The Second Chair

23

Hardy's medical business with Frannie- taking her to the doctor, getting her back home, into bed and fed- trumped any interaction he might have had with Juan Salarco, and took up a good portion of his morning. Rebecca, the dear, had told her mother that since Dad had taken the regular car, she had no choice but to drive herself and Vincent to school in the convertible. So after he'd changed into his business suit, then called to speak with the principal at Sutro, he swung down to their high school, found the S2000 in the lot and switched cars on her, leaving a note about the broken window on the 4Runner so she wouldn't think it had happened at school.

He drove by Salarco's, saw that the truck was nowhere to be seen, and realized he'd have to come back after the workday. As far as he knew, Juan's wife Anna spoke only Spanish. Beyond that, he doubted if she would know the precise residence where her husband was working at any given moment. Anxious though he was for Salarco's information, he had to pass for now. He had other questions, and precious few answers.

It wasn't far to Sutro and he made it there by the end of the school's lunch hour. The outer administration office was empty, but Hardy knew where he was going and went right to it. The principal was in his office, behind his desk doing some paperwork, and stood when Hardy poked his head in. "Mr. Wagner? Sorry to barge in but time is short and there isn't anybody out front. Dismas Hardy. Andrew Bartlett's attorney?"

Wagner, portly and slightly foppish with a bow tie and suspenders, reached a hand out over his desk. "Certainly. How's he doing?" In his earlier call, Hardy had told him about the suicide attempt.

"He's alive," Hardy said. "Which is good enough for now."

Wagner swiveled in his chair, looked out the window behind him at the play yard, still packed with students. "This has been a terrible tragedy for the school," he said. "To think that he was coming here every day for weeks after…" He sighed. "Our counselors are a little overwhelmed, you know. Students realizing they'd been walking around, or even taking classes, with a murderer."

"An alleged murderer," Hardy said.

"Alleged or otherwise." Wagner spun back around, gave him the man-to-man. "Mr. Hardy, please. Do you really think it's possible Andrew is not guilty?"

"Yes. Possible. Although proving I'm right may be a different story."

"I must say it's refreshing to hear someone say they don't think he's guilty. Pretty much all I heard after the arrest was that it was open-and-shut."

"I'd heard the same thing myself. I keep hearing it, in fact."

Wagner moved some papers around on his desk. "You know, it would be so wonderful for the school if that weren't the case. It's bad enough that the two victims were members of the community. But if somehow Andrew were found innocent, it might go a long way toward starting the healing."

"Well, you know, sir, that's the reason I came by here today. I've got a hearing for Andrew scheduled to begin tomorrow and I wondered if I might ask you a favor. I understand his sister goes here, too."

"That's right."

"Well, I know it's unusual, but I've got some questions for her, and for the two other people that were in the play with Andrew, that really might be of some use. I know I could wait and see all of them at home with their parents"- and maybe their lawyers, he thought-"tonight, but I'm in a time crunch of major proportions. Would it be possible to borrow a room here in the office and pull those three people out of class for a few minutes?" When he saw that Wagner had a problem with the idea, he added, "Mr. North assured me that I would have your complete cooperation in the defense of his son."

Wagner considered a moment. "I'm sure we can do that." A bell rang and he looked up at his wall clock. "Fifth period," he said. "Together or separately?"

"Separately would be better," Hardy said.

But it wasn't to be that simple. Wagner's desire to see Andrew cleared because it would benefit Sutro might have blinded him to the fact that he should not under any circumstances be allowing his students to talk to an attorney without parental permission. But obviously he couldn't let Hardy be alone in a room with one of his students, either.

Hardy was obliged to let him sit in. He couldn't help but think that this changed the dynamic dramatically- he had been planning a gloves-off discussion with each of the kids, but he had no choice. If the meetings were going to happen at all, they'd be in Wagner's office with the principal in attendance.

Alicia breezed in first. Hardy had heard next to nothing about her, either from Wu or from Andrew. His only preconception was that she was probably the model for the sister in Andrew's short story, locked in her room listening to death music and smoking dope. His first look at her- very pretty with beautiful long dark hair, clear skin and eyes, designer clothes- was a bit of a shock and brought him up short. Andrew's story, he reminded himself, was fiction. If the judge wound up having trouble with that concept, Hardy thought he could bring in Alicia as a witness and win the point without any further debate.

She took a few confident steps into the office, threw at glance at Hardy- a stranger to her- and spoke to Wagner. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Alicia, this is Mr. Hardy. He's one of the lawyers representing Andrew. He'd like to talk to you for a few minutes if you don't mind."

Her face grew serious, and she nodded first at Wagner, then at Hardy. "Sure. Okay. Why would I mind? Although Andrew and I aren't exactly what I'd call close."

"Why not?" Hardy asked.

"Well, I don't know. He's just… We don't have that much in common, I suppose."

"So you don't know much about what's happening with him?"

"Just of course the basics. What Dad and Linda have told me. I thought it must be some misunderstanding or something that Dad would have to work out."

Hardy found that an interesting turn of phrase. He asked her, "Would you be surprised to hear that Andrew tried to kill himself this morning?"

She stared. All the vivacity drained out of her face. She looked to Wagner. "Is that true? Is he dead?"

"No, but Mr. Hardy was at the hospital this morning."

"He tried to hang himself," Hardy said. "He didn't succeed."

The news derailed her for a beat. Without asking permission, she went to a chair and sat. "I guess I could see him doing that," she said. "He's just always so intense and so unhappy. And then when Laura… was killed, it got so much worse." She turned and faced Hardy full on. "But I don't think he killed her. You don't think he did, do you?"

Hardy shook his head no. "There might be some facts about that night that don't work if Andrew did it."

"See? I didn't think he did either."

Hardy hadn't quite said that, but he'd take it. He stood up, hands in his pockets, and began to pace the room. "But the problem I've got is that I don't know what else was going on in Andrew's life, something that might have had some connection to Mr. Mooney or Laura and given someone else, perhaps, a reason to have killed them."

"Surely not another student here," Wagner said.

"I'm not implying that. There's no evidence implicating anyone else here at Sutro." Hardy came back to Alicia. "But you're his sister. You may have heard Andrew say something that didn't seem to mean anything at the time, but now when you think back on it, it might have been important."

He thought that given the different crowd Alicia hung out with, the odds were against her providing some alternative theory of the crime, but at least she might start thinking about her brother's situation differently. In Hardy's experience, schools- like companies and coffee groups and men's clubs- always had secrets. If Andrew hadn't killed Mooney and Laura, then the person who had done it might have had some connection to Sutro. At least, from Alicia or one of the other students, he might get some rumors, something to wave in front of a judge or jury, as opposed to what he had now.

Which was nothing.

Nick and Honey are the character names of the young couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? who become foils for the vitriolic outpourings of George and Martha as their relationship implodes. Mooney cast Andrew and Laura as the leads, with the secondary couple's parts going to Steve Randell as Nick and Jeri Croft as Honey.

If Alicia North was the norm for the "popular" look at Sutro, Jeri was something else again. She'd dyed her hair a dark henna, rimmed her eyes with black kohl shadow. Waif-thin, the pajama bottoms she wore hung low enough on her hips to reveal a hint of pubic hair on her belly under the black T-shirt. In addition to the silver rings adorning both of her ears, she'd pierced her nose, eyebrows and tongue. When she got to the office, she greeted Wagner and then Hardy with an ill-disguised wariness. She tugged her pajamas up an inch or two. "So why again am I here?"

Wagner went through the explanation for a second time. The girl scanned Hardy up and down, clearly pegged him as another meddling adult in the Wagner mold. Suit and tie. A dork who started out by saying, "I'm trying to get at the truth of what happened that night."

She rolled her eyes, an actress all right. "I don't think so," she said. "If you're Andrew's lawyer and you're any good, you're trying to get him off, whether it's the truth or not. So give me a break, all right? And that night? I don't know what happened. I wasn't there."

"Okay," Hardy said. "Thanks for coming down, then." Dismissing her. Two could play at that game.

She threw a confused glance first to Hardy, then at Wagner. "That's it?"

Hardy, stonewalling, shrugged. "You obviously don't want to talk about it. I want to help Andrew and I'm sure there are other students here at Sutro who feel the same way I do. So why waste each other's time. Sorry to have interrupted your class."

She shifted her weight, hip cocked. "Who said I didn't want to help Andrew?"

Hardy, giving her nothing, looked up from scribbling on his legal pad as though surprised she was still there. "I got that impression. It's not a problem. Thanks again." He went back to his notes, spoke to Wagner. "Let's try Steve Randell."

"Wait a minute! Steve doesn't know anything either."

Patiently, Hardy said, "Well, if that's true, I'm sure he'll let us know."

"What could he tell you? He wasn't there either."

"I don't know, Jeri. What do you know, say, about Laura?"

"You mean she and Mooney?"

"We can start with that, sure."

"Well, the main thing, they didn't have anything going. Sexually."

"But Andrew thought they did?"

"Maybe. I mean, yeah, sure, the first couple weeks of rehearsal, Laura got a crush on him. So did I, you want to know the truth. He was just so there, you know?"

"This is Mr. Mooney now?" Hardy ventured an encouraging smile. "Just keeping the players straight. Mr. Mooney was so there, you said. You want to talk about that?"

A sigh. "Have you met Laura's parents?"

"No. They wouldn't see me."

"There you go. They wouldn't see her much either. I'm going to sit down." She folded herself down onto the floor. "The thing about Mike- Mr. Mooney- is there was no… like barrier, you know. I mean, at school he was a teacher and all, but when you got acting, you were with him. Just completely equal. He'd get inside your space and you'd just want to stay there. It was just total acceptance."

"Of what, though, exactly, if you can say?"

She paused, thinking. "Of who you are, of what you were doing."

"And Laura? How did she react to that?"

"What do you think? Like a desert to water. She bloomed, man. Everybody did."

"And this is when Andrew became so jealous?"

Jeri didn't answer right away. "Okay," she finally said, "let's get this part straight. At first, yeah, Andrew kind of freaked. But you've got to remember that this was like in November or something, four months before the shootings happened. Four months. You know how long that is? That's half the school year."

"All right. But you said Andrew freaked? What do you mean by that?"

"First, though, you had to know Laura."

"Were you and she friends?"

"Like, best." On the floor with her legs crossed, Jeri bent over at the waist, stretching, came back up. The movement seemed unconscious, but it bought her some time to get her emotions in check. "You know she was seriously depressed?"

"No. I hadn't heard that."

"That's the key, though. She'd been in therapy forever. She tried to kill herself two years ago. Did you know that?"

Hardy and Wagner exchanged glances, and Wagner gave a small nod, acknowledging it.

"Do you know why?" Hardy asked.

"A million reasons. The world, you know? But mostly the home scene sucked."

"What sucked about it?"

"Basically, clueless parents. They're heavily into the social thing here in town, you know? The Wrights? Wright-Way Components? Anyway, she had this whole wing of her house that was all hers? So she comes home from school, goes to her room and gets loaded, listens to all, like, you know, metal and death music."

"Like who?"

Jeri shook her head. "You wouldn't know them. They're not playing for guys like you. Let's just say the music's dark. So anyway, she's popping valiums and ludes and anything else she can get her hands on, but nobody notices. I mean, her parents see her every day, right? And Laura's fine, she's pulling A's and B's. And Mom and Dad are all, 'Whatever, as long as you don't bother me, 'cause I've got a party.' You know? Same as Andrew."

"You mean with the drugs, too?"

"No. Andrew's uptight about drugs, but the home thing. Gone parents. That's how they connected."

Hardy found himself working the fictional angle again- the sister in "Perfect Killer" hadn't been based on Andrew's sister, Alicia, but on his girlfriend Laura. He made it up.

Next, wondering if the Wrights had discovered their daughter's pregnancy and, because of the rumors about Mooney's promiscuity, attributed it to him. And what they might have been tempted to do about that. He scratched a note, came back to Jeri. "So how does all this relate to Mr. Mooney?" he asked.

She scrunched her face puzzling it out. Hesitantly, the words started to come. "I guess, I think Laura needed somebody to notice she was alive. Maybe Andrew needed the same thing. That was kind of the baseline, you see?"

Hardy didn't exactly, but wanted to keep her talking, so he nodded.

"Okay, so you've got two needy kids- Andrew and Laura- hanging on to each other, right? Then, all the sudden really, one of them wakes up. Now she doesn't just need anymore. Suddenly, she's… I don't know if happy is the word, maybe… validated. Mike- Mr. Mooney- makes her feel that way, all on her own, without Andrew. If you ask me, that's what Andrew freaked about. Laura just had this new confidence and went flying away. Not with Mike, by herself. But Mike had made it happen, and Andrew didn't know how to handle it."

"So how'd they get back together?" Hardy asked.

"That's what's funny. The same thing, I think, happened to Andrew. Mike really thought Andrew was a great actor. I mean, he gave him the lead. And I think Andrew finally just got it. He'd been stupid and he apologized. So next time he and Laura got together, it was… I don't know… it seemed like it was on a different plane, if that makes any sense."

"So you're saying you don't think Andrew was jealous of Mr. Mooney anymore, at least not by the time the shootings happened?"

"No way. He just wasn't. I knew them as well as I know anybody. They were tight."

"But she didn't tell him she was pregnant? Did you know that she was?"

Jeri glanced down to the floor. "Yeah. But she was getting an abortion. She didn't want to screw things up with Andrew again by getting him involved in all that. It would be better if he just never knew. That's why she was staying later with Mike those nights, getting all that worked out. He was going to help with the arrangements. She sure couldn't go to her parents."

"All right. But what if Andrew found out about the baby and wanted to keep it? Might they have fought about that?"

"I doubt it. And so then because he wants the baby to live, he kills it? I don't think so. And while we're at it, Andrew didn't shoot Laura, either. Or Mike. There's no way. That's just not who he is."

Hardy leaned forward. "Then do you have any idea at all who might have?"

"This is going to sound weird, I know," she said, her dark eyes shining now, "but I don't think it could have been anybody who knew either of them." A tear track, black with kohl, coursed her cheek. "They were too great," she said.

24

First thing that Monday morning, Glitsky had put out the word with Marcel Lanier that he would like to see the field notes from the weekend work of his task force investigators on the Boscacci investigation. Because of the Twin Peaks killings on Friday night, Lanier himself, as head of homicide, had been otherwise employed and had not been able to participate, but Pat Belou, Lincoln Russell and the General Work inspectors had covered all of the gun shows in the Bay Area that weekend except the one in Fremont. Maybe because these San Francisco cops didn't have reliable snitches in some of the outlying counties, nobody came back with anything remotely resembling Glitsky's phone book from Mr. Ewing's truck.

Frustrated by the lack of data, Glitsky still believed he was on to the only possible lead, albeit a remote one, to Boscacci's murder. So before he ran out to his 8:00 A.M. chiefs' meeting, he called the ATF liaison for San Francisco, got a recorded message and left one of his own. He gave a Xerox copy of Ewing's phone book to the guys from General Work and told them to get names and addresses for everyone in the book from the phone company's reverse listings. He wanted them by the time the ATF got back to him so that he'd have something to trade- the names and addresses of known suppressor buyers- in exchange for the ATF's cooperation in supplying still other, much larger lists of similar buyers. He had the personnel and the budget, for once, and he was looking for the nexus, if any, of suppressor buyers and people who might have had dealings with Allan Boscacci.

After chiefs', he met with the mayor's representative, Celia Bonham, at City Hall, to discuss some jurisdictional issues between the SFPD and the officers and administrators of Homeland Security. After that, Paganucci drove him halfway home, out to Fillmore, to talk to the new executive director of the African-American Art & Culture Complex about some mutual impact issues, such as the use of the city's finest as private security for the complex at the city's expense. Back at the Hall of Justice, he fielded questions from reporters on all three of the major events currently transpiring in his domain- the handling of the LeShawn Brodie matter, Allan Boscacci's murder (which some reporter had now called an assassination) and the double homicides of the Executioner on Friday night. Since he had nothing good or even mildly productive to say about any of these, it was a dispiriting news conference. Glitsky couldn't seem to get much of a spin going about the fact that between the chiefs, the homicide detail and his own special event number task force, he had nothing to show, and very little to say, about crime in the city within the past six days.

He finally checked into his office. The General Work guys had done a good job while he'd been going to meetings, and they'd compiled a neatly typed name and address list from the Ewing phone numbers, which now lay under a stapler on his desk. For lunch, he washed two rice cakes down with a Diet Coke. When his receptionist buzzed to tell him that two ATF agents were here, he felt reasonably prepared.

But that didn't last long.

The two of them- Aitkin and Drew- struck Glitksy as having come straight not from their offices but from the street, perhaps a bust. Both still wore their black field jackets with the oversized initials "ATF" across the back; both were packing in obvious, bulging shoulder holsters. Drew made the introductions for both of them, and they sat without any fanfare in the chairs in front of Glitsky's desk.

Glitsky had planned to open the discussion by expressing his appreciation that they'd come down on such short notice and so on, but Drew barely gave him the chance before he interrupted. "We just wondered, sir," he began in a terse tone, "if you're familiar with the joint task force we've had working with local officers in each county and through which we're all supposed to coordinate our activities?"

"Sure," Glitsky said. "I called Sergeant Trona last Friday and he told me he could get me hooked up with one of your agents by early next week, which is now. I'm heading up an event number force on this Allan Boscacci homicide. I didn't have that kind of time." He reached for his list. "But I think you'll be pleased with my results."

Aitkin, who so far hadn't said a word, came forward and took the sheet of paper. Drew glanced over at it without much show of interest. "And these are what?" he asked.

"Names and addresses of people who've bought suppressors illegally from a man named James Martin Ewing out of the Cow Palace. Or at least that's where he was working out of last Friday."

"How did you get to him?" Drew asked. "Ewing?"

"I had a snitch. It was easier than I thought it should be."

Finally Aitkin spoke, turning to Drew. "Imagine that."

"I beg your pardon." Glitsky didn't much appreciate the tone. "Do you gentlemen have some kind of a problem?"

"Yes, sir. I'm afraid we do." Drew sat back, linked his hands over his belt.

Aitkin had carried in with him a flat leather briefcase and now he opened it on his lap and withdrew a photograph, which he handed over to his partner. Drew, in turn, handed it to Glitsky. "I'd like to ask you, sir, if this looks familiar to you."

The picture was of him. The photo was taken last Friday, no doubt from the camera Ewing had concealed somewhere inside his van. "Ewing is your snitch," he said.

Drew nodded. "Didn't you wonder why it was so easy getting connected with him? You got a guy looking at twenty years if he gets caught at this stuff and you drop one name to a more or less random dealer at a gun show and you're talking to him in fifteen minutes? Any warning bells go off for you?"

"I thought I was having a lucky day."

The two agents' heads turned, briefly, to each other. Drew came back at Glitsky. "So what are you looking for?"

"Background. I need to know if any of these guys are connected to Boscacci." He pointed to his list. "It's long odds, but we're not working with much."

The problems of any local police department were of no concern to the ATF. "We've busted two-thirds of Ewing's people already," Drew said. "The others we're watching to see who they hang with, how they hook up. You know the drill, which is why we're asking you not to pursue… this any further."

Glitsky passed the photo back to Drew. His stomach was doing a mariachi dance and he put a hand over it. "I'd still be interested in getting some background on anyone who has bought suppressors, see if we can get a match."

Drew and Aitkin exchanged a glance and nodded. "We can provide that," Drew said. "Probably be a couple of days."

"Sooner would be better."

"Always. Of course."

As the two men were standing up, Aitkin spoke for the second time. "It's always our intention to work with local agencies, sir. That's why we set up the joint task forces, for mutual communication and cooperation. So in future, if you plan to freelance out of your jurisdiction, you might check in with local authorities to find out what you might be getting into."

"I get it," Glitsky said.

When they had gone through the door and out of the office, he heard one of them say, "Fucking locals."

"I need to talk to you." Wu hadn't changed since the hospital. She still wore her blue jogging suit, tennis shoes, the Giants warm-up jacket. She stood in the doorway to Brandt's mini-cubicle at the YGC. Her mouth was dry and her palms wet. Even after the ride they'd shared to downtown, which had seemed to break the ice a little, she didn't know how he would receive her. But she felt that coming here to him could be read as an apology of sorts. She was playing straight with him now, keeping her opposite number up on developments in the case. She knew she was here with the best of intentions. "You're not going to like it."

Brandt had his hand on the telephone receiver, halfway to his ear, but he replaced it. He wore a neutral expression. "I already heard," he said. "Did he make it?"

"He's going to."

"I'm glad. I really am."

"Which leaves us some business." She leaned against the doorjamb. "I'm requesting a continuance on the hearing tomorrow. I wanted to tell you about it beforehand."

"I figured you would," Brandt said, "when I heard about the suicide attempt. You ought to know, since we're being up front with one another, that I heard Warvid this morning talking to his clerk about that very thing. I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"He said he wouldn't continue?"

"That's what I hear from the clerk. If Andrew's bipedal, we go."

"Maybe he won't be."

"That remains to be seen then. But let me ask you something. If Warvid continues on these grounds, what's to stop everyone from feeling suicidal the day before their hearing?" Brandt leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, his feet up on the desktop. "Let's be straight here, okay? This hearing is a formality. You know it, I know it, Warvid knows it."

"My client went sideways, Jason. Hasn't that ever happened to you?"

"Of course. All the time. But right now, the only thing Warvid wants is to restore order to the cosmos, and to do that, he's got to get Bartlett back upstairs. Which he'll do. Tomorrow."

Wu went from one doorpost to the other, arms crossed. "I'm calling witnesses, you know. I've filed a list."

Brandt's feet came off the desk. He straightened in his chair. "You're not fighting the criteria?"

"Every one."

"All I need is one, you realize that?"

"Sure."

Brandt sighed. "I've got to assume you've read his short story."

"I have," she said. "I can mitigate it."

"All right, mitigate. But you can't believe that a double homicide won't strike the court as of sufficient gravity?"

"It isn't if he didn't do it."

Brandt's mouth stood half-open. When he finally spoke, his voice hummed with concern. "Amy, listen. Last time we were in court, you were admitting the petition. Now you've got one of the world's fairest judges seriously upset with you. And what are you going to argue, that the homicides didn't happen? 'Cause that's all I've got to show- that they did. There's no burden of proof. You know this. I make a prima facie case and I've got gravity and circumstances. You even get a step into arguing the basic facts and Warvid's going to shut you down."

She smiled. "Good. You're worried."

"I'm not worried," he said. "Or rather, I'm worried for you. There's no argument to be made here. Warvid's going to walk in with his mind made up, as it should be."

"Maybe not, after he's seen my motions."

"But Amy… Bartlett isn't a juvenile!"

"He's seventeen, Jason. He's a boy."

Brandt threw his head back, brought his hands to his face, finally looked at her over them. "I don't believe you're doing this."

Wu took a step, about the limit she could trespass without coming behind Brandt's desk. "Jason, listen to me. You know when Andrew said in court that he didn't do it? He might have been telling the truth."

"No, he wasn't."

"But what if he was?"

"So go to trial downtown and get him off. But for God's sake, do yourself a favor and get it out of Warvid's courtroom first."

But she shook her head. Intense now, she leaned in to him. "He's already suicidal, Jason. As it is now, he thinks he's going to be in prison the rest of his life."

"That's where he should be. He killed two people, Amy."

"Maybe, but he's innocent until-"

Brandt barked a laugh of pure disdain. "Oh, give me a fucking break."

"You read his stuff, Jason, you know-"

"I know he's dangerous; that's what his writing shows me. He's a sophisticated criminal mind who thinks he can use you, and is on his way to proving it."

"He tried to kill himself to manipulate me? Is that what you're saying?"

Brandt shrugged. "I heard the shirt he used ripped. Maybe he tore it a little first."

Wu reacted in a blaze of rage. "Bullshit, Jason! That's just such bullshit!"

Suddenly, behind them in the hallway loomed the imposing and, to Wu, increasingly sinister form of bailiff Nelson, knocking on the door behind her. "Is everything going along okay with you people?" He moved in closer, lowered his voice. "The sound's traveling pretty good in the hallway here."

Brandt spoke over Wu's shoulder, the voice relaxed and friendly. "We're fine, Ray. Just a friendly little pretrial conference between two country lawyers."

Wu's eyes were flashing, her color high. She whirled and brushed by Nelson. "Excuse me, please." Jogging, in her tennis shoes, she disappeared around the corner of the hallway.

Brandt found her car, the last in a long line of them parked at the curb downhill from the front entrance to the YGC.

She was in the driver's seat, sitting with both hands on the wheel, head down. From the sidewalk, Brandt hesitated, then touched the passenger window with a knuckle, leaned over so she could see who it was. She reached over and unlocked the door. When he'd closed it again behind him, they both sat in silence for the first seconds. Finally, Brandt, eyes sideways, let out a long sigh. "I shouldn't have said that in there. I don't think your boy faked it."

She kept her own eyes forward, her hands back on the wheel. "I came down here as a courtesy to you, Jason. I wasn't playing any more games." She paused. "With this case or with you. The other night…" The words stopped. She looked over at him.

"We don't have to talk about that."

"Yes, we do, I think." Then. "You were right. There's something wrong with me."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." She moved her hand from the steering wheel as though she were going to touch him, but stopped, dropped it into her lap. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure."

"That night, at the Balboa… I didn't go into that thinking about Allan or Andrew or the deal I thought I'd made. That was just us. That was real."

"All right."

"That's all I want to say."

"Okay, then, I've got one. If it was so real, why'd you kick me out?"

"I didn't kick you out. You left."

"After you said, and this is a direct quote, 'You'd better be out of here by morning or we're in trouble.' You don't remember saying that?"

Wu shook her head slowly from side to side. "I didn't mean legal trouble. I meant… I meant if this was supposed to be a one-nighter and neither of us wanted to get serious, you had to leave before we went any further."

"But we already-"

She turned on him. "I didn't mean the sex."

Brandt blew out heavily. "No. I know. I know what you meant." A long silence. Then. "You figured I was playing you." He chuckled. "I love this."

"Me, too. It's perfect."

"A microcosm of life itself," Brandt said. "Makes me think, though, that maybe we want to go in and get out of Bartlett now."

Wu shook her head. "We can't. I can't abandon him, and if you drop out, the seven-oh-seven gets continued, plus you'd have to give a reason, which would probably get you fired."

