"Sorry for last night," he said. "You were caught in an unavoidable confluence of events, I'm afraid. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong guy."

She let a lift of her shoulders pass for a reply.

"You know Ed Ransome before you came to Texas, or was he just, uh, a new friend? You can tell me. There's no law here against getting involved with the wrong man. Couldn't build enough prisons to hold all the women guilty of that crime."

It was a cornball thing to say, but he smiled as if he knew it was a cornball thing to say, and she found herself thawing a little. Guzman was not a handsome man, and his body was shaped like a squash, with its narrow shoulders and paunchy midsection. But he had a kind face that invited confidences and confessions-those big brown eyes and a glossy mustache whose shape mirrored the gentle, downturned mouth beneath it. Perhaps if she told him everything she knew, she would be allowed to go home and sleep. She thought longingly of La Casita, then remembered that Esskay was there alone. Maybe they would let her call Mrs. Nguyen at least, so she could feed the dog, get one of the hookers to take her for a walk. It would be so good to crawl into bed next to her.

But what was best for Tess wasn't necessarily best for Crow.

"I'm a private detective, which you know, since you've obviously gone through my wallet. Crow-Ed Ransome to you-is an old friend. An old boyfriend." That wasn't revealing anything, given the way the police had found them. Coitus interruptus by SWAT team. At last a form of birth control that was one hundred percent reliable. "His parents asked me to find him and I did. End of story."

"I think it's just the beginning," Guzman said, then waited, with those big brown eyes and that so very sad smile. He was letting the silence do the work, hoping Tess would rush into it out of nervousness. Exhausted as she was, she couldn't help admiring the technique.

"This is really good," she said. "This elephant ear. It's the best I've ever had."

Guzman followed her little sidestep effortlessly, the Arthur Murray of the box. "It's from Mario's, in El Mercado. You been there yet?"

She shook her head.

"I keep forgetting, you're not just another tourist. El Mercado, the River Walk, the missions-those are the places the tourists go."

"And the Alamo."

"Claro que sí. Not that I have much use for the Alamo."

"Why?"

"Do I look like John Wayne?" he asked. "Or even Fess Parker?"

"Oh, yeah-your people were on the outside."

"Not my people. My people run a shoestore in Guadalajara. Besides, there were Mexicans inside, too, you know. No, it just doesn't mean anything to me. There's a lot of stuff in San Antonio like that. This stupid All Soul Festival, for example. Gus Sterne's brainchild."

"Gus Sterne?" Tess had heard of the festival, and heard of Gus Sterne, the cousin who had raised Emmie until their falling-out. She hadn't heard the two were connected.

"Yeah, Gus Sterne. I know he raises all this money for scholarships, but to me, it's a sacrilege, using Day of the Dead as some hook for another week of parties and parades that also happen to promote his barbecue restaurants. Yet the City Hall folks, the tourism gurus, say it's a big deal. They say it's going to be bigger than the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival one day. ‘As if,' my twelve-year-old daughter would say."

As if she would say as if. That locution was only a thousand years old in teen-speak. Under different circumstances, Tess might have smiled at the thought of this streetwise cop who couldn't keep up with his own daughter's vocabulary.

"Anyway, I don't care," Guzman said. "I'll make some overtime."

"Umph," Tess said, hoping it sounded like a polite, neutral agreement. Her lips were covered with pastry flakes and there was no napkin she could see. The back of the hand would have to do. But then her hand was covered with pastry, which made her giggle. God, she was so fatigued, it was like being stoned. Where had she read that British secret service agents had to undergo seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation as part of training?

"I remember when I used to make overtime working cases, not pulling parade duty. The bad ol' days. Now the homicide rate's at a twenty-year low."

"Really." Although Tess couldn't put much energy in her reaction, she was impressed. Baltimore had fallen back from its body-a-day high, but not by much. In fact, the stats indicated Baltimore's killers were simply getting more efficient: fewer shootings, but a higher fatality rate. Way to go, kids. If you can't bring up your reading scores, at least you're improving as marksmen.

"It gives us time to solve cases," Guzman said. "Old ones, as well as new ones. Today's technology can solve yesterday's murders. We cleared a twenty-five-year-old case last month. I was counting on Tom Darden to help me clear another one, one almost as old. You remember Tom Darden? You made his acquaintance up near Twin Sisters, as I recall. Stocky fellow?"

Not so stocky with his chest hollowed out by a gunshot blast, Tess thought. Somewhere in her body, a warning signal was going off, or trying to go off-it seemed almost as far away as the city's church bells. See? her body screamed at her mind. You should have let me sleep, then we could cope with this. The mind replied testily: Oh shut up and make some adrenaline.

"You know who Tom Darden is, Miss Monaghan?"

"He's the man I found."

Guzman smiled approvingly, a teacher with a slow student who had finally, after much prodding and many hints, come up with the right answer.

"That the only time you've ever seen him?"

"As far as I know. I don't really know what he looked like when he was alive."

Another smile, another nod. "Good point. They keep making bigger and better guns, but there's still nothing like an old-fashioned shotgun for ripping open some guy's face, is there? That gun we found under your friend's bed, it was old, but it could do the job, couldn't it? A beauty. Matches a gun that belongs to Marianna Barrett Conyers. I just talked to her on the phone. She confirmed that she keeps it up at her weekend place. What do you want to bet that it's not there anymore?"

Tess said nothing, but in her mind she was making another quick inventory of the limestone cottage. No bullets in any of the drawers she had pulled open, no locked gun cabinet, but she recalled a rack above the fireplace. Empty, it hadn't registered as being of any significance. Could have been a plate-holder for all she knew, or some other piece of decorative bric-a-brac. A gun rack. Go figure.

"Don't get me wrong," Guzman said. "I'm not going to shed any tears over Darden. In fact, I was counting on watching him die one day. I just thought it would be through lethal injection, a few more years down the road. The thing, is, I wanted to talk to him first about some old business, and now I can't do that. And although I'm indebted to your friend, I can't really let it go, you know? Even lowlifes have rights."

Tess started to nod, then stopped, not sure what she would be agreeing with.

"Unless-" Guzman paused as if struck by a sudden brainstorm, only he was a little too stagey. "Unless, of course, your friend killed him in self-defense. I can see that. He's staying up there with Emmie Sterne, and this bad guy breaks in. Your friend gets scared and grabs the gun. Bang, bang, bang, lots of blood and screaming. Everybody panics. It's natural. He stashes the guy in the pool house, cleans up real good, and hits the road. Then you come along, looking for your old buddy, and you find the body. Only you don't bother to tell the sheriff why you're really there. That how it happened?"

"If it did, wouldn't it be a matter for Sheriff Kolarik? His county, his body."

Perhaps the slow student was moving a little too fast now. For whatever reason, Guzman was no longer smiling and nodding at her.