He searched her eyes for some sign of pain or loss and saw none. Ingraham might have been an old schoolteacher, sometimes remembered, sometimes fondly.

“So how long did you two go out?”

She looked up at the ceiling. “I’d guess close to a year, maybe ten months. That was about his limit. A year. Then whoever he was seeing would suddenly be last year’s model, you know, and there was nothing to show off there.”

“And you didn’t resent that?”

“Actually I saw it coming and beat him to the punch. By that time I had him pretty well figured out and was starting to feel sorry for him. And you can’t love somebody you feel sorry for.”

“Why’d you feel sorry for him? I thought he was this super success?”

“Well, that’s why. It was a sickness. I really believe that, that he was a sick man. He couldn’t lose at anything, or even have the appearance of losing. He didn’t care about what was real-it was all the appearance.”

“So what happened with Hector Medina?”

“Well, I think that’s mostly why I broke it off. He just had to prove to me that he was right about Medina. He’d said it in front of a group of us, and he wasn’t going to back down. We fought about it. I wanted him to just let it go. I mean, what did it matter? Medina might not have been a great cop, but he wasn’t worse than a lot of others. He had a family, all that. Why stir it up? The original investigation had cleared him. But Rusty got on his high horse and there was no getting him off.”

“But why?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? At first, no doubt about it, he thought it impressed me, or would impress me. Solo prosecutor takes on the police department and district attorney’s office and brings in a righteous conviction. He thought it would make him more romantic. The Serpico of San Francisco…”

“And that passed, the part about impressing you, I mean?”

“Well, it never really worked, but after he committed himself…” She shrugged. “But that was just Rusty. His ego.”

“And to hell with Medina, right?”

“Oh, Medina didn’t even exist to Rusty. He was just another trophy, like I was, I guess. He eventually got off again anyway.”

“But lost his job.”

“I know. No one believed him after the second investigation, but there wasn’t enough evidence to bring him to trial, so he walked, but to everybody he was a killer cop.”

“Do you think he was?”

“He had a reputation for being mean. Little things lots of guys do-maybe an extra thwack with the sap, cuffs tight enough to cut-nothing heavy, but they came out in the investigation.”

“You know about now, the accusation against him?”

“Killing that dog? He might have done that.”

“And how about Rusty? Killing him?”

“After all this time?”

Hardy explained about the connection through the Valenti and Raines situation. Putting Medina back into the action.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it could’ve powered him up. But if he didn’t do it when it was fresh, would he now?”

“Except back then he was married, had a good job, a future. Now he’s divorced, raising a daughter alone, his job is nothing. Maybe it brought back all he’s lost, all that Rusty made him lose. He snapped over it…”

Karen slipped off the desk and walked over to the window. She put her hands on her hips and did a couple of waist rolls, keeping loose, stretched like a cat, turned around. “Stranger things have happened, but you’ve got to believe time heals at least a little. If Rusty did something else, something new, I could see it better. You get any sign of that?”

“Nope. In fact, Medina told me he hadn’t seen Rusty in years, although he’d called him recently.”

“To say what?”

“Nothing. He said he changed his mind, hung up.”

There was another question in her eyes but she didn’t ask it. Instead she said, “It might be worth checking his alibi.”

Hardy, sitting, ran his fingers over the keyboard in front of the terminal. “I’ll do that,” he said.

She came up behind him, looking over his shoulder at the screen, which still held the information about Rusty’s car. “Back to basics, huh? He was driving an old Volkswagen?”

Hardy squinted at the glaring green terminal. “Does that mean something?”

“It means he must have had a bad streak at the track. He used to say he’d never drive less than a Lincoln. He’d rather walk.”

“So what’s the track have to do with it?”

“I thought you said you knew him.”

To Hardy, Rusty had been another red-hot young attorney much like himself, trying cases and winning them, putting bad guys away. They got along fine in the office, once in a while had drinks and discussed work. That was it. “I guess not,” he said.

“If you didn’t know his gambling, you didn’t know him at all.” Karen came around and sat on the desk again. “The track is what broke us up, much more than Hector Medina, if you want to know the truth, although it was all part of the same thing, I suppose, the winning thing. He said the ponies were the ultimate challenge. He really believed, or wanted to believe, that you could learn enough, follow the jockeys and horses closely enough, so you’d never have to lose. He used to say it wasn’t even gambling, you could make it a sure thing. Not every race, you understand, but when you were sure, you jumped.”

“And he was successful?”

“He did pretty well.” She glanced over at the screen again. “Except when he lost.”

“Which was often?”

“No, but which tended to be big when he did.” She shook her head. “An old Volkswagen… who would’ve thought it? He must’ve been losing. Big.”

Hardy’s fingers drummed some more on the desk. “And that’s what broke you up?”

“Well, it just showed me who he was. It’s why I eventually came to feel sorry for him. Nobody wins all the time, I don’t care how good you are, what you know. But it was like a personal affront to him every time he lost. He’d go crazy. The universe was against him. Nutso.”

She was lost in the memory now. “A couple of times he hit on me for my check after blowing his, losing on what he thought was a sure thing, and not believing he could go out and lose my check the same way on the next race.” She met Hardy’s eyes. “It was very sad really, the addiction. It was like he won at everything else, so he purposely picked something he couldn’t win at so it could verify that he was really, at the bottom, a loser. Or that’s how he saw himself.” Abruptly, she brushed at her hair with her hand as if something of Rusty had stuck in it and she wanted it out. “That’s just my two-bit psychology, but it makes sense to me.”

“So you think he was a loser, deep down?”

“All the way down. There was just what he’d won and what he’d lost. He just wasn’t there-no person holding it all together, giving any kind of focus. And I think his biggest fear was that people would find out he wasn’t the fantastic winner he tried to appear to be. So he couldn’t lose anything, ever.”

“And yet he constantly tested that at the track?”

“I said it was a sickness. He couldn’t help himself. The track was his litmus test. When he beat it, he could beat anybody. If it started to beat him, he’d nose-dive all over his life. We finally broke up in one of the down cycles.”

Hardy thought of the Rusty who’d come into the Shamrock the week before-a little down and out, clothes not pressed, riding public transport because his car had been stolen. He still had the gab, the line, the presence, but he wouldn’t have impressed anybody as a man who could take on the universe. Hardly a winner.

Karen pushed herself off the desk. “But the horses didn’t kill him, did they?”

“No,” Hardy said. “It was somebody with opposable thumbs.”