Brandt suddenly saw something over Wu's shoulder, and he swore. Across the street, Ray Nelson was leaning over the roof of his car, lighting a cigarette. Seeing them both now looking at him, he raised a hand in greeting, then opened the car door and got in.

"He saw us," Wu said.

"Yes, he did. But so what? We're sitting in a car, having a discussion."

"Do you think he followed us out?"

"I don't know. Why would he?"

"I don't know. To have something on us." Wu looked after Nelson's car, now driving away. "The guy creeps me out."

"Ray? He's a pussycat after you get to know him," Brandt said.

"I don't want to get to know him."

"No, honestly, you probably don't. But maybe him seeing us out here was a good object lesson, after all."

"In what?"

"The wisdom of being seen together outside the courtroom."

25

Top down on the convertible, with coat and tie off and the top button of his shirt undone, Hardy with his headphones on might have been mistaken for a stressed-out executive zoning out to his relaxation tapes. In fact, he was waiting across the street from the murder scene, listening again to the tape of the other male actor in the play, Steve Randell, to whom he'd talked at Sutro after he'd finished with Alicia North and Jeri Croft.

When Juan Salarco pulled into his driveway at a little after three o'clock, Hardy sat up, slipped the recorder back in his pocket, put up the car's hood and got out. Across the street, Salarco exited his truck and immediately went to the small garage and opened it. By the time he turned around, Hardy was standing by his driver's side fender. He raised a hand with an exaggerated nonchalance that he didn't come close to feeling.

He realized that ever since he'd concluded his careful review of the tape he'd made with Juan, he'd begun to imagine that Andrew Bartlett might be innocent. But, he reminded himself now, that belief hinged on what Salarco told him in the next ten or fifteen minutes. If he had in fact heard two gunshots, or even what might be interpreted as two gunshots, Hardy's hopes and maybes would be out the window. He hadn't recognized before this moment how invested he'd become. "Hey!" he said, low-key.

Salarco's boyish face broke into a ready smile. "Deezmus," he said, coming forward to shake his hand, crushing it effortlessly. "I try to get you this weekend, after you call, sí?"

"Sí, but my wife had an accident skiing. She's okay, but it took up some time. Now I'm wondering if I can take up a little more of yours."

Salarco took a minute, perhaps translating the request, then nodded. "Sure." He pointed. "First, I unload though, the truck, okay?"

The sun was bright overhead, but a light breeze kept the day cool enough, and Hardy decided to pitch in. It seemed the natural thing to do, lifting the rakes, shovels and wire trimmer from their positions in the wooden slats on either side of the truck while Juan wheeled the mowers and heavier gear down his makeshift wooden ramp and around into the garage. When they finished, Juan locked up the garage and the truck, and then they walked up the indoor stairs together.

At the door, Salarco called out, "Hola," got a female response and went straight through the living room, past the television with its American soap opera on the screen, to the cheerful kitchen. Hand-sewn curtains- bright yellow cotton with a red and orange floral print- cast shade over the back counter and the Formica table, but they only covered half the windows, and allowed in bright shafts of sun.

Anna turned as they entered. Hardy saw her light a smile at her husband, then extinguish it when she saw him. She had a large pot going on the gas burner- olive oil and garlic- and was cutting more vegetables- onions, red and green peppers, tomatoes- on the counter, while Carla, the baby, sat contentedly jailed, spinning the plastic letters on the sides of the playpen.

Salarco picked up the baby, tucking her in his arm. He then kissed his wife, whispering something to her, and went to the refrigerator for a couple of beers. Hardy took his, pulled at it, tried with a grin to break some ice with the wife. "It smells great in here." She nodded politely and went back to her vegetables. Still holding Carla like a football under one arm, Salarco walked over to the table and sat in one of the chairs, indicating that Hardy should take another one. Moving forward, he took his tape recorder from his pants pocket and held it up, getting tacit permission.

Salarco nodded. "So, how can I help you?"

Hardy had been waiting so long to ask that he pushed the record button and was talking before he'd sat down. "Something we really didn't get clear last time that might be important."

Salarco moved the baby to his knee and began bouncing her up and down. "Okay."

"The noise of the gunshot."

"What about it?"

"The last time we talked, and I listened to the tape of our conversation a lot, you were talking about the noises downstairs when the fighting was going on. This is after you'd gone down the first time to ask them to be more quiet. Do you remember?"

"Sí."

"All right. If you don't mind, I'd like to go over those few minutes again with you. From the first noise that woke up Carla again. Do you think you can put yourself back there and try to remember exactly what things sounded like? What you thought at the time?"

"All right."

"We can take a minute," Hardy said. "We're in no hurry. I want you to think back to that night if you can. Carla had a high fever and she'd been crying all night, and then finally you got her to sleep. You and Anna went out to the living room and turned on the television, quietly. Do you remember all that?"

Salarco was concentrating, the perfect witness who wanted to recall the exact truth. And with no one to object if Hardy led him back to the scene, to his state of mind. "Sí," he said. "I am there."

"Okay." Hardy had memorized the sections. "Last time we talked, you said you heard a scream, the girl scream."

"Sí."

"And then the first noise you heard- a bump, you called it- where you said you could feel it in the floor, as though something heavy had dropped downstairs."

Salarco was paying careful attention. He had stopped bouncing Carla, put one of his fingers into her mouth, a pacifier. His face took on a faraway look.

"Is that about right?" Hardy asked. "The first noises, then, were a scream, then a bump?"

A nod.

"Now the next noise, the second one. You said it sounded like something crashing with glass breaking." Anna, Hardy noticed, had stopped cutting her vegetables, although she didn't turn around.

"Yes. I hear that," Salarco said. "The glass breaking. Okay."

Hardy threw another quick glance at Anna. She hadn't moved a muscle. "Finally," he said, "the last one was a boom again. You didn't say it sounded like somebody slamming the front door under you. You said it was the door slamming."

"Sí. Okay."

"You mean yes? That's what it was?"

"Right. Yes."

"So would you now describe any of those sounds- try to remember exactly if you can- would you say any of those sounds could have been a gunshot?"

A spark of surprise, or perhaps it was something else- recognition of a mistake? pure fear?- shot through Salarco's eyes. He licked his lips. The youthful face suddenly aged.

"It's all right," Hardy said. "You've never testified that they were. You've said what you've said, and people assumed. Now I'm asking you. Were they gunshots?" He was sure for a moment that he'd spooked him by springing an unseen trap. And he couldn't afford to lose Salarco's cooperation. If that happened, Andrew would be tried as an adult and probably convicted. Hardy, himself, might never know the truth of what happened downstairs that night.

He had been subliminally aware of the television in the next room- in English- throughout the entire course of his questions so far with Juan. And now, needing to somehow redirect the energy and keep these witnesses talking, he had to take a chance. "Mrs. Salarco?"

Her shoulders tightened; then she sighed and she turned around. "Sí?"

"Wouldn't you say that's about right? The way your husband described the noises? Did any of them sound like gunshots to you?"

She didn't even have to think about it. "No. I never thought about that before, but there was no sound of any shots. Just the other sounds." She turned to her husband. "Cariño? Sí? Es verdad?"

He nodded and seemed to take some strength from her. Taking a breath, he came back to Hardy. "When I sit back and listen, I cannot say any of the noises sounded like shots."

The relief almost made Hardy dizzy. Not only had he gotten the critical admission, but they'd both put it on tape. Now, instead of being the prosecution's star witnesses, the Salarcos' testimony would work if not to exonerate Andrew, then at least in his favor.

Anna came over, picked up the baby and stood holding it, leaning against her husband.

"Your English is very good, Mrs. Salarco," Hardy said.

She wasn't happy or, at the moment, proud of it. "Three years," she said. "Juan and I- me?- we try at home."

"And pick up a little here and there on TV?"

She flashed a glare into the living room, went and placed the baby gently back into her playpen.

Hardy let them get used to the change in the dynamic. He took a sip of his beer, then spoke to both of them. "As I said before, I'm not with the INS. I will do nothing to involve you with them, no matter what you say or do. If they come to me with any questions about you at all, I won't answer them. The only person I'm interested in is Andrew. I'm starting to believe he may not be a killer."

"But I…" Juan stammered. "It was him. I saw him with these eyes."

"Yes, you did," Hardy said. "In fact, you saw him twice. Once when you went downstairs the first time to complain, the second time when he came back after you'd called nine one one. Isn't that right?"

"Yes. But there was also the other time."

Hardy clucked, folded his arms, sat back a moment. He picked up his beer as a prop. He didn't want to risk alienating Salarco for good, but he had another point to drive home, perhaps more critical than the first. And to get to it, he had to expose something much worse than Salarco's gunshot misperception, or lack of precision.

"That other time is what I wanted to talk about," he began. "The time after the door slammed downstairs, when you and Anna jumped up from the couch and looked out the window and saw somebody turn around on the walkway out by the street."

"It wasn't 'somebody,' " Juan said. He pushed back a little from the table, straightened himself in his chair, his back stiff now, and crossed one leg over the other. He'd picked up on Hardy's direction, and didn't like it. "It was the boy. Andrew. I saw him."

Afraid of losing him, Hardy twirled his bottle, took a beat. "I'm not saying you didn't, Juan. If you saw him, you saw him, and that's the end of it."

Salarco nodded, an abrupt bounce of the head. Suddenly impaciente with all this, and equally afraid of where it might go. When he picked up his bottle and drank, Hardy seized the opportunity. "It's just that when we talked the other night… I've got a copy of the tape right here if you'd like to hear it… but I also wrote down exactly what you said." He took the folded sheet of yellow paper from his shirt pocket, opened it, and spread it out in front of them. "Here. Listen: 'Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. He stops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to… to scream at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying.' " That's what you said, Juan. Isn't that how you remember it?"

Salarco put his bottle down and stared out through the curtains.

Hardy pressed him. "The reason it's so important, Juan… the reason that this particular identification is so important…," he brought Anna into it with his eyes, "is that there's little doubt that the person that both of you saw out the window was the person who had killed Mr. Mooney and the girl. Very little doubt."

Salarco pouted, his visage frankly dark now. "It was Andrew," he said.

"I'm not arguing with you. It may have been Andrew. Certainly it looked like Andrew, with the same cowled sweatshirt he was wearing that night. But listen to what you said in your own words. You said Anna went to the window, and you were behind her."

"Sí."

"So you weren't at the window exactly, were you? Could you have been maybe a couple of feet behind it?"

No answer.

"Then the boy runs down the walkway," Hardy kept up his pace, measured yet urgent. "He stops for a second under the light, and turns. This is the moment that you see him. He's under the light, he turns, the cowl over his head…"

Hardy looked to Anna, who stood transfixed.

"This is when Anna goes to put the window up, to yell at him. She's angry, you're angry, and just at this second, your baby starts crying again. You're behind your wife, who is standing at the window, trying to pry it open, and suddenly your baby screams, and you turn, cursing and swearing, and go back to her."

"Yes," Salarco said softly. "Yes. That's how it was."

"Well, then," Hardy said. "If you were behind your wife, a few feet back from the window, and she was standing in front of it, trying to get it open, and the boy with the cowl sweatshirt over his head was thirty feet away, in only the dim light from one of the street lamps, please tell me how you could possibly have seen his face?"

Salarco stared at a spot in the middle of the table, not meeting Hardy's eyes. Finally, he looked up. "I'm sorry, señor, but it was Andrew," he said.

26

Monday afternoon, Lanier told Glitsky that this would be a good time to come down and talk to the troops. With the rash of killings lately, Lanier felt overwhelmed. It was bad enough when it was the usual gangbanger mayhem and carnage, but when regular citizens got killed, it felt to him like another matter entirely. And regular citizens were taking an especially serious hit over these past two or three weeks, first with Elizabeth Cary, then Boscacci, and now this Executioner and his two victims last Friday.

Hanging up with Glitsky, Lanier stood, stretched and walked out into the inspectors' area. The desks of his twelve people were placed back to back, in team pairs, and over the years a line of metal filing cabinets had slowly grown like a vine out from one of the walls so that it now nearly bisected the space, isolating the inspectors area from the lieutenant's office. Even so, over the past half hour, Lanier had been aware of inspectors drifting back in for their paperwork, or simply to get the decks clear for tomorrow.

Now, he got himself a cup of coffee in the main room. He hadn't yet taken his first sip when Glitsky showed up. In another minute, eight homicide cops stood or sat casually around the partnered desks of Dan Cuneo and Glen Taylor.

Lanier wasted no time. "I know all of you are busy with your own cases, and a couple of you are on the Boscacci force, but in light of these Executioner killings, Deputy Chief Glitsky thought it might be helpful to do some brainstorming. Abe?"

Glitsky looked over the inspectors' faces, realizing with some surprise that most of them had never worked personally under him. Of the assembled group, only Sarah Evans and Darrel Bracco had been homicide inspectors while he'd run the detail. Of the other four- Belou, Russell, Glen Taylor and Dan Cuneo- two were almost complete unknowns. The other two, Cuneo and Russell, had actually investigated Glitsky in the weeks before last year's shoot-out. It was common knowledge that they still weren't among his fans. So it was not as congenial a group as Glitsky might have hoped.

Still, he needed their cooperation. "First, I'm only here because Marcel asked me to come down. I've been working with a small team on the Boscacci killing, and frankly, we haven't made much progress. Marcel tells me it's basically the same situation with these Executioner hits, although we've got the ballistics match, that connection between the victims. My question is whether there's another one."

Sarah Evans spoke up. "Nothing's leaping out at us, sir. The elderly woman, Edith Montrose, lived alone, and has no local survivors, although a son and a daughter have both flown in from out of state for the burial. Neither of them had ever heard of the other victim, Philip Wong. And Mr. Wong's wife, Mai Li, didn't know Montrose."

Evans's partner, Darrel Bracco, added his voice. "We're close to eliminating robbery, too. We wouldn't know for sure with the Montrose woman, but Mai Li hasn't found anything missing. Both of them look like, pardon the phrase, executions."

"Am I missing something?" This was Dan Cuneo, sitting at his desk, playing some imaginary bongo drums between his legs.

"What's that, Dan?" Lanier asked.

The inspector stopped drumming. "Well, you've got this Boscacci thing on the one hand, and the two executions on the other." He turned to Glitsky. "Aside from the fact that we've got very little on any of them, I don't see any connection at all."

"I don't either," Glitsky said. "But along with no connection, I see total evidence of two slugs. No witnesses, no prints, no forensics, no motives, no nothing. Am I wrong?"

"No, sir," Evans admitted, speaking for the rest of them.

"This spark any ideas for anybody?" Glitsky asked.

"Does what spark any ideas?" Cuneo asked. "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'."

"Wait a minute," Belou stepped out from behind her partner, Russell. "We do have another open case with that profile."

"Hell, Pat," Cuneo said, "I've got about a dozen myself if you want one."

"Yeah," Lanier interjected, "but are any of them citizens?"

"Elizabeth Cary was," Belou said.

"Yes, she was." Glitsky filled in for those who didn't know. "Couple of weeks ago now, Elizabeth Cary, a middle-aged, white housewife, was gunned down at her front door, one bullet in the heart. The shooter left no sign except a nine-millimeter casing."

"Was there a slug?" Cuneo asked.

Belou shook her head. "No. Through and through, then through the drywall and stucco out the back of the house. We had CSI look for a whole day. They couldn't find it."

"So we don't know if it was this Executioner or not?" Russell asked.

"Right," Glitsky said. "He left us nothing. Now my question to all of you is: why does this sound familiar?"

"Excuse me, sir." Cuneo had straightened up in his chair. "So you're saying you think because we got nothing on these separate cases, that they're related. With respect, that seems like a stretch." He got agreeing nods from at least Russell and Taylor, and went on. "It's like saying beer isn't water, and milk isn't water, therefore beer is milk."

"I realize that." Glitsky, knowing what he'd come down here to propose, was prepared to remain unruffled. "And of course it's a good point. But on the other hand, since we've got nothing on these four homicides in this past fortnight, maybe the only way we'll catch a break is to go outside the box. We can expect this Executioner to hit again, and until he's kind enough to leave us a clue, maybe we ought to work with what we've got."

"Which," Evans said, "I thought was nothing."

"No, Sarah, not quite," Glitsky said. "We've got only the ballistics connection if we're looking at the Twin Peaks killings. But if we go on the assumption, first, that Boscacci may have been an Executioner victim…"

Cuneo nearly jumped out of his chair. "Wait wait wait! You're really losing me here, sir. You're saying maybe the Executioner killed Boscacci? Next is Kennedy maybe, too, huh?"

Lanier came to Glitsky's defense. "No one's denying it's a reach, Dan."

"If we had anything else at all to follow up on the Executioner's victims," Glitsky said, "I wouldn't waste anybody's time talking about this. But the fact is, we don't have anything."

"And nothing with Boscacci either," Cuneo said.

Glitsky: "Not quite. We believe it's likely he was shot with a silenced weapon. In fact," he turned to Lanier, "that's why we need to have the lab reexamine the slugs from Twin Peaks."

"They already ran ballistics," Lanier said. "And the Boscacci slug was deformed so they couldn't cross-check."

"I know," Glitsky said. "I'm not talking about ballistics." He talked to the group. "Boscacci's slug had a fairly distinctive scuff. Sometimes, if a silencer isn't fitted properly, it scuffs a slug as it leaves the barrel, and normal ballistics wouldn't pick it up, especially if the slug is deformed. But," he added, "they get a visual match with the Twin Peaks's slugs, maybe we're in business."

"So these are pro jobs," Taylor said.

"Maybe," Glitsky said. "In any case, it would be worthwhile to find out if anybody in Twin Peaks heard a gunshot. Or," he turned to Belou, "near Mrs. Cary's home?"

"Yeah, but so what?" Cuneo asked. "Every witness says they heard nothing, which is the answer every time I ask anything. They didn't hear nothin', they didn't see nothin', as far as they can recall if their memory serves them at that particular point in time they were out of the area code if not the hemisphere when the incident occurred. Then what? We're going to consider that some kind of positive evidence?"

Glitsky remained calm. "At least positive enough so that the ATF will supply us with people who bought silencers. These we interview and try to find some connection between any one of them and any of the victims. At least it's doing something, instead of just waiting for another strike."

"And meanwhile," Taylor said, "when the Executioner does hit again, then what?"

"Then, if he leaves us anything at all, we move on that, of course. But until we've got something better, we've got to eliminate other options, the best one being that a silenced weapon has killed four people instead of two."

"And," Lanier said, "we can know the answer to that by, say, tonight, if we all go out and canvass now, when witnesses are likely to be home."

Evans chuckled softly. "That was subtle, Marcel."

Lanier smiled all around. "Thank you. I like to think it's the key to effective management."

"So we're approved on the overtime?" Russell asked.

This was always a thorny issue. Lanier hesitated, looked over to Glitsky, who nodded. "Put it all on the event number," he said.

"One more thing," Cuneo said. Everyone turned to him. "When we started talking about Boscacci, you said, first, you were going on the assumption that he was one of these Executioner victims. Was there something else?"

A muscle worked in Glitsky's in his jaw. "I said first?"

"I believe so. Yes, sir."

Another minute. "Sorry," he said, "it's gone."

When Hal and Linda North came out of their son's guarded room at the hospital, Wu and Hardy were there in the hall to meet them. After Wu introduced Hardy, Linda smiled and said, "Dismas? Wasn't that the name of the good thief on Calvary?"

Hardy forced a smile. He didn't feel remotely friendly. "That was him," he said. "Not too many people know that. He's also the patron saint of murderers."

Linda tightened, drew herself up. "Andrew isn't a murderer."

"No, ma'am, he isn't."

Hal spoke up. "After all we've been through on that score, it's good to hear somebody say that. So you're telling me we've got a chance?"

"Don't get me wrong. We've got some tough days ahead, but there's some reason for guarded hope. There have been some developments in your absence. Besides, of course, this suicide attempt." He fixed them both with flat eyes.

Linda read his look. "You probably think we're horrible to have gone away, don't you?"

"It doesn't matter what I think," Hardy said. "Maybe I wondered a little."

"About what?" Hal stepped protectively in front of his wife. "About what?" he repeated. "Us going south?"

Hardy said nothing.

"I asked Andrew and he said he was fine. He knew that we'd had the reservations for months and he was adamant we should just go. It was only for three days. He said he'd be fine. He was getting used to Youth Guidance. We didn't know he'd do anything like this. How could we have known?"

"Mrs. North," Hardy said, "Mr. North. I'm not accusing you of anything. It's none of my business how you run your lives. For Andrew's sake, though, it might be helpful if we knew where we could find you if we need to contact you while this is going on, but…"

"He knew where we were." Hal was growing hot. He turned to Amy. "I was sure he'd have told you."

"No, sir. He didn't."

"He can talk to us anytime," Linda put in. "Both of our kids can. Hal and I, we're always there for them if they need us."

"There you go." Hal took an aggressive stance between them, but spoke to Wu. "You could have called Alicia at home. You have that number. She could have reached us. Easily."

"How did you find out?" Hardy asked. "About this?"

"I called the YGC to talk to Andrew as soon as we got home this morning. They told me. Then I called Hal and we came straight here."

But Hal continued at Wu. "I still don't understand why you didn't think to call the house. Alicia could have called and gotten us back here hours ago."

Wu matched his gaze, tightened her lip, turned to Hardy, who came to her defense. "Your daughter wasn't home, sir."

"What? Of course she was. We both talked to her."

"We did," Linda said. "She was home. Absolutely. She called us."

"On her cellphone?" Hardy asked.

"Yes, I think so." Linda looked from Hardy to Wu, then back to Hardy. "You're saying she could have called from anywhere."

"I'm telling you," Hardy said, "that when they found Andrew in his cell this morning, they called your home first, then sent a squad car by- this is at four a.m., remember- and nobody was there. The first person they could reach with any connection to Andrew was Amy, at her apartment."

"I don't believe that," Hal said.

"You check it out," Hardy replied. "Won't take you five minutes."

"Now you're calling my daughter a liar." Hal directed his ire at Hardy. "Hey, you know what? We don't need to take any more of this crap from you or anybody else." He turned to Linda, grabbed her by the elbow. "Let's go. That's the end of this."

But she held back. "I want to know the truth about Alicia."

"You just heard it," Hardy said.

"It doesn't matter," Hal snapped. "It's another ploy to make us feel guilty and ultimately, I'm sure, to pay him more."

"Pay me more? Here's a flash for you, pal, if you haven't already heard. I'm doing this for free." Hardy was by now so mad at the man's blindness and arrogance that he was tempted to throw a punch. Blood pounded in his ears. He felt he had to raise his voice to get above it. "And firing Amy? There's a brilliant idea! Never mind how Andrew is going to feel if the one person who's been standing by him since his arrest deserts him, too. You think that's going to help his state of mind? His self-esteem? Of course, worrying about what Andrew's feeling isn't something you do much, is it?"

Linda stepped in front of her husband. "How can you say that? I love my boy. I do."

Hardy forced himself to some semblance of calm. "You know, Mrs. North, I'm sure you do. But doesn't last night tell you that maybe he's not getting the message? That maybe he feels alone and deserted in the world?"

"That's not because of us," Hal said. "Our kids have had everything they need their whole lives, every opportunity." He looked to his wife, took her hand, came at Hardy. "You keep wanting to bring this back to me and Linda. We are not at fault here. This is all because of Andrew- the lies he told, how he acted, who he is. He's always been such a difficult kid. This is not me and Linda. We have been damn good parents."

This, Hardy realized, would never go anywhere productive. "Look," he said, "I've got two kids myself. Teenagers. I know what you're talking about. My wife and I get a chance for time alone, we take it, too. But I might suggest- and this is true with me and my wife and maybe every other set of parents on the planet- that maybe you're not as in touch with your son's feelings as you think you are. He did, after all, just try to take his own life."

After a short and tense moment, Linda broke the silence. "I'm going back in to him," she said, "for when he comes out of it. Come on, Hal. Are you coming?"

With a surly look back at both Wu and Hardy, and no comment, Hal took her hand, and together they turned back toward Andrew's room.

27

… And people wonder where they go wrong raising children," Frannie said. She was already chafing at the bedrest edict, and against her doctor's orders had been planning on coming downstairs to dinner. But Hardy had finessed her by bringing up the fettucine alfredo and serving her in the bedroom. Now he sat next to the bed, eating his own pasta from a television table.

"I don't know if Hal and Linda wonder about that so much," Hardy said. "Ask them and they'll tell you. They're not doing anything wrong. They're great parents. They've worked hard and now just want to have some fun."

"You can't argue with the basic concept."

"Okay, but getting it even a little bit right takes some energy. You check up on them from time to time, get in their faces when they need it; once in a while, God forbid, you say no. You make sure they know they're loved all the time, even when you hate 'em."

"Especially when you hate them."

"That, too. See, it's not that complex."

"Although I've heard you say more than once that raising the little darlings is the hardest thing in the world."

"That's because I only speak in revealed truth." Hardy went back to his food.

Frannie fell pensive. Time passed. Then: "Maybe they just got tired. The Norths."

Hardy put his fork down. "Who doesn't? But you're still in their lives a little. Not that some percentage of them wouldn't make it if you left, even a large percentage. But somebody like Andrew who's already got obvious issues, it might occur to you he's at risk, wouldn't you think?" He shook his head, forked some pasta, chewed thoughtfully. "One of the kids I talked to at Sutro today was this girl, Jeri, pierced everywhere you could stick a needle, tattoos- the look, you know? Not my first choice for fashion consultant, but a really good kid. Solid, grounded, helpful. She was in the play with Andrew."

"What about her?"

"Well, when she walked in, she was the one who fit the poster child image of troubled youth. But you hear her talking about Andrew or Laura, these kids who look like they've got everything, and she's got the answer. She calls them gone parents. Even if they're right in the house, they're gone. And Hal and Linda aren't even in the house all that much."

Frannie reached over and put a hand on Hardy's tray table. "So what happens now? With Andrew, I mean?"

"Well, they're sending him back up the hill in the morning. Meanwhile, it looks like Amy's on tomorrow."

Frannie took a breath and let an involuntary moan escape. Closing her eyes, she let herself back down onto her pillows. "And what about you?"

"No. What about you? That didn't sound too good."

"I'm a little sore, that's all."

