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Red Lanterns: A “The Mentalist” Novella

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.”

Ayn Rand

In front of the Sheriff’s Department, a large sign read “No Parking.”

The two CBI Suburbans pulled up to the curb and stopped.

Patrick Jane smiled to himself. He hadn’t got over the enjoyment of breaking traffic laws simply because they could. Then he stepped out of the vehicle and looked at the damage to the office frontage. He stopped smiling.

The office matched the architecture of the downtown, a hewn-log bi-level structure at the end of a cul-de-sac off Main Street, a quarter-mile from the main road into town, sitting in picturesque glory among piles of melting snow. Broken glass grinned from the front windows like jagged teeth. Glass sparkled on the sidewalk.

Teresa Lisbon ducked under the yellow tape strung across the doors, walked inside and stopped dead. Rigsby and Cho detoured to avoid walking into her. Grace van Pelt paused a second, then stepped inside, carefully, like a cat walking across a puddle.

DuLacs County sat in the mountains north and east of Sacramento, wide in acreage and sparse in population. Royale, the county seat, held maybe two thousand of that population, and the Sheriff’s Department was not large. It would now be even smaller.

A man wearing a khaki uniform turned to look at them.

Lisbon said, “CBI. Teresa Lisbon.”

He nodded and stepped forward. “Cordell Austen. DuLacs County Sheriff.” He jerked his thumb towards the south. “Mayor Wando’s in the County Building. Told her I’d keep her advised.” He held out a hand.

She shook his hand. “This is my team.”

A minute passed while everyone performed the rituals necessary for proper social interaction among humans, a process he always found interesting for its revelations about the people in question. General hand-shaking ensued. Patrick noted that the Sheriff had a firm, steady grip with no overcompensation.

Austen sighed. “I appreciate the assistance, Agent Lisbon.” He spread a hand out, indicating the office. “Doc McNulty and I, and Doctor Ripper—he’s the County Coroner—cleared the bodies and marked, but I waited for your arrival before doing anything else.”

Patrick put both hands in his jacket pockets, moved to one side, then cataloged the room while he listened to the movements and the conversations.

Blood spattered the whitewashed walls. Bullet holes splintered wooden desks and chairs. Plastic and electronic debris littered the floor and the desks.  On both first and second levels, shattered glass rimmed the interior office windows. The bodies had been taken away, but tape and chalk marked the outlines of where three bodies had fallen. Chunks of wood littered the floor. He backtracked the trajectory to the upper level. Stairs led up to a balcony where four offices existed. The balcony railing nearest the first office had been fragmented; pieces of railing hung askew. The remainder of the railing had splinters and gouges, most likely from bullets, but the back stairs seemed intact.

The main area, open to the ceiling, seemed to have been where most of the work was done. Two enclosed offices sat below the balcony and towards the back staircase, in the back third of the office. He edged around the room until he could see inside them. The larger one had nothing except an empty window, broken blinds, and pock-marked walls. The smaller office nearer the main area had two tape outlines: one on each side of the desk. Next to the larger office was a door. He opened it and found darkness. Turning on the light illuminated a narrow corridor leading down to three holding cells. Three doors were set along the left side of the corridor. The first opened into a small room with a set of lockers and a door, which led into a full bathroom. The second door was a narrow unisex washroom. The third was locked. He walked back up the corridor, shut the door behind him, then marked where his team was in the evidence phase.

Rigsby set the evidence bag down, crouched and used a pen to pick up a shell casing. “Didn’t police his brass,” he said to no one in particular.

Lisbon crouched beside him, eyeing the casing. “Thirty-ought-six,” she said. She stood, turning back to Sheriff Austen. “Lot of game hunting this time of year?”

“Big game season’s over, ma’am,” he said. His words came out clipped, bare of emotion, making a report. His voice didn’t match his eyes. His eyes kept returning to the outlines on the floor. “No military bases in this area.  We have some wildcatters around here, but the target range they use is out west of town. In bad winters, we have been known to get a wapiti in town, but nobody’s ever shot one while it walked down Main Street.”

Lisbon’s head lifted. She squinted at him. “Excuse me—a what?”

“A wapiti,” he said. “You might call them elk.”

“Ah—”

Patrick focused on the Sheriff. Austen was in his thirties, two inches shorter than Jane himself, with straight black hair cut military-short and a face which looked flat when viewed in full but sharp in profile. With the casual mention of ‘wapiti’… Most likely part-Native American, intelligent, furious and distraught over the loss of his team—more than happy to have CBI backup. Points in his favor; Patrick was inclined to like the man.

The Sheriff continued, “We’ve got a seven-day sled-dog race starting end of the week, but that crowd doesn’t usually include folks into hunting or hand-loading either.”

“This one’s a Smith and Wesson. Forty-four,” Rigsby announced, as he picked up another spent round. He began collecting more casings. Van Pelt moved to the nearest desk. She examined the computer there before moving on to the next desk.

Austen glanced down at the casing. “One of ours, most likely. Smith and Wesson forty-four Special’s what the county settled on as official sidearm for the department.”

Lisbon stood. She unzipped her CBI parka and rested her hands on her hips. “Any of your people survive?”

“Yes, ma’am. My Assistant Sheriff, Sam Kelly, and my senior deputy, Carlos Morales.” His eyes drifted across to one of the desks. Along with a computer, it had a typewriter and a Dictaphone on it. Then he glanced a third time at the chalked outline behind the shattered chair.

Patrick sauntered over to the desk. He walked around it, not touching anything, careful where he put his feet. Tiffanie Phelps must have been the office secretary.

“Samantha Kelly?” Lisbon’s voice changed, sharp and soprano; her eyes narrowed. Some of the color faded from her tan. “How badly was she injured?”

He turned his full attention on Lisbon. Not only did Lisbon know that ‘Sam Kelly’ was a woman, she knew that the woman was Austen’s Assistant Sheriff. From the corner of his eye, he caught Grace pausing halfway into a chair. After a second, she slid all the way into it, then began typing. Another clue that the behavior was unusual.

Austen sketched out an arc from the broken wooden rail on the second level to a tape outline some three feet from it on the ground floor. “Came out of the interrogation room on the second floor is my guess—there’s fibers from her trousers on the rail up there and spent rounds on the floor next to it. She fell and landed here. They didn’t care if she lived or died, apparently, left her and ran out the back. She’s at County. Broken leg, contusions and abrasions, probably concussion. She’s unconscious; they’re waiting to see what happens when she comes around.” He folded his hands behind his back in “parade rest”. “You know Sam, Agent Lisbon?”

“I trained her when she joined CBI ten years ago.”

“She’s good, then,” Patrick said, putting just a little edge on it. Samantha Kelly wasn’t CBI any longer, and Teresa Lisbon wasn’t happy about that. And Sheriff Austen had been in the military. He would have known what ‘thirty-ought-six’ meant, which Patrick did not. Something to look up when they left here.

“Yeah.” Teresa looked around at the damage again. “And Deputy Morales?”

Austen gestured at the ground-floor office’s shattered door. “Took two rounds to the chest and one to the head. He’s in surgery, still.”

“Still?” Van Pelt checked her watch.

Patrick didn’t need to glance at his Rolex. It had taken them two and a half hours to reach Royale from Sacramento. The call from the Sheriff’s office had been an hour before that.

Lisbon cocked her head, examining the Sheriff. “Where were you when all this happened?”

“Mayor’s office. County Planning Commission meeting, discussing the setup for this sled-dog shindig. Going to be a hell of a headache. Can’t be cancelled.” Austen’s lips compressed. “Worse headache now.” He eyed Lisbon thoughtfully. “You would be Tracy, then.”

Cho’s head jerked up. Rigsby twisted around, both eyebrows raised. The clack of keys from Grace’s desk stopped.

Pink crept up Lisbon’s face. “Yes.”

Something to remember. Patrick flicked a glance through the now-open window. Fragments of the metal blinds swayed in the air coursing through the building. “Who was in the office with Deputy Morales?”

Austen scrutinized him. His dark eyes flicked from Patrick’s consultant badge to his face. His expression said he recognized Patrick, but he made no comment. “Brandon Innis. Local man, but new to the area. Been here about two and a half years. We haven’t been able to notify his family yet.”

Cho said, “Why the back door?”

Austen jerked his chin at the street. “No parking on the street. It’s posted throughout the downtown. Only way to avoid problems with traffic in peak seasons. People park in the lot out back, walk around to the front. Or walk down from Main and in the front door. Nobody saw them go in the front door. If they’d parked in front, it would have drawn attention.” Now he gestured to the desk nearest the door. “That’s Quincy’s desk. He’d have been on his feet and to the door before anyone made it there.” He pointed at the tape outline near that desk. “But that’s where we—Mayor Wando and I—found him. Facing the back door.”

Cho nodded.

Patrick looked at the desks again. “Who else was in the office?”

“It’s a weekday; we were full-staffed. Quincy Benedict, Tiffanie Phelps—” Sheriff Austen choked on the name, then snapped his fingers. “Damn. I completely forgot. Dean Phelps wasn’t in; he’s on suspension.”

Lisbon’s head jerked up at that. “Suspension? Why was that?”

Austen’s back stiffened. His mouth tightened, dangerous small lines deepening around his eyes.

“Oh, that’s to be expected,” Patrick interrupted. He smiled at the Sheriff and at Teresa, then shrugged. “I mean, once Tiffanie got a restraining order against her husband, who was not only a deputy but a co-worker, a suspension would be the next step, wouldn’t it? I suspect it was the talk of the county.” He didn’t glance at the wastebasket sitting next to the desk where the nameplate Tiffanie Phelps sat untouched. In the wastebasket, a picture of a blond man and a bleached-blonde Hispanic woman embracing lay face-up, the glass in the frame cracked by the force of the drop.

Rigsby had frozen, watching the Sheriff’s blank face and Lisbon’s raised eyebrows. Now he dropped the last shell delicately into a plastic envelope, sealed it, then braced it against his notebook to sign across the seal. He stood up, the tallest man in the room, and began stowing the collected evidence into the bag, moving with the fastidious care so notable in such a big man.

“Yeah,” said Austen. “Ex-husband. They’ve been divorced three months.”

Lisbon relaxed a fraction. “Restraining order?”

Dark eyes didn’t waver. The Sheriff sounded grim. His fingers tapped his belt. He glanced over at Tiffanie’s desk. “Yeah, restraining order. Dean’s got a bit too much temper. Tiffanie grew up over the ridge in Verellen, but he’s from Los Angeles. Not much sympathy for him.”

“I’ve got security camera feeds, ma’am,” said Grace.

“Good.” Lisbon’s eyes flickered back and forth. Then she nodded at her. “You—”  she turned to look at Cho, “and Cho see what you can get from them.” She started to step away, then paused. “And canvass the shops across the street once you’ve checked the recordings.”

She folded in the fingers of one hand, then turned to smile at Austen. “Sheriff, could you help Agent Rigsby locate Dean Phelps?”

That left him. On cue, Lisbon turned to him. She took a breath, braced herself, then said, “Jane, you and I are going to County Hospital.”

When they left the building, their breaths spread out white in the frigid air of the Lakes Basin, into mare’s tails, before dissipating. Patrick shivered in spite of his coat. Royale was a good forty degrees colder than Sacramento, with no concrete towers to hold in heat. Lisbon’s peacoat couldn’t be much warmer than his cashmere, but she seemed more comfortable with the winter chill.

Across the street, the florist’s shop window exposed curious townspeople, four or five of them, more discreet than the gawkers who pretended to be examining the shop windows while they watched the scene sidelong. Observers could be useful, but the crowds at crime scenes were like worn brakes; they screeched and dragged and grated. Patrick gritted his teeth and hunched his shoulders. Down the street, kept back by orange cones, a news crew had parked their van and adjusted their satellite dish. He slid into the Suburban, then rested his elbow on the window’s edge, blocking his face.

Patrick waited until they were back on Main Street before opening the subject. “You know, it’s not your fault you haven’t been in touch with Samantha Kelly recently.”

“Yes, I know—” She stopped. “Don’t start. I don’t feel guilty.”

“Of course you do. But you’re right. It’s not your fault.”

He saw her eyes roll. But she leaned back against the seat. “She must have come out of the upstairs office when the shooting started.”

“Unless—”

“No unless.” That shot out like a bullet itself. Lisbon scowled. She glanced at the speedometer and took her foot off the gas.

Patrick folded his arms. “Personally, I like Dean Phelps for it. Going postal and all that. Especially since Tiffanie was dating the Sheriff.”

“Jane—”

He ignored the warning. “Sheriff Austen prefers your friend Sam, but she shot him down. He’s not one to turn down an attractive woman.” He raised a finger. “However, she’d have to be intelligent as well as attractive, so Tiffanie couldn’t have been your stereotypical Tiffanie.”

Lisbon shook her head.

“You both liked The Philadelphia Story and High Society?” He faced forward, but watched her from the corner of his eye.

“What—” She bit off the word, shifted in the seat, and sighed. “Yeah.”

Patrick glanced at her. All right, so now we go for the ringer…  He looked straight ahead as he applied the shocker. “You know, Sheriff Austen thinks you have a terrific ass.”

“Jane!”

He slipped the hook in while she was off-guard. “So why are you so angry she left CBI?”

“She was good. She was damn good. Top-notch evals, fast-tracked, could have headed a team of her own before I did, and I was her trainer. And she dumped it all—” She caught herself and sat back, her lips clamped together.

“To come back to Podunk, Iowa.” He let the words pour out like melted chocolate. Bitter, of course.

Her jaw set, but she spoke anyway. “Told me she was homesick.” Lisbon stopped at a light, flicked her turn signal, and swung the Suburban right.

“And you didn’t believe her.”

Nothing for a second. He let her brood. Finally, she shook her head. “There was something else. She wouldn’t admit it, but there was something else. I just never knew what.”

“Family?”

Another shake of her head answered the question, but he’d nudged her into a more forthcoming mood. “Her family’s dead, except for a great-aunt somewhere in Indiana. Look. Sam is not a suspect. This isn’t her.”

“Unless she’s changed.”

Lisbon glanced at him, her eyebrows drawn down and her eyes grim. “I know Sam Kelly, Jane. Drop it.”

He nodded and folded his arms. He could wait.

*** *** ***

Carlos Morales was still in surgery. The receptionist could tell them nothing except that his condition was “guarded”.

Lisbon’s next goal was the morgue. The coroner was young, Caucasian, deeply tanned, with bulging arms and thighs, a snub nose, wide brown eyes, and dishwater blond hair cut close to his scalp. A body builder with a baby face and another interesting characteristic: Dr. Ripper (ironic name, that—Patrick resisted the urge for a pun) was gay.

Patrick looked over the three bodies: Tiffanie Phelps, the dead secretary, with the blood washed away from her mocha skin; Quincy Benedict, his coffee-colored skin gone grey, his carefully manicured nails incongruous against the terrible wounds on his arms; Brandon Innis, blond, tanned, with half-healed scratches on his left arm, a bruise on his forehead, and bruises on his chest and arms. “Wonder how the townspeople felt about a gay man as deputy?”

The coroner glanced up. His brown eyes narrowed; his voice acquired a defensive note. “Quincy was a good man. Easy-going, pleasant, quiet. He’s not the only queer in Royale, or the surrounding area. Wasn’t anyone’s business what he did in his free time, and he didn’t cruise, if that’s what you’re implying.”

Patrick stopped smiling. He studied the coroner. “How long had you been involved with Deputy Benedict?” From his periphery, he saw Lisbon’s eyebrows arch.

Nothing broke the silence for a moment. Then a deep sigh shook the man’s body. He said, “A year. We’d been corresponding for two before that, saw each other two or three times a year before I moved here.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He knew that wound, the one that wouldn’t heal, that left you alone when you were busy, that was always there when you relaxed, that stabbed you through the heart when you contacted something that hauled a memory up from some deep chasm, like a shark on a hook.

Dr. Ripper glanced away, coughed, stared at the far end of the room and blinked hard. He took a deep breath, then managed to speak with professional calm. “Thank you.”

Lisbon pointed at Innis’ right temple. “That doesn’t look like it happened in the attack.”

“No. I noticed that once I washed off the blood. It’s antemortem, yes. I’d estimate it happened one, maybe two hours prior to death.” He touched the chest bruising with a gloved finger. “These are even older.”

She nodded.

Patrick broke in. “Looks like it was done by someone who was left-handed.”

Another nod answered him. “And Mrs. Phelps, Doctor?”

An irregular bruise, beginning to fade at the edges, followed Tiffanie’s left jaw. Someone had punched her—probably the ex-husband.

“Antemortem, but two to three days old. Probably happened Sunday.”

Lisbon’s head lifted. “Why Sunday?”

“There was a—” the coroner rubbed the back of his neck, fumbling for words, then settled for, “an incident between Tiffanie and Dean.”

“I thought there was a restraining order.”

Dr. Ripper sighed. “There was. You ever know one of those that was worth the paper it was printed on?”

She shook her head. “No, you’re right. Deputy Benedict was involved?”

“No, he wasn’t on call. Sam Kelly was; we heard the call from over the scanner, but he didn’t get a call for backup, so I suppose she handled it. Sam’s hell on wheels with domestics. We didn’t hear anything about the Sheriff being involved.”

“Why would Sheriff Austen have been involved?”

Patrick grinned. You’d think she’d believe me by now.

“He’s been seeing Tiffanie these last two months. Since her divorce. Dean didn’t take it very well.”

Lisbon’s eyes said that interested her. “Was there bad blood between them other than Mrs. Phelps?”

Dr. Ripper frowned. He ran a hand over his bristling hair. “Well, he did think that he should have gotten the Assistant Sheriff position. He’d been in the LAPD all of two years.”

“Deputy Phelps wanted more than that, didn’t he?” Patrick wove the impressions together in his head, and the answer appeared in turn. “He thought he should have been elected Sheriff, but he never won over the locals, did he?”

“It got worse after the first time he hit Tiffanie,” the coroner admitted. His eyes dropped. He shifted from one foot to the other.

“Samantha Kelly was the one who handled that?” Patrick knew the answer to his question, but he wanted the coroner’s response to it.

He looked at Patrick now, his pupils wide and his expression baffled. “I don’t know how you know—yes, she was. He went for her when she told him to get away from Tiffanie.”

“And he jumped her.”

“Tried to. She cold-cocked him; knocked him flat out with one punch.”

“Quincy saw that, too?”

“Yeah. Phelps was drunk, of course— This was the first time he stormed into the Sheriff’s office drunk after a fight with Tiffanie.”

Patrick said, softly, “And Quincy didn’t interfere?”

“If he had, Sam would have never been able to control the town.” Jonathan Ripper smiled. “Sealed her rep.”

“What did Austen think about it?”

“Gave Phelps his first warning and his first suspension. This is Phelps’ third suspension—the next time, he’s out of a job.”

Lisbon picked up on Patrick’s slant—she was improving at that. “Doctor, do you think Phelps might have done something like this?”

The doctor frowned and scrubbed his hand over his hair again. He glanced down at the corpses, exhaled, and then rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s got a nasty temper. Really nasty temper.”

In other words, maybe, but you don’t want to commit yourself. “Anybody in town who did like Phelps?” Patrick put his hands back in his jacket pockets.

“Clint McCloskey. Boy from Verellen, but a bad background. Nothing against him except a couple of DUIs—and his only traffic accidents were single-car, Quincy said.” Ripper crossed his arms. “Luther Crowson and Demetrius Brune. All of ‘em drank too much, talked too much trash.”

“Didn’t like gays?” Lisbon had it now.

Now he snorted. “Ask me who they did like. That would be a harder question.”

Patrick tag-teamed his partner—Lisbon was as good a shill as any he’d ever used. “Did they like anyone in the Sheriff’s office?”

“Well—no.” But the coroner wasn’t happy with his answer. “Look, Detectives—I don’t think…” He stopped. “Okay, Phelps was a loudmouth and a bully and I wouldn’t cry if he did turn out to be your perpetrator, but—”

“But?” Lisbon urged him on with the word and her expression.

“But there’s a difference between hitting someone smaller and more vulnerable than you are and shooting five people in cold blood!”

“We’re not sure it was cold blood, Doctor.” Lisbon jerked her head toward the door. “Thank you for your time. If we have more questions, we’ll be back.” In the corridor, Lisbon paused for a second. She crossed her arms and frowned. “It could still be some sort of terrorist cell.”

“Out here in the back of beyond?” Patrick mocked her, but left the mockery gentle.

“Any time you have semi-automatic rifles, you have to consider that.”

“All right. Why would terrorists shoot up a Sheriff’s office in Podunk, California?”

She threw up a hand. “I don’t know yet. And this isn’t Podunk, California, Jane. This is the county seat and the county contains about ten thousand people over a thousand square miles and ten towns. At the moment, we can only eliminate five of those people as suspects. We’re still working the evidence.” Her sidelong glance warned him she was about to try distraction. “It was the way his hands shook, wasn’t it? That’s what told you he and the deputy were lovers?”

He smiled, and shook his head. “Never give away the trick. Tells differ on everyone, remember? And technically, that’s four people eliminated.” Let her get away with it and she’ll think she won.

“And the trick gets you in trouble with casinos,” she said. She ignored his statement regarding the suspects as she led the way up to the main floor to locate the receptionist.

The DuLacs County Hospital served four surrounding counties; it contained a trauma center, an oncology department, a psychiatric ward, and a state-of-the-art imaging department. It also contained Doctor Alec McNulty.

McNulty hulked over the waiting room, his muscled arms held like a grizzly deciding whether or not to charge. Frizzy white hair against his craggy copper face suggested he was in his sixties or seventies. He towered above both Lisbon and Patrick—he would have topped Rigsby, even. His shoulders were broader than a linebacker’s. “There is no way you’re getting in to see Sam Kelly.” A lingering Scottish burr lent his voice a softness that clashed with his glower.

Lisbon pulled her badge and rank, but he scowled and dug in his heels. Patrick tapped her on the shoulder. “Can I speak to Doctor McNulty a moment, Agent Lisbon?”

She glared at him, but walked to the window, standing with her back to them, ostensibly staring out at the parking lot.

Patrick put a finger to his lips and rested one hand on McNulty’s shoulder. He directed his eyes to the floor, but watched the doctor’s face from under his lashes. As he lowered his voice, he assumed a confidential air. “Agent Lisbon is extremely distressed. Please make allowances for her. You see, she knows Samantha Kelly. She trained her—”

“When Sam spent that six years in Sacramento,” the old man said. He pursed his lips, studied Patrick, then studied Lisbon. He grimaced. “Aw, damn it. Agent Lisbon! Would you come here?”

She turned, looked them both over, then stalked back across the room.

McNulty ran a hand over his Albert Einstein hair. “You need to understand that she may not be able to tell you anything. She’s been in and out of consciousness since the fall. Her pupils are equal and reactive, and when she was awake, she was lucid, but unaware of where she was or why she was here. She has displaced oblique fractures of the distal tibia and the proximal fibula in her left leg. The ER was able to stabilize the break by immobilization with a full-leg cast, but once she’s fully conscious, she’s going to be in a great deal of pain. And we haven’t told her anything about the assault or the other deputies’ deaths. You need to go easy with her.”

Lisbon smiled. The smile softened her, made her look less imposing. It’s why she doesn’t smile much at the office. “We’ll do that, doctor,” she said. “Thank you.”

He waved a hand at the end of the hall. “Last room. 420.”

The hum of medical equipment and the stench of disinfectant greeted them. Lisbon took a deeper breath, then walked in. She hesitated at the foot of the bed.

The woman in the bed looked as if she might be in her early twenties, but according to the numbers, had to be nearer thirty. The left side of her pale face was one massive bruise, currently in the blackening phase. She must be pretty under normal circumstances. Severe prettiness, though: pale-skinned, straight sharp nose, and black eyebrows to go with the straight black hair. A thread of familiarity niggled at the back of his mind.

Teresa studied the monitors. She stepped forward to lay her hand on Samantha’s left hand, where the saline drip ended in a needle. He knew something about hospital monitors after years of his previous work; these all said positive things.

“Sam? Sam, it’s Teresa Lisbon.” Yes, there was a tremor in Lisbon’s even voice, slipping past her control. “We need to ask you a few questions. Sam, can you hear me?”

Long black eyelashes fluttered. The deputy shifted in the bed. A groan escaped. The eyes opened: dark green irises against her ivory skin, with the black pupils first huge, then shrinking to normal: equal and reactive, as the doctor said.

Classic black-Irish background, like Lisbon. Classic, but not usual in the US, and less usual in California. He remembered—no, not this face, but something. Maybe it was just that she and Lisbon had the same coloring, although Lisbon was more tanned. And she wasn’t a ‘Sam’. Definitely a ‘Samantha’.

Samantha Kelly’s eyes flicked across the door, then met his etes. All color disappeared from her face. She jerked, as if to pull away, gasped, and grabbed for her leg.

