Author John Lescroart

Prologue

Only four minutes remained in sixteen-year-old Laura Wright's life as she came out of the bathroom of the small apartment on Beaumont Street in San Francisco. Her eyes glistened with the residue of recent tears. But in the bathroom she'd splashed water over her face and washed away the smeared mascara and makeup, and now her skin glowed. A damp tendril of blond hair hung over a broad, unlined forehead.

She walked through the tiny living room and over to where Mr. Mooney, her drama coach, leaned over the kitchen table, making some notes in his neat hand in the margins of the script they were rehearsing. At her approach, he straightened up. In the brighter light of the kitchen, Laura's eyes picked up some of the turquoise in her blouse.

Mooney wore a kind face, projected an easy manner. Ten years before he'd been leading man material and now, though still trim and good-looking in a conventional way, his hair had thinned and gone slightly gray, a hint of jowl marred his jawline. He smiled down at her.

"Better?" he asked.

She nodded, still too emotional to trust herself with her voice.

The two stood facing each other for a moment, and then Laura reached out her hands and stepped into him. After a minute, her shoulders began to shake and Mooney, holding her, moved his hands over her back, the smooth fabric of the silk. "It's all right," he said. "It's going to be all right."

"I know. I know it will be." Her face was buried into the hollow of his neck.

"It is now," Mooney said.

She nodded again. "I know. Just . . . just thank you." She stepped back, a little away, and looked up at him. "I didn't mean to get this way."

"The way you are is fine. I'm just glad you found the courage to tell somebody. Holding that inside can be so hard."

"I figured I could trust you."

"You figured right."

"I know, but . . . what was that?"

Mooney crossed to the window, looked out to the street. "Nobody. Nothing."

Laura sighed, a deep exhalation. "I didn't think Andrew could be back already. I don't know if I'm ready to face him. He'll be upset if he finds out I told you first. I mean, it's his baby, too. Maybe I can just say I started crying right after he left and you asked what was wrong . . ."

"Which is exactly what happened."

She nodded. "I know. But Andrew's been a little funny about you and me."

"You and me? What about you and me?"

"Our relationship. Yours and mine. We actually broke up about it once."

Mooney had to suppress a laugh. "About what, exactly?"

"He thought I had a crush on you. I did, in fact."

"You had a crush on me?"

"When we started the play, yeah, rehearsing here. A little. He was just so jealous, and then I got so mad when he accused me."

"Of what?"

"You know. Having a thing with you."

Now Mooney did allow a small chuckle. "Well, by now I hope he knows that didn't happen. And besides, this is about you. It's your body. You get to decide what to do." A pause. "And you know, it might not be the worst idea in the world to talk to your parents."

"No way," she said, shaking her head. "They'd kill me. They wouldn't want to be bothered. Trust me, this I know." Her eyes began to well up again.

Mooney stepped near to her and brushed a tear where it had fallen onto her cheek. "It's okay," he said. "In a few months this will all be behind you. It's just getting through the tough part."

"I so hope you're right. I feel like such a fool for letting this happen. I mean, it was just the one time."

"It only takes once." Mooney spoke gently. "You might want to keep that in mind, though, in the future."

"Don't worry," she said. "It's locked in." But again her composure slipped. Tears still threatening, she stood looking helplessly up at him. "Do you think I could get one more hug?"

"As a special request, one short one." He put his arms around her.

She pressed herself against him, squeezed hard, then all but jumped back out of his embrace as a knock came on the door. "Oh God," she said. "There's my great timing again. That's got to be Andrew. What if he saw us?"

Mooney held her at arm's length. "Laura," he said, "Andrew's a great guy. You don't have to worry about him, and even if he saw us, he knows you love him. Really. You just take care of yourself and do what you have to do and everything will be fine. I promise."

Mooney didn't know it, but his last words were a lie. Another knock sounded, and he moved to get the door.

Chapter One

"Hello."

"Amy Wu, please."

"This is Amy."

"You sleeping? I wake you up?"

"No. Just lying down for a minute."

"So Friday afternoon, you're not at work?"

"No. Right. I'm not feeling too well. Who is this anyway?"

"Hal North. You remember me."

"Of course, Mr. North. How are you? How'd you get my home number?"

"You gave it to us last time, remember?"

"Right. That's right. I gave it to you. So how can I help you?"

"Andrew's in trouble again."

"I'm sorry to hear that. What kind of trouble?"

"Big trouble. The police just came and arrested him for murder. You still there?"

"Yeah. Did you say murder? Andrew?"

"Yeah, I know. But right. Two of 'em, actually."

"I'm sorry. Two of what?"

"What did I just say? You paying attention? Murders. His teacher and his girlfriend."

"Where is he now?"

"They took him to jail. I mean, to the Youth Guidance Center. He's still not eighteen, or it would have been the jail."

"Is that where you're calling from, the YGC?"

"No. Me and Linda, we got a benefit tonight, so we're still home for another two hours at least. We could probably be late to the thing and make it three if you..."

"I could be over in, say, a half hour."

"Good. We'll be looking for you."

* * *

Wu checked herself in the bathroom mirror. No amount of makeup was going to camouflage the swollen bags under her eyes. Half-Chinese and half-black, Wu had a complexion that was dark enough as it was, and when exhaustion got the better of her, the hollows around her eyes deepened. Now, between the crying jags, the lack of sleep and the hangover, Wu thought she looked positively haggard, at least a decade older than her thirty years. Why guys would hit on her looking like this, she didn't know, but there didn't seem to be a shortage of them, not since she'd started going out almost every night to find whatever the hell she was seeking in the four months since her father died.

Still, prepping herself to visit Hal North, she did her best to make herself presentable. It wouldn't do to look unprofessional. This was a legal matter, and she knew the potential client had made millions from his chain of multiplex movie theaters. At least he had been worth millions a couple of years ago, when Hal North's corporate attorney-a classmate from law school-had recommended Wu for criminal work and she'd represented his stepson Andrew for a minor joyride beef. She'd gotten him off with a fine and some community service. The fees at her hourly rate had come to a little under two thousand dollars, but when the judge came down with his wrist-slap judgment, North wrote her a check for ten grand. She wasn't sure if she should be flattered or insulted that he assumed he should tip his lawyer.

