‘I wanted to be clear on May, though. Wednesday when you called her, you left a message?’

Farris nodded. ‘That’s right. You were right there.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m a little confused, though, because Sergeant Glitsky tried to call her this morning and no one answered.’

‘How’d he get her number?’

Details, Hardy thought, this guy is into details. He lifted his shoulders an inch. ‘Cops have access to unlisted numbers.’ He hoped.

Farris accepted that. ‘But the machine didn’t answer?’

‘Ten rings.’

‘No, it picked up after two, three for me.’ He thought a minute. ‘Maybe it got to the end of the tape.’

‘You’d still get her answering message, wouldn’t you?’

‘I think you would.’

The two men sat, putting it together. ‘She’s alive then,’ Farris said. ‘She unplugged it.’

‘Would she have had a reason to kill Owen?’

‘May?’

‘Somebody did.’

Farris shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know her. I wouldn’t know her if she walked in here.’

‘But did Mr Nash -?’

‘Owen liked her.’ He paused. ‘A lot. More than a lot.’

‘So how about if he stopped liking her?’

‘So what?’

‘So might she have gone off, something like that?’

Farris shook his head. ‘I just don’t have any idea. The last I knew, Owen liked her. But, I mean, the woman’s a prostitute, right? She kills a John over his dumping her? Even if it’s Owen, I don’t see it. And I don’t think he was dumping her.’

‘So where is she? Why hasn’t she returned your call?’

‘I don’t know. That’s a good question.’

Hardy finally had to let it go. ‘What are you doing about the body?’ he asked.

Celine was going by the coroner’s this afternoon to sign some papers. The autopsy was supposed to have been done this morning. So they planned to have the cremation Sunday morning, scattering his ashes over the Pacific that afternoon.

Farris looked hard out the window. He had a minimum view of the sun behind the low green buildings, some grass, a couple of pine trees. He put his hand to his eyes and pushed against them, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

Hardy stood and thanked him for his time. Farris got up from his chair, shook hands over the desk and apologized again. He wasn’t himself. Sorry. Thanks for coming by.

Hardy turned back at the door. Farris had sat back down in his chair behind the wide expanse of the oak desk. He was staring out again into the evening shadow cast over the lawns and pine trees, the shade now reaching to his no-view window – a statue of grief.

The flight was on Japan Airlines at eight-fifteen.

It was four-fifteen, far too early to leave, yet she had phoned for the cab. What was she thinking of? May knew she would go mad sitting out at the airport for three hours, worrying that someone would stop her, knowing that she had to leave here, that this place, maybe America itself, was over for her.

Her bags were by the front door. She had decided to pack the Lennons, and the foyer looked bare without them. The sun shone in through the turret windows, which she’d opened due to the heat. The heat made her feel as though in some ways she was leaving a place she’d never been.

She wore a dark blue linen suit with dark hose, not the perfect outfit for this weather, but she thought it made her look more businesslike. Her hair was in a tight bun, her most severe look. She didn’t want people coming up and talking to her.

When the doorbell rang, she was surprised. Normally, the drivers would honk out on the street. Nevertheless, she determined that she would tell the man she’d made a mistake; he could come back later if he wanted the fare.

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Through the peephole, his looks scared her – a light-skinned black man with a nasty-looking scar through his lips, top to bottom. On the other hand, she wanted someone who wouldn’t talk to her and this man looked like that type. She opened the door.

She was looking at a badge of some kind, the man identifying himself as Inspector Abe Glitsky of the San Francisco Police, Homicide. She stepped back as he asked if she was May Shintaka. ‘May I come in?’ He sounded polite enough.

‘Certainly.’

He stood in the foyer. There was nothing she could do to keep him from noting the newly empty walls, obviously where the Lennons had been taken down. ‘I’m here about Owen Nash.’

A nod. She turned and walked back into the living room. Now she was really hot and she took off her coat, draping it across the arm of the couch. She went to the turret window and heard the honk of the cab down below.

The sergeant took a few steps into the room, but stopped near the foyer. ‘Your shoes,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’ She motioned to a long, polished and ridged board that began next to the door. Her own pair of dark-blue pumps were already resting over the ridge.

Abe stepped out of his wing tips and placed them on the board. ‘Were you planning on going somewhere?’ He motioned to the bags in the hallway.

She was coming back across the room. He seemed to fill up where he stood even more than Owen had, and Owen was a big man, had been a big man. ‘That’s my cab down there now,’ she said. ‘But it’s too early anyway. I should tell him.’

Abe was nervous about letting her go down, but she’d left her bags as well as the jacket of her suit. She didn’t take a purse. If she got in the cab, he’d be able to call the dispatcher and possibly stop her before she’d gone a mile.

The advantage was his now. She had invited him into her apartment. He hadn’t needed to show a warrant, which in any event he didn’t have.

As soon as he’d left Hardy, he decided he had to do some police work. He had the phone company run a reverse list on May’s phone number and got her address, which was on his way home. He’d called back Elizabeth Pullios, but she was out with a witness and wasn’t due to return to her office until Monday. He finished up his paperwork on the Nash incident report, grabbed an afternoon cup of tea and some peanut M &Ms downstairs, then went upstairs to the jail and interviewed a snitch who supposedly knew the name of the shooter in last weekend’s drive-by. The information was worth checking, so he scheduled a videotape session for Monday.

Back at his desk, now getting on four o’clock, he called records and got a registration on the Beretta. The gun belonged to May Shintaka.

Nash’s autopsy showed that the bullets that killed him were.25 caliber, and Glitsky figured he didn’t have to wait for the formal Ballistics report. He had her address, and for the moment at least, May Shinn was ‘it.’

She didn’t hop in the cab and make a run for it. He was standing in the turret, watching her say something into the passenger window. After she stepped back, the cab took off with a squeal of rubber.

Glitsky watched her close the door to the apartment, gently, holding the knob with one hand and fitting the door into the sill with the other, the way mothers sometimes did when their children were sleeping in the room they were closing off. Seeing her dark blue, low-heeled pumps and the tailored suit, he had to remind himself that according to all the information he had, this woman was a prostitute.

She was out of the shoes, then, turning away from the door. She came back into the living room. He found he couldn’t make a guess as to her age and hit it within a decade. She could be anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five. She had, he thought, a very unusual face, the bones clearly defined, the skin smooth and stretched tight with the hair pulled back.

She walked over to the low couch, next to where she’d laid her jacket, and floated down onto it. She made some motion that he took to be an invitation to sit, which he did, feeling like a clod in his brown socks and his American sports coat.