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special. Usually they leave shit like that in the Sound because of the cost, but everybody’s been raving. It was only fifty feet down. They had guys in these super scuba suits going after it with winch lines. Poor bastards nearly froze too.”
    “Did they get the Caddy?”
    “They got photos of it and brought her body up. She was still holding the gun.” Sierra stood and started for the door. “Are you going to take care of this cactus?”
    “You don’t water them, so what’s to care for?”
    “I thought that would be your attitude.” She retrieved it from the windowsill, held it close, but not close enough to scratch her. Flynn realized there was a metaphor there, but he was too tired to fully examine it. She gave it another minute’s worth of love and warmth before abandoning it back on the sill.
    Sierra put her hand on the door knob and checked the hall before stepping into it. She turned back and said, “Well, it’s good you’re not too brain-damaged anyway. Hey, they’re showing
Out of the Past
at the Paradigm if you want to take it in.”
    Iced. For nearly a half hour. And still it wasn’t a record.
    But Flynn wasn’t so sure of the brain-damage part.
    Because a moment after Sierra shut the door, the dead dog Zero crawled out from beneath the bed where he’d been hiding, still wearing the white sweater and little booties, looked up at Flynn and said, “The Paradigm, huh? I love Robert Mitchum.”

THREE
    A different pair of cops came around before he was released. They warned him not to discuss an open investigation with the media. As soon as Flynn was wheeled out the front door of the hospital he covered his ass and talked to every reporter who wanted to listen. He suspected the cops were building a case against him and he wanted his side of the story out there building momentum if they came after him.
    The media was hopped up and merciless. Flynn did his best and told the truth, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Nobody wanted to believe him. Rude as the story was, it was even nastier to point the finger at him. It was too difficult for them to come to terms with a beautiful, high-class woman keeping her retarded brother locked in a cage. It was easier to call Flynn a pedo on the prowl working for CPS.
    None of the stations came right out and said it. They edited his footage to make him sound thick and a little high. He couldn’t handle the spotlight well and they took advantage of it. Every time they showed his face on television he looked sweaty and guilty as hell. Sierra gave him pointers on how to do it right, but when the lights were in his face and the journalists were sticking their mikes under his nose, he just tried to explain himself and give the facts. He appeared dazed. It was his own fault. All the pretty reporters sounded so sincere that he was easily duped.
    The papers did better by him, but nobody read the papers. He started receiving death threats in the mail and over the phone. He recognized at least one voice, a woman whose husband used to beat her and their eleven-year-old daughter. Flynn had investigated the case and got the husband put away for a nickel. The woman spit venom and used some foul language he’d never come across before. It was spooky. Her vitriol downshifted into broken sobbing when she admitted her name and told him how betrayed she felt, that he was doing the same things her husband used to do. He talked to her for more than an hour before she hung up, furious and calling him a liar. He hadn’t taken a drink in eighteen months but could only fall off to sleep that night after killing a half bottle of Jack.
    Despite all he’d seen and survived, Marianne used to call him terribly naive. He was starting to understand what she meant.
    He went back to work. He ran two investigations, following up complaints that turned out to be from angry in-laws who didn’t like their grandkids watching too much television. He ran another case and found a father with his belt in