So when Glitsky let her know he was going to expose her, she decided she wasn't going to endure an arrest, a high-profile trial and the loss of her national reputation. At the time she was, after all, one of the most prominent and respected African-American women in the country. She chose her own way out – an 'accident' with a gun in her mansion.

After that, Glitsky had never been able to bring himself to reveal the secret to his daughter. Why would she need the baggage? he asked himself. What good could it possibly do her to know?

And now suddenly it was – forever – too late. He'd followed her life, of course, the path her career had taken after she left the DA's office. Plugged into her mother's political connections, she'd gone into private practice with Rand and Jackman, one of the city's premier law firms.

Through the grapevine, Glitsky heard that she'd gotten engaged to some doctor from Tiburon. She'd recently been shortlisted for appointment to a judgeship. She also taught moot court at Hastings Law School and donated her honorarium back to the scholarship fund.

She was going to be fine. Her life was going to work out on its own, without any interference from him. He could take pride from a distance, privately savor her accomplishments. She hadn't needed him as a father. Now she was beyond needing anything.

Glitsky had himself tightly wound down. Hands in his pockets, he walked almost the length of Maiden Lane – maybe a hundred yards – from where he had parked his car on Stockton at the edge of Union Square. The body lay at the other end, twenty feet or so west of Grant Avenue. A small gathering of authorities and onlookers had already appeared and Glitsky used the walk to steel himself.

He saw a couple of black and white cruisers, what he supposed were some city-issued vehicles, and the coroner's van parked at angles, on the sidewalk and in the alley itself. He heard his steps echoing – the buildings were close on either side of him. Halfway down the lane, he suddenly stopped, took a deep breath and let it out. He was surprised to see the vapor come from his mouth – he wouldn't have said it was that cold. He wasn't feeling anything physical.

Casting his eyes up for a moment, over the buildings that rose all around him, he noticed the star-studded sky. Here between the buildings it was full night. The filigreed streetlights – four of them, two on each side – glowed. The street had that glassy, wet look favored by cinematographers, although the asphalt itself was dry.

A figure separated itself from the group and began walking toward him. It was Ridley Banks. After he'd closed to within fifteen feet, he stopped – perhaps catching the 'keep away' vibe that his lieutenant projected – and waited until the two men were side by side. Glitsky's usual style was all business in any event, and today it served him particularly well.

'What've we got?' he asked tersely.

'About as clean as it gets, Abe. We got a body, a shooter, a weapon and a motive.'

'And what's that, the motive?'

They were still standing off a ways from the knot that had formed around the body. Banks kept his voice low. 'Robbery. He took her purse, the watch, a gold chain.'

Glitsky was moving forward again. He'd made it down from his duplex to the scene in only a bit more time than it had taken the techs, and now, just as he came up to the main knot surrounding the body, one of the car's searchlights strafed the lane. Reflexively, Glitsky put a hand up against the light, pressed himself forward, went down to a knee by the fallen body.

It lay on its right side, stretched out along the pavement in an attitude of sleep. It struck Glitsky that whoever had shot her had laid her down gently. He saw no blood at first glance. The face was unmarked, eyes closed.

He'd come to love that face. There'd been a picture of her in the Chronicle in the past year and he'd cut it out and stuck it in the bottom of the junk drawer of his desk. Two or three times, he'd closed and locked the door to his office, taken it out and just looked at her.

Seeing her mother in her face. Seeing himself. In recent months, he'd told himself it was possible that if they came to know about each other, it wouldn't be baggage after all, but a source of something else – connection, maybe. He didn't know – he wasn't good at that stuff. But the feeling had been building and he'd come close to deciding that he would tell her, see where it took them.

The body was clad in an elegant overcoat, still buttoned to the neck. Blue or black in color, it looked expensive with its fur-trimmed collar, red satin lining. One black pump had come off her left foot and lay on its side, pathetically, in the gutter.

She was wearing black hosiery – and again, there was no sign that it had snarled or that the nylon had run when she'd gone down. Under the overcoat, Glitsky saw a couple of inches of what appeared to be a blue or black skirt with white pinstripes.

The lack of blood nagged. Glitsky stood, moved around to her back side, studying the pavement. Ridley was a step behind him and anticipated his question. He handed the lieutenant a ziploc bag which held an almost impossibly small handgun. 'One shot at the hairline in back, close contact, up into the brain. No exit wound.'

Glitsky opened the bag and looked inside, put his nose against the opening and smelled the cordite. He recognized the weapon as a North American Arms five-shot revolver, perhaps the smallest commercially-made weapon in America. It was most commonly worn as a belt buckle, out in the open, so small it did not seem possible that it could be a real gun. It weighed less than ten ounces and fitted easily in the palm of his hand. Ridley was going on with his descriptions and theories and Glitsky ached to tell him to shut up.

But he wasn't going to give anything away and he didn't trust himself to utter a word. Instead, he left it to his body language. Zipping up the plastic that held the gun, he gave it to Banks without comment, and moved off, hands in his pockets. The message was clear – Glitsky was concentrating, thinking, memorizing the scene. Disturb him at your peril.

Ridley hung back with the body. After a minute, he started giving directions to the techs.

Twenty minutes later, they had triangulated the body in high beams and the alley had taken on an unnatural brilliance. The crime scene people had set up a cordon of yellow tape, uniformed officers, black and white police cars, all of them conspiring to block unauthorized access to Maiden Lane, although due to the hour that wasn't yet much of an issue. Still, half a dozen police radios crackled. The first news team had arrived – a van and its crew from a local television station – and the negotiations over access to the scene between the perky, aggressive newscaster and the supervising sergeant tempted Glitsky to take out his gun and shoot somebody.

Instead, he accompanied Ridley Banks to the squad car and the officers who had discovered the body and apprehended the suspect. Two uniformed men exited the vehicle from both front doors at the same time, introducing themselves as Medrano and Petrie.

'That the shooter?' Glitsky asked, pointing to the backseat where the suspect sat propped against the side door, slumped over. 'I think I'll talk to him.'

The two officers exchanged a glance and a shrug. The older officer, Medrano, replied. 'You can try, sir. But he hasn't moved in an hour.'

'Drunk?'

'At least that and plenty of it.' The other uniform, Petrie, hesitated for an instant, then continued. 'Also appears to be mainlining something. Tracks up his arms. He's gonna need some detox time.'

Glitsky received this not entirely surprising news in silence. Then he nodded and walked around to the other side of the squad car, where the suspect leaned heavily against the door, and pulled it open quickly. With his hands cuffed behind him, the man fell sideways out onto the pavement. His feet stayed up in the car while his head hit the asphalt with a thick hollow sound. The man moaned once and rolled over onto his back.