"Does he use a chainsaw, anything like that?"

McFrazier frowned. "No. He doesn't work on trees." He looked at his watch, barely visible through his arm hair, and said, "Lunch time. Got an appointment. See Franklin. He can tell you more."

He stood and stuck out his hand again, indicating their talk was over.

Dazed, Lawless shook his hand and left. He got Franklin's number from McFrazier's secretary and left the building, resisting the temptation to step over the silly gate leading into the lobby. Outside, he sat in his hot car with the engine running, the air on full, and dialed Franklin's number. In five minutes he learned Sanchez was indeed checking irrigation gates, and, as a rule, was always out early in the spring and summer. It could get hot in Modesto in May so management let field workers set their own hours as long as they got the work done.

Lawless clicked off and thought about the dead man again. He'd asked McFrazier if Sanchez had a chainsaw, but knew the answer would be no; a chainsaw could not have caused Sanchez's wound. There were too many unanswered questions. There was no blood or sign of a struggle on the canal bank or inside the truck, so where had the man been attacked? How had he lost his arm, and where was that damn arm, anyway? It should have been in the canal with the body, stuck on the grille. He hoped Brouchard's autopsy would provide some answers.

Lawless's stomach growled and he left the curb thinking about lunch. He decided to go home, sure he had something in the fridge he could warm up. And he could fix his shoe.

Daniel Lawless was born in San Francisco in the early 60s. His parents, Donald Lawless and the former Carly Polanski, met while working at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco.

It being the decade of free love, Donald and Carly lived together for several months before she got pregnant. They were married in Reno in March; Daniel was born two days after Thanksgiving; and Donald was gone by the following September, disappearing into San Francisco's bath houses and the drug culture of the 60s. Daniel was fatherless before his first birthday.

Carly moved to San Jose to live with her parents and lick her wounds. She divorced Donald but collected no child support or alimony; he didn't pay and she was too timid to go after him. She got a job selling shoes at a shopping center in Palo Alto when Daniel was two.

She studied shoe catalogs at home and drove into San Francisco regularly to attend fashion shows and conventions, taking little Daniel with her when possible. She taught him to read from the catalogs and by the time he was four he could identify shoe brands as well as she could.

Shoe watching became a game for them.

"Look Mom. Converse All Stars in red."

"Daniel, look at that woman's shoes! She wearing DiGeorio leather pumps in camel. They go for a hundred and fifty bucks. What a sale that would have been!"

It never occurred to Carly that maybe it wasn't a good thing for a four-year-old boy to know so much about shoes, but nothing about baseball, riding bikes, or digging holes in vacant lots.

Daniel could read and write when he started kindergarten; unusual for that time, years before yuppies began sending their three year olds to preschool. Because he'd rarely socialized with kids his age, he didn't know what they talked about or how they played. If a kid asked him if he liked Superman more than Spiderman, he'd respond by telling them how many colors the shoes they had on came in; he didn't know who Superman or Spiderman were.

While his fascination with shoes turned into a lifelong obsession, he discovered early on he had to keep it a secret. School was traumatic for a boy who liked shoes but didn't know how to play baseball or throw a football, or fight. Recess and lunch were treacherous times. If he dared venture out into the fields where the other boys were playing, they would go after him. If they caught him, they would take his shoes and urinate on them or throw them over the fence into the weeds, sometimes both.

The verbal abuse was often worse than the physical. He was called lots of things - freak, queer, weirdo, sissy, momma's boy, pussy - but only Shoe Boy stuck.

Then, in the fifth grade, things changed: he began to sense trouble before it happened.

The first premonition occurred when he was playing tetherball with Jilly Franklin, getting trounced. While watching the ball sail over his head, he suddenly felt a nauseous, tingling, swirling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

John Wanker, a sixth grader, twice flunked and who outweighed Daniel by fifty pounds, yanked him away from the tetherball pole. John had suffered a beating at the hands of his mother's drunk boyfriend the night before and was looking to pass the love on to someone else. Who better than Shoe Boy?

The next time he got the feeling, he paid more attention. He still got caught, and he still had to retrieve his stinking, wet tennis shoes from the toilet, but that was the last time the bullies got him without having to run him down. After that, he'd get the feeling, look around to see where they were, and take off. It frustrated the bullies so much that they moved on to easier targets before the school year ended, giving Daniel some degree of peace.

When the phenomenon known as the shopping mall swept the country, Carly took a manager position in Sacramento's first mall; they moved and Daniel started over at a pivotal time, high school.

He worked at his mother's store his freshman year and was immediately disliked by the other employees. They found it creepy that a thirteen-year-old boy knew so much about shoes. It didn't help that he outsold them all despite working part-time.

