"Do you really think she'll do it?" he asked.

"You know her better than I do, Clay. What do you think?"

He didn't answer. They were running almost full out, but it still took ten minutes to reach McCullough. This side street was full of vendors and overflow from the parade, and no one seemed to notice the woman with the braid and the man with the book slipping into the parking lot behind the Morgue, where the door to the loading dock, tightly bolted yesterday, was now ajar, and a white Toyota with Maryland plates was parked illegally. Great, her car would probably be towed before this was all over.

Clay started to follow her inside, but Tess stopped him. "If you're there, she can still do it, right? She wants to die in front of you. She doesn't need a parade to do that. Wait here, and if I don't come out in fifteen minutes, I want you to get a cop and come find me. Okay?"

"Okay," he said reluctantly. "But if I'm there, if I can talk to her-"

"We can't risk it, Clay. Now help me with Emmie-think-roof, or the top floor?"

He didn't need more than a second. "Top floor. On the roof, the news and traffic helicopters could spot her. She's smart enough to have thought that through."

Tess took the stairs to the fourth floor, treading as softly as possible. The Morgue's various music venues went only as high as the third floor, and this area appeared to be a storage room, virtually unrenovated. She walked through old boxes and piles of newspapers, moving toward what her ears told her was the Broadway side of the building. The crowd was loud and restless, possibly because the parade was now officially behind schedule. The noise would be deafening once things truly got under way. She wondered how much time Kristina had bought them.

She tried a series of doors along the corridor. The Lady or the Crow. No. No. No. What if she was wrong, after all? She had bet all the time they had on this one hunch. She might have bet Crow's life on it as well.

The last door she tried was in the northwest corner and when she entered, there was Emmie, kneeling over Crow, pressing her hand against his stomach. When she saw Tess in the doorway, she held her hands up as if to ward off a blow. She wore white gloves. Once-white gloves now covered with blood.

"I'm so sorry." Emmie was almost babbling. "I wouldn't have hurt him, not for anything, you have to know that. I tried to tell you he was in trouble, but you were so slow to come. Why couldn't you come sooner?"

Tess pushed Emmie so hard that she hit the far wall, next to the room's only window. She knelt next to Crow and lifted his shirt. The wound was narrow, but deep, and he was losing blood at a sickeningly rapid rate. She took off his shirt and used it as a compress.

"You'll be fine," she said, hoping it was true. She should get her gun out of her knapsack, hold it on Emmie, so she wouldn't come at both of them with the knife. Tess looked around the room and saw the long blade lying on the floor, just a few feet from her. She couldn't get to it without leaving Crow's side. Meanwhile, Emmie seemed in no hurry to pick up the weapon and resume her attack. She sat on the floor, legs spread out like a Raggedy Ann doll, babbling to herself.

"You should have come sooner. I wouldn't have hurt him for anything."

"Go," Crow said, his voice weak. "Live."

"Not for anything," Emmie repeated in a low moan. "Never, never, never." She beat on her skirt, as if trying to put out flames, but succeeded only in leaving her own bloody handprints behind. She was dressed like a princess, or a little girl's idea of a princess, in a long gauzy skirt over a pink leotard and leggings, her feet in flat ballet slippers. Those white gloves. "I never wanted him to be hurt."

Tess felt the pulse at Crow's neck. It wasn't strong, but it was steady. There was some hope. "Then why did you?"

"I didn't," she wailed, crouching in the corner like some strange animal. "But he said-and I promised, and I keep my promises, I always keep my promises. He was the one who broke his promise. He said no one would be hurt. Only bad people, he said. Only bad people, who deserved what they got."

The door opened, and Clay stumbled in, a police officer at his side. Good for him, he hadn't waited the prescribed fifteen minutes. They would need a cop to get an ambulance through the crowds, to get Crow the help he needed. The parade was starting, she could hear the strains of a marching band, blasting out something that sounded like "I've Been Working on the Railroad." She looked up hopefully into the face of the cop with the rifle on his hip.

Steve Villanueve took off his dark glasses.

"Don't feel bad, Tess," he said. "You weren't the only one who never stopped to think that Pilar Rodriguez had a family, too. Or that there was someone who loved her enough to avenge her death."

Chapter 29

"Pilar Rodriguez was my family's cook," Clay said stupidly. Tess noticed he was still holding his book, a finger at his place, as if he might have time to finish a chapter or two before Steve killed all of them.

"Pilar Rodriguez was my grandmother." Steve used the rifle's long barrel to prod Clay into the corner where Tess crouched, her hand still bearing down hard on Crow's wound. The door was less than fifteen feet away on a diagonal, Tess judged. If she or Clay ran, they might make it before Steve got off a shot. But she couldn't leave Crow, and Clay seemed to be in a trance.

As did Emmie, who couldn't stop staring at her cousin. She chewed a knuckle, eyes wide, her back pressed so hard against the wall that she might have been nailed to it. It had probably been a year since she was this near to him, since he had been close enough for her to touch, to gaze into the shadowed eyes so like hers.

In a room full of people, Tess was clearly on her own.

"You did fool me," she told Steve. "I thought you were an overeager rookie, trying to win points with the boss. But you were miles ahead of Guzman."

He nodded curtly, too distracted by the events swirling around him to pay much heed to her fake praise, much less be taken in by it. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his round face had a flushed, feverish quality. He had looked like that when they were running together. Yet this day was cool, and the little room, away from direct sunlight, was cooler still.

"Pilar Rodriguez," Tess said, musing aloud. "No, I never gave much thought to her. ‘The cook.' That's what Guzman, everyone, always called her. The cook."

"As if she were nothing," Steve said. "As if she weren't a person, too."

He was still looking out the window. He would have a very precise plan, Tess knew. He had probably written it down, gone over every possible scenario, then committed it all to memory. Tess suddenly realized he was the one who had put the gun beneath Crow's bed, left his T-shirt at Espejo Verde, hoping to be rid of him before today. He was that careful. He was so careful that any disruption, any unexpected contingency, would throw him off his stride. How flustered he had been in the park that day, when she had seen through him. Well, almost seen through him. Crow's appearance today would have kicked up the first stone in his path. Now here were Tess and Clay. Everything was falling apart.

"I don't remember her," Clay murmured. "I know her name, of course, but I don't remember her."

"I do," Emmie said. "She smelled like vanilla. She was the one who called me Dutch."

"She wasn't yours to remember," Steve said. "She was your employee. She cooked your meals, she took care of you, so she would have money for her own children and grandchildren. Money, but no time, because she worked six days a week, living in your house. She made the food that made Espejo Verde famous. So then she had two jobs. Before too long, she had a third job as well-babysitting, while Lollie Sterne fucked her best friend's husband in the little bedroom off the kitchen."