“I just don’t know. I can’t believe they went down there all the time and he didn’t tell me about it-it’s so far out of the way.”

Holman agreed. They could have sat around getting drunk anywhere, but they had gone down into a deserted, off-limits place like the riverbed. This implied they didn’t want to be seen, but Holman also knew that cops were like anyone else-they might have gone down there just for the thrill of being someplace no one else could go, like kids breaking into an empty house or climbing up to the Hollywood Sign.

Holman was still thinking it through when he recalled something she mentioned earlier and he asked her about it.

“You said he almost never went out late like that, but on that night he did. What was different about that night?”

She seemed surprised, but then her face darkened and a single vertical line cut her forehead. She glanced away, then looked back and seemed to be studying him. Her face was still, but Holman felt the furious motion of wheels and cogs and levers behind her eyes as she struggled with her answer.

She said, “You.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were being released the next day. That’s what was different that night, and we both knew it. We knew you were being released the next day. Richard never spoke about you with me. Do you mind me telling you these things? This is just so awful, what we’re going through right now. I don’t want to make it worse for you.”

“I asked you. I want to know.”

She went on.

“I tried talking to him about you-I was curious. You’re his father. You were my father-in-law. When Donna was still alive we both tried-but he just wouldn’t. I knew your release date was coming up. Richard knew, but he still wouldn’t talk about it, and I knew it was bothering him.”

Holman was feeling sick and cold.

“Did he say something, how it was bothering him?”

She cocked her head again, then put down her cup and turned away.

“Come see.”

He followed her back to a bedroom that was arranged as an office. Two desks were set up, one for him and one for her. The first desk, hers, was stacked with textbooks and binders and paperwork. Richie’s desk was backed into a corner where corkboards were fixed to the adjoining walls. The corkboards were covered with so many clippings and Post-it notes and little slips of paper they overlapped each other like scales on a fish. Liz brought him to Richie’s desk and pointed out the clippings.

“Take a look.”

Shootout Ends Crime Spree, Takeover Bandits Stopped, Bystander Killed in Robbery. The articles Holman skimmed were about a pair of takeover lunatics named Marchenko and Parsons. Holman had heard about them in Lompoc. Marchenko and Parsons dressed like commandos and shot up the banks before escaping with their loot.

She said, “He became fascinated with bank robberies. He clipped stories and pulled articles off the Internet and spent all of his time in here with this stuff. It doesn’t take a doctorate to figure out why.”

“Because of me?”

“Wanting to know you. A way of being close to you without being close to you was my guess. We knew you were approaching your release date. We didn’t know if you would try to contact us or if we should contact you or what to do about you. It was pretty clear he was working out his anxiety about you.”

Holman felt a flush of guilt and hoped she was wrong.

“Did he say that?”

Elizabeth didn’t look at him. Her face had closed, and now she stared at the clippings and crossed her arms.

“He wouldn’t. He never talked about you with me or his mother, but when he told me he was going to see the guys, he had been in here all evening. I think he needed to talk to them. He couldn’t talk to me about it, and now look-now look.”

Her face tightened even more with the hardness that anger brings. Holman watched her eyes fill, but was too scared to touch her.

He said, “Hey-”

She shook her head and Holman took it as a warning-like maybe she sensed he wanted to comfort her-and Holman felt even worse. Her neck and arms were bowstrings pulled taut by her anger.

“Goddamnit, he just had to go out. He had to go. Goddamnit-”

“Maybe we should go back in the living room.”

She closed her eyes, then shook her head again, but this time she was telling him she was all right-she was fighting the terrible pain and determined to kill it. She finally opened her eyes and finished her original thought.

“Sometimes it’s easier for a man to show what he feels is a weakness to another male rather than to a female. It’s easier to pretend it’s work than to deal honestly with the emotions. I think that’s what he did that night. I think that’s why he died.”

“Talking about me?”

“No, not you, not specifically-these bank robberies. That was his way of talking about you. The work was like an extra duty assignment. He wanted to be a detective and move up the ladder.”

Holman glanced at Richie’s desk, but he didn’t feel comforted. Copies of what looked like official police reports and case files were spread over the desk. Holman skimmed the top pages and realized that everything was about Marchenko and Parsons. A small map of the city was push-pinned to the board with lines connecting small X’s numbered from 1 to 13 to make a rough pattern. Richie had gone so far as to map their robberies.

Holman suddenly wondered if Richie and Liz believed he had been like them.

He said, “I robbed banks, but I never did anything like this. I never hurt anyone. I wasn’t anything like these guys.”

Her expression softened.

“I didn’t mean it like that. Donna told us how you got caught. Richard knew you weren’t like them.”

Holman appreciated her effort, but the wall was filled with clippings about two degenerates who got off by pistol-whipping their victims. It didn’t take a doctorate.

Liz said, “I don’t want to be rude, but I have to finish getting ready or I’ll end up blowing off class.”

Holman reluctantly turned away, then hesitated.

“He was working on this before he went out?”

“Yeah. He had been here all evening.”

“Were those other guys on the Marchenko thing, too?”

“Mike, maybe. He talked with Mike about it a lot. I don’t know about the others.”

Holman nodded, taking a last look at his dead son’s workplace. He wanted to read everything on Richie’s desk. He wanted to know why a uniformed officer with only a couple of years on the job was involved in a major investigation and why his son had left home in the middle of the night. He had come here for answers, but now had more questions.

Holman turned away for the final time.

“They haven’t told me about the arrangements yet. For his funeral.”

He hated to ask and hated it even more when the hardness again flashed across her face. But then she fought it back and shook her head.

“They’re having a memorial for the four of them this Saturday at the Police Academy. The police haven’t released them for burial. I guess they’re still…”

Her voice faded, but Holman understood why. These officers had been murdered. The medical examiner was probably still gathering evidence and they couldn’t be buried until all of the tests and fact-finding were complete.

Elizabeth suddenly touched his arm.

“You’ll come, won’t you? I would like you to be there.”

Holman felt relieved. He had been worried she might try to keep him away from the services. It also wasn’t lost on him that neither Levy nor Random had told him about the memorial.

“I would like that, Liz. Thank you.”

She stared up at him for a moment, then lifted on her toes to kiss Holman’s cheek.

“I wish it had been different.”

Holman had spent the past ten years wishing everything had been different.

He thanked her again when she let him out, then returned to his car. He wondered if Random would attend the memorial. Holman had questions. He expected Random to have answers.