Franks had thrown himself into a wrinkled pair of brown slacks and a stained Corona beer T-shirt. When he opened the door, he backed away a few steps. "This couldn't wait till the morning?"

Juhle held his warrant up for Franks to see, dredged a tolerant expression from somewhere. "Mr. Franks," he said in a conversational tone, "you have my word we'd rather be doing this in the morning, too. But a woman who lived in this building was shot dead the night before last and we don't feel like we've earned any rest until we've got some kind of jump on who might have killed her, which we don't have yet. We thought we might find something in her apartment that might help us. Can you understand that?"

The little speech hit its mark. Suddenly Franks was less hostile. "You said Staci Rosalier? She dead?"

Juhle nodded. "She just got identified an hour ago by a friend of hers who told us she lived here. That's why we're bothering you."

"You want to see her apartment?" But then a thought struck him. "Don't you need to have some kind of warrant for that?"

Juhle sighed and produced it again.

"Okay," Franks finally said. They walked down a dark hallway on the first floor to the office of the building, where Franks went to a cabinet, unlocked it on the third try, and pulled a key off a hook. "There you go," he said, handing it over to Juhle, "now if that's all…"

Shiu, unable to fake equanimity, hung back by the door, his arms crossed over his chest. Juhle looked at his partner, came back to Franks. "Just one or two questions."

Sighing extravagantly, Franks lowered a haunch onto the corner of his desk. He brought a hand up to his eyes and rubbed them. "Okay, what?"

"Would you notice when she had visitors?"

"No, I don't think I ever did. She could have anybody come anytime they wanted."

"But you didn't notice anyone special?"

"People are coming and going all the time. I don't pay much attention." Franks checked the wall clock. "You said only a couple of questions…"

"Yes, I did." Juhle's humor actually seemed to be improving-in spite of the hour, in spite of his broken bones. "Here's another one: Do you remember if anyone came to see her in the past few days? Anyone unusual?"

"I'm sorry," Franks said, "I just never pay attention to that. We've got almost a thousand tenants, and all of them have friends and families, most of 'em unusual one way or another. People are coming and going all the time." He straightened up off the desk. "Now if you don't need me anymore, I'm going back to bed. You can drop the key in the box when you're done."

"Thank you, sir," Juhle said, "we appreciate your cooperation."

Franks shrugged. "No problem."

In the elevator, Juhle shot a glance at Shiu. "Personable guy."

"If that was no problem," Shiu said, "I'd like to see him when he thinks he's got one."

Juhle shrugged. "He's tired."

"Who isn't?"

"Offer it up to the poor souls in purgatory."

"What's that?"

"Purgatory? Kind of like a waiting room outside of heaven, although I vaguely remember hearing it doesn't exist anymore. Wouldn't that be a bitch? What happened to all the souls waiting around in there when they decided it wasn't there?"

"Is that a real question? Let's make this quick."

Staci Rosalier had lived on the fourth floor, three steps across from the elevator, where the judge would face little danger of being recognized when he came to visit.

They opened the door and turned on the light. The condominium was high-end and modern in style and adornments but smaller than Juhle had imagined it would be. Twenty-five feet deep, maybe fifteen wide.

Four stools fronted a bar that ran along to their left. Behind it was a kitchen area with a sink and two-burner stove. The bar ended at a door to a small, shower-only bathroom. Directly across were full-length closet doors and built-in bookshelves filled with paperbacks. The far wall was all window, drapes open both sides, the ballyard across the way. He guessed that the couch was a sofa bed. There was a coffee table on an artsy-fartsy throw rug and a comfortable-looking brown leather chair under a reading lamp in the corner.

"The good life," Shiu said.

"You don't like it?"

"It's a hotel room. Nobody lives here."

"No, look," he said. "Daffodils on the bar there. Books in the shelves." Juhle was pulling on his surgical gloves. On the small table next to the sofa, he turned on a three-way reading light and picked up two framed photographs, one-badly out of focus-of a smiling young boy, and the other of Judge Palmer. "Personal photos. She lived here, all right, Shiu. She just didn't have much room."

Shiu was already behind the bar, poking around in the cabinets, the drawers, the refrigerator. He was reaching into a closet when Juhle grabbed his arm. "Gloves," he said.

Juhle opened another closet filled with clothes and a dozen or more pairs of shoes. Staci had color-coded the hangers. He turned. "Here's the wallet." On a built-in chest of drawers. Moving out into the room, he sat on the sofa and began emptying the wallet's contents onto the coffee table in front of him. Cash-four fifties and four ones. Credit cards. Library card. Social Security. Costco. A smaller version of the same fuzzy snapshot of the boy. One of the judge-much more casual than the formal office shot she'd framed and taken in this room, Juhle realized-in the reading chair, grinning.

Juhle made an unconscious noise and the sound stopped Shiu. "What?"

"That's weird."

"What?"

Juhle shrugged, held up a business card. "Andrea Parisi." At Shiu's blank look, he thought fast and said, "The TV expert on the Donolan trial?"

"Ah." Shiu placed the name, but neither it nor the card had any significance to him. "What is weird about her? She hangs out with the judge, she's going to know some lawyers. Plus," he added, "you know as well as me, MoMo's is famous lawyer land."

"Yeah, you're right." Juhle didn't see any need to tell his partner that his friend Wyatt Hunt was sometimes her jogging buddy. And that he had been regaling him with Andrea Parisi fantasies for the past six weeks or so. Instead, he placed the business card back with the other contents of the wallet. "But it's funny that this is the only card she kept."

Shiu didn't think so. "Maybe, like every other waitress in the world, she wanted to get into television."

"That's not here. That's in L.A."

"It's everywhere," Shiu said. "It's a universal truth. Anyway, I bet we find a stack of other business cards in some drawer here. Either that, or Staci got that card and hadn't thrown it away yet. Besides, you and I know this doesn't have anything to do with Andrea Parisi."

"We could pretend. Spend a little time with her cute little self." Juhle cracked a grin, got no response from his partner, tried again. "Spend a little time with her cute-"

"I heard you."

"That was a stab at humor."

"Adultery's not something you joke about."

"You are so wrong, Shiu. Adultery's no lower than number three on the list of all-time joke topics. In fact, there's this Irishman, Paddy, who hasn't been to church in something like twenty years, and this one day-"

"Dev." Shiu held a palm up. "It's something I don't want to joke about, okay?"

"So along with religion and ethnic and gay and women, now you don't do adultery. Christ, what's left?"

"Why does there have to be anything?" Shiu sat down on one of the stools. "Devin," he said, "it's the middle of the night. We're investigating a double homicide that's all about adultery, okay? We know we're going to arrest Jeannette Palmer in the next week, maybe sooner than that. Her life will be ruined, already is ruined. This young woman is dead. So is a federal judge. None of this is funny. And Connie wouldn't find it funny that you want to get cozy with Andrea Parisi."