“What’s that?”

“You know. Fund-raising. Benefits. Helping people like her get appointed. I’m beginning to think it’s really not about justice at all. I wonder what we were doing, what we were thinking, all that time.”

“Protecting your interests,” Hardy said. “Your assets. And you wind up with people like Braun, and Glass, for that matter, as your gatekeepers. And they take it damn seriously. Problem is, once you’re perceived of as outside the loop, you’re the enemy. You’re the threat.”

“Joel’s not a threat.” Finally, some color came into her face. “He’s never done a dishonest or illegal thing in his life. And they’re all over him.”

“He’s going to beat it,” Hardy said. “But he’s going to need you beating this thing too.”

She turned her head toward him. “I thought that’s what we were paying you for.”

Hardy had heard this kind of thing before, from both husband and wife, even from Harlen, and he showed some of his growing impatience with it. “As we’ve just been discussing, sometimes money doesn’t get you what you think it should. Sometimes you’ve got to change your vision. Your idea of what you’re all about. Like, for example, are you inside that big wall, protecting your assets, or are you going to just let these people take them?”

“Me! Am I just going to just let these people take them? Like I’ve got any choice in what’s happening here? Or out there?”

Hardy put his back against the wall and turned to meet her eyes. There was no warmth in his expression. “You’ve got all the choice in the world, Maya.”

She just stared over at him, shaking her head. “What are you talking about? I’ve got no choice about anything. Are you out of your mind?”

“Maybe I am, trying to defend you with the wrong theory, the wrong motive, and you sitting there day in and day out watching me do it, letting me do it.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, you do, Maya. I’m talking about the basic fact of this case. Dylan wasn’t blackmailing you because you guys sold drugs in college and, gosh, maybe people would find out. That wasn’t it, was it? Although that’s what you let me build our whole case on.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Two reasons. One, you felt guilty and that you deserved to be punished. And two, you could never tell anybody the truth. Not even your lawyer, because you can’t trust him enough.” Hardy came forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Okay, so enough. Now it’s time. True or false, Maya. Dylan was blackmailing you because of something to do with your aunt’s death, wasn’t he?”

Her body gave slightly. No words came.

“What was it, Maya? Did you know who did the hit-and-run and not tell the police? Did you loan them your car?”

Now Maya’s mouth went loose, her eyes glassy.

“You were there, weren’t you, Maya? In the car with them.” Hardy suddenly felt his own head go light as the probable reality hit him. “No,” he said. “No, you were the driver.”

For a long moment she regarded him as she might her executioner, then all at once a small sound came out of her throat. She hung her head and her shoulders began to heave.

Tears splashed like raindrops onto the floor between her feet.

She’d passed through the sobbing, though the blotched and wet effects of it remained on her face. “What matters is that nobody in the family can know. Which means nobody at all, ’cause whoever knew would tell them.” She let out a shuddering, unsteady breath. “How did you find out?”

“Serendipity,” Hardy said. “My investigator mentioned Tess Granat and you to his girlfriend in the same breath, and there it was. You’ve kept this to yourself all this time?”

“Of course. I had to.” Then, a hand quickly on his leg. “And you can’t tell anyone either. Ever.”

“No. I know that. You don’t have to worry about that.” He hesitated. “But maybe you could, after all.”

Her tortured gaze fell on him. “If you think that,” she said, “you don’t understand my family at all. Or me. Or any of this.”

“What about your husband?”

“Tell him I am a murderer? Tell him the mother of his children is a child killer?”

Hardy straightened, his back stiff up against the cell wall. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Maya. It was a long time ago.”

She shook her head. “It’s yesterday,” she said. “It’s this morning. It’s now, for God’s sake. Don’t you understand? I killed her. My mom’s sister. Kathy’s sister and her unborn child. Everybody’s favorite.”

“It was an accident.”

“I was stoned and drunk. Both. Loaded. It was murder.”

“And you’ll never forgive yourself for it.”

“Why should I? I did it. Would you?”

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. Maybe after all this time I’d be tempted to start trying.”

“Time hasn’t made it go away.”

“It might if you shared the burden of it. If you told somebody. Maybe you need absolution.”

“I pray for it every day.”

“It’s not going to come without some kind of confession.”

“What? Now you’re a priest?”

“Not even close,” Hardy said. “Just a fellow sinner like yourself. But I was raised a good Catholic. Believe me, I know how the forgiveness thing works.”

“You ever kill anybody?”

Hardy nodded. “I was in Vietnam. I killed a lot of people.” Including not just in Vietnam, he thought, but also the victims of the horrific gunfight he’d been part of here in San Francisco, the after-math of which had dominated his emotional stability and career for the next three or four years. So, yes, he’d killed his share of people. And kept his share of secrets too. A plague of them, he sometimes felt. But Frannie, his children, Glitsky, Roake-they all knew what he’d done, had worked through the consequences together, and that had helped.

Maya shook her head. “Vietnam was killing in a war.”

“What? Like that doesn’t count? It felt like it counted, trust me. I know it did to the families of my victims. I know it did to me.” He drew in a breath. “My only point is I think maybe keeping this secret has hurt you enough. Look at the power it gave Dylan Vogler.”

“I hated that man.”

“I’d imagine so. He was in the car with you?”

She nodded. “It was his car. No connection to me. He just washed it up and never told anybody. The bastard.”

“When did the blackmail start?”

“Not until he was out of prison, but right after that. He couldn’t get any other work, not that he really tried, I don’t think. He looked me up and reminded me how much I owed him for his silence.”

“I get it,” Hardy said.

“I don’t know if you do. I don’t know if anybody can.” Her chin fell, a puppet’s string cut. “It never ends. It’s just a constant weight.”

“I don’t want to beat a dead horse, Maya, so I’m only going to say it one more time. You could let it go. Let Joel in, at least. He’s stuck by you through all this, and here maybe thinking you killed somebody too. He loves you. He could handle it.”

She had her arms crossed over her chest, hunched over now, rocking on the hard concrete ledge. “God God God.”

“It’s all right, Maya. It’s all right.”

“No. No, it’s so not all right.” Seconds passed and she slowed herself down in her movements, finally became still. “You’d think I would have been on guard against it. I mean, it was the great myth I was raised with.”

“What was that?”

“Eve. The Garden of Eden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s what it all was to me back when I met Dylan. He was the serpent, just so attractive, so much wiser, I thought. Willing to try anything, you know, for the experience of it. ‘Here, try some of this.’ And I was this kid who’d never done anything, who was just-just so simple, and stupid. And you know what the real stupidity was?”

“What’s that?”

“I really was happy.” She looked over at Hardy, searching his face to see if he understood at all. “I mean, before Dylan. I was a happy person, a good person. But then he’d started challenging and questioning me about everything, about who I was. ‘How can you know you’re as happy as you can be when you haven’t even tried to experience anything outside of your well-ordered little life? Maybe you’re just afraid to find out what real life is about. And if that’s the case, then all your so-called happiness is just cowardice and sham, isn’t it?’ ” Her eyes pleaded with Hardy. “How could I not see what he was doing?”