"Yep, I'm just great," Herman said, taking a deep breath. "Wonderful-tip-top, yes siree."

He walked down the hallway to the phone bank. His cell phone was out of service and all four pay phones were in use, so he sat on the bench across the hall to wait and consider what had just happened. She was right. He could appeal, and of course he would; but he would probably lose. The circuit court judges who heard his appeal would all have their own "Herman the German" stories. He didn't have many friends on the federal bench. Certainly it was wrong of Melissa to have thrown out his case, but he had fudged on the amended complaint and lied in front of her in court, trying to slide it past her. So, there it was-he was screwed.

He sat there and thought about his life: how his dreams had all been lost, how the things that he really cared about were just jokes to other people. Since she brought it up, he thought about his MK Ultra suit that Melissa had thrown out of court four years earlier. Yet, two years after she pitched it, a group of schoolchildren in Tokyo watching the Japanese cartoon program Pikachu had suddenly gone into convulsions. Some were hospitalized with a condition doctors diagnosed as very close to epilepsy. The Japanese government stated that it looked as if some sort of experiment in mind control had occurred in which children had been used as guinea pigs. When they examined the cartoon at slow speeds they discovered that the eyes of the animated character, Pikachu, flashed at high frequencies. Everybody finally admitted that this had caused a form of low-grade epilepsy. It was odd, they said. Odd to everybody but Herman, who found out that the cartoon had been designed in the United States, not Japan. He had traced its animators back to the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

Okay, to be perfectly honest, there was some hearsay there, so he couldn't use it in court yet, but he was still working on the case, getting ready to refile. No less a magazine than U.S. News amp; World Report had stated after the Japanese incident that: "U.S. information warfare experts conclude that there are no longer any technological hurdles to developing a mind control weapon that could be delivered by computer, television, or film." Such a weapon, they said, "would produce effects similar to the recent Pikachu-induced spasms."

There it was-almost an admission of what Herman had accused the CIA of doing, but Melissa had thrown it out. Even now, if he showed her this new research, including the facts of the Pikachu incident, she would just snort at him and tell him it was all bullshit. Some people just didn't have an inspired view of what was really going on in the world, and Herman had been dragging that fact behind him like a cross that he'd soon be hung on.

When one of the phones finally cleared, he got up, shuffled over, and dug into his pocket. He pulled out Sergeant Lester Cole's card and dialed the number in San Francisco, rubbing his thumb across the fancy embossed gold police shield on the lower-left-hand corner while he waited for the call to go through.

"San Francisco Police Department," a woman's voice said.

"I'd like to talk to Lester Cole in Homicide." He was transferred, then heard the steady beep alerting him that the call was being recorded.

"Sergeant Cole, Homicide Desk," a familiar voice answered. Herman pictured the short sergeant with the weightlifter's body and tired eyes.

"Sergeant, this is Herman Strockmire Jr. We talked last evening at the hospital in L.A. "

"Yeah. How you feeling?"

"Oh, much better… very well, thank you."

"You remember something else?"

"Well, no. No-that isn't why I'm calling."

"Okay," Cole was disinterested now.

"Uh, Sergeant, I was wondering… when is your medical examiner planning on releasing Roland's body for burial?"

"Why?"

"Well, I talked to Roland's mother, Madge Minton, and she is very upset. She's trying to plan a service, and they wouldn't give her a date. She needs closure, and of course she wants the body flown back to Washington where she lives. I told her that I would get Roland released."

"Y'did, huh?"

"Yes, sir. Is that gonna be a problem?"

"Well, could be… the way it all ended up."

"Really?" Herman took a deep breath. "What way is that, Sergeant?"

"It ain't our case anymore. So you're talking to the wrong Indian."

"Whose case is it?"

"Federal government. They swooped in here first thing this morning, just after I got back from L.A. Took over the entire investigation-body, crime scene, ME reports, the works."

"No kidding? Isn't that a little strange?"

"They're feds. You ask me, everything they do seems strange."

"Well, I mean… how's it a federal crime? Roland was not on federal property. He wasn't a federal employee, so why would the federal government take it over? What's their legal authority? It's a local homicide, pure and simple."

"Only one reason," Sergeant Cole said.

Herman could hear coldness in his voice that matched the disgust he'd seen in Cole's eyes when the sergeant was standing at the foot of his bed. "What's that?" Herman asked.

"Somebody in the big bureaucracy don't agree. The case must have major federal implications, otherwise they wouldn't be here."

"Yeah-I see what you mean," Herman said and hung up the phone. He stood in the hallway feeling something close to vindication. He realized his theory, the one he dared not express to anyone, could in fact be true.

One thing he knew for sure, he couldn't go back to the hospital and be out of commission for two weeks. Not now, not with this going on. Herman had to move fast. He had to figure out what Roland had found in the Gen-A-Tec computer that was so important that it had gotten him ripped apart.

There was no doubt in Herman Strockmire's mind that whoever was investigating Roland Minton's murder also knew who killed him.

Susan found out that Herman hadn't returned to the hospital, because there was a message on her beeper from Dr. Shiller. She called the doctor on her cell phone after leaving Jack Wirta's office.

"He didn't show up," Shiller said angrily.

"Damn!" She made a U-turn, heading back to Fairfax and the Santa Monica Freeway.

"I feel like I'm always chasing an ambulance with this guy," Shiller said. "If he doesn't come back here, fine. That's it for me, Ms. Strockmire. I'm through. I can't help him."

"I understand," she said. "But, Doctor, at least let me find out why. I mean, maybe there's a good reason he didn't show up."

"I'm through trying to convince him. As far as I'm concerned, he should get another doctor."

"I'll get him there," she said. "I promise."

"Whatever."

It took her over forty minutes to get out to Malibu, because she took the Coast Highway and had forgotten how congested it could get in the late afternoon. She pulled the borrowed station wagon into the driveway of the huge French Provincial beach house and parked next to the Mercedes her father had been driving. That meant he was there. She let herself in through the side gate, punching the security code numbers and using her key, then walked past the Olympic-size pool to the large one-story guesthouse.

It was empty, but as she passed through the billiards room she saw her father through the window, sitting out on the sandy beach about thirty yards away, his back to her, staring at the ocean. He had his arms wrapped around his knees, looking very small and alone.

She slid open the glass doors and walked across the narrow brick patio and through the little white gate. She kicked off her shoes and trudged across the sand, finally settling down next to him. "You broke your promise."