'I don't think so, Bree. How is that possible?'

'Tractor fuel, cost of shipment, storage, refining, like that.'

Well...'

'Well nothing. And since it has less fuel energy than gas, it guarantees worse gas mileage, which affects everybody who drives. Plus,' she continued, having worked herself into a high dudgeon, 'do you realize that every dollar of SKO's ethanol profits costs the American taxpayer thirty dollars? And I'm leaving out all the science here. This is just the c.r.a.ppy business stuff. It's just awful.'

Valens had no response to any of this. He didn't know if any of it was true or not, and didn't care, but it was clear that she had come to believe it and might take her message to Damon. That was the issue. That s what he had to deflect.

He kept his voice under control. 'But Bree, almost all businesses-'

'But Damon isn't involved with almost all businesses. He's involved with this one. And this ethanol thing isn't even the worst of it.'

He waited, hardly daring to breathe. What could be worse than what she'd already come to? 'So what is?' he asked.

She leaned forward, and her zealot's eyes locked into his. 'We don't need either of them.'

'Either of what?'

'Either MTBE or ethanol, or any other gas additives for that matter. The EPA has mandated them, but the whole thing is a scam. The whole thing, do you realize that?' Her voice went up several decibels with her outrage.

'I. . . I'm afraid I don't understand,' he managed to stammer.

'No, no. I know you don't. How could you? n.o.body does. Wait a minute.'

Suddenly she was up, nearly running, disappearing into a hallway across the kitchen area. In another moment, she reappeared carrying a large handful of papers. 'Look,' she began without preamble. 'I don't expect you to understand the science,' she said, 'but let me try to explain some of this.'

He listened for what seemed an eternity as she went over the salient points of the report she'd been working on for the past month or six weeks. It contained a great deal of data - graphs, equations, a.n.a.lyses of comparisons in burn rates, emissions, efficiencies of gasoline - and gradually even Al Valens began to see what Bree had a.s.sembled.

Culled from patent applications, lawsuit transcripts, internal memos, executive summaries, and expert testimony of dozens of combustion engineers, Bree s report detailed a startling truth - that the oil companies had discovered a way to formulate gasoline so that it burned cleanly without the addition of oxygenates, without any additives at all. 'So you see, Al, it's what I was telling you. The whole additive question is a scam. Damon's got to be made aware of this. I've got to tell him.'

When she finished, Valens gathered his thoughts. It wouldn't do to alienate Bree now. If she did go running to Damon with this, if she convinced him to start talking about it, it would be a disaster. He sighed histrionically. 'This is terrible,' he said. 'Just awful. I wonder why it hasn't made the news in a big way?'

But Bree knew the answer to that one. 'It's a bunch of individual papers, experiments, opinions. That's how we scientists work - on small problems, little tweaks here and there, which are fascinating and challenging in themselves.

'Like with me and MTBE. At the beginning, in layman's terms, my job was to prove it made for cleaner air. And every way I tested it, it worked. And then somehow my job changed and gradually I wasn't really a scientist anymore. I was a spokesperson defending what I'd done, what Caloco believed in, what I believed in. So I wasn't interested in groundwater, in cleanup, even in this reformulated gas. My job, my life, was MTBE. The rest of it wasn't my problem.' She looked at him hopefully. 'Do you understand at all?'

He nodded. 'Of course. Of course I do.'

She squared the pages of her report, and sat back with it in her lap. 'But I was wrong.'

'No. I don't think so. I think you trusted your employers.' Valens reached across and touched her knee with his fingertips. Quickly. Even through the jeans, it burned. 'Bree, you did the right thing calling me about this. I want you to know that.'

She let out a long breath. 'I didn't know what else to do. Part of me feels like I should tell Damon, but he has so much on his mind already...'

'Exactly.'

'But if I don't...'

Valens interrupted with the answer she needed. 'If you don't, he'll understand. In fact, after the election, he'll thank you for it. The issue at this point in any campaign, much less a squeaker like this one, Bree, is focus. If he loses focus, the voters get confused, he s dead. And this stuff, you've got to admit, it's a little complicated.'

She broke a small smile. 'A little, I suppose.'

'Don't suppose. Believe me on this one! Now they were more than allies - they were really pals. It was time to make his pitch. 'Bree, that report, you got it on your computer too?'

'Yes.'

'You know, it's pretty volatile stuff. It gets in the wrong hands, maybe your husband's...'

What?'

'He could delete it maybe. Shred the hard copy. And then where's all your hard work? If he connects it with you and Damon...'

'No,' she said, 'Ron would never do anything like that.' She hesitated. 'Ron accepts the situation.'

He shrugged. It wouldn't do to push. 'Well, it's your decision, but I could take all that stuff - your disks, everything. Keep them someplace safe till after the election.'

But she was firm. 'It's safe here. I don't want Damon to see it until I tell him, until we have time and I can explain it, and also why we decided not to tell him sooner.'

'After the election?' Valens wanted it nailed down, although what he really wanted was all copies of the report or, better yet, for Bree to disappear along with it.

'I think so,' she said. 'As we've decided.'

