina noted. “Can’t be many private shoreline sites left.”

“Which should make the Reisers a bundle when they sell,” Doyle said, wheeling the cruiser into the small parking lot. Switching off the engine, they sat a moment, listening to the lonely lapping of the waves and the cries of the gulls.

The yard wasn’t much to look at. The only buildings were a cabin, a curing shed stacked with drying lumber, and the boatworks itself, a long warehouse surrounded by a deck that extended out over the water, built of rough-hewn timbers culled from the surrounding forest.

A young girl was huddled in a lawn chair at the end of the dock, fishing with a cane pole, an ancient Labrador retriever at her feet. The dog raised its head, growling a warning as the two officers approached.

“Shush, Smokey,” the girl said. “Daaa-ad! The police are here. Have you been bad again?” Her impish grin faded into a spate of coughing. She was muffled in a heavy parka, though the temp on the point was a full ten degrees warmer than the inland hills. Lake effect. Her head was swathed in a turban against the cold, and to cover her baldness.

“Something I can do for you folks?” Emil Reiser asked, stepping out to meet them. He was a bear of a man, dressed for blue-collar work, red and black checked flannel shirt, jeans, and cork boots. He needed a shave and his wild salt and pepper mane hung loosely to his shoulders. Two fingertips on his left hand were missing.

“Don’t mind the dog, he’s harmless, mostly. Is this business or pleasure?”

“It’s business, Mr. Reiser.”

“Yeah? Buying a boat, are you? Cause that’s the only business I’m in.”

“Actually, it’s about your wife’s attorney, Jared Bannan?”

“Hell, what does that bastard—” Reiser broke off, glancing at his daughter, who was watching them intently. He flashed her a quick command in sign language and the girl turned away.

“She’s hearing impaired?” Doyle asked.

“Among other things,” Reiser sighed. “We’d better talk inside. That kid can eavesdrop at fifty yards.”

Reiser’s workshop was like stepping back in time. The long room had four wooden hulls on trestles, in various states of completion. The air was redolent of sawdust, wood shavings, and shellac. Not a power tool in sight. But for the bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling beams, the works could have time-traveled from the last century. Or the one before that.

Zina wandered between the boats, running her hand over the hulls.

“Beautiful,” she murmured. She paused in front of a rifle rack that held a dozen long guns, scoped Springfields and Remingtons, plus a pair of ’94 Winchester lever action carbines.

“Expecting a war, Mr. Reiser?”

“They’re hunting guns, miss.”

“What do you hunt?”

“I don’t, anymore. I build boats. And don’t be wanderin’ around back there. Workshops can be dangerous.”

“Is that how you lost your fingertips?” Zina asked, rejoining them.

“My fingers?” Reiser glanced at them, as if he was surprised they were missing. “Yeah. Bandsaw, couple of years ago.”

“Looks like it hurt,” Doyle said.

“Compared to what?” Reiser snapped. “Your eye don’t look so hot either, sport. Can we get on with this? I got work to do.”

“I understand you had a beef with Jared Bannan?” Doyle said.

“My wife and I are breaking up. God knows, we’ve had enough trouble the past few years to wreck anybody. I got no beef with Rosie taking half of everything, though she’s been doing more drinkin’ than workin’ lately. When this is over, I’ll probably get drunk for a month myself.”

“When what’s over?”

“Our daughter is dying,” Reiser said bluntly. “Cancer. You’d think being born deaf would be enough grief for any child, but...” He trailed off, swallowing hard.

“I’m sorry,” Doyle said. “Truly.”

“It can’t be helped,” Reiser said grimly. “All I asked from Bannan was a few extra months, so Jeanie could be at home until... her time. Rosie was okay with it, but Bannan said he had a big-bucks buyer lined up who wouldn’t wait. Then Rosie’s drunk-ass boyfriend put in his two cents. If Marty Lehman hadn’t broken things up I swear I would’ve pounded ’em both to dog meat. But I never laid a hand on either of ’em. If Bannan claims I did, he’s lying.”

“Mr. Bannan isn’t claiming anything,” Doyle said mildly, watching Reiser’s face. “He’s dead. His car was run off the road last night.”

“Jesus,” Reiser said, combing his thick mane back out of his face with his shortened fingertips. “Look, I had no use for the guy, but I had no cause to harm him.”

“Not even to get the extra time you wanted?” Zina asked.

“We already worked that out. My wife’ll tell you.”

“Where is she?”

“Stayin’ at the Lakefront Inn, in town. On my dime. With her speed freak boyfriend, Mal La Roche.”

“We know Mal,” Doyle nodded. “Would you mind telling us where you were last night?”

“Here with Jeanie, where else? You can ask her if you want, just don’t upset her, okay? She’s got enough to deal with.”

“We’ll take your word for it, Mr. Reiser. No need to bother the girl. Thanks for your time. And we’re very sorry for your trouble.”

Zina craned around to take a long look back as they pulled out of the boatyard. Reiser was at the water’s edge, standing beside his daughter, his hand on her shoulder. Talking intently on a cell phone.

“We’ll take your word for it?” she echoed, swiveling in her seat to face Doyle.

“As sick as that kid is, she probably goes to bed early, and she’s hearing impaired. How would she know whether Reiser went out? What did you make of him?”

“An edgy guy with a world of trouble. Given his state of mind, I wouldn’t want to get crossways of him right now. You think his daughter’s the kid Doctor Bannan mentioned? The one who wanted an early Christmas?”

“She’s deaf and the Blair Center is the only school for special-needs students. Check with the school when we get back to the House. Meantime, we’ll talk to Reiser’s wife, confirm his story.”

“Or not,” Zina said.

“Rosie don’t want to talk to you,” Mal La Roche said, blocking the motel room doorway, his massive arms folded. Shaggy and unshaven, Mal was a poster boy for the cedar savages, backwoodsmen who still live off the land, though nowadays they’re more likely to be growing reefer or cooking crank than running trap lines.

Mal has two brothers and a dozen cousins rougher than he is. Every cop north of Midland knows them by their first names.

“This isn’t a roust, Mal, it’s a murder case,” Doyle explained. “We need to ask the lady a few questions, then we’re gone.”

“Or we can pat you down for speed,” Zina added. “You look jumpy to me, Mal. Been tootin’ your own product again?”

“I ain’t—”

“It’s all right, Mal, I’ll talk to them.” Rosie Reiser edged past Mal. Bottle blonde and blowsy, in a faded bathrobe, she looked exhausted, defeated. And half in the bag. “We’ll talk out here, things are a mess inside. Is this about Mr. Bannan?”

“Your husband called you?” Doyle asked.

“He said you might be by,” she nodded.

“Did he also tell you what to say?”

“I don’t need him for that!” Rosie said resentfully. “I’m here ain’t I?”

“So you are,” Zina said, glancing pointedly around at the rundown motel cabin, “though I can’t imagine why. Your daughter—”

“Is where she needs to be! With her father, by the damn lake. His little princess. It’s always about her! Has been since she was born. Never about me.”

“Okay, what about you?” Zina said coolly. “Is this dump where you should be?”

“Just ask your questions and git!” Mal put in. We don’t need no lectures.”

“What was the beef between your husband and Jared Bannan?” Doyle asked.

“It’s over and done with.”

“I didn’t ask if it was settled. I asked what it was about.”

“It...” Rosie blinked rapidly, trying to focus through a whiskey haze. “I don’t know. Something about... Emil wanted to wait until after Jeanie... you know.”

“Dies?” Zina prompted coldly. “And Bannan had a problem with that?”

“He had some big-shot buyer lined up, but they wanted to break ground right away,” Mal put in. “It’s taken care of now, though. Jared and Emil worked it out.”

“How?” Doyle asked.

“I don’t know the details.”

“Who was the buyer?”

“We don’t know!” Rosie snapped. “I just know it’s settled.”

“Because your husband said so?”

“Screw this, I don’t have to talk to you. You want to arrest me, go ahead.”

“Why would we arrest you?” Doyle asked, puzzled.

“That’s what you do, ain’t it? So get to it or take a hike.” She thrust out her wrists, waiting for the cuffs.

“We’re sorry for your trouble, ma’am,” Doyle sighed. “Have a nice day.”

Zina started to follow him to the car, then turned back.

“Mrs. Reiser? It’s none of my business, but losing a child must be incredibly difficult. You might want to wait a bit before you throw away your marriage for the likes of Mal La Roche.”

“Hey,” Mal began, “you can’t—”

“Shut up, Mal, or I’ll kick your ass into next week. Mrs. Reiser—”

“Butt out, Pocahontas,” Rosie said, clutching La Roche’s arm protectively. “At least Mal can show me a good time. Just because Emil’s got no life don’t mean I gotta live like a damn hermit.”

“No, I guess not,” Zee shrugged. “You’re right, ma’am. You’re exactly where you belong.”

“It’s the same kid,” Zina said, hanging up her phone. “Jeanie Reiser is enrolled at Blair Center. Or was. A special-needs student, hearing impaired. She was taken out of school a few weeks ago, because of health issues.”

They were in their office at the House.

“Which means Doctor Bannan knows Emil Reiser,” Zee continued. “Interesting.”

“Interesting how?” Doyle snorted. “Like Strangers on a Train? He kills her husband and... Who does she kill? Mal La Roche? Besides, neither one of ’em has an alibi.”

“Maybe they aren’t as tricky as the guys in the movie.”

“Yep, that sounds like the doc all right. Dumb as a box of rocks.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Glad I caught you two,” Captain Kazmarek interrupted, poking his head in the door. Fifty and fit, “Cash” Kazmarek bossed the Investigations unit. An affable politician, he was also a rock-solid cop, twenty-five years on the Tri County Force. “I got a call from the sheriff’s department at Gaylord. They have your truck. Red Ford pickup, passenger’s-side front fender damaged, reported stolen yesterday. Found it an hour ago, abandoned in a Walmart parking lot. What the hell happened to your eye, Doyle?”

“Hockey game,” Doyle said. “Did the security cameras catch anything?”

“Nope. The driver dumped it behind a delivery van to avoid the cameras. No prints either. Wiped clean, looks like.”

“A professional?” Zina asked.

“Could be,” Kazmarek said, dropping into the chair beside Doyle’s desk. “Or maybe some buzzed-up teenager with more luck than brains. Where are you on this thing?”

“We’ve got suspects, but it’s a fairly long list,” Doyle said. “Bannan majored in making enemies. Why?”

“Actually, a matter of overlapping jurisdictions has come up. I want you to drop a name to the bottom of your list.”

“Let me guess,” Zina said. “Doctor Lauren Bannan?”

“Lauren?” Kazmarek asked, surprised. “Is she a suspect?”

“The wife’s always a suspect. Why, do you know her?”

“We’ve met. She’s done some counseling for the department.”

“No kidding? Who’d she shrink?” Zee asked.

“None of your business, Detective. And Lauren’s not the name we need to move anyway. According to my sources, Emil Reiser has an ironclad alibi for that night.”

“What alibi?” Doyle asked. “He claimed he was home alone with his sick kid. There’s no way to verify that.”

“Consider it verified,” Cash said, rising briskly. “As far as we’re concerned, Mr. Reiser was at the policeman’s ball, waltzing with J. Edgar Hoover in a red dress.”

“Hoover?” Zina echoed. “Are you saying the Feds want us to lay off Reiser?”

“I didn’t mention the Feds, because a snotty FBI agent in Lansing asked me not to,” Cash said mildly. “That crack about Hoover must have been a Freudian thing. Forget you heard it. Clear?”

“Crystal. Does this mean Reiser is totally off limits, Captain?”

“Not at all, this is a murder case, not a traffic stop. Just make sure you exhaust all other avenues of investigation before you lean on Reiser. And if you come up with solid evidence against him, I’ll want to see it before you go public. Any questions?”

“You’re the boss,” Doyle said. “What about Mrs. Bannan?”

“I’d be surprised if Lauren’s involved,” Kazmarek said, pausing in the doorway. “But I’m obviously a lousy judge of character. I hired you two, didn’t I?”

Zina and Doyle eyed each other a moment after Cash had gone.

“Federal,” Doyle said at last.

“There’s no way Reiser can be a confidential informant,” Zina said positively. “That boatyard’s in the middle of nowhere and he’s been out there for years.”

“Which leaves WITSEC,” Doyle agreed. “Witness protection.”

“So Reiser gets a free pass just because he testified for the Feds once upon a time?”

“No way, in fact it makes him a lot more interesting. But since he’s officially at the bottom of our list, let’s see how fast we can work our way back down to him. Ferguson’s the only suspect we haven’t interviewed. We might want to look at Mal La Roche too, just on general principles—”

“That’s the second time you’ve done that,” Zina said.

“Done what?”

“Skipped over the foxy doc. She’s got five million reasons to want her husband dead, Doyle, she’s connected to Reiser, and she definitely ducked some of our questions. Or maybe you didn’t notice? Because you’re a guy and the doc definitely isn’t.”

“That’s a load!” Doyle snapped. “I’m not...” He broke off, meeting Zee’s level gaze. Realizing there might just be a kernel of truth in what she said. As usual.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Straight up, do you seriously think she killed her husband? Or had it done?”

“I don’t know. Neither do you. But she was definitely holding something back. Maybe it’s connected to her husband’s death, maybe not, but if we’re crossing names off our list, I think I should question her again. Alone, this time. Girl talk. Unless you’ve got some objection? Sergeant?”

Doyle scanned her face for irony. He’d been partnered with Zina Redfern since she transferred north. Nearly two years now. And he still had no idea how her mind worked. Nor any other woman’s mind, for that matter.

“Hell, go for it, Zee. Seeing a shrink might do you some good. Just be careful she doesn’t have you committed.”

“Screw that. I’m more worried about getting torched in my car.”

Lauren Bannan delayed making the phone call as long as she could. She meant to make it after lunch, but wound up working at her desk well into the afternoon.

So she swore to make it the last call of the business day. Then forgot again. Sort of.

But when she stepped into the kitchen of the small lakefront cottage she’d leased after her separation, she knew she couldn’t delay any longer. And like most tasks we dread, it wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared.

Nearly eighty now, Jared Bannan’s mother had been in a rest home in Miami for years. She was used to receiving bad news. In the home, it came on a daily basis.

“Don’t make a big fuss over the funeral, Lauren,” she quavered. “Jared never cared a fig for religion and I won’t be coming. I’m sorry, but I’m simply not up to it. Hold whatever service you feel is appropriate, then send his ashes to me. He can be on the mantle, beside his father. I’ll be seeing them both before long. How are you holding up, my dear?”

And Lauren started to cry. Tears streaming silently as she listened to words of comfort from an elderly lady she hardly knew. And would never see again.

“I’m all right, Mother Bannan,” she lied. “I’ll be fine.”

Afterward, she washed her face, made herself a stiff cup of Irish coffee, then sat down at her kitchen table to scan the Yellow Pages listings for funeral homes.

The doorbell rang.

Padding barefoot to her front door, Lauren checked the peephole, half expecting Marty Lehman. He’d been hinting about offering her a shoulder to cry on—

But it wasn’t.

“Detective Redfern,” Lauren said, opening the door wide. “What can I do for Valhalla’s finest?”

“Sorry to bother you at home, Doctor Bannan, but a few things have come up. Can you spare me a minute?”

