'OK,' Freeman conceded, 'maybe. But if they were playing cards together – or if they say they were – until two o'clock on that night, we lose. If they see where Dismas is going with this and talk together tonight, for example…' He let his voice trail off.

Jon Ingalls pushed his chair back from the table. 'You're saying we need to know if they had alibis.'

'I'm saying,' Freeman amplified, 'that we'd be damn negligent if we got this far and lost sight of what we're really trying to do, which is provide an alternative to our client as Elaine's killer. Not a theory, a person. Nothing less is going to do it.'

'How are we going to do that,' Curtis Rhodin checked his watch, 'in three or four hours?'

'I don't know,' Freeman conceded. 'I admit there's precious little time and it's really police work that they probably haven't done. But if we don't have that information, we're looking at ugly surprises just about when we think we've won.'

After a moment, Amy Wu shook herself and sat up straight, smiling. 'OK,' she said. 'How do we do this? Where do we go?'

After the musketeers had broken off and left on their various assignments, Freeman, Gina Roake and Hardy had stayed on for over an hour to discuss the possible meaning of the blank entries in Logan's check register. Hardy thought it completely in keeping with Logan's character that his office still seemed to use a low-tech, one-write system approach to its check-writing and bookkeeping. Before computers had come into his life, Hardy had used the same kind of system himself, so he was familiar with it. You wrote your check and tore it off. Under it, a light-blue NCR-paper copy of the check was your receipt. And finally, under the copy, the check was automatically entered in the ledger. The blank lines could have been anything really – voided checks, a ditzy secretary inserting a piece of paper between the ledger and the checks, a purposeful hiding of records. The last was Hardy's favorite notion, but there was simply no way to tell.

The musketeer assignments were desperate and dangerous, but necessary. The very cute Amy Wu was going with Jon Ingalls as her invisible chaperon to spend some time at Jupiter where, according to the bartender when they'd phoned, Dash Logan was currently having a few drinks. He looked to be in for the long haul tonight.

From the Solarium, Curtis Rhodin had called the home of his friend at the AG's office – they'd been unsuccessful getting a judge to issue any kind of warrant on Logan's office that morning, and both had been frustrated, aching for another chance. This was it. They would take an investigator – three of them together would ensure their safety, they hoped – and call on Visser first at his office and then at his home address. When they found him, they would ask him what he had to say about his movements on the night of Elaine's murder.

The same drill would not work on Torrey, not that Freeman, Roake, or Hardy really considered that the Chief ADA could have pulled the trigger on Elaine. They all agreed that he would have used Visser. But why would Torrey even see them? Certainly, he would blow off Curtis, his friend, and their investigator. And even if they did get in and pushed him for his alibi, he'd tell them to get lost -he wouldn't miss the message. His guard would be raised even higher.

Freeman, though, wanted to be thorough, and he had an idea. He believed he'd be able to bait Torrey into giving something away the next morning before court went into session.

It was closing in on ten thirty and Hardy sat alone in the glass room.

The ledger sheets from Dash Logan's office lay fanned in front of him. They had been important enough for Elaine Wager to have copied them separately and carried them away with her – illegally. Her special master mandate was specific about her duties in searching a lawyer's office. She had two and only two options on how to treat documents such as these that she reviewed in a search. She determined whether they fell into the categories specifically described in the affidavit. If they did, she gave it to the cops or, if the lawyer claimed a privilege, she took it to a judge. If they did not, she left them alone. And never, ever discussed them with anyone, not even a judge. It was that simple.

And yet she had risked her license and quite possibly her life to copy and remove what Hardy had in front of him.

Why? Why?

Freeman had left a few inches of wine in his bottle. Hardy got up, thinking he'd go see what tonight's choice had been. He went and sat in the chair David had been using. But he didn't reach for the wine right away. Just to his right, on the seat next to him, was the cardboard box full of Elaine's personal items.

On the top of it, face down, was a framed something. He lifted it up. It was the picture of her mother, Loretta, that Treya had put up on the table when they'd first brought all the stuff down here. The other morning, Abe had asked the gang at the table if anybody minded if he put it back in the box. He didn't want to look at her face all day while he worked, and Hardy thought he understood pretty well why that was.

Still holding the frame, his fingers absently moving up and down the cardboard backing that held the photograph in place, he stared at the familiar visage of the senator, a well-known public figure. Like her daughter, a beauty; and like her daughter, dead.

Hardy sighed wearily. Maybe his daughter was right after all to be frightened of everything. Maybe there was no security. A snatch from Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach' flitted across his mind: '… neither joy, nor love, nor light. Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain

He placed the photograph carefully on the table and reached for the wine bottle. Groth Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, 1990. He swirled and sniffed, then tipped the bottle up to his lips and tasted it, thinking it was no wonder David could keep up his good attitude most of the time.

Abruptly, he stood. Carrying the bottle out with him, he crossed the lobby and walked down the hallway to the coffee room, where he turned on the light and took a wine glass from the cabinet. This stuff was too outrageously good to swill. He poured, put the bottle down, and suddenly the wine had vanished from his mind, driven away by a cascade of realizations.

He checked his watch.

It was too late now to call Judge Thomasino, but he could stop by his chambers first thing in the morning. The evidence locker, on the other hand, would be open all night. If he busted his hump, he could get down there, verify what he realized he had to know, and still – maybe – make it home to get the five hours' sleep he needed to survive another day.

Stopping back at the Solarium to turn off the lights, he saw that he'd left Loretta's picture on the table. Abe would see it first thing when he came by for the morning briefing, but Hardy didn't even have the energy to walk around the table and put it back into the box. Abe was a big boy. He'd be able to handle it.