But as the door closed behind him, Al knew he hadn't pushed hard enough. He stood in the landing by the elevators, wondering whether he should knock again while she was still alone, and go in and take what he needed, personally and professionally.

Because if he knew Bree at all, and he did, she'd never be able to keep this to herself. She'd get cozy with Damon one night and just have to tell him, and then Damon would decide that the right thing to do would be to share it with the public.

And while it was one thing to be a White Knight crusading against an evil corporate polluter, it was quite another to be a paranoid left-wing fanatic who believed that the Environmental Protection Agency was part of the Great Government Gasoline Conspiracy. That, while possibly true, would not fly, and Valens knew it.

It would cost Damon the election. It would cost Al his potentially lucrative future relationship with SKO. It would infuriate the volatile and unpredictable Baxter Thorne.

No. It wouldn 't do.

From his endless bag of tricks, Baxter Thorne had produced Dismas Hardy's telephone number and suggested that Valens call with an amendment to his earlier lie about not having called Ron.

When Hardy wasn't home, Valens left a message, then came over to the couches again, where Thorne was on his fourth little bottle of liquor after his opening shot of pure ethanol. 'That ought to help,' Thorne remarked, his voice firmly under control. 'But I don't like him meddling in our affairs. He really doesn't belong in this picture, does he? I don't know where he's come from.'

Valens found that he was afraid to reply. There was a glaze in Thorne's eyes - maybe not all from the alcohol - that scared him.

Thorne leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and took another long pull at his gla.s.s. 'He's got you telling a fib. He may know something of the report if he's been to Bree's.' A silence settled which Valens took to be ominous. 'And if that's the case, he may decide to share it with Damon, or the press.'

A long moment pa.s.sed. Suddenly, Thorne put his gla.s.s down, slapped his knees, and stood up. 'Well, Al, thanks for the c.o.c.ktails.' He headed for the door. 'It seems to me Mr Hardy has a little too much free time on his hands. I think perhaps a... distraction would be good for him just at this time. You say he isn't home right now?'

'He wasn't when I called.'

'Yes, that's right, that's right.' Thorne checked the peephole, opened the door an inch, turned to face Valens, apparently came to some decision, then pulled the door all the way open and left without another word.

PART THREE.

22.

In San Francisco, there is summer, which is windy, harsh and damp, although it rarely rains. And then there is Indian summer, from late August into mid-October, when the days are warm, the skies cloudless, the breezes kind. For the rest of the year, it's all fog and low clouds near the coast, clearing inland by afternoon, highs in the low sixties and winds from the west at fifteen to twenty.

When Hardy woke up on the Cochrans' couch at a little after six, it was obvious that Indian Summer was over and the rest of the year had kicked in. He sat up stiffly and took a minute getting his bearings - it had been a while since he'd slept on a couch in somebody else's living room. The dim outlines of morning bled through the Venetian blinds, but he somehow knew at once from the quality of the light that the fog had come in. Involuntarily, he sighed.

Ten minutes later he was on the road, lights on in the soup. It was going to be another long day and he needed some fresh clothes and a shower. Erin, of course, had already been up too, making coffee in the kitchen, and he told her he thought he'd go home, check his messages, clean up, and try to be back with them on Taraval before the kids awoke.

When he turned off Geary on to his block, though, he was struck immediately with a sense of foreboding - he'd lived on this street for most of three decades, and there was a familiarity to it that was deeper than anything rational. Something, this morning, was out of the ordinary. In the fog, he couldn't see down to the end, where his house was, but it definitely felt wrong. There was a blinking red glow up ahead. He slowed down even further, on alert, equally reluctant and compelled to keep going forward.

Then, gradually emerging from the murk, the definable shapes, images from some horrible dream. Three fire trucks were still parked in the street, hoses trailing from them in the gutters like bloated serpents. A couple of black and white police cruisers - the source of the red strobes - their bubbles on. A half-dozen men in uniform were standing on the sidewalk, on his lawn, milling in the wet morning street.

In a daze, trying to keep the rising sense of panic at bay, he parked carefully, pulling straight into the curb. Getting out, he was aware of the crackling sounds of radio static and perhaps, of smoldering wood.

He moved forward without any awareness of it, transfixed by the still-smoking ruin that had been his home for over twenty years. The white picket fence had been trampled to bits by the firemen and their equipment. What had been a small, carefully maintained lawn was a mess of mud and charred wood. The front porch wasn't there at all, and the ruined living room behind it yawned obscenely open in the gray dawn. His chair. The mantel over the fireplace. Their beautiful cherry dining set, destroyed.

He was on the property now.

'Sir?' A man in a white helmet was suddenly in the path, cutting him off. 'I'm sorry, but you can't...'

'I live here,' Hardy said. 'This is my house.'

Miraculously, much of the house had been saved. Some late Hallowe'en revelers on their way home had seen the flames within minutes after the blaze had begun around four a.m. and called the fire department on their cell phone. As a result, the back half of Hardy's home - kitchen, bedrooms and baths - had remained relatively unscathed, although the cleanup was going to take weeks, and the burned smell might never go away.

The incident commander - the man in the white helmet - had given him permission to survey the damage, but he was to be accompanied at all times by Captain Flores. They were talking about evidence and preservation of the scene and it struck Hardy that he was, at least for now, an arson suspect.

