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a badge. People with badges are actively working on this. Actively. You understand? Leave it at that.”
    Before I could speak she fired another round at me.
    “And don’t trouble yourself about me, okay? I have no anger toward you anymore, Harry. You left me high and dry but that was a long time ago. Yeah, I had anger but it’s a long time gone. I didn’t even want to be the one who came here today but he made me come. He thought I could convince you.”
    He being the chief, I assumed. I sat silently for a moment, waiting to see if there was more. But that was all she had. I spoke quietly then, almost as if I was putting a confession through the screen to a priest.
    “And what if I can’t leave it alone? What if for reasons that have nothing to do with this case I need to work this? Reasons for myself. What happens then?”
    She shook her head in annoyance.
    “Then you are going to get hurt. These people, they don’t fuck around. Find some other case or some other way to work out your demons.”
    “What people?”
    Rider stood up.
    “Kiz, what people?”
    “I’ve told you enough, Harry. Message delivered. Good luck.”
    She headed toward the hallway and the door. I got up and followed, my mind churning through what I knew.
    “Who is working the case?” I asked. “Tell me.”
    She glanced back at me but kept moving toward the door.
    “Tell me, Kiz. Who?”
    She stopped suddenly and turned to me. I saw anger and challenge in her eyes.
    “For old time’s sake, Harry? Is that what you want to say?”
    I stepped back. Her anger was a force field around her body that was pushing me back. I held my hands out wide in surrender and didn’t say anything. She waited a moment and then turned back to the door.
    “Good-bye, Harry.”
    She opened the door and stepped out, then pulled it closed behind her.
    “Good-bye, Kiz.”
    But she was already gone. For a long time I stood there thinking about what she had said and not said. There had been a message within a message but I couldn’t yet read it. The water was too murky.
    “High jingo, baby,” I said to myself as I locked the door.

6
    The drive out to Woodland Hills took almost an hour. It used to be in this place that if you waited, picked your spots and went against the grain of traffic, you could get somewhere in a decent amount of time. Not anymore. It seemed to me that the freeways, no matter what time and what location, were always a nightmare. There was never any respite. And having done little long-distance driving in the past months, being re-immersed in the routine was an annoying and frustrating exercise. When I’d finally hit my limit, I got off the 101 at the Topanga Canyon exit and worked my way on surface streets the rest of the way. I was careful not to try to make up for lost time by speeding through the mostly residential districts. In my inside coat pocket was a flask. If I got pulled over, it could be a problem.
    In fifteen minutes I got to the house on Melba Avenue. I pulled my car in behind the van and got out. I walked up the wooden ramp that started next to the van’s side door and had been built over the front steps of the house.
    At the door I was met by Danielle Cross, who beckoned me in silently.
    “How’s he doing today, Danny?”
    “Same as always.”
    “Yeah.”
    I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t imagine what her view of the world was, how it had changed from one set of hopes and anticipations to something completely different overnight. I knew she couldn’t be much older than her husband. Early forties. But it was impossible to tell. She had old eyes and a mouth that seemed permanently tight and turned down at the corners.
    I knew my way and she let me go. Through the living room and down the hallway to the last room on the left. I walked in and saw Lawton Cross in his chair-the one bought along with the van after the fund-raiser run by the police union. He was watching CNN on a television mounted on a bracket