The Liar’s Lullaby
Meg Gardiner

For Eleanor

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Also by Meg Gardiner

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

HACK SHIRAZI BRACED HIMSELF IN THE OPEN DOOR OF THE HELICOPTER and gazed across San Francisco Bay at the crowded ballpark. Wind and engine noise buffeted him. The evening sun bisected his field of vision. The check had cleared, so he was going to deliver the Rambo. But they were running late, which put the failing gold light square in his eyes.

He shoved the banana clip into the Kalashnikov. “On my mark.”

In the helicopter flying alongside them, the second team positioned themselves in the doorway. They swept over the bay toward the city. Whitecaps foamed on the surface of the water, five hundred feet below. In the pilot’s seat, Andreyev held tight to the controls.

The Giants’ ballpark was filled to capacity. People jammed the stands and covered the field from home plate to the centerfield stage. The two Bell 212 choppers would fly beyond it, circle back, and make their run at the target from out of the sun.

Andreyev radioed their man on the ground. “Rock and roll.”

IN THE STANDS BELOW, Rez Shirazi put a hand to his radio earpiece. “I hear you.”

Rock and roll was just about all he could hear. It echoed from the bleachers along the foul line, where beer-marinated rednecks whooped to the beat. From the teeming field, where sunburned college girls sang along with the saccharine lyrics. From the corporate hospitality suites on either side of him, where venture capitalists sipped mojitos and dipped five-dollar tortilla chips in mango chutney salsa.

Shirazi shook his head. Ersatz rock and roll—drowned in country-western cheese sauce. Tasteless, drippy American cheese.

Through his earpiece, he heard his brother Hack. “Four minutes. Mark.”

Rez clicked the timer on his watch. “Mark.”

On the stage, near towering speakers that amplified their cornpone accent, a choir of backup patriots was woo-wooing, while a singer in two-thousand-dollar cowboy boots wailed about the trials of the common man.

You can take my work, you can take my cash…but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your—

“Ass,” Shirazi said.

The surrounding suites were jammed. People crowded the interiors and filled rows of seats on the balcony. But Rez’s suite was empty: no food, absolutely no drink, no loiterers. He stepped onto the balcony and checked their gear. The CO₂ canisters were in place. The zip line was secure. It was a stainless steel aircraft cable, clamped through a forged eyebolt and anchored to the girders that supported the upper deck of the stadium. He glanced at the video camera, then over the edge of the balcony. The drop was substantial.

Andreyev’s voice crackled through the radio. “I can’t see her on video. Is she there?”

ON CUE, the door to the suite opened. Noise flowed in from the hallway outside. Tasia McFarland stormed in.

“Rez, they’re following me. Get rid of them. I can’t do this with all these people harassing me.”

His nerves fired at the sight of her. “She’s here.” For a millisecond his skin itched and his ears thundered. “Oh, brother.”

In his ear, Hack sounded sharp. “What’s wrong?”

Tasia already had the climbing harness cinched around her hips. That was no mean feat. She was wearing a magenta corset, which trailed back into ruffles that dragged on the floor. Beneath it she wore ripped jeans and turquoise cowboy boots. The top half of her looked like Scarlett O’Hara halfway through a striptease. The bottom half looked like she’d escaped a cage fight with a rabid badger.

Behind her, people streamed through the door. Stadium security men. A makeup artist. A wardrobe assistant. The soundman.

She spun on them. “Stop hounding me. You’re turning my head into a beehive. I can’t think. Get out. Rez, get them out.”

Rez put up his hands. “Okay. Chill.”

Her eyes gleamed, jade bright. “Chill? This is an event. This is a supernova. I’m at the shore of the Rubicon. And these”—she waved at the entourage—“these vampires are filling my head with static. They’re filling the score with noise and I won’t be able to hear what I need to hear to protect myself out there. Get them out.”

In his ear, Rez heard the director in the control booth. “Crap. Is she melting down?”

“You got it.” Rez gestured the entourage back. “You heard the lady. Everybody out.”

The makeup girl pointed at Tasia in dismay. “Look at her. She’s been playing in the crayon box.”

Rez pushed the girl toward the door.

The security men glowered. “This breaches protocol.”

“It’s not a problem,” Rez said. “We’ve done the stunt a dozen times.”

The soundman shook his head. “Her radio mike, she—”

“I got this.” Rez ushered the last of the crowd from the suite.

The soundman shouted over his shoulder. “It’s on your head, man.”

“I’m the stunt coordinator. It’s always on my head.” Rez shut the door.

“Lock it,” Tasia said.

Rez flipped the bolt. Tasia stalked around the room, glancing at corners and the ceiling, examining the shadows. Her ruffles trailed behind her like a peacock’s plumage.

“I used to think fame was a shield. But it won’t protect me. It’s only made me a target,” she said.

Rez glanced at his watch. “Celebrity’s tough.”

“Tough? It’s a life sentence. And life’s a bitch, and I’m a bitch, and then you die. Like Princess Di.”

Over the radio, Andreyev said, “Three minutes. We are inbound, beginning our run.”

“Roger,” Rez said.

In three minutes a computer program would set the special effects sequence in motion, and Tasia would make her grand entrance as the helicopters overflew the ballpark. And she was blowing a damned cylinder.

“And I’m not camera shy. But there’s an eye in the sky, watching me. Satellites, NSA, paparazzi. On TV, online, whenever I turn my back. I’m in their sights. Fawn in the headlights. Doe in the brights. Do, re, mi, fa, so long, suckers.”

She stalked out the plate-glass doors onto the balcony and stared down at the forty thousand people who filled the ballpark. The music bounced off the glass, distorted echoes of the Star-Spangled chorus.

Rez followed her outside. “Let’s get you rigged. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a stunt.”

The breeze off the bay lifted her hair from her neck like swirls of caramel smoke. “It was a stunt in the movie. But in the movie, the star didn’t do this. You know why?”

Because she’s sane. “Because she’s not you.”

Because the star wasn’t as ravenous for stage time as Tasia McFarland. Because the star wasn’t brave or wild enough to hook herself to a zip line and fly forty feet over the heads of the crowd as fireworks went off from the scoreboard, singing the title song from the movie.

Bull’s-eye was the latest in a series of action films that featured guns and slinky women. Long Barrel. Pump Action. The stuntmen had their own names for these movies. Handguns and Hand Jobs. Planes, Trains, and Blown Brains.

But the flick was a hit, and so was “Bull’s-eye,” the song. Tasia McFarland was top of the charts. And she wanted to stay there.

“Movie stars don’t do their own stunts because they don’t know jack about life and death,” she said.

Her eyes shone. Her makeup looked like an overstimulated six-year-old had applied it after peeping at Maxim.

“Stop staring at me like that,” she said. “I’m sober. I’m clean.”

Too clean? Rez thought, and his face must have shown it, because Tasia shook her head.

“And I’m not off my meds. I’m just wound up. Let’s go.”

“Great.” Rez forced encouragement into his voice. “It’ll be a breeze. Like Denver. Like Washington.”

“You’re a lousy liar.” She smiled. It looked unhappy. “I like that, Rez. It’s the good liars who get you.”

In his ear, Andreyev’s voice rose in pitch. “Two minutes.”

Tasia’s gaze veered from the empty suite to the heaving field. She squirmed against the tight fit of her jeans.

“The harness feels wrong.” She pulled on it. “I have to adjust it.”

A carabiner was already clipped to the harness. Rez reached for it. She slapped his hand. “Go inside and turn around. Don’t look.”

He glared, but she pushed him back. “I can’t sing if my crotch is pinched by this damned chastity belt. Go.”

And she thought that adjusting her panties in full view of a stadium crowd was the modest option? But he remembered rule number one: Humor the talent. Reluctantly he went inside and turned his back.

Behind him the plate-glass doors slammed shut. He spun and saw Tasia lock the doors.

“Hey.” Rez shook the door handles. “What are you doing?”

She grabbed a chair and jammed it under the handles.

“This isn’t a stunt, Rez. He’s after me. This is life and death.”

ON THE FIELD, sunburned, thirsty, crammed on a plastic chair surrounded by thousands of happy people, Jo Beckett sank lower in her seat.

The band was blasting out enough decibels to blow up the sonar on submarines in the Pacific. The song, “Banner of Fire,” was hard on the downbeat and on folks who didn’t love buckshot, monster trucks, and freedom. The singer, Searle Lecroix, was a pulsing figure: guitar slung low, lips nearly kissing the mike. A black Stetson tipped down across his forehead, putting his eyes in shadow. The guitar in his hands was painted in stars and stripes, and probably tuned to the key of U.S.A.

The young woman beside Jo climbed on her chair, shot her fists in the air, and cried, “Woo!”

Jo grabbed the hem of the woman’s T-shirt. “Tina, save it for the Second Coming.”

Tina laughed and flicked Jo’s fingers away. “Snob.”

Jo rolled her eyes. When she’d offered her little sister concert tickets for her birthday, she figured Tina would pick death metal or Aida, not Searle Lecroix and the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.

Despite her taste in music, Tina looked like a junior version of Jo: long brown curls, lively eyes, compact, athletic physique. But Jo wore her combats and Doc Martens and had her UCSF Medical Center ID in her backpack and her seen-it-all, early thirties attitude in her hip pocket. Tina wore a straw cowboy hat, a nose ring, and enough silver bangles to stock the U.S. Mint. She was the human version of caffeine.

Jo couldn’t help but smile at her. “You’re a pawn of the Military-Nashville complex.”

“Sicko. Next you’ll say you don’t love puppies, or the baby Jesus.”

Jo stood up. “I’m going to the snack bar. Want anything?”

Tina pointed at Lecroix. “Him. Hot and buttered.”

Jo laughed. “Be right back.”

She worked her way to the aisle and headed for the stands. Overhead, sunlight glinted off metal. She looked up and saw a steel cable, running from a luxury suite to the stage. It looked like a zip line. She slowed, estimating the distance from the balcony to the touchdown point. It was a long way.

A second later, she heard helicopters.

ANDREYEV PUT THE BELL 212 through a banking turn and lined up for the pass above the ballpark. The second helicopter flanked him. The sunset flared against his visor.

“Ninety seconds,” he said. “Rez, is Tasia ready to go?”

He got no reply. “Rez?”

He glanced at the video monitor. It showed the balcony of the luxury suite.

He did a double take. The doors to the suite were jammed shut with a chair. Rez was inside, rattling the doorknob.

On the balcony Tasia stood with her back to him. She reached around to her back pocket, beneath the extravagant ruffles that trailed from her corset.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Andreyev said.

From the door of the chopper, Hack Shirazi shouted, “What’s going on?”

Andreyev yelled into the radio. “Rez, she’s got a gun.”

2

REZ POUNDED ON THE PLATE-GLASS DOOR. “TASIA, OPEN IT. FOR God’s sake, nobody’s after you.”

In his ear Andreyev shouted at him. “…a gun. Rez, stop her.”

Rez put his hand over his earpiece. Tasia turned around. In her right hand she held a pistol.

“What are you doing with that?” he said.

The gun was a big mutha. It was a goddamned Colt .45 automatic.

“Is that from Props?”

“It’s from the department of authenticity,” she said. “With a grand finale, it always comes down to a gun.”

“On-screen, not in real life. Put it down.”

“You keep thinking this is a show. So call this a solo with high-caliber backup.”

“That thing drops on somebody’s head and we’re sued up the wazoo. Don’t get me fired.” He rattled the door again. “You can’t take a weapon out there.”

She smiled angrily. “Everybody else involved in this stunt has a gun.”

“But theirs are fake.”

“Exactly.” She held up the pistol. “Fame can’t protect me. Just Samuel Colt. And my music, ‘cause the voice is mightier than the sword. Melody, harmony, counterpoint, lyrics. Remember that—if they get me, remember. The truth is in my music. Number one with a bullet, glory, halle-lu-jah.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Tasia.” Rez raised his hands placatingly. “Please put it down.”

“Do you think I’m an asshole? I won’t drop it.” Her eyes swam with a feverish heat. “God, you actually think it’s loaded.”

For a moment her swirling hair took on the look of snakes. But the snakes were only in her head.

From the chopper, Andreyev said, “Is the gun a prop? Rez?”

“I don’t know.”

Tasia’s voice hit him low and sharp, like a blade. “No, you don’t. You have no idea what’s out there. What’s waiting. I’m talking about violence. I’m talking about propaganda of the deed. I’m talkin’ ‘bout a revolution—yeah, you know, we all want to change the world.”

In his ear, Rez heard the director. “What’s happening? Shirazi, for the love of Christ, what’s she doing?”

“Tasia, put down the weapon.”

She shook her head. “I put it down, and he gets me. Then it’s open season. Car bombs in cities. Death squads cutting down women and children.” She held the gun up, and turned it, seemingly checking that it had all its working pieces. “I used to think they wouldn’t dare. But I was naïve. I was a child. A freaking child, playing around. Round, round, get around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Martyrdom.”

Rez felt faint.

“It ain’t always religious. Sometimes it’s ungodly, and sometimes it’s at the hands of the angels, not the devil. And this gun is from the source, the alpha and omega.”

She grabbed her carabiner and clipped it to the trolley cable that hung from the zip line.

Into his radio, Rez said, “Get security. Send them through the luxury suites on either side of us and grab her.”

Tasia turned abruptly and stared at him. “I told him. Warned him. So he’s heard me. But he’s going to hear me again, right now, a whole lot louder.”

Jesus. “Come on, T—”

She waved the gun haphazardly in his direction. He flinched. She turned back to the crowd.

“Secret Service would have scoped it out beforehand.”

Oh, crap.

“But they won’t protect me. Au contraire. Loose cannon, loose lips, loose woman. I am on my own and in their sights. So it’s just me and my music and the peacemaker here.”

Onstage, the band segued into the intro to “Bull’s-eye.” On cue, the CO₂ canisters rigged around the balcony began discharging. Clouds of white smoke swirled around Tasia.

Shirazi stared at the barrel of the Colt. He had no way to determine whether the gun was loaded.

“Tasia, if there’s a problem, come inside and let security handle it. You can’t take a gun onstage. You’ll terrify the crowd.”

“No, I won’t.” She smiled again, darkly. “Watch me.”

The director shouted in his ear. “Grab her.”

