According to Vishneski, Iraq had changed Chad's personality. Jekyll and Hyde and which was the mean one? He could never remember. As he talked, Vishneski finally pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. He played with it, tapping it on the tabletop, running it between his fingers, a prop to help him get through his story.

"He didn't tell me he was joining up. I knew he wasn't one for the books, but he just wandered into an Army recruitment office on Addison Street during spring break. Next thing I knew, he was off to basic training."

"That must have startled you," I said.

"I was p.i.s.sed off, him doing it without even talking to me, throwing away his college scholarship. But then I saw how much the Army suited him, and I thought, well, maybe he knew best after all, he needed that discipline. That and the activity. He used to send us these pictures of him and his unit, they'd be laughing, Chad teaching Iraqi boys how to play American football. 'That soccer, that's for sissies,' he says he told them."

Vishneski rubbed his face. I wasn't supposed to see the unexpected spurt of tears as he thought of his son's happy-go-lucky past.

"But those endless deployments, they put the big hurt on all the kids out there. And they saw stuff no person ought to have to see, grown women fighting over a piece of bread, babies with their arms blown off, other things Chad wouldn't even talk about. It was too much for him."

I went back to the murder weapon that the police supposedly found next to Chad when they picked him up. "What kind of guns did Chad have?"

"He was a soldier. They don't get handguns. Chad, he likes-liked-to shoot, but Mona wouldn't let him keep a gun in her place any more'n I would in mine."

Anymore than they allowed drugs or alcohol, which is to say parents often see what they hope will be in front of them.

"But did he own a gun? Guns?"

John claimed Chad didn't. And certainly not the Baby Glock that the police had found in bed with Chad.

"So whose gun was that?" I asked.

"If you're going to clear his name, you'll have to find that out, won't you?" He gave me a ferocious glare, as if anger with me could keep grief and uncertainty at bay.

"You're not hiring me to clear his name but to find out what happened," I reminded him.

He argued with me a bit about that but in an unfocused way, not sure what he believed about his son. I asked him for names of Chad's friends, those boys and girls who used to have good clean fun with him.

Vishneski said, "The kids he hung out with before he deployed, they couldn't understand why Chad was so angry all the time when he got home, so he kind of lost touch with them. The guys he sees now, they're Army buddies he picked up after he got home last summer. Most of 'em I don't know, but Tim Radke, he's the one who called me after he heard about Chad. He's the one said they'd been at a bar."

Vishneski didn't know Radke's number, but maybe Mona would. I asked if there were any women in Chad's life, not counting Nadia Guaman, whose connection to Chad we were tiptoeing around.

"He dated a sweet gal in high school, but she married someone else while he was overseas. Since he got home, I don't think he's been meeting any women. But his ma would know. You ask Mona when you talk to her."

Women are the repository of personal details in the lives of all who intersect their worlds. Even my own brief husband had expected me to know his clients' and his parents' birthdays.

Back in my office that afternoon, I typed up all my notes from the day and entered them into everyone's separate case files-which I religiously backed up on a portable drive as well as the office backup drive.

Oh, the computer age. It's been good for me, in a way. I used to write my notes on sc.r.a.ps of paper and lose them in the landfill on my worktable. Now everything's tidily laid out in my Investigator's Casebook spreadsheets, which automatically updates my handheld. Something's missing, though: the personal touch on archives. You see things when you're handling doc.u.ments that you miss on the World Wide Web.

The winter evening had closed in on the city hours ago. I felt cold and lonely in my office, although my leasemate was still hard at it with a blowtorch across the hall. If we still lived in caves, we'd be asleep, not driving ourselves to work in the dark.

I logged on to the Body Artist's website, [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com. It opened to the slide show I'd seen on the screens at Club Gouge-the eye winking down at her v.u.l.v.a, the jungle scenes up her spine. The Middle Eastern music tw.a.n.ged with the changing screens.

The text, which was also disquieting, changed along with the pictures: What, is thy servant a dog that she should do this thing?

