She considered taking thirty extra seconds and putting on a bra- she didn't want to send any kind of sexual signal- but if it was going to be two minutes, she might as well hear it and then get back in bed. Besides, she wore no makeup, her hair was still damp, her eyes must be ravaged. She was a train wreck.

She opened the door.

In a gray business suit, white shirt, rep tie, Brandt stood awkwardly. Hands in his pockets. He cleared his throat. "Can I come in?"

Stepping back without a word, she let him pass, closed the door behind them.

He crossed over to her all-purpose table, pulled a chair around and sat in it, looking around, getting his bearings, really seeing the room for the first time. The other night they hadn't paused for the grand tour before dragging each other into bed. Afterward she didn't think he'd even turned on the lights, just pulled his clothes on and let himself out.

Arms crossed, waiting, she leaned against the counter by the sink.

"I was down in the street for a while and saw your shadow moving up here, then the lights went out. I thought if I was going to get you, it had to be now."

"Okay, you got me." Then his phrase caught her. "You were down in the street for a while? Doing what?"

"Just standing there." He shrugged again. "Deciding whether to come up and try to talk to you."

Something in his tone stopped what would have been another harsh reply. She cocked her head. "All right. Talk."

"First," he began, "I wanted to apologize."

"Okay."

"But beyond that, I guess I'm having trouble figuring you out." He took a breath, pushed on. "I don't understand what's happening exactly, first the other night with us, then the next morning at my office-"

She cut him off. "Then you accuse me of murder. Talk about not understanding what's happening."

"Amy, I swear to God. I never accused you of anything like murder. I didn't accuse you of anything at all."

"That's funny. I just got back from the Hall of Justice, where Abe Glitsky said you told him there was bad blood between me and Allan. He seemed to think I was some kind of a suspect."

"That couldn't have been me."

"You're saying you didn't talk to him?"

"No. I talked to him. But just telling him about what's happened with Bartlett-"

"And me and Allan."

"Okay. But never even implying… I mean, come on. If Glitsky came to that on his own… If you want, I'll call him tomorrow. I never meant anything like that. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean…" He looked up at her. "I'm sorry," he said again.

Her tone softened. She was too exhausted for another round. "All right, apology accepted, okay? Now if you don't mind, I'm exhausted and your two minutes are up."

But he didn't move. "I didn't just want to apologize." He scratched at the table, took a quick breath. "I wanted to ask you about you and me."

"You and me?" She pulled a chair around and sat on it. "First you accuse me of screwing you for advantage in a case, then you go to Glitsky and somehow give him the idea I might have killed Allan. I don't see any 'you and me' in this picture." She paused, let out a breath. "Look, I don't expect anything from you, Jason. That night was that night. I'm not telling anybody about it, so our jobs are both safe. So now you can go. In fact, you really should go now."

"That's not it," he said.

"No? Then tell me what it is." Sighing again, she shook her head. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I thought it was a game to you, too."

"No. Okay, maybe it started that way at first." He walked over to one of the windows, turned back to her. "For a minute, I thought we had something going. I mean personally." He tapped his chest. "In here." He waited, eyes on her. "I guess not."

She didn't contradict him. Did he really think she was going to fall for this line now? If he would have said something that night, maybe. Because he was right. There had been a real moment between them. They'd both realized it. Beyond the physical stuff, something that had felt to her like a deeper connection. Then in the morning, he'd been gone.

Fool me once, okay. But twice? She didn't think so.

A tense silence gathered, until she finally broke it. "I think you'd better get out of here right now. I mean it."

15

Hardy didn't want to go out after dinner at home, but with the 707 hearing looming, he felt he had no choice. Since Frannie had suggested he put his heart into his work again, she couldn't very well object. They both knew the strains that Hardy's work ethic had placed on their marriage in the past, and both saw the irony in her position. If Hardy was going to care, he was going to put in the hours. That was who he was. That was the trade-off. So when he told her he had to go out and have a talk with Mike Mooney's neighbor, she kissed him with a tolerant humor. "Husbands," she said. "Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em."

He had conceived of a strategic idea that he thought stood a long shot, but still possible, chance to play at the 707 hearing if all the stars lined up just right. He'd already told Wu that she could confidently call any witnesses she wanted. Jackman's insouciant attitude notwithstanding, Judge Johnson would be concerned about the risk of having the case reversed on appeal. He wouldn't hurt the defense any more than he already had done. And it would be greatly to Wu's advantage if she knew how some of the witnesses were going to testify at trial.

But it had occurred to Hardy that he might be able to take it a step further, and convince Johnson that justice demanded he allow witnesses to the crime itself. This would be decidedly unusual, since in this type of hearing, the prosecution only had to make a prima facie case that the crime had been committed, and there wasn't any doubt that somebody had killed Mooney and Laura. But Clarence Jackman had never practiced as a criminal lawyer in his pre-DA career, and even after three years in office, he was sometimes embarrassingly inexperienced in the nuts and bolts of how things really worked. And Hardy's hope was that Brandt, young and relatively green himself, by pushing the supercharged rush to the 707 after Boscacci's murder, had goaded Jackman to a tactical blunder.

Judge Johnson would be nervous that the defense had only been given five days to prepare for the hearing. No doubt feeling angry and abused himself, he would be inclined to grant the DA's wish to get Andrew moved downtown- he'd want to slap Wu as badly as either Brandt or Jackman did- but Hardy and Wu would file motions by Monday making sure the judge knew that the defense considered this unseemly hurry an appealable issue. After that, if Johnson let the hearing proceed as planned, he'd be extra sensitive to the threat of appeal, and might let the defense get away with calling witnesses related to the case in chief as a function of the fifth amenability criterion- the gravity of the offense.

If Hardy and Wu could make that happen, then Andrew would get himself not just an administrative hearing, but a de facto juvenile trial. If he lost at the 707, then worst case Hardy and Wu would get two chances to hear the prosecution's case. And to beat it. And even if Andrew then lost again in adult court, Hardy might still be able to appeal, saying that they'd been forced to go to the 707 before they could adequately prepare.

Hardy knew this wasn't just a long shot, it was a full-court bomb at the buzzer. But occasionally, he knew, they went in.

So as he turned into Beaumont Avenue, in the first block off Geary Boulevard, he felt some small grounds for enthusiasm. Twenty feet of free, legal curb space yawned open on his right, and he pulled over and parked. He'd driven out with the top down on his convertible- there was no fog and the last days' winds had finally abated- and now he sat, headlights off, letting a sense of the crime scene seep into him. He forced himself to wait, to observe, to listen. There was no hurry. If his coming out here was going to do any good at all, he had to slow down and take time.