"It did not result from the throat wound. That was inflictedafter death. So was the broken neck. The cord is completely severed but there's no hemorrhage into it."

Deja vu struck again. Death by bleeding, wounds and a broken neck inflicted after death. Now heknew he had knowledge of a previous crime with similar circ.u.mstances. Garreth bit his lip, straining to remember the previous case.

"He didn't bleed to death internally and I can't find any exterior wound to account for-"

There had been something else strange about that bruise on the other man. Now, what had it been? "What about the bruise?"

he interrupted.

". . . for a blood loss of that magnitude," the doctor went on with a frown at Garreth, "unless we a.s.sume that the punctures in the jugular vein were made by needles and the blood drained that way."

Thatwas the other thing about the bruise!

"Two punctures, right? An inch or so apart, in the middle of the bruise?"

She regarded him gravely. "I could have used your crystal ball before I began, Inspector. It would have saved me a great deal of work."

Garreth smiled. Inside, however, he swore. He remembered that much, those facts, but still nothing that could help him locate the case in the files, not a victim or detective's name.

The remainder of the autopsy proceeded uneventfully. Lack of water in the lungs established that the victim had been dead before entering the water. The skull and brain showed no signs of bruises or hemorrhage to indicate that he might have been struck and knocked unconscious. The stomach contained no food, only liquid.

"Looks like he died some time after his last meal. We'll a.n.a.lyze the liquid," the doctor said.

Garreth bet it would prove alcoholic.

When the body was on its way back to its locker, Garreth prepared to leave. He had missed lunch but had no appet.i.te.

Perhaps he should just go on to the hotel. At least the fog had burned off, leaving a bright, clear day.

Before leaving the morgue, he called up to the office. Kolb answered. "Is there a message from the Denver P.D. with descriptions of some men's jewelry?" he asked her.

She went to look and came back on the line in a minute. "No, but there's a message to call-d.a.m.n, I wish Faye would learn to write legibly. I think the name is Ellen or Elvis Hague or Hugie. I can't read the number at all."

"Never mind. I think I know." Mrs. Elvira Hogue was one of the witnesses to the Mission Street liquor store shooting. He looked up the number in his notebook and dialed it. "Mrs. Hogue? This is Inspector Mikaelian. You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes." Her thin, old-woman's voice came back over the wire. "I saw the boy who did it, and I learned his name."

Garreth whooped silently. Once in a while the breaks came their way! "What is it?"

"You remember I told you I've seen him in the neighborhood before? Well, he was here this morning again, bold as bra.s.s, talking to that Hambright girl up the street. I walked very close to them and I heard her call him Wink."

"Mrs. Hogue, you're a wonderful lady. Thank you very much."

"You just catch that shtunk. Mr. Chmelka was a nice gentleman."

Garreth headed for R and I-records and identification-to check the name Wink through the moniker file. They came up with a make, one Leroy Martin Luther O'Hare, called Wink, as in "quick as a," for the way he s.n.a.t.c.hed purses in his juvenile delinquency days by sweeping past victims on a skateboard. Purse s.n.a.t.c.hing had been only one of his offenses. Wink added burglary and auto theft to his yellow sheet as he approached legal adulthood, though he had not been convicted of either charge.

With Wink's photograph tucked among half a dozen others of young black males, he drove to Mrs. Hogue's house.

She quickly picked out Wink. "That's him; that's the one I saw this morning and the one I saw coming out of the liquor store after I heard the shooting."

Garreth called Serruto.

"We'll get a warrant for him," the lieutenant said.

Garreth visited Wink's mother and the Hambright girl, first name Rosella. He also talked to the neighbors of both. No one, of course, offered any help. Garreth gained the impression that even Wink's mother hardly knew the person Garreth asked about. The neighbors denied any knowledge of comings and goings from Mrs. O'Hare's or Miss Hambright's apartment.

"Hey, man, I gots enough to do chasin' rats over here without wachin' someone else over there," they said, or else: "You wrong about Wink. He no good, but he no holdup man. He never owned no gun."

Garreth dropped word of wanting Wink into a few receptive ears whose owners knew he could promise some reward for turning the fugitive, then he headed for the Jack Tar. He would see Serruto about staking out the mother's and girlfriend's apartments. For now, he had better check in with Harry before his partner put out an APB on him.

7

"So we both came up empty today," Harry said, hanging up his coat in the squad room.

"Except for identifying our liquor store gunman and the odd results of the autopsy."

"I'd just as soon do without the autopsy." Harry grimaced. "Who needs a bled-out corpse who died before his throat was cut?"

Garreth had arrived at the hotel just in time to follow Harry back to Bryant Street.

"The meetings are breaking up for the day," Harry had said. "Everyone will be going out to play. We'll start in on them again tomorrow, and this time you can join the fun."

In the squad room Garreth rolled a report form into his typewriter. "Did I miss anything interesting at the hotel?"

