“Sounds like she had a good lawyer.”

Hayashida nodded. “Took a week for him to talk her into a plea deal and accepting probation, and even less time for the prosecution to accept it. She wanted the charges dropped. She acted like that’s what she expected to happen, she’d just walk away scot-free. A month after she walks out of here, she and Dougal are driving around in a shiny new Mercedes-Benz, drinking good liquor until Dougal filled himself with too much Jameson one night and made a wrong turn off a dock into the bay. Somebody saw them and got them out, Dougal and Glynnis. I understand the Benz is still down there.”

“Who paid for the lawyer?”

“You want to guess?”

“You’re saying Mike Pilato got Dougal and Glynnis to kill somebody for him.”

Hayashida turned back to his computer. “No, I’m saying that you should be careful where you go or you could wind up next to Dougal’s Mercedes.”

“He was pretty talkative today. Almost charming.”

“Because he wasn’t talking business. He never talks business in his office. He’s afraid we’ve bugged it.”

“Have you?”

Hayashida smiled. “He takes lots of walks. With people he wants to talk business with. And he doesn’t want anybody listening in.”

“I don’t give a damn about his business, whatever it is, and it’s sure not hardware. What’s wrong with asking about Gabe? What’s wrong with flattering him a little, letting him think he’s charming me?”

He looked across at me. “I’m serious, Josie. If Mike Pilato snaps his fingers because he wants you dead, you’ll be gone before he can put his hand back in his pocket.”

I had come in like Nancy Drew and been reduced to Anne of Green Gables. “Glynnis Dalgetty thinks Gabe shot her husband.”

Hayashida said, “Maybe he did.”

He was staring at me, waiting for my reaction, which was to tell him that it was total crap, Gabe never shot anybody. Including himself.

Hayashida thought about this while I watched him watching me. Then he stood up, looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, sat down again, and leaned toward me, his hands on his knees. “I think you should go get a coffee.”

I thought he wanted me to play cop station waitress. “Where’s the machine?” I asked, looking around.

“Not here.” He kept his voice low. Anyone beyond the cubicle wouldn’t hear a thing. “There’s a Tim Hortons down the street, about four blocks down on your right. Go have yourself a coffee. In the last cubicle near the rear exit, if it’s available. Okay?”

When I stood up to leave, Hayashida whispered, “Ten minutes,” but it didn’t register immediately because I was looking beyond the cubicle to the open corridor leading to Walter Freeman’s office. I knew it was his office because the sign on the door said chief of detectives walter freeman and because the oversized son of a bitch was waiting for a man to enter the office ahead of him, a guy with sandy hair and a good physique wearing a neat blue jacket over a white shirt and brown chinos, a guy who was calm and smiling slightly and not foaming at the mouth and screaming for me to tell him where Grizz was, which is what he had been doing the last time I saw him. Just as he entered Walter’s office, Walter scanned the squad area to see who was watching, and I enjoyed a brief thrill of Up Yours when his eyes locked on mine.

“That’s—” I began, leaning toward Hayashida, who had been busy adding something to his notepad.

Hayashida looked up at me, frowning. I wanted to say more, but Walter had closed the door behind the guy in the windbreaker and was walking toward me, gesturing for the cop on the reception desk to join him as he approached.

I expected Walter to ask what the hell I was doing in a place where he didn’t want me, but he didn’t speak to me at all. Instead, he spoke to the duty cop, who was hustling across the floor at Walter’s command. “Evict this woman,” he said in his best supreme commander’s voice. “Tell her she’s been witnessed consorting with a convicted felon by law enforcement officers and inform her that if she sets foot in this building again without a direct request from someone in this department, she will be charged with trespassing.”

“This is a goddamn public building,” I said to Walter, who was already heading back to his office. “I just might charge you with police harassment, Walter. Consorting? What the hell does that mean? And what are you doing with a junkie in your office?”

The last few words were aimed at the door to Walter’s office, which did not answer back because it was closed.

The obedient duty cop appeared to be deciding whether to use kind words or pepper spray to encourage me to leave, but I gave him time to use neither.

“YOU’RE LATE,” I said to Hayashida when he slid into the booth opposite me. It was half an hour later.

“Walter,” Hayashida said, “would have me downtown patrolling washrooms if he knew I was here.”

“So why are you?” I asked. “Here, I mean.”

“You said something back there that’s important.”

“I said something important? You’re sure it was me?”

He looked across at the donut display. Cops are around donuts like squirrels are around peanuts. What is it, the fat? The sugar? The shape? “You said Glynnis Dalgetty believed your husband shot her husband.”

“She’s wrong.”

“I agree.” Hayashida tore his eyes away from the chocolate-iced lovelies to look at me. “Except, today the lab confirmed that the bullet that killed Dalgetty came from Gabe’s gun.”

“Then they’re wrong too. Gabe did not shoot that woman’s husband.” Before Hayashida could speak, I added, “And Dalgetty was killed, what? A month ago? Six weeks ago? And you’ve just learned he was shot by Gabe’s gun? Hey, when’re you going to hear that Princess Diana died?”

Hayashida opened his hands and stared at his palms. “We got a tip from somebody to say we should compare the slug from Dalgetty’s head with the one … the one we removed from Gabe. We knew they were both the same calibre, and probably came from the same kind of gun. But it never occurred to us to put both under the scope and check.”

“Dalgetty was executed.”

“That’s right.”

“Then so was Gabe.”

“Or, having killed Dalgetty, Gabe might have been remorseful or threatened with being identified as the killer …”

“Which would drive him to suicide.”

“It’s a possibility.”

I needed time to absorb this. “The guy who went into Walter’s office today,” I said, “wearing a blue windbreaker. He’s a nutcase, a junkie, looking all over for Grizz because he needs a fix, I guess, or whatever they call it now—”

“He’s a narc.” Hayashida was watching me as though daring me to react, which was enough to shut my mouth. “Undercover. Sent over from Toronto. Trying to flush out the guy named Grizz. That’s how you do it. Get somebody putting out the word and hoping for a reaction. By the way, I hear the guys in the plumber’s truck got some good shots of you entering and leaving Mike Pilato’s place. I hear they’re pretty flattering.”

I said, “I need more coffee.”

“You say a word about this, about the narc or about Gabe’s gun being identified as the weapon that was used on Dougal Dalgetty, and Walter will find a reason to turn your house upside down and arrest you for having your lipstick smeared.”

“I don’t tell stories I don’t believe.”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe. I’ve been here nearly fifteen years. Biggest lesson I learned? Don’t screw around with Walter Freeman.”

I held my head in my hands. Nothing was what it had seemed a couple of weeks ago. So I thought about the Buddhist.

I dated a Buddhist just before meeting Gabe. I had been looking for somebody gentle, trustworthy, spiritual. He was all of that. He was also a strict vegetarian. I never got tired of the sex, but I sure got tired of tofu and being told that the world does not exist as we see it but as we imagine it. Or something like that. He was drifting from Buddhism into a mild addiction to hashish, which seemed to strengthen his spiritual side. It made me think that drugs are for people who can’t handle religion. Didn’t Karl Marx say something like that?