I can make a case that Clark is the shooter, and I can tie Carmel to her, maybe

I could talk a jury into sending Carmel away.'

'Oh, man, I don't know – that doesn't sound overly ethical.'

'I ain't a fuckin' lawyer I'm just a humble cop,' Lucas said. 'So I don't know about ethics. But could you send a lawyer up? We can work out the details -the ethics – later.'

She was peering at him over the diner table, and said, 'I'm not sure I want to know the details.'

'But you'll send somebody up?'

'I guess.' She had one small crumb of toast sitting on the left corner of her mouth, and Lucas picked up her napkin and dabbed it off for her.

'You had a crumb,' he said.

She shrugged and met his eyes. 'The story of my life…'

Sherrill agreed with Malone. 'That is the goofiest thing I've ever heard.'

Black disagreed: 'How about the Tracy Triplets and the thing with the gourd? You said that was the goofiest thing you'd ever heard. That you'd never see that peak again.'

Sherrill's eyes stayed with Lucas, but she spoke to Black. 'Okay, this is the second goofiest thing I've ever heard. The Tracy Triplets are still first, but only because of the midget. If it wasn't for the midget, this would be goofier.'

Lucas wasn't smiling. 'This is not goofy. You're starting to piss me off.'

Sherrill was waving her arms. 'Lucas, how'n the hell can you convict an innocent dead woman of something she didn't do?' -

'Shouldn't be too tough,' Lucas said. 'We do it a few times a year with innocent live people. How hard could it be to do it with a dead one? She certainly won't care. And we will get Carmel.'

'Jesus, man, I don't know,' Black said. 'This ain't a game.'

'I know. But maybe we'll break something loose.

So what I want, is I want everybody out working on connections between Louise

Clark and Carmel. They were about the same age – did they ever go to the same school? Did they ever hang out at the same place? They must've known each other, so let's make them into friends. Let's put together some ideas that'll tighten up the story on Clark, something we could take her to court on. ..'

'If she were alive,' Black said.

'Yeah. If she was alive.'

'This won't work if Carmel doesn't hear about it. We want her to react,' Lucas said. A half-dozen detectives were crowded into Lucas' office: Sherrill, Black,

Sloan, a guy from drugs, two from sex. Lucas wanted people he'd worked with and could trust. 'We know she's got at least a couple of sources inside the department, so we want you to blab. Gossip. Homicide is tying Carmel Loan to

Louise Clark, and through her, to the killings.'

'Why don't you call some of your pals at TV3?' Black asked.

'I'd rather have them ask me about it,' Lucas said. 'I don't want it to be an obvious plant. Rumors are better than actual stories. In fact, if the newsies hear about it, I'll probably deny it.'

'Refuse to comment,' Sherrill said. 'That always makes their little weenies hard.'

Carmel heard about it almost immediately. 'They're what?'

'They're tying you to Louise Clark. If they can tie you to her, you could be in trouble.'

'But I didn't do anything,' she said with asperity.

'Yeah, well, whatever. Listen, things are getting a little warm around here. I'm getting out of the information business for a while, okay?'

'You mean, "Don't call,'" Carmel said.

'I'm not trying to be an asshole, but they're pulling out all the stops. They've got a half-dozen guys working on it. Davenport told somebody that they'll have you inside by the end of the week.'

'That's absurd.'

'I thought you'd want to know… so I'm signing off, okay? This last one's a freebie.'

'Fuck your freebie,' Carmel snarled.

Black found an invitation to a lawyer's Halloween Ball organized by members of several downtown firms. A photo of four of the women who organized the ball, including Carmel, was on the back of the program, and Louise Clark's name was in the list of people who'd volunteered to help out.

'What you should do,' Lucas told Black, after he'd seen the photo, 'Is get in touch with these other women, and ask them about the relationship between Carmel and Clark. How closely did they work together? That kind of thing.'

'I think Clark was probably a flunky – Xeroxed the invitations, or something.'

'That's fine, but ask anyway,' Lucas said. 'One of the people you ask will call Carmel, and tell her you're asking.. .'

Then Sherrill came up with a strong tie, one that surprised everybody: Louise

Clark's phone records showed two calls to Carmel Loan's unlisted home phone in the week before Clark was killed. Both calls were late at night.

'I can't think why they would be talking – why Clark would be calling her. But it's an amazing tie,' Sherrill said.

'It's almost enough by itself,' Lucas said. 'You know what? I want you to go over and brace Carmel about this, face-to-face. Tell her it's part of the Clark investigation, and we just want the question answered… no big deal.'

Carmel's face was the color of her fabulous bloody-red silk scarf: 'She never called,' Carmel shouted. 'She never called.'

'Ms. Loan, somebody called – from her house to yours. This isn't bullshit – this is the list straight from the phone company. I brought a Xerox copy for you.'

Sherrill was sitting in front of Carmel's desk, and she unfolded the Xerox and pushed across the leather desk pad. '… and you can call the phone company yourself, if you don't think this is accurate.'

Carmel snatched the Xerox copy from the desk, looked at the two underlined phone calls. She shook her head angrily, said, 'No. This is…' But then she trailed off, and her head swung sideways and down, a pensive look crossing her face.

'You know what this is?' she asked finally, looking up at Sherrill. 'That sonofabitch was calling me from her house. He was sleeping with me three nights a week, and when we weren't together, he was sneaking over to her place.'

Sherrill looked doubtful: 'Well…' She stood up. 'If you say so.'

'That's what it is,' Carmel shouted, shaking the Xerox copy in Sherrill's face.

Lucas was not amused by the story. He shook his head, fiddled with a sport-coat button. 'I'm starting to feel sorry for her,' he said. 'Almost.'

'My question is, where are you going with this? I mean, exactly where?' Sherrill asked.

They were alone in Lucas' office, streetlights coming on outside the single window; a soft glow lingered in the sky. A perfect summer night, a night for walking around the lakes, Sherrill thought. Lucas said, 'You're the only one who knows about the shell I found in her bedroom closet.'

'Unless you told somebody else,' Sherrill said.

'No. It's just you and me,' Lucas said. He pulled out the typewriter tray on the top corner of his desk, leaned back in his chair and put his feet up. 'But something happened to get that shell in there. Somebody dropped a box of shells, somebody ejected a shell and didn't pick it up, or somebody was punching a bunch of shells into a clip and fumbled them… If Carmel sees me find a shell there, and if I find it in just the right circumstances, I think she'd come after it. Either her, or the shooter.'

'You mean like… any shell.'

'Sure. Any shell. Any. 22. Whatever happened to get that shell in the closet,

Carmel will know about. If I find a shell in the closet, she'll know she's fucked. Especially if she hears about the scratches on the back of Rolo's hand and our other corroborating evidence, whatever it might be.'

'What'll she do?'

'Suppose I find the shell on a Friday night. Suppose everybody has left her apartment, except me, and I find the shell while I'm taking a last look around.