Hunt decided not to say that she looked pretty damn good to him just like she was. "I'm sure I can find something," he said.

Now she was wearing one of his black pullovers over a T-shirt and a pair of his jeans with a length of rope to gather the waist. They were drinking coffee at the table in Hunt's kitchen. "So how do I thank you?" she asked.

"No need. You were in trouble. I'm supposed to leave you passed out in the street?"

"Some people might have."

"No human beings."

"Well…thank you." She sipped at her coffee. "It keeps coming back to me. I hate a public scene."

"I've seen worse," Hunt said.

"Did I hit him?"

"Yes, you did. A slap, really."

"That's inexcusable."

Hunt shrugged. "He'd been lying to you."

"Still. That's no excuse. Once the hitting starts, excuses get lame pretty quick."

"I have noticed that."

Something about the way he said it stopped her, the cup halfway to her mouth. "That sounds like personal experience?"

"Maybe a bit."

"If you don't want to talk about it…"

"No, it's all right. I spent time in a few foster homes when I was a kid, that's all. I found that once the old corporal punishment barrier got broken…as you say, any excuse became a good one."

She put her cup down. "You were a foster kid?"

He nodded. "For a while. Till I was eight. I was lucky. I got adopted."

"At eight?"

"I know, it's unusual." He made a face. "I must have been cuter then."

"Well," she said, "maybe in a different way. But you know, then, too, about getting hit."

"Too? Who hit you?"

She drew in a deep breath and let it out. "My mother's second husband. Richie. He was a big believer in discipline, and I was his favorite."

"Why was that?"

"You're sure you want to know this?"

"I asked."

She sighed. "I think because I tried to fight him off. Note the key word, 'tried.' Luckily, he was only around for a year."

"What happened?"

"Mom found out. About me. She got him to come at her, and she killed him. They called it self-defense."

"Sounds like it was."

A small smile began, faded. "Close enough, I guess." Twirling her cup on the table now. "I apologize for all the melodrama."

"It's all right. I can take it."

"Anyway, it's why I'm so disgusted if I hit Spencer, even if he's a shit. I thought I'd trained myself never to do that."

"You think maybe you got drunk and saw a little of Richie in Spencer?"

"I don't want to think that. I don't want to see Richie in anybody."

"But he's always around?"

"The memory. Somewhere, yes. And I know what you're going to say next."

"If you do, you're a step ahead of me."

"I doubt that."

"Okay, so what was I going to say?"

"That you know why I crave this public adulation, the anchor thing."

"Do you? Crave it, I mean?"

"I must. Deep down, I don't think I feel too worthy of any one person's affection. I'm damaged goods. So maybe enough love from the masses makes up for the lack of it from any one person. How's that for a theory?"

"Painful." Hunt started to move a hand across the table to cover hers, the comfort of a sympathetic touch. He didn't let it get there.

She went on. "I can't think of how else or why else…anyway, I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Hunt said. "Love. That's a bad thing for a person to want." He finished his coffee, put his cup down. "No more apologies, okay? How's the head?"

"The head pounds. The head is going for a new record."

"Well, as long as you get something positive out of it."

A feeble smile, then the structure of her face seemed to break somewhat. Tears threatened again. "What's really funny is that Spencer was really just the last straw. You know why I got involved with him in the first place?"

"You wanted to be a star."

"Okay, that. But mostly to get out of San Francisco. To New York or anywhere else. And to do it as a celebrity. That would just show…" She twirled her coffee cup.

"Show what?"

"Not what. Who." She drew a breath and spoke under it. "Another guy. We broke up six months ago, just when Donolan was starting. I was too serious, he said. He didn't want serious. Besides, he had a new girlfriend. Two years we're together, and he didn't want serious. We were adults, colleagues. The professional side would just be the same."

"And it was?"

"That's the killer. It was." She met Hunt's eyes. "Then Spencer showed up. And the new gig. And suddenly that all became a way to get out."

"To get away from this other guy?"

She nodded. "I couldn't stand to keep seeing him, but we had to meet all the time. Work. Prison guard stuff, CCPOA. Piersall's bread and butter, as you know."

But Hunt hadn't realized that. "I thought they were just another client."

"Not exactly. In fact, they're number one for us. Six or eight million in billings."

"Every year? Are they in the market for their own private investigator?"

"I don't think you'd like working for them."

"For any whole number percentage of eight mil I'd try. I'd try really hard." Hunt came back to the nut of it. "So you had to keep seeing this guy professionally? You couldn't just bail on him?"

"You don't bail on that kind of business and stay employed. Not at Piersall."

"So New York was the answer?"

"Well, it was an answer." She spun her cup, forced a weak smile. "I think it's time I called a cab."

"You don't need a cab. I'll take you home."

"No. You've already done too much. I'll just get a cab."

"We're not arguing about it," Hunt said. "Grab your clothes. It's time I got out in the world today, anyway. I can drop you."

Juhle didn't get into the homicide detail until a little after ten. He assumed that since he'd been out working the Palmer-now the Palmer/Rosalier-case until the wee hours of the morning, Lieutenant Lanier would be inclined to cut him some slack on his regular hours. This turned out not to be the case for a couple of reasons.

First, his partner was at his desk before eight o'clock, shaved and polished and writing up a report on Mary Mahoney's identification of Staci Rosalier, including the fact that the young female victim had been Palmer's kept woman. CSI was searching the condominium again more thoroughly this morning and hoped to have a lot more to give homicide, plus next of kin information, before the end of the day.

The other reason that Lanier wasn't in a forgiving mood was that the two special agents of the FBI who were also on the case had arranged with him to convene an informal task force meeting at nine thirty in his office with Juhle and Shiu and the other two investigators with the Department of Homeland Security.

So everyone wouldn't step on each other's toes.

By the time Juhle arrived, it was clear that Shiu had sold their case pretty well. He had shared his information about the relationship between Rosalier and the judge, as well as the testimony of the neighbor, Ms. Levin, about Mrs. Palmer's car being out in front of the house at the time of the shooting while she was supposedly in Novato. In spite of all the potential jurisdictional issues confronting them, Shiu convinced every one of the other five professional investigators in Lanier's office that the most likely scenario for the double homicide was that the wife had discovered her husband's infidelity and somehow had known that he and the girl would be in her home while she was supposed to be away. Either that or she'd lured them there under some pretext.

All that remained, Shiu had told them, was to break Mrs. Palmer's alibi with her sister and, if they were lucky, find the murder weapon, although she had probably disposed of it somewhere along the road or in the Bay on her drive back to her sister's house in Novato. The bottom line was that it appeared to be a crime of passion, personal and local, and hence under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Police Department.