John Lescroart - The First Law

But until tonight, just now, Gerson had seemed congenitally blind to these subtleties. He had a suspect and evidence and an arrest warrant, and goddamnit, why should he keep looking at all?

Now the lieutenant returned, got back in his swivel chair, made some kind of conciliatory gesture. "I apologize for being such a hard-ass about this, Paul. It's actually nice to have an inspector with this kind of initiative. It certainly wouldn't hurt to put these two guys in an interrogation room and sweat them on videotape, would it? If they broke…" Gerson brightened up, met Thieu's eyes. "But I would be more comfortable either way if we got Dan and Lincoln on board. Does that sit all right with you?"

Thieu remembered Glitsky's admonition that he should go directly through Gerson, without involving the two inspectors of record. But the reaction here had rendered that suggestion moot. If there was going to be any resolution to this case, there was no avoiding Cuneo and Russell now. "Sure. Your call, sir."

Gerson turned and punched numbers into the phone. "Hey, is Cuneo or Russell out there? Do you know when they…? Oh. Really? Okay, thanks." He hung up.

"Evidently they're coming in by chopper right now. Five minutes." The police helicopter, as well as others belonging to the Highway Patrol and even private companies such as Georgia AAA, often landed on the target painted on the roof of the Hall of Justice. "I don't think I've been out of this room all day, Paul. You mind if we get some exercise and meet them up there? I could use the air."

"Sure. Why not?"

Gerson grabbed his jacket from the peg by his door while Thieu went to get his off his chair. They passed out of the homicide detail and into the hallway, where Gerson turned right and Thieu followed. They went into the Inspectors Bureau, unoccupied at that time of the night, and pulled a key off a hook in a side room. This enabled the elevator to go all the way to the roof. They ascended in a companionable silence.

"Watch out," Gerson said, as he stepped over a low sill and out, "it's gotten a little dark."

And indeed it had come to full night, with a chill and biting wind.

Thieu had his hands in his pockets and shuddered against the cold. With the stiff breeze, he wasn't surprised that he couldn't yet hear the thwack-thwack of the helicopter's approach, but he turned a half circle and looked for it anyway.

The city was all dressed up. Thanksgiving was still a couple of weeks off, but already the Christmas lights were burning in several locations, some of the hotels, uptown. Taking in the sight, Thieu wondered why he didn't come up here more often. There was a splendid isolation, especially at this time of night, when the traffic was heavy but mostly unhearable, the stars close enough to touch. He moved a couple of steps toward the low edge of the roof, then started to turn back to ask his lieutenant if he knew from which direction the chopper might be approaching.

But he hadn't really begun the turn when a pair of strong hands hit him low in the back. With his own hands stuck deeply in his pockets, he could offer no resistance. "Wait!" was all he could think to say. "Wait!" But his feet hit the bottom of the wall almost before he realized he was being pushed, and there was nothing to stop his body from pitching over into the air.

Thieu's last whole thought, in the instant before the falling wiped his consciousness clean of anything but terror, was that Gerson had made that call to the outer office to check on the whereabouts of Cuneo and Russell. He'd talked to someone out there, and then less than a minute later they'd left the office to come up here. But no one had been in the office when Thieu had gone to retrieve his jacket. He should have remembered that, grown suspicious. He should have…

Susan Weiss, McGuire's wife, was doing her best to cope with the unexpected crisis, but it had thrown her off balance. This-the sudden arrival of her sister-in-law's family at her three-bedroom apartment in the Haight-was not something she felt equipped for, or trained to handle. She listened to their talk about fleeing from their house after the darkness had become complete, all of them making certain no one was behind them, with an air of disbelief. Was this really happening?

No one was acting as though the threat to the Hardy kids extended to the McGuire family, to her own children, Brittany and Erica. But even though Susan doubted that Panos knew that Moses and Frannie were brother and sister, she couldn't get that thought out of her mind. A cellist by profession and a true pacifist, Susan went through the motions of dinner and sleeping bags for the cousins and the fold-out couch for Dismas and Frannie with a wary, sleepwalking quality.

Susan knew the degree of protectiveness that Moses felt for Frannie. Her husband might be a good man with a pure nature, but at heart-and it had always troubled her-he was also a fighter, the veteran of dozens of bar brawls, rugby skirmishes, shillelagh altercations. Moses, like her brother-in-law Dismas, had seen action in Vietnam. Both of them had actually killed people, although she preferred to forget that most of the time.

Here, though, tonight, that was not possible.

Rebecca and Vincent wouldn't be going to their school for at least the next day and perhaps several more. Frannie wasn't going to her classes, either. After he talked to Glitsky tonight, Dismas would decide if the family needed to go into true hiding. They could get on a plane for somewhere, or at least check into a hotel out of town.

Now it was way past bedtime and still her girls sat spellbound on the floor, caught up in their cousins' fear and excitement. Suddenly, through no fault of Susan's, here was her whole family involved in a world of threats and violence, of intrigue and terror. She couldn't help herself, couldn't stop a great wave of resentment from washing over her. At her husband for insisting that they all come here, at Dismas and Frannie for agreeing. And now Dismas had gone off to discuss the situation with Glitsky, and Moses was back at the Shamrock.

Susan went to the kitchen, where poor Frannie was rinsing dishes and piling them in the dishwasher. Busing a few more dinner items from the table over to the sink, Susan fell in next to her, and shortly found she couldn't sustain any resentment toward her sister-in-law. Frannie, too, moved in a slightly robotic fashion, as though the strain of all this was just too great to contemplate, and Susan's heart went out to her.

Frannie finished rinsing a plate, then put it back down on top of the others, turned off the water and hung her head. Susan put an arm around her. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

Frannie sighed. "That maybe we're going to have to move after all."

"Where to?"

"It doesn't matter. Away from here. At least for a while. I can't imagine ever letting the kids go back to that school. Or really, to the house for that matter."

Susan understood what she was saying-she'd of course seen the Polaroid that Dismas had brought with him in a Ziploc bag. The two kids were at the gate in front of their house, knapsacks on, leaving for school, Frannie behind them a little out of focus. Whoever shot the picture couldn't have been more than thirty feet away. A red circle enclosed both of the children's torsos, smack in the crosshairs.

It was an image that would live with Susan for a long time. "Maybe," she said, "it really is just trying to get Dismas to stop working on this case."

Frannie turned the water back on, reached for the already rinsed plate. "He's already called their lawyer. But what if it's not who he thinks?" She shuddered. "I just see the man who took the picture sitting in his car right there, Susan. Close enough to touch. Except next time not with a camera. God." Suddenly the shuddering seemed to gather in on her and her shoulders were shaking. She brought her wet hands up to her face and covered it completely.