"I comforted her, but Dennis kept taunting me. He turned to me in the foyer and said that Caitlin was lying, that her hysteria was make-believe. I knew what he'd done. I knew full well what he had done to my little girl.

"He saw the gun in my hand, and I remembered that I was holding it. I said, 'Stay where you are. I'm calling the police.'

"He laughed at me. I lifted the muzzle and aimed the gun at him, and for the first time since I'd met Dennis, I saw fear in his face - but only for a second. I shot him twice, once while he was standing, once when he was down.

"Caitlin was holding on to me, screaming and crying, and then Duncan was there, too. He saw his father lying dead on the floor. I put Caitlin aside and swept Duncan up, carried him to the foot of the stairs, and told him to run up to Cyndi's room and stay there."

Candace came back to the present and she spoke directly to me.

"Sergeant, it had all become quite clear to me - I had to protect those children. If not me, then who?

"I went to the foyer and picked up the gun. After that, I called nine one one. When the police came, I said that an intruder had broken into the house and had killed my husband. They tested my hands for gunpowder. I told them I had opened the front door and fired after him. They brought me here. You know the rest.

"I'm sorry that it happened this way, but in that moment, I acted on pure instinct. I couldn't let Dennis live in the same world with Caitlin."

Chapter 119.

YUKI AND I walked Candace back to the beginning of her story, and she filled in the sickening gaps. She said that Dennis Martin was a degenerate womanizer and a stalker with a well-honed gift for emotional abuse but that he had a good reputation in the community and was well spoken. Candace said she was convinced that in a divorce trial she wouldn't have gotten custody of the kids.

Dr. Martin said, "Had I known that he was abusing Caitlin before that moment, I would have taken her and Duncan and called the police. I would not have let my children see him die."

After Candace was locked up and Phil was on his way home to Oakland, Yuki and I gathered our notes and collected the videotapes. And then we were alone.

I said, "That was the worst."

"Awful. If the jury had heard it, even if they thought she was guilty, they might have let her off so she could be there for her kids."

"Caitlin told her shrink that Dennis had been raping her?"

"Yes. I didn't see any point in telling Candace that it had been going on for quite a while."

"What are you going to recommend?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know," Yuki said.

She hurried upstairs to confer with Red Dog and I went down four flights to see Jacobi, my former partner, my longtime friend, and now the chief of police.

Jacobi cracked open a couple of c.o.ke cans, and after I brought him up to the minute on Candace Martin, he said, "What's Yuki thinking?"

"She and Parisi are chewing it over right now. Brady is going to bust me back to the beat," I said. "I couldn't let this case go."

"You want me to talk to him?"

"Yeah. Would you?"

Jacobi nodded his head and began tapping on the desk. He kept it up until under my prompting to just spit out whatever he was thinking, he said, "Lindsay, a message was forwarded to me this morning. It's not good news."

"What is it? What's wrong?" I asked.

"It's about your father."

"My father?"

"He died back in August. The pension people just got the word. I'm sorry, Linds."

I said, "No," and stood up, surprised that I felt light-headed, that my legs didn't want to hold me up. I grabbed the back of the chair for support. I thought about how Marty Boxer was hardly a father. In fact, I wasn't sure that he had even loved me. Had I loved him?

The next thing I knew, Jacobi had come around his desk and put his arms around me, and I was getting tears on his jacket.

"I wanted to be the one to tell you. He didn't ditch you at your wedding, my friend. He had a heart attack. He was already gone."

Chapter 120.

CLAIRE'S HOME in Mill Valley is a dream of a house: wood-paneled inside with trusses and beams in the cathedral ceiling, stone floors throughout the open s.p.a.ce, and a two-story fireplace. The bedrooms all have mountain vistas, and the patio has a multimillion-dollar view of a great, green, tree-studded lawn.

Edmund Washburn, a big teddy bear of a man, had fired up the barbecue, and Joe, Brady, and Conklin were horsing around with a football on the gra.s.s.

Yuki, Cindy, Claire, and I reclined on teak lounge chairs under woolly blankets, and baby Ruby slept in her rocking seat at Claire's elbow.

A Mozart symphony was pouring out of the Bose, and Yuki was staring at the guys on the field, at Brady in particular, and she finally said, "I'm a goner. I just thought you ladies would like to know. I'm a very moony lady. Over my head for Jackson Brady."

We laughed out loud - couldn't help ourselves. Yuki wanted to be in a relationship and it looked like she was in one with my lieutenant.

Brady saw her watching him, tossed the football aside, and ran toward us. He grabbed Yuki out of the chair, hoisted her over his shoulder, and made a run for the s.p.a.ce between the two saplings that marked the goal line.

Yuki shrieked and kicked melodramatically as Brady did the happy dance around the trees, then put Yuki on her feet and kissed her. With their arms around each other, they came back to the patio, laughing.