"Just Susan Pegans fainting dead away when we told her about Mossman. No one I talked to, conventioneers or other exhibitors around Kitco's booth, saw him last night or knew where he was going."

Garreth began his report. "Did you go through Mossman's room?"

"Right away. There was about what you'd expect . . . a couple of changes of clothes and a briefcase full of company propaganda. A return plane ticket to Denver. He traveled light in the city; there's a false bottom in his shaving kit where I found his credit cards, extra cash and traveler's checks, and personal keys. No billfold, so he must have had that on him when he was killed. He made two calls, one Monday and one last night, both a little after seven in the evening and both to his home phone in Denver."

"Tomorrow why don't I check with the cab companies to see if one of them took a fare of Mossman's description anywhere last night?"

"Do that."

Garreth remembered then that he needed to talk to the lieutenant. He knocked on Serruto's door. "May I see you?"

"If it's about the warrant on O'Hare, we have it. There's an APB out on him, too."

"I'd like to stake out his mother's and girlfriend's apartments. He's bound to get in touch with one or the other."

Serruto leaned back in his chair. "Why don't we see if the APB and your street contacts can turn him first? Two stakeouts use a lot of men." He did not say it, but Garreth heard, nonetheless:We can't spend that much manpower on one small-time crook.

Garreth nodded, sighing inwardly. All are not equal in the eyes of the law. "Yes, sir." And he went back to his typewriter.

An hour later he and Harry checked out for the night.

8

Garreth always liked going home with Harry. The house had the same atmosphere Marti had given their apartment, a sense of sanctuary. The job ended at the door. Inside, he and Harry became ordinary men. Where Marti had urged him to talk, however, Lien bled away tensions with diversion and serenity. A judicious scattering of Oriental objects among the house's contemporary furnishings reflected the culture of her Taiwanese childhood and Harry's j.a.panese grandparents. The paintings on the walls, mostly Lien's and including examples of her commercial artwork, reflected Oriental tradition and moods.

Lien stared at them in disbelief. "Home before dark? How did you do it?"

Harry lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. "We went over the wall. If someone calls, you haven't seen us." He kissed her with a great show of pa.s.sion. "What's for supper? I'm starved."

"Not lately." She patted his stomach fondly. "Both of you sit down; I'll bring tea."

Strong and well laced with rum . . . an example of what Garreth considered a happy blend of West and East. Between sips of tea, he pulled off his shoes and tie. One by one his nerves loosened. These days, he reflected, Harry's house felt more like home than his own apartment did.

During dinner Lien monopolized the conversation, heading off any threat of shop talk with anecdotes from her own day. She brushed by the frustrations of finishing drawings for a fashion spread in the Sunday paper to talk about the art appreciation cla.s.ses she taught at various grade schools in the afternoons. Garreth listened, bemused. Her kids carne from a different world than the one he saw everyday. They never took drugs or shoplifted. They were well fed and well dressed, bright-eyed with promise. Sometimes he wondered if she deliberately told only cheerful stories, but he never objected; he liked hearing about a pleasant world populated by happy, friendly people.

Not that he regretted becoming a cop, but sometimes he wondered what he would be doing now, what kind of world he would live in, if he had finished college . . . if he had been good enough to win a football scholarship like his older brother Shane, if he and Judith had not married so young, if she had not gotten pregnant his soph.o.m.ore year and had to stop working, leaving them with no money to continue school.

Or would things have been any different? He had always worshipped his father and wanted to be just like him. He loved going down to the station and watching the parade of people and officers. While Shane had been starring in backyard scrimmages and Little League football, Garreth played cops and robbers. Police work had seemed a natural choice when he had to go to work.

After dinner, helping Lien with the dishes, he asked, "Do you believe people really have free choice, or are they pushed in inevitable directions by social conditioning?"

She smiled at him. "Of course they have choices. Background may limit or influence, but the choices are still there."

He considered that. "ConsultingI Ching isn't a contradiction of that?"

"Certainly not. If anything, the sage supports the idea that people have control over their futures. He merely advises of the possibilities."

She looked up in concern. "What's the matter? Are the dreadful broodywhat-if's chewing at you?"

He smiled at her understanding. "Sort of."

Or maybe what really chewed was the thought that tonight one man no longer had any choices at all. Someone else had taken them away from him.

The body in the bay with its peculiar bruise haunted him, lurking in the back of his mind the rest of the evening, even through the excitement of watching the Giants win a 1-0 squeaker. He stared at the TV screen with Harry and asked himself who would stick two needles into someone's jugular and drain out all his blood. Why? It seemed too bizarre to be real. And why did his memory refuse to give up the information he wanted on that other case like it?Garreth had no particular desire to go home to his empty apartment, so after leaving Harry and Lien, he headed his car-a bright Prussian red Datsun ZX he and Marti had given each other on their last anniversary-back to Bryant Street. He sat in the near- empty squad room doodling on a blank sheet of paper and letting his mind wander. Bruise . . . punctures . . . blood loss. He recalled a photograph of a man in a bathtub, arm trailing down over the side to the floor. A voice said, "Homicide isn't like Burglary, Mikaelian. This is the kind of thing you'll be dealing with now."

