Rigby was by now sitting on the front two inches of the couch. He looked up balefully. 'What have you got, Abe?'

'We've got Griffin's notes - basically nothing. I've got a better one for you.' He turned back to Pratt. 'Sharron, who, specifically, has been pressuring you to go get Beaumont?'

Again, some unspoken message seemed to pa.s.s among the airport staff - Struler, Pratt, Randall. Glitsky was getting a little tired of the secret handshake stupidity, but experience had told him that if he let it run its course, it might lead him somewhere.

Pratt slid off the desk and went around it, where she opened a drawer, then closed it. 'Well, naturally, Caloco would like to see the case closed. They're taking a lot of flack in the media, as you may know.'

'And are they one of your contributors?' From Pratt's reaction, Glitsky could tell that the question had hit a mark. He hadn't done twenty-five years of interrogations for nothing after all.

But Pratt didn't blow. Her eyes narrowed slightly. Her game face appeared. 'They contributed to my opponent as well, sergeant.'

'And as long as whoever gets elected does them a favor whenever they ask, they keep the money coming, is that it? So what's the favor here? Find a likely scapegoat and hang him out to dry?'

'Sergeant, you're out of line,' Rigby barked.

But finally, Batiste took a few steps toward the group. He'd spent many years in homicide and suddenly had picked up a bad smell. 'With all respect, sir, Abe's asked a good question. If Caloco's trying to influence the investigation, it increases the odds that they might somehow be involved.'

'That's ridiculous,' Pratt exploded.

Randall was up now, supporting his boss. 'Completely ridiculous. You can't make that kind of baseless charge, captain. Caloco's been the soul of cooperation...'

'I haven't made any kind of charge,' Batiste retorted. 'I'm saying the lieutenant, here, has the right to ask the question. Do you have anything on Caloco?'

'There's nothing on them. They came to us and gave us a case of doc.u.ments,' Struler said hotly. 'And we got Ron implicated.'

For a long moment, nothing moved in the room. Finally, Scott Randall whispered 's.h.i.t' under his breath. Even Rigby the politician - there to steamroll Glitsky into official compliance - frowned. Into the well of silence, Batiste dropped a little echoing pebble. 'What doc.u.ments?'

Glitsky picked it up. 'I haven't seen any doc.u.ments.'

'They weren't any part of the original investigation.' Pratt was hustling to put her finger in the dike, but the water was spraying all around her. 'Caloco came to us, voluntarily.'

'With what, exactly? And when?' Glitsky, suddenly, was glad he'd come in on this lovely Sat.u.r.day afternoon. But he had to give it to Pratt, she didn't break.

Boosting herself on to the desk again, she gave a little apologetic smile. 'Ms Beaumont had been a valued employee and a couple of weeks after she was killed, when no suspect had turned up, Caloco called my office and offered all the files they had related to her.'

'And naturally,' Glitsky said, his voice thick with sarcasm, 'because they related to a murder, you informed my detail immediately so we could evaluate all the information.'

'You'd already dumped the case,' Randall said.

For another moment, Glitsky stood in the doorway. He had straightened up from his slouch long ago. This was not just petty politics, but a serious breach of legal ethics. Formal obstruction of justice out of the DA's office. Glitsky was having trouble accepting it.

But he knew what he was going to do with it. 'I'll expect that box and all its contents on my desk within the hour.'

Glitsky hadn't received the box from the DA by the time Dismas Hardy appeared at his office minutes after leaving his wife at the jail. 'Working on the sabbath?' he said from the doorway.

Glitsky, slumped over bunches of paper, gave him the evil eye. 'Don't start. Really.'

'OK. Meanwhile, while I'm not starting.' He tossed a bag on to the desk in front of him. 'I figured I was here, I'd see if you were and give you the leftovers.'

'Today's my day for leftovers.' He pulled the bag over to him. 'What is this?' Glitsky's face didn't exactly light up - Hardy thought that would be impossible - but Hardy was gratified by the expression. 'Is this lox? Tell me this is lox.'

'Your favorite. There'd be more except the desk sergeant at the jail ate the first two pounds.'

Glitsky had ripped the bag open and was spreading out the contents on the brown paper. 'You got this into the jail?'

'Technically, the answer to that would be no, though they do love me down there, I can tell. But no food inside, so they held it at the desk while I visited Frannie. Can I come in?'

'Since when do you ask?'

Hardy shrugged, moving forward. 'New policy. Ask first. I'm trying it out.' He sat on the wooden chair across from Glitsky's desk. 'While you're eating,' he said, 'I've got to tell you about these three leprechauns.'

Glitsky rolled his eyes. Hardy's jokes were a constant torture. 'You ever wonder why it's always three?' But his mouth was full and he was chewing happily.

'So they're all standing outside the Guinness Book of World Records building and the first one says he's got the smallest hands in the world and he's going to show them to the Guinness people and get in the book. A couple of minutes later, he comes out, all thrilled-'

'OK.' Glitsky was between bites. 'Second guy's the feet, third guy's the d.i.c.k. What's the punch line?'

