victims were merely those available at the moment. The woman in the mall parking lot could have been merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the murder at night on the beach, and the one down the dark tracks at the edge of the not yet lighted church parking lot were unlikely to be of the moment. Those victims probably had been preselected. Or the site had been. It was unlikely that the killer/killers were merely hanging around there. Say the killers had preselected the site. How did they know someone would come along for them to shoot? And how did they know that if they hung around in such unlikely places for long, someone might not get suspicious and a cop might not sooner or later show up and say whaddya doing. No, the least unlikely hypothesis was that he/they had preselected the victim and followed the victim to the site.

Elementary, my dear Ozzie. Now that he knew that, what did

he know?

Nothing.

He held the glass up and looked at the light shining through it.

He wondered if Ozzie Smith had been a drinker. Probably not. Hard to do what Ozzie had done with a hangover.

The bastards weren’t going to ruin that girl’s life, though. If

he did no other thing he was going to save Candace Pennington. He wasn’t clear yet how he was going to do that, but as the alcohol

worked its happy way, he knew that he could, and that he would, no matter what else.

Be good to save something.

25

At 8:10 in the morning, Bo Marino sat alone in the back of the school bus with his feet up on the seat next to him, smoking a joint. The smell of weed slowly filled the bus and several kids turned to look and a couple of them giggled. Bo took a deep drag and let it out slowly toward the front of the bus. The driver was a woman. Bo wondered if she even knew what pot was when she smelled it. Bo looked older than he was. He was already shaving regularly.

He had been lifting weights since junior high, and it showed. His neck was short and thick, and his upper body was muscular. He was the tailback in the USC-style offense that Coach Zambello used.

Several small colleges had recruited him, and he was very pleased with himself.

In the rearview mirror, Molly could see Bo smoking. She smelled

the marijuana. Well, well, she thought, Bo Marino

appears to be breaking the law. She called Jesse on her cell phone and spoke softly.

“One of the three young men we’re

interested in is inhaling a

controlled substance in the back of the bus,” Molly said.

Jesse was silent for a moment.

Then he said, “When you get to school, arrest him.

I’ll have

Suit meet the bus.”

“Okeydokey,” Molly said.

“Aren’t you supposed to say something like

‘roger that,’” Jesse

said.

“I like okeydokey,” Molly said, and smiled and shut off the

phone.

The bus pulled into the circular driveway in front of the high school and the kids got off. Bo stayed until last, smoking his joint, and pinched it out when there was no one else on the bus. He dropped the roach in his shirt pocket, swung his feet contemptuously off the seat, and stood.

As he got off the bus, the lady bus driver said,

“Hold it there

for a minute, Bo.”

He stared at her.

“Hold what?” he said.

The lady bus driver took a badge out of her purse and showed it

to him.

“I observed you using a controlled

substance,” Molly said. “We’d

like you to come down to the station.”

Bo stared at her. Peripherally he saw the janitor that everybody

knew was a cop walking toward the bus.

“A what?”

“A controlled substance. You were observed smoking a joint on

the bus. The snipe is still in your shirt pocket.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Bo said.

“We can go in my car,” Molly said.

“It’s parked over

here.”

“Fuck you, lady,” Bo said.

He started to walk past her. Molly stepped in his way.

“Don’t make me arrest you,”

Molly said.

“You?” Bo said. “Get out of my

way or I’ll fuck

you.”

He tried to move past her again, and again Molly blocked him.

Bo

covered her left breast with his right hand and shoved her out of the way. Molly took a canister from her purse and sprayed him in the face. Bo made a sound that might have been a scream and clasped his hands to his face.

“Ow,” he said. “Jesus Christ,

ow, ow! You fucking blinded

me.”

Molly put the Mace away, took her handcuffs and snapped a cuff on Bo’s left wrist. Suit came around the front of the bus in his

janitor’s outfit and pulled Bo’s right hand down, and together they

cuffed him.

Red-eyed, coughing, and head down, Bo was dragged into Jesse’s

office and put in a chair.

“My eyes are killing me,” he said.

“I need something for my

eyes. The bitch sprayed me for no reason. Gimme something for my eyes. My father’s gonna sue your ass.”

“Uncuff him,” Jesse said. “And

leave him with

me.”

Molly took the cuffs off and put them in her purse. Bo immediately began to rub his eyes.

“It’ll stop in a while,” Jesse

said. “Rubbing them won’t help.

We’ll go down and wash them.”

Molly put a bag on Jesse’s desk.

“When we arrested him,” Simpson said,

“naturally, we patted him

down for concealed weapons. Found this in his backpack.”

Bo stopped coughing just long enough to say,

“That’s not mine,

the bastards planted that.”

“Be my guess that there’s enough

here,” Molly said, “to support

possession with intent.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Jesse

said. “Anything

else?”

“No weapon,” Simpson said. “But

we didn’t look at

everything.”

Simpson put Bo’s backpack on top of the file cabinet next to the

window behind Jesse’s desk.

“You guys may as well go back to what you were doing,” Jesse

said.

“Cover’s pretty well blown,”

Molly said.

“Stay on it anyway,” Jesse said.

“I never had any cover to start with,”

Simpson

said.

Molly and Simpson went out. Jesse sat quietly looking at Bo.

“I need something for my eyes,” Bo said between coughs. “I need

a doctor.”

Jesse didn’t say anything for a while. Then he stood.

“Okay, let’s go wash you off,”

he said.

Rinsed and dried, Bo was still red-eyed and puffy-looking, and he still coughed sporadically.

“You call my father?” Bo said.

“We’re working on it,” Jesse

said. “Right now we got you on

possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, failure to obey a lawful command, threatening a police officer, assaulting a police officer, and being a general major-league fucking jerk.”

“That bitch can’t get away with spraying me like that,” Bo

said.

Jesse smiled. He didn’t say anything. Bo sat in the chair across

the desk staring hard at Jesse.

“So you gonna arrest me?” he said.

“Or what?”

Jesse didn’t answer him. Bo stood up.

“Fuck this,” he said.

“I’m walking out of here.”

“Nope,” Jesse said.

“You think you can stop me?” Bo said.

Jesse laughed. “Of course I can stop you,”

he said. “For

crissake a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman hauled you in here in handcuffs.”

“If you weren’t a cop

…”

“But I am a cop,” Jesse said.

“Sit down.”

Jesse’s voice was still pleasant, but there was a sudden

undertone in it that made Bo uncomfortable. He didn’t want to sit

down. He tried looking hard at Jesse. If Jesse noticed, it didn’t

show. Bo sat down. Jesse picked up the backpack and put it on the desk in front of him and dumped it out. He looked at what he had. A notebook, three ballpoint pens, some Kleenex, a packet of condoms, a ruler, a protractor, two packs of spearmint gum, and a white envelope. He opened the envelope and found four prints of Candace Pennington, lying naked on the ground. Bingo! Her face was