Flores and Hardy stood in the center of the kitchen and Hardy was trying to answer the captain's questions. But his mind kept jumping. He noticed his black cast-iron frying pan on the stove where he'd left it. Looking down the now-gaping open hallway, he noticed that his front door was still on its hinges, perhaps salvagable. He would plane it and paint it again.

Their footfalls crunched over the gla.s.s and debris. 'No. There couldn't have been any fire left burning in the fireplace,' Hardy was telling Flores. 'I hadn't been home since yesterday morning. We haven't lit a fire in there in months.'

'Well, pretty obviously that's where it started, up front. You got any gas pipes in there? Do you smoke?'

'No and no.'

Captain Flores was a sweet-faced young man with a drooping mustache. He followed Hardy back into the burned-out front area of the house and they stood in what used to be the dining room - the dusty rose drywall now mostly gone. The roof was open above them and water still dripped randomly. Hardy let out some air. 'What do you do with this?' he asked.

Flores saw similar scenes every day, but that didn't make it any easier. 'Do you have insurance?'

'Yeah, but that's not what I meant.'

'I know.'

Hardy turned to him. 'Somebody did this, didn't they?'

The captain shrugged. He might have some suspicions but he wasn't going to share them with a civilian. 'That's always a thought. It's why we've got arson investigators.' He indicated a couple of guys poking around by what used to be the porch. 'At this point it's a little early to make that determination. But if you know something I don't, I'll pa.s.s it along.'

Hardy had his hands deep in his pockets. 'I don't know anything,' he said, referring to a lot more than the fire.

Flores sc.r.a.ped a toe along the burned hardwood floor and sighed. 'You're not going to want to hear this, but this might be somebody's idea of a Hallowe'en prank.' He paused. 'It's happened before.'

Hardy gave it a moment, shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

If anything, the morning fog had grown heavier.

One of the first things Hardy did after the incident commander stopped him was ask if he could get a patch through to Glitsky's home on the patrol car radio. Next was his brother-in-law Moses McGuire.

Now the lieutenant sat on the hood of his car, feet resting on the front b.u.mper, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his head down. Even with all his years in homicides, at terrible crime scenes, here Glitsky almost couldn't bear to look.

Hardy had been silent, withdrawn with shock and rage, when Abe had arrived. Gradually, Glitsky had gotten him away from the arson people, from the house itself, where the effects of the fire weren't so pervasive. Now he was coming out of it, beginning to pace. 'I'll tell you one thing - they think they're warning me off? They think I'm going away now? They should have killed me instead.'

'Who's that?'

'Whoever did this, Abe.'

'Somebody did this to get at you?'

Hardy nodded. 'It's a warning. It has to be this Beaumont thing.' Hardy stopped in front of him. 'You think it's not?'

Glitsky was silent.

Hardy raised his voice. 'Well what the h.e.l.l do you think this was, Abe? Spontaneous combustion?'

Glitsky met Hardy's eyes. 'I don't think it's a great time to get in an argument with you, how about that?' He slid off the car, and put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

Hardy could only manage a nod. Glitsky gave his shoulder a last squeeze, moved off a few steps, then turned and with an almost visible effort, forced himself to look at the house. 'If you need me, I'll be downtown. I'm going to work.'

Flores was at his elbow, and Hardy was back in the house, in the little enclosed area behind the kitchen where he kept his safe. Flores didn't want to let him back in - they might trample over more evidence. The captain made it very clear that until they were done with their investigation, this was the fire department's house, no longer his. But the arrival of Glitsky - a highly ranked city cop who was obviously a personal friend - had given Hardy some credibility, and Flores cut him a little slack. They could go up through the back door, and Hardy could get what he needed, although he had to show Flores his license to carry, and even then, when Flores saw what he wanted, he could tell he was pushing it.

But this time he felt no twinge of the reluctance he'd felt the last time he'd gone for his guns. There was also an old badge from his days as an a.s.sistant DA. He didn't think too hard before grabbing it. Then, tucking his Police Special into his belt, he pulled his jacket down over it and walked back into the desolation in the front-yard area.

Moses had finally arrived a few minutes after Glitsky's departure, and now was standing at the front side of the house by the chimney, which was still standing. Moses had picked up something and held it out as Hardy and Flores mushed through the mud. 'Start your new collection,' Moses said somberly.

It was one of the exquisitely fragile Venetian gla.s.s elephants that had grazed, cavorted, and trumpeted on their mantel over the past decade, which Moses had rearranged with nearly every visit. Until last night there had been fifteen of them - Hardy had just recently acquired the latest one for their anniversary. And now against impossible odds at least one had survived, perhaps blasted out into the yard by the force of water.

Hardy took it and turned it in his hand, then handed it back to Moses, asking his brother-in-law to hold on to it for him.

After ten more minutes of surveying damage, he excused himself. Moses didn't have to open the Shamrock for another four hours. He agreed that Hardy needed to go down to the jail and break the news to Frannie. Then to the kids. Moses would stay here with Flores and take care of the first round of details. He was glad to be able to help.