From now on, North had said in his forceful manner, she was his lawyer, that was all there was to it. Andrew, who'd been sullen and distant throughout the entire proceeding, even broke a rare smile and concurred. She'd told them both that though she was flattered that they liked her work, all in all it would be better if the family wouldn't need a criminal lawyer ever again. They both conceded that she probably had a point.

She lay down on the bed for two minutes, timed, with ice wrapped in a dish towel over her eyes. When she got up, she dried her face and started applying eyeshadow again, mascara, lipstick. Her hand was steady enough, which was a nice surprise. This morning, brushing her teeth after she'd gotten home from whatever-his-name's place a little after dawn, she'd dropped the toothbrush twice before she'd given up, called work for the fouth time in four months—very bad—to say she was sick, and crashed.

For a moment she considered calling North back and making another appointment for tomorrow. After all, the Norths had a benefit tonight—it came back to her now, they always had something going on—and they'd be in a rush. And she really did feel horrible. She wouldn't be as sharp as she liked. But hell, that was getting to be the norm, wasn't it? No sleep, no focus.

She hated herself for it, but she couldn't seem to stop feeling that it didn't matter anyway. Of course it mattered, she told herself. As her old boss David Freeman never tired of saying, the law was a sacred and beautiful thing. And Wu hadn't dreamt of a career in it for five years, then studied it for three, and now have worked in it for five only to lose her faith and become cynical about it. That wasn't who she was, not at her core. But it was who she acted like—and felt like—all too often lately.

The truth was—her bad angels kept telling her—that you didn't really have to be as much on your game as she'd always taken as gospel, since law school. She'd proven that clearly enough in the past four months, when she'd essentially sleepwalked through no fewer than ten court appearances. No one—not even her see-all boss Dismas Hardy—had alluded to any problems with her work. She could mail it in, which was lucky, since that's what she had been doing.

The clients were always guilty anyway. It wasn't as though you were trying to get them off, cleanly acquitted. No, what you did was you squeezed a little here, flirted with a DA there, got a tiny bit of a better deal, and everybody was generally happy. That was the business she was in. It was a business, and she'd come to understand how it worked.

Mr. North had said that his son had been charged with murder, and if this were true, it would be her first. But her experience led her to believe that it probably wouldn't turn out to be a righteous murder, charged as such. If it wasn't simply confusion with another person, at worst an accident, it was probably some kind of manslaughter. And of course the Norths would want to get an attorney on board. If Wu went over now, at least she would get a feel for the case, some of the salient details. It would give her the weekend to get her hands on some discovery, if it was available yet.

And if she could keep herself straight and productive for two whole days in a row.

* * *

The Norths' home was a beauty near the Embassy Row section of Clay Street in Pacific Heights. Old trees shaded the sidewalks on both sides, and most of the residences hid behind some barrier—a hedge or fence or stucco wall.

At a few minutes past four o'clock, Wu got out of her car to push the button on the green-tinged brass plate built into the faux-adobe post that held the swinging grille gate to the driveway. When she identified herself, she heard a soft click, then a whirr, and the gate swung open.

For all of the security, there was very little actual room between the gate and the house. Wu got inside, then turned left before she came to the garage. The driveway was quite narrow as it passed in front of the house, but widened into a larger circle near the entryway, and this was where she parked, the area deep in shadow. Getting out of her car, she could see blue sky above her through the trees and hear a steady shush of April breeze, but here in this small leafy enclosure, it was still. Briefcase in hand, she drew a breath, closed her eyes for an instant to gather herself, then went around her car, up the steps to the semi-enclosed brick porch, and rang the bell.

Hal North was in his early fifties, a short, wiry man who tended to dress, as he talked, loudly. Today he answered the door in a canary yellow, open-necked shirt that revealed a robust growth of chest hair into which was nestled a thick gold chain; white slacks; penny loafers with no socks. He hadn't aged one week since Wu had seen him last. He wore his thick black hair short and basically uncombed—the tousled look. His face was not-unattractive, slab-sided with a strong nose and piercing green eyes that sized Wu up afresh as he crushed her hand. "Thanks for coming," he said. "You don't look too sick." He backed away a step. "You remember Linda."

"Sure." Wu stepped over the threshhold and extended her hand. "Nice to see you again, Mrs. North."

Linda North was at least three inches taller than Hal and in another age would have been called a bombshell. Blond, buxom, thin and long-legged, she had always struck Wu as one of those freak-of-nature women over whom age and experience seem to pass without leaving a scar, a line, a trace. Though Wu knew that she was somewhere close to either side of forty—she'd delivered Andrew when she was just a year out of high school—in her jeans and tennis shoes and men's T-shirt, with her hair back in a ponytail, she looked about seventeen herself.

"Ellie's got some coffee going." Hal was already moving, shooing the women before him down the short hallway from the foyer into the dining room. "Ellie!" He pushed open the door to the adjoining kitchen. "In here, okay?" He turned around, motioning to the women. "Sit, sit. She'll be right in." He pulled a chair next to his wife and sat in it, threw a last look at the kitchen door where Ellie would presumably soon appear, then came back to Wu. "Really," he said, "we appreciate you coming out."

"We just can't believe this is happening," Linda said. "It's just a total shock. I mean, out of nowhere."

"You didn't expect something like this?"

"Never," Linda said.

"Complete blindside." Hal was shaking his head, his lips tight. "They kept saying Andrew wasn't a suspect."

"They always say that. You know why? So you might not think you need to have a lawyer with him." She paused. "So I'm assuming you let him talk to the police?"

"Of course," Linda said. "We thought it would help to be as cooperative as we could."

The couple exchanged a glance.

"Why don't we start by you telling me what has happened," Wu said, "starting from the beginning, the crime." She turned to Hal. "You said he's accused of killing his teacher and his girlfriend?"

Linda answered for her husband. "Mike Mooney and Laura Wright. They were in the school play and..."

"What school?"

"Sutro."

Wu wasn't surprised to hear this. Among the city's private schools, Sutro was a common choice among people with real money. "Okay, they were in the school play..."