“Actually, your timing’s perfect, Detective. I have to choose a funeral home for Jared’s service. Can you recommend one?”

“McGuinn’s downtown handles the department funerals.” Zina followed Lauren through the living room to the kitchen, glancing around the small apartment. It was practically barren. She’d seen abandoned homes that looked friendlier. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

“I’m still living out of boxes in the garage,” Lauren admitted. “I took the place for the lakefront. The back deck overlooks the big lake. The view will break your heart. Sit down, please. I’m having Irish coffee. Would you like some?”

“Coffee’s fine, but hold the Irish, please.” Zina took a chair at the kitchen table. “This isn’t a social call.”

“Good,” Lauren said, placing a steaming mug in front of Zina, sitting directly across from her. “I wouldn’t know how to deal with a social call. Our friends were mostly Jared’s business buddies. What do you need, Detective?”

“You sure you’re up for this? You seem a bit... distracted.”

“This hasn’t been a day to relive in my golden years, but I’m not a china doll either. Cut to the chase, please.”

“Fair enough. We’ve got an ugly murder on our hands, and you’re screwing up our case.”

“In what way?”

“By lying to us or withholding information.”

“Holy crap,” Lauren said, sipping her coffee. “That’s pretty direct.”

“You’re not a china doll.”

“No I’m not,” Lauren said, taking a deep breath. “I’m a special ed teacher and counselor, licensed by the state and prohibited by federal law from divulging information obtained in my work. To anyone.”

“Are you trying to tell me you know who killed your husband?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“But you know something?”

“Nothing that directly relates to Jared’s death. And nothing I can discuss with you in any case.”

“Reality check, Doc. A fair amount of evidence points directly at you. Shut us out and you could end up in a jackpot that can wreck your life, guilty or not.”

“I’ll help you in any way I can.”

Leaning back in her chair, Zee sipped her coffee, reading Lauren’s face openly. “All right. Let’s hit the high spots. In our first interview, Doyle asked why you moved north. You ducked that question. Why was that?”

Lauren glanced away a moment, then met Zina’s eyes, straight on. “Jared and I needed a fresh start after the death of our son,” she said flatly. “Jared Junior was born with a congenital heart defect. He lived five months. We hoped a new place might help. It didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was four years ago. I didn’t become a counselor because I’m a good person who wanted to help others, Detective. I was only trying to save myself.”

“How’s it going?”

“A day at a time. Next question?”

“The big one. When Doyle asked who might have cause to hurt your husband, you hesitated.”

“Did I?”

“You just did again. Are you protecting someone?”

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said, shaking her head slowly. “I can’t.”

“You can’t? I can’t believe you’d protect a killer over some damned technicality. Give me a name! Hell, give me his initials!”

“I just told you, I can’t!”

“Jesus H. Christ!” Zina said, rising from her chair, leaning across the table. “In Flint I worked gangland, lady. The east side. I’ve known some hardcore bangers, but I’ve never met a colder case than you. The guy may have killed your husband!”

“You’d better go, Detective.”

“Damn right I’d better, before I slap the crap out of you. But I’m warning you, Doc, if anybody else gets hurt because you held out on us? I’ll burn you down, swear to God!”

Doyle was at his desk when Zina stormed in.

“She definitely knows something, but won’t give it up,” Zina said, dropping into her seat, still seething. “What did you get?”

“More than I wanted to,” Doyle said absently.

“About who? Ferguson?”

“The old man’s been in the county psych ward for a week, for evaluation. Twenty-four observation. He’s totally clear. So I ran Reiser through the Law Enforcement Information Net.”

“Cash told us to lay off him.”

“I didn’t run his name, just his general description and those missing fingertips. Got a dozen possibilities, but only one serious hit. A case I actually remembered, from twelve years ago in Ohio. I was a rookie on the Detroit force then. A Toledo hit man called the Jap, rolled on the Volchek crime family, busted up a major drug ring. They wiped out his wife and kids as a payback.”

“Nobody in our case is Japanese.”

“Neither was the hit man. He got that nickname because he had some fingertips missing. Japanese Yakuza gangsters whack off their fingertips over matters of honor.”

“Hell, Doyle, half my backwoods relatives are missing fingers or toes because they swing chain saws for a living. That doesn’t make ’em hit men.”

“There’s more. After the trial, the Jap disappeared. No mention of prison time, no updates on his whereabouts. Zip, zilch, nada.”

“You think the Feds put him in the witness protection program?”

“Probably,” Doyle agreed. “Let’s say you’ve got a witness with a contract out on him. You can give him a new identity, maybe even plastic surgery. But you can’t grow his fingers back...”

“They stashed him in chain saw country,” Zina finished, “where nobody notices missing fingers. You think Reiser’s this Jap?”

“I can’t think of any other reason a backwoods boat builder would be waltzing with J. Edgar Hoover.”

“And this hit man’s daughter is in Mrs. Bannan’s school, so they almost certainly know each other. Do you think she knows who he really is?”

“I know they’ve been talking a lot,” Doyle said. “I pulled her telephone L.U.D.s. She calls the parents of her students on a monthly basis, probably to discuss problems or progress. But over the past few months she’s been talking to Emil Reiser several times a week.”

“His daughter’s dying.”

“And as her teacher, the Doc would naturally be concerned,” Doyle nodded. “But they usually talk during business hours. She calls his shop or he calls the school. Except for last Tuesday. She called him at ten p.m. And two days later...”

“Somebody greased her husband,” Zina whistled. “Wow. But can we move on this? Cash told us to lay off Rieser unless we had rock-solid evidence. All we’ve got is a possible connection between the Doc and a possible hit man. And I guarantee she won’t give anything up. That’s one tough broad.”

“Cash ordered us to give Emil Reiser a pass. He didn’t say anything about Mrs. Reiser.”

“Rosie was already half in the bag this afternoon,” Zina agreed. “By now she’s probably sloshed and looking for a shoulder to cry on.”

But Rosie Reiser wasn’t at the Lakefront Inn. Her boyfriend told them she’d been called to the hospital. An ambulance had brought princess Jeanie to the emergency room an hour earlier.

D.O.A.

They found Rosie Reiser in the E.R. waiting room, alone and dazed, her hair a shambles, cheeks streaked with mascara like a mime’s tears. Her eyes were vacant as an abandoned building.

“Mrs. Reiser,” Zina said, kneeling beside Rosie’s chair. “We’re very sorry for your loss. Can you tell us what happened?”

“Emil called. Said Jeanie was gone. She was fishin’ off the end of the dock, that kid loved bein’ outdoors... But she dropped her pole. And when Emil checked, she was...” Rosie took an unsteady breath. “He called the ambulance, they brought her here. They let me see her before they took her downstairs.”

“Where’s your husband now?” Doyle asked.

“He split. He knew when Jeanie died, the Doc would give him up. Figured you’d come for him.”

“You mean Doctor Bannan knows who he is?”

“Hell, she was the one that warned him. That bitch almost got me killed!”

“Warned him about what, Mrs. Reiser? What happened?”

“Our final hearing was coming up, Jared had a buyer lined up for the business, we could cash out and be gone. But Emil kept stalling, wanted to wait because of Jeanie. Him and Jared had a big blowout about it. After Emil stormed out, I told Jared about Emil being in witness protection, hiding out up here. Jared planned to out him in court, make Emil run for his damn life. That way I’d get everything, not just half.”

“Clever plan,” Zina said, her tone neutral.

“Marty Lehman didn’t think so. He argued with Jared about it. Claimed Jared was an officer of the court, shouldn’t give Emil up. Jared told him to screw himself. I thought we’d won. Then the Doc tipped Emil what was up and he took Jared out. Told me if I opened my mouth, he’d do me and Mal the same way.”

“How did Doctor Bannan find out about Emil?” Doyle asked. “Are they involved?”

“Involved?” Rosie echoed, puzzled.

“Are they lovers, Mrs. Reiser? Are they friends?”

“Hell, Emil’s got no friends. We had to live like goddamn hermits out there.” And she began to sob, great gasping yawps of self-pity.

“Mrs. Reiser, do you know where your husband might have gone?” Zina pressed.

“He went with Jeanie when they took her down. He didn’t want her to be alone in that place.”

“What place — whoa, you mean the morgue? Doyle, the morgue’s in the basement. Reiser’s still here!”

But he wasn’t. They found the morgue attendant sitting on the floor, in a daze, his skull bloodied. He said Reiser clipped him with a gun butt. He was gone. And he’d taken his daughter’s body.

Lights and sirens, flying through town pedal to the metal, Doyle driving, Zina hanging on to the dashboard crash bar.

Turning onto the Point Lucien road, he switched off the sirens without slowing. Not that it mattered. Reiser would be expecting them.

“Eavesdropping,” Zina said suddenly.

“What?”

“When we were out here before, the girl was fishing. Emil signed for her to turn her back. He said she could eavesdrop at fifty yards. But she was deaf.”

“He meant she could read lips.”

“That’s right. And where would a kid learn to do that?”

Doyle risked a quick sidelong glance, then refocused on the road. “In school,” he nodded. “Doctor Bannan teaches hearing impaired kids and she was in the anteroom when her husband and Lehman were arguing about outing Reiser.”

“In an office with glass walls,” Zee finished. “The secretary couldn’t hear them, but the Doc could have picked up the gist of their argument. And warned Reiser.”

“And Reiser killed her husband to — Sweet Jesus!” Doyle broke off. “What the hell is all that?”

Ahead of them, the sky was glowing red, dancing shadows flickering through the trees as Doyle whipped the patrol car around, skidding broadside into the Lone Pine parking lot.

The boatworks was engulfed in flame, a seething, crackling inferno fueled by the stacks of dried wood. Black smoke and sparks roiling upward into the winter night. Backlit by the blaze, Emil Rieser was calmly watching the fire consume years of his work. And his daughter. His whole life.

As Doyle and Zina stepped out of the car, Reiser turned to face them, his work clothes blackened with soot, his shaggy mane wild. Holding a hunting rifle cradled in his arms.

Doyle carefully drew his own weapon, keeping it at his side.

“Mr. Reiser, we’d appreciate it if you’d put that gun down, and step away from it.”

“Not a chance, Stark. Just give me a few minutes. Jeanie wanted her ashes scattered out here, this is my last chance to do for her. Let the fire go a bit longer, then we’ll get to it.”

“To what?” Zina asked.

“You know who I am, don’t you? And what I’ve done.”

“You killed Jared Bannan?” Doyle asked.

“I did the world a favor with that one. I only wanted another month or so. Less, as it turned out. He was gonna wreck the little time Jeanie had left just to squeeze a few more dollars out of the deal. If anybody ever had it comin’, that sonofabitch did.”

“Was Bannan’s wife a part of it?”

“Part of what?” Reiser asked, glancing absently at the fire, gauging its progress.

“Did she know you were going to kill her husband?” Doyle pressed.

“She phoned me, warned me he was going to blow my cover. Tell her I said thanks.”

“You can tell her yourself.”

“No,” Reiser said. “It’s too late for that. Fire’s about done. Let’s get to the rest of it.”

“Please don’t do anything crazy, Mr. Reiser,” Zina pleaded quietly. “Do you think your daughter would want this?”

“All Jeanie ever asked for was an early Christmas. She didn’t even get that. Maybe it’s an early Christmas where she is now. Hell, maybe it’s Christmas every damn day. We’ll see.”

Zina and Doyle exchanged a lightning glance, reading the vacancy in Reiser’s eyes. Knowing what it meant.

“Hold on, Mr. Reiser,” Zee said, drawing her automatic. “Please, don’t do this.”

“Funny, that’s what Bannan said. Don’t. Please. Something like that. It didn’t work for him either.” Reiser jacked a shell into the chamber of his rifle. “It’s on you two now, lady. You can send me over. Or come along for the ride.”

And he raised the rifle.

Doyle fired first, spinning Reiser halfway around, then all three of them were desperately exchanging fire as the boatyard blazed madly in the background, flames and smoke coiling upward, smothering the stars of the winter night. A funeral pyre worthy of a princess.

“Do you think he was really trying to kill us?” Zina asked, fingering the rip in the shoulder of her black nylon POLICE jacket, the only damage from the fatal shootout.

“I don’t think he cared. He sure as hell didn’t leave us any choice.” They were in the car, roaring back through town, lights and sirens. Leaving the smoldering boatyard to the firemen and the crime scene team. And the coroner.

“What’s your hurry?” Though she already knew.

“Like the man said, it’s time to settle up. Any problem with that?”

“Nope. I told the Doc if anyone else died, we’d be along.”

“All right then.”

It was past midnight when they skidded into Lauren Bannan’s driveway. Doyle left the strobes flashing. Wanting the neighbors to know. He hammered on the door. No answer.

“I’m out here,” Lauren called.

They circled the house to the rear deck. Lauren was standing by the rail, in black slacks and a turtleneck, looking out over the lake. Slivers of early ice floating ghostly in the dark waters, as far as the eye could see.

“Reiser’s dead,” Doyle said bluntly. “His daughter too.”

Lauren nodded, absorbing it, showing nothing. “Did Jeanie go easily?”

“I... suppose so,” he said, surprised by the question. “She died in her chair, on the dock.”

“That’s good. It can be far worse, with that type of cancer. What’s the rest of it?”

“Emil Reiser killed your husband, Mrs. Bannan. He admitted it. Before we had to kill him.”

“I’m sorry it came to that.”

“It didn’t have to! You could have stopped it! Warned us. The way you warned him. You knew what he’d do.”

“No. I didn’t know that. I thought — he’d bring pressure on Jared, that he’d contact the marshals or—”

“But you damn sure knew what happened after the fact! And you still didn’t tell us.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Because of some damned health regulation?”

“No. Not because of the law. I would have broken the law. Perhaps I should have. But my obligation wasn’t to you, Sergeant, or even to my husband.”

“Triage,” Zina said quietly, getting it. “You told us the first day. It was too late to save your husband. Or Reiser. You were protecting the child.”

“Jeanie’s mother is a hopeless alcoholic, drowning in self-pity, with a violent boyfriend. If I’d warned you about her father, she would have spent her last days in foster care with strangers or even in court. She had so little time left and she was already dealing with so much. I simply couldn’t do that to her.”

“But you knew Reiser was a murderer!” Doyle raged.

“Actually, I didn’t, not to a certainty. But it wouldn’t have mattered. You saw them together. She worshiped him. And he treated her like...”

“A princess,” Zina finished.

“What?” Doyle said, whirling on her. “You can’t be buying into this crock?”

Zina didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.

“Are you here to arrest me?” Lauren asked.

Doyle eyed his partner, then Lauren, then back again.

“It’s your call,” Zina said.

“No,” he said slowly. “Not tonight, anyway. But you’re not clear of this, lady. You’ll be answering a lot more questions before it’s done.”

“I’m terribly sorry about the way this played out, Sergeant. About what you were forced to do. I hope you can believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe,” Doyle said, releasing a ragged breath. “Let’s go, Zee.”

In the car, he sat behind the wheel without starting it, staring into the snowy darkness.

“I know what’s bugging you,” Zina said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“It’s one helluva coincidence. That warning Reiser, for the sake of his daughter, just happened to make the doc a very rich woman.”

“You think she’s capable of that?”

