It seemed clear that if she was in danger, it was because she was involved in the canal monster case; that he could change. He was lead detective and could assign any deputy he wanted to this case, or none.

But what would have happened yesterday if he had been riding with Cruff or McCain, after he throttled the man in Elk Park and then went on his psychic trip with the monster? He would either be in the hospital doped up on psychiatric drugs or on medical leave with an appointment to see the department shrink.

Jensen had listened to him, believed him, and helped him when everyone else would have called for the padded wagon: she had been his ground to reality for two days. He needed her.

That led him to his motives: did he really need her, or did he just want her?

She walked into the kitchen, wearing boxer shorts and a tiny T-shirt, her hair flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, yawning.

"How come you didn't make any coffee, Lawless?"

He looked at the clock on the microwave: 6:31.

"You got up a minute late."

Without missing a beat, she said, "It took a minute to fix my hair."

He grinned.

She fixed coffee.

Chapter 9.

Lawless was home dressing when he thought to check his office for messages. He'd decided to tell Jensen about his dream later, hopefully over lunch, convinced it was better that way. They needed to focus on their meeting this morning with the Modesto cops.

He had two messages. Assistant DA Heath Jorgenson called about a drug case Lawless was the arresting officer on, said it was coming to trial soon and would Lawless please call him back. Not today. Jorgenson was windy; the guy would eat up at least an hour.

Lawless was, however, very interested in the second message.

Doctor's Medical Center had called regarding Tony Fruega, the only living person who'd seen the canal monster and lived. A nurse said Fruega was talking, "somewhat," which sounded better than what they had to work with yesterday.

He checked his watch: quarter after eight; not enough time to go to the hospital and make the ten o'clock with the Modesto cops. That was okay, especially if he could get a lucid statement from Fruega. Maybe he could get something from the coroner by then as well, something solid.

He called Baskel and moved the meeting to three. Baskel said he didn't know if all four detectives would be there, but he would for sure.

"One other thing," Baskel said. "Last night a couple of our officers responded to a call about someone screaming. They didn't find anyone, but they found evidence of a struggle, maybe a fight. There was a lot of blood and some intestines, I think. Could be animal, we don't know yet."

Lawless wondered why Baskel thought he needed to know that. "So?"

"It happened by a canal."

Oh. "Where?"

Baskel told him and hung up.

He called Jensen, told her about Fruega, the postponed meeting, and the new thing by the canal.

"Let's go see," she said.

"Then we can talk to Freuga," he said. "I'll pick you up."

She was waiting for him in front of her apartment, looking neat in her starch-stiff khaki uniform.

"D'you eat?" he asked, after she got in.

"Toast."

"Want something?"

"We have time?"

"Not for sit-down, Burger King or McDonalds."

"Grease on the run? Sounds good to me."

They found a Burger King, ordered breakfast croissants and orange juice, and ate as he drove to Lateral No. 7. They parked on the street, walked down the access road and found the spot in five minutes.

"No shit something happened here," she said. "They just found some guts?"

He pulled at his ear. "That's it."

"This is new for it, eating everything." She studied the ground. "Man, I'm always amazed at how much blood can come out of a human being."

Then she remembered something, a thing she thought of after he left that morning. "Hey, I didn't find any new bruises on my shins this morning."

"So?"

"I got some the night before. You didn't have your dream, did you?" She sounded hopeful.

"No."

Lawless looked away. She caught it and said, "What?"

"I didn't have the dream. I don't know why."

"You're not telling me something. Out with it Lawless, what happened last night?"

He sighed. "Okay. I didn't have that dream, I had a different one."

"That's good, isn't it? Why didn't you tell me this morning?"

He looked off into the canal. "I wouldn't call it 'good.' You were in this one."

He was about to kick a rock into the water, but reconsidered, thinking of the damage it might do to his shoe. "I was going to tell you at lunch."

Now she looked worried. "What happened?"

He blew out a breath and looked at his watch. "Okay. But remember, it's just a dream."

She was staring at him. "With you, nothing's a 'just.' "

He couldn't disagree. He told her about his dream.

Jensen was smiling as he recounted the dream, until the part where the sea turned red: it was all downhill for her after the sea turned red.

She tried to play it cool. "So we know not to go on vacation together to the Caribbean."

"Yeah," was all he said.

"So you think it means I'm going to die?"

"If we took everything that comes out of my crackpot head literally, I'd say you might be in danger. Or I could be nuts or have a brain tumor."

"The problem with your theory about being crazy or having a tumor is, we have physical evidence that backs up your psychic experiences."

She turned her back to him and took a few steps down the canal bank, thinking. Then she turned back and said, "What do you think I should do?"

