The First Law

14

The call came into homicide at 4:38 a.m. As soon as he heard the tentative identifications, Paul Thieu thought he knew what he had, but for his own reasons, not the least of which was pride in his work, he proceeded in his own ordered, methodical fashion. He had to get to the scene and make his own determination first.

Gerson wouldn't thank him for a call at this time of the morning anyway. If the crime scene was anything like what it promised to be from the dispatch-double homicide or possibly homicide with suicide-the CSI team wouldn't even have gotten a good jump by the time it was reasonable to call the lieutenant.

In the cold, dark morning, Thieu left the Hall of Justice through the front doors. A couple of black-and-whites were parked on Bryant just down the steps-the dim light of cigarettes visible in the front one. Thieu didn't want to waste even the few minutes it would take to walk to the back lot and get his assigned Ford Taurus. He walked up to the driver's window and pressed his badge up against it. The window came down in a fog of smoke and coffee. "Sorry to interrupt your coffee break, officers, but I've got a very hot homicide eight blocks away and I'd like to be there ten minutes ago." He slapped the roof of the car. "How fast can you make this thing go?"

Sirens screaming all the way-Thieu saw no reason why commandeering a squad car couldn't include an element of fun-they dropped him at his address in under five minutes. Two other squad cars were already parked in the street, but there was no sign yet of the coroner's van or any of the CSI people.

The building had no aspirations to stand out among the other worn and tawdry four-story structures on the block. With its common entrance, yellowing paint and graffiti in a hundred hands and colors, the apartment house squatted all but anonymously amid its identical neighbors, each more depressing than the next. Inside, Thieu knew, the apartments would also be more similar than not, every one squalid. Stained ancient mattresses with no coverings, broken furniture without upholstery, bare walls and sagging wallpaper hanging in sheets no one ever thought or cared to remove. In every kitchen, dirty dishes would lie piled in the sinks and on every flat surface, the stoves would be buried in grease and carbon, the refrigerators nearly living with mold. The stench of the rooms-of tobacco, urine, alcohol, vomit, decay and musk-would, Thieu supposed, never come out.

When homicides are reported, the sergeant from the local precinct is supposed to come out and maintain security at the sight until an inspector from the homicide detail arrives. In this case, things were working as they should and Sergeant R. Penrose, from his name tag, out of the Tenderloin Task Force was standing, talking to another uniformed patrolman at the building's entrance. Out of the wind, inside the open doorway.

Thieu introduced himself and noted the look of relief on Penrose's face-the scene wasn't his direct responsibility anymore. Thieu pegged him at about his own age, mid-thirties, but a kind of rigid nervousness made him seem younger. "This is Officer Lundgren," he said. Although Thieu was anxious to get inside, he knew it was smarter to get everything from the beginning. "He and his partner out in the car there, they got the original complaint."

In this part of town, complaints to the police were decidedly unusual, so this in itself piqued Thieu's interest. "Who complained about what?" he asked.

"The landlady." Lundgren pointed into the half-shadow behind him where a small Asian woman, dressed now in a heavy overcoat, hovered by the stairway. "Mrs. Chu. Her English isn't so good, but evidently she was trying to sleep and-"

"Excuse me, Officer," Thieu said, stopping him. He turned to Sergeant Penrose. "Maybe I will see if I can just talk to her for a minute, please."

Penrose nodded. If he was surprised, he didn't show it. He motioned to Mrs. Chu to come forward. Thieu was not a tall man, but Mrs. Chu didn't reach his shoulders. She looked to be about sixty years old, and as she emerged from the shadows, Thieu took in her threadbare coat, the thin, short gray hair, a pair of red Converse tennis shoes. She, too, like Penrose, exuded wariness.

That was it, Thieu was thinking. Everybody here looks asleep, Sergeant.

He addressed her in Mandarin, in which he was fluent, and at the familiar sounds, she relaxed slightly. She told him that she'd been watching television (not in fact trying to sleep as Officer Lundgren had volunteered), trying to drown out the loud radio from directly below her. Usually the tenants down there were quiet and polite, but tonight it seemed they were partying. They came in a little after midnight-yes, she thought, several people, at least three but maybe more-and first thing had turned on the radio, very loud. She couldn't hear her television over the blaring radio. But noise was a fact of life in the building, and people tended not to get involved. (Thieu knew that interrupting "parties," that is, drug use or sex or both, was a typical cause of violence in the Tenderloin.) Besides, one of the men downstairs was very big and she did not want him to become mad at her, so she put it off a long time. But eventually, about an hour ago, she needed to sleep and so came down and knocked.