"Yes," Linda said. "Andrew and Laura were the leads, and they'd been rehearsing nights at Mr. Mooney's house rather than the school. Then, the night it happened, somebody just came and shot them down. Luckily, Andrew had gone out for a walk to memorize his lines and wasn't there when it happened or he might've been shot, too."

Luckily or too conveniently, Wu thought. But she moved along. "And Andrew got arrested when?"

"They came by about twelve-thirty, one o'clock. School is out for spring break. And they just took him."

"I was at work," Hal said, "or I would have tried to slow them down, at least."

"Then it's probably better you weren't here." Wu was sitting beyond Linda at the table and could see them both at once. "When did the crimes happen?"

"February." Linda said. "Mid-February."

Wu's face showed her confusion.

"What's the problem?" Hal asked her.

"I guess I don't understand how two months have gone by and all that time, with the police coming by, neither of you thought Andrew was a suspect?"

"He said he didn't do it," Linda said, as though that answered the question. "I know he didn't. He couldn't have."

Ellie came through the door and the conversation stopped while she set out the coffee service. As soon as the door to the kitchen closed back behind her, Wu began again. "Mrs. North, you just said that Andrew couldn't have done these killings. Why not? Do you mean he physically couldn't have done them because, for example, he wasn't there? Does he have an alibi? I mean, beyond the walk he took."

"But he did go for that walk," Linda said. "There's no doubt about that. Besides," she added, "Andrew's just not that kind of person."

Wu's experience was that anyone—if sufficiently motivated—could be driven to kill. And Hal, she'd noticed, had stopped talking, was looking down into his coffee cup. "Mr. North," she said, "why'd they decide just now, after two months, and after they'd talked to Andrew several times? Did something new come up? Do you have any ideas?"

He raised his eyes to her, made a face. "Well, the gun," he whispered.

"That's nothing!" Linda's eyes flared and her voice snapped. "That's not even been definitely connected to Andrew."

Hal, muzzled, shut up and shrugged at Wu, who then spoke gently to Linda. "I don't believe I've heard anything yet about a gun."

She was prepared to answer. "This was early on, in the first week or so. The police asked Hal if we owned any guns, and Hal told them he had an old registered weapon..."

"Nine-millimeter Glock semi-auto," Hal said.

Again, Linda snapped. "Whatever. And when Hal went to find it, he couldn't." She turned to her husband. "But you know you're always misplacing things. It didn't mean Andrew took it."

Wu touched Linda's arm. "But the police think he did?"

Linda looked at Hal, who answered for her. "They found a casing in his car."

"So what?" Wu asked "Without the gun, you can't have a ballistics test."

"It was just a random piece of junk under the seat," Linda said. "It might have been there forever. It was nothing."

Wu tried to look sympathetic. "So the police didn't specifically refer to that when they came today?"

"No. They just said he was under arrest. They had enough evidence, they said. Something about a lineup," she added.

"He stood in a lineup? You let him do that? Who was trying to identify him?"

Hal North bristled. "I don't know. Some witness. Someone identifying Andrew, obviously."

"And wrongly," Linda said.

"Although," Wu phrased it gently, "as you say, he was there at Mooney's place. So someone might have seen him. Yes?"

"Yes, but..." Linda slapped at the table.

Hal reached out and put a hand over hers. "Look," he said to Wu, "we're not sure why any of this is happening. We don't think Andrew did this."

Linda slapped the table again. "We know he didn't do this."

"Okay, okay, that's what I meant," Hal said. He turned to Wu. "But they must have built a pretty impressive case against him if they got all the way to arresting him, wouldn't you think?"

Wu more than thought it. They had a case, and—since Andrew was the son of a wealthy and prominent man—it was probably a strong one. A gun in the house, a casing in Andrew's car, a positive lineup identification. What she had here, she was beginning to believe, was a young man who'd made an awful mistake.

"What are you thinking?" Hal asked her abruptly.

"Nothing," Wu said. "It's too soon. I don't know anything yet."

"You know he's innocent," Linda said. "We know that."

"Of course," Wu said. "Other than that, though."

* * *

By Sunday afternoon, when she met with Hal North again, Wu knew that they had a substantial problem. She also thought she had a solution.

This time it was just she and Hal in the large, bright, and high-ceilinged living room. Hal sat in the middle of a loveseat while Wu perched on a couch.

Linda had gone to visit Andrew and would be gone for at least two hours.

Wu had been lucky to get a couple of folders of discovery on Andrew's case from the DA's office before close of business on Friday. She had spent all day Saturday going over what the police had assembled. It looked very, very bad.

"What's so bad?" North asked.

Wu sat all the way forward on the couch, hunched over in tension. Her folders rested unopened on the coffee table in front of her. "Where do you want to start? It could be almost anywhere. They've got a good case."

"It looks like he did it?"

"Do you know anything beyond what we talked about on Friday?"

North shrugged. "I figured the gun was a problem, but I didn't know how they'd tied that to him. They didn't find it, did they?"

"No. Still no weapon, but there's plenty in here"—she tapped the folders—"to prove to me that he had the gun with him that night. You want me to go over it piece by piece?"

North waved impatiently. "I don't need it. If you're convinced, it'll be good enough for a jury." He slammed a palm against the side of his seat. "I knew he took it, goddamn it. I knew he was lying to me." Smoldering, North sat forward with his shoulders hunched, his elbows resting on his knees, head down. Finally, he looked up at Wu. "What about the lineup?"

"The man upstairs saw him leave just after the shots. Positive ID."

North slumped again, shook his head from side to side wearily, came back up to face her. "So he did it." Not a question.

"Well, maybe he wasn't taking that walk to rehearse his lines, let's say that."

"Jesus. This is going to kill Linda."

"She really believes him?"

"We're talking faith here, not reason. I thought that alibi story was like the ultimate in lame myself, but once Andrew came up with it, he had to stick to it. I just wish he would have invented something else, almost anything else." North shook himself all over, then straightened his back and threw Wu a determined, pugnacious look. "Okay, Counselor, what do we do now?"

Wu was ready for the question, and suddenly glad that Linda wasn't here. Hal would play much more into her plan that she'd reluctantly come to believe was the boy's best hope—albeit a defeatist and cynical one because it was based on the absolute fact of Andrew's guilt.

