Carmel got on with a man who she'd introduced at the office as Dane Carlton, her personal attorney. Lucas knew him to nod to, a tall, slender, grey-haired man with a cool demeanor and icy blue eyes behind plain gold-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and wine-colored tie.

To Lucas, Carmel said, 'Fuck you.'

Lucas sighed, looked at Carlton. 'You should tell your client to watch her mouth.'

'I'm her attorney, not her guardian,' Carlton said bluntly.

'And he's gonna rip you a new asshole when we're done with this,' Carmel said.

Lucas looked at Carlton. 'That right?'

Carlton, with the tiniest movement of his head, said, 'Yes.'

When Carlton and Carmel got out at Carmel's floor, Sherrill, looking after him, put her mouth close to Lucas' ear and whispered, 'I get the feeling he could do it.'

Lucas said, 'I know him. He could.'

The search team was methodical and undiscrimi-nating. They were looking for guns, cartridges, records, notes, letters – anything that would tie Carmel to any of the people who were murdered. They found a half-dozen notes and e-mails written to Hale Allen, most of them simply setting up dates.

Franklin, wearing white plastic gloves, gave one of them to Lucas: 'Fuck around on me, and I'll kill you,' Lucas read aloud.

Carlton glanced at Carmel, who rolled her eyes. But she was angry, and getting angrier, Lucas thought. He dropped the D'Aquila scratches on her the first time he got an opening, which came when Carmel started screaming again.

'You're messing up my goddamn clothes, those clothes are worth more fucking money than the city can pay… Dane, we gotta recover for this, they're wrecking that suit.'

Carlton said, 'We will, Carmel.' He turned to Lucas: 'Chief Davenport, why don't we end this charade? There's no evidence that Carmel had anything to do with any of these killings. You're simply fishing – and we will eventually find out why.

It appears to be a personal crusade against one of the most highly regarded criminal attorneys in the state. Have you lost a case to Carmel? What is there in your past…?'

'I don't have anything against Carmel/ Lucas said, injecting a little steel into his voice, 'I always kind of admired her. She's a tough attorney. I stopped admiring her when Rolando D'Aquila used his fingernails to carve Carmel's name into the back of his hand while he was being tortured and then executed.'

Carlton showed a thin smile: 'That is… one of the more amazing things I've ever heard.'

'You'll be even more amazed when you see the scratches. Or gouges – doing it had to be almost as painful as getting the holes drilled in his knees. And he didn't just carve her initials. He carved her name: C. Loan. Quarter-inch grooves in the back of his hand…'

Carlton glanced at Carmel, who'd frozen in place when she heard D'Aquila's name.

'I just don't believe it,' Carlton said finally.

'Well, we've got D'Aquila's body on ice in St. Paul, along with the blood that dried on his hands and arms while he was carving her name out. So you all can go over and look at it. I'm sure you'll find your own pathologist to examine the body…'

Carmel started to interject something, but Carlton waved her down, and turned to

Lucas with a slightly warmer tone of voice. Lucas knew what he was doing: he was looking for information, anything that might someday help a defense. 'We will challenge it, of course; because whatever might be carved on Mr.

D'Aquila's hand, it isn't Carmel's name.'

'You can say that without seeing it?' Lucas' eyebrows went up.

'Of course. Because it can't be Carmel's name.' 'Okay,' Lucas said, mildly. 'If that's your story.' 'It is, and we're sticking to it,' Carlton said.

The search continued. Sloan, one of the more mild-mannered of the homicide cops, mentioned to Carmel, in passing, that they knew about her connection with Clark at law school. Lucas, outside the bedroom when Sloan and Carmel were talking, heard Carmel spluttering, 'She was a secretary, for Christ's sake.'

And Sloan answered, 'C'mon, Carmel, we know she took that legal writing course the same time you did.'

'If she did, I didn't know about it.'

'Ah, c'mon,' Sloan said. 'You guys go way back. You even did that Halloween Ball together. It's right on the program.'

'Jesus… you guys.' But she was scared, now. More angry than scared, but scared nevertheless.

At six o'clock, with Carlton glancing at his watch every two minutes, the search team began breaking up. A crime-scene crew had been brought in to take samples from Carmel's bed, the guestroom bed, and to dust the guestroom for fingerprints. They began packing their gear, and Sloan told Lucas he was heading home. Then two more detectives checked out, and Carlton asked Lucas, 'I assume you're not planning anything else dramatic? No new papers to serve…'

Lucas shook his head: 'No. We're about done. I'm gonna take one last cruise through the place…'

Carlton went to Carmel and said, 'I'm chairing a bar meeting at seven o'clock.

Will you be all right here?'

'Sure. It's all over.'

And Sherrill, her voice low, asked Lucas, 'Got the shell?'

'Yeah. Take off as soon as Carlton's out of here.'

'I'll be across the street with Sloan. Franklin and Del are headed for your house.'

Carlton left, Sherrill looked at her watch: 'You want me to stay?' she asked

Lucas. 'I'm kind of in a rush.'

'Take off,' Lucas said. 'I'll say good-bye to Carmel, make sure nobody left anything behind.'

Carmel shouted at Sherrill, as she left, 'Good riddance to all of ya. Fuck ya.

Fuck ya…'

Sherrill flashed her the finger, over her shoulder, and Carmel's eyes widened and she took a step after Sherrill, and Lucas stepped between them and said,

'Hey, hey…' Then, to Sherrill, 'Knock it off, okay?' At the same time, he winked at her.

'Yeah, yeah…' And she was gone, too, and Lucas and Carmel were left alone in the fabulous apartment.

Carmel asked, 'Are you wearing a wire?' They were still standing in the living room, by the open door to the hallway.

'No. Should I be?' Lucas stepped over to the door and pushed it shut.

'When I think about it, I don't really care,' Carmel said. 'I'm gonna get you for this, Davenport, I swear to God. I'm gonna dedicate my life to it.'

'Gonna take a lot of dedication, if you're out at the women's prison for thirty years,' Lucas said.

She flushed, and he could see her eye-teeth, bared, as she spoke: 'There's not gonna be any prison. Not for me. Could be for you, when we're done with you.

You've got nothing.'

Lucas shook his head and said, 'They're arguing about that over at the courthouse. Some of the guys think we've got enough, some of them don't. Gonna be close.' He drifted across the living room as he talked, poked his head into the guestroom, then continued to her bedroom, Carmel following him down the hall. 'What do you want in here?' she demanded.

'I'm just closing the place down, making sure nobody left anything behind,' he said. The shell was between two shoes in the open part of the closet. 'I'll tell you something, Carmel. Just between you and me – and I don't care if you're wearing a wire. I know you were involved in these killings. I know it. I know you were involved in the first one, Barbara

Allen, and I think you did it because you wanted Hale. You were screwing him before the body was in the ground.'

'You don't know that.'

'I do know that. Hale told me that.'

'Hale?' Her hand went to her throat.

'Yeah. We had a long talk about you. I know all about you, about your sexual preferences, about what you like to talk about in bed. And you know what? You scared the shit out of Hale. He didn't have the courage to stop you, but he did have the courage to come in and talk to me, and I taped it. Hale telling me about how you hated Barbara, about how she was holding him back, about how he was lucky to be rid of her.' Lucas was adding that last bit on, but he bet it was true.