Lisbon put her hand on Kelly’s shoulder this time. “Sam! Easy. Take it easy.”

The green eyes snapped to her. Her shoulders tensed again, then slowly loosened. After a moment, Samantha frowned. “Tracy? Did I oversleep?”

Lisbon’s lips twitched. “No, not at all.”

Patrick interrupted, focusing on the woman’s face, with her hands in his periphery and her hoarse voice in his ears. “Do you know what day it is, Samantha?”

“Wednesday,” she said, immediate and certain. She stopped. A frown darkened her face. Her eyes narrowed. Her fingers twitched. “Yes, Wednesday. I get the bagels today.”

“Bagels?” Teresa leaned forward.

“Royale’s not such a hole as that, Lisbon. We’ve got the only kosher bakery in five counties.” That came out as definite as if she were picking up the thread of a conversation held yesterday. She struggled to pull herself upright in the bed.

He picked up the remote, then raised the head of the bed.

She shifted until she found a comfortable position. “Tracy? What are you doing here?” Samantha lifted her left hand, looked at the needle, then at the tube, and then around the room. “Was there an accident?”

Lisbon picked up his line. “What do you remember?”

“It’s Wednesday. I get the bagels today. I did get—” She grabbed the bedrail with her right hand. “Damn, my leg hurts.” Her eyes widened; her face blanched. “There were shots. There were shots—Tracy!” Her eyes turned wild with fear. “The others—are the others hurt?”

Patrick took a step closer. He rested his fingers on her right forearm, curling them around the narrow wrist, feeling the muscles under the skin twitch and tighten. Strong hands, solid wrists. The knuckles on her left hand showed scrapes and bruises; the nails were broken. Both hands themselves were well-kept otherwise, her nails clipped short. Samantha’s fingers closed on the blanket under her hand. Her pulse hammered under his fingers, rapid but strong. A second after he took her pulse, she pulled her hand away from his: a convulsive reaction. Her eyes slid sideways, met his, and she yanked her gaze back to Lisbon.

“This is Patrick Jane, Sam. He’s consulting—”

“I know who he is.” Sam inhaled. The pulse rate on the monitor dropped into the sixties. An athletic woman: having a broken leg would be an irritation. “Tracy—Teresa—Agent Lisbon. Tell me what happened. Please.”

Lisbon’s voice sounded gentle but insistent. “First I need to know what you remember about today.”

Samantha closed her eyes. The motion of her eyes, back and forth, showed beneath the closed lids. Her fingers tightened on the blanket. “I came in. We were joking around about the OT we would have over the next week, due to the sled race—Carlos said he was going to get his wife a fur coat this year. I said he’d just do better to buy more diapers; it’s going to be twins this time.” She opened her eyes; her lips compressed. She shook her head. “I remember I was upstairs. And the back door opened, and then there was a shout. Tiffanie screamed. Then I heard these pops—”

Patrick kept his voice low, as well, soothing, trying to slip in under her conscious radar. “What kind of pops?”

“Haven’t heard it since I left Sacramento. Like on the training range. High-powered rifle fire. Semi-automatic,” she said. “I ran out, I drew my weapon.” She rubbed her forehead. “I fell through the railing.” Her eyes widened once more. She yanked the blanket and sheet away from her left leg. When she saw the cast, she let go of the breath she’d held. “The others. Lisbon, I have to know. What happened? How badly are they hurt? Who did this?”

Lisbon struggled with the decision. Patrick made it for her. “You’re the only one who can tell us that, Samantha. That’s why we’re asking you.”

For the first time, she met his eyes willingly. In fact, her eyes hunted his, frantic for an answer. Either she guessed, or she managed to read something he hadn’t meant her to read, because her eyes shut again. “Oh, no. Oh, God, no.”

“Carlos is in surgery,” Lisbon said. She glared over Sam’s head at him.

What happened to the ‘buck up, soldier’ routine?

Samantha opened her eyes, looked at Lisbon and then back at him. Patrick nodded.

All he could read in those green Irish eyes was misery. Too much misery. Samantha Kelly acted as if she were innocent. And if she were innocent, and as good a cop as the evidence said, then her next reaction should be…

“Get this damn bedrail down,” Sam said. She reached for the needle in her hand.

Yes. Lisbon was right. The suck it up attitude is there. Lisbon and she have a lot in common. Stands to reason they’d be friends or enemies.

Lisbon grabbed her before she pulled out the drip. “Hey, hold on. Wait a minute.”

She stopped, but not because of Lisbon’s restraining grip. “Is Kick okay?” Her eyes flicked back and forth, and then she sighed. “He wasn’t there. He was at the mayor’s.”

“Kick? Sheriff Austen is Kick?”

She’s heard about Austen in another role, then. Lover? Friend? Patrick set it aside for later consideration.

“Yes. Cordell Austen is Kick. Is he all right?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” Lisbon put a hand on her shoulder, pushing Sam back against the pillow.

Samantha scowled at Lisbon and sat up again. “I need to get this damn thing out of my hand. And I need my clothes.”

Lisbon leaned forward, the whole force of her personality bearing down on the deputy. “You lie down. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”

 “If it were you and your team had been killed, would you be in a bed?” Sam’s eyes and voice were ragged scalpels.

“I’d follow my doctor’s advice.”

A snort answered. “And bears use Charmin.”

Picking the moment, Patrick interceded. “The best way you can help us is to remember what happened.” He gave it a two-second count, then added, “Who came in?”

Another immediate response. “Flannel shirts,” she said. “Three. Flannel shirts--lumberjack shirts.” Her mouth tightened, the lines drawing in around her eyes as well, as she dredged up flashes of memory. “Ski masks.”

Lisbon sighed.

“Come on,” he said, dropping his voice into a slow even purr. He rested his fingers on her wrist once more. This time when her eyes met his, she didn’t pull away from him. She stared at him. No, not exactly at him. She had some practice at focusing; she was looking through him, reading memories. “Blonde curls,” she said. “Blonde curls hanging down from her ski mask.”

“A blonde woman?”

 “Or a man with long blond hair?” Lisbon interrupted.

He looked at Lisbon, reminding her that this was his area of expertise. She frowned, but pressed her lips together, waiting.

“Samantha.” He opened his fingers and rested his palm on the back of her hand. He kept his voice to a low monotone, matching it to her breathing. “I want you to look back in your memories. Something about the figure suggests a woman to you. What about the blonde curls beneath the ski mask makes you think you see a woman?”

Her eyelids flickered. “Blonde curls. Long. Small hands.” Then she yanked her hand away once more. Her pulse sped up; the numbers on the monitor jumped. Her breathing shortened, sharpened. “Don’t do that.” She glared at him, then at Lisbon. “I will not be hypnotized.”

Patrick raised both hands. “I only want to help you remember.” He gave it a beat, then switched gears, putting anger in place of gentleness. “You want the people who shot your coworkers to get away?” He smirked. “Maybe you have a reason for that?”

She didn’t give him any ‘how dare you’. She lunged at him. Her casted leg slammed against the foot of the bed. Samantha Kelly yelped; her face drained of color. She dropped back as if someone had cut her strings. Her eyes defocused; she gasped as if all the wind had been knocked out of her.

Dr. McNulty blew in like a hurricane. “What in the hell is going on in here?! I told you people to take it easy.”

Lisbon stopped him with a hand to his chest. “We’re fine. Sam will settle down in a moment.”

“Lights,” said Samantha.

Patrick heard it. “What lights?”

“Off her nails.”

“Her nails glittered?”

“I—yes, I think so. They reflected light when she was shooting.”

“But she didn’t hit you?”

“I went flat, and then I rolled away. The bullets splintered the railing and when I tried to get to my feet, I crashed through them. I think—” Her breaths eased out into normal rhythm. “No. That’s it. It’s just black after that.”

“Before that,” Patrick said.

“That’s all I remember. The shots and the figures.”

“Who else was in the office?”

“Everyone but Sheriff Austen.” She paused. “No. No, Dean wasn’t there. He was on suspension. He’d violated the restraining order on Sunday and I was on call. I had to break it up.”

“How hard had he hit her?”

“He was drunk. He punched her in the face. He’s lucky he didn’t break her jaw. I grabbed the frying pan before she hit him with it. Or hit me with it, waving it around.”

Lisbon lifted an eyebrow. “How’d he take to being bossed around by a woman?”

“I had to cuff him and get him into the back of the car. By the time I got him back here, he wasn’t in a fighting mood. I dumped him in the holding cell and let him cool his heels overnight.”

“How big is Dean Phelps?” Patrick estimated Samantha’s height to be nearly five-eight, possibly five-nine, four inches or more taller than Lisbon and near Grace’s height. Bared by the hospital gown, her arms and legs showed muscles: maybe one-thirty, one-forty in weight.

“Six-three, six-four,” Samantha said. “Skinny for his height. Surfer dude.” She shrugged. “I can handle a drunk.” She slapped the bedrail. “Lisbon! I’m not letting you two jerk me around. Get me out of this damn hospital!”

McNulty stepped in. “Sam, as your doctor—”

“As my doctor, you know if I have to stay here, I’m going to fret and fidget and chew my nails unless you sedate me. I’ll be in worse shape than I would be if you’d just get me some clothes and let me out of here. I’m going to get out of here one way or another. I’m no use in here.”

“Sam,” Lisbon said, then paused. She sighed, rubbed the back of her neck, then went on, “What if whoever shot up the office comes after you?”

“Then they’re more likely to come here than the office,” was the prompt reply. “And where am I going to be safer than with more cops around? If they come after me while I’m with you, at least you’ve got weapons.”

Lisbon crossed her arms. “You haven’t changed. You always have an answer, don’t you?”

Sam opened her mouth, then thought better of it. She closed her teeth on her lower lip, then, after a few seconds, said, “No. Not always.”

“I think,” Patrick said, “it might be a good idea to let her see the office. It might help restore her memories.”

“Retrograde amnesia.” McNulty scowled at him. The man smoked a pipe, but not in the hospital, apparently. “It’s not a matter of her having forgotten her keys. This is a brain injury.”

Patrick tilted his head back, looking up the doctor. “But amnesiacs do have unpredictable reactions to stimuli and locations. Deputy Kelly is attempting to remember specific incidents in an environment totally unlike that in which the assault occurred. I have had success in previous cases when I brought a woman back through the environment where an incident happened.”

“Aw, damn it.” The doctor rubbed a hand over his skull again. “You can’t wear the uniform you came in with, Sam. We had to cut it off to treat you.”

“I came in without my coat, didn’t I? And You didn’t cut off my boots, did you?”

“No, I admit we didn’t.”

“Then get me my boots and a pair of scrubs and find somebody to loan me a coat.”

He scowled again. “Aw, damn it. All right, I’ll get them to give you scrubs. And you can borrow my coat.”

*** *** ***

Rigsby let the Sheriff knock on the trailer door. He looked around the trailer park: three to five acres of seventy-five to one hundred trailers, most of them double-wides like this one. Some were carefully tended; others, like this one, needed paint and had concrete blocks visible through the gaps in the skirting, with the concrete steps in front pockmarked from freeze and thaw. The parking spot was clean, though, and the dark blue pickup sitting in it gleamed.  “I see what happens when you divorce your wife. She gets the house.”

Austen stepped back, examining the park. “Tiffanie was a local. So is the judge. Not the most unbiased situation, but it’s not unusual in a town like this. Insular.” He shrugged. “But the house she ‘got’ is a modular and not well-insulated. A level or two above a trailer, but that’s about it.”

The guy didn’t sound like what Rigsby expected a county sheriff to sound like. Clipped, cool, and good with procedure. “You spend your whole life here?”

Austen’s mouth twitched. “No. I spent ten in the Army.”

“Officer?”

“First Sergeant. Sergeants run the Army. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.” He pounded on the door with his fist a second time. “Came back two years ago, got elected Sheriff, and still am.”

“First Sergeant.”

“Yep. Two tours in Afghanistan, four in Iraq.” Austen sighed. He pounded on the door again. “Dean! Phelps, you in there? It’s Sheriff Austen—need to speak with you!”

Something inside the trailer thudded. Austen stepped down and back. Rigsby pushed his jacket back, slid his gun from its holster, and tucked his hand behind his back. Faster then having to pull it if the perp showed up with his own cocked and ready.

The door swung out. “You don’t have to break the damn door down.” Dean Phelps leaned on the doorjamb, glaring out at them through bleary red-rimmed eyes. His blond hair stuck up in punk spikes and he stank of booze—the hard stuff, not just beer.

Austen’s face turned into a brick wall. He folded his arms across his chest. “You been here all morning, Dean?”

“What business is it of yours?” Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. A yellowing bruise on his left cheekbone and healing scratches on his arms suggested that he’d violated that restraining order Jane had brought up. He peered at Rigsby. “Who the hell are you?”

Wayne showed his badge. “CBI.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not dead.”

“I can see that, Mr. Phelps.”

“Well, then, why you showing up on my doorstep with CBI, Austen?”

Shit, and the guy blusters, on top of everything else. Wayne cleared his throat. “Mr. Phelps, do you have any witnesses to your presence here this morning?”

“I haven’t had anybody in, if that’s what you mean.” He looked back at Austen. “Sheriff, what’s going on?”

Rigsby said, “Well,” at the same moment Austen did. He coughed, then motioned for the Sheriff to go ahead. Better to watch. I hate doing this.

“I’m afraid there’s been—an incident at the office.”

“An incident.” Dean tried to mimic the deliberate tenor and turned it into a falsetto. “What the hell is an incident?”

“Someone shot up the place.” Austen rested clenched fists on his hips.

Rigsby went on alert. Better keep an eye on him; he’s liable to go postal on Phelps if it turns out to be him…

“What d’you mean, somebody shot up the place? Those damn kids again?” Phelps reached out one long, wiry arm, trying for Austen’s shirt-collar. “This some kind of joke?”

“I don’t joke about shootings.” Austen inhaled, then measured out his words. “I’m sorry, Dean. Tiffanie’s dead. So is Quincy Benedict.”

“Dead? No, you’re wrong. She can’t be dead. Not my Tiff, not—” Phelps lunged down the concrete steps.

Austen stepped back.

Phelps swung at the Sheriff. Austen ducked. “You killed her, didn’t you, you goddamned Indian bastard! You couldn’t stand that we were meant to be together and you killed her!”

Austen’s hands clenched. Big hands. Boxer’s hands.

Phelps swung again. Austen rocked back, and the fist missed his face.

Damn, I wish Jane were here. I’d like to have his interpretation of the Sheriff’s expression. Wayne grabbed Phelps. Phelps kicked at him, struggling against the grip.

“If you weren’t drunk,” Austen said, “I’d kick your ass into the Pacific Ocean! You know the only people who ever hit Tiffanie were her father and you!”

 “You’re lying! She’s not dead. You’re just trying to shake me up. It won’t work! She’s not dead. She can’t be dead.” Phelps yanked at Rigsby’s arm. Rigsby gave up and wrapped his arm around the skinny neck. “Damn it! Let go of me! I’ve got to get to the station!”

Doors in the nearby trailers popped open. Heads craned out to see the entertainment. One woman, wearing an ankle-length leopard-print caftan and shoulder-length beaded braids, stepped out onto her concrete patio, planted her hands on her hips, and stared.

Dean Phelps finally gave up. He hung in Rigsby’s grip, panting. “Where is she?”

“County Hospital. In the morgue.”

“Lemme go.”

Rigsby looked at Austen, and Austen nodded. He released Phelps, and stepped away from him, ready to grab him again if necessary.

The Sheriff folded his arms. “You need to stay in town, Dean.”

“Oh, I’ll stay in town. At least until I find out who murdered Tiffanie.” Phelps stuck his chin out. “And if it was you, Austen—”

“Yeah? And if it were you?”

Silence. Phelps flushed brick-red. Then he jumped.

Finally, Austen swung. His fist connected with Phelps’ jaw.

Phelps staggered back, then collapsed on the ground. He sat there, stunned, then rubbed his jaw.

“You swing at me again and you’ll be picking your head up in Sacramento.” Austen straightened. “And you get yourself sobered up before you drive to County, or you’ll find yourself spending time in County Jail instead.”

“I could have you up for assault!”

“Self-defense,” the Sheriff said. “You swung on me twice. But you knock yourself out, Dean.” His lip curled as he stared down at the deputy. “You don’t change. You’re a drunk and a bully, but you’ll never bully Tiffanie again.”

“You bastard—” Phelps scrambled to his feet.

Austen kicked his feet out from under him; Phelps crashed back to the ground. He lay there, winded and panting. Austen turned and walked back to his truck, with Rigsby right behind him.

“You think he did it?” Rigsby studied the Sheriff’s profile.

“He might have beaten her to death, if he were drunk enough, but I don’t think he’d be the kind to go nuts with a rifle.” Austen shrugged. He swung himself into the car and stared out of the windshield at the man still on the ground. “Many have fallen with the bottle in their hand.”

Rigsby looked at him. No, he didn’t have any handle at all on what made Sheriff Austen tick. “Sounds profound when you put it that way.”

His shrug didn’t answer the comment, but after a moment more, Austen said, “Something my grandfather used to say. When you’re young, you hear your elders. When you get old, you start quoting them.”

*** *** ***

A firm rap at the front door interrupted, getting both Cho’s and Van Pelt’s attention.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway, her head swiveling as she surveyed the damage. She might have been an actress playing a modern Miss Marple: a very tall and thin elderly woman with a stoop, her salt-and-pepper hair cut very short but still curling up at the ends, dressed in a fuchsia turtleneck, black slacks, and black flats. Around her neck hung a pair of reading glasses on a jet-bead chain. She craned her neck and cocked her head, rather like a stork hunting for fish.

Grace smiled. No matter what the occasion, she knew how to come up with a believable smile. It didn’t seem to help much with Lisbon, but she couldn’t really read Lisbon. On the other hand, she hadn’t been in the unit long, and that might improve in the future. “May I help you?”

“I’m Liza Johnson. I own Flowers off Main, the shop across the street. I saw them taking out bodies—and before that I heard shots. Is everyone okay?”

Van Pelt glanced at Cho. He nodded. Van Pelt brightened; a chance to further advance her questioning skills.

“Would you come in, Ms. Johnson?”

“It’s Miss.” The woman sniffed. “I’m unmarried, not a manuscript.”

Grace smiled a second time. “Of course, Miss Johnson. Please come in. I think we can find you a chair.” She looked over the undamaged equipment, found a chair against the wall, and moved it to an empty desk in the corner. A further examination located another chair, this one spattered with drywall dust. She wiped it off with a fragment from one of the curtains, and set it next to the desk. “Here, sit down. You said you heard the shots?”

“Yes. I wasn’t sure they were shots, at first. Then the window shattered, and I knew they were shots.” She preened. “I used to be a very good shot when I was younger. I was in the WACS during the war.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She did not let herself get sidetracked enough to ask which war. “Did you see anyone before you heard the shots?”

“Didn’t you catch him?”

Cho gave up listening. “Catch whom, ma’am?”

“Mr. Innis. He and his wife are always arguing. They argue in my shop, they argue at the grocery store, they argue at the coffee shop. I figured he must have cracked, finally, and grabbed one of the deputies’ guns and shot them all.”

Cho did not roll his eyes. Grace blinked, then blinked a second time, absorbing the inaccuracy as well as the bias.

Cho said, “What time this morning did you see Mr. Innis come in?”

“Well, I’d just had my coffee break, so it would have been 10:30 am.” She hesitated, rolled her head back and forth, stork-like, then added, “Well, I would say between 10:30 am and 10:40 am.”

“How can you be so certain of the time?” As soon as he said it, Cho glanced at Grace. He grimaced as if apologizing, and sat back in the chair.

Miss Johnson clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Young man, I am a disciplined, organized person. I live above my store. I get up at 6:30 am, do my exercises, which require exactly thirty minutes, take a fifteen-minute shower, prepare and eat my breakfast, which requires an additional forty-five minutes, then go downstairs to open the shop. I sweep or shovel the sidewalk, which never requires more than thirty minutes, and then I water all the plants—” Her head bobbed up and down, the way that one of those plastic birds they put in front of water glasses did. “So important to do that, you know, because otherwise they don’t look their best when customers come in—and nothing cheers people up in the winter more than some nice bright green plants or even some hothouse roses—not that roses from the hothouse have the same intense scent as the ones you don’t force, but still—anyway, as I said, I watered the plants and rearranged the cut flowers and set the dying ones aside to strip for potpourri—I don’t believe in wasting anything, especially flowers.” At this point, she stopped for a breath.

Grace inhaled. She’d begun to think her face was going to freeze from trying to look interested.

“By then, it is always 10:15 am,” Miss Johnson continued, “or within two or three minutes of that time, and I stop for a cup of coffee and a cookie. Just to keep my blood sugar up, of course. So important when you’re older. That takes me no longer than fifteen minutes. And, of course, I checked the time when I rinsed out the cup and saucer.”

“Was his wife with him?”

“No. They’re not joined at the hip, which is likely a good thing, since they seem to end up arguing most of the time they’re together. I did see her driving their truck as I walked down Main Street, though. She was turned out like usual; hair curled, nails manicured. Always neatly dressed, even if she does wear jeans in public, which no lady should ever do. No reason to let yourself go even if you do work at home, young lady.” Miss Johnson tapped the desk firmly with her index finger. “Keep that in mind.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Behind her, Cho coughed. “So you heard the shots between 10:30 and 10:40 am.”

“Yes. Definitely before 10:45, because I heard the quarter-chimes on my mantel clock—well, it was my mother’s mantel clock, and her mother’s before that—after I heard the shots.”

She made a note. “And you saw Mr. Innis before the shots?”

“Well, no.”

Cho’s chair thumped against the floor. Grace glanced down, biting her lower lip.

Miss Johnson frowned. “But surely you have spoken to Ms. September?”

Cho leaned forward. “Miz Who?”

“Ms. Moonstone Nine September.” Miss Johnson’s sharp eyes darted back and forth. “I understand that Moonstone is the Ayurvedic birthstone for the month of September. The ninth month, of course. Ms. September runs the Nirvana Tea Shop and Meditation Center on the corner nearest Main Street. She saw Mr. Innis walking down towards the Sheriff’s office this morning. That was after I’d finished clearing the walk and had gone back inside.”

“And you know this because—” Grace waited.

“Because she told me, of course. Heavens, young lady, surely that was obvious. I did think that you’d have already canvassed the street. The public can’t do all of your work for you, you know.”

Cho started coughing again.

Grace said, “No, ma’am. Of course not.”

“Well, then. You’ll go speak to Ms. September and I will go back to my flowers. It’s almost time to close up for the day.” Liza Johnson stood up, nodded good-bye, and strode off briskly, taking care to close the front door gently. A fragment of glass wobbled and fell clinking onto the floor.

“I can’t,” Cho said. “You’ll have to.”

“I’ll have to what?” Grace turned in the chair.

“You’ll have to interview Ms.—Whatever. I can’t interview someone called Ms. September.”

Grace sighed. “I’d like to hear you tell Lisbon that.”

“She’s not here. I don’t have to. Please, please, Van Pelt. Don’t make me have to go and interview someone named Ms. September. I’ll—disgrace the team.”

She shook her head. “Wimp.” Grace collected coat, hat, and gloves. She checked for her badge and her weapon and then started for the door. She paused, with the door open. “You know, you owe me for this.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Not a problem.”

She stepped over the broken glass and started down the street. Thank God I wore the Uggs. I’d be freezing my toes off if I were wearing heels.

The Nirvana Tea Shop and Meditation Center was on the corner, a simple brick rectangle with two glass shop windows: one framed with lace curtains woven with squirrels in the center medallion and acorns and leaves woven through the valences, and the other covered with bamboo blinds.

A cascade of bells chimed as she stepped through the door. On her left, the open area was filled with tiny tables covered with white tablecloths. All of them were occupied: almost as one Stepford-wives unit, the occupants turned to look at her.

Like walking into one of my mother’s church committee meetings…  She nodded at the groups.

Next to the cash register was a curtained arch. The curtain slid back and a short woman in a sari stepped through it. She was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt beneath the sari, and embroidered shoes. Her platinum hair needed a touch-up—an inch of dark roots showed—and it lay in soft curls over her shoulders.  “May I help you?”

Grace showed her badge. “I’m from CBI…”

“Yes, of course! I’m so sorry I hadn’t made it down to talk to you, but my assistant is out sick today. Please come back to my office.”

“You must be—”

“Moonstone Nine September. That’s my DBA. My legal name is Gertrude Payne, but that sounds like a dominatrix and I don’t fit most people’s idea of a dominatrix. You can call me Trudy. Or Moon. Whichever you prefer.”

Grace blinked. She cleared her throat and took out her notebook. Moon held the curtain and motioned her into a large open room, painted a deep tranquil blue. Free-standing Japanese rice-paper screens divided the room into sections. Pillows, kneelers, and rolled yoga mats were arranged against the near wall. An archway opened in the near wall, and through the archway Van Pelt could see bamboo blinds. A Japanese tea room as well, then?