My eye winks at my m.u.f.f, my beaver, my little animal The Female of the Species is Deadlier than the Male The bashful audience member, drawing a few squiggly lines, a few people attempting actual figurative work with varying degrees of success, were staples of the shows. And so was Rodney. You didn't actually see him stride up to the stage, his paunch swaying slightly with his rolling gait, but you almost always saw the crude sets of letters and numbers on the Body Artist's b.u.t.tocks.

I found one of Nadia's drawings, the pink-and-gray scrolls, the woman with a slash down the middle of her face, and tried to print out a copy of that, and of Rodney's crude work. Unfortunately, the Artist had a slick print-protection feature built into her site: all you got was the text around the edge of the page, not the picture itself. You had to pay fifty dollars to print your own version; seventy-five would get you a signed print from the Artist. Two hundred, and it would arrive framed.

I copied down Rodney's contributions. "C-I," he wrote on one occasion. "3521986 !397844125" on another. "L-O 6221983 !4903612." I looked at five different examples of Rodney's work. Each entry had a set of numbers separated by an exclamation point, but, other than that, I couldn't see what they shared. The strings of numbers weren't the same length from entry to entry.

I wondered if they might be phone numbers, perhaps for disposable phones in an overseas market. Europe doesn't share our fixation with the ten-digit phone number. Or perhaps Rodney was a spy for a burglary ring and used the Body Artist to broadcast safe combinations. Or he'd picked pockets at the club and was relaying credit card numbers. No matter what he was transmitting, why do it like that at all? In an era of instantaneous communication, this was incredibly c.u.mbersome. The only thing he really seemed to gain was a sense of power over the Body Artist, and over Olympia.

Before I left [http://embodiedart.com] embodiedart.com, I looked again at the changing images and captions on the home page, stopping each slide to study it more closely. Many of the pictures were overtly cruel: The Hind at Bay, The Hind at Bay, for instance, showed dogs mauling a deer that had a woman's face. for instance, showed dogs mauling a deer that had a woman's face. Crucifixus Est Crucifixus Est depicted a woman on a cross, a spike hammered through her v.u.l.v.a. Her face was divided in two, one side expressing bliss, the other agony. depicted a woman on a cross, a spike hammered through her v.u.l.v.a. Her face was divided in two, one side expressing bliss, the other agony.

As I went through the exhibit, I realized I'd misread one of the captions: "Deader than the Male," it said, not "Deadlier than the Male." And the face was the one Nadia had been painting on the Body Artist, a young woman with curly dark hair, her face cut in two where Nadia had sliced it with the palette knife.

I found myself shivering. Women savaged by dogs. Women crucified through the v.a.g.i.n.a. Women with their faces slashed. It was horrible and horrifying. If a man had done these paintings, I'd say he hated women. What was going on with Karen, that she hated other women, or hated herself so much she had to dismember her female body? And Nadia Guaman-was that what had drawn the two women together? Slasher art?

I rubbed my arms and got up to walk around the room, trying to dispel the images, or at least push them far enough away that I could think. I needed human company. I crossed the hall to see if my leasemate was willing to be interrupted, at least for five minutes. Tessa was hovering over a steel bar with a blowtorch, her dark face wet with sweat underneath her protective eyewear. She looked up at me briefly, continued her work until she'd finished the cut to her satisfaction, then turned off the flame and came over to me.

"I need someone alive and wholesome for a minute before I go back into my computer." I explained what I'd been looking at.

Tessa was interested enough to wipe her face and neck dry and come across to look at the Body Artist's slide show. She went through it twice, pausing at several of the images, before she said anything.

"She's a skilled representational painter, no doubt about it, and she knows her art history. The Hind at Bay, The Hind at Bay, it's constructed like it's constructed like The Stag at Bay, The Stag at Bay, even if Landseer's dogs were more genteel and not actively attacking the stag. And the crucifixion, that's modeled on one Michelangelo painted." She brought up a new window and found reproductions of both paintings so I could see how similar they were to Karen Buckley's work. even if Landseer's dogs were more genteel and not actively attacking the stag. And the crucifixion, that's modeled on one Michelangelo painted." She brought up a new window and found reproductions of both paintings so I could see how similar they were to Karen Buckley's work.

