Many of Molina's peers were unwinding in a laid-back cop bar right now. She glanced at her watch. 6:05 P.M. She could have actually stopped by for once. Except that having made a habit of heading home to kid and kittens had made her a stranger in a familiar land. So had her rank. Face it. She was not a party person.

Ah. Mariah was gone. No need to listen to that pulsing, rapping, mewling, screaming rock/rap radio station. Save her from preteens going on thirty!

Molina backtracked to the living room, moved the dial to the easy-listening station she had once kept tuned in, and waited until "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" came drooling over the airwaves like a cool mint julep spilling between the cracks of an overheated wooden porch floor somewhere over the rainbow where bluebirds sang and crickets chirped and sap ran.

Ah. She stepped out of her loafers, worn because their low heels did not intimidate male coworkers shorter than she. She picked them up by the heels and carried both shoes and semiautomatic pistol toward her bedroom.

She paused at the open door to Mariah's bedroom.

The same bright chaos as always. Textbooks in canted piles under discarded clothing scattered around the room like the Scarecrow after the Flying Monkeys had gotten through with him. Mariah could never decide which look-alike shapeless T-shirt and baggy pants were coolest of them all. Posters everywhere of sinister, pouting males and females masquerading as singers. If she'd seen these punks when she was walking a beat she'd have arrested them on suspicion of juvenile dysfunction. Stuffed toys enough to almost hide the state of the unmade bed.

Nothing straightened up as promised: "Tomorrow, I promise!" And tomorrow and tomorrow.

Molina shook her head and smiled. Better an untidy room than a messy head. And Mariah's head was still mostly straight on. So far.

She moved the few steps down the hall to her room. So quiet now.

Maybe she would have a drink before dinner. There was a bottle of aged whiskey that had aged even longer in her kitchen cupboard waiting to serve in Christmas egg nogs. Somehow she never had time to have adults over for Christmas.

She paused at her bedroom door, remembering the crowded, noisy Christmases of her childhood in East L.A. The tiny bungalow crammed with tearing kids tearing wrappings off a Technicolor mountain of presents under a skinny balsam Christmas tree draped in miniature pinata figures and huge pinwheel-striped lollipops from the Christ child to every kid under twelve in the house, and there were tons of kids. Her eight half-brothers and -sisters, for instance, all younger. All kids still, and she, Carmen, had been older, an adult early, more their nursemaid than their sister, even when she had been only nine, or seven, or even five.

They danced around her imagination now, her half-brothers and -sisters, black-haired, black-eyed sprites with adorable faces . . . that needed constant wiping by her of food and tears, depending on the day or the occasion.

She loved them all . . . and it would be a cold day in h.e.l.l before she would want to shepherd more than one kid, Mariah, to adulthood again. She'd been a mother most of her life. When she'd become the first in her family to go to college, a two-year college, it was more a betrayal than a cause for celebration.

Molina . . . Carmen . . . sat on the bed, gun and shoes sitting beside her, symbols of everything that had gone right and wrong in her life.

She so seldom had time to think. To remember. Now, even shattered images of Rafi Nadir washed over her in the dead quiet.

She couldn't seem to control the memory flood. Was she drowning? Drowning in guilt? Or just stranded tired and alone for once? Sitting on the dock of the bay, on the tree above the flood, waiting to be rescued.

No. She rescued herself. Always had. She didn't sit around waiting for anything. For anybody.

She started singing counter to the living room radio, softly, in harmony. It was odd hearing her own voice without accompaniment, without the boys in the band behind her.

She sighed. It had been too long since she'd dropped in at the Blue Dahlia to add the words to their music. Dolores was always available. She should do it again soon.

Sittin' on the dock of the bay. Something, something away.

She saw Va.s.sar spread-eagled on neon, stripped and dissected on stainless steel, a twelve-hour transformation, from pinned b.u.t.terfly to laboratory frog.

She shook her head, shook the image away. There was no reason she couldn't contact her family now, though it had been so long.

Except that Rafi would have known, and he wasn't about to let her go. And maybe, maybe, she was just as glad he'd forced her to run away, start a new life alone. With Mariah when she arrived.

She had been mired in her own unhappy history. Always the half-breed. Her mother's one unforgivable mistake, that she'd tried to undo eight times until she had died of it.

By then Carmen had been in place, knowing she was a mistake, apologetic enough to make up for it, tending her mother's whole-breed brood, loving them, hating herself.

She shook her head. That was so long ago. Why was she thinking of it now?

Of course. Rafi. He was like the recurrent nightmare in a slasher movie, Michael or Jason, never quite dying, always popping up to revive the terror. A franchise attraction.

Molina stood up. She was a big girl now, in every respect.

If Matt Devine had anything to do with Va.s.sar's death, she would find out and arrest him. If Rafi found her and Mariah, he would be sorry. If Max Kinsella crossed her path again, in the wrong place at the wrong time, she'd stop him no matter what it took. If Temple Barr was in mourning for the two men in her life, let her weep and wail.

If she, Carmen . . . no, Molina, had to destroy her career to bring down a murderer, so be it.

She went to her closet, opened the door, dropped her shoes on the floor, moved to turn the tumblers on the safe. Something elusive and soft brushed her wrist. She started to push it aside.

