"Oh, it is!" said Kathryn laughing.

"So how did you learn your poems?" I asked.

"Catholic boarding school."

"Wait, you're not Catholic."

"My mother felt it would be a good influence on me. She was wrong. It was a prison. My father liberated me after a year."

"That must have made you angry at your mother."

"Uh, yes. You know the movie Bambi? That was my favorite movie in my teen years."

I snorted. "It's good that you can make jokes about it now that you're all grown up? Isn't it?"

"Is it?" she asked dryly.

"But you learned all those poems."

"The only bright moments had to do with a rather serious crush on the beautiful young nun who taught poetry."

"An ounce of perversion is worth a pound of cure."

"It certainly is," said Kathryn in a provocative voice. "I promise I'll tell you about it some time, late at night, as a bedtime story."

We left the road and zig-zagged past plots toward the place where Farrel and I had seen The Lost Bride.

Kathryn looked up at the sky and then turned slowly around. She said, "So many emotions have been expressed on this little piece of ground. Historians find it so simple to presume that emotional life was vastly different 140 years ago. It's a tribute to Evangeline that Merganser spent a fortune on beautiful sculpture of her for everyone to see, but to put it in this mournful spot."

I could feel what she meant. The cold steady breeze that rustled the branches over our heads carried the echoes of deep sorrows and fleeting joys. The loneliness, the relief, both cruelty and freedom, even the need for revenge were all such a part of this place.

I sighed. "Of course, trying to frame love in the context of today and apply it to the past is tricky, but I agree, it's just as dangerous to presume today's context doesn't apply." I reached for Kathryn's hand and we walked together glove in glove toward the east along a gravel-covered path.

Kathryn asked, "Do you think Cora was right about couples?"

"You mean when she said that it takes two people to end a relationship?"

"Yes," Kathryn said softly.

I thought about my two previous committed relationships. Both had lasted a few years and had ended because we'd each gone our separate ways. But then there was Carrie, short term but remarkably intense. I'd thought it was the beginning of something lasting, but I'd woken up one morning to find her gone. The brief good-bye note had no explanation.

Long before that, when my mother died, I'd felt the dark cloud of abandonment paralyze my emotions until they were unfrozen a few years later by my father's new wife, Juana Martinez, and my new sisters, Sara and Rosa. They'd made me laugh and love again. But Farrel was right. Years later, when Carrie left, I tried to be tough, but it made me shy about giving my love away. At least I could understand that, even if I couldn't talk about it.

But Kathryn had done much more than unfreeze the heart of a lonely little girl. She'd lit a flame in me that I'd never known. Once Farrel told me that when she fell in love with Jessie she was able to look into her future and see Jessie with her. I didn't understand at the time but now, with Kathryn, I knew exactly what Farrel meant. Still, it didn't make this any easier; it made it harder. Because it mattered.

I squeezed Kathryn's arm. I said, "When Suzanne Carbondale left Gabriel he was totally shocked. Suddenly she was just gone. And I guess that's why Jessie is still so angry. Suzanne didn't just leave Gabe; she left everyone. It sure seemed like a one-sided break-up."

Kathryn nodded a little bit and then said simply, "There must not have been much communication between them. Or do you think there was someone else?"

I shrugged. "You never really know what's happening between two people. Sometimes the two people themselves don't know," I said looking steadily into her eyes.

"We'll have to be sure that doesn't happen to us." She smiled and stroked my cheek again with her gloved hand.

"OK, so next time don't wait until the last minute to tell me you have to go to some meeting, when I'm counting on an afternoon of hot erotic thrills! I wouldn't have been annoyed at you."

"You sound annoyed," she said with a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"But not at you. I can coast on antic.i.p.ation."

"Maybe we can think of something to tide you over... other than just antic.i.p.ation," whispered Kathryn close to my ear.

We were pa.s.sing the tomb that Farrel and I had peeked around the night before. There in front of us was the monument of Evangeline Fen. It was blue-white in the waning afternoon sun. On the high granite pedestal, the figure was almost as ethereal as it had seemed in the moonlight. It wasn't just a beautiful lost woman, it was a moment frozen in time.

"It's such a familiar face. No doubt about it," I said. "Your little figure has the face of Evangeline Fen."

Kathryn was speechless. She moved closer, looking up at its gentle curves. Evangeline was fully draped in an off-the-shoulder cloak. Her delicate feet and ankles were bare. She was poised to run, with her head turned slightly to the side, one bare arm back, and the other slightly forward with a hand extended in a beckoning gesture. The features were still crisp and clear, though more than a hundred years of the city's acid rain had tried to dull them.