But no one answered, although the radio kept on and on. Finally, she called the police and they…

Thieu thanked Mrs. Chu and turned back to Sergeant Penrose. "I'd better go in. I expect the coroner and crime scene investigation unit any time. I'm afraid you're not going to be getting much sleep, Sergeant. Sorry."

"I think it's going to be a while anyway," Penrose said. "Every time I close my eyes, I…" He stopped, motioned toward the closed door. Again, that spooked quality. He reached out and touched Thieu on the arm, a dramatic gesture under any circumstances, and not at all coplike. "Prepare yourself," he said. "It's bad."

Dawn ambushed him. One minute Thieu was opening the door to the apartment, flipping on the light against the blackness outside, thinking not only that it wasn't bad, it was incredibly well-kept-the flowers, the polished surfaces, a sense of order and cleanliness, to say nothing of the matching furniture, high-end magazines, framed prints on the faux-painted terracotta walls. A minute later, he stood squinting up at blue sky through the back window that opened on an alley. In three plus hours, he hadn't grown appreciably inured to the sight of the carnage behind him in the bedroom.

He'd been wrong about the CSI team hardly getting a jump before it was time to call Gerson. They were getting close to finished. Already they wanted to remove the bodies, but much as it sickened him to refuse, that's exactly what he did. After a long while working here, someone had opened both the back windows and the front door and the temperature in the apartment now barely made it into the forties, although it felt like one hundred degrees to Thieu.

He knew it was time to call Gerson, but he checked his watch anyway and made sure. Turning around, he resolved to go outside for a moment-he wanted to get out of this room-and patch into the detail from one of the squad cars, or maybe the coroner's van. He stepped carefully to avoid the blood, tried again without much success to avert his eyes from the horrific tableau.

But before he'd made it out of the room, Lennard Faro stopped him. Faro was the crime scene specialist. Thin and intense, he had recently begun sporting a soul patch under his lip which he called his bug. Both of his ears were pierced, the right one twice. He wasn't yet thirty years old, yet in his profession believed that he had seen everything. Even the almost unfathomably grisly scene here today failed to elicit any response, and Thieu found himself wondering if it was all simply a defense. He knew that he, himself, came across as very professional, and knew the reality behind that guise. Maybe Faro was simply better at it than he was-but even if it was your job, Thieu didn't think most humans could handle the butchery they had here without reacting viscerally.

But Faro seemed to be holding up. Certainly better than Thieu was. He and Thieu had both spent the previous night crawling around the driveway where Matt Creed had been shot, so when the specialist had first arrived, he greeted Thieu with the old, "We've got to stop meeting like this." But that was before he'd seen the bodies.

Now, having seen them, his voice held a suitable gravity, but no real sign of personal revulsion. Suddenly Thieu realized what it was-Lennard Faro wasn't spooked. And it was hard not to be. "So we got a refrigerator here, Paul. You still wanna leave 'em where they be?"

"I do," Thieu said. "I'm going out to call Gerson on it right now. Couple more hours isn't going to hurt them, I don't suppose."

Faro cast an unfeeling eye back at the room. "No. They'll keep. But the team's going to want to wrap it up, and-" Seeing Thieu's expression-anger and resolve-he stopped. "I'm just saying it's two nights in a row now. People get tired they don't do as good. We got the place sealed off. We come back early, say. Or bring out the day team to tag and bag. What do you say?"

Thieu knew that he could appear peremptory. He forced a smile, pointed to the front door. "Let's go out a minute, get some air, okay?" By the time they had reached the front door, finally out of sight of the bedroom, Thieu found he could control himself much more easily.

Turning back to Faro, he spoke with an easy assurance, even sympathy. "I hear what you're saying, Len, but I think in this case, it'd be helpful if your team stayed around just awhile longer, at least till the lieutenant's here to let you go."

"You think Gerson's gonna be coming down here?" Faro, clearly, didn't envision that possibility. "That would be a first, wouldn't it?"