“I think she’s awfully bright, Doyle. She has the degrees to prove it and she’s one very cool customer. So is it at least possible? Damn straight. But given her choices? I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Nor do I,” he admitted. “I just wish...”

“What?”

“I wish that kid had gotten her early Christmas, that’s all.”

“Hell, maybe she did,” Zee said. “Maybe her father was right. Maybe where she is now, it’s Christmas every day. Start the damn car, Doyle, before we freeze to death.”

Doyle nodded, firing up the Ford, dropping it into gear. But as he pulled out, he realized Zina was still eyeing him. Smiling. “Now what?”

“My grandfather Gesh once told me he’d killed many a deer with one perfect shot,” she said. “Right through the heart. But sometimes a buck will keep on running, a hundred yards or more. He doesn’t realize he’s been hit, you see. Right through the heart.”

“I don’t follow you,” Doyle said.

“I know,” Zina grinned, shaking her head. “I’m just sayin’.”

The Live Tree John Lutz

With more than forty novels and two hundred short stories to his credit, John Lutz has demonstrated both the ingenuity and work ethic of early pulp writers who turned out readable, entertaining prose year after year. His most commercially successful book is probably SWF Seeks Same (1990), a suspense thriller that served as the basis for the 1992 movie Single White Female starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Lutz has served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for four Edgar Awards, winning in 1986 for best short story. “The Live Tree” was first published in Mistletoe Mysteries, edited by Charlotte MacLeod (New York, Mysterious Press, 1989).

Clayton Blake was tired of Christmas, and it was still five days away. His four-year-old son, Andy, was curled on the sofa pouting, making Clayton feel about as small as one of Santa’s elves. But damn it, he was right about this.

His wife, Blair, said, “You’re wrong about this, Clay. What would it hurt to buy one more real Christmas tree? It’s a big thing to Andy, and he’s still so young. He doesn’t understand how you feel about Christmas.”

Clayton’s argument with Blair and Andy had left his nerves ragged. But he was still determined to buy a small artificial tree this year, keep god-awful Christmas fuss to a minimum. “How Andy feels doesn’t change what Christmas really is,” he said. “Nothing but a major marketing blitz that starts sometime in October. You know the retail stores make half their profits during the Christmas season?” He peaked his eyebrows in indignation. “Half! I mean, it’s reached the point where how well they can con us at Christmas determines how the entire economy’s gonna go. The world economy! Goddamn governments rise or fall on it.”

Andy said, “Wanna weal tree.” It came out as a pitiful bleat.

Blair looked as if she were suffering physical pain. Then she shook her head, her long blond hair swaying. A beautiful woman still in her thirties. Slightly myopic blue eyes. Bedroom eyes. “Tell Andy about the economy,” she said. “He’ll understand your position once the two of you have talked about gross national product and the trade imbalance.”

There was a clatter on the porch. Stomping footsteps. The mail being delivered. Clayton was grateful for the interruption.

He and Blair both strode to the front door to get the mail. When she saw what was happening she stopped and let Clayton step out onto the porch to collect it. As he pushed outside, the winter wind seemed to slice to his bones like icy razor blades.

He was still cold after he came back in. Just those few seconds outside had chilled him to the quick. Temperature must be near zero. He really hated not only Christmas, but this time of year in general. Gray skies and gloom.

“Twee,” Andy insisted.

Clayton hardened his heart and ignored his son. Said with disappointment, “Looks like nothing but Christmas cards.” He dropped the stack of mail on the table in the foyer. Laughed without humor at the one envelope he was still holding. It was a longer envelope than the others, and he recognized the return address. The state penitentiary. This would be the yearly Christmas card from his brother, Willy, who was serving time for mail fraud. Clayton said, “The usual card from Willy,” and tossed the envelope in with the unpaid bills piling up from Christmas shopping. ’Tis the season to be indebted.

Blair said, “Even in prison, Willy’s got the Christmas spirit.”

“Even in prison, Willy’s got you conned,” Clayton said. “Willy can con anybody he wants to, and from any distance.”

“He might be a con man,” Blair said petulantly, “but he’s also a decent person.” Left hanging heavy in the air was the implication that Clayton was not a decent sort; he was the kind of miser who wouldn’t even let his family have a genuine Christmas tree. That irritated him. Wasn’t he an excellent provider? A faithful and sober husband? A good father to their son, if perhaps a stricter one than Blair would have liked? And how was Willy — a convicted criminal — a decent person? Wasn’t that just what a con artist needed you to believe — that he was basically decent?

Blair began opening the Christmas cards, using a long red fingernail to pry beneath envelope flaps. “Well, when are you going to buy this artificial tree?” she asked resignedly, without meeting his gaze.

“In a little while.”

Still not looking up, she said, “Andy was looking forward to picking out a real one with us over at the lot on Elm Avenue.”

Clayton didn’t answer. He actually didn’t even want to go to the trouble of buying and setting up even an artificial tree. Some of them were complicated and the branches didn’t fit right. What he really wanted was a window shade with a picture of a tree on it. He could pull it down during the holidays, then roll it up sometime around the new year. Better not tell Blair about that idea, though.

Andy said, “Pweese, Daddy!” from the sofa.

“You can get up now, son,” Clayton said just as the doorbell rang. “But behave. No more temper tantrums.”

He took two steps to the door and opened it. Stood with his mouth hanging open, breathing in cold air.

His brother, Willy, was standing on the porch.

“Willy, how’d you—”

“I’m let out on a good behavior program till after Christmas,” Willy said. “They’re doing that now for trusties convicted of nonviolent crimes.” He grinned. “Nobody’ll skip. Not this time of year. That’s why they call us trusties.”

Clayton didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t actually all that glad to see his brother. They’d never gotten along well.

“Willy!” Blair said behind Clayton. “For God’s sake, come on in!”

“Yeah!” Clayton said, pulling out of his shock. “Get in here, Willy. Cold out there.”

Willy the master criminal smiled. He was a shorter, bulkier version of Clayton, but with a face that perpetually beamed and a nose red from hanging over too many highball glasses. While Clayton’s features were lean and intense, giving him the look of a concerned headmaster, Willy resembled a life-coarsened department store Santa out of uniform and on his way to a bar. Clayton wondered if Willy had been drinking before coming here. Did Santa’s reindeer have antlers?

Willy hadn’t moved. He said, “I got something with me.” Reached off to his left and tugged at an obviously heavy and resisting object.

A Christmas tree came into view.

Not only a tree, but a large one. Almost six feet tall and also big around.

Not only a large tree, but a live one. Its roots still surrounded by a massive clump of earth that was wrapped in burlap tied with twine.

What was going on here? Clayton wondered. Had Willy conned a tree from a nursery in the spirit of Christmas? He was capable of it, and that was sure how it appeared.

Blair almost screamed, “A real tree!”

“Weal twee!” Andy scampered across the living room and bounced off Clayton’s leg.

Clayton cleared his throat and said, “This is your uncle Willy, son.”

Andy said, “Wi-wee.”

Willy was beaming down at Andy with an expression so tender it surprised Clayton. He’d been in prison since before Andy’s birth. “Finally get to see you, little buddy.”

Clayton said, “Leave the tree on the porch for now and come inside, Willy. You’re so cold you’re white.” Except for the drinker’s nose.

As Willy leaned the tree against the house and stepped through the door, Blair said, “You sure you’re feeling okay, Willy? You are kind of pale.”

“Oh, yeah. Pri — where I been does that to the complexion. You know me, always healthy. Never even a cold.”

Germs slain by alcohol, Clayton thought, but he kept the opinion to himself.

Willy peeled off his coat. He was wearing a cheap blue suit. Scuffed black shoes. Prison issue.

Willy handed his coat to Clayton and glanced around. “Good. I was hoping you hadn’t bought a tree yet. Wanted to surprise you. We gotta get it in a washtub with some water in it pretty soon. Then, after Christmas, you can plant it someplace in your yard. It’ll grow tall and strong right along with Andy, here.”

Clayton wasn’t surprised to see that Andy, like all things warm-blooded, had taken an immediate liking to Willy. He was standing close and gazing up at him as if Willy were a life-size G.I. Joe. War toys, Clayton thought. At least Willy hadn’t brought Andy war toys.

Blair bustled off to get Willy a cup of hot chocolate. Willy settled down on the sofa with Andy next to him. Old pals already.

Clayton said, “Where you staying, Willy?”

Willy waited until Blair had returned. He said, “Well, I thought maybe here. I gotta report back in right after Christmas.”

Clayton had barely opened his mouth when Blair said, “Great, Willy. We’ve got a guest room.”

Andy said, “Back in where, Uncle Wi-wee?”

“Uncle Willy meant he had to go back home,” Clayton said quickly. “Soon as Christmas is over.”

Willy sat back in the softness of the sofa and looked around. “Great place, Clayt. Great family. Great cup of chocolate. You know how lucky you are?”

Clayton said he knew.

They went out for supper at a family-style restaurant that served fried chicken and was decorated with holly and pine rope and red bows. Willy was his usual mesmerizing self and Andy behaved beautifully. Clayton was surprised to be enjoying himself. Actually glad to see Willy, the older brother of whom he’d always been so jealous. In high school Willy had stolen from Clayton the affections of Janet Gerinski, a cheerleader whose good looks transcended even the glinting metal orthodontic braces of the era. Janet had interested Willy for about two passionate weeks, and was now married to an insurance man and living in an even more expensive part of town than the Blakes.

Clayton knew he’d never really forgiven Willy, who, after dropping Janet, left school and hitchhiked to California. There Willy’s intended career in rock music had quickly fallen through. That was when Willy began plying his charm in pursuit of illegal profits. From the record industry to telephone boiler rooms to plush hotel suites in Reno, Willy had bilked thousands of dollars from unsuspecting admirers and business associates.

Odd, Clayton thought, how nobody liked what Willy had done, but everybody seemed to like Willy. It was something Clayton had never understood.

The next morning was Saturday, and the three adults, with Andy’s help, stood the live pine tree more or less straight in a washtub and decorated it. Clayton felt good watching Andy. Thought for the first time that maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to deprive the boy of a real Christmas tree at only four years old.

“Hey, Clayt!” Willy said that evening after Blair’s home-cooked dinner. “Let’s all drive downtown and show Andy the display windows. They got a train about a mile long in one of the department stores.” He grinned over at Andy. “You sat on Santa’s lap yet, buddy?”

“Not since he was a year old,” Blair said, shooting a glance at Clayton Scrooge.

Willy shoved his chair back and stood up. “Well, we can fix that tonight. Stores are open late. C’mon, folks. I got some shopping to do anyway.”

Clayton was surprised. “Where would you get money in—”

Blair raised a hand palm out to silence Clayton.

“Aw, you know me, Clayt,” Willy said. “How I always been able to play cards.”

Cheat at cards, Clayton thought. But again he kept his silence.

After Willy helped Blair load the dishwasher, they set off in the station wagon for the highway leading downtown. Willy suggested they sing. Clayton objected only briefly before being overruled. By the time they got downtown he was actually enjoying belting out Christmas carols, listening to Andy sing with lisping soprano gusto. Blair was smiling and looking — well, angelic.

Willy winked at Clayton in the rearview mirror. “Holiday spirit, Clayt.”

Clayt. Clayton had always hated that nickname. And now only Willy called him that.

Andy was enthralled by the colorful display windows. Sat beaming on Santa’s lap and asked for a model plane. Which amazed Clayton; he and Blair were giving Andy a simple plastic model plane for Christmas.

An hour before the stores were due to close, Willy told the rest of the family to drive home without him. He wanted to do some shopping and then he’d take a cab back to the house.

Clayton agreed, and they said good-bye and went outside to walk the short, cold two blocks to the parking lot.

No one said anything. Even Clayton thought the drive home was comparatively dull.

And during the drive he began to think. Why was Willy laying on the charm? Was he trying to work some kind of con? Clayton couldn’t be sure, but he was determined to be careful.

Christmas morning was a delight. Clayton felt a warmth he hadn’t thought possible watching Andy open the many presents placed under the tree by his uncle Willy. With the warmth was an unexpected melancholy yearning for Christmas mornings years ago when he and Willy had been held in check at the top of the stairs and then allowed to race downstairs and examine their own presents. He remembered the pungent scent of the real Christmas tree, the same scent that was now Andy’s to remember. The years at home with Willy might not have been as bad as Clayton usually recalled them. Besides, shouldn’t there be a time limit, a statute of limitations on ancient injuries?

It had snowed that morning, as if the weather knew one of Willy’s gifts to Andy would be a sled. That afternoon, after a meal of ham and sweet potatoes, with apple pie for dessert, Willy suggested they all go to a hill in a nearby park and test the sled. Clayton was reluctant at first, but he went along and had a marvelous time even though he suspected three or four fingers might be frostbitten. He even soloed downhill with the sled, something he hadn’t done since he was twelve. “Got carried away,” he explained to a grinning Blair when he’d clomped uphill, snow-speckled and trailing the sled on its rope.

As they were trudging through the snow back to the car, Clayton and Andy fell behind Willy and Blair. Andy looked up at Clayton, his reddened face curious beneath his ski cap. “How come Uncle Wi-wee don’t get cold?”

“He does get cold, I’m sure.”

“Don’t act cold.”

Which was true, Clayton realized. Maybe Willy was fortified with alcohol, he thought, and then immediately felt guilty. As far as he knew, Willy hadn’t touched anything alcoholic since he’d arrived for his Christmas visit.

That night, after an exhausted Andy had fallen asleep on the sofa next to Willy and then been carried upstairs to bed, Blair made some eggnog and the three adults sat around talking.

“I always envied you, Clayt,” Willy said, wiping eggnog from his upper lip.

Clayton was surprised.

“Still do. The roots you put down early. You oughta take stock of what’s yours in this world and appreciate it. I mean, nothing lasts forever, and you got this time with Blair and Andy...”

Now Clayton was astonished. For a moment it appeared that Willy might actually break down and weep. Willy a family man?

Then Willy sat up straighter and asked for a refill on the eggnog. The familiar Willy; there was alcohol in eggnog. He was again the charming con man who’d bilked thousands from people who strangely wouldn’t count him among their enemies.

After Willy had gone to bed, Blair said, “He knows he’s getting older, and he has to go back to prison tomorrow. I feel terrible about that, don’t you? Clay?”

For the first time in years, Clayton said without reservation, “I pity him.”

The morning after Christmas, Willy was gone.

They hadn’t heard him depart.

He’d left no note.

His bed was made and there was no sign that he’d even visited them. When Andy woke up and asked about him, Clayton told him his uncle Willy had gone back to where he worked in another country. Peru, Clayton had finally said, when pressed. Andy didn’t like it. Cried for a while. Then accepted this explanation and got interested in the array of toys he’d received yesterday.

Two days later Clayton was reading the morning paper when Blair said, “Clay!” Something in her voice alarmed him. He put down the paper and saw her standing by the table in the foyer, where she’d been sorting through the mail. Her face was pale and puzzled. “I found this still unopened,” she said, and held out a white envelope and the letter that had been inside.

Clayton stood up and walked over to her. Saw she was holding the envelope that had come from the state prison. “Willy’s Christmas card,” he said.

He’d never before seen such a look in her blue, blue eyes. “But it’s not a card. It’s...” As he gently took the letter from her hand she said, “... a death notice.”

