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“Too bad you had to go and sell me out at work, though. I guess maybe we ain't friends after all.”

Luther finally managed to speak in an audible tone. It wasn't much. His voice was hoarse, kind of weak-sounding. It didn't really sound to Denny like his old pal Luther at all.

“Fuck, ” he croaked, “you talkin’ about?”

Denny just patted Luther's knee through the bed-sheet. “Don't die or nothin’. I hear prison ain't so bad. You behave, keep up your yard privileges, you get to work out all you want inside.”

Luther tried to grab Denny's wrist, but he didn't have much of a reach with the IV needle spiked in the back of his hand. He coughed, made another pained face, and had to stop and wheeze a little. The quiet little beeping machine beeped a little faster.

Denny put the water cup back down on the stand. He pressed the nurse call button next to the bed. Then he went ahead and got out of there before Officer Barney came back around.

ANDREW
woke up to the smell of home.

At first, he didn't know which pulled harder: the aroma of a fresh pot of coffee brewing downstairs, or Caroline's guest sheets. They smelled just like Aunt Judy's. Andrew could remember the first morning he'd woken up in their house after the night of the fire. He wondered if it was the detergent, or the fabric softener, some kind of potpourri she kept in the linen closet. He couldn't imagine. But it was uncanny.

He stayed in bed for a while.

It had been after three in the morning by the time he'd finished telling Caroline everything. They'd sat up together for a while after that. He didn't know what time he'd finally hit the sack, but he couldn't have slept more than three or four hours, tops.

Still, Andrew hadn't woken up feeling quite this rested in a long time. He was stiff all over. His hip bone
was tender as bruised fruit, and his arm ached like somebody had pounded the hell out of it with a heavy iron plate. But all in all, he'd felt worse.

He finally hauled himself out of bed at a quarter of ten. Downstairs, he found Caroline in the sunroom. She sat with a glass of orange juice, looking out the window. She'd gone out to get the newspaper, but it didn't look like she'd opened it yet. Their little color television played on the counter in the kitchen.

Andrew poured himself a cup of coffee and joined her at the table. He kissed the top of her head and sat down.

“Mm, ” she said. “Morning. How did you sleep?”

“Like the dead. You?”

“Only mostly dead.” She yawned. “How are you feeling?”

“I was about to ask you.”

Caroline smiled a little but didn't answer the question. “Jeffries called. He wants you to call him back and let him know when you want to meet downtown.”

“Right.” Andrew sipped his coffee. “Downtown.”

“Are you going?”

“Don't see why not.” He shrugged, tried a grin. “That's what you regular citizens do, isn't it?”

She didn't say anything.

“Where's hubby this fine morning?”

“Out at the house, ” she said. “With the insurance adjuster. I think they're taking pictures of bullet holes while they're still fresh.”

They shared a little chuckle over that. It was nice, but it wasn't much.

“Hey. Kiddo.” He looked at her. “Are you okay?”

She took a moment to think about it.

“I can't decide, ” she said. “It was touch and go last night, but this morning … I don't know, Drew. Shooting
somebody isn't as hard as I would have thought it should be. I think I might have serious problems.”

“I'm your only serious problem, ” Andrew told her. “Other than that, you're just fine. Trust me.”

She looked at him and smiled, and reached across the table. She grabbed the pinky finger poking out of his cast and gave it a squeeze.

“I'm glad that man didn't die, ” she said. “I'm glad he didn't die, and thank God I don't have to live knowing I actually killed anybody. But I'd shoot him again in a heartbeat. You know that, don't you?”

He smiled. Nodded. He knew.

She curled her little finger around his. Andrew curled back and sat with her.

When he finished his coffee, Caroline got up. She took his mug and her empty juice glass and headed back to the kitchen to fill them up again.

While he waited, alone at the table, Andrew reached out and took up the newspaper. He wondered if they'd made the morning edition. As he browsed the local section, he noticed he wasn't hearing much activity from the kitchen. He paused to listen.

“Well, I'll be damned.”

Andrew put down the paper and got up to see what was going on. He found his kid cousin standing at the counter, watching the television.

“What's the matter?”

“Shh. Just watch.”

He stood beside her and watched. The morning show had gone to the local news segment. He recognized the reporter right away. It was none other than the intrepid Carla Sheppard, KTLA5 News.

Sheppard stood outside a building with her trusty microphone. The text bar across the bottom of the screen
read
Parker Center
—
Live on Location.
He caught something about early this morning before the segment went to tape.

The taped footage showed a small knot of people moving into the same building. Andrew caught a glimpse of Heather Lomax's face. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw the back of Benjy Corbin's head. He saw a familiar shock of thick silver hair somewhere in the middle.

He spotted Detective Timms blocking reporters on the periphery.

“What is that?”

“I'll be damned, ” Caroline repeated.

“What?”

Carla Sheppard came back briefly, promised updates throughout the day. Then the segment cut to another reporter with smoke in the far distance behind him, followed by aerial wildfire footage.

“Well, ” Caroline said. She shook her head. “There you have it.”

“There I have what?”

“The prodigal son returneth, ” she said. “David Lo-max turned himself in an hour ago.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm not either.”

“I don't believe it.”

“They just said so on the TV. You were right here beside me.”

Andrew stood and pondered this development.

Caroline looked at him. “What are you thinking?”

“I don't know.”

But it wasn't exactly true.

He was thinking about everything that had happened since he'd first heard the name David Lomax four days
ago. Andrew realized he'd begun to feel strangely bound to this missing stranger over the course of this strange week. Now he wasn't missing anymore. Just like that.