Man. They were disgustingly happy.

But I didn't begrudge Yuki a bit of it. Between Yuki and Jacobi, Brady had let my end run fade without so much as a wrist slap.

d.a.m.n. It was good to have friends.

Joe called my name. He had the ball, so I stood, ran out, and waved my hands in the air until he tossed it to me. Cindy threw off her blanket and went for a pa.s.s, doing some little moves with her hips that had never before been seen in football.

I threw the ball to her, a surprisingly tight spiral, if I do say so, and she whooped and yelled as she caught it. Conklin came off the sidelines and chased and tackled her, and then, even though I didn't have the ball, Joe tackled me. He tucked me under his body and rolled with me so that I landed on top of him, never even touching the ground.

We were all acting like a bunch of kids. And you know what? We needed to be kids. It was wonderful to just laugh our heads off. That's what I was thinking when a minute later Brady came over to me at the barbecue and pulled me aside. He leaned toward me, close enough to whisper in my ear.

He said, "For insubordination, Boxer, you're on night shift for the next six weeks."

It sucked, but I knew he was right. I had broken the rules.

What could I say? "Okay, Lieutenant, I understand."

Chapter 121.

WE ATE like we never expected to eat again.

When Joe's secret-sauced ribs had been picked clean, the salad had been reduced to a film of olive oil in the bowl, and all that remained of the baked potatoes was a pile of foil in the recycle bin, we went inside the house.

Claire busted out the cake while Edmund popped the top on the Krug. It was one of the best champagnes, at least a hundred bucks a bottle.

"Introducing my original white-chocolate cheesecake with cream cheese and orange slices between the layers," Claire said, putting it down on the dining room table. "Baked sour cream frosting, and Grand Marnier in a graham cracker crust. Voila! I hope you like it."

The applause was spontaneous and rousing, and I was pushed forward so that I could be next to my best friend. There were ten candles on the cake, standing for the tenth anniversary of the first time Claire and I met.

It had been a memorable occasion: It was my first week in Homicide, and Claire was the low woman on the totem pole in the ME's Office. We'd been called to the men's jail. A skinhead was down, three hundred pounds of swastika tattoos and muscle, wedged under his bunk and handcuffed. Not breathing.

The guard outside was in a high panic. He had cuffed the inmate and put him in his cell because the inmate was out of control, and now he was dead.

"He couldn't find the keys to the cuffs," Claire said. "And we couldn't turn the body over."

Claire was laughing as I told about her locking her kit outside the cell, then dropping her camera so hard she cracked the lens.

"And so Claire bends down for her camera, and I back into the guy's toilet, which sends me down," I said. "I reach out to grab on to something - anything - and end up grabbing his still under the sink. And the hooch sloshes all over me. I mean all over all over."

Edmund has this big laugh: "Hah-hah-hah."

He was pouring champagne into the good crystal gla.s.ses. I started to lift my flute of bubbly, but put the gla.s.s down.

Claire was snickering now, and Yuki's trilling laugh was sounding the high notes.

"We get back to the morgue," Claire continued, "stinking of hooch."

"Disgusting," I said. "But it was a no-brainer what killed him."

"No-brainer?" said Claire. "No-brainer for you you. I'm the one stuck with doing the post while you go home and change your clothes."

"He OD'd?" Brady asked.

"Didn't take much," Claire said. "If you're distilling hooch in tin cans - and he was - it turns to methanol. Three ounces'll kill you dead."

"I can't hear that story too many times," Cindy said, laughing.

She plucked the candles out of the cake one at a time and licked the bottoms clean, making Conklin shake his head and laugh.

Yuki brought out the plates and forks, and Edmund handed me my sleeping G.o.ddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn, a child as cute as ten b.u.t.tons.

Claire hugged me tight, the baby between us.

"Happy anniversary, Linds," said my best friend.

I had a lot of thoughts, and images came to me of a lot of murders and late nights working with Claire to solve them. It had been trial by fire every single time.

"And many more years together, girlfriend," I said.

We were still laughing an hour later, and then it was time to go. After I'd hugged and kissed all my buds good night - and yes, even my fine lieutenant - Joe and I headed back to town.

It was wonderfully peaceful inside that car.

I said to Joe, "It was hard not to tell anyone."

"I know. But let's keep it to ourselves for now, Blondie."

My handsome husband shot me a smile. Patted my thigh.

"Six weeks on night duty, huh?" he said.

"I dissed the lieutenant. I deserve it. Still, I did the right thing."

"I'm going to have the whole bed to myself for forty-two nights. And here I am, married at last."

"We can fool around when I get in at eight-thirty a.m.," I said.

I leaned over and kissed Joe's cheek as we took a turn onto Lake Street. Centrifugal force and a whole lot of love glued us together.

"Whoaaaaaa!" I squealed.

d.a.m.n, I was happy.

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Epilogue.