Andi said, "Grace, that's a great idea. Let's see…"

Grace slipped her shoe off and handed it to her mother. The heel was capped by a thin slice of hard plastic. "We could break the plastic in half and make a hole in one half and put the nail through, and then put the other half over the nail head and tape it all together," Grace said. "When you stick him, you could have the nail coming out between your fingers with the heel in your hand."

Andi stared at her daughter: Grace had been thinking about this, how to kill him. Had visualized it, right down to the fatal punch. And it should work.

"Do it," she said. "I've got to keep scraping."

Another two hours, and they were done. The broken heel-cap and tape made a knob at the end of the nail, and held in her closed fist, with the nail protruding between her ring and middle finger, Andi could strike-and strike hard. The nail was five inches long. Nearly four were exposed beyond her fingers, and the last inch glittered with raw steel, like the tip of a new hypodermic needle.

"Now," Andi said, hefting the nail. "Let's go over it. When he comes, you're in the corner, playing with the computer. I'm lying on the mattress. I start to cry, but I don't get up. He comes to get me, just like he did the last couple of times. When he pulls me up, I put my left arm around his neck and pull up close, and my right hand hits him right below the breast bone, pointing up toward his heart. I do it a whole bunch of times, and try to turn him toward the wall…"

"And I come up from behind him and hit him in the eye with the spring," Grace said. She held up one of the thin needles she'd used to free the nail.

"So we should have room."

They danced it out, in the small cubicle: Grace was Mail, and bent over her mother, pulling her up. Andy struck at her mid-section, pulled back, did it again.

Then Andi was Mail, her back turned, standing on the Porta-Potti, and Grace came from behind, striking a roundhouse blow at the left eye with the wire. The wire wasn't stiff enough to penetrate muscle, but it would blind him.

When they'd gone through it a half-dozen times, they sat down, and Grace said, "He's been gone a long time. What if something happened? What if he doesn't come?"

"He'll come," Andi said. She looked around the hole and touched her temples. "I can feel him out there, thinking about us."

Del looked LIKE he'd been stuffed in a gunny sack and beaten with a pool cue. A patch of his blue jacket was discolored and stiff with something-ketchup? beer? His face was cut with stress lines, his hair was spiked from a pillow.

Franklin was not much better. He was a large black man, who wore a partial plate where his front teeth had been knocked out in a fight. He had the habit of dislodging the plate and rolling it with his tongue when he was thinking. Worse, a wandering eye gave him the appearance of a medieval insanity. He'd put on a suit, but he wore white gym shoes and a discolored t-shirt that said "Logan Septic Service: Satisfaction Guaranteed or Double Your Shit Back."

Loring was the prize. He was very large-fat-with a head the size and shape of a pumpkin, and eyes set so deep they were almost invisible. He hadn't shaved, and his beard was as thick and dangerous as a blackberry bramble. Sitting on top of the fat of his face, the beard shook like a bowl of cactus jelly. With his pale lavender suit and piss-yellow shirt, he looked crazier than Franklin.

Sloan simply looked worn out.

And all four were worried.

"You're talking about our ass," Franklin said. They were all standing, jammed into Lucas's office, the desk dwarfed by the bulk of the five large bodies.

"I can cover it," Lucas insisted. "You're just taking orders and there's no time to argue about it. You argue about it, those two are gonna be dead."

Del nodded. "I'll do it."

Franklin growled, "Yeah, you're Lucas's pal. But shit…" He looked at Loring. "What do you think?"

Loring shrugged, then sighed. "Fuck, what can they do to us?"

"Fire us, take our pensions away, put us in jail, and these chicks could sue us for every dime we got."

After a moment of silence, Loring said, "What else?"

Franklin and Del started laughing, and Lucas knew he had them.

Lester stuck his head in the office. "I just saw a gang of your buddies running across the street. What's going on?"

Shit. "What're you doing here, Frank?" Lucas asked.

Lester straightened, frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Frank, you don't want to be here. Not for an hour or so."

"Why not?"

"You just don't."

Lester stepped inside, pushed the door shut with his foot. "Cut the bullshit, Lucas. Tell me what's happening."

"On your head," Lucas said.

"I'm willing to lie about it," Lester said. "I was never here."

Lucas said, "Somebody is feeding information to Mail. I'm sure of it."

"Who?"

"I don't know-but I'm fairly sure it's either Nancy Wolfe or Helen Manette. None of the other people were around for both the sessions that Mail got information from."

"But which?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "There just isn't any way to tell. They've both got motives-money, emotional problems, or both. In fact, it could have been Tower Manette or Dunn, but they didn't feel right, and when I talked to Mail, he said it was a she. So now I think it's got to be either Manette or Wolfe."

"So what're you going to do?"

"I'm arresting both of them," Lucas said. "I'm gonna have them dragged down here, searched, I'm gonna give them jail smocks and have them stuck in separate rooms, and I'm gonna have Franklin and Loring and Del and Sloan yell at them, until one of them cracks."

"Jesus Christ." Lester stared at him. "What about the innocent one?"

"I'm gonna apologize," Lucas said.

"You're fuckin' crazy," Lester said.

"Mail's on his way to kill those people. You heard the tapes. But he was a long way out, up north, and we've got ears tangling up traffic all over the south side of the Metro area. It'll take him awhile to get there-but he will get there, and when he does, he's gonna kill them. That's how much time we've got."

"Does Roux know about this?" Lester asked.

"She's outa touch…"

"So am I," Lester said. He pulled open the door. "I never talked to you."

And he was gone. Lucas felt peculiarly alone, standing in his empty office. Nothing to do now except wait for the women to arrive. Then he heard footsteps outside, and Lester was back.

"How are you gonna cover it?" Lester demanded. "You got anything?"

Lucas shook his head. "Moral appeals. We were doing the only thing we could to save Manette's life, and the kid, if she's still alive."

Lester turned in a circle and said, "Christ, twenty-four years on the force." He ran a hand through his hair and said, "I gotta go do some paperwork."

Lucas said, "Frank: could you get us a helicopter in here? Across the street on the government center plaza?"

Lester thought for a second, then gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I can do that." And he was gone again.

Nancy Wolfe came in screaming. Helen Manette came in weeping.

Helen Manette arrived first, wrapped in a nightgown, with Tower Manette six feet behind her. They were moving fast, a tight clutch of cops, the fat Franklin and the frightening Loring and the middle-aged suspect, Tower Manette trotting a few feet behind, his white hair standing up in peaks. He spotted Lucas and ran at him, his thin face white with anger, his thin-man's wattles shaking with rage.

"What in the hell is going on?" He turned to point at the cops with his wife. "I'm told you're behind this… this fucking travesty of justice."