“I’m trying. Did you call security?” Rez shook the plate-glass door one last time. He ran across the suite, opened the main door, and leaned into the hall. The corridor was crowded. A guard was loitering nearby.

Rez waved at him. “Tasia’s locked on the balcony, freaking out. Go through the suite next door and grab her.”

Behind him, she called, “Rez, you idiot. He’ll get in.”

The security guard hustled to the adjoining suite and pounded on the door. Rez ran back to the plate-glass windows. Tasia looked manic and distraught, her face blurred by the swirling CO₂.

“I can’t let this happen.” She turned on her headset mike and began gesturing to the people sitting along the balcony in the adjoining suites. “Hey, everybody. Join the party.”

People looked up, surprised. As if she were hosting a street party, she waved everybody toward her. They held back, unsure.

“Come on!”

“What the hell?” the director said.

First one person, then another, stood up and climbed over the low barriers from the balconies of adjoining boxes. Then they all came. They swarmed over the barriers and mobbed her.

“Damn,” Rez shouted into his radio. “She’s surrounding herself with people so the security guards can’t get to her.”

More CO₂ canisters lit off. Dozens of fans, hundreds, crowded around Tasia before they were lost in the white mist of carbon dioxide.

And understanding swept through Shirazi. “Tasia, no.”

He grabbed a chair and swung it into the plate glass. It bounced off. The pane was ultra-thick safety glass, and the blow left barely a mark.

The first round of fireworks ignited. Tasia faced the stage and raised the Colt.

3

STANDING CENTER STAGE, GUITAR IN HIS HANDS, SEARLE LECROIX HIT the high note at the end of the verse. The crowd reached toward him, swept up in his performance like wheat pulled forward by a prairie wind. He grinned and pushed the cowboy hat down on his forehead.

In the stands behind home plate, carbon dioxide swirled around Tasia. Lecroix hit the downbeat. On cue, she began to sing.

“Give me a shot of whiskey with a chaser of tears…”

Her soprano filled the air like silver. The crowd cheered. Lecroix felt a rush.

He hit the chord change to G major. Tasia’s voice gained power.

“Give me a shot of courage, blow away all my fears…”

Her magenta corset swam in and out of view through the smoke. The crowd was spilling onto the balcony around her. What on earth? And she had something in her hand. It caught the light.

A gun.

He lost the beat. The bass player glanced at him.

Theatrically, like she was a gunfighter practicing a quick draw, she swung the gun up, aimed at the stage, and pretended to pull the trigger. The second round of fireworks whizzed into the air from the stage scaffolding. Tasia jerked her hand up, miming recoil. The fireworks burst with a crackle and poured red light on the crowd.

It looked like Tasia had set them off. She raised the gun to her lips and blew on the barrel.

Wow. The girl wanted to tie the crowd in knots. Indulging herself in some fake gunplay—Drive the guys crazy, why don’t you?

More fireworks lit off, green and white. Again Tasia raised the gun, fake-fired, and blew on the barrel.

“Fire away, hit me straight in the heart…”

Lecroix’s own heart beat in double time. Above the stadium, two helicopters flew into view. The third round of fireworks burst, red, white, and blue. Tasia’s voice rocketed above them.

“Baby, give me a shot.”

She raised the gun again. Smoke obscured her.

A sound cracked through the ballpark like cannon fire.

BELOW THE BELL 212, the ballpark swept into view. Andreyev heard Rez yelling at him over the radio.

“The weapon’s not a prop and—”

A colossal bang cracked through Andreyev’s headphones.

“Christ.” Ears ringing, he called to the pilot of the other helicopter. “Break off.”

Was Tasia Goddamned McFarland firing at him? The second chopper veered right. Andreyev banked sharply, following it.

Hack shouted, “Too close!”

He’d banked too hard. He jerked the controls, but it was too late. His tail rotor hit the second chopper’s skids.

The noise was sudden, loud, everywhere. The chopper shook like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. The tail rotor sheared off.

Hack yelled, “Andreyev—”

The chopper instantly spun, losing height. Andreyev fought with the controls. “Hang on.”

The engines screamed. The view spun past Andreyev. Bay Bridge, downtown, sunset, scoreboard. God, clear the scoreboard, get past it and ditch in the bay and don’t auger into the crowd—

“Hang, on, Hack.”

The bay swelled in his windshield.

ONSTAGE, LECROIX HEARD metal shearing. He glanced up. In the sky above the stadium, debris spewed from one of the stunt helicopters. The crowd gasped. The chopper spun in circles, engine whining. It keeled at a sharp angle and dropped behind the scoreboard toward the bay.

The security guards waved at the band. “Get down. Look out.”

A slice of rotor blade buried itself in the stage like a hatchet.

The drummer leaped up, knocked over his kit, and hit the stage with his hands over his head. Lecroix threw down his guitar and jumped into the crowd.

A chunk of the chopper’s tail plunged like a meteor into the front row seats. Screaming, the crowd fled. Lecroix fought against the tide, aiming for the stands where CO₂ canisters continued to spew white smoke.

Lightning seemed to run through him. He knew where the first God-awful banging noise had come from. And why it was deafening, infinitely louder than the pyrotechnics or guitar solo.

The gun had fired, next to Tasia’s headset mike.

A gearbox slammed into the field. The flight of the crowd became a stampede. Lecroix struggled to stay upright. And from out of the smoke Tasia came sliding toward the stage on the zip line. She twirled, slow as a lariat, hanging by the harness around her hips. Her head was back, arms flung wide, as if offering herself to heaven. Blood saturated her hair. It dripped like fat tears onto the fleeing crowd. Lecroix tried to scream, but his voice was gone.

JO RAN FROM the snack bar toward the shouts and wailing. She heard metal slicing metal. She rounded a corner and saw mayhem.

People were racing away from the stage. Debris was raining from the sky like bright metallic confetti. Beyond the right field wall, smoke rose from the bay.

“Oh Jesus.”

A chopper had gone down. Nausea spiked her stomach. She dropped her popcorn and ran toward the field.

“Tina,” she said.

A chunk of debris smashed into the stanchion at the back of the stage that anchored the zip line. With a twanging sound, the steel cable snapped loose. It dropped like a heavy whip into the crowd.

“Dear God.”

A woman was on the zip line. Jo saw her plunge helplessly into the crowd.

People poured toward her. They pushed, stumbled, fell, piled on top of one another. She tried to fight her way through them. Then, like a top note, she heard her name being called.

“Jo, here.”

Tina was running in her direction. Jo pushed through the surging crowd and grabbed her.

“The helicopters collided,” Tina said.

Jo pulled Tina against a pillar and watched, eyes stinging. The stampede flowed toward the right field stands. People poured over the railings and fell into the dugout.

A stadium official took the microphone and begged for calm. The screams turned into wailing and an eerie quiet in the upper reaches of the ballpark.

“What just happened?” Tina said.

“The worst stunt catastrophe in entertainment history,” Jo said.

She wasn’t even close.

4

TWILIGHT VEILED THE SKY, BLUE AND STARRY, WHEN JO AND TINA walked from the ballpark onto Willie Mays Plaza. But the stadium lights blazed. Police cruisers lined the street. On the bay, searchlights on a salvage barge illuminated the rough waters where the helicopter had crashed. Third Street was lit by television spotlights. The night was whiter than a starlet’s red-carpet smile.

Jo hung her arm across Tina’s shoulder. Exhausted and numb, they headed toward her truck.

Ahead, leaning against an unmarked SFPD car, was Amy Tang.

The young police lieutenant had a phone to her ear and a cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A uniformed officer stood before her, getting instructions. Her coal-colored suit matched her hair, her glasses, and, it seemed, her mood. Barely five feet tall, she was tiny against the Crown Vic. She looked like a disgruntled hood ornament.

Jo veered toward her. Tang looked up. Surprise brushed her face. She ended her call and dismissed the uniformed officer.

“You were at the concert?” Tang said.

“Tina was on the field.”

Tang’s mouth thinned. She glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed since the stunt disaster.

“Fire Department and paramedics were swamped. We stuck around,” Jo said.

Tang nodded slowly. “Lucky thing you love country rock so much.”

Tina pulled off her straw cowboy hat. Her curls were lank. “Yeah, every stadium should have a barista and a shrink on emergency standby.”

“Brewing coffee and listening to people’s problems—I’m sure that’s what you did, and well,” Tang said.

Jo and Tina had helped ferry supplies and comfort distraught concertgoers. But Jo didn’t want to talk about that.

“Congratulations on your transfer to the Homicide Detail, Amy. Why are you here?”

Tang’s sea-urchin hair spiked in the breeze. She didn’t answer.

Jo stepped closer. “A body’s lying on the field, covered by a tarp. And tonight came close to being a remake of the Twilight Zone disaster, starring my sister as Woman Hit by Crashing Chopper. I want to know what happened.”

“It’s Tasia McFarland.” Tang’s face turned pensive. “And I want you to know what happened. I think I want your professional opinion on it.”

Jo felt a frisson. “Her death is equivocal?”

“Fifty points for the deadshrinker.”

Jo was a forensic psychiatrist who consulted for the SFPD. She performed psychological autopsies in cases of equivocal death—cases in which the authorities couldn’t establish whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide.

She analyzed victims’ lives to discover why they had died. She shrank the souls of the departed.

But the cops normally requested Jo’s expertise only when a death remained indecipherable even after a long investigation. If the SFPD already considered the death of Tasia McFarland—notorious, splashy, icon-of-Americana Tasia McFarland—to be equivocal, this case was going to be tricky, as well as inconceivably high profile. Jo had a brief image of her professional life igniting like a matchstick.

And she saw her sister beside her: tired, lovely, lucky to be breathing.

She handed Tina the keys to her truck. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Tina kissed her cheek and whispered, “I’m fine. There was no instant replay. Don’t dwell on it.”

Jo blinked. Tina squeezed her hand and headed off.

Tang flicked her cigarette away. “Come on.”

They headed back into the ballpark. Tang said, “Pilot of the first helicopter’s missing, presumed dead. Stuntman who was in the back of the chopper survived, barely.”

Jo ran her fingers across her forehead. Her face was stinging. Tang glanced at her, and hesitated.

“Sorry, Beckett. This must hit close to home.”

“That score’s already on the board. I can’t take it down.”

Her husband had been killed in the crash of a medevac helicopter. But she couldn’t avoid discussing aircraft accidents, any more than she could rewind her life three years and get a second swing at the day Daniel died.

“Keep talking,” she said. But as they walked, she sent a text message to Gabriel Quintana. Am OK. With Tang, will call.

“The second chopper managed to crash-land at McCovey Point with no fatalities,” Tang said.

They passed through a tunnel and emerged onto the bottom deck of the stands. The ballpark’s jeweled views, of San Francisco and the bay, were the greatest in Major League Baseball, and Jo usually met her parents at the stadium for a Giants game at least once a summer. Now forensic teams, photographers, and the medical examiner were working the scene. The yellow tarp stood out, as bright as a warning sign.

“I saw her drop,” Jo said. “Debris hit the stanchion where the zip line was anchored. It collapsed and she fell like…” A ribbon of nausea slid through her. “She fell.”

“The fall didn’t kill her,” Tang said. “She had a gunshot wound to the head.”

Jo turned, lips parting. “Somebody shot her? She shot herself? What’s confusing about her death?”

Tang walked down the aisle toward the field. “Aside from the fact that she slid down the zip line with half her throat blown away?”

“Aside from that.”

“And that at least seventy-five people in the crowd were hit by falling debris or trampled in the stampede?”

“And that.”

“And the fact that Fawn Tasia McFarland, age forty-two, born and bred in San Francisco, was the ex-wife of the president of the United States?”

Jo slowed to a stop. “No, that, without a doubt, most definitely covers it.”

5

TANG TURNED TO JO. “TASIA’S DEATH COULD BE AN ACCIDENT. COULD be suicide.”

“Could be murder?” Jo said. “Somebody may have just shot the president’s ex to death?”

Tang nodded.

Jo felt an electric tremor of excitement. “You want me to perform a psychological autopsy on Ms. McFarland?”

“This is going to be an alphabet soup investigation. SFPD, NTSB, DA’s office. Join the lineup. I want you to turn on your radar and cut through the clutter. Will you?”

Jo thought of reasons a fast-rising lieutenant might want the assistance of a forensic psychiatrist: ass covering, running up the score on the opposition, positioning a scapegoat to take the arrows. But Amy Tang had always played straight with her.

The cops called Jo when they could identify how a person had died—a fall, an overdose, a collision—but could not determine why. Jo investigated a victim’s state of mind, and retraced his final hours, to pinpoint whether he had tripped from the roof or jumped; overdosed on barbiturates accidentally or deliberately; stepped carelessly in front of the bus, or been pushed.

Some police officers dealt reluctantly with Jo, seeing her as a sorceress who cast bones to divine a victim’s fate. Some, like Tang, treated her as an investigative teammate who could uncover the emotional and psychological factors that led to victims’ deaths. Working with Tang was like holding a cactus-covered live grenade. But Tang cared about putting the good guys first, and bad guys behind bars. She didn’t play games.

“My sister could have been sliced in two by a helicopter blade. I will,” Jo said. “But I don’t want to end up in a meat slicer myself.”

“I want your perspective and insight. This will be a backstage role, not a star turn.”

“Did you know that when you lie, your cheek twitches?”

Tang huffed. “All right. This case has enough celebrity, politics, and carnage to feed the world. But you’ll be a consultant, not the lead investigator.”

“Great. Tell me about the case.”

“Tasia McFarland apparently bled to death when her carotid artery was severed at the jaw line by a forty-five caliber bullet.”

“Did she pull the trigger?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a hell of an admission.”

“It certainly is.” Tang’s shoulders tightened, as though somebody had turned a knob. “We need to slam the door on this case. You saw the media outside. The networks, cable, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, and some camera crew from, I swear, the Garden Gnome Channel. And they all want to eat us for lunch.”

“Again, I refer you to the image of the meat slicer.”

“As thrill rides go, this’ll be cheaper than Disneyland.” Tang gazed at the field. “Fawn Tasia McFarland died in front of forty-one thousand witnesses. Cameras caught it from three angles. And we can’t see the shooting on any of them.”

The breeze swirled through the ballpark, blowing Jo’s curls around her face. “Who claims Tasia was murdered?”

Tang nodded at the shiny yellow tarp. “Tasia does.”

