They were dismissing the second squad car. The rest of the homicide team had arrived and there wasn’t any use for beat cops at this stage. Abe walked into the relatively cooler shade of the garage and lifted the sheet, surprised to see Rose the housekeeper.

“Bored Abe?” Giometti asked, challenging, coming over.

“Yeah, yeah, I can’t get enough.” Then he explained, “I was here last week on something. You mind?”

Giometti shrugged. “Knock yourself out. No mysteries here, though.”

“You don’t think?”

“Nada.”

“You tow Hardy over here with you?”

Griffin heard this as he came up to them. “Here and gone.”

“His car’s still here.”

Giometti smiled. “He’s probably inside, interrogating a suspect.”

Griffin added, “He thinks this was a murder too. Me, I’m leaning toward a gang hit.” Said with a straight face.

Abe went back to the gurney. They had loaded it into the van. He picked up the sheet. “Any sign of struggle?”

Giometti joined him there. “The lady started the car and went to sleep, but as you can see we’re running the usual.”

The photographer had already finished his work, but the print guy was still kneeling in the front seat, brushing.

Giometti, shaking his head, said, “Waste of time. We got nothing.”

Griffin kept playing. “Nothing? How could you forget? She sat on the passenger side.”

Glitsky said, “What?”

Giometti snorted. “Your friend Hardy noticed that she was sitting in the passenger’s seat.”

“Told us to make sure and dust the keys for her prints. Said we wouldn’t find any,” Griffin said.

“Very helpful guy,” Giometti said. “We probably would have forgot, right, Carl?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Glitsky, wondering where Hardy had gone and thinking it might in fact be a little unusual for someone who’d killed herself that way to be sitting in the passenger seat, walked back out into the sun.

He turned around and asked Giometti and Griffin would they mind if he checked out the house. He started across the asphalt.

Hardy could not believe he had forgotten his gun. Erin’s car was closer, and so he’d run for that. It would have only taken him another minute to get to his own car with the.38 in the glove box. He might even have been able to talk one of the cops into going over with them. But he hadn’t thought at all, he was in too much of a hurry, he might not have a minute.

And still it might be too late.

Erin had asked what they were doing as he pulled away from the curb in front of the rectory.

“What’s the quickest way to your house?” And tried to figure out what he was going to do or say to Erin if they weren’t in time.

And he could even be wrong. They could have called from the rectory and found out Steven was alone and all right. But he knew he wasn’t wrong.

He kept his hand on the horn through the intersections, hardly slowing at all.

WHAT HE thought he would do was make a couple of jokes as he came through the window. Steven was used to that from him. When he got to the bed he would hold a pillow over his face until he was unconscious. He would have to be careful- he didn’t want another investigation like Eddie’s getting started, and there was no way Steven could suffocate himself.

When the boy was unconscious he would take the switchblade he had once given him and that Steven always kept hidden in the drawer next to his bed, and he would cut his wrists.

It would make sense. After all, the boy had just run away and been abused a few days before. He was deeply depressed over his brother’s death. It would be compellingly believable. Steven had waited until he was alone-his mother had just gone out-then did what he had been building up to ever since his brother’s death.

“Steven?” he said again, hoisting himself up into the window.

Steven willed every part of his body to move. Even with the pills, the pain was awesome. The bandages seemed to be ripping the skin off his whole side, and with the cast on his foot and his arm stuck out at this weird angle.

Still, he got himself sitting upright, though it had to be on the right side of the bed, facing away from the open window. He was trying to stand, twisting to look back, when Father Jim boosted himself onto the sill.

“Hey, why didn’t you answer me?” he said, smiling.

Steven couldn’t stop him from getting in. The only hope was if he could maybe get to the bathroom and lock the door. He stood, wobbly, not yet putting any weight on the bad foot.

“Steven, come on”-still smiling-“what are you doing up?” His upper body was through the window.

He had to move faster. He stepped onto the foot in the cast.

“Steven, what’s the matter?”

It wouldn’t hold him. The leg crumbled and he came down on top of it. He didn’t mean to, but he cried out, a wordless scream of pain.

Father Jim in the room now, over him. Kneeling on one knee, still a gentle look on his face. His arms reached out as though to cradle him.

“Get away from me-”

“Steven…”

“You killed Eddie, you killed him…”

Father pulled his arms back, no longer reaching for him. He sank back on his leg.

“What are you talking about? You can’t believe that?” He was actually surprised.

“Now you’re gonna kill me, aren’t you? That’s what you came here for?” Father Jim widened his benevolent smile. How can he be so relaxed if he’s going to kill me…?

“Steven, Steven, Steven,” Father Jim said. “I came here to visit your mother.”

“But she just went to see you.”

“So that’s why she’s not home.” He just kept smiling. “You’d think after all these years we’d communicate a little better. I thought we were meeting over here.”

He reached down for Steven again. “I think those pills might make you hallucinate a little. Come on.” He put one hand under his head. “Just lean into me. Let’s get you back in bed.”

It was hard to keep up this charade.

He lifted him first to a sitting position, then up onto the side of the bed. He had to be in the bed-that was essential. But this movement was so awkward, all plaster and bone. The joints didn’t bend the way they should.

“I didn’t mean it about Eddie,” Steven said. “I don’t know, I just thought…”

“It’s okay, Steven.”

“But the other thing, the accident…”

“I did want to talk to you about that.” Put him at ease again. It was going to be all right. “Let me go get a beer,” he said. “You get comfortable.”

Out to the kitchen, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, like walking in a tunnel. He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle, started twisting the neck going back to the bedroom.

Good, he was back lying down. Okay, now put the beer on the bed table. (And remember to take it when you go.)

“Here,” he said, “let me get that pillow for you.”

“Whose car is that?”

Erin didn’t know, it wasn’t Jim’s car. But there was somebody there! In her house, with Steven. “Oh, God!”

Dismas pulled the Volvo up over the curb onto the lawn. She already had her door open, running.

Where’s the knife?

Steven always kept the knife in the bottom of the drawer here -he’d seen him pull it out a dozen times.

Now he was beginning to moan again. He hadn’t believed Steven had had that much strength.

Maybe in the second drawer. And if it wasn’t there, he’d try to put him under again, but the timing of that was tough. He thought he’d held the pillow down too long last time when he’d pulled it up and the boy’s lips were blue.

He opened the second drawer.

God! Dismas had the keys.

“The keys! The keys!” She pushed at the doorbell. “Steven! Steven!”