“I’d rather you tried to rape me,” I said. “Then I’d have an excuse to shoot you.”

“I’m not sure you could do it.”

“There’s a way to find out.”

“Have you ever killed a person?”

“You’re not a person.”

“Maybe you just would.”

“I promise you I would.”

“You won’t survive where you’re going. You believe in yourself because you’ve had good luck. Good luck always changes. You won’t survive.”

“I’m glad I didn’t sell these diamonds to you, Jason. If you offered me the full forty-five right now, said this was all just a prank, I’d still walk out of here with them.”

“That’s why you won’t survive, Maxine. Because you become emotional about the wrong things. You are emotional about inert stones. You should be emotional about saving your life.”

“It would break my heart to put such beauty into dimpled, hairless hands.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do with the rocks,” Jason says. “They already belong to someone else.”

“No. You’re the only one who’s seen them. You’re the only one who knows what I have.”

“Don’t forget Lupercio. What if he’s been pointed in your direction? They say he never gives up. If he brought MS-13 to its knees for a truce, he’ll find and crush you, easily.”

“There’s no evidence of Lupercio,” I lie. “No evidence that anyone knows except for you. The last few days have been peaceful. If I see evidence, I’ll attribute it to you.”

“You don’t have the weight to hurt me.”

“Believe in that.”

Carl opens his hands palms up. “The only two things I know about you aren’t even true. A first name that isn’t yours. And a phone number that will be useless before the sun comes up. I’d betray you, if I had enough of you to betray.”

“How about you just get me back to Jack in the Box?”

I’m put out and hungry so I hit the drive-through. A few minutes later I pull into a driveway in Hollywood, roll down the window and drop a paper grocery bag to the ground.

In my rearview mirror I can see Melissa grabbing her ten grand in cash as I head back toward the freeway.

A deal’s a deal.

I’m still pissed off.

I want to shoot Cavore so badly I have to stop by the indoor range, where I fire fifty rounds of.45-cal wadcut ters at twenty, thirty, forty and fifty feet. Nice groups except for my occasional stray. I love that Colt.

Then I fire Cañonita at ten and twenty feet. I’m in the black of the silhouette at ten, but at twenty it’s tough to keep them on the paper.

When the range master isn’t looking, I fire both the Colt and the derringer at the same time, left and right hands, a brief Armageddon featuring Cavore’s blubbery greed-bag rapist’s body at the receiving end.

I breathe deeply and listen to the ringing in my ears, in spite of the foam plugs.

Then I reload Cañonita and slip her into my waistband and close my eyes. The target is at twenty feet. I breathe deeply, then see Cavore at twenty feet, coming at me. I open my eyes and draw the derringer. The first shot flies over his left shoulder, but the second one hits the middle of his black little heart.

I smile at the range master on my way out.

Hood found Ernest and the boys at the beach down by the Oceanside pier. A summer swell pushed the waves high along the pilings, and Hood watched the surfers carve the green walls with their short, quick boards. The sign outside the lifeguard headquarters said the waves were six to eight feet and the water temperature was sixty-six degrees.

Ernest sat in the cool of a portable sunscreen. There were blankets and backpacks strewn in the sand and a cooler with its lid ajar. Kenny lay on his back in his portable crib, head to one side, his eyes locked onto towering Hood.

Hood squatted for a moment, trailing his fingers through the fine gray Oceanside sand.

“That’s Bradley, with the black wet suit and the red-and-white twin-fin,” said Ernest. He nodded to the surfers.

“Big waves today.”

“He’s fearless.”

“Children can afford that.”

Ernest’s face was unyielding and his eyes calm.

“Where did your wife go?”

Ernest shook his head. “She’s not my wife and she didn’t tell me.”

“She just took off?”

“There are times when she needs to be out of sight. She doesn’t tell me where she is and I don’t ask.”

“K ind of an odd arrangement.”

“There’s nothing odd about trust. Why do you care where she went?”

“I think she’s in trouble. I think the man who killed the brothers was looking for her.”

“Why does he want her?”

“Maybe she knows.”

“Who is he? Tell me where he lives. I’ll settle it.”

“I don’t know either of those things.”

“But you say he’s looking for Suzanne? You’re not making sense.”

“Why did she run away?”

“Staying out of sight is not running away.”

“Why is she staying out of sight?”

Kenny rolled over to his stomach and strained his head up from the floor of the crib. Ernest looked at him then at Hood, then out at the waves. “I respect her fears and her worries.”

“Ernest, if I could talk to her I might be able to put some things together. The other night she saw this man near a crime scene in L.A. He saw her, too. I think he’s the one who killed Harold and Gerald. But he didn’t go all the way down to Valley Center to do that. He went for Suzanne. He was on her property. He thinks she saw something in L.A., or has something. That’s why I need to talk to her.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

Hood watched Bradley ride a wave. It didn’t matter if Ernest was lying if Ernest wasn’t going to tell where she’d gone. “Tell her to call me.”

“She got your message.”

“Tell her again. Is she going back to school? It starts in a few weeks. She can’t teach history and stay out of sight.”

“We haven’t planned that far ahead.”

“Plan ahead if you want to stay alive,” said Hood.

Ernest stood and reached down into the crib, touching the baby’s head. “Watch the baby. You wanted to talk to Jordan.”

Hood watched the Hawaiian amble down to the surf line. A dark-skinned boy ran past him, slid his skimboard into the receding backwash and jumped on. He raced along, threw a rooster tail and shot into the incoming white water, landing on the back side of it while still balanced on the board. The boy said something to Ernest, who shrugged and took the board and waited for the next backwash. Ernest was big-chested and short-legged, but he rode the board with an easy power, managing most of a three-sixty just before he got air then wiped out. He was smiling and shaking his head as he pointed up to Hood.

Jordan wrapped a towel around his slender shoulders. His teeth chattered while he said that the fisherman was short, dark-skinned and dark-haired. No mustache or beard. His hair was cut flat on top. He was “not an old man and not a young man, either.” He wore jeans and cowboy boots and a short-sleeved plaid shirt and a straw cowboy hat. He was small but powerful. It was really hot that day. His fishing rod and reel looked new and he caught several fish, which he threw back. When they talked, the man said the worms worked best, but you had to hook them so you could feel the tug when the fish bit them.

“Show him what you did,” said Ernest.

Still hunched in the towel Jordan hustled bent-legged over to a backpack and came back with two folded sheets of paper. Hood remembered the child’s paintings and drawings he’d seen on the wall of the room where he’d embarrassed himself in front of this boy’s mother.

Jordan gave him the papers and Hood unfolded them. They were better than any IdentiK it or police artist’s drawing that he’d ever seen. They looked like a well-observed man-not a composite, not an interpretive sketch of someone else’s memory. A man. There were two versions: one with a straw cowboy hat and one without. With a pencil Jordan had shaded in a little behind the portraits. He had signed them. Hood rubbed his fingertip across one pen ciled corner and it came back without a smudge.