"And you intend to prove this," Turner said, "to Juhle's satisfaction? Right here, right now. How do you intend to do that?"

"By comparing the stories you've told and seeing where they don't agree. But also, a little bit," Hunt replied, "by the process of elimination. You, for example, Mr. Turner. Mr. Mugisa drove you home right after the COO meeting on the night Nancy Neshek was killed. You've got your son and your wife and the other kids who were there building their homecoming float who will swear that you were with them until you went to bed. No one's suggested that you've done anything different, and you can prove that. So you didn't kill Ms. Neshek, and therefore you didn't kill Dominic."

Turner sat back, shaking his head in derision. "Well, of course I didn't. The idea's ridiculous."

"The whole concept is ridiculous," Jaime Sanchez said. "Lola and I went to dinner after that meeting, and then home together."

"Where did you go to dinner?" Hunt asked.

"The Hayes Valley Grill. We walked there from City Hall. They know us there. I'm sure I'll even have a credit card receipt."

"And after that?"

"Jesus Christ!" Turner raised his hands as if in exhortation. "Inspector Juhle, is this the kind of questioning that Mr. Hunt thinks is going to get us anywhere? Do you have any reason to believe that Jimi and Lola Sanchez are any kind of even potential suspects in either of these murders?"

Juhle said, "No, sir. No, I don't." He turned to Hunt. "If this is your idea of breaking the case, Wyatt, maybe you should send these good people home and let me go about doing my job, which is arresting my suspect."

Hunt kept his cool. "Mr. Sanchez," he said, "my apologies to you and your wife. I was using you as an example of Mr. Turner's point about the process of elimination, which I think we can all agree is not too satisfying. Far better is the question of the information we've received, and where what one person told us is contradicted by somebody else." Now Hunt turned in his chair. "For example, Mrs. Como. You told me that your husband was in love with Ms. Thorpe and that-"

Ellen cut him off and snapped back at him. "He was. He told me. There wasn't any doubt about that."

"No, not about that bare fact. Your husband was in love with her, okay. But Alicia swears that they didn't have a physical relationship."

"Well, she's lying. What do you expect?"

"I'm not lying," Alicia said, as Roake put a restraining hand on her arm.

Hunt turned to Ellen and went on. "How do you know Alicia's lying?"

"Because they were caught in the office."

"Making love, you mean?"

"f.u.c.king, is what I mean. f.u.c.king is what they were doing, not making love. Don't try to dignify it."

"And where were they doing this?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean, physically, where were they having s.e.x in the office when they were caught?"

"I don't know. How would I know?"

"So how did you know about it in the first place?"

"Well." Her brow clouded, then cleared. "Lorraine told me. I think I even told you that, didn't I, Mr. Hunt?"

"Yes, you did. So, Ms. Hess." He came around to face her. "Let me ask you. Where in the office did you discover Mr. Como and Alicia having s.e.x?"

Hess had straightened in her seat, her hands on her lap. "I don't know." She shook her head. "I wasn't the one who saw them. It was one of my people, one of the young women."

"Do you remember who, exactly?"

"No. It seemed like everybody knew kind of all at once. You know how offices are."

"So you, Ms. Hess, didn't really know for sure firsthand about this physical side to Alicia's and Dominic's relationship?"

"No. Not firsthand, no."

"And yet you gave this information to Mrs. Como?"

"I thought she needed to know."

Ellen Como spoke up again. "I did need to know, G.o.d d.a.m.n it."

"Yes, well, and Ms. Hess made sure that you did, didn't she?"

"She's a friend. Of course she did."

"Of course." Hunt took a breath, shifted again in his chair. "Mr. Carter, as Dominic's driver, you must have been privy to many of his private thoughts and even secrets, isn't that true?"

"I like to think so."

"Did you ever have occasion to hear him talk about Alicia Thorpe?"

"Yes, frequently, since she started driving him mornings."

"Was he in love with her?"

"Yes. At least, that's what he told me."

"And did he also tell you any details about his love life, if any, with her?"

Carter came out with a dry chuckle. "Only the fact that he didn't have any love life with her."

"That's not true!" Mrs. Como exclaimed. "I know he-"

"No, ma'am. It is true as I know it." Warming to his topic, Carter brought in the rest of the circle. "He laughed about it, how he had this pure love that neither of them were going to do anything about. They talked about it. How seeing her every day, not being able to touch her, knowing he was never going to be able to touch her, it was just breaking his heart."

Again, Ellen Como couldn't take it. "Bulls.h.i.t, Al!" she said. "That's just bulls.h.i.t."

"No, ma'am. That's what he told me."

"Okay, Al," Hunt said. "Let me ask you this. In your eight years driving Dominic, did you ever know him to see other women?"

At this, Carter hesitated, looking first at Ellen Como, then over to Lorraine Hess. "Yes," he said. "Many times."

"s.h.i.t! That b.a.s.t.a.r.d. That f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

Hunt pressed. "Anybody else at Sunset?"

Another pause, this one lengthy. Finally, Carter looked over to his left again and shrugged. "When I first came on, he and Lorraine were in the middle of a thing."

Ellen Como exploded, "What? Lorraine." And stood up.

Hess shot out of her seat, held her arm out as though fending Ellen off. "That's a lie, Ellen! That's a d.a.m.n lie, Al!"

Juhle was on his feet, arms out to either side as though he were a referee at a boxing match. He pointed to Hess. "Sit down!" and over to Como. "You, too, please, ma'am, right now."

But neither woman sat down. Instead, they stared at each other across the circle. "Lorraine," Ellen Como asked in a near-whisper, "is this true?" She turned. "Al?"

The driver nodded somberly.

Hess was shaking her head. "No, no, no." Pointing at Alicia, her voice quivering with rage, Lorraine Hess went on the attack. "She's the one who was sleeping with him. They were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in the car. I know they were. If you look, you'll know I'm telling the truth."

