"Hi!" She punctuated her response by cracking her chewing gum.

"Dakota and Dakota."

"I remember," she said.

"Your stuff's ready. I'll get it." She glanced at Bobby and smiled, and he smiled, too, although her expression seemed a little peculiar to him.

When she returned with two large, sealed manila envelopes-one labeled SAMPLES, the other a.n.a.lYSES-she handed the second one to Bobby. They stepped to one side of the lounge, away from the counter.

Bobby tore open the envelope and skimmed the doc.u.ment inside.

"Cat's blood."

"You serious?"

"Yeah. When Frank woke up in that motel, he was cover with cat's blood."

"I knew he was no killer."

Bobby said, "The cat may have an opinion about that."

"The other stuff is?"

"Well... bunch of technical terms here... but what it comes down to is that it's what it looks like. Black sand."

Stepping back to the reception counter, Clint said, "You remember we talked about a black-sand beach in Hawaii "Kaimu," she said. "It's a dynamite place."

"Yeah, Kaimu. Is it the only one?"

"Black-sand beach, you mean? No. There's Punaluu, which is a real sweet place too. Those are on the big island. I agree there must be more on the other islands, 'cause there's volcanoes all over the place, aren't there?"

Bobby joined them at the counter. "What do volcanoes had to do with it?"

Lisa took her chewing gum out of her mouth and put it waside on a piece of paper. "Well, the way I heard it, really hot lava flows into the sea, and when it meets the water, there're huge explosions, which throw off zillions and zillions of the really teeny-tiny beads of black gla.s.s, and then over a long period of time the waves rub all the beads together until they ground down into sand."

"They have these beaches anywhere but Hawaii?" Bobby wondered.

She shrugged. "Probably. Clint, is this fella your... friend?"

"Yeah," Clint said.

"I mean, you know, your good friend?"

"Yeah," Clint said, without looking at Bobby.

Lisa winked at Bobby. "Listen, you make Clint take you to Kaimu, 'cause I'll tell you something-it's really terrific to go out on a black beach at night, make love under the stars, because it's soft, for one thing, but mainly because black sand doesn't reflect moonlight like regular sand. It seems like you're floating in s.p.a.ce, darkness all around, it really sharpens your senses,.if you know what I mean."

"Sounds terrific," Clint said.

"Take care, Lisa." He headed for the door.

As Bobby turned to follow Clint, Lisa said, "You make him take you to Kaimu, you hear? You'll have a good time."

Outside, Bobby said, "Clint, you've got some explaining to do."

"Didn't you hear her? These little beads of black gla.s.s-"

"That's not what I'm talking about. Hey, look at you, you're grinning.

I don't think I've ever seen you grinning. I don't think I like you grinning."

BY NINE o'clock, Lee Chen had arrived at the office, opened a bottle of orange-flavored seltzer, and settled into the computer room a midst his beloved hardware, where Julie was waiting for him.

He was five six, slender but wiry,a warm bra.s.s complexion and jet-black hair that bristled in a modified punk style. He wore red tennis shoes and socks, black cotton pants with a white belt, a black and charcoal-grey shirt with a subtle leaf pattern, and a black jacket with narrow lapels and big shoulder pads. He was the most stylishly dressed employee at Dakota & Dakota, even compared to Ca.s.sie H ley, their receptionist, who was an unashamed clotheshor.

While Lee sat in front of his computers, sipping seltzer, Julie filled him in on what had happened at the hospital and showed him the printouts of the information Bobby had acquired earlier that morning.

Frank Pollard sat with them, in the chair, where Julie could keep an eye on him. Throughout the conversation, Lee exhibited no surprise at what he was being told, as if his computers had bestowed on him such enormous restrain and resignation nothing-not even a man capable of teleportation-could surprise him. Julie knew that Lee, well as everyone else in the Dakota & Dakota family, would never leak a word of any client's business to anyone; but didn't know how much of his supercooled demeanor was real and how much was a conscious image that he put on every moment with his ultra-voguish clothes.

Though his unshakable nonchalance might be partially feigned, his talent for computers was unquestionably real.

When Julie had finished her condensed version of recent events, Lee said, "Okay, what do you need from me now?"

