“Well, I can’t believe you’re so touchy about it. It’s not that big a deal. We’re just talking.”

“No, we’re not just talking.” Now he sat up straight, off the headboard, pulling the blankets up around him. “And it’s way that big a deal! You don’t see that?”

“Not as big as you’re making it.” She stood up and walked across to the chair where she’d put her clothes. She slipped out of the robe and started to grab her underwear.

“What are you doing?” Chiurco asked.

“I’m going home. I think we’re done for tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” She had her jeans on, pulled her sweater over her head. “And while we’re at it, disagreeing about this and other stuff, I thought we’d decided we weren’t going to be smoking weed anymore.”

Now Chiurco crossed his arms, shaking his head back and forth, and went silent, rage and frustration smeared across his features.

“In case,” Tamara went on, “you think I didn’t notice or smell it or anything.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“No? A quick toke in the bathroom with the window open? That’s not exactly lighting up in front of me.”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

“Correct, Craig. Mad at you for using it, and mad that you can’t stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, Tam. I’ve told you. I like it, is the problem. And I could stop anytime I want. Which maybe I don’t.”

“Maybe I’ll believe you when I see it start even a little. And meanwhile, this paranoia problem, don’t kid yourself. That’s the weed too.”

“Now I’ve got a paranoia problem.”

“Your testimony issues? We just had a fight about them? Hello?”

“You’re wrong. You’re just plain wrong.”

“I really don’t think so.” She crossed over to the door. “I really don’t, Craig. And in the meanwhile, I’m just plain gone.”

In the living room of his Marina mansion Harlen Fisk hit the remote switch and turned off the television right after the nightly news. He and Kathy had in fact made quite a splash by showing up today in the courtroom, and the networks had played it up in a gratifying way. The city wasn’t coming close yet to an election cycle, so in spite of the negative connotations being slung around about his connection to Joel’s development deals and his sister’s coffee shop, the general rule of thumb was that the more your name appeared in the media, the better your chances to get elected.

And getting elected was what Harlen was all about.

Still, he couldn’t help but be disappointed in his sister. As a matter of fact, disappointed was hardly the word.

Well, he told himself, I’m not going to think about Maya now-what her future might be like if in fact she got convicted and sent to jail. That wasn’t his fault; it was her doing. Her clueless, stubborn nature.

If she had only kept her mouth shut. That had been Harlen’s intent in putting her in touch with Hardy in the first place. A good lawyer should in theory have kept her from admitting anything that put her near any of the murders. But by the time she’d gotten with Hardy, she’d already told the police that she’d been out at church that morning, and somehow the fear that she’d be caught in that lie had led her to compound the injury by confessing to both the lie and her whereabouts near the time of the murder.

Which put her in their sights.

Stop. Don’t keep worrying this to death, he told himself. Get up. Go to bed.

But his body didn’t respond. He sat there with the reading lamp on next to him, his hands crossed over his comfortable-looking stomach, which tonight felt suddenly knotted with tension.

“Babe?” His wife, Jeannette, looking in. “Are you all right? Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“This trial. Maya. The whole thing.”

She came into the room, pulled up an ottoman, and sat on it. She was tall, solidly built, athletic, with shoulder-length blond hair encircling a wholesome, all-American face. “I’ll talk about it if you want.”

He smiled at her. “I would have thought you’d have been sick of it by now.”

“I might be sick of it, but I’m not too tired to talk about it if you want to.”

He paused a moment. “I just marvel that she can be so dumb. Sticking with the story that she didn’t know much about the weed. I mean, come on, I knew about it, everybody knew about it.”

Her forehead creased in a look of concern. “I don’t think I knew that. You knew Dylan? How well did you know him?”

He waved that away. “I met him first when he was her boyfriend for a while when they were in college. Then again when Maya hired him, just after he got out of jail. I told her it was a mistake. And of course, she listened to me as much as she always does, which is not at all.”

“Harlen, come on. She listens to you.”

“Maybe listens, but doesn’t hear. I told her this dope stuff could be a problem a couple of years ago, told her to fire him. No chance.”

“Why not?”

“She was saving him, I think. This messianic complex she’s got. She’s got everything and she’s so lucky and so she’s got to help losers to balance the scales or something. Not realizing, of course, about the people who are covering for her.”

“You mean you?”

“Let me just ask you,” he said. “Who’s got her kids right now?”

“I don’t mind that. They’re good kids.”

“No argument. But they’re not ours, are they? And you and me, we didn’t sign on for the little darlings, did we?” Sighing, he went on. “She shouldn’t even be in this at all. I told her not to go down there. Six in the morning? I mean, what kind of hour for a meeting is that? And why do these things with her become my problems?”

“I didn’t know you’d talked to her. When was that?”

Again, he waved off her question. “The night before. She called and asked me what I’d do. I told her to call him back and find out what was so important, but again, naturally…” He turned a palm over, meaning she’d ignored his suggestion. He let out a long breath, his head shaking from side to side. “And then there’s this Levon thing too.”

“The other victim?”

He nodded. “Levon Preslee. Actually not a bad guy.”

“You knew him too?”

He faked a short-lived smile. “Hey, I’m a politician. I know everybody.”

“So what is this Levon thing?”

“He gets out of jail, he comes to my sweet little sister to help him out, since she helped Dylan when he got out. And if you haven’t guessed yet, these guys-Levon and Dylan-still talk to each other. So I know people, right? It’s what I do. So way back then I put him in with Jon Francona over at ACT, and it worked out pretty good until… well, until last fall.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. So, well, the point is, why I might be thinking about this stuff right now, and getting a little edgy about it, is Jon Francona died two years ago, so nobody in the world, besides my sister and you, has got or knows of any connection between me and Levon Preslee, and I’m just a little wee bit concerned that along with this forfeiture stuff we’re all wrestling with, somebody’s going to pull that up and wave it in my face too. And don’t get me wrong, I love the publicity and all, but I think that might actually do me some harm.”

“Well”-Jeannette reached out and put her hands on her husband’s knees-“nobody’s going to fault you for helping the poor man out all those years ago.”

“Nobody’s going to know, Jeannette. Nobody can entertain the thought even for a minute that I knew this guy from Adam.” He let out a last deep sigh. “I mean, I keep telling myself Maya put herself in this position. I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to let her get herself out of it. I can’t cover for her anymore, or else everything we’ve got is at risk.”

“Come on, hon. I think that must be a bit of an exaggeration.”

Harlen chewed at the inside of his cheek and pushed himself up out of his recliner. “Not really,” he said. “Not too much.”