He sat bolt upright. Earl Faye's voice! It had been Faye and Centrello's case. Faye had told Garreth-new to the section, unpartnered as yet, and stuck with paperwork-all about it in elaborate, gory detail.

Garreth scrambled for the file drawers. Everything came back to him now. The date was late October last year, just about Halloween, one of the factors which had fascinated Faye, he remembered.

"Maybe it was a cult of some kind. They needed the blood for their rituals."

Methodically, Garreth searched. The file should still be here. The case remained open, unsolved. And there it was . . . in a bottom drawer, of course, clear at the back.

Seated cross-legged on the floor, Garreth opened the file. Cleveland Morris Adair, an Atlanta businessman, had been found dead, wrists slashed, in the bathtub of his suite at the Mark Hopkins on October 29, 1982. The death seemed like suicide until the autopsy revealed two puncture wounds in the middle of a bruise on the neck, and although Adair had bled to death, his wrists had been slashed postmortem by someone applying a great deal of pressure. That someone had also broken Adair's neck. Stomach contents showed a high concentration of alcohol. The red coloring of the bathwater proved to be nothing more than grenadine from the bar in his suite.

Statements from cabdrivers and hotel personnel established that Adair had left the hotel alone on the evening of October 28 and gone to North Beach. He had returned at 2:15 A.M., again alone. A maid coming in to clean Sunday morning found his body.

Hotel staff in the lobby remembered most of the people entering the hotel around the time Adair had. By the time registered and known persons were sorted out, only three possible suspects remained, and two of them were eventually traced and ruled out. That left the third, who came through the lobby just five minutes after Adair. A bellboy described her in detail: about twenty, five ten, good figure, dark red hair, green eyes, wearing a green dress plunging to the waistline in front and slit to the hip on the side, carrying a large shoulder bag. The bellboy had seen her on occasion before, but never alone. She usually came in with a man . . . not hooking, the bellboy thought, just a very easy lady. He did not know her name.

What interested Faye and Centrello about her was that no one saw her leave. Their efforts to locate her failed, however.

Nor did they find any wild-eyed crazies who might have made Adair their sacrifice in some kinky ritual.

The Crime Lab turned up no useful physical evidence, and robbery was apparently no motive; Adair's valuables had not been touched.

Garreth reread the autopsy report several times. Wounds inflicted by someone applying a great deal of pressure. Someone stronger than usual? The deaths had striking similarities and differences, but a crawling down his spine told him that his gut reaction believed more in the similarities than in the differences. Two out-of-towners staying at nice hotels whose blood had been drained through needles in their jugulars, then the bodies doctored to make it seem that they had bled other ways. It had a ritual sound about it. No wonder Faye and Centrello had hunted cultists.

After a jaw-cracking yawn, Garreth glanced down at his watch and was shocked to find it almost three o'clock. At least he would not notice the emptiness of the apartment now. He would be lucky to reach the bedroom before he collapsed.

9

Every eye in the squad room turned on Garreth as he tried to sneak in. From the middle of the meeting, Serruto said, "Nice of you to join us this morning, Inspector."

Garreth tossed his trench coat onto his chair. "Sorry I'm late. A potential witness wouldn't stop talking. Have I missed much?"

"The overnight action. Takananda can fill you in later. Now we're up to daily reports. Let's start with your cases. You've identified the Mission Street holdup man. Any word on him yet?"

"On my way in this morning I rattled some cages close to him," Garreth said. "We'll see what that produces."

"So we're just waiting to collar him, right? How about the floater?"

Garreth let Harry answer while he tried not to yawn. Despite the hour he had fallen into bed, sunrise woke him as usual.

"I've been awake since six," he complained to Harry after the meeting broke up. "So I went to work. After I rattled cages, I went by China Basin and talked to people there. So far no one seems to have seen a body being dumped in the bay." He poured himself a cup of coffee.Do your stuff, caffeine. "Where are the lab and autopsy reports you said we have back?"

Harry picked them up from his desk and tossed them at Garreth. In return, Garreth handed Harry the Adair file. "I finally remembered where I saw a bruise like Mossman's before. Take a look at this."The lab and autopsy reports told Garreth nothing new. No bloodstains on the clothes, confirming that Mossman could not have had his throat cut on the street. However, there had been soiling which a.n.a.lyzed as a mixture of dirt, residue of asphalt and vulcanized rubber, and motor oil. It would seem Mossman had gone to the bay in the trunk of a car. No surprise there.

The autopsy report merely made official what Garreth had seen yesterday. a.n.a.lysis of the stomach contents found a high percentage of alcohol, as he had thought there would be.