"I see why you find them disturbing," she continued. "There's no life here. There's a kind of rage under these, and a kind of exhibitionism, but not vitality. I'd rather see something like these uncertain lines." She pointed at one of the slides of customer art from a Club Gouge night. "The person who held that brush was willing to take a risk."

"You don't think it's a risk being naked on a stage, letting strangers put paint on you?"

"I think it's an extreme form of self-indulgence," Tessa said. "Every time you put paint on canvas, or flesh, you're taking a risk, but your Body Artist isn't doing that. Come to think of it, I'm surprised she isn't cutting herself onstage. I don't like the performance art of people like Lucia Balinoff, but she works along the same themes: the savaging of the female body. Your performance artist isn't doing anything new and she's not taking any risks. She's exposing herself, but not her self." self."

Tessa left on that stern note. A moment later, I heard her blowtorch fire up again.

9.

The Dead-Before They Got That Way.

I tried to map out a course of action. The most important thing seemed to me to get the client's son better care. That meant I needed sophisticated medical as well as first-cla.s.s legal help. I started with Freeman Carter. He had been in court all day and wanted to get away; he had tickets to the opera and wasn't going to miss the curtain on my account. I gave him a thirty-second rundown and told him I wanted a court order ASAP so we could move Chad-I hoped to Beth Israel, Lotty's hospital. tried to map out a course of action. The most important thing seemed to me to get the client's son better care. That meant I needed sophisticated medical as well as first-cla.s.s legal help. I started with Freeman Carter. He had been in court all day and wanted to get away; he had tickets to the opera and wasn't going to miss the curtain on my account. I gave him a thirty-second rundown and told him I wanted a court order ASAP so we could move Chad-I hoped to Beth Israel, Lotty's hospital.

"I'll get a doctor over to Cermak tomorrow morning if you can organize the legal side."

"Are you being Donna Quixote," Freeman asked, "or do you really have evidence that the wrong person is in custody? From everything I've read, this was a PTSD vet who lost control. Not that it matters, you understand. I'm used to the odd alignment you make between the law and facts."

"Vishneski is a PTSD vet, but I'm beginning to think he was framed. I'll tell you why when you have more time."

"And is this on your tab, or can your client pay?"

Freeman's bill is one of the things that keeps me from ever getting ahead of the game financially. But the alignment between the law and me is such that I need the best defense lawyer in town. Even though my outstanding balance right now was close to sixty thousand, I a.s.sured Freeman that if the client couldn't pay him, I'd take care of it. I hung up knowing that the phone consult itself had just added a hundred dollars to my bill.

I called Lotty, who was also going to the opera, but who gave me a little more attention.

"Eve Rafael is a very fine surgeon, new to our practice, but she has a lot of experience with head trauma and coma. I'll see if she's free. But the billing is going to be complicated, you know. And it would help if I could tell her what your young friend had ingested."

"I won't know that for a few days, but Chad's been at Cermak since Sat.u.r.day morning. I hope it's not too late for a world-cla.s.s neurosurgeon to rescue his brain."

"Medicine, Victoria-not a science, not an art, somewhere in between. How badly Chad Vishneski wants to recover will also play a role in this. But I'll talk to Eve on my way to the opera."

"As long as someone else is driving, Lotty!"

Lotty's driving, on a sunny day and with no one else on the road, was still a fine test of anyone's nerve endings. In the snow, with a cell phone in her ear, I wouldn't want my life to depend on her.

"You worry too much about trivialities, Victoria: that will shorten your life as much as fried food."

As she hung up on that crisp note, I realized I should have talked to the client first before making all these arrangements for his son. Fortunately, when I reached John Vishneski, he was so grateful for my arrangements that he didn't question my protocol. I gave him Freeman's number.

"Call him first thing in the morning. He's going to get a court order to allow him to move your son, and either Dr. Herschel or Dr. Rafael will be on hand to oversee his care."

"I have to be at a jobsite at seven," Vishneski said.

"It'll be best if you let someone else take care of that. You told me yesterday that Chad depended on you to look after him, and this is one place where you can do that. Even if he's unconscious, your voice in his ear will rea.s.sure him."