"That's all. You didn't by any chance forget to take your pain medicine, did you?"

She shook her head as far as the neck brace let her. "It's not that bad. I don't want to be drugged up."

"If you weren't already so hurt, I'd whup you upside the head." Hardy got up and went into the bathroom, found her medicine and brought it back. "Here. Take these, would you? Give yourself a break. Tomorrow you can get up and suffer all day if you want."

"What are you going to do?"

"Clear dishes, check on kids, take the rest of the night off."

"On the day before a hearing? You're kidding."

"Yep," he said.

"So what? Really?"

"Really? I don't know exactly. I've got some phone calls. I've got to find something that might help this kid. Especially after what he tried last night." He leaned over and she put a hand behind his neck, held him in the kiss for an extra second. When he straightened up, he said, "On the other hand, I could close the door and get these silly dishes off the bed, although with your medical condition we'd have to cut back on the usual acrobatics."

"It's a nice offer, but with the concussion and all, I really do have a headache." She offered him a weak smile. "I hate to say that."

"It's fine. I really do have stuff to do anyway." He sat down on the side of the bed. "But for the record, that was a nice kiss."

"Thank you. I thought so, too. You know why?"

"Why what?"

"Why suddenly I thought a good kiss was in order."

Hardy shrugged. "I thought it was just the usual animal magnetism."

"That, too," she said. "But also I'm liking this guy who showed up again recently. Caring for his clients, interacting with his kids. All that sensitive stuff." She touched his hand. "Really," she said. "If he wanted to stick around, that wouldn't be so bad."

"He's thinking about it," Hardy said. "No commitments, though."

"No, of course not. No pressure, either. But just so he knows."

Hardy leaned over and kissed her another good long one. "He'll take it under advisement," he said.

As a matter of course and of habit, Hardy had left his card- home and business numbers- with all of today's interview subjects. He had also asked for their own numbers and told all of them that he might need to call them as witnesses for Andrew, but this really didn't seem too likely at the moment. None of them had given him a shred of evidence, and without that no judge would let him introduce even the most compelling alternative theory of the murders. Hardy had to have something real, and he had nothing at all, not even a reasonable conjecture of his own.

This last fact, considering that he'd come very close to actually believing in Andrew's innocence, was the most galling. If someone else had killed Mooney and Laura Wright, he had no idea who it might have been, or what reason they might have had. Perhaps the most frustrating element was that Hardy now believed that Juan Salarco- or, more precisely, Anna Salarco- had actually seen the murderer as he fled from the scene and turned to look back at the house.

But because of the promises of the police for some kind of intercession on his behalf with the INS- promises Hardy knew to be empty- Salarco couldn't admit that he'd made a mistake on the identification. Maybe he didn't even accept that fact himself. Maybe all Anglos looked pretty much the same to him, especially young ones wearing cowled sweatshirts.

He was just finishing up a telephone discussion with Kevin Brolin, the psychologist who'd treated Andrew for his anger problems when he'd been younger, and whom Hardy wanted to testify the next day on the second criterion, Andrew's rehabilitation potential. Brolin had been called by the Norths before they'd even flown home after the suicide attempt, and Hardy had talked to him earlier that evening at the hospital right after his little contretemps with Hal and Linda. Brolin seemed knowledgeable and sympathetic and, more importantly, convinced that Andrew had resolved the problems with his temper- in Brolin's opinion, he was not a candidate for physical violence. He'd learned to channel that negative energy into creative outlets, such as writing and acting. Brolin even understood that he'd stopped eating meat out of compassion for the suffering of food animals.

Hardy didn't tell him about Andrew's jailhouse conversion on the vegetarian issue. Nor was he particularly convinced by Brolin's professional opinion about Andrew's current commitment to a nonviolent life. In Hardy's own experience, he'd known people who had directed their "negative energy" toward creative outlets, and who were still capable of heinous acts of violence. The two were not mutually exclusive. But if as a psychologist and expert witness- at a thousand dollars per court day- Brolin thought they were, and was willing to say so, that was all right with Hardy. It might not convince the judge, but Brolin would certainly make a damn strong argument that would be hard to refute, especially if Jason Brandt had not thought to present a rebuttal witness to testify to the opposite.

Hardy was still on the kitchen phone when the front doorbell rang. He checked the wall clock. It was 9:40. "Anybody want to get that?" he called out.

"In a second!" Vincent called from his room.

Rebecca gave her constant refrain. "I'm doing homework!"

The doorbell rang again. Hardy said, "Excuse me a minute, Doctor, would you?" Covering the mouthpiece. "Now!" he called out, "as in right now!"

"Beck!" Vincent yelled.

"I'm doing homework, I said." Her final answer. She wasn't budging.

"So am I! It's not fair!" Hardy heard a slam from Vincent's room- a book being thrown down in a fit of pique?- then a chair perhaps knocked over. Anger anger everywhere. His son went running by down the hallway. Hardy came back to the phone. "You work with children all day?" he asked. "How do you do it?"

"I'm a very, very old forty-five," Brolin said.

From the front door. "Dad! Somebody for you."

Covering the phone again. "Tell him I'll be a minute."

Hardy heard Vincent's steps coming back up through the house, then passing through the kitchen. His put-upon fourteen-year-old son didn't so much as favor him with a glance.

Hardy cut it off as quickly as he could with Brolin, told him he'd see him at the YGC the next morning and walked up through the dining room to the front of the house. No one waited in the living room and the front door was still closed. Was it possible, he wondered, that Vincent had left the caller to cool his heels outside and closed the door on him? Surely between him and Frannie, he thought, they'd covered, at least once, some of the basic etiquette involved in answering the goddamned front door?

But evidently not.

A shadow moved behind the glass and Hardy opened the door.

The young man looked familiar. Recently familiar, but Hardy couldn't quite place him. "Mr. Hardy," he said. Then, reading Hardy's uncertainty: "Steven Randell, from Sutro?"

"Sure, sure. Sorry. Didn't my son invite you in?"

"He said you'd just be a minute."

Hardy sighed, backed up a step, opened the door all the way, summoned him inside and closed the door behind him. "You want to come in? Can I get you anything? Something hot to drink, maybe?"

"No, that's okay, thanks."

He went to the window seat. Neatly groomed and as tall as Hardy, with brown hair and a good complexion, closely shaved, he hailed from the opposite fashion camp as his costar Jeri. He wore tan cargo pants and a black leather coat over a blue work shirt. During the session they'd had earlier in the day at Sutro, he hadn't volunteered much, his position being that he hadn't known either Andrew or Laura very well. But if Andrew had killed Mr. Mooney, Steve hoped that he'd be punished for it. Hardy had given him his by now pro forma song and dance about Andrew's innocence, but had gotten the impression that it had rolled off. But, obviously now, if he was here, something had stuck.

"You mind if I ask you how you knew where I live?" Hardy asked.

Randell shrugged at the no-brainer. "I had your phone number. I just got directions to here on the web."

"You can do that?"

Another shrug. Had Hardy climbed the evolutionary ladder all the way up to Cro-Magnon? "Sure," he said. "You can find anything on the web."

Hardy wanted to ask him how he'd found this particular and unnerving bit of information, and if there was a way he could remove it from the public domain, but he guessed it would be impossible now. Besides, the young man hadn't come here to talk about cyberspace.

"So what can I do for you, Steven?" he said.

He sat straight up, rather stiffly, his hands folded in his lap. The window seat was really more of a bench with cushions. There was nothing to lean back against, no real way to get comfortable. And now that they were down to the nub, Randell seemed suddenly reticent, even confused. "Um…" Wrestling with it.

Hardy helped him out. "Did something we talked about earlier come back to you?"

"Something like that."

Hardy waited through another lengthy silence. In the street out front, a couple of cars passed, and from up on Geary came the wail of a siren. City noises. Finally: "Steven."

"Yeah. I know." He let out a heavy sigh, took an audible breath. "But before I tell you anything, I need you to promise me that it stays between us."

Hardy narrowed his eyes, cocked his head. "Do you know who killed Mooney and Laura?"

"No. But I know something. I just don't know what it might mean, if anything. I almost told you at the end of our talk today. And maybe I should have, but then Wagner would have known, too, and he might have felt like he had to go to my parents. Anyway, then tonight I couldn't get it out of my mind, that I should have told you. I'm not even sure it matters, but there are things about it that definitely matter a lot to other people. And to me. Personal things. Do you know what I'm saying?"

"I don't mean to be dense, Steven. But you have my word that whatever it is, I'll keep it between us. How's that?"

Another sigh. "It just seemed like you really might believe that Andrew didn't do any of this."

Hardy finessed that admission, which was still just slightly too strong. "I believe that somebody else might have come to Mooney's while Andrew was on his walk. If that's true, I'm trying to find out who, or why, or both."

"Okay. What if I told you… and this is the thing I was talking about, the secret. What if I told you that Mr. Mooney was gay?"

The perverse obviousness of it brought a lightness to Hardy's head. He'd been standing by the fireplace, and now he crossed the room and sat down on the ottoman by his reading chair. "Then I'd say he did a good job of keeping it hidden."

"Yes, he did. That was on purpose. Do you know his father?"

"I've met him. Yes."

"Well, Mike loved him more… more than almost anything, I think. He couldn't let him find out, his dad. It would have broken his heart. He couldn't have dealt with it."

"The dad, the Christian minister, couldn't have dealt with it?"

"The Southern Baptist minister. Right."

"How is that possible? I mean, this is San Francisco in the two thousands. Mooney's dad must have seen hundreds of people come out."

"Yeah, but not his own son. Not Michael. And he isn't a San Francisco minister, putting together an AIDS quilt. He's a nice enough man, I guess, but his church is down on the Peninsula, and his brand of preaching is, uh, more conservative. The sons and daughters of Gomorrah being turned into salt, and rightfully so. I've heard him." Steve pitched his voice differently. " 'Homosexuality is always sin, and always a choice. It's not a matter of genetics, as some would have us believe, but a degenerate lifestyle for those unfortunate people who can muster neither the strength nor the grace to reject it.' Straight out of the fifties, huh? And that's Michael's dad. Still."

But Michael's dad or no, Hardy immediately saw the incalculable strategic value of this information for Andrew. If he could bring it out at the hearing- or the trial if it got to that point- then all he and Wu would have to do would be to keep their defendant from testifying, which was always the defense's option. Meanwhile, the jury would naturally assume, especially in San Francisco, that Andrew and everyone else at Sutro knew that Mooney was gay. This would, in turn, eliminate the prosecution's primary motive of jealousy.

It would also not only open up an alternative theory of the crime- the "soddit," or "some other dude did it" defense- but also allow Hardy and Wu to question the original police investigation that had resulted in Andrew's arrest. They certainly should have interviewed people from this aspect of Mooney's life; a failure to even identify Mooney as gay must surely argue for a shoddily handled case from the outset. If Hardy could then get Salarco's no gunshot testimony and even a hint of a hedge on the eyewitness identification, his client stood at least a chance of a hung jury, then maybe a plea on a lesser charge. This was very, very big news.

If it were in fact true.

If he could get it in front of a judge or a jury.

And, most importantly, if it wasn't merely hearsay. "Steven," Hardy said, "I've got to ask you this question, and I think I already know the answer, but in the eyes of the law there's a big difference between someone hearing about a fact and someone experiencing that fact with their own senses. Did you and Mr. Mooney have a relationship?"

Steven needed to take a while with his answer and Hardy was content to let him. "Yes," he finally said.

With that one word, Hardy's entire view of Mike Mooney underwent a complete transformation. If he was in fact having sex with one of his students- male or female, Hardy didn't care- then he was not the caring and sensitive soul most people took him for. He was a predator. "Would you be willing to testify to that in court?" he asked.

But Hardy couldn't let his reaction slow him down. This was critical information, and though the bare fact of it filled him with outrage toward Mooney, he had no choice but to find a way to use it.

Hardy couldn't imagine why, but the question actually seemed to both surprise and frighten him. He thought another moment, then shook his head. "No."

"Why not?"

"I mean, not unless it's your very last chance to save Andrew by itself, and I don't see how it could get to be that. That's why I asked you to promise before I told you."

"Okay, but I've still got the same question. Why not?"

Randell met his gaze with a steady one of his own. "Are you bullshitting me?"

"No. What would I be bullshitting you about?"

"Why I won't testify." He choked off a bitter laugh. "Because I'm not out, Mr. Hardy, I'm not out."

"Okay."

"And I'm not going to be out while I'm still at Sutro. There's no way."

Hardy was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "Would it be that bad? I always thought if you were gay, this was the town to be in."

"Maybe for older guys, but don't be a gay teenager. You'll get slaughtered. You want to hear a story?"

"Sure."

"I had this friend, Tony Hollis, you can look him up. He came out last year and got beaten up by cruisers in Noe Valley four times in six months, whenever any prowling group of teenage straights got bored. Then I guess Tony got bored with that and took a bottle of pills." He took a minute collecting himself. "So, no, I'm not saying anything in public. And you promised you wouldn't, either. If you do, I'll deny it. And that goes for Mooney, too."

"What do you mean, it goes for Mooney, too?"

"You promised you wouldn't tell about him."

"Yes, but that was…" Hardy paused. "I'm not sure I understand why that is so important now, after he's dead."

"For the same reason it was while he was alive. He didn't want his father to know. It was, like, the most important thing to him. He lived this whole secret life to keep the truth from his old man. If he didn't want to cause him that pain, how am I supposed to let it happen? I can't do it. When you were talking to me today, you said if I knew anything, I should come forward and do the right thing. Well, I've come forward, but letting you tell his father about Mike wouldn't be right at all."

"So then maybe you can tell me how am I supposed to use this information? If I can't let it come out."

"I don't know. That's not my problem." He stood up, a good kid awkward with playing the heavy, and now suddenly anxious to get away from what he'd already done. "Look, I'm sorry, I really am, but I just thought it was important that I tell you, so you'd know what you were really dealing with."

"Don't get me wrong, Steven. I really do appreciate that, but…"

The young man cut him off. "But what you do with it is up to you."

Hardy sat in his reading chair for a couple of minutes, pondering. Then he rose and walked back up through the dining room into the kitchen. In the dark and empty family room, he stopped to gaze at his tropical fish for a moment of centering and peaceful reflection. He turned on the room's lights, then knocked on his children's bedroom doors at the same time- perpendicular to each other.

"Just a second!"

"I'm doing homework!"

He knocked again. "I need to see both of you right this minute please."

The familiar grumblings ensued, but he heard movement from inside both rooms. By the time the first door opened and the Beck appeared, he was standing out in the middle of the family room, hands in his pockets, relaxed and casual. Vincent opened his own door, saw his sister pouting, looked to his dad. Having a hunch what might be coming, he wiped all traces of his own bad attitude from his face. He asked helpfully, "What's up?"

Hardy gave them a full ten seconds of low-grade glare, then finally spoke in the calmest voice he could muster. "I don't know if it's escaped your attention or not, but your mother is upstairs in bed, pretty beat up. And while I realize that the critical schoolwork you're both working on so diligently is far more important than the job I work at to keep us fed and clothed, I don't think it's asking too much for both of you to contribute toward the smooth running of the household when I'm, for example, busy on the telephone. And let me say I'm just a tad disappointed that I have to mention this to people of your ages, to whom it should already be, and I thought was, second nature. But clearly I was wrong."

He paused for a moment, made eye contact with both of them. "So here's the deal. Whenever the doorbell or the telephone rings and either your mother or I, or both of us, ask if one or even both of you could please get up and answer it, I don't want to hear about your homework, and I don't want to be told to wait even for a second. I want you both to jump and even race to see who can get to it the fastest.

"And whoever does get there first, I expect you to extend to whoever it is the kind of hospitality that you would expect to receive in the home of a civilized person. For example, Vincent, you don't leave a guest who asks for someone in this house by name standing out on the porch in the cold. And beyond that, if it's an adult you don't know, you look him in the eye, shake his hand and introduce yourself. Then you invite whoever it is in and even- I know this can be grueling- engage that person in small talk and make him or her feel comfortable until the member of this household that he requested makes an appearance. Does any of this sound remotely familiar to you? Have we ever talked about this before?"

Rebecca tossed her hair. "If this is just Vincent, Dad, I've got homework I need-"

Hardy wheeled on her and cut her off. "As a matter of fact, my dear, it's not just about Vincent. Your homework is not an automatic pass on the normal duties of citizenship around here. Vincent has homework, too. Believe it or not, even your father has homework from time to time, like tonight. Relatively important homework. Your mother never stops having homework. So homework is not an excuse to opt out of your duties as a citizen in this house. Is that clear?"

She drew a pained, audible breath. It hit Hardy very wrong. "And while we're on these special moments of politeness, I'd really prefer not to see your theatrical sighs or, Vin, your looks of obvious displeasure. We all live here together. We've all got things we need to do. So we respect each other, we cooperate, we use nice manners to each other and to our guests." He looked from his son to his daughter and back again. "Is there anything about what I've just said that either of you don't understand? Vincent?"

His son was leaning against the doorjamb, downcast. He shook his head no.

"Vincent," Hardy repeated. "Look at me. In the eyes. Good. Is there something about what I just said that you don't understand?"

"No."

"No what?"

"No, sir."

"That's the right answer. Rebecca?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry."

"Even better." Hardy turned as the phone started to ring in the kitchen. "Don't either of you trouble yourselves," he said. "I'll get that."

"I usually wouldn't call this late," Glitsky said, "but your phone was busy last time I called so I figured you might still be up. How's Frannie?"

"Sleeping, I hope, if she's not lacing up her track shoes. But that's not why you called."

"No."

"Are you waiting for me to beg?"

"No. You'll never believe what we think we found out about the Executioner."

"Don't tell me he's a redheaded dwarf."

"He might be," Glitsky said. "But he may also be using a silencer."

"Still on silencers."

"We didn't have anything else, so I sent out half of homicide to ask around in Twin Peaks. Between the two killings, we talked to twenty-one citizens who were nearby- just like with Boscacci- and nobody heard a thing. Elizabeth Cary's neighborhood, too. Remember her? Nobody on the whole cul-de-sac, and all of them were home. Nothing."

"So what are you saying. These were all this Executioner?"

"That's the working theory. In any event, you get four shots in high-density areas and nobody hears anything, something's a little funny."

Hardy didn't really agree. It was a noisy city, and people were so inured to near-constant aural assault that he thought a gunshot could easily go unremarked. Nevertheless, though he wasn't ready to mention it to Abe yet, when the time came he might be tempted to call his friend to the stand as a witness in the Andrew Bartlett matter, where the actual sound of the gunshots was the proverbial dog that barked in the nighttime.

Another alternative theory presenting itself, another ball in the air.

But something entirely different struck him. "Wait a minute," he said. "Did you say Boscacci? What's this got to do with him? You think this guy shot him, too?"

"I don't know," Glitsky said. "But it is tantalizing, don't you think?"

"That they all might be connected? Sure. But you've got to admit, it's not much to go on- something people didn't hear, especially a shot, which most people think is a backfire if it registers at all. I'll bet most of 'em didn't hear tinkling sounds either, and that doesn't mean Tinker Bell did it."

"You sound like Treya."

"There are worse people to sound like."

"Granted. But it's not all fairy dust. I called down to the lab again, and asked them to physically check Allan's slug. The tech couldn't get a ballistics match with the Twin Peaks slugs- they were too deformed- but he did get to eyeball identical scuff marks on rounds of identical caliber. He couldn't swear to it in court, maybe, but his bet is it's the same gun, silenced."

"Maybe," Hardy said, "though if he couldn't swear to it in court, which last time I checked was where we had to do these things…" But he didn't mean to bust Abe's chops. "Anyway, it does sound like you're getting somewhere," he said, "but if you'd told me you'd found something with the other victims about that jury the Cary woman sat on, maybe Allan was the prosecutor on the same case, then I'm thinking you might-"

"That's it!" Glitsky's voice crackled with a rare enthusiasm. "What I forgot. Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Hardy said, but he was talking to a dial tone.

28

Though it had suddenly taken on a much higher profile, Hardy's professional life wasn't all, or even mostly, Andrew Bartlett. First thing Tuesday morning, he had another appointment with Clarence Jackman, so he didn't even check in at the office, but drove directly to the Hall of Justice, parked in the All-Day where Boscacci had been shot, and was talking to the DA at 8:30 sharp.

The issue they were discussing was a theory called "provocative act murder," where the person charged with the crime had not killed the victim. Instead, the theory went, the person charged had done something so "inherently likely to cause a violent response" that they were legally responsible for the murder.

There were two classic examples. The first was when somebody goes in to rob a liquor store, pulls a gun on the proprietor, and the proprietor pulls his own weapon out from behind the counter and shoots, missing the robber but accidentally killing a bystander. The proprietor in this case is completely blameless, where the robber might be charged with provocative act murder. The second example is a scenario where two drug dealers get in a shoot-out, and one of them grabs an innocent person, using that person as a human shield, who is then killed by a shot from the other drug dealer's gun. In this case, while the second drug dealer might be guilty of murder, too, the person who grabbed the human shield in the first place, though he didn't fire the lethal shot, could be charged in the death.

In the case Hardy was arguing, his client was Leila Madison, the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy named Jamahl Madison, who'd gone with a gang of four of his homies to rob the apartment of one of their neighbors. Hardy had gotten connected to Leila because she was the cleaning lady of another of his clients. Besides Jamahl, she had three other children under the age of ten, all of whom lived with her own mother in Bayside. It was a horrible, all-too-common situation, now aggravated by Jackman's initial decision to charge Jamahl as an adult with the provocative act murder of his friend Damon. Jamahl had not shot Damon. In fact, the apartment owner, while the gang was fleeing from the robbery, had taken some shots at all of them, and had wounded Jamahl and killed Damon.

And again, as had been his habit lately, Hardy wasn't planning to take the case to trial. He was facilitating. Though his heart didn't go out to poor Jamahl, it did to the boy's mother, and he'd taken five hundred dollars, donated by Leila's boss, to see if he could persuade Jackman that in this case, provocative act murder wasn't the right call.

"… if he were even, say, seventeen, Clarence. But the boy's only fourteen. He's gotten his own stupid ass shot already and lost his best friend. I've got to believe that's going to make an impression that maybe it's not a good idea to rob people."

Jackman, behind his desk, seemed to be enjoying the exchange. "So would thirty or forty in the can, Diz. Time he gets out, I'll bet he's lost his taste for it entirely." He spread his hands on his desk. "My question to you is do you honestly think he's going to change, ever?"

Hardy shook his head. "You ever meet a kid that didn't, Clarence? Age fourteen to forever. He might. He gets the right counselors at YGC, somebody catches a spark with him, he comes out in a few years and he's a stand-up human being. But the real question, the legal question, is the provocative act."

Jackman ran a finger under his shirt collar. Now, his deep voice an almost inaudible rumble, he chuckled. "If you break into somebody's home, you forfeit quite a few of your inalienable rights."

"Granted. But Mr. Parensich"- the robbery victim who'd actually shot Damon and Jamahl-"was never really in danger. The boys didn't even have guns. They didn't even know he was home."

"That's what they say, so it's just more bad luck for them. And let's remember, there were five of them." He held up his hand. "Cinco. This is a substantial amount of gang throw-weight, and you know it. Even if this guy was only fourteen. I believe Mr. Parensich felt legitimately threatened."

"I don't doubt it, but these kids didn't act up that much. They were already fleeing when Parensich fired at them. Self-defense or not, they're the ones that took the shots. Let's call it square."

"If you're suggesting it, let me just say that no way am I going to charge Parensich," Jackman said. "Somebody's got to stand up for the victims in these situations."

Hardy actually broke a grin. "That's a lovely campaign moment, Clarence, but you can't say that running away is inherently likely to cause a violent response, and that's what the boys were doing, hightailing it." Hardy paused, considered, concluded. "Parensich's response was legal, but unnecessary, so the murder can't go under provocative act. That's all there is to it."

Jackman had been listening carefully, rolling a pencil under a finger on his desk. "So how do I get the message out to these people, Diz? You break into some guy's house, you don't understand somebody's likely to get hurt? The tragedy here isn't your boy and his mother, but Damon, who was also fourteen and who won't be getting any older. If these dumb fuck kids, pardon me, wouldn't have decided to knock over Parensich, Damon's still walking around. It's such a goddamn waste."

"I hear you, Clarence. I really do. But you're punishing Jamahl in any event. He's going to YA on the robbery. That's appropriate. But you won't win hearts or minds by a reach of a charge like this. You'll just seem unfair and vindictive. Jamahl's only fourteen, Clarence. As you say, he's still walking around, so he's still got a chance. Slim, but real. You don't want to take that away from him on this. And," Hardy was getting to the bottom line, "you and I both know there's no way you'll get any jury in this town to convict him, so why waste the time? You're just pissed off."

"I am pissed off."

"That's fine. But take it out on somebody's who's earned it. This one just ain't right, and you know it." Hardy found himself surprised that he'd used these words. He hadn't thought that way in quite some time.

Jackman rolled the pencil some more. By all indications, he was making his decision on Jamahl, but when he finally spoke, it wasn't about that. "I hear through the grapevine that you're working with your associate on Bartlett. That the hearing is this morning, if I'm not mistaken."

"That's right. It should start in about an hour."

"I'm taking your presence on the team to mean that some kind of reason is going to prevail up there."

"Well, we're playing the cards we got dealt, Clarence, if that's what you mean. Amy should never have tried to make the deal with Allan, that goes without question. But not because she didn't deliver."

"No, then why not?"

"Because I'm more than halfway to convinced he's not guilty."

The quiet voice took on an ominous tone. "You think there was a rush to judgment out of this office? Do you think we weren't fair? That we don't have a case? Your own associate was going to plead him guilty less than a week ago. What's changed? Do you have new evidence?"

"No, sir. Not really. Maybe a new approach. That's all."

"Well." Jackman, frowning now, picked up the pencil and tapped the table with its eraser. "I'll let you know my decision on Jamahl, then. When I make it." He looked at his watch. "You don't want to be late for court."

It was a dismissal.

When the meeting ended, Hardy came out into the reception room by Treya Glitsky's desk. "So how'd it go?" she asked.

"The reviews aren't all in yet." But Hardy's face indicated that when they came, they wouldn't be all good, and Treya knew better than to push. His pager had vibrated three times while he'd been speaking with Jackman, and all the calls had come from his office, and now he asked, "Could I borrow your phone for one minute? Local."