Hardy was used to this, Glitsky's perennial cut to the chase. 'Third leprechaun comes out and he looks depressed and his friends ask him what's the matter - does he have the smallest d.i.c.k in the world or what?'

'I can't wait.' Another bite of lox and bagel.

'Guy shakes his head, looks at his friends and says, "Who the h.e.l.l is Abe Glitsky?" '

With the expected reaction - that is, none - Glitsky sat back. 'I had a good time recently. Want to hear about it?' He outlined the events from his recent meeting with Pratt and the rest of them, and the withholding of Caloco's doc.u.ments.

By the time he'd finished, Hardy was sitting back in a kind of shock. 'You're telling me Dan Rigby was in on this, too? Do you realize you could have a good shot at taking down Pratt's office? In fact, I know a local lawyer who'd be happy to help you. Get yourself promoted to chief.'

Glitsky made a face. 'I don't want to be chief. Sometimes I don't even want to be head of homicide. I just want to be a cop again. Catch bad guys.'

'You might be doing that here. What do you think's going to turn up in the box?'

'Whatever's in there.' He'd find out soon enough. 'Can you believe the arrogance, though? It never occurred to any of them that they didn't have every right to that evidence. It came to their office so it was theirs and whatever they should legally do be d.a.m.ned.'

'You better watch out,' Hardy said, 'You're starting to sound like a lawyer.' He pushed back his chair a couple of inches. 'So that's what brought you down here today?'

Glitsky nodded. 'More or less.'

'And here I thought it might have been your two inspectors - checking into Carl Griffin's investigation as your best friend had suggested - had stumbled on to something.'

'Well, since you mention it.' Glitsky bunched the brown paper bag and tossed it into his wastebasket. The papers he'd been studying before Hardy's arrival didn't appear to be in any order, but he started picking through them as though he'd arranged them in some way. 'Here's copies of some notes from Griffin's notebook. He was working the building where Bree lived. No sign he'd gotten anywhere with witnesses, but it was Carl and he didn't write any follow-up' - he glanced up at Hardy and shrugged - 'so who knows?'

Glitsky picked up another stapled group of pages. 'Crime scene. Zip. No gla.s.s anywhere to match what was in her scalp.'

'Which was what?'

A flip of a page. 'The theory is that it was from a leaded crystal wine or champagne gla.s.s. The Beaumonts didn't have anything to match on hand.'

Hardy was into Griffin's notes. 'Here's Jim Pierce again. Damon Kerry. Al Valens. How'd Griffin get these guys?'

'The grieving husband, your friend Ron. Wanted to help find whoever killed her.'

'And he thought one of these guys... ?'

But Glitsky was shaking his head. 'He just gave Carl a bunch of names, Diz. People Bree had hung out with.' A pause. 'Why did you say Jim Pierce again?'

'What?'

'You said "Here's Jim Pierce again." '

Hardy smiled. 'That wasn't me. It must have been somebody else.' Then, relenting. 'It'd be neat if the odd slip of the tongue got by you once in a while. Anyway, I just visited him - Pierce - and his wife a couple of hours ago. You'll be gratified to know that your inspectors had already been there.'

A nod. 'Rattling his cage is all. He's got a decent alibi.'

'Just decent?'

'Driving to work. Left home around eight, at the Embarcadero office forty minutes later.'

'Forty minutes? I just did it in fifteen.'

'This is Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Try it on a weekday morning, rush hour. Coleman and Batavia did it last night and it took 'em an hour. And he was at his desk forty minutes later.' Glitsky shrugged. 'OK, anything's possible as we know, but n.o.body's put him anywhere near her place. He told my guys he hadn't seen her in four months. They're checking, but so far they hear the same thing. No contact.'

'What about Damon Kerry?'

This time, Glitsky's mouth tightened. 'He's running for governor, Diz. I just don't think so.'

'I don't either, but was he around at least?'

Glitsky nodded. 'He was in town, shooting TV spots.'

'Seeing her?'

'Sometimes. Often.'

'Were they sleeping together?'

This almost brought a true smile, which for Glitsky was a rarity. 'What a quaint way to put it. Let's just say that for a married woman, she spent a lot of time with him, but it's not like Kerry's such a hot item that reporters are on him around the clock. His people quote resent the implication. She was a technical adviser on environmental matters. That's the story.'

'On the payroll?'

'No. Another committed volunteer, which is what makes this country great.' He held up a hand. 'I know, but Griffin never got to him and here four days before the election, without any physical evidence, you don't just send two inspectors down to grill him.'

'Why not? I would.'

Glitsky liked that. 'I'm sure you would, which is why you don't work for the city anymore. No, what you do is what we've done - ask him to come down and give a statement and of course he's promised full cooperation. As soon as he's got a free minute, which ought to be by Christmas, he's going to give it top priority.'