Three woman and two men sat full-lotus in a circle. Soft oms hummed like cats purring throughout the room. One of the men was actually still wearing black pinstriped trousers and a white Oxford shirt, although he had removed his tie.

“This is our meditation area,” Moon said, waving an arm. “But these clients already know what to do, so I don’t need to instruct them.”

A woman dressed in a ski outfit stuck her head into the meditation area. “Hey, Moon, there’s a guy from CBI looking for you and this lady, I think.”

Jane sauntered through the door, with his hands in his coat pockets.

Grace managed not to roll her eyes. Handling a witness was never easy when Jane rode shotgun.

He smirked, of course. Widely. Completely without any shame. “We were bringing Assistant Sheriff Kelly back from the hospital, and as we passed, I saw you coming in here, so I thought I’d tag along.”

“Sam’s out of the hospital?” Moon’s dark eyes widened. “How is she doing? Was she able to tell you what happened?”

He offered her a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met—Moon September, is it?”

“Yes.” She gestured at the room. “This is my business. Here, let’s give my clients some privacy.” She motioned for them to follow her and led the way into her office: a small space but not claustrophobic, with a state-of-the-art computer, a bookshelf, and a couple of file cabinets, labeled in sans-serif: Accounts, Yoga, Tantric, Zen, Tea Recipes, Vendors, Legal Papers, and Personal. “Sit down, please.” She motioned to the first chair, which was empty. She took a half-completed afghan off the second chair. Then, she pulled out her computer chair before seating herself.

“Moon September—?” Jane left the question dangling.

Grace waited.

“As I was telling Agent Van Pelt here, it sounds more suitable to teaching meditation and yoga then Gertrude Payne.”

He rested a finger against his lips, but the grin came back. “I can understand that.”

“But I know who you are, of course!” She grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “I’ve seen some of your television performances.”

His smile vanished. “I’m not a psychic.”

“Well, no, of course not. But that doesn’t make what you could do any less impressive.”

“Are you a psychic?” Knowing Jane’s tendency to brush off any spiritual or mystical matters, Grace decided to keep an open mind.

Moon laughed. “Me? No, not at all. I am a practicing Buddhist, and I teach meditation techniques and yoga, but that’s really the extent of it.” She looked around the small office and it seemed to satisfy her. “Half of succeeding in a business like this is marketing. Meditation and yoga help a great many people—yoga’s quite a good exercise and strengthening technique, as well as promoting flexibility, especially in my older clients. Meditation’s marvelous for relieving stress.”

Jane leaned back in the chair. His eyes were no less intense, but the posture said he’d settled something in his mind about their witness.

“I did know someone who had seen you in person—” She frowned. “It was some years ago—Oh! I remember now. Of course. It was Angie Kelly.”

Jane’s shoulders knotted; he cocked his head. “Any relation to Deputy Kelly?”

“Her younger sister—” Brown eyes widened in consternation, and she put a hand over her mouth for a second, before reaching toward him but not touching. The fluorescent light glinted off her silver-polished nails. “Oh, my God, don’t mention it to Sam. I can’t believe I forgot that Angela killed herself some time after that. My mouth is just like a faucet; you turn it on and everything just pours out.”

His hands came out of his pockets. He folded his arms across his chest, staring at Moon September, as if turning on a floodlight. “Killed herself?”

“Yes. Sam had been away in Sacramento, registering for medical school, and she came home to find Angie in the bathroom. She’d cut her wrists.”

“Where were their parents?”

“Mrs. Kelly died of cervical cancer when I was 13—Sam would have been 12. And six years later, Mr. Kelly died.”

“And they were alone since then?”

“Sam fought like hell to keep them from putting Angie in foster care. She got her dad’s aunt or great-aunt or second cousin or something to come out from Indiana and stay with them while she commuted back and forth to Sacramento for college. I don’t remember the details… Once she graduated, they were going to move to Sacramento. The aunt—I can’t remember her name, I don’t know why—had gone back to Indiana, Sam was setting up an apartment and everything, and Angie killed herself. I know she hadn’t wanted to move to Sacramento. Sam went to pieces—well, she went to Sacramento after all and your agency took her on. And then, five—no, four years ago—” Moon’s eyes widened; she put a hand up to her mouth again. “Oh, Mr. Jane…”

Grace stepped in at last, suspecting that Moon’s next words might be about Jane’s family. “Yes, of course. We’re actually here because Miss Johnson suggested that you might be able to tell us about the incident in the Sheriff’s office.”

“I can tell you what I saw, if it will help, of course.” She beamed at them. “Always important to help out the police.”

Jane leaned forward. “Just one question first—”

Too late, Grace told herself.

“Yes?”

“Where did you get your nails done?”

Moon blinked at him, then looked down at her nails with their metallic polish. “Oh, down at Betty’s. She’s got a new manicurist—came out here from New York and has a lot of ideas that are new around here—rhinestones or air-brushed designs on the nails, unusual colors, that sort of thing. Took off like a rocket, especially among the teenagers. Kids from three counties away show up on the weekends.”

Jane nodded. “Thank you.” He glanced at his nails. “Maybe it’s time I should get mine done; it’s been a while.”

Grace managed not to roll her eyes. “Ms. September, if you could tell us what you saw before the shooting?”

“I was sweeping off the sidewalk when Brandon Innis passed on the other side of the street.”

“What sort of car was he driving?” She did not intend for Jane to take over the conversation, as he usually did.

“No car. He was walking. His little girl was with him—Bethany. She’s home-schooled, so I wasn’t too surprised to see her with him. She didn’t look that well-dressed for the weather, which did surprise me. But they walk into town together pretty frequently, even though it’s a long walk for an 8-year-old. She’s a solid little girl, very strong and active, but—” Moon considered it, eyes narrowed, and added, “She was dragging a bit.”

“What time would that have been?”

“Shortly after ten. I went out at ten. It might have been five or ten minutes after that.”

Jane’s face acquired the blank expression that always made Grace uneasy. “Did you see what they did?”

“They walked up towards the Sheriff’s office. I thought probably he meant to stop and visit Sam.”

“Was that a common occurrence?”

“Well—” Moon turned pink. “He’d been sort of hanging around her when his wife wasn’t around. Bethany liked Sam, and I think he was using that as an excuse. Sam eats lunch here frequently, and when he’d come by, she’d whip out a book and pretend to be too interested for company. But he is married, and his wife’s a—” Pink darkened to cherry red; she cut herself off.

“Jealous?”

“Well, I was going to say she was a bitch, but that’s not really accurate. She was, well, rough with him—and with the little girl. I think the reason that Sam let Brandon come by the office was because Bethany liked to see her. And—well, Sam’s pretty intense when it comes to domestic stuff. Runs a self-defense class for women.” She considered that, then said, “She’s a little hard for some of the men to take. Not used to someone who’s that—” She hesitated.

Jane lifted one eyebrow. “Aggressive?”

The woman’s hackles rose like a cat’s. She tilted her chin up, drew her shoulders back, and glowered. “Assertive.”

“Ah.” He leaned back in the chair. He glanced down at his nails again, then folded his arms.

“I like Sam a lot. She’s really sweet when you get to know her, but some guys, you know, just can’t handle the—” She waved one hand in the air, then settled for a weak, “Assertiveness.”

Grace interrupted again. “So Mr. Innis and his daughter went up the street towards the Sheriff’s office?”

Moon nodded. “They stopped about halfway up the street and he picked her up—piggyback, you know—then went on up to the office. They went in.”

Grace chewed her lower lip. “Did either of them come out?”

“I heard that they brought out Mr. Innis’ body, but I haven’t heard anything about Bethany.” Moon’s round cheerful face paled; her eyes widened. “I thought either the Sheriff or you must be taking care of her—or had called her mother.”

Jane said nothing. He got up from the chair and left. He wasn’t running, but he did move fast enough that Grace heard the door slam before she got out of her chair.

Grace found a smile, even as worry swept up through her. No one had said anything about a little girl in the office. “We’re in the process of contacting all the relatives. I’m sure the Sheriff took care of everything.”

“Oh, good. Bethany’s such a sweet little girl.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Grace assured her, then hurried off after Jane, hoping to see where he’d gone before he completely disappeared and Lisbon asked her where he was.

When she got to the corner and looked both ways, she saw him halfway up the block, heading towards the crime scene—the Sheriff’s office. Since there was absolutely no way to know what Jane might do at any given moment, she went after him.

*** *** ***

Ignoring the ‘No Parking’ sign, Teresa parked the van in front of the office. She got out and opened the passenger door behind hers. The roads in early winter up here in the mountains weren’t the smoothest. Sam, of course, had pocketed the bottle of prescription pain pills given to her at the hospital instead of taking any. As she expected, Sam’s face was white to the lips, and she moved with all the caution of an invalid.

“Here. I’ll help.”

“I’m fine.” It was the expected answer. Teresa lost it a moment, which she wouldn’t have done with Jane as an audience.

“Damn it, Sam. There’s no weakness in letting me help you. You’ve got a severe fracture and probably a concussion and sometimes you just can’t make it on your own. That’s what we’re here for.”

“U2,” Sam said.

Teresa squinted at her, trying to figure out Sam’s answer.

“You know, the song.”

Sometimes you just can’t make it on your own. Sam had always been able to break up a tense moment with something that sounded like a non-sequiter but ended up making sense. She shook her head. “Someone’s going to shoot you for that sense of humor one of these days.”

“Hey, make ’em laugh, isn’t that the goal?” Sam pulled out the crutches, paused, winced, and said, “Yeah. I could definitely use some help here. I wish I could remember what the hell happened.”

“You will.” She took the crutches away and rested them against the side of the SUV. “Careful with that cast.”

“Doc’s too sneaky. It’s why he casted my knee bent, so I couldn’t put any weight on this damn leg.” Sam slid down onto her good leg, then balanced against the door while Teresa got the crutches. As she tucked the crutches under her arms, Sam lifted her head and looked her in the eyes. “I’m glad they’ve got you on this one, Tracy.” She twisted her mouth and corrected herself. “Teresa. Lisbon.”

She coughed, glanced away, and blinked. Damn glad Jane’s not here. I’d never live this down. “If you’d wanted me to come for a visit so badly, you could’ve just told me, you know.”

A smile slid across Sam’s face, then vanished. “Next time I will.” She started across the sidewalk. Teresa shut the door and followed her.

Two men were nailing plastic sheeting across the broken window. They’d already covered the door with the same thick clear plastic, braced with two by eights. As she held the door for Sam, she heard Cho using his ‘explaining voice’.

“Here, I’ve got it marked at the start of the assault. Looks like it took seventeen minutes from the time they came through the back door to the time they left. They shot out the parking lot security cameras as they came in—I have a fragment of a license plate number and a blurred view of a blue Chevy pickup.”

Teresa counted heads. She was missing Van Pelt and Jane, but had acquired Rigsby and the Sheriff. She urged Sam forward to one of the remaining intact chairs, but Sam dug in her good heel and her crutches and rooted herself in the center of the floor.

Rigsby turned, saw them, and tapped Cho’s shoulder.

The Sheriff leaned over and squinted at the screen. “Lot of blue Chevy pickups around here,” Austen said. “Mine’s blue, in fact. Well, but it’s a Ford.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And an Expedition, not a pickup. And that camera’s out of focus.”

Cho glanced up at him, frowned, then motioned towards the back door. “And the security camera focused on the back door wasn’t working.”

“Cho,” said Teresa. She left Sam on her own and crossed the room to where he sat.

He got up, pointing at the screen. Austen climbed up the stairs to the security camera. He pressed a key to eject the tape, then lifted the camera out of its stand to examine it.

“We have a problem?”

Cho glanced at Sam, nodded to her, then gave Teresa his full attention. The expression in his eyes said he knew she wasn’t going to like this. “The security camera feed shows a short blond man and a girl—blonde, somewhere between, say, six and ten—walking in through the front door. Timestamp says ten-ten. Confirms a witness account.”

“Which one?”

“Liza Johnson. Owns Flowers on Main, across the street.”

“A little blonde girl?” Sam swung around on the crutches, wobbled, lost her balance, and toppled sideways.

Rigsby dove like a man going for a football. He grabbed her before she hit the ground.

Austen bounded down the stairs. “Easy, Sam!” His voice sliced through the room. “No point in banging yourself up more than you already have.” He reached for her, but Rigsby warded him off.

“I’ve got her. Here, sit down here, Deputy—” Rigsby co-opted Cho’s chair in front of the monitor and parked her in it.

“Sam,” she said. “Call me Sam. Thanks. Still a little shaky on my feet.” She shucked off Doctor McNulty’s parka, looking like an Inuit crawling out of an igloo.

Austen scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be here. You ought to be in the hospital.”

“Tell it to the Marines, Sarge.”

A grin flickered, replaced by a sober expression. Austen rubbed his eyes. “If Tiffanie weren’t dead, I’d kick her ass. She was supposed to keep track of the cameras. The backup tape in there’s so old it’s dusty.” He looked at his watch. “I’m going to try calling Mrs. Innis again.”

Teresa focused on the fact. That sounded… wrong. “You haven’t been able to contact her yet? She’s not at the hospital?”

He shook his head. “Not answering her phone. I’ve called her three times since eleven o’clock.”

Sam leaned forward to peer at the screen. “Bethany was here, with Brandon? Where are they now?”

Cho turned the computer screen towards her and tapped in some information. The on-screen record blurred forward then stopped. “Here, you see, are a man and a little girl walking through the door. The Sheriff identifies them as Brandon and Bethany Innis.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, that’s them.”

A young Latina woman with blonde streaks in her brunette hair looks up from her PC, smiles, and turns. Sam Kelly comes out from the back office and stops, then crosses the room. Her face reads as wary, the look she used to wear when she entered crime scenes. Bethany reaches up to her. Sam smiles, crouches down, and hugs her. Brandon says something, but the feed is too pixilated, and he’s turned away from the camera, so lip-reading isn’t possible. Whatever it is galvanizes Sam. She stands up, turns, and a middle-aged Latino man gets up from his chair in response. After further conversation, Sam takes Bethany’s hand and leads her out of the frame. Carlos heads back for her office with Brandon Innis.

Cho stopped the feed.

Sam shut her eyes a moment, then looked up at the Sheriff. “My God, Kick, they were here when it happened?”

Austen exhaled, then nodded.

Sam sat back in the chair, took a breath, and then said, “Is he alive?” Her voice wasn’t cold, but it was controlled.

Austen shook his head.

“Where was he killed?”

Lisbon folded her arms and looked at Austen. He looked back at her, then turned his attention back to Samantha. “He and Carlos were in your office; it looked as if Carlos had started to get up and draw his gun. You don’t remember them? Don’t remember why they were here?”

She leaned forward, elbows on her thighs and her hands in her hair. “I’ve got this gap in my head. I keep running into this blank wall. I can’t get past it. I remember coming into work, and then it’s just these—flashes—until I fall through the railing.”

The outer door slammed.

Lisbon swung around.

Jane strode into the room, all of his saunter and swagger vanished. His eyes swept across the room. “Have you found Bethany Innis?”

Austen’s dark eyes narrowed. “No. How did you know about Bethany?”

Jane ignored him. He scrutinized Sam, who was staring down at the floor, her forehead furrowed, her mouth tight. Then he darted up the near stairs to the interrogation rooms.

Teresa went after him. Behind her, the door opened and shut again. Grace, out of breath, gasped, “Is Jane here? Did you find Bethany Innis?” Teresa stopped, turning back to observe.

Multiple feet and voices intertwined, explanations and questions interweaving below the stairs.

Van Pelt, talking to Sam. “According to Ms. September, he visited you frequently.”

Sam half-swallowed her words. “I couldn’t kick him out of here. I avoided him as much as I could. I felt sorry for him.”

“Why would you feel sorry for him?”

“He was—” She stopped.

“Pussywhipped,” Austen said, dryly. “I asked him to leave once myself. After that, I’d just wander out after a few minutes, and he’d take off.”

“Deputy Kelly,” that was Cho, “you said you remember flashes? What sort of flashes?”

“Ah—” She ran a hand through her tangled hair. “There were three of them. Two average-sized, one shorter. They wore ski masks and lumberjack shirts—flannel plaid shirts—and jeans. The short one had blonde curls.”

“A woman?”

Sam rubbed her forehead. “I think so. It seemed like a woman, but I’m not sure why.”

Teresa turned back to the stairs. Jane was already into the first interrogation room. Nothing in there but a two chairs and a desk with sides which almost touched the floor. He knelt and peered under the desk, then shook his head.

Austen’s voice this time, a drill sergeant bark. “Sam. Do you remember why you were upstairs when the assault happened?”

“The only reason I would have been up there because I was with someone.” She exhaled. “It must have been Bethany—”

She looked around the room. No closets, of course. Nothing but the observation room which backed onto it.

Rigsby, now. “Had anyone else come in who might have been up there with you?”

“I can’t remember!”

Cho, probably leaning over the desk. “Try!”

“I am trying, damn it!”

Grace sounded out of breath once more—she’d been checking something. “Nothing in the closets or the washrooms. Deputy Kelly, if Bethany had been with you when the shooting started, what would you have done?”

“There’s a door that leads into the observation area for Interrogation One. I’d have shoved her in there and told her to hide under the desk—its skirt touches the floor and she’d be hidden, and it’s metal—it would deflect bullets.”

The one-way glass was still intact; Teresa opened the door to the abutting room and checked it.

Jane paused in the doorway.

She shook her head. He passed her, went to the second of the three rooms, and searched it. She went around him to the third room, checked it and its observation area, but came up empty-handed again.

Patrick was coming out of the last door as she came out of the third interrogation room. “Bathroom,” he said. “Not there.”

She exhaled. Not good. She pitched her voice to carry. “She’s not up here.” She completed her circuit of the upper story by taking the back stairs down to the first floor. “Sheriff, can you try Mrs. Innis again?”

“Yeah.”

Jane had already hit the foot of the front staircase when Teresa was halfway down the back. “Is there anywhere else you might have hidden her?”

“The weapons locker,” Sam said. Then she ran her hands through her hair again. “But that’s down here—I would have had to be down here with her. Then I would have had to go back up—”

Austen, holding the cell phone against his ear with one hand, pulled a set of keys from his pocket with the other and headed off to the back. In less than thirty seconds, he was back. “Not in the weapons locker, not in the holding cells.”

Samantha’s voice arched and crashed. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” She clenched her teeth. She ran her hands through her hair again, but this time tugged on it, as if trying to pull it out of her skull.

“Hey!” Teresa grabbed her hands. “You’re not helping yourself. You need to lighten up.”

“How the hell do I remember something I can’t remember?”

Teresa looked around for inspiration. As she did so often, she ended up staring at Jane, who stared back, unmoving, then raised one eyebrow. Hypnosis. And Sam turned on him once because of that—he’s not going to risk a second rejection. Which means—me. She focused on Sam again. I don’t want Jane rummaging through Sam’s brain. That’s it, isn’t it? After a moment, she reached down and put her hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Listen. You remembered something before when Jane was working with you.”

Samantha’s jaw clenched again. After a second, she calmed down enough to say, “You mean let him hypnotize me.”

“Yeah. That is exactly what I mean.”

Austen stepped forward, putting himself between Sam and Jane, the immovable object. “Agent Lisbon, I’m not comfortable with the idea of—” a pause, and then he finished with, “Someone hypnotizing Sam.”

Someone, my ass. You’re not comfortable with Jane hypnotizing Sam, either. Teresa met his eyes and put all the force she could into her voice without shouting. If I can deal with it, you can. “Bethany’s life might depend on this, Sheriff.”

“How do you know this won’t make things worse? She’s had a concussion; I don’t know if Mr. Jane is a licensed hypnotist, or if he has the least idea what he’s doing!”

Jane folded his arms. He spoke, smooth and plausible, charming instead of snide. “The Sheriff’s concerns are reasonable, Agent Lisbon. Hypnotism can be dangerous in the hands of the unscrupulous or the amateurs.” He gave it a beat or two, and then smiled. “I, however, am an expert.”

Austen started to answer him, still hot, but Sam put a hand on his forearm. He looked down at her. His face softened. He sighed, nodded, and stepped out of the way.

Big brother and little sister. No wonder she talked about him the way she did.

Sam swallowed. She met Jane’s eyes directly; her shoulders were braced, though, and she clenched her hands, resting them on her thighs. “You can hypnotize me, Mr. Jane?”

“Jane,” he said. “Or Patrick. We need a moment of respite to start out the session, and if you think of me as ‘Mister’, that’s only going to increase your stress.”

Another breath. “All right. Jane.”

He gave her the smile that usually made female suspects’ knees weak. “Good.” He rested his hands on his hips and looked over the room, then motioned toward the back corner. “Let’s move back here.”

That involved moving chairs and brushing debris out of Sam’s path. She was cautious on the crutches; Teresa was glad to see that. Sam had been reckless when she first started out in CBI.

Jane watched Sam as if he were dissecting her. He probably was.

I pulled the car up to the hospital entrance. Jane was standing next to Sam and the nurse behind her wheelchair; possibly closer than she liked. Once the nurse moved away with the chair, he insisted on helping her into the SUV. As she got in, he said, “Have we met before?” He didn’t ask her while the nurse was there—only when it was the three of us.

Sam said, “No.” I know that tone. She wasn’t lying, but there was something she didn’t say.

I wonder if he’d have chosen to ask her earlier, if the nurse hadn’t been there. If he’d have preferred I couldn’t hear it.

He seemed to have accepted the ‘no’. He dropped it—but he hasn’t dropped it, not really.

Sam lowered herself into the chair. She laid her crutches across the desk, then took her first few easy breaths since she started moving across the room.

Jane pulled over another still-intact chair. He sat down in front of her, not too far and not too near. His voice surprised Lisbon: matter-of-fact, serene, casual.

I expected some sort of clue that he was about to hypnotize her.

“The first step, Samantha, is just what you’ve done—breathe deeply and slowly. I’ve had excellent success with these techniques, and there’s nothing dangerous in what I’m going to do.”

That pink flush bled up her face once more, then faded.

“I want you to close your eyes.”

Sam released one long slow breath, then obeyed.

He examined her for another moment. Teresa wondered if he’d ever studied her that way. She decided she was relieved that she didn’t know. “Good.” He leaned forward in the chair, with his hands clasped, studying Sam’s face. “I want you to count backwards for me, silently, from one hundred. Concentrate on that: one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…”

Her lips moved, at first. Once she’d hit the rhythm, she stopped counting aloud.

So often Teresa felt, working with him, that as far as he was concerned, no one else existed to him except for the person or persons he was concentrating on. Like some sort of Twilight Zone episode where the figures disappear into a fog around you.

“Just keep counting. Concentrate on your counting. Nothing else exists but the numbers moving backwards…”

At seventy-five, Sam’s breathing stopped and her eyes snapped open. She blinked several times, her breathing jerky and shallow.

Jane put his hand on her forearm. “Relax. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She inhaled. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, either. Let’s try again.”

She took another breath, then nodded. “Okay.”

“All right. Close your eyes. From one hundred…”

This time, Sam got down to 65 before she pulled out of the hypnosis attempt. The Sheriff walked to the other side of the room and took out his cell again.

Patrick’s shoulders looked more tense. This time he adjusted Sam’s position and rested his fingers on her forehead while she started counting.

Cho muttered, “Maybe Jane can’t hypnotize everybody.”

“He’d better be able to hypnotize Sam,” Teresa said. She folded her arms. “She’s the only witness we’ve got at the moment.”

A third try—and Sam came out of the partial hypnosis at 50. Then the fourth time—Jane got her down to 80, but she balked again, her eyelids snapping open, her body jerking upright.

Austen pressed End on his cell phone. He turned to watch the two of them. His eyes said he wanted to intervene; his jaw set, but he stood unmoving.

 “All right,” Jane said. He didn’t sound irritated or unnerved. He sounded—firm. “We’ll take a short break. I’ll get you a glass of water.” That superior smirk was not in evidence. He was focused. His voice hadn’t changed. And yet—he was frustrated. Teresa tried to nail down what told her that, but could only mark a general change—an intensity, rather like focusing a magnifying glass on a scrap of tinder.

Sam Kelly put her head in her hands again. “It’s not working. Am I not trying hard enough?” She sounded ragged, hoarse, helpless. Her shoulders quivered.

She hasn’t been out of bed that long. This is too rough on her. Teresa stepped forward. “Maybe you’re trying too hard.” She glanced at their resident miracle-worker. “Jane?”

“We need a little more time,” he said. It sounded positive. But then, Jane almost never sounded negative about a case. Sarcastic, yes. Occasionally mocking, and in at least one case, nasty. But he always believed they—or he—would crack it.

“Is it the surroundings? It worked with the other girl when you retraced her steps, right?”