It seemed anticlimactic.

Caroline slipped an arm around his waist. “So what now?”

Andrew stood beside her and thought about it.

“I guess I call my lawyer, ” he said.

THROUGHOUT
her statement to Detectives Joe Reese and Ruben Carvajal, Iris Warner insisted she'd never meant anybody to come to harm. She said she'd prayed for exactly the opposite.

She'd been employed by Mountain View Supported Living for nine years; she'd cared for Barbara Lomax on a live-in basis for nearly eight of them. The bonds that developed under such circumstances were different than those that normally developed between a nurse and a long-term patient, Warner said. Most people wouldn't understand, nor could they be expected to.

At first, when Barbara's period stopped coming, both women had assumed she'd reached her menopause. She was, after all, fifty-one years old. Warner claimed she'd only run the pregnancy test to ease Barbara's irrational worry that she might be with child.

When the first test came up positive, and so did the
follow-up, Warner said she'd been unable to bring herself to tell Barbara Lomax of the heartbreaking result.

Warner said she'd feared what the news would do to her patient and friend, who responded to emotional stressors unpredictably. She said she'd feared the reaction of Doren Lomax when he learned that his wife's caregiver had been secretly allowing Tavlin's visits for years. She even feared the depth of Gregor Tavlin's devotion. For all the same reasons.

She'd only wanted to protect Barbara.

Lost, and growing desperate for direction, she'd turned to the only person she could think of who might be able to provide some guidance under the circumstances. The only person, short of her children and her lover, who had visited Barbara with regularity.

This person had told her she'd done the right thing. This person had made the arrangements.

After it was over, of course—after the panic had cleared and she could see again—Iris Warner had realized they'd done something unforgivable.

Barbara Lomax had believed she'd undergone a basic menopausal examination. She'd believed her regular gynecologist had been ill that day.

It was routine to sedate her for her annual checkups, as she found them difficult and physically uncomfortable. The doctor who had made this particular house call had used midazolam hydrochloride, a powerful preanesthetic sedative commonly used during invasive procedures for its memory-impairing qualities.

Barbara had never even known she was pregnant.

But Iris Warner couldn't forget. Her conscience sliced away at her days and nights, she said. And Gregor Tavlin?

Somehow, Gregor Tavlin had sensed the lie. Warner claimed it was as if he could smell the guilt on her skin.
When Barbara suddenly began menstruating again, he'd cornered Iris alone. And then he knew.

“Warner stated that she called two people after Tavlin left the premises on the morning of July thirty, ” Timms told the group. “The first call went to Craig R. Robbins, OB/GYN, of South Pas. Suspended license. Late yesterday, Ruben Carvajal tracked Robbins to a rented villa on Grand Cayman. Seems the good doctor has been taking sabbatical there since August three. We're in touch with the Royal Cayman Island Police. Dolan and Levinger are running the financials.”

Kevin Dolan from Team One flipped a short salute.

Timms took a moment to let the information settle, met a few gazes around the room. All eleven detectives from Teams One and Two were gathered around the conference table, including Aaron Keene, who maintained a stiff but swollen upper lip.

Meanwhile, Captain Graham conducted an unscheduled press conference in the auditorium, assuring the media swarm that nobody, including Commissioner Doren Lomax's son, David, had been taken into custody in association with the Gregor Tavlin investigation at the present time.

Present being the operative word. Timms had begun to allow himself a little optimism.

“According to Ms. Warner, ” he said, “the second call went to a Lomax Enterprises exec named Todd Todman. Todman's official title is Director of Corporate Identity, but he's basically a glorified PR manager. It's not clear whether he's one-hundred-percent inner circle, but he's trusted, and his job description seems to cover a lot of ground. We've got squads on the way to Todman's home and office now. Search warrants in the works. If anybody from the press gets you in a corner, we're bringing him in
as a witness and not a suspect. But as far as we're concerned internally, this guy is climbing the charts. We'll approach him accordingly.”

Timms nodded to Detective Ben Carlton, Team One's point man. Carlton's partner, Vaughn Chester, sat by.

“Detectives Carlton and Chester will coordinate the rework of the Tavlin residence between us and SID. Drea Munoz will coordinate deep background on Tod-man.” Timms took off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the table. “Anybody have questions?”

Nobody did.

They went to work.

The Playa del Rey location was basically a low clifftop overlooking a sandy inlet with big rocks that sent every third or fourth wave shooting up into the air. Denny drove straight there from the beach lot in Santa Monica.

He was plenty late.

But not
that
late. Denny was surprised to find the crew already in the process of packing up by the time he arrived on the set. He saw a line of guys with dreadlocks passing stuff to each other in a kind of bucket brigade. The steel-drum band who came in to do live music every other week. They loaded their gear into a van with a bright crazy paint job. Denny didn't even see the craft services crew who supplied the water and Gatorade. Everybody else kind of stood around, talking and leaning against the breeze.

At first, Denny thought one of two things: Either this Lomax thing had queered the schedule, or maybe they'd called off production on account of conditions. It was damned hot and windy to be taping outside at this time
of the day. Five minutes out of the car, his shirt stuck to his back. He already had sweat running down his leg from behind the plastic CD case tucked in his waistband.

He'd found Luther's hip sack in the Buick, right in the front seat where Luther had said it would be. Had to pay eight bucks just to get in the damned lot.

But it all worked out. He'd slim-jimmed the door, swiped the disc, left the fanny pack where he'd found it, and met a blue-and-white cruiser and a city wrecker coming into the lot as he made his way out. He was on a roll so far.

Now all he had to do was find Rod. Guy was gonna love this.