After a shocked moment of silence, Banks blew out heavily. 'Jesus.'

Torrey pumped a fist. 'Fuckin' A,' he whispered.

Pratt cleared her throat. 'Well, Chief, in light of this admission, you can't-'

'Sharron! Please.' Rigby stopped her with his palm, turned to his chief of homicide. 'Lieutenant Glitsky, are you telling me you gave evidence in a murder trial to a defense attorney? Am I hearing this right?'

Glitsky inclined his head an inch. 'Yes, sir.'

The Chief sighed heavily. 'All right.' His mouth worked. He might have been grinding his teeth. 'All right,' he repeated. 'We've got to look into this. Meanwhile-'

Torrey: 'What's to look into? He's admitted-'

'MEANWHILE,' Rigby bellowed to shut him up. He turned to Batiste. 'Meanwhile, Frank, I'd like you and Abe to meet me up in my office in' – he checked his watch – 'thirty minutes. Lieutenant, if you'd like to bring a grievance officer along with you, that might be prudent. Everybody else,' his voice hardened, 'I'd appreciate it if anything mentioned behind these doors stays here until I can prepare a statement after we get to the bottom of what went on.' He glared at Pratt and Torrey. 'And if there is a statement to make, we'll make it together. Is that clear?'

'We can agree to that,' Pratt stated.

'Though it should be sooner rather than later,' Torrey added.

'As soon as the facts are in,' Rigby replied crisply. He cast a last slow look around the room, finally rested on Glitsky, shook his head. 'Jesus Christ, Abe,' he said under his breath, 'what were you thinking?'

Then he turned the knob and was out the door, leaving it open behind him.

Gene Visser's law enforcement career began in a promising fashion. He spent three years working the streets in a squad car, then got moved up and he earned a stripe and an inspector's job in burglary. After three years in that department, he put two more in vice, took the sergeant's exam, and applied for the next opening as inspector of homicide, which was pretty much the top rung in the ladder for working cops. When he got that promotion at thirty, he was one of the youngest inspectors ever to attain that rank and position.

But Visser had a couple of character flaws that were going to negatively impact on his aspirations in the force. The first one was a tendency to theorize before all the evidence was in. He'd get a feeling about who among the various suspects in a case was the most likely culprit, and he'd focus his energies trying to prove his point. The first couple of cases he'd handled, this approach had even worked – quite often, the guy who looks like he did it actually did.

But not always.

And the law of averages – along with the complexity of motives and situations in real-life homicides – finally caught up with him in a high-profile case.

This was where his second major failing – a lack of focus regarding loyalty – came into play. Visser thought it only made sense to have friends in the press and the DA's office as well as with the police. It couldn't hurt to give a reporter a little advance heads up on what might be coming down the pipeline, sometimes before it was supposed to be public. These people – the DAs and reporters – after all, were the end users of his product. They ought to be entitled to an early look.

And in their zeal for convictions (pre-Pratt), the occasional prosecutor would sometimes use Visser to funnel something to the press that they couldn't say themselves. If you were nice to reporters, they were nice to you in print. It was you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Visser may even have thought that everybody did it, although in this belief he was mistaken.

Until one day, stunned, he found himself transferred out of homicide. Soon he found it prudent to resign and get another job as Investigator for the District Attorney's office, where he was pretty much like a police inspector, but not really.

That new position lasted only eighteen months. He could have stayed on, of course – he hadn't really done anything wrong – but he felt frozen out. He became the prosecutor's last choice if they needed a real investigator. Finally, deeply embittered by the system that had rejected him, he quit and, encouraged by several defense attorneys with whom he'd become friendly and who promised him steady work, he hung up a shingle as a private investigator.

Visser had once been handsome, with a full head of sandy-colored hair, chiseled cheekbones, a well-trimmed goatee.

In the decade since he'd had his own business, though, he'd gained forty pounds and two inches of forehead. He'd also lost the facial hair that had hid his chins. Now the skin of his face stretched tightly over too much flesh through which smallish eyes perpetually seemed to squint.

Right now he was on his way to see Dismas Hardy's client Rich McNeil at Terranew Industries. He didn't have an appointment; that wasn't his style.

McNeil's office was on one of the upper floors of the company's headquarters on California Street halfway up to Nob Hill. The room was of reasonable size, with modern furnishings, built-in bookshelves, windows on two of the walls looking out over downtown. When his secretary buzzed him and said a private investigator with the Manny Gait case was outside, McNeil let himself hope that maybe Hardy had hired a p.i., and maybe he had come up with some good news about something and couldn't wait to tell McNeil directly.

But as soon as he saw Visser, he realized that this was wishful thinking. This beefy hunk of trailer trash couldn't be Hardy's man. Still, McNeil had let him into his office, so he'd be polite. He rose out of his seat, came around his desk, extended his hand. 'Mr Visser. Rich McNeil. What can I do for you?'

The big man's grip crushed his hand. Intimidation with a smile. 'Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. You mind if I sit down a minute?'

McNeil opened and closed his hand, relieved that it still seemed to be working. 'Not at all. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time, but…'

'I won't take much, then.' Visser pulled his pants at his thighs, settled back into one of McNeil's leather armchairs, looked around the office. 'Nice place,' he said. 'I got an office in an old warehouse on Pier 42. Great view, right on the water. Treasure Island, the Bridge. But no chairs like this.'

'Well…' McNeil didn't have a chit-chat answer prepared. He pulled a chair up, put on an expectant expression. 'So…' He waited.

Visser took another moment appreciating his comfort level, the buildings out the windows. He shifted his shoulders, leaned into the leather, came back to McNeil. 'Just so you know,' he began, 'so we're clear, I'm working for Dash Logan, Mr Gait's attorney. He thought it might be… helpful if you and me had a discussion about what we're looking at here, kind of off the record.'

But McNeil was shaking his head. 'I don't know if that's a good idea. My lawyer told me-'

'No, c'mon, hey. Lawyers, I know. I work for one. Dash talked to your lawyer yesterday, which is why I'm here today, call it a courtesy. Your guy – Hardy, is it? – he seems to think settling this case out of court isn't a good idea, says we've got no criminal case. But I gotta tell you…' The squinting eyes shifted around the office.

'What?' McNeil prompted.

With some effort, Visser brought his bulk forward on the chair. 'Here's the thing,' he began, all sincerity. His voice dropped a few decibels. 'This stuff happens in these cases, the lawyers, they start pissing at each other, pretty soon everybody loses. Mr Logan, he hates to see that…'

'Well.' McNeil wanted no more of this. He started to stand up. 'Be that as it may, I really can't-'

'The thing is, Rich,' Visser interrupted, almost coming out of his own chair, intimidating McNeil again back into his. 'I used to be a cop a lot of years. I know the kind of things they're looking for and they're going to get it. I mean, everybody's got a skeleton in their closet – tax stuff, couple of times you maybe took cash for rent without receipts. This is stuff your guy Hardy wouldn't know about.'