“Yes.” He rested his fist against his mouth. He unclenched his hand, tapping a finger against his lower lip while he glanced around the room. “The scene of the crime might be increasing the stress too much, however. If we shifted you to a less stressful location, Samantha…”

Rigsby shrugged. “The hospital?”

Sam’s shoulders jerked; it looked involuntary.

Not the hospital. You’re helpless in the hospital.

Jane’s eyes flicked from Sam to Rigsby and back again. He echoed her thoughts. “No,” he said. “Not the hospital.”

Teresa clenched her teeth. Someplace restful—of course! “Her house? Sam, how far do you live from here?”

“Ah—Three blocks west and four blocks north. It’s up a hill, and the road’s long. Maybe half a mile.”

Jane’s smile returned. “Do you think it’s likely to be calming, Samantha?” Teresa couldn’t gauge his tone. The phrasing almost sounded like a challenge.

“You’re the expert. If you think it’ll work, I’ll give it a shot,” Samantha said. She sounded willing, if not eager.

Teresa pulled out the keys. “I’ll start the car.” She stopped, remembering the phone in Austen’s hand. “Sheriff, have you been able to contact Mrs. Innis yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

Still civil. Amazing—by this point, most local police were speaking between their teeth. Especially around Jane, who was gangbusters at influencing people but a wipeout in winning friends. “Rigsby, why don’t you go with the Sheriff and check out the Innis place?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Austen eyed Sam. For a few seconds, he hovered on the edge of refusal. Sam shook her head. With a sigh, he said, “That’s a good idea. Agent Rigsby?”

Rigsby followed Austen to the back door. He stopped to check the jamb, then said something about the lock.

“We lock it when nobody’s here,” was the reply. “The weapons locker, after all. But it’s open if someone’s here, so they didn’t have to shoot out the lock.”

“But they did, so they didn’t know that, right?” The door closed on Rigsby’s question.

Cho and Van Pelt both turned expectantly to Teresa.

“You keep watching that feed. See if you can clear it up, get us a clearer picture or what happens when the shooters enter.”

Their faces fell.

Van Pelt hurried to help Sam stand; Jane handed Sam her crutches.

“I’m fine,” she said. “A little wobbly, but I’m not about to fall flat on my ass at the moment.”

Lisbon walked beside Sam. Four years ago, you’d have thought of her as your friend, Sam Kelly. We both said some harsh things when she quit CBI. Left CBI.

She put Sam in the back seat, where she could stretch out her casted leg.

Jane got into the passenger seat. He sat quietly until she put the SUV into gear.

“Kick’s an unusual nickname.” He sounded as if it were casual conversation. When Teresa glanced into the rearview mirror, she saw that he was also staring into the mirror—watching Sam’s face again.

“He was quarterback and place-kicker for the football team sophomore through senior years,” Sam said. “Could kick a football from three-quarters of the way down the field through the goalposts.”

“Ah. So it was Kicker, originally?”

Sam hesitated a fraction of a second, then said, “Yes.”

“Ah.” Jane leaned back in the seat, but his eyes remained focused on the rear-view mirror. “You cheered him on?”

For the first time, the edges of a smile entered Sam’s voice. “No, I was two years behind him, but when I made freshman, I got taken on as a wide receiver. I was fast, not brawny. He made me wear extra padding, though, and I couldn’t play in the championships, but I was good at home and with the neighboring counties.”

“You must have been close, then.”

“Yeah. Our dads served together. He was two years older than I was, and when I was four, he adopted me as his little sister. I spent the rest of my life following him around. Until he went into the Army, of course.”

“Yes, I see you didn’t follow him there.”

Teresa made the last turn and guided the car up an incline, on a curving drive which turned and disappeared behind trees. The drive was graveled, not paved. Gravel crunched under the wheels.

After several seconds’ pause, Sam said, “I was going to be an oncologist. But life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”

I remember she mentioned medical school. They wanted to put her into forensics training, and she turned it down—wanted to be an investigative agent. She never said she wanted to be an oncologist. She glanced at Jane. You just wind people up and they start babbling, don’t they?

The drive crossed in front of the house, leading right into the connecting garage. A log house. A fancy log house, with a steeply pitched roof and an arrangement of front windows which reached from just below the roof to the ground. The wood had weathered to a deep silver streaked with mahogany—it looked as if it had been built several generations ago.

“Nice house,” he said.

 “My dad had it built after he bought the land. That was after he got back from ‘Nam and he and Mom got married.”

I never asked her where her parents had come from. It must have been Indiana… I never asked her much about her life before CBI. She never asked me much about mine.

“And you’ve lived here ever since?” He gave it a beat, then said, “Well, except for the six years in CBI.”

“Yeah.”

After another pause, Jane said, “Lisbon, how much strength does it take to fire a rifle?”

Out of left field again. “It depends on the rifle.”

“An—assault rifle? Is that what they call them?”

“Assault rifle’s just a political term,” Sam said. The words jumped out, sharp and decisive.

Teresa said, “Not always. There is an assault rifle.”

“But it’s not what most people mean when they say assault rifle. They mean a rifle that fires a high-power cartridge.”

She caught the grin on Jane’s face, something Sam couldn’t see. He said, “Like the thirty-ought-six?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “That’s actually a battle rifle, and it’s awkward for close-quarter work. For close-quarter work, most city police forces and SWAT units would use a submachine gun, and the majority of those use 9-19 Parabellum rounds.”

“So if we found thirty-ought-six rounds in the Sheriff’s office, what would you think?”

“Hunters.”

Teresa looked into the rear-view mirror. Sam was frowning, but not objecting to the question, simply confused. “Not semi-automatic rifles?”

“Here? Teresa, I’m the first to say this isn’t the Yukon, but it’s not Afghanistan either. The Sheriff’s office has semi-automatics, but I’d be damn surprised if you could turn up something like that around here.”

Jane looked over; Teresa took the hint.

“Good points. But we should still keep it in as a possibility.”

“I—” Sam’s fingers drummed against the plaster cast. “It’s not as if there’s anything logistically important around here. We have a small downtown, a movie theatre with six screens, a branch of Citibank, and a small jewelry manufacturer’s. The most unusual thing we have is the tourist trade, the motocross in the summer, and the sled-dog race in the winter. I mean—the nearest Army base is the Reserve Center in Sacramento, and you know how far away that is.”

“Timothy McVeigh wasn’t near an Army base, was he?” Jane sounded mild—not a usual tone from him.

Sam exhaled. Then she sighed. “Touché.”

Teresa put the car in park. As soon as she then switched off the engine, Sam pushed the back door open, as if eager to escape the vehicle.

Or possibly the questions? She twisted around in her seat. “Sam. Let me get out and give you a hand.”

“Thanks.” Sam did sound pleasant, at least. “I think I’ll be okay.”

Jane stuck in his oar again. “You took a pretty bad knock on the head, Samantha. You ought to be more careful.”

“He has a point.” Teresa waited while Sam got herself from the car to the ground.

“I always do,” Jane said. “Samantha, why don’t you give me your keys and I’ll unlock the door?”

She stopped, wavering a little on the crutches. “What makes you think I lock my doors?”

“You lived in Sacramento for six years, and you’re a cop.” He held out a hand.

Balancing on the left crutch, she dug in the pocket of her borrowed coat and pulled out a key ring. “The one next to the writing on the heart.”

Teresa took the key ring. “I’ll do it.” Let Jane go in first and who knows where he might end up? She looked at the pewter and brass heart: Faith, Hope, and Love each filled one of the three sections. Faith, hope, and love? She couldn’t think of anyone besides herself who had less of those than Sam Kelly. Except Jane, of course.

*** *** ***

Austen was a deliberate man, it seemed. Even now, as he got into his Chevy truck, backed up, then pulled out into the street, he moved with thought. He might be different in a crisis, but at the moment he acted as if everything he did needed consideration.

Rigsby wondered about that. The man wasn’t stupid, not like some county sheriffs. And he wasn’t obstructive. He seemed willing to accept help and to step back and let them take the lead. But Rigsby couldn’t quite get a handle on Austen, except that he had been sleeping with his secretary who happened to be his co-worker’s ex-wife, and he seemed very—attached—to his Assistant Sheriff. “What are the Innises like, Sheriff?”

“Call me Kick.” After a moment, Austen slowed down his Chevy Silverado and adjusted his sunglasses. “The Innises keep to themselves. Innis wasn’t as antisocial as his wife. She home-schooled their daughter and she was known to make derogatory remarks about Mexicans, Native Americans, and Jews. Sort of general neo-Nazi crap. Not as personal as Phelps and his drunken tirades. Brandon—” Austen blew out a breath, considered his words, then said, “He wanted to be liked. He wasn’t the kind of guy to fight back, normally, but I thought that someday that bitch would push him too far and he’d explode.”

“So, when you heard there’d been a shooting—how did you hear there’d been a shooting, anyway?” Rigsby folded his arms. Did I sound too aggressive?

“Liza Johnson. Once she heard shots and saw the glass shattering, she rang up Sandy at the courthouse and sent her in to interrupt our meeting. The whole city council was on my heels—it took a lot of talking on my part to keep them out while Doctor McNulty checked the scene and called ambulances. I couldn’t keep the Mayor out—but Rachel Wando wasn’t going to be a problem. She’s good at delegating. We don’t have a lot of serious problems around here.”

“Losing most of your team… That’s a rough thing to happen.”

Austen’s jaw tightened. “I lost too many men while I was in the service. I figured I might lose one here to a bear or a drunken brawl. Not to semi-automatic rifles.”

“At least Deputy Morales and Sam Kelly are still with us.”

“If he makes it through surgery. Encarnación Morales went into labor this morning. She wasn’t due for another month.”

“Damn. But Sam Kelly’s still—”

“Sam…” Austen frowned. He went silent for a few seconds, then sighed. “Sam takes things too hard. A lot of people here will take this just as hard. This is going to be hell for the town to get over. That’s why I called CBI. If we can get the perps, it’s going to give us—” Austen grimaced and stopped.

“Closure?”

“I hate that word.” Austen’s foot went down hard on the accelerator; in the next second, he took his foot away from it and let the Chevy slow down. “Sounds like shutting a door and it doesn’t mean a damn thing except to a shrink.”

Rigsby chewed that over a moment, thinking of oddly connected things, like Jane and Grace, people who loved money more than their families, people who didn’t know love when they looked at it. “Kick—that’s kind of an unusual nickname.”

“I was place kicker for the football team in high school.” Austen signaled for a right. He glanced over, and the first signs of a grin lit up his face. “We could have used someone like you. Nevada County had this half-back who was six-foot and two-fifty. Cracked my collarbone once.”

“Yeah, I got lots of props in football.”

 The SUV turned, heading onto a rougher road where the pines encroached on the shoulders of the much-mended asphalt and loose rocks spit under the tires.

Oddly connected things, like kids… “When we saw Phelps, he said something about those kids having done something to the office. What kids was he talking about?”

“I don’t know if he was referring to the race competitors—the young ones, teenagers and the twenty-somethings get rowdy sometimes, all that energy—or to the county kids who come in to hang out at the McDonalds, or to a couple that come up to stay at the Innis place. From what we were able to determine when the trouble happened, they’re underage, or at least under-twenty-one, cousins of Mrs. Innis.”

“Trouble?”

“A year ago. They vandalized the kosher bakery. It was the second or third time they showed up in town. We got them running away from it—they picked a summer day during the motocross and a couple of the local kids grabbed ’em. They got substantial fines, had to clean up the bakery, and they spent six months on probation. They’ve been back twice since then, and we haven’t had any problems with them.”

“Are they just wild, just need to blow off steam—or they have problems with authority?”

Austen shrugged. “Hard to tell. They could just be bored. You know kids. One gets an idea, the other has to come up with something more exciting.” After a moment, the Sheriff added, “Exciting to them, that is. Adults tend to see it differently.”

Rigsby chuckled. “I hear you there. You seem more—tolerant for kids than a lot of cops I’ve known.”

Another shrug started the answer. “I had my own share of trouble when I was a kid. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.” He chewed that over, then added, “And I know damn well they don’t like me, so I don’t want them to have any reason to say I’m biased against them.”

Yeah, I’m starting to like this guy. Which made him think… “I’m Wayne, by the way.”

“Okay.”

*** *** ***

Patrick scanned the house as he entered. The front door was offset, with the living room on the left, and a long hallway leading from the foyer to a staircase then continuing past the staircase to the back of the house. A film of dust on the pictures hanging in the foyer suggested that dusting wasn’t the owner’s priority. The hardwood floor was swept and polished, though, and the butter-yellow paint looked recent and professional.

When he followed Lisbon and Samantha into the living room, he noticed newspapers stacked next to a recliner and a stack of books on the end table next to a sofa. The upholstery matched the walls—various shades of brown and bronze—but the throws and pillows glowed in red and electric blue. Old furniture, too good for a thrifty person to discard, had been modernized with new pillows and accessories. The end table next to the recliner held an empty cup and plate as well as the television remote. The entertainment center was new—in its center area was a forty-two-inch Panasonic high-definition plasma television, probably hooked up to the satellite dish next to the house. Below it was a dual VCR & DVD player. The right tower of the unit held VCR tapes and DVDs.

He glanced at the sofa again, and isolated the anomaly. One of the pillows on the couch wasn’t a throw pillow, but a bed pillow in a red case. The throws looked as if they’d been pushed back when someone got up from sleep. Not enough room for two people to sleep on the couch.

Sam Kelly slept on her couch more than occasionally, apparently. Not a woman in a committed relationship.

He ran an eye over the pictures which covered the top of one low bookcase. One family picture showed mother and father with one grade-school and one pre-school girl—Samantha and Angela. The girls looked alike, even with the disparity in age: bobbed black hair, parted in the middle, dark green eyes, skin the color of milk. Angela had attended one of his performances; that would explain why Samantha looked familiar. Angela’s suicide would have connected the two of them in Samantha’s mind. Another evident conclusion, or it should have been—he sensed that it wasn’t the entire story, but had no further information to feed into the mill at the moment.

Another one stopped him a second longer. This one showed a teenaged Samantha with her arm around a younger Kick Austen: she wore a short red dress exposing gawky runners’ legs; he wore a US Army private’s uniform. Both grinned into the camera.

Samantha paused, balancing on her crutches. “What do you want me to do—”

He could read both pain and exhaustion in her body language. And what will you finish that with now?

“Jane.”

Ah. A concession that I’m still in control. Reassuring to me—how reassuring to you is it that I’m in control? He smiled at her. “I think you might be more comfortable in the recliner, don’t you?” Give her another reason to agree. “It would keep the pressure off your leg, I think.”

She nodded. She sat down on the edge of the recliner and reached into the right-hand pocket of her uniform parka. Her hand emerged with her Smith and Wesson, still in its holster. As if on automatic herself, she took the weapon out of the holster, ejected the magazine, checked to be sure that no cartridge was in the chamber, then inserted the magazine, and put the gun back in the holster. The unloaded gun went into the drawer of the end table next to the recliner.

“No gun safe?” he said.

Samantha blinked at him. “I don’t have kids in the house. And I lived in Sacramento for six years. It doesn’t have a round in the chamber.”

“I do the same thing.” Lisbon crossed her arms over her chest.

Defending her, Lisbon? Good for you. He took off his coat, and then his suit jacket. He laid both of them over the back of the sofa, then came back to look at her.

A smile twitched at Samantha’s mouth. She lifted her casted leg, twisting so she could slide back on the cushion. She winced, biting into her lower lip. “Damn.”

“You should take something for pain,” Patrick said.

She frowned at him. “I’m fine.”

He looked at Lisbon, who responded exactly as he wanted.

“Sam, there’s no point in being proud. Broken legs hurt, and you’ve got scrapes and bruises as well.” She picked up the uniform jacket and started rummaging through the pockets. “Tell me you didn’t leave the prescription at the station.”

“Inside pocket, left side upper.”

Patrick nodded. “Let me get you a glass of water.” He pointed at the door offset from the southwest corner of the room. “The kitchen’s through here?”

“No, that’s the den. Well, was the den. The kitchen is at the end of the hall and on the right. You could get to the kitchen from the den, but—”

“Thank you.” He set off to reconnoiter.

Everything was in its place in the kitchen. He opened two shelves before finding glasses. No dirty dishes out, but there was a dishwasher. Over a breakfast nook were bookshelves filled with books, not knickknacks—a rarity, that. Another book lay on the table, with a bookmark halfway through the pages. Persuasion, by Jane Austen, hard-bound. He frowned, and scanned the shelves again. There it is. Another copy of Persuasion, but this one much more frayed, with the spine cracked. So she was reading one copy but kept another?

He could hear a murmur of voices in the next room. He slid the older book from the shelf. The text block fell out. As he caught it, a folded sheet of lined paper fluttered to the wooden table top. He put the book back and opened the sheet.

In a careful round script, it started out Dear Sammie. There were dried brown splotches on the paper. Blood. The paper itself was puckered, as if it had been wet at some previous time.

“Jane?” Lisbon’s voice carried easily through the house. “You get lost?”

He tucked the paper into his inside coat pocket. ”Just finding a glass, Lisbon.” He ran cold water into the glass and carried it out.

Lisbon held an open prescription bottle. As soon as he handed Samantha the glass, Lisbon dropped a white pill into her palm. Samantha took the pill, grimaced, and washed it down with half the glass.

“Damn, those things taste awful.” She took another swallow of water, then set the glass on the side table.

“Ah, but the effect is positive,” he said, which surprised a faint smile from her. He looked up at Lisbon. “Agent Lisbon, would you do me a favor and set your cell phone to vibrate if it isn’t already?” Once that was done, he turned his attention to his subject. “Are you comfortable?”

She extended the recliner foot before lifting her casted leg to the left an inch. Her knee hung unsupported in the air. Jane collected a pillow from the sofa, motioned for her to lift the leg again, then slid the pillow under her knee. She sighed with relief. The stress left her face. Samantha leaned back, then wriggled herself down into the chair. “Comfortable.”

“Good.” On the other side of the sofa was a club chair with a large round ottoman. He dragged the ottoman across the room to the recliner, putting himself on her left side, where no table blocked them. There were six possible induction techniques: boredom, confusion, loss of equilibrium, eye fixation, misdirection, shock and overload. He’d considered them in turn as they drove. Now he pulled his lighter out of his pocket. Every now and then he changed his props. This particular prop earned a raised eyebrow from Lisbon, which he ignored. “I want you to focus on this, Samantha. Just watch the surface for me.” He rocked the lighter in his hand, catching the sunlight as he continued with his soothing line of patter, working her into a receptive state of mind. Her pupils enlarged; from the corner of his eye, he saw the muscles in her forearms slacken.

He went through the steps of relaxing her body, easing her into the lighter stages of trance. He glanced at his watch—two minutes. Not bad for a resisting subject. Moving her into deeper hypnosis would take longer. He rested his fingers on her wrist, curving around to settle the first two fingers on her pulse, measuring the rate. He continued to talk her down, coaxing her to continue watching the play of the light on the gold-plated lighter. It still took several minutes before she reached a deep trance, something that should take her past the trauma and to a stage where he could bring up her memories.

“Samantha, we’re going to walk through Wednesday. You’re going to observe yourself and your co-workers, and watch what you did. You’re just an observer—you’ll watch what happens, but it won’t affect you. You won’t feel any anxiety or any pain. You’re watching what happens, and you’ll tell us what is happening, but you are apart from the scene.”

“Okay. I can do that.” Tranquil and in trance, she sounded younger, more innocent—her voice was lighter and more musical. As a college student, she must have been remarkably attractive; odd that there were no indications of a boyfriend. Just that one picture of her with the younger Kick Austen.

“It’s Wednesday morning. You get up and on your way to work, you stopped at the kosher bakery to get bagels for the office.”

*** *** ***

“Hey!” Cho leaned back. “Van Pelt, take a look at this on the feed. The time on this is ten-seventeen am.”

She got up from the second intact computer, where she had been running the feeds from cameras two and three, and trying to make out the license on the one visible truck. “He came in after the Innises? But before the shooting?”

“Yeah.” He ran the feed backwards. “I don’t know why we didn’t notice it earlier.”

“We were interested in the shooting and in the Innis girl.” She leaned over his shoulder, watching the screen.

A tall skinny guy in a baseball cap and a sheepskin jacket marches through the door as if he has a right to be there. He stalks towards Tiffanie—she glances up, sees him, and starts to get up.

Benedict stands; his lips move.

The guy turns. He waits. Benedict walks up to him and steps out of camera range.

Carlos appears in camera range. His lips move; after a moment he looks up, towards the balcony, then turns his attention back to the visitor.

The man’s head also lifts. After a few more moments of silent conversation, he turns and stomps out.

“He looks familiar,” Grace said. She tapped her foot against the floor. Then her face lit up. “I know!” She swung around, heading for Tiffanie Phelps’ desk.

Cho stopped the feed. Not a good thing, to have been so interested in the actual shooting that he missed something. Van Pelt was still the newest member of the team, but he had experience. He shouldn’t have missed that.

She dug something out of the wastebasket. “Here! I’m sure this is the same man.”

As soon as he saw the photo, Cho said, “It’s the same baseball cap, anyway. But there have to be a lot of Giants baseball caps out there.”

Grace turned the frame over and started taking it apart. Once she finished that, she tapped the writing on the back of the photo. “Dean and Tiffanie, March 6, 2003.”

“Dean Phelps.” The dead secretary’s husband—well, you look at spouses first. “I thought Austen said he’d been at home all this morning?”

She frowned. “Wasn’t it that Dean had said he’d been at home all morning?”

Cho pulled out his cell phone. “I’m going to call Rigsby.”

*** *** ***

The Innis house sat back off the two-lane road, down a narrow unpaved drive. Smoke curled from an unseen chimney. The Sheriff’s truck rumbled to a halt in front of the two-story log cabin. A battered red Chevy pickup marred with splotches of primer sat off to one side, with its hood open.

Log cabins seemed suitable for this kind of area, but Rigsby couldn’t imagine living in one.

“They’re not all as simple as this,” Austen said. A grin curled the edges of his mouth, making him less inscrutable. “You should see the Kelly place. Jacuzzi in the master bath, second-floor sundeck around the back, big windows—of course, I don’t have any clue what the inside of this place looks like, but it’s in decent shape outside.” He checked his pistol—he used an M9 semi-automatic, probably his service weapon.

“You expecting trouble?” Rigsby checked his own Glock.

“I always expect trouble.” A faint smile twisted Austen’s mouth. “That way I’m never surprised.” He put the gun away and switched off the engine. “But we’ll treat this as an ordinary call. I have no idea what Mrs. Innis is going to be like if she’s distraught.”

Rigsby grimaced. “I hate it when they go to pieces. I never know what to do.”

“Well, I suspect if she loses it, it’ll be your shoulder she cries on.”

Gravel wet with snow creaked under his boots as they walked the rest of the distance to the front door.

The Sheriff knocked on the door and gave it a minute.

Cold wind swept across the porch, carrying the scent of snow coming. Rigsby shivered in spite of his parka and glanced around the postage-stamp-sized front yard, examining the tall spruces which ringed the space. Like something out of one of the Friday the 13^th movies.

He looked back at the porch windows. Country-style curtains covered them, pulled tightly against the weather—or against outside eyes? He shrugged, then glanced at his watch.

The Sheriff frowned. He knocked a second time, more loudly. “Maybe someone already told her.” He looked around the yard. “There is a second truck, if I remember correctly…”

“What’s the hospital number?”

Austen fumbled for his cell phone, flipped it open, and handed it over. “Check the recently sent—it’ll be the third number down.”

“Thanks.” He found the number and pressed Send.

A few clicks and rings punctuated the air. Then a cheerful soprano said, “Sheriff? You talking to us again?”

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m not the Sheriff. I’m Agent Rigsby with CBI. The Sheriff handed me his phone.”

“Agent Rigsby, then—nice to chat with you. I’m Marie. What can I do for you folks?”

“Has Mrs. Innis been there to check on her husband?”

“Pearl Innis? Hold on, let me ask.” Marie put him on hold. He stood in dead silence for a few seconds.

The soprano came back. “Agent Rigsby? The coroner hasn’t seen her and she hasn’t checked in here at Reception.”

“Thank you. Would you let the Sheriff know if she comes by?”

“Of course. Have a nice day.”

“Uh—thanks. You, too.” He closed the clamshell and handed it back to Austen. “No good. They haven’t seen her.”

Austen tapped his foot. He ran a thumb over the butt of his gun. “Maybe she’s in the back. Maybe one of the boys took their truck.”

“You know what they drive?”

Austen considered it. “Last time it was a beat-up red Jeep Cherokee.”

The Sheriff remembered a lot of details about the Innis cousins, if they were merely a couple of kids. “Okay for us to look around?”

“No fence, no gate. We’re not trespassing.” He headed around the corner of the building. “You go the other way; we’ll meet up in back.”

