"Make sure Barbara's there."

Two hours later he had it.

She opened the door and her face went white and blank. Her dark eyes went from McMichael to Hector and Barbara, then back to McMichael. He couldn't tell what filled them- fury or disappointment or just surprise.

"Sorry," he said. "We need to have a look around."

"For what?"

"Meperidine, strychnine and stolen property from Pete Braga's home," he said, holding up the document. "It's all right here, under scope of search. We ask you to stay and help us."

"Help you?" She looked past him to the two uniforms standing out in the sand. She was wearing sweats and athletic shoes and her old denim jacket over a sweater.

She threw the door closed but McMichael had his toe in and the door bounced off and slowly shuddered open. She had stepped back into the kitchen, and the stare with which she met him as he came into her house was like nothing McMichael had ever seen before. He had seen anger, but never so focused, never so personal. The uniforms barged in behind him.

"Stay with her," said McMichael.

"Yes, sir."

Sally Rainwater turned her back to them, stood in front of her kitchen sink, put her hands on the counter for support and stared out her drafty louvered window toward Tijuana.

Down inside the radiator vent in the second bedroom, Barbara found a Libertad pyramids box containing a pair of almost comically large diamond earrings hidden in a pair of men's socks.

In the attic, among a collection of old paint cans and solvents and stains, Hector found an aspirin bottle containing eight capsules of what appeared to be Demerol.

In the top of the crowded hallway closet McMichael found two Dunhill cigar boxes containing what looked like about twenty thousand cash. And a small wadded paper bag containing Anna's hummingbird, once described by Sally as the most beautiful man-made thing she'd ever seen.

Sally Rainwater stared down at the collection, arranged by McMichael on the coffee table in her living room.

"I've never seen those things before," she said.

"What, they crawled in here and hid themselves?" asked Hector.

"I need a lawyer," she said.

"Lawyers are for people charged with crimes," said Barbara, the standard cop line for getting someone to talk without one. "You're not charged. Can you explain these things?"

Sally continued to stare at the evidence against her. The angle of her head suggested puzzlement, her tears suggested grief. But, as McMichael saw when she looked at him, her eyes were fury.

"I trusted you."

"Everyone's got a sad story," said Hector, while the uniform cuffed her hands. Hector Mirandized her, reading off the card to get it right.

McMichael and his son walked into Spellacy's at six, collected Gabriel off his stool and got a booth. The place was already busy, Friday night- darts and billiards in the back, the bar three deep and loud, waitresses squeezing through the crowds with serving trays while Celtic-rock-fusion music whinnied through the loudspeakers. Hugh wasn't tending the bar tonight, McMichael noticed, but his brother Clancy seemed to be handling things just fine.

McMichael sat across from his father and son and was momentarily lifted from his dark mood by the sight of them together. With Johnny, Gabriel was far lighter than McMichael ever remembered him. His father listened, which was nearly absent from McMichael's memories of boyhood. The two talked and joked and Gabriel gave Johnny liberties that McMichael rarely did- indulging some pretty bad manners, rolling with Johnny's puerile insults, encouraging Johnny's jokes: Under the Toilet Seat by Seymor Butts! Yellow River by I. P. Freeley! Brown Trail by Squat and Leavitt!

Another little boy came over and challenged Johnny to darts. McMichael watched them hustle to the bar to get darts from Clancy Spellacy, then edge through the crowd to an open board.

Gabriel waved a waitress over for another shot and a Guinness. McMichael stuck with his barely touched half-pint.

"We arrested the nurse," he said. "We're not sure exactly how she figures in, but somehow."

Gabriel blinked his clear blue eyes. "His caretaker, Tommy! Lots of that in the news these days- the younger generation preying on the older."

"Yeah."

"Drink up. You've got a whole weekend to forget about it and be with your boy. What you shouldn't forget is that Pete was shown the same mercy he showed your grandfather."

"I'll remember, Pop."

"Who was trying to feed a family."

"I know."

Gabriel eyed him with slightly drunken affection.

Tim Keller pulled up a chair while they ate dinner, tried to enlist McMichael in a Sons of Ireland pancake breakfast on Sunday after church. He said Irish cops always made the best breakfast chefs- Rourke and O'Grady from the sheriff's would be there. He studied McMichael with his cheerful, delinquent eyes.

After dinner McMichael and his son walked down to the waterfront, then south toward Broadway. They stopped in the Harbor Cruise coffeeshop for hot chocolate then fell in with the light foot traffic on the boardwalk.

Victor Braga shuffled along a hundred feet ahead of them, headphones on, carrying a heavy plastic bag in each hand.

"There's Victor Braga," said Johnny. "But Grandpa didn't do it."

The story- with Gabriel as the guilty attacker- had found Johnny's ears on his first-grade playground one day. Johnny had come home, excited that his grandfather was the star of a legend. McMichael and Stephanie had told him their agreed-upon version: Johnny's great-grandfather, Franklin, had been cheated out of money by a boat captain, and the captain had killed him. Someone-no one knows who- had beaten up the captain's son a little while later. Victor, the son, was never the same after the beating. Some people blamed the beating on Grandpa Gabriel. Others said he didn't do it. Tim Keller said he was with Grandpa that night and Grandpa didn't do it. Grandpa always said he was innocent, and we believe him. In this country you are innocent until proven guilty.

"How retarded is he?" asked Johnny, spooning the whipped cream into his mouth.

"Keep your voice down. Age ten, I heard."

"What grade is that?" whispered Johnny.

"Fifth, say."

"Fifth-graders get to walk around at night?"

"Not usually."

"How old is he, really?"

"Grandpa's age- sixty-three or so."

"How old is that in dog years?"

"About nine."

"I wish I had a dog."

"We'll get you one someday. That's a promise, John."

They turned up Broadway to the car, Johnny slopping the hot chocolate on his jacket while McMichael watched Victor trudge patiently southward toward Tuna Harbor.

After Johnny went to bed, McMichael poured an illogically large glass of tequila, added some ice and sank down into his couch. He turned on the local news, volume low. The tequila did nothing to clarify his thoughts so he drank more. All it really did was make him want to go back to the night he'd driven to Sally Rainwater's house to tell her that her prints weren't on the fish club and that her story checked and that she was, what, beautiful and he just wanted to look at her?- to go back to that drive down Silver Strand Boulevard, turn the damned Crown Vic around and drive it home. He leaned his head against the sofa, shaking it slowly. Too late. Too late for that. Too late for everything. Too late for him and Steffy. Too late for Gabe and Victor and Patricia and Garland. Too late for everybody, like we're all gears notched just wrong into the gears next to us- one giant clock, always off, too late, too late, too late.