As a good lawyer with a difficult case before her—hell, as a good person—she knew she should have been consumed with getting Andrew off. That was in many ways the definition of what her job was all about. Give her client the best defense the law allowed. And myriad defenses—insanity, psychiatric, diminished capacity, some form of self-defense or manslaughter—were always available, a veritable smorgasbord of reasons that homicide could be if not forgiven entirely, then mitigated. But all of those defenses and strategies involved huge expense for her client's family, a year or more of her life's commitment, and tremendous risk to her client should she fail, or even not completely succeed.

On the other hand, assuming that Andrew was guilty in actual fact (and every other client she'd ever defended had been), Wu knew that she could get him a deal that would give him a life after he turned twenty-five years old, eight years from now. And this when the best result she could reasonably expect under the other various defense scenarios was ten years—and probably many, many more.

And so, though it was a terrible choice, she had convinced herself that, all things considered, it was the best possible strategy in these circumstances. "I think our primary goal," she said, "ought to be to keep Andrew in the juvenile system, not let them try him as an adult."

"Why would they do that? He's not eighteen. It's eighteen, right?"

"Right. At eighteen, it's automatic, he's an adult. But that doesn't mean the DA can't charge younger people. It's a discretionary call."

"Depending on what?"

"The criminal history of the person charged, the seriousness of the crime, some other intangibles." She took a breath, held it a moment, let it out. "I have to tell you, I've already talked to the chief assistant DA—his name's Allan Boscacci—and as of this moment, they're planning to file Andrew as an adult."

"Why? That makes no sense. This is his first real offense. He's a little hard to talk to sometimes, okay, but it's not like he's some kind of hardened criminal or anything."

"Yeah, but two killings, point-blank. Pretty serious. They're even talking special circumstances. Multiple murders, in fact, again, it's automatic."

"Special circumstances? You're not talking the death penalty?"

"No, you can't get that no matter what if you're under eighteen at the time of the offense."

North quickly cast his eyes around the room. "Okay, so what happens when he's an adult? Different, I mean."

Wu knew she had to deliver it straight and fast. If she was going to get North to agree with her strategy, she had to make it look as bad as she could for Andrew as quickly as possible. "A couple of major issues. First, most importantly, if he's an adult, life without parole is in play. If he's a juvenile, it's not. The worst he can get as a juvenile is up to age twenty-five in a juvie facility."

But North, not too surprisingly, was struck by the worst-case scenario. "Jesus Christ! Life without parole. You've got to be shitting me."

"No, sir. If he's convicted."

"Okay, then, he doesn't get convicted. Last time you got him off clean. It's not even on his record."

"Last time, sir, with all respect, he borrowed a car for half an hour. That's a long way from murder."

"Yeah, but I'm paying you to get him off. You can't do that, I'll find me somebody else who can."

Wu expected this—denial, anger, threats. She held her ground. "You might find somebody who'll say they can." She fixed him with a firm gaze. "They'd be blowing smoke up your ass."

"You're saying you can't do it?"

"No, sir, I'm not saying that. If that's your decision, I'll sure try. I might succeed, like I did before. Get him a reduced sentence, maybe even an acquittal. But nobody—and I mean nobody—can predict how a trial's going to come out. Anybody who says different is a liar. And the risks in this case, given just the evidence we've seen so far, are enormous." She reined herself in, took a deep breath. "What I can do, maybe, is avoid the adult disposition. If Andrew goes as a juvenile, the worst case is he's in custody at the youth farm—which is way better than state prison, believe me—until he turns twenty-five. Then he's free, with his whole life still in front of him."

"Okay, so how do you do that? Avoid the adult disposition?"

"Well, that's both our problem and our solution. To have any chance of convincing the DA at all, we'd have to tell him Andrew would admit the crime."

North snorted. "That I'd like to see. That's not happening."

Wu shrugged and waited, content to let the concept work on him. North did his quick scan of the room again, sat back in his loveseat, frowned. Finally, he met her eyes, shook his head. "No fucking way," he said.

"Okay."

"Shit."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll never get Linda to go for that. She'll never believe he did it."

"All right. But what do you believe?"

"I don't know what I believe. The kid and I never bonded really well, you know what I mean. I don't know him. He's all right, I guess. I love his mother, I'd kill for her, but the kid's a mystery. But whether he could kill somebody..." He shrugged, helpless. "I don't know. I guess I think it's possible. I'd bet he's lying about the walk he took. I know he took my gun, and he's lying about that, too. And why'd he take it if he wasn't going to use it?"

"That's a good question." Wu kept her responses low-key, not wanting to push. North, she was sure, would come to his conclusions on his own. As she had. At least that Andrew's situation looked bad enough to make the risks of an adult trial not worth taking. Still, in a matter-of-fact tone, she said, "They don't usually arrest innocent people, sir. No matter what you see in the movies." Then she added, "I'm not saying Andrew is guilty, but last time, if you remember, he started out saying he never took the car. Never drove in it at all. Didn't know what the cops were talking about. He swore to it."

"Just like now." North was slumped back in his chair, his palm up against the side of his head. "This is going to kill Linda," he said again.

"Well, if he really isn't guilty..." Wu let the words hang.

North shook his head. "Even if he isn't, how's a jury going to like the eyewitness and the gun and the motive? Jealousy, right?"

Wu had read the testimony of one of Andrew's friends, alluding to the jealousy motive—he evidently thought the teacher and his girlfriend were at least on the verge of starting—if not engaged in—an affair. But it was the first time North had mentioned anything about it, and the independent, unsolicited confirmation was a bit chilling.

Still, Wu restrained herself from trying to convince. She believed that forceful men like Hal North stuck far more tenaciously with decisions that they reached on their own. So she changed tack. "Here's the thing, Mr. North. He's up at the YGC now, they haven't filed against him as an adult yet, so practically speaking he's being treated as a juvenile. They have to hold what's called a detention hearing right away—I've already checked and it's tomorrow—to decide if they're going let Andrew go back home under your supervision."

"No reason they shouldn't do that."

Except for the fact that he's killed two people, she thought. But she only let out a breath and said, "In any case, as long as he's considered a juvenile, administratively they've got to have this detention hearing. That might give you some time, not much admittedly, to walk through some of these other issues with Linda, and even with Andrew."