Clayton stood paralyzed and read. Blair was right. The state penitentiary had written to inform Clayton as Willy’s next of kin that one Willard Blake had died of pneumonia. They were awaiting word concerning the disposition of the body.

Clayton stood with his arms limp, the hand holding the letter and envelope dangling at his side.

“Look at the postmark,” Blair said in a hoarse whisper, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows in her palms, as if she were cold. “Look at the date on the letter. It’s three days before Willy’s visit.”

Something with a thousand tiny legs seemed to crawl up the back of Clayton’s neck. He drew a deep breath. Exhaled. “A mistake, that’s all. Some kind of mistake at the prison.”

He looked again at the letterhead. Found a phone number. Strode into the kitchen and called the prison.

It hadn’t been a mistake, the woman he talked to said. She told him she was sorry about his brother. Said, “About the remains...”

Clayton slowly replaced the receiver and sat staring at the phone. Blair walked into the kitchen and saw the expression on his face. Slumped down opposite him.

They stared at each other.

Andy helped Clayton plant the live tree in the backyard. Every Christmas they lovingly decorated it with strings of outdoor colored lights.

There was something — something he knew was absurd — that Clayton couldn’t shake from his mind. In a place beyond lies, Willy had come face to face either with St. Peter or with the devil. Could Willy — even the magnificent faker Willy — con either of those two? Maybe.

Only maybe.

Which was what nagged unreasonably at Clayton. If Willy hadn’t worked a con to buy his extra time on earth, had he worked a trade?

Even after Andy had grown up and left home for college, Clayton continued to decorate the stately pine tree every Christmas. And in the summer he’d unreel the garden hose and stand patiently in the glaring sun, watering the ground around its thick trunk. He’d thoroughly soak the earth beneath the carpet of brown dried needles.

It was impossible to know how deep the roots of such a tree might reach.

Three-Dot Po Sara Paretsky

One of the pioneers of the hard-boiled female private eye school of crime writing in the early 1980s, Sara Paretsky was one of the co-founders of Sisters in Crime, an organization created to increase awareness for women mystery writers. In V. I. Warshawski, she created one of the most significant tough female PIs in literature, unafraid to use a gun or martial arts to whip her opponents into shape — or kill them. The character inspired the dreadful 1991 motion picture V. I. Warshawski, which starred Kathleen Turner; it was not based on any of Paretsky’s novels. The author was honored as a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America for lifetime achievement in 2011. “Three-Dot Po” was first published in The Eyes Have It, edited by Robert J. Randisi (New York, Mysterious Press, 1984).

Cinda Goodrich and I Were jogging acquaintances. A professional photographer, she kept the same erratic hours as a private investigator; we often met along Belmont Harbor in the late mornings. By then we had the lakefront to ourselves; the hip young professionals run early so they can make their important eight o’clock meetings.

Cinda occasionally ran with her boyfriend, Jonathan Michaels, and always with her golden retriever, Three-Dot Po, or Po. The dog’s name meant something private to her and Jonathan; they only laughed and shook their heads when I asked about it.

Jonathan played the piano, often at late-night private parties. He was seldom up before noon and usually left exercise to Cinda and Po. Cinda was a diligent runner, even on the hottest days of summer and the coldest of winter. I do twenty-five miles a week in a grudging fight against age and calories, but Cinda made a ten-mile circuit every morning with religious enthusiasm.

One December I didn’t see her out for a week and wondered vaguely if she might be sick. The following Saturday, however, we met on the small promontory abutting Belmont Harbor — she returning from her jaunt three miles farther north, and I just getting ready to turn around for home. As we jogged together, she explained that Eli Burton, the fancy North Michigan Avenue department store, had hired her to photograph children talking to Santa. She made a face. “Not the way Eric Lieberman got his start, but it’ll finance January in the Bahamas for Jonathan and me.” She called to Po, who was inspecting a dead bird on the rocks by the water, and moved on ahead of me.

The week before Christmas the temperature dropped suddenly and left us with the bitterest December on record. My living room was so cold I couldn’t bear to use it; I handled all my business bundled in bed, even moving the television into the bedroom. I didn’t go out at all on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day I was supposed to visit friends in one of the northern suburbs. I wrapped myself in a blanket and went to the living room to scrape a patch of ice on a window. I wanted to see how badly snowed over Halsted Street was, assuming my poor little Omega would even start.

I hadn’t run for five days, since the temperature first fell. I was feeling flabby, knew I should force myself outside, but felt too lazy to face the weather. I was about to go back to the bedroom and wrap some presents when I caught sight of a golden retriever moving smartly down the street. It was Po; behind her came Cinda, warm in an orange down vest, face covered with a ski mask.

“Ah, nuts,” I muttered. If she could do it, I could do it. Layering on thermal underwear, two pairs of wool socks, sweatshirts, and a down vest, I told myself encouragingly, “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” and “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that counts but the size of the fight in the dog.”

The slogans got me out the door, but they didn’t prepare me for the shock of cold. The wind sucked the air out of my lungs and left me gasping. I staggered back into the entryway and tied a scarf around my face, adjusted earmuffs and a wool cap, and put on sunglasses to protect my eyes.

Even so, it was bitter going. After the first mile the blood was flowing well and my arms and legs were warm, but my feet were cold, and even heavy muffling couldn’t keep the wind from scraping the skin on my cheeks. Few cars were on the streets, and no other people. It was like running through a wasteland. This is what it would be like after a nuclear war: no people, freezing cold, snow blowing across in fine pelting particles like a desert sandstorm.

The lake made an even eerier landscape. Steam rose from it as from a giant cauldron. The water was invisible beneath the heavy veils of mist. I paused for a moment in awe, but the wind quickly cut through the layers of clothes.

The lake path curved around as it led to the promontory so that you could only see a few yards ahead of you. I kept expecting to meet Cinda and Po on their way back, but the only person who passed me was a solitary male jogger, anonymous in a blue ski mask and khaki down jacket.

At the far point of the promontory the wind blew unblocked across the lake. It swept snow and frozen mist pellets with it, blowing in a high persistent whine. I was about to turn and go home when I heard a dog barking above the keening wind. I hesitated to go down to the water, but what if it was Po, separated from her mistress?

The rocks leading down to the lake were covered with ice. I slipped and slid down, trying desperately for hand- and toe-holds — even if someone were around to rescue me I wouldn’t survive a bath in subzero water.

I found Po on a flat slab of rock. She was standing where its edge hung over the mistcovered water, barking furiously. I called to her. She turned her head briefly but wouldn’t come.

By now I had a premonition of what would meet me when I’d picked my way across the slab. I lay flat on the icy rock, gripping my feet around one end, and leaned over it through the mist to peer in the water. As soon as I showed up, Po stopped barking and began an uneasy pacing and whining.

Cinda’s body was just visible beneath the surface. It was a four-foot drop to the water from where I lay. I couldn’t reach her and I didn’t dare get down in the water. I thought furiously and finally unwound a long muffler from around my neck. Tying it to a jagged spur near me I wrapped the other end around my waist and prayed. Leaning over from the waist gave me the length I needed to reach into the water. I took a deep breath and plunged my arms in. The shock of the water was almost more than I could bear; I concentrated on Cinda, on the dog, thought of Christmas in the northern suburbs, of everything possible but the cold which made my arms almost useless. “You only have one chance, Vic. Don’t blow it.”

The weight of her body nearly dragged me in on top of Cinda. I slithered across the icy rock, scissoring my feet wildly until they caught on the spur where my muffler was tied. Po was no help, either. She planted herself next to me, whimpering with anxiety as I pulled her mistress from the water. With water soaked in every garment, Cinda must have weighed two hundred pounds. I almost lost her several times, almost lost myself, but I got her up. I tried desperately to revive her, Po anxiously licking her face, but there was no hope. I finally realized I was going to die of exposure myself if I didn’t get away from there. I tried calling Po to come with me, but she wouldn’t leave Cinda. I ran as hard as I could back to the harbor, where I flagged down a car. My teeth were chattering so hard I almost couldn’t speak, but I got the strangers to realize there was a dead woman back on the promontory point. They drove me to the Town Hall police station.

I spent most of Christmas Day in bed, layered in blankets, drinking hot soup prepared by my friend Dr. Lotty Herschel. I had some frostbite in two of my fingers, but she thought they would recover. Lotty left at seven to eat dinner with her nurse, Carol Alvarado, and her family.

The police had taken Cinda away, and Jonathan had persuaded Po to go home with him. I guess it had been a fairly tragic scene — Jonathan crying, the dog unwilling to let Cinda’s body out of her sight. I hadn’t been there myself, but one of my newspaper friends told me about it.

It was only eight o’clock when the phone next to my bed began ringing, but I was deep in sleep, buried in blankets. It must have rung nine or ten times before I even woke up, and another several before I could bring myself to stick one of my sore arms out to answer it.

“Hello?” I said groggily.

“Vic. Vic, I hate to bother you, but I need help.”

“Who is this?” I started coming to.

“Jonathan Michaels. They’ve arrested me for killing Cinda. I only get the one phone call.” He was trying to speak jauntily, but his voice cracked.

“Killing Cinda?” I echoed. “I thought she slipped and fell.”

“Apparently someone strangled her and pushed her in after she was dead. Don’t ask me how they know. Don’t ask me why they thought I did it. The problem is — the problem is — Po. I don’t have anyone to leave her with.”

“Where are you now?” I swung my legs over the bed and began pulling on longjohns. He was at their apartment, four buildings up the street from me, on his way downtown for booking and then to Cook County jail. The arresting officer, not inhuman on Christmas Day, would let him wait for me if I could get there fast.

I was half dressed by the time I hung up and quickly finished pulling on jeans, boots, and a heavy sweater. Jonathan and two policemen were standing in the entryway of his building when I ran up. He handed me his apartment keys. In the distance I could hear Po’s muffled barking.

“Do you have a lawyer?” I demanded.

Ordinarily a cheerful, bearded young man with long golden hair, Jonathan now looked rather bedraggled. He shook his head dismally.

“You need one. I can find someone for you, or I can represent you myself until we come up with someone better. I don’t practice anymore, so you need someone who’s active, but I can get you through the formalities.”

He accepted gratefully, and I followed him into the waiting police car. The arresting officers wouldn’t answer any of my questions. When we got down to the Eleventh Street police headquarters, I insisted on seeing the officer in charge, and was taken in to Sergeant John McGonnigal.

McGonnigal and I had met frequently. He was a stocky young man, very able, and I had a lot of respect for him. I’m not sure he reciprocated it. “Merry Christmas, Sergeant. It’s a terrible day to be working, isn’t it?”

“Merry Christmas, Miss Warshawski. What are you doing here?”

“I represent Jonathan Michaels. Seems someone got a little confused and thinks he pushed Ms. Goodrich into Lake Michigan this morning.”

“We’re not confused. She was strangled and pushed into the lake. She was dead before she went into the water. He has no alibi for the relevant time.”

“No alibi! Who in this city does have an alibi?”

There was more to it than that, he explained stiffly. Michaels and Cinda had been heard quarreling late at night by their neighbors across the hall and underneath. They had resumed their fight in the morning. Cinda had finally slammed out of the house with the dog around nine-thirty.

“He didn’t follow her, Sergeant.”

“How do you know?”

I explained that I had watched Cinda from my living room. “And I didn’t run into Mr. Michaels out on the point. I only met one person.”

He pounced on that. How could I be sure it wasn’t Jonathan? Finally agreeing to get a description of his clothes to see if he owned a navy ski mask or a khaki jacket, McGonnigal also pointed out that there were two ways to leave the lakefront — Jonathan could have gone north instead of south.

“Maybe. But you’re spinning a very thin thread, Sergeant. It’s not going to hold up. Now I need some time alone with my client.”

He was most unhappy to let me represent Jonathan, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He left us alone in a small interrogation room.

“I’m taking it on faith that you didn’t kill Cinda,” I said briskly. “But, for the record, did you?”

He shook his head. “No way. Even if I had stopped loving her, which I hadn’t, I don’t solve my problems that way.” He ran a hand through his long hair. “I can’t believe this. I can’t even really believe Cinda is dead. It’s all happened too fast. And now they’re arresting me.” His hands were beautiful, with long strong fingers. Strong enough to strangle someone, certainly.

“What were you fighting about this morning?”

“Fighting?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Jonathan: I’m the only help you’ve got. Your neighbors heard you — that’s why the police arrested you.”

He smiled a little foolishly. “It all seems so stupid now. I keep thinking, if I hadn’t gotten her mad, she wouldn’t have gone out there. She’d be alive now.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What were you fighting about?”

He hesitated. “Those damned Santa Claus pictures she took. I never wanted her to do it, anyway. She’s too good — she was too good a photographer to be wasting her time on that kind of stuff. Then she got mad and started accusing me of being Lawrence Welk, and who was I to talk. It all started because someone phoned her at one this morning. I’d just gotten back from a gig” — he grinned suddenly, painfully — “a Lawrence Welk gig, and this call came in. Someone who had been in one of her Santa shots. Said he was very shy, and wanted to make sure he wasn’t in the picture with his kid, so would she bring him the negatives?”

“She had the negatives? Not Burton’s?”

“Yeah. Stupid idiot. She was developing the film herself. Apparently this guy called Burton’s first. Anyway, to make a long story short, she agreed to meet him today and give him the negatives, and I was furious. First of all, why should she go out on Christmas to satisfy some moron’s whim? And why was she taking those dumb-assed pictures anyway?”

Suddenly his face cracked and he started sobbing. “She was so beautiful and I loved her so much. Why did I have to fight with her?”

I patted his shoulder and held his hand until the tears stopped. “You know, if that was her caller she was going to meet, that’s probably the person who killed her.”

“I thought of that. And that’s what I told the police. But they say it’s the kind of thing I’d be bound to make up under the circumstances.”

I pushed him through another half-hour of questions. What had she said about her caller? Had he given his name? She didn’t know his name. Then how had she known which negatives were his? She didn’t — just the day and the time he’d been there, so she was taking over the negatives for that morning. That’s all he knew; she’d been too angry to tell him what she was taking with her. Yes, she had taken negatives with her.

He gave me detailed instructions on how to look after Po. Just dry dog food. No table scraps. As many walks as I felt like giving her — she was an outdoor dog and loved snow and water. She was very well trained; they never walked her with a leash. Before I left, I talked to McGonnigal. He told me he was going to follow up on the story about the man in the photograph at Burton’s the next day but he wasn’t taking it too seriously. He told me they hadn’t found any film on Cinda’s body, but that was because she hadn’t taken any with her — Jonathan was making up that, too. He did agree, though, to hold Jonathan at Eleventh Street overnight. He could get a bail hearing in the morning and maybe not have to put his life at risk among the gang members who run Cook County jail disguised as prisoners.

I took a taxi back to the north side. The streets were clear and we moved quickly. Every mile or so we passed a car abandoned on the roadside, making the Arctic landscape appear more desolate than ever.

Once at Jonathan’s apartment it took a major effort of will to get back outside with the dog. Po went with me eagerly enough, but kept turning around, looking at me searchingly as though hoping I might be transformed into Cinda.

Back in the apartment, I had no strength left to go home. I found the bedroom, let my clothes drop where they would on the floor and tumbled into bed.

