His son was leaning against the doorjamb, downcast. He shook his head no.

"Vincent," Hardy repeated. "Look at me. In the eyes. Good. Is there something about what I just said that you don't understand?"

"No."

"No what?"

"No, sir."

"That's the right answer. Rebecca?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry."

"Even better." Hardy turned as the phone started to ring in the kitchen. "Don't either of you trouble yourselves," he said. "I'll get that."

"I usually wouldn't call this late," Glitsky said, "but your phone was busy last time I called so I figured you might still be up. How's Frannie?"

"Sleeping, I hope, if she's not lacing up her track shoes. But that's not why you called."

"No."

"Are you waiting for me to beg?"

"No. You'll never believe what we think we found out about the Executioner."

"Don't tell me he's a redheaded dwarf."

"He might be," Glitsky said. "But he may also be using a silencer."

"Still on silencers."

"We didn't have anything else, so I sent out half of homicide to ask around in Twin Peaks. Between the two killings, we talked to twenty-one citizens who were nearby- just like with Boscacci- and nobody heard a thing. Elizabeth Cary's neighborhood, too. Remember her? Nobody on the whole cul-de-sac, and all of them were home. Nothing."

"So what are you saying. These were all this Executioner?"

"That's the working theory. In any event, you get four shots in high-density areas and nobody hears anything, something's a little funny."

Hardy didn't really agree. It was a noisy city, and people were so inured to near-constant aural assault that he thought a gunshot could easily go unremarked. Nevertheless, though he wasn't ready to mention it to Abe yet, when the time came he might be tempted to call his friend to the stand as a witness in the Andrew Bartlett matter, where the actual sound of the gunshots was the proverbial dog that barked in the nighttime.

Another alternative theory presenting itself, another ball in the air.

But something entirely different struck him. "Wait a minute," he said. "Did you say Boscacci? What's this got to do with him? You think this guy shot him, too?"

"I don't know," Glitsky said. "But it is tantalizing, don't you think?"

"That they all might be connected? Sure. But you've got to admit, it's not much to go on- something people didn't hear, especially a shot, which most people think is a backfire if it registers at all. I'll bet most of 'em didn't hear tinkling sounds either, and that doesn't mean Tinker Bell did it."

"You sound like Treya."

"There are worse people to sound like."

"Granted. But it's not all fairy dust. I called down to the lab again, and asked them to physically check Allan's slug. The tech couldn't get a ballistics match with the Twin Peaks slugs- they were too deformed- but he did get to eyeball identical scuff marks on rounds of identical caliber. He couldn't swear to it in court, maybe, but his bet is it's the same gun, silenced."

"Maybe," Hardy said, "though if he couldn't swear to it in court, which last time I checked was where we had to do these things…" But he didn't mean to bust Abe's chops. "Anyway, it does sound like you're getting somewhere," he said, "but if you'd told me you'd found something with the other victims about that jury the Cary woman sat on, maybe Allan was the prosecutor on the same case, then I'm thinking you might-"

"That's it!" Glitsky's voice crackled with a rare enthusiasm. "What I forgot. Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Hardy said, but he was talking to a dial tone.

28

Though it had suddenly taken on a much higher profile, Hardy's professional life wasn't all, or even mostly, Andrew Bartlett. First thing Tuesday morning, he had another appointment with Clarence Jackman, so he didn't even check in at the office, but drove directly to the Hall of Justice, parked in the All-Day where Boscacci had been shot, and was talking to the DA at 8:30 sharp.

The issue they were discussing was a theory called "provocative act murder," where the person charged with the crime had not killed the victim. Instead, the theory went, the person charged had done something so "inherently likely to cause a violent response" that they were legally responsible for the murder.

There were two classic examples. The first was when somebody goes in to rob a liquor store, pulls a gun on the proprietor, and the proprietor pulls his own weapon out from behind the counter and shoots, missing the robber but accidentally killing a bystander. The proprietor in this case is completely blameless, where the robber might be charged with provocative act murder. The second example is a scenario where two drug dealers get in a shoot-out, and one of them grabs an innocent person, using that person as a human shield, who is then killed by a shot from the other drug dealer's gun. In this case, while the second drug dealer might be guilty of murder, too, the person who grabbed the human shield in the first place, though he didn't fire the lethal shot, could be charged in the death.

In the case Hardy was arguing, his client was Leila Madison, the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy named Jamahl Madison, who'd gone with a gang of four of his homies to rob the apartment of one of their neighbors. Hardy had gotten connected to Leila because she was the cleaning lady of another of his clients. Besides Jamahl, she had three other children under the age of ten, all of whom lived with her own mother in Bayside. It was a horrible, all-too-common situation, now aggravated by Jackman's initial decision to charge Jamahl as an adult with the provocative act murder of his friend Damon. Jamahl had not shot Damon. In fact, the apartment owner, while the gang was fleeing from the robbery, had taken some shots at all of them, and had wounded Jamahl and killed Damon.

And again, as had been his habit lately, Hardy wasn't planning to take the case to trial. He was facilitating. Though his heart didn't go out to poor Jamahl, it did to the boy's mother, and he'd taken five hundred dollars, donated by Leila's boss, to see if he could persuade Jackman that in this case, provocative act murder wasn't the right call.

"… if he were even, say, seventeen, Clarence. But the boy's only fourteen. He's gotten his own stupid ass shot already and lost his best friend. I've got to believe that's going to make an impression that maybe it's not a good idea to rob people."

Jackman, behind his desk, seemed to be enjoying the exchange. "So would thirty or forty in the can, Diz. Time he gets out, I'll bet he's lost his taste for it entirely." He spread his hands on his desk. "My question to you is do you honestly think he's going to change, ever?"

Hardy shook his head. "You ever meet a kid that didn't, Clarence? Age fourteen to forever. He might. He gets the right counselors at YGC, somebody catches a spark with him, he comes out in a few years and he's a stand-up human being. But the real question, the legal question, is the provocative act."

Jackman ran a finger under his shirt collar. Now, his deep voice an almost inaudible rumble, he chuckled. "If you break into somebody's home, you forfeit quite a few of your inalienable rights."

"Granted. But Mr. Parensich"- the robbery victim who'd actually shot Damon and Jamahl-"was never really in danger. The boys didn't even have guns. They didn't even know he was home."

"That's what they say, so it's just more bad luck for them. And let's remember, there were five of them." He held up his hand. "Cinco. This is a substantial amount of gang throw-weight, and you know it. Even if this guy was only fourteen. I believe Mr. Parensich felt legitimately threatened."

"I don't doubt it, but these kids didn't act up that much. They were already fleeing when Parensich fired at them. Self-defense or not, they're the ones that took the shots. Let's call it square."