“TASIA LEFT A message,” Tang said.

“But not a suicide note. What did she say?” Jo said.

“I’ll get to that, but first let me explain how we got to this.” Tang nodded grimly at the yellow tarp on the baseball field. “She was supposed to slide down the zip line, singing the song from that action movie. Guns ‘n’ poses. All butch-and-big-hair, patriotism and sexual innuendo. She turned up with a real gun. A Colt forty-five.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. “Classic weapon. And a hell of a choice.”

“She liked big statements.”

“Was she known to carry?”

Tang shook her head. “No. I’ve spoken to her agent and manager, plus the tour manager and the concert promoter. Nobody had ever seen her with firearms. But she wasn’t the most reliable person—which we’ll also get to.”

High above the stands the American flag snapped in the wind, vivid under the stadium lights. Jo brushed her hair from her eyes.

“Ballistics?” she said.

“Don’t count on it. The shot was through and through. We haven’t found the round or the brass. We’re bringing in metal detectors, but I’m not hopeful.”

The field was churned to bits. The scene was hopelessly contaminated.

“How many cartridges were loaded?” Jo said.

“That’s part of the problem. After the fatal shot, the weapon fell into the crowd and a bunch of idiots fought for possession of it.”

Jo almost guffawed. It seemed preposterous, yet unsurprising.

“They grappled like bridesmaids fighting for the bouquet at a wedding. One guy finally got it and ran off, then had second thoughts about selling it online. He turned it over. Unloaded—says that’s the way he got it.”

“You’re sure it’s the weapon?” Jo said.

“There’s DNA on it. Of types I have no doubt will prove to come from the victim.”

Tang didn’t need to say blood, bone, brain matter. Her face said it for her.

“Tasia told the stunt coordinator the weapon was unloaded,” she said. “But he didn’t know if she was lying, teasing him, or serious. And the Colt’s capacity is seven-plus-one.”

Seven rounds in the cylinder plus one in the chamber. “You think she checked the cylinder but not the chamber—and actually believed the weapon was empty?”

“It’s possible. The gun’s twenty years old. The round that killed her could have been in there for decades. But without the bullet and the casing, we can’t tell.”

“You think it was an accident?” Jo said.

“You think it wasn’t?”

Jo stated it as clearly as she could. “Self-inflicted, contact gunshot wounds to the head are presumptive evidence of suicide.”

Tang grumbled. It was as close as she came to sighing.

But Jo knew the statistics. The majority of gunshot deaths in the United States were suicide. Almost as many were homicide. Only a small percentage were accidental.

“If a victim has a history of depression, the presumption of suicide is even stronger,” she said. “Did Tasia?”

“Yes.”

“But you think it was a prank? Stupidity?”

“It’s been known to happen. Brandon Lee died filming The Crow.”

“That was an accident. Unequivocally. Fatal error on the movie set. Nobody noticed that a bullet had jammed in the barrel of the gun. When the weapon was reloaded with blanks and fired again, the jammed round discharged and hit Lee in the chest.”

“That actor on a Hollywood TV set shot himself with blanks.”

“Jon-Erik Hexum. Also unequivocally an accident. Hexum didn’t realize that blanks can discharge with enough force to kill. He put a stunt gun to his temple, apparently as a joke, and pulled the trigger.” Jo stuck her hands in her pockets. “On the other hand, there’ve been televised suicides. A reporter in Florida sat down at the news desk, made a crack about bringing viewers blood and guts in living color, put a revolver to her head, and fired.”

Tang’s mouth pursed. “Never challenge a forensic shrink on death trivia.”

“I’ll take Onstage Fatalities for two thousand, Alex.”

Tang looked like she had a burr under her shirt. “We’re checking whether Tasia purchased ammunition recently.”

“What’s gnawing at you?”

“The wing nuts are out there, the political banshees, and you can bet they’re getting ready to fly. I need to shut down any talk that dark forces are at work here.”

My superiors want me to shut it down was the undertone.

“You’re talking about murder,” Jo said.

“If somebody killed Tasia, I need to know it. And to know if her death is a fuse that’s been lit.”

Jo’s hair blew across her face. “You’d better tell me about the message she left.”

“It’s a recording. It’s her playing two songs she wrote last night. Plus a rambling statement, saying, ‘Publish this in the event of my assassination.’”

“She used that word?”

“Hear for yourself.”

Tang took an audio player from her pocket. “The tracks are called ‘After Me’ and ‘The Liar’s Lullaby.’ She left it for her boyfriend.”

They each put in an earbud and Tang pushed Play. Jo heard a piano, spare and melancholy, and Tasia McFarland’s shimmering soprano.

“After me, what’ll you do?”

The melody was mournful, Tasia’s voice bright and riven with cracks. She hit a hard minor chord and let it fade. Then she spoke.

“I’m in danger of being silenced. If that happens, I won’t be the last.”

Her speaking voice was bold, ringing, and rushed. “Searle, my love, my baby boy, Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, listen close. Turn your ear, turn your heart, turn your head. Because I might not make it.”

Jo glanced at Tang. “Lecroix?”

Tang nodded.

“Things have gone haywire,” Tasia said. “I can’t tell you more than that. Telling you more would kill me. But if I die, it means the countdown’s on.”

A chill inched up Jo’s neck. She glanced at the tarp on the field.

“It means time’s running out like a train headed for a wreck. My death will be the evidence.” Tasia inhaled, like a swimmer coming up for air before plowing on. “I was confused, but not anymore. I thought I got away without being followed. But they’re after me. Robert McFarland makes that inevitable.” She paused. “Publish this in the event of my assassination.”

She played a heavy chord on the piano, and began to sing.

You say you love our land, you liar Who dreams its end in blood and fire Said you wanted me to be your choir Help you build the funeral pyre.

The chill crept across Jo’s shoulders.

But Robby T is not the One

All that’s needed is the gun

Load the weapon, call his name

Unlock the door, he dies in shame.

The melody changed up and went into the refrain.

Look and see the way it ends

Who’s the liar, where’s the game

Love and death, it’s all the same

Liar’s words all end in pain.

Tang stopped the playback. “There’s another verse, but you get the gist.”

“That’s the creepiest song I’ve ever heard.”

They stood above the field, silent under the harsh lights and the wind.

“ ‘They,’” Jo said.

“Unfortunately. And no, I don’t know whether it was just a paranoid rant.”

“Did she have a psych history?”

“Manic-depression. But that’s not my point.”

“She was bipolar? That’s huge. It’s—”

Tang raised a hand. “It’s not my point.”

Jo thought about it. “If she genuinely feared for her life and brought the gun for self-protection, it argues against an intent to commit suicide.”

“The stuntman claims she said, ‘He’s out there,’ and ‘It’s life or death.’ Maybe she was acting. Maybe she was delusional. But maybe not.”

“Are you suggesting somebody really wanted her dead? Why—because she was once married to Robert McFarland?”

Tang turned to her. “Will you perform the psychological autopsy? Are you in?”

“You bet I’m in.”

“Good. I need you to find out why Tasia McFarland was carrying a pistol that, according to California firearms records, is registered to the commander in chief of the United States.”

6

You can take my cash, but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your ass…

THE MUSIC RAGED THROUGH THE PARKED TRUCK. IVORY TURNED IT UP. “You tell it, Searle.”

The man sang about the hardest life around, Ivory thought—being a white American. Work yourself into the grave, while the government confiscates your wages and an ungrateful world demands handouts or tries to blow you up.

She stared across the street at the ballpark. “It’s time to launch a rocket up somebody’s crack.”

Behind the wheel, Keyes chewed on a toothpick. “Unbunch your panties.”

“Searle Lecroix’s woman just got shot down like a dog. Two choppers got taken out—you think that wasn’t to cover the shooter escaping? You should put on a pair of tighty-whiteys yourself, and bunch them so tight you squeal.”

“Like you know how to fire a rocket launcher?” he said.

“You’ll teach me.”

That finally earned her a look from him.

“Tasia dying wasn’t any accident. It was a government hit, no joke.” Government came out “gubmint.” “Government brought down the twin towers, Keyes—they wouldn’t think twice about killing McFarland’s first wife.”

Keyes looked away again. He watched the police and media spectacle outside the ballpark with a cool eye. People took that look for boredom, Ivory thought, when really he was scanning the scene for threats, soft targets, weak points in the police cordon. Years of experience, it came as a reflex to him.

“Question isn’t what the government does. It’s what we do about the government.” He turned off Lecroix’s music. “And entertainers don’t have the answer.”

He took out his phone and went online. His face, pale and pocked, looked vivid. His anger didn’t run hot; it was reptile anger—cold and submerged and liable to erupt in ruthless bursts. Being near it made Ivory feel confident. She was in the vanguard, with a man who would be the teeth and claws of the fightback.

She leaned close and saw him load the Tree of Liberty home page. On-screen was a message to the faithful.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.—Thomas Paine

“When did this post?” she said.

“Ten minutes ago.”

Tree of Liberty was the cyberdomain of True America. It was the online outpost of people like Keyes and Ivory, who saw the nightmare of government tyranny darkening the horizon. Tom Paine was their voice crying in the wilderness.

His post began, like all his essays, with a quote from the original Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary. Then it launched.

And so it begins.

Today, in front of a stadium crowd, the Enemy and his legions struck down Fawn Tasia McFarland. And they murdered her in such an audacious fashion because they knew what they’d pull off: a charade.

The circus monkeys of the mainstream media are already spinning Tasia’s death to suit Robert McFarland. It was an accident. Stunt calamity. Boo hoo.

Bullshit. The White House killed her because of what she knew, which was plenty.

The traitor who has seized the Oval Office is a smooth-talking jackal, but he can’t put the rumors to rest. Because, despite his lies, the truth is the truth: He was born in Cuba. Castro did finance his education. Despite the cover story concocted by the Pentagon, he called in the air strike that killed seven men in his platoon, and he did so because they were about to blow the whistle on his sexual deviancy and treason.

Nobody was better positioned than Tasia to know Robert McFarland’s lies. She was once his consort. And she was a patriot. Read her interviews. She didn’t shrink from speaking truth to power.

Now power has shut her up.

Before tyrants launch a crackdown, they assassinate their most dangerous foes: the people who could expose or stop them. Tasia’s murder is like a flare fired into the sky. It’s a signal that McFarland’s troops are moving into position. Time is short.

Robert Titus McFarland must be stopped. Who will do that? The dumb populace, grown soporific on junk food and reality TV? Never. When the government opens its internment camps, they’ll slouch through the gates without complaint, like cattle.

Patriots must stop McFarland. And it’s pucker time, because he has us in his sights. But we refuse to shrink from the coming fight.

His name is Legion, people. Stand up. Rip off his mask.

Rise.

Keyes and Ivory stared at the screen. Nobody knew who Tom Paine was. Tree of Liberty skipped around the Net, changing host sites to prevent the feds from tracing it. Paine was a specter.

“Fuckin’ A,” Keyes said.

Ivory drew a breath. She had chills. “We’re at ground zero. We need to send him photos.”

Nobody had met Paine, but Keyes and Ivory volunteered as his scouts. Keyes got out of the truck and crossed the street toward the ballpark. Ivory put on a ball cap and followed.

The cap said BLUE EAGLE SECURITY. She was clocked in for work, so she covered her hair, which she dyed as snowy as a swan’s wing. She covered her tattoos with long sleeves. And at the depot, she kept her opinions to herself. She worked in San Fran-freak-show, where whack jobs could parade bare-butt naked, chanting about diversity, but an Aryan woman had to hide her Valkyrie Sisterhood tattoos and apologize for the crime of being born white.

Outside the ballpark, it was a scene. News trucks, reporters with microphones. And police cars lined up for a hundred yards, lights shrill, a bigfoot presence that made her skin creep.

Keyes tapped his watch. “Sixty seconds, max.”

They were on a late run, one of Blue Eagle’s night pickups in the city. The truck’s onboard computer automatically tracked their route. It had logged them taking a detour to the ballpark, and if they loitered there too long, their jobs would be toast.

“Do you care?” Ivory said. “When the fightback comes, these jobs won’t matter.”

“When the fightback comes, I want access to the truck and everything in it. So I stay on the payroll until shots are fired.”

The Blue Eagle uniform shirt stretched across his sloping shoulders. Years in the army, Ivory thought; a decade spent working as a security contractor on behalf of the government, earning three hundred thousand dollars a year, and for what? To get fired. To end up sitting on his butt behind the wheel of a courier truck, wearing that cheap-ass shirt. The “gubmint” had reduced a warrior to a delivery boy.

Ahead, barricades were set up. Behind them people huddled, lighting candles, laying flowers, crying. A TV crew was interviewing a Mexican woman and her little girl. The woman wiped her eyes. “Tasia grew up here—it’s like losing a member of our family. How could an accident like this happen?”

Ivory kept her voice low. “The lie’s taking root.”

Keyes’s face flattened, like a club. “Soon enough we’ll give her something to cry over.”

They kept moving. Being near so many cops gave Ivory the willies. She had a record. She’d been caught patrolling the border. Illegals infested America like lice, but hunt them, take their drugs, and you got called a criminal.

Keyes snapped photos with his phone. “Didn’t I tell you, Frisco is at the heart of the government’s plans?”

Ivory nodded. He certainly had told her San Francisco would be a staging center during the government crackdown.

“Killing Tasia here proves it,” he said.

He sent his photos to Tree of Liberty. Nearby, the little Mexican girl laid a spray of white carnations by the barricade.

“God have mercy on their souls,” Ivory said.

“Mercy, on lice?”

Keyes eyed her with what felt like disgust. True America, the realm of freedom and power where they lived—in their hearts—was a hard-core place.

“Don’t hurt my feelings. I meant God better, ‘cause we won’t.”

He should know how serious she took it. She risked everything for True America. This job, her whole life in San Francisco, was a front. And if the cops found out, she’d take a hard fall.

Then Keyes put a hand on her shoulder. “The rocket launcher rests right here. I’ll teach you.”

She lifted her chin, thrilled. Around them, gawkers and weepers continued to gather. Cops came out of the ballpark, and a few stragglers who had been at the concert. Some wore bloody clothing. One, silhouetted by the white light of television cameras, was a lumbering figure in fatigues, a—no motherloving way—a Goliath holding a chunk of the turf from the field as a souvenir.