"One? One," she said. Then, after she'd made sure the door to Jackman's office was closed, she added, "Abe called. He asks if you get a chance, stop up."

Hardy was punching numbers, nodded abstractedly. "He called me? How'd he know I was here?"

"He didn't. He didn't call you. He called me since I'm his devoted wife and I work here. I told him you were in with his nibs. He's going to want to talk about…"

"Excuse me, one sec." Hardy was holding a finger up, stopping her. He spoke into the phone. "Phyllis, Diz. You don't have to call me three times. You leave the number once, I'll call back, promise." He listened. "Who? Okay. Yes, I know her. I got it. All right, then. I'll be going straight out there. Right. Right. That means I won't stop at the office first. After that I'm up at YGC with Amy. Right, okay. That's it. Thanks." Hanging up, he turned to Treya. "I love that woman," he said. "She makes the rest of humanity look so good by comparison. Was Abe important?"

"Always," she said, then lowered her voice. "But I think he just wants to pick your brain on this silencer thing with Allan and the others."

"The others." Hardy leaned over her desk. "You know I think he's a brilliant and fascinating guy, but this is just spinning his wheels until he gets something real."

"That's what I told him," she said. "He just wants to be back in homicide, and this gives him an excuse. He sent out a couple of inspectors this morning to ask relatives of the Twin Peaks people- if there are any- if either of them had ever served on a murder jury. They weren't too enthusiastic, the inspectors."

"Wait'll he sends them downstairs to Records to look up all of Allan's cases over the past twenty years. That'll really juice 'em up."

At this moment, Anna Salarco was, by any of Hardy's standards, more important than Glitsky. So, for that matter, was the hearing, which would start now before he arrived. But he couldn't ignore the summons from Anna, who had called his office. Wu and he had discussed strategy late yesterday afternoon, and he had no reason to believe she couldn't handle it well herself. But he did ask Treya to call Abe back and send his regrets.

Twenty-five minutes later he was back in the Salarcos' bright yellow kitchen. Carla was in her playpen watching Barney on television. Clearly nervous, her head darting this way and that, her hands pushing her hair around, Anna offered him a seat at the kitchen table. He took out his tape recorder, held it up and got a nod from her, and put it on the table between them. She sat where she could keep an eye both on her baby and on the front door. Reading the signs, Hardy asked her if her husband knew that she'd called him.

"No, but I had to. I think about it all the night. The boy. Andrew. The one Juan pick out of the lineup." She threw a look at the door, took a breath, came back to him. "I was there, too. At the lineup. With Juan. But afterward, they only talk to him."

"Because he'd seen Andrew and he'd told them that he could identify him?"

"Sí. But they did not…" She snapped her fingers, cast her eyes about the room, searching for the right word. "No sais." Then: "They did not make it different, the times Juan saw him, like you did."

"Differentiate," Hardy said.

"Sí. Differentiate. Between when he went down first and when he came back later, after. Or the other one."

"The one you saw? Outside in front?"

"Sí. I don't know what… how… if Juan saw something that time." She'd gripped her hands, intertwining her fingers in her lap, and now she turned them over on themselves. "But I went over it last night a hundred times, what I remembered, and it was as you say, as Juan said when he… described how we went to the window. Me in front of him."

"You're doing fine," Hardy said. "I'm listening. It's all right."

She gave him a darting, empty smile, turned her head toward the door again.

"You were at the window…"

"Sí. I look out, and I am angry, too, at waking up the baby. I am slapping, you know, at the window. This is why the boy turn around. He look up at me and then he's gone, running."

"And that man, that time, was it Andrew?"

"No." She shook her head. "I don't say Juan is not telling the truth. Maybe he saw different. Maybe I… It was too far and I don't see everything just perfect."

"All right. Maybe all that. Listen, Anna. No one's going to accuse Juan of anything because of what you tell me now. It could have been an honest mistake. He'd already seen Andrew twice that night, so who else could it have been? Right? And when was the lineup? A month later? Six weeks?"

"Sí. Something like that much. But they bring out the boys, and Juan and I are both there, you know, watching from back in the dark. They keep us apart and we're not supposed to talk, you know. They give us a card and we make an 'X' if we know somebody. But I see nobody I know, and later I find out Juan said it was number two. He knows. I tell him I don't think this is who I saw from the window."

"It was not Andrew?"

Shaking her head from side to side, she said, "No. Not if he was in that lineup." Then, with the confession out, she stopped all the frenetic movement. Her shoulders settled almost imperceptibly. "Juan, he takes my arm and asks me do I know what am I saying. He tells me that there is no doubt. This is who he saw."

"He did," Hardy said. "That's who he did see. Just not that one time."

"Sí. But he is… angry at me. Very angry. Do I think he does not know who he saw? Don't I know the police will help us with la migra if we help them?"

"They can't," Hardy said. "They won't."

"I think that, too. But Juan still hopes, you know. If we go to the trial and he says it was Andrew…" She trailed off. "Anyway, I don't fight him anymore." Her head was down, but she raised her eyes to him. "Not until yesterday. When I understand."

29

By the time Hardy arrived at the YGC at 10:15 and got himself admitted to the courtroom and then the defense table in the bullpen, all under the disapproving eyes of Judge Johnson, they appeared to have cleared all the motions, including the continuance request, and now were apparently in the middle of what Hardy supposed was their first witness.

But before they could get back to that, Johnson took off his glasses and spoke up. "For the record, the court notes the arrival of…?"

Hardy stood. "I'm sorry I'm late, your honor. Dismas Hardy, second chair for the minor."

Johnson's lips went tight, his eyes narrowed. "All right, Mr. Hardy. Would you care to approach the bench, please? Ms. Wu? You, too."

This was unusual, but when the judge called you up, you went.

"Yes, your honor?"

Johnson held his glasses in one hand, and it was shaking. His eyes were cold pools of glacier water. He spoke with a crisp clarity, brooking no misunderstanding. "I gathered from your various motions and witness list yesterday that you intended to make this hearing more of a protracted proceeding than I had intended to countenance in this particular case. Now I see a second lawyer at Mr. Bartlett's table. I don't often see two attorneys for one juvenile defendant in the seven-oh-seven. I wanted to give you both fair warning that I'm not going to tolerate any delaying tactics or tag-team mumbo jumbo from either of you. I'll hear from one lawyer per witness- either one of you, but only one. If your witnesses don't speak to particular criteria, I will dismiss them. If you waste this court's time, I will cut you off. Is that clear?"

"Yes, your honor." Hardy was stunned at not only the force of the warning, but also the severity of the dressing-down. Wu had really ruffled feathers up here, maybe more so even than she had with Boscacci, and Hardy would be well advised to keep it in mind. Still, he wasn't about to roll over. "But as you've no doubt noticed from our motions, your honor, this case has grown in complexity. The-"

Johnson pointed a finger. "That's exactly my point, Mr. Hardy. Don't get me started. This hearing is not about the complexity of this criminal case. It's about whether Mr. Bartlett should be tried as a minor or not. That's all it's about. I've read your motions about calling witnesses for the gravity criterion and it doesn't take a genius to see what you have in mind on that score, but your witnesses had better be about facts and evidence. I won't tolerate any alternative theory nonsense- you can bring all that up in adult court if some judge will let you." He caught himself. "Assuming, of course, that this case goes to adult court."

He leaned down over the bench, shot a look at Hardy, over to Wu. He lowered his voice, which in no way diminished its intensity. "I believe we all know that we shouldn't even be here this morning, and wouldn't be, Mr. Hardy, if your firm had played straight with the DA. But now that we are here, I won't let you make a mockery of this proceeding. That's all."

Summarily dismissed, Hardy returned to the defense table while Wu prepared to continue with her witness. Seated next to Andrew, for several minutes Hardy found that he couldn't get his mind to focus. Johnson's warnings rang in his ears; Anna Salarco's tape burned in his pocket.

Next to him Andrew sat not in one of the courtroom chairs, but propped and shackled to a wheelchair, his wrists cuffed and resting in his lap. A thick, cotton-wrapped white brace of some kind encircled his neck, bringing visions of Frannie back to him- it was neck brace week on the hacienda. Andrew sat straight up, a ramrod, eyes closed, occasionally emitting tiny moans that Hardy did not believe were faked. Behind them both, in the front row, Hardy felt the hostile eyes of the Norths- they'd watched him enter the courtroom, followed him up the aisle and to their son's table, with ill-disguised displeasure.

Gradually, he forced himself to put the distractions aside. He reminded himself that this hearing was merely Act I of what looked more and more like it would become a three-act play- with the preliminary hearing in adult court next and then the trial to follow. On the stand next to the judge was an ex-cop private investigator friend of Wes Farrell's named Jane Huron, whom they were paying $350 and who was to have read Andrew's "Perfect Killer" story and picked it apart for criminal veracity. On the surface, Hardy thought, this was a simple and fairly straightforward task, especially since they'd supplied her with many of the objections Andrew himself had voiced for them.

She'd obviously been on the stand for a good while, and now Wu was apparently in the process of wrapping it all up. "So, Ms. Huron, based on your training and experience, eleven years as a police officer and seven as a private investigator, how would you characterize the criminal sophistication of the author of this story?"

Huron looked the part: short-cropped, dark hair, a dark blue pants suit. She was a hefty, solid woman with a no-nonsense face. Answering, she turned directly to the judge, as Hardy and Wu had suggested. They'd also told her not to mince her words. "Not at all sophisticated, in terms of the real world," she said.

"What specifically do you mean by that?"

"He showed no knowledge of how a real police investigation would treat such a crime."

"Could you give us one example, please?"

"Yes. His alibi was extremely naive."

"In what way?"

"Well, primarily because it wouldn't in any way have eliminated him from suspicion. The times of the deaths would have been consistent with his presence at the scene when they occurred, regardless of what he did afterward. It would have just been stupid. And then going back to the scene, and pretending to discover the bodies. Not even the most remotely sophisticated criminal would consider doing something like that."

"Anything else?"

Again, Huron looked up at the judge, as though for approval, and he nodded down at her. "Almost everything else, I would say. The author demonstrated little understanding of forensics, ballistics testing, gunshot residue, hair and fiber samples, any of the normal details that crime scene investigators routinely analyze as a matter of course. The kind of precautions outlined in the story- the surgical gloves and fingerprint worries and so on- are what you'd expect to get from watching television and movies. Not from any real-life crime experience."

This was all Hardy and Wu could have hoped for, and Huron had pulled it off perfectly. Wu inclined her head, thanked her, and said she had no further questions.

"Mr. Brandt?" Johnson intoned from the bench.

And Brandt was immediately on his feet, approaching the witness with a light in his eye and a spring in his step. Hardy thought this wasn't a good sign, but didn't see where he could go. He was about to find out, and it wasn't a long journey. "Ms. Huron, you've worked in law enforcement for nearly twenty years, isn't that true?"

"Yes it is."

"And you've had a great deal of experience with firearms and forensics, have you not?"

"Yes."

"Ballistics studies, matching samples of bullet slugs and so on?"

"Yes."

"I see. Let me ask you this, then. Prior to reading this story, did you know that guns made in Israel were fingerprinted ballistically before they were sold, and that this information was embedded with the registration number of the weapon, so that any bullet fired from that gun anywhere in the world could be matched to its owner?"

Huron smiled as though in appreciation of a bit of fascinating trivia. "No," she said, "to tell you the truth, I didn't know that. That's an interesting fact."

"Yes, it is," Brandt said, "and you, a sophisticated criminologist, didn't know it." He half-turned back to Wu and Hardy, came back to the judge, nodded genially. "I have no further questions."

The suddenness of it clearly surprised Wu, but Hardy thought it was a very effective jab, trumping Huron's own undeniable sophistication with an even better example of Andrew's. But he didn't want to risk causing damage to Wu's rhythm or confidence, so he just leaned back, crossed his arms, nodded as though he were enjoying himself.

Wu stood and called her next witness, this one someone she had known from college- Padraig Harrington, Ph.D., a teacher at San Francisco State University. But just as Bailiff Cottrell got to the back door and opened it to call the witness, Brandt stood again. "Your honor, sidebar?"

Judge Johnson adjusted his glasses, raised his voice to the back of the room, saying, "One minute, please, Dr. Harrington" and motioned counsel up to the bench. When they were all in front of him, Johnson said, "Yes, Mr. Brandt?"

"Your honor, before we begin with this witness, I'd like to ask Ms. Wu what it is that Dr. Harrington is a professor of?"

"I don't see the relevance…," Wu began.

Johnson cut her off. "I do. Answer the question."

"English Literature."

"English Literature?" Brandt raised his eyebrows, clearly a rehearsed gesture. "Your honor, with the court's permission, I'd like to ask Ms. Wu for the general import and relevance of Dr. Harrington's expected testimony."

"You'll see when I ask him," Wu retorted.

"Not good enough," Johnson said. "It's a legitimate question. Answer it." Johnson was being just nails on the bench and Hardy longed to raise some objection to protect Wu, but knew that anything he said now would only alienate the judge further, and hurt their client's chances. He'd have to stand and take it.

Wu swallowed, blinked, looked quickly to Hardy, then threw a glance at Brandt. "He'll be talking about the nature of fiction and the degrees of similarity between an author and a character that the author has created. In other words, is a person capable of making up things that he's incapable of actually doing?"

Brandt fairly dripped derision. "Your honor, is there some science here that I'm missing? The petitioner is willing to stipulate that fiction authors make things up. If that's the gist of Dr. Harrington's testimony…"

Wu interrupted. "He's going to address specific elements in Mr. Bartlett's story, your honor, as compared to elements in the actual crime."

"And this will demonstrate what, exactly?" the judge asked.

"That even the degree of sophistication exhibited by the character in the story, minimal though it is, as my last witness demonstrated…"

Brandt corrected her. "… tried to demonstrate."

"… as my last witness demonstrated," Wu repeated, "even that small degree of sophistication is less than that possessed by Mr. Bartlett."

"Or more," Brandt said.

Her stage whisper getting out of hand, Wu shot the question at Brandt. "What do you mean, more?"

He turned directly to her. "I'm willing to accept it's different. The author's either more sophisticated or less. There's no way to tell from what he wrote."

"Both of you, listen to me." Johnson was a few inches out of his chair, leaning over the front of his bench. "You'll both address your remarks to the court and the court only. I don't want anything personal marring these proceedings. As to the point at issue, I agree with Mr. Brandt. Ms. Wu, given petitioner's stipulation that fiction authors make things up, it's this court's ruling that we don't need to hear from this witness."

"Thank you, your honor." Brandt immediately bowed and turned back toward his seat.

Wu stood in shock. "But…"

Johnson snapped at her. "Put your offer on the record if you wish."

She returned to counsel table and then repeated for the court reporter what she had told the judge. When she finished, Johnson wrote something, then looked up. "Dr. Harrington," he said, raising his voice to be heard in the gallery, "you're dismissed. The court thanks you for your time."

Johnson had announced a twenty-minute morning recess before Wu would call her next witness. This one was testifying on Andrew's potential for rehabilitation. Most of the rest of the courtroom had emptied out. Bailiff Nelson- Brandt's "pussycat"- had wheeled Andrew off to go to the bathroom, while Bailiff Cottrell and the court recorder had disappeared through the door that led back toward the judge's chambers. Brandt was just suddenly gone, as were the Norths, probably out into the main hallway. This left Wu and Hardy, at the defense table, alone.

"His honor seems a little bit biased," Hardy said.

"Yeah, like Bill Gates is a little bit rich."

Hardy managed a small smile. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, though. It's going to come down to five, anyway."

"If that's the case, we're in trouble."

Hardy shrugged. "Maybe not." He brought her up to date on the two major elements he'd unearthed since he'd last talked to her with the Norths last night at the hospital- Michael Mooney's gayness and Anna Salarco's failure to identify Andrew as the person who'd run from Mooney's place just before Juan had discovered the bodies.

Wu's eyes lit up. "Will she testify?"

"Maybe. She's got some issues with her husband." He explained the INS problem they faced. "So it's not a slam dunk, but she called me on her own, which is a positive sign. The husband's a good guy, but he's afraid of getting deported. I can't say I blame him."

"Can we do something to help them?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Turn them on to some good immigration attorneys? Something?"

Hardy shook his head. "Maybe, but not until she testifies. I don't want to get into the whole question of whether we're suborning or buying her testimony by offering her some kind of immunity. In fact, I was going to attack her husband's ID of Andrew on pretty much those grounds myself, except say it was the police promising to help him if he gave ' em Andrew. So I wouldn't feel right about it. Afterwards, if she comes through, different story."

"But if she'll say it actually wasn't him…"

"I know. But it's more than that. Her husband's on the record saying it was. He'll have to admit he was wrong, and as of yesterday, that wasn't happening. He'll look like a fool and, maybe worse, he'll look like he can't control his woman. And as long as they've got his ID, they've got a case."

They both settled into their thoughts. Finally, Wu asked, "What about the gay thing?"

"The one I'm not allowed to mention?"

"Yeah, that one."

Hardy blew out in frustration. "I've been wrestling with that all day. What am I supposed to do? I promised the kid."

"Against Andrew's life?"

"I know, I know. But the question I have is really, so what? If Andrew didn't know Mooney was gay, then nothing changes. He'd still be just as jealous. Maybe I could run it up for a jury in the trial, but it's weak. It's not going to do it on its own. And without the kid's testimony, it's only hearsay anyway."

"Could you get it somewhere else?"

Hardy considered, drummed his fingers on the desk. "Even if I did," he said slowly, "what does it get us? So Mooney was gay? Maybe Andrew's homophobic and killed him for that?" He shook his head. "And meanwhile we've outed the boy and screwed up his dad. No, it just doesn't work."

"Except it opens up another world about Mooney."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that everybody loved him, right? He was the world's best teacher, and so on. But the truth is, nobody knew him. He had a secret life. It seems to me anything we could bring up that points that out has got to help Andrew. At the barest minimum, it might give us somewhere else to look for who killed him."

Hardy's fingers stopped drumming. He suddenly sat up, put out his hand over hers. "The wives," he said.

"Whose wives?"

"Mooney's."

"He had wives?"

Hardy nodded. "Two of them." His ridiculous memory had somehow retained the names. "Terri and Catherine."

"Well. What about them?"

"They would have had a hunch, wouldn't you think?"

The regular Tuesday lunch meeting at Lou the Greek's was both a somber and an ill-attended affair. Jackman, of course, was there, but not presiding, since there wasn't much of an assembly. Glitsky, having missed the last few of these luncheons because of scheduling conflicts, had decided on the heels of his involvement in these latest murder investigations that he was going to take a more proactive stance in defining the parameters of his job, and basically do what he wanted to do, pleading out of as many meetings as possible. He sat next to his wife. Gina Roake, like Glitsky a frequent absentee of late, was also at the table.

But missing were Hardy, the "CityTalk" columnist Jeff Elliot, both city supervisors- Harlan Fisk and Kathy West- and, of course, Allan Boscacci. So instead of the big round table in the back that they usually filled, they had a booth for four under one of the alley-level windows.

Instead of the usual- convivial gossip, personalities and politics- they talked about the Executioner, who had apparently claimed another victim last night, although the shooting hadn't taken place in the city, and nobody investigating down in San Bruno had put together a possible connection until early this morning, when the police chief in that town had put in a call to Lanier and wondered if somebody from the city would like to come down and have a look.

Lanier had driven down himself, accompanied by Sarah Evans, and they'd learned that Morris Tollman, an engineer with Amtrak, divorced, living alone in a small house by the Tanforan Park Shopping Center, had taken one shot to the head, point-blank, on his driveway as he was getting out of his car last night sometime between six and eight-thirty. Near sunset, a woman walking her dog had seen the body and called police. The local crime scene people had found a.9mm casing in the weeds beside the driveway, but no slug so far.

On Glitsky's prevailing theory, wild shot though it might be, Lanier, Evans and two of the local cops had gone door to door. The neighbors on both sides of Tollman had been home all evening, and nobody in either house- four adults and five children- had heard anything resembling a gunshot.

That had been good enough to juice up Lanier, and he'd called Glitsky, who, grasping at straws, asked Lanier and Evans to try and talk to Tollman's next of kin, if any, and see if he had a murder trial in his past. After that, he had called the ATF to try to light a fire under them. Then he had come back downtown, where, in response to the request he'd fired off after talking last night with Hardy, he'd already received by fax a long list of names from the California Department of Corrections, convicts who'd been released from California's various jails and prisons in the three weeks or so since just before Elizabeth Cary's murder.

Since these people were in the computer, Glitsky assigned his General Work officers to look up the original case numbers that had been assigned to them, and then begin checking them against the hard files downstairs in the basement to see which of them, if any, Boscacci might have prosecuted. By the time Glitsky left for lunch at Lou's, the two inspectors had identified thirty-one of the four hundred plus case numbers.

"Which is why I'd like to get my hands on more bodies," he was saying to Jackman.

"He doesn't mean dead bodies, either," Treya said. "He means people to check the files."

Glitsky nodded. "I can't ask homicide inspectors to do that, even my event number people. They'd mutiny, and I wouldn't blame them. Even the GW guys are grumbling."

"I'd imagine so," Jackman said.

"I've got a call in to the mayor now," Glitsky said. "If he sees 'serial killer' here, which I'm starting to, he'll give me some more staff, but even so, it's a monster of a job. I don't think the FBI could do it in a month. But maybe hizzoner can also persuade the ATF to get off their duffs. Although that's just one more list to check out."

Jackman lifted a peanut with his chopsticks and looked at it skeptically. The special today was Kung Pao Moussaka- not one of Chui's all-time triumphs- and everyone at the table was picking at their food. "Are you sure it's even worth the time, Abe?"

Glitsky knew what Jackman meant. He sagged a bit. "No. I don't."

"On the other hand," Roake said, "if it's the only thing you have to go on, what do you have to lose?"

"That's my feeling." Glitsky sipped some tea. "Whatever else he is, this guy knows what he's doing. I don't believe somebody's paying him to hit these people, and he's not picking them at random."

"Are you even sure of that?" Jackman asked.

Glitsky had to shake his head. "At this point, Clarence, I'm not sure it's Tuesday."

"And no hint about Allan, either, I assume."

Treya answered for her husband. "Abe sent out Inspector Belou this morning to talk again to Edie." Boscacci's widow.

"Meaning no leads on anything in his professional life?" Jackman asked. "Any of his active cases?"

"He didn't really have any, Clarence, as you know better than anybody. There might be something on the home front Edie couldn't remember with the initial shock. But I'm not holding out much hope there, either."

"So you really think Allan might have been shot by this Executioner, too?" Roake asked.

"No. I can't say I'm all the way to thinking it, Gina. I'm really just back where we were," Glitsky said. "It's the only place I've got to look. What I'm really hoping is that this guy last night has got a huge extended family, who'll tell us that a long time ago he invested in Wong's produce and dated Edith Montrose and bought a used car from Elizabeth Cary, and they all had the same banker."

"Who is a gun collector," Treya added.

"Right," Glitsky said. "That'd be even better."

"But you doubt it?" Roake said.

Glitsky nodded. "Seriously."

Everyone stopped and looked up as Marcel Lanier suddenly appeared at Glitsky's elbow. "Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt. Abe. I was just up at your office."

Lanier's face was mottled with emotion. His breath came as though he'd been running. "I'm just back up from San Bruno," he said. "I begged crime scene down there to come back and look again and they found the slug."

"Tollman's?"

"Yeah. In the roof of a garage a couple of houses down. Given the circumstances, they let us run it up to our lab…," the San Francisco Crime Lab was halfway down to San Bruno anyway, "where they rushed it. You'll never guess."

Glitsky was already up. "I already did."

"Right. Same gun, no question. And Abe? All silenced. Four of the five slugs have a scuff mark. Same place on the bullet. Microscopically identical. A silencer, and the same one. And guess what else? Tollman? His daughter said he was on a murder jury one time."

"Where? San Bruno?"

"She didn't know. But they lived in the city until she was five."

"So it might have been here. What about the ex-wife? She'd know."

"She might. Except she's on a mission in India."

"How the gods favor the good." Glitsky put his hands to his face and pulled them down over it. He looked back at the table. "This is it," he said to no one and everyone. Then, to Jackman. "I need more people, Clarence. Yesterday."

Jackman nodded. "I'll give you some clerks and every deputy I can spare."

"Guys." The men looked back at Treya. "Forgive me for speaking up, but I'd be careful about that." She spoke to her husband. "I know you need people, Abe, but you don't need this to make the news, do you?"

"What?" he said. "You're saying the media isn't my friend?"

"She's right," Lanier said. "It gets out, it tells him we know."

"Good," Jackman said. "Then maybe he stops."

"Or maybe he hurries up to finish," Glitsky said.

"Call me slow," Roake said, "but what is it that we know, exactly? What's he going to hurry to finish?"

By now they were all out of the booth, standing in a knot. Glitsky leaned in to Roake. "He's recently gotten out of prison and he's killing the people that put him away. He's already killed the prosecutor and I'm guessing four of the jurors. That leaves eight more, and maybe the judge, whoever that was."

"The good news," Jackman said, "is if you're right, it's a finite list of suspects. Big, but finite. Maybe among your four hundred, Abe."

"That's where I'm starting, for sure," Glitsky said.

"If it's not on that list, though," Roake said, "what are you looking at?"

Glitsky thought of the cavernous basement to the Hall of Justice, nearly a city block square, packed to the fifteen-foot ceiling with file boxes of ancient transcripts. "A lot more victims," he said.

Jackman and Roake walked together across Bryant Street. They were about to say good-bye when the DA put his hand on Roake's arm and said, "I'm glad to see you back down here, Gina. I was worried about you. Although, of course, I understood. We all miss David, though never as much as you do, I'm sure."

"Thank you, Clarence. That's nice of you to say."

"I mean it. May I ask you, though, did anything specific bring you back today?"

She offered a slinky grin. "If credit is due, I'd have to give it to my oh-so-subtle partner."

"No offense to Mr. Farrell, but that would be Mr. Hardy?"

She nodded. "You've got to love the guy, except when you hate him."

Jackman gave his own imitation of a smile. "Yes, I had a little of both experiences just this morning. I wonder if you could give him a message for me?"

"Certainly."

"Just tell him that it's not about scratching backs. It's about justice and that's why Jamahl isn't being charged with murder."