Thieu didn't comment on that. "What I think is that whether or not he comes down himself, it's very likely he's going to assign this case to Cuneo and Russell, which is what he did with Creed last night." Faro's hand went to his bug as he processed this. "I'd bet you anything that this one's part of that, which is part of Silverman. So if you don't mind, I think it'd be helpful if you guys were around to answer questions when the new guys get here. Probably in fifteen minutes or less. Plus," he added, "they need to see it."

Faro's face suddenly went slack. "Nobody needs to see that," he said.

Thieu felt a wash of something like relief. He decided to speak. "You know, Len, I'm glad to hear you say that. I thought it rolled right off you."

Faro pulled at his bug, shook his head slowly side to side. "Nope," he said.

When Thieu reached Gerson on the phone, the lieutenant as expected wasn't enthusiastic about coming down and checking out the murder scene himself, but he wasted no time at all with his administrative duties. Upon learning that the victims were Clint Terry and Randy Wills, the two chief suspects in both the Creed and Silverman homicides, he told Thieu-again, if he didn't mind and with other suitable disclaimers-that it sounded like efficiency would be better served if Cuneo and Russell were assigned to this homicide as well as the other two. He told Thieu that the two inspectors were running a little late getting into the office this morning since they were stopping at the lab for some ballistics results before reporting in. But Gerson would call dispatch and send them directly to the crime scene just as soon as he got off the phone with Thieu.

Which he did shortly, leaving Thieu and Faro standing out in the street by the coroner's van. But when Thieu started explaining Gerson's decision about Cuneo and Russell to Faro, the crime scene specialist stopped him before he'd gotten very far. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You want to run that by me again? You're telling me those guys in there, they were suspects in the Creed thing?"

Thieu nodded. "Yeah, and them plus a third guy named Holiday for Silverman."

Faro pulled at his bug. "So the theory is what?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you just told Gerson this homicide was related to Creed and Silverman, so he's sending over Russell and Cuneo, right?"

"Right."

"So what's the relation?"

"The relation is that they're suspects in both those murders."

But Faro was shaking his head. "They killed Silverman. Then they killed Creed. Now they're both dead. And this guy Holiday, he's the only one left?"

"Yeah, looks like. Which makes him…" Thieu cocked his head. "What's the problem, Len?"

Faro took a long beat deciding what he'd say. Finally, he said, "This might be a hell of a coincidence, okay, and we're trained to hate and mistrust them, but they happen. My take is that this isn't any of that-Silverman and Creed, I mean. It's completely unrelated."

"It can't be. These are the same guys."

"Be that as it may, I've seen a half a dozen of these."

"Like this? Not like this." Thieu motioned toward the apartment. "Like that?"

Faro's head bobbed down, then up. "Spittin' image, or close enough. This is a pickup gone bad. I'd bet my badge on it. Which might close Silverman and even Creed, okay, except maybe for this other guy, Holiday, but these stiffs here, this case-they ought to stay with you."

"With me? In what way with me?"

"Your case. They've got nothing to do with Cuneo and Russell's other work."

Thieu rubbed his hands together against the cold. "They do if.. ."

"Nope. Not unless you think Holiday did this, which I'm betting he didn't. You're thinking he did?"

"I didn't know. I just assumed he must be in it somehow. He fits."

"A falling out among thieves, something like that?"

"Something like."

Suddenly Faro shivered. "Jesus, it's cold. I'm going to go tell the team we're hanging fire another hour or so. Send 'em out for coffee." He fished in his pockets, brought out his keys, pointed. "That's my car over there, the brown one." He flipped the keys to Thieu. "Get the heat going, would you? Have a seat. I'll be right back."

Thieu was still pondering the pickup gone bad theory when Faro opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. "So where were we?"

"This should stay my case."

"That's it. And hey, no offense to Dan and Lincoln, nothing personal. It's just that their theory don't hold."

Thieu crossed his arms, hugging himself. It hadn't warmed up much. "So what's yours?"

"What happened? Easy. The two vies in there went out to party last night and found some guy who wanted to play, so they brought him back here. You see some of that powder on the bureau? Ten to one it's coke, maybe heroin or crank, one of those. So they're getting a lot high and a little kinky, maybe one of 'em's already naked-I'm thinkin' the big guy…"

"That's Terry. Why him first?"

"We'll get to that. But see if this don't play. So Terry's tied up in the chair just like he is now, maybe they're playin' a little with him and the two other guys-well, the guy they picked up and the one he thinks is the girl…"

"Wills."