Ivory turned and pulled Keyes toward the truck. “Freak alert. The night crawlers are coming out.”

Keyes didn’t linger. When you drove an armored car for a living, you couldn’t afford to be late to the bank.

7

ROBERT MCFARLAND OWNS THE COLT FORTY-FIVE?” JO’S HEART rate kicked up. “I’d better see the footage of the shooting.”

“You should. But don’t expect it to clarify anything,” Tang said.

Tang led her to a control room on an upper deck of the ballpark, overlooking the field. One wall was lined with television monitors. Cops and stadium officials filled the room. Below, under the bleached stadium lighting, forensics techs in white bodysuits searched the scene. The medical examiner was preparing to move Tasia’s body to the morgue. A gurney had been brought in and the yellow tarp pulled aside. Against grass churned to dust, Tasia’s clothing stood out, sharp swipes of magenta and black. She looked small, delicate, torn.

Tang asked a tech to run a video. Jo braced herself.

She had seen people die—as a physician, an investigator, and a wife. Death, that radical moment, was a desperately intimate thing to watch. Being of Coptic descent, with a basting of Japanese Buddhism and a thick shellac of Irish Catholic education, Jo believed that death didn’t equate to annihilation. Still, as the video started, she knew she was going to feel like she’d had her bell rung. She slipped her emotional chain mail into place.

The footage began with Searle Lecroix and the band playing the introduction to “Bull’s-eye.” Then the camera swiveled to reveal Tasia on the balcony of the hospitality suite.

Her outfit was a western twist on the Madonna-whore dichotomy: like a barrel-racing champion had taken control of the Mustang Ranch. Yee-haw, by Victoria’s Secret. Her waist harness was clipped on to the zip line. Knowing that the cable was going to collapse gave Jo, as a rock climber, a visceral feeling of dread.

Beneath the thundering music, Jo heard muffled shouting. Tasia was wearing a headset mike. Jo couldn’t make out her words, just a rising tone of indignation—or fear. Inside the suite, the stuntman rattled the doors.

Tasia turned and beckoned to the crowd. The gun flashed in the sunlight. As people surged onto the balcony and surrounded her, stage smoke erupted. She broke into song and aimed the pistol at the stage.

“Holy crap, she’s blowing on the barrel,” Jo said.

She watched, aghast. The music soared. The crowd swarmed around Tasia. CO₂ obscured the view.

The roar of the gunshot was sharp and shocking.

Tasia emerged from the roiling smoke, hanging limp from the climbing harness, and slid down the zip line. The gunshot wound was plainly visible, a gory rose blooming on her neck and head.

The camera swerved. The scene turned to panic, falling helicopter debris, collapsing stage scaffolding, people screaming.

Then, amid the chaos, the camera zoomed in on the field. In front of the stage Tasia’s broken form lay on the grass. Beside her knelt Searle Lecroix. Her headset mike amplified his voice above the torrent of noise.

“For the love of God, somebody help her,” he cried.

Jo exhaled. “Stop the video.”

The air seemed to smell of smoke and salt water and the wretched, oily stink of wrecked aircraft. She stared at the screen.

It was impossible to see who had fired the gun.

“Somebody could have taken the pistol from her, or grabbed her hand and squeezed the trigger. Still, three seconds before the shot, Tasia had possession of the weapon,” she said.

She thought about Tasia acting out a high-risk, sexualized game with the Colt .45. Blowing on the barrel was showy, attention-grabbing behavior. Not playful, exactly—more like shtick. And suicides, in the moments before death, tended not to goof around.

“Can I talk to the stunt coordinator?” she said.

“Sure. Guy’s name is Rez Shirazi. Fifteen years experience on feature films.”

Tang led her to one of the corporate hospitality suites. As they walked, she summed up what Shirazi had already told the police.

“He tried to talk Tasia into putting down the weapon—the only thing she was supposed to take onstage was her bad, Botoxed self. She refused, but didn’t threaten him or the crowd or herself. Wasn’t angry. She was frazzled and terrified.”

Tang knocked on the door and entered the hospitality suite. It was filled with cops and stadium officials. A television was tuned to a news channel. Shirazi was pacing, phone to his ear. When Tang introduced Jo, he ended the call and shook her hand.

“I’ve been talking to detectives and lawyers for two hours,” he said. “Please, read my written statement, or else ask me something new.”

He had warm eyes in a rough face, and bounced on his toes as he talked, like a welterweight boxer. In film credits, Jo thought, he’d get stuck as “Thug” or “Crazed Bomber.”

“I’m assessing Tasia’s state of mind. Can you describe her mood tonight?” she said.

“She was wired.”

“Can you be specific? Wired meaning happy? Coked up?”

“Not coked up. At least, she said she was clean. And not happy. I’ve seen her ecstatic, zooming a million miles an hour, and she had a smile, man…but tonight she was agitated.” He circled his hands, seeking the right description. “Once she started talking, I couldn’t get her to stop. It was like her mind was a popcorn machine.”

He shook his head. “I heard she was bipolar. Tonight she seemed manic and depressed. She was energized but dismal. Saying things like, ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die. Like Princess Di.’ And making musical…jokes, kind of, but bummers. ‘Do, re, mi, fa, so long, suckers.’”

“She mentioned death, more than once?”

“She said tonight was all about life and death. She mentioned martyrdom. Car bombs, death squads, holy war.” He tilted his head. “Then she mentioned the Secret Service. And said, ‘He’s out there.’”

“You think she was referring to the president?” Jo said.

“Maybe. But I thought tonight’s main event was supposed to be a concert, so what do I know?”

“Anything else you noticed about her attitude tonight?”

“Yeah. Everything was exaggerated. She came in with the corset undone more than usual, the jeans slung lower, and her makeup was just extreme.” He looked weary. “She acted like she was the center of the universe. All performers do, but tonight she really believed it was all about her. She seemed—on a mission.”

“And this was a change from her mood recently?”

Shirazi rubbed his chest as though it ached. “Yeah. At the start of the national tour, couple months back, she was really up. Bubbly. Then she went flat. Moody, withdrawn—I mean, it was a noticeable swing. But over the past few weeks, everything’s been building up. Her energy and her…discontent.”

“Wired but miserable.”

“You got it.”

His phone rang. He took the call, said, “On my way,” and hung up. “My brother was in the helicopter that hit the bay. He just came out of surgery. I need to get to the hospital.”

“All right,” Tang said. “Anything else you can tell us before you go?”

“I got a terrible feeling she was going play with the gun like a toy. It was a recipe for disaster. And I wish I could tell you what happened. When I couldn’t break the plate-glass windows, I ran for the suite next door, to see if I could get to her on the balcony. But I heard the gunshot.” His voice ebbed. “I ran out of time.”

Tang gave him her card, and said she’d be in touch. He headed out the door.

“Initial assessment?” Tang said.

“Besides the fact that Shirazi feels guilty that she died?” Jo said. “Get a tox screen on Tasia. If she wasn’t on cocaine or amphetamines, she was having some kind of manic episode.”

“You don’t sound convinced about that.”

“Manic episodes are characterized by euphoria, and Tasia sounds far from euphoric. But other things fit,” she said. “With mania, people can’t stop talking. Their speech becomes pressured. And they’re showy. They wear bright-colored clothes and tons of inappropriate makeup. It looks…off.”

Tang nodded. “ ‘Playing in the crayon box’ is the phrase the makeup woman used.”

Jo thought again about the game Tasia had acted out with the Colt .45. “They can also be hypersexual. And they can have grandiose delusions.”

“Like they’re the target of an assassination plot?”

“When people with bipolar disorder become paranoid, they think massive forces are threatening them. Not merely the neighbors and the mother-in-law and their shrink.”

“Such as the president of the United States?”

“There’s the rub,” Jo said.

Behind them, conversation bubbled above the noise from the television. Jo mulled what she’d seen and heard.

“Three possibilities. One, the pistol was defective. It just went off,” she said.

“Unlikely. But we’ll tear it apart and find out.”

“Two, Tasia McFarland put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

“You believe that less than you did ten minutes ago.”

“Three—”

On the TV, a news anchor said, “Now we go to the White House, where President McFarland is about to speak about the death of his ex-wife.”

8

JO AND TANG CROWDED AROUND THE TELEVISION WITH THE COPS AND stadium officials in the suite. On-screen, the White House press secretary stood at a podium, pudgy and diffident. The pressroom was a forest of jutting hands, all raised to ask about the death of Robert McFarland’s first wife, the lovely, tragic, maybe crazy Fawn Tasia.

A reporter asked, “Did the president know that she was in possession of the Colt forty-five?”

“The president isn’t going to comment on matters that might fall within the scope of the investigation into Ms. McFarland’s death. Obviously he wants to avoid any remarks that could compromise the investigation.”

“But did he deliberately leave the gun with her when they divorced?”

The press secretary adjusted his glasses. His forehead looked shiny. “The president will issue a statement momentarily. If I could—”

“Tasia McFarland was a diagnosed manic-depressive. Did the president know of that diagnosis at the time he left a large caliber semiautomatic pistol in her possession?”

Jo said, “Wow.”

There was a stir in the pressroom. The press secretary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president.”

The camera swiveled. Robert Titus McFarland strode toward the podium, grave and purposeful.

He had the ascetic build and weightless gait of a cross-country runner. His hair, black as a priest’s cassock, was shorn unfashionably short, a legacy of his army years. His temples were salted with gray.

He gripped the edges of the podium. He looked drawn. He didn’t have the aw-shucks charm of Bill Clinton, didn’t have Kennedy’s élan or Reagan’s disarming ability to project whimsy. He had a craggy dignity and laconic style that pundits called “western” and attributed to his Montana roots.

He peered into the lights. “The news tonight from San Francisco has come as a shock, and has saddened me, deeply.”

He let that last word fall heavily. He let it roll across the press corps until it pinned them to their seats and smothered all noise in the room.

“My thoughts are with the family of the pilot who lost his life, and with all those who were injured.”

McFarland was an outlier: a working-class liberal, a warrior turned antiwar. He had grown up in a double-wide trailer on a cattle ranch outside Billings, son of the ranch foreman and his Salvadoran wife. He won the state cross-country championship, received a commission to West Point, and served as an army officer in hot zones across the globe before—famously—resigning his commission in protest over a friendly fire incident for which junior officers took the blame while higher-ups escaped censure. He returned to Montana, went to law school, practiced environmental law, and went into politics. His rise was swift. He won the presidency after serving five years in the Senate.

He had a reputation as a quick-thinking, hard-driving politician, a man who held everything in his head like a mental battlefield map and maintained rapport with underlings and rivals. In other words, a commander.

Along the way he’d married and divorced Fawn Tasia Hicks. And for two decades he had carefully avoided talking about her. He’d been remarried, to the calming, outdoorsy First Lady, for seventeen years. They had twin sons and a golden retriever, and kept roan quarter horses on their spread outside Missoula. As a political liability, Tasia had been no cause for alarm, not even a wisp of smoke on the horizon. She’d been a curiosity.

Not anymore. Jo watched him, thinking: Let’s really see who I voted for here.

McFarland gazed around the pressroom. “Tasia’s death is a tragedy. Sandy and I extend our sympathies to her family, and join her friends and all those around the country who are tonight mourning this…” He slowed, and his voice deepened. “…loss.”

He looked down and shifted his weight. Still gripping the podium, he shook his head. Then he seemed to throw a switch.

“Prepared remarks don’t cut it at a time like this.” He looked up. “This news is a kick in the gut. Tasia was too young to die.”

Behind him, at the edge of the screen, stood presidential aides and the White House chief of staff. McFarland glanced their way. Their presence seemed to bolster him. He straightened.

“Tasia was a force of nature. Plain and simple, she had more personality than anybody I’ve ever met. She could have moved mountains with a stare if she wanted. And for all her singing talent, and her fame, what marked her out was her generosity of spirit. She had a heart as big as the sky.”

He paused. “Learning that she was shot to death with a pistol I bought is shattering. There’s no other word for it.”

A buzz ran through the pressroom. McFarland took time to consider his next remark.

“I didn’t intend to take questions this evening, but on my way in, I heard somebody asking if I knew Tasia had bipolar disorder when I left the gun with her.”

In the background, the White House chief of staff stiffened. K. T. Lewicki had the bullet head of an English bull terrier, and he looked like he wanted to tackle McFarland. The president didn’t see it, or deliberately ignored it.

“The answer is no,” he said. “Tasia and I were married for two years. She was twenty-three when we divorced. As I understand it, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her early thirties.”

He scanned the room, making eye contact. “I bought the pistol before I deployed for duty overseas. She was going to be home on her own. I wanted her to have a reliable means of defending herself.” His tone sharpened. “And before you ask—it never crossed my mind to take it from her when we divorced. That pistol was supposed to protect—”

His expression fissured.

“…protect her.” A glaring light seemed to shear across his face. “Offer a prayer for her. Thank you.”

He turned and left the podium. He couldn’t have left faster if the room had been burning. A reporter said, “Mr. President, had you spoken to her recently?”

McFarland raised a hand as he walked away. “No.”

Another reporter called, “Do you know why she brought your gun to the concert? Mr. President, did she ever speak about suicide?”

He shook his head and strode out the door.

In the hospitality suite, people wandered away from the television. Behind Jo, a man said, “Conscience has him by the throat.”

Tang turned. “Mr. Lecroix.”

Searle Lecroix stood at the back of the room, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, staring at the TV from under the brim of his black Stetson. “That man’s just one more person who let her down. But at least he seems to know it.”

His smoky drawl sounded hoarse. His face was drained. Tasia’s baby boy, her Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, looked like he’d had the stuffing pounded out of him.

Tang walked over. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“I couldn’t leave while Tasia’s out there,” he said. “Leave her lying on the field with people picking her over—I couldn’t. She deserves to have somebody nearby who cares.” His timbre dropped. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet,” Tang said. She motioned Jo over. “This is Dr. Beckett.”

Tang explained what Jo did, and asked Lecroix to let Jo interview him.

“You want to talk about Tasia from a psychological perspective? Now?”

Jo shook her head. “Tomorrow or the day after.”

He agreed, and gave her his cell phone number. “You going to find out who let this happen?”

“Maybe you can help us figure that out.”

He nodded. “They’re taking her to the morgue. I need to go.” He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Lieutenant. Doctor.”

