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Cuneo lived alone on what had formerly been the grounds of the Alameda Naval Air Station, across the bay from San Francisco. The nine-hundred-square-foot standalone building, which back in the fifties had housed a marine engine repair shop, sat perched on a concrete slab that jutted out ten feet into the channel. All day, every day, flotillas of mostly small saltwater craft glided by his bedroom window, sometimes close enough to touch. The ferry to San Francisco passed every hour or so, too, as well as the occasional Coast Guard or naval vessel.

After six hours of fitful sleep, Cuneo-dreaming of fire-started awake at twenty minutes after four in the afternoon. Tangled up in his blankets, he was breathing hard and sweating. Throwing and kicking the covers off, he shot up to sitting and looked from side to side, getting his bearings. The smoke smell was real enough, all-pervasive in the small house. He let his breathing slow

down, the tendrils of his nightmare still clutching at his psyche.

For another minute or so, he sat as he almost never did, in absolute stillness. He wore only his Jockeys, but the stench of last night's smoke still clung to his skin. At last, unconsciously, he lifted the heel of his right foot, let it fall, lifted it again. In seconds, still unaware, he was tapping a steady rhythm on the concrete floor.

Next to the bedroom on the water in the back, a tiny, low-ceilinged workroom huddled to one side of the house. Going forward, the kitchen and bathroom divided the central segment of the building two-thirds to one, and after putting some water on to boil, Cuneo stopped in at the bathroom for a shower, mostly to get the smell off him. When he was done, wearing his towel, he made some Nescafe-two spoons of crystals, no sugar or cream, and went back to put on his clothes.

Up in the front of the house, a relatively spacious living room provided two front and two side windows that gave the space an open feel and plenty of light. A leather love seat sat against one wall, a small teak bookshelf and television stand on the other. By far the most immediately noticeable furnishing, though, was a full set of Lud-wig drums in the middle of the room. Cuneo didn't have any idea where his nearest neighbor's home might be, but it was at least out of earshot. He could play all day as loud as he wanted and nobody ever complained.

Three years ago, after his fellow inspector Lincoln Russell finally couldn't take partnering with him anymore,

Lieutenant Lanier had recommended that maybe he might want to see a psychologist-his insurance through the city would pay for the first three visits-and try to get some handle on why he couldn't ever sit still, or shut up. He would sing to himself driving to crime scenes, hum during interrogations, often break into unconscious song while he wrote up his reports in homicide. Maybe he had Tourette's syndrome, or Saint Vitus' dance or something, Lanier had suggested, and if he did, it would be better to at least know what he was dealing with.

As it turned out, he only saw the shrink-Adrienne Schwartz-professionally the three times that his insurance covered it, though they dated for six weeks or so after that until she started hinting that she was looking for some kind of commitment. The best thing she'd done for him was recommend that he buy the drums and take some lessons, and now he'd almost always start his day with a twenty-minute workout, getting it all moving by playing along with some CDs of the classic big band guys-Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Louis Bellson.

Today, though, he didn't do his full twenty. Ten minutes into it, in the middle of "Sing, Sing, Sing," he suddenly stopped, stood up, grabbed his jacket. The Hanover woman from last night was a real babe, and he'd picked up the definite sense that she and her husband weren't doing too well. She'd told him he was down in Mexico, fishing for a week, and it didn't seem to bother her too much. He didn't think he'd have too much to do with the murder/suicide-that appeared to be straightforward enough-but he'd want to be thorough, find out what he could. You never knew. The arson inspectors and their police counterparts would have a hundred or more names they'd picked up at the scene, and he'd want to find if any of those potential witnesses had seen anything that might be telling, might call the basic facts into question.

But first the Hanover woman again. See how she was handling the tragedy. If she was lonely. Or horny.

One of the benefits of working nights was commuting against the traffic. Cuneo checked in at the Hall of Justice within twenty minutes of walking out his front door. Up in the homicide detail, Lanier wasn't in his office, and the other four inspectors still at work said hello from their desks and then cordially ignored him. The usual assortment of housekeeping and other messages cluttered his voice mail-a snitch needing some cash to hold him over until he testified in court; another witness sounding very afraid about her upcoming testimony against her husband, who was in jail for murdering their mutual lover; a friendly notice from payroll that his overtime last pay period had exceeded the approved hours; another call that he was behind on his credit union payments; the arson guy, Becker, wondering how he wanted to arrange his pickup of last night's witness list; a woman he'd stopped seeing recently.

Barely audible to the other inspectors, he was humming the opening riff to "Satisfaction" over and over and over as he listened to the messages, writing notes and phone numbers on the pad he carried in his back pocket. Glitsky's was the last message and, hearing it, Cuneo went silent. He played the message again, aware that a flush of anger was rising to his face, but otherwise trying to keep his expression neutral. He threw a quick glance around the room, wondering if any of his colleagues might have heard something, if they were watching for his reaction. But no one was paying him any mind.

The recording told him that he'd finished with his last message, to press one if he'd like to hear it again, two if he'd like to save it, three to delete it. It told him the same thing all the way through again. When it started to tell him for a third time, he finally heard it and slowly replaced the receiver.

What the hell did this mean? The deputy chief of inspectors didn't just call and say, "Oh, by the way, I'll be working with you on your latest case." Cuneo had never heard of anything like it. He'd been without a partner for almost three years now and didn't think much about whether he was popular or not. He was under the impression he'd been doing a good job, making triable cases on five killers in the past eight months, had gotten the collars. It was much better than the average for the detail. Certainly it was the best stretch he'd ever enjoyed professionally.

But what else could this be about except that somebody was checking up on him and his work? And on this of all cases, which on the face of it appeared very close to a slam dunk. It had to mean that they were going to begin some kind of bullshit documentation for moving him out of homicide, maybe out of the PD altogether.

And why would Lanier or anybody else want to do that?

Sitting back in his chair, he began tattooing the arms of it with a steady, rapid beat. It couldn't be about his work product, he thought. If it was, Lanier was straight-shooter enough to have told him, even if it was true that he and Glitsky went way back, sometimes even saw each other socially. Cuneo wondered if his lieutenant even knew about the message Glitsky had left-if he did, he certainly would have given Cuneo some warning, or at least an explanation. This kind of thing just wasn't done. It wasn't right. More, it was an insult.