No sound.

Then he laughs again. I hear footsteps. Slow footsteps; he's relaxed. I'm trying to breathe slower, but every breath makes a squeaky sound.

Through the door I hear: “Stupid little shit. You cornered yourself.”

He's right.

The bathroom has no window.

Now he's kicking the door it shakes the wood swells like a balloon that cracks right in the middle I jump up open the medicine cabinet feel in the darkness for something sharp a razor blade scissors anything no razor blade no scissors here's something pointy a nail file I think it's not sharp but I grab it he kicks part of his leg comes through black sweats black tennis shoes I stab down at the pants the nail file hits bone but it slides off doesn't go in he yells calls me a little bastard-

Another explosion much louder.

Something comes through the door flying by me the mirror on the medicine cabinet door shatters I feel pain in the back of my head put my hand there warm and sticky needles glass needles.

A gun- he's got a gun, too.

I throw myself into the tub he shoots again now the door is full of holes splintering and now I can see part of him on the other side his legs and shoes and his pants he's still shooting I'm lying facedown in the tub as low as I can go but a bullet hits the tub and the porcelain shatters and part of the wall falls off this is it I'm trapped finished I did my best it wasn't good enough I hate you everyone- another explosion the bullet goes into something above my head stuff falls down on me dust tiles I'm getting buried.

Now there's no door just him big huge the knife in one hand the gun in another.

He turns on the light.

I've still got the nail file. He sees it and laughs.

Puts the gun in his pocket.

Oh no the knife.

I curl up don't want to see it just don't let me feel it.

He takes hold of my hair pulls me up so I'm on my knees pulls my head back.

I piss my pants and shit slides out of me running down my leg thank you God for nothing you don't exist you liar-

Another explosion.

More and moreandmoreandmore I can't stand the noise I don't get it what's he doing-

He drops me and I fall into the tub hard.

A woman's voice says, “My God!”

Then: “It's okay, honey.”

A hand touches the back of my neck.

I scream.

80

Red puffs sparked from Balch's back, neck, posterior skull. Later, Petra learned she'd shot him nine times within a two-foot diameter, each bullet lethal, a tight little circle of death.

He fell on his face next to the bathtub, stayed there, the gun at his side. She kicked the weapon across the floor. Kicked him to make sure he was dead, though maybe that wasn't the only reason. The knife had fallen to one side. Big ugly commando thing with a black hard-rubber handle. She kicked it away, too, stepped over the black-sweat-suited corpse. Bits of blood-pinkened bone gritted the tile floor. The bathroom door was a splinter of frame barely hanging from one hinge.

The boy was huddled fetally in the tub.

What was left of the tub. Ragged chunks of porcelain had been torn loose; glass shards and dust and broken tiles were everywhere. Blood had flowed over Balch's back and wormed onto the floor. The place looked as if it had been through a war- how could the idiot think he'd get away with this?

He'd come close.

She'd had trouble finding a space within eyeshot of the house, and even though she saw no sign of intrusion, something pinged in her gut and she double-parked around the corner.

She got out of the car, smelling sea air, expecting another dead end.

Then gunshots raped the silence and she pulled out her gun and ran around to the back, found the door kicked in, a dimly lit kitchen beyond the threshold, off to the left another ravaged door, black-sweatsuited bulk nearly filling the opening- an upraised knife, a child's limp legs.

“Stop!” she screamed, but it was no warning; she was already shooting.

When she got to the boy, he refused to uncurl, whimpered when she talked to him, screamed when she touched him. Such a skinny little thing! His long hair was bloodstained, porcupined with glass fragments. Twelve, but the size of a ten-year-old. A yellow pool had spread underneath him. She smelled feces, saw the stain covering the seat of his jeans.

The urge to pick him up, hold him, rock him in her arms was so strong it made her palate ache. She got down on the floor, talked to him, finally managed to stroke his hair without repulsing him.

He stopped shaking, went rigid, then limp. She cradled his head, and now he let her. She knew how to comfort. At that moment she thought, crazily, of Nick. You were wrong, you prick.

When the boy was breathing regularly, she lay him down gently in the tub and called for an ambulance and uniformed backup, Code 3. Returning, she stayed with him, picking glass out of his scalp, getting splinters in her finger- it didn't matter; it felt okay. Calling him William, using a soothing tone, not really knowing what she was saying, wanting to calm him down, but how could you comfort a kid who'd been through this?

She heard sirens. Pacific Division cops burst in; then came the paramedics. Only when the boy was up on a stretcher did she allow herself to leave him. Fetal again, so small under the shock blanket. An old man rushed in, looking stunned. The paramedics seemed pained as they carried the boy out.

She watched them carry him away, ignored the old man's questions. The uniforms' too. Walking straight to Balch's body, she turned it over.

Not Balch. A stranger.

The shock punched her in the heart, and she broke out into a sweat.

A second jolt hit her, even stronger. Recognition.

Ramsey.

His mustache was gone and his skin was different- some kind of salmon-pink theatrical makeup was smeared all over his face and down his neck, flaking around his nostrils. Dark shadows around his eyes- gray makeup. The bushy blond wig had been jarred loose, revealing a crescent of black curls. Blond tint in the eyebrows- he'd even done the eyebrows.

Blue eyes, dull as sewer water.

Mouth open, the same old death gape. She looked down his mouth, saw the tongue curled back, blood collecting at the bottom of his throat.

Thinking about what he'd put the boy through, Lisa, Ilse, the Flores woman, she would have welcomed the chance to kill him again.

81

They found Gregory Balch's body the next day, buried under dirt, hay, and horse manure in the barn behind the Calabasas house, his throat cut, just like Estrella Flores's.

Entombed in dung. You didn't need to be a shrink to interpret.

After tearing the pink palace apart, the closest they got to a motive was a single piece of notepaper in Ramsey's bedroom rolltop. One of those FROM THE DESK OF things. In the center, he'd written:

L and G?

Lisa and Greg. A sweat stain beneath the inscription indicated stress, according to a department shrink. Very profound. The psychologist was light on facts, heavy on pomposity, suggested he be the one to see Billy Straight for “debriefing.”

Petra had other ideas, and she stood her ground.

Stu's find added another layer: ten-year-old Adjustor plot out of TV Guide.

A football player attempts to frame his best friend for murder, and Dack Price investigates.

Maybe eventually it would help Stu feel he'd played a part. Right now he had Kathy's recuperation to deal with; she'd finally gotten realistic, agreed to his thirty-day compassionate leave.

L and G? Had Lisa and Balch tumbled? Or was it all in Ramsey's paranoid mind? Or maybe it was money, Lisa and Balch conspiring to skim. No way to know till all the financial records were pried loose from Larry Schick. Maybe never. Petra really didn't care.