Turning to the younger man, extending his hand, Hardy broke a practiced smile. ‘It was nice to meet you, Mr Soma. I wish you luck in your career.’

The young man wasn’t blind or stupid. He caught the dismissive tone and served one back to Hardy. ‘We need to see Russo by tomorrow. We don’t mean the day after.’

Hardy nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I guess I hear that message loud and clear. Thank you very much.’

An hour after Soma and Hardy exchanged their pleasantries, Marcel Lanier sat double-parked in front of the office of the attorney general on Fremont Street, drumming his hands on his steering wheel.

This was supposed to have taken five minutes – whip by here and get confirmation that Graham Russo was in the system. He’d sent Sarah up and she’d already been gone for twenty. Marcel sat with his driver’s window down, eyes closed. It was a nice afternoon, smells of coffee roasting and diesel fumes – not altogether unpleasant.

He was half dozing until another cop pulled up behind him. Marcel flashed his badge and explained the situation and tried to go back to dozing. Until two minutes later when another traffic-and parking-enforcement meter-minder tapped him – hard! – on the elbow. ‘Come on, now, move it along.’

Another flash of the buzzer, this one not as effective. ‘I don’t care about the badge, Inspector. You’re blocking the street here. You gotta move it along.’

So Marcel, humoring this bozo, drove in a big circle, hoping Evans would be back down when he returned. But she wasn’t, so he double-parked again in the same spot, closed his eyes again. It couldn’t be long now, he told himself, it just couldn’t be.

But it was long enough for a pair of indigents, one of them wearing a football helmet and the other pushing a stolen shopping cart loaded with recyclables, to stop at his window and ask him for money. Marcel revved the motor and took off again for another tour of the surrounding three blocks.

When he returned this time, he at least got the time to start drumming his fingers before Evans appeared, coming out of the building with the skinny young lawyer.

Lanier was watching the guy move. Soma had come all the way down from the third floor with Sarah Evans when all he needed to do was have his secretary check the computer? So that’s what it was – Soma was hitting on her.

Leaning on the horn, he saw her wave, gesturing to him, making excuses. As though she needed to explain to this dweeb that she was supposed to be doing her job. He rolled down the window on her side. ‘Hey, Sarah!’

He didn’t know what it had been – whether Soma had been overbearing, or he’d honked too often. Maybe it was PMS. You never knew. He was the one who’d had the frustrating twenty minutes out in the car, but now she was sulking, her elbow out her own window as they drove west, staring out away from him.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’ Except, of course, that the man I love is now a fugitive and the next time I see him I’ve got to arrest him.

‘That guy Soma bothering you?’

She shrugged, still not looking over.

The silence went on for another few blocks. Finally, Lanier spoke again. ‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, nothing seems to have got you pretty upset.’

Now she turned. ‘I’m not upset.’

‘Right. That’s right. You’re always this way. Quiet and kind of moody.’

Another block. ‘I told him he was making a mistake.’

‘Who?’ Lanier asked. ‘About what?’

She flicked at the folder containing the file. ‘Gil Soma. This thing.’

Marcel threw her a concerned look. ‘The warrant? What’s the matter with it?’

‘Russo.’

‘You back on that again? Give it a rest. He did it.’

‘Oh, okay. Never mind.’

‘Sarah.’ Asking her to be reasonable.

‘No, really. You think he did it, therefore he did it.’

‘Who cares? It’s Soma’s problem. It’s not our problem. We’re just doing the delivery.’

‘You’re right. There’s nothing to discuss.’

‘Besides, he did it. Nobody else could have done it. We checked. Everybody else is clean. You read that Time story? That woman up in Sacramento? He did it.’

She was silent.

‘What?’

‘He helped his dad die to put him out of his misery, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So what about the struggle? What about the hooker downstairs, what she heard? The bump on the head?’

Marcel was nodding. ‘That’s what I mean. He did it.’

‘For the money?’

‘Sure.’

‘But you just said it was assisted suicide.’

‘Maybe it started that way, and the idea that when it was done he would have the money, maybe that kind of grew on him. Then he got started and panicked when the old man changed his mind. Anything could have happened, Sarah, but whatever it was, he was there. He did it. This stuff happens. I had a guy once killed his wife. Same thing.’

‘She was sick?’

‘Oh, yeah. Same thing. Wouldn’t admit he did it.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re going to love this. Guy was like sixty years old. He didn’t want his eighty-year-old mother to be mad at him.’

‘What?’

‘God’s truth. You heard it here first. The mother didn’t believe in the concept, so the son tried to fake it and make it look like a straight suicide, but he botched it all up.’

‘Did he also try to make it look like a murder? Steal his wife’s jewelry, anything like that?’

‘No. But that would have just been going into more detail. He just wasn’t as smart as this Russo guy, that’s all. Same basic idea, though.’

‘Well, thanks for making that clear.’

‘Anytime. You think he’ll be home?’

‘Russo? I doubt it.’

Sarah didn’t simply doubt that Graham wasn’t at his home. She knew it for a fact. He’d been staying at her apartment since the long night they’d spent with each other after she’d licked his palm. Sarah’s argument to herself (fatuous, and she knew it) was that Graham had not been under indictment at that time and was, in theory, a citizen who was to be presumed innocent. Now the indictment had come in and though it had been expected, like it or not it changed everything.

He saw it as soon as she walked through the door, closed it carefully behind her, kept her distance from him. For the last few days she’d entered the apartment and they’d fallen into each other’s arms. He stood in the middle of the living room. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘The matter is you got yourself indicted this morning by the grand jury. I’m not supposed to tell you that. I’m not supposed to be in love with you. I’m supposed to arrest you right now.’

He tried a tentative smile. ‘You going to?’

‘This isn’t funny.’

‘I don’t think it’s funny.’

‘Then do me a favor. Don’t laugh about it.’

‘That ought to be easy. Not laughing, I mean.’ He couldn’t make himself move toward her. He could feel the aura from where he stood; she had to keep a distance between them. He wasn’t going to push it. ‘What do you want me to do, Sarah? I’ll go if you want, leave here if it’ll make it easier for you. Or you can take me in. Whatever you want.’

‘Don’t you understand? Shit. I don’t want to take you in!’ Her strong shoulders sagged. She bit at her lip. ‘This is wrong. This is all so wrong.’

This time he did take a step toward her, but she held out a hand. ‘Don’t!’

He stopped, waited, spoke quietly. ‘My dad and I, I didn’t-’

She interrupted him. ‘That’s not the point, Graham.’

‘So what is?’

‘The point,’ she said tightly, ‘is that I’m a cop and you’re indicted. If I was doing my job, I should have come here with Marcel in the middle of the afternoon, taken you downtown-’

‘I’m not kidding you,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. I’ll go right now. I’ll beat this, and then-’

‘No! God damn it, no! We’re not doing that.’