He shook his head. "No, she'll talk to him, but maybe I can make her see what's happening."

Wu drew another breath and came out with it. She was going to need her client's approval before she took her next gamble, and this was the moment. "In light of everything we've been talking about here, Mr. North, I'd very much like to try to keep him in the juvenile system and avoid an adult trial if there's any way at all to do it, but that means he admits guilt right now. Immediately. Not maybe. I tell the DA he will admit and clear the case, in return they let him stay in juvenile court."

He sat stone still for a long beat, then nodded once.

Ambiguous enough, but Wu took it as an acceptance. "Do you think you can get your wife to go along with that? I want you to understand clearly that if Andrew admits, there won't be a trial, either in juvie or adult court. He'll just be sentenced. But the worst sentence he could get is the youth farm until he turns twenty-five."

"Eight years," he said. His shoulders slumped around him. "Eight years. Jesus Christ."

"That's the maximum. The actual sentence may be less. With the crowding at the youth work farms and time off for good behavior, he might not be as old when he gets out as when he'd finish college."

North may have been starting to see it, but the pill wasn't getting any less bitter. He rubbed his hand against the slab of his cheek. "Still, we're talking years."

Wu nodded soberly. "Yes, sir. But compared to the rest of his life. Even if I could plead him to a lesser charge as an adult—say second degree murder or manslaughter—he'll do at least double that time." She came forward. "And it would be in an adult prison, which is like it appears in the movies. But if we can get him declared a juvenile, which is not certain..."

"It seems to me we've got to do that. At least try for it."

"I can do it, but I'll have to move quickly." She consciously repeated herself. "You might want to talk to Linda first."

He gave it another few seconds of thought, then nodded again, spoke as if to himself. "Andrew's stubborn, but he'll come around when he sees the alternative. If he goes adult and gets convicted, Linda couldn't handle it. She really couldn't." Tortured, he looked across at her. "So what do we do?"

"I'm afraid that's got to be your decision."

He blew out heavily in frustration. "And when is this filing decision, adult or juvie?"

"Soon. It might have already happened, except that Andrew got arrested on a Friday afternoon and Boscacci is off on the weekend. But by sometime tomorrow morning, probably."

"Tomorrow morning?" His eyes seemed to be looking into hers for some reprieve, but the situation as they both sat there seemed to keep getting worse. "And once a decision comes down, then what? I mean, is it appealable or something?"

"You mean, once he's declared an adult? No. Then he's an adult."

"God damn." He shook his head, side to side, side to side. "This isn't possible." At last, he seemed to gather himself. "So if they decide he's an adult tomorrow, we're screwed?"

"Well, we go to trial, yes."

"But you might be able to talk to this guy Boscacci before then?"

"I'd call him at home today if you want me to."

"And that gives us a better deal?"

She phrased it carefully. "Less of a potential downside, let's say that."

"And that's definite. I mean, we go juvie, he's out at twenty-five?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the best deal we can get, don't you think?"

"As a sure thing? Yes, sir, all else being equal, I do. But I don't want to hurry you in any way. This is a huge decision and right now Andrew stands presumed innocent. If he admits, that changes."

North shook his head, dismissing that concern. His stepson, with whom communication was so difficult, who'd screwed up so many times before, had done it again. He was a constant burden and strain, and now he was putting his mother through more and more heartache. But North couldn't yet admit out loud what he might believe, and so he simply said, "He might be innocent, okay, but tell me there's a jury in the world that's going to see it." A sigh. "At least he'll have a life afterwards, when he gets out."

Wu watched the second hand on the mantel clock move through ninety degrees, then spoke in a gentle tone. "So do you want me to see what I can do?"

A last, long, agonizing moment. Then: "Yeah, I think you've got to."

Sitting back on the couch, she let herself sink into the deep cushions. "Okay," she said. "Okay."

Chapter Two

Deputy Chief of Investigations Abe Glitsky was sitting in his old office in homicide on the fourth floor of San Francisco's Hall of Justice. He was talking to the detail's lieutenant, Marcel Lanier. When another old homicide chief, Frank Batiste, had finally been appointed chief of police the previous summer, he'd rewarded Glitsky, his longtime colleague, with the plum job of deputy chief. Though Glitsky's civil service rank was lieutenant, for the year preceding his appointment he had labored unhappily in a sergeant's position as head of payroll. Now, as deputy chief, and still a civil service lieutenant, Glitsky supervised captains and commanders and, of course, every one of the two hundred and forty police inspectors in the city.

As deputy chief, Glitsky's role was important but nebulous. The Investigations Bureau had taken a very public hit about six months before, when the Chronicle had run a weeklong feature exposing the fact that of all the nation's largest cities, San Francisco came in dead last for its police record in arresting criminals and solving crimes of all types.

The article had revealed that during the previous four years, over 80 percent of all crimes committed in the city had gone unsolved. Many criminal acts, even violent ones such as street muggings, were never investigated at all, and with others—residential burglaries and the like—the investigation would consist of one inspector making one phone call to the victim, asking if anyone would like to come down to the Hall of Justice and file a report on what was missing. Though the scathing report had not yet seen print at the time, Batiste had of course been aware of the dismal numbers, the lackluster performance, and generally low morale of the department as a whole, and he'd brought Glitsky on to galvanize the bureau, to kick ass and take names, and above all to see that more bad guys actually found themselves arrested.

It was true that many inspectors had fallen into bad habits, but this was not always because they didn't care about their jobs. In many cases, budget cuts to the PD had eliminated overtime pay for interviewing witnesses or writing up incidents. More systemically, a culture had arisen in the DA's office—Sharron Pratt's legacy——that placed a premium only on cases where the evidence was so overwhelming that a conviction could be guaranteed, and that encouraged assistant district attorneys to ask officers not to arrest suspects until they had the strongest possible case. If they had a guy cold on one count, for example, they should wait until they could get him for three or four, as that would make conviction more likely. This kept that particular scumbag out on the street, when in most other big cities he would already have been locked up.

Glitsky's first few months on the job had been characterized by his rather forceful presence working over the bureau, collaring inspectors in the Hall and even patrolmen in the precincts or out in the streets on surprise inspections. He'd put a friendly and unbreakable armlock on one of his troops and get right in his face. "I know you've got suspects and you're waiting till they do something more. But I say let's put 'em in jail. And I mean today!"

