He checked with Barbara Givens, who had taken Anna's hummingbird to a jeweler she knew. He told her that the "jewels" were just glass, eight dollars' worth max, but the workmanship was very good. He had seen similar decorative hummingbirds for sale but couldn't remember where- possibly at the swap meet in Oceanside.

He talked to Johnny for almost half an hour, getting an earful about this new puppy his mother had bought, a chocolate Labrador retriever that he'd named Brownie. McMichael was happy at the joy in his son's voice, sad that he couldn't be there to see his face. It crushed him in some unsupportable way that he wasn't the man who had gotten his own son a dog. But Johnny was happy and McMichael smiled as he pictured his boy with the new puppy, and Dr. Clay Blass sneezing, breaking out in hives, maybe an aneurysm or sudden heart failure.

"You can see him tonight, Dad!"

"I wish I could. But your mother has plans for you."

"Oh."

McMichael let the silence murder him because he thought he deserved it.

He returned Dr. Arnold Stiles's call and learned that Courtney "Angel" Gonzalez had been killed by two.22 caliber bullets shot into her head. Stiles had found star-shaped flesh tears and unburned gunpowder around the entry wounds, which indicated "extremely close range." One bullet had entered her left temple and exited her right. One had gone in above her left ear, traveled down at a sharp angle and lodged near the cortex. The exit wound on the right temple had some very small fragments of safety glass imbedded around it.

Stiles put the time of death between December twenty-fifth and January fifth, which lined up with Penny's last sighting of Angel on Thursday, January second.

"Sorry I couldn't get more for you," said Stiles. McMichael pictured him in his blood-splattered glasses and washable necktie. "But she had at least two weeks out in that desert, Detective."

"Did she put up a fight?"

"No signs of that, but the flies, beetles, ants, coyotes and vultures worked her over pretty good. No contusions to the skull, none of her bones or teeth were broken. No ligature marks that I could make out."

"Safety glass around the wound?" asked McMichael. "Shower glass?"

"Maybe," said Stiles. "Or maybe she was sitting in a car, passenger's side. The driver just reaches out and bap, bap. The bullet went through the soft part of her head and through the window. Thus the glass frags. Drive and dump. I doubt you got tire tracks with all the storms."

McMichael imagined the wine-colored SUV. He thanked the ME and hung up.

One contemplative minute later he got a call from Barbara Givens: Dylan Feder had been arrested for public drunkenness in Palm Springs. Palm Springs PD ran a warrant check and when it came up hot, they called Dade County. Feder's P.O. had thought of Feder's connection in San Diego.

One less creep to worry about here, thought McMichael. He thought of Sally Rainwater sitting in jail.

An hour before his shift was to end, he drove down to the waterfront and walked along the Embarcadero, trying to clear his mind of sleeplessness, feelings of having failed Johnny, and a steady hum of doubt about the coming night. He'd seen the same doubt in Rawlings's eyes.

He walked past the cafes and tour boats, past the Berkeley and the Star of India, glancing up at a darkening sky that refused to allow optimism. Another storm front was coming in and McMichael thought he could feel a barometric drop in his own body, this sense that things were about to change.

He checked the postcards in the tour boat shop, wondered who might like a note and a picture of San Diego Harbor. He bought one for Johnny, slid it into his pocket.

At a stand offering ocean-themed T-shirts he looked at the whales and dolphins pictured on the cotton, wondered why artists had to make their faces look human. He pictured the living Angel Gonzalez- a pretty girl of seemingly average intelligence with no meanness in her that he had ever seen.

A jewelry maker had set up a small card table to show off his wares. There were necklaces made of coral and shells, matching bracelets. And jewelry boxes, too, covered with faux gemstones in red and green and amber.

Dangling by monofilament from a small branch of driftwood was a flock of hummingbirds, turning absently in the breeze, their detailed glass feathers catching the last of the afternoon light. McMichael touched one.

"I've got tabletop hummingbirds, too," said the craftsman, bringing up a bag from his side of the table. He was short and gray-haired, with an enormous mustache and hoops in his left ear. "Here."

He pulled a small cardboard box from the bag, opened it and set the bird on the table.

"Anna's hummingbird," said McMichael.

"I've got some ruby-throats and some hybrids, too."

The bird on the table looked, to McMichael, almost identical to the one they'd found in Sally Rainwater's house.

You don't know quality when you see it.

"May I?"

"Go for it."

He picked it up and set it in his palm. Just like Pete's, he thought: head up, tail fanned, little wings extended. The crown was a shroud of pale violet made of tiny glass drops. The eyes were black and the body a metallic silver. And when you set it on a flat surface, which he did, it balanced just barely on two small, flattened feet.

"Sell a lot of these?"

"A lot."

"Recently?"

"It's been a few days. Last month I'd say ten. Stocking stuffers. They're only thirty-five dollars."

The most beautiful man-made thing I've ever seen.

"Where'd you get the idea?"

"Friend of my dad, old tuna boat skipper. He had one from Panama, only with real jewels. I was just a kid but I never forgot it. He got murdered two weeks ago."

"Been making them long?"

"Off and on, thirty years. The public changes. One year it's birds. Next it's flowers. Then angels. After nine eleven it was all flags but that's tapered off."

"I'll take this one," said McMichael.

"She's a beauty."

Bland came home at six thirty-seven that evening. He parked in his garage then came out to the driveway, holding a small bouquet of flowers. He examined the moths swirling around the streetlamp. He wore the same gray suit and brown shoes that never seemed to change, the same placid, thorough expression that had gotten him through almost four decades of police work. He looked at the surveillance van for a while, tapping the flowers against his leg, and McMichael wondered if he was going to come over to check it out.

"Don't even dream about it," said Hector.

Bland turned and went back into the garage. McMichael saw the garage door lurch downward and the house door swing open to a rectangle of domestic light.

At seven-thirty they ate cooling take-out tacos and drank more coffee. At nine-thirty the lights in the Bland house went off. Almost an hour later McMichael saw the garage door rise and Bland's take-home Crown Victoria back into the street and turn in their direction.

They slumped down below dashboard level and McMichael watched the Crown Vic's headlights move across the headliner front to back, then heard the big Ford swoosh past fast.

The homer led them south. They picked up Bland on Adams and tailed him three cars back to Interstate 15 southbound. Bland made the light and they didn't, and by the time they got the big van moving on the freeway the Crown Victoria was nowhere in sight. But the homer beeped faster and louder when McMichael hit ninety in the fast lane, just in time to follow Bland onto the 805 south.

"He's in a goddamned hurry," said Hector.

"Maybe he wants to see his shipment arrive," said McMichael.

"If he makes our guys, we're dead."