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But Merci now had
something that seemed far more important than running the Crimes Against
Persons Section by fifty: She had her son. He was beautiful and bright and
precious and possessed an infinity of potential. It was her job to let it
happen for him. She could never have predicted such a change in herself, and
she'd had little time to prepare for such a change. She'd made love to Hess
just
once
, back when she'd believed in the power of her own will, thinking it
might save his life. Instead, they had created one.

"I
heard about Mike and the girl," said Brighton.

"Sir, I
apologize if I got in Gilliam's way. I wanted to talk to Mike first. See if
there was some simple—"

"No, not
that," he said, waving a hand. "That's fine. I called you in here
because I was thinking more along the lines of what in hell happened."

"I
believe that he was developing feelings for her."

Merci heard her own
voice as if it were someone else's. It sounded strange to her: automatic,
prepared.
Developing feelings. Hell.
Like she was Wally the Weasel in
Public Information, doing a press briefing.

"Whittaker was
one of the Epicure girls vice was working," she continued. "Mike
recruited her. She invited him for dinner. He went. Later that night she was
murdered."

She compared her
mechanical voice to the sinking, humiliating anger in her heart, and she
understood what she was doing.

Brighton understood
it, too. "You don't have to do PR for the stupid sonofabitch."

"No. Thank you,
sir." She felt the anger draining out of her, the disappointment pouring in
to replace it. She felt like a complete sucker, a dupe, a punching bag.
Brighton had always been in favor of Mike and Merci together. He'd mentioned
it. He'd approved. That had meant a lot within the department.

He watched her like a
farmer watching wheat. "Look, I'm going have to let this slide around
here. Mike had the sweets for a whore, went to her house. That accounts for his
fingerprints all over the damned place. Okay. These things happen. In vice,
these things happen more than they should. My official line is a slap on the
wrist for McNally, but really no big deal. You're going to have to deal with
your end Merci. I can't stand up and bark just because Mike acted stupid. I’m
sorry."

"I
know, sir. I didn't expect anything like that."

"When things cool
off, a month or so, I'll move him out of vice. He seems to understand the
feelings of dogs quite well."

Brighton smiled and
Merci joined him. He told her he had Gilliam and Coiner under penalty of death
if this got out to the press. Same with her. She smiled bitterly and looked
away.

"What's
it look like so far? The Whittaker thing?"

"Someone she
knew. He knocked. She had a peephole. The porch light was on. She knew him, or
thought she could trust him. One shot in the heart with a silenced forty-five, the
second she opened the door. After he shot her, he was inside for at least ten
minutes. He left wads of cash in her purse. Didn't take a thing we know of yet.
It's Strange, sir. Clean and cold, like a contract killing. Up close and
personal, like a love thing gone bad. I've got a list of johns and a call-out
sheet coming the phone company. We've got plenty to work with. There's
motivation all over the place, if she was thinking blackmail."

Brighton
considered. "Any prints besides hers and McNally's?

She told him about
the latents not good enough to send through or CAL-ID. She told him they hoped
for a DrugFire hit on the brass casing. She told him about the hair and fiber
and shoeprint, if they could eliminate Aubrey's own clothes and those,
possibly, of Mike McNally.

Brighton listened
passively. He wasn't a guy who filled up silences. "And how's Miss Patti
Bailey?"

"I've
barely scratched it, sir."

"I don't expect
you to kill yourself on it," he said. "I give those out to clean the
files. If we solve one, fine."

"I
understand."

"Bailey
was a prostitute, too," he said. "I'm sure you figured out that much
by now. I remember she was mixed in with the narcotics suppliers back then. You
know, that was nineteen sixty-nine. Supposed to be free love and cheap highs
and bell-bottoms. A lot of it was. But the speed racket guys weren't giving it
away. Neither were the heroin sellers. And we had lots of professional girls
out on Harbor Boulevard, servicing the guys who weren't getting it for free.
Lots of conventioneers. Tourists."

"Like now."

"Exactly."
Brighton swiveled in his chair and looked out one of the vertical windows.
"That was a long time ago. I was forty years old that year. A captain. Two
years later, they asked me to be the sheriff. Thirty years of that. It seems
like about fifteen minutes."

"You've done
well, sir."

He
swung back, a dry smile in place. "Time to think about stepping
aside."

"You've said
that every year, sir. For the last few, anyway."

He smiled but his
eyes narrowed. "That's the perception?"

"Just
mine," Merci said quietly. Even at thirty-six, her talent for saying the
wrong thing was undiminished.

"I
appreciate your candor, Sergeant. Give me some more of it now: How would you
feel about Nelson Neal as sheriff?"

Watch it now, she
thought. "Fine. Not inspirational."

Brighton nodded.
"Craig Braga?"

"Yes."

"Mel
Glandis?"

"Same as
Nelson."

"How
about Vince Abelera, over in the Marshal's Department? He wants it. He's got
some rank-and-file P.D. support, a good face for the cameras."

Merci
had heard Abelera's spiel on the TV news: If he was sheriff, he'd trim the fat
and hire more deputies, he'd franchise some of the inmate population into
private "jails," the public would become his "customers,"
law enforcement was a "marketplace." He said the Sheriff Department
should be run like any corporation. He was handsome, dressed well and had good
teeth.

"I think he's
telling people what they want to hear. Everybody wants to save money. Everybody
wants more cops."

Brighton nodded
again. His eyes were small and bright in his craggy face.

"You
still have your eyes on the Crimes Against Persons Section?”

"It
seems years away."

"And someone's
got to be running Homicide Detail when I retires. That's early next year."