Glitsky also set an example by showing up at work no later than seven-thirty and staying until at least six o'clock, and not putting in for overtime. He believed that the badge was a calling and a public responsibility more than it was a job. He made it clear to the people under him that they would have greater satisfaction in their work if they came to share that view. And ironically, after requests for overtime fell off slightly, Glitsky started getting more of it approved by Batiste. The Investigations Bureau was still far from perfect, but things seemed to be improving.

A fortuitous sidelight that had opened up as a result of Glitsky's flexible schedule was that he found himself free to stroll down the hallway from time to time, as he had this morning, and keep up on the workings of the homicide department. From his earliest days as a patrolman, Glitsky had viewed homicide as Action Central. This was where he wanted to be. These were the crimes that mattered the most. For twelve years he'd been an inspector with that detail, and for another eight the head of it. It wasn't ever going to get out of his blood.

When Batiste had offered him the post of deputy chief, he'd almost countered with the suggestion that he'd be happier back running homicide. Fortunately, before he said those fateful words, he'd recognized the faux pas they would constitute. Any response but an unqualified yes to Batiste's thoughtful and generous offer would justifiably have made him appear to be ungrateful and would have driven a wedge between him and the new chief. If Glitsky had requested the job in homicide, not only would he never have gotten it, he'd never have left payroll. The Chief had picked him out from far down in the ranks and elevated him above many others to a truly exalted position. Glitsky even had his own driver!

So reluctantly he'd accepted the new job, believing this meant that his time in homicide, the work he had always loved the best, was behind him forever. But now here he was, less than a year after his promotion, sitting with his feet up in his old office, discussing a particularly baffling murder case with Lieutenant Lanier. Who woulda thunk? But he'd take it.

A middle-aged, happily married, slightly overweight white housewife named Elizabeth Cary had been shot at her front door about a week before. To date, inspectors had found no clues as to who had killed her, or why. "And you sweated the husband hard?" Glitsky asked. "Wasn't his alibi soft?"

"Robert. Yeah," Lanier said. "He says he was driving home. He's the one called nine one one. But Pat Belou—you know her? She's new, but good. Anyway, she had him in there"—the interrogation room on the other side of the homicide detail—"six hours last Thursday, then we did him again four hours the next day, Russell in with her this time doing good cop/bad cop." He shook his head. "Nothin', Abe. If he did it, he's good. Belou and Russell both say they couldn't break him. Plus, no sign of another girlfriend on the side. The guy's not exactly Casanova. Bald, fat, old."

"How old?"

"Sixty. She was fifty."

Glitsky shrugged. "Bald fat old guys can get girlfriends, Marcel."

"Not as often as you think, Abe. And not Robert, I promise. They were redoing their wedding vows for their twenty-fifth anniversary next month."

"Doesn't mean they couldn't have had a fight."

"About what?"

"I don't know. Maybe they couldn't agree on the guest list and he really wanted this old friend of his to come, but she hated him—the friend—so he had to kill her." Glitsky scratched his cheek. "All right, maybe not. So who else could it have been? One of the kids?"

"I don't think so. They're all wrecked. I've talked to all three of them myself. Nobody's that good an actor, especially the young one, Carlene. I think she's eleven. Besides, they alibi each other—all watching some action video in the back of the house. Never even heard the shot. Must have thought it was part of the movie. Plus, finally," he sighed, "no motive in the whole world. They loved her. I really think they did. You should have seen them. They're all just completely fucked up around this. Excuse me the French."

Glitsky waved off the apology. He disliked profanity, but he'd heard all the words before and at the moment his mind was taken up with the case. "What about her friends?"

"She's got a regular book club and this group of other mothers from the neighborhood that meet every week or so, but we've talked to every one of them. All shocked. Stunned. Nobody had even a small problem with Elizabeth. Everybody came to her for everything and she never said no."

Lanier had reconfigured the office pretty much back to the way it had been when it had been Glitsky's. One desk took up most of the center of the room and he sat behind it, with Glitsky across from him, his feet up, his fingers templed in front of his mouth.

"I went to the funeral on Saturday, Abe," he continued. "Huge crowd. Everybody loved this woman."

"Somebody didn't."

Lanier conceded the point. "Well, whoever it was did it right. Took the gun with him, touched nothing. One shot, point-blank to the heart."

"You checking phone records?" Glitsky asked. "Maybe she had a boyfriend?"

"We're looking."

"Money?"

Lanier spread his hands. "Not a problem. She was frugal. Robert makes enough that they're okay. They went on vacation every year. Houseboat on Shasta."

Glitsky brought his feet to the floor. "So your absolutely typical average American housewife answers the door on a Tuesday evening and somebody shoots her for no reason?"

"Right. That's what we got."

"It's unlikely."

"Agreed." Lanier came forward. "Look, Abe, if you're not so subtly hinting that you'd like to talk to some of the players here yourself, I would invite any and all input. Belou and Russell are stumped and have other cases with better chances of getting solved. So if you want to jump in on this, have at it."

Glitsky was standing. "If I get the time, I might like to have a word with the husband."

"Knock yourself out," Lanier said.

* * *

To avoid the gauntlet of Sixth Street south of Mission—perhaps the city's most blighted stretch of asphalt and hopelessness—Dismas Hardy chose to drive the ten blocks or so from his Sutter Street office to the Hall of Justice. Only eighteen months before, his ex-partner David Freeman had been mugged and killed when he chose to walk home from the office one night rather than drive. Freeman's attackers hadn't come from the ranks of miscreants and drug-addled denizens of Sixth Street, true, but the old man's death had brought home to Hardy in a visceral way the literal danger of the streets. You entered certain areas at your own risk, and the greater part of valor was avoiding them if at all possible.

As he crossed Mission today in his flashy new, silver Honda S2000 convertible, on his way to what was sure to be a controversial meeting, his thoughts, as they did with an exhausting regularity, went back to the events surrounding Freeman's death—events that had been the proximate cause of another, far more profound, change in Hardy and several of his closest friends.