Daniel made friends, not what most people would call close friends, but at least he socialized with someone outside the shoe world.

The premonitions stopped.

Carly remarried in Daniel's junior year. Her new husband, Steve, quickly abandoned any thoughts he once entertained about doing man-stuff with Daniel - catching a Giant's game, fishing, boating, hunting - after witnessing his first Carly-Daniel shoe-talk.

Donald Lawless, Daniel's father, never made any attempt to contact his ex-wife or son and died of a drug overdose in 1971.

Daniel graduated high school and entered a local college, Sacramento State, enrolling in their law enforcement program. That he had chosen such a manly occupation pleased Steve, who thought perhaps there was hope for his stepson after all.

In high school, Daniel had listened to the popular music of the 70s, disco and rock, but his tastes changed in college. He switched to classical after being forced to listen to it in a music appreciation class; he found he could think better with it playing in the background.

Then, in his senior year at Sac State, a bookish woman he dated a few times introduced him to opera in a way he would never forget. After dinner at her place, and a couple of bottles of cheap wine, she attempted a striptease while a seductive aria from the opera Carmen played on the stereo. The combination of too much alcohol and not enough practice made for a pathetic, even comical performance. Not only did she fail to seduce him, she scared him away for good.

The evening was not a complete waste, though; he liked the aria and bought a recording of the entire opera the following day.

College was followed by the police academy, a huge change for Daniel, whose interests had never involved physical exercise of any type. Overweight and soft, the academy toughened him up and prepared him for the years he would spend in a patrol car.

While the physical rigors of the police academy changed the way he looked, albeit temporarily, it didn't change Daniel's mind-set about conflict. Having been persecuted for so long when young, and faced with overwhelming odds, he'd learned to avoid conflict rather than confront it. As a child, if he couldn't talk his way out of trouble, and he usually couldn't, he ran from it.

This philosophy served him well until he hit the streets in a police uniform. After several years in a patrol car, where everything he did involved conflict, he knew he had to find something else to do. Not wanting to pitch his college education altogether, he signed up for extra training and began applying for detective positions.

He was hired by the city of Riverbank, a town east of Modesto, in the early 90s. Riverbank was a small town of 4,500, with typical small-town problems. A few years later, the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department took over the law enforcement work for Riverbank and Daniel transferred to Modesto, then a city of 190,000. Now there murders to solve, big drug busts, car theft rings, gang violence, and home invasion robberies. His name began appearing in the local paper.

Detective work was more mental than physical, more Columbo than NYPD Blue, so it suited him better than street patrol. He spent most of his time in his office, thinking or talking with people in person or on the phone. He never had to kick in a door or throw someone up against the wall and threaten to "take them downtown." He carried a revolver and knew how to fire it, but as a detective he'd never once had to take it out. If he suspected trouble, he brought a deputy or two to handle any wrestling or handcuffing.

He had things pretty well figured out and was good enough at what he did that people left him alone, which suited him fine.

He dated enough to quell most rumors he was gay. Sex was okay but too messy, too intimate. And sex usually took place in the bedroom, where shoes are kept. Daniel had eighty-two pairs, a fact he preferred to keep private. He was sure that once a woman learned he had a thing for shoes she would leave and tell him to never call again. Few people saw the inside of his apartment and no one, ever, went into his bedroom.

All-in-all, Daniel Lawless was an odd man with strange passions, but not so strange that he couldn't fit in. He discovered he could have his shoes and his music so long as he enjoyed them quietly. He was content and prepared, if necessary, to live out his life alone.

He was not, however, prepared in any way for the horror that was descending upon him and the people he had sworn to serve and protect. Modesto needed a Dirty Harry, a man of action who carried a big gun he wasn't afraid to use, but what they got instead was Daniel Lawless, a man who carried a small gun he preferred not to use, a man who liked shoes.

Chapter 3.

Hank Weston hummed a country tune, something he knew but nothing he could name, as he bounced down the dirt road in his old Chevy.

His dog, Chip, sat opposite him on the bench seat, staring out the window at row after row of almond trees. Chip, like most dogs, was a mongrel, but he was smarter than any dog Hank had ever owned, and he'd had a few.

Hank'd rather be with Chip than his wife Doris. Chip always did what he was told, without sassing back, and didn't nag at Hank for spilling coffee on his shirt or tracking dirt on the carpet. And, unlike Doris, the dog required very little attention; Hank could ignore him for half a day and he didn't seem to mind. Doris, on the other hand, never shut up about how long it had been since he'd taken her out to dinner or away for the weekend.

As Hank cared nothing for sex, overrated entertainment, as far as he was concerned, and could cook for himself, he often wondered why he didn't just kick Doris the hell out of the house. She'd given him two daughters, neither of which he'd give a dollar for, and no sons: she couldn't even get that right.

