2

Atlanta

Two days later

Lang thought he had grieved as much as a man could.when Dawn died. The lingering illness, the agony of watching the woman he loved slip away had, he thought, seared his soul against further loss.

He was wrong.

As he watched the two caskets, one only half the size of the other, being lowered into the red Georgia day, he lost the stoic exterior southern custom required of men. Instead, he wept. First wet eyes, then tears he made no effort to staunch. If anyone thought less of him for his anguish, screw 'em. He was not weeping only for Jeff and Janet, of course. He was crying for himself just as much. The last of his family gone. The thought filled him with loneliness he had never known existed.

He had lost friends and acquaintances before; any adult had. He had also known a few guys, fellow employees, who had perished in the occupational hazards of his former work, too. And he had lost Dawn, but he had had months to anticipate the inevitable. But his younger sister and nephew had been snatched away with a suddenness and in a manner that was incomprehensible.

The funeral had an air of unreality, something staged for his consumption alone. He watched the service as though witnessing someone else's bereavement, perhaps in a film. But he was no mere spectator to the anguish that chewed at him like an animal gnawing its way free from a cage.

The holes that would receive Jeff and Janet were next to the marble with Dawn's name on it, not yet weathered, the inscription as sharp as the loss he felt every Sunday when he placed flowers on the impersonal hump of earth. He would have two more graves to visit as Jeff and Janet shared eternity with Dawn on this same hillside.

Instead of hearing the words Francis read from the prayer book, he replayed every video game he had shared with Jeff, saw again every gold-starred homework assignment. He missed them both, but the death of a child was the bit of evidence that condemned the universe, that denied a sparrow-watching god.

By the time the mourners, mostly neighbors or Janet's medical peers with a scattering of parents of Jeff's friends, had finished their sincere if meaningless condolences, his grief had metabolized into fury. Whoever had done this would pay in spades. No matter how long it took, how much time was required, how far he had to travel, he would find him. Or them.

They had screwed around with the wrong family. He had no experience in law enforcement but he did have a unique repertoire of acquaintances, people who had access to information unavailable to police. If he had to call everyone of them to find the guilty party, he'd do it.

The anger was strangely comforting. It brought order to an otherwise senseless world. He imagined the taste of revenge against persons unknown, ignoring the growing impatience of the cemetery's crew. His lingering at graveside was postponing the removal of the Astroturf that had concealed the mound of raw dirt from sensitive eyes, the return of the backhoe that would push the mound of soil onto coffins that had remained closed during the service.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder. His thoughts scattered as Francis patted him on the back. Lang had asked him to officiate not only as Janet's priest and friend but also as his own friend.

"Lang, you need to be thinking of Janet and Jeff, not revenge."

Lang sighed. "That obvious, huh?"

"To anyone who looks at your face."

"I can't just walk away, Francis, forget what happened. Someone did this, killed two innocent people. And don't tell me it was God's will."

The priest shook his head, staring at the two graves. "I assume you asked me to perform the service because you wanted to involve a higher force than yourself. I…"

"Oh, bullshit!" Lang growled. "Your higher force was notably absent when needed."

He instantly regretted the remark, the result of grief and anger as well as a sleepless night or two. Although Lang professed no particular faith, there had been no need to belittle someone else's.

"Forgive me, Francis," he said. "I'm a little raw right now."

If the priest had been offended, he didn't show it. "Understandable, Lang. I also think I understand what you're thinking. Wouldn't it make more sense to let the French police handle it?"

Lang snorted derisively. "Easy enough for you to say. To them it's just two more homicides. I want justice and I want it now."

Francis studied him for a moment, large brown eyes seeming to read his thoughts. "Just because you survived one risky occupation doesn't mean you're qualified to track down whoever did this thing."

Lang had never told Francis about his former employment. The priest was smart enough to guess that a lawyer who had attended law school in his thirties and had a blank spot almost a decade long in his resume likely had a past he didn't want to discuss. Francis had surmised the truth or something very close to it.

"Qualified or not, I have to try," Lang said.

Francis nodded silently and turned his head to stare down the gentle slope before giving his usual parting shot. "I'll be praying for you."

Lang managed to tweak his mouth into a grimace that didn't quite reach a smile as he gave his usual reply. "Can't hurt, I guess."

It was only as he watched Francis walk down the slope that Lang realized he had made a commitment to himself. Not a promise born in fury, not some feel-good resolution to be forgotten, but a commitment.

How he was going to fulfill it, he had no idea.

3

Atlanta

An hour later

Lang went from the funeral to Janet's house. He would have to put it on the market, of Course, although he was avoiding doing so. Janet had worked hard as a single-income parent for this place where she could give her son a home of his own. It was a part of both of them with which Lang was reluctant to part.

The grass needed cutting, he noted sadly, a condition Janet would never have tolerated. In back, he almost wept again when he saw the swing set he and Janet had erected two years ago. The effort had consumed most of a hot summer afternoon and a cooler of icy beer. Only last month, Jeff has confided to his uncle that he was too big now to play on swing sets like little kids.

Lang unlocked the door, noting that the place had that stuffiness that unused places seem to acquire. Telling himself that he needed to make a thorough inspection, he wandered upstairs and down, winding up in Janet's living room. He smiled wanly. It was far neater than he had ever seen it. The walls were covered with her paintings: mournful saints, dour-faced martyrs or bloody crucifixions. Janet collected religious art and Lang was the one who had started it.

Years before, a defector from one of the Balkan countries had brought with him part of his art collection, paintings he had no doubt stolen from some Communist banned church and was selling with an enthusiasm only a recent convert to capitalism could muster. The pictures, as Lang recalled, were of a bloody and recently severed head of John the Baptist and an equally gory body bristling with arrows. Saint Sebastian, he supposed. The colors were remarkable, the style early Byzantine and the cost at the London auction quite reasonable. In light of Janet's recent conversion to Catholicism, the gifts had seemed appropriate. Or at least the source of a good laugh.

They were a bigger hit than Lang had contemplated, igniting an interest that would last the rest of her life. Janet was not a particularly religious person, her Catholicism notwithstanding. She did, however, enjoy the portrayals of the sundry saints in all their miseries of martyrdom. It was the only sort of art, she explained, she could really afford. Impressionists and their contemporary progeny far exceeded her finances. There was enough church art on the market to keep the price of even some of the earlier pieces within her range.