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the hard drive, if that’s where you’re headed. No coded files, no deleted files that look like anything.”
    They spoke to two other priests, to the cook, the maid, three clerical assistants. None could add anything relevant. No one had ever spoken to or seen Charles DeBruler.
    “He knew his murderer,” Delion said when they were back in the car. “There’s no doubt about that. He knew he was a monster, but he wasn’t afraid of him.”
    “No,” Dane said, “not afraid. Michael was repulsed by him, but he wasn’t afraid of him. Charles DeBruler spoke two other times to my brother, last Tuesday and last Thursday, both in the late evening.” Dane took a deep breath. “For Michael to be that upset, for him to be angry about seeing this man, it’s my best guess that the man must have done something horrendous around both those other times. Delion, were there any murders committed here in San Francisco on those days or perhaps a couple of days before?”
    Delion hit the steering wheel with his hand and nearly struck a pedestrian who was stoned and walk-dancing across Market Street. He gave them the finger, never breaking stride.
    “Yes,” Delion said, turning the Ford sharply to make the guy jump out of the way. “Damn. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”
    “You’re exhausted, for a start.”
    Delion blew that off, fingered his mustache. “Okay, Dane, let me think. We’ve had three murders, one a couple of weeks old. We’ve got the guy—a husband we believe who just wanted to collect on his wife’s life insurance. That was Donnie Lunerman’s case. He just shook his head when he walked out of the interview with the man. It boggles the mind what some people will do for fifty thousand dollars.
    “I’ve got it. Last Monday night—just one night before the first confession—there was an old woman, seventy-two, who lived alone in the Sunset District, on Irving and Thirty-third. She was murdered in her home. No robbery, no forced entry, no broken windows. The guy clubbed her to death in her bed and took off. Thing’s a dead end so far.”
    “He didn’t shoot her,” Dane said thoughtfully, bracing one hand against the dashboard as Delion took a sharp turn into the police garage.
    “No, he bludgeoned her to death. Then, last Wednesday, and this is the one that everyone is all up in arms about, a gay activist was murdered, outside a bar in the Castro. Lots of witnesses, but no one close and no one can agree on what the guy looked like. He was straight, he was gay, he was fat, thin as a rail, old, young—you get the picture. That’s not my case. The chief formed a special task force, that’s how high profile this guy was.”
    “How was he killed?”
    “Garroted.”
    “Okay. Blunt force, strangulation, bullet. The guy is all over the board.”
    “If,” Delion said, “if—and this is a really big if—if the guy killed both those people and taunted your brother about them, then why would he kill him?”
    “I don’t know,” Dane said. “I’m really not sure, but I’ll betcha that our profilers would have an idea about that.”
    “Oh man,” Delion said, screeching into a parking place in the garage, “the Feds are coming to roost on my head after all.”
    “They’re good people, Delion.” Dane paused a moment, then said, “You know, I’m wondering about that woman—the one who called in my brother’s murder—why she was there at midnight on Sunday?”
    “Yeah, everyone was wondering about that. No way to find her. Let’s hope she calls us again.”
    “I wonder what she really saw.”
    “We’ll probably never know. I don’t think we’ll have any luck finding her.”
    Dane said, “Maybe she’ll be on Father Binney’s list.”
    Delion glanced over at him. “You ever find anything out that easy?”

FIVE
    She stood on the bottom step of the ugly Hall of Justice building on Bryant Street.
    It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, gloriously sunny,