There was no doubt on either his part or hers that eventually he could provide whatever she required.

She gave him a steno pad. Double rows of currency serial numbers filled the first ten pages.

"Those are random samplings of the bills in each of the bags of cash we're holding for Frank. Can you find out if it's hot money-stolen, maybe an extortion or ransom payment?"

Lee quickly paged through the lists.

"No consecutive numbers? That makes it harder. Usually cops don't have a record of the serial numbers of stolen money unless it was brand-new bills, which are still bound in packets, consecutively numbered, right off the press."

"Most of this cash is fairly well circulated."

"There's an outside chance it might still be from a ransom or extortion payoff, like you said. The cops would've taken down all the numbers before they let the victim make the drop, just in case the perp made a clean getaway. It looks bleak, but I'll try. What else?"

Julie said, "An entire family in Garden Grove, last name Farris, was murdered last year."

"Because of me," Frank said.

Lee propped his elbows on the arms of his chair, leaned back, and steepled his fingers. He looked like a wise Zen master who had been forced to don the clothes of an avant-garde artist after getting the wrong suitcase at the airport.

"No one really dies, Mr. Pollard. They just go on from here. Grief is good, but guilt is pointless."

Though she knew too few computer fanatics to be certain, Julie suspected that not many found a way to combine the hard realities of science and technology with religion. But in fact, Lee had arrived at a belief in G.o.d through his work with computers and his interest in modern physics.

He once explained to her why a profound understanding of the dimensionless s.p.a.ce inside a computer network, combined with a modern physicist's view of the universe, led inevitably to faith in a Creator, but she hadn't followed a thing he'd said.

She gave Lee Chen the dates and details of the Farris and Roman murders.

"We think they were all killed by the same man. I haven't got a clue to his real name, so I call him Mr. Blue. Considering the savagery of the murders, we suspect he's a serial killer with a long list of victims. If we're right, the murders have been so widely spread or Mr. Blue has covered his tracks so well that the press has never made the connections between the crimes."

"Otherwise," Frank said, "they'd have sensationalized it on their front pages. Especially if this guy regularly bites his victims."

"But since most police agencies are computer-linked these days," Julie said, "they might've made the connections across jurisdictions, saw what the press didn't. There might be one more quiet, ongoing investigations between local, state, and federal authorities. We need to know if any police in California-or the FBI nationally-are on to Mr. Blue, and we need to know anything they've learned about him, no matter how trivial."

Lee smiled. In the middle of his bra.s.s-hued face, his teeth were like pegs of highly polished ivory.

"That means going through public-access files in their computers. I'll have to breech their security, one agency after another, all the way into the FBI."

"Difficult?"

"Very. But I'm not without experience." He pushed his jacket sleeves farther up on his arms, flexed his fingers, and turned to the terminal keyboard as if he were a concert pianist about to interpret Mozart. He hesitated and glanced sideways at Julie.

"I'll work into their systems indirectly to discourage tracebacks. I won't damage any data or breach national security, so I probably won't even be noticed. But if someone spys me snooping and puts a tracer on me that I don't see or can't shake, they might pull your PI license for this."

"I'll sacrifice myself, and take the blame. Bobby's license won't be pulled, too, so the agency won't go down. How long will this take?"

"Four or five hours, maybe more, maybe a lot more. Can somebody bring me lunch at noon? I'd rather eat here and take a break."

"Sure. What would you like?"

"Big Mac, double order of fries, vanilla shake."

Julie grimaced.

"How come a high-tech guy like you never heard of cholesterol?"

"Heard of it. Don't care. If we never really die, cholesterol can't kill me. It can only move me out of this life a little sooner."

ARCHER VAN CORVAIRE cracked open the Levolor blind and peered through the thick bulletproof gla.s.s in the front door of his Newport Beach shop.

He squinted suspiciously at Bobby and Clint, though he knew and expected them. At last he unlocked the door and let them in.

Van Corvaire was about fifty-five but invested a lot of time and money in the maintenance of a youthful appearance. To thwart time, he'd undergone dermabrasion, face-lifts, and liposuction; to improve on nature, he'd had a nose job, cheek implants, and chin restructuring. He wore a toupee of such exquisite craftsmanship, it would have pa.s.sed for his own dyed-black hair-except that he sabotaged the illusion by insisting on not merely a replacement but a lush, unnatural pompadour.

