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“That's great, Marlene. So, I'm not going nuts?”

“Not any more than you were already. The question is, what do you want to do about it?”

“I don't know, to be honest. I can't talk about this with the cops. They'll put me on the rubber gun squad. I can't assign anyone to investigate and I don't have any real time to investigate it myself.”

She waits for him to continue. When he doesn't she says, “Ah, the pregnant pause.”

“Just look into it, Marlene. Nothing big-time. I don't know what you charge, but…”

“Oh, right, a NYPD lieutenant is going to pay a PI for an investigation. Don't be ridic.”

“So…what does that mean? You will, you won't…?”

“No, you've got the juices flowing, now. And we owe it to Pete, just to check it out. He would've if it was you or me.”

He gives her a searching look. “You're not just, like, humoring me?”

“No, I think it's something that has to be checked out,” she says quickly. “And let me start by going over the Tighe file. I can get that from Butch. I want to find out what I can about the devil cult and whether Felix had any likely near and dear. The third brother issue. Then we should investigate the cousin, find out what he did with the body. I'd like to see the grave. Or the ashes.”

“He probably flushed them.”

“I would have,” she says, “but you never can tell about families.”

 

Lucy got to South Station in Boston early in the evening, and took the T to Kendall Square, near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dan Heeney, her so-called boyfriend, had an apartment near there, a three-bedroom in a modern building he shared with a couple of other geeks. She had a key, but she rang the bell instead.

“This is a surprise,” said Dan when he opened the door. “Wow. Why didn't you call?”

Lucy eased past the startled young man and into the apartment. The living room was large, light, and filled with more than the usual amount of furniture, electronic equipment, expensive monitors, and fast-food detritus. There were no obvious signs, however, of a female presence.

“I just came by to use the bathroom,” she said. “All toilets in New York are closed until further notice to counter the terrorist threat.”

Once locked in the bathroom, she made a quick inspection. The room was, naturally, disgusting, which was a good sign. Dan's roomies were Maruf, a Pakistani engineer betrothed since the age of ten, and Wan, a chubby genius to whom sex was a distant rumor. The boyfriend, in contrast, although somewhat softer than was fashionable, had the milky radiance of a quattrocento angel. Girls followed him down the street with jaws agape. Lucy had never been jealous before, nor had she before Dan had anyone to be jealous about, nor had the fellow ever given her any cause for jealousy. Yet she was jealous, and enjoyed being so, and enjoyed watching herself in the throes of jealousy; it appealed to the romantic and literary side of her nature. It made her feel Sicilian, and closer to her mother, although she would have jumped in front of a subway train before admitting this to herself.

A quick check revealed no indication that a female had ever visited the squalid place, or that the sexual act had ever transpired on the premises. No condom wrappers in the wastebasket. No hairpins. She was actually poking through it! Degrading! Marvelous! She popped out, approached the bemused boyfriend, and threw her arms around him.

“Hello, sailor,” she said. “Got a kiss?”

He had. It took a while. Kissing was, remarkably, the extent of their intimate relations and they made the most of it, until cyanosis presented a real danger.

“I
really
just came to Cambridge for that,” she said through heavy gasps. “I guess I'll go home now.”

“Being it's you,” he said, “I would almost believe it.” He led her over to a love seat, moved some books and a pizza box out of the way, and sat her down. More of the same. She was going to have red marks all over her face from his beard, but she didn't care.

“Okay, let me guess,” he said in the first intermission. “You decided that you would finally let me slake my lusts, as you put it.”

“Yes, I sensed that you're finally ready to make a lifelong commitment, so that the church can be reserved and lust-slaking can be at least contemplated.”

He sighed. “The concept of ‘too young' still evades you, I see.”

“It does. But that's okay. I don't mind a little heartbreak. I don't mind being spurned now in favor of some future woman who might be better than me. I'm slavishly devoted to you. I admit it.”

“So this visit is just to, I don't know, crank up our frustration to an even higher level?”

“Speak for yourself,” she said airily. “My mind is set on higher things.” She pulled away and looked him in the eye. “Seriously. I needed to get away and I needed to see you. My mom's back.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, but the fact is, while she's deigning to grace our happy home and watch the boys, I can get away.”

“You could get away anytime. Your dad's an adult.”

“Oh, please! Did you ever see him in the kitchen? And if it was you, you'd do the same, wouldn't you?”

A nod, a reluctant grunt. Dan Heeney was from West Virginia, the son of a union official who'd been murdered along with his wife and young daughter, an event that had both precipitated the current crisis of the Karp family and brought Lucy into his life. He often had the odd feeling that suffering on such a scale was part of what made him attractive to her. And her to him. He could not imagine going out on a date with a regular girl, talking exclusively of pop music, movies, classes, gossip.

“Anyway, I don't want to talk about that part,” she said. “I just need to be with some dumb-ass materialists for a little while.”

“At your service, ma'am,” said Heeney. “Them saints visiting you again?” In the mountain accent he used to lighten things, and when he was nervous.

“Not saints, no. I have a thing going with a guy—don't laugh—I think he's a demon.”

“With the head turning around backward and strange powers?”

“Uh-huh. He wants me to have his pagan love child so he can rule the world. I'm thinking it could be, like, you know, cool.”

She looked at him sharply, then punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“You were checking me out to see whether I was joking. How
could
you!”

“Well, hell,
I
don't know which of all the stuff you spout is for real. It
all
sounds like Twilight Zone to me.”