A weary sigh. 'You know, Diz, you and I might have our good reasons for hoping it isn't Ron, but it still might be. Really. He looks a lot better than Kerry, or Pierce for that matter, and that's even before what's in the mystery box.'

Hardy didn't want Glitsky thinking this way. He was shaking his head. 'I don't think so. I like it that Kerry's in election mode, he's stressed to the max and this lady hits him with something that'll derail his campaign. He's got no time to think so he does the first thing that occurs to him and she winds up dead. Oops. Makes perfect sense to me.'

'He's at her house?'

'Could have been. Do we know? You find his prints?'

'Prints, please.' Fingerprints were useful when they could be cross-checked against those of known criminals, but if someone hadn't ever committed a crime, their prints would not be in the database. 'We got prints from the door to the balcony and some dishes in the sink. Ron's prints and the kids, which we didn't need to run 'cause we knew who they were. Then we've got a dozen, fifteen more, unidentified. Could be other kids, family friends, anybody. But no known criminals.'

'Maybe Damon Kerry, though.'

'We may never know and even if he was, so what?'

'It puts him at the scene.'

Glitsky rolled his eyes, his patience with amateur detective work growing thin. 'Why wouldn't he be at the scene at some point in the last few months? He knew her. So he went to her house? So what?

'Listen,' he continued, 'I'll tell you what. You get to Kerry, borrow his shoes, and find some lead crystal residue on them. Then find somebody who can put him at Bree's place or better yet, can prove they were doing each other, or stopped doing each other, or anything...' His voice wore down, his eyes came up. 'The more I think about it, Diz, and I hate to say it-'

Hardy held up a hand. 'Then don't.'

17.

The Pulgas Water Temple sits in a peaceful and picturesque location among low rolling hills about twenty miles south of San Francisco. A semi-circle of high white Ionian columns rises behind a reflecting pool and forms an elegant structure that commemorates the completion of one of the most famous (or infamous) engineering feats in California history, the Hetch-Hetchy Project. This marvel of architecture and city planning captured the plentiful water and snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada mountain range at Yosemite and delivered it, mostly underground over nearly two hundred miles, into a shallow valley that had once been an Indian prayer grounds.

This once-holy spot is now the Crystal Springs reservoir, the source of San Francisco's drinking water and, in fact, one of the principle reasons that naturally dry San Francisco is a major metropolitan center and not a quaint tourist destination with nice views and bad weather.

The sculpted grounds of the Temple is a popular picnic destination and this bright, warm afternoon held a typical Indian summer scene - family blankets with food and drink spread on the gra.s.s, boats in the reflecting pool, dogs and kids and couples and a handful of bicyclists and solitary readers. Occasionally a Sheriff's patrol car from San Mateo County would cruise the lot, but there was no regular security presence at the site. There had never been any need of one.

The parking lot was nearly filled and the nondescript Chevy Camaro that pulled off the main road and into it had to park at the far northern end, nearly three hundred yards from the Temple.

The two middle-aged men got out of the front seat and the two women from the rear. All of the eventual witnesses agreed that the group was dressed too warmly for the day, the women with scarves over their heads, the men with hats pulled low, but as they got out of the car, they attracted no attention. Without exchanging a word, they congregated at the trunk, then two men and one of the women began walking toward the Temple with a large picnic basket. The other woman got back into the car in the driver's seat and rolled down the window.

From where they had parked, the three carriers hadn't been able to hear a thing except the twittering of the birds and the casual noise of the picnickers, but as they got closer, a low roar gradually became audible, then undeniable.

'Either of you guys ever jump in here when you were a kid?' the first man asked. He didn't want an answer, was babbling out of nervousness, and neither of his two companions said a word. In any case, his story was drowned out in the sound of the water pouring out of the input pipes into the temple, but he kept right on talking. 'When I was growing up, this was the thing to prove your manhood, let me tell you. I knew a guy broke a leg and almost drowned, but I rode it halfway down to the lake.'

He was referring to what had once been a popular rite of pa.s.sage for teenagers on San Francisco's peninsula. For years, males with testosterone poisoning would come down here with other guys or their girlfriends, mostly at dusk, and jump over the low wall of the temple down fifteen feet into the churning, ice-cold water, which surged at thousands of gallons per second into a circular, tiled pool. The flow would pick these kids up - or occasionally push them down and not let go - and shoot them out a fifty-foot submerged tunnel, then to the ca.n.a.l that led to the reservoir.

Now, in response to the occasional drowning, the state had installed a wide-meshed steel grate to cover the pool and jumping in was no longer an option.

As the three conspirators got to the low wall, the woman - she was by all accounts the leader - looked back and made sure that their car had pulled out of its s.p.a.ce and was now idling, ready to take them out of here. There was a young couple on the platform with them, the boy's arm around his girl, both of them mesmerized by the rushing water, unlikely to move away in the next five minutes.

A solo man, mid-fifties, in shorts and hiking boots, was climbing the low steps to the temple even as she waited, and behind him a family of four were getting up from their blanket, looking like they were walking this way.