Holy Innocents’ Day, lavishly celebrated by my Polish Catholic relatives, was well advanced before I woke up again. I found Po staring at me with reproachful brown eyes, panting slightly. “All right, all right,” I grumbled, pulling the covers back and staggering to my feet.

I’d been too tired the night before even to locate the bathroom. Now I found it, part of a large darkroom. Cinda apparently had knocked down a wall connecting it to the dining room; she had a sink and built-in shelves all in one handy location. Prints were strung around the room, and chemicals and lingerie jostled one another incongruously. I borrowed a toothbrush, cautiously smelling the toothpaste to make sure it really held Crest, not developing chemicals.

I put my clothes back on and took Po around the block. The weather had moderated considerably; a bank thermometer on the corner stood at 9 degrees. Po wanted to run to the lake, but I didn’t feel up to going that far this morning, and called her back with difficulty. After lunch, if I could get my car started, we might see whether any clues lay hidden in the snow.

I called Lotty from Cinda’s apartment, explaining where I was and why. She told me I was an idiot to have gotten out of bed the night before, but if I wasn’t dead of exposure by now I would probably survive until someone shot me. Somehow that didn’t cheer me up.

While I helped myself to coffee and toast in Cinda’s kitchen I started calling various attorneys to see if I could find someone to represent Jonathan. Tim Oldham, who’d gone to law school with me, handled a good-sized criminal practice. He wasn’t too enthusiastic about taking a client without much money, but I put on some not very subtle pressure about a lady I’d seen him with on the Gold Coast a few weeks ago who bore little resemblance to his wife. He promised me Jonathan would be home by supper time, called me some unflattering names, and hung up.

Besides the kitchen, bedroom, and darkroom, the apartment had one other room, mostly filled by a grand piano. Stacks of music stood on the floor — Jonathan either couldn’t afford shelves or didn’t think he needed them. The walls were hung with poster-sized photographs of Jonathan playing, taken by Cinda. They were very good.

I went back into the darkroom and poked around at the pictures. Cinda had put all her Santa Claus photographs in neatly marked envelopes. She’d carefully written the name of each child next to the number of the exposure on that roll of film. I switched on a light table and started looking at them. She’d taken pictures every day for three weeks, which amounted to thousands of shots. It looked like a needle-in-the-haystack type task. But most of the pictures were of children. The only others were ones Cinda had taken for her own amusement, panning the crowd, or artsy shots through glass at reflecting lights. Presumably her caller was one of the adults in the crowd.

After lunch I took Po down to my car. She had no hesitation about going with me and leaped eagerly into the backseat. “You have too trusting a nature,” I told her. She grinned at me and panted heavily. The Omega started, after a few grumbling moments, and I drove north to Bryn Mawr and back to get the battery well charged before turning into the lot at Belmont Harbor. Po was almost beside herself with excitement, banging her tail against the rear window until I got the door open and let her out. She raced ahead of me on the lake path. I didn’t try to call her back; I figured I’d find her at Cinda’s rock.

I moved slowly, carefully scanning the ground for traces of — what? Film? A business card? The wind was so much calmer today and the air enough warmer that visibility was good, but I didn’t see anything.

At the lake the mist had cleared away, leaving the water steely gray, moving uneasily under its iron bands of cold. Po stood as I expected, on the rock where I’d found her yesterday. She was the picture of dejection. She clearly had expected to find her mistress there.

I combed the area carefully and at last found one of those gray plastic tubes that film comes in. It was empty. I pocketed it, deciding I could at least show it to McGonnigal and hope he would think it important. Po left the rocks with utmost reluctance. Back on the lake path, she kept turning around to look for Cinda. I had to lift her into the car. During the drive to police headquarters, she kept turning restlessly in the back of the car, a trying maneuver since she was bigger than the seat.

McGonnigal didn’t seem too impressed with the tube I’d found, but he took it and sent it to the forensics department. I asked him what he’d learned from Burton’s. They didn’t have copies of the photographs. Cinda had all those. If someone ordered one, they sent the name to Cinda and she supplied the picture. They gave McGonnigal a copy of the list of the seven hundred people requesting pictures and he had someone going through to see if any of them were known criminals, but he obviously believed it was a waste of time. If it weren’t for the fact that his boss, Lieutenant Robert Mallory, had been a friend of my father’s, he probably wouldn’t even have made this much of an effort.

I stopped to see Jonathan, who seemed to be in fairly good spirits. He told me Tim Oldham had been by. “He thinks I’m a hippy and not very interesting compared to some of the mob figures he represents, but I can tell he’s doing his best.” He was working out the fingering to a Schubert score, using the side of the bed as a keyboard. I told him Po was well, but waiting for me in the car outside, so I’d best be on my way.

I spent the rest of the afternoon going through Cinda’s Santa photographs. I’d finished about a third of them at five when Tim Oldham phoned to say that Jonathan would have to spend another night in jail: because of the Christmas holidays he hadn’t been able to arrange for bail.

“You owe me, Vic; this has been one of the more thankless ways I’ve spent a holiday.”

“You’re serving justice, Tim,” I said brightly. “What more could you ask for? Think of the oath you swore when you became a member of the bar.”

“I’m thinking of the oaths I’d like to swear at you,” he grumbled.

I laughed and hung up. I took Po for one last walk, gave her her evening food and drink and prepared to leave for my own place. As soon as the dog saw me putting my coat back on, she abandoned her dinner and started dancing around my feet, wagging her tail, to show that she was always ready to play. I kept yelling “No” to her with no effect. She grinned happily at me as if to say this was a game she often played — she knew humans liked to pretend they didn’t want her along, but they always took her in the end.

She was very upset when I shoved her back into the apartment behind me. As I locked the door, she began barking. Retrievers are quiet dogs; they seldom bark and never whine. But their voices are deep and full-bodied, coming straight from their huge chests. Good diaphragm support, the kind singers seldom achieve.

Cinda’s apartment was on the second floor. When I got to the ground floor, I could still hear Po from the entryway. She was clearly audible outside the front door. “Ah, nuts!” I muttered. How long could she keep this up? Were dogs like babies? Did you just ignore them for a while and discipline them into going to sleep? Did that really work with babies? After standing five minutes in the icy wind I could still hear Po. I swore under my breath and let myself back into the building.

She was totally ecstatic at seeing me, jumping up on my chest and licking my face to show there were no hard feelings. “You’re shameless and a fraud,” I told her severely. She wagged her tail with delight. “Still, you’re an orphan; I can’t treat you too harshly.”

She agreed and followed me down the stairs and back to my apartment with unabated eagerness. I took a bath and changed my clothes, made dinner and took care of my mail, then walked Po around the block to a little park, and back up the street to her own quarters. I brought my own toothbrush with me this time; there didn’t seem much point in trying to leave the dog until Jonathan got out of jail.

Cinda and Jonathan had few furnishings, but they owned a magnificent stereo system and a large record collection. I put some Britten quartets on, found a novel buried in the stack of technical books next to Cinda’s side of the bed, and purloined a bottle of burgundy. I curled up on a beanbag chair with the book and the wine. Po lay at my feet, panting happily. Altogether a delightful domestic scene. Maybe I should get a dog.

I finished the book and the bottle of wine a little after midnight and went to bed. Po padded into the bedroom after me and curled up on a rug next to the bed. I went to sleep quickly.

A single sharp bark from the dog woke me about two hours later. “What is it, girl? Nightmares?” I started to turn over to go back to sleep when she barked again. “Quiet, now!” I commanded.

I heard her get to her feet and start toward the door. And then I heard the sound that her sharper ears had caught first. Someone was trying to get into the apartment. It couldn’t be Jonathan; I had his keys, and this was someone fumbling, trying different keys, trying to pick the lock. In about thirty seconds I pulled on jeans, boots, and a sweatshirt, ignoring underwear. My intruder had managed the lower lock and was starting on the upper.

Po was standing in front of the door, hackles raised on her back. Obedient to my whispered command she wasn’t barking. She followed me reluctantly into the darkroom-bathroom. I took her into the shower stall and pulled the curtain across as quietly as I could.

We waited there in the dark while our intruder finished with locks. It was an unnerving business listening to the rattling, knowing someone would be on us momentarily. I wondered if I’d made the right choice; maybe I should have dashed down the back stairs with the dog and gotten the police. It was too late now, however; we could hear a pair of boots moving heavily across the living room. Po gave a deep, mean growl in the back of her throat.

“Doggy? Doggy? Are you in here, Doggy?” The man knew about Po, but not whether she was here. He must not have heard her two short barks earlier. He had a high tenor voice with a trace of a Spanish accent.

Po continued to growl, very softly. At last the far door to the darkroom opened and the intruder came in. He had a flashlight which he shone around the room; through the curtain I could see its point of light bobbing.

Satisfied that no one was there, he turned on the overhead switch. This was connected to a ventilating fan, whose noise was loud enough to mask Po’s continued soft growling.

I couldn’t see him, but apparently he was looking through Cinda’s photograph collection. He flipped on the switch at the light table and then spent a long time going through the negatives. I was pleased with Po; I wouldn’t have expected such patience from a dog. The intruder must have sat for an hour while my muscles cramped and water dripped on my head, and she stayed next to me quietly the whole time.

At last he apparently found what he needed. He got up and I heard more paper rustling, then the light went out.

“Now!” I shouted at Po. She raced out of the room and found the intruder as he was on his way out the far door. Blue light flashed; a gun barked. Po yelped and stopped momentarily. By that time I was across the room, too. The intruder was on his way out the apartment door.

I pulled my parka from the chair where I’d left it and took off after him. Po was bleeding slightly from her left shoulder, but the bullet must only have grazed her because she ran strongly. We tumbled down the stairs together and out the front door into the icy December night. As we went outside, I grabbed the dog and rolled over with her. I heard the gun go off a few times but we were moving quickly, too quickly to make a good target.

Streetlamps showed our man running away from us down Halsted to Belmont. He wore the navy ski mask and khaki parka of the solitary runner I’d seen at the harbor the day before yesterday.

Hearing Po and me behind him he put on a burst of speed and made it to a car waiting at the corner. We were near the Omega now; I bundled the dog into the backseat, sent up a prayer to the patron saint of Delco batteries, and turned on the engine.

The streets were deserted. I caught up with the car, a dark Lincoln, where Sheridan Road crossed Lake Shore Drive at Belmont. Instead of turning onto the drive, the Lincoln cut straight across to the harbor.

“This is it, girl,” I told Po. “You catch this boy, then we take you in and get that shoulder stitched up. And then you get your favorite dinner — even if it’s a whole cow.”

The dog was leaning over the front seat, panting, her eyes gleaming. She was a retriever, after all. The Lincoln stopped at the end of the harbor parking lot. I halted the Omega some fifty yards away and got out with the dog. Using a row of parked cars as cover, we ran across the lot, stopping near the Lincoln in the shelter of a van. At that point, Po began her deep, insistent barking.

This was a sound which would attract attention, possibly even the police, so I made no effort to stop her. The man in the Lincoln reached the same conclusion; a window opened and he began firing at us. This was just a waste of ammunition, since we were sheltered behind the van.

The shooting only increased Po’s vocal efforts. It also attracted attention from Lake Shore Drive; out of the corner of my eye I saw the flashing blue lights which herald the arrival of Chicago’s finest.

Our attacker saw them, too. A door opened and the man in the ski mask slid out. He took off along the lake path, away from the harbor entrance, out toward the promontory. I clapped my hands at Po and started running after him. She was much faster than me; I lost sight of her in the dark as I picked my way more cautiously along the icy path, shivering in the bitter wind, shivering at the thought of the dark freezing water to my right. I could hear it slapping ominously against the ice-covered rocks, could hear the man pounding ahead of me. No noise from Po. Her tough pads picked their way sure and silent across the frozen gravel.

As I rounded the curve toward the promontory I could hear the man yelling in Spanish at Po, heard a gun go off, heard a loud splash in the water. Rage at him for shooting the dog gave me a last burst of speed. I rounded the end of the point. Saw his dark shape outlined against the rocks and jumped on top of him.

He was completely unprepared for me. We fell heavily, rolling down the rocks. The gun slipped from his hand, banged loudly as it bounced against the ice and fell into the water. We were a foot away from the water, fighting recklessly — the first person to lose a grip would be shoved in to die.

Our parkas weighted our arms and hampered our swings. He lunged clumsily at my throat. I pulled away, grabbed hold of his ski mask and hit his head against the rocks. He grunted and drew back, trying to kick me. As I moved away from his foot I lost my hold on him and slid backwards across the ice. He followed through quickly, giving a mighty shove which pushed me over the edge of the rock. My feet landed in the water. I swung them up with an effort, two icy lumps, and tried to back away.

As I scrabbled for a purchase, a dark shape came out of the water and climbed onto the rock next to me. Po. Not killed after all. She shook herself, spraying water over me and over my assailant. The sudden bath took him by surprise. He stopped long enough for me to get well away and gain my breath and a better position.

The dog, shivering violently, stayed close to me. I ran a hand through her wet fur. “Soon, kid. We’ll get you home and dry soon.”

Just as the attacker launched himself at us, a searchlight went on overhead. “This is the police,” a loudspeaker boomed. “Drop your guns and come up.”

The dark shape hit me, knocked me over. Po let out a yelp and sunk her teeth into his leg. His yelling brought the police to our sides.

They carried strong flashlights. I could see a sodden mass of paper, a small manila envelope with teethmarks in it. Po wagged her tail and picked it up again.

“Give me that!” our attacker yelled in his high voice. He fought with the police to try to reach the envelope. “I threw that in the water. How can this be? How did she get it?”

“She’s a retriever,” I said.

Later, at the police station, we looked at the negatives in the envelope Po had retrieved from the water. They showed a picture of the man in the ski mask looking on with intense, brooding eyes while Santa Claus talked to his little boy. No wonder Cinda found him worth photographing.

“He’s a cocaine dealer,” Sergeant McGonnigal explained to me. “He jumped a ten-million-dollar bail. No wonder he didn’t want any photographs of him circulating around. We’re holding him for murder this time.”

A uniformed man brought Jonathan into McGonnigal’s office. The sergeant cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Looks like your dog saved your hide, Mr. Michaels.”

Po, who had been lying at my feet, wrapped in a police horse blanket, gave a bark of pleasure. She staggered to her feet, trailing the blanket, and walked stiffly over to Jonathan, tail wagging.

I explained our adventure to him, and what a heroine the dog had been. “What about that empty film container I gave you this afternoon, Sergeant?”

Apparently Cinda had brought that with her to her rendezvous, not knowing how dangerous her customer was. When he realized it was empty, he’d flung it aside and attacked Cinda. “We got a complete confession,” McGonnigal said. “He was so rattled by the sight of the dog with the envelope full of negatives in her mouth that he completely lost his nerve. I know he’s got good lawyers — one of them’s your friend Oldham — but I hope we have enough to convince a judge not to set bail.”

Jonathan was on his knees fondling the dog and talking to her. He looked over his shoulder at McGonnigal. “I’m sure Oldham’s relieved that you caught the right man — a murderer who can afford to jump a ten-million-dollar bail is a much better client than one who can hardly keep a retriever in dog food.” He turned back to the dog. “But we’ll blow our savings on a steak; you get the steak and I’ll eat Butcher’s Blend tonight, Miss Three-Dot Po of Blackstone, People’s Heroine, and winner of the Croix de Chien for valor.” Po panted happily and licked his face.

