He piled his own plate from the pan on the stove, sat across from me, leaning on his

elbows the better to intimidate his food.

We ate to the homely sounds of the dishwasher running and coffee machine

percolating.

I was deep in thought when Jake’s voice yanked me back to awareness.

“So what’s on your mind? You’re usually chirping and chattering around here in the

morning.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the flattering comparison to Tweety Bird.” I

forked in a mouthful of fluffy, scrambled eggs. He was a good cook, and I did appreciate the

fact that he fixed me breakfast and did my dirty dishes – and saved my skin on occasion.

I said, “To start with, I think your new partner Rossini smells a rat.”

“Let me worry about Rossini.”

“Happy to.”

“What else?”

“Oh, so we’re talking about this now?”

“We’re talking about whatever is freaking you out.”

“Freaking me out?” I murmured politely.

“You know what I mean.”

Well, actually…no .

But in the interests of keeping it civil, I said, “Okay. What does Angus say?”

“I didn’t interrogate Angus – and we’re not discussing the case except as it directly

affects you.”

“What does Angus say?” I repeated.

Grudgingly, he replied, “He says he didn’t do it.”

“Do you believe him?”

“We’re investigating his story.”

“No, I mean do you personally believe him?”

“Don’t be naive. My personal feelings have nothing to do with it.”

“Come off it, Jake. You’re always talking about a cop’s instinct. You know Angus. What

does your gut tell you?”

“Nobody ever really knows anybody,” Jake said.

“You’d be the expert on that,” I said shortly. “I still think you can know people well

enough to tell whether they’re homicidal maniacs.”

“Tell that to the neighbors of the serial killer of your choice.”

“Does he have an alibi?”

“We’re checking into it.”

“Did he –”

Jake cut across. “Let’s cut to the chase. He hasn’t said anything about any cult or coven.

In fact, he clammed up at the suggestion.”

“What does that tell you?”

“That he decided not to waste his breath and our time.”

I nodded. Speared a bit of bacon.

“I suppose it’s occurred to you that he’s not likely to back our story of casual

acquaintances?”

He didn’t respond.

“Okay, answer me this. If she was killed between six and ten o’clock, how would

Angus have got back to Lake Tahoe in time to call me at eleven-thirty?”

Jake took a long, deliberate drink of coffee, set down his cup without haste. “Have you

ever known me not to do my job?”

I flashed onto the memory of him wiping the doorknob at Angus’s rental. Did that

count?

“Well…not exactly.”

“Then chill. Have a little faith in the system. If he’s innocent, it’ll come out. If he isn’t

innocent, he deserves to fry.”

“He deserves to fry? Welcome to the Age of Enlightenment. Happily, we gas them here

in the Golden State, remember?”

Jake shook his head, not bothering to reply to this old argument between us.

I said, “How much of a fair trial is he going to get with the cops already convinced he’s

the man and a public defender straight out of law school?”

Jake raised his brows. “For your information, he doesn’t have a public defender. Martin

Grosser has officially taken his case.”

“Martin Grosser, the major league media lawyer?”

“You got it.”

“Pro bono?”

“I guess. I wouldn’t know.” Jake added grimly, “I’m on the other team.”

I chewed this over. After a time I noticed Jake watching me with that sardonic

expression.

I pointed out, “You were the one with the theory that Angus was on the fringe of

something bigger. A coven would have thirteen members. Maybe that doesn’t qualify as an

actual cult, but –”

“The unofficial view is that Angus and his girlfriend acted on their own in the killings

of Kinsey Perone, Tony Zellig, and Karen Holtzer.”

Like Daniel and Manuela Ruda, a husband-wife team in Germany who stabbed their

best friend sixty-six times, then drank his blood – claiming the Devil made them do it. But

even the Rudas appeared to have connections to underground occult groups in Britain.

“Does that mean you have a different take on it?”

He rose, dumped his dishes into the sink, ran water. A well-trained and completely

house-broken male: La Cage aux Folles meets Leave It to Beaver.

He turned and faced me. “Look, I’m not discussing the case with you. You’re a witness,

remember? A hostile witness at that.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he stopped me with a quick, rough kiss that tasted of

coffee and bacon.

“Stay out of trouble,” he said.

A moment later, I heard the front door slam.

*****

“Someone doesn’t like you, Adrien,” Ted Finch muttered, tapping away at my

computer keyboard.

Like the majority of writers I knew, published and unpublished, Ted has a day job. He

works as a computer programmer and freelance web designer. I pay him a nominal fee to

maintain the Cloak and Dagger Web site – and to bail me out of disasters like the present

one.

“How bad is it?”

He chuckled. “Not that bad, just mean. Very mean.” He swiveled in the chair. “It’s a

freeware prank program. It automatically launched when you opened the e-mail. Do you

know who sent it?”

I shook my head.

Ted made tsking sounds. “You should never open e-mail from an unknown address.”

I didn’t bother to reply. Half the e-mail I got was from customers whose e-mail

addresses I didn’t recognize.

“So we saw on the news that Angus was arrested for that coed’s murder.” He shook his

head. “I bet you saw that coming.”

“Not at all.”

“You’re kidding. Jean and I were saying this morning that you’re probably the one who

tipped the police off.”

“Why would you say that?” I can’t say I was thrilled at the notion of me as the local

stool pigeon.