If he ever got into a swimming pool wearing that toupee, it would look like the conning tower of a submarine.

After reengaging both dead bolts, he turned to Bobby.

"I never do business in the morning. I take only afternoon appointments."

"We appreciate the exception you've made for us," Bobby said.

Van Corvaire sighed elaborately.

"Well, what is it?"

"I have a stone I'd like you to appraise for me." He squinted, which wasn't appealing, since his eyes were already as narrow as those of a ferret. Before his name change thirty years ago, he'd been Jim Bob Spleener, and a friend would have told him that when he squinted suspiciously he looked very much like a Spleener and not at all like a van Corvaire.

"An appraisal? That's all you want?"

He led them through the small but plush salesroom: handtextured plaster ceiling; bleached suede walls; whitewashed oak floors; custom area carpet by Patterson, Flynn & Martin in shades of peach, pale blue and sandstone; a modern white sofa flanked by pickled-finish, buriwood tables by Bau; elegant rattan chairs encircling a round table with a gla.s.s thick enough to survive a blow from a sledgehammer.

one small merchandise display case stood off to the left. Corvaire's business was conducted entirely by appointment, his jewelry was custom designed for the very rich and tasteful people who would find it necessary to buy hundred-thousand dollar necklaces to wear to a thousand-dollar-a-plate char dinner, and never grasp the irony.

The back wall was mirrored, and van Corvaire watched him self with obvious pleasure all the way across the room. He hardly took his eyes off his reflection until he pa.s.sed through the door into the workroom.

Bobby wondered if the guy ever got so entranced by his image that he walked smack into it. He didn't like Jim van Corvaire, but the narcissistic creep's knowledge of gems and jewelry was often useful.

Years ago, when Dakota & Dakota Investigations was julie Dakota Investigations, without the ampersand and the red dancy (better never put it that way around Julie, who wouldn't appreciate the clever wordplay but would make him eat redundancy. Bobby had helped van Corvaire recover a fortune in unmounted diamonds stolen by a lover. Old Bob desperately wanted his gems but didn't want the woman sent to prison, so he went to Bobby instead of to the police That was the only soft spot Bobby had ever seen in van vaire; in the intervening years the jeweler no doubt had grown a callus over it too.

Bobby fished one of the marble-size red stones from his pocket. He saw the jeweler's eyes widen.

With Clint standing to one side of him, with Bobby behind him and looking over his shoulder, van Corvaire sat on a high stool at a workbench and examined the rough-cut stone through a loupe. Then he put it on the lighted gla.s.s table with a microscope and studied it with that more powerful instrument.

"Well?" Bobby asked.

The jeweler did not respond. He rose, elbowing them out of the way, and went to another stool, farther along the work bench. There, he used one scale to weigh the stone and another to determine if its specific gravity matched that of any known gems.

Finally, he moved to a third stool that was positioned in front of a vise. From a drawer he withdrew a ring box in which three large, cut gems lay on a square of blue velvet.

"Junk diamonds," he said.

"They look nice to me," Bobby said.

"Too many flaws."

He selected one of those stones and fixed it in the vise with a couple of turns of the crank. Gripping the red beauty in a small pair of pliers, he used one of its sharper edges to attempt to score the polished facet of the diamond in the vise, pressing with considerable effort. Then he put the pliers and red gem aside, picked up another jeweler's loupe, leaned forward, and studied the junk diamond.

"A faint scratch," he said. "Diamond cuts diamond."

He held the red stone between thumb and forefinger, staring at it with obvious fascination-and greed.

"Where did you get this?"

"Can't tell you," Bobby said.

"So it's just a red diamond?"

"Just? The red diamond may be the rarest most precious stone in the world! You must let me market it for you. I have clients who'd pay anything to have this as the centerstone of a necklace or pendant. It'll probably be too big for a ring even after a final cut. It's huge!"

"What's it worth?" Clint asked.

"Impossible to say until it's finish-cut. Millions, certainly."

"Millions?" Bobby said doubtfully.