"I'd love to get
my hands on it. But you need the respect. I'm thirty-six and I'm a woman. I'm a
mom. There was Hess. I'd
need ...
respect."

Brighton listened,
cocked his head to the rain, then looked back at her. "You have mine.
Sorry about your boyfriend."

"I'd
rather you didn't call him that."

"Noted. I'm
sorry the dumb prick didn't exhibit better sense this girl. We're all going to
suffer for his antics now."

"I
do appreciate your saying that."

"It'll blow
over. Unless it leaks all over the department and the reporters get it."
Brighton seemed to consider this possibility, then he blinked and shook away
the vision. "Look, tomorrow's Friday. You could use a day away from here.
Do what you can with the Bailey case. But Rayborn—don't kill yourself over this
one. Nineteen sixty-nine a bad year then, and it's a bad year still. Bring me
the guy who shot Whittaker. That's who I want."

"You'll have him,
sir. I promise that."

• •

Zamorra was at his desk
when Merci walked back into the pen. His face looked tired but his eyes were
oddly hopeful.

"Moladan
checks out at the Bay Club," he said. "Pond scum sticks
together."

"McNally
went to dinner that night. Friends. They'd become best of friends."

Zamorra
looked at her, shaking his head. There was lipstick on the collar of his white
shirt.

"How
is she?" asked Merci.

"Tomorrow's
the day. Tomorrow morning, at six."

"I'll
say a prayer then, Paul."

"There's
a chance it could work."

The prayer or the
"experiment," Merci wondered. Whatever that was. If Paul wasn't going
to talk, she wasn't going to pry.

She sat down and
glanced at the list of johns that Moladan had given them. More names for Gary
Brice to run, she thought. She looked for a note from Coiner or O'Brien, hoping
they'd lucked out with AFIS or CAL-ID on one of the latents. It would be nice
to know somebody else had been to Aubrey Whittaker's home, other than her own
alleged boyfriend. Boyfriend. She'd always hated the word. Ex-boyfriend sounded
even more preposterous. What in hell was he?
Ex-something.
At any rate,
no note.

"I'm going to
make another pass through Whittaker's place," she said. "Check the
closets and dry cleaning against the fibers Gilliam found."

"I'm
in."

Merci was happy for
that. For one thing, she thought partners came up with more than singles. Two
pair of eyes, two minds, all that. Two guns, if it went that way.

But more, she hated
the idea of being alone, especially in a place that wasn't hers. She had felt
this way ever since the Purse Snatcher had fooled her. In the end, she'd taken
his life, and he'd taken her courage. She could always feel the fear inside,
humming along her nerves, a simmering anxiety that could rise to panic in a
couple of beats of her heart. The panic brought coldness to her bones, weight
to her muscles, a haze to her vision. It made her feel slow and helpless.

It was tripped by
things that would have embarrassed her if she'd told anyone about them—dark
rooms, elevators, parking structures. Cars at night or early morning. Baths.
Using the bathroom. Bathroom fans that whirred on when you hit the light
switch. Showers. The walk from her bedroom to Tim's room late at night. The
walk back. The ocean. Trees without leaves.

Anything she did
alone, or anything she looked at that made her feel alone.

She
had plenty of antidotes: security lights in the yards; double-checking the car
before getting in; a gun hidden safely in every room; one .32 backup strapped
to her ankle and another under the seat of the Impala and her own Trans Am;
nightly courtesy patrols of her by Sheriff Department deputies; an expensive
alarm system installed in her old orange grove house; more hours on the range
with the nine jumping in her hands, again and again and again.

Having
her father move in was partially an antidote.

Seeing
Mike had been partially an antidote.

Socializing
after work once a month on Thursdays was an antidote.

None of them worked.
It was still there inside, ready to flare up, like a gastric virus picked up on
some exotic vacation. Much worse that, actually. More like a freezing river
that would take you with it, shut you down, sweep you under forever where it
was too cold and dark to breathe.

She called Roy
Thornton up in Arrowhead. Personnel had dug up the number for her. He said he'd
talk tomorrow if she wanted to, gave her directions, told her to bring her snow
chains. They already gotten feet, much more to come.

He also asked her to
bring the old file to help refresh him, to jar the memories "out of this
tired old gourd."

Then
she called her father to say she'd be home late.

"SUDS
Club?"

"Yeah."

The Sheriff's
Unsocial Deputies Society—named by Evan O'Brien, who had an eye for a good
acronym—met on the second Thursday each month, 7
p.m
. at
Cancun Restaurant.

"Keep
Tim warm and dry," she said. "I miss you guys."

"We
miss you. It's chaos out there on the freeways. Be careful."

T
he rain heaved down and made freeway lakes in the low
spots, cars planed off the asphalt or into each other. Merci couldn't see dick
out the windshield even with the wipers pegged and the defroster on full blast.
All just water and red lights and the roar of rain on sheet metal three inches
from her head. It took over an hour from the sheriff building to Aubrey
Whittaker's apartment in San Clemente. Zamorra left headquarters after Merci
did but got there first.

He
was already inside, standing in the living room, still wearing his black
overcoat, watching the storm roil the Pacific. She saw a pink shiver of
lightning branch into the dark water. She flipped on some lights, Aubrey's dry
cleaning hooked in one of her hands, hangers digging into her fingers.

"Okay,"
she said. "A black wool and Orion mix garment, possibly a sweater, knit
cap, gloves or muffler."

"I'll take the
kitchen," he said. "It's been bothering me." So be it. She hit
the bedroom lights, placed the dry cleaning on the bed, slid open the mirrored
closet door, then hung the clean clothes at one end. Starting at the other end,
she began taking out hangers three or four at a time, laying them on the bed.