"Where are the cops on it?" Hardy asked.

"Missing Persons won't do anything for at least another day or two. But do you know Devin Juhle?"

"Sure. Homicide."

"Right. And, most of the time, a pal of mine." Hunt delivered it straight. "He considers her a suspect in the Palmer murders."

Hardy narrowed his eyes. "We're talking the same Andrea Parisi? Trial TV?"

"Right. So now Juhle wants her as badly as we do, maybe worse. I'm hoping to leverage him to do what Missing Persons won't."

"A homicide cop? And what do you want from him?"

"What he knows."

Hardy seemed to find that amusing. "And he's just going to tell you? How are you planning to make him do that?"

This was, of course, Hunt's problem. Especially after Juhle's last words to him. "We go back a ways," he said.

Hardy appeared to get a kick out of this. "Because you're friends, you're just going to ask him?"

"That was the original plan, but I knew a couple of things, and I didn't tell him right away. So now he thinks I was holding out on him."

"Sounds like you were."

"Well, there you go. Anyway, it's a problem."

"Well, the bad news," Hardy said, "is that he wouldn't tell you anything if you just asked, anyway. It's the same gene that predisposes these guys to homicide. He probably wouldn't tell his wife, either. The good news is it happens that I've had a little experience with exactly this sort of problem." He paused. "Abe Glitsky's one of my best friends." Glitsky was San Francisco 's Deputy Chief of Inspectors. For a dozen or more years before that, he'd been the chief cop in the homicide detail.

"That's impossible," Hunt said. "You're a defense attorney."

"It is impossible," Hardy agreed genially enough. "If you knew Glitsky like I do-and count your lucky stars you don't-you'd know how impossible. But I'd be lying if I told you he hasn't been a help to me more than once."

"On the defense side?"

"Sometimes kicking and screaming, I might add. But, yeah."

"How did that happen?"

Hardy lifted his beer out of the gutter, took a sip. "When you can't just ask," he said, "you trade."

Hunt couldn't decide if what he liked the most about his Cooper was the turbocharged power; the cool, high-tech, vaguely Art Deco dashboard; or the fact that it could fit into parking places only a little bigger than the size of a toaster. He pulled up right in front of the familiar small house on Twelfth Avenue between Ortega and Noriega and parked between its driveway and the house next door, in maybe eight or nine feet of curb space. Though it was dark out now, he knew that the garages on either side and all the way up and down the block sported signs that read: DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE! And in his own personal experience, he knew the home owners meant it. A couple of times, he'd hung half a foot over the outer lip of somebody's driveway and come out to find himself towed-one hundred and twenty-five bucks plus the ticket, thanks.

Juhle's home looked like all the other houses on the block-two-story stucco with four steps up to the front stoop, the built-in one-car garage taking up a third of the footprint. In the daylight, the house's fresh, bright green trim distinguished it somewhat from its neighbors, and at this time every spring, the flower boxes in the windowsills bloomed with daffodils, impatiens, and angel's hair. But by now it was a few minutes after nine, none of these amenities were visible, and it was just another shivering house squatting out in the fogbelt of the Sunset.

After the clear and cloudless day, the fog was in and now obscured most of the rest of the street. But he could see lights on inside at Juhle's. They'd gotten home.

As he mounted the front stoop, Hunt found himself fighting his nerves. Constant action since he'd finished his deposition work at McClelland's in the late afternoon had insulated him somewhat from his growing visceral worry-by now nearly a physical sickness-about what had happened to Parisi. With every minute, the odds that she was alive grew longer. And yet he couldn't accept her possible death, if only because he wanted to believe that life wouldn't do this to him again-give him hope, even a deluded, perhaps foolish hope, only to steal it away.

All he knew was that he needed to find her. To find out, if nothing else, where it all could go with her. And without Juhle's help and even active cooperation, he didn't think it was going to happen.

He pushed the doorbell, heard the chimes within, and waited in the fog.

Connie met him at the door with a kiss on the cheek. "You've got guts, Wyatt, I'll give you that."

But then she led him back to the rest of the family. Juhle, his arm in his sling and his other hand in a bucket of ice, looked through him. The kids-Eric, Brendan, and Alexa-all jumped up from the kitchen table, where they were eating their pizza. Uncle Wyatt was a favorite. He often arrived laden with coins, candy, other treats for them, and tonight was no exception. For some reason, their parents tolerated these gifts from Hunt but from no one else, and it set a tone of acceptance. That, plus the fact that their father usually seemed looser when Hunt was around. Juhle would play games with them that he otherwise didn't have all that much time for-Foosball and Ping-Pong out in the garage, football or baseball catch out in the street, hoops on the driveway. Occasionally, the two men would play guitar together or listen to new CDs. Wyatt was cool.

Tonight after they'd pilfered his pockets for Necco wafers, the kids went back to their places. Hunt moved around behind them and pulled a quarter, one at a time, out of each child's ear. Eric was still in his Hornets uniform. "How'd you guys do tonight?" he asked him.

"We killed 'em, nine to two," the older boy replied. "Dad was coach. He let me pitch."

"How'd he get to be coach? He looks like he's hurting right now."

"He's okay," Alexa said. At seven years old, she was the queen of fatherly protection. "Nothing like Coach Doug."

"Are we talking about Mr. Malinoff?"

"Yep," Brendan said.

"What happened to him?"

Finally, Juhle relaxed the frown he'd been cultivating. "Pickle," he said.

"Malinoff played pickle?"

"In spikes," Eric said. "On the grass."

"You know pickle, right, Uncle Wyatt?"

"Sure, Brendan. In fact, I invented it. Run back and forth between bases, slide under the tag, right?"

Alexa caught him with a suspicious glare, turned to her father. "Did Uncle Wyatt really invent pickle?"

"If he says so," Juhle said, then added with some edge, "I know he wouldn't lie."

Hunt turned to Connie. "So what happened to Malinoff?"

"He challenged the kids. Said he'd give five bucks to anybody who could beat him."

"Daddy told him not to," Alexa said, "but Coach just called him a wimp. I heard him."

"He was kidding, honey," Connie said. "Just teasing. He knows your father's not a wimp. It was kind of an adult joke about how he hurt his arm, that's all."

"It wasn't funny." Alexa was in full pout. "I didn't like it."

"God didn't like it, either," Juhle said, "which is why he punished him."

"What did God do?" Hunt asked.

Connie was having trouble keeping a straight face. "He broke Coach's leg," she said.

"Ow!"

"That's what Doug said, too."

"Not exactly, Dad," Eric said.

"No, I know. And I bet Uncle Wyatt can imagine what he really said, too. But we don't use that kind of language, do we? It's bad sportsmanship. Right?"

To a chorus of "Rights," Juhle stood up, took the dish towel Connie held out for him, and wrapped it around his catching hand. "Okay, you guys, finish your pizza, and I hear there's still homework to be done. And no Neccos tonight, either. Con?"