They watched him walk down the hall, shoulders slumped. After a moment, Jo said, “I was going to tell you Possibility Number Three.”

“Please.”

“Tasia planned to shoot somebody besides herself. But an unknown person in that swarm of fans got hold of the trigger and shot her first.”

“Now you believe somebody was out to get her?”

“Now you don’t?” Jo said.

“I don’t know. I mean, you heard her. ‘Liar’s words all end in pain.’”

9

TANG DROPPED JO AT HER HOUSE ON RUSSIAN HILL. SHE HANDED over a thick manila envelope.

“The concert video, photos of the scene, witness statements from the stuntman and stage crew. And Tasia’s ‘in the event of my assassination’ recording.”

Jo paused. “Using her ex-husband’s gun is a huge statement.”

“No kidding, Sigmund.” Tang pointed at the envelope. “Figure out what she was saying.”

The car grumbled away.

The night air was cool. The cable car tracks hummed with the sound of gears and cables ringing beneath the road. Jo climbed her front steps.

Her small house sat across from a park, surrounded by grander, brighter homes painted building-block colors. Hers was a fine San Francisco Victorian with iron-red gables. The front yard was a spot of grass the size of a paperback book, bordered by gardenias and white lilacs. Inside, her Doc Martens sounded heavy on the hardwood floor. Her keys echoed when she dropped them on the hallway table.

Jo never would have chosen the house for herself. She would have struggled to afford it. But her husband had inherited the home from his grandparents. He and Jo had redone the place. Knocked out walls, sanded the floors, installed skylights.

When Daniel died, his absence from the house had been excruciating. Early on, Jo had moments when she was overcome with an urge to shatter the windows and shout, Come back to me. Daniel’s parents would have loved for her to sell it to them. But she’d made it her home, and now couldn’t bear the thought of giving it up.

She went to the kitchen and fixed coffee. The magnolia in the backyard was laden with flowers. Under the moon they shone like white fists. Music from a neighbor’s house floated to her, a Latin tune with sinuous horns. She felt jacked up, like she’d spent the evening strapped to a rocket sled.

She heard a sharp knock on the front door.

She answered it to find Gabe Quintana standing on the porch, hands in the pockets of his jeans. One look at her and his eyes turned wary.

“Maybe I should have called first, ” he said.

“The concert ended with the star and a stunt pilot dead, fans trampled, and me signing up for a case from one of the more exotic rings of hell.”

“Want me to come back another time?”

His black hair was close-cropped. His eyes had a low-burning glow. Right, Jo thought. He didn’t believe for a second that she’d kick him out.

“Some day I’ll actually say yes. Just to keep your self-confidence under control,” she said.

His smile was offhanded. “No, you won’t.”

Laugh lines etched his bronze skin. He leaned against the door frame, his gaze rakish.

Jo grabbed him by the collar of his Bay to Breakers T-shirt and yanked him through the doorway. She kicked the door closed and thrust him against the wall.

“Watch it. I can push your buttons and bring you to your knees”—she snapped her fingers—“like that.”

“Promise?”

She held him to the wall. “I haven’t seen you for twenty-four hours, and it’s your fault that twenty-four hours feels like a long time.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist. “My buttons. Yeah, I’m the one whose control panel is blowing up here.”

He kissed her.

Sometimes he seemed as still as a pool of water. Sometimes he seemed reserved to the point of invisibility. She knew that the surface reflected little of the turbulence beneath, that it hid his intensity and resolve. He was an illusionist, a master of emotional sleight of hand.

His cool served him perfectly as a PJ, a search and rescue expert for the Air National Guard. He came off as affable and reassuring. But sometimes, when he was challenged or threatened, his attitude changed, and Jo glimpsed the warrior he had been.

And was about to be again.

One day gone, eighty-seven left. Gabe had been called up to active duty. At the end of the summer, he and others from the 129th Rescue Wing had orders for a four-month deployment to Djibouti, to provide combat search and rescue support for the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa. He’d be back at the end of January. After that he’d remain on active duty for another eight months, but thought it possible he would serve much of that time at the Wing’s headquarters, Moffett Field in Mountain View.

But as always when reservists were called up, Gabe’s life was getting blown to the wind. He wasn’t just a pararescueman; thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was also a graduate student at the University of San Francisco. Deployment was going to tear up his academic schedule. But his first priority was his ten-year-old daughter, Sophie. He was a single dad. His ex-girlfriend lived in the city but on the fringes of competence, and saw Sophie only twice a month. Gabe had gone to painful time and expense to modify his custody arrangement so that Sophie would live in San Francisco with his sister and her husband while he was deployed. Sophie wasn’t happy that he was going. But she knew it was his job. She’d been through it before.

Jo hadn’t. But, holding him, she set that aside. She tried to stop the ticking in her head.

He brushed her curls from her face. “You okay?”

“Once I saw Tina, I was great.”

His face looked sober. “It was only a close call. But I know that’s too close.”

She suppressed thoughts about any dangers involved in his deploying to the Horn of Africa. And she knew she was far more head over heels for this man than she could ever have imagined.

“What part of hell does your new case come from?” he said.

“I’m going to perform a psychological autopsy on Tasia McFarland. It seems I’m going to ride the tiger.”

His eyes widened. “Excited?”

She had to think about it a moment. “Yes.”

“Ready for the predators to come at you out of the tall grass?”

“Undoubtedly not.”

“You really are a thrill seeker, aren’t you?”

Sharp guy, Gabe Quintana. She put her hands on his shoulders. “I am. How long can you stay?”

He smiled and pulled her against him. And his cell phone rang.

Jo leaned back. He answered the call.

“Dave Rabin, what’s up?” he said, and within five seconds she knew that thrill seeking of a radically different kind was on his agenda.

“Sixty minutes. I’ll be there.” He flipped his phone off. “Merchant tanker five hundred miles off the coast, reports a fire in the engine room. They’re adrift and down at the stern. Multiple casualties.”

Jo reluctantly let him loose. A buzz seemed to radiate from him. He put a hand on her hip and kissed her again.

“Bring ‘em back,” she said. “Be safe.”

He ran down the steps toward his truck. She hung in the doorway and watched him go. She didn’t want to close the door, to turn back to Tasia McFarland and the unblinking certainties of death. She watched him go until he was out of sight.

10

NOEL MICHAEL PETTY THUDDED UP THE HOTEL STAIRS, SWEATY AND winded, cradling the artifact inside the fatigue jacket. The hallway was dank but empty. Petty rushed inside the hotel room, slammed the door, and leaned back against it, breathless. Nobody had followed. Nobody had even noticed. Not at the ballpark or anyplace along the route to the Tenderloin.

That’s because, when you hover like an angel, you become invisible.

Quick, latch the chain. Clear a space on the table. Shove aside the scissors and the news cuttings. Let the tabloid articles and glossy magazine photos flutter to the floor. Take a breath.

Carefully, ceremoniously, Petty pulled open the fatigue jacket and removed the artifact. It was a piece of turf from the baseball field, a lump of grass and earth about the diameter of a compact disc. Petty set it on the table and ran a hand across it, stroking the grass like a baby’s soft hair.

Victory is mine.

Stepping back, Petty pulled off the green watch cap and turned on the television. Tonight’s events were historic. It was vital not to miss a moment, not one beautiful second.

There—news. Images sparkled on the screen, familiar and thrilling. The smoke so black, the blood so messy, Tasia’s hair so thick, fanning around her head in a gold comet’s tail. People screaming, fleeing from her body. Tasia had terrified the crowd, dying like that. What a cow.

Bursting through the crowd came Searle Lecroix. Petty grimaced.

Too late, Searle. She’s gone. She can no longer suck the love from a man’s bones. We’re free.

Free. Petty glanced at the artifact. It was a memento of deliverance, like a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

Lecroix shoved his way past the ravenous onlookers on the field, gawky strangers who wanted a piece of Tasia McFarland, who wanted a chance to say, I was there. But they were only about celebrity and sentiment. They would never understand. Tasia’s death was not an accident. It was a triumph.

On-screen, Lecroix dropped to his knees beside Tasia’s body. Petty cringed.

“Searle, you fool.”

The death of a cow should not affect a man so. It was a painful sight. It diminished the victory.

If you believed the gossip, Tasia had lured Searle Lecroix into her bed. But he couldn’t have known her. He couldn’t have given himself to her and received back in turn. Not from an unhinged, half-lunatic fame-whore who had fucked the president to get where she was.

Lecroix gripped Tasia’s hand. He begged, “Help her.”

Smarting, Petty turned away. But Tasia’s face followed. She stared down from the walls of the hotel room. Hundreds of photos, her beautiful face, her filthy gaze, her dark inner light, staring, knowing.

Petty stared back. “But you didn’t know what was coming. You refused to listen.”

Tasia had snubbed NMP. Then ignored NMP. She’d had the gall to rebuke and disregard NMP.

A smile squeezed Petty’s lips, full of pain.

Stop that. You are not a fat, weak-kneed fan. You are a righteous guardian and protector of the truth and the Good Ones. Petty scratched an armpit.

The hotel room smelled stale and fuggy, like a cheap costume for a stage play. But that’s what this Tenderloin dive was—a disguise. Nobody would look here for a hovering angel.

The news switched to a White House press conference. Robert McFarland was praising Tasia. He was waxing melodic about her talent.

The thrill of victory subsided. Petty sloughed off the fatigue jacket and sat heavily on the bed. Generosity of spirit…was McFarland joking? The president of the United States was beatifying Saint Tasia, the Holy Cow.

Slut, thief, liar.

A heart as big as the sky. Letting out a moan, Petty thundered to the table, grabbed the artifact, and threw it at the television.

This was insane. It was…a spell. The vixen had bewitched even the leader of the free world.

All Petty’s work had been in vain. The king rat of politicians, a man of the smoothest tongue, a hypnotist, was spreading the lie. People would buy it. Heart as big as the sky would become conventional wisdom. It would twist people’s minds, turn them into Tasia-lovers. It would burrow under the skin of people who needed protection. Tasia, thief of hearts, would steal yet again, just as she’d stolen from NMP, but this time from beyond the grave.

Her death hadn’t ended the battle. It had only intensified it.

Petty heard a voice, a whisper, a promise. Don’t tell. You’re my eternal love. Shh.

Deep breath. It was time to slough off Noel Michael Petty. Time to put on the camouflage that kept the Protector safe and anonymous. It worked on the Net, where nobody knows you’re a dog. Now, offline, Petty needed to assume the guise. Full-time, with no slipups.

Going into the bathroom, Petty faced the dingy mirror. From now on, you’re not Noel. You’re not a sweaty fan who follows the tour around the country. You’re him. NMP.

Tasia hadn’t seen the end coming. Neither had Searle Lecroix, though he’d been onstage, staring at her. And judging from the news footage, Lecroix still didn’t see. Tasia still held him in her thrall. And now the president was hypnotizing the public into believing the same thing. Somebody had to stop it.

Somebody needed to expose Tasia once and for all. End the love affair with her. Get proof, and make noise, and shut the liars up for good.

You are NMP, the archangel, the big bad bastard. You are the sword of truth.

You’re the man.

11

IN THE MORNING JO WOKE TO THE RADIO.

“…investigation into the death of Tasia McFarland. A police source tells us that a psychiatrist has been hired to evaluate Tasia’s mental state.”

She sat up.

“Our source believes that the police are working on the theory that Tasia committed suicide, and want a psychological opinion to back it up.”

She reached for the phone. Saw the clock: six twenty. Too early to harangue Lieutenant Tang about departmental leaks.

She heard the foghorn. She kicked off the covers, pulled on a kimono, stumbled to the window, and opened the shutters. Fog skated across the bay and clung to the Golden Gate Bridge. But uphill, the sun was tingling through the clouds. The magnolia in the backyard looked slick in the early light.

The news continued. Not a word about a merchant ship on fire and down by the stern five hundred miles off shore. Not a word about the 129th Rescue Wing. Accidents at sea could entangle rescuers in disaster, and she listened, shoulders tight, for the words Air National Guard. Nothing.

She grabbed her climbing gear and drove to Mission Cliffs. She found a belay partner and spent forty-five minutes on the gym’s head wall. It soothed her. Hanging fifty feet off the ground, with nothing but a void between her and a broken neck, always cleared her head.

She was at her desk by eight. She’d finally cleared out Daniel’s mountain bike and Outside magazines, and turned the front room into her office. She kept gold orchids on the bookcase and her favorite New Yorker cartoon framed on the wall—where a drowning man yells, “Lassie! Get help!” And Lassie goes to a psychiatrist.

Normally she began a psychological autopsy by reading the police report and the victim’s medical and psychiatric records. But those weren’t yet available. To determine NASH—whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide—she needed to assess not only the victim’s physical and psychological history but also his or her background and relationships. Jo interviewed family, friends, and colleagues, and looked for warning signs of suicide or evidence that anyone might have intended the victim harm. She built a timeline of events leading up to the day of the victim’s death.

Since she didn’t have records, she read press accounts of Tasia McFarland’s psychiatric history. It was sad and brutal. And Tasia hadn’t hesitated to talk about it.

Tasia had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at thirty-two. But she’d whipped between mania and depression for years before that. Volcanic highs and hideous lows had played out in public—tantrums, car wrecks, drug binges, and flights of creativity—as she veered from teen singing sensation to washed-up party animal to comeback queen. In short, as analyzed by Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and People magazine: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

But bipolar disorder was a devastating diagnosis. The DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defined Bipolar I Disorder as the occurrence of one or more “Manic Episodes or Mixed Episodes,” though people often had major depressive episodes as well.

During a manic episode, people didn’t need sleep and didn’t feel tired—for a week, a month, two months. They felt on top of the world. They might learn new languages or take up a new instrument. Their extraordinary energy and sense of power came on spontaneously, without being triggered by any outside event, such as graduating from college or winning an Oscar, that could generate euphoria.

Jo wondered about Tasia, revved into the red zone on the night she sang a hit song to a stadium crowd in her hometown.

Manic people could be gregarious and entertaining. In fact, physicians training in psychiatry were told: If you’re highly entertained by a patient, consider mania as a possible diagnosis. But while manic people could be lovable, they could also be exhausting.

And when patients dropped into depression, they crashed. Guilt and hopelessness overwhelmed them. Suicide was common.

