“This better be the guy,” Windhauser said. “I ain’t got time for this bullshit.”

“Trust me,” Marvis said, “it’s the guy.”

The guy had been sitting on the toilet in a glazed euphoria, the syringe needle he’d stolen from his diabetic grandmother still stuck between his toes, when the men in blue came barging in. Startled into something approaching lucidity by all the yelling and breaking of glass, he made what police call a “furtive move” toward a serrated steak knife that he’d used to cut the bottom off a Diet Pepsi can, which he’d then used to mix the heroin, on which he’d been orbiting the planet. For his trouble, he received two barbed electrodes to the neck and a 50,000-volt hello — how-do-you-do, courtesy of Taser International, Inc.

Two patrolmen dragged the dazed suspect, handcuffed and still naked, out of the house and into the back of a black and white.

“That’s him, that’s the dude!” Woodley said.

Czarnek and Windhauser strode toward the patrol unit. Savannah started to go with them.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Windhauser said to her.

“I just want to look at him,” she said.

“You’re not looking at anybody. Get back behind the car.”

“C’mon, John,” Czarnek said, “if she was your wife…”

“I’m senior lead on this case and I say she stays put.” Little angry globs of spittle shot from Windhauser’s lips as he spoke. He turned toward Savannah. “Get back behind the vehicle. Now. Do you understand?”

“You’re being a dick for no reason,Windhauser.” I said. “All the lady wants to do is look the man in the face who may have shot her husband, though we both know that’s highly unlikely.”

“She’s obstructing a police investigation. And so are you.”

“Nobody’s obstructing anything. What if, miracle of miracles, it is the guy? What if she’s seen him before and can positively ID him? But you didn’t think of that, did you, Joe Friday, because thinking requires a brain and the LAPD by all indications didn’t issue you one of those.”

The wishbone vein in Windhauser’s forehead bulged like rope. Did he not know that hypertension is America’s silent killer?

“Fuck you, Logan.”

“That’s all you got? Fuck you, Logan? C’mon, Detective, where’s the creativity? How about, ‘Fuck you, Logan, and everybody who looks like you.’ Or, ‘Click your heels together three times, Logan, and go fuck yourself.’ Or—”

“Whatever!” Windhauser seethed. “She wants to eyeball him, I could give a shit. But you stay put, or I will arrest you for obstruction.” He motioned impatiently for Savannah to follow him. “Let’s go. I don’t got all day.”

She rewarded me with an appreciative smile and tagged after the detectives. The kind of smile that makes a man want to do handstands and sing Barry Manilow songs. If I were that kind of man.

“What about me?” Marvis said. “I was the one who saw him first.”

“C’mon,” Czarnek said.

Marvis jogged to catch up with the detectives. “It’s him,” he kept saying. “I know it is.”

It wasn’t, as it turned out. Not by a mile.

A quick background check determined that the junkie Marvis Woodley identified as Arlo Echevarria’s killer was a recidivist named Nicholas Sulak who’d racked up so many priors that clerks at the LAPD’s Records and Identification Division had to install a new toner cartridge to print out all seventeen pages of his arrest record. None of Sulak’s close encounters with Johnny Law factored much as far as Echevarria’s murder was concerned, with one noteworthy exception: nine months before Echevarria was gunned down, Sulak was picked up in Riverside for lifting a pack of cotton balls and two cans of Hormel chili from a mom and pop bodega. He was two weeks out of prison. Rather than trifle with misdemeanor shoplifting charges, county prosecutors had kicked his case to state authorities, who promptly revoked Sulak’s parole. On the night of Echevarria’s death, Sulak was in his cell at medium-security Wasco State Prison, 125 miles away. He would not be released for another two weeks. There was no way he could’ve shot Echevarria.

Czarnek emerged from the house holding the pistol Sulak had allegedly pointed at Woodley. The weapon was found buried under a pile of filthy clothes. Closer inspection determined that it was a squirt gun.

“Our captain’s gonna want to know why we committed half of Valley Bureau day watch to nab some fucking hype with a squirt gun.”

“Tell him what Friedrich von Schiller once said: ‘He that is overcautious will accomplish little.’”

“Who’s Friedrich von Schiller?”

“German writer. Big Sturm und Drang guy. Invented potato pancakes.”

“I thought it was the guy,” Marvis kept saying.

“Fucking ridiculous,” Windhauser said. He climbed in on the driver’s side of the Crown Vic and slammed the door. “You coming or what?” he yelled at Czarnek.

“Gimme a minute.”

There was no statute of limitations on homicide, Czarnek told Savannah. The LAPD still had leads to pursue and would continue to work the case vigorously until it was solved.

“That’s a lie,” Savannah said, “and you know it.”

The other police cars were starting to pull out. “I’ll let you know as soon as anything breaks,” Czarnek said.

“I’m sure you will,” she responded derisively.

Czarnek watched her walk with Marvis Woodley back to his house.

“Good lord,” he said, “that is one gorgeous creature.”

“So was Medusa.”

Czarnek said he would continue to explore the Bondarenko connection, but conceded that the pace of the investigation might be even further slowed. With gang violence exploding in the San Fernando Valley, every detective was working overtime, juggling more cases than they could handle. It didn’t help, he said, that normally knowledgeable street sources within Los Angeles’ Russian émigré community professed to know nothing about the murder of either Bondarenko or Echevarria. I asked him if he’d looked into Harry Ramos’ possible involvement in the case.

“Harry Ramos?”

“Janice Echevarria’s second husband. He was on a business trip to Kazakhstan when I talked to her.”

“Oh, yeah, him. Yeah, he’s supposed to call us when he gets back to San Fran.”

“Let’s go already, for Chrissake,” Windhauser said. “I gotta eat before I pass out.”

“He’s hypoglycemic,” Czarnek explained.

Windhauser glared at me. “You get any other big leads, do us all a favor. Keep ‘em to yourself.”

“I assume this means we won’t be taking any warm showers together anytime soon.”

“You got a bad attitude, Logan, you know that?”

“Better a bad attitude than delusions of adequacy, Detective.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I just smiled. Czarnek tried not to.

Windhauser grumbled something nasty under his breath and threw the car into gear. The two detectives sped off like they were late for the early bird special at T.G.I. Friday’s.

Come to think of it, I was starting to get a little hungry myself.

Savannah was sitting beside Marvis Woodley on his sofa. He shook his head side to side and kept looking down at his hands, rubbing them together.

“I could’ve sworn it was him.”

The hype the LAPD hauled off looked exactly like the man who’d breezed past his window the night Echevarria was killed, Woodley said. All he’d ever wanted to do was square things with Arlo, make amends for all those lies he told him. And now this. Woodley looked like he was about to cry. Rambo rested his furry little head on his master’s foot. Man’s best friend. You can be Saddam Hussein and your dog will love you, regardless. Unlike certain cats.

“You did nothing wrong,” Savannah assured him. “You were just trying to help. Arlo would’ve done the same for you.”

“He told me he wanted to move out of Los Angeles,” Marvis said. “That teacher who got shot the week before over on the next block was the last straw for him. He told me if he ever had the money, he was gonna buy himself his own island up in Washington or somewhere like that and live on it the rest of his life.” Marvis wiped the wetness from his eyes. “I told him, I says, ‘Fool, you can’t live on no island all by yourself. No man can.’ And you know what he says to me? He says, ‘Marvis, I’d live there with my wife if she’d ever take me back.’”