"You should request to be reassigned back to your regular duties," he said, looking at his shoes. "We should take the dream seriously."

"What do you want me to do?"

He hesitated, then said, "I don't think I can do this without you, but if something happened to you and I couldn't see you every day ..." He trailed off. "Even if the monster swam back to whatever hell it came from, or someone found it floating dead in their pool, I'd still want to see you every day. I'm just afraid my selfishness will get you killed."

She came to him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "I don't want to go away. I like what we have and I've never felt so needed. We'll just have to watch out for each other."

He smiled. But still, in the back of his mind...

Then she said, as she looked at the ground and went back to work, "Besides, I can't see McCain nursing you back to sanity. You think he'd do the dinner and dance thing afterwards?"

"Maybe. Bet he couldn't give me the boob job lesson, though."

"Bet he could."

They studied the dark dirt and abstract signs of a struggle for a few minutes, made nothing of it, then Lawless took several shots with his digital camera. He went to put it back in his pocket and stopped.

He looked at the camera.

He looked at her.

He smiled.

She caught it. "Not in your wildest dreams, big boy."

He shrugged. "Let's go see Fruega."

"You should be able to talk to him as long as you don't push too hard. You push too hard and he'll clam up."

Fruega's treating doctor, Dr. Nielson, looked like the actor Robert Wagner when he was on Hart to Hart in the 80s.

Dr. Nielson glanced at Jensen, his eyes lingering a bit too long: Lawless felt a jolt of insecurity shoot through his chest.

After a long uncomfortable moment, at least for Lawless, the doctor's fault was at last revealed: starting with his right eye, half his face contracted in a slow spasm, as if the whole right side of his head winked, or grimaced, or did something. Then he sniffed, as if the sniff explained the massive contortion his face had just gone through. The massive tic made him look ridiculous, and Lawless was relieved of his distress.

Dr. Nielson gave them Fruega's diagnosis and medications, but Lawless didn't bother writing them down; he knew he wouldn't get the spelling correct and he could get a copy of the file if he really needed the details. "Post-traumatic stress syndrome" was all he needed for now. Fruega would stay in the hospital until they were "reasonably confident he isn't a threat to himself or anyone else," a time Lawless guessed would coincide with his insurance benefits running out.

Then, before hustling off, the doctor added, "One of the medications is for the hallucinations he's been having."

"Hallucinations?" Lawless asked, feeling his only eyewitness slip away.

The doctor was already gone.

In Fruega's room, Mrs. Fruega was fast asleep in a chair. Her chin rested on her pillowy chest and an inch of drool hung from her bottom lip. Air whistled in and out of her constricted airway.

"Should we wake her up?" Jensen asked quietly.

Lawless shook his head. "Let her sleep. She'll probably wake up in a minute, anyway. Her son's an adult so we really don't need her permission to talk to him."

He pointed his chin at the young man in the bed, who had his eyes closed but didn't look asleep. "Why don't you go ahead and talk to him." He pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket and handed it to her. "See if you can get his permission to tape the conversation."

She nodded, took the recorder and sat on the bed next to Fruega. His eyes popped open and he raised his head, stared at her, but there was no recognition in his eyes. "Who are you?" he asked, his tongue thick from medication.

"I'm Deputy Jensen, Tony. Do you remember me from yesterday?"

He continued to stare at her. Then he noticed Lawless standing at the foot of the bed and stared at him for several seconds. His mother snorted, he turned and stared at her: finally, here was someone he recognized.

"She drools like a baby," he said, dragging out the word baby.

He closed his eyes and dropped his head onto the pillow.

Jensen set the recorder on the bed and held his right hand between hers. "Tony. Do you mind if we talk to you?"

"I don't know you, lady. Go away." He raised his left hand and made an exaggerated shoe-fly motion, waving them away.

"I'm Sandra Jensen. I came and saw you yesterday. I'd like to talk to you about Bobby." Her voice was soft and soothing, hypnotizing.

"You come to see the loco Mexican?"

"I don't think you're crazy, Tony."

"Man, they got some good shit in this place." He smiled a droopy, drugged smile, a look Lawless had seen before, many times. Junkies looked like that after getting their juice, right before he, or rather, his deputies, broke their door down or found them shooting up in an alley. They smiled when he read them their rights, didn't seem to mind being handcuffed, smiled all the way to jail, smiled while they were being fingerprinted - everyone was a friend. Two hours later, however, when the drugs wore off and the walls were closing in, the smiles were gone. Lawless never understood how that short high was worth the long low.

"Can you tell me what happened to Bobby?" Jensen prodded.