*** *** ***

With her eyes open, staring at the empty air, Samantha said, “He’s distressed. Angry. He says her cousins are back—he doesn’t like her cousins.”

Patrick said, “Why not?”

“A year ago they vandalized the kosher bakery. Terrified Mrs. Cohen. Protective Services from Verellen got pulled in, threatened to take Bethany away. The cousins—Zachariah and Seth, I think—were told not to stay at the Innis place as part of their probation. But they’re back. I told Tiffanie to check the records to see when the probation was up. She didn’t like that. Since she started dating Kick, she doesn’t like to take orders from me.”

He flicked a glance down at her hands. No movement; still tranquil. “Does that cause a lot of friction in the office?”

“Quincy thinks she’s jealous of me; she feels Kick pays me more attention that he does her.”

“Does he?” Patrick suspected that the answer was yes. He also suspected he might have made a rare error: there wasn’t any jealousy in Samantha, and now that he considered Sheriff Austen’s behavior, it didn’t seem as if his interest was sexual.

“Kick’s my best friend. Has been since I was a child. I think he’s made a mistake getting involved with Tiffanie, but it’s his business.”

“Any other reason you dislike Tiffanie?”

“She doesn’t like me. I don’t think she liked me at first because Dean doesn’t like me.”

Jane paused. Wait a minute. “Why does Dean dislike you?”

“He thought he should get the Assistant Sheriff position after Harriston retired. He doesn’t think women should be cops; he thinks Brandon spends too much time in the office. He was really pissed when I shoved him in jail overnight to sleep it off.”

Not quite what you said in the hospital. So there’s some bad blood there already. And Phelps has a history of  violence. “Did Brandon come into the office because the cousins were back?”

“No. He says she slapped Bethany. He wants to move out, get a restraining order—he wants us to arrest Mrs. Innis.”

Blood boiled up into his eyes. He needed a few seconds before he could trust himself to speak. He interlaced his fingers, glanced down, and saw his knuckles whiten. “Mrs. Innis slapped her daughter?”

“Yes. Bethany says she opened a door she wasn’t supposed to. She saw guns.”

He tightened. Guns? “How many?”

Something moved in his periphery. He glanced over, saw Lisbon reaching for her phone, and held a finger to his lips as he shook his head. Wait. Or go outside. I’ve got her under, but she’s so resistant I don’t know what might pull her out.

Samantha’s eyebrows drew together. “She doesn’t know. She saw them leaning against the wall, at least two long guns—I asked her to draw them, and her drawing looks like rifles. Her mother came in, yanked her away, slapped her, and shut the door.”

Lisbon hesitated, with her cell phone in her hand.

“And then?”

“Then she and Brandon waited until Pearl, Seth, and Zack left. She and her dad walked into town. Brandon wants to file a restraining order. The boys don’t have gun permits. He’s frightened.” Her voice lifted, her words higher and beginning to sound emotional. “Tiffanie says that Pearl has a permit for one rifle. Not three.”

“Relax, Samantha. Remember, you’re watching this. It doesn’t affect you—no one is being hurt here. There’s nothing to be afraid of; nothing to worry about. Deep breaths, now. Concentrate on the light. As long as you see the light, you are only watching what happens.” When her breathing resumed normal rhythm, he said, “Then what do you do?”

“I tell Carlos to take Brandon into my office and start the paperwork while I take Bethany upstairs and calm her down. I need to see if I can get more information from her; she’s comfortable with me but she’s shy around Carlos.”

*** *** ***

When his cell phone rang, Rigsby jumped. Just a little creepy here in the woods. He opened the clamshell. “Rigsby.”

“Hey. Wayne.”

“Yeah, Cho.” He glanced at the Sheriff.

“We’ve got another entry into the office. This one was before Brandon Innis and his daughter. He matches the picture of Dean Phelps in Tiffanie Phelps’ wastebasket. Didn’t you say Phelps said he was at home all morning?”

Rigsby ran over the conversation in his head. After a moment, he pulled out his notes and checked. “No, first he asked quote what business is it of yours unquote and then he said quote I haven’t had anybody in if that’s what you mean unquote.”

“That’s pretty evasive.”

“Didn’t seem like it at the time.” He looked up. “Austen!”

The Sheriff spun on one heel, a parade-ground drill-team turn. “Yeah?”

“Turns out Dean was in the office this morning.”

Cho said, “He seemed to be arguing with both Deputy Benedict and Deputy Morales. I can’t tell about the Assistant Sheriff yet—we haven’t finished watching the feed.”

*** *** ***

Lisbon took two soft steps forward. She leaned over to whisper in Jane’s ear. “See if you can get more information about the guns.”

He nodded. “All right, Samantha. You’re doing very well. You took Bethany upstairs.”

“She was nervous. She hates it when her parents fight. She wouldn’t sit still, so I got her an orange soda. She’s not allowed sodas at home—her mother doesn’t like them. Brandon lets her have one now and then, so I got her the soda and let her just wander around the room while she drank it.”

“Why were her parents fighting?”

Samantha’s voice deepened in timbre; her eyes opened, and she stared through Jane, as if seeing something else. “Her cousins had come to visit. They came in late. She heard them bringing things in from their truck. The next day the back storage room was locked.”

“Brandon didn’t like having the cousins there?”

“He said they were nothing but trouble. Pearl said they were family and she wasn’t going to stop them from visiting.”

“What else did Bethany remember?”

“Yesterday morning the cousins were outside when she got up. She was curious, and the back room door was open a little, so she opened it further.”

“What did she see?”

“Guns like her mother’s hunting rifle leaning up against the back wall.”

“Like her mother’s hunting rifle?”

“Long barrels, but the butts looked shorter. She says bottoms—I tell her they’re usually called butts—” Her voice lightened again. “And she giggles.”

“How many? Can she draw it for you?”

A long pause ensued. Then she said, “She thinks more than two, but she knows she definitely saw two.”

Lisbon tapped him on the shoulder. She motioned towards the hall, then headed out of the room.

Calling Cho, Grace—or Rigsby. Jane considered it, then decided it would be Rigsby, for the added benefit of communicating with the Sheriff. Along with that, Rigsby and the Sheriff were at the Innises and might need that information.

*** *** ***

Austen frowned, then opened his cell phone, but stopped when Rigsby’s rang a second time.

Rigsby winced when he heard his boss’ voice. Bad sign—Lisbon sounded flat and unnaturally calm. “Bethany Innis said she found quote—long guns—unquote in a room in the Innis house.”

“Long guns—rifles?”

“Sounds like it. But we’re getting it third-hand, so it’s hard to be sure. Check with the Sheriff. See if there have been any gun incidents with the Innises.”

Rigsby covered the phone. “Sheriff, Brandon Innis and his daughter came into your office to report that Bethany found ‘long guns’ in a room in their house. You ever had any problems with the Innises and guns before?”

Austen’s eyes narrowed. He checked his gun again, then chambered a round. “Mrs. Cohen told us that one of the boys—Seth. That was it. Seth Fedler. Zachariah’s last name was Drew. She said she thought she saw a pistol tucked into the back of the boy’s belt, but she wasn’t sure and didn’t want there to be more trouble.”

“What about Mr. and Mrs. Innis?”

He frowned. “I know Mrs. Innis hunts. When we had the problem with the boys, I checked her place and found…” He pulled out a notebook and flipped pages backwards. “Yeah, I’ve got it here. A two-eighty Remington rifle, a Beretta Bobcat, and a Colt 1911 pistol. She had permits for all three. I haven’t had any complaints about guns regarding them.” He looked at the door, then knocked a third time. “Don’t like this at all.” He moved down the porch and peered at the window. “Can’t see anything through the curtains.” He straightened. “Did Agent Lisbon get that information from the hypnosis?”

Rigsby put the phone back to his ear. Before he could say anything, Lisbon spoke.

“Yeah, we got it from the hypnosis. I know, it’s not admissible in court.”

He settled for saying, “Yes,” to both Austen and Lisbon.

“Damn.” Austen looked at the door and frowned. “I don’t think I’ll get a pass from the court if I enter on evidence from hypnosis.”

Lisbon said, “Have we got pictures of Mrs. Innis? What about the boys?”

Rigsby exhaled. “Cho and Grace can pull them up off drivers’ licenses.”

“That’ll do.” Lisbon came back to him. “I’ll call Cho. He and Van Pelt can run a BOLO on Mrs. Innis, canvass the town. We’ll bring Phelps into the office—the holding cells there are still good. Sheriff Austen know what kind of car or cars the cousins drive?”

Odd that he should just have asked that question. Maybe Jane’s rubbing off on me. “Well, they used to drive a red Jeep Cherokee.” His cell phone vibrated in his hand. “Hang on, boss, I’ve got Van Pelt on the other line.” He switched the call. “Hey. What’s up?”

Grace spoke with crisp authority. “We can’t get Dean Phelps on the phone. We’re heading over there to check on the trailer. Give me directions.”

He glanced up. “Austen, Cho and Van Pelt are heading over to Dean Phelps’ trailer. How do they get there from the office?”

“Head down to Bracknell, the third light…”

*** *** ***

Jane smelled ‘Green Tea’ before he heard the sound of boots on wood. Lisbon. Time to see what was going on elsewhere and time to decide how far to go with the hypnosis. He touched his subject’s forehead with his first and second fingers. Her eyes shut in response.

“I just want you to stay in that safe place for the moment, Samantha,” he said. He took his fingers away from her forehead and sat back. At least she didn’t shrink from touch—it was his voice, then, and his name to which she reacted.

“Is something wrong?”

There’s a trauma in her background which has something to do with me—and most likely her sister. Not information he wanted to give Lisbon at present.  “I’m having a hard time keeping her in trance. We approach the point where she hears something from the interrogation room, and then she drops out of deep trance.”

“That’s not usual, is it?”

He rubbed the side of his hand over his mouth, hunting back through the years of practice. “No. It’s usually indicative of trauma.”

“Well, this was a trauma.”

He twisted around to make eye contact. “Of course it was. But she’s a law enforcement officer, isn’t she? She’s seen and been involved in shootings before, hasn’t she?”

Lisbon’s eyes flicked away from his. “Yes…” She dragged out the word.

“But?”

“She was in one fire-fight while she was a rookie. Then, fifth year in, she was involved in three. In the same year. None after that, but— Just her luck; a lot of agents never even have to draw a weapon. She got three bad ones in less than ten months.”

“You thought that might have something to do with her leaving CBI?”

She hesitated. After a moment, she nodded.

“So it wasn’t just that she came back to Podunk—you thought she didn’t have the guts to handle CBI.”

“No!”

He looked at her. For the first time, Lisbon looked away. “Yes,” she said.

“By any chance—was any other CBI agent injured in those firefights?”

Another hesitation. “Yes… A minor injury in the first. I got hit in the second.”

“Her fault?”

Now she met his eyes straight on, without blinking. “No.”

Lisbon, I know when you’re lying to me. “I need the truth if I’m going to have any success here.”

“It wasn’t her fault.” Lisbon frowned, folded her arms, then grudgingly added, “But she thought it was.”

“And the third?”

“I don’t see why this is—”

“Hypnotism is both an art and a science, Lisbon. I need to know these things. You’re not betraying her.” Okay, not quite true. It could be considered a betrayal.

“An older agent—due for retirement—was killed.”

That made sense. That made a great deal of sense. “Well, that might explain the problem here. The traumas could be overlaying each other, or feeding into each other.” And all them involved with death and blood—and the unforgivable fact that she survived. A voice in the back of his head whispered, Just the way you survived… He shut it away, refusing to listen.

“Is there a way around that?”

“I need to get her into a deeper level of trance, and I’m going to have to push her a little.”

She frowned. After a second, she uncrossed her arms and rested her hands on her hips, pressing her lips into a single flat line.

Lisbon, do not let your irrational fear of hypnosis interrupt us now.

“Is that safe?”

“Yes.” Not entirely safe, but it’s worth the risk.

She folded her arms once more, then rested her weight on one foot. “Why do I think you’re not being completely honest with me?”

He took another tack. “Samantha gave us her consent. She’s our only link, at present, to the killers and to Bethany Innis. She knows that.” He let her chew on that a moment, then said, “And it’s the only way to be sure she’s not in danger herself—if the people who did this come back to clean up loose ends. If I woke her up now, what do you think your friend would tell me to do?”

Lisbon exhaled. “All right. Go ahead. She wouldn’t give a damn about herself, but she’d want us to find Bethany.”

*** *** ***

Rigsby was tall enough to look in the back windows, since the house was built on a slope. But the curtains here blocked the view as well. “You think Phelps could have done it?” Nothing suspicious about not wanting people to look in your windows.

“We saw glimpses of three people on the feed,” Austen said. He led the way back around the cabin, then vaulted over the railing onto the porch.

Getting jumpy? “But they wore ski masks. Phelps is smart, isn’t he?” Feeling antsy himself, Wayne paced back and forth across the porch of the Innis’ house.

“Yeah. He’s got a degree in Criminal Justice from USC—graduated cum laude.” Austen scowled, tapping his fingers against his belt buckle. “With an attitude.”

Rigsby stopped pacing. “Attitude?”

“Assistant Sheriff until last year was Pete Harriston. He retired. I chose Sam as Assistant Sheriff, and the only one who bitched was Phelps.” He paced back and forth across the porch, his eyes restless and always moving. “He thought he should get it, even though he started two years after Sam and he’s not as good a cop. Apparently he thought the cum laude and two years in LAPD meant more than a four-year degree and six years with CBI.”

Explains hard feelings… Goes to motive, too. “Cause a lot of hard feelings?”

“Dean drinks and he bitches. Bitches mostly to his goon platoon.” He grimaced, took off his cap, and ran a hand through his hair. “His buddies.”

“He got a lot of friends?”

“I’ve seen him with four or five different guys.” Austen frowned. He remained silent for a minute, then sighed. “He was involved with Moon while he was married to Tiffanie. That was one of the reasons they divorced.”

“Moon—you mean Miss September?”

“Yeah. Rumor said it’s why she dyed her hair blonde—Tiff had bleached hair.”

“Anybody count as a close friend?” Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Austen tapped his fingers against his belt buckle again. “If there was one moron who’d do almost anything for Dean, it was Clint McCloskey.”

“You say almost. How almost is almost?”

The frown cut deeper into the Sheriff’s face. “If you’d asked me that three weeks ago, I’d’ve said you were nuts.”

“Not so sure of it now?”

“No. I’m not.” Austen swung off the porch. “Let’s head back to the office.”

“Something got you worried?”

Austen motioned for Rigsby to catch up with him. As he opened the driver’s door, the Sheriff said, “Dean knows where the keys to the weapons cabinet are.”

“The suspects appear to already have semi-automatic rifles.”

“As does the department. And ammo for the same. You never have enough ammo.”

“Damn,” Rigsby said. He got into the truck and fastened his seatbelt as Austen backed it up.

This time they kicked up gravel as they went down the road.

*** *** ***

Cho pulled up in front of the trailer. He glanced over at her. “Better put on a vest.”

“Should have thought of it before we left the Sheriff’s,” Grace said, but she shucked her jacket and struggled into Kevlar. She put her jacket back on over the Kevlar, but it wouldn’t button. She checked her pistol, chambered a round, and put that back in its holster.

Cho’s jacket did button. He might be sorry of that if someone put a bullet through it. Better to just get a bullet in the vest. Better not to get a bullet at all, she thought, and then pushed the thought away.

She stepped down out of the Suburban and glanced at Cho. He motioned that he would go around the back of the trailer. She nodded.

Her stomach twisted; she took a deep breath against nervous reaction. Inching up against the outside wall of the trailer, she noticed rust spots on the apron. Where two sections had been riveted together, two rivets were missing: the corrugated steel curled at the bottom where the sections parted. The stench of stale cat urine hit her nostrils, sour and sharp. The steps were wide enough to let someone stand to one side while the door opened, but it would still put that person in direct line of fire.

Cho came around the other end. They looked at each other. He worked his way to the bottom of the steps.

From the hinges, the trailer door would open outwards, towards him.

Cho met her eyes again. She nodded, then made an effort to ease her shoulders.

Cho went up the steps and pounded on the door. “Mr. Phelps? California Bureau of Investigation! Please open the door, sir!”

He waited. He glanced at her, then banged his fist against the metal door once more. Still no answer. He looked at her again. She nodded.

He tested the door. The doorknob turned. He backed down two steps, leaned forward, and grasped the doorknob. He turned it delicately, like a safecracker in a forties movie, until it clicked and the lock released. Then he eased the door outward, inch by inch, with his right hand aiming his Glock at the door.

As the trailer door hit the halfway point, the metal screeched like an owl at night.

He jumped down two steps.

She winced.

The door hung at the halfway point, still. No one appeared. No guns showed or spoke.

Cho rolled his eyes and shrugged. He went back up the steps, leaned over, and pulled it all the way open. No more screeches. No sound at all, in fact. He wiggled his fingers at her. Grace edged around and planted herself against the door, peering into the interior. Enough light showed through the curtains to show that no one was near the door. She nodded to her partner.

Cho held up a hand with three fingers. He folded one, then the second, and then the third. Then he swung up into the trailer.

She went in on his heels, staying low to sweep the floor.

Room by room, choking on the smell of liquor and unwashed clothes, the two of them cleared the trailer.

Cho halted in the bedroom, curled his upper lip, and looked around at the jumble of blankets, sheets, empty McDonald’s bags, and beer bottles. “Goddamnit,” he said.

The room stank of grease as well as dirty sheets. Grace blinked, then swung her head. She’d seen a glint of something—foil? Metal? “Wait.”

“What?”

“Pull that curtain back.”

He did. A ray of sunlight caught something bright at the edge of a blanket trailing on the floor.

“Brass, I think.” She crouched and lifted the blanket, wrinkling her nose at the sour stink of unwashed cotton. One single cartridge lay on the floor, next to an empty cardboard box.

Rubber snapped. Cho lifted the cartridge, turning it over in his gloved fingers. “Thirty-ought-six.” He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and dropped in the cartridge, then put it back in his pocket. He stooped to pick up the carton. “Thirty-ought-six,” he said again.

“And empty,” she finished.

“Yeah. Let’s see if someone out there can tell us when he left.”

*** *** ***

Rigsby jotted down some hasty notes, bracing the cell between his shoulder and his ear. “Copy that.” He twisted to motion to Austen. “Phelps might be doing a runner.” He finished up speaking to both Grace and Austen at the same time. “I’ll get a BOLO out as soon as we get into the office.”

As they drew up to the corner, he noticed that the repairmen seemed to be finishing up temporary weatherproofing. Two were fastening crossed boards to the window frames, bracing the heavy plastic. A heap of plastic lay on the ground next to the door, where two other men were setting replacement glass into the door frame. They passed out of view as the truck swung around the corner. Austen pulled into the lot behind the office, then sat there for a second with the motor running, scowling at nothing.

“Kick?”

“Someone’s laughing at us. Hell, maybe Coyote’s laughing at us. And we run around like the Keystone Kops!” He slammed his hand against the wheel.

Rigsby clasped his hands in his lap, glanced away, then looked back. “Easy, there. We’re still in early hours here.”

“Forty-eight hours,” Austen said.

If you don’t clear a case within forty-eight hours, there’s a high probability it would never be cleared. “It’s not more than six hours in, Kick. We’ve still got time.”

“We’ve got Mrs. Innis and her cousins out there somewhere, Bethany Innis missing, and now Phelps missing on top of it.” He shoved the driver’s door ajar and stepped out. Rigsby did the same on his side. “You don’t know the area. I do, but I can’t run the entire area without some idea of where to look. Sam’s out of it with that leg. If we had another—wait.” Austen pulled his cell phone out and started dialing as he headed through the broken back door.

“What?”

“Pete Harriston. He’s retired, yes, and he’s sixty-seven, but his eyesight’s good and he knows this place better than anyone but my grandfather.”

“Maybe we should get your grandfather too.”

“If the old man wasn’t dead, I’d be heading down there, I tell you.” He stopped. “I don’t know. Maybe I ought to go to his grave and talk to him. He might know more than I do about this.” He shook his head, opened his cell phone and punched in a two-digit number—speed-dial, then tilted his head back while he waited. “Hey, Sandy, it’s Kick. Listen, tell the Mayor and the rest of the council we’re trying to locate Mrs. Innis and Dean Phelps. Anyone sees them, don’t approach them. Just call you and you call me. And tell them not to pass this around to anyone! I don’t need a bunch of vigilantes taking the opportunity to run wild around the county.”

He took the phone away from his ear, walked across the room, and stared out of the broken glass as he hit End and then punched in another two-number speed dial. He waited, turned his head, and said, “He’s got an answering machine. No guarantee he’ll pick up.” A beep signaled the answering machine. Austen pitched his voice to carry. “Pete! Kick Austen. You there? Pick up!”

A moment passed while he stared down at his muddy boots. His dark face unwound. “Yeah. You heard? How much?” He waved at Rigsby. “Can you get down to Main Street and wait in case I need you? Take your cell phone. Yeah, I know you hate it, but take it anyway. I’ve got to be able to reach you.”

Rigsby took himself over to the computer and started the procedures for two BOLOs. They’d at least have the State Police for backup. Might be able to pull some of them to bolster the search.

Even better, Cho and Grace might have found something in what was probably a pigsty of a trailer.

*** *** ***

“Remember, Samantha, you’re watching all of this from a safe place, like watching a movie. You can see it happening, but it doesn’t touch you. You see a calendar in front of your eyes, and we’re going to turn the pages back. I’m going to count back by months first, and then by years.”

Lisbon shifted. He held up a hand; it was enough, for that moment, to hold her off while he sent Samantha back to the year she was twenty-two. The Assistant Sheriff’s eyes followed his hand, watching him with the intensity of the hypnotized. “You’re standing in your house, and something has happened which upset you. Something with blood; something you don’t like remembering.”

Lisbon said, “Jane, what are you—”

This time he looked at her and put his finger to his lips. “Shh!” He focused on Samantha again. “What do you see?”

“Daddy.”

What? “You see your father.” Never show emotion to a hypnosis subject.

She nodded. “My father’s lying at the foot of the stairs. There’s blood all around his—his head—” She bit her lip.

The image had taken her back further than he meant; in her mind, she was eighteen, not twenty-two. The first trauma.

“It’s nine am. It’s Saturday,” she said. “I stayed overnight in Sacramento with Linda; I just registered for college and we celebrated… If I’d been here, I might have found him before he died…” Her chest heaved.

Patrick dropped his voice into a soothing purr. “You’re seeing this from a distance, Samantha. It’s all in the past. It doesn’t hurt you any longer.” He twisted again to look up at Lisbon. She had her fist pressed to her mouth. He glanced at Samantha, then back at her, letting the question show in his eyes. Lisbon shook her head.

So you didn’t know how her father died. He said, “Samantha, I’m going to touch your forehead. When I do, you’re going to move forward in time four years. You’ve graduated from college.”

Her face eased. “Getting ready for med school.”

“You’re looking forward to that.”

Still in trance, she smiled. It was that young smile, serene and satisfied, something that brought sunshine and summer into the room. “Yes. I have an apartment ready. Two bedrooms. All of the financial aid came in. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Good. Now, I want you to move forward six months. You haven’t gone to med school. Why is that?”

“Angie—”

This time Lisbon said, “Damn it! Jane!”

Jane swung around. Don’t interrupt…

“You’re responsible,” Samantha said, as clearly as a child answering a question.

Lisbon stopped in mid-breath.

“Responsible for what?” He cursed himself—he hadn’t thought out the question properly.

“Angie killed herself because of what you said to her.”

Lisbon said nothing. Jane took a breath. Underlying trauma, yeah. What do I have to do with it? “How do you know that?”

“The letter. There was blood on the floor—she killed Daddy. She didn’t mean to, she said she didn’t mean to, they had an argument and she pushed him—”

He touched her forehead again. The prompt worked once more; her green eyes closed as she slid back into the safe place he’d built with her. This was not the time to have to deal with Lisbon’s irrational fear of hypnotism.

“Jane, you can’t do this.” Lisbon snarled like a furious tiger. “You can’t just wander around in someone’s brain—”

“Lisbon. She gave me permission.”

“Not for this.”

He took a deep breath. He liked Lisbon. He understood her need to follow the rules, to force order on a chaotic universe. But now is not the time. “Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards[1]. To find out who has Bethany Innis and who killed those agents—and injured Samantha herself—I have to access those memories. Trauma is blocking those, and to understand how and why, to resolve that trauma, I have to reach into her past. Apparently that trauma has to do with me. But I don’t have another hypnotist available. This has to be done now, and I have to do it.” He touched Samantha’s forehead again. “Samantha.”

Her eyes opened: clear, calm, focused on something further away than the room around her. She met his eyes with the same detached interest.

“Why did you join CBI?”

“I needed to be able to track you. You work with the police sometimes. I could follow you, find out where you were.”

“Why did you need to find me?”