And mixed episodes were the roughest of all: A person’s mood disturbance met the criteria for manic and major depressive episodes simultaneously. Mixed episodes were difficult to diagnose. Jo believed they were the state in which people were most likely to commit suicide.

She thought about the way Rez Shirazi, the stuntman, had described Tasia: hyper but dismal.

She got herself a cup of coffee. She needed Tasia’s prescription records and toxicology results. When well medicated, people with bipolar disorder could be accomplished and creative. They became physicists, computer scientists, artists. A number of famous classical composers had been bipolar.

But people often went off their meds because they loved feeling manic. They loved the explosion of creativity brought on by mania.

“Art and madness” was a cliché. But Jo had attended a med school lecture series on the mind and music. Strong evidence existed that Schumann had bipolar disorder. Gershwin may have had ADHD. And composers’ mental states influenced their compositions. Bipolar composers, she recalled, loved repetitive melodic motifs and sometimes became obsessed with particular sounds or tempos.

Jo listened again to “The Liar’s Lullaby.” Her musical ear wasn’t sharp enough to pick out clues buried in the melody, but the lyrics were disturbing enough. You say you love our land, you liar / Who dreams its end in blood and fire. The third verse was less eerie, but nonetheless sad.

I fell into your embrace

Felt tears streaming down my face

Fought the fight, ran the race

Faltered, finally fell from grace.

She tapped her fingers on the desk, wondering if the verse referred to Tasia’s marriage.

Few photos existed of Tasia and Robert McFarland together. But online she found an old, and vivid, magazine photo essay. Tasia had met McFarland while performing for the troops, and several photos showed her mingling with soldiers. McFarland was prominent among them. He looked young, handsome, and sure of himself. In one lighthearted shot, McFarland and a bullet-headed officer Jo recognized as K. T. Lewicki, now White House chief of staff, had hoisted Tasia onto their shoulders. In another, taken soon after the McFarlands’ marriage, they brimmed with energy—seemingly from being in each other’s presence. Tasia looked like a saucy cheerleader, ready to single-handedly rouse the army to victory. McFarland looked like he believed himself the luckiest man alive: confident, swimming in love, and unselfishly proud of his talented young wife. They were laughing as though the world had revealed its secrets, and was beautiful.

At nine, Amy Tang phoned. “Tasia’s autopsy is this morning. Medical and psychiatric records might be with you this afternoon, but full tox and blood work will take days. Her next of kin will meet with you at ten A.M.—her sister, Vienna Hicks.”

Jo wrote down Hicks’s phone number. “Did you know that police sources are talking to the press about me?”

“As I told you, this is a cheap thrill ride, not the Pirates of the Caribbean. But I’ll remind people to keep their mouths shut.”

Jo looked again at the photo of Tasia and Robert McFarland, young and in love. She didn’t know how Tasia had gotten from there to writing, But Robby T is not the One / All that’s needed is the gun. She wondered if Tasia’s sister could tell her.

12

SHORTLY BEFORE TEN, JO DROVE DOWNTOWN. THE STREETS OF THE Financial District were packed with cars and delivery trucks. The sidewalks bustled. The sun flashed from skyscraper windows, and wind funneled between the buildings. Jo pushed through a door into a coffeehouse where silverware clattered and the staff wore facial piercings and protest buttons pinned to berets. Vienna Hicks waved from a table against the windows.

Jo worked her way through the crowded room. Hicks stood and clasped her hand. “Dr. Beckett. I’m Vienna.”

Vienna Hicks stood six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds. Her ash-blue suit was impeccable. Her red hair looked like a runaway fire.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Jo said.

“I was downtown on business. I’m a paralegal at Waymire and Fong. They’re handling Tasia’s estate, and they’ll tackle any lawsuits that get filed against it.”

She sat again, solidly. Her physique looked too grand for the tiny table. She had the forceful gaze of a grizzly bear. She eyed Jo up and down, and didn’t look dazzled.

“Psychiatrist. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re running on empty, aren’t they?” she said.

“The police?”

“They don’t know how to label Tasia’s death.”

“The police are searching for an explanation. I’m here to help them find it.”

Vienna tapped manicured nails on the table, patently skeptical. “This place is stifling. Let’s walk.”

She stood and headed for the door, parting the crowd around the counter like an ocean liner. Jo hustled after her. Outside, Vienna threw a crimson scarf around her neck and strode along the sidewalk toward the Embarcadero Center. The scarf whipped in the wind like a crusader’s banner.

“You want a label? The media gave Tasia enough of them to carpet the streets at a ticker-tape parade.” She put on a pair of oversize sunglasses. They barely contained the force of her gaze.

“Starlet. Mouseketeer. Pop tart,” she said. “Loser, reality show contestant, drug addict.”

She headed toward the waterfront. “A-list dropout. Fame whore. Presidential reject.” She glanced at Jo. “Manic-depressive.”

“Was that officially diagnosed?”

“By a board-certified psychiatrist. Rapid-cycling Type One bipolar disorder.”

Vienna’s cat’s-cream skin was nearly luminous in the sunlight. Her red hair flew about her head in the wind.

“You want to know if she killed herself? Fully possible. Her major depressive episodes were deeper than a bomb crater.”

“When did she begin showing signs of the disorder?” Jo said.

“Her teens. It became obvious in her early twenties. During her marriage.”

“Was it a factor in her divorce?”

Vienna’s jaw cranked down. “You’d have to ask him.”

Him being the man who got 67 million votes in the most recent election, whose face graced the cover of every news magazine on the rack, and whose voice echoed from the television every ten minutes, day and night. Piece of cake.

“You don’t speak to Robert McFarland, I take it,” Jo said.

“I don’t even speak of him. And I never speak out about him. Tasia did that enough when she was off her medication.”

Jo nodded. Ahead, she saw the clock tower at the ferry building, the bay, and Alcatraz.

“Besides,” Vienna said, “you don’t need to hear my opinion on Rob. There’s plenty to go around. Read the Vanity Fair profile, the one that described Tasia as a hopped-up, bebop Bunny wannabe with her gleaming eyes on the prize.”

Jo kept her mouth closed. If Vienna wanted to talk, she wanted to hear it.

“I presume you’ve got the whole IMDb-of-crazy database that lists Tasia’s greatest hits of conspiracy theory,” Vienna said.

“I’ve seen a few clips.”

“Fox News?”

“Talking about the Second Amendment. Assault rifles for all. Homeland Security putting tranquilizers in the water supply,” Jo said. “The YouTube rant against the Federal Reserve.”

Vienna’s mouth pursed. “The vitriol was clinical paranoia, and yeah, it was embarrassing as well as frightening. But in her defense, she was off her meds then. In recent years she got much better treatment and good med management. The political rants stopped.”

They paused at a corner. Palm trees stood sturdy against the breeze, fronds cutting the air. A tram rolled past, orange and yellow, one of the mid-twentieth-century electric trolleys recently resurrected by the city. When it stopped, Jo half-expected to see Humphrey Bogart climb off, fedora rakishly cocked.

“Being Tasia’s sister must have been difficult—”

“Eight years of medical training for that insight? You went to public schools, didn’t you?”

“—but you must have felt both angry and protective of her.”

Vienna’s Afrika-Corps-size sunglasses hid her eyes, but she radiated heat. The light changed. Vienna plowed across the street toward the waterfront.

“And helpless,” Jo said. “As if she was being taken from you by a host of banshees, and you were powerless to stop it.”

Vienna walked on for a few seconds. Then she turned to Jo and pulled off the shades. She let out a slow, barely controlled breath.

“People feasted on her like vultures. And she enabled it,” Vienna said. “She was so passionate about performing—so talented, so needy for an audience, so…panicked about the idea that all the attention might go away. She practically staked herself out on the ground and called them down to tear chunks from her flesh.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jo said.

“Thank you. Tell me it was an accident. Please.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you.”

The wind blew Vienna’s scarf skyward. “I know.”

“Did you know she had the gun?”

“It always worried me.”

Jo surmised how Vienna felt: In a perverse way, the fait accompli was a relief. The dread she had lived with for years, the fear that her sister would suffer harm, had come to pass, and brought with it release from the awful pressure and anxiety. None of that lessened Vienna’s grief. But the grinding worry that never went away…had now gone away.

“Did she ever threaten to shoot herself?” Jo said.

“Not in so many words. ‘What’s the point?’ she’d say. ‘Who’d miss me? Would people treat me like Kurt Cobain if I played his final verse?’”

“That must have been awful for you. Did she ever attempt suicide?”

Vienna’s lips parted, words seemingly on the tip of her tongue. Tart words. Then she checked herself. “Maybe he can tell you. Or at least supply her medical records from the army hospital.”

Superb. Intra-family feuds, with a guy who had round-the-clock Secret Service protection.

“Any attempts you personally can tell me about?” Jo said.

“Half-hearted, twelve years ago. Southern Comfort and a dozen ibuprofen.”

Vienna glanced at the bay. A windsurfer scudded along atop the whitecaps, his lime-green sail a shark’s fin.

“She also said she pictured herself going out like fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Vienna said. “Did you know she was writing an autobiography?”

“No. Did she leave notes? A draft?”

“Notes, photos, lots of recorded ramblings. She wasn’t writing it herself.”

“Ghostwriter?”

“Man named Ace Chennault.”

Jo took out a notebook and wrote it down. “Know how I can reach him?”

“He’s around. He’s a music journalist, was on the road with her for the last few months, gathering material.” She smiled briefly, a flash of teeth. “There’s family, and then there’s entourage.”

“When was the last time you spoke to your sister?”

“Yesterday morning. She called to make sure I’d gotten the tickets she sent.”

Jo stopped writing. “I’m sorry, I should have known you were at the concert.”

“Yeah.”

The clipped syllable sounded like pain itself.

“How did she sound?” Jo said.

“Soaring, but agitated. Sort of…” She tilted her hand side to side. Comme ci, comme ça. “Disconcerted. Fizzing like peroxide.”

“How long had she sounded that way?”

“A few weeks. But she could swing from mania to depression within days.”

Rapid cycling indicated a deteriorating psychological condition. It meant the bipolar disorder wasn’t under control. Rapid cycling could result from the disorder’s progression over many years, or from poor medicating, self-medicating, or a patient going off her meds.

“Did she ever have mixed episodes?” Jo said.

Vienna frowned. “Not as far as I know.”

“What was she like when she was hypomanic?”

“Like a Saturn rocket. Full throttle, roaring straight for the sky. Incredibly creative. She’d write songs and record all night. Funny and outgoing.”

“And when she experienced full-blown mania?” Jo said.

“Challenger. Blast off, screaming for outer space, ka-blooey.”

“Did she engage in dangerous behavior?”

“She’d hit the sack with every man in arm’s reach. Snort cocaine, even out the coke with vodka-and-OxyContin smoothies, cool off by driving the Pacific Coast Highway, headlights off, hundred miles an hour. Surely you’ve seen her mug shot online,” she said. “I posted her bail.”

She stared at the whitecaps on the bay. “Listen, I’m venting here. But the last few years, Tasia worked at managing her life. She quit the drugs and the booze binges. Stopped being promiscuous. She didn’t crash into the dark, dark holes like in the old days. She didn’t have weeklong sleepless jags where she rewrote the Ring Cycle as an epic about stock car racing. She was stable.”

“Did you see her often?”

“No. She has a house near Twin Peaks, but she’s been touring.”

“Did she talk to you recently about ending her life?” Jo said.

“No.”

“Did she seem to be making any preparations—had she given away any of her possessions? Made a will?”

“Wrote a will ten years ago. Otherwise, no.”

“Did she have any enemies?”

Vienna turned her head slowly, and gave Jo the remorseless grizzly bear gaze. “The police played her ‘I’m going to be assassinated’ recording for me. It was…shocking. But I have seen no evidence that anybody killed her. If you have any, tell me. I mean now, Doctor.” The gaze didn’t relent. “I want the truth.”

Jo knew that Vienna didn’t simply want the truth; she needed it. Without it she would live like a wounded animal, bleeding and pain-stricken, burdened with doubts and guilt her entire life.

Jo hoped she could help provide her with it. That’s why she did the job.

“I don’t yet know what happened, but I’m trying my best to find out. Could anybody have wished your sister harm?”

Vienna fought her emotions. “Real harm, not conspiracy theory bullshit? People are saying she took a bullet meant for Searle Lecroix, or that the stuntman shot her—he has a Muslim name, Shirazi, so it’s a jihadist plot to destroy country music. Or she was given hallucinogenic drugs that made her shoot herself.”

That, Jo thought, was actually an interesting possibility.

“She made enemies right and left. She was a diva. Ninety percent were showbiz rivals or family members she antagonized. But did people hate her enough to what, secretly load bullets in a gun she thought was unloaded? How preposterous is that? How many people had access to that gun? Not many.”

Vienna looked at the windsurfers on the bay, their sails iridescent in the salt spray and sunshine. “The medical examiner’s expediting the autopsy. They’ll be releasing her body, and I have to plan the memorial service. I need to bury my sister. You understand that, Dr. Beckett?”

“Perfectly.”

She looked at Jo. “Did somebody kill her? I have no idea.”

13

These are the times that try men’s souls.

—Thomas Paine

THE CURSOR BLINKED ON THE SCREEN. HIS FINGERTIPS TINGLED. HE typed the words that transformed him.

Call me Paine.

His thoughts pulsed. When he spoke aloud, people found him clumsy. An awkward white guy, soft around the middle—human mayonnaise. But when he sat before the glowing computer screen and reached into the minds beyond it, he became fluent and convincing. Power surged through his fingers.

The jackal in the Oval Office is playing games with us. Legion is plying us with lies. He thinks we can’t see his ass hanging out.

Beyond the rooftops, downtown San Francisco gleamed in the morning sun. The Transamerica pyramid was a lustrous white edifice, the waters of the bay deceptively smooth. The postcard view disguised the degenerate reality. Whores, addicts, gays. And everywhere, coming out of drainpipes and cracks in the sidewalk, illegals. The ROW—the Rest of the World—a seething mass infecting the nation with their leprosy and laziness.

The city was a magnificent arena. What exquisite irony that the end game should play out here.

Watch the video footage from last night’s concert. Not the film shot by the official camera crew—that footage has already been altered to depict the story the gubmint wants sheeple to believe. Watch videos shot by concertgoers. Raw footage of Tasia’s death. It reveals the shocking truth.