"Yeah, whatever, so those two start to get it on. Then the pickup guy reaches down and-whoops!-gets a handful of surprise."

"Wills isn't a woman."

"He sure isn't. Not even a little. So the perp goes ballistic-the coroner will tell us exactly what he did next, but my guess is he strangled Wills, maybe knocked him around a little first. But he's still flying on whatever drug they're doing and completely out of his mind now with being fooled. His masculinity, if you want to call it that, is all fucked up. Except he really knew all along. Plus he's just killed Wills with Terry tied up sitting there watching him. What's he gonna do? He's in a rage and completely freaked. He's got to get out of there, but first there's business. So maybe he's gone to the bathroom since he's been there, seen the straight razor Wills shaved his whole body with. He goes back in there…"

"I think I get it from there," Thieu said. He might have been a hard-boiled six-year veteran inspector of homicide, but he was shaking now not with the cold, but with the recitation. He didn't think he could bear to listen to Faro's certain-to-be-vivid clinical description of how the throats of both of them had been slit, or the individual steps as Randy Wills was undressed, trussed, and finally castrated.

Faro needed a moment to extract himself from his imagination. At last, he turned to Thieu. "Anyway, my point is that whatever happened here, this was separate. Nothing to do with Creed or Silverman or anything else. This was its own thing and the case ought to belong to you if you want it."

John Holiday loved Clint Terry-he really did-but he was going to have to fire the irresponsible son of a bitch. He was thinking this as he pulled the chairs off the tables that he'd put on them when he'd closed the place last night at two o'clock. Why did he bother? He set the last chair in its place and checked his watch. Noon. He'd closed the place up a mere ten hours ago, and thank God he'd come by just on a random check to find the door closed and nobody behind the bar. This was his only source of income and it had to be open for him to actually make some money, stay solvent and not be forced to sell cheap.

He still believed he could get a lucky streak going, maybe at poker. Lucky streaks weren't out of the question. Look at him and Michelle. With just a few solid months and a bit of luck, he could make the Ark presentable, and then maybe sell at a profit, go back into something more legitimate.

What was the matter with people? he wondered. A gay ex-convict like Clint with a questionable reputation and no real skills, where was he going to get another job as good as this one? With a laid-back boss, flexible hours, decent pay. What, if anything, was he thinking as he undoubtedly slept in this morning, making it two days in a row, knowing he was blowing the job off? All Holiday asked, essentially, was that the big galoot show up, and especially- especially!-when Holiday had pulled the night shift the day before. But first yesterday, then today. Enough was enough.

He was going to have to do it. That was all there was to it.

Fortunately, when he'd closed last night, he'd prepped the back bar and cleaned up every bit of the glass and mess-good guy and great employer that he was-so that Clint could have it easy when he opened. Now, at least, he was close to ready, albeit two hours late, as he unlocked the front door and flicked on the open sign.

As sometimes happened, a man was waiting just outside and pushed open the door while Holiday went around the bar. The man, a wiry Asian of some kind, was seated by the time the two men were face to face, a cocktail napkin down on the bar between them. "Morning," Holiday said. "What can I get you?"

"How about a beer?"

"Bottled? Draft? We got Sam Adams and Anchor Steam."

"Which one's colder?"

"Anchor," Holiday said, naming the city's own brew. "It's lived here longer so it's had more time to chill. But you sure you want cold today? There's plenty of that outside."

But the play had run out. "Anchor's good," the customer said.

Holiday turned and grabbed a glass from the refrigerator, tipped it up against the Anchor spigot and drew off the pint. Coming back to the bar, he noticed a twenty dollar bill in the gutter, the man's wallet out on the pitted wood. the change.

He put the beer down carefully. "I told the guys who came by yesterday that I wasn't talking to you without my lawyer here. I'm still not. You want me to call him?"

"I'm off duty and I've got the world's simplest question, I promise. Whatever answer you give me, I drink my beer and go home and get some sleep."

For some reason-Clint's absence, or this man's easy manner, or even his own fatigue at having his guard up all the time-Holiday called him on it. "Okay. What the hell? One," he said.

"Where were you last night at midnight?"

Holiday actually laughed out loud. "That's it? That's the one question? We could play this all day. I was here, and by here I mean right here"-he tapped the bar twice- "tending this twenty-two feet of antiquated glulam with dedication and some might even say panache."

