T. Parker: Cold Pursuit

"The cold weather made him stiff. He liked the fish room when it was cold. Because of the fireplace. But we didn't have any wood."

"We," said Hector. "You two get along pretty good?"

"Yes. Sure. Seven months, I got to like him."

"So you were like, friends."

"We were friends."

"Friends," said Hector with a smile.

McMichael watched her watch Paz. "How was Pete tonight?"

"Fine. He was always fine. Alert. Strong for his age. Healthy."

"Pete ever talk about being in danger, having enemies?"

"He disliked a lot of people. And a lot of people disliked him. I'm sure you know that."

"Any recent threats that you know of?"

"No."

McMichael watched her reflection in the picture window and saw that she was watching his. The first small drops of rain skidded down the glass. "Did that club come from the wall?"

"I think so. It looked like the one that used to be there."

"We'll get prints off the handle," said Paz. "Unless the creep was wearing gloves, or wiped it down."

She stared out at the storm-swept bay, but said nothing.

"Did you wear your gloves when you tried to revive him?" McMichael asked.

She looked at him again and shook her head, a minor motion that seemed intended mostly for herself. "No. Well, at first I touched his head, the sides of his face, to see his eyes. The gloves were on when I did that. Then I went to the phone and took them off to dial. When I straightened him in the chair and tried the CPR, no, I didn't have them on."

"Did you touch the club tonight?"

"No."

"Did you touch it recently?"

"No. Why?" She turned and looked at him, and for the first time he saw confusion in her unhappy brown eyes.

"In case we find two sets of prints on it."

"And what if you find just one?"

"That person is in deep shit," said Hector.

When she turned to look at Paz her ponytail shifted and McMichael saw the tattoo high on her neck, an inch below the hairline, right side, a small red flame with two points lapping at her pale skin. Or maybe it was a red tulip.

"It would help us quite a lot if we could have your boots for blood samples," he said.

"You can take the gloves and sweater, but I'm not walking around tonight in my socks."

"Ms. Rainwater, do you plan to be in town for the next few days?"

She answered yes without looking at him.

"Can I see your driver's license?"

"My purse is in the kitchen. I'll go-"

"I'll get it," said Hector. He was already moving toward the French doors. "Stay put, Ms. Rainwater. You've had a hard night."

Paz came back into the room with a black purse in one hand and a stainless steel derringer in the other. He held the gun between thumb and forefinger, at the bottom of the grip, the short barrel dangling down.

"Sorry, Ms. Rainwater, but the strap snagged, the purse tipped over, and out came your piece. I'll just put it back in. It's yours, isn't it?"

"It's mine and it's registered."

"You got a permit to go with it?"

"Yes. Give me my purse."

She set the purse on the table, dug out a wallet from which she handed McMichael a CDL and a San Diego County Concealed Carry Permit.

He took out his notebook and wrote down her date of birth and the license and CCP numbers.

Hector had glommed Fiore's camera during his purse retrieval, and now used it to shoot pictures of Sally Rainwater's boots.

She took back her documents, slung the purse over her shoulder and started out.

"Ms. Rainwater," said McMichael. "Where did you go for the firewood? Which store?"

"Ralph's on Rosecrans," she said, and kept on walking.

"Did you lock the door when you left?"

"Yes. And it was locked when I came back."

They watched her go, McMichael unable to keep from checking her shape in the jeans. Excellent indeed.

When she was gone, Hector smiled at McMichael and shook his head. "Odds?"

McMichael switched off his tape recorder, hit rewind. "Ninety-ten no. So far, I believe her. And if she did it, she'd bash, grab what she wanted and drive away. She wouldn't call us."

"I got sixty-forty yes. She bashes, stashes the goods in her Beetle out there, calls us, gives a story and sticks to it. Fucking gloves , man. Convenient. And she knows the name of that club, but she's never touched it? Come on."

"So she's driving away with stolen property right now?"

"Sixty-forty she is," said Hector.

"Pull her over and ask her if you can look in her car."

"She'd say no. She's not dumb."

"Then beat her home and see what she unloads."

McMichael hit the play button on his little tape recorder, wrote Sally Rainwater's address in his notebook, snapped the sheet out and handed it to Paz.

It took McMichael three calls to get Patricia Hansen's home phone number and tell her what had happened to her grandfather. She'd been sleeping and her voice was thick and dull but McMichael recognized it immediately. He could hear her husband, Garland, interrogatively grumbling in the background. She said thirty minutes and hung up.

Besides the painting missing from the hallway, Detective Barbara Givens had found for McMichael two more blank spots- with the lights illuminating nothing- in an upstairs bedroom. And another painting gone from the dining room. Another from one of the downstairs baths.

"Nothing else obvious," she said. "We could use someone who knows the house."

"The granddaughter's coming over."

"Good. The press is out in force. Local celebrity hour."

"Tell them no arrests. I let the nurse go home, Barbara. Leave her out of your statements if you can."

"They already know she made the call," said Givens. She was stout and broad-shouldered, with short blonde hair and quick blue eyes that often noticed what others missed. McMichael thought of her as optimistic and he trusted her completely. "Her car looked fine from the outside, Tom. Nothing interesting. Wouldn't mind lifting that trunk, though. And I listened to both the messages on the answering machine in the kitchen- a health insurance solicitation and a call from a man named Victor. No last name and no message."

Victor Braga, thought McMichael: Pete's son. A sixty-three year-old man with the mind of a ten-year-old. Living proof of the hatred between the McMichaels and the Bragas.

"Try the neighbors on each side, and across the street," he said.

"My next stop. What do you make of the nurse?"

McMichael had to think about that. There was a lot to see but not much to conclude. "Scared, angry. I don't think she did it."

"I'd feel that way, too. Whether I'd bashed him or not."

Back in the trophy room he watched the coroner's team zip Pete Braga into a body bag, one of them cradling the old man's head with a plastic sheet so the pieces wouldn't slide to the floor. McMichael felt bile in his throat and disgust in his heart. But he also felt a confirmation that pleased him in a way he couldn't deny, though he certainly wouldn't confess it to Father Shea.

Because Pete Braga had shot Franklin McMichael, his grandfather, dead in the summer of 1952.

Because Pete Braga said it was self-defense and the district attorney had not filed charges.

Because, in McMichael's book, murder was unforgivable and it always caught up with you in the end, which was part of why he had become a cop in the first place.

Patricia Hansen blew through the front door at twelve-forty in a red hooded raincoat, two steps ahead of Garland. She finished cursing an officer outside, shook out of the coat and hung it on a rack by the door while her husband battled the umbrellas.

McMichael had seen her eight times in the last twenty years, only because they lived in the same city.

"Goddamn Tommy, it's not good to see you but it is."