"You've been trying to pin this on me since day one."

Neil's voice sounded flat, without affect. No anger or guile. Just flat.

"That's not true. When you admitted that you and Farina were lovers you became a witness."

"And I somehow graduated to suspect. How'd that happen?"

"Put the gun away and let's do this right."

"There is no right. You told the papers I was taken off the case. That I was given a temporary suspension. And there's speculation of improprieties-that I'm a suspect."

"Where the hell did you hear that?"

"Calls from the Globe and Eyewitness News."

"That was probably Pendergast's lawyer-maybe getting back for his death."

"You don't bullshit well, Steve. Never have. That was you because no one else wants to discredit me."

"Why would I want to discredit you?" Steve's mind scrambled.

"In fact, you could be planting evidence for all I know."

"Jesus, man, what the hell would be my motive?"

"To keep them off you. You knew her. You had a thing for her. And you may have been the last person to see her alive."

Steve felt goose skin flash up his trunk. "What're you talking about?"

"I knew you were after me so I did some snooping of my own. Does Conor Larkins ring a bell?"

"Conor Larkins?"

"Don't go stupid on me."

"You mean the pub?"

"Yeah, the pub right across from Northeastern. I knew she liked to go there to do her homework. So I asked around, showed her picture. Seems that she was there the afternoon she was killed and she wasn't alone. Nope. With a guy who may have been you."

Steve felt as if he were walking through a minefield. "If you thought it was me, why didn't you bring it to Reardon?"

"Because I only found out today, and when I showed the waitress your picture she wasn't too sure, but she said it could have been you. It's been three weeks and her memory was fuzzy. But I'm thinking that maybe it was you after all. You had all the answers," he said. "You did her and decided to try to hang it on me. Maybe get a medal and make up for the Portman shit."

Steve's s breath had bulbed in his throat. "I didn't kill her." The words rose up without thought.

"Yeah? Then maybe it was Pendergast after all," Neil said. "But, you know, I really don't give a shit. I really don't fucking care. My wife is dead. My daughter's a fucking mess, I'm under suspicion for murder by my own colleagues. Life's short, but at least it sucks."

Steve's heart froze. He had seen Neil in despair when Lily once overdosed on sleeping pills, but he had not been so low as this. His voice was dead and he was thinking that he had little to live for-the prospect of trying to prove his innocence and possibly spending the rest of his life behind bars. What Steve could hear was hopelessness. And in that hopelessness he wanted to take Steve with him. It's what people suffering clinical depression did-go to the office and shoot everybody who ever looked cross-eyed at them.

This is my death, Steve told himself. He's going to kill me. Then he's going to kill himself. My punishment, and such sublime irony.

"Freeze! Lower the gun, Neil."

Steve turned. Dacey. She was in a stance with her hands on her weapon and aimed at Neil's back.

Neil looked over his shoulder at her.

"Drop it, Neil. Drop it."

For a brutal moment Neil stood frozen with the gun at Steve's head and Dacey with hers at Neil's. In the tiny window of awareness, Steve imagined Neil fulfilling the existential moment and blasting Steve and taking Dacey's fire. And he held his breath and waited for the explosions.

Instead, Neil swung the weapon around so Dacey could take it. She did and stuffed it into her belt behind her. Steve got to his feet.

Dacey moved to snap her cuffs on Neil, but Steve stopped her hand. Neil was staring down at the still open bottom drawer of his dead wife's clothes. Dacey's weapon was still on him. She began to utter a command when Neil moved past Steve and bent down. "Is this what you want?" he said, and pulled up the black stocking.

But it was not a stocking. It was one leg of a folded set of panty hose.

Neil held it up to Steve's face. "This what you're looking for?"

Steve could think of nothing to say.

"How about this?" Neil said, and pulled out more panty hose, then some letters bundled together. Then a small red photo album. "Or these?"

Then Neil yanked out the whole drawer and dumped the contents at Steve's feet. Then the next drawer and the next, until there was a pile of Ellen Gilmore French's intimate apparel spilling over the feet of Steve and Dacey, who stood there as if they'd each been shot with a stun gun.

Neil looked back at them. "Lily five seventeen ninety-one."

For a moment Steve said nothing. Then he put it together. "Your daughter's birthday."

"And the password to the laptop."

Before Steve could think of a response, Neil turned and left. They heard the front door close behind him.

Steve looked down at the pile of garments on the floor. "Shit," he muttered.

He looked at Dacey. He didn't know what she had heard, but her eyes were huge and fixed on him.

66.

FALL 1975.

"She was so beautiful."

Becky's mother gave him a tearful squeeze. "I'm so sorry." Her husband said basically the same thing and shuffled on to his aunt and uncle who made up the rest of the receiving line and with whom he would have to live until he was eighteen. The thought of moving to Fremont added to his numbness. Another sweet little surprise in Lila's legacy.

The Tollands were the last of the guests at the two-hour wake. It was the same funeral home and the same mourners who had attended his father's wake the week before. The same receiving line except Lila was now in the casket.

Festooned with roses and shiny sympathy banners, the casket was closed, of course. She apparently was dead for nearly twelve hours, and her face was already disfigured and bruised from Kirk, made worse by the noose. She was dressed in her favorite black lacy sundress and a large gold crucifix with the detailed full-body Jesus, his feet snugly tucked in the upper reaches of her cleavage.

At his insistence a small bouquet of white roses was placed in her hands along with the set of rosary beads from her confirmation. She also wore a pair of black nylon stockings with lacy elastic tops. Wolfords. The choice of her death wardrobe was his.

