"What are you saying?"

"Just my evil mind at work. Wondering if somebody else snagged it – afraid their voice might get identified."

"Dreyer?"

"Maybe there was something on there he got worried about. Like they'd argued, and he threatened her. He could have taken it that night, while she was knocked out. Or made copies of her keys, and come back when the super wasn't around. You got his address?"

Monks checked in his shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper he had copied from the Emergency Room.

"Haver Street. Looks like a few blocks west of Van Ness."

Larrabee leaned out the window to check the side mirror, then pulled into traffic.

"I can't wait to meet him," Larrabee said.

Ray Dreyer's building was a very different order of business from Eden Hale's – an old Victorian that had been chopped up into apartments, like a lot of others in the area, and like many of them, down-at-heels. The street was lined with distinctly unglamorous cars, the sidewalk cracked and gummy. The apartment windows were not open to the light and filled with plants, like in some of the city's other areas. Most were heavily curtained. In the entry, there was an old intercom system that looked defunct. Dreyer's name was not listed next to any of the buzzers, anyway. Only a couple names were.

They got back in Larrabee's van and punched Dreyer's number on the speakerphone. The same machine answered as last time.

"It's Dr. Monks, Ray. Pick up if you're there. This is important."

The phone clicked. Dreyer said, "Yeah?" in a tone that managed to sound both indolent and impatient.

"I'm outside your place," Monks said. "I want to come in and talk to you."

"What about?"

"Eden."

"We talked about Eden. I got nothing more to say."

"Some new questions have come up," Monks said.

"You can tell them to my lawyer. You're going to be talking to him anyway."

"I'm going to be talking to your lawyer? What about?"

"I'm filing a wrongful-death suit against you, dude."

Monks stared at the phone in his hand, then dropped it on the seat and yanked open the van's door. Larrabee grabbed his arm.

"Hang on," Larrabee hissed into his ear. "You can beat the shit out of him as soon as we get inside."

Larrabee picked up the phone. "You're going to need a lawyer all right, Ray, but not for the reason you think."

"Who's this?" Dreyer said suspiciously.

"I'm a private investigator who used to be a cop, and I can have you in jail within an hour."

'That's bullshit." His voice was scornful, but working at it.

"She was murdered, Ray, we're sure of that now," Larrabee lied.

"Murdered?"

"And you were the last one with her."

"You're fucking crazy," Dreyer said.

Larrabee did not speak. The silence lasted perhaps ten seconds.

"What good's it going to do me, talking to you?" Dreyer said.

"I'm sick of sitting out here. Open the door, or not."

Monks watched the building door steadily, his brain on hold.

"I'll buzz you in," Dreyer finally said. "It's number seven, third floor."

The stairway was scarred old oak, spacious, and once even grand, but now musty with the smell of invisible lives. The door to apartment number seven was open. It was a studio, with worn, stained carpet of a bilious green, an unmade Murphy bed, and a few pieces of cheap old furniture. There was a lot of stuff strewn around.

Ray Dreyer was standing in the middle of it, arms folded, head cocked to one side – challenging. He was wearing the kind of nylon jogging suit favored by those who never jogged and had a cigarette toward the corner of his mouth, in a sort of James Dean imitation.

Monks went in first and walked toward him, in a steady, even stride. On the last step, he swung his open left hand from his waist, coming hard off that foot, pivoting his hips with the swing, and then snapping them back. His palm landed across the side of Dreyer's face with a jolt Monks felt to his shoulder. It picked Dreyer up in the air, half turned him, and set him down facing the other direction. The cigarette went flying across the room and bounced off a wall. When he landed, he lurched another couple of steps with the momentum, hands flailing for something to grab. He caught hold of a threadbare couch, used it to turn himself clumsily around, and came scrabbling back toward Monks.

"You cocksucker!" he screamed, fists clenched. "I'm having you arrested!"

Monks stood without moving, hands ready, breathing heavily.

Larrabee, unperturbed, walked to the smoking cigarette and ground it into the carpet with his heel. Then he sat on a corner of a table, one foot dangling. He opened his wallet and held it at eye level, showing his license.

"Let me explain to you how this is going to go, Ray," Larrabee said. "First off, Eden dumped you to move up here. Wouldn't even give you a key to her new place. You came after her anyway. That's called stalking.

"Then you let her die. If you'd been with her, like you were legally obligated to be, she'd have gotten to the hospital on time.

"And now, you're trying to turn a, profit on it. You got any idea how all that's going to look?"

Dreyer clapped his own hand to the reddening side of his face, then stared at it, as if he expected to see it dripping with blood. The look in his eyes was extremely ugly, but he was not making any more moves to fight.

"We're your friends," Larrabee said. "We might be able to help you, if you tell us the truth. Believe me, the cops won't help. They like things to get tied up nice and neat."

"I'm very afraid, man," he spat out with bitter sarcasm.

"I would be if I was you," Larrabee said. "And in prison, Ray, a good-looking guy like you – let's just say your dance card's going to stay full."

"Hey, I didn't do anything. She was my fiancée."

"Yeah, you keep saying that. Seems like she saw it differently."

Monks was feeling better. In fact, a lot better. He relaxed, stepped away, took a look around the place. Among the litter of clothes and junk, there was a fair amount of photography equipment. One corner of the room was piled waist-high with stacks of contact sheets and photos. Not surprisingly, most of the ones Monks glimpsed were of women.

"I can't believe this," Dreyer muttered.

"Believe it," Larrabee said. "Let's start with something simple. Did you take the phone answering machine from her apartment?"

"Why the fuck would I do that? Are you telling me somebody did?"

"I'm asking you if you did," Larrabee said. "Just like the cops will."

"The last time I was in there was when I took her home from the clinic. Everything was just the same as always."

"Where'd you go when you left her?"

"Why is that important?" Dreyer said. His belligerent gaze shifted evasively.

"It's called an alibi," Larrabee said patiently.

Dreyer sat abruptly on the couch, shoulders sagging. His hands clasped together between his knees, fingers pulling at each other.

"There's this woman, an actress. She's fan-fucking-tastic, drop-dead gorgeous. You'd recognize her name."

"Why don't you tell us?"

Dreyer hesitated, but then said – proudly, Monks thought – "She goes by Coffee."

Larrabee nodded, but Monks drew a blank. "I don't recognize it," he said.

Dreyer snorted in disgusted disbelief.

"Coffee Trenette. She made a big splash about ten years ago," Larrabee explained. "A movie called Take Me. Haven't heard much about her since."

"She had a little drug problem," Dreyer said. "She came up to San Fran to get away from it. I'd worked with her a few times, back when. She called me up, the day Eden had the surgery."