"Jamahl isn't being charged with murder. Got it."

"It's about justice, too. That's important. That's why he's supporting my campaign."

"Jamahl and justice."

A wide grin. "And Jackman."

"Hand in glove," Roake said. She gave the DA a chaste buss on the cheek. "I'm all over it," she said. "See you next week."

30

Outside the YGC courtroom after lunch, Hardy said hello to Ken Brolin, Andrew's anger management psychologist, while he was in the hallway catching up with the Norths. Hal and Linda maintained their chilly demeanor, not saying a word to him as he introduced Brolin to Wu, explaining that she would be conducting Brolin's interrogation on the second criterion when court was back in session.

When the younger bailiff- Cottrell- called everyone in from the hallway, Hardy went out to his car, drove to the 280 freeway and headed south. He'd called Mike Mooney's father during the lunch break. The sad old man had been home, but had no idea how to get in touch either with Terri or Catherine, Mooney's ex-wives. He hadn't heard from either of them in years and years. So Hardy had asked him if he was still in possession of his son's effects. If the dissolution papers were among them, Hardy might be able to track the women down.

As it happened, the reverend had his son's papers and files stored in an empty room of the rectory until he could decide what to do with them. Until now, he hadn't even had the heart to glance at all the stuff, but he said Hardy was welcome to go through it if he'd like, if it would help him identify Mike's killer.

Mooney stood and raised a hand in feeble greeting as Hardy came up the walk. He wore his black sports coat today, and had obviously been in his chair on the small front porch waiting.

If anything, the house was sadder during the day, in the sunshine. Five painful minutes after he'd arrived, after he had assured Reverend Mooney that he would be welcome to join him if he'd like to take this opportunity to start going through Mike's possessions, Hardy was alone in one of the unused back bedrooms of the sprawling house. Even with the blinds open and the overhead light on, it was a dim room, with a threadbare light-orange carpet. There was a dresser with a mirror over it, a made-up single bed, an empty pocket-door closet, a small bathroom. Three rows of four packing boxes were tucked into the corner under the windows.

Hardy went to the nearest one, cut through the tape and lifted the cover. Clothes. Being thorough, he pulled out each item- folded shirts and pants- until he got to the bottom. He then repacked in reverse order. The entire effort look him less than two minutes. The second and third boxes also contained clothing items, although in the bottom of the third box, he found an envelope filled with snapshots- all students, some with Mooney and some alone- none even slightly objectionable or incriminating by themselves. Although Hardy, with his secret knowledge, found himself fighting a rising tide of anger.

In the fourth box, he ran across his first paperwork, mostly scripts and what appeared to be students' papers. He went through these with a little more care, hoping to find perhaps some correspondence that he'd be able to use. But Mooney had evidently been a careful and very private man, and there was no indication that he had any private life at all, much less, as Wu had called it, a "secret" one.

By the time he'd found the marriage dissolution papers filed among some old tax filings and ancient bank statements in the seventh box, Hardy was tempted to keep looking through the rest, just to see if anything of import to his investigation would come to light. But he'd already thumbed through a thousand or more sheets of paper, including many, many letters (mostly to and from current and former students), and again, there had been no overt signs of impropriety. He decided that he'd gotten what he had come for. If it turned into a dead end and he needed more, he could always come back.

For now, he had to keep moving forward. The way the 707 was going, they could be crucial to the fifth criterion- circumstances and gravity of the offense, the one he'd been planning to argue- by tomorrow. Judge Johnson had made it abundantly clear that neither alternative theories nor hearsay evidence were going to make the cut. Hardy would need demonstrable facts, both from Anna Salarco and from what, if anything, he might discover from talking with Mooney's wives, and even then Johnson might not admit them.

Reverend Mooney lent Hardy the telephone in his office- another room of sepia tones- and he called information to get the number of the law firm Blalock, Hewitt and Chance, and/or the attorney, Michelle Ossley, who had evidently handled both sides of Mike's uncontested divorce from his first wife, Terri. Neither were listed in San Mateo, Santa Clara or San Francisco counties, so Hardy placed another call to his office and asked Phyllis to please check Martindale-Hubbell- a directory of attorneys- and have either Blalock, Hewitt, Chance or Ossley call him on his cellphone, if she could find them.

He had better luck with Catherine's attorney, from the second divorce- the spouses had used different lawyers this time. His name was Everett Washburn, a sole practitioner who practiced out of Redwood City, another fifteen miles south. His secretary informed Hardy that Mr. Washburn was expected to be in court until four or four-thirty, after which he would probably go out to the Broadway Tobacconists for drinks and a cigar, his invariable ritual after a court date, if he wasn't going out with the client. Could she take his name and have Mr. Washburn get back to him tomorrow?

"I'm in a bit more of a hurry than that, I'm afraid. I'm trying to find a witness for a murder hearing that's in progress right now and I think she may have once been one of Mr. Washburn's clients. Does he have a pager number?"

"Yes, but he turns it off in court, and then leaves it off if it's after five or if he's out with clients. He thinks it's rude to let cellphones interrupt important conversations. Also, he had a heart attack a year ago and won't work anymore except during business hours."

Hardy was happy for him, but this wasn't any help. "Maybe I could try it anyway?"

"Certainly." She also took his name and all of his phone numbers and would tell Mr. Washburn if he called, which was doubtful, that it was rather urgent. Hardy thanked her and sat at Reverend Mooney's desk, staring at the motes flickering in the thin shafts of sunlight that penetrated the window slats. After a moment, and before he forgot to do it, he punched in the numbers for Washburn's pager, left his own cell number as a callback.

His watch said 3:40 as he swung onto 101 South, heading for the courthouse in Redwood City. Traffic was heavy, but the time passed quickly enough as he took phone calls from both Messrs. Blalock and Chance. Ten years ago, their firm had broken up after Hewitt had died, and though both remembered Michelle Ossley, neither of them had kept up with her. Chance thought he'd heard she left the law biz and moved to Florida to work with her new husband in a travel agency, but he wasn't sure. Neither of them had ever heard of Ossley's divorce clients, Mike and Terri Mooney.

Hardy paid five dollars to park in the Redwood City Courthouse lot, only to discover that here at four-thirty, all the courtrooms were deserted and locked up. On the front steps, he saw two middle-aged black men in business suits talking together. Both of them had thick briefcases at their feet; both projected an air of solidity.

Hardy strolled over and excused then introduced himself. "Would either of you gentlemen know where I would find an Everett Washburn?" he said.

Washburn was a different suit of clothes than Hardy's friend and mentor David Freeman, but he was cut from the same cloth. No doubt pushing seventy, Washburn wore suspenders and seersucker rather than Freeman's rack brown suit, but neither believed in shining their shoes, neither shaved with particular care (and Washburn sported an impressive gray walrus mustache), and both seemed to believe that the smoking of daily cigars with some kind of strong alcohol was the key to longevity, to say nothing of sex appeal.

When Hardy found Washburn in the backroom of the Broadway Tobacconists- private humidified cigar vaults, bottles of single malts and rare cognacs on the low tables- he was holding court with a few well-dressed younger people of either sex. Next to him, an elegant and statuesque middle-aged black woman in a bright red dress smoked a cheroot and kept her free hand protectively on Washburn's forearm.

Reluctant to interrupt, Hardy watched and listened to him for a while through the thick, blue, fragrant smoke. Finally, and again Freeman-like, Washburn called the shot himself. Smiling around at the gathered group, whispering something to his attractive companion, he rose and walked directly up to Hardy. "If you're looking for Everett Washburn, son, and by the way you're standing here I gather you are, then you've found him." He had a large watch on a fob chain that he consulted. "There's barely five minutes left in the business day, and even if I didn't have a beautiful woman waiting for me when I get free, I don't work after that, so you'd better talk fast."

"I'm trying to locate Catherine Mooney. You represented her sixteen years ago in a divorce proceeding against her husband, Mike, who was killed a few months ago in San Francisco. I'm representing the suspect in that homicide, and Catherine may have some crucial information that could free my client." This was a stretch, but Hardy didn't care. "I have to talk to her as soon as I can."

Washburn's expression showed nothing. He brought his cigar to his lips, squinted his eyes against the smoke. "You got a card with your cell number? You got your phone on you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let's have 'em both."

Hardy dug out his wallet, extracted his business card, gave the man his cellphone.

"Let's go find ourselves a little more light." He led the way out of the room, out of the store, stopped on the sidewalk outside and turned around to face Hardy. "You wait here." He walked off ten or fifteen steps and Hardy watched as he first punched some numbers, then talked into the phone, then read from Hardy's card, and finally closed the phone up. When he came back, he handed the phone back to him, pocketed the card in his shirt. "I like the dart on the card," he said. "Nice touch."

"Thank you."

"If she wants to talk to you, she'll call you. That's how I left it."

Hardy knew that that was all he was going to get, and damned lucky at that. If Catherine Mooney had remarried and changed her name, which was not unlikely, Washburn wasn't about to give it to him. Without the call, Hardy might never find her. "I appreciate it," he said.

Washburn waved the thanks away with his cigar. "Professional courtesy, Mr. Hardy. I'm sure you'd do the same for me."

"Could I ask you one more question?"

A quick smile washed away the merest flash of impatience. "Certainly."

"In case I need to see her in person, would you recommend that I stay in the area, or go back up to the city?"

"And which city would that be? Pace," he said. "A joke. I'd stay nearby."

"Good. Thank you."

Washburn checked his pocket watch again, nodded with satisfaction. "And with twenty seconds to spare, too. If I would have gone over, it would have cost you."

Now it was after six o'clock and Hardy brought his cup of espresso to the pay phone by the kitchen at Vino Santo Restaurant on Broadway, across the street from the tobacconists, about five blocks from the courthouse. He had his cellphone with him, of course, but he didn't want to use it and risk missing Catherine if she called.

"Hello," Frannie said.

"I'm assuming the kids must have put the phone in your bed, right? Which is how you're able to answer it."

"Dismas, I'm fine."

"In other words, not in bed as the doctor- no, scratch that, two doctors have ordered."

He heard her sigh. "Did you call to yell at me? Because if you did, you can just call back in a minute and leave it on the machine."

"I'm not going to yell at you. I'm calling to say I'm probably not getting home anytime soon. I'm down in Redwood City, hoping to talk to a witness for Andrew Bartlett. Are you making dinner?"

"No. As a matter of fact, our two darlings are cooking up something even as we speak. It smells delicious. What's gotten into them, do you think? They're being angels."

"They love their mother and want to take care of her, that's all. Since, apparently, she won't take care of herself."

"You didn't talk to them?"

"I talk to them all the time. It's what a father ought to do."

"That and not nag the mother."

"Unless she asks for it."

"Well, whatever you said, thank you. It's really made a difference."

"That's good to hear. Really," he said. Then added, "But you, don't push it, okay? I don't want to come home and have you on your back in bed."

She lowered her voice. "That's the saddest thing. You always used to."

"Here's a little secret," he said. "I still do."

Hardy next reached Wu at the office, where she was getting ready for tomorrow. She told him that the Brolin testimony had gone all right. Judge Johnson had given her considerable leeway with the psychologist, who'd painted Andrew in the best possible light- a young man who didn't need rehabilitation because he was essentially a good citizen already. As Hardy knew, they had also pulled Mr. Wagner from Sutro in, and he'd testified to Andrew's basic goodness, his extracurricular activities, talent for writing and the arts in general. Again, there was nothing to rehabilitate. Brandt had not even bothered to cross-examine, and Wu had thought it was because he was prepared to give her these criteria. After all, he only had to win one of them. "But Mr. Brandt fights everything, I'm learning. He called his own witness. Glen Taylor, the inspector who'd arrested him?"

"And what'd he say?"

"Well, Brandt leads him up from the beginning of the investigation, his first suspicions about Andrew, the mounting evidence, right up to the arrest, then asks him if in all that time, did Andrew show the slightest amount of remorse for what he'd done."

"You objected, of course."

"Of course, and even got sustained, but he just rephrased. 'Did Andrew at any time show any remorse about what had happened?' And of course Taylor said no."

Hardy, at his table at Vino Santo, drew circles on his legal pad. There weren't any notes to take or comments to make. This was pretty much pro forma police testimony in proceedings of this kind, and wasn't particularly sophisticated or damning stuff. It sounded as though Wu had won her point.

He wasn't so sure, though, about the third criterion- the minor's previous delinquent history. This both he and Wu had considered a slam dunk, since Andrew had no real record. They hadn't even planned to call any witnesses, but would let that fact speak for itself. But again, the short lead time Andrew had demanded- aggravated by his suicide attempt- had left them unprepared and vulnerable to attack, and Brandt was ready for it. He called as witnesses two YGC counselors and another San Francisco police officer who had had occasion to meet with Andrew before this case. For while it was true that Andrew had never been "arrested or convicted," it turned out that, as Brandt phrased it, he had had "previous dealings with the police and youth authority." The joyride.

Wu had fought back with the standard argument that it hadn't been a serious offense- he'd never been arrested or even formally charged- but Hardy thought it was bad luck to get surprised in court, and at the very least doubted if they had helped themselves on criterion number three.

And worse, he knew that the problem with number three would impact criterion number four. Obviously, given Andrew's presence in the courtroom and the fact that he was being charged with special circumstances murder argued more eloquently than mere words could against "the success of the juvenile court's previous attempts to rehabilitate" him. Like all criminal lawyers, Hardy and Wu both knew that once a defendant began showing up in courtrooms, the cycle was more likely than not to go on repeating itself. From the court's perspective, and although not legally accurate, this was really Andrew's second offense. Johnson would be aware of the statistics- people who appeared before him twice most often managed a third; then, as adults, they would start accumulating the strikes that would eventually get to three and put them in jail for life.

"I know we had no witnesses, but did you make any argument at all?" Hardy asked her.

"I just reiterated that he's got no record. There wasn't any previous effort at rehab to be successful or not. I know it sounds bad, but we've got to win these last two on the merits."

Hardy hoped she was right. In a completely fair world, she would be, but Johnson had thus far shown himself to be so antagonistic that Hardy wasn't sure how it would come out. It wasn't impossible that he'd find against every one of the criteria as an object lesson for Wu to contemplate. And because no one could reasonably dispute his acceptance of the gravity criterion, Johnson would be immune from appeal on the other four. Rejection of any one of the criteria got Andrew into Superior Court as an adult, so the remaining four would be judicial largesse, a personal thumb to the nose.

But if it was to be, it was already done. "So where are we now?" Hardy asked.

"I've served the Salarcos," she said, meaning with subpoenas to appear in court. They'd be there tomorrow. "How are you doing with the wives?"

"Still hoping."

Silence. Wu asked, "You'll be in court tomorrow, though, right?"

"That's my plan."

"Because we're opening with your show."

"I'll be there," Hardy said. "Don't worry."

The cellphone rang an hour later. He'd had another cup of coffee, his first apple pie à la mode in probably ten years. Forgotten tastes, childhood memories. Delicious beyond imagining.

"Mr. Hardy?"

"Yes."

"This is Catherine Bass. I'm sorry I'm a little late getting back to you. We've got three kids under fifth grade and we just finished supper. But Everett Washburn said this was about Mike Mooney."

"Yes, ma'am."

Hardy thought her brittle laugh sounded nervous, or embarrassed. "Don't tell me he left me all his money."

"No. It's not that."

"I'm kidding, of course. Mike wouldn't have had any money." Then: "I was so sad when I heard about that. It's just so unbelievably sad."

Hardy gave her a second, then said, "I realize that this is an imposition, but would you mind if we talked in person? I won't take much of your time. I know about small children. I promise I won't keep you." Hardy's intention all along had been to get some face time with either of the wives. He didn't just want to verify the fact of Mooney's sexual orientation- after Steven Randell, he didn't have any real doubts about that. What he wanted was some sense of where it might have played in his married life, in the hope that some of the habits might have continued. Did he have secret liaisons? Long-term but hidden relationships? Was he consumed with smoldering anger or paralyzed by fear of exposure? Were there enemies? Lovers? Blackmailers?

Too much for a phone call with someone he'd never met.

She came back after talking to her husband. "Where are you?" she asked.

Catherine Bass, like his own wife, was a petite redhead. She didn't have Frannie's world-class cheekbones; her skin was a bit more freckled and her hair cropped short, but with her striking green eyes and dimples as she smiled, she was very attractive nonetheless. Hardy had the impression that she was still dressed from a day of work at some professional job- she wore low black heels, a gray knee-length skirt, a black turtleneck sweater. She exuded a confident warmth as Hardy stood and they shook hands.

He thanked her for coming to meet him. She waved that off as they both sat and the waitress came to the table- by now Hardy was a resident. Catherine ordered herself a dessert called a chocolate heart attack. "I've got CDD," she said by way of explanation, breaking that dimpled smile again.

"No, let me guess." Hardy was immediately taken with her. After a second, he said, "Chocolate something something."

"You're not from around here, are you? Or it would be obvious. Chocolate Deficit Disorder. It's pretty serious."

"Why would I have known that if I lived around here?"

"Because here in the lovely south Peninsula, you have kids and you hear 'D' attached to anything, you know it means disorder. You may not realize it, but right now we're sitting in the Ritalin capital of the world. Every second or third child here has ADD. Or maybe ADHD. At least something."

"Why is that? I mean, why's it so big down here?"

She leaned in toward him and lowered her voice. "This is heresy," she said. "I could be shot if anyone heard me, but it's because they test for it."

"Who does?"

"Any parents with a difficult kid. Your children are failing or acting up in school, take them to a shrink, have them tested for ADD. And see if you can guess- you're a shrink looking for a condition where, if it's present, you've got a lifelong patient and endless billings."

"They tend to find it?"

"Surprising, is it not? Kind of like asking a car mechanic if you really need the brake job." She shook her head. "Because it's not that kids crave attention from their both too busy and can't be bothered parents, it's that they're born with a disorder. Not the parents' fault, not the kid's, either, which is the way we like things down here. Don't get me started."

Hardy was grinning at her. "I thought you already had."

"It's my job," she said. "Forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive."

"I know I get tedious. I'm trying to stop." The dimples. "Chocolate will help."

Hardy wanted to keep her talking until she was comfortable, and it didn't seem like that was going to be much of a chore. "What do you do?"

"I'm a city attorney, believe it or not. I do code enforcement on foster homes and shrinks, mostly, but my real mission is this over-prescribing of Ritalin. It really is an epidemic down here. Maybe it's everywhere parents can afford to get their kids tested, I don't know. Maybe kids have fundamentally changed since I was growing up and everybody needs to be medicated. But if you want my opinion, and it looks like you're going to get it anyway, it's that most of the time- not always, I admit- kids have this attention deficit because they don't get attention from their parents. Is it that complicated? Oh God." She brought her hand to her forehead. "I'm sorry. Especially if your kids have it, and they probably do, don't they?"

"No. Sometimes they get COUD, but we don't medicate for that. We just bust them pretty good."

It took her a second. "Center of universe disorder?"

"You're good," he said, smiling. "You must do this all the time."

The waitress arrived. "This will shut me up." She stuck a spoon into the dessert, brought it to her mouth, savored. "Okay," she said, "Mike. You know, I never asked you what about Mike you wanted to talk about."

"But you still came down here?"

"I still cared about him, although I hadn't seen him in years. He was a good guy."

Hardy kept his opinion on that to himself. "That's what everybody says. But somebody killed him and I'm trying to find out why."

"Somebody? I understood they had a pretty solid suspect." An awareness gathered in her eyes. She killed a few seconds licking her spoon. "You're defending the killer?"

Hardy had gone through this so often that he was tempted to wave it off. But it was the first time that Catherine Bass would have heard it, and he had to give the objection its weight. "The alleged killer, yes. Andrew Bartlett. But I expect he'll be released maybe as soon as tomorrow. I'm all but certain he didn't do it. I want to find out who did."

"And you think I might know? I haven't laid eyes on Mike in years."

"I realize that." He paused, then came out with it. "Mrs. Bass, I know he was gay."

She closed her eyes for a second, drew a deep breath and let it out. "All right."

"I'm wondering if that might have played some role in his death."

"If what did? Being gay? How would it do that?"

"I don't know. If he had some secret life…?"

She poked the chocolate with her spoon. "Wasn't someone else killed with him? A girl? One of his students?"

"Yes."

"That doesn't really point to a sinister gay secret life to me."

"It doesn't to me, either. She might not have been part of the original plan, but as a witness she had to be eliminated."

"Do you really think that?"

"I really don't know. I'm hoping my client is innocent. Beyond that, I'm fishing. But it would be helpful to get the simple fact of Mike's gayness out in front of the judge."

"And how would that help?"

"It might punch some holes in the prosecution's motive theory."

"What about his father?"

Hardy's own expression had grown somber. "I know. I've been trying to figure that one out. Bring it out in chambers, seal the record, something. I see you've dealt with it, too."

Her mouth was a hard line. "God, those years. When I compare them to how I live now…"

"How long were you together?"

Her eyes came back to him. "Not so long in real time, I guess. Thirty months, something like that, beginning to end." Her mouth tried to signal a kind of apology for getting so personal. "It was an eternity, though, in psychic time. We really were best friends, even back when he was with Terri. I was the other woman, you know, in their marriage. Broke them up. It was really pretty funny, actually, if you had a taste for irony."

"Did you know?"

"About his being gay? Not at first. At the time… hell, you know… we were young and living the theater life, all of us. It was assumed that we all led active sexual lives and that some of us experimented with… various combinations. We didn't see it as a big deal. And Mike was pretty…" She laughed again with the brittle embarrassment Hardy had first heard on the phone with her. "Actually, he was pretty, period. Gorgeous. And promiscuous as all hell, trying to prove what he wasn't, you know? God! Was it exciting! Drama every day, especially when he, when we, were cheating on Terri. Sometimes she'd be out on stage doing a scene- I mean in plain sight, thirty feet from us. Jesus."

He gave her a minute to come back to him. "So how did you find out?"

Hanging her head, she drew her dessert near and picked at it. "After we got married, we had a couple of good months. But pretty soon the… the physical side… I guess what turned him on was the forbidden fruit aspect. When I stopped being that…" Her shoulders rose, then fell. "But as I said, we were friends. We liked to do the same things. So at first we pretended everything was the same, fooling ourselves, you know. I'm not sure if Mike really admitted to himself that he was strictly gay, even then. We were always together and busy and… shit, I may as well tell you… we never had sex in our bed. It was always someplace we might get caught. For me, that got a little old, but as long as we had our busy routine and found time to sneak away, I told myself that we were intimate enough. The lies we tell ourselves, huh? And then, as it turned out- nobody's fault- but the routine changed on us anyway."

"What happened?"

"Mike got called to jury duty."

31

Lucas Welding. Write it down." Hardy was in his car, speeding north, talking to Glitsky. It was 10:30 and he'd left Catherine Bass fifteen minutes before. His right hand was sore from taking notes, but he remembered everything he'd written. "In 1984, he strangled and murdered his wife, Ginny. Got tried and convicted in San Francisco in '86, sentenced to LWOP."

"But he's out now?"

"Looks like."

"How'd that happen?"

"I don't know. But Mrs. Bass, Mooney's ex-wife, is a lawyer herself now and remembered Boscacci distinctly as the prosecutor. She's followed his career ever since. I'll bet you a million dollars that your Elizabeth Cary was on the same jury."

"You said you're in your car. Where are you?"

"Just passing the airport."

"Meet you at the Hall," Glitsky said. "Twenty minutes."

Since the ground floor of the Hall of Justice was the location of SFPD's Southern Station, the building was open. Hardy and Glitsky opened the front door together and passed through the metal detectors and security cops in the lobby. Lanier was already waiting for them in the hallway outside Glitsky's office, and the three of them filed into the small conference room behind the reception area.

By earlier that afternoon, they'd finally managed to set up a total of six borrowed computers for the use of the two General Work officers and the twenty-two others that both Jackman had provided and Glitsky had recruited out of their respective clerical staffs. All overtime expenses paid.

It had taken a good part of the afternoon to get the computers up and connected, but when Glitsky had left work that night, all of them had been in use. Six volunteers at a time worked the list of four hundred recently released convicts, while six others- armed with case numbers from the computer searches- went downstairs and under the building to Records, where they searched for the physical files on the Boscacci "hits."

By the time of Glitsky's departure earlier that night, out of the first 154 they'd identified seven cases where Boscacci had been the actual trial prosecutor. At 8:00 P.M., the second "shift" of twelve was scheduled to come in and continue through the night and then the next morning, until they got something.

But now the room was empty.

"Where is everybody?" Glitsky asked.

"They're all downstairs," Lanier said. "They got the case number on Welding five minutes after you called. Finding the physical records isn't so easy. It may be a while. He wasn't in your original four hundred, you know."

"So he didn't get out in the last two months," Glitsky said.

"Where'd they keep him?" Hardy asked.

"Corcoran, according to the computer."

Hardy threw a glance at Glitsky, came back to Lanier. "And he's out now?"

"Pretty much got to be if he's killing people, don't you think?"

Glitsky took Hardy's silent cue. "We call, tie it up. If it turns out this guy is the Executioner, we want to know everything about him. The warden gets a wake-up."

Hardy and Lanier followed him around the corner to his office, where he flipped through his Rolodex and picked up the telephone. After a short wait, he identified himself by name and rank and said he needed a record on one of the prison's inmates immediately. It was urgent.

Glitsky listened for a while, then said, "Yes, I realize that. But if he's the only one with that access at this time of night, then I need to talk to him." Another pause while the scar in Glitsky's lips went white. Then: "Could I get your name and rank, please? Thank you, Sergeant Gray. Listen, I could have the mayor of San Francisco call again in five minutes, and possibly even the governor after that, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary trouble. I'll take full responsibility."

Glitsky spelled his name, left his badge and telephone number, hung up. "I guess the warden likes his beauty rest," he said.

They heard the elevator and the scuffle of feet, and in a minute the small army of twelve volunteers had gathered again in the computer room. They'd brought up two large gray rolling trolleys, each about four by six feet wide and three feet high, and on them were piled what looked to be about twenty cardboard boxes. The lead guy, who was in uniform, saluted Glitsky. "This is the case, sir, or as much of it as we could find. Lucas Welding. Eighty-six. There's no room and worse light down there, so we thought we'd bring it up. What are we looking for?"

