McMichael and Hector traded glances, and it hit McMichael.

I met a nice guy last week. Local restaurateur. Very French. Very handsome, very mysterious.

"Why do you need a computer to tell that?" asked Hector.

Proulx smiled. It was a happy, uneven grin. "It just helps me remember. These winter nights? They all seem very similar."

"Tell me about Libertad," said McMichael.

"I stayed there for maybe one hour. I talked to the owner. At twelve-thirty I walked back here to my apartment. It is over us, on floor four."

"Then what?" asked Hector.

"I drank two glasses of Bordeaux and showered. I was in the bed by one or one-thirty."

"Alone?" asked McMichael.

Proulx looked down with an air of reluctance, rolled his shoulders. "I was with a woman."

"Raegan," said McMichael. He stared at Proulx, but saw Hector glance his way.

Proulx smiled his sunny smile but the rest of his face was dark. "Yes. Do you know her?"

"She's my sister."

Proulx looked at McMichael as if he'd been caught at something but wasn't quite sure what. "What am I being asked to do?"

"To answer simple questions," said Hector.

"Am I not to date a policeman's sister?"

"You're not to beat women or solicit prostitutes in my city," said McMichael. "I'm not so sure you should even be in my city."

"Yes, I am," said Proulx. "I have resident status. I am documented. All of that trouble is the past."

Hector leaned across the desk and looked at Proulx like he was something in a zoo. "This guy doesn't get it, Tom."

"Not fully."

"What do you got inside that skull of yours, Andre- onions?"

"Shallots, of course."

Hector pushed back from the desk, shaking his head. "Let's just deport him."

"You can't," said Proulx. "I have resident sta-"

"You tell Raegan about your criminal record?" McMichael asked.

Proulx's face hardened into a look of dinged pride. "No."

"You jerk-wad cowards never do," said Hector.

Proulx stared at him. "It's the past. I'm trying to forget it and be a better man."

"Take it easy," said Hector. "I'll tell Raegan for you."

"Please don't. I like her very much."

"But you beat the shit out of women you don't like quite so much?" asked McMichael.

"Never again," said Proulx. "Look, I was very young. And foolish. The assault was a slap, when my money was stolen. The solicitation was when I was drunk and unhappy. Never again. I have a business now, and we're doing well here. I have no time for these things."

"Any time for Angel Gonzalez?" asked McMichael.

He watched Proulx's face closely but saw no deceit in it, which meant nothing.

"I don't know Angel Gonzalez."

"Sure you do," said Hector. "She's the working girl with the pretty face and the dimples. Been up and down the sidewalk out there about a million times."

"No. I haven't seen her."

"Well, some people saw you," said McMichael. "Thursday, January two. You were in your pretty new SUV, picked up Angel Gonzalez on Broadway, drove toward the harbor."

Proulx frowned and shook his head. McMichael saw the first signs of worry in his face. "Impossible. Ask Raegan."

"If her story is any different than yours," said Hector, "I'm going to throw you back in jail."

"That's okay," said Proulx.

"What is?" asked McMichael.

"She will drop me. Raegan will drop me, but that's okay."

"My heart's breaking," said Hector.

Proulx shot a look at him, and in it McMichael saw anger and control.

"I will tell her myself," he said.

"Too late for that," said McMichael.

They sat across the street at Bombay, drinking coffee outside and waiting for Andre to come hustling out, bound for Libertad and a scene with Raegan. McMichael called her on his cell phone and confirmed that Andre Proulx had indeed been in her company on the night in question. Raegan was unhappy to learn of Andre's past but did a cavalier job of hiding it. She had always fought pain with good humor.

Proulx came outside Provençal just once, to write the specials on the sidewalk menu in bright pink chalk. Squatting in front of the stand, he traced a line down the back of the hostess's calf and she bapped him with a handful of menus, giggling.

"Creep," said Hector. "See, that's what I was saying about women. Why they put up with guys like that while it takes me two, three nights of yapping to come up with a phone number. I don't get it."

"I guess Andre does."

"Hire them for sex, beat them, lie to them. And Raegan? She's smart. She's been around, knows the score."

McMichael didn't get it either.

Just before five o'clock, a disheveled Arthur Flagler came into the Team Three pen to announce that he'd found microscopic bone fragments on Fish Whack'r #2, and that Bob Harley had coaxed fingerprints and a "respectable partial palm print" from the handle using the bench laser.

"Unfortunately, there aren't many palm prints in the fingerprint registers," he said. "Give me three days for a DNA comparison on the bone frags. I did a visual comparison of Lance Wood's prints and the prints on the inside of the gloves. No match."

McMichael smiled. "You're amazing, Arthur."

"I know."

San Diego Times reporter Rob Skelton called a little after six.

"Can you help me round out a suspect profile on Sally Rainwater?" he asked.

McMichael told him he couldn't discuss an active case or ongoing investigation- department policy. Public Information might be able to help him.

"I really don't enjoy being nosy, but were you involved with her?" asked Skelton.

"I can't discuss an active case or ongoing investigation," McMichael said again, his heart plummeting toward the lobby four floors below.

"I'm going with what I have, then," said the reporter.

McMichael hung up. Gene Goldman, he thought- Sally's lawyer- loading the cannons for battle.

He called the women's jail out in Santee.

McMichael walked into the jail at seven-thirty and said he was there to see inmate Sally Rainwater. A few minutes later the amused deputy said that he would be allowed a contact visit, not the standard phoner between the glass. He was told there would be no touching of any kind- no hugging or shaking hands- nothing.

McMichael surrendered his weapon and was pat searched before being led into a glass-walled room.

Sally came in wearing the jail suit- blue, too big, the same plastic shower sandals Jimmy Thigpen had. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her face looked caved and haunted.

They sat across a table from each other.

"You've got the wrong person," she said.

"Were you set up?"

"All the way."

"Do you know who?"

"I've got no idea."

"I'm doing what I can. Things aren't lining up just right."

"For you or for me?"

He nodded. "For anybody. Look, the press is onto us. I figure Goldman is trying to make the PD look bad. I thought we'd both be better off without bringing that in. What I'm saying is, we don't have to talk about it."

She shook her head. "I haven't told him."

McMichael saw a female deputy stroll by on the other side of the glass wall, trying to look disinterested.

"I haven't told anyone," she said. "So it had to come from your side."

McMichael felt cool pricks of sweat on his scalp. Bland. Rawlings. Barbara and Sergeant Hatter. IAD and their foot soldiers, the Professional Standards Unit. Right on down to Rob Skelton at the Times.