“I want,” said that placid, young, innocent voice, “to kill you.”

*** *** ***

Cho stepped out of the trailer first, and took a deep breath of the clean air. Place stank. How can anyone live in a garbage heap? He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, then turned to check on Grace.

She took the same relieved breaths he had. “I’ve heard of depression affecting your life, but—!”

“Yeah.”

“Check with the locals to see if anyone saw him leave?”

“Yeah.” Cho scanned the trailers around them. A line of trailers to the west paralleled this line, the two separated by a five-foot-wide courtyard of grass, pines, and what might have been flowerbeds in warmer seasons. Sidewalks crossed it at intervals, and bordered the withered grass. Diagonally from Phelps’ trailer, a double-wide had a bow window. As his eyes slid past it, he paused and looked again. Yep, a curtain twitched. He jerked his head toward the trailer. “We’ll start there.” With luck, the nosy neighbor would be a gossip. They usually are.

Grace said, “Okay.” She fell into step beside him.

One of the things he liked about Van Pelt was that she only argued with you when she had good reason for it. Also, she didn’t chat just to hear the sound of her own voice.

The double-wide showed care; there were flower boxes in front of it, and the skirting, although streaked with dirt, had no rust spots—in fact, it looked as if someone had applied fresh paint to it within the last few months. It had clean concrete steps placed parallel to the trailer itself. The metal railing gleamed with black enamel. Cho knocked while Van Pelt waited at the foot of the stairs. Only fair since I made her interview Miss September.

The inner door opened; Cho stepped back as a woman pushed the screen door out. “Good afternoon, ma’am—”

Shrewd dark eyes looked the two of them. “You cops?” In her gold and red caftan, with a scarf wrapped several times around her head, she would have been distinctive even if she hadn’t stood close to six feet tall. She was probably in her fifties, but her mahogany skin hid her age. Her long dark fingers were accented by long square nails painted gold with silver whorls.

“Yes,” he said. “CBI. I’m Agent Cho, and this is Agent Van Pelt. We’re investigating a shooting at the County Sheriff’s office.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Heard him—” She jerked her head at Phelps’ trailer. “Yelling about it when the Sheriff and this other guy was there. Anybody but Tiffanie Phelps hurt?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.” Give a little to get a little. “Dean Phelps isn’t there—any chance you saw him leave?”

“Oh, yeah.” The gold hoops on her ears danced when she jerked her head up and down. “Along about a half-hour after the Sheriff left, the McCloskey boy showed up.”

Cho pulled out a notebook and a pen. “Can I get your name?”

“Ronelle Chance.” Without being asked, she spelt it for him.

“You said McCloskey?”

“You want to step inside?” She motioned at the interior. “Little chilly here for a conversation.”

“Thank you.” He glanced back at Grace, who nodded.

This trailer’s interior was a great relief after the chaos of Phelps’. Gold-bordered tiles on the floor complemented the spotless white walls. Bright paintings broke up the white, and a pair of carved masks sat on the top shelf of a bookcase.

“Would you like some coffee?” Ronelle Chance sat on the sofa in front of the bay window and gestured for them to seat themselves. A large grey Persian cat sauntered across the room and leaped gracefully up onto her lap. She stroked it from head to tail, and it settled down, observing the guests through cool green eyes.

“No, thank you,” Grace said. Cho shook his head, keeping a wary eye on the cat.

“Clint McCloskey,” said Ms. Chance, and then spelt it as well. “Probably the closest friend that Phelps boy had in town. Sorehead; you get nothing but attitude and disrespect from him. Thought being from LA—” She curled her lip. “—meant more than living here. Sam Kelly and Kick Austen both went off for some years, but you don’t see those two kids acting like it makes them better than other folks.”

“Yes, ma’am. So Mr. McCloskey arrived at Mr. Phelps’s trailer—what happened then?”

“It happened about a hour ago. He didn’t have to knock—I think Dean must’ve been waiting for him, ‘cause he opened the door even before Clint got up the stairs. Dean looked around the yard here and I dropped the curtain. That boy’s got a temper, I tell you, and he goes crazy if he thinks you’re watching him. One time I threatened to call the Sheriff on him because he tried to kick Bonhomme.” She stroked the cat again, and a deep rusty purr filled the room. “I’m retired. I used to work on the highways—you got to do something with yourself when you retire or you lose your mind. So I watch my neighbors.”

His mom said that—Cho smiled. “Absolutely.”

“When I looked out the window again, the trailer door was closed.” She frowned. “But it felt—odd, you know?—so I kept watching. About fifteen minutes later, they both came out, pulling on their coats as they came down the steps. I saw something glint from their belts, and the coats bulged, so I’m guessing—just guessing, I admit—that they were carrying.”

“You didn’t see anything definite?”

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t bigger than a handgun.” She shook her head, pressing her lips together, then sighed. “I can’t give you more than that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Ms. Chance. You’ve been a great help.” Cho stood up. In his periphery, Van Pelt put her notebook and pen away before she got to her feet. She held out a hand, and Ronelle Chance shook hands with her. This time he followed Grace’s lead.

Ms. Chance’s grip surprised him with its strength. He said, “Thank you for your assistance.” As she shut the door behind them, he was already planning the next steps in his head.

Once they got back in the car, he said to Van Pelt, “Call Lisbon.” Second thoughts hit him. He grabbed her hand. “No, call Rigsby first, he’s at the Sheriff’s office. Austen will know what guns Phelps should have had.”

*** *** ***

For a moment, Jane stopped breathing. It seemed as if someone very large had punched him in the gut. Samantha seemed further away—he was standing. He’d stood and shoved the ottoman away. He shut his mouth, blinked, then took several deep breaths. His mouth felt like sandpaper. It hurt to swallow.

Lisbon stood beside him. She inhaled. He reached over, without looking, and put his hand over her mouth before she said anything to pull Sam out of the trance. After a moment, she nodded. He took his hand away.

Think. Think. She didn’t kill me. In four years, she should have had the chance, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she? He reached out to touch Samantha’s forehead. Her eyes closed; he heard her breathing slow to dream rhythm. He pulled the letter from his pocket, opened it to look at the careful round script and the poor spelling.

Mr Jane sownded like Daddy he said just the way Dad would of “It’s okay, sweetie, I know you didn’t meen it. You have to think about youre sister now. She’s taken care of you all these years and now you have to do what’s best for her.” And thisis best Sammie I know it’s the rite thing to do. You’ve done so much for me & you never complaned much. I wish he wer still heer. Love you.

Okay, Jane, think. She’s regressed to six years ago—move her forward. He touched her forehead once more and her eyes opened, calm, focused on him. “All right, Samantha. We’re going to turn those calendar pages forward.” He went through the months. “Now. It’s five years ago.”

She nodded,

No good. I have to know. “Are you still planning to kill me?”

 “I can’t. Not after—” Her soprano arched up in distress. “What can I do to you after—after Red John— Nothing I can do is worse than that. I thought I could kill you… I’m as evil as he is.” She bit her lip. “What am I? What have I turned into?”

“You’re nothing like Red John. You did nothing to be ashamed of.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I blamed you. I wanted—”

“I know. It’s all right to blame me.”

“It’s not. She chose to do it. Nothing in what you said suggested she should kill herself, but I had to blame someone. And it wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s all right, Samantha. I understand.” He took a normal breath this time. The knots eased out of his gut. Nothing like being told someone wanted to kill you to wake up the primitive forebrain.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Lisbon’s shoulders loosen up. She uncrossed her arms and rested her hands on her hips.

“Let’s move forward, Samantha. You left CBI. Why?”

“I had to,” she said. “I couldn’t trust myself. I might do something stupid—” She looked at Lisbon. “I couldn’t tell you, Tracy. I thought you’d be more disappointed in me if I told you—”

“I’m not disappointed.” Lisbon spoke immediately, firm and calm. “You did the right thing. I understand.”

Samantha sighed. Her arms lost all tension.

Now. “We’re turning the calendar pages forward again. It’s Wednesday. It’s today. You’re sitting up in the interview room on the second floor with Bethany Innis. She’s told you about finding guns in a room in her house.”

“The phone rings. It’s an outside line. Tiffanie gets me on the intercom. She sounds so snippy, honestly, it’s like dealing with a love-struck teenager—”

Lisbon stiffened, leaning forward.

“Who’s calling?” Anything could be important.

“The backers for this sled-dog race.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Damn pain in the ass. We’re going to have to have a state police patrol standing by next week. The armored truck is bringing the prize money today—they’ll be here by 5:00 pm, before the bank closes.”

Now that was something new. He checked Samantha’s pulse again; the blood pumped steadily, in that even slow athletic rate. “How much money are they bringing?”

“Two hundred twenty-five thousand this year. Ten prizes.”

Lisbon hissed. She pulled out her cell phone, flipped it open, then turned her attention back to him.

“Then what?”

“I put them on hold and have Carlos pick up to get the details. Five minutes later, I hear Dean Phelps.”

Lisbon took a step forward, then stopped before he could say anything. Samantha’s face was strained, tense.

Her pulse picked up under his fingers—still steady, but definitely faster. “Dean is in the building?”

*** *** ***

Rigsby listened to Grace’s recitation. He’d rather have her with him than her with Cho— Which might be why Lisbon sent me with Austen. She doesn’t miss much about her people. “Okay. I’m going to update the BOLO with armed and dangerous.”

“You going to call Lisbon or you want us to do it?” Grace made the offer, and she hadn’t even seen Lisbon at her worst.

“I’ll do it.” No point in letting you shoulder the brunt of it. He ended the call, then relayed the information to the Sheriff first.

Austen’s face turned into granite once more. He ran down the short back hall, then came back juggling two semi-automatic rifles and four boxes of ammunition. “Four of the rifles are missing. Besides these two, there are two left. I have more shells, but we’re short on those, too.”

“You think Dean armed himself?”

Austen’s face might have been granite, but his eyes were volcanoes. “I think that the damn cabinet was locked when we left and it’s locked now. And the only person besides Samantha who’s still standing and knew where the keys were is Dean Phelps.” He glanced at the window, where the workmen were packing up and sweeping the sidewalk. “Hang on.” He dodged out of the door. Rigsby followed.

“Hey, Barry.”

The oldest of the four slid a toolbox into the back of the Dodge pickup before he turned. “Hey, there, yourself, Sheriff. Shame about this. You got any idea who’d pull some fucking dumb shit like this?”

“Working on it. Anybody been in besides you guys while we were out?”

Barry scratched his balding head. “Yeah. About half-an-hour ago or something like that. Didn’t think much about it—they came in through the back like you guys usually do.”

Rigsby straightened. “You recognize them?”

The youngest of the crew, an African-American young man with dreadlocks and a wad of chewing tobacco, guffawed, then spat into the street. “Hell, I’d recognize that LA Rams jacket of Phelps’ anywhere. And everyone in four counties round knows that candy-apple Ranger of Clint’s with the gold stripes on the fenders.”

“You saw their truck?”

“Oh, yeah. They came around the corner here, nice and easy, like they didn’t want no one to notice.”

Another man, Hispanic, a little older, chuckled and elbowed him. “Like anyone’s not gonna notice that thing. Hell, I’d notice it on a night with no moon.”

Rigsby exhaled.

Austen said, “You better call your boss.”

“Yeah.” He headed back inside the building. No point in sharing everything.

*** *** ***

Samantha’s eyes—the pupils enlarged, leaving only a thin line of dark green around them—focused on the lighter. “I can feel the door slam, so he’s come inside. I can hear him through the phone—Carlos hasn’t put it back on the base yet. He’s downstairs swearing at Tiffanie. She’s cussing him out as well. Bethany’s upset; she puts her hands over her ears and starts shaking. I tell Bethany to stay put, shut the door behind me and hear Carlos telling Dean to get out. I tell Dean the same thing.”

“Does he?”

“He says if I was any kind of Assistant Sheriff, I’d be worrying about crime instead of a man having an argument with his wife.” She stopped; her eyes flickered back and forth.

“It’s all right, Samantha. You’re doing fine. Go on.”

“I point out Tiffanie’s his ex-wife. He’s had three strikes. He doesn’t have a job after this and if he doesn’t want to end up in jail for trespassing he needs to get out now. He calls me a bitch, but he goes to the door. He’s still standing there when I tell Carlos about the money, tell him to call Kick, so I turn around and yell at him to get his ass out of the office. He goes, then, at last.”

“Then you go back to Bethany.”

She nodded. “She’s so upset. I sit her down on my lap and hug her and rock her. My mom used to rock me—it always made me feel safer. She says that her mom and dad and her cousins were having arguments about money and it always scares her.” Samantha stiffened. Beneath his fingers, her pulse sped up. “Something’s happening.”

“It’s not happening to you, Samantha. It’s something you’re observing. Nothing can hurt you or anyone else. Breathe and focus on the light. What’s happening?”

“It’s just a loud noise, like wood cracking. I open the door. Cracks. Something cracking, repeatedly, like on the firing range—shots. Someone’s shooting—Tiffanie’s screaming. I grab Bethany and shove her through into the observation room, tell her to crawl beneath the desk. Quincy’s screaming. The shots keep coming. I’ve only got my Smith and Wesson—I get out onto the balcony.” She started to pant. “Blood. Blood all over the place. There’s three of them, flannel shirts and ski masks, one of them coming up the stairs—”

“What does he look like?”

“Her.”

“What makes you think it’s a woman, Samantha?”

“Short. Blonde curls beneath the ski mask. Little hands. The light’s glinting on her hands—her nails. Painted gold. Those—those long fake acrylic things. About half an inch long and squared. Little fake diamonds were pasted on them. Glittered in the light while she shot at me with her fussy little hands.”

“Deep breaths, Samantha. It’s done with, it’s not happening now. You’re safe.”

Her eyelids flickered; her eyes shifted back and forth, following something only she could see. “The rail splinters—I don’t know why she hasn’t hit me yet. The rail’s falling apart. There’s something black between her thumb and her index finger. It looks familiar. My gun’s empty. She raises the rifle again and I jump—I’m falling. I’m falling and I can hear Bethany screaming. And then I’m nowhere and it’s dark.” Her pupils widened until only a thin green line showed around them. “I think I’m dying.”

He touched her forehead. She went under instantaneously. Jane released the breath he hadn’t realized he held. “Samantha, you’re in a safe place. You’re resting. I want you to stay in that place and rest.”

As he turned, he saw Lisbon drag the back of her hand across her eyes. She straightened, about to say something, then stopped to look down at her cell: a call coming in.

“It’s fine,” he said. “She won’t hear you. Go ahead.”

She turned before she spoke into the phone. “Lisbon.” After a moment of silence, she said, “Cho and Van Pelt on their way in?”

His hair stood on end. He took a step towards her, marking the rigidity of her spine, the electricity crackling around her, all the tells of a dangerous situation.

“All right. I’m on my way back. Keep me informed.” She snapped the phone shut and turned.

“Lisbon?”

White stress-lines radiated from her mouth. “We all missed a question when we came in to this.”

It took him a second. That was due to his own distraction. “Not just who shot the sheriff’s deputies but why.” Money. Love, greed, and power. The three common motives for human behavior.

“Yeah. Stay here with Samantha. I’m going back to the Sheriff’s office.” She got two steps away before he spoke.

“Lisbon, you need me on this.”

She stopped. One hand clenched. Then she swung around. “Yes, I do. I need you here. You’re the hypnosis expert. I don’t know what state Sam’s going to be in when she comes out of that trance. She’s just out of the hospital—and probably shouldn’t be out of the hospital. I can call you—” She tapped the cell phone on her belt. “And believe me, I will.” A few seconds later, she capped it. “I need you to be here.”

He met her eyes squarely, then nodded. “All right.” He didn’t need to emphasize that he was doing this because she asked. She knew. It never hurts to have a marker. “Oh, and Lisbon?”

She turned back one last time.

“Have someone call the beautician’s—Betty, I believe Ms. September said her name was.”

“Why?”

 “Ask her manicurist who last got their nails painted gold with rhinestones and has a tattoo on her right hand between the thumb and forefinger.”

“What?” Then her eyes ignited. “Right. Got it.”

Jane watched her hurry out the door, and muttered to himself, “The little light, she goes on…”

*** *** ***

Ignoring the “No Parking” sign in front of the Sheriff’s office again, Teresa slammed on the brakes, shoved the gear into Park, and bombed out of the Suburban. Heavy plastic and boards covered the large windows. The glass in the front door was new; the glass fragments had been swept from the sidewalk. Through the gleaming glass, she saw her team, along with Sheriff Austen, huddled in the center of the room.

Except for Jane. No, better off with him far removed from possible gunplay. One thing I do not need to explain to that weasel Minelli is Jane’s sudden death from lead poisoning. She pulled the door back—it swung open so fast she took two steps backwards. The door had been perfectly balanced; it felt much lighter than expected. She walked into the middle of a discussion.

Cho stood with his back to the door, his arms folded. “All right. Lisbon will be here in a minute. What do we have for an update? We’ve got reasonable suspicion that Dean Phelps was here and took weapons and ammo. Why? Because he shot up the office and knows he’s been found out?”

“Maybe because of a phone call,” she said.

 Heads jerked up; the five of them stared at her.

“The tape misses one important event.” Lisbon nodded at the monitor. “Van Pelt. I want the numbers of all incoming calls today.”

Grace’s fingers tapped out a rhythm on the keyboard, nails and keys clicking.

Cho’s eyes narrowed. He folded his arms, glanced at the others, then back at her. “What phone call?”

“Jane succeeded in getting into Sam’s memories of today. She remembers a phone call from the sled race backers. They were expecting to deliver the prize money for the race this afternoon.”

Austen straightened. “When?”

“About five pm.”

All the heads swung to the clock hanging over the front door—except hers. She knew what it said, because she’d looked at the time on the dashboard before she got out of the SUV.

Four-thirty-seven.

“How much?” Rigsby looked from her to Austen.

Austen said, “Quarter of a million dollars.”

Grace’s fingers paused a second, then continued.

Rigsby whistled.

Cho said, “Damn.”

*** *** ***

Jane left Samantha resting while he made tea and ran a glass of water. An attractive japanned tray hung on the wall; he took it down and arranged the teapot, cups, and glass on it. He paused, while the tea brewed, to read all of Angela Kelly’s letter before returning it to the battered copy of Persuasion. Time enough to tell her he’d read it when—or possibly if—it became necessary.

He shifted the lamp on the side table, so that the tray would fit, then brought in the tray and set it down. He settled on the ottoman.

She looked young and peaceful in trance; pity to have to wake her to the stressors of the real world.

 The touch of his fingers to her forehead brought her out of rest once more. “Samantha. I want you to listen to me.”

“Yes, Patrick.”

Interesting. She thinks of me by my first name. “When I count backwards from ten, you will start to wake up. When you wake up, you will feel refreshed and alert.” He’d argued the point with himself then chosen the more honest result. “You will remember all we discussed, and you will remember everything you told me and told Teresa Lisbon. You will feel neither anxiety nor distress over what we know. You will know that none of this was your fault. Do you understand?”

She repeated his words obediently.

“Good. Very good. You’ve done very well today, Samantha. You will remember that you gave us all the information we needed. You will feel satisfied with what you have done.” He took a breath. “Now. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

Samantha blinked. She sat up in the recliner. Jane handed her the glass of water he’d collected before he brought her back to consciousness. Sweat glistened on her face, even though the room was chilly. She pushed a hand through her damp hair, shoving it back from her forehead. Her head swung in one smooth arc, searching the room and ending up at his face. Red flooded into her cheekbones; her eyes dropped. She rubbed her hand over the cast on her left leg.

He’d assumed his professional face as well as returning the letter and preparing a panacea. Hypnosis of that depth needed some warmth to overcome the emotional side-effects, and by now he was a master at simulating warmth. “I’ve made some tea. Coffee’s not the best thing after a hypnosis session. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been dragged through a bush backwards.” She accepted the water, took a swallow, then sighed and drank half the glass in a few gulps. “My mouth is so dry.”

He poured her a cup of tea. When he reached for the sugar bowl, she objected.

“I don’t take—”

He stirred the sugar into the liquid and handed her the cup. “Sugar’s good for emotional and mental stress. Watch out, it’s still hot.”

Her fingers brushed his; he noticed no distress in her, no reflex to avoid touch even if she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Thank you,” she said, then winced.

“How are you feeling?” Repetition worked, most of the time. It should work with her, even in a highly emotional state.

“I’m—” She hesitated. Her eyes lifted, but not quite to his. Her jaw set a moment, before she spoke. “I feel as if I ought to feel more guilty.”

He shook his head and folded his arms. “You have nothing for which you should feel guilty.”

Now her head jerked up. “I wanted to kill you.”

“But you didn’t. The thought is not the act. And you took yourself out of temptation’s path.”

“What about a man lusting in his heart already being an adulterer?”

“Something thought up by the confessional. Breast-beating. Masochistic and egotistic.” He hesitated. No, I owe her something. “I do owe you an apology. Your sister committed suicide because I told her your father forgave her and she should consider you instead of herself. I’m sorry for that.” Somewhere in his house he had the recordings of his performances. He’d need to check Angela Kelly’s date of death and find the DVD of that to know exactly what he’d said.

She shook her head. “You never meant to hurt her. Or me.” She paused, then drank more tea. “She never meant to hurt him. It was this stupid argument over a concert she wanted to go to in Verellen. He said no. They got into a shoving match. And he fell down the stairs. It was an accident.”

“And that means that you’re not guilty for her suicide, either.”

She froze. A short laugh emerged. She swallowed one more mouthful of tea. “Touché.”

He drank some of his own tea; it had gotten cold, but he finished it before refilling the cup. “I will say I am very relieved to know that you no longer want to kill me.”

Samantha flushed. She ran her finger around the rim of her cup. She chewed on her lower lip, then looked up at him from under her lashes. “I had to be out of my mind.”

“Grief has strange effects.”

She eyed him for a moment; she looked almost about to ask a question, but then thought better of it. Instead, she held out her cup. “I wouldn’t have thought I’d like it, but I think I’d like more tea.”

“Good.” He poured and added sugar again. “Tell me something. Whom did you know who was murdered by their spouse?”

Samantha choked on her first sip. Tea slopped onto her scrubs. “Damn. How— Never mind. I don’t know that I want to know what gave me away.” She took a paper napkin from the tray to wipe up the tea. “Kick’s mom. His dad was drunk one night and beat her to death. Then he passed out. When he woke up, he saw what he’d done and blew his brains out with his service weapon. He’d been in Vietnam, too—my dad said that Grant Austen never came home from ’Nam, not really.”

And that’s why you’re ‘hell on wheels with domestics’. “And you were there for Kick?”

“He was my big brother. He was sixteen then, and his grandfather had died two years before his parents. He didn’t want to add to his aunts’ and uncles’ burdens—they had kids of their own. He was just going to stay on in their place until he graduated, if he could avoid CPS that long. It took a lot of talking from my dad—he and Grant had been in the same unit in ’Nam, but in the end, Kick moved in with us: my dad and Angie and me.”

“But he wasn’t there when your father died. Or when Angie committed suicide.”

“He was stationed abroad when Dad died. By the time he came back, I’d joined CBI.” She looked down at her hands. “I never told him the truth about Dad’s death, either. How it happened and why I became a cop. I kept it from everyone.” Now she met his eyes. “I guess guilt’s a fact of life, isn’t it?”

His smile froze, but he held it. “It seems to be.”

“Tell me something?”

“If I can.”

She dragged in a breath, then let it go. “What are you going to do when you catch him?”

*** *** ***

“Grace!” Teresa lifted her head. She could still hear keys clicking. “You got that phone number yet?”

“Working on it, boss.”

Austen disappeared into the back office. He emerged carrying a large rolled-up sheet of laminated paper. With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the rubble from Tiffanie Phelps’ desk and unrolled the cylinder on it. “We have a 3D computer map of the town, but this is faster.”

“A 3D computer map of the town?” Cho said. “Like Google Earth?”

Austen pulled a grease pencil from his shirt pocket. “Yeah, but proprietary.”

“Like Army infantry GPS?”

Austen glanced up. “You were in the military?”

“Yeah.”

“Officer?”

Cho shook his head. “Not me.”

A nod answered and agreed. “First Sergeant in my platoon. So I’d guess we’re missing the one thing we’d have to worry about.”

Lisbon folded her arms. Of all the times for a male bonding session. “What’s that?”

Cho answered, straight-faced and innocent. “A Second Lieutenant with a map and a compass.”

The Sheriff snorted.

Rigsby muttered, “Have to save that one for Jane. He’d appreciate it.”