For the attack that killed David had been the penultimate escalation in a pattern of violence that had begun with the murder of a pawnshop owner named Sam Silverman, and continued through the deaths of two policemen, then to an attempt on Hardy's own life. When he and his best friend, Glitsky, learned that a man named Wade Panos was behind this vendetta, they had of course taken their suspicions to the proper authorities—the DA, the police, the FBI. But Panos owned a private security force sanctioned by the city, and the lieutenant in charge of homicide turned out to be on Panos's payroll as well. Hardy's and Glitsky's accusations fell on deaf ears, and before they could take it to the next level of legitimate authority, they had both received threats to the lives of their families.

To protect themselves and their loved ones, out of time and frustrated by the law they'd both sworn to uphold, the two of them—along with Hardy's brother-in-law Moses McGuire, his partner Gina Roake, and his client John Holiday—found themselves forced into a shoot-out with Panos's men at a deserted pier near the abandoned waterfront. In a brief but furious gunfight, in pure self-defense, they had killed four of Panos's men, including Lieutenant Barry Gerson, and had lost one of their own, John Holiday.

The four survivors—Hardy, Glitsky, McGuire, and Roake—were physically untouched and made a clean escape. But there was much collateral damage.

If Hardy had considered himself cynical about abusing the letter of the law in his practice before, now he was past entertaining any qualms at all. He still considered himself a "good guy," whatever that meant, but he also recognized that a kind of a scab had grown over the wound his softer instincts had sustained. He'd been doubted, betrayed, lied to, threatened, and abandoned both by those in whom he'd put his trust and in the system he'd believed in intrinsically. Now he wasn't about to squander any more emotional investment in a process that hadn't worked for him when he'd needed it most. He did what he did and if sometimes it was ugly, well, sometimes life was ugly. Get over it. He didn't care if everybody liked him anymore.

Sometimes he didn't like himself very much, either.

As he turned into the All-Day Lot at the end of the alley across from the Hall of Justice, he found that his hands ached from gripping the wheel so firmly. His jaw throbbed from the constant pressure he'd been putting on it.

His appointment was with the district attorney, Clarence Jackman. He was here to cut a deal for a client he despised, whom he wouldn't have gone near a couple of years ago. In those days, he would simply have declined to take the case. In his earlier career, he'd turned down business many times when he didn't personally like a prospective client. But more often than not lately he found himself inclined to choose to profit from his squeamishness, and would take the case at double or even triple his normal rate. It was all a game anyway, and if he didn't profit from it when he could, he was a fool.

So when an ex-cop named Harlan Fisk, now a city supervisor, came to Hardy the fixer to talk about Peter Chase, a big-time property manager/developer who'd been caught fondling his eleven-year-old nephew, Hardy forced himself to listen. Chase was one of Fisk's big donors. Hardy heard the facts and said he'd see what he could do to keep the case from coming to trial, but it would cost Chase fifty thousand dollars. Up front.

Now he had done his homework and perfected his pitch. He delivered it to Jackman in his third-floor office in the Hall of Justice. Also in the room were Supervisor Fisk, Chief of Police Batiste, and Celia Bonham, a representative from the mayor's office.

Winding it up, Hardy said, "Look, Clarence, I don't like this any better than you do, but I'm just the messenger."

Jackman, a physically imposing African-American, was a powerful and charismatic figure. When Sharron Pratt, his predecessor as district attorney, had resigned in disgrace three years before, Mayor Washington had appointed Jackman to fill out the remainder of her term, and Jackman had hired a team of aggressive prosecutors who much preferred putting criminals in jail to understanding them and their problems. He was running for election in his own right next November, and was ahead in all the early polls.

Now sitting behind his desk, his hands clasped in front of him, his voice mild, he said, "I'm of course happy to hear the mayor's position on criminal cases. But there was a victim in this case, an innocent little boy, and this office has his rights to protect. Are you telling me his abuser should go unpunished? You'll pardon me for speaking frankly, Diz, but I'm a little surprised you're taking this tack. This discussion is beneath you."

Hardy controlled a grimace, took a breath. "You should know he's reached a financial settlement with his sister, the boy's mother, Clarence. Will that make up to the boy for what he did to him? Will any amount of money address the human issue? No, it won't. But it will pay for counseling for the victim, and then perhaps help with his schooling and even college. In return, the family has agreed to my proposal. To the mayor's proposal, really."

"He can't want us to drop the charges, Diz. Even if the victim's family agrees, I'm inclined to pursue them. We're a tolerant city, God knows, but not for this kind of stuff. Not on my watch."

Hardy turned to share a glance with Fisk, then came back around to the DA. "I'm not talking about dropping charges, Clarence. He remains charged. The case stays open."

Jackman frowned. "Then what do you want?"

"I want the case to stay open. That's all. My client gives you his word that nothing like this will ever happen again. Ever. He remains in counseling in perpetuity. He goes to meetings every week. His life changes. It has changed. He is always in treatment. And if he ever does cross the line again, Clarence, you've already got him charged. You just pull him in."

"If I may," Ms. Bonham said, "I'm at this meeting because Mayor Washington wanted his feelings known. He has been acquainted both personally and professionally with Mr. Chase for many years, and while he in no way countenances his behavior in this case, he sees it as a one-time failing of an otherwise good man with a real sickness, a disease if you will, who may have let the stresses of his work get the better of him."

Jackman listened with interest to this extraordinary little speech, then nodded and looked at Chief Batiste. "Frank?" he asked. "What's the police position here?"

"I serve at the mayor's pleasure, Clarence, as you know. If the mayor's okay with holding off on a trial . . ." He let the sentence hang.

Jackman brought his eyes back to Hardy. "This is a nonstarter, Diz, and you know it. What's really going on here?"

This was getting to the meat of it. "As you know, Clarence, Mr. Chase manages several city properties in the blocks surrounding city hall. Beyond those, he also holds the contract for the police department's motor pool. He leases all the city cars. What he's proposing is a yearlong moratorium on rents for all these properties, starting this month."

In a long legal career, Jackman had fielded a host of bizarre settlement offers, but this one rocked him. He blew out a lungful of air, pushed his chair back, got up quickly and walked over to his windows. He was close to losing his temper, something that he had not allowed himself for years.