Kathryn turned and spied the recently toppled headstones. "This statue shouldn't be out here exposed to vandals. At least no one can reach her head," she said. We'd seen a number of lower statues with their heads broken off.

"She seems kind of at home here, though. She was very beautiful. Amanda and Judith were certainly right about that," I said. A gust of wind stirred some dead leaves at the statue's base. I looked at my watch. I said, "It's ten after twelve."

"Twelve-thirty is just the check-in. I'll call and tell them I'll be late. Let's see if we can find some of the other Evangeline statues."

She turned in place, searching for other figures in white stone. To the south, at the intersection of two major paths, was a small tomb with another statue of Evangeline Fen in front of it. We went to it. The sculpture was half the size of a real person, but also on a high pedestal. She was seated with her head tilted back, wearing a traveling cloak wrapped around her body in graceful folds. Her left arm was draped across her lap. Her right hand pointed gracefully with all her fingers toward The Lost Bride statue less than thirty feet away.

Kathryn walked around the statue to view it from all angles while I stepped closer. The face was so realistic she seemed about to speak.

"She looks like she knows a secret," I said.

"Mmmm, yes, and kind of smug about it, isn't she," said Kathryn.

Kathryn paused and looked around. "It's so quiet here; there's privacy with all these yews," she said in a low voice. "So, Maggie, do you think it would be unseemly if we found a little... um... satisfaction, here?" Kathryn firmly pushed me against the wall of the block building.

"It's twenty degrees and we're in a cemetery," I said incredulously.

"We'll keep our coats on. And really, Maggie, in this garden of souls' 200-year history, I'm sure we won't be the first moonstruck couple to find a private corner in this otherwise hallowed ground," said Kathryn, giving me a look that was so hot it could have melted the wrought iron fence and brought a few of the corpses back to life.

"Maybe making love in it actually makes it hallowed," I suggested, setting the bag of sculptures next to the wall.

"You say the most inspirational things!" said Kathryn, slipping my glove off and drawing the back of my hand to her warm lips.

The logic that usually controls my brain was draining away. I found myself ignoring the freezing cold, ignoring the public place, ignoring the kinkiness of doing it in a boneyard. Carpe Diem.

I moved Kathryn back into a niche in the tomb wall that was sheltered by yew branches and slipped my hands into her coat and under her sweater as I kissed her throat. I undid the clasp of her bra.

"Oh!" gasped Kathryn as I cupped her freed breast and brushed her nipple with the cold pad of my thumb.

"Officer, I swear I wasn't going over fifty."

"You still have to be searched." My mouth found hers; she gently bit my lower lip. I could feel her lips curve into a smile as I undid the top b.u.t.ton of her jeans and unzipped them. I wrapped one arm around her as my other hand moved under the silky fabric and into the increasingly moist place between her legs. She stiffened as I explored.

"Oh, mmm," she murmured, pushing down her jeans for more access.

And then we heard the distinct noise of a dog-collar tinkling. Gabriel Carbondale was walking Buster, his huge Harlequin Great Dane.

"He'll notice us," sighed Kathryn regretfully.

"Maybe not," I said, pressing her further under the branches.

Gabe Carbondale pa.s.sed unseeing just feet in front of us and Buster only turned his head for a second to meet my eyes. He did a s...o...b.. head tilt and then went on.

"Good dog!" I mouthed soundlessly, nodding like a bobblehead. Carbondale was beyond our view when I drew Kathryn from the yew branches to resume the course of her promises.

And then an echoing shot rang out. A slug ricocheted off a grave marker with a ping-zip and a puff of rock dust. Then another shot, this time louder, and then the low rumble I'd heard the night before. Gabe Carbondale screamed like a frightened boy-band fan. Before reality even registered in Kathryn, I'd spun her around and pressed her down into the protected hollow. She crouched, grasping the situation.

"Stay here. Don't move," I said in a low voice.

I reached up and chinned my way over the building wall, flattening myself on the roof in one smooth movement. The slate shingles were the definition of stone cold against my bare hands. I'd pocketed my gloves when I'd begun to touch Kathryn. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911, gave the 10-13 code for shots fired, and my name and location.

I peered over the roof edge, scanning the cemetery for the shooter. Carbondale was kneeling with his hands on the ground, shaking his head and gasping. About twenty feet ahead of him, near the base of The Lost Bride, was a body in a blue down jacket. A moment later, a person in a maroon hoodie ran up to the body, looked at it, then stood straight when the police sirens blared up the street. The person ran east behind a tall stand of yews.

I glanced back over the edge of the mausoleum and called softly, "Kathryn, stay where you are. Please don't move."

She looked up at me and nodded.

I rolled to the other edge of the roof and dropped down silently, wishing I'd brought my Beretta along. I hesitated, acutely aware that someone with a gun was nearby.

