"My point exactly. You don't need any more problems."

He dropped me off at the office and waited until I got into my car. I followed him out of the parking lot, and he went his way and I went mine.

19

The tiny moon-eyes from the dead man's skin glowed in my mind. They looked out from that deep, off-limits place where I stored my fears, which were many and of a kind not felt by anyone else I knew. Wind shook bare trees and clouds streamed like banners across the sky as a cold front rushed in.

I had heard on the news the temperature might dip into the twenties that night, which seemed impossible after weeks that felt like fall. It seemed everything was out of balance and abnormal in my life. Lucy wasn't Lucy so I couldn't call her and she wasn't speaking to me. Marino was working a homicide even though he wasn't a detective anymore, and Benton was gone, and everywhere I looked for him I found an empty frame. I still waited for his car to drive up, for the phone to ring, for the sound of his voice, because it was too soon for my heart to accept what my brain knew.

I turned off the Downtown Expressway onto Cary Street, and as I drove past a shopping center and the Venice Restaurant, I became aware of a car behind me. It was driving very slowly and too far away for me to tell anything about the person behind the wheel. Instinct told me to slow down, and when I did, so did the car. I turned right on Cary Street, and the car stayed with me. When I took a left into Windsor Farms, there it was, maintaining the same safe distance.

I didn't want to get any deeper into this neighborhood because the roads were winding and narrow and dark. There were many cul-de-sacs. I took a right on Dover and dialed Marino's number as the car turned right, too, and my fear grew.

"Marino," I said out loud to nobody there. "Be home, Marino."

I ended the call and tried again.

"Marino! Goddamn it, be home!" I said to the handsfree phone in the dashboard as Marino's clunky cordless phone inside his house rang and rang.

He probably had it parked by the TV, as usual. Half the time he couldn't find it because he didn't return it to its base. Maybe he wasn't home yet.

"What?" his loud voice surprised me.

"It's me. "

"Goddamn-mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch. If I hit my knee on that goddamn table one more time…!"

"Marino, listen to me!"

"Once more and it's out in the yard and I'm gonna smash the shit out of it with a hammer! Right in the fucking kneecap! I can't see the fucking thing 'cause it's glass and guess who said it would look so nice there?"

"Calm down," I exclaimed, watching the car in my mirror.

"I've had three beers and I'm hungry and tired as hell. What?" he asked.

"There's someone following me."

I turned right on Windsor Way, heading back to Cary Street. I drove at a normal speed. I did nothing out of the ordinary except not head for my house.

"What do you mean, someone's following you?" Marino asked.

"What the hell do you think I mean?" I said as my anxiety heated up more.

"Then head this way right now," he said. "Get out of that dark neighborhood of yours." “I am.” "Can you see a plate number or anything?"

"No. He's too far behind me. It seems he's deliberately staying far enough behind me so I can't read the tag or see his face."

I got back on the expressway, heading to the Powhite Parkway, and the person tailin$ me apparently gave up and turned off somewhere. Lights of moving cars and trucks and the iridescent paint on signs were confusing, and my heart was beating hard. The half-moon slipped in and out of clouds like a button, and gusts of wind rushed the side of the car like linebackers.

I dialed my answering service at home. I had three hangups and a fourth message that was a slap in the face.

"Chief Bray here," it began. "So nice to run into you at Buckhead's. I have a few policy and procedural issues to discuss with you. Managing crime scenes and evidence, and so on. I've been meaning to discuss them with you, Kay„ The sound of my first name coming out of her mouth infuriated me.

"Maybe we can have lunch in the next few days," her recorded voice went on. "A nice private lunch at the Commonwealth Club?"

My home phone number was unlisted and I was very careful who I gave it to, but it was no riddle how she'd gotten it. My staff, including Ruffin, had to be able to reach me at home.

"In case you haven't heard," Bray's message went on, "Al Carson resigned today. You remember him, I'm sure? Deputy chief of investigations. A real shame. Major Inman will be acting deputy chief."

I slowed at a toll booth and tossed a token into the bin. I moved on and a beat-up Toyota full of teenaged boys stared boldly at me as they passed. One of them mouthed motherfiucker for no apparent reason.

I concentrated on the road as I thought about what Wagner had said. Someone was pressuring Representative Connors to push legislation that would transfer my office out of Health and Human Services and into Public Safety, where the police department would have more control over me.

Women could not join the prestigious Commonwealth Club, where half of the major business deals and politics affecting Virginia were made by male power brokers with old family names. Rumor had it that these men, many of whom I knew, congregated around the indoor swimming pool, most of them naked. They bartered and pontificated in the locker room, a forum where women weren't allowed.

Since Bray couldn't walk through the door of that ivydraped eighteenth-century club unless she was the guest of a member, my suspicions about her ultimate ambition we s virtually confirmed. Bray was lobbying members of the General Assembly and powerful businessmen. She wanted to be the Secretary of Public Safety and have my office transferred to that secretariat. Then she could fire me herself.

I reached Midlothian Turnpike and could see Marino's house long before I got near it. His gaudy, outrageous Christmas decorations, including some three hundred thousand lights, glowed above the horizon like an amusement park. All one had to do was follow the steady traffic heading that way, because Marino's house had risen to number one on Richmond's annual Christmas Tacky Tour. People couldn't resist coming to see what was truly an amazing sight.

Lights of every color were sprinkled in trees like,neon candy. Santas, snowmen, trains and toy soldiers glowed in the yard, and gingerbread cookies held hands. Candy canes brightly stood sentry along his sidewalk, and lights spelled out Season's Greetings and Think Snow on the roof. In a part of the yard where scarcely a flower grew and grass was patchy brown all year long, Marino had planted happy electric gardens. There was the North Pole, where Mr. and Mrs. Claus seemed to be discussing plans, and nearby choirboys sang while flamingos perched on the chimney and ice skaters twirled around a spruce.

A white limousine crept past, followed by a church van, as I hurried up his front steps, feeling irradiated and trapped in a spotlight.

"Every time I see this, it confirms you've lost your mind," I said when Marino came to the door and I quickly ducked away from curious eyes. "Last year was bad enough."

"I'm up to three fuse boxes," he proudly announced.

He was in jeans and socks and a red- flannel shirt with the tail hanging out.

"Least I can come home and something makes me happy," he said. "Pizza's on the way. I got bourbon if you want some."

"What pizza?"

"One I ordered. Everything on it. My treat. Papa John's, don't even need my address anymore. They just follow the lights."

"What about hot decaffeinated tea," I said, quite certain he would have no such thing.

"You got to be kidding," he replied.