It was irrigation day; Hank had one every-other-week. At five-thirty in the morning, he and Chip were on their way to open the irrigation gates. Hank farmed one hundred acres of almonds six miles west and two miles north of Modesto. His land was irrigated by water released from Lateral No. 7, a canal owned and operated by the Modesto Irrigation District.

Getting the water he needed was easy. Hank told MID how much he needed and they told him when to open and close the gates. Pretty damned ingenious. Sprinklers were better, but he was cheap and flood irrigation was free.

At the gate, he and Chip got out, climbed the five-foot canal bank and stretched their legs. Hank yawned and looked into the canal: the water was inky-black, void of reflection, and smooth and silent as it snaked through his orchard. It ran full from March to the middle of November and worked like a giant artery, feeding the fields and orchards that would wither and die without it.

The sun, still hidden behind peach orchards to the west of Hank's property, threw soft yellow light over the countryside. Hank could hear mooing from the Johnson dairy north of the canal; a stupid sound made by stupid animals. He took a deep breath and imagined how sweet the air might be if he wasn't downwind of half a ton of fresh cow shit. At least the air had life in it. City air was dead.

He glanced at his watch: ten minutes. Plenty of time for a smoke.

Chip sniffed at the man's boots, then sniffed at the canal. It didn't smell like life to him, no fish swam in the canal, so it failed to hold his interest. It was just another place the man took him.

His only concern regarding the canal was, it's not a good place to get a drink. The one time he'd tried drinking from the canal, he'd lost his footing and fell in. Unable to climb out on his own, his master had grabbed his collar and yanked him out before the swift current carried him away and drowned him. He took his drinks elsewhere after that.

The dog sensed something in the air - danger. And he sensed it was in the canal.

Not knowing exactly what to do or how to tell the man they needed to move, the dog crept to edge of the canal, ears back and a low growl in his throat, and sniffed. This time he detected something in the water, something evil.

Chip looked at his master to see if he could smell it too, but the man had one of those stinking white sticks in his mouth, the ones that made his eyes water and sting and his throat hurt when the man burned them in the truck. The stinking stick must be preventing the man from smelling the evil thing in the water, so he barked. The man looked at him, but did nothing.

The sense of danger grew at an alarming rate and Chip became terrified. He backed away from the canal, whimpering and wetting the ground. Couldn't the man sense what was coming? Why was he standing there, doing nothing?

He wanted to run into the orchard, get as far away from the canal as possible, but his instinct to protect his master was stronger than his fear.

He barked and began running back and forth between the canal and the man. His master made noise but his commands were unfamiliar.

The air became electrified: Chip stopped, frozen by fear.

In the dim light, he saw something shoot out of the water and bite the man, taking his legs. It disappeared into the canal before he could move.

The man fell back and tumbled down the canal bank, landing facedown in the dirt. Several inches of his calves stuck out from the tops of his dusty boots. Severed arteries leaked blood that ran in rivulets into the man's socks, soaking them.

Chip barked at the bloody legs, then ran and leapt off the canal bank and ran into the orchard.

Hank thought his dog had lost its mind when it began running around barking its fool head off. He hollered at the dog, but it had no effect; the animal had gone crazy. He was afraid to grab its collar for fear of getting bit, thinking it may be rabid or have the distemper. The stupid animal barked at the canal itself. He took a couple of steps forward and looked into the dark water, but saw nothing.

Then the air changed: the hair on his arms stood straight out and the dog finally shut up.

He glanced at the dog, but before it registered in his brain that the animal was terrified, he saw a dark streak shoot out of the water, to his left, followed by a quick, sharp pain in his legs. He lost his balance and fell back off the canal bank.

The next thing he knew he was lying face down in the dirt, weeds and sand in his mouth and nose. At first he thought that he, a grown healthy man, had fallen clean off the canal like an old woman. He was embarrassed and tried to turn over, but something was terribly wrong with his legs. They felt as if they had been doused with gasoline and lit with a match.

I broke my legs. He swore when he realized he'd have to hire more help, which meant putting off some equipment upgrades he'd planned for the fall.

He lifted his face out of the sand, spitting weeds and dirt. Damn, his legs hurt. He felt lightheaded.

With great effort and determination, he flopped over on his back. The maneuver seemed to take all his strength and air; he gasped. The pain from his legs shot through his entire body in nauseating waves and he thought it might kill him, that he might die right there in the dirt like a gunshot squirrel.

The pain spiked again and he screamed.

Mustering great strength, he propped himself up on one arm, too weak to get both elbows under him. He looked at his legs, half expecting to see them bent sideways, bloodied white bones jutting out through torn jeans.

