Lanier's mouth turned upward briefly in a parody of a smile. "That's a fine idea, Devin, except for the press conference that I'm supposed to be giving in about two hours."

Juhle shrugged. "The investigation is continuing. Tell 'em we're making progress. Which we are. Reporters love progress."

"We all do. But what would that progress be in this case?"

"Eliminating suspects. We don't have to tell them Jeannette's out because, in fact, maybe she's not. We're just pretty sure she wasn't the shooter."

Lanier didn't like that. "Pretty sure?"

Shiu stood at attention. "My money, she's still in it."

Lanier turned his head. "What about you, Dev?"

Not exactly exuding enthusiasm, Juhle lowered his chin an inch, which served as a nod. "Barring something pretty weird, it's probably true she couldn't have been there for the shooting, sir. She was up in Marin."

Shiu spoke up in a hurry. "But that doesn't mean she couldn't have planned it and hired someone."

"That's where you're going with this?"

"I think it's still our best shot, sir. One thing's sure-if Mrs. Palmer knew about the Rosalier girl, she's got the best motive. We'll be trying to find out if she did and if so, how."

"So she's still the focus?" Lanier asked. "Just on the off chance somebody with the feebs comes and asks."

"We're not ready to abandon the motive, Marcel," Juhle said. "Oh, and I did mention she got herself lawyered up, didn't I? Everett Washburn."

Although retaining an attorney was universally viewed by the cops as nearly tantamount to an admission of guilt, in this case the news didn't rock Lanier much. "You'd expect that, wouldn't you? Judge's wife. She knows the game. But Washburn, shit."

"Yes, sir," Juhle said. "High-powered. Good news is maybe it takes a couple of years before it gets to trial and he'll die before then."

Lanier shook his head. "I wouldn't get my hopes up. Prosecutors have been saying that for the past ten years. The old fart's going to live forever. He's too smart to die."

But clearly Mrs. Palmer's choice of legal representation wasn't his main concern. He leaned back in his chair, cast his gaze up to the ceiling for a minute. When he came back down to his inspectors, his face was set. "I want you to understand, Shiu, that I agree with you that she's got a good motive. Hell, the classic motive, no question. So I'm just being devil's advocate here a minute."

Juhle was starting to like this. In the old days, when he was paired with Shane Manning, the two of them would toss case theories back and forth all day long, dig into them for nuances, contradictions, contexts. Lanier might be the boss, but he'd come up through the ranks and had been an inspector himself for fifteen years. This was what cops did, how they talked, the way they thought. Juhle wondered for the hundredth time what he'd done to deserve his current partner, who just didn't have a cop's imagination. Standing here by the desk, rooted to the floor, for example.

"Excuse me, before you start," Juhle said, "my esteemed colleague here actually likes standing at attention all day, but I'd really like to sit down." Amazingly, his partner moved, crossing behind the desk to the far chair while Juhle took the near one. "Okay," Juhle said when he'd taken the load off, "advocate."

Lanier wasted no time, held up a finger. "First, professional hit is your call, am I right?"

"Right," Shiu said. "Best case."

"Okay, a couple of questions. Like, how do you explain the slug in the book? The shooter's three, four feet max, from his targets, who at the very least aren't moving much. Palmer's in his chair. How does he clean miss? And okay, of course, gun's go off by themselves, but just to think about. Next, what's this nonsense about how they can tell that the shooter is probably short? Like kid-size, small-woman-size."

Juhle snapped his fingers. "That rent-a-midget place," he said.

Shiu painted on a frustrated look that Lanier ignored and went on. "The other question is where does a woman like Jeannette Palmer find a professional killer, first, who's going to trust her, and second, who she's going to know how to talk to once she finds him, if she can get that far? How does she even ask? What, she's doing research for a book or something?"

Shiu spoke up. "Are you suggesting we drop it?"

"No. But I do think it's a reach."

"Why is that?" Shiu asked.

Lanier gave it another moment, considering. "Okay, the stuff I've just mentioned, for starters. Not insignificant, especially setting up the deal in the first place. Next, no scuff marks on any of the slugs, which means no silencer. Another small point, I grant you, but if I'm shooting somebody-make that two people-during daylight hours in a street-facing room in a house in a quiet, highend residential neighborhood, even if I'm using a.22 pistol, I'm trying to keep the noise down, you know. Simple precaution."

Lanier paused, picked at a spot on his right ear. A silence built in the small room, but the lieutenant obviously had more to say, and evidently even Shiu saw the wisdom in letting him get to it uninterrupted.

"You know what's the real thing, though?" he asked. "I'm picturing the moment, okay. Palmer's in his big leather chair, the girl is next to him, the shooter's across the desk." He shook his head. "I just don't see it."

"Why not?" Shiu asked.

"May I?" Juhle asked.

Lanier nodded.

"It's too far away," Juhle said. "The judge let him in-we've got no sign of forced entry. Okay, say, he showed the gun at the door, backed everybody in. No way do they get to the office with the judge sitting in his chair. No, the second he's inside, the shooter pops him in the head right now, then goes for the girl. They are not all somehow chatting in the office."

"I have no trouble with any of that." Shiu had sat back, crossed his legs, spoke to Juhle, while including Lanier. But a tone of defensiveness crept in. His back was straight and stiff against the wooden chair. "But maybe the person didn't appear to be a threat. Maybe the judge knew him. Or her. And the victims thought they were going to be able to talk things out."

The guy even sits at attention, Juhle was thinking. He said, "It's not a deal breaker, but there is one more thing." He turned to Lanier. "He shoots the girl again, am I right, Marcel?"

"I think so," Lanier said. He lowered his voice, shifted to face Shiu a bit more. "She went down after the shot, but there's no visible wound. What do you do if she's your contract? He's already missed at least once. She might have fainted, or even ducked. A pro doesn't leave her there without making sure. He comes around the desk and puts another one in her brain. And probably another one for the judge as well."

"At that range, he would know they were dead if he hit them in the head." Shiu sat with all of their objections for a long moment. Finally, he said, "I still think that somehow it has to involve Mrs. Palmer."

"And I agree that it's a strong assumption," Juhle said. In fact, he'd seen enough homicides to know that the taking of lives almost always involved a great deal of sloppiness. Retaliatory gang hits would as a matter of course take out four bystanders and leave the intended victim untouched. A woman would plan to kill her cheating boyfriend, wouldn't put enough rat poison in the peas-or he'd taste it halfway through-and they'd wind up in a knife fight that left them both dead. Strung-out, part-time hit men had been known to hit the wrong guy. Oops.

But beyond the randomness that often accompanied violent death, depending on who you asked, Juhle knew that the going rate to take someone's life in San Francisco ranged from down around one thousand dollars to somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars. Obviously, if you hired from the low end of that spectrum, your junkie street person looking for dope money to get right might make any number of technical errors in planning and execution. Of course, Juhle figured that if Mrs. Palmer had hired out the job, she had drawn from the upscale side, but maybe not.