Russell Andrews - Hades

Justin also knew he had to talk to Bruno. He was still waiting for Billy DiPezio to send him the results of the fingerprint search he'd asked for-a search that would, Justin hoped, identify the man who'd tried to shoot Bruno. The big man was another piece to this strange puzzle, and Justin had to find out where that piece fit. Bruno had said he'd appear once Justin was back in East End Harbor, and Justin knew that Bruno was, in his own way, a man of his word. So he could wait for Bruno to keep his word. At least for a little while.

And finally, he had to find the meaning of Wanda's message to him.

Just for the hell of it, he had googled the words that Wanda had managed to scrawl on her body: "Hades" and "Ali."

Hades had 9,850,000 mentions on the main page. There were 176,000 different references to the use of the word "Hades" in song lyrics; there was a Hades computer software program; paintings of the god Hades in museums all over the world; poems and books about Hades dating back hundreds of years; food products named Hades and a Hades Bloody Mary mix. It was impossible even to begin to sift through the various choices. The only thing he knew about Hades was the mythological aspect: it was the name, in Greek mythology, for both the underworld and the god of the underworld. So what Justin did was to pick the very first and easiest Google reference and enter it into his computer. He didn't really know why he bothered, except he liked the sound of it, and including it in his file-seeing it whenever he went back in to refer to his notes-would work to keep his anger about Wanda fresh and present and alive. He decided to title the entire casebook document Hades, and he typed in the following from something called the "Hades homework page": "HADES: Zeus's brother and ruler of the underworld and the dead. Also called Pluto-God of Wealth."

Justin thought it was fitting. The god of wealth and the ruler of the dead. Sounded like a god whose path he might cross one of these days.

Googling the name "Ali" produced 216,000,000 mentions. He managed to scroll through about forty of them-one-line descriptions of sites for info on Muhammad Ali, Ali G, NASA's advanced land imager (acronym ALI), Ali Baba, and an actor named Ali Suliman who was in the film Paradise Now (which, oddly enough, Justin had gone to see with Abby Harmon at the old-fashioned, arty East End Harbor movie theater that always smelled of grape drink and disinfectant). Justin gave up fairly quickly on this second search, deciding it was a reasonably safe bet that neither Muhammad Ali nor Ali G had anything to do with his murder investigations. He found absolutely nothing there he deemed worth adding to his lists.

Restless, he reached for his cell phone and dialed Abby's number in the city. She had not returned his calls from yesterday. He got her answering machine again, left a briefer message than his last one. "It's Jay. I'm in East End and I'd like to talk to you." She knew his number, so he didn't bother leaving it. The fact that he even considered leaving it made him realize that the relationship had shifted and was already different. So after a very brief pause, all he said was, "So call me. Bye." He then called her cell, which also immediately went to voice mail. He repeated, almost word for word, what he'd left on her home machine. Then he hung up, dissatisfied.

He paced around the room, not exactly sure what was fueling his impatience. At 7:30 p.m. Justin forced himself to sit back down at the computer. He made a short To Do list: an abbreviated version of everything he'd already entered, now turning them into specific tasks, in order of priority. This final list read: 1. Evan Harmon-background; Fed investigation 2. Ronald LaSalle-business connections to Harmon

5. Rockworth and Williams-Ellis St. John, H. R. Harmon, Lincoln Berdon

There was nothing more he could realistically get done tonight except perhaps for some more reading, so he began to think about dinner. He had nothing in his fridge or freezer-and the lack of anything even remotely domestic in his house made him think about the differences in the life he led from the one led by his parents. Right about now Louise would be setting a delicious meal and an excellent wine on the table before Jonathan and Lizbeth. No one was going to serve Justin the bottle of Pete's Wicked Ale and the shitty Chinese food he was about to go out and get and eat straight out of the cardboard carton.

Choices, he thought. Everything was about choices.

He'd made his. Maybe he should have made some different ones along the way.

Maybe it wasn't too late to make different choices for the future.

Then again, maybe it wasn't about choices. Maybe it was about fate. Or randomness. Maybe it was just about doing the best you could to control the uncontrollable.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his front door. Three knocks. Two were rather soft and tentative. The last one was harder, more forceful, as if whoever it was wasn't really sure about wanting to come in, then gathered up some courage and decided it was okay after all. Justin didn't know who could be showing up unexpectedly. He was not exactly Mr. Sociable. He supposed there were several people who wouldn't mind talking to him at the moment. Larry Silverbush. Leona Krill. Maybe even Bruno. So he rose from his chair-not without some effort; another reminder that he'd better get to the gym sooner rather than later-and went to open the door.

If there was one person he was not expecting to see-now or ever again-it was the woman standing in his doorway.

"Are you going to invite me in?" the woman said.

Justin didn't answer. He just stared. At first it was a stare of surprise. But the longer it went on the harder his eyes turned.

"You're going to have to let me in sooner or later," she said. "After all, we're partners."

Justin's first words to her in over a year were: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"They didn't tell you?"

And from the look on his face, the stunned silence, she saw that he hadn't been told, that they'd left all this up to her, so she met his hard stare with a softer one of her own and broke the news to him herself.

"The FBI," Reggie Bokkenheuser said. "I'm the agent assigned to work with you."

Her hair was blonder now; it had been darker when he'd seen her last. It was more natural this way; seemed to fit her better. She'd let it grow some; it had gotten a little wilder looking. And she'd lost some weight; she looked stronger than she used to look, leaner and more muscular. Her blue eyes were the same, though-clear and lovely, if a bit sad, and her skin was smooth and tan, her neck short and not thin but somehow elegant. Her mouth had the same touch of sadness that her eyes had, but it also had the faint trace of a protective smirk. Her mouth and that smirk gave away the fact that she had a sense of humor. But they also kept the world at a distance. Yes, it was definitely the same woman who'd been planted on Justin in the East End Harbor police department a little over a year ago and whom he'd taken into his confidence and to whom he'd made love and who'd led him into a trap that saw him wind up in Guantanamo's prison. The same woman who'd shot and killed Ray Lockhardt, the manager of the local airport, under orders from her superior at the FBI. The same woman he'd arrested for that murder.

And the same woman he realized-looking at her standing on his doorstep, her lips parted slightly, her thin smile hopeful and nervous and, as always, lopsided-could still make his stomach flutter and make his knees buckle ever so slightly.