He wiped his palms on his jeans. He was logged on through an anonymizer, a tool that stripped out identifying information about his computer and made his activities on the Net untraceable. Supposedly.

The discussion boards at Tree of Liberty were heaving. Thousands of comments. Battle cries. Pledges to fight to the death. The passion was unbelievable. His people, the online rant-’n’-ravers, loved Paine. They needed him. They bought him. The stock he owned in ammunition manufacturers was going to shoot through the roof. And some commenters were more than mere armchair insurgents. Tom Paine had real volunteers out there.

But these were nerve-racking days. Tasia was gone, and time was desperately short. To save himself from a full-blown attack, he had to act now. Fear touched the back of his neck with a dry heat.

The truth, despite what the more excitable members of our community believe, is that the shooter did not execute Tasia from the stunt helicopter.

I know what some of you think—Look at the stuntmen’s names. Shirazi. Andreyev. And yes, Shirazi is a Muslim name. Andreyev is Russian. These men come from enemy stock, but the facts are indisputable: Neither shot Tasia. The angle of fire is wrong.

In the hall beyond the door, people passed by, laughing and chatting. Paine pulled his hands from the keyboard. His heart was racing.

He was a jack of many trades, but he was a master of persuasion—written, emotional, and political. He hated the word prankster. Intimidator suited him better. He was the rock in the gears, the sugar in the gas tank. He stopped things. Or kicked them off. Politicians talked; Paine turned propaganda into deeds.

He picked up a matchbook and flipped it between his fingers. He needed to stoke the fire.

Analyze the videos. They’re blurred and shaky, but look. Her murderer fired a single shot from a high-powered rifle from the stage rigging in centerfield.

The gubmint will use Tasia’s murder as an excuse to confiscate our firearms. Expect the second amendment to be suspended within the week. National Guard checkpoints will be erected after that. We’ll be stopped, arrested, and interned. Be ready, people.

Yeah, that was good. He was getting warmed up now. His blood heated his hands.

The police investigation into Tasia’s death is puppet theater. The SFPD will never produce the bullet that ended Tasia’s life. Doing so would prove, incontrovertibly, that she was killed by a round fired from a military-issue sniper rifle, not a Colt .45.

And now the authorities have thrown another curve ball. They can’t silence the outcry over Tasia’s assassination, so they’ve decided to smother us with psychobabble. They’ve hired a psychiatrist to analyze Tasia’s death.

This is not a joke.

Tasia’s murder had been bold, incredibly so. She was a fire, and she’d been put out. But much worse was coming, straight at him, unless he took action immediately. Government minions—Legion’s legions—would descend on him like demons. Robert McFarland could cry for the TV cameras, but his people certainly weren’t. They were thinking Finish the job. They would come for Tom Paine.

Authority always did. He had to strike first.

We’ll get “insights” into Tasia’s “tortured” mind. This psychiatrist will give us a sad, I’m-so-sorry face, and blame Tasia’s mother and American society for her “tragic suicide.” You know she will—she’s from San Francisco. She’s a gubmint lackey, a useful idiot.

This is how tyrants plant their boot on our faces. Not always with a midnight knock on the door, but through the comforting lies of a quack.

A chill curled down his arms. He would put out the call. Keyes, the ex-merc who now drove for Blue Eagle Security, would answer, and that atavistic white power groupie he worked with, Ivory.

Tasia warned us. She came to the concert armed with the jackal’s gun. She raised it high. She could not have shouted a louder message: True Americans will not go quietly.

To quote Thomas Paine: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Who’s with me?

Yes, Keyes and Ivory would be dying to ride to the rescue. The question was how many people could they take with them when they rode off the cliff?

AFTER JO SAID good-bye to Vienna Hicks, she walked back to her truck along crowded streets. Businessmen’s ties writhed like snakes in the wind. Above skyscrapers, clouds fled across the blue sky. When she turned on her phone it beeped with multiple messages from Tang.

But the message she wanted, one from Gabe saying he was safe on dry land, wasn’t there. Her breath snagged. Her emotions caught on a bramble, fear glinting in a corner of her mind.

She shook loose from the feeling. He would call. She wouldn’t. She would wait, because that was the unspoken rule. Instead she called Tang, who sounded like she’d been chewing on sandpaper.

“Give me joy, Beckett. I need progress.”

“Tasia’s sister thinks it’s fully possible she committed suicide.”

“ ‘Fully possible’ doesn’t work. I need concrete results.”

“You sound like you’re sitting on a sharp rock.”

“You been watching the news? ‘Still no information on the bizarre death of Tasia McFarland, and with each passing hour speculation grows that the police are incompetent, in on the conspiracy,’ blah blah repeat until nauseated. The sharp rock’s sitting on me.”

Jo stopped at a corner for a red light. Taxis and delivery trucks jostled for space at two miles an hour, horns quacking.

“I need Tasia’s medical and psychiatric records. All of them, including files from the years when she was married to Robert McFarland,” she said.

“Army records, yeah. Getting paperwork from the military is going to be like pulling teeth from a chicken.”

“You expect them to drag their feet?” The light changed and Jo crossed the street, dodging oncoming pedestrians. “Who’s got their thumb on your neck, Amy?”

“You want the list alphabetically, or in order of political throw-weight? The White House wants this to go away. K. T. Lewicki called the mayor to express the administration’s support for our investigation. In other words, the president’s chief of staff wants us to turn off the gas and snuff this story out. Get me something we can use, or we’re going to get squashed.”

“Still nothing on the search for the bullet?” Jo said.

“The Tooth Fairy is more likely to put it under your pillow than I and the department are to find it.”

“The Warren Commission found a magic bullet on a hospital stretcher in Dallas after JFK was assassinated.”

“Beckett.” Tang’s next words were barked at her in sharply inflected Mandarin. “Don’t you dare inflict that conspiracy garbage on me.”

“Political paranoia is as American as apple pie and obesity. We dine on it as a nation.”

“The departmental powers want me to clear the case by the end of the week. Get me something solid, Jo. I need progress by tomorrow so I’ll at least have dog chow to feed to the brass.”

“On it.”

“Have you gone to Tasia’s house yet?”

“Next stop.”

“Step lively, chickie.”

NMP—YOU ARE not Noel Michael Petty, you are NMP, the big bad bastard, the sword of truth—gazed down the hillside. He was invisible in the thick brush, hovering like an angel.

A man was inside the house below. A man in a shiny blue blazer who had parked in the driveway and jogged to the door, sorting keys in his hand.

Hours of surveillance were about to pay off. Hours of silent hovering, of waiting for the chance to get inside the house without breaking in, because break-ins brought the police, or left forensic evidence, and—Don’t tell, precious love, promise me—NMP was no fool. And now, finally, the property manager had shown up.

To Tasia’s house. The battle was about to be joined.

Blue Blazer Man, quick and skinny, scurried inside the house and shut off a beeping alarm. He opened a window to let in fresh air. He came to the sliding glass patio door and opened it a crack, thank you very much. Then he disappeared.

NMP waited. Inside that house lay proof, and the truth, and NMP was going to get it, because the truth will set you free.

A minute later, the front door slammed. Blue Blazer Man got back in his car and sat there, making phone calls.

NMP slipped down the hillside and ran across the backyard. Noel Michael Petty might have lumbered, or tripped and fallen, but not NMP. He glided inside through the sliding glass door.

He stood there, dizzy.

It looked like Tasia. It smelled like Tasia. Slowly he turned his bulk to take in the panorama. In the living room was a grand piano. Sheet music lay on top of it. He balled his fists and pressed them to his mouth.

Don’t squeal. Don’t gasp. He saw the photos on the walls. Oh, the photos! So many famous people, all lined up to get their picture taken with Tasia.

He crept along the wall and examined each in detail. He recognized many of them from TV and magazines. Red carpet shots. Awards ceremonies. Tasia singing the national anthem at the Indianapolis 500, wind blowing her hair across her face like a shroud—a portentous shot. To finally see those famous photos firsthand felt like coming home.

See, Tasia: I know you. I’ve been this close to you, from the beginning.

This hallway, this house, validated everything. All the hours, the days, the year NMP had spent gaining familiarity with Tasia’s background. Learning about her early life, her school days, her early forays into entertainment; they all showed here. The weekends NMP had spent at the library, the online all-nighters tracing her life through articles and links, images and videos, music downloads, chat room discussion threads about her, snarky comments by know-nothings…he had followed her lifeblood, from her beating heart to her fingertips. That’s how well Petty knew her.

Petty.

Stop calling yourself by your last name. You’re NMP. Out on the streets, you’re three letters, no more. No ID, no driver’s license or wallet, no way to identify you. You’re NMP, big bad bastard of the Tenderloin.

NMP knocked a fist against the side of his head as a reminder to be careful.

Then he fought down a giddy giggle. He was inside Tasia’s house. It was like exploring the heretofore-undiscovered tomb of an ancient ruler. And, oh, goodness—in the living room were photos that weren’t to be found on the Net. Private snapshots, albums showing Tasia with friends and family. Photos from the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.

NMP’s stomach soured. Who were those people? Entourage. Stage crew. Groupies, managers, hangers-on, bandmates, stuntmen. Why did they get backstage passes? NMP was the tour’s most fervent follower. Where was his backstage pass?

Not fair. Not motherloving fair.

He was seeing her soul, at last, and it was corrupt.

Disgusted, NMP crept into the kitchen—and saw signs of Searle. The empty box of KFC in the trash. Searle Lecroix was an extra-crispy man; it was in US Weekly magazine. Up the stairs, creeping on tiptoe, big bad dude moving like Papa Bear sneaking up on Goldilocks, finding himself outside her bedroom door, her fantasyland, her center…

Her clothes were draped across the bed, the nightstand, the chair, the floor—as if she had performed some debauched striptease. Guitar leaning against the chair. Boots by the bed.

Petty gasped, a hard involuntary moan of pain.

Outside, a car door slammed. Petty lurched to the window and peeked through the blinds. Somebody was here. Petty fled the bedroom.

14

TASIA MCFARLAND HADN’T BEEN SOLELY A SINGER. SHE HAD WRITTEN songs from the time she was a child. The melodies seemed to spin inside her head, growing louder and more insistent until they woke her at night and demanded that she play them on the piano. The music seemed to jump from her hands like sparks, and she would play until her fingers stung. By the time she finished high school she had written two hundred songs and a fully orchestrated rock cantata.

Jo drove up winding streets through the Twin Peaks neighborhood where Tasia and Vienna Hicks had grown up. The city tumbled around her in all directions, houses and apartments stacked on ridges and crammed into valleys like dice. The view was one that sold the place to the world. The bay glittered. The Golden Gate anchored the city to the wild Marin Headlands to the north. Along the western edge of the city, the fog curled against the beach, cold and thick.

As the hill rose higher and grew ridiculously steep, the streets became rustic. Eucalyptus groves grew in ravines, filling the depths with shadow. Manicured lawns bordered the snaking road. Neat homes boasted groomed gardens and rustling, well-tended pines. She followed the road past Sutro Tower. The radio mast rose almost a thousand feet above the peak. No matter how aggressive the fog became, Sutro Tower’s three gigantic prongs protruded above it. The mast was like a science fiction monster, awaiting the signal to awake and rampage through the city below. Or so Jo had imagined when she was nine.

Tasia’s house was an Italian-style villa tucked against the hillside, gazing down on the Financial District and the bay. Jo got out of the Tacoma and a biting wind stung her cheeks. The driveway was so steep she nearly needed crampons.

Behind her on the street a car door slammed. “Hang on, there.”

Jo turned and saw a man walking toward her. “Are you the property manager?”

He climbed the drive, shaking his head. He was in his mid-thirties, with a guileless face and boyish blond hair, dressed in jeans and a Bad Dogs and Bullets T-shirt. His hands were stuffed in his pockets but the nonchalant façade didn’t hide the red flush in his neck. He was out of shape.

“You the psychiatrist I heard about?”

“I’m Dr. Beckett. And you?”

He stopped beside her. “Ace Chennault.”

“Tasia’s autobiographer.”

“The author is gone but the ghost remains.”

He tried to sound jocular, but only managed forced. Belatedly he extended his hand.

Jo shook it. “I’d like to interview you. I’m—”

“Performing a psychological autopsy. I know. News travels fast.”

“Apparently.”

“Perhaps we can help each other out.”

His cloudless smile and baby-fat cheeks must have gotten him interviews with kindly grandmothers and with rock singers who were needy for a big brother’s attention. His voice had a hint of jollity. But Jo sensed a practiced stratagem behind the sad clown’s eyes. Journalists, one had once told her, needed to connect instantly and deeply with people they interviewed. They needed the illusion of intimacy, of being a person’s best friend for a day or an hour, to get the really juicy quotes.

And Ace Chennault was a journalist who’d just lost his biggest source—and source of income.

“Can we set up a time later today?” Jo said.

“I thought we could do some horse trading. You want to poke through my notes and listen to the stream-of-consciousness narration Tasia recorded?” He smiled again. “I’m willing to share it all with you. But be fair. Give me something in return.”

“Such as?”

“Your unique insights into her mind.”

A mental warning light blinked red. “If my report becomes part of the public record, you’ll have access to it.”

“That’s not what I was hoping.”

“I figured not. But I’m working for the SFPD. They have dibs on my work.”

The smile broadened. “No tit, no tattle?”

She put on a practiced face of her own: neutral. “Can’t play it that way.”

Behind her the front door opened. A man in a blue blazer extended his hand. “Dr. Beckett? I’m the property manager.”

Jo stepped into the front hall. Chennault followed.

“Excuse me?” she said.

He shrugged, gesturing no biggie. “I’ve been here before. Stayed in the guest room half a dozen times.”

“Okay, but right now I’m the one with permission from the police to come inside. Sorry, Mr. Chennault.”

He raised his hands. “Wouldn’t want to muddle the pack order, Alpha girl. Mr. Manager and I’ll wait while you take your tour.”

Jo smiled firmly, neutrally, at him. “How about we grab coffee after this?”

Hands still up, he retreated. When he reached the door, he put his hands together and bowed, like a Thai offering a wai.

She watched him walk down the steps toward his car. To the property manager she said, “Have you seen him here before?”

“No, but I’m not here very often.”

“I’m going to survey the house. I may be a while.”

“I’ll be in the car. Got calls to make.”