"So you had customers? People you knew?"

"Six or eight at least. But I just gave you another question."

"Two actually," Thieu said. He lifted his glass and, closing his eyes, drained half of it. "Great beer," he said. Then, "Thank you."

He picked up his wallet, got off his stool, and walked to the door, where he stopped and turned again. "Keep the change."

The evidence bonanza that was the Terry/Wills apartment was almost enough to overcome the revulsion felt by both Cuneo and Russell when they had first arrived and taken in the appalling scene. Thieu had still been there with them, of course. They didn't know it, but Gerson had overruled his request, based on Faro's theory of the case, that on reflection he should remain the inspector of record. Thieu didn't argue with the lieutenant, but simply hung around until all three inspectors signed off on the release of the bodies to the medical examiner's with a great sense of relief.

Once the overwhelming presence of the corpses was removed, and Thieu had gone, Faro and the other members of the CSI unit began walking the two new inspectors through the masses of evidence they'd acquired and bagged in plastic. Cuneo and Russell were both tightly focused and slightly flushed with the successful results of the ballistics test they had finally shepherded through the crime lab. That test, performed on two remarkably undamaged slugs, had conclusively shown that Sam Silverman and Matt Creed had been shot with the same. 38 caliber weapon.

And now, among other items, they were looking at just such a gun, a Smith amp; Wesson revolver with its serial number filed off, found under a pile of socks in the bureau drawer in the bedroom. Two empty bullet casings remained in the cylinder with four live rounds. Additionally, the same drawer yielded a box of. 38 ammunition minus eight shells, a stack of bills of various denominations-$2440 in all- each one marked with a small red dot in the upper right-hand corner. Wade Panos and Sadie Silverman, both and separately in their respective interviews, had mentioned this habit of Silverman's, red-dotting the bills he'd be depositing.

When they had nearly finished-Faro had already gone home for the day without burdening the new inspectors with his theory of the case-Cuneo had an idea and went to the bedroom closet. The CSI team had already looked inside it and found nothing, then had reclosed the door. Of course, the clothes the two victims had been wearing were already bagged and tagged, but Cuneo had read Thieu's report on the Creed crime scene and had something specific in mind. He wasn't a minute looking before he stopped humming "Bolero" and turned back to the room. "Lincoln, get me another bag, would you? Good-sized."

He came out holding a pair of large shoes. They were nicely made, expensive-looking loafers of light brown braided leather with a tassle. The soles were worn smooth, but there was some gunk-still tacky-stuck where the heel started, a little more around the edge, on the right one. "If this is what I think it is," Cuneo said, "we got this thing wrapped up."

As it turned out, they didn't need the analysis of the garbage effluent. This time the two inspectors of record didn't email the lab and request that someone drive up to the Hall and pick up their new evidence. They had the gun- the probable murder weapon-and, since they hadn't been back to the Hall to return the earlier slugs to the evidence locker, they had possession of them, too. So they had another hamburger lunch at Dago Mary's while the lab fired the gun and compared this new bullet to the earlier rounds.

By one o'clock, they were back uptown talking to Gerson in his office. Ten minutes after that, they appeared in the chambers of Judge Oscar Thomasino, a venerable presence on the bench, who was on his lunch break from the trial over which he was presiding. This was his week as duty judge, which meant he was the person responsible for approving search warrants, and he was already well disposed to both Cuneo and Russell. The DNA evidence that had led to the arrest of the alleged rapist and murderer Shawon Ellerson last week had come from a search conducted by these two inspectors at the suspect's apartment, and Thomasino had signed off on the warrant for that search.

He got up from his desk and the paperwork on it and ushered the two men over to a small seating area by the room's one window. "You boys are having yourselves quite a week," he said.

Russell nodded soberly. It never did to gloat. "We're getting a few breaks, your honor. That's true."

"It's funny how breaks come to the good cops. I've noticed a definite correlation."

"Thank you, your honor."

"This one looks pretty solid," Cuneo added. He handed the warrant across to the judge.

Thomasino looked it over carefully. These may have been good cops, but the decision to violate a citizen's residence by allowing a legal search was never a casual one, and Thomasino took it very seriously indeed. When he'd finished reading, he looked up. "So this man, Holiday, how does he fit exactly? I'm not sure I see it."

