Charles's mood was more somber now that he had come to understand the true purpose of the doctor's visit. He placed a drink in his guest's hand, then joined him at the kitchen table and continued his perusal of the crime-scene photographs. The corpse depicted here was no longer recognizable as a seventeen-year-old boy. "I see most of the shots are to the head." Edward Slope nodded. "That would've been enough to make Riker suspicious." His eyes were less focused now that he was feeling the anesthetic benefit of twelve-year-old single-malt whiskey, but he was not finding sufficient solace in his glass. "You probably noticed. The shots to the torso seem almost…"

"Like an afterthought? Yes, I agree." It appeared that the detectives of Special Crimes Unit had thought it unseemly to blow the boy's face away. And so they had added more shots to the torso for the sake of decency.

Dr. Slope set down his empty glass and pushed it away. "They're not trained to make head shots, you know. Cops usually aim for the widest part of the body. Less chance of bullets going wild… and their targets frequently survive."

"No chance of that here," said Charles. He examined the last photograph, then quickly scanned the postmortem report. "But it was self-defense? The newspapers all – "

"If that's what it said in the newspapers, then it must be true." The pathologist covered his tired eyes. "Sorry. That was unfair. The boy fired on them first – one shot before they killed him. I was on the scene when the techs dug his bullet out of the wall. It was a justified shooting. No question."

No question? Ah, but the doctor's face was saying something entirely different.

Charles pulled the X rays from the envelope of autopsy materials. These pictures of naked bone told him so much more than the boy's blown-away flesh could reveal. And he would undoubtedly have to fetch Edward Slope a new whiskey bottle before the evening ended.

"All these bullets." Charles turned to his friend. "I imagine you found it impossible to determine which one killed the boy."

"That's what it said in my report." The doctor emptied the bottle into his glass, then quickly drained it. "None of the police bullets went wild. That was the truly odd part. A shoot-out is a terrifying experience for cops. Fear gets in the way of their aim – but not on this occasion." And now, fortified by alcohol, he found that he could look at the photographs one more time as he replaced each one in the envelope. "What a mess. All those bullets. All on target."

Charles held the X ray up to the light, fascinated and horrified. Among the massive damage of shattered facial bones was the one remarkably symmetrical hole in the boy's skull. It lay between the orbits of the eyes, not one hair off center.

Symmetry, thy name is Mallory.

She might as well have signed her work. Other, later holes and grooves at the top and sides of the skull told the rest of the story. He envisioned the other detectives firing shots at a falling target – a dead one – to obliterate the evidence of Mallory's remarkably cold and steady aim, until the final effect appeared less like an execution.

"I suppose it's better for all of the detectives," said Charles, "if none of them knows which shot was fatal."

The doctor's sudden relief betrayed him. Obviously he was assuming that the omissions in his report were less transparent than he had supposed. Edward Slope could not fail to believe that his secret was safe. His proof of this was sitting right there on the other side of the kitchen table. Charles Butler's face showed no signs of a tell-all blush; he had learned how to lie.

Riker stepped out of the shower as a new man and donned his best suit, the one least stained. When he walked into the living room, he found Mrs. Ortega surveying the new-and-improved state of his apartment. He lightly kicked her rolling cart of supplies. "Get this thing out of here, okay? It's ruining the damn ambiance."

She ignored this, turning her back on him to inspect the rug and run one finger over the surfaces of tables and chairs, checking for dust. "So this is what you've been doing all day?" "Yeah. Not bad, huh?"

"Amateurs, the both of you. I'll take it from here. Just stay out of my way." The intrepid cleaning woman marched toward the tall windows that bore the streaks of his own attempted washing.

"I love you, too," said Riker, but he said it low, almost a whisper, so she would not feel obligated to insult him in return. "Where's Jo?"

"Gone. She said she had to go feed some cat." Mrs. Ortega spat out this last word with great contempt. In her philosophy, the only good fur-shedder was a dead one.

Riker stood before his desk, staring down at the small drawer where he kept his weapon. It had been opened, though the key was still hidden in a crack behind one wooden leg. And the gun was gone.

He wasted no time on this little mystery. The perp who had broken his bathroom window would not have known how to finesse this excellent lock, and there was no sign of forcing the wood. Mallory was the only thief who had recently visited his apartment, and she traveled everywhere with lock picks in her pocket.

So the brat had not trusted him with his own gun. Regulations required him to report a missing weapon, but that would only create more trouble for both of them. And now he wondered if he should demand its return. Or should he wait for Mallory to break into his apartment and put the revolver back in the drawer? Yeah. That would be the polite solution.

All but the cat's head was swaddled in a white cloth binding so that he could not win this fight to stay alive. The veterinarian's hand hesitated with the needle. All the pity in the doctor's eyes was for the woman and not the animal. "You know it's the best thing for him, Johanna."

But not for your reasons.

"You don't have to – "

"Yes, I do." She held Mugs gingerly, minding the phantom nerve that so agonized him. "Now, please."

The needle was injected into Mugs's neck, and minutes passed before it had any effect. His personality was still intact when he met her eyes, looking there for mercy and asking, Why? She cradled him until he was lulled into a drowsy stupor by her slow rocking motion and the sedative. At last he was well beyond pain in real or imagined realms. She wanted to believe that he was not beyond love, that he could luxuriate in the feeling of her arms about him now that it did not hurt him anymore, not in his body or his mind. She kissed him, then held him close until he went limp. Though the poison would come later, this was not like sleep; this was good-bye.

"He's at peace, Johanna," said the doctor. "He'll never feel the next one." The second shot would wrack the cat's body with a violent seizure, a prelude to death. "It's for the best."

"I know that," she said, but a long time passed before she would cease her rocking and open her arms to release Mugs.