Jo took out her digital camera and walked deeper into the house. It was compact and elegantly appointed. Food in the kitchen: organic arugula, an empty KFC bucket in the trash. Vitamins, herbal supplements, and a bottle of Stolichnaya on the counter.

She wandered into the living room. The plate-glass windows overlooked a small backyard that rose steeply into bottlebrush trees and rhododendrons on the hillside.

The police had been through the house already, and apparently hadn’t found any evidence of a crime. So Jo was looking for the contours of Tasia’s emotional landscape. And she was looking for traces of her final day.

Two big bookcases were haphazardly piled with paranormal romance novels, old copies of Entertainment Weekly, and a country music Listeners’ Choice award.

Mixed in with the spicy books about hot girl-on-werewolf love was a copy of Gerald Posner’s Case Closed. Jo picked it up, perplexed. The book was an anti-conspiracy text, considered an authoritative tome debunking conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination.

Why was Tasia interested in JFK? Or presidential assassination?

She snapped a photo of the bookshelf.

The grand piano was covered with slumping piles of music manuscript paper. Jo was certain that the police had shuffled through them looking for a suicide note. They hadn’t found one. The manuscript paper was covered with Tasia’s compositions. Musical notes crowded the treble staff. The lyrics rushed across the page, as if Tasia had been gasping to keep up with the music that poured from her head.

Propped on the music stand was “The Liar’s Lullaby.” Tasia had scored a complete arrangement for piano. At the top she’d scribbled Allegro. Counterpoint/Round. Dense chords packed the bass clef.

Said you wanted me to be your choir

Help you build the funeral pyre.

Jo picked out the piece on the keyboard. The melody was minor key, droning, repetitive, sad. It sounded almost compulsive. From the evidence heaped on top of the Steinway, Tasia had been filled with desperation and obsession.

Jo carefully photographed each sheet. Then she went upstairs.

In Tasia’s bedroom she found disorder. The bed was unmade and clothes were strewn on the floor.

Jo’s own wardrobe was functional. She wore tailored blouses and well-fitting pants that allowed her to simultaneously look professional and run for her life. No pencil skirts, no scarves that wrapped around her neck. Nothing that would prevent her from leaping out a window if a schizophrenic gangbanger heard voices telling him the bitch needed cutting, or a psychopathic convict decided, on a whim, to strangle her. She had combats for the weekend, sweats and shorts for climbing, and a black suit for testifying in court. If she wanted to go high fashion, she’d put on her paisley Doc Martens.

The thought that Tasia McFarland, or anybody, would treat designer clothing—clothing that cost enough to put a teenager through college—like dishrags dropped on the floor to mop up spilled coffee, boggled her. Either Tasia had been inured to the privileges of fame, or she was so depressed that she couldn’t even pick up a…she looked at a label…Dolce & Gabbana dress from the bathroom floor.

She took more photos. Then she turned to the bed. The covers were turned down on both sides. Two pillows had distinct impressions. A set of men’s boots sat beside it. Worn, well-loved red cowboy boots.

On an easy chair, beneath a gauzy pile of women’s blouses, she found a man’s shirt that still smelled of aftershave. She checked inside the collar. A cleaner’s mark read SL. Leaning against the chair was an acoustic guitar.

Searle Lecroix had, it seemed, been serenading Tasia shortly before her fateful trip to the concert.

She headed into the bathroom. The wind sliced through the open window. Half a dozen prescription bottles sat on the counter.

Tasia’s pharmaceutical cornucopia looked as colorful as confetti. Antianxiety drugs. Vicodin and Tylenol with codeine. Sleeping pills. Diet pills, aka amphetamines. Prozac.

Lithium. From the scrip label, the prescription had been filled two months earlier, but the bottle was full.

Off her meds.

Jo lined up the bottles and took photos, making sure she got the labels and the prescribing physicians’ names. All these bottles would be checked by the medical examiner and cross-referenced for tox screening in connection with Tasia’s autopsy. But Jo wanted to verify their contents for herself.

The wind whistled through the open window. She heard a car drive past the house. Men’s voices batted about on the wind.

The floor creaked behind her. She turned.

The bedroom looked exactly as she’d seen it moments earlier. The floor creaked again, in the hallway beyond it.

Chennault.

Damn, the nosy bastard had snuck back inside the house. She strode out of the bathroom toward the bedroom door. “Excuse me.”

Again the creak. She stepped into the hall. Nobody was on the landing.

“Mr. Chennault?”

She told herself she hadn’t imagined it. Again she heard men’s voices outside. She walked to the landing, where a picture window overlooked the street. The hairs on her arms prickled.

Beside his car, Chennault stood talking to the property manager.

Slowly she turned. Behind her, outside a hallway closet, stood a figure in fatigues and a balaclava.

Five foot eight, probably two-fifty, and breathing hard. Jo’s gaze went to his hands. Gardening gloves.

She ran for the stairs.

She sprinted, two steps, three, and heard him coming. His feet thumped on the carpet. Run, she thought. She leaped down the stairs two at a time.

A hand grabbed her hair. Her head snapped back.

She swung an elbow and hit padded flesh, heard his thick breathing, felt his meaty presence. His hand twisted her hair. She lost her balance, missed a step, and fell.

She threw out her hands and hit hard, knees to stomach to her face. The masked man grunted and toppled with her. They slid down the stairs and thudded against the hardwood floor.

He landed on top of her. His weight, his smell, were crushing. She squirmed, fingernails out. His flesh was soft and red around the collar. She clawed at his neck.

He lumbered to his feet and careened into the living room, hitting the wall as he ran. He threw open the plate-glass patio door.

Jo clambered to her feet and stumbled for the front door. Looking back, she saw the intruder flee across the backyard.

She threw open the front door. “Help.”

Chennault and the property manager looked up, startled, and rushed toward her.

Jo found her phone. Fingers shaking, she punched 911. She pointed at the back of the house. “Man in a balaclava. Ran out and into the trees.”

The property manager gaped at her, and at the open patio door, with seeming confusion. Chennault took the same long second, then put a hand on Jo’s shoulder.

“Are you hurt?” he said.

She had the phone to her ear. Her ribs were killing her. Her face had rug burns. She couldn’t swallow because her throat was bone-dry.

“I’m okay.”

Through the patio door, she saw movement. The bottlebrush trees were heavy with red blooms, and they swung as the man in the balaclava ran past. Chennault saw it too. He hesitated only a second before running out the patio door.

“Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“An intruder just assaulted me.”

Jo ran after Chennault. He was already across the yard and running for the trees. Up the steep hillside, the rhododendrons rustled like a black bear was tearing through them.

She gave the 911 dispatcher the address. “I’m in pursuit on foot, with another civilian.”

Part of her thinking, what the hell was she doing? Another part thinking, Look around. Make sure there’s not another one. And what the hell am I doing?

“Stay on the line, Dr. Beckett,” the dispatcher said. “A unit is on the way.”

“Wouldn’t hang up for a million bucks,” Jo said.

She aimed for the trees.

15

JO RAN UP THE HILL BEHIND TASIA’S HOUSE, PHONE PRESSED TO HER ear. Her heart beat like a snare drum. Branches swung past her face. The hillside smelled of damp earth and the musk of the attacker’s clothing. Above her, the bushes swayed violently as the attacker bowled through them.

“He’s a hundred yards ahead of me, heading for the top of Twin Peaks,” she told the emergency dispatcher. “The other civilian is closer to him.”

Rhododendrons were dense on the hillside. Sunlight gashed through the leaves, looking unnaturally bright. Damn it. How had the guy gotten into the house?

Ahead, Ace Chennault muscled through the brush. Ungainly but purposeful, he closed the distance on the attacker.

“Chennault,” she hollered, “watch out for weapons.”

She put the phone back to her ear. “We’re heading toward Sutro Tower. How long for the unit to respond?”

“They’re on the way,” the dispatcher said.

The damp ground gave way beneath her feet. She pitched forward and her hand hit the slope. The attacker disappeared from sight, followed by Chennault. She heard them threshing the bushes. She put her arm up to shield herself from branches and plowed after them.

The hillside flattened and she came out onto a dusty field. Ahead lay eucalyptus groves, then a chain-link fence. Sutro Tower stood beyond it, a fulsome red and white in the sunshine, rising mightily three hundred yards overhead.

The attacker was following the fence line into the distance. He had a smooth stride and was surprisingly light on his feet, motoring toward freedom. Chennault sprinted raggedly behind him.

“He’s headed west. If he gets past Sutro Tower…” She tried to picture what lay beyond the antenna. Glades, more eucalyptus, steep ravines. “…he could lose us.”

She ran, beginning to blow hard. On the far side of the hilltop the attacker darted into a eucalyptus grove and dropped from sight over the lip of the hill. Five seconds later so did Chennault.

Jo passed Sutro Tower. “They’re in heavy woods, heading downhill.”

At the lip of the hill she slowed. The ground pitched harshly into trees and tangled undergrowth. The vine-covered ground was a morass of eroded gullies. A fallen eucalyptus, at least a hundred feet tall, spanned a ravine like a bridge.

Chennault was eighty yards ahead, pummeling downhill like he couldn’t stop. She didn’t see the attacker. In Chennault’s wake branches snapped and leaves crunched, but nowhere else. A black wire of warning spun around her chest.

She scanned the terrain. She had a rule: Listen to the whisper on the wind. Hear the still small voice that says, Watch out.

She cupped her hands in front of her mouth. “Chennault, be careful.”

He barreled onward, seemingly certain that he was still on the attacker’s trail—or maybe just out of control. He put a hand against a tree trunk to slow himself.

Behind him the attacker rose from a thicket. In his hand he had a rock the size of a softball. He whipped his arm overhead and smashed it against Chennault’s head.

Chennault staggered, crashed into another tree trunk, and toppled like an upended floor lamp into the ravine.

The wind snapped through Jo’s hair. She clutched the phone, horrified. “He attacked the man who was chasing him. Get the cops here. Hurry.”

“They’re coming, Doctor.”

The attacker stared into the blank space where Chennault had fallen. His shoulders heaved. The rock looked sharp and bloody.

“Get them to come faster.”

The attacker continued to stare into the ravine. Shit. How far had Chennault fallen? The attacker weighed the rock in his hand. Eyes downslope, he inched over the edge of the ravine. Dammit. Damn.

“A man’s down and the attacker’s moving on him again,” she said. “And I don’t have a weapon.”

Deep in the distance, a siren cried. Jo cupped her hands in front of her mouth and yelled down the ravine. “That’s the cops.”

The attacker turned. His dark eyes peered at her from beneath the balaclava.

Her voice sounded dry. She told the dispatcher, “He’s watching me.”

Fear whispered, Run. But if she fled, the attacker would have free range to finish off Chennault. She forced her legs not to bolt. The siren grew louder.

She gritted her teeth and shouted, “Hear that?”

For another moment the attacker stared at her. Then, without a sound, he turned and disappeared into the trees.

The siren grew shrill. A police cruiser heaved into view. Jo pointed at the trees and yelled, “Assailant ran that way.” Then she scurried down the slope to the edge of the ravine. A trail of broken vegetation delineated Chennault’s fall line.

She couldn’t see him. “Chennault?”

From the depths of the ravine, beneath moss and fallen logs, came moaning. She sidestepped down the slope, hanging onto branches and crawling green vines. The shadows deepened. Above, the siren cut off and car doors slammed.

An officer called, “Are you all right?”

“Man’s hurt. He needs rescue.”

The moan came again, like the lowing of an animal. She followed the sound and found him half-buried in creepers and mucky earth.

God, scalp wounds were bloody. If she hadn’t seen the rock smash against Chennault’s head, Jo would have thought he’d been shot.

She crouched at his side. “Hold still. The police are calling the paramedics.”

“Damn,” he moaned. “Bastard brained me, didn’t he?”

Wild vines had wrapped around him. Beneath the copious blood his face was white. He tried to sit up, and screamed. His left arm was fractured and his elbow dislocated.

Jo gently held him down. “Stay still.”

“Make a great postscript for the book,” he said, and passed out.

16

WHEN JO GOT HOME THE SUN WAS HIGH IN THE SKY. SHE PARKED the Tacoma beyond the park and hiked toward her house, feeling spooked.

Chennault had been evacuated by the paramedics to UCSF Medical Center. He couldn’t give the police much information about the attacker. Neither could she.

When her phone rang she grabbed it and peered at the display. A pang went through her, disappointment covering worry.

“So, have the police discovered how the guy got into Tasia’s house?” she said.

“The property manager opened the back door before you came,” said Amy Tang. “He snuck in while nobody was looking. Bigger question—who was he?”

“And what did he want?”

“Thief?”

“Ghoul? Somebody seeking relics to sell on eBay?”

The cool wind shook the Monterey pines in the park. A cable car clattered past, bulging with tourists. The gripman rang his bell.

“I have another question,” Jo said. “Will he be back?”

“Watch yourself.”

“You bet.”

She hung up but clutched the phone in her palm as she walked. Come on. Ring.

How could it be that modern life was saturated with communications devices, that the information age spewed gossip and barking commentary night and day, that the entire electromagnetic spectrum was alight with phone calls and texts and breaking news about celebrity boob jobs—but when she wanted news that the PJs of the 129th had safely touched down at Moffett Field, she was utterly in the dark?

She tucked the phone in her back pocket. A second later she pulled it out again and called Vienna Hicks. When she told her about being attacked by the intruder at Tasia’s home, Vienna said, “Holy crap, are you okay?”

“Aside from a rug burn on my face, I’m perfect. But Ace Chennault was taken away in an ambulance.”

“Poor bastard. The guy never did look like he could duck.”

Jo smiled. “Do you know anybody who might want to break into your sister’s house?”

She tossed it out like chum on choppy water, not really expecting an answer. She checked for traffic and jogged across the street toward her house.

“Maybe,” Vienna said.

Jo slowed. “Really?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Dr. Beckett. Can you meet me at Waymire and Fong this evening?”

“Certainly.”

“Bring your secret psychiatric decoder ring.”

“Want to clarify that?”

“Six o’clock. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

Jo saw the green VW Bug drive past at the same moment the driver saw her. The woman’s head swiveled sharply. She whipped a U-turn and double-parked in front of Jo’s house. The VW’s air-cooled engine squealed. Exhaust stank from its tailpipe. The driver climbed out.

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