“They’re here again.”

“Schiff and Bracco?”

“They’re unbelievable, these two.”

“I don’t know. I find myself believing in them lately. What do they want?”

“Apparently they’ve got a search warrant. They want to look through the house. Joel’s furious, of course. We haven’t even finished breakfast, and the kids are all upset. I don’t know who’s going to take them to school now.”

In fact, Hardy heard children crying in the background. “What time is it, actually?”

“Ten after seven. They got here at seven sharp.”

Hardy knew that this was a bad sign. Generally speaking, police were not permitted to serve warrants in the middle of the night. In fact, search warrants were not valid for service between ten P.M. and seven A.M. unless a judge specifically found evidence that justified the extreme intrusion into someone’s home. Absent an emergency, judges were reluctant to issue such a warrant. They would do that, of course, if there was cause to believe that a suspect would destroy evidence or flee under cover of darkness. So the fact that they’d waited until seven-the first allowable minute without that extraordinary finding-was ominous.

“So where are they now?”

“Right here. Joel’s trying to reason with them. They said we had to let them in. They have us all sitting on a couch in the front room. They won’t let us move. If we try to move, they said they’ll put us in handcuffs. They wouldn’t even give me my cell phone until I said I needed to call Harlen to get the kids and then you. Can they do all this?”

“If they have a warrant, they can. Did they say what they’re looking for specifically?”

“Shoes and/or clothing that might contain blood…”

Which meant, Hardy knew, that she was now a suspect.

“… phone and financial records, computer files-a lot of the same kind of stuff they wanted for the other-” The woman’s voice suddenly broke. “Oh, God. I don’t know why all this is happening to us all of a sudden. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s like we’re living in a police state. Can they just come in here and look through everything?”

“Not without a reason, so they must think they have one, and they must have convinced some judge too. Have they talked to you at all?”

“To get in, yes. Before they told me they had this warrant, they asked me about what I did yesterday.”

“When yesterday? What time?”

“Afternoon.”

“And you didn’t tell them anything, right?”

“I said I’d gone to church, that’s all.”

That was enough, Hardy thought, wondering anew about his client’s predilection to lock herself into a position that might incriminate her. But he kept his voice mild. “You went to church again?”

“I know. Most people don’t, I suppose. But I do all the time. St. Ignatius.”

“And how long were you there?”

“I don’t know. A little while. Before I had to pick up the kids. But I told them, the inspectors, that I wouldn’t answer any more questions until you got here.”

Open barn door, let horse out, close barn door after it. Check. But there was nothing to do about it now, so Hardy merely said, “Good for you, Maya. Try to stick with that. I can be there in a half hour. How’s that sound?”

“Like a long time.”

“I know. I can’t help that. I’ll get there as fast as I can. Promise.”

“Okay.” Hardy heard her breathe.

“Maybe between Harlen and Joel they can stop them before that.”

“Harlen? Your brother Harlen?”

“Yes. I told you I called him first, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but you said it was something about the kids.”

“Well, that too. But he and Sergeant Bracco are friends, you know.”

“Right. I’m aware of that. They were friends, but now he’s-” Hardy stopped before he said anything else, such as that given the presence of Jerry Glass around this case, Harlen Fisk was possibly the worst imaginable choice of a person to confront the police, and especially Schiff, about the legality or reasonableness of a search warrant in Maya’s house.

“He’ll be good with them, Mr. Hardy. Harlen’s good with everybody.”

“Okay, then, but even after he gets there, if it’s before me, can I ask you please not to say anything to the police until I get there? Can you promise me that?”

After she did, Hardy pushed the button to ring off the phone and went to straighten himself, but the crick in his neck asserted itself again and he sat back down with some care, twisting his head to find an angle that didn’t hurt.

“Are you all right?” Frannie coming through the dining room with two steaming cups in her hands.

“Except for the icepick in my neck.” Taking one of the cups. “You’re the best, you know that?”

“I’ve heard rumors. So why again were you sleeping down here?”

“I wasn’t sleeping upstairs and didn’t want to wake you up.”

“You can always wake me up.”

“That’s what they all say, but they don’t mean it.”

“I mean it, Dismas. You know that.”

“I know. I’m sorry, just kidding.” He sipped his coffee, and sighed. “But all kidding aside, this isn’t starting to look too good.”

“Maya Townshend?”

He went to nod but stopped himself before he got too far. “I need to get over there right now. They’ve got to have something new or they wouldn’t have moved like this.”

“You think it’s this guy Glass?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I should call Abe.”

“And what?”

“Finesse him to get some inside dope. Failing that, see if he can slow things down.” Realizing the absurdity of that possibility, he added, “Which he’s just plain not going to do, is he?”

“Not if they have something on her, which they must, right?”

“Right. I wish I knew what it was.” Grimacing, he reached over and put his cup down on the windowsill. “I’ve got to get moving.” He started up again, and again his hand went to his neck, but this time he fought through the pain, got to his feet. “One step at a time,” he said half to himself. “One step at a time.”

Arriving at the premises, Hardy convinced Bracco to let him sit with his clients in their kitchen in return for a vague promise that they might have something to say to the inspectors.

Maya set her mug of coffee down on the countertop. “Even if he did call me, that doesn’t mean I went and saw him afterwards, does it? I don’t even know where he lives. Lived.”

“So you couldn’t have gone there,” Hardy said. “You’re absolutely sure you didn’t go there, right?”

“Well, yes. Of course. I don’t see why there has to be a connection between him calling me and me going to see him. He just wanted to talk about Dylan and if anybody suspected him.”

“Because you all used to be friends,” Hardy said in a low voice.

The police had let them give the children to a neighbor-Harlen hadn’t made it there yet-to take to school. They were probably just as happy not to have the kids underfoot anyway. The three of them-Joel, Maya, and Hardy-sat around the island stove in the Townshends’ ultramodern, supergourmet kitchen. Every appliance, from the refrigerator and stove to the toaster and coffeemaker, was of brushed steel; every flat surface a green-tinged granite. Outside the wraparound back windows the storm swirled and eddied around them. The lights had already blinked twice as gusts of wind hammered at the glass.

Along with two other search-specialist cops Bracco and Schiff were somewhere back or up in the house behind them. Occasionally the disembodied voices from one or more of these people would carry in to the trio in the kitchen-thrumming undertones of a somehow undefined menace and conflict. The uniformed officer left at the door of the kitchen to watch them didn’t appear to be either interested or listening.

Nevertheless, they kept their voices low. “It made perfect sense to me, Dismas. Even if it doesn’t to you.” She motioned back toward the rest of the house. “Or to them.”