With the election four weeks from tomorrow, Kerry trailed his opponent by half-a-dozen points. Bree’s death had become big news. And every time someone mentioned her name, Damon Kerry came up as well.

But Carl Griffin wasn’t troubled. He had a plate full of active homicides and knew the suspects in three of them. He was simply assembling the packages.

On Bree Beaumont, he was confident he was close to asking for a warrant. There was just one piece of information he had to verify and he’d have it tied up. And wouldn’t that just show Glitsky and the rest of them who thought he couldn’t get anything done on this kind of case?

That’s why he never told anybody about his progress or lack of it. He wasn’t good with criticism. It rankled when other inspectors second-guessed him about what they’d do differently, where they ‘d look, why they wouldn’t talk to the people Carl was talking to.

Carl didn ‘t take this as good-natured ribbing, and maybe it wasn’t. He considered that he was an old-fashioned cop, a dog sniffing where his nose led, discarding anything that didn’t smell, following what did. His nose told him he was about a step away on Beaumont.

He stood in Glitsky’s doorway on his way out of the office. He wore his black Raider’s windbreaker over an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt that he tucked into a shiny pair of ancient black slacks. The shirt billowed over his belt. He looked about halfway to term.

Griffin was telling his lieutenant that he was going to be seeing a snitch on a gang-related in the Western Addition first thing this morning. He was late for it now, which didn’t matter because the snitch would be late, too. Then, depending on how things broke with the snitch, if he got time, he planned to try to find the knife in the Sanchez case – the crime scene investigators hadn’t been able to locate it in the house, but he’d bet it was somewhere on the block, so Griffin was going to poke around the shrubs and see what he came up with. His guess was she got out of the house and threw it somewhere and then came back before she dialed 911. Anyway, then…

Glitsky interrupted him. ‘How we doin’ on Beaumont?‘

‘Pretty good’.

Glitsky waited.

‘Couple more days.’

‘You writing it all up?’

Griffin lifted his windbreaker to show Glitsky the notebook tucked into his belt. He patted it. ‘Every word.’

There was no point in pushing. Griffin would tell him when he had something and he’d write it up when he got to it. Meanwhile, it sounded like he was moving steadily on at least two of his other cases. It would have to do for now.

But if Beaumont didn’t close in a couple of days, Glitsky knew he would have to pressure Carl to share his discoveries – he was starting to take heat about it.

‘All right.’ Griffin started to turn and for some reason, Glitsky said, ‘Watch your back, Carl’ A nod.

‘Always!’

‘Griffin wasn’t the brightest light in the detail,’ Abe said. ‘You ever meet him?’

‘Couple of times, yeah.’

‘So you know. Anyhow, we figure he arranged some kind of sting, putting the heat on one of his witnesses. Guy might have been on something and didn’t like the way it was going. Anyway, he didn’t respond well under pressure, felt he was getting double-crossed, and shot Carl, something like that.’ Glitsky made a face. ‘We may never know for sure.’

Hardy clucked in commiseration, then gestured down at the file he was holding. ‘So who’s got the case now?’

Glitsky nodded at the stack of folders he’d just gone through. ‘I got these off Tyler Coleman’s desk. That one doesn’t look much like it’s been worked.’

‘Why not?’

Glitsky shrugged. ‘It’s their sixth active. Time they got it – the thing’s already over a week old. Priorities.’

Hardy knew. Homicide inspectors didn’t want to waste their time – when the kill was no longer fresh, the scent disappeared. Suddenly, Hardy pulled the telephone around and punched for information. A minute later he hung up. ‘Unlisted, of course. If it were listed, I could just call and save myself an hour, but I wouldn’t want to do that now, would I?’ He was on his feet. ‘I’ve got to go. Are you going to be around?’

Glitsky checked his watch – nine o’clock. ‘I was thinking about seeing Orel.’ Glitsky was a widower with a fourteen-year-old son at home. He tried to make some time for him every day. Some. Now he looked across the desk into the worried face of his friend. ‘You get something, call me at home. Fair?’

Hardy pointed a finger – they had a deal – and hit the door running.

As Hardy drove out to the site of Bree Beaumont’s death, he realized that it was going to take some kind of miracle to get Frannie out of jail tonight. Even if he convinced this guy Ron, Frannie’s friend Ron, to divulge his secret, then what?

Glitsky had counseled him against calling on Judge Braun at her home, and he was right. It would only make matters worse, and perhaps get Hardy his own contempt citation. He had to put it out of his mind and take things one step at a time.

But he kept getting distracted. He couldn’t understand it. How could Frannie have let this happen, degree by degree? Now the family truly had a problem that was going to impact both him and their children in a major way. And all because Frannie had simply gotten her back up. At any point, she could have done something differently and avoided this mess.

But she hadn’t and that had something to do with Ron, something personal.

He didn’t want to follow that train of thought, which of course made it irresistible. What about if Frannie was simply a novice at covering her tracks, at making excuses? She’d never had to learn those tricks before because she’d never cheated before. They’d always told each other everything. But now, suddenly, with Ron (whoever the hell he was), with his dead – no, his murdered wife – things had changed.

Frannie hadn’t even mentioned the subpoena?

Hardy couldn’t imagine getting a subpoena to appear before the dogcatcher, to say nothing of the grand jury, and not discussing every detail of it with his wife. What had he done? How was he connected? How should he act? What did it mean?

And yet Frannie had been summoned, days ago, to be a witness in a murder investigation and hadn’t mentioned it to him even in passing? Didn’t want to bother him with it? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that was it at all.

Something else was in play here.

He missed his left turn on to Broadway, immediately swerved – not in time – and, swearing, slammed his hand on the wheel so hard that he thought he might have broken it. Finally, his insides curdled, he made the next left that presented itself five blocks later.

Why had he left Frannie at the jail? Allowed himself to be conned out to ask Ron Beaumont about his damned secret? He and Frannie had each other’s trust or they had nothing. Something was very, very wrong with the picture, with Frannie’s actions as well as her explanations for them. How could she have done this to all of them?

And, perhaps more fundamentally, what exactly had she done?

He opened his window to breathe in some of the cold, sea-scented air. It wasn’t just anger after all. He brought his hand to his chest and pressed. His heart was beating strongly all right, but he felt as if a piece of it had been nicked away.

When it gets down to North Beach, Broadway is famous for its strip shows and tawdry tourism. But after it moves out of the old Italian neighborhood, through the city’s longest tunnel, then across Van Ness Avenue, it begins to define the ridge of the escarpment that falls steeply down to Cow Hollow and the Marina. At this point, the avenue boasts some of the most impressive residential structures in San Francisco.