Cuneo took point. "We believe he was with the other two men-the victims this morning in the apartment where we found the gun-during the Silverman robbery and murder. Plus, we've confirmed that the same gun was used to kill a security guard two days ago, Matt Creed."

"But these men were not shot? This morning?"

"No, sir. Somebody had cut their throats," Russell said.

"And you think it was this Holiday?"

"Yes, your honor." Cuneo, exuding urgency, came forward in a kind of a crouch. "We didn't get a positive match on the slugs for Silverman and Creed until this morning and based on them, we were planning to arrest Terry and Wills, except they went dead on us."

"But not Holiday? Why not?"

Russell shifted in his seat. "He's a bartender. He was working when Creed got shot, so we think that Creed was just the two of them, Terry and Wills."

"Maybe Holiday didn't even know they were planning on killing him," Cuneo added. "He might have felt they were getting too trigger-happy and were a risk. Which is why Holiday decided he had to kill them."

"But," Russell said, "it's probable he did know about Creed. That they all decided."

"And why would they do that?" Thomasino asked.

Cuneo straightened up, the tag team continuing. "Because Creed had identified all of them as the guys who'd killed Silverman. So they figure he can't testify if he's dead."

Russell jumped back in. "And me and Dan repeating what Creed told us would be hearsay and inadmissible anyway, isn't that right?"

A faint trace of smile tugged at the judge's mouth. "The rules about hearsay have fooled better men than me. But you're saying you had an ID on Holiday? Then why isn't he in jail already?"

"The ID was in the dark at fifty feet, your honor," Russell said. "The DA wouldn't have charged it if that's all it was."

"We needed physical evidence tying him to Silverman," Cuneo added. "And we didn't get any until this morning, when we got plenty."

Thomasino stroked his chin, pulled at his ear, rubbed his neck. Something about all this still bothered him. "I see you've got a lot for these two dead men, although it's a little late now. I'm still not sure I see the connection to Holiday so clearly."

Cuneo had started tapping his thighs in agitation. "Your honor, he killed them both last night. The other dead man, Creed, put Holiday with them both during the Silverman robbery and murder. I'm a hundred percent certain we'll find evidence we can use at his place tying him to four murders. This man needs to be off the street."

"But you need probable cause for a search warrant. You gentlemen know this. And I'm not sure you've got anything yet that rises to that standard."

"Your honor." Russell reached over and touched his partner's arm, stopping the agitation. Playing counterpoint to Cuneo's intensity, he leaned back in his chair, crossed a leg over his knee, "I personally heard Matt Creed positively identify the three men who robbed and killed Mr. Silverman as Clint Terry, Randy Wills and John Holiday." He pointed to the form in Thomasino's hand. "As the affidavit indicates, we found bills with Mr. Silverman's distinctive mark at Wills's and Terry's apartment. We will be searching for similar bills at Mr. Holiday's. We know they were together."

Chewing the inside of his cheek, the judge sat with it for another moment. Finally, he narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Inspector Russell, you heard this Mr. Creed's identification with your own ears?"

"Yes, sir."

"Inspector Cuneo? Same question."

"Yes, your honor."

Thomasino nodded. "All right. Perhaps the warrant application just isn't as clear as it needs to be. I want you to handwrite that right here, initial and date it, each of you. I'm calling that good enough for me." He came all the way forward and placed the warrant on the small table between them. The pen's scratch was the only sound in the room.

Holiday called Michelle at her apartment from the Ark. She had a restaurant review for a place on Chestnut Street and they'd been planning to go there together for lunch, but now that wasn't going to happen. He told her that Clint still hadn't shown up and he was going to have to pull a double shift. He'd see her tonight, late, after he got off. He wondered, since the restaurant was near his own duplex, if she'd mind swinging by his place for a clean shirt or two and some underwear. He might be pulling back-to-backs at the bar and he could be with her sooner tonight if she could save him the long walk or bus ride home. He'd lost the last car he'd owned at a poker game, then found he didn't need a car for his normal life, anyway, since he lived all of it within such a relatively small radius. Most days he walked to work-Chestnut to Taylor or Mason, then all the way down to O'Farrell wasn't even two miles and the hills gave him some badly needed exercise.