He agreed after a moment of rambling talk-how he'd have to talk to someone named Derek, how Mona needed to know-should he call her or would I? Before we hung up, I told him I was sending him a form to sign that would give his and his ex-wife's consent to my talking to Chad's doctors, and he agreed to that as well.

As a courtesy, I called Terry Finchley to let him know what I was doing. Like most sensible people, he'd gone home for the day, so I left a detailed message with the officer who answered his phone. By now, I was too hungry to think clearly: I hadn't eaten since grabbing a sandwich in the Loop at two, and it was after eight now. I drove back downtown, to the south Loop, and went into the Golden Glow, Sal Barthele's bar in the financial district.

Right after the closing bell, the Glow is packed with hysterical traders. This time of night, the atmosphere is mellower. Business travelers mingle with regulars from the high-rises and converted lofts along Printers Row, and everyone relaxes more in the light of Sal's Tiffany table lamps.

Sal stood inside the mahogany horseshoe bar where most of her clients like to sit. Sal is tall, majestic in build, and her wardrobe doubles her impact. Like Olympia, Sal knows her business depends on showmanship. Showwomanship. Tonight she was eye-stopping in a shimmery black sweater and pants topped by a silver vest that hung to her calves. Her Afro was cropped close to her head, and earrings the size of chandeliers swept her shoulders.

She patted the hand of the man she'd been talking to and moved across the horseshoe to the empty side where I was sitting. "That was quite a to-do at Olympia's place. I saw on the news that some stressed-out vet went off the rails and killed a woman."

"That's the word on the street."

Sal brought out the Black Label bottle. "And you don't agree?"

I shrugged. "The evidence, such as it is, points to the guy. His father says PTSD had seriously damaged him, but that it wasn't in his nature to lie in wait for a woman he barely knew just to shoot her."

"So you think he didn't do it?"

She c.o.c.ked her head, catching the earring on her left ear in her sweater. I reached over and untangled the metal from the threads.

"You should wear football pads with these. I am committed to a client who believes Chad didn't do it. He hired me just to get the facts, but, underneath it all, he wants the facts to prove Chad's innocent. So I'm working on that a.s.sumption."

"You practice for half an hour a day, like the White Queen, so you can learn to believe in the impossible? What's Olympia saying?"

"Olympia is behaving oddly. Do you know her?"

Sal shook her head. "We're not old pals, or even lovers, if that's what you want to know. I know her because we belong to an organization of women restaurateurs, and that's a small group in Chicago. Olympia can be good fun, but she's definitely pushed herself to the top by having the sharpest elbows in the heap. I mean, so have we all, in a way, but some of us, we put on velvet elbow pads so the suckers along the way don't realize they've been hit until they get home and study their bruises."

"Ain't that the truth," I said, thinking of the pushing I'd had to do to get taken seriously as a detective.

I gave Sal a precis of my nights at the Club Gouge, my encounters with Nadia and Karen Buckley, and Olympia's insistence that nothing was going on. Sal left me several times to check on other customers, but she sent a minion to the restaurant across the foyer-she supplies their liquor, they feed her customers-to get me some broiled halibut. When I'd finished the story, she shook her head.

"If Petra were working here and she brought you in without my permission, I'd be seeing red, white, and blue. I'd fire her a.s.s and probably shoot yours, if I could get you in my sights. Your cousin is lucky Olympia hasn't let her go."

"But if someone in here were injured the way Karen Buckley was when she cut herself with that gla.s.s in her paintbrush, would you refuse to bring in the cops?"

"Devil's advocate, Vic, but-Olympia's got a naked woman onstage. Cops could get her written up for a million violations if they thought it was a d.y.k.e scene and they wanted to be ugly."

I thought of Detective Finchley's reaction to the Body Artist's act and pulled a face. "When you put it that way, it's hard to argue with you. But there are other things. This guy Rodney: Olympia pretended she didn't know his name when Detective Finchley was talking to us. But he is there most nights. And he threatened me with violence. I'm wondering if the club is a front for him to run drugs."

