“Probably smart. You had no choice.”

“Really. None.”

“I know. I believe you. You just wonder sometimes how things get to where they are. I mean, why did Maya even get charged? And because of that Harlen’s dead? And Schiff? And even Ruiz. To say nothing of Chiurco and those poor bailiffs. What’s that about? All those victims.”

“And everybody still goes on calling it a victimless crime, don’t they?”

“It’s the crime part,” Hardy said. “Take away the crime, make the stuff legal…” He looked at his friend. “But you being a cop and all, I don’t suppose that’s going to be your issue, is it?”

“Good guess.” Glitsky chewed at his cheek. “But as to how things got to where they did, part of that, you want to be honest, was me. Bailing on the job. Worrying about Zack.”

“That would have been a very small part. But I’m proud to see you’re already back on the road to beating yourself up.” Hardy glanced at his watch. “You made it about forty-five seconds, a new record, I think.”

“No. I know it was mostly Schiff, and God knows she paid for it.”

“What about Bracco? You talk to him?”

“Not since right after.”

“How is he?”

Glitsky let out a breath. “Talk about beating yourself up. He said he knew he should have stepped up, said something, but he wanted to be loyal to his partner.”

“Cops and loyalty, huh?”

“Don’t I know? I just hope he can talk himself into staying on, but I’m not betting on it. On the other hand, Treya had some fun news the other night you might not have heard about.”

“She’s pregnant again.”

Glitsky gave him the bad eye. “Don’t even kid. Think DA’s office.”

“Clarence is stepping down and she’s taking over.”

“Incorrect. Think Paul Stier.”

“The Big Ugly?”

Glitsky nodded. “The big, now-between-jobs ugly. At least until he can hook on with Glass or somebody.”

“I don’t know. I think Mr. Glass might be having his own problems lately. Having taken on the mayor, stirring up all this shit, and really coming up with squat. Rumors abound. And speaking of which, the word is that you’re back in the saddle next week.”

“Might be. Might not.”

“Let me guess. You’re not beating yourself up over it?”

Glitsky nodded. “Close enough.”

Tamara Dade knew that Craig Chiurco’s shell-shocked and disbelieving parents had taken his ashes and scattered them under the Golden Gate Bridge. She hadn’t wanted to intrude on them in their own hours of grief; and besides, she did not come close to forgetting that she and Craig had broken up. A serious and, she had felt, irrevocable breakup. So she wasn’t with the family and didn’t want to be.

But she had her own grieving to deal with.

Now, four days after the memorial service, she found herself at the pier behind the Ferry Building, waiting in line again for the boat to Sausalito. She hadn’t come in to work, nor had she called, since the day of the shootings. Instead, four days ago she’d started to come out here after her mostly sleepless and crying nights, and she’d ride across the bay, sit alone on the Sausalito jetty and watch the water, then take the ferry back by about noon. She’d then repeat the round trip in the afternoon, getting back to the city after darkness had descended.

Today was bleak, windy, and bitter cold. As the ferry left the protection of the shore, whitecaps piled up and flung their foam across the open front deck. This was where Tamara had taken to standing, but on this day, even with her raincoat, it was too wet, too miserable. She turned and went back inside, bought a hot chocolate, and found a seat at one of the bolted-in tables by a window, where she could look out and…

What?

Imagine what life would have been like with Craig? Wonder why they had never progressed to a committed relationship? Try to understand what he’d done, and why? And what, simply, had happened in the courtroom?

None of it made any sense to her. She found it nearly impossible to get her mind around the stark reality that he’d murdered Dylan Vogler and Levon Preslee, and apparently another liquor store clerk years ago. That he had been able to live with letting Maya Townshend get all the way to trial.

Who had he been all this time, and how had she not seen it?

She didn’t have any answers. Except that it would be a long while before she would trust her romantic instincts, or even her fundamental human instincts, again. Maybe forever, she thought. She stared out into the windswept, gray-green, white-capped chop.

“Is this seat taken?”

The familiar voice startled her and she turned her head quickly to verify the presence of her boss, Wyatt Hunt. After doing so she turned back to the window and her shoulders rose and fell as she blew out a long breath. “How’d you find me?”

“I’m a private eye, Tam. Finding people is what I do. If you don’t want me to sit down, I’ll go find another spot.”

She turned back to him. “No. It’s fine. You can sit here.” Then, when he had, “I don’t know if I can come back to work.”

“Okay. That’s not why I’m here. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Her lips turned up fractionally and she let out a dry, one-note, half-laugh half-sob. “I don’t know what that means, all right. Not anymore. I can’t believe Craig’s gone. Even more, maybe, I can’t believe what Craig was.”

Hunt nodded. “I’ve been having some issues with it myself.”

“So were we both just blind?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. Although, how were we going to know? What did he show us that could have tipped us off?”

“I don’t know. But I keep thinking I should have known. I should have seen something. I mean, I knew he was confused, and he had his bad moments, but he was almost always nice to me. To everyone, really.”

“You never threatened him. Thank God.”

She let out another deep sigh. “So he really did do it? I mean Vogler and Preslee.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, Tam.”

Turning away from him, she looked out the window at the churning bay and, at the farthest extent of vision, the spectral shape of Alcatraz, the old deserted prison with its decrepit buildings. “I really don’t know what I’m going to do, Wyatt. About work, I mean.”

“How about if you don’t have to decide for a while?”

“Even still. I don’t know. It’s like the world is all different. Maybe I should be in a different field, around different people.”

“Maybe you should.”

“You wouldn’t hate me?”

He put his hand over hers. “There’s nothing you could do that could make me hate you, Tam. You’ve got to know that.”

She turned back to him and tried to smile. “I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, Wyatt. I feel like he stole my innocence or something. I just keep waiting for a break in these clouds, but I’m not sure there’s going to be one.”

“Except that there always has been before.”

“No,” she said. “The clouds have never before been this thick. And I really hate him for that.”

Hunt patted her hand. “Time,” he said.

She attempted another wan smile. “God, I hope so.”

On the third Friday after the last day of Maya’s trial, the phone buzzed at Hardy’s elbow in his office, and he punched the button to speak to Phyllis. “Yo.” Taking a moment’s immature pleasure from his receptionist’s exasperated sigh-senior attorneys do not answer the phone informally, since that causes a disruption in the force-he checked that it was indeed four-thirty and again stole Phyllis’s thunder when he added, “Send the Townshends right in.”

It was both of them, holding hands, Maya looking so radiant and lovely that he might have passed her on the street and not recognized her. Her hair and her cheeks glowed. She’d lost the weight she’d gained on the jail food, as well as the cellblock pallor. Joel, for his part, wore a sense of comfort, a confidence, and an easy smile that Hardy hadn’t noticed before.