"Good idea. Do you happen to know where we can find her? There are only two roads into that neighborhood, and I've had a cop stationed at each one all night, waiting for the two roomies to come home. You swam into our net eventually. But she never came home."

Breakfast at the Alamo, Tess thought, but she didn't volunteer the information. At this point, she wasn't sure if finding Emmie would help or hurt Crow.

Guzman was still waiting for her answer, allowing another silence to fill the room, when the policeman who had been watching the door poked his head in and motioned to the detective. The two left the room together, shutting the door behind them. Tess couldn't make out the words, but she heard Guzman's voice getting louder and angrier. The door opened again, and his kind face had been transformed into a furious one.

"You can go," he said curtly.

"Go where?" Her car was at Crow's duplex, which she wasn't sure she could find again. She knew the place was close to La Casita, somewhere in the folds of the park, but she didn't remember much from the trip, except the feel of Crow's hands on her body, his mouth on her neck.

"An officer will take you to your car."

"No, we'll take her, Detective." Rick Trejo was leaning against the door jamb. He wore the preppy clothes and cowboy boots of the night before, but Tess was sure these were different, cleaner versions. He was freshly shaven, too, and his face had the smooth, rested look of someone who had enjoyed at least a few hours of sleep. If she hadn't been so relieved to see him, she might have hated him for looking so well-rested. She hated everyone who had slept in the last eight hours.

"It's no trouble," Guzman said.

"I'm sure it's not. I'm sure you'd love to have her in a patrol car just a little while longer, ask her a few more questions. I'd prefer to have her come with me and my client. It's her choice, of course. But if she's free to go, she's free to choose how she goes."

"Yeah, well, tell your client not to leave town anytime soon. I bet we have him back down here before the week is out."

"Detective, you can talk to him anytime you want-as long as I'm with him. I only hope you won't drag him down here again unless you're prepared to charge him." Trejo smiled at Guzman. "Cheer up, buddy. It's not my fault that the DA says you fucked up. He sounded kinda mad, by the way. Not that I talked to him. I just could hear how loud he was screaming when your boss was on the phone with him. C'mon, little Yankee gal. Vamanos."

Tess, thoroughly confused, followed him. She felt guilty somehow, as if she had chosen the slick lawyer over the earnest cop, but she didn't see what choice she had.

"How did-" she began to ask in the hall.

"Not here," Rick said quickly. "We'll talk in the car."

"He's not charged with anything?"

"The search was no good. They had a warrant for his arrest, but they didn't have a search warrant, and they didn't have any reason to enter the house-Crow was outside, remember?"

She remembered.

"If the shotgun had been out in plain view, things might be different. But it wasn't. And the gun was all they had, which wasn't much to begin with-you can't match shotgun pellets the way you can bullets. The DA knows they can't use it, so they're going to have to build a case without it. End of story. For now."

Crow was sitting in the lobby with Kristina, who was beaming as if bailing out her favorite musician was the realization of some long-held dream. Crow looked dazed and frightened, yet grimly resolute. Tess had a feeling that Guzman had not been so kind and gentle with him.

"How did you know we were here?" Tess asked Rick.

"I have sources," Trejo said. "There are people here who let me know when there are, um, interesting cases in which representation might be required."

"He pays people," Kristina said.

"Kristina-that would be illegal. I simply am a generous man with a very long Christmas list. Anyway, Sam from Hector's called me, after Crow called him."

"We have to go," Crow said, rising to his feet. "It's already past eleven."

"Go where?" Kristina asked.

"In the car," Rick said, before Crow could say anything more, indicating the desk sergeant with a slight lift of his chin. "Let's confine all our chatter to the goddamn car."

Once in the car, a Lexus the same flan color as his skin, Rick wanted to take a meandering course through downtown to make sure the police weren't following them. Crow was much too impatient for that.

"We don't have time," he said, pressing his hands against the glove compartment as if he could push the car through the streets. "She's probably already gone."

"Who's gone where?" Rick asked.

"The Alamo," Crow said, which didn't answer Rick's question, but told Tess everything she needed to know. "Just drop me off at the Alamo."

"Let's show a little discretion, okay? I'll let you off at Rivercenter Mall. Where you go from there is your own business. Just make sure you're not followed."

Crow didn't ask Tess to accompany him, but when he leaped from the car, she was a half-step behind. He scurried ahead, trying to lose her, but he couldn't break into an all-out run without attracting attention, so she had no problem keeping pace. At last, she could feel a little adrenaline moving through her body.

They left the mall by another entrance, Crow practically jogging now, a determined salmon swimming upstream through the schools of sluggish tourists. In less than a block, they were behind the walls of the Alamo, in a pretty, shaded garden. Crow stopped at a bench, then turned in a circle. He was looking, Tess knew, for a bright blond head, and there were plenty of those to be seen. But it was just a group of Germans passing through, eyes and mouths round with reverential awe. Who had told her, some time ago, that Germans loved the whole cowboy-frontier thing? It had been Crow.

"She's not here," he said. "She's not here."

"Maybe she's back at the house?"

"The cops would have gotten her, then. No, she's gone, and now everything's ruined." He looked at Tess balefully. "Everything's ruined because of you. You brought the cops right to us. All I needed was a week to make everything okay and you wouldn't even give me that. One goddamn week. Why couldn't you stay away? Why did you have to come to Hector's and set all this in motion? You know, I keep thinking you won't disappoint me if I don't ask for too much. But I'm always wrong."

With that, he turned and walked away. She could have run after him. She could have caught him, too, and told him it wasn't her fault, that the cops had simply made the same connection she had, from Marianna to Emmie to him. But she knew he was determined to be alone, or at least without her. Unsure of what to do, or how to hook up with Rick and Kristina, she sank onto a bench and looked around. So this was the Alamo.

It was pretty, although smaller than she thought it would be.