Mad Dog Dick Lochte

Dick Lochte’s first novel, Sleeping Dog (1985), recounts the adventures of a precocious fourteen-year-old girl and a worn-out Los Angeles private detective as they search for the girl’s mother across most of California. It was nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards and won the Nero Wolfe Award. It also was selected by the New York Times as a “Notable Book of the Year.” The Independent Mystery Booksellers of America named it one of the 100 Most Popular Mystery Novels of the Century. More recently, he has been co-writing books with Christopher Darden and Al Roker. “Mad Dog” was first published in Santa Clues, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Carol-Lynn Rossell Waugh (New York, Signet, 1993).

The guy who said April was the cruelest month must not have spent much time alone in Hollywood during the Christmas season. There’s all that smog-filtered sun shining down. Neon trees. Elves with tans. Reindeer with chrome sidewalls. And the street decorations are flat-out cheesy — sprigs of wilted holly with greetings that are so busy being nondenominational they might as well be serving some other purpose, like telling you to keep off the grass. If there was any grass.

As you might guess from the foregoing, I was fairly depressed that night before Christmas Eve. My few friends were scattered to the winds and the holidays loomed so bleak that I was at the end of my tether. So I agreed to appear on The Mad Dog Show.

Mad Dog, last name unknown if it wasn’t “Dog,” was the latest thing in radio talk hosts. He was rumored to be young, irreverent, glib to the max, and funny on occasion, usually at the expense of someone else. As I discovered by listening to his show the night before my scheduled appearance, he was also brash and self-opinionated and he had an annoying habit of pausing from time to time to let loose with a baying noise. But his coast-to-coast audience was not only charmed by such behavior, it was large and loyal. And, as my publisher’s publicity agent informed me, Mad Dog actually read books and was able to sell them.

Even stranger, much to the agent’s surprise, the self-described “howling hound of America’s airways” specifically requested that I appear on his pre-Christmas Eve show to talk about my latest novel.

His station, KPLA-FM, was in a no-man’s-land just off the San Diego freeway, nestled between a large lumberyard, apparently closed for the holidays, and a bland apartment complex that looked newer than the suit I was wearing, if not more substantial. The station would have resembled a little white clapboard cottage except for the rooftop antenna that went up for nearly three stories. It was situated in the middle of a shell-coated compound surrounded by a chain fence.

Security was a big thing at KPLA-FM, apparently. A lighted metal gate blocked the only road in that I could find. I aimed my car at it, braked, and waited for a little watchman camera to spin on its axis until its lens was pointed at my windshield.

“Hello,” an electronically neutered voice said, “have you an appointment?”

“I’m Leo Bloodworth,” I replied, sticking my head out of the side window. “I’m guesting on the...”

“Of course,” the voice interrupted me. “Mad Dog’s expecting you. Please enter and park in the visitor section.”

There weren’t many cars. I pulled in between a black sedan and a sports convertible, got out without dinging either, and strolled to the brightly lit front door, my current novel under my arm.

The door was locked.

I couldn’t find a bell, so I knocked.

A little peephole broke the surface of the door, through which an interior light glowed. A shadow covered the light and the door was opened by a pleasant woman in her senior years, rather plump and motherly. There was something familiar about her intelligent, cobalt-blue eyes. Had she been an actress on one of those TV shows my family used to watch? Aunt Somebody who was always baking cookies and dispensing comfort and advice?

“I’m Sylvia Redfern, the assistant station manager,” she said. “I’m not usually here this late, but we’re very short-staffed because of the holidays. Come, I’ll show you to what passes for our greenroom.”

She led me to a small, pale blue and white, windowless space furnished with thrift-sale sofas and chairs, a large soft-drink machine, and a loudspeaker against a far wall, from which emanated music that sounded vaguely classical.

There were two people in the room. The man was a reedy type whose lined face and sparse white hair made me place his age as somewhere in his mid-sixties, at least a decade older than me. The woman, tall and handsome with good cheekbones and short black hair, I figured for being at least twenty years my junior.

“Another fellow guest,” Sylvia Redfern announced cheerily. “Ms. Landy Thorp and Dr. Eldon Varney, this is Officer Leo Bloodworth.”

“Just Leo Bloodworth,” I corrected, nodding to them both.

Sylvia Redfern looked chagrined. “Oh, my,” she said, “I thought you were with the police.”

“Not for twenty years or so. I hope our host isn’t expecting me to...”

“I’m sure his information is more up to date than mine,” she replied, embarrassed. “Please make yourself comfortable. I’d better go back front and see to the other guests when they arrive.”

Dr. Varney’s tired eyes took in the jacket of my book. He gave me a brief, condescending smile and returned to his chair. Landy Thorp said, “You’re the one who writes with that little girl.”

It was true. Through a series of circumstances too painful to discuss, my writing career had been linked to that of a bright and difficult teenager named Serendipity Dahlquist. Two moderately successful books, Sleeping Dog and Laughing Dog, had carried both our names. This was the newest in the series, Devil Dog.

“May I?” Landy Thorp asked and I handed her the novel.

She looked at the back cover where Serendipity and I were posed in my office. “She’s darling,” Landy Thorp said. “Is she going to be on the show, too?”

“No. She’s in New England with her grandmother.” And having a real Christmas, I thought. “So I’m here to flog the book. What brings you to The Mad Dog Show, Miss Thorp?”

She frowned and returned Devil Dog as she replied, “I’m not sure I know.” Then the frown disappeared and she added, “But please call me Landy.”

“Landy and Leo it will be,” I said. “You don’t know why you’re here?”

“Somebody from the show called the magazine where I work and asked for them to send a representative and here I am.”

“What magazine?” I asked.

“Los Angeles Today.”

“Los Angeles Today?” Dr. Varney asked with a sneer twisting his wrinkled face. “That monument to shoddy journalism?”

Landy stared at him.

“The magazine ruffle your feathers, Doc?” I asked.

“I gather they’re in the midst of interring some very old bones better left undisturbed.”

Landy shrugged. “Beats me,” she said. “I’ve only been there for a year. What’s the story?”

“Nothing I care to discuss,” Dr. Varney said. “Which is precisely what I told the research person who phoned me.”

I strolled to the drink machine and was studying its complex instructions when the background music was replaced by an unmistakable “Ahoooooooo, ruff-ruff, ahoooooooooo. It’s near the nine o’clock hour and this is your pal, Mad Dog, inviting you to step into the doghouse with my special guest, businessman Gabriel Warren. Mr. Warren has currently curtailed his activities as CEO of Altadine Industries, to head up Project Rebuild, a task force that hopes to revitalize business in the riot-torn South Central area of our city. With him are his associates in the project, Norman Daken, a member of the board at Altadine and Charles ‘Red’ Rafferty, formerly a commander in the LAPD, ahooooo, ahoooooo, and now Altadine’s head of security.

“Also taking part in tonight’s discussion are Victor Newgate of the legal firm of Axminster and Newgate, mystery novelist slash private detective, Leo Bloodworth, journalist Landy Thorp, and Dr. Clayton Varney, shrink to the stars.”

Varney scowled at his billing. I was doing a little scowling, myself. Red Rafferty had been the guy who’d asked for and accepted my badge and gun when I was booted off the LAPD. I suppose he’d had reason. It all took place back in the Vietnam days. Two kids had broken into a branch of the Golden Pacific Bank one night as a protest. The manager had been there and tried to shoot them and me and so I wound up subduing him and letting the kids go. The banker pushed it and Rafferty did what he thought he had to. But I never exactly loved him for it. And I was not pleased at the prospect of spending an hour with him in the doghouse.

A commercial for a holiday bloodbath movie resonated from the speaker. Dr. Varney stood suddenly and headed for the door. Before he got there, it was opened by a meek little guy carrying a clipboard. He looked like he could still be in college, with his blond crew cut and glasses. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Mad Dog’s engineer, Greg. This way to the studio.”

“First, I demand a clarification,” Dr. Varney told him. “I want to know precisely what we’re going to be discussing tonight.”

Greg seemed a bit taken aback by the doctor.

He blinked and consulted his clipboard. “Crime in the inner city. What’s causing the current rash of bank robberies. The working of the criminal mind. Like that.”

“Contemporary issues,” Dr. Varney said.

“Oh, absolutely,” Greg replied. “Mad Dog’s a very happening-now dude.”

Somewhat mollified, Dr. Varney dragged along behind us as the little guy led us down a short hall and into a low-ceilinged, egg-carton-lined, claustrophobic room with one large picture window which exposed an even smaller room with two empty chairs facing a soundboard.

The men in the room looked up at us. They occupied five of the nine chairs. In front of each chair was a microphone. Mad Dog stood to welcome us. He was a heavyset young guy, with a faceful of long black hair that looked fake, and a forelock that looked real bothering his forehead and nearly covering one of his baby blues. He was in shirtsleeves and black slacks and he waved us to the empty seats with a wide, hairy grin.

Since I was locking eyes with Red Rafferty while I located a chair across from him, I didn’t spot the animal until I was seated. It was a weird-looking mutt nestled on a dirty, brown cushion in a far corner.

“That’s Dougie Dog, the show’s mascot, Mr. Bloodworth,” Mad Dog explained. “We use him for the Wet Veggie spots. He’s not very active. Kinda O-L-D. But we love him.”

“Is this for him?” I asked, indicating the empty chair next to me.

“No.” Mad Dog smiled and settled into his chair. “The D-Dog prefers his cushion. That’s for... someone falling by later.”

“Sir?” Dr. Varney, who was hovering beside the table, addressed our host.

“Please, Doctor. It’s Mad Dog.”

“Mad Dog, then.” Dr. Varney’s lips curled on the nickname as if he’d bitten into a bad plum. “Before I participate in tonight’s program, I want your assurances that we will be discussing issues of current concern.”

“Tonight’s topic is crime, Doctor. As current as today’s newspaper. Or, in Ms. Thorp’s case, today’s magazine.”

“Sit here, Clayton,” the dapper, fifty-something Gabriel Warren said, pulling out a chair next to him for the doctor. “Good seeing you again.” He looked like the complete CEO with his hand-tailored pinstripe, his no-nonsense hundred dollar razor cut, his gleaming white shirt, and red-striped power tie. His voice was clear and confident, just the sort of voice you need if you’re planning on running for the Senate in the near future, which everyone seemed to think he was. “You know Norman, don’t you?” he asked Varney.

“Of course.” The doc nodded to the plump, middle-aged man in a rumpled tweed suit at Warren’s left hand, Norman Daken.

“What are you doin’ here, Bloodworth?” my old chief asked unpleasantly. Never a thin man, he’d added about six inches around the middle and one more chin, bringing his total to three.

“Pushing my novel,” I said, pointing to the book on the table.

He glanced at it. “Beats workin’, I guess,” he said.

“It takes a little more effort than having somebody stick a fifty-dollar bill in your pocket,” I said. That brought a nice shade of purple to his face. There’d been rumors that he’d made considerably more money as a cop than had been in his bimonthly paycheck, especially in his early days.

“Aaoooo, aaoooo,” Mad Dog bayed. “Gentlemen, lady, I think Greg would like to get levels on all of us.”

While each of us, in turn, babbled nonsense into our respective mikes to Greg’s satisfaction, the woman who’d greeted me at the door, Sylvia Redfern, entered the engineer’s cubicle and positioned the chair beside him — the better to observe us through the window.

Mad Dog asked innocently, “Any questions before we start? We’ve got one minute.”

There was something about his manner, the edge to his voice, that made me wonder if we weren’t going to be in for a few surprises before the show was over. The empty chair at our table was added intimidation. I think the feeling was shared by the others. They asked no questions, but they looked edgy, even lawyer Newgate whom I had observed in the past staying as cool as a polar bear under tremendous courtroom pressure.

Seated at his console behind the glass window, Greg stared at the clock on the wall and raised his hand, the index finger pointed out like the barrel of a gun. Then he aimed it at Mad Dog, who emitted one of his loud trademark moans. As it faded out, Greg faded in the show’s theme (a rather regal-sounding melody that Landy later identified for me as Noel Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”).

Then our host was telling his radio audience that they were in for a special show, one that people would be talking about through the holiday season.

Dr. Varney’s frown deepened and even the smooth Gabriel Warren seemed peeved as Mad Dog blithely continued his opening comments. “Thirty years ago tonight, before I was even a little Mad Puppy, a terrible crime was committed in this city.” Gabriel Warren leaned back in his chair. Norman Daken edged forward in his. Rafferty scowled. “Two crimes, really,” Mad Dog corrected. “But the one people know about was the lesser of the two. The one people know about concerned the grisly death of a man of importance in this city, the father of one of our guests tonight, Theodore Daken.”

Norman Daken’s face turned white and his mouth dropped open in surprise. He had a red birthmark on his right cheek the size and shape of a teardrop and it seemed to glow from the sudden tension in his body. Mad Dog rolled right along. “Theodore Daken was then president of Altadine Industries, which in the early 1960s had developed one of this country’s first successful experimental communications satellites, Altastar.”

“Excuse me,” Gabriel Warren interjected sharply. “I understood we were here to discuss urban violence.”

“If Theodore Daken’s death doesn’t qualify,” our host replied, “then I don’t know the meaning of ‘urban violence.’ ”

“Please,” Norman Daken said shakily. “I don’t really feel I want...”

“Bear with me, Mr. Daken. I’m just trying to acquaint the listeners with the events surrounding that evening. Both you and Mr. Warren were young executives at Altadine at the time, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but...”

“You were the company’s treasurer and Mr. Warren was executive vice president, sort of your father’s protege. Is that right?”

“I suppose so.” The birthmark looked like a drop of blood. “I handled the books and Dad was grooming Gabe to assume major responsibilities.”

“Yes,” Mad Dog said. His blue eyes danced merrily. “Anyway, on that night you two and other executives — and their secretaries, that’s what they called ’em then, not assistants — had your own little holiday party in a large suite at the Hotel Brentwood. A good party, Mr. Warren?”

“As a matter of fact, Norman and I both had to leave early. Theo, Mr. Daken, was expecting an important telex from overseas that needed an immediate reply. It concerned an acquisition that we knew would involve a rather sizable investment on our part and Norman was there to advise me how far we could extend ourselves.”

“And you didn’t return to the party?” Mad Dog asked.

“The telex didn’t arrive until rather late,” Warren said. “I assumed the party must have ended.”

“Not quite,” Mad Dog said. “You missed what sounded like, for the most part, a very jolly affair. Lots of food and drink. Altastar had gone into space and it had taken your company’s stock with it. Each guest at the party was presented with a commemorative Christmas present — a model of the satellite and a hefty bonus check. And everyone was happy.

“Daken, very much in the spirit of things, presented the gifts wearing a Santa Claus suit.

He didn’t need a pillow. He was a man of appetite. For food and for women.”

“Please,” Norman Daken said, “this is so unnecessary.”

“Forgive me if I seem insensitive,” Mad Dog said. “But it was thirty years ago.”

“And he was my father,” Norman Daken countered.

“True,” Mad Dog acknowledged. “I apologize. But the fact is that he did set his sights on one of the ladies that night. Isn’t that true, Mr. Newgate?”

