“And of course there’s the fishing line. So… what are we thinking?” I said to Conklin. “That Hawk and Pidge also killed Michael Campion? Because I don’t see two guys killing a kid when their MO is to tie up rich couples, leave a few words in Latin inside a book, and then burn the house down.”

Conklin said, “Nope. That doesn’t work for me, either. So why do you think these birds targeted the Campions?”

“Because the Campions are in the news. Big house. Big fire. Big headlines. Big score.”

Conklin smiled, said, “Only they screwed up.”

I smiled back, said, “Yeah.”

We were both starting to feel it, the kind of incomparable exhilaration that comes when after nothing but dead ends, A leads to B leads to C. I was sure that Hawk and Pidge were the sadists who did the arson killings, but not only couldn’t we prove that, we didn’t know who Hawk and Pidge were.

I stamped out my cigarette on the street, said to Conklin, “That Hawk bastard had better live.”

“At least long enough to talk,” said my partner.

Chapter 104

HAWK’S SURGEON, Dr. Dave Hammond, was a compact man with rusty hair and the tight manner of a perfectionist who’d spent the night stitching his patient’s guts back together. Conklin and I had spent the same eight hours in a small, dull waiting room at St. Francis Hospital, waiting for Hammond ’s report.

When the doctor entered the waiting room at 6:15 a.m., I shot to my feet, asked, “Is he awake?”

Hammond said, “Right now, the patient’s condition defines touch-and-go. He was bleeding like a son of a bitch when he came in. One slug punctured his lung and nicked his aorta. The other damn near pulverized his liver.”

Conklin said, “So, Doctor, when can we talk to him?”

“Inspector, you understand what I just said? We had to inflate the kid’s lungs, transfuse him, and remove a chunk of his liver. This is what we like to call major surgery.”

Conklin smiled winningly. “Okay. I hear you. Is he awake?”

“He just opened his eyes.” Hammond sighed with disgust. “I’ll give you one minute to get in and get out.”

One minute was all we’d need, enough time to wring two words from that bastard – his first name and his last. I pushed open the door marked RECOVERY and approached Hawk’s bed. It was a shocking sight.

Hawk’s body was lashed down in four-point restraints so that he couldn’t flail and undo the work his surgeons had just done. Even his head was restrained. IV bags dripped fluids into his body, a chest tube drained ooze out of his lungs, a catheter carried waste into a canister under the bed, and he was breathing oxygen through a cannula clipped to his nose.

Hawk looked bad, but he was alive.

Now I had to get him to talk.

I touched his hand and said, “Hi there. My name is Lindsay.”

Hawk’s eyes flickered open.

“Where… am I?” he asked me.

I told him that he’d been shot, that he was in a hospital, and that he was doing fine.

“Why can’t… I move?”

I told him about the restraints and why he was tied down, and I asked for his help. “I need to call your family, but I don’t know your name.”

Hawk scanned my face, then dropped his gaze to the badge on my lapel, the bulge of my gun under my jacket. He murmured something I had to strain to hear.

“My work here is finished,” Hawk said.

“No,” I shouted, gripping the kid’s hand with both of mine. “You are not going to die. You’ve got a great doctor. We all want to help you, but I have to know your name. Please, Hawk, tell me your name.”

Hawk pursed his lips, starting to form a word – and then, as though an electric current had taken over his body, his back bowed and he went rigid against his restraints. Simultaneously, the rapid, high-pitched beeping of an alarm filled the room. I wanted to scream.

I held on to Hawk’s hand as his eyes rolled back and a noise came from his throat like soda water pouring into a glass. The monitor tracking his vital signs showed Hawk’s heart rate spike to 170, drop to 60, and rocket again even as his blood pressure dropped through the floor.

“What’s happening?” Conklin asked me.

“He’s crashing,” Hammond shouted, stiff-arming the door. The rapid beeping turned into one long squeal as the green lines on the monitor went flat.

Hammond yelled, “Where’s the goddamned cart!”

As the medics rolled it in, Conklin and I were pushed away from the bed. A nurse closed the curtain, blocking our view. I heard the frenzy of doctors working to shock Hawk’s heart back into rhythm.

“Come on, come on,” I heard Dr. Hammond say. Then, “Crap. Time of death, 6:34 a.m.”

“Damn it,” I said to Conklin. “Damn it to hell.”

Chapter 105

AT 7:45 THAT MORNING, I took off my jacket, hung it over the back of my chair, opened my coffee container, and sat down at my desk across from Conklin.

“He died on purpose, that monster,” I said to my partner.

“He’s dead, but this is not a dead end,” Conklin muttered.

“Is that a promise?”

“Yeah. Boy Scout’s honor.”

I opened my desk drawer, took out two cello-wrapped pastries, not more than a week old. I lobbed one to Rich, who caught it on the fly.

“Oooh. I love a woman who bakes.”

I laughed, said, “Be glad for that coffee cake, mister. Who knows when we’ll see food again.”

We were waiting for phone calls. A blurry photo of Hawk being wheeled out of the Campion house was running in the morning Chronicle. It was unlikely someone could ID him from that, but not impossible. At just after eight, my desk phone warbled. I grabbed the receiver and heard Charlie Clapper’s voice.

“Lindsay,” he said, “there were a dozen prints on that bottle and the foil it was wrapped in.”

“Tell me something good.”

“I’d love to, my friend,” Clapper said. “But all we’ve got for sure is a match to Hawk’s prints, and he’s not in AFIS.”

“There’s a shock. So he’s still a John Doe and, I take it, so is Pidge.”

“Sorry, kiddo. The only other match I got was to Connor Campion.”

I sighed, said, “Thanks anyway, Charlie,” and stabbed the blinking button of my second line.

Chuck Hanni’s voice sounded wound-up, excited.

“Glad I got you,” Hanni said. “There’s been a fire.”

I pressed the speaker button so Conklin could hear.

“It just happened a few hours ago in Santa Rosa,” Chuck said. “Two fatalities. I’m on the way out there now.”

“It’s arson? You think it’s related to our case?”

“The sheriff told me that one of the vics was found with a book in his lap.”

I stared at Conklin, knowing he was thinking the same thing: that SOB Pidge hadn’t wasted any time.

“We’ll meet you there,” I said to Hanni.

I wrote down the address and hung up the phone.