Now Glitsky's voice rasped. "And you think I'd help her?"

"No. Never on purpose. But listen to me. If you're reporting to her and not to anybody in homicide…"

"But that's what I'm saying. I'm trying to get with Cuneo."

"Still, it's mostly you and her, not you and him. If you get close to something that she needs to be concerned about…"

"Wait a minute. You can't think Kathy West is involved in the murders."

Lanier looked at the air between them for a moment, then shrugged. "Not in the sense you mean. No, not really. Though you and I both know she could be. But the real question is, Could there be some other connection between Mr. Hanover and her honor? Maybe whoever killed him meant it as some kind of a warning to her. Maybe there's an issue of, say, contribution money." At Glitsky's look, Lanier backed off, opened his hands palms out. "I'm just throwing out ideas here. But the fact remains that she might want you on this for an entirely different reason than what she's telling you, and I don't think you're naive enough-hell, you're not naive at all-to haven't considered that." Lanier was sitting back again with his arms crossed, unblinking, daring his superior to deny it.

"I don't know if I'd gotten that far," Glitsky said after a pause. "Yesterday, when it looked like a suicide, she wanted me to clear Hanover's good name. Now that it looks like somebody's killed him…" He stopped, let out a breath.

"I'm just saying, from a certain perspective, it looks a little squirrelly."

"Okay, grant that," Glitsky said, "but she's the mayor. And the police chief, as you may know, serves at her discretion. Batiste is already on board with this. With me on the case, I mean. You don't tell her no without some serious risk to your career opportunities." After a short silence, Glitsky went on. "Just tell Cuneo I need to talk with him, that's all. Share information. Between the two of us, we'll take it from there. You mind doing that?"

"No, that's fine. I'd be happy to, Abe. There's nothing personal here between me and you. I'm just the messenger. And the message has got some merit."

"I hear you. I even agree with you." Glitsky came off the wall, rolled his shoulders, took a breath. He reached for the doorknob, turned it, started to walk out.

Lanier stopped him. "Abe."

Glitsky turned, a question on his face. He pulled the door back to.

The homicide lieutenant took another few seconds staring at the ceiling while he decided whether or not he was going to say it. Finally, he said, "One thing you might want to know. Cuneo's call this morning? He didn't want it to get out, maybe especially not to you, but you've got to know." He let out a sigh, waited some more.

"You want to give me three guesses?"

The scathing tone made Lanier talk. "Maybe it wasn't the D'Amiens woman in the house. Some witnesses may have seen her leaving a little before the fire. Cuneo's thinking that if that's true, maybe she was the shooter."

"So who was the woman in the house?"

"No clue."

"And where's D'Amiens?" "Nobody knows."

"I know where she is. She's in my locker not fifty feet from where we're resting our tired old bones, Abe," Strout said. "That's where she is for a damn pure medical certainty. And as for her doin' the shooting, well, that would have been highly unusual, if not impossible. Her bein' dead an' all at the time." The medical examiner had his feet up on his desk. Behind him through the window, the barely visible morning freeway traffic was stopped in both directions. The fog gave every indication that it was going to be around for lunch. Strout was opening and closing a switchblade as they talked. "Who's the perpetrator of this outrageous folderol? That it wasn't

D'Amiens."

"Before I tell you that, John, tell me why it's folderol."

"Because I called your Dr. Toshio Yamashiru-who by the way turns out to be one of the premier forensic odontologists in the state, was called in to help identify the 9/11 victims in New York-anyway, I called him within about two minutes of getting his name from you yesterday, and he was good enough to come down here last night with her dental records and compare them to her."

"D'Amiens?"

"Well, they weren't Marilyn Monroe's." He closed the switchblade. "Same person."

"Well, wait…"

"Okay." The knife flicked open and closed four times. Behind Strout on the freeway, a car inched forward from one pane of his window to the next. "What are you thinking?"

"Have you talked to Dan Cuneo? About this case?"

"Sure. He was at the scene."

Glitsky shook his head. "No. Since then."

"Well," Strout drawled the word, pronouncing it as two syllables-way-all-" 'then' would have been only yesterday morning, Abe. But the answer's no, I haven't seen him since then. Why?"

A pause. "Nothing. Just curious."

Strout let a chuckle percolate for a few seconds. "Idle curiosity, huh? Something you're so well known for." But he held up a hand, still enjoying the moment. "But seriously, you don't have to tell me why it matters if I've seen him. Maybe it's none of my business."

"It's not that. I haven't talked to him, either, but Marcel tells me he's got witnesses who saw her leave the place and go to her car just before the fire. D'Amiens."

"Maybe she came back. Obviously she did."

"Good point."

"Shot him, then went to her car and got the gasoline, which tends to be obvious if it's sitting out in the foyer."

But Glitsky was shaking his head. "No. That's if she killed herself, which I think we agree she couldn't have."

Strout chewed on that for a moment. "So somebody who looks like her?"

"Maybe." He came forward in the folding chair. As usual, Glitsky was in full uniform, and leaning over, held his hat in his hands between his legs. "How certain was Yamashiru?"

"That it was D'Amiens? A hundred percent. We went over everything for almost an hour. Anyway, he was certain enough-and so am I-that I'm putting her name to the autopsy."

Glitsky had known Strout for thirty years, and knew that this was a point of professional pride and honor. Strout didn't call it as a matter of law unless he was completely convinced. He knew he might have to testify under oath on the witness stand, and so far as anyone in the city knew, he had never made a mistake on an autopsy-either an identification or a cause of death. He would not hesitate to decline to state when he wasn't sure. But he'd never been flat wrong. And Glitsky didn't think he was now.

Which meant that, with a slight detour, he was back where he'd been before he'd talked to Marcel Lanier this morning, or even when he'd had his discussion with the mayor yesterday afternoon. Somebody had shot Hanover and D'Amiens and then set their bodies on fire.

This, then, was a straightforward murder investigation. Cuneo was the inspecting officer, and-orders from the mayor or not-Glitsky would defer to him as long as it was practicable. Hardy's advice echoed-this might be a good opportunity to mend fences with the man, get to some kind of mutual understanding, perhaps the beginnings of respect.

Finally making it nearly to his own office, Glitsky stood frowning at the door, which sported a cutout of this morning's Chronicle photo. It shouldn't have amazed him, though it always did, how the news agencies-print, audio or film-all so consistently managed to convey misleading information, even in a picture. Of course, he'd seen the stupid picture first thing in the morning. It was impossible to miss. He found it odd that he had no memory of the actual moment at all, even though he appeared to be standing at formal attention and the salute was so crisp he might have been posing.

Aware that someone had come into the conference room that separated the reception area and his office, he turned around. Melissa wasn't really his private secretary-technically she was merely the gatekeeper for him and the other deputy chief within the suite, Jake Longoria-but as the highest ranking of the six clerks in the reception bay, she took a proprietary, even maternal, interest in the men whose access she protected. Now she was smiling broadly at him, clearly pleased with the reflected glory that the picture brought to her, as well as with Glitsky's obvious and growing prominence among the city's leaders. (It wouldn't be unknown for a deputy chief to take his gatekeeper with him should the promotion to chief ever come along, either.)