Edith turned slowly, eyes searching, the gun barrel following the sights of her eyes. Mallory silently circled a stack of boxes and came up behind her, grabbing the old woman's wrist with enough force to leave prints on the flesh. She twisted the gun from Edith's hand with one swift motion.

Edith gasped, turning to face Mallory, her lined face illuminated by the poor light of the back window. The old woman smiled too quickly, too wide.

"Oh, Kathy, thank God. I thought you were dead. Oh, thank God."

"Yeah, right."

Mallory clicked on the flashlight and knelt down by Gaynor's body, wholly dissatisfied with the man's continued breathing. His head had struck the wall. He was unconscious but not dead, and the wound was not life-threatening.

And a gun was in her hand.

"Kill him," said Edith, standing over Gaynor. Kneeling down now, coming closer, her lips near to Mallory's ear, "Finish it," she whispered softly, her magnified blue eyes growing even wider. "No one will know."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Edith?"

Markowitz would not have liked that at all.

Mallory stared at Gaynor. Markowitz's killer was in her hands. The rain ran into her eyes as she turned to Edith. "I don't suppose I could trust you to go upstairs and call the ambulance… No, I suppose not." She picked up the fallen snub-nose revolver. Plastic still clung to the metal by a fusion of heat. Gaynor had not fired fast enough. There was one bullet left in the chamber. She pulled the plastic loose and handed the gun to Edith, using two fingers on the rough side grip of the handle. The old woman looked down on the weapon in her hand, eyes glistering.

Mallory checked Gaynor's pulse and then pulled back the lid of one eye. He showed no signs of coming around. "I'm going for the ambulance. I don't think you'll need to use the gun."

She wadded up the plastic bag which had fallen away from the gun, and slipped it under her jacket.

"I understand," said Edith, nodding slowly. "I do understand." She was smiling as Mallory turned her back and headed for the way out.

After passing through the cellar doorway, she reached up to turn the overhead light bulb in its socket. When she was standing in the light again, she thought to turn around, to go back and undo this thing. She lost this thought as she stared up the winding metal of the staircase and into the eyes of Jack Coffey standing on the level above her. Beyond Coffey, a uniformed officer was motioning Henrietta Ramsharan back into the hallway and closing the door.

"Mallory?" Coffey was staring from the blackened hole in her shirt to the gun which dangled from her hand. Now he looked into her eyes and one hand tightened on the railing and there it froze.

She continued to hold him, to pin him to the landing with her eyes. Only a second longer.

A gunshot exploded in the room behind her.

Jack Coffey and the uniformed officer were pounding down the staircase, guns drawn, pushing past her on the way through the cellar door.

Mallory slumped against the wall of the stairwell. Later, she would have trouble remembering how much of this she had planned.

Yeah, right.

She started up the steep stairs. First her mind stumbled and then her feet. Yet she did not pick her way more carefully as she continued up and up. She was in that moment when the guts flutter and rise, the heart pounds, the brain waffles between belief and disbelief, and she did not care if she fell, nor how far.

EPILOGUE

Mrs Ortega scanned the hospital room with the all-encompassing eye of a career cleaning woman as she settled the pink geraniums into an empty water glass on the bedside table. She pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed and as far from Mallory as she could get.

"That was thoughtful of you," said Charles. "They're lovely flowers."

"They're plastic," said Mrs Ortega. "They live longer."

Charles gave her his widest, looniest smile and the legs of her chair scraped away from him. He turned his smile on Mallory, who seemed less unnerved by lunacy.

"So, I'm assuming it was a traffic accident," said Charles. "How many accidents around the house could lodge a piece of metal so close to the heart? Am I right?"

Mrs Ortega shifted in her chair and rolled her eyes.

"Sounds reasonable," said Mallory.

"You're not even going to give me a hint?"

"Dr Ramsharan said it would be better if the events came back naturally. She says you may never get it all back. A lot of trauma victims never recall the last fifteen minutes of consciousness."

"And how many trauma victims have policemen posted outside the hospital-room door?"

"You're a material witness in the insider-trading scam."

"A witness? All the data I had was pulled off your computer."

"Memory can come back too fast, Charles. Take it easy.

The SEC investigator is coming by for a statement this afternoon. If you can't remember where you got the files, that would be okay with me."

"Understood. But will you at least tell me what's been going on in the world these past two weeks? They won't let me read the newspaper or watch television."

"We locked up the case on the insider-trading racket. The evidence is so tight, most of them are plea-bargaining. There's only a few hold-outs for the grand jury."

"And what about Edith? Did she – "

"She made bail," said Mrs Ortega, helpfully.

"What?"

Mrs Ortega fell silent under the icy hex of Mallory's eyes.

"People are climbing all over themselves to turn in their friends and relatives," said Mallory. "Edith didn't jump on the wagon in time to get immunity for testimony."

Mrs Ortega looked at the floor as the headline murder charge slid under the carpet.

"What will they do with her?"

"I'm told she has the best lawyer money can buy. You're tired, Charles. We'll be leaving now. I'll be back this evening with your journals."

Mallory stood up and glanced at Mrs Ortega. The cleaning woman jumped up from her chair and followed Mallory out of the room and into the long white corridor. She hurried along on her shorter legs to catch up with Mallory. Not that she wanted to be this near a cop, particularly not this cop, but there was something she had to know.

"Why can't he remember getting shot? How does a person forget a thing like that? If I'd been shot, I would remember a thing like that."

"Charles has soft spots and you don't," said Mallory. "You're tougher than he is."

Mrs Ortega's dark head raised up half an inch and she remained half an inch taller as she kept pace with Mallory's long stride.

"It's better this way," said Mallory. "The soft people always prefer the accident. They never like the version where they can be deliberately ripped open with bullets fired at ninety miles a second."

"But what happens when he reads a newspaper and finds out who shot him?"

"I'm taking him away for a few months, maybe a long cruise. While we're gone, the grand jury will convene and indict, and there'll be a plea-bargain to waive the trial for a lesser sentence. The whole thing will be over before we get back. Maybe I'll tell him then."

Mrs Ortega slowed her steps and watched Mallory walk on alone. As Mallory receded in the distance of the empty corridor, she seemed to grow larger instead of smaller.

"And that one's another Martian," said Mrs Ortega.

"Kathy, you can't leave."

"Mallory, call me Mallory."

Edith Candle stood at her back as Mallory unfurled the white sheet and watched it settle as a ghost with the outline of the couch. The room was filled with such ghosts. Dust covers lay across each piece of furniture in Charles's apartment.