"We have his head," Halverchek said. "It's a match."

"I beg your pardon?"

"He was decapitated." Dusty Halverchek seemed to be enjoying this. It was as if they were discussing ball scores. "His head was ripped off and thrown on the bed."

Susan turned and ran out of the room in tears.

"Shit, Dusty," Cole said.

Herman was wondering how he would get through the next few minutes. Miraculously, his heart stayed on rhythm, although the bedside monitor beeped ominously.

"What kind of information was he after?" Cole asked.

"He was looking for information regarding a case we had in court. We were suing three labs and a handful of federal agencies over careless testing of bio-enhanced corn."

"I see," Cole said, looking over at Halverchek, who shrugged. "And you say he sent you nothing?"

Herman nodded. "He hadn't contacted me in two or three days, which is unlike him. I was expecting to hear yesterday, because we started trial this morning. When he didn't call I got worried. I didn't know what could have happened to him."

"He died sometime around five this morning," Cole said. "You're absolutely sure he gave you nothing? Sent you nothing? No material-or anything that might suggest who could have killed him?"

"How many times do I have to tell you? We were expecting him to call. He didn't. I was getting worried."

"I see." Cole looked at Halverchek again and they had some kind of silent cop moment. Then Cole turned back to Herman. "Anything else you can think of that might be important?"

"He has a mother. Have you notified her?" Herman asked.

"Not yet. We didn't have any next of kin. If you have her number, we'll do it."

"I'd like to be the one to call her. He was her only child."

"Sorry," Cole said. "We have to do the notification of death, then you can contact her. Where does she live?"

" Washington, D.C. "

"You can call her sometime tomorrow after lunch."

Herman wrote the number down and handed it to Sergeant Cole.

"We'll need a list of names of the corporations and agencies you were suing."

"It's in my briefcase… on the top. They're listed on a motion I filed yesterday. It's a copy, so you can have it."

Halverchek opened the briefcase, found the motion, and held it up for Herman to see. He nodded. Then the nondescript cop folded it and put it in his side pocket.

"Okay, then you have no further knowledge of who or what might have killed him?" Cole asked.

"Did you say what might have killed him?" Herman furrowed his brow.

"The body was ripped apart. Shredded," Cole said. "There was no surgical intervention. He wasn't cut apart, is what I'm trying to say. We know of nothing that would have enough strength to disjoint a man physically like that… pull him limb from limb. Our ME is telling us it would take more than a thousand pounds per square inch to accomplish that. Also, the window frame was bent open. We can't imagine the killer got in that way, because there was no balcony to stand on, but the window was pried. No human would be strong enough to do it. There was urine mixed in with all the blood. It doesn't match the urine left in the deceased's bladder, so whoever or whatever did this urinated on the body parts."

Herman's mind was wrestling with what Sergeant Cole had just said.

"Okay, Mr. Strockmire. I'm going to end this now because your doctor says it's a terrible time for this interview, and he wanted us to keep it short. But I'm going to have to ask some follow-up questions later. I may require you to come up to San Francisco. Would that be possible?"

"Yes."

"Here are my numbers," Sergeant Cole said, handing him an embossed card that was a lot nicer than the flat, cheap Institute for Planetary Justice cards that Herman gave to his clients.

After Sergeant Cole and Detective Halverchek left, Herman lay quietly in the hospital bed listening as his heart beeped hypnotically from the bedside monitor. He was horrified about Roland, feeling responsible and full of remorse. But his mind kept coming back to Sergeant Cole's statement:

We know of nothing that could have enough strength to disjoint a man physically.

With all that he knew about the abuses of the federal government, Herman had a few ideas of his own. But he dared not even contemplate their ramifications.

At 9:45 the next morning Herman was still in the hospital. He had changed into his regular clothes, waiting to be released, and was sitting on the side of the bed talking to Roland's mother on the phone.

"I'm so sorry, Madge." His voice cracked. Tears stung his eyes. "I feel like… I don't know. I feel like… like I sent him to his death."

There was a long silence on the phone while Roland's devastated mother evaluated that admission. "No," she finally said. "It wasn't you."

But he knew it was. He would never forgive himself. He had really come to like Roland. More than like, even- Roland had been a treasured friend.

He remembered his first meeting with the geeky hacker. They'd been in the attorneys' room at the D.C. federal lockup. Roland Minton had been convicted of federal computer crimes. He'd penetrated the White House Budget Office mainframe for some harebrained reason that was never fully explained. God only knew what he had been up to. What the feds were doing with the national budget was bad enough without having Roland in their damn computer, screwing around with the data. Herman had agreed to represent the skinny little hacker whose mother was a motel maid.

Herman wondered why Roland didn't get a job, didn't do something to help Madge and his two sisters, instead of doing show-off criminal hacks-but that was beside the point. Herman had been hired to get Roland's conviction overturned on appeal. If he didn't get it reversed, this skinny, vulnerable kid was going to end up at Raiford, and Herman didn't wish that on some computer geek with purple hair.

That was four years ago. Herman had found a loophole in the search and seizure of Roland's computer, which the original trial judge had wrongfully admitted as evidence. Then Herman did a standard "fruit of the poisonous tree" defense, which dictated that all evidence or testimony resulting from an illegal search and seizure was inadmissible. After that, the government's case came apart like antique stitching and Herman had Roland back on the streets.

During the appeal he discovered the skinny hacker was much more intriguing than he would have guessed. Roland had a sly sense of humor and a world-class IQ. As a high school student Roland also had no friends, so he and Herman compared locker stories. Roland was so smart that he became bored easily and withdrew into his computer world. His criminal hacks began a year later. He and Herman began matching wits. Herman usually won on theory and abstract thought, Roland on anal logic and X-over-Y deductive reasoning.

Herman often tried out his legal arguments on Roland and found, to his surprise, that the young hacker could almost always find embellishments and improvements. His mind was so logically bulletproof that Herman was often put to shame.

They soon learned that they shared the same latent anger and sense of disenfranchisement. They began to bond with each other for support… or for protection? Or both?

Now his friend was gone.

He could hear Madge sniffling on the other end of the phone, in her little walk-up apartment in Washington, D.C. He could picture her chapped, dishwater hands, her soft-but-wrinkled complexion, her tired gray eyes.

"Madge, I'm going to find out who killed him," Herman promised, not using the pronoun what, as Sergeant Cole had. Not wanting to add the specter of some savage, unearthly beast ripping and shredding her only son.