"If you're suggesting it, let me just say that no way am I going to charge Parensich," Jackman said. "Somebody's got to stand up for the victims in these situations."

Hardy actually broke a grin. "That's a lovely campaign moment, Clarence, but you can't say that running away is inherently likely to cause a violent response, and that's what the boys were doing, hightailing it." Hardy paused, considered, concluded. "Parensich's response was legal, but unnecessary, so the murder can't go under provocative act. That's all there is to it."

Jackman had been listening carefully, rolling a pencil under a finger on his desk. "So how do I get the message out to these people, Diz? You break into some guy's house, you don't understand somebody's likely to get hurt? The tragedy here isn't your boy and his mother, but Damon, who was also fourteen and who won't be getting any older. If these dumb fuck kids, pardon me, wouldn't have decided to knock over Parensich, Damon's still walking around. It's such a goddamn waste."

"I hear you, Clarence. I really do. But you're punishing Jamahl in any event. He's going to YA on the robbery. That's appropriate. But you won't win hearts or minds by a reach of a charge like this. You'll just seem unfair and vindictive. Jamahl's only fourteen, Clarence. As you say, he's still walking around, so he's still got a chance. Slim, but real. You don't want to take that away from him on this. And," Hardy was getting to the bottom line, "you and I both know there's no way you'll get any jury in this town to convict him, so why waste the time? You're just pissed off."

"I am pissed off."

"That's fine. But take it out on somebody's who's earned it. This one just ain't right, and you know it." Hardy found himself surprised that he'd used these words. He hadn't thought that way in quite some time.

Jackman rolled the pencil some more. By all indications, he was making his decision on Jamahl, but when he finally spoke, it wasn't about that. "I hear through the grapevine that you're working with your associate on Bartlett. That the hearing is this morning, if I'm not mistaken."

"That's right. It should start in about an hour."

"I'm taking your presence on the team to mean that some kind of reason is going to prevail up there."

"Well, we're playing the cards we got dealt, Clarence, if that's what you mean. Amy should never have tried to make the deal with Allan, that goes without question. But not because she didn't deliver."

"No, then why not?"

"Because I'm more than halfway to convinced he's not guilty."

The quiet voice took on an ominous tone. "You think there was a rush to judgment out of this office? Do you think we weren't fair? That we don't have a case? Your own associate was going to plead him guilty less than a week ago. What's changed? Do you have new evidence?"

"No, sir. Not really. Maybe a new approach. That's all."

"Well." Jackman, frowning now, picked up the pencil and tapped the table with its eraser. "I'll let you know my decision on Jamahl, then. When I make it." He looked at his watch. "You don't want to be late for court."

It was a dismissal.

When the meeting ended, Hardy came out into the reception room by Treya Glitsky's desk. "So how'd it go?" she asked.

"The reviews aren't all in yet." But Hardy's face indicated that when they came, they wouldn't be all good, and Treya knew better than to push. His pager had vibrated three times while he'd been speaking with Jackman, and all the calls had come from his office, and now he asked, "Could I borrow your phone for one minute? Local."

"One? One," she said. Then, after she'd made sure the door to Jackman's office was closed, she added, "Abe called. He asks if you get a chance, stop up."

Hardy was punching numbers, nodded abstractedly. "He called me? How'd he know I was here?"

"He didn't. He didn't call you. He called me since I'm his devoted wife and I work here. I told him you were in with his nibs. He's going to want to talk about…"

"Excuse me, one sec." Hardy was holding a finger up, stopping her. He spoke into the phone. "Phyllis, Diz. You don't have to call me three times. You leave the number once, I'll call back, promise." He listened. "Who? Okay. Yes, I know her. I got it. All right, then. I'll be going straight out there. Right. Right. That means I won't stop at the office first. After that I'm up at YGC with Amy. Right, okay. That's it. Thanks." Hanging up, he turned to Treya. "I love that woman," he said. "She makes the rest of humanity look so good by comparison. Was Abe important?"

"Always," she said, then lowered her voice. "But I think he just wants to pick your brain on this silencer thing with Allan and the others."

"The others." Hardy leaned over her desk. "You know I think he's a brilliant and fascinating guy, but this is just spinning his wheels until he gets something real."

"That's what I told him," she said. "He just wants to be back in homicide, and this gives him an excuse. He sent out a couple of inspectors this morning to ask relatives of the Twin Peaks people- if there are any- if either of them had ever served on a murder jury. They weren't too enthusiastic, the inspectors."

"Wait'll he sends them downstairs to Records to look up all of Allan's cases over the past twenty years. That'll really juice 'em up."

At this moment, Anna Salarco was, by any of Hardy's standards, more important than Glitsky. So, for that matter, was the hearing, which would start now before he arrived. But he couldn't ignore the summons from Anna, who had called his office. Wu and he had discussed strategy late yesterday afternoon, and he had no reason to believe she couldn't handle it well herself. But he did ask Treya to call Abe back and send his regrets.

Twenty-five minutes later he was back in the Salarcos' bright yellow kitchen. Carla was in her playpen watching Barney on television. Clearly nervous, her head darting this way and that, her hands pushing her hair around, Anna offered him a seat at the kitchen table. He took out his tape recorder, held it up and got a nod from her, and put it on the table between them. She sat where she could keep an eye both on her baby and on the front door. Reading the signs, Hardy asked her if her husband knew that she'd called him.

"No, but I had to. I think about it all the night. The boy. Andrew. The one Juan pick out of the lineup." She threw a look at the door, took a breath, came back to him. "I was there, too. At the lineup. With Juan. But afterward, they only talk to him."

"Because he'd seen Andrew and he'd told them that he could identify him?"

"Sí. But they did not…" She snapped her fingers, cast her eyes about the room, searching for the right word. "No sais." Then: "They did not make it different, the times Juan saw him, like you did."

"Differentiate," Hardy said.

"Sí. Differentiate. Between when he went down first and when he came back later, after. Or the other one."

"The one you saw? Outside in front?"

"Sí. I don't know what… how… if Juan saw something that time." She'd gripped her hands, intertwining her fingers in her lap, and now she turned them over on themselves. "But I went over it last night a hundred times, what I remembered, and it was as you say, as Juan said when he… described how we went to the window. Me in front of him."

"You're doing fine," Hardy said. "I'm listening. It's all right."

She gave him a darting, empty smile, turned her head toward the door again.

"You were at the window…"

"Sí. I look out, and I am angry, too, at waking up the baby. I am slapping, you know, at the window. This is why the boy turn around. He look up at me and then he's gone, running."

"And that man, that time, was it Andrew?"

"No." She shook her head. "I don't say Juan is not telling the truth. Maybe he saw different. Maybe I… It was too far and I don't see everything just perfect."