“Actually, I'm a little scared,” she said.

“Really?” He saw that she was not joking, that she was pale and worrying her lower lip between her teeth. He felt a chill himself. He came from a family where courage was the expected thing, but he had never met anyone with the guts that Lucy Karp had shown him last summer in West Virginia. He didn't want to think about what could frighten her.

“Uh-huh. I brought in an expert in the field. He thinks this guy is the real thing.”

A laugh popped out of his throat. “Oh, come on! So you have to find the hidden chest with the secret ring in it? The parchment with the spell written in blood.”

She gave him a sad look that was harder to bear than if she had exploded in anger.

“No, those are metaphors. Devils don't have horns and angels don't have wings. The unseen world operates through bodies, but they don't control them like robots. It's not like in the movies. That's why it's scary. It's all spiritual; it's in your head and your heart. The actual violence, it's not from scarlet rays of power, it's just some guy decides that his life will be just great if he chops up a bunch of little girls. I mean, it makes
sense
to him because a
being
has convinced him that his own pleasure and power are more important than the lives of the little girls and their families and all that. And that means…”

She stopped abruptly and examined his face, which had upon it an expression both cautiously neutral and doting. She touched his cheek and smiled. “You don't believe any of this, do you? You think I'm a lunatic.”

“Yup.”

“I know. And it must be so relaxing. Secular humanism, the La-Z-Boy of philosophy. It's all waves and particles, isn't it, operating according to fixed laws, right?”

“You got it.”

“And the mind is just chemicals, and the spirit is just a fantasy, right?”

“Right.”

She nestled against him and he put a protective arm around her. She felt like a bird, delicate and hot. “Fine, then,” she said. “Alleluia, I'm converted. And could we go out tonight? I want to breathe smoke and drink whiskey and listen to loud stupid music and mindless conversation, and dance until my feet hurt and then I want to go to bed with you and torment you with my partial unavailability.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

 

Judge Amos Higbee was a cocoa-colored, bulky man with a passing resemblance to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, a resemblance he did nothing to disguise; he cultivated a brush mustache and a rumbling slow delivery.

“Mr. Karp,” he growled, not looking up from his papers, as Karp walked in to his chambers. “Mr. Karp, I'll ask you to wait for your colleague. Have a chair.”

Karp sat and thought about Higbee and the triplex chemistry that would develop between them and whomever the detective's union had hired to replace Hank Klopper. Karp ran through the likely members of the defense bar in his mind. Eliminate anyone who hadn't defended a cop. Foolish of them not to pick someone with experience in that particular and peculiar brand of defense. An upside-down trial. He'd explained it all to Murrow, but he doubted that the young man could fully comprehend the true weirdness of such a trial. For every instinct of a defense lawyer, reinforced over hundreds of hours in the courtroom and library, was to attack the police, their methods, their skill, their honesty and integrity. And the prosecutorial bar was conditioned to establish just the opposite, which is why the prosecution of rogue cops was such a kidney stone to a DA's office, and why it was so rarely done, and even more rarely successfully done. A cop had to do some truly lunatic act, impossible to cover up, or do some ordinarily horrendous act in front of a video camera. Neither was present here, which was why it was a bear. He needed a couple more days, a week, which was why he had asked for this meeting. He didn't think whoever picked up the D would object.

Object. Keegan hadn't. Why? Karp thought again about Keegan's puzzling good humor. Murrow hadn't come back with anything yet. He'd have to lean on him. Why did Jack seem almost to want him to take the case? Because he wanted it lost? Or won? The case was extremely tough, but Karp was the best litigator on the DA's staff, and thus provided the best chance at a victory. On the other hand the DA had never registered any particular anxiety about winning the case. In fact, he had been conspicuously silent and offhand about it, as if he didn't want either credit or blame to touch him. Or maybe he thought the case impossible and wanted to stick Karp with the loss. Why? Karp losing a case with a black victim and a white defendant would simply confirm the opinion in a large segment of the African-American community that Karp was a bad actor, a racist, but why would that be to Keegan's advantage? He could fire Karp any time he wanted if he wanted to curry favor with that segment, and he hadn't, not even a couple of years ago when he was involved in a serious race with a black candidate. Could Keegan have turned nondevious in his old age?

A knock on the door. Higbee said, “Enter!” in his basso, and Roland Hrcany stepped through the door. The former head of the homicide bureau of the New York DA greeted the judge and took a seat.

Karp became conscious of the amazed expression on his face, and that Roland was aware of it, and was enjoying the effect of his entrance. He'd trimmed his hair, Karp noticed, as Roland shook hands with Higbee and traded pleasantries. During his long career at the DA Roland had worn his blond hair long, brushing his jacket color. Together with his brutal features and his weightlifter's body, it had given him the air of a professional wrestler, but this had not detracted at all from his effectiveness in the courtroom—helped it, probably. He had one of the best records ever for felony convictions, and had been forced out when someone had tape-recorded one of his famous, obscene misogynist-racist tirades.

The business was quickly accomplished. Karp asked for an extension of the recess, Roland objected. Again, topsy-turvy. The defense was always asking for delay, the state for celerity. Higbee commented on this dourly, and made his decision. The trial would resume after the weekend, as originally scheduled, with the same jury.

Hrcany and Karp left the chambers and stood uneasily together in the hallway outside.

“This is a surprise,” said Karp. “I was under the impression your practice was restricted to celebrity hit-and-run cases, the dope in the limo, stuff like that.”