“Hi sweetie,” I said.

That broke her stunned silence. She screamed and slid down to the floor, and started to crawl backwards until she bumped into Alison.

Brad, once again, spun around to face me. “You…!"

I realized I had to do some fast talking. I was running out of bodies. And at the rate at which Brad was blowing their heads off…

“Hold it, tough guy,” I said. “I have something important to say. To Agent Fieldman."

“I doubt it,” Fieldman said, from within Alison's robot body.

“This exercise in revenge isn't going to solve anything. You're treating the symptom, not the disease. This is an entirely wasted effort.” It must have seemed too funny to watch a dead guy wax philosophical about the uses of revenge.

“Ah,” Fieldman said. “This is where I'm supposed to have an epiphany about violence begetting violence? Spare me the philosophy, Collective. This store isn't buying. The ‘exercise’ you see before you is going to solve everything. I've been trying to explain this to your tiny mind, but will you listen? No. This is much, much bigger than you or I, or anybody in this world."

“Okay, Buddha. Maybe everything you're saying is true. If it is, fine. You want some kind of higher justice served? Bully for you. But it still doesn't address my earlier point: What are we going to do about the killer?"

“We have the killer. Killers, to be precise."

“No, not this pathetic errand boy, or the dizzy wench. I mean the real killer.” I looked at Brad. The face of the killer, accusing the victim.

“What?” he asked.

“You don't see it, do you Brad? You killed your wife, and yourself!"

“Shut up,” he said.

“It was you. You hired these two pathetic people to do it."

“I did not!"

“Perhaps not the personality known as Brad Larsen,” I said. “But the name on the dotted line was John Paul Bafoures. And you were, in fact, John Paul Bafoures."

I could see a dim bulb lighting in Brad's mind. “No…” he said weakly, but he was finally getting it.

Alison's face wrinkled up in confusion. “What are you saying… he hired them?"

“Sorry, Fieldman. I suppose you would have had no way of knowing, looking at the situation from the outside. But Brad and Paul are one and the same. A split personality-do they still use that term in your dimension? Brad wanted out of his professional rackets, and decided to bury the murderous side of him. Only problem, the murderous side resented it. So he decided to cash in everybody's chips, all at once."

“You…” Fieldman said. It sure looked weird coming out of Alison's mouth. “All this… for nothing!"

I saw the fire die in Alison's eyes, and something invisible pound in Brad's body, flinging him back against the wall. Alison took two wobbly steps backwards, found her back against the wall, then slid down. She started to cry. At last, the real Alison Larsen, the woman I knew as Amy Langtree, finally regained control of her artificial body. Had she been watching the whole time? I had no way of knowing. She simply lowered her head into her folded arms and sobbed.

Brad, on the other hand, was on the floor convulsing. Clearly, the Ghost of Fieldman had jumped in there, and there was some kind of battle royale going on in that skull. I probably shouldn't have waited this long to play my trump card, but hell, hindsight is 20/20. And to be honest, I had no idea Fieldman would be this upset. To think that would have meant believing his crazy stories and schemes. And now-after seeing how this damned thing was turning out-maybe I was. Maybe this case was bigger than all of us.

Finally, a victor emerged. Brad stopped shaking. He rolled over on his side, then scrambled to his feet. He paused to straighten out his police uniform and looked at me. “I owe you an apology, Collective,” he said, smirking. “Brad Larsen is under arrest."

I was about to accept Fieldman's apology when I saw Susannah pick the cop's revolver from the floor and shove it in his face.

“Cool your tool, fool,” she said.

As if on cue, a siren screamed outside.

“Talk about timing,” I said.

Fieldman nodded. “Yes. Brad had arranged for that. He figured the FBI was here at the beginning, might as well call them in at the end. I can't believe how clouded my judgement has been."

“Hello!” Susannah yelled. “Can't you see I have a fucking gun to your head?"

“Sorry,” Fieldman said.

I was growing tired of the interruptions. Part of me wished I had shown up after Brad had deep-sixed both of them. “Lady, listen to me,” I said from Ray's bleeding body. “Do you still think can control this situation? After all you've seen tonight?"

Susannah didn't bother to give me a rational answer. Instead, she whipped the pistol around and fired, screaming, “AND YOU!"

The shot was amazing. It planted directly beneath my right eye, dug a few inches into my skull, then exploded back and out. All in all, a much more professional shot than the one she'd delivered to my other head mere hours ago. Talk about a learning curve.

When my vision dimmed and my head flopped to the left, I started to worry. This was beyond my bag of resurrection tricks. If someone were to poke out Ray Loogan's remaining eye, I'd be screwed, blued and tattooed. And as much as I've complained before about all the miserable places my soul had been shuttled to, this was by far the King Daddy shit-pick of the year.

I could still see, though, out of my remaining eye. Susannah had the gun back on Fieldman. Why didn't he use the distraction to disarm her?

“The law is coming for you,” Fieldman said.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'll explain everything to them. How you killed all of these nasty people. How you tried to kill me."

“They won't believe you, Ms. Lewalski."

“No, but they will believe Susannah Winston. She has powerful friends. She has a powerful father. She can explain her way out of anything."

Feds kicked in the front door; footsteps thundered up the hallway. My old buddy-Special Agent in Charge Dean Nevins-whipped out his pistol, doing the best Dirty Harry impression he could muster. “Drop your weapon!"

“Oh, can she?” Fieldman whispered, looking directly into her eyes.

“Explain this."

Susannah's trigger finger twitched, enough to fire the gun. At first, I'd thought she'd flinched, but then it became clear what had happened. God, that clever, stupid bastard. His face-which looked like Brad's, but used to belong to a Philadelphia police officer-exploded in a blur of wet crimson, and his body flipped back to the ground. I wonder what kind of gizmo he'd used to do that. The look on Susannah's face was priceless. Absolute and complete horror.

One might say what happened next speaks volumes about the self-control of Dean Nevins-after all, any other agent would have immediately started pumping lead into the psycho bitch. But Nevins didn't do that. He calmly and sternly repeated himself. “Drop your weapon now, woman!"

Susannah turned to face him, gun still in her hand. Ooh, bad form, girl.

“Drop it!” Nevins squawked. His entire body seemed to tense.

“God, NO! He did this-"

“I said DROP IT!"

“Yes, yes, of course…” Susannah bent down to put the gun on the floor.

“That's it."

Susannah complied, even offering a weak, vulnerable smile.

“Now just step away from the body…"

I couldn't believe it. Despite Fieldman's last-minute efforts to the contrary, it looked as if Susannah Winston was going to explain her way out of this one, too. Her whole life had been lying her way into bigger and better social circles-shit desert town to gun moll, gun moll to high-society mistress, high-society mistress to… what? Directrix of the FBI?

Thankfully, it wasn't to be. A thirst for justice runs in the Larsen family.