It had taken less than three minutes-two minutes, thirty-eight seconds-and he had stopped still at every one of the seven stop signs. It would be a poor time to get a ticket.

He waited.

After what seemed an hour he checked his watch and realized it had not yet been five minutes. He rolled down the car’s window. The day was unnaturally still. He reached over and cracked the passenger window, hoping to get some cross-ventilation. It didn’t do much good.

Could she have left in the time it took him to drive over? He thought about it. Unlikely. He had gotten out of the rectory within thirty seconds of hanging up with her. Unless she had been ready to walk out her own door when they were talking, she would have needed at least five minutes to say good-bye to Steven, comb her hair, get her purse.

Still, if she didn’t come out within another couple of minutes, and only a couple, he would somehow have to check.

He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and ran it over his brow, around his neck. He felt clammy, and now a tiny breeze finally stirring in the car made him shiver. Was he getting sick? Even his hands felt sweaty, sticky.

Come on, Erin, he thought. Come on.

Ah, here she was.

She backed the Volvo wagon into the street. She didn’t even glance behind her in his direction. His breathing started coming a little more easily. The Volvo stopped at the corner, let a UPS truck pass in front of her, then turned left out of sight.

Cavanaugh turned the key, pulled into the street and parked in the Cochrans’ driveway. He walked across the familiar brick path to the front stoop, mounted the stairs and rang the doorbell.

“Steven,” he called. “Erin!”

He rang the bell again.

“Who is it?” Steven’s voice sounded thin and far away from back inside the house.

“Father Jim, Steven.”

A pause, then another distant yell. “I can’t get up, Father. Come on in.”

“What are you doing here?”

Hardy, seeing Erin crossing the little patch of lawn, opened the door and stood in the front doorway of the rectory.

Her face really was incredible, he thought. “I might ask you the same thing,” she said. “Is Jim inside?”

“Jim isn’t around.”

She stopped, her expression flickering. “Well, of course he is. I just talked to him.”

“You just talked to him?”

“He said he needed me over here.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

“Over here? At the rectory?”

“Yes, is something wrong?”

Still in the doorway, Hardy frowned. “I hope not.”

They started back through the house. “Rose is dead, you know,” Hardy said.

Erin touched Hardy’s arm the way she did. They faced each other in the hallway. “Jim said she killed herself too.”

“What do you mean, ‘too’?”

Erin looked down. Hardy picked up her chin with his finger. “Eddie didn’t.”

He could tell it was hard for her to hear it, but she had to know.

“Steven just said the same thing. He said he’d figured out how it happened. He was just talking to Jim about it.”

Hardy felt the blood draining from his face.

“What’s the matter?”

“When?”

“When what?”

“When was he talking to Jim about it?”

Erin had taken his hand, as though to steady him. “Just before I left, just before he asked me to come over, I think.”

Hardy was frozen for a few seconds, letting the coins drop. “Jesus Christ!” He looked behind her. The front door was still closed. “Give me your keys.”

“What?”

“Your keys. Give me your keys!”

Obediently, she opened her purse. Then he had the keys and was running for the door. “Come on, come on!” he said. “Your car. Let’s go!”

THE FRONT door was locked.

He was just about to call out for Steven again, then realized it would be better not to draw more attention to himself. He looked both ways down the street. It was a slow Tuesday, still before lunchtime. There was no one outside on the entire block. And Cavanaugh knew Steven couldn’t get up-so what good would calling him do?

He tried the door again. No, it was locked. Probably deadbolted, too, if he knew Erin.

He went past the Honda again, along the side of the house on the driveway. All the windows were closed. In the backyard he went up onto the deck and tried the sliding glass doors. They, too, were locked, with a sawed-off broom handle wedged into the runner on the floor to make sure the door wouldn’t open.

Cavanaugh looked at his watch, sweating now. Too much time was passing. He had to get inside, and it must not look like forced entry.

Walking off the deck, he rounded the corner and started up to the front again, along the other side of the house where there was just a strip of grass and a fence.

It was so vivid it could not have been a dream, but if it wasn’t a dream, then where was Father Jim? Steven was sure he’d heard him call out from the front door. He’d even called back that he couldn’t move, that he should just come in.

But had he heard him? He hadn’t come.

His eyes were heavy, and he really couldn’t remember if he’d dozed off or not before the bell rang. He knew he’d taken another dose of the pills before Mom had left. His foot didn’t hurt, so they must have already kicked in.

He closed his eyes. Maybe it was like when he thought he’d seen Eddie here in his room the other night. That had seemed so real it wasn’t until the next morning that he realized it couldn’t have happened. Okay, the doorbell had seemed real, and Father Jim’s voice… But it had happened right after the pills, too.

Besides, it made no sense. Mom had just gone to see Father Jim. What would he be doing here?

He had begun to figure it out just as he saw the fingers come around the bottom of the windowsill, open about four inches to let in some air. The hand pushed at the window and it slid up until Father’s arm had straightened-maybe another foot.

He heard his name again, quietly this time.

“Steven?”

Glitsky heard the follow-up call-in on his way to his appointment in the Projects. He was going to meet a steady source named Quicksand Barthelme that Dick Willis would love to get to know. But Glitsky didn’t work for the DEA, and Quicksand was too valuable an ally in the Projects to worry about how he made his money. Quicksand could operate safely forever, as far as Glitsky was concerned. He was small time, was grateful for the umbrella of Glitsky’s favor, and knew everybody. Willis no doubt had a few murderers among his sources, and it probably bothered him about as much as Quicksand’s drug activities bothered Abe.

But today Quicksand didn’t show. It happened. These guys, it wasn’t like you made an appointment with their secretary and did a power lunch. Sometimes-hell, all the time-the street had its own rhythm and you had to go with it.

So Abe was half listening to the squawk box, still furious with himself and Hardy and pissed at Quicksand and the heat when he heard that there was a suicide at St. Elizabeth’s. That decided what he was going to do with the rest of his morning.

One of the squad cars was pulling out as he turned into the driveway. He saw Hardy’s car over by the garage as soon as he passed the rectory. The guy was persistent-he gave him that. He parked in the thinning strip of shade along the side of the garage.

Coming around the building, he saw two priests, neither of them Cavanaugh. One of them was leaning up against a workbench in the garage, silent. The other stood by the gurney, covered by a sheet, under which, presumably, was a body.

“Hi, guys,” Abe said. Giometti and Griffin had drawn the call, he noticed, and somehow knew it wasn’t a coincidence. “Fancy meeting you here.”