“I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make,” lawyer Newgate said.

“Simple enough,” Mad Dog replied. “On that night of nights, after all the food had been consumed, the booze drunk, and the presents dispersed, everyone left the party. Except for Daken and his new office manager. While they were alone together... something happened. Perhaps you can enlighten us on that, Mr. Rafferty.”

Red Rafferty was living up to his nickname. He looked apopletic. “Sure. What happened is that the woman went crazy and bashed... did away with poor Mr. Daken. Then she dragged his body down to her car and tried to get rid of it in a dumpster off Wilshire.”

Mad Dog’s lips formed a thin line as he said, “The woman’s name was Victoria Douglas and because the story about her and Theodore Daken was all anybody talked about that holiday season, she became known as ‘The Woman Who Killed Christmas.’ She was tried and eventually placed into a hospital for the criminally insane. And, after a while, she escaped.

“She was at large for several years. Then fate caught up with her and she was discovered driving her car on an Arizona road, tripped up by a faulty brake light. She was put back into another facility and again she escaped. Five times over the past three decades did Victoria Douglas escape. She was found and brought back four times. And yes, my math is correct. The last time she escaped from a hospital, eleven years ago, she remained free.

“But The Woman Who Killed Christmas has never been forgotten. Even now, thirty years after the fact, her ‘crime’ remains one of the most infamous in this nation’s history. And, all of you dog lovers out in radioland, here’s something to chew on during the next commercial: It’s entirely possible that the worst crime that took place that night wasn’t the one committed by Victoria Douglas. Of that greater crime, she was the helpless victim.”

Mad Dog leaned back in his chair, let loose a howl, and surrendered the airways to a commercial for soybean turkey stuffing.

Gabriel Warren stood up and turned to his associates. “Our host seems to have made a mistake inviting us here tonight. I suggest we leave him to contemplate it.”

Red Rafferty knocked over his chair in his hurry to stand. Victor Newgate was a bit smoother, but no less anxious. The same was true of Dr. Varney. Norman Daken stood also. He said to Mad Dog, “I can’t imagine why you’re doing this terrible thing.”

“How can you call it ‘terrible’ until you know what I’m doing?” Mad Dog asked. He turned to me. “You going, too, Bloodworth?”

“To tell the truth, I never was certain justice triumphed in the Daken case. So I’ll stick around to see what’s on your mind.”

“Good,” he said.

Since he didn’t bother to ask Landy if she was staying, I figured she was in on his game, whatever it was.

The others were having trouble with the door, which wouldn’t budge. Warren was losing his composure. “Open this goddamn door, son, if you know what’s good for you.”

“You’ll be free to leave when the show is over in a little under an hour,” Mad Dog informed them. “In twenty seconds we’ll be back on the air. Whatever you have to say to me will be heard by nearly a million listeners. They love controversy. So feel free to voice whatever’s on your mind. It can only boost my ratings.”

Red Rafferty lifted his foot and smashed it against the door where the lock went into the clasp. The door didn’t give and Rafferty grabbed his hip with a groan of pain.

“Not as easy as they make it seem in the police manuals, is it, Rafferty?” I asked.

“You son—” Rafferty began.

He was cut off by Mad Dog’s howl. “We’re back in the doghouse where some of my guests are milling about. Something on your minds, gentlemen?”

The others looked to Warren for guidance. He glared at Mad Dog and slowly walked back to his seat. The others followed. In the engineer’s booth, Sylvia Redfern was viewing the proceedings with a rather startled expression on her face. In truth, I was a little startled myself at the way Mad Dog was carrying on.

“O.K., Mr. Bloodworth,” he said, “why don’t you tell us what you know about the eve of Christmas Eve, three decades ago?”

“Sure.” And I dug into my memory bank. “I was barely in my twenties, the new cop on the beat in West L.A. My partner, John Gilfoyle, and I were cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard when we got a Code Two — that’s urgent response, no siren or light. Somebody had reported a woman in distress in an alley off Wilshire.

“We arrived on the scene within minutes and found a tan Ford sedan parked in the alley with its engine going. The subject of the call was moving slowly down the alley, away from the car, a small woman in her mid to late thirties. She was in a dazed condition with abrasions on her face and arms. Her party dress was rumpled and torn.

“She didn’t seem to understand who we were at first. I thought she might have been stoned, but it was more like shock. Then she seemed to get the drift and said, ‘I’m the one you want, officers. I killed Theo Daken.’

“Around that time, John Gilfoyle poked his nose into her car. He shouted something to me about a big Santa Claus dummy on the backseat. Then he took a better look and saw the blood. He ran back to our car to call in the troops.”

“Did Victoria Douglas make any effort to escape?” Mad Dog asked.

“No. She was too far out of it. I don’t know how she was able to drive the car.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “I had to get her name from the identification cards in her purse.”

“What happened then?”

“Gilfoyle and I were helping her to our vehicle when the newspaper guys showed up. I don’t know how the heck they got there that fast. I put Miss Douglas in the back of our vehicle and helped Gilfoyle pull the photographers away from the body. But they got their pictures. And the people of Los Angeles got their dead Santa for Christmas.”

Norman Daken opened his mouth, but decided against whatever he was going to say. I remembered what he was like back then, sitting in the courtroom, in obvious pain. Thinner, more hair. Women might even have found him handsome. Not now. Unlike Warren, to whom the years had been more than kind, Daken resembled an over-the-hill Pillsbury Doughboy.

Mad Dog turned to Rafferty. “You took charge of the Daken case personally, Mr. Rafferty. Care to say why?”

“Because it was a...” he began, shouting. Then, realizing that his voice was being carried on an open radio line, he started again, considerably more constrained. “Because it was a circus. There was this crazy woman who’d used a blunt instrument on Santa Claus. Not just any Santa, but a Santa who was an old pal of the governor’s. And a damn fine man.” This last was said with a glance at Norman Daken. “And my chief wanted action. That’s why I took charge.”

“Even though there was this tremendous pressure, you feel that the police did all that they could in investigating the murder?”

“Absolutely. It was handled by the book.”

“Mr. Bloodworth.” Mad Dog shifted back to me. “According to an account printed at the time of Victoria Douglas’s trial, you felt that maybe the detectives on the case had missed a few bets.”

“Bloodworth was a cop on the beat,” Rafferty squealed. “His opinion is worth bupkis.”

“It wasn’t just my opinion,” I said. “Ferd Loomis, one of the investigating officers, agreed with me.”

“Ferd Loomis was a soak,” Rafferty growled. “That’s why he took early retirement and why he wound up eating his Colt.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “All I know is what he told me. He said that the officers sent to secure the crime scene were greener than I was and they let reporters in before the lab boys got there. Not only that, a hotel bellboy was collecting tips to sneak curious guests into the room.

“All the evidence — the glass statue that was the supposed murder weapon, wiped clean of fingerprints, the dead man’s clothes, the bloody pillow — was polluted by a stream of gawkers wandering through.”

“But the evidence was allowed, wasn’t it?” Mad Dog asked with the assurance of a man who’d read the trial transcripts. He wanted to lay it out clearly for the radio audience. When no one replied, he specified, “Mr. Newgate, you were Miss Douglas’s lawyer.”

“Judge Fogle allowed the evidence,” Newgate said flatly. “I objected and was overruled. It was highly irregular. I don’t know what made Fogle rule the way he did. Since he’s been senile for nearly fifteen years, I don’t suppose I ever will.”

“What was the motive for the murder?” Mad Dog asked, like a man who already knew the answer.

Rafferty didn’t mind responding. “According to our investigation, Victoria Douglas had been having an affair with Daken. We figured he broke it off that night.”

“Sort of a ‘Merry Christmas, Honey, Get Lost’ approach?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why not? He dumped her. And then made the big mistake of falling asleep on the bed. She picked up one of those satellite statues and beaned him with it. Then she hit him a few more times to be sure and lugged him down to her car.”

“Without one witness seeing her,” I said.

Rafferty shook his head as if I were the biggest dufus in the world. “She took the freight elevator or the stairs. My God, Bloodworth. The suite was only on the third floor.”

Mad Dog was vastly amused by our interchange. The others were expressionless. Landy Thorpe winked at me.

I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be plugging my book that night. But maybe this was better. As I said, I’d never felt right about the trial. And even if nothing came of this re-examination, it was getting under Rafferty’s hide.

I said, “When we found Victoria Douglas, she looked like she’d been roughed up. But that wasn’t mentioned at the trial.”

“You can muss yourself up pretty bad swinging a heavy statue fifteen or twenty times with all your might,” Rafferty explained.

“Then there’s her size. She weighed about one hundred twenty-five pounds. Daken weighed twice that. How’d she get him down the stairs?”

“Maybe she rolled him down.” Rafferty’s little eyes flickered toward Norman Daken, ready to apologize for his crudeness. But Daken seemed to have adapted a posture of disbelief that the discussion had anything to do with him. He stared at his microphone as if he were waiting for it to suddenly dance a jig. The fingers of his right hand idly brushed his cheek where the birthmark was.

“Anyways,” Rafferty said, “crazy people sometimes have the strength of ten.”

“Which brings us to you, Dr. Varney,” Mad Dog announced, getting back into the act. “The defense used your testimony to legitimize its insanity plea. But was Miss Douglas truly insane?”

“That was my opinion,” Dr. Varney said, huffily.

“You came to this conclusion because of tests?”

“She refused to take part in tests,” Dr. Varney said.

“Then it was her answers to questions?” Mad Dog inquired.

“She wouldn’t answer questions. She wouldn’t talk at all, except to repeat what she’d said to the police, that she’d killed Daken.”

“Then how could you form a definite conclusion?”

“My God, man! All one had to do was see pictures of the corpse. It was determined that she’d hit him at least twenty times, most of the blows after he was dead.”

Norman Daken closed his eyes tight.

“Ah,” Mad Dog said, not noticing Norman, or choosing to ignore him. “But suppose she’d hit him only once? One fatal blow?”

Dr. Varney frowned. “I decline to speculate on what might have been. I was faced with what really did happen.”

“So now we’ve come to the beauty part of the story,” Mad Dog said, blue eyes sparkling. “What really did happen?” He lowered his hand to the floor and snapped his fingers. The ancient cur, Dougie Dog, rose up on creaky bones and padded toward him. “But first, a word from Mad Dog’s own mutt about Wet Veggies.”

Mad Dog lowered the mike and Dougie Dog gave out with a very laid-back but musical bark. Greg, the engineer, followed the bark with a taped commercial for a dog food that consisted of vegetables “simmering in savory meat sauce.” I was getting a little peckish, myself.

Gabriel Warren tapped Victor Newgate on the arm and asked, “How many laws is our friend Mad Dog breaking by keeping us here against our will?”

“Enough to keep him off the radio for quite a few years, I’d think,” Newgate replied.

“C’mon, guys,” Mad Dog told them. “Aren’t you even the least bit interested in where we’re headed?”

Norman Daken’s eyes moved to the picture window where Greg was staring at the clock and Sylvia Redfern was looking at us with concern. His fingers continued their nervous brushing of his cheek near the birthmark. “Where are we headed?” he asked, so softly I could barely hear him.

“Thirty years ago, I would have been interested,” Warren said dryly. “Today, I couldn’t care less. It’s old news.”

Dougie Dog put his paws on his master’s leg and made a little begging sound. Mad Dog reached into his jacket pocket and found a biscuit that he placed in the animal’s open mouth. “Good old boy,” he said.

“Family dog?” I asked.

Mad Dog smiled at me and his clear blue eyes didn’t blink. “Yes,” he said. “Fact is, he was given to me by my mother when I moved out on my own.”

“You can sit there and talk about dogs all you want,” Dr. Varney said. “But I am definitely not going to let you get by with...”

“Awoooo, awoooo,” Mad Dog interrupted. “We’re back again, discussing the thirty-year-old murder of industrialist Theodore Daken. You were saying, Dr. Varney?”

“Nothing, actually.”

“We were getting to a description of what really happened in the murder room that night.”

“What happened is public record,” Rafferty said. “The verdict was in three decades ago. Case closed. Some of you guys like to play around with stuff like this, but you can’t change history.”

“Things do happen to make us doubt the accuracy of history books, however. Look at all the fuss over Columbus. Or the crusades. Or maybe a murder case that wasn’t murder at all.”

“What the devil’s that mean?” Rafferty asked.

“This really is quite absurd,” Gabriel Warren said flatly. “Why Victoria Douglas killed Theo Daken three decades ago is an intriguing question, but its answer will solve none of today’s problems. We should be discussing the murders that take place every seven hours in this city, or the bank robberies that take place on an average of one every other day.”

“That’s what I thought we were here to talk about,” Victor Newgate added.

“We can discuss crime in L.A. for the next year and not come up with any concrete answers,” Mad Dog said. “But tonight, it’s possible that we will actually be able to conclude what really happened to Theodore Daken. Isn’t that worth an hour of your time?”

“You’re going to solve the Daken murder?” Rafferty asked sneeringly.

“Actually, I was hoping to leave the solving to Mr. Bloodworth.”

“Huh?” I replied. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mad Dog. But I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes. I’m just a guy who plods from one point to another.”

“Plod away, then.”

“The world turns over a few times in thirty years, and its secrets get buried deeper and deeper. Too deep to uncover in an hour.”

“Suppose we make it a little easier?” Mad Dog said.

I thought I knew where he was headed. I pointed at the empty chair at the table. “If Victoria Douglas were to come out of hiding and join us, that might make it easier.”

The others didn’t think much of that idea. They eyed the chair suspiciously. “She’s still a wanted woman,” Rafferty said. “And it’d be my duty to perform a citizen’s arrest and send her back where she belongs.”

“Don’t worry,” Mad Dog said. “The chair’s not for her. Is it, Miss Thorp?”

We all turned to Landy expectantly. “Victoria Douglas is dead,” she stated flatly. It was the first sentence she’d spoken since we all sat down and it more than made up for her silence. “She died of a heart attack nearly six months ago in the Northern California town of Yreka, where her neighbors knew her as Violet Dunn. Knew and loved her, I should add.”

The others seemed to relax. Then Landy added, “But before she died, we had many long talks together.”

“What kind of talks?” Gabriel Warren asked.

“Talks that I’m using in an article on Victoria Douglas for my magazine.”

Dr. Varney exclaimed, “I told you about it, Gabriel. Someone phoned my office.”

“N-nobody called me,” Norman Daken said.

“You’re on my list,” Landy told him. “We’re just starting the major research. I’ll be calling each of you.”

Warren stared at her appraisingly. Rafferty seemed amused. “So, honey, on these long talks you supposedly had,” he asked, “did she happen to mention anything about the murder?”

Landy stared at him. “She told me that she killed Theodore Daken in self-defense. It was she who fell asleep that night. She was not used to alcohol and had had too much champagne. When she awoke, Daken was beside her on the bed in his underwear, trying to remove her clothes.

“She called out, but everyone else had gone. She tried to push him away and he slapped her across the face. Struggle seemed useless. He was a big, powerful man. Her hand found the statue somehow and she brought it down against his skull. Then she blacked out. She doesn’t remember hitting him more than once.”

“Doesn’t remember? That’s damn convenient,” Rafferty said. “No wonder she didn’t try that yarn on us at the time.”

“She might have,” Mad Dog informed us, “if she’d taken the stand at her trial.”