It was velvet. Midnight blue velvet, a limp, 1930s evening gown, Depression era; sleazy and soft and irresistible.

Molina frowned at the Blue Dahlia side of her closet with its meager column of vintage gowns. Carmen wasn't here anymore, but her wardrobe was.

Blue velvet? G.o.d, she was losing it. She'd forgotten buying that one.

Or did she just want to forget? Not only the ancient past, but the recent one, all the way up to encouraging Matt Devine to make a date with destiny.

CHAPTER 28.

. . . A League of Her Own Matt had spent his working life on a phone for over a year now: first at the hot line and now at WCOO radio.

He was used to calls being urgent, to surprises, to communicating well despite the distance and the lack of face-to-face contact.

Now he was hanging on hold, waiting for the phone to be picked up again after a long, frustrating attempt to make contact.

He supposed calling the FBI might be like that. "Matt!" boomed a confident and somewhat superficial voice.

"Frank," Matt echoed, determined to control this con versation.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm afraid I still need information on that woman terrorist, Kathleen O'Connor, only this time it might involve murder."

"I came up dry last time."

"I know. I believe in try, try again."

"What's the murder case?"

"Mine."

"What?"

"Well, it cuts two ways, if you recall how Miss Kitty introduced herself to me a few months ago."

"Humor does help, Matt. Yes, I remember. She cut you. Razor, wasn't it? Odd weapon for a woman."

"She's an odd woman. She's been stalking me."

"Why?"

"Because I was there? All I can glean from what she's said, which I don't entirely believe, is that she has a grudge against priests."

"You're an ex-priest."

"So I told her. It doesn't seem to matter to her."

"I know she's been a thorn in your side for some time. What's happened to escalate matters?"

"First, she started physically threatening my friends and acquaintances. Women, girls, old women, it didn't seem to matter as long as they were female."

"You are talking major-league obsessive."

"Yes." And Matt hated doing this sort of talking on the telephone. Despite a bug-free apartment, he still had the slimy sensation that someone was listening. It could be a hangover from his radio talk-show history, or just knowing that the FBI probably recorded everything.

"I wish we could talk in person."

"Can you come out here?"

"Not right now."

"Then shoot. If it's not a matter of national security, this is a safe line."

Matt grimaced. That wasn't much of a guarantee, but he needed solid answers, not speculation. Besides, he had confessed so often to Father Frank Bucek when they were both in seminary, Frank as instructor, Matt as acolyte, that pulling back now seemed foolish.

"Okay. This woman made it plain: my virtue, or their lives."

"Nasty. I a.s.sume you took measures."

"I tried to. I got as much advice as I could-"

"From whom? You didn't ask me."

"I'm ... sorry, Frank. Guess I was embarra.s.sed."

"What? That some woman was so infatuated she'd blackmail you into submission? You and Brad Pitt. Don't be an a.s.s, Matt. It's like that out here in the real world. There are guys who would envy you."

"That's like telling an eighty-year-old woman she's lucky to be raped."

Silence on the line. Long silence. "You're right. I was being cynical. It gets that way, if you see enough. Sorry. It works both ways. Stalking is stalking. So what advice did you get?"

"It was clear she wanted to destroy what I had taken out of the priesthood, my celibacy."

"Odd fixation. Odd woman."

"I know. So, my ... friends . . . all urged me to lose my virtue and thereby my value to her."

"It makes sense, but this is a senseless woman."

Matt nodded, even though Frank couldn't see the gesture. "The solution they came up with was that I take advantage of Las Vegas's reputation as 'Sin City.' I was to take a circuitous route along the Strip, get a room for cash and then change the number, at an upscale hotel, and hire a high-cla.s.s call girl to do the job, make me unfit for my stalker."

Frank chuckled. "Surely an expensive way to go. Did it work?"

"Yes . . . and no."

"I'm on tenterhooks."

"I bet you are, you old married man. I bet you love hearing my odyssey of unwanted s.e.x."

"Maybe. It's an interesting theological question: for love of your fellow man, should you submit to carnal knowledge, once against your vocation, and now against your free will and inclination only? If you were a woman, say St. Maria Gorretti: virgin, rape victim, and martyr, the answer would be a resounding yes. But the Church is a bit more ticklish about male self-sacrifice."

"Apparently not in seminaries."

"Whoa! Where did that come from?"

"A former St. Vincent's alumn who approached me. That's not what I meant to call about, but he says there was a lot of abuse back when we were there. Was there, Frank?"

Another silence. "G.o.d, I hope not."

"You don't know? You were an instructor, a confessor, a mentor."

Silence. "I . . . honestly don't know. Did you see it?"

"Maybe. But I didn't know enough to recognize it."

"You never-?"

"No. I'm told I was fairly unapproachable by then."

"Ah, yes. Mr. Angel-face iron man. Not unapproachable, really, just closed like a work-in-progress freeway. I knew you were chewing on family issues. I respected that. Leaving you alone to do it seemed the best course. That work out?"

"Eventually."

"Good enough. So you came through unscathed."

"I thought so, but if others didn't, then there's no honor in that, is there?"

"No. It's hard enough to outgrow your childhood and your past, then you learn that it was all corrupt. I wasn't, Matt. I was as s.h.i.t-faced innocent as you were then. That's no excuse."

"Yes, innocence never feels like enough of an excuse. She's dead, Frank."