“Just reading about it now,” he said. “I don’t read the paper all that often.”

“But you do watch TV, right? One of the guys Revenge killed was a big-deal undercover cop, and his wife is going to be on TV tonight. With Katie Couric.”

“No kidding. Well, maybe I’ll watch it then.”

He smiled at the waitress, poured milk into the cup, and capped it. He left four dollars on the counter, told Martina to take care, and went out into the strip mall.

He got into his vehicle and called his wife, told her he’d be home in half an hour; did she need him to pick up anything?

“No, thanks. We’re good, sweetie,” she said.

Revenge hung up and had just started the engine when he saw something that almost snapped his head back. It was Raoul Fernandez, a scumbag drug dealer who was moving up in his world from small-timer selling teenths in the hood to distributor with young kids doing the dealing for him.

While Revenge was with the DEA task force, he’d looked for evidence against this ugly piece of work. Fernandez was cagey and elusive, and after serving two years for dealing, he had been released.

That should never have happened. Now Revenge watched Fernandez lock up his sporty little Mercedes and head across the parking lot toward the Safeway.

The strip mall was busy. Revenge had just been seen by Martina and everyone who’d been in Peet’s. He knew he ought to let Fernandez go. He should drive home to his family, just drive away.

But fuck it. He might not get this chance again.

Revenge got his gun out of the glove box and stepped out of his car. He walked past the Mercedes and followed a dozen yards behind the drug dealer, his gun pressed against his leg.

Fernandez might have heard something, or maybe he just had a sixth sense; the dealer turned toward Revenge, and he had a gun in his hand.

Revenge felt his heart rate spike.

The voice inside his head was saying, This was a mistake. This is where I go down. I guess I want it to happen. Today.

Chapter 54

CONKLIN AND I stood with Charlie Clapper on the bricks behind the Ellsworth compound watching CSU pack up their gear. The garden was pocked with holes and heaped with mounds of dirt; it looked as if a hundred woodchucks on crack had run amok there.

Still, no additional heads or any other body parts had been found. There was no new evidence of any kind.

I was struck again by how twisted this case was, how unusual in every way.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, a homicide investigation revolves around a body and a scene where the crime actually took place.

You’ve got an assortment of material to work with: clothing, blood, fingerprints, hard evidence that can tell you who the victim was, what caused his death, and possibly when the victim died. You can even compare a photograph of the victim with the DMV’s database and most of the time can come up with a name.