"More blanks?" Riker was that rare person who did suffer fools gladly, for the criminally misguided had always been his chief source of entertainment. "So you thought you might need to reload in a hurry… with emergency blanks."

MacPherson nodded, then forced a smile because Riker was smiling.

"Imbecile." Ian Zachary shook his head slowly from side to side and leaned back against an old junker of a car, the perfect complement to his disguise of workman's coveralls. He was a portrait of New York elan, so blase in the aftermath of his own attempted murder. He turned to face Riker, saying, "You're going to arrest him now, right?"

"Hell, no. How many ways can I say this?" Riker spoke slowly and carefully in the manner of talking down to a half-bright child. "I – am – not – a – cop – anymore."

"You could make a citizen's arrest."

"Naw, I'm gonna buy him a beer. Poor guy, he's had a rough day." Riker clapped one hand on MacPherson's shoulder. "C'mon, you're with me. I wanna know what the hell went on in that jury room."

There was no sound of sirens yet. He knew they should be gone before the first police car arrived. Jo would have located a public phone by now. However, he had a feeling that she would not leave her name as the 911 caller. Riker walked the incompetent shooter up the ramp in silence, and there was time to wonder who the lady had been following tonight. Himself? Was Jo taking the blame for Bunny's death? Was she worried that another friend would be the next target? Or was it Ian Zachary she was tailing? He glanced at the ashen face of MacPherson and decided to include him on the short list of men who so interested Johanna Apollo.

From the bowels of the parking garage, Ian Zachary called out, "Can I come? I'll buy!"

Riker sat back and enjoyed his favorite brand of bourbon – Free Booze – as Ian Zachary laid out more cash for the cocktail waitress. Turning to the small thin man between them, Riker said, "You're perfectly safe.

This is a cop bar."

Once again, MacPherson failed to get the joke. He appeared not to understand that cops usually arrested people for waving guns around in a menacing way. Perhaps there was something to the Reaper's stupid-juror theory. But then he decided that this man had simply lost the ability to think clearly; he had spent too much time in seclusion, hiding from a maniac who wanted him dead. Riker could empathize with that, though he had never been a man in hiding. That was not his way. And he would never tremble so in public.

Upon entering this old SoHo haunt, he had made his usual scan of the crowd, checking out young males for signs of psychosis and concealed weapons. And now his gaze settled upon a blind man's white cane; it leaned against a bar stool draped with a black coat. Squinting for clarity, Riker decided that this man in the silly wig was young, but he could read no finer detail between the long red curls and the oversized dark glasses. The blind man dipped one hand into his coat, and Riker froze, waiting for a bullet. The man withdrew a wallet, set his money on the bar, and Riker began to breathe normally again. It was unlikely that this was the same white cane that had tapped past him in the parking garage twenty blocks away, but he wished he could see this blind man's eyes.

Two drinks had gone by, and he had learned nothing of the events that had led MacPherson and his fellow jurors to a not-guilty verdict. But he knew that something shameful had happened in the jury room. That much was in MacPherson's eyes as the man evaded every question.

"Well, what is a juror anyway," Ian Zachary was saying, pontificating to no one, for Riker had ceased to listen and poor MacPherson was sliding into shock. "A juror," said Zachary, "is someone too stupid to get out of jury duty. Now, this man here, he was one of the rocket scientists in that courtroom. He's a math teacher."

MacPherson corrected him, saying in a small cracked voice, "Was a math teacher. I lost my job. I still have a wife, though." He looked down at his bony hands tightly folded in his lap. "But she always cries when I call home." He also seemed at the point of crying, and his last drink had done nothing to calm his nerves. "The jurors weren't stupid. Those poor people were only – "

"Hey, I was there, too," said Zachary. "Remember me? The defendant? When the prosecutor polled the jury in open court, one by one, they all voted not guilty. And you? You just tried to kill me with blanks, you fool."

"I only wanted you to know how it felt to be me."

"You mean you didn't have the guts to kill me. You're a coward."

"No, he isn't," said Riker. "He didn't run, did he? You and your fans set him up, nailed him down to New York City – even the building he lives in. And the Reaper's probably camped out at his front door right now. I say the man has guts."

However, MacPherson was an idiot.

Riker scribbled a brief note on a cocktail napkin, then pulled Marvin Argus's business card from his pocket. "It's time to call for protection, pal. You're naked now." Under the cover of the table, he pressed the napkin and the card into the man's hand.

"It doesn't matter anymore," said MacPherson. "I just want it to be over." He glanced down the note, then rose from the table, mumbling, "Men's room." He turned his back on them and walked toward the sign for the rest rooms at the rear of the bar.

"He's one scared rabbit," said Zachary. "Or maybe not." He slid along the seat of the leather booth, moving closer to Riker. "Wouldn't it be a kick if that was just an act? What if he turned out to be the Reaper?"

"Yeah, right." Riker's attention was divided between the blind man at the bar and MacPherson, who stood by the pay phone, shaking his head and debating the wisdom of making a telephone call to the FBI.

The Englishman prattled on, oblivious to anything but the sound of his own voice. "No, he's not smart enough to get away with slaughtering all those people. And then there's the FBI agent in Chicago. Did you know he was one of the Reaper's kills? The newspapers never made the connection on that one. The Chicago cops wouldn't give reporters any details. But you may recall that one of my fans works in the morgue."

The blind man turned his head toward Riker, then quickly looked away and counted up his change from the bartender. Not blind? A fraudulent beggar, a con artist, in a cop bar?

Looking past Zachary to the window on the street, Riker drank steadily as he endured another ten minutes of crackpot theories on the Reaper. He was buying MacPherson some getaway time.

Now the shock-jock noticed that their drinking companion was still absent from the table.

"What's with him, I wonder? You think he's in the men's room slashing his wrists?"

"He's long gone," said Riker, though only a minute had passed since Argus's white car had pulled up to the curb and carried the juror away. "He slipped out? You just let him go?"

Riker rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and said, "I'm not a cop any – " "I know," said Zachary, "but if he dies tonight, it's on your head, isn't it?" No, MacPherson would at least live through the night. The feds could not afford one more screwup on the Reaper case. And Riker could do nothing to save the man; he could not even protect himself – not with a gun, not when the mere sound of the shot could render him breathless and useless. He needed no more proof that his life as a cop was done.

"Maybe you're the one who needs protection." Riker ripped open the man's orange coveralls, revealing a bulletproof vest of better quality than police issue. "Don't put all your faith in body armor. The next time that poor bastard comes after you, he might use real bullets – and he might make a head shot."

"Highly unlikely. You saw him," said Zachary, paying no mind to the broken zipper on his coveralls. "The man's harmless. But I still think the Reaper was one of the jurors. My favorite candidate is the jury foreman – the hunchback."