"If you mean look in the limo for evidence, Lorraine," Hunt said, "the police already did that. And they found what you planted there."

"I didn't plant anything. What are you talking about?"

Hunt didn't respond to her, but turned to Carter. "Al, what's the first thing you do every day at work?"

Carter nodded. "Like I told you today, we clean out that limo for my shift. Polish the car, wash the seats, vacuum the rugs."

"And that includes under the seats, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"And did you do that the day after you dropped off Mr. Como for the last time?"

"Yes, sir."

"And was there a condom in the car, or a scarf?"

"No, sir. Nothing like that."

"But"-and here Hunt came back to Hess-"in fact, those items are exactly what the police did find. So the reason you were so sure there was evidence in the car, Lorraine, was that you put it there, didn't you?"

Hess seemed rooted to the floor, unable to reply.

"My only question," Hunt went on, "is if you stole the scarf intending to kill Dominic, or if you simply found it later and decided to use it to frame Alicia."

"Lorraine?" Ellen Como asked a last time. "It's you. Could it really have been you?"

Hunt, standing next to Juhle, took a step in Hess's direction. "Do you want to tell us about the federal money, too, Lorraine? Dominic's private safe? He not only broke it off with you, he discovered you'd been taking the money, too, didn't he? He was going to let you go out at Sunset as well."

"This is all wrong," Hess said. "You don't know this. You can't prove any of it."

"I don't have to prove it, Lorraine. The police will have all the proof they need when they get a search warrant for your bank account, won't they? When they find all the unexplained cash deposits. And when they talk to all the extra help you hired for your son, they're going to find you paid with a lot more cash than you can explain, aren't they? And even if you've got more cash stashed in other bank accounts, they're going to find that, too, aren't they?"

Lorraine Hess put her hands in the pockets of the ski parka she was wearing, then lifted out her right hand, in which she was holding a revolver. Juhle, caught completely off-guard, went to reach for his shoulder holster.

Hunt motioned for Juhle to stop, then turned and spoke calmly to Hess. "What are you going to do now, Lorraine? Kill us all? And then go on the run? Who's going to take care of your son? And how long do you think it's going to take the police to find you?"

Hess stood holding the gun in both of her hands, aiming it squarely at Hunt's chest. Her eyes flitted over to Ellen Como, to Juhle, to Carter and Alicia, and then back to Hunt. No one seemed to be breathing.

But then at last, something shifted in Hess's position, and she slowly began to lower the gun, then finally dropped it with a clatter onto the basketball court's flooring at her feet.

Now staring with a pathetically blotched face at Juhle, she hung her head, wagged it disconsolately from side to side, then looked back at him. "Thank G.o.d," she said. "Thank G.o.d. It's finally over." She met Juhle's eyes. "I never meant . . . but it doesn't matter what I meant now, does it?"

Hunt had crossed the circle and gotten his hands on the weapon. Now, that threat removed, he looked up at her. "Lorraine," he said. "Jim Parr. Where's Jim Parr?"

For an answer, Hess turned vaguely, almost wistfully, to Juhle. "I wonder if you could send somebody to see if my son Gary's all right? I always worry about those pills I give him when I need him to sleep, that I might have given him too many."

34.

Juhle hated this.

He imagined himself in front of the Police Commission, explaining how he had gotten involved in this half-a.s.sed operation. And without his partner or any other backup. This was not how it was done, fraught with risk and uncertainty for everyone involved. He wondered and sincerely doubted if any other cop he knew would have made the kind of promise he'd made to Hunt; if any other homicide inspector, with an imminent arrest of his prime suspect in his pocket, would have postponed the moment and agreed to this amateur-hour charade. His only consolation was that when Hunt's scenario failed-as it surely would-he would then pick up the Thorpe woman. Of course, the fact that Hunt had invited Roake along would complicate that arrest, but not impossibly so. Still, it galled Juhle that Hunt had never even mentioned Roake's presence here as Thorpe's attorney during their phone call. In fact, everything about this felt wrong to him. But, he told himself, that's what happened when you believed your friends.

And people wondered why cops grew so jaded over time. It was because you were either in the brotherhood or you were not. You played by the rules or you didn't.

Somehow Hunt had persuaded him he had no choice. And that, more than anything else, added to his fury and frustration.

Almost as soon as Juhle had arrived, Hunt suggested that they all come out now to the basketball court. Now Roake, Thorpe, and Dade sat together in consecutive chairs while Juhle stood behind them, arms crossed and his shoulder holster unb.u.t.toned, where he could keep his eye on them as well as on whoever entered through the Brannan Street door. The lights were up; the temperature fairly cool, in the mid-sixties, the way Hunt liked to keep it.

They weren't in there and settled for more than three or four minutes when the doorbell for this side of the warehouse rang and Al Carter, who for some reason Hunt had designated to greet the guests, crossed to the door by the garage entrance, opened it up, and said h.e.l.lo to Len Turner and a tall, thin, well-dressed young black man that Juhle guessed must be Keydrion Mugisa.

Inside his jacket, Juhle's hand went to the b.u.t.t of his duty weapon.

The doorbell rang again. As instructed, Carter opened the door again.

Quite clearly, Juhle heard him say, "h.e.l.lo, Lorraine."

And then he heard the voice of Lorraine Hess as she said, "Hi, Al, you dumb s.h.i.t."

And then the enormous boom of the shot.

Hunt was over by the residence side of the warehouse and broke for the door, jumping over Carter's p.r.o.ne form. He got outside just as Lorraine Hess was running to get to her car, sitting and idling there at the curb fifty feet up the street, a couple of seconds after the unmistakable report.

"Hold it," he yelled. "Stop!"