The body groaned. It was the start of a death rattle. I sprinted to the person on the ground, pulled off my scarf, wadded it up, and pressed with all my might against blood flowing from the front and back wounds.

"Don't die! Fight!" I yelled urgently, pulling out my phone with one hand to shout for an ambulance to come with the police.

Twenty feet away, Gabriel Carbondale threw up.

Chapter 4.

"Yes, it's cold, but you see, I'm a professor at Irwin College and I was reviewing the historic art and architecture here."

Kathryn was giving her statement to the police. She hadn't really seen anything, just heard the shots. The officer interviewing her was trying to figure out why anyone would be in a cemetery on a day like this, unless they had to bury somebody.

The first police car arrived four minutes after I called. Two minutes later the ambulance pulled up. The EMTs took over for me, but it was too late. They cleaned the dead man's blood off my hands, but my jacket was ruined. That seems to happen to me a lot. One of the EMTs loaned me a hoodie. I transferred the stuff from my pockets, and the EMTs bagged my blood-covered jacket and scarf and gave the bag to the crime scene team.

I'd given my formal statement already, so I went back to the spot in which Kathryn and I had been rolling in the pine boughs and retrieved the bag of sculpture. Then I drifted toward the crime scene. The cop let Kathryn go. She waved to me and sped off to her meeting.

One of Fenchester's finest, Ed O'Brien, was leading the investigation. He'd been my boss in my previous life. He was balding and had the ruddy complexion of a guy who drank a lot of beer. He was smart and hard-working but lacked imagination. He patted me on the back.

O'Brien spoke as though the crime scene itself was the first half of his sentence. "Carbondale couldn't have done it. No gun, no powder burns, wrong position." He reached into his lined black raincoat to offer me a stick of gum. "You see anything?"

I pa.s.sed on the gum and said, "Lieutenants don't investigate crime scenes and I thought you retired?"

"It was a deal I couldn't refuse, Maggie. I retired from being a Lt., and got rehired as a sergeant. Means I get my pension, I get to investigate crimes again, I get my salary as a sergeant too, and if I live long enough, I could actually get another pension."

"You're kidding."

"True. I'm saving the city money. Less paper work, more action, and now my wife's gone, gives me something to do." O'Brien turned back to the crime scene. "The other guy. Tell me again."

"He came from the right, stopped to look at the body, then kept running east behind those yew trees. He had a maroon-colored hoodie, dark blue jeans, and dirty white sneakers. The hood was up, so I didn't see a face, but his hands were white. Could have been a woman but I'd say from the posture it was a man. About five feet eight inches tall. 150 pounds. Fast runner. I heard a rumbling sound, then the victim moaned a few times and I hurried over to him."

O'Brien nodded as he took notes.

"What does Carbondale say?"

Gabe was sitting a few headstones away, shaking his head.

"He's a basket case. He saw the dude in the blue jacket, heard the shots, saw blue jacket fall down. Saw blood, started to freak, and he's still freaking. Didn't see the second dude; probably had his eyes closed by then." O'Brien took a deep breath and looked around the cemetery. "So where's the shooter? Might have been a gang banger, maybe hiding in one of the crypts. But my team checked all the open buildings and they're all clean. Small. Barely room for one person to turn around."

"ID on the victim?" I asked.

"Nothing I could see. No tattoos or gang symbols either. In his pockets was about $500 cash, disposable cell phone, and a set of keys... um... Chevy key, standard house key, bra.s.s skeleton key like they use in row houses. It's a load of cash for a guy like this. You're really not supposed to be in on this but want to see him?"

I nodded.

We looked at the stark white face of a young man who'd woken up this morning with no idea that this day would be his last. His brown eyes were fixed in a death stare and becoming cloudy. He had a fringe of beard, pale white skin, a brown scarf, and red chapped hands. Under his open blue down jacket was a thin red sweater over a white tee shirt. He had new baggy jeans and black sneakers. A bullet hole and a big red stain made the outfit horrible.

I took out my phone and snapped a picture of his face.

"What does the Medical Examiner think?" I asked.

"One shot, medium caliber. Ten to fifteen feet away, to the back. Went through the heart, exit wound in the jacket front."

"And Carbondale didn't see the shooter?" I asked.

"No, he says he only saw the vic fall," said O'Brien.

"Any other witnesses?"

"Little girl down near the entrance saw the shooting from outside the fence over there but didn't see anyone exit the gate."

"I'm not sold on the guy in the maroon hoodie doing it. Have the guys checked for trees or buildings near the fence that someone could use to climb over?"

"Why the h.e.l.l don't you like Hoodie for this?" O'Brien asked.