Newgate waved a dismissive hand. “She would have hurt her case immensely. It was my feeling that, in light of the grisly aspects of the situation, she was better off with an insanity plea. She could only have hurt that defense by taking the stand.”

“She told me she did mention self-defense at her first parole hearing,” Landy said.

“And, alas, as I feared, they didn’t believe her,” Newgate said. “I suppose that’s what pushed her into making her initial escape.”

“How did you come to be her lawyer, Newgate?” I asked.

He stared at me as if he didn’t feel he had to waste his time responding. But we were on radio, so he replied, “I’d met her socially.”

“You mean you’d dated her?” I asked.

“No. But, from time to time, I had lunch with her and... other employees of Altadine. The firm I was working for did quite a lot of business with the company.”

“Did Daken sit in on these lunches?” I asked.

“The old man? Hardly,” Newgate replied with a smile. “He was the CEO. We were a few rungs down.”

“Who else would be there?” Mad Dog wondered.

Newgate brushed the question away with an angry hand. “I don’t really know. An assortment of people.”

“Mr. Warren?” I asked.

“I was part of the crowd,” Warren said. “Eager young execs and pretty women who worked for the company. Victoria Douglas included. There was nothing sinister about it. Nothing particularly significant, either.”

“According to testimony from a woman named Joan Lapeer,” Mad Dog said, “Miss Douglas had been Theodore Daken’s girlfriend. Did she confirm that, Miss Thorp?”

“Victoria told me that Joan Lapeer had been Altadine’s office manager before her. Theodore Daken fired the woman and hired Victoria. Joan Lapeer was so bitter that she spread the word that Daken had wanted to hire his girlfriend.”

“Then there was no truth to it?”

“None,” Landy said. “Victoria told me she’d only met Daken once or twice before she went to work for Altadine.”

“Met him where?” I asked.

“Joan Lapeer was a very lazy, very incompetent worker,” Gabriel Warren suddenly announced. Norman Daken looked up from the table at him, without expression.

“So she lied about Victoria Douglas’s involvement with Theodore Daken,” Mad Dog said.

“Miss Douglas said he asked her out a few times,” Landy told us. “But she always refused.”

“Because he was her boss?” Mad Dog asked.

“Or a fat slob, or...?”

“Because she was involved with someone else,” Landy said.

“Who?”

Landy shook her head. “She wouldn’t name him. She said it was the one oath she would never break.”

“She used the word, ‘oath’?” I asked.

“Precisely.”

“Is he our mystery guest?” I asked Mad Dog, indicating the empty chair.

“No,” he said, turning toward Greg in the booth. “But this might be a good time to cut to a commercial.” He nodded, let out one of his wails and Greg responded to the cue with a spot announcement for a holiday lawn fertilizer, “The perfect gift for the gardener around your home.”

“How much longer are you going to hold us here against our will?” Warren demanded.

“The old clock on the wall says another nineteen minutes.”

“This is going to turn into a very expensive hour,” Warren said.

“Why don’t you just make your point,” lawyer Newgate said to our host, “and be done with it? Why must we put up with all this cat-and-mouse routine?”

“That’s how radio works,” Mad Dog replied. “We have to build to a conclusion.” He leaned toward me. “Are you willing to give us a wrap-up, Mr. Bloodworth, of what you think happened that night?”

“I wouldn’t want to go on record with any heavy speculation. You don’t seem to care about these litigious bozos, but I personally would just as soon stay clear of courtrooms.”

“No need to mention any names,” he said. “Just give us...”

He paused, some sixth sense informing him that the commercial had ended and he was about to go back on the air. He let out a howl and said, “Welcome back to the doghouse. Private Detective Leo Bloodworth is about to give us his version of what happened back at that hotel thirty years ago.”

“Well,” I said. “I’ll take Victoria Douglas’s word for it that she acted in self-defense. That would explain her battered condition. But if the guy attacked her and she repelled him, why wouldn’t she just stay there and call the cops?”

“Because she panicked?” Landy speculated.

“When you panic, you run away. But Rafferty and his detectives tell us she didn’t do that. Their scenario has her hanging around the suite and finally taking the body with her when she left. Why would she do that?”

“The dame was crazy.” Rafferty was almost beside himself.

I replied, “She’s just killed a man. She’s confused. She decides to take the dead guy with her? Nobody’s that crazy. Wouldn’t it have been much more natural for her to just run away? Probably down the service stairs?”

“That’s your trouble, Bloodworth,” Rafferty said. “You refuse to believe what your eyes tell you. You saw her with the stiff... ah, the poor guy’s body.”

“That was later. What I think is that she ran away to the one person she trusted — the guy she was in love with. She told him what had happened in the hotel suite. He told her he’d help her, but she had to promise to keep him out of it, no matter what.

“They went back to the hotel in her car, parking it near the service exit. Maybe they went up together. Maybe he told her to stay in the car. He, or the both of ’em got Daken’s body down in the service elevator. They put it in the back of Victoria Douglas’s car. By then, she was in no condition to drive. So the boyfriend drove to the alley off Wilshire. And here’s where it gets a little foggy. For some reason the boyfriend ran out on her and left her to face the music all alone. And true to her promise, her ‘oath,’ she refused to name him. Even though it made her look like a crazy woman.”

“Wait a minute, Bloodworth,” Rafferty blustered. “If it didn’t make sense for her to move the body, why did he decide to do it?”

“Because there would be less scandal if Daken were found beaten to death in an alley wearing a Santa Claus suit than if he turned up dead in a hotel room in his skivvies.”

“You’re saying that Theodore Daken was moved to salvage his reputation?” Mad Dog asked.

“And that of his company’s,” I said. “I assume Douglas’s boyfriend was an executive at Altadine...”

“Why?” Mad Dog asked.

“That’s one way Victoria Douglas would have met Daken once or twice before he hired her. It’s also how she would have known about the job opening. For all we know, the boyfriend could have closed the deal with Daken for her to come aboard. Anyway, he was the one who was trying to downplay any scandal.”

“Only it didn’t work,” Mad Dog said.

“And I bet the guy next in line to the presidency, Gabriel Warren, had quite a job on his hands keeping Altadine’s investors high on the company.” I looked at him.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said. “It would have been quite a lot easier if Theo’s death had been minus the sordid details. But as bad as it got, I managed.”

“I’ll bet you did,” I said.

“Wait a minute!” Landy interrupted. “This was a company Christmas party. If Victoria’s lover had been an Altadine exec, would he have just gone off, leaving his girlfriend passed out and easy prey for Daken?”

“I think the guy left the party early, before she was in any danger,” I said, looking at Warren.

“Would you care to take a guess at the name of Victoria Douglas’s lover, Mr. Bloodworth?” Mad Dog asked.

I continued staring at Gabriel Warren. “Like I said, somebody who left the party early. Somebody who wanted to squelch the scandal. But when that didn’t happen, he was shrewd enough to know when to cut and run. Somebody smooth and savvy and well-connected enough to know how to push enough buttons, once Victoria Douglas was on the spot, to keep himself clear of the fallout.”

“How would he do that?” Mad Dog asked. Warren glared at me.

“By pressuring a high-ranking police officer to disregard a few facts that didn’t jibe with the official story of how Daken died. By getting a defense lawyer to plead his client insane and keep her off the stand, just to make sure his name didn’t come up in testimony. By convincing a judge to bend a few rules. All to keep one of America’s great corporations flying high. Because, surely, if one more guy at the top of Altadine had got caught by that tar baby, the company might never have recovered.”

“You’re not going to name him?” Mad Dog asked.

“He knows who he is,” I said, nodding at Warren.

I was hoping to get the guy to do something. Like snarl. Or show his fangs. When he didn’t, I said, “It just occurred to me that maybe Victoria Douglas didn’t really kill Theodore Daken at all. She told Miss Thorp that she didn’t remember hitting him more than once. Suppose that wasn’t enough to do the job, though she thought it was. Suppose the boyfriend went up to that hotel room, saw Daken on the bed sleeping off that nonfatal whack and picked up the statue and finished the job, wiping the weapon clean. Then he had an even stronger reason for wanting Victoria Douglas to keep quiet about his participation in the removal of the body. What do you think, Warren?”

“You’re making a big mistake,” he hissed. I shrugged.

“This may be the perfect time to bring in our mystery guest,” Mad Dog said. And almost at once, the door opened and a wizened old man entered. He looked like he was a hundred-and-one, his khaki pants flapping against his legs, his bright red windbreaker hanging on his bony frame. A plaid cap with a pom-pom covered his bald pate at a jaunty angle.

The door slammed behind him and he turned and looked at it for a second.

“We’ve just been joined by Mr. Samuel J. Kleinmetz,” Mad Dog informed his listening audience, which included me. “Mr. Kleinmetz, would you please take this chair?”

As the old duffer shuffled to the chair, Mad Dog said, “Mr. Kleinmetz was working that night before Christmas Eve, thirty years ago. What was your occupation, sir?”

The old man was easing himself onto the chair. “Eh?”

“Occupation.”

“Nothing,” he said, louder than necessary, sending Greg jumping for his dials. “Been retired for fifteen years. Used to drive a cab, though. Beverly Hills Cab. Drove a Mercedes. Leather seats. Wonderful radio. Worked all the best hotels...”

“Good enough,” Mad Dog said, stemming the man’s flow. “You were working the night...”

“The night the woman killed Christmas?” the old man finished. “Sure. I worked six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. I was working that night, absolutely.”

“In the Wilshire district?”

“That’s where I used to park and wait,” the old man said. He squinted his eyes in delight, staring at the microphone. “This is working?” he asked.

“I hope it is,” Mad Dog told him. “On that night, you picked up a passenger not far from where they later found the body of Theodore Daken?”

“The guy in the Santa Claus suit, yeah. I guess it was minutes before. The paper said they found the guy at about ten-thirty. I picked up my fare at maybe ten-twenty...”

“How the devil can he remember that?” Gabriel Warren snapped. “It was thirty years ago.”

“There are days you remember,” the old man said. “I can remember the morning I woke up to hear the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I can tell you everything that happened that day. And the day that great young president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated by that Oswald creep. And the night the woman killed Christmas.”

“We showed Mr. Steinmetz photographs of the members of the executive board of Altadine taken that year,” Mad Dog said. “He identified his passenger. We then showed him a photograph of that same man today. Would you tell us if he’s in this room tonight?”

“Sure.” Sam Steinmetz looked across the table in the direction of Gabriel Warren, and I could feel a smug grin forming on my face. “That’s him right there.”

My smug grin froze. Steinmetz was pointing a bony finger at Norman Daken. “You didn’t have to show me all those pictures. He’s changed a lot, but I’d have known him right away, as soon as I saw that red dot on his face. Never seen one quite like it before or since.”

Daken looked more relaxed than he had all evening. “So many years ago,” he said, almost wistfully. “I’d almost forgotten. As if anyone could.”

“Don’t say a word, Norman,” Gabriel Warren cautioned.

“No more, Gabe. I don’t want to hold it in any longer. My father and I... we had our disagreements. He thought I was weak. I suppose I am. I loved Victoria.”

I looked from him to the engineer booth. Both Greg and Sylvia Redfern were totally caught up in the tableau in the studio. Her expression was impossible to read, but her blue eyes looked kind and sympathetic.

“I think that’s why he felt he had to have her,” Norman continued. “Because I loved her. And he ruined it all for us. I never blamed her. It wasn’t her fault, poor woman. She fought him and knocked him unconscious. She didn’t hate him, you see. Not like I did.”

Warren was scowling at him. “What the devil are...”

“Bloodworth was right. I killed him, Gabe. I thought you knew that.”

“You thought I... How could...?” Warren was having trouble articulating.

Norman Daken gave him a pitying smile. “He wanted you to be his son. I guess you felt that way, too.”

“I would never have...”

“That’s what was so beautiful about it, Gabe. You fixed it so that I stayed clear of it.”

“I was trying to save the company,” Warren said. “But if I’d known...”

“Well, now you do,” Norman Daken told him. “You did everything you could to keep Altadine going. I, on the other hand...”

He didn’t finish his sentence. I said, “I always wondered who reported Victoria Douglas to the police that night. And who called the reporters. That was you, wasn’t it, Norman? You left that poor woman in the alley and went off to call the cops.”

“I’m sorry I hurt Vicki so,” he said. “I told her that she would never go to prison and I lived up to that. Thanks to Gabe’s influence.”

“But she wasn’t exactly free,” I said.

“No,” Norman agreed. “But I had to make that sacrifice, if my father’s reputation was to be thoroughly destroyed.” He looked at Mad Dog hopefully. “Maybe now, thanks to you, he’ll be dragged through the mud again.”

Station KPLA-FM went off the air early that night, even though the police made short work of their task. They came, they saw, they escorted Norman off to be booked. As they explained, there was no statute of limitations on murder, not that he really wanted one.

As for the crimes Warren and his associates may have committed, the police were less certain of their footing. So that foursome left on their own recognizance. Even if it turned out to be too late to nail them for railroading Victoria Douglas, they probably wouldn’t be suing Mad Dog or myself. And I doubted I’d be seeing Warren’s name on any ballots in the near future.

When they’d all departed, leaving only Mad Dog, Landy, Dougie Dog, and myself in the main studio, I asked, “Are you both her children?”

“Just me,” Mad Dog admitted, grinning. “What tipped you?”

“Dougie Dog, for one,” I said, looking at the drooping mongrel. “The family hound, you said. Dougie. Douglas. And then, there’s your nickname. Mad Dog. Madison Douglas?”

“Nope. Just Charlie Douglas. The ‘mad’ is, well, they said she was mad and what happened to her made me pretty angry. My dad worked at the hospital where Mom spent her first three years. He helped her escape. When she was sent back, I was raised by my paternal grandparents.”

“And you kept her name?”

“It’s mine, too. They never married officially. How could they? Anyway, figuring out that I was her son, that was good detecting.”

“It’s the least I could do after picking the wrong murderer,” I said.

“We didn’t know about the murder,” Landy said. “Poor Victoria always thought she’d killed Daken.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Just a friend of the family?”

“As I said, I’m a journalist. I happened to rent a house next door to Victoria’s a few years ago. We became friends and eventually she opened up to me about who she was. I think she hoped Charlie and I might get together.”

“And you did.”

They both smiled.

The dog rose to its feet, yawning, and dragged itself to the door and out of the studio.

“And you two decided to clear Victoria’s name,” I said.

“Right again,” Charlie “Mad Dog” Douglas said. “Thanks for the help.”

I stood up and picked my book from the table. “I didn’t sell many of these tonight,” I said.

“Come on back,” he offered.

“It’s too bad your mother passed away without ever learning the truth about that night. But I guess it’s just as well that she won’t have to go through the ordeal of Norman’s trial.”

They both nodded solemnly.

I left them and wandered out into the corridor. A light was on in the greenroom. As I passed, I saw Sylvia Redfern sitting on the couch, reading a book. Dougie Dog was curled up at her feet, sleeping peacefully. Her eyes, blue as a lagoon, blue as Mad Dog’s, suddenly looked up and caught me staring at her. She smiled.

“Goodnight, Mr. Bloodworth,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

I told her it was my pleasure and wished her a very merry Christmas.

“It will be,” she replied, “the merriest in years.”