Jonathan grinned. "OK, I misled you a little bit last time. Actually, though, it doesn't have anything to do with who killed Abramowitz. But this guy got in touch with me because he saw my stories on that case. I'm afraid, Tess, you're going to have to come to terms with the fact your buddy probably did it."

"I think Tyner's going to have a lot to work with."

"Tyner could recover the use of his legs during the trial, tell the jury it's because the defendant is really Jesus Christ, and it still might not be enough to get Paxton off. The only thing you've got going for you is the innate hostility Baltimore juries harbor for the state's attorney's office." He grabbed her wrist, his voice suddenly husky. "Then again, maybe you could slap the jury around a little bit. You've got a future as a dominatrix."

But Tess, exhausted and drained, just lay back and let Jonathan lead the way. I'm going to stop doing this, she promised herself. She closed her eyes, then opened them again when she realized Crow's face had slipped into her mind.

Afterward, as Jonathan started to doze off, Tess whispered in his ear: "You're not keeping me from the boat house tomorrow. The alarm goes off at five-thirty. You can leave with me or stay here."

"Sick, very sick, this compulsion of yours," he murmured. "But I guess I'll go with you. Make sure I get up, OK? If I'm home by seven I can make bed check. Daphne likes to call early in the morning." In seconds he was snoring, as Tess lay awake, realizing she had never heard his girlfriend's name before.

In late September, when the city was still under daylight saving time, mornings were quite dark. Traces of last night's fog lingered as Jonathan and Tess left through the back door and walked down the alley toward Bond Street and their cars.

The air was heavy and humid, like a wet fur blanket. Jonathan, in a fit of politeness, tried to hold Tess's hand. But she couldn't bear to feel someone else's flesh on such a damp morning, and she shook her hand loose from his grip.

They were almost to the street when, behind them, a car's engine came to life, racing madly. Tess turned to look for headlights, but there weren't any, just the sound of an engine revving. In silhouette it looked like one of those humpbacked old taxis, a Checker or a Marathon, but its motor sounded ferocious and souped-up. For a split second the car seemed to hesitate, like a bull readying its charge, then came straight at them.

Jonathan and Tess also hesitated. Like deer in the headlights, Tess thought, except there are no headlights. Why are there no headlights? Their reflexes slowed, their depth perception thrown off by the darkness and the early hour, they did not move for several seconds, assuming the car would veer to one side. Even the car, for all its furious noise and speed, seemed slowed by the humidity. But it was still coming straight toward them.

Jonathan reacted first, bursting into action like someone breaking through the surface of a pool after a long swim underwater. He pushed Tess, hard, to the south side of the alley, stumbling to one knee as he did. His shove sent her a good ten feet, and Tess rolled into the bookstore's rough brick wall, skinning her knees and bruising her shoulder, scraping flesh from her palms. She flattened herself against the wall, covering her head with her arms as if it were an air raid drill. Then she struggled back to her feet, trying to get her bearings. Where was the car? Where was Jonathan?

She saw Jonathan first. His jeans were ripped from where he had fallen, but he was up and running. He made it to Bond Street and was a few feet from a row of parked cars when the old taxi hit him. It seemed to rear back and take aim before it struck, catching him at hip level.

Like most reporters Tess had seen only the aftermath of accidents. In movies, people who get hit by cars fly effortlessly, lightly, like rag dolls. If they're heroes, they get up again. Jonathan was a more leaden target. Instead of flying through the air in a graceful arc, he looked like a sack of potatoes being thrown off a truck. He landed hard on the hood of some doctor's BMW, denting it. Tess waited for him to get up, assumed he would get up. He was a hero, he had saved her life.

The humpbacked car sped away, heading north on Bond Street. Tess stood in the alley, her back still flat against Kitty's store, her fingers trying to find a handhold on the brick. Her palms were skinned and bleeding, but she kept digging at the brick. A car alarm wailed, probably the BMW on which Jonathan rested. Lights came on, and people began running outside, pulling bathrobes around their skimpy, hot-weather sleeping outfits. Every house on the block seemed to empty. The car alarm wailed. People kept coming.

Tess couldn't understand all the people. A car alarm was a common sound in Fells Point, especially on a Sunday morning, when the last drunks brushed against the parked cars on their way home.

Then Kitty was there, her silk robe barely covering her, shouting in Tess's face. It was only when she heard Kitty's voice that she realized the alarm's piercing drone had been drowned out by her own voice, shrill and keening. She had never heard herself scream before, so she stopped to listen. Then there was nothing to hear, a fact she found hilarious. Tess began laughing as Kitty held her in her arms and rocked her like a baby.

"I shut up to hear myself! I stopped screaming so I could hear myself scream!" She laughed at her own idiocy, then cried. Finally she ran out of noises to make, appropriate and otherwise. She listened for ambulance sirens, but the morning was still new. The car alarm had been shut off. Tess saw a man, probably the BMW's owner, bend over Jonathan and shake his head. Now she knew why there were no sirens, why everyone was moving so slowly, as if there was no reason to rush. There was nothing anyone could do.

"No one murders reporters."

Tess sat at the big pine table in Kitty's kitchen, surrounded by what looked to be the most unorthodox of families. Kitty, in a slip dress that covered less than most negligees, was Mom. Dad would have to be Thaddeus. Torn between the immodesty of appearing in his bathrobe, or the indiscretion of wearing his bicycle patrol uniform, he had chosen the latter. Rounding out the group was Gramps-Tyner, in a pale rose polo and matching sweats, cantankerous as always. At the emergency room Kitty had called him after Tess begged her not to call her parents. Now Tess almost regretted her injunction. Her parents, more respectable than this crew, might have given her some much needed credibility with the two traffic detectives she faced.

"No one murders reporters," detective number one repeated. Or was it the other one, echoing his partner's sentiments? The two men looked so alike-medium height, sallow complexions, brown hair and eyes-that Tess worried her fall had made her see double. Only their names were markedly different: Ferlinghetti and Rainer.

"Like the poets?" Kitty had asked Ferlinghetti, squinting at his ID.

"If you say so," he had said. "Can we talk to Miss Monaghan?"

While Tess had been in the emergency room and Jonathan in the morgue, the detectives had spent the morning interviewing neighbors, pacing off the distance between the point of impact and where Jonathan's body had landed, drawing little diagrams of the accident. The day was unseasonably warm, and both men now had half-moons of sweat under the arms of their short-sleeved dress shirts. They were hot and irritated, and their mood was not improved by Kitty's hot, bitter coffee or Tess's insistence the old cab had been lying in wait for her, for Jonathan, for both of them, for someone.