"The jurors," Glitsky said. "Also, just to be thorough, let's make sure Allan Boscacci tried the case."

Everyone, including Hardy, took a box and started going through the paper- endless, endless reams of paper, the complete record of a California murder trial. The boxes contained everything from the initial police reports to the autopsy and forensics information, to witness interviews, as well as all discovery, prosecution notes, expert witness testimony and background, the transcript of the trial itself. After fifteen minutes, one of the workers said, "I've got Boscacci. Here's the what-do-you-call-it, the front page."

"The caption page," Hardy said, although nobody looked up or seemed to care.

Glitsky jumped, though, and was looking at it. "Okay. So far so good." He flipped through a few of the following pages in that document, then closed it and handed the whole thing back. "Let's keep going," he said.

A long twenty-five minutes after that, Lanier's easy delivery broke the silence. "Here we go." He was sitting across the table from Glitsky, and slid the document across, while everyone else- some from out in the reception area- stopped what they were doing to look.

Glitsky read for a moment, then put a hand to his scar and pulled at it. "He's the one," he said in a hoarse and strangled tone. Then, clearing his throat, he read aloud. "Philip Wong, Michael Mooney, Edith Montrose, Morris Tollman."

"What about Elizabeth Cary?" Hardy asked.

Glitsky looked down, nodded. "Elizabeth Reed. That was her maiden name."

"Jesus Christ," someone whispered.

"I doubt it," Lanier said. "He wouldn't have come back for a murder trial." To a titter of nervous laughter.

But Glitsky was already punching numbers into the phone on the desk, a muscle working in his jaw. While he was waiting, another phone rang in his office. "Diz. That's the warden. Get it," he ordered. "Tell him I'll be right there." Hardy jumped.

"Marcel." Glitsky handed Lanier the conference room phone he'd been using. "That's Batiste. When he picks up, tell him what we've got and that I'll be right back. Now or sooner we're going to need eight teams at least, at least, to protect the people who are left." He was moving back to his office. "And when you're done, put out an all points on Welding ASAP."

In his own office, Glitsky strode in and grabbed the phone from Hardy. "Warden Fischer," he said. "This is Glitsky. Thanks for getting back to me. I don't know if you're familiar with these Executioner killings we've been having… Okay, great. In the last hour or so, we've developed a tentative ID on the suspect and believe he was staying at your place until recently. We're going to need all the information you have on him immediately- last known address, next of kin, the works. He went up in '86, LWOP. I know. I wondered about that, too. Welding. W-E-L-D-I-N-G. Lucas. Yeah, I'm sure. Why?"

Hardy watched Glitsky's face, already hard, turn to stone. The eyes narrowed, the lips went tight, the jaw muscle by his ear quivered. His hand went to his side and he pushed in as though trying to reposition his intestines. Then, for a long frozen moment, he ceased to move entirely. Finally, he asked, "You're sure?" Then, "Yes, of course, I see. Thank you."

He hung up, raised his head, saw Hardy standing there. "Lucas Welding is dead," he said.

For the next half hour, Glitsky was a dervish. Other people might still be at risk. Knowing that there had to be a connection between the Executioner and Lucas Welding, he sent people to find the names of all of Welding's visitors at Corcoran; correspondents, cell mates, people who put money on his book; everyone who had ever met the guy. He assigned the other half of his volunteers in pairs to track down the other jurors from Welding's trial. Check phone books and reverse listings. Get unlisted numbers from the phone company. Go online- somebody had to know how to locate individuals by name and get their address. Be aware of the maiden name issue. Leave messages with DMV and any federal agency they could think of. Wake up anybody they needed to, the jury records people. He didn't know precisely how the connection fit yet, but he knew that it did.

He ran down the hall to homicide and stopped Lanier from issuing the APB.

Back in his office, he briefed Batiste on the general situation and told him he wanted to assign protection officers to the jury people- to have teams of two standing by to deploy as soon as he could locate the jurors. Then they had to reschedule other officers to fill the affected shifts. Everyone's time would be on the Boscacci event number, if that met with the Chief's approval, which it did.

Hardy listened in, picking up the information secondhand. "He died two months ago in the infirmary in Corcoran," Glitsky told the Chief. "Fischer remembered specifically because it was a bit of a deal- he'd just been cleared on appeal. DNA. It looks like he really didn't do it. But then the cancer got him first."

"If that's true, it's ugly," Hardy said as he hung up. "They put away an innocent man?"

"Looks like." From the expression on his face, Glitsky wasn't happy about it either. "The Executioner seems pretty upset about it, too."

"I can't say I blame him."

Glitsky's look went black. "You don't?"

Hardy held up a palm. "Easy. For what he feels. Not for what he's doing."

"He does what he's doing, I don't care how he feels."

This certainly wasn't the time to discuss it, and Hardy wasn't sure he disagreed so much anyway. Injustice happened, he knew, and sometimes- perhaps with Welding- even innocently. Revenge and violence wasn't going to make anything better. At least, that was the theory. "So who is it?" Hardy asked. "Did he have a kid maybe? Some other relative?"

Glitsky, still in "do something" mode, snapped his fingers and picked up his desk telephone again. "Fischer"- the warden-"will know that. Where are you going?"

"Home." Hardy looked at his watch. "It's twelve-thirty and I've got a hearing this morning."

"You don't want to know how this comes out?"

"I know how this comes out, Abe. For my client."

Glitsky had certainly already known this on some level- Hardy had given him the first inkling of it the night before on the telephone, and tonight the Mooney connection through Catherine Bass had all but cinched it- but suddenly it hit him fresh. He put the phone down on the desk. "And the girl, too."

Hardy nodded. "Laura Wright. She just happened to be there."

32

At 9:40 on Wednesday morning, Dismas Hardy stood up at his place at the defense table and addressed the juvenile court for the first time In the Matter of Minor: Andrew Bartlett.

"Your honor," he said. "Before we begin argument and witnesses today, I think it will save the court considerable time and trouble if counsel meet in camera for a few minutes."

Johnson, perhaps sensing shenanigans, considered for a long moment. "We just got out here, Mr. Hardy. I'd like to get a little work done before we take a break."

"We may not need to do the work, your honor. There is new and pertinent information about this case, critical evidence that will, I believe, be persuasive to the court and perhaps even lead to dismissal of all charges against Mr. Bartlett."

The courtroom, as always, was nearly empty, but his words still created an audible buzz from the Norths, who sat behind Hardy, and even from the bailiffs, the clerk and the recorder. Brandt, who sat to Hardy's right, at the prosecution table, pushed his chair back and stared with frank amazement.

Johnson pulled himself up to his full height in his chair behind the bench. "As I mentioned to you at the outset, Mr. Hardy, we're not here to consider the criminal charges against Mr. Bartlett. The purpose of this hearing, and it's only purpose, is to determine where Mr. Bartlett gets tried- here or in adult court. Not whether."

"Of course, your honor, I understand that. Nevertheless, the import of this new information is rather extraordinary and I believe the court will want to have heard it."

"To save the time that is obviously so important to you?"

"To prevent a grave injustice, your honor. I'm talking perhaps ten minutes, maybe less."

Johnson wore his reluctance like a shroud, but finally, shaking his head in disgust, he turned to Brandt. "Does the petitioner have any objection?"

"Nothing substantive, your honor."

"All right. I'll see counsel in my chambers." Johnson stood. "Ten minutes." And he left the courtroom by the back door.

Johnson, his arms crossed over his chest, stood in his robes in the middle of his room, so that when the three lawyers trooped in behind him, there really wasn't anyplace for them to go. After Brandt closed the door behind them, they stood with their backs to the wall, their faces to the intractable judge. "All right, Mr. Hardy, we're in chambers. As you can probably tell, I'm not in much of a trifling mood, so let's hear what's so important."

Hardy nodded. "Thank you, your honor. I'll cut to the chase. Andrew Bartlett didn't kill Mike Mooney and I have information which I believe rises to the level of proof, and I think you'll agree."

But Johnson was already shaking his head no. "I won't agree because I won't hear it."

"Pardon?"

"I can't imagine, Mr. Hardy, how I could have made it more clear to you that this seven-oh-seven is not about Mr. Bartlett's guilt or innocence."

Hardy, striving for equanimity, inclined his head an inch in deference. "Yes, your honor, I understand, but this-"

"You say you understand, and follow it with a 'but.' That sounds like an argument coming up. Do you hear yourself?"

"Your honor, forgive me. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm trying to present information that you will, I'm sure, find compelling."

"About your client's guilt or innocence?"

Hardy knew the wrong answer, and tried to avoid it. "About the circumstances of the crime. Which would make it fall under criteria five."

"All right, but be careful." Johnson cocked his head. "We're getting a little obscure here, Counselor."

"I'm talking about the person they're calling the Executioner."

"What about him?"

Brandt got on the boards. "Excuse me, but wait a minute. This sounds to me like we're getting back to who committed these murders."

"It does to me, too," Johnson said. "Mr. Hardy, you're not going to imply, I hope, that some unknown serial killer might be guilty of the crimes for which your client is charged."

"Your honor, with respect, it's not a question of might. I was in the Hall of Justice last night with Deputy Chief Glitsky. He identified a defendant in a seventeen-year-old case with connections to Allan Boscacci as well as to all the so-called Executioner victims…"

"And you're saying the victims in this case…"

"I'm saying Mike Mooney and Laura Wright were killed by the Executioner, yes."

"Excuse me," Brandt said again. "Did I miss something? Have they caught him?"

"No."

"Has someone confessed?"

Hardy came back to Johnson. "That's not the point, your honor. Glitsky knows who he is, but hasn't been able to identify him yet by name."

Johnson barked a note of derision. "So he's known but unidentified, whatever that means. It seems we've gotten to quite a long throw from whether or not Mr. Bartlett is an adult."

"I'm getting there, your honor."

"You are? You know, Mr. Hardy, I don't believe you are. Is Mr. Bartlett somehow related to this known but unidentified Executioner?"

"No."

"May I ask how you can know that one way or the other if you don't know who the man is?" The judge gathered himself for a moment, then pointed an accusatory finger at Hardy. "This is exactly the type of alternative theory hocus-pocus that I warned you against at the outset, and warned you again before we came back here to chambers."

"But this isn't hocus-pocus, your honor. You can call Deputy Chief Glitsky and-"

Johnson finally raised his voice. "I don't have to call anyone! If there is strong enough evidence to warrant revisiting the charges against Mr. Bartlett, I'm sure Mr. Brandt will hear about it from the district attorney. Mr. Brandt, have you gotten any calls today on this topic?"

"No, your honor."

He turned to Hardy. "Then this court is going to assume, Mr. Hardy, that the current charges are still in effect. If Mr. Bartlett is demonstrably innocent of them, I'm sure that Mr. Jackman will drop them and let Mr. Brandt know as soon as he can. But in the meanwhile, until I hear otherwise, Mr. Bartlett is in the middle of an administrative process to determine where he gets tried. That's all that's happening here. Enough of this!"

Hardy, in a bit of a fury of his own, took a step forward, moving into the judge's personal space. "To the contrary, your honor, with all respect. There has not been enough of this. If it's your decision to refuse to hear what I've got to say, then when we get outside I'm going to open up by making a representation to the court and getting it on the record."

Johnson glared at him. "Talk all you want, Mr. Hardy. Sooner or later you'll have to stop and we'll get on with it."

"If it please the court." They were all back in the courtroom. Hardy didn't even sit down, but got back to his table, turned and spoke. "Last night, acting on information received from a classmate of Andrew Bartlett, I spoke to a woman named Catherine Bass, who was at one time the wife of Michael Mooney." Because proceedings in juvenile court were kept confidential, Hardy could bring up the bare fact of Mooney's sexuality here if he needed to and still keep it out of the public record. But now he realized with some relief that there was no reason even for that. "She informed me, and subsequently I have verified it as true, that in 1984, Michael Mooney served on a jury here in San Francisco in the case of People v. Lucas Welding, a murder case. The prosecutor in that case was Allan Boscacci. Other members of that jury included"- Hardy looked down and checked his notes-"Elizabeth Cary, born Elizabeth Reed, Edith Montrose, Philip Wong, and Morris Tollman. All of these people, the jurors I've mentioned and Allan Boscacci, have been murder victims in the past three weeks."

Next to him, he heard Andrew- his neck brace gone now- whisper to Wu, "Is that true?" Even within the bullpen, he saw the bailiffs exchange glances with each other and then the court recorder. Johnson picked up his gavel, then put it back down. It was the first time that he was hearing all of this in detail, and Hardy hoped that the recitation would make an impression.

"Upon receiving this information, I immediately called San Francisco's deputy chief of inspectors, Abe Glitsky, and subsequently met him at the Hall of Justice, where he discovered that Lucas Welding, who had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife, had recently won a reversal of his conviction based upon DNA evidence that had not been presented at the original trial. He had been ordered released from prison, but during the course of his appeal, he had developed cancer and ultimately died at the infirmary at the Corcoran Penitentiary before he could be released."

Hardy stopped, wondering if that was enough. It certainly had been plenty for him and Glitsky. He threw a look over to Brandt, but the prosecutor was sitting slumped in his chair, his head down, his hands clasped on his lap. Johnson himself appeared to be waiting for more, and if that door was open, Hardy thought he should walk through it.

"Deputy Chief Glitsky has assigned several inspectors first to find and protect the other jurors from the Welding case, and second to identify and locate anyone who might have had a relationship with Welding, and whose rage over Welding's seventeen years of incarceration for a crime he did not commit might have become a motive for the murders of Allan Boscacci and several members of the convicting jury." He paused to let his words reverberate for a moment, then added. "Including," he said, "the murder of Michael Mooney."

Brandt was sitting up straight now. Johnson was taking some notes at the podium. When he was finished, he looked up. His eyes went first to Brandt, then to the gallery, where Hal and Linda were whispering, then finally back to the defense table. "Thank you, Mr. Hardy. Your representation is noted for the record. Is that the substance of it?"

"Yes, your honor."

"All right, then, let's move on. Do you have another witness for this seven-oh-seven proceeding?"

"Wait a minute." Andrew's voice was still fairly hoarse, but carried in the courtroom. "If you know that somebody else killed Mooney…"

Behind him, Hardy heard the Norths and he turned. Hal was on his feet. "That ought to be the end of this," he was saying. Both bailiffs- Nelson and Cottrell- stood quickly and moved out from their positions on either wall.

"But this is nuts," Andrew was saying to Wu. "It proves what I've been saying from the beginning." He got to his feet and spoke up to the court in general, back to his mother. "It's what I've been telling you guys all along…"

Johnson gaveled him quiet. A sharp, loud crack. "I'll have order in this courtroom. Mr. North, sit down. Mr. Hardy, Ms. Wu, I'm warning you, get your client under control." Both bailiffs stopped in their tracks for a moment, then Cottrell, with a warning glare at Wu and Hardy, walked out through the bullpen gate and into the gallery.

Hardy turned and watched Cottrell as he continued back past the Norths and positioned himself by the back door.

Wu stood up. "But, your honor, surely the import of Mr. Hardy's-"

Johnson brought down his gavel again. "Ms. Wu. I said that's enough."

Shaking her head in frustation and anger, Wu shared a look with Hardy, put her hand on Andrew's arm to calm him, and sat back down. Hardy was still on his feet. "Your honor," he said, "it's obvious to everyone in this courtroom that Andrew Bartlett did not kill Mike Mooney."

Brandt was up across the room. "Your honor, if it please the court. It's not obvious to me. I've got an eyewitness and a great deal of evidence that says he did. And what about the other victim in this case, Laura Wright? Andrew Bartlett's girlfriend? Does defense counsel contend that she was on this Mr. Welding's bad luck jury, too?"

Hardy spoke to the judge. "Your honor, she was killed because she happened to be there and Mooney's killer did not want to leave a witness."

Johnson used his gavel again, then waited while the courtroom went to complete silence. Finally, he drew a long breath. "Mr. Hardy, I reject your conclusion that your representation rises to the level of proof in the matter before this court. I'll admit that it does rise to the level of coincidence, and the court does not find that compelling. Also, it doesn't change the essential fact of the gravity of the offense- Mr. Mooney and Ms. Wright were murdered. The district attorney has not withdrawn the charges against Mr. Bartlett, nor has he conveyed the gravemen of your most recent information to the court or to Mr. Brandt. As I've already mentioned several times, this seven-oh-seven is about whether Mr. Bartlett is a juvenile or an adult and that's all it's about."

"But, your honor-"

Crack! "Mr. Hardy, your representation is noted for the record. What do you expect me to do, drop the charges?"

"I don't think that would be unreasonable, your honor, given the enormity of what you're calling the coincidence. Mr. Mooney and Ms. Wright were both killed by someone connected to Lucas Welding, and there's no such connection with Andrew Bartlett."

"I understand that that's your theory, Mr. Hardy. Now do you have another witness, or is it time that I make a ruling?"

Hardy bit the inside of his mouth hard. Looking down to his right at Andrew, he whispered, "Hang in there," then came back to the judge and said, "We'd like to call Anna Salarco, your honor."

"All right." Johnson looked to his left- Cottrell's standard position in the courtroom- and frowned. He turned in the other direction. "Officer Nelson, would you please go out to the hallway and call the witness? Anna Salarco. And while you're out there, if you see Officer Cottrell, would you ask him if he'd care to join us again in the courtroom?"

There followed some minutes of confusion. Hardy had told Anna Salarco that they'd call her as a witness as soon as the court was called to session, but then they'd all had the meeting in chambers and Hardy's representation to the court. In the interim, evidently, both of the Salarcos had left the hallway to go to the bathroom. Maybe Bailiff Cottrell had gone looking for them. In any event, Cottrell was still missing from the courtroom when Anna Salarco finally, and nervously, took the witness stand.

Hardy walked her through the by-now familiar recital, making sure to memorialize for the record the understanding that the Salarcos thought they had with the police regarding their immigration status, which Hardy believed served as a strong incentive for Juan to refuse to change his story. When they'd finished, Anna's testimony was all Hardy could have wished for. Just before her husband had gone downstairs and discovered the bodies, she had clearly seen the man leaving the house after the door had slammed, and could not identify him as Andrew. Hardy thanked her and turned her over to Brandt for cross-examination.

Much to Hardy's displeasure, Brandt and Anna weren't complete strangers anymore. Wu told him that when the prosecutor had seen her name on the list, he, too, had called the Salarcos, then gone out to visit with them last night himself. This was why Juan was out in the hallway now, waiting for his chance to talk to the court and possibly refute whatever his wife had said first.

So Brandt advanced to the witness box with a relaxed demeanor. "Mrs. Salarco," he began, "how far is it from your window to the sidewalk in front of your house?"

"I don't know exactly."

"Approximately, then."

She shot a glance at Hardy and he nodded with some confidence. This question was not unexpected. "Thirty feet, maybe forty."

"Thirty or forty feet, thank you. That's about the distance from where you're sitting to the back of this courtroom, is that right?"

Hardy turned around to check and saw that Brandt wasn't far off.

"Something like," Mrs. Salarco said. "Yes."

"And you and your husband live on the second floor of your building, do you not?"

"Yes."

"So you were looking down at the person you saw?"

"Yes."

"And he was wearing a cowl?" At her confused expression, he mimicked with his hands, and added, "A sweatshirt with a hood over his head?"

"Sí. Yes."

"Did it cover his whole head?"

Again, she looked at Hardy, and again he nodded. What else could he do? He had to let her tell her story and hope it came out as credible.

She nodded back at Brandt. "Yes. But not his whole face."

"Did it cover part of his face, then?"

She paused. "Yes." Then added. "He looked up."

God bless her, Hardy thought.

But Brandt came right back at her. "What do you mean by that, Mrs. Salarco? That he looked up? Do you mean-"

Hardy stalled to let the witness get composed. "Objection."

"Sustained."

Brandt was ready, though. "At any time, did the hood come off the man's head?"

"No."

"It covered the top of his head and part of his face?"

Hardy stood again, objecting.

"Sustained."

"All right. Let me ask you this, Mrs. Salarco? Was it dark outside at this time? Nighttime?"

"Yes, but-"

"Yes is sufficient, thank you," Brandt said, cutting her off. He must have decided that he'd made enough of his point, and switched gears. "Mrs. Salarco, were you present at the police lineup where your husband identified the person who'd been downstairs at Mr. Mooney's apartment that night?"

"Yes."

"Did you take part in that lineup, too?"

"Yes."

"And you failed to identify anyone in the lineup as the person you saw that night, is that right?"

"Yes."

"You were given a form, and then signed the form, saying you didn't recognize anyone in the lineup, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And Mr. Bartlett, sitting at that table over there"- he turned and pointed-"you did not recognize him?"

"Your honor." Hardy was up again.

"I'm getting to something here, your honor," Brandt said.

"All right." Johnson nodded. "Objection overruled, but get to it."

"Mrs. Salarco, when you did not positively identify anyone in the lineup as the man below your window, did you mean that you didn't know whether it was one of the people in the lineup or not? It might have been or it might not have been. Or did you mean to say that none of those people in the lineup was the man you saw? That is, you could not definitely say that it was Andrew?"

Her eyes by now filled with fear, Anna Salarco looked to Hardy for support, but there was nothing he could do. She came back to Brandt. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"Your honor," Brandt said. "May I rephrase?"

"Go ahead."

Brandt gave her a warm smile and stepped a bit closer to her. "Mrs. Salarco," he said, "we are trying to understand exactly what it is that you want to tell the court. At the lineup, you said you could not identify anyone, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"All right. Did you mean that it could not have been Andrew? That it was impossible that it was Andrew down below you thirty or forty feet away, with a hood over his head on a dark night?"

"No. Maybe not impossible, but-"

Brandt rushed her with the follow-up. "So your testimony now is that what you meant to say was that you couldn't positively identify the person as Andrew? Is that right? That you weren't sure enough to swear to it."

"Sí," she said. "I could not swear to it that it was him."

"Ah." Brandt rewarded her with a beaming smile. "Thank you, Mrs. Salarco." He whirled to Hardy. "Redirect."

He wanted to take a short recess, perhaps confer with Wu and give Anna a few minutes to collect herself and perhaps realize what she'd said. But he didn't think he could afford to wait. "Mrs. Salarco," he began. "Is there a streetlight in front of your house?"

"Yes."

"Was it on- that is, lit up- when you saw the man come from the downstairs apartment, turn, and look up at you?"

"Yes."

"And could you see the man's face?"

"Yes."

"And was it Andrew's face?"

She stopped, looked for a long time at the defense table, then finally shook her head. "No," she said. "Was not that boy."

During the lunch recess, Hardy stood out in the back lobby making phone calls, to Glitsky, to his wife, to the office. As he was finishing up the last one, he noticed Wu and Brandt sitting on a bench next to the walkway that led up to the cabins. From his vantage, they appeared to be arguing, but there was something about their body language that set Hardy's alarms jangling. Since there wasn't a jury that might be influenced by seeing the opposing attorneys schmoozing during lunch, their tête-à-tête wasn't the breach in trial decorum it might otherwise have been. But still, especially given the Norths' presence just up the hill in the cabins having lunch with their son, Hardy did not think it presented a picture that would be particularly comforting to the clients.

He put away his cellphone, walked out the back door, and started to approach them. When he got close, he noticed the silent signal pass from Brandt to Wu, and they both shut up and put on different faces. Hardy gave them both a polite hello.

"Any word from Glitsky?" Wu asked him.

"He's not answering, so I'm assuming he's too busy. I left a message that we want to know the second he's got anything firm. Meanwhile, I'm going up to have a word with Andrew and his folks. If I'm not interrupting anything here, you want to come along?"

Coming from her boss, this wasn't really a request. Wu hesitated, then stood up and fell in next to him as he continued walking. "He's not going to call Juan Salarco," she said.

Hardy nodded, believing that the decision was the proper one. Though Juan's testimony might have undercut his wife's credibility somewhat, in the end his identification of Andrew in the lineup was already on the record, and the differences in the stories and interpretations of the husband and wife were what juries were for. Further, once he got on the stand, Hardy or Wu would have a chance to cross-examine him and perhaps expose other weaknesses that they could later exploit at the trial. "So that's it for witnesses then?"

"It looks like."

"Then it's over. We get the ruling when we go back in." Hardy took a few more steps, then asked, "What were you two arguing about? It wasn't that he isn't calling Salarco."

"No, it's that he won't call Jackman."

"Why should he? As his honor was kind enough to point out, if they get anything, Jackman will call him. Mr. Brandt is just playing it out."

"A game, right."

"Well, in some ways it is a game, Wu. You know that."

"Not for Andrew," she said.

"No, though it was when you started with him, wasn't it?"

Her shoulders fell with the truth of that. "It's just that keeping track of when it's a game and when it's not"- she broke a weary smile-"it can wear a girl out." They hadn't yet reached the gate that enclosed the cabins, and Wu stopped walking. "But this is just so clearly wrong, don't you think? Andrew didn't kill anybody."

"No. I don't believe he did either."

"That's what I asked Jason, whether or not he believed it. He said that wasn't the point. He didn't want to go there."

"He's right. His job right now is to present the petitioner's argument."

"Even if he knows it's wrong?"

"Even then. And in this case, he doesn't know he's wrong. He's just a lot more likely to be wrong than he used to be."

"And so Andrew winds up screwed again?"

"You don't want to be screwed, don't get in the system. But for the time being, that's what it looks like. But it won't last much longer, I don't think."

Wu bit her lip, shook her head. "This is all my fault, you know that? Every bit of it. If I hadn't been so arrogant and stupid, Johnson might be listening to all this new information with an open mind, instead of being so blind… I mean, what if Andrew had succeeding in killing himself? That would have been completely my fault. And now, every extra minute that he spends in jail…"

Hardy stopped her. "You thought you were doing what was best for your client. That's the job."

"But he wasn't guilty."

"You didn't know that. You thought he was."

"I always thought they were. They always have been before."

"Okay, so maybe you won't think that anymore. It's not all about strategy and leverage. Sometimes- not often, I grant you, but sometimes- it's about the truth."

The small visitors' room was too small for all of them, so Bailiff Nelson had accompanied Andrew, Hardy, Wu and the Norths back down the hill to the courtroom, where they now sat. "But this makes no sense at all," Linda North said. "We know that Mr. Mooney and Laura were both killed by this Executioner, don't we?" She looked around at them all, wide-eyed. "Don't we all know that? Is it just me?"