After orienting the map, Austen ran his finger down one of the streets. “Main Street.” He turned to point out the window, then went back to the map. He marked it up with the grease pencil as he talked. “Diamond Street. Bank is here, at the corner of Diamond and Mill. When the armored truck comes in, it takes A49, turns here, comes in on Main Street, then goes left down Diamond to turn right on Mill. This—” He stabbed a finger into a narrow lane. “Is the alley that parallels the bank. The back door of the bank leads into where the vault is, and the truck backs in, turns diagonal, and blocks access except for a foot on either side. Here—” He marked an X on the map. “Was where the five and ten used to be. It shut down last year, and nothing’s taken it’s place yet. It’s a dead street at the moment: a couple of law offices, a video game parlor at the far end. We’ve had problems with kids in the county breaking in there after dark. Owner’s moved to a retirement village in Mexico—he’s not interested in paying for a burglar alarm. I can’t be certain it’s secure.” He traced the diagonal. “It’s the only real vantage point in the alley, unless you’re going around the truck.” He looked up at Lisbon. “If someone is going for the money, these would be the factors, in my opinion.”

“Does that make me the Second Lieutenant with the map and compass?”

His head dropped. She caught the grin before he managed to contain it. He looked up. “No, ma’am. Not in the least.”

“Got that number,” Grace said. She handed over an index card.

Teresa read the number, reached for her cell, then stopped. She gave the card to Austen. “They’re more likely to know your voice than mine.”

“And my number.” He straightened, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m going to go back to my office, if you want to come back and listen.”

That sounded like a good idea. Teresa paused after a few steps. “Van Pelt—call the beauty salon. Ask the manicurist if she painted anyone’s nails gold with rhinestones recently.”

Grace blinked.

Teresa took another step before pausing for a second time. “Oh, yes. And ask if anyone who had their nails painted like that had a tattoo between their thumb and first finger.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Van Pelt sounded wooden, which meant she thought Teresa might have flipped.

Teresa thought so herself. However, Jane’s sudden left turns into Surreal City always seemed to have sound ideas behind them. And he would absolutely remember and ask later if she’d checked up on it. And if she didn’t and it did turn out to have a bearing on the case, he’d never let her hear the end of it.

Austen put his phone on “speaker” before he dialed. The connection rang, and rang again. Lisbon started counting at the third ring. On the fifth ring, the number flipped over into voicemail. Austen hung up. “I don’t like this,” he said. “What do you want to do, Agent Lisbon?”

“I think we should get down to the bank.”

“Well, I would agree with you there, ma’am.”

“We may be over-reacting. There’s nothing but coincidence and circumstance here.”

He gave her one slow massive shake of his head, like a bear about to charge. “From your lips to God’s ears, ma’am.”

*** *** ***

It stopped him a second time. Patrick turned and walked over to the bookshelves, staring at the spines without seeing the words. “Catch whom?” Are you asking what I think you’re asking?

“Red John.”

He didn’t owe her an answer. Or maybe he did. The words fell out of his brain and onto his tongue before he could stop them, but he didn’t turn to watch her reaction. “I’m going to kill him.”

She inhaled. Her voice didn’t shake, though. “How?”

 “Whatever’s handy, I suppose.” A memory swallowed his mind: scarlet drying on a painted wall, scarlet drying on crumpled sheets, scarlet drying on his wife’s naked feet. “I’ll improvise.”

No answer for a moment: then she inhaled a second time. When she spoke, it was crisp and casual, a cop talking to an equal, not patronizing. “He uses a taser to incapacitate his victims.”

“So?” Now he turned, scrutinizing her face, watching for cues and clues. Are you trying to talk me out of it?

Her green eyes examined him with his own concentration. “Have you had any self-defense training? Have you ever physically fought with someone?”

“Fistfights in school. Why?” He felt a smile twitch at the corner of his mouth, not quite his usual mask. You’ll have to do better than that.

She shook her head. She shifted herself in the chair, grunted, and found a more comfortable position. “He’s progressed beyond fistfights in school. He’s killed before. More than once. You never have. He disables his victims first. He might not even have to get close to them—some tasers work from a distance. And he’s a stalker. He picks his victims, he studies them—your family was an anomaly, in more than one way.”

Blood thrummed in his temples. He sat down on the ottoman. He folded his hands, and stared at her. “You’ve studied the murders of my wife and daughter?”

“I studied him. Afterwards.” She grimaced. “I mean, I knew what scuttlebutt said before that, but I took a look at the files after—it happened. After he stopped. There hadn’t been a child killed before. The—” She stopped.

Patrick said, very softly, “Mutilations?” The room had grown uncomfortably warm. Sweat beaded up on his forehead.

He heard her teeth grit. She nodded. “He was much more elaborate than the previous killings. You got in the way of his fantasies—you saw too much about him, and you saw through him. That enraged him. And it did something to him. It might be why he stopped. Or it might be that he moved elsewhere, out of your range.”

He’d lost control of this conversation. He needed to take it back.

“But he knows enough about you to be sure you won’t stop hunting him.”

 “Are you sure of that?” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist.

She looked over his head, refusing to meet his eyes. “You need to be prepared.”

“Are you certain I won’t stop hunting him?”

Her lips parted. Then she bit her lower lip; the color bled away from the pressure until the lip was as white as her teeth.

Patrick said her name. It had no effect; she still avoided his eyes. He tightened his fingers. “Look at me.”

Muscles tightened in her jaw; she swallowed. She submitted—she met his eyes. Her pupils dilated, again; stress lines fractured her eyes and mouth. “I studied you,” she said, first in a whisper, and then more clearly. “I lived you. I slept and ate and breathed you. I even drove by your house once, although I never saw your family—it never occurred to me you had a family. I don’t know why I never thought—” She shook her head. “You won’t give up until he’s dead.”

“No. You’re right. I won’t.” He smiled. Blood on a man’s corpse: as yet a man with no face. But some day I will know that face.

Her breath caught. “What does that mean for me?” Her voice cracked. Her skin smelt of musk and disinfectant. Her pulse raced under his fingers.

Trance is not the only thing that causes the pupils to dilate… He glanced down at his hand; he found it still wrapped around her wrist, with her flesh under his fingers white from his grip.  I need to let her go. His fingers didn’t move. After a moment, with effort, he uncurled his fingers, one at a time. He looked at his hand, turned it over, then massaged it, working over the palm, the fingers—My palm, my fingers. Not someone else’s. He had been hurting her.

She hadn’t moved. Her left hand dug into the chair arm.

He found his professional smile. “I’m like—Dexter; isn’t that the forensic investigator in that series of books? I only kill serial killers.”

The lines around her eyes deepened. He analyzed her face: her mouth, her eyes. He stood up; he glanced around the room, then took a few steps away. When he turned back to face her, her troubled expression told him he hadn’t deceived her.

He let the smile die. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets. As gently as he could, he told her, “You’re in no danger from me, Samantha.”

“Jane—”

“Ah-ah-ah.” He held up his index finger. “Patrick. At this point, I think you should call me by my first name.”

She chewed her lower lip again, then said, “Patrick, you have to be prepared for meeting him. It’s not something you can do with improvisation.”

“No point in worrying about it now.” He poured her the last cup of tea, stirred in sugar, then picked up the tray. “No point in you worrying about it at all. Now, drink that up and then take a nap. If you’re any more exhausted when Lisbon returns, she’ll dock my pay.”

Samantha sighed. She was submitting once more. She nodded and gestured at the books. “There are plenty of books—”

“Thank you.”

*** *** ***

Austen fingered his badge as he stared down at the map. “All right, Agent Lisbon, what’s your plan?”

Most of the time she let SWAT arrange raids, or the local police. Teresa took a breath. “You have suggestions on the best way in?”

“I think if we go through the five and ten, then into the alley, we should be coming in from behind the armored van.” He tapped the end of the line on the map. “The alley dead-ends beyond the bank. Last time I was by there I remember several dumpsters. It ought to give us some cover.”

“What about someone going in and checking out the inside of the bank?”

“Anybody our suspects don’t know might spook them.”

Cho said, “Do we know who our suspects are yet?”

Van Pelt looked up from her keyboard and phone. “Dean Phelps and Clint McCloskey. We have an eyewitness who saw them both leave Phelps’ trailer in a hurry.”

Teresa rocked her head back and forth, then said, “Our eyewitness and our camera says three shooters and one of them was a woman.”

Rigsby turned to the sheriff. “You said Phelps had been involved with Moon September while he was married to Tiffanie.”

“I talked to Moon September,” Van Pelt objected. “I have a hard time imagining her handling a weapon capable of firing a thirty-ought-six bullet.”

“She shot a bear when she was 16,” Austen said. “Had her picture in the paper and all that.” Van Pelt started to answer, but he went on, slow and deliberate, “On the other hand, shooting bear’s not like shooting a man. Or several men.”

“In cold blood,” Van Pelt finished.

Austen raised one eyebrow, then looked at the windows. “I’m not sure how cold-blooded this was, Agent Van Pelt, but I agree she’s never had much of a temper.”

Teresa cleared her throat. “Anybody else look good?” Damn, I’d like to have Jane here to comment. No, I need him where he at the moment, far away from guns.

“Mrs. Innis, her cousins, and her daughter are missing.” Rigsby rubbed the back of his neck. “And it is her husband who’s dead.”

Cho added, “But Phelps’ wife is among the dead, too.”

“Or it could be a third party we don’t know,” Teresa said, finishing the argument. “Out best bet is still to check the bank, but we don’t need dead civilians.” Minelli would tell us to wait for the State boys. Caution had always been her watchword, until Jane walked in the door. Right now we can’t afford to wait. “And we’re the unknowns, but Sheriff, I can’t have you check it out, because if they’re in there—”

“I’m either dead or a perfect hostage. Roger that.” He shifted. “I’ll pull what I’ve got in the way of guns, ammo, and body armor. There’s not much of it, I’m afraid.” He pulled open the back door past the offices and flipped on the light.

“Give you a hand.” Rigsby followed him.

Cho said, “I’ll check the cars.”

Austen came back up to the main office area at a run. “Wayne reminded me I do have one resource nobody would suspect.” He laid down his arm-load of ammo and Kevlar, then pulled his cell phone out. “Can’t get a signal back there where the locker is.” He scrolled through his contacts, hit Send, put the phone to his ear, and waited. “Pete! You uptown yet? Good. Listen, I want you to stroll down to the Citibank. Don’t say anything to anyone, don’t hurry. Just wander in there and keep a lookout, okay? Call me if anything unusual happens. I’m gonna put this phone on vibrate. Do the same for yours—if I call you, I don’t want anyone to hear the phone ring.” He was silent for a second, then smiled. “Yeah, I’m not teaching you your business, old man.”

At that moment, Van Pelt said, “Hello, I’m looking for Zoë. I’m Agent Grace Van Pelt, with the California Bureau of Investigation.”

Cho came back from the cars with their gear.

Austen put the phone away. “Pete Harriston’s uptown. He’s in his late sixties—everybody in town knows him by sight, and nobody expects any fireworks from him, but he’s one of the best observers I’ve ever known. He can go in there to get change for some twenties; that will let him see if there’s a problem.”

“What about the danger?” Teresa drew a vest over her head and twisted to reach the Velcro on the left side.

“He can still outshoot me, and his eyesight’s twenty-twenty.”

She started on the right side. “What about the civilians in the bank?”

“Pete’s savvy. He’ll get them as far out of harm’s way as possible. I think he’s our best bet, Agent Lisbon.”

“All right, Sheriff. We’ll do this your way this time.” It earned her a smile. Jane’s words popped up in her head—‘And he thinks you have a terrific ass’. Teresa hoped she hadn’t blushed when she thought of it.

Grace said, “Thank you!” She put the office phone back on the hook. “I finally got the manicurist. Had to wake her up at home. She says that five women chose gold polish and rhinestones in the past two weeks. Three of them had marks between the thumb and first finger: Lindsay Ellicott has a heart tattooed on her left hand, Consuela Ramirez has a mole on her left hand, and Pearl Innis has a swastika tattooed on her right hand.” She inhaled. “Moon September has a blue ankh tattooed on her right hand, but her nails are polished in silver.”

Teresa nodded. “Okay. You’re riding with Cho and me. Austen, I’m going to let you take point.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Gold Street ran parallel to Diamond, with Mill at the bottom end of the rectangle, and Hunter Street at the top. Little or no gold showed on Gold Street. Nine buildings lined the street, five of them two stories tall and four of those having office signs. Two of the two-story brick buildings had For Rent signs across their empty windows. One at the end of the block was six stories, and on its shiny red awning read “Condos for Sale.” In the middle of the block, the fifth two-story building still had its signage: a tarnished metal plate with three-foot-high red letters reading Newburgh’s Five-and-Ten. Across its empty windows, someone had pasted up posters for the sled-dog race over old banners, part of which could still be read: “BUSINESS” and “NO REASONABLE” and “SALE”.

 The first building, a one-story stone structure with a neon sign flashing “GAMES” in red and blue, turned out to be a video game store with a bar for snacks and sodas. The Suburbans cruised past it, slowly, getting no attention from anyone inside. They drew up in front of a red Jeep Cherokee and a blue Chevy pickup parked in front of the empty Newburgh’s. A couple of pedestrians paused to look at them, but went on without incident.

“Damn glad it’s not holiday break yet,” Austen said as they huddled in front of the store. “Next week and we’d have a lot of kids roaming through here.”

Teresa checked her gun first, and then her jacket. It was cold enough to need their winter jackets over the Kevlar, but the layers were bulky. “Watch out; we’re all going to be moving more slowly than usual.” She reached into the back of the Suburban, pulled out one of the rifles, and slung it over her shoulder.

Heads nodded all around.

Austen reached out for Newburgh’s front door. He paused, with his hand in mid-air, then pointed. “Looks like someone’s been ahead of us.”

Next to the handle was a jagged hole punched in the glass. He turned the handle. The door opened. “Definitely been here ahead of us,” he muttered. He glanced back at her. “You want to wait for the state boys, Agent Lisbon?”

A sharp pop shattered the air. As Sam had described: high-powered ammunition in a high-powered rifle. Submachine guns would be worse; be grateful for small favors.

“No.” Teresa motioned for her team to fall in. Thank God I’m not riding herd on Jane right at the moment. He and Sam are safe and out of this.

More explosions.

Damn it. There are civilians in there. Where in the hell are the State boys? Her gut tightened up; her breathing shortened. The hair on her arms stood up as they stepped into the shadowed interior of the empty store and began to work their way through the building. The walls bore evidence of spray-painted graffiti, tags over tags.

For an empty building, the amount of trash was astounding. The shelving had never been pulled—what hadn’t been sold had been left on the shelves. Rats or other vermin had chewed open bags of chips and gnawed into boxes. Along shelving and walls, intruders had built cardboard fortresses. Heaps of junk—old pillows, sleeping bags—suggested squatters. Each heap had to be checked and cleared. They took it two and two, switching high and low and precedence; first herself and Austen, then Rigsby and Van Pelt, then Cho and herself. After clearing the main room, Rigsby kicked open the door into the back area.

More empty boxes, more empty shelves. She noted that a whiteboard hanging by one corner held scrawled profanity and elaborate but lousy pornographic illustrations of same. They kicked these boxes apart, frightening roaches.

A rat scurried out two inches in front of Cho’s foot. He jumped back into her.

“Easy,” she said.

He nodded. But he also watched the rat until it disappeared into a hole in the wall before he moved forward.

At the far end of the storage area, past a washroom with no door, the back door leading into the alley showed sunlight. Folded cardboard jammed under the hinges kept it open.

Teresa blinked, getting her eyes to adjust to the light.

The bank had two dumpsters, closer to the dead-end, nearer to them than the truck. Another dumpster sat in front of the dead-end, with the end nearest to them closer to the wall than the other. Bad angle.

A dumpster sat between them and the video game store, blocking its back entrance.

Someone could be on the other side of it.

Heaps of snow spotted with car exhaust and dirt popped up among the dumpsters, partially melted and refrozen.  No real cover there.

However, the armored truck, parked diagonally, blocked the entrance to the alley except for narrow gaps beside front and back. At least it would be difficult to surprise her team from the entrance. The steel door to the bank’s back entrance also stood open, masking the entrance. Coming past the armored truck made any approach dangerous.

Check the weak points from near to far. She signaled to Cho, pointing to the video dumpster.

He nodded, then dropped down and peered under it first. Then he tagged her until they got to the dumpster where he went high and she went low.

What a waste of adrenaline that was. No one on the other side; she took a breath, then gestured to the others, spreading them out among the dumpsters.

 A shot came out of the bank’s loading entrance. It ricocheted from the truck’s door. A male voice, falsetto, shouted, “Get away from the truck!”

An answering shot came from the top of the truck.

All five of them ducked. Can’t see the top of the truck—damn it! Who’s shooting at whom?

“CBI!” Teresa shouted. “You on the truck! Drop your weapon!” She waved at Rigsby, who was closest to the truck. He caught her movement; when he glanced at her, she pointed to her eyes and then to the top of the truck.

He nodded, looked around himself, then slowly backed away from the dumpster and toward the wall. He took another survey, then stretched himself to his full height.

A male voice, hoarse but still tenor, replied, “You have Sheriff Austen down there?”

Teresa nodded to the Sheriff.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“It’s Clint McCloskey! Two of ’em are in the bank. Dean’s blocking them from inside, but he can’t get a clear shot because there’s civilians in the way.”

“How many are there?”

“He saw three, but I don’t know where the third is.”

Rigsby stiffened. He brought up his gun, aimed high, and shot twice, chipping brick from the bank façade. A shot, further back than McCloskey’s voice, answered as he dived for the dumpster.

She saw something move on top of the armored truck, as if something turned. Two shadows passed across the alley.

Shots erupted, falling on top of each other, deafening. McCloskey screamed, then fell silent.

Cho’s eyes tracked something. After a second, he laid a line of shots along the edge of the van’s roof.

The bullets whined, and one hit something soft, which was answered by a soprano yelp and a thud of body against metal.

Five seconds after that, a line of bullets spattered the alley, more like wild fire than aimed. They still ducked, going flat behind their cover.

Austen yanked his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. He whispered, “Austen.”

She leaned her head over to listen. He tilted the phone so she could hear.

An elderly, wheezing voice said, “Kick, it’s Pete. I got two masked guys in the back of the bank. They got the manager, the bank security guard, and one of the tellers back there with ’em, and they’re trading threats with Dean Phelps. McCloskey’s been keepin’ ’em from getting out the back. Both of the armored car guards are dead. Phelps is tryin’ to talk ’em down, but they’re not having any.”

Lisbon turned to Cho. “Can you get up on top of that armored car?”

He nodded.

“Van Pelt, cover him.” She pointed towards the dumpster Cho had been using for cover. It gave decent vantage and a good angle for the back door. “Rigsby, you take Cho’s place. You should have a view from there. Cover us—we’re going to try and get inside.”

He nodded.

Austen dragged in air, pointed to himself, then to the door.

It went against her grain to let a local take point, but he knew the bank layout. She nodded to him.

He ran crouched, crab-wise, zig-zagging his way towards the steel door. He stuck his head out a second, jerking back behind the door when a shot rang against the steel.

At the same time, she reached the open truck back, put herself against the door, peered around for a second, then yelled, “CBI! Drop your weapons!”

Bullets answered.

“We got hostages in here!” A second male voice emerged, cracking into falsetto in the middle of the words: young, not far out of adolescence. “You’re gonna back off and we’re gonna walk out of here with them!”

“Not gonna happen,” she said. “You drop your weapons and come out. Nobody else has to get hurt here.”

Over her head, shots echoed. Van Pelt shouted, “Runner!”

The second male voice said, barely audible, “She ran out on us! The bitch ran out on us!”

“Keep your head, jackass!” The first voice was higher-pitched, even if it sounded older and in charge. “She’s comin’ around the front—keep your eyes on that freakin’ door and that freakin’ cop!”

A shot echoed.

A scream followed.

“Seth! You mother—” A bullet exploded, cutting off the curse.

Teresa risked another glance around the door. The vault door stood open.  Beyond that, another door had been wedged open. Huddling against the dubious shelter of that single door, a group of three terrified probable-hostages stared at two figures on the floor. One ski-masked figure lay face-down; the other knelt next to him, rifle still in his hands, patting the downed figure.

Now. She jerked her head at Austen.

He nodded.

They rushed the door. Behind them she heard Rigsby, moving like a man running for home base.

The figure still with the gun swung around.

Austen spoke first; she heard herself echoing him. “Drop it!”

The gunman pointed the rifle toward the three next to the door. “You drop your guns or they’re dead.”

The heavyset man in the khaki uniform shifted until he stood in front of the petite woman with magenta-rimmed bangs leaning against the man in the grey suit. Grey suit shifted as well, until they covered her on both sides—the robber would have to shoot through them.

Please, God, don’t let our security guard try to be a hero. Teresa made an effort to relax her shoulders. She kept her voice low and easy. “You don’t want to do that. You try to pull that trigger, and three guns are going to open up on you. Your—” Two male cousins of Pearl Innis… “Cousin might not be dead. We might be able to save him, if you stop this now. Put the rifle down. Be sensible. Even if Mrs. Innis—”

He jerked.

“Yeah,” she said, “we know who you are. You see? You don’t really want to hurt anyone else, do you? Put the weapon down—do they call you Zachariah?”

“Zack,” he said. His voice cracked on that, too.

“Let us take a look at your cousin. Put the rifle down. Now.”

He looked at the three bank employees, then at the three guns. He laid the rifle down on the floor.

“Good. Push it over here, towards me. Then put your hands behind your head.”

His shove sent the rifle toward Austen. The Sheriff stooped, gun still aimed, and scooped up the rifle without taking his eyes or his aim from Zack. She heard metal on metal as he ejected the magazine and emptied the chamber.

Rigsby edged past her, staying out of her line of fire as he stepped around Zachariah. He pulled the boy’s left arm down, snapped on the handcuff, then finished with the right arm. With him cuffed, Wayne pulled off the ski mask. A white face under white-blonde hair stared up at them, attempting to look defiant, but only looking as if he wanted to vomit.

Austen handed Teresa the rifle. He scanned the employees. “Greg, everybody okay? Mr. Michaels? And it’s Tina Li, isn’t it? You all okay?”

Tina looked between the three of them, then nodded, but her lips trembled as much as her magenta bangs.

“Austen, you want to get them out of here?” Teresa holstered her Glock.

“Yeah,” he said. He shepherded them through the door into the teller area.

A woman screamed.

Teresa jumped for the door.

Tina Li huddled against the man in the grey suit. Kick was kneeling by a man on the floor: baseball cap and a Rams jacket. He looked up at her. “Dean Phelps.”

“How is he?”

Kick shook his head.

“Call an ambulance and the coroner,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She exhaled. “Damn it.”

“Is Seth gonna be okay?” Zack said from behind her.

“We’re getting an ambulance now.”

The two male employees urged Tina outside the teller area. They settled her in one of the desk chairs. Mr. Michaels rushed off to the water dispenser. He brought her the water and coaxed her to drink it while the security guard—Greg—patted her shoulder.

Austen straightened. He fished his phone from his jacket pocket, flipped it open, read the number, and frowned as he answered. “Austen.” Rigsby came out of the back room.  Austen’s head lifted; he relaxed on recognizing Wayne. “Yeah, Marie?”

Rigsby said, “The third shooter got one off at McCloskey. Blonde curls and a ski mask. Cho and Van Pelt are giving chase.”

“What?” Austen put a hand up. Rigsby stopped talking. “Two calls? How far apart?”

Cho came through the front, breathing hard, scowling. “Guy got into a blue pickup and ran. Van Pelt’s calling in the plate.”

Austen’s face turned grey. He spoke in short bursts. “Lisbon. A little girl called the hospital. About fifteen minutes ago. Asked if Sam had been released yet. Marie told her yes. She’d gone home. Kid hung up. Just now, a woman called. Asked the same thing. Marie gave her the same answer.” He took a breath. “I’m going.”

“Hang on. I’m with you.” She turned to her team. “Stay here and contain things. The State Police are on their way. Update the BOLO for a blue Chevy pickup registered to Pearl or Brandon Innis!”

*** *** ***

Patrick laid down They Came to Baghdad and pulled out his cell phone for the fifth time. No calls, no messages. Lisbon had been gone thirty-seven minutes. I should be there with them. Without his insight, they might miss something.

Phelps could be after the money. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

You haven’t met Pearl Innis. But everything pointed to her. Her husband’s dead body and the bodies of the Sheriff’s Department pointed to her.

So why would Phelps have disappeared? He was missing details. I should be trying to find Bethany Innis. I should be with my team.  Even if they might be shooting at something. Or someone.

A rap at the front door startled him. He put Agatha Christie aside.

Samantha sat up in the recliner, rubbing her eyes with the side of her hand. She reached for her crutches.

He shook his head. “I’ll get it. You’ll have time to get adjusted to moving around on crutches later.”

As he reached the door, the knocking started again, faster, frantic. He opened the door on a knock. A girl of six or eight, wearing overalls and a long-sleeved t-shirt but no jacket, fell into him. She pulled herself upright, then peered up at him through tangled bangs. Strands of hair poked out of her messy braids.

