He felt the cold of the day come up at him. He had a vision of an almost purple sky, of a noise like a rushing wind, of Treya Ghent somehow reaching for him just as he'd caught her minutes earlier.

And then it was dark.

It was dark. Hardy rubbed his hand over his eyes and realized that night had fallen outside while he'd been sitting at his desk. He looked at his watch – 9:15. Had he called Frannie to tell her he was missing dinner? Said good-night to the kids? He didn't even remember.

Oh yes, he did now. Frannie knew what he was going through and he could stay down and catch up as long as he needed. Things at home were under control – the kids had already finished homework and were on their way to bed. Tomorrow would arrive bright and early. Maybe it wouldn't kill him if he wanted to put something off, come home? But it was his call. No pressure.

He stood up and put his hands on the small of his back, did a half turn in each direction trying to get the crick out. Coming around his desk, he flicked on the room lights by the door to his office. He'd been reading in the pool of light created by the green banker's lamp on his desk, studying the first of the discovery documents in the Cole Burgess case -pictures of the crime scene, the arresting officer's reports, autopsy, interrogation transcript with Ridley Banks.

Outside in the hallway, he stood a minute listening for other signs of life in the building.

Nothing.

He walked down the half-dark stairs until he could get a view of David Freeman's office. The door was closed and no hint of light came from under it, so apparently even the old man had gone home for the night.

The laggard, he thought. Imagine Freeman going home before ten. Whatever for? He had no life outside the law.

But Hardy wished he had been there, wished he could talk to him. He stayed for a long moment on the stair, then walked the rest of the way down, into Freeman's unlocked office. If Phyllis could only see him now, he thought. But it gave him no real solace.

He went to the wet bar and poured himself three inches of Scotch, then went back to the door with his glass and took a last look at the room. 'Lazy slug,' he muttered aloud.

Back upstairs in his office, his drink on his desk, he pulled three darts from the board and paced off the distance to the tape line he'd put down at the eight-foot mark. Throwing easily, willing his mind to go empty, he hit the 20, 19, and 18 on the first round. He noticed, but just barely, and went to the board to retrieve the round, then went back around his desk, swallowed a mouthful of his drink, and picked up the telephone again, punched in the hospital's number. 'Intensive care nurses' station,' he said.

Glitsky was still incommunicado. As of now, it wasn't certain he would ever again be otherwise. He was under heavy sedation.

The call got bounced to the nurse's station, where they filled him in on more of the nothing that had changed in the two hours since he'd called last time. There was no one else at the hospital that Hardy could talk to. Glitsky's father and son had gone home. His condition was listed as guarded.

Hardy hung up, looked at the darts, still in his hand, wondered where they had come from. He drank some Scotch. Half-heartedly, he opened one of the folders in front of him.

And there it was again, staring him in the face – the damning, nearly incontrovertible evidence against Cole Burgess.

Who, Hardy reminded himself not to forget, had never once denied that he had killed Elaine Wager after all. At best, he'd said he couldn't remember.

And Hardy didn't kid himself. He thought that there was an excellent chance that Cole had in fact killed Elaine. He might be able to fashion an argument to convince a jury that his client was legally innocent. He absolutely believed that this was not a special circumstances death penalty murder no matter what. But nothing could hide the terrible fact of what had happened.

And if Cole had been prowling the alleys looking for prey – and that appeared to have been the case – and then killed Elaine because he was strung out and just didn't quite understand what exactly was happening – then Hardy didn't like where he was.

And the more he looked, the more he saw.

Both of the arresting officers told essentially the same story, even if their reports had slightly different details -most notably, one of them said he heard a shot and its ricochet during the chase. But the rest of the facts were undisputed and, from Hardy's perspective, depressing and damning.

One of the most difficult problems Hardy was going to face when this thing came to trial was the whole question of the character of the defendant. Now, the good news regarding character is that neither side could mention character in any relevant context unless the defense brought it up first. After that, though, it was open season.

So Hardy sensed that he was going to be faced with a dilemma. If he brought it up that Cole was really an OK person who just had a disease – addiction – and could supply witnesses such as high school teachers, old friends, his mother, and so on, to prove it, then Torrey could bring up the years of theft, petty crimes and minor assaults that were part and parcel of Cole's history. And even if Hardy didn't raise Cole's character in the guilt phase of the trial, the jury would hear about the facts of this crime.

And they were particularly ugly.

The police had come upon Cole after he had picked the body clean of its jewelry. They discovered all of it on his person, in his pockets. He had ripped a heavy gold necklace from around Elaine's throat, slicing the skin of her neck in the process. He'd pulled a half-carat diamond engagement ring off her finger, breaking the finger at the knuckle as he did so. He had ripped the earrings from her pierced earlobes. He had inflicted all of these injuries post mortem, according to the autopsy. They were the only bruises and marks, except the bullet entry wound, on Elaine's body.

And Cole had – quite definitely – inflicted them.

He didn't remember that, either.

He'd gone through her purse, taking the money from her wallet, leaving the credit cards, apparently realizing, even in his stupor, that no one would mistake him for an Elaine.

Which led Hardy to the whole question of Cole's sobriety or lack of it during the commission of the crime. Everyone – the arresting officers, Banks, Glitsky – agreed that he seemed to be either drunk or stoned, but as he read over the documents, Hardy realized that there was no proof of that either. No one had given him a breath or blood test, and they'd sweated him long enough that by the time he'd been admitted to the hospital, his blood-alcohol level was about at zero. The prosecution could easily argue that Cole's apparent unconsciousness after his arrest in the police car was an act, and Hardy would be hard put to refute it.

Especially in light of Cole's flight when the arresting officers flushed him. His eventual crash into the hydrant notwithstanding, Cole had run swiftly and with determination away from the pursuing officer, so much so that he had been pulling away during the chase and, if not for the hydrant, nearly invisible on the dark night at street level, would quite possibly have escaped. He was not staggering, not speaking with any slur more noticeable than his usual drug-addict drawl.

After they put him in the squad car, he apparently passed out. Hardy could argue that the adrenaline had kicked in, then worn off. But it was not going to be an easy sell.

He closed the folder again, looked at his drink which had evaporated, checked his watch. It was ten thirty. He considered calling the hospital again, but realized he couldn't bear to hear it tonight.