Hardy nodded. "No, it's not just you, and yes, we know it. But we don't have proof."

"What more proof would we need?" Hal asked.

"Physical evidence," Hardy said. "We know that they've matched the slugs that killed at least three of the Executioner's victims. I'm asking the police to take another pass at Mooney's place, try to find the slugs. Either they'll do it or I'll find some investigators and pay them to."

"But what if nobody finds them?" Linda asked.

"Then maybe they'll find this Executioner and he'll confess to killing Mooney. Or maybe Juan Salarco could withdraw his ID. Any of those would be good."

"But what if," Linda went on, "what if we don't get any of them? Are you saying they won't let Andrew go?"

"They still might, yes," Hardy said. "But they might not."

"And in the meanwhile," Andrew said in his damaged voice, "what happens to me?"

"I'll be here," his mother said to him. "I'll be here every day."

"We'll both be here," Hal added.

Hardy put a hand on the young man's arm, gave what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "I've got to ask you to sit tight awhile longer. You think you can do that? This is going to work out. I promise you. We're almost done."

Hal couldn't let it go. "But the judge must know now, doesn't he? I mean, the coincidence is so great it really couldn't be anything else."

"In fact," Hardy said, "it could be something else. Somebody else besides the Executioner could have had a motive to kill Mooney, or Laura, though I wouldn't bet on it. But Andrew's guilt or innocence isn't what this hearing is about anyway."

"And meanwhile he sits in jail," his mother said.

"Really, though," Hardy said, "not for too much longer."

"This is just a fucking travesty," Hal said.

Hardy met his angry gaze with one of his own. "I couldn't agree with you more."

Nelson's bulk appeared at the table beside them. "Mr. Hardy, Ms. Wu, his honor would like to see both of you in chambers."

They exchanged a worried glance, excused themselves and walked back out through the bullpen. Nelson knocked on the judge's door, got a "Yes?" and pushed it open.

This time, they had room to enter and even to sit on two of the three chairs that had been placed in front of Johnson's desk, where the judge sat without his robes, in shirt and tie. Much to Hardy's surprise, he looked up from the document he was perusing and greeted them more or less genially. "I've asked Mr. Brandt to join us as well, and I'd prefer to say nothing until he arrives." He went back to his document, occasionally taking a note or striking a phrase.

Brandt didn't keep them waiting long, and as soon as he'd come in and sat, Johnson adjusted his glasses and began to speak. "I want to thank you all for coming by. You'll notice that I have not asked the court recorder to join us. This is because I'd like this meeting to be off the record. Does anyone have an objection to that?"

No one did.

"As all of you I'm sure realize, this has been an acrimonious case from the outset. I've spent the last hour and a half here at my desk thinking about what we've seen and heard about this minor Andrew Bartlett, his attempted suicide, and so on. It's led me to wonder if perhaps some of the earlier defense motions and strategies presented in this case might have antagonized the court to a degree that is incompatible with the interests of justice. The fact of the matter is that I've been very angry and remain very angry at what I've taken to be deliberate manipulation of the court."

"Your honor…!"

"That's all right, Ms. Wu. I'm not accusing you of anything now. I'm pretty well over it." He took off his glasses and laid them on the desk in front of him. "Mr. Hardy, your representation in the courtroom this morning was, as you pointed out, compelling and highly relevant. However, as I tried to make clear about half a dozen times, I wasn't going to allow this hearing and the reason for it to become bogged down in the question of Mr. Bartlett's innocence or guilt. But now we've heard from all the defense witnesses, and Mr. Brandt, I understand you won't be calling anyone?"

"That's correct, your honor."

"All right, then, for all practical purposes, we're finished with the seven-oh-seven. All that remains is for me to render my decision, which I've prepared and plan to deliver at the proper time. For my own peace of mind and, frankly, to preserve the integrity of the court, I wanted to share that tentative decision with all of you now, before we go out on the record."

He replaced his glasses then and opened the document that was on the desk in front of him. "The court finds that the minor was seventeen years old at the time of the alleged offense and that the offense falls within Welfare and Institutions Code 707(b). The court finds as follows: the minor is not a fit and proper subject to be dealt with under the juvenile court law."

He looked up, noted Hardy's and Wu's looks of frustration and defeat, went back to his text. "The court finds that the minor is not amenable to the care, treatment and training programs available through the juvenile court based on the degree of criminal sophistication exhibited by the minor for the following reasons: the minor eluded a vigorous anti-weapons campaign at his school for several months before the alleged incident, and carried a loaded gun concealed on his person…"

For the next several minutes, Johnson didn't look up as he read from the notes in his folder, finding that Andrew "is amenable to the care, treatment and training programs available through the juvenile court" for the second, third, and fourth criteria, and giving his reasons. So Wu had won three out of four, Hardy was thinking, not that it mattered one whit for their client.

"As to the fifth criterion," Johnson finally intoned, "the court finds that the minor is not amenable… the minor is an unfit subject to be treated in the juvenile justice system. The matter is referred to the district attorney for prosecution under the general law. The matter shall be set for arraignment in the adult court."

When he finished, he took a breath and removed his eyeglasses. "That's where we are," he said. "I wanted all of you to understand my position on the law, my reasoning and my ruling. That will be the ruling of the court."

Now he looked to each of the three lawyers in turn. "However, in view of Mr. Hardy's representation, and in the interest of justice and simple fairness, I'm not going to issue this ruling today. I'm going to take the matter under submission for one week, during which time you, Mr. Brandt, will discuss the matter with the district attorney and determine if he chooses to pursue the matter further, and to what degree. In the meanwhile, since Mr. Bartlett remains a minor until I formally declare him to be an adult, I intend to release him from his detention into the care of his parents until next week when I deliver my ruling."

Brandt, having won the hearing on its merits only to have the victory snatched from him, raised a hand and spoke. "Your honor, with respect, you can still issue your ruling today. The DA will be reviewing the case as a matter of course and will-"

But Johnson stopped him. "You're forgetting the special circumstances, Counselor. The minute I declare Mr. Bartlett an adult, he remains in confinement, and that doesn't seem right to me. There's no bail by statute in a special circumstances case. If I say he's an adult today, he goes downtown today. And it's my feeling that he's already been locked up too long. If he's innocent, one day is too long."

"Thank you, your honor," Wu said.

But he turned on her, too. "There's nothing to thank me for, Counselor." He tapped the document on his desk. "This will be my ruling. It goes into effect when I deliver it, one week from today. Meanwhile, your client doesn't leave the jurisdiction. He's under his parents' care and guidance the entire time. There will be a number of strict conditions. Is that clear?"

"Yes, your honor. Of course."

"Of course." Johnson was clearly sick of the whole thing. He looked at his watch and stood up. "If there are any more comments, I'd prefer not to hear them. My decision is my decision and it's final. Now I'd like to go out and put it on the record."

33

Jason Brandt wasn't as disappointed as he'd let on with Johnson's decision on Andrew Bartlett. In fact, as he listened to Dismas Hardy's representation to the court that morning, he'd realized that if even most of what his opposite number in the courtroom was saying proved to be true, he could be prosecuting an innocent man. And since it was all verifiable, why would Hardy lie? Then when the judge had ordered him to confer with the DA on the further disposition of the case, it removed any onus from him. He'd won the 707 hearing on its merits and that was the task he'd been assigned.

Now that was over.

Johnson had made his decision and anything he and Amy Wu might do outside of the courtroom would be irrelevant to the case. Technically, he should possibly wait to see her until the ruling next Wednesday, but there was just no way he was going to do that, not now. He'd take the risk, and if one of his bosses didn't like his timing, he had an answer that he knew would fly- they hadn't started until after the ruling. They would not be adversaries in the courtroom again.

But after they'd adjourned at the YGC, he'd had no opportunity to talk with her in the courtroom, set up a time they could get together. She, Hardy, Andrew and the Norths had been celebrating quietly around the defense table, and he had caught her eye for an instant- a message or a promise- then left by the back way. He'd called Jackman's office and Treya told him she could squeeze him in at a little after four o'clock, which meant he couldn't waste a moment, so he didn't.

When Brandt came in, Jackman stood, came around his desk and shook his hand, which Brandt took as a sign of enhanced recognition and even of approval. They sat on either end of the low settee in front of the coffee table. Jackman asked him what was so important and Brandt gave it to him in under five minutes.

"We can check this out pretty quick," the DA said in his quiet tone. He stood again and went over to the door. "Treya," he said, "is there a chance you could get me in touch with your husband right away?"

"I'll give it a try."

"Just transfer him to my line." Jackman came back into the office, went back to his desk, and the telephone rang once before he picked it up. "Abe. We've had a question come up here. There's a young man in my office, Jason Brandt, who's been prosecuting the Andrew Bartlett case up at the YGC. Mike Mooney and… Right. That's right, it's Hardy's case, too… You are? Well, the judge has postponed his ruling until he knows more. I'm thinking you might be able to tell Mr. Brandt what you've got and he can report back to me… Right, on Mooney, too, but all of it. Thanks."

Jackman hung up. "You know where you're going?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then go."

In the improvised computer room next to his office, a harried and exhausted Glitsky was bringing Brandt up to date between taking the reports of his people in the field and answering the questions of his workers. The clock on the wall read 4:40.

"I know. Hardy has already left me three messages about the slugs at Mooney's, but I've got other priorities at the moment. We don't have any of those slugs. We didn't find any the first time. I don't think it's likely we'll find them next time we look either."

"But do you think, personally, that Mooney was one of the Executioner's victims?"

Glitsky's lips pursed. "You don't?"

"I don't know."

"Well, start knowing. I'm not saying we can prove it yet, but it's a dead lock as far as I'm concerned."

"And Bartlett?"

"I don't know from Bartlett," Glitsky said. "Wrong guy, wrong place, wrong time."

Phones were ringing all over the office, and somebody from outside in the reception area called in, "Chief, your line."

Glitsky picked up the receiver, then pulled a pad over and wrote, furiously taking notes. "How many times?" he said. "What's the name? Anybody see him? Enough for a composite? Do they video the visitors down there?" Glitsky's mouth went tight. "Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. Keep checking."

He hung up, raised his voice. "Everybody listen up," and the other noises in the room stopped. "That was Darrel Bracco down at Corcoran. Lucas has got a son, Ray Welding, visited him in prison forty times in the last three years. No address, no listing. Bracco's requested the phone calls from the pay phone at his father's block and they're going to fax it up direct. Sarah," he turned to Evans, "you pick three people. I want every four one five, four oh eight, five one one, six five oh"- all the telephone area codes for the Bay Area-"every one reversed for names and addresses. This might be the guy."

"This guy, Welding, the dad." Brandt, wanting to contribute, couldn't stop himself and spoke to Glitsky. "If he won an appeal, he must have had a lawyer. The lawyer would know the son, wouldn't he? Where he lives?"

"He might," Glitsky said. "But he won't talk to us. We're the cops, remember, the bad guys."

"But if the son's the Executioner?"

Glitsky didn't answer because someone else told him to pick up the phone. This time he listened without writing or saying much, and by the time he put the phone down, the room had hushed. His head hung, chin to chest. He slowly fisted the table in a black fury.

Everyone waited until he raised his head. "The last local juror," he said. "Wendy Takahashi, maiden name Shui. The one that just moved last month." Which was why they hadn't been able to locate her sooner.

"She's already dead?" someone asked.

"Before we got there," Glitsky said. "Maybe just before. Belou's been standing outside her place since about two, protecting a dead woman." Glitsky's eyes, opaque with fatigue and anger, were glazed over.

Brandt wandered out to the reception room, stopped next to a uniformed officer. "What did he mean, the last local juror?"

The man, studying a computer printout, answered like a zombie. "There were six locals. Mooney, Reed- that's Cary- Montrose, Wong, Tollman, and now Shui/Takahashi. She was the last one."

The mention of Mooney as the first Executioner victim did not escape Brandt's notice. "What about the other six?" he asked.

"Four moved away, two died. We're trying to find the four. We figure the other two- the dead ones- are out of immediate danger."

Wu got back to the Sutter Street office and, after accepting congratulations from the small group gathered in Hardy's office, excused herself to go and call Brandt back at the YGC. He wasn't in and she left a message that she wanted to see him, with her work and home phone numbers. Maybe, she said, they could even have dinner later tonight. Start over and take things more slowly. In the flush of confidence she was feeling after Johnson's decision on Andrew, she allowed herself to believe that sometimes the right thing could happen in this world.

But Brandt wasn't at his office. She'd have to wait a bit longer.

Her in basket was filled to overflowing with work- mail that she'd neglected, returned materials from word processing and her secretary. On the top was the most recent draft of the notice rule memo she was writing for Farrell- billable work- and she lifted it up from the pile, kicked back from her desk, put her feet up and began to read it over.

Ten minutes later she was back in her working hunch, red pen in hand, scratching out and rewriting, when somebody knocked at her door. "Come in."

"You're working," Hardy said.

"That's what you pay me for. What's up?"

"I'm going down to the Hall, see if I can find Glitsky and get a word with him. Maybe get a commitment on some action with the Mooney scene."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Actually, I was going to suggest that you give yourself a break. As managing partner, I wanted you to know that I've declared today a clear win for the good guys. And they're not so common you want to ignore them, ever. David Freeman, lesson six. So it's your sacred duty to take the evening off and savor the victory."

"David Freeman never took time off."

"Not true. Every time he won, he burned the city down."

Wu glanced down at the draft on her desk, let out a sigh. "I don't consider this over yet, sir. Not till next Wednesday. If then."

"It's over," Hardy said. "Jackman hears that the Salarcos never heard a shot, my guess is that even without scuffed slugs from Mooney's, he'll never go forward. Andrew's home tonight, Wu. You've got to call that a win."

"All right, but it wasn't a win for me."

"How do you figure that?"

"You're the one who found everything that made the difference. I just made problems we shouldn't have had at the outset. Then made them worse as we went along."

Hardy stood a minute in the doorway, then took a step in and closed the door behind him. "Look, Wu" he said, "this was your first major case. So you weren't perfect. Nobody is. The point is, do you think you learned anything?"

Gradually, she softened. Nodded her head in acknowledgment.

"Okay, then. Your client's free, your team just took the flag, your boss is telling you to take the rest of the day off, and you're splitting hairs about how we didn't really win and it wasn't really you and how it could have been better? Don't do that. It could always be better, but you ought to recognize when it's good enough, don't you think?"

She sighed again, glanced at her in box, finally looked up and gave him a chagrined smile. "All right."

"You can go back to punishing yourself tomorrow. I won't stop you. But tonight, give yourself a break and get out of here."

Hardy was right, she thought. You had to take these moments when you could.

It was a bit after five, suddenly warm and still now after all the spring wind, with an almost buttery softness to the air and the light. She parked just off Chestnut and decided to stroll along the avenue, letting her senses dictate where she'd stop, what she'd buy for a private celebration dinner at home. She'd open all the windows to let in some of the outside, then sit alone at her table with her view of the bridge and some great bread and selections of the awesome take-out Marina food and fresh flowers. After, she'd curl up in her chair and read or put on some music or both, and Jason would call or he wouldn't, but either way there would be tomorrow and if it was meant to be, it would be.

It took her most of an hour, dawdling along, stopping in at half a dozen shops, chatting with the merchants and even some of the other customers. She bought daffodils and some fresh Asiago cheese bread, marinated artichoke hearts, a spinach salad, some pot-stickers, an early pear.

The staircase up to her apartment was suffused with still-bright sunlight as she walked up. When she got to the fourth-floor landing outside her door, she stopped and took another moment to look down over the neighborhood, then the view beyond- the dark green cypresses in the Presidio, a hundred pleasure boats on the bay.

What a gorgeous place!

Suddenly, for perhaps the first time in her adult life, she realized that she felt blessed and even lucky.

She put down the bag of food and flowers. Taking her keys from her purse, she inserted the house key into the door, picked up her groceries again and walked inside. Closing the door behind her, she threw the deadbolt and set the chain lock.

Behind her, a male voice said, "Turn around slowly and move away from the door."

The after-work crowd at the Balboa Cafe wasn't quite as thick as the after-dinner mob, but Jason Brandt still felt fortunate to get a seat at the bar. He laid a twenty-dollar bill down and ordered a beer.

"A beer?" Cecil held up a bottle of Jack Daniel's. "I see you walk in the door, my hand automatically goes to the JD. Double, rocks."

"Not today," Brandt said. "Beer."

"What kind of beer?"

"Wet and cold. I'm looking for Amy Wu. She been in?"

"Not yet." He started pulling a Sierra Nevada from the tap on the bar. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen her in a while. Since she went out of here with you, if I remember. You think she's all right?"

"Yeah. I was with her in court today. She's fine."

"She is fine. You seeing her?"

"No. We've been in trial together. Opposite sides. It's against the rules."

"Shame," Cecil said.

"Yeah." Brandt brought the beer to his lips, drank off an inch.

Cecil moved down the bar, served some customers, changed the channel on the television set. When he came back, Brandt was staring into his beer, turning it around and around on the bar in front of him. "You all right?" Cecil asked.

"Yeah, great."

"You don't look great. You look unhappy."

"It's Wu," Brandt said. "I think I'm kind of in love with her."

"You say that like it just occurred to you."

"It did."

"Are you still in trial?"

"I don't think so. Not after today."

"Well, if you're in love, bro, you better make a move or somebody else will snag that babe first for sure. I wouldn't be sitting my poor ass on a stool waiting for her to come in here. I'd go find her where she is, stake my claim."

His glass halfway to his mouth, Brandt stopped and lowered it back down to the bar. Then he was up off the stool and moving.

"Hey, your change!"

"Keep it."

He was sitting in her reading chair, having moved out from behind the changing screen where he'd been waiting when she came in. He held a gun on her- a gun with a long and very heavy-looking tube attached to the barrel. She sat at her table, hands in her lap. The grocery bag remained on the floor by the door she'd locked. "How did you know where I live? How'd you get in here?"

His laugh was guttural, humorless. "I've gotten real good at finding people. And getting in is the same as it was when I was a kid. The point is that I'm here."

"What do you want?"

"I want to finish my work."

"And what's that? Your work?"

"I believe you legal types would call it redress of grievances."

"Then it can't have anything to do with me. I haven't done anything to you."

"No, that's true. Not to me personally. In your case, maybe it's more that I want to keep you from doing more harm."

"Than what? I haven't done anybody any harm."

"Amy, Amy, Amy, please. I hope you don't really feel that. What about Andrew Bartlett?"

"What about him? He got out of detention today. Did you know that? How is that harming him?"

"Are you forgetting his attempted suicide already? Did it really make that little of an impression on you? You don't call that harm?"

"But I didn't-"

He slapped his free hand down on the arm of the chair, bared his teeth in a snarl. "The fuck you didn't! Don't you think he did that because you made him believe he'd never get out? But no, you don't think that way, do you? Nothing's really your fault, is it?"

"No. That's not true. Some things are completely my fault. Please don't point that thing. I'm sorry," she said. "Whatever it is, I didn't mean…"

"You don't understand what I'm saying. I don't care what you mean, what you meant. You play the same game they all played with my father, don't you see that? You're just like Allan Boscacci was twenty years ago- arrogant, self-righteous, pigheaded and wrong." He lifted the gun again. "Don't you move!"

"I wasn't. I was just…"

He kept his arm extended, the gun with its silencer pointed directly at her chest. "I don't care. I say something, you don't deny it. If I say 'Don't move,' you don't move."

"I'm sorry. I won't anymore. I promise. But I'm nervous. I've got to pee."

"So pee."

She started to stand, but he barked again, came halfway out of the chair with the gun trained on her. "Sit down!"

"But you just said…"

"I said you can pee. I didn't say anything about going anywhere."

She stared across at him, squeezed her legs together. "What do I have to do with Allan Boscacci?" Anything to keep him talking, to buy time, even a few precious seconds more.

"You're just like him."

"You said that. But how?"

"You really ask how? As if you don't know. All right, I'll tell you how." He sat back in the chair, rested the gun on his knee. "I saw you that first day with Bartlett, so sure he was guilty, ready to send him away for half his life, no concern at all for the truth, for what might be right. Just like Boscacci did with my father. Sent him up for life when he didn't do it."

"Your father?"

"That's right. My father."

"Didn't do what?"

"Rape and kill my mother, that's what."

She clutched her hands together against her stomach. "I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about my father, goddamn it! My father!" Again he'd come forward, lifted the gun. He held it on her for five seconds, ten. Again he collapsed back. "My father," he said, his voice now going to dead calm.

"What about him? I don't know about your father."

"Lucas Welding. His name was Lucas Welding."

"All right," she said. "Please. Tell me about him."

Jason Brandt got to the landing and thought he heard voices upstairs. He stopped and listened, almost turned around and went back down, but then decided since he'd come this far, he'd just say he was in the neighborhood and thought he'd stop by and see if she wanted to go out for a drink, or maybe meet him later at the Balboa. Surely, that was harmless enough. Or if whoever was with her turned out to be just a friend or a neighbor, she'd invite him in, they'd finish their conversation, then she'd tell the friend good-bye. After that, the two of them could let the night take them where it would.

When he got to the door, he paused a moment and listened. Yes, two voices, one male and one female. When he knocked- three quick raps- the voices stopped abruptly within. He waited through a lengthening silence, perplexity growing on this face. Then all at once the truth of what he must have been hearing dawned on him.

He blinked a few times, nodded, bit at his lower lip. He wasn't aware of it, but his shoulders fell.

What a fool he was.

He turned back toward the steps.

Then heard her voice through the door behind him. "Who is it?"

For a second, he considered not answering, getting to the stairs and out of sight before he brought any more embarrassment to himself. But she had asked him to believe her, believe in the kind of person she was. At least, he thought, he owed her that. To give her a chance to be straight with him. "Amy. It's me, Jason."

"Jason." He thought he heard a kind of relief in her voice, but it disappeared with her next words. "This isn't a good time. I'm sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. But really, it's not a good time."

"Okay, but if I could just-"

"Jason, go away! Leave me the fuck alone, all right! Get out of here! Now! Or you're in trouble! I mean it!"

"Good," he said. "That was all right. Nobody stays around after that."

"No. He's a jerk," she said, turning around. "Well, you know that. But please, could I go to the bathroom?"

Brandt stood below, in the gathering dusk, looking up at her window. Her outburst against him had punched him in the gut. Even now, frozen in his spot, leaning against the wall of a building across the street, he held his hand there.

He couldn't seem to make himself move. He stared up at the window, saw no shadows, no sign of movement.

Maybe they were lying together in her bed?

That thought came like another kick to his stomach, but suddenly, all at once, he couldn't accept it. That wasn't what was happening up there. And his certainty wasn't a matter of rational thought. It was on another level, a bone-deep conviction. She was up there with somebody, yes, but even if she was being romantic with another man, there was no way she would have gone off on him that way. Beyond the connection he felt that they'd established, that wasn't who she was. She wouldn't have treated him like that, not now.

It made no sense.

And then, suddenly, her words came back at him. "You're in trouble." That private, powerful, ambiguous code word between them, and now Amy had screamed it at him through her locked door. "You're in trouble." A little out of place, even in that context. Off-key.

A warning? Or a cry for help?

Christ, he thought. What an idiot. She's just dumping me. Let it go.

But he was already crossing the street, going back up.

"Boscacci was so sure," he said. "All the jurors were so sure. They polled them one by one afterward, you know. Every one of them."

He'd followed her into the bathroom, stood in the doorway while she'd gone, walked her back to her chair and now was finishing his story.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah? Well, here's something else you don't know. You don't know what it's like having your home taken away from you when you're seven years old. You don't know what it's like when your mom's murdered and they blame your father for it and then try him and take him away and put you in foster care. Do you know what that's like?"

"No, I don't," Wu said. "I'm so sorry." And she was, but mostly she was afraid that she was going to die, and thought maybe she could get him to spare her. "It must have been terrible for you."

"Terrible doesn't begin to cover it. And taking away my own name, talking me into taking my mom's maiden name. I didn't want to have people knowing I'm the son of that murderer, did I? Wouldn't I be happier with a different name? Don't you understand- they took away my life!"

"I'm sure they didn't mean to do that. I mean, Boscacci and the jury…"

"I hope they all rot in hell." He suddenly jerked and was back to the present. "Thirteen of them, every one of them so certain, and every one of them so completely dead wrong." He found something to laugh at. "And now more than half of them just completely dead."

She felt a wave of chill break over her. "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? I mean I killed them. You haven't figured that out yet? All of them still living around here, anyway, in beautiful San Francisco and vicinity."

When it came to her, the blood ran from her face. "You're the Executioner."

"Good," he said. "Why do you think I got onto you in the first place?"

"I don't know."

"You don't, really? All right, then, I'll tell you. Because there you were, Miss Professional Lawyer who doesn't believe in seeing people you work with. There you were, Andrew's defense lawyer, the only person in the lousy system who's supposed to be working for him, and you're talking about pleading him guilty and sending him away for eight years. And I'm watching you in court, and listening to what you're telling him, and I see it's going on and on, and will always go on with you, since you're just like them all, like all of them have always been."

He raised the gun and she thought he might shoot her now, but he lowered the weapon then, swallowed, went on. "And it was so funny to me, you see? Because I knew he didn't do it. And you know why I knew that? Because I did."

"You killed Mooney?"

He nodded. "And his whining little girlfriend. And while we're at it, I should maybe call your partner after I've gone and thank him for letting me know how close they were to finding me this morning. I wasn't planning to do more of my work today until I heard what he said in court and realized I really had to hurry. Though I would have been gone anyway soon enough."

"Where to?" she asked.

He gave her a ghastly, empty smile. "On the road. But first," he said, "there's you."

"Please," she said, "please don't. Put the gun down."

"Don't make me use it then. I don't like sitting with a corpse. They stink. So you stay sitting there and shut up."

"All right, I will," she said. "I won't move. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," he said. "I want it to get dark." Again, that empty-eyed smile. "It's so much easier to walk away when it's dark."

Brandt crept away from Amy's door and descended from the fourth down to the second landing, which he figured was the closest spot where he couldn't be heard from above. He took out his cellphone and turned it on and couldn't get a signal in the stairwell.