Sal's brows contracted. "If-and that's a mighty big if-Olympia is doing or dealing, get your cousin out of there ASAP. It's a big chance to take, though. I wouldn't think Olympia would risk her license and her property by letting a dealer operate so blatantly."

"Maybe so, but there's something going on there. You stop by one of these nights and you'll see what I mean." I picked at a loose corner of the label on the Scotch bottle. "You said you and Olympia weren't old lovers, but what about her and Nadia Guaman? Or her and Karen Buckley? Were Nadia and Karen around the club scene, at least as far as you know?"

"I never heard of this Nadia, Vic. Karen Buckley, I've caught her act. It's a startling piece of performance art for this town, the kind of thing you expect in San Francisco or New York, but not conservative Chitown. Gal like that could sleep with anyone for any reason. I mean, maybe she's having an affair with Olympia, maybe she slept with the dead woman, but I'm guessing Buckley's not a d.y.k.e. I wouldn't even say she was bis.e.xual. She just does what she wants when she wants with whoever she wants."

An omnis.e.xual. I wondered what that felt like, to do what you wanted when you wanted. Buckley hadn't struck me as a very contented person, despite her yoga poses and deep breathing.

"That paintbrush with the gla.s.s-at the time, I wondered if the Artist or Olympia did it as a publicity stunt. I'm still not convinced they didn't. But Nadia could have sabotaged it, or even Chad, I suppose."

"Could be. Olympia's been hurting along with the rest of the economy. If she thought it would bring in business, she'd cut her own wrists in front of a webcam."

"Would you?"

Sal laughed. "h.e.l.l, no. I'm quite attached to my own good looks, thank you very much."

I looked at her seriously. "You're tough, Sal, and one of the strongest people I know. But you're sane. What you just said about Olympia, you may have meant it as a joke but the very fact that such an image came to your mind means you feel what I'm talking about, that edgy, danger-daring quality."

"You'd be the expert on that particular bit of human nature, Warshawski. You going to drink that whisky or just play spin the bottle all night?"

"Neither." I handed Sal my AmEx card. She used to run a tab for me when she and I first opened our businesses twenty years ago, but those days have disappeared with the rest of the economy.

I took side streets going home. I was tired, and whisky at the end of a long day hadn't been the smartest move before getting behind the wheel. Sal's response to my questions about Olympia hadn't done anything to dampen my enthusiasm for my case. That was because my enthusiasm level had been low to begin with. Chad with a Glock on the pillow next to him was a high hill to climb over, and I didn't think I'd find an easy path on the other side.

I hadn't actually seen any ballistic or forensic evidence in the case. In the morning, I'd check with the ME on that. In the meantime, before going to bed, I turned on my laptop and logged on to my subscription databases; they could spend the night hunting for information about Nadia Guaman. For good measure, I also asked about Olympia, Karen Buckley, and Chad Vishneski.

When the alarm woke me at six, I wanted to shoot it or scream, or something. I've never been much for early mornings, and when it is pitch-black, with the kind of cold that makes you feel your head is strapped inside iron bands, it takes every ounce of will not to pull the covers over your head and wait for spring.

"Bunter!" I cried. "Bunter, get that cappuccino machine fired up. And look smart about it!"

What a strange fantasy, to imagine someone who was dressed and ready to do your bidding at whatever hour it pleased you to bid him. So very obviously politically and socially incorrect, and yet how much I longed for my own Bunter. I flung the covers back and ran across the cold floor to the kitchen, where I put on my espresso maker, before tiptoeing to the bathroom.

I turned the thermostat up to sixty-eight before collecting the dogs from Mr. Contreras.

When I got home and thawed out, I sat at my laptop with my second espresso. LifeStory, an innocuous-sounding outfit, for whose detailed searches into everyone's lives I pay eight grand a year, had sent me a profile of Nadia Guaman.

Guaman had gone to Columbia College in the south Loop after a childhood in Pilsen and high school at St. Teresa of Avila. Her father, Lazar, worked as a baggage handler up at O'Hare; her mother, Cristina, was a cashier at a Pilsen hardware store. They still lived in the bungalow on Twenty-first Place where Nadia had grown up.