"So Mr. Chase wants to buy his way out of child molestation charges? Why send you, Diz? Why not a plain envelope stuffed with hundreds delivered by some hoodlum in a dark bar?" He actually spoke more softly. "I won't be bribed, Diz, and I'm disgusted that you think I could be." He looked from eye to eye at the assembled legation. "I think you all had better leave."

Hardy stood up, put out a restraining hand to the others, crossed over to where Jackman stood. "Look, Clarence, I said at the outset that I knew this stinks. The guy hired me because he figures I can pull a personal string here, and I have the right to be as insulted as you do.

"But I think you've got to do this. Listen. Washington says the city will make about three mil on this deal. If you won't do it, he'll just cut the difference out of your budget. You're being extorted, Clarence, plain and simple, squeezed by a child molester and a venal political hack."

Behind him, he heard Ms. Bonham make a kind of gurgling noise. He was talking loud enough for her to hear, and this was getting rather more raw than she'd expected.

"But the bottom line," Hardy concluded, "is I think they've got you."

Hardy knew that three million dollars was about 10 percent of the DA's already lean budget. The office had already made deep cuts, and three million more would be a catastrophe. Jackman would have to lay off 15 percent of his staff. And because most of his nonlabor expenses were fixed, salaries were all he had to work with.

"Clarence," Hardy concluded, lowering his own voice now, "believe it or not, I'm here as your friend because nobody else would have told you what was really going on. I think you have to do this."

Hardy walked back to the couches. Jackman returned to his desk and sat back down in the heavy, expectant silence. After a moment, he looked up and nodded. "If he so much as spits on the sidewalk, I'll have him hauled in and fast-track him to Superior Court. Is that clear to each and every one of you?"

"Yes, sir," they intoned as with one voice.

"All right. You make sure the paperwork is tight and have it back here by this evening for my signature. Ms. Bonham, while I'm talking about signatures, I wouldn't mind his honor's position in writing. At his and your convenience, of course. Other than that," he pointed toward his door, "I've got a couple of appointments scheduled. I appreciate you all coming to talk to me about this problem."

Bonham, Fisk and Batiste were through the door when Clarence called out for Hardy to stay behind a minute. After the door closed, he sat looking down at his desk. When he spoke, the words came out with a scalpel-like precision. "I accept you came here as a friend, Diz. But, as a friend, never come here with a deal like this again. Not ever. Understood?"

"Understood."

* * *

With more than just a bad taste in his mouth, Hardy went into the bathroom in the hallway outside Jackman's office. There he leaned over one of the sinks for a few seconds, his head hanging as though from a thread. Then he turned on the cold water and threw several handfulls into his face. Drying off with a paper towel from the roll, he suddenly stopped and stood studying his face in the mirror for a long moment. The conversation with Jackman had netted him and his firm fifty thousand dollars, and though he told himself that it was a decent deal all around, his body was telling him something else. His head was light, his heart pounded. A wave of nausea made him hang his head again. When the dizziness passed, he ran his palms over his face, trying to recognize the person he was staring at. Would Clarence ever forgive him, he asked himself. Would he forgive himself? Could he continue to live like this?

I have no choice, he told himself. Don't confuse a job with a vocation. This is a job. You do it. You get paid for it. That's what it's about. It's not about you. It's not personal. Don't lose that focus. If it gets personal, you lose.

When he got his breathing and the rest of his body under some degree of control, he rode the elevator up one floor. Looking in at the suites of administrative offices that opened onto the lobby, he noticed with some surprise that the reception area was empty. He stood inside the double doors for a moment, making sure no one was guarding the entrance, then reached behind the waist-high wooden door by the reception desk and pressed the button that admitted visitors to the inner sanctum. In a few steps, silently, he'd passed through the outer office, then the conference room. Neither of the deputy chiefs was in their adjacent offices.

The room to his left was Glitsky's office. Far from the norm at the Hall, his office was expansive, nearly as large as Hardy's own, and almost as well furnished. Windows along the Bryant Street wall provided lots of natural light.

The bookshelves behind his desk testified to Glitsky's love of books. A knowledge junkie, he stocked hundreds of paperback novels, a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, an abridged, although still enormous, Oxford English Dictionary. There was a shelf of history, another of forensics, criminology, the Compendium of Drug Therapy and other medical references. One whole section was devoted to Patrick O'Brian's seafaring books, Glitsky's ongoing passion now for the past few years, and the other highly esoteric reference books that accompanied these novels—Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, Harbors and High Seas, A Sea of Words, a biography of Thomas Cochrane, who'd been O'Brian's inspiration for Jack Aubrey.

On these shelves, too, were a number of personal artifacts—a football signed by all of his college teammates at San Jose State; pictures of him and his sons on most if not all of the Pop Warner teams he'd coached; his old patrolman's hat; a menorah (Glitsky was half Jewish and half African-American); lots of police-themed bric-a-brac from citations he'd been awarded, classes and conferences he'd attended, decorations and medals he'd acquired. The walls were covered with even more citations, including Police Officer of the Year in 1987, plaques, diplomas, the (premature) obituary that Jeff Elliot had written about him after he'd been shot. There were also two family photos—one about twelve years old featuring his then-young boys and his wife Flo before she'd died; the other taken only last December with Treya and their baby Rachel, Treya's twenty-year-old daughter, Raney, and his three now-grown young men—Isaac, Jacob and Orel.

In Glitsky's new position, he spent a good portion of every day going to meetings, holding press conferences to manage the spin on police issues, representing the Chief at various functions. Hardy assumed he'd been at such a meeting this morning, and saw no reason not to take advantage of his friend's absence to inject a little lightness into his afternoon. He walked behind the desk and opened the top left drawer, which as he knew was filled with peanuts in the shell.

Quickly, looking up lest one of the gatekeepers bust him, he pulled the drawer all the way out and set it on the desk. He then took out the right-hand drawer—pens, Post-it pads, business cards, paper clips—and inserted it into the left-hand slot. When the peanuts were in on the wrong side, he checked his handiwork and saw that lo, it was good.

Glitsky the control freak would go into fits.

Hardy made it out of the administrative offices without running into a human being. When he got back on the elevator going down, his good humor had mostly returned, and he was whistling to himself.