His breath coming in ragged gasps, he broke out of the building onto the sidewalk, got his signal and punched in the number for police dispatch, which, like all assistant DAs, he knew by heart. He didn't want nine one one, somebody getting it wrong and showing up with lights and sirens. "This is Jason Brandt. Patch me through to Deputy Chief Glitsky, please, at the Hall of Justice. Yes, it's an emergency. Tell him I've found the Executioner."

34

The sun kissed the tops of the cypresses, next the roofs of some of the low buildings, and then suddenly full dusk had fallen. There were no shadows anymore, no reflection of the setting sun in the windows of Amy's place across the street. The sky in the east had gone from turquoise to a deep indigo. Behind Brandt, at the western horizon, a garish orange sunset was fading to a purplish yellow bruise.

But no Glitsky.

Four patrol cars had arrived, silently, then three more. Then Brandt had lost count. All of the police cars had parked invisibly somewhere in the surrounding streets and dispatched their occupants out to encircle Amy's place and evacuate anyone inside who lived on the floors below her, and even people in the surrounding buildings. Brandt showed his badge to Sergeant Ariola, the initial ranking officer at the scene, and identified himself as the person who'd called the police. But that cut him no slack with Ariola, who shunted Brandt with an escort back behind the police line.

He could still see Wu's windows, but now he was around the corner on Cervantes Boulevard. Looking behind him and down the other streets, he realized that the entire block had been cordoned off- squad cars parked perpendicular to the curbs in the middle of the streets, stopping any automobile traffic. Teams of cops were keeping pedestrians out of the area, although now small crowds of the curious had begun to gather at the perimeter.

Next, bad to worse, the TV news vans were arriving- the very scenario Brandt had tried to avoid by calling Glitsky direct. If the TV happened to be turned on in Amy's apartment and they broke the story as late-breaking news, there was no telling what would happen inside, but it could not be good. Next, Brandt watched with some admixture of dread and disbelief as the motor home command post of the tactical unit pulled up. He saw Ariola moving toward it and again tried his DA's badge trick with one of the uniformed cops, who this time let him through with barely a glance. He stood right behind Ariola as he reported the situation to the TAC unit commander, and neither of those men paid him the slightest heed either.

The whole TAC unit wasn't here yet- it usually took forty minutes to an hour for all the members to check in- but the sharpshooter had been one of the first to arrive, and the commander sent him up to the roof of the building directly across the street from Amy's to see what, if anything, he could do. Brandt heard the order, "If you get a clear shot, and he's got a gun on her, take it." Then, motioning to the TV vans, he turned to Ariola. "Inform those jackals that if anyone runs a live feed, I'll hunt them down and kill them and their children."

In the crush of events, Brandt's presence continued to go unnoticed. Ariola went to talk to the newspeople, while the commander ran across the street and disappeared into Amy's building. Every minute or so, another policemen in a black TAC unit jacket would show up and report to the deputy commander at the door to the motor home. At some point- any normal measure of time had long since become meaningless- Ariola reappeared next to Brandt, and they both watched as the commander came out of the lobby, looked up into the sky and jogged back over to where they stood. He spoke to his deputy. "I don't see how we can wait much longer."

"I don't either."

"The Chief ordered me to wait for him. If we bust in, we could lose her. Although I don't know what else he's got in mind." Again, the commander glanced at the rapidly darkening sky. Shaking his head, he sighed with exasperation, looked up again. "Five minutes," he said, "and it's dark. We've got to go in."

He'd been sitting the whole time, holding the gun with its awkward attachment, the silencer, resting on the arm of the chair. His finger continually, unconsciously, teased the trigger as he flipped one by one- casually, relaxed- through the pages of the various magazines Wu kept next to her reading chair. She became nearly hypnotized with fear, watching it. Once she shifted her weight in her chair at the table and it was as though she'd prodded him with electricity, so quickly did he have the gun raised, all focus and menace. "Don't move!"

Then, satisfied that she wouldn't, he sat back, crossed one leg comfortably over the other and began turning pages again.

Wu didn't know what she could do to save herself, and so sat in a numbed state of panic and resignation. She'd already considered what she thought were her only options. In his chair, he was probably close to ten feet away from her, farther than she could leap in a quick rush. The front door was still deadlocked and chained. The bathroom- the only place she might conceivably escape to- was all the way at the back corner of the large, otherwise open room.

She thought that when the time came, if indeed he gave her any warning at all, she would bolt and try to throw something- the saltshaker, the chair she sat on. But she realized from his demeanor throughout this excruciating wait that he was just as likely to lick his finger, turn a page, check the window (as he'd done a dozen times), decide it was sufficiently dark, lift the gun without a word or warning and shoot her. Then unlock the door and walk downstairs and out into the sheltering night.

Unable to bear watching his twitching finger any longer, she closed her eyes, trying to find some place of inner peace, but found there was nowhere she could go. This was the end of her life, and all she could feel was the coming void. Opening her eyes again, she watched him flip a page, glance at her as though she were a piece of furniture, look back down at his magazine, turn his head to the window, flip another page.

The small hole in the barrel of the silencer, the finger dancing over the trigger guard, had so dominated her consciousness that she hadn't looked at the window herself in what must have been minutes. But now she did and realized that the night had truly come on- she was looking at her own reflection now in the glass, as though in a mirror. There was no more light from outside to dissipate the image.

He would not wait much longer.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The sound startled them both. Wu gave a little involuntary yelp and he jumped where he sat, the chair legs giving a little screech on the hardwood floor. At the same time, the magazine slipped and fell out of his lap. After all the silence in the room, the two sounds- the knock and the dropped magazine- seemed to Amy to echo like thunder.

She shot a startled glance at him. He lifted the gun, his arm outstretched, centered on her heart. The gun never left her. His eyes went to the door, back to her. The initial moment of panic passed. She felt she could see him plotting what he would do. With the inadvertent noises from inside, there was no way to pretend that no one was home.

Quickly, he pointed the gun at the door, then back to her, and nodded.

"Who is it?"

"Amy. It's me. Diz. We had a meeting?"

She turned to him. Mouthed, "My boss."

Something like a smile curled the corner of his mouth. All the better. He nodded. The message was Let him in. He got to his feet.

"Just a second," she said.

In a few steps, agile as a cat, suddenly he'd come around the table and pressed himself against the wall by the door. He moved the gun up and now held it on her head. One foot from her head.

Wu read his intentions with crystal clarity. When she opened the door, it would block him from sight until Hardy was inside. And then he would shoot. And then both of them would die. She couldn't let that happen.

What was he doing here? They hadn't planned any meeting.

She undid the chain, fumbling with it, her hands shaking.

If she threw the door back quickly, could she disable him? She looked down for an instant, saw that he'd planted his foot to prevent that. The door could open only enough to let Hardy in, nothing more. And meanwhile he could fire at will.

If she let him in, Hardy would die, too. She couldn't be responsible for that. If she was going to die anyway, maybe at least she could warn him first.

Her thoughts tumbling over one another, she watched as though from a distance as her hands turned the dead bolt, went to the knob, turned it.

Dropping her hand, resigned now to the gun there at her ear, she heard herself saying, "I don't feel well. You have to go, Diz."

"We need to talk," he said, "face to face. It's urgent."

Hardy knew she'd undone the chain. He'd heard her throw the dead bolt, watched the doorknob turn and heard the little click. The door was unlocked. He guessed she was stalling for time, but there was no more time.

He grabbed the knob, turned, lowered his shoulder and exploded into the crack where he'd opened the door, hitting her with a tackle at the waist, taking her down with him.

Before they'd even hit the floor, the four TAC unit specialists who'd crammed into the landing behind Hardy crashed in through the opening with their guns drawn, splintering the door completely off its hinges. There were another four behind them, and then yet another team, rushing unstoppable as a flash flood into the apartment.

The force of the door flying back knocked the gun from his grip and somersaulted him back over the table and onto the floor. Crashing against the counter where Wu kept her dishes and cooking supplies, for an instant he lay stunned on the floor amid the splintered wood and broken glass. But in the half-second before anyone could reach him, emitting an animal cry, he made a last desperate scramble and lunge for his weapon.

But he never made it, as the first pair of TAC unit specialists reached and fell upon him.

Writhing and screaming, a run-over animal whose back had been broken, he grunted and kicked and gouged and spewed his vile rage until they'd gotten his hands behind his back and cuffed him. Now, facedown in his own blood and spread-eagled with a TAC guy on each leg and another kneeling on his back, he couldn't move a muscle.

Glitsky was standing in the doorway, his own gun drawn, but now held down at his side. He could see that his plan- well, his and Hardy's- had worked. And they'd managed to pull it off without anyone having to die. Their backs against the wall, Hardy sat next to Wu on the floor, a protective arm around her. Wu's head was down, her shoulders heaving a little as she cried out some of the tension.

Fine.

Glitsky walked over to where his troops had the suspect in righteous custody, and looked down at the now pathetic and restrained figure of the Executioner. They'd only discovered his name in the minutes before Brandt had called to say he knew where they could find him.

The Youth Guidance Center bailiff, Ray Cottrell.

The TAC unit police had wasted no time getting Cottrell up and taking him away, and now the room fairly buzzed with the spent energy and the detritus of chaos.

In the destroyed half of the apartment, Wu, Hardy and Glitsky went to almost robotic wordless motion, getting the shattered door to one side and leaning it up against the wall, setting the table back on its legs, righting the chairs, two of them still unbroken, picking up the larger pieces of plates and pottery.

At last, Wu sat heavily in one of the chairs. Hardy took the other.

Glitsky crossed to the dish counter and filled a glass of water from the tap. He went over to the table and handed it to Wu, then went back to the counter, cleared a spot and sat on it. "How did he get here?" he asked.

"I don't know. I had no idea he knew where I lived."

"But what did he want with you? You were- what?- twelve years old during his father's trial. You had nothing to do with it, did you?"

Seeming to notice the glass in her hand for the first time, Wu drank off half the water. She dropped her head and appeared to gather herself for another minute. Finally, she began to tell them what Cottrell had said he had wanted with her, as best she could explain it- her connection to the system that had mistakenly and tragically convicted his father.

"No, more than that," she said. "It wasn't just that I was another lawyer. He saw me as exactly like Allan Boscacci had been when he'd prosecuted his innocent dad and sent his dad up. I was doing the same thing to Andrew Bartlett, bartering away years of his life when Ray knew Andrew was innocent." She was coming out of her state of shock, and seemed suddenly to realize the import of what he'd told her. "Because he was the one who'd done what Andrew had been arrested for. Don't you see? He killed Mooney and Laura."

"We'd pretty much gotten to that ourselves," Glitsky said.

She raised her voice a notch. "But he told me he did it. He actually told me. He called Mooney by name." She turned to Hardy. "That's important," she said, urgency bleeding out of her. "It makes a difference."

"I know." He put a hand over hers at the table. "I don't think Abe's missing it."

Glitsky nodded. "We'll get his statement, then see where we are," he said. "But unofficially, I don't think you need to worry. It'll all come out."

"At least enough to clear Andrew," Hardy said. "Let's hope."

Wu let out a heavy breath. "But how did you know I'd open the door?" she asked. "I almost didn't."

"I didn't know that for sure," Hardy said. "That was Plan A. Plan B was the door comes down anyway about five seconds later. Abe and I both thought it was worth a try to get you out of the way first."

They heard noises from out on the landing, footfalls and voices on the stairs. "I'm going to want a more complete statement from you tomorrow," Glitsky said, "but we can let that go tonight." His eyes went to the shattered door leaning up against the wall, the empty door frame with its hanging hinges. "Are you going to need a place to stay?"

"She can come to my place," Hardy said, turning to her. "If you're good with that? Same spacious quarters and comfortable bed?"

"Same night chef?" she asked.

"It might be arranged."

At that moment, Jason Brandt broke from the ranks of police that were accompanying him up the stairs and stopped in the open door frame. "Jesus," he exclaimed at all the damage. Then, seeing her at the table, he closed his eyes and blew out heavily in relief. Hardy and Glitsky might as well not have been there. "Amy, are you all right?"

Her face lit up. "Jason. What are you doing here?"

"What's he doing here?" Hardy asked. "He's the hero, that's all."

Brandt shook his head in embarrassed denial, spoke to Hardy. "No. From what I hear, you're the hero. I just-"

Hardy cut him off. "You just figured it all out and called Chief Glitsky here and got us moving, that's all. Without which none of this happens."

Wu was staring at Brandt. "But I told you to get away, Jason. To get out of here."

"I know." He shrugged. "I snuck back up and listened at the door."

"But why? How did you know?"

"Because I know you, Amy," he said. "You wouldn't have just sent me off. Not that way. No matter what. That's not who you are."

Lanier and Ariola appeared from the steps, on the landing behind Brandt. Hardy turned back to Wu and saw that her eyes had brimmed.

Brandt stepped into the room, out of the cops' way. He hesitated, then came over behind Amy at the table. He put a hand on her shoulder, and Wu put her hand over his.

In the door frame, Ariola said, "If we're sealing this place up, we're going to want to get to it pretty soon, Chief."

"All right," Glitsky said. He motioned to the civilians. "When they're ready to go down, let's get that done."

Lanier spoke up. "Also, just a heads up, Abe, but there's some people waiting for you downstairs," he said. "Cameras."

Glitsky's face went dark. He took in the scene here one last time, said "Swell" and pushed through to the landing.

Out in the street, at the impromptu press conference, Glitsky stood in a circle of halogen and uniforms and spoke into a hastily assembled cluster of microphones. As usual at this type of event, he found himself on the defensive. "Well," he said. "Assuming that our sharpshooter could not take him out, which was always a viable option, there were really two main objections to simply calling him up on the telephone or using a bullhorn to tell him he was surrounded.

"The first was that we knew that he'd already killed seven people at close range and in cold blood. After some serious discussion downtown, we decided-"

"Who's 'we,' Chief?"

"Myself, homicide Lieutenant Marcel Lanier and Dismas Hardy."

"The lawyer?" A woman's voice. "What's a lawyer doing making police decisions?"

"Mr. Hardy didn't make the decision, Claudia. He had some detailed knowledge of the situation and it proved useful. In any event, getting back to the original question, in view of Mr. Cottrell's behavior in the past few weeks, if we announced our presence, we thought it extremely likely that he would simply kill the hostage and then himself. The second objection was that we thought we had a better plan."

"But one that exposed civilian lives to danger, isn't that true?"

"That's true, but it was only one civilian and Mr. Hardy volunteered, and his involvement was crucial. Ms. Wu is his business associate and friend. And let's not forget, if you don't mind," Glitsky said, forcing himself, "the operation was a success."

Another disembodied voice from out in the darkness: "Yes, but how sure are you that Ray Cottrell is in fact the Executioner?"

"Close to a hundred percent. He confessed as much to Ms. Wu. But now that he's in custody, you'll be hearing lots more about that, I'm sure."

"I understand he was an abused child who grew up in a succession of foster homes."

"Is that a question?" Glitsky asked. "If so, I have no comment."

"Chief? What part of your decision not to use your sniper in this instance comes from the tragic results of the LeShawn Brodie situation?"

"Well, first, that LeShawn Brodie decision wasn't made by me or anybody else in this jurisdiction. Second, as I thought I'd already made clear, Mr. Ralston, we never made the decision not to use our sharpshooter in this case, and in fact that option was on the table throughout the course of the operation, if the opportunity presented itself. Which it didn't."

"In other words, you approved the order to have Cottrell shot out of hand, but by the same token you elected not to give him a chance to surrender by letting him know that his options had run out and he was surrounded?"

Glitsky brought one hand to his side and pushed in against the spasm there. He raised his other hand up against the bright lights. Trying not to look too menacing, and to possibly even look cooperative and friendly, and failing abysmally, he glared out into the invisible circle in front of him. "As I believe I've already explained…"

35

On the Wednesday of that week, at a little before one o'clock in the afternoon, Wu walked up the hall from her office and turned right toward Hardy's, passing directly behind Phyllis's workstation. The elderly receptionist obviously had eyes in the back of her head, because as Wu came abreast of her, she whirled in her ergonomic chair and actually held a hand up. "He's busy and doesn't want to be disturbed. Did you make an appointment?"

Wu stopped, forced a polite smile. "I just opened my mail," she said, holding up a yellowish manila envelope, "and he'll want to see this. I promise."

"That's what everyone says. All of you associates believe he'll want to see you, which of course he does. He and I have discussed this. He's happy to make time for the associates, but he'd really prefer that those times are convenient to him, not necessarily to them." Phyllis possibly actually thought she was softening the message with her schoolteacher smile. "I'm sorry," she said, as one of the phones in her bank rang behind her and she whirled around again to get it.

Wu didn't hesitate for a moment, but broke right as quietly as she could, got to Hardy's door and knocked.

"Ms. Wu!"- from behind her, as from the other side of the door she heard, "Yo!" and got herself inside.

Her boss, coat off, tie loosened, was rummaging through the drawers of his desk. He greeted her arrival with a smile that seemed more or less welcoming behind the more obvious fluster of his demeanor. "How did you…?" he began, and was interrupted by the sharp buzz of his intercom.

He reached over, pushed the button and said "Yo!" again, this time into the speaker. He knew that of all the things hated by Phyllis, and in his experience this included nearly all forms of human interaction, his cavalier telephone greeting ranked near the top. He winked at Wu during the short, distinctive pause while Phyllis bit back her natural reprimand. "Mr. Hardy! I told Ms. Wu you weren't to be disturbed, and she went ahead."

"I can see that, and I assure you that I'm already disturbed, Phyllis. It's not your fault. I intend to have a word with her right away. Thank you."

He left his speaker on for a second or so while he began in a firm voice. "Ms. Wu, when I tell Phyllis I don't want to be disturbed, I expect you and all the associates to…" Then he pushed the button, breaking the connection. "Charging the door isn't very subtle, Wu. I need that woman, believe it or not. She's very good at what she does, none better."

"Maybe, but she's not very nice."

"She's not supposed to be. If she were nice, people would walk all over her. As it is, some of your colleagues are afraid to go to the bathroom if they have to pass her station. So they stay at their desks, working all day. This is good for the firm."

Wu allowed a smile. "You really are becoming more and more like Mr. Freeman."

Hardy inclined his head an inch. "I'll take that as a compliment of the highest order. Have you seen my darts?"

"Your darts? When would I have seen your darts?"

"I don't know. But they were here yesterday or the day before, and now I've mislaid them. Second time in two months. I think I'm losing my mind."

"Maybe you're just saving it for bigger things."

Hardy stopped his rummaging through his drawers, slammed the latest one closed. "Unfortunately, there's not much sign of that either." Scanning the room one last time for obvious places where he might have left them, he finally gave up and sat down in the big leather chair behind his desk. "So what's important enough to risk the wrath of Phyllis?"

She held up the envelope. "This is very cool."

"What is it?"

She handed it to him and he pulled out the pages.

Dear Ms. Wu,

I've been meaning to write to thank you and Mr. Hardy for all that you did for me, but I had so much work to make up at school, I never got the time. As I think you might have heard from my mom, Sutro took me back- some combination of Hal's money and Mr. Wagner making me sign a paper promising that I wouldn't bring a loaded gun to school again.

Oh. Okay. Or what? I get expelled?

Forgetting that we don't own a gun anymore, and as if that would stop me if I decided to. But don't worry, I agree that it's a bad idea.

The other reason I haven't had time is that I've been doing some more writing- I started almost the day I got out, totally different stuff than "Perfect Killer." Working with the narrative voice, wondering if maybe it wouldn't hurt to have it be accessible, even friendly. Anyway, maybe I'm getting somewhere, since just today I heard back from McSweeney's. They say they want to publish my latest story. I thought you'd be glad to hear about that, and maybe also to hear that I'm so glad I didn't die when I tried to kill myself. So glad.

You know the famous line from Anna Karenina? "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well, my time in my own unhappy family is getting to the end, and maybe when I get to going out and making one of my own, I can form it a little differently. The story McSweeney's is taking imagines a guy from a happier family, way later on. I hope you like it.

Just remember one thing, though, would you? I made it all up.

Brandt and Wu were at a table in the restaurant at the back of the Balboa Cafe. The waiter had brought their drinks, but both of them remained untouched. When Brandt finished reading Andrew's letter, he handed it gingerly back to Wu. It was a long minute before he said anything. "I don't like to think that I was trying to send him to prison for the rest of his life." He paused again. "I've never had a defendant be innocent before, you know that? It gives one pause."

"You wonder if you've sent up somebody who shouldn't be there?"

He thought about it for a few seconds. "Not really, no. I don't think so. I mean, Bartlett was unusual. At least I hope he was. But I don't know for sure, to tell you the truth. I'm sure Allan Boscacci thought what's his name, Welding, was guilty. In a funny way," he said, "it almost makes me feel better about the system. I mean, Andrew Bartlett got off, with me and Johnson both trying to bring him down. Sometimes it works."

Hardy and Glitsky hadn't seen much of each other for six weeks.

In the aftermath of the Executioner arrest, and in spite of its successful conclusion, the media couldn't seem to warm to Glitsky's politically incorrect style. The many published and broadcasted comparisons with his role in the LeShawn Brodie debacle, combined with his alleged insensitivity not only to the legal, but to the basic human, rights of suspects, especially those that came from backgrounds riddled with abuse, prompted several public and private calls for his resignation. Other advocacy groups demanded investigations into the police department's decision-making procedures, and called for the formation of various committees to oversee (and second-guess) the command structure.

How had it taken the police so long (nearly twenty hours!) to crib together the clues linking Lucas Welding with his son and his current identity? Why, even working with the luxury of an event number, had no one in the police department been able to discover sooner that the Executioner's victims had all been on the same jury? Surely, the records on these things should be more accessible. How had it taken so long to locate the address of the last victim, Wendy Takahashi? Better police work, quicker and more informed decision-making, would almost certainly have saved her life. How in the world had Glitsky seen fit to allow an unelected civilian to take part in a command decision involving the city's highly skilled and specialized TAC unit?

And on and on and on.

Fortunately, Batiste, Lanier, Jackman and the mayor himself- in a rare and somewhat surprising display of unanimity- had all closed ranks around Glitsky, shouldering their portions of the blame if, in fact, there had been any. Eventually, inevitably, the immediate outcry had died down.

Although Glitsky knew, and hoped, that his days as deputy chief were probably numbered. He couldn't say it broke his heart. He'd even spoken to Lanier and Batiste about the possibility of becoming an inspector at large, where he could float between the investigations of different details without being burdened by an administrative portfolio. He wasn't a politician and everybody knew it, so why not let him work where he could do some good, instead of where, with the best of intentions, a great work ethic and even a record of success, he caused nothing but headaches for the department?

For his part, Hardy had spent most of his time bringing his associates and partners up to speed on the workload surrounding what he called his "influence clients." He'd lost his taste for facilitating. What he liked best and did best was trials. Another of his associates, Graham Russo, had asked him if he'd consider another shot at second chair in a local potential death penalty murder case that would need an incredibly strong psychiatric defense to prevail. Russo was planning to argue some variety of mental illness to save his client's life. And in truth, Hardy had known golden retrievers with more brains than their client, who reminded him of Lenny in Of Mice and Men-"Tell me about the rabbits, George." The client had done some terrible things, it was true, but Hardy didn't believe the state should execute him. But whatever the outcome, it was going to be a complex and interesting case. Huge issues. He just wanted to be part of it.

He'd spent the better portion of the rest of his time, at his own expense, boning up on immigration law- there was already an enormous market there, and in California it was only going to grow- and using the Salarcos as his guinea pigs. He'd secured the sponsorship of several of Juan's gardening customers (all of whom lived in comparative splendor), and though it was early in the game, he held out some hope that the Salarcos could avoid some of the bureaucracy and despair of the long-drawn-out citizenship process.

Today, though, Sunday, the first day of June, Hardy and Glitsky sat seven rows behind home plate at PacBell Park. They both wore their Giants caps against the bright sunshine, had removed their jackets. Bonds had dumped one into McCovey Cove and they figured they'd gotten their money's worth already, although in truth the seats had been free, courtesy of one of Hardy's clients with season tickets.

Hardy popped a peanut, chased it with a slug of beer. "Your gallbladder?"

"That's the latest. They want to take it out." Glitsky sipped his Coke. "I told them no."

"Why not?"

Glitsky shrugged. "I've had enough metal in my guts over the past few years to last me a while. I'm not letting them cut me three more times, which is how they do it nowadays. My doc even said, kind of goofing, 'Yeah, it's like being stabbed in the gut. In fact, it is being stabbed in the gut.' Guy's a laugh riot."

"Yeah, but if that's what's causing the pain…"

"It's on the other side."

"What is?"

"The pain. It's on the other side from my gallbladder. It's called referred pain. They say it's fairly common. You get a whack on the toe and feel it in your arm."

"Oh yeah," Hardy said. "That happens to me all the time."

Glitsky threw him a look. "Me, neither. It's why I'm a little skeptical about the diagnosis. Plus, what I've got, it's not really pain, I mean like sharp pain. It's more a flutter."

"Maybe it's your heart again."

Glitsky shook his head. "Nope. I know what that feels like, and it's not that."

"So if you don't let them take the gallbladder out, what are you going to do?"

"Live with it. It's been a year already and it hasn't killed me yet. Treya's convinced it's all stress, and she's not dumb. During all that madness after we got Cottrell, it got pretty unbelievable, a knife in here all the time. Since then, it's seems to be getting better. I've got a theory."

"I hope it's not relativity," Hardy said. "That's already been taken."

"You remember when I got the event number for Boscacci, we were going to do the biggest manhunt in history?"

"Okay."

"So with all that effort and personnel, we pretty much came up with nothing. Not to swell your already large head, but if you hadn't talked to Mooney's wife, we'd never have got him."

"Maybe."

"Maybe, but the point is nobody's ever going to check, go back to it, find anything." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "I'm talking about us. Nobody's looking for us. Nobody's going to be looking for us. Ever. I don't have to worry every… single… damn… day that somebody's going to find out and my life's going to implode."

Hardy noted the expletive with surprise. Glitsky never swore. He put a hand on his friend's arm for a second. "Nobody's looking, Abe. Really." He squeezed the arm. "Let it go," he said. "Life's too short."

"I guess it's just I know that if I were back running homicide, I'd still be looking."

Hardy had to grin. "That's what makes you such a joy to know. But let me ask you this: are your guts fluttering right now?"

Glitsky sat back into his seat, concentrated a minute, shook his head. "No."

"Let's call that a win, then, and move on."