So after lunch, sometime between 2:00 and 3:00, Michelle found herself climbing the stairs to his flat. He'd lived in the same upper duplex on Casa Street in the Marina for over fifteen years, had bought it with Emma, lived there with her for their three years together. In a fit of fiscal probity during Emma's pregnancy, the young couple had actually bought mortgage insurance and because of that, after her death, the place was now paid off. It still had ghosts for him, evidently, and he spent as little time there as possible, although he had told her that he recognized the necessity of holding on to it. He could never afford to rent a similar, or even a far less desirable, place. It was just something he possessed, like his bar. Part of his life.

There had been three newspapers in the little area at the foot of the stairs, and Michelle was carrying them as she got to the upper landing and noticed that his door was open. She pushed at it gingerly and it gave another few inches. Inside, she heard unmistakable sounds of movement and male voices.

"Hello!" she sang out. "Is anybody home?"

The voices ceased. Footsteps approached. The door opened all the way. A well-dressed, clean-cut black man stood in front of her, scowling. "Can I help you?"

"Is John home?" she asked. "Who are you?"

The man pulled out his wallet and showed her his identification. Another man, this one white, appeared in the hall behind him. "Inspector Lincoln Russell. My partner, Dan Cuneo. We're with homicide."

"Homicide?" She backed away a step. "Is John okay?"

"That would be John Holiday? Yes, ma'am, as far as we know."

"All right, but then what are you doing here?"

"We're searching his apartment." Inspector Russell reached into his coat pocket and produced a piece of paper. "We have a warrant."

The other man came forward. "While we're getting to know each other, can I please see some identification?"

"From me?"

"Yes, ma'am. If you don't mind."

It didn't seem to her that it was a request she could refuse. Flustered, going for her purse, she dropped the newspapers around the welcome mat. Finally, she fished around and brought out her driver's license, which she handed to Russell, since he was nearest to her. He glanced at it, showed it to his partner, then gave it back to her and said, "All right, Ms. Maier, you mind telling us why you're here?"

Michelle was thinking as fast as she could, showing them nothing. "I've been trying to get in touch with John and he's not answering his phone, so I thought I'd come by and leave a message on his door. I'm going away for a couple of days and he always watches my cats." She knew she was blurting and realized at the same time that this might not be a bad thing. "He's really good with cats. He never forgets. Anyway, so when I got here I thought I'd pick up his papers when I saw them all down there, and then the door was open a little, so I… well, you know." She stammered to a halt. "I'm sorry to have interrupted you," she said.

The black inspector turned to his partner, came back to her. "You don't know where Mr. Holiday is?"

"No. That's why I came by, to see if…" She gave them both her most plaintive look. "Is he in trouble?"

Cuneo came forward a step. "You might want to find somebody else for your cats. If he comes by, we'll see he gets the papers."

It was a dismissal. She couldn't believe it, but as long as she stayed cool, they were letting her just go away. "Okay, then." She forced herself to wait another moment, then raised her hand tentatively, as though wondering if it would be appropriate to wave. "Sorry to have bothered you. 'Bye."

"So… what?" Gerson said. The three of them were in his office, sitting around in something like a circle. The door was closed. "You left his copy of the warrant taped to the front door? Inside?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't want any technical error to screw this up."

"No, sir," Cuneo said. "Neither do we. It was a righteous search, by the book."

"And where was all this? Just lying out?"

He was referring to the three baggies the inspectors had brought in with them-their winning streak growing to truly absurd proportions. In Holiday's bathroom, one of the drawers under the sink didn't appear to be as deep as the counter over it. Upon pulling it out, Russell discovered a battered, old dull red leather pouch stuffed to near bursting with over $3,700 in mixed bills, each one marked with a red dot in the upper right-hand corner. As if that weren't enough, at almost the same instant, Cuneo-in the bedroom-let out a yelp when he opened a cigar box on a shelf in the back corner of the closet. It rattled when he picked it up, and he found that it contained seven rings, five of them women's engagement rings with large diamonds, two of them for men. One of the men's rings was truly distinctive, inset with what looked to the inspectors to be a huge and brilliant star sapphire. Two of the rings, including the sapphire, still had the tiny price tag attached with a small length of thin white string. The price tags also had red dots on them-Silverman's.

Cuneo nodded. "We talked about it on the way in," he said. "If I were more cynical, I wouldn't believe this could have fallen together so perfectly all by itself."

"You are more cynical, Dan," his partner said. He turned to Gerson. "It wasn't just lying out, sir. Holiday had it hidden. Just not well enough."