He did not expect to see two bloody stumps.

The sandy ground underneath what was left of his legs was black, and he knew why. He also knew he would die if he didn't stop the bleeding.

Survival instincts kicked in and adrenaline coursed through what little blood he had left, energizing him. Thinking only of stopping the rest of his blood from spilling into the sand, he worked his belt loose and wrapped it around the stump that had once been his right leg. He struggled to tighten the belt, and had a thought: he was bleeding from both legs but had only one belt. He'd die if he didn't tie off the other stump.

The Chevy. He could find a piece of rope, something, in his pickup that he could use to tie off the other leg.

Had he not been going into shock from massive blood loss, he might have considered the impossibility of opening the pickup's door, or climbing up to the bed, with two five-inch stumps for legs.

He finished cinching the belt around his right stump and looked to see how far away the pickup was: thirty feet, maybe less.

Another wave of pain coursed through his body and he screamed again.

After a brief rest, he flopped onto his stomach and started dragging his broken body toward the truck. Weak and tired from pain and blood loss, it took everything he had to move.

His vision blurred: darkness formed at the periphery and worked its way in until he was in a tunnel looking out. He tried to focus on the truck, but it seemed to be farther away now.

He resolved to increase his efforts and crawl faster. He dug in with his elbows and pulled, making five feet in thirty seconds. Encouraged by his progress, he felt certain he was going to make it now, make it to the pickup and...

What? He'd forgotten why the pickup was so important.

Perhaps if he rested a little it would come to him. Just a brief rest.

He laid his head down.

He'd barely crawled ten feet when he gave up. He forgot about the pickup and the rope - there wasn't any rope anyway - and closed his eyes. The fatigue was enormous. He was tired of the pain, tired of crawling. He laid his head in the dirt, not minding the pokey weeds, and fell asleep. It had never felt so good to sleep. He didn't see the dog come out of the trees, whimpering, tail between its legs. He didn't feel the rough, wet tongue on his face. He felt no pain. He felt nothing.

Randy McCain and Jon Cruff were the first officers on the scene, answering the 07:17 call from dispatch.

Upon arrival at the Weston ranch, they were greeted by two Hispanic men, employees of Hank Weston, who appeared to have been badly frightened. They babbled at the deputies in Spanish while pointing at the orchard, but the officers couldn't understand a word they said.

Doris Weston came out of her house to see why there were two Sheriff cars in her yard. She didn't speak Spanish either and had no idea what had happened. The men motioned for the deputies to follow them, but clearly did not want Mrs. Weston to come. This frightened her and made her think something had happened to Hank. After persuading Mrs. Weston to stay put, Cruff joined the men in their pickup while McCain followed in his cruiser. Mrs. Weston went inside and called her sister in Fresno.

The caravan of two stopped behind an old pickup identified by the workers as "Senor Weston's peekup."

Cruff and McCain, weapons drawn, found Hank Weston lying in the dirt, looking very dead. McCain felt for a pulse, didn't find one, and called dispatch for an ambulance and a detective. He sent Cruff back to watch the workers, not knowing if they had anything to do with Weston's death or not, and scanned the immediate area looking for the missing legs. Seeing nothing, he eyed Weston's bloody tracks, followed them until he saw a pair of cowboy boots on the canal bank.

Tightening the grip on his weapon, he made his way to the canal, occasionally looking down to make sure he wasn't stepping on evidence. Ten feet away, he saw one or two inches of what appeared to be bloody legs sticking out of each boot.

The deputy stood on his tip-toes and scanned the canal bank, looking for the legs, looking for anything. Finding nothing, and seeing nothing that presented any danger, he holstered his weapon and climbed up the canal bank. He peered into the water, then used his high-ground position to scan the surrounding orchard: he saw nothing unusual.

Satisfied he hadn't made a mess of anything, or missed anything obvious, McCain returned to Weston's pickup, found a comfortable tree to lean against, away from the body, and waited for someone to come and take over.

The ambulance arrived, but when the EMTs saw the corpse and found no pulse, they didn't bother getting any equipment out. They joined McCain by the comfy tree, big Starbucks cups in their hands, and looked like spectators at a tennis match; heads going back and forth between the body and the boots. The trio took turns offering possible explanations for how the man had died, none of which made any sense. Cruff remained with the workers but was now unhappy; he would rather have been leaning up against the tree with the English-speaking men.

Lawless pulled in next and made his way to the group of idle professionals, looking as if the call had found him in bed, sleeping in his clothes. His hair had been combed with fingers and looked it; he hadn't shaved, but it was difficult to tell as his beard was so light; his eyes were red, again, or still.

His shoes: immaculate.

He ran into Cruff first and croaked, "What do we have here?"