Becky was the last in line. She gave him a long close hug. "What can I say?"

"Nothing."

As they embraced, he looked over Becky's shoulder to the tawny red cherry casket, almost the same color as Lila's hair. And even though he could not see her, he felt something radiate from those frozen shut eyelids within.

Even unto death I shall be with you.

Lila's favorite hymn passage.

He tapped Becky on the back to release the embrace-an embrace that would be the last real exchange with a female for years. Of course, Becky could not know that Lila had usurped his passion. And that Lila would be in his system forever like one of those childhood vaccines whose preventive effects would last a lifetime once in your blood. This was her legacy. This and a black lace-top stocking.

"If there's anything I can do, just call."

He nodded and Becky left to join her parents outside.

It was nine P.M., time to go. His aunt and uncle were waiting in the other room. All the chairs were empty. The funeral was tomorrow morning at Holy Name Church in Derry.

For the last time he stood at the casket. Yes, she was beautiful. And now she was something grotesque and hard.

He knelt on the low padded stool. He wasn't religious, so he didn't pray. He closed his eyes, and like a movie projected on the inside of his skull, he saw her laughing, reading from a script in front of the mirror. Giving him smirky looks. Crying. Fighting with his father. Folding into her funk; angry, bitter, wounded. He saw her give him those withering looks, then the far askew stares, and the sulking mask that scared him more than death itself.

He also saw her cupping his face and kissing him to make some hurt go away. And like flicking channels, there she was dancing before him in those maddening, forbidden black nylons, peeling off one then the other and drawing it teasingly from his body to hers, entwining their sexes.

My mommy, my Salome.

And he saw her radiant with happiness in the Algonquin Room.

He saw her at the bathroom mirror, brushing that glorious burnt rose mane. He knew he would never ever see or smell that hair again, so before the police cut her down he snipped off a lock.

And now I hate you. I hate you for leaving me. I hate you.

My Beauty Boy, I'm so sorry, but I have been bad and cannot live with my sins any longer. Please remember the good me. And may Jesus be with you.

Love, Lila Her secret death note to him. Her exit line.

You bitch. You hurtful, hurtful bitch.

We could have gotten away with it. You passed the polygraph. There were no witnesses. You showered when you came home, so no cordite was on your hands. No evidence at the scene connected to the killing. And I was your alibi. The police said that they had a small list of potential suspects, and you weren't one of them. And the insurance money from Kirk. You could have had it all. We could have. You could have found another acting job. It wasn't the end of the world.

You left me, Lila. And now I'm a ward of my dolt uncle and boring aunt, executors of Kirk's will. I have to leave my school and town and friends and move to another.

You did this to me.

His eyes fell on the crucifix hanging above the casket.

Jesus. For eternity he was going to hang in her dead cleavage in mute fourteen-carat gold while she shriveled to a mummy.

Jesus.

What the hell did Jesus ever do for you? He didn't get you the big break you'd prayed for all your life. He didn't get you a husband who fulfilled your needs. He didn't stop his hand from smashing your dreams. He didn't grant you peace from what your father did. He didn't end your suffering. Jesus had nothing to do with you, just dangled false hopes around your neck until you got so weighted down you made yourself a noose out of your love toy. But you let Jesus get the best of you like a jealous lover. And here you are.

And now what? What happens to me, Lila? You're dead forever. The ultimate silent treatment. And I've got to go on living with nothing-nothing but a black lace stocking.

Bitch. You heartless, selfish bitch. You left me in the cold forever.

He slammed the casket with the flat of his hand and walked into the night.

67.

"Then maybe it was Pendergast after all. But, you know, I really don't give a shit."

But I do, Neil. Oh, boy, do I.

Over the two days following the break-in, Neil's computer hard drives had yielded no incriminating evidence connecting him to Terry Farina or the Novak woman, although that case was still being considered coincidental. Likewise, the Wolford stockings had, in fact, been purchased by his daughter and were found in their still unopened packages in her room.

Although Neil's suspension from duty was now officially over, Steve and he had not crossed paths at headquarters. But he did leave a message on Neil's cell phone apologizing for the break-in. He explained the circumstances behind the unwarranted search. "It was a desperate measure, and I'd understand completely if you reported it to the captain," he added, knowing that the consequences could mean his and Sergeant Dacey's suspension from the force.

But Neil did not return the call, nor had he apparently reported the incident, since Steve had not been red-carpeted. He also had not reported his suspicion that Steve had been with Terry Farina in Conor Larkins before she was murdered.

Maybe it was Pendergast after all.

And maybe he'd dig a little deeper on the guy before he went to Reardon and fessed up. Back to door one.

That was what Steve told himself as he drove to visit Dana.

He had not seen her since the operation. Nor had they talked. But she had left a brief message that it had gone well but that she didn't want visitors until the discomfort and draining was behind her. Then today she left a message to drop by that evening after work.

"It looks much worse than it feels," she said when she met him at the door.

Her face was heavily bandaged, with a thick packing running down her nose and tape crisscrossing under her eyes and across her brow. The flesh of her upper face was swollen and purple and her eyes were bloodshot. Once again, Steve could not help but see Terry Farina's choked-up purple face. "I certainly hope so."

She led him into the kitchen where she had been sipping a milkshake through a straw. The doctor had put her on a liquid diet for a few days. While she described what little she recalled, Steve was having difficulty imagining how different she'd look once the dressing came off. In fact, he was having difficulty trying to remember her old nose.

"What time's the appointment?"