Quinn stopped. He stood straight and holstered his weapon. He glanced at Eugene Franklin, turned, and gave them his back. Quinn headed for the barn door.

Earl picked up the Colt and slid it down the bar to his son. Ray's boot heel caught momentarily on the brass rail as he swiveled his hips. He lost a second of time, reached out for the Colt's grip, got his hand around it, and swung the muzzle toward Quinn as Earl found the.38 and drew it from his coat pocket.

'Hey, Terry,' said Franklin in a quiet, even way.

Quinn cleared his Glock from his holster. He crouched and spun and fired from the hip. The bar splintered around Ray. Quinn fired again, and the slug tore open Ray's shirt in the center of his chest. Ray dropped his gun and fell to the slatted wood floor.

A gunshot exploded into the room. Earl's pistol jumped, and Quinn felt air and fire burn at the side of his scalp.

Franklin kicked the card table over as he stood. He squeezed the trigger on his Glock four times, the gun jumping in his hand. Earl was thrown back into the bar mirror. The bottles on the call rack exploded around him in a shower of glass and blood. Earl spun, dropped, and disappeared.

A bell tone rang steadily in Quinn's ears. He heard someone moan. Then a short cough and only the ringing sound and the rain.

Quinn walked through the roiling gun smoke. He kicked the.38 away from Ray's corpse. He went around the bar with his gun arm locked and looked down at the father. Quinn holstered his gun.

'The girl,' said Franklin.

'Strange got her,' said Quinn.

'Delgado?'

'If Strange got the girl, he got Delgado, too. Let's go.'

Quinn picked up his coat and pack in the stand of pine. He and Franklin entered the woods and headed for the row of lights on the interstate, glowing faintly up ahead.

An hour later, Quinn parked the Chevelle in the lot of Franklin's apartment house and let the motor run.

Franklin said, 'What now, Terry?'

'You've got a little bit of time,' said Quinn. 'Strange sent a package off today to someone he trusts in the department. Chris Wilson's notebook and the photographs.'

'What about my confession?'

'Strange made a copy of that.' Quinn reached across Franklin and opened the glove box door. 'I've got the original right here.'

Franklin took the yellow piece of paper from Quinn's hand. Quinn nodded, and Franklin slipped the paper into the pocket of his coat.

'Thank you, Terry.'

Quinn stared through the windshield and pushed hair behind his ear, careful not to touch the tender spot where Earl Boone's bullet had grazed his scalp.

'You're not off the hook. The evidence Strange mailed in is enough to convict you. However you want to plead your defense, that's up to you. As far as what happened tonight, and the girl-'

'Ain't no one ever gonna know about what happened tonight, or about the girl. Not from me.' Franklin swallowed. 'Terry-'

'Go on.'

Franklin offered his hand. Quinn kept his grip tight on the steering wheel.

'All right, then,' said Franklin. He stepped out of the car and crossed the parking lot, his head lowered against the rain.

Later, and for the rest of his life, Quinn would not forget Eugene Franklin's sad, odd face, or the hang of his outstretched hand.

Near dawn, Derek Strange exited the house of Leona Wilson, closing the front door softly behind him. The rain had ended. He stood on the concrete stoop and breathed the cold morning air, turning his collar up against the chill.

Down on the street, parked behind his Caprice, was a pretty blue Chevelle. A long-haired young white man sat behind the wheel.

'Thank you, Lord,' said Strange.

He locked eyes with Quinn and smiled.

33

That evening, the suicide of Eugene Franklin made the six o'clock news.

A resident in the apartment next door had heard a gunshot around noon and phoned the police. They found Franklin upright on the couch. His eyes were bugged from the gas jolt, and his nose was blackened and scorched. Blood and bone and brain matter had been sprayed on the walls and the fabric of the couch. His service weapon lay in his lap. A letter written in longhand had been neatly placed on the coffee table before him.

On the eleven o'clock news, Franklin's suicide was eclipsed by the discovery of a mass homicide on a wooded property at the east-central edge of Montgomery County. Six bodies had been found in various stages of decomposition. The police had been alerted by a friend of one of the victims, a woman named Edna Loomis. The friend, Johanna Dodgson, had not heard from Loomis for days and had called the local cops when her concern became great. After two bodies were discovered in the barn, and another in the house, police found three additional bodies, including the corpse of Edna Loomis, in a tunnel underneath the property. Johanna Dodgson had mentioned the existence of the tunnel in her initial call to the police.

The Out-County Massacre, as it was immediately dubbed by the press, dominated the news for the next three days. A rumor surfaced that one of the victims was a D.C. cop, and then the rumor was publicly confirmed. Drugs and large amounts of money were said to have been found at the scene. Another rumor surfaced, alleging that the suicide of Officer Eugene Franklin was somehow related to the Out-County Massacre, but this rumor remained unconfirmed. Police spokesmen promised a speedy resolution to the case, claiming that an announcement regarding the findings was 'imminent.'

Strange went to work daily and kept to his general routine. He followed the news reports closely but did not discuss them, except with Ron and Janine, and only then in passing. He phoned Quinn and spoke to him twice, and on both occasions he found him to be uncommunicative, remote, and possibly in the grip of depression. He visited Leona and Sondra Wilson briefly and was pleased with what he found.

It was a tentative time for Strange, and though he picked up a couple of easy jobs, mostly he waited. By the end of the next week, he welcomed the phone call that he knew with certainty would come. The call came on Saturday morning, when he was returning from a long walk with Greco, as he stepped into the foyer of his Buchanan Street row house.

'Hello,' said Strange, picking up the phone.

'Lydell here. You ready to talk, Derek?'

'Name the place,' said Strange.

Oregon Avenue, south of Military Road, led into a section of Rock Creek Park that contained a nature center, horse stables, and miles of hilly trails. A huge parking lot sat to the right of the entrance, where people met to train and run their dogs on the adjacent field. The parking lot was a popular rendezvous spot for adulterous couples as well.

Strange and Lydell Blue sat in Strange's Caprice, parked beside Blue's Park Avenue in the lot and facing the field. Blue's hair had thinned and it was all gray, as was his thick mustache, which he had worn for thirty years on his wide, strong-featured face. His belly sagged over the waistband of his slacks. He held a sixteen-ounce paper cup of coffee in his hand, steam rising from a hole he had torn in its lid.

Over a dozen large-breed dogs ran and played in the field, all of their owners white, well-off, and dressed in casual, expensive clothes. At the far end of the lot, near the tree line, a middle-aged man and a younger woman necked in the front seat of a late-model Pontiac.

'You shoulda brought Greco,' said Blue, looking through the windshield at an Irish wolfhound and a white Samoyed sitting side by side on a rise, a woman in a Banana Republic jacket telling them to hold from fifteen feet away.