"Don't get me wrong," Cuneo said. "I'm not complaining. I'll take it. Makes up for all the times nothing works. It's just so weird. I'm tempted to go buy a lottery ticket."

Gerson nodded. "And Thomasino signed off on the search?"

"Yes, sir," Russell said.

"Okay, so what I suggest you do is go back to him right away…"

"He's at trial," Cuneo said.

"Interrupt his honor," Gerson replied. "He won't mind, I promise. Print yourselves out an arrest warrant and show him what his wisdom allowed you to discover. You'll make his day. You have any idea where Mr. Holiday is at the present time?"

"Dan called the Ark, sir, from the phone at his place as soon as we found this stuff. When a male voice answered, we hung up. We figure he can't have a clue we've made this kind of progress. Enough to arrest him. And it's got to be him working there now. His other bartender's dead."

"Good point. All right. So after the judge signs your warrant, you're going down to pick him up? You want some backup?"

Cuneo answered. "We can handle it, sir. He won't give us any trouble."

Gerson considered for a beat. "Okay, but by the book."

"Every time, sir," Russell said, nodding in agreement. "Every time."

"Glitsky. Payroll."

It rankled every time.

"Lieutenant? Barry Gerson again."

"Yes, sir." No emphasis. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, first I wanted to apologize for going so territorial on you the other day. I can't blame you for being interested in Silverman. Your father knew him. Of course you're interested. I was out of line."

"Thank you. What's second?"

The brusqueness of the reply slowed Gerson for a second, but then he recovered. "Second is I thought you'd want to know that Cuneo and Russell have been doing some incredible work these last couple of days. I believe they've gotten to the bottom of this thing with Silverman. At least they've got plenty that you can pass on to your father."

Suddenly the flat tone left Glitsky's voice. "I'm listening."

Gerson gave him the rundown on the evidence that so unambiguously pointed to Terry, Wills and Holiday-the gun in Terry's drawer, so clearly and demonstrably both the Silverman and Creed murder weapon. But also the red-dotted bills from both the Jones Street apartment and from Holiday's duplex in the marina. Although the lab hadn't finished its analysis of the gunk yet, Gerson threw in for good measure the shoes found in Terry's apartment and their probable relation to the Creed killing. The pawnshop jewelry articles in Holiday's closet. The case was solved, soup to nuts.

When Gerson finished, Glitsky exhaled heavily. "So that's it?"

"That's it."

"And Holiday killed the other two. Last night, was it?"

"Looks like. There's really no other option. Thomasino gave Cuneo and Russell a warrant in about five seconds. They've gone on down now to pick him up."

Glitsky spent a second or two adjusting to this new reality. The fundamental rule of his thirty years of life as a cop was that evidence talked, and in this case it positively screamed. He had been completely wrong, and his meddling had possibly even inconvenienced the good inspectors working the case. Maybe, he thought bitterly, payroll was where he belonged after all. He'd obviously lost his edge. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. "Then I'm the one who should be apologizing, Lieutenant. If Wade Panos put your guys on the trail that led here, I must have pegged him wrong."

"That's not an issue for me, Abe." Glitsky noted the first name, a far cry from the "lieutenant" he'd started with. "You thought you were doing me a favor."

"I really did."

"I believe you. Some of these rent-a-cops… well, you know. They're not all righteous, we can go that far. But Panos had something real this time. We're lucky he felt cooperative. Anyway, if you've got something I need to hear in the future, my door's open. You put in a lot of years at this desk. I'd be an idiot if I didn't take advantage of that."

"Thanks, Barry. I appreciate it. But it's your gig now. I'm out of it."

"Maybe. But I'm reserving the right to come to you if something stumps me. Deal?"

"Deal."

When they hung up, Glitsky sat unmoving, turned away from his desk, staring out the window into the bright afternoon. He heard the wind whistling around his corner of the building. A deep sigh escaped. In spite of the kissy-face words, the hard truth settled over him like a shroud-in the real world, Glitsky would probably never set foot in homicide again. No one was even going to have to try to keep him out. The thing was done, a fait accompli.

It was the termination of all those years.

After a minute, he swiveled his chair, stood up and went over to the printing room to see how the paychecks were coming along. They were due out tomorrow morning. That was the priority now, the sum total of his professional importance-making sure those checks got out on time.