A car’s engine could be heard from the main road. The child hunched over, swung around to stare at the driveway, freezing until the engine receded into the distance. Then she turned back to him. “Please, is Sam here? She said they’d let her out of the hospital.”

He heard the recliner clunk as the leg rest lowered. Samantha’s soprano raised half-an-octave. “Bethany! Are you all right, sweetheart?”

Bethany—Bethany Innis. He put a hand on her shoulder, but the girl twisted free of it. She skittered around him, then ran into the living room. By the time he got into the living room, Bethany was lying across the foot of the recliner and across Samantha’s good leg. Samantha’s casted left leg dangled off the chair; she was trying to pull Bethany up onto her lap, or trying to shift so that she could stand. She stroked Bethany’s long fine hair over and over again.

Between sobs, Bethany babbled words that only made sense after hearing them. “Don’t let her. Don’t let her. She says she’s going to take me where nobody’s going to find us. She killed Daddy. Don’t let her take me away.”

“Okay, honey, okay. We’ll take care of you.” Samantha looked up at him in patent appeal.

Jane lifted the child to her feet. He pulled the ottoman back and dropped onto it to put himself on her level. “Easy, Bethany. It’s all right. You’re safe with us.” He picked up the glass of water. “Here, now, drink a little of this.” He patted her back. “It’s just water. Drink a little of it. Come on.”

Bethany gulped a mouthful of water, swallowed, then dragged her hand across her face, smearing wet grey streaks from her eyes to her mouth. “Please don’t let her take me. She killed my daddy.”

“You saw her?” His guts tightened. The room grew warm again.

She shook her head. “I ran out when I heard Sam scream.” Her eyes flicked to Sam. “I know you told me to stay put. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby. Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t have done anything to fix it.”

“I ran down the back stairs, but Mom followed me and grabbed me. I saw Mr. Morales and Daddy—but she dragged me past them. But she talked about it. They were all laughing about it, the three of them.” She sniffled.

“Aw, sugar.” Samantha hugged the girl to her. “I’m so sorry…”

“They told me you were dead too but I couldn’t believe it. They said now all they had to do was take care of Sheriff Austen…”

Color fled Samantha’s face. “God, Kick—” She grabbed for her crutches. Patrick took them from her and laid them back against the end table.

“You stay put. You’re not in any condition to rush out there—all they need is to try and protect you while they’re handling the situation. The Sheriff’s with Lisbon and the others. They’ll watch out for him.”

A glower answered him, but he had faced down more frightening people than Samantha Kelly. When her scowl didn’t move him, she sighed. With the scowl gone, she glanced down at Bethany, then rubbed the little girl’s back as well.

“Okay, sweetie, you need to get your face washed. Have you had anything to eat since this morning?”

Bethany shook her head.

“Help me up, Patrick, please. At least we can make her a sandwich and get her hands and face washed while we wait for someone to tell us what’s happening.”

“Anything but sitting around,” he agreed. “Come on, Beth—do they call you Beth?”

“Daddy called me Beth.”

“Well, then, Beth—let’s help Samantha get up and then we can get you something to eat. I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

Beth sniffled again, but nodded.

In the distance, he heard a car engine race. Lisbon wouldn’t be burning rubber like that; she didn’t like it when he drove at a reasonable speed. The engine grew louder. Tires shrieked as brakes squealed. The engine sounded as if it were—coming directly toward the house.

Samantha’s eyes narrowed. She shifted on the crutches, then opened the end table drawer.

Gravel crackled under tires. The engine roared, then dropped into a purr when the brakes screeched like a flock of birds.

Beth screamed. “It’s her! It’s her! She followed me!” She hid herself between the recliner and the end table.  “Don’t let her! Don’t let her! Please!”

“Hush, sweetheart. You stay down there, out of sight. We’ll handle it.” Samantha pulled her sidearm from the drawer. Even unsteady on her crutches, she drew her gun from the holster without a fumble, falling, or dropping it. She pulled the magazine, checked it, drove it home, then chambered a round.

The front door knob rattled.

Her head jerked up. “You didn’t lock it, did you?” Samantha said.

He frowned at her. “I’m a consultant, not an idiot.”

She shrugged, then offered him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry.”

He nodded. “Accepted.”

Sharp pops exploded; wood splintered. The front door burst open.

“Bethany!” A soprano, shrill as an angry cockatoo, pierced the room.

Samantha put her right hand behind her back, with her finger on the trigger of her Smith and Wesson.

Jane motioned to Beth, caught her attention, then put his finger against his lips. She gulped, then nodded. She wound herself into a tight ball, huddling against the chair.

“You come here right now! You hear me?”

Samantha spoke in response. “Who’s there? What are you doing in my house?” No panic in her voice:  nothing but calmness, resolve, strength. Her face told him something else—he knew that rage. Sometimes it surprised him in a mirror.

A moment later, a woman appeared in the wide arch of the living room. Her long platinum hair spilled over her shoulders in Mary Pickford ringlets. Blood marked lines down the back of her right hand. A drop of red splattered on the floor. The flannel shirt she wore was meant for someone ten inches taller and fifty pounds heavier; a ragged hole in it was matched by holes in the jacket and shirt beneath it, with blood drying on the cloth. Her gold-polished nails glinted with rhinestones, and a small black swastika had been tattooed between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. He noticed the tattoo because those small white hands—she couldn’t have been as tall as Lisbon, who was average in height for a woman—held a large rifle that would have been better suited to a SWAT officer.

“Bethany!” Her eyes searched the room. She pointed the rifle at Samantha. “Where’s my daughter?”

“Mrs. Innis, I think you should put the rifle down.”

Mrs. Innis laughed. She meant it to sound sarcastic, but it came out hysterical. “I think you should mind your own damn business and tell me where my daughter is. Bethany! You come here right now!”

He saw, from the corner of his eye, the small blonde huddle shift. He gestured ‘stay’. Beth rolled onto her hands and knees anyway. He took two careful steps toward Sam.

The rifle swung to cover him. “You stay right there. Who the hell are you?”

“Patrick Jane.”

“What are you doing here?” Her dark eyes narrowed. “You from Protective Services?”

“No, I’m a consultant with CBI.”

She hesitated. The barrel of the rifle dipped. Then she blinked hard—against dizziness?—and brought the rifle back to bear. “Where’s my daughter?”

He smiled, gauging how desperate she was. The blood on her arm suggested that she was staying on her feet through dogged stubbornness. “I was going to ask you the same question, Mrs. Innis. Your daughter’s been missing since this morning. Since your husband was murdered.”

“My husband’s no loss. Freakin’ wimp; scared of everything. Even me.”

“Did he have reason to be afraid of you?”

She stared at him, blinked again, and wavered a little. “Only when he wouldn’t do what I told him.”

“But you didn’t want him to do what you told him, did you?” He took one step forward. “You wanted a man. Someone whom you could lean on, whom you could trust to make decisions. A real man.”

Samantha’s eyes narrowed now. She glanced sidelong at him, then focused on Pearl Innis.

Good for you. You’re starting to figure out what I’m doing. Almost as quick on your feet as Lisbon.

Pearl blinked. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Samantha and him. The rivulets of blood were drying on her hand, but every now and then, another drop rolled down from her sleeve to her fingers and spattered the hardwood floor.

“You started to think it was your fault somehow, didn’t you?” he said. He slid his hands into his pockets. His cell was in the left pocket. He opened it, slowly, keeping all his motions minimal. The last person he had called was Lisbon. He wound his fingers around the phone, resting them over the speaker to muffle sounds, and pressed Send twice with his thumb.

From the corner of his eye, he could see the gun still waiting behind Samantha’s back. He could also see that she was studying Pearl’s hands. If you jump her, you’ll do damage to your leg. He smiled at Pearl. He took one step forward, then another left, putting himself closer to Samantha.

Her head didn’t move, but her eyes did. Her glare held a clear warning; he had no intention of heeding it, of course.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Pearl said.

“No, it wasn’t. But your father said it was, didn’t he?”

The rifle jerked in her hands.

Samantha’s shoulders tensed.

Pearl bit her lower lip. “He liked Brandon well enough when he met him the first time. He encouraged me and him.”

Patrick gauged her expression, analyzing stance and movement at the same time. “But that was just one of the tricks he pulls, isn’t it?”

Her eyes widened.

He made this step diagonal, gaining inches, getting closer to standing between the rifle and Samantha, between the rifle and Bethany. “He sets you up to think you’re doing the right thing and then he laughs at you and says you failed. But you didn’t really fail, you know—you listened to what he said and you did what he said.”

One slow nod replied.

“Which means—if you think about it—he lied to you, didn’t he, Pearl? He set you up to fail.” One more step and he was in front of Samantha. He heard her whisper, “Patrick!”, but ignored it.

Pearl stared dumbly at him.

“What you’re doing right now is what he expected you to do—make mistakes that he could laugh at and say were all because you were a woman, not a man. You don’t really want him to win at this. You want to do the right thing.” Almost have her.

“I want—I want—” She blinked. Then her pointed little chin lifted. “I want my daughter. We’re getting out of here, and she’s going with us.”

From behind him, a shrill childish voice rose. “I won’t! I won’t go with you! You can’t make me!”

He started to turn. Then Samantha stumbled into him. He threw out an arm and she grabbed onto it.

“Bethany!” Samantha’s voice wasn’t a whisper this time.

Long fine white-blonde hair swung through his field of vision. Small dirty hands rose, holding metal which flashed in the light. She’s got Samantha’s gun. Something exploded. For a moment, he could hear nothing at all. One of the floor to ceiling windows burst, showering glass across the room and the outside porch.

Bethany’s hands flew up into the air as she fell backwards. The gun spun backwards and away.

His phone spoke. “Jane! Jane, are you all right? Is anyone hurt?”

Plaster splattered across Pearl’s platinum hair. She yelped, pulling her hands up over her face, hunching up.

A siren sounded in front of the house. A car engine came closer, roaring as it churned gravel.

Pearl straightened, slowly, turning from terrified to vindictive. “You—little—brat! How dare you—” Her dark eyes turned to him. She took a firmer grip on the rifle.

No, not me. Samantha.

“It’s all your fault, you bitch, you and that bastard Brandon, you turned my own daughter against me!”

Samantha tugged at his arm. “Patrick, get behind me. Beth, get down—get behind the chair.”

Can’t do that. He stepped between the two of them.

Bethany scrambled backwards, her sneakers pushing against the wood like a crab scuttling. She rolled over, crawling behind Samantha and him, crouching back behind the recliner.

“No, you don’t! No one’s going to take my daughter away from me. I have a right to her—I’ll kill her myself before you turn her into a sniveling mongrel!” Pearl lifted the rifle and took aim.

Lisbon and Sheriff Austen appeared on the porch. Austen’s voice cracked through the house. “Sam! Fire in the hole!”

Samantha threw herself at Jane. They went down in a tangled heap. She smothered an agonized shriek against his collarbone.

Bullets exploded overhead. Glass shattered. Plaster sprayed fine white dust through the air. The stink of burning gunpowder and red-hot metal flooded the room.

Samantha rolled off him. Somehow in that dive, she’d located and grabbed her gun. She rolled onto her back, panting, pointing the gun toward the archway.

Patrick sat up.

After a second, Samantha lowered the gun and let her head drop back onto the hardwood floor.

Pearl Innis sprawled on her back across the threshold, no threat at all.

Lisbon came through the front door and into the living room. She crouched beside the body, felt along the throat with her long narrow fingers. She lifted her head to look at Austen, who had remained on the porch with his gun aimed. “Clear.”

Austen holstered his gun. His boots echoed on the porch. In another few seconds, he was in the archway. “Is she—?”

Lisbon shook her head.

He sighed, shook his head, then stepped around her. “Anybody hurt? Mr. Jane?”

“I’m fine.” Patrick scrambled to his feet, rumpled and undignified. He paused to slap plaster dust from his trousers and vest. “Samantha? Beth, are you all right?”

Bethany started to cry.

Samantha exhaled. “I’m fine. Just banged up a little.” She sat up, bracing herself on one arm. “Kick, get me up.”

As Austen bent to help her, Patrick turned his attention to Bethany. “Come on, Beth—let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll get you a glass of milk.” Once in the kitchen, he settled her in a chair, scavenged a glass of milk and a bar of Lindt chocolate. “Now you eat this. I’ll be back in a minute or two.”

He returned to find Lisbon arranging a throw over Mrs. Innis’ corpse. He slid his hands into his pockets again, as he walked over to watch.

He smiled at her. “Everything under control, Lisbon?”

She rolled her eyes. “It is now.”

“Patrick,” Samantha said. She was leaning against Austen. Her Smith and Wesson lay on the end table. The only color in her face came from the bruises. If she hadn’t been leaning against the Sheriff, Patrick wasn’t sure she could have stayed on her feet.

He turned to her. He cocked his head to one side, taking his hands out of his pockets. “Yes?”

She crooked a finger at him. He crossed to her.

As soon as he stepped into range, her arm snaked out. She wound her right hand into his shirt front. In the next second, she yanked him forward, until they were nose-to-nose. He put his hands up in self-defense, pressing them against her shoulders.

“Don’t—you—ever—do—that—again,” she said, between her teeth. She shook him; it took effort, and must have hurt like hell, but she was too furious to feel it. “You never, never, never get between a police officer and a suspect with a gun! You pull that shit once too often, you’re going to get someone killed! You hear me?”

He spread his hands out in surrender. “Yes,” he said, nodding, trying to look harmless. “I get it. Never get between an officer and a gun.”

“And you’re listening to me, right?”

“Yes, yes, I am. Lisbon, help me out here.”

“You asked for it. And you got it from someone who knows,” said Lisbon.

Samantha released him. She sagged back into Austen, with an exhausted groan.

“Give me a hand, Jane,” the Sheriff said.

Between the two of them, they lifted her into the recliner.

Lisbon clapped a hand to her hip. She pulled out her phone and flipped it open. “Lisbon.” She listened, then threw her head back, with a glance at the ceiling. “Thank God.” To the rest of them, she said, “State Police have arrived.”

“Better late than never,” Samantha muttered. She laid her head back and closed her eyes.

Lisbon turned away to finish her conversation.

Standing there his thumb tucked into his belt, Austen frowned down at his Assistant Sheriff. “You need to go back to the hospital, Sam. You might have jarred that fracture out of alignment.”

She sat up; the recliner foot clunked down. She winced and put a hand under the cast. “Oh, fuck, no!”

“Ah-ah-ah.” Patrick pointed a finger at her. “There are children in the house. No language. Speaking of children, shouldn’t you put that gun back in the drawer?”

Lisbon snapped the phone shut and put it back on her belt.

Samantha glared at him, mouth open. Then she looked over at Lisbon. “Tracy, how the hell do you keep yourself from duct-taping his mouth shut and locking him in a closet?”

“I ask myself that frequently,” Lisbon said.

Patrick assumed his best innocent-injured expression, then winked at Austen, who chuckled.

*** *** ***

Although crime novels always ended with the villain dead or in custody, Patrick had discovered that the aftermath of real cases required clean-up. Clean-up meant hours spent with the State Police, filling out preliminary paperwork, spending time on cell phones with Minelli in Sacramento.

The State Police and the County Coroner—in the person of Jonathan Ripper—cleaned up the bodies. The glass and the blood would take a few more days. County workers would finish up the Sheriff’s building, but no one official would clean up the dust, blood, and shattered windows in Samantha Kelly’s house.

Paperwork and phone calls ended after three a.m. Facing with driving through mountain roads in the dark, and with Minelli’s grudging permission, the CBI team spent the night in Royale. Minelli gave permission solely because they’d be guests of the Mayor in the bed-and-breakfast she owned and ran, so there would be no charge to the California State Government.

That, of course, was why Patrick found himself sitting in the bed-and-breakfast lounge with the rest of his team, along with Samantha and Rachel Wando, at four a.m. He was on his fourth cup of tea and a second scone. He’d lost count of how much coffee Rigsby and Cho had imbibed, but if it had been beer, neither one of them would have considered driving. Rigsby, with his growing-boy appetite, picked up a fourth scone.

Cho shook his head.

Rigsby looked wounded.

“Go right ahead,” said Rachel. “I’ve got another batch in the oven; they’ll be done in five minutes. I don’t think any of you had lunch.” She frowned at Samantha. “I know you didn’t.”

“When did any of us have time to eat?”

“And you should still be in the hospital.”

She shook her head. “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” She settled back and closed her eyes.

He was perfectly happy to sit there and relax—sleeping was still not something he did well.

Bethany was spending the night there as well. She and Rachel’s two children, Lauren and Graham, had been sent to bed.

“Beth isn’t going to be picked up by CPS, is she?” Patrick hoped that she wouldn’t disappear into the system.

“No.” Rachel refilled the cups. “We’ve managed to keep Protective Services out of it. She’s staying with me until her grandparents—Brandon Innis’ parents—get here from Pennsylvania. It’s going to take them a week and a half—they’re driving a U-Haul so they can collect their son’s effects. She’s a little nervous about it. She hasn’t seen them since she was three.”

Samantha shifted in her chair. The warmth of the fire seemed to have been inducing sleep. She didn’t sound sleepy, though. “It’s the best thing for her. Get her out of here.”

Rachel eyed her. She was gearing up to say something. Patrick wondered if she would, then saw the decision form in her eyes. “You stayed, Sam.”

“Yes, well—I was young. I didn’t know what I do now. It might have been better if—”

“Ifs,” he interrupted, “will drive you crazy. What is that kid’s rhyme—‘but all for want of a horseshoe nail’—no point in thinking if.”

“Easier said than done.” She said it, though, while staring into her mug of hot chocolate. Rachel had refused to give her coffee, saying she needed something with food value to it.

Lisbon surprised him. She said, “Jane’s right, Sam.”

“Why, thank you, Lisbon.” True enough; it was a platitude. A lot like that speech you gave that mother and daughter, Patrick.

“Absolutely.” Grace sat up; her ponytail bounced. “You have to move on.” She leaned forward to stare at Rigsby and Cho. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course,” Rigsby mumbled through a mouthful of scone.

Cho folded his arms. “You did your best; that’s all you can do.”

Rachel contributed her opinion as she stood. “You ought to listen to them. I’ll go get those scones.”

Samantha’s eyes crinkled; her mouth twitched. “If you’re all going to gang up on me, I think I need to give in.”

He leaned forward to tap the back of her hand. “Good thought.”

The bell on the front door jangled. Boots stamped in the front hall. Austen came in, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them into his pockets. His eyes first sought out Samantha. She smiled. He walked across the room and bent to kiss her on the forehead. “You doing okay, sis?”

“Nothing that a couple of hours of sleep won’t fix.”

Lisbon said, “That and six weeks to heal up that leg.”

Samantha made a face at her. “You have to take the fun out of everything, don’t you?”

Austen laughed. “Thank you, Agent Lisbon. Maybe she’ll listen to you.” He raised an eyebrow at his Assistant Sheriff. “You, ma’am, are off work for a week. Doc McNulty’s orders. After that, we figure you can sit in the office as well as you can in the house, so I’m getting a comfortable chair for your office.”

The Mayor appeared with a basket of scones wrapped in a plaid towel. “Ah, here you are, Kick.”

“Bearing good news.” He grabbed a scone as she put the basket down. Tossing it from hand to hand to cool it, he sat down beside Samantha.

Rachel poured him a cup of coffee. “We’re waiting.”

“Well, Zack’s in the County Jail. Hospital says Seth might pull through. Carlos woke up. Seems that the bullets just slid under his skull, so the head injury is minor. They got the chest trauma under control. He’s lucid; he confirms that Brandon was with him and they were both shot by two men in ski masks. Encarnación’s twins arrived shortly after midnight, one boy, one girl; they’re all fine. Haven’t decided on names yet. I called Gateway and they’ll be shipping new computers to us on Monday.” He took a bite of the scone, then washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “And, Sam, I got hold of Aunt Nina. Her kids’ll be over in the morning to clean up your living room and repaint. Also spoke to Barry. He’s got glass that will fit your windows; he’ll be there tomorrow to put it in. The glass for the office will be delivered on Friday and installed then or on Saturday.”

Rachel sat down. “Well, that wraps up most of the issues. I only have one question—”

“Just one?” Austen grinned.

“Nobody likes a smartass, Kick. What did Dean think he was doing? Well, he and Clint.”

Austen frowned.

Lisbon started to speak at the same moment Patrick did. She stopped, motioning for him to go ahead.

He set his cup down, then leaned forward as he interlaced his fingers. “In the simplest terms, Sheriff, he thought he was being a hero. He came into Royale two years ago expecting to be a big fish in a small pond—much easier here than in the LAPD. He never got the recognition he felt he deserved. He took it out on his wife, took it out on Samantha. He probably ran you down behind your back—”

Rachel snorted. “No question about that.”

“I figured as much.” Austen shrugged. “Soreheads don’t bother me. When he did his job, he did it decently.

“You’re a forgiving man, Sheriff.” Patrick leaned back.

“Nah. It pisses ’em off more if you ignore ’em.”

Rigsby laughed.

“So it does.” Patrick smiled. “So he was in the office and overheard the conversation about the money. It didn’t mean anything to him until he heard that the deputies had been injured or killed. He had a leap of insight, so he went to check out the bank with his friend Clint. But even with the added guns, they were still two to three.” He looked down at his hands. “If he’d been willing to be a team player and not a grandstander, he would have had backup.”

Cho shook his head. “Hell of an epitaph.”

“Man’s life in one sentence. Good job, Mr. Jane.”

Rachel stood. “A good job all around. Thank you all. On that note, I think we should all get a little sleep. Austen, are you spending the night?”

“If I do, the cat will never let me hear the end of it. No, I’ll see you tomorrow at the follow-up board meeting.”

“I called everyone and moved it back to eleven.”

“Thank God.” He stood, leaned down to kiss Samantha on the cheek, and said, “You stay off that leg tomorrow—I’ll be in to check on you. Pete’s coming in to cover. You can draft the notices for the bulletin boards and the papers about the job openings.” He shook hands all around, solemnly. Patrick noted that he held Lisbon’s hand a little longer than necessary. “Thank you for the assist. Really appreciate it.”

Faint color came up in her face, but she answered with no sign of embarrassment. “Thank you, Sheriff. Always glad to help out.”

The next morning, they dropped Samantha off at her house so Lisbon could say goodbye one more time. Patrick inserted himself into the good-byes. He waited until Rigsby, Cho, and Grace went back to the SUVs.

He amused himself while Samantha and Lisbon chatted by watching the vigorous repairs.

Two girls and two boys, Sheriff Austen’s adolescent cousins, were scrubbing, putting up drywall, and prepping for new paint. Four adult men—the same ones who’d replaced the glass in town—worked over the windows in the living room.

“I’ll walk you to the door.” Samantha, settled on the sofa, sat up and swung her legs off, then reached for her crutches.

“No, you stay there. You’ve done enough for two days. You should have gone back to the hospital for a day or two,” Lisbon said.

“They x-rayed it, and I’m fine. I just have to heal up.”

Lisbon nodded. She mock-punched Samantha’s shoulder. “You take care of yourself. I don’t want to have to come up here and pull your ass out of the fire again.”

Samantha laughed. “Yeah, right. Next time, it’ll be me pulling you out of a snow bank.” Her face turned serious. “Remember, you promised you’d let me teach you to ski.”

“I promise. Next winter, I’ll take a vacation. I could use some peace and quiet.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

They smiled at each other.

He turned his back to them. He walked over to the single unbroken window, watching their reflections in the glass. The hypnosis did what it was supposed to do. Give her a few weeks, and that guilt complex should be a thing of her past as well. At least some things came out of this better than they started.

Samantha started to reach out at the same moment that Lisbon did. They both paused. Then Lisbon stooped and hugged her. After a second, Samantha’s arms wrapped around Lisbon’s shoulders.

“I’ll see you.” Lisbon swung around. At the archway, she paused; from his angle, he saw her drag her hand across her eyes. “Say good-bye and let’s go, Jane. Minelli’s going to be blowing steam when we walk into the office tomorrow.” She walked down the hall. The front door shut behind her.

“Yes, ma’am.” And I still have sleeping pills in the house. I should be able to get some sleep before tomorrow. Patrick stopped to smile down at Samantha. “Well—”

She inhaled. “Patrick. Wait.”

Her expression stopped him. He cocked his head, dissecting her nervousness, her embarrassment, and her determination.

She dug her teeth into her lower lip again, then said, “Kick told me an old Navajo proverb once.”

“What’s that?”

“Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.” She frowned at him. “You think about what I said. Take care of yourself.”

He looked away from her, at the men replacing the shattered windows. So easy, to replace things. Outside, Lisbon beeped the Suburban’s horn twice. He stopped at the archway, then turned back to her. “I will. Thank you, Samantha.”

[1] Soren Kierkegaard, “The Concluding Unscientific Postscript to The Philosophical Fragments.”