I could imagine someone going after Lawrence. He was in a line of work where you encountered the odd bad guy. He’d been following those guys in the Annihilator. He’d probably pissed off a lot of people when he was a cop. Maybe somewhere along the line, as a private detective, he’d made life tough for some philandering husband he’d caught in the act.

But what did anyone have against me? Who would also have it in for Lawrence?

And I thought back to those guys in the black SUV. What if they’d figured out Lawrence and I had been the ones following them that night? That those shots fired at their SUV had come from us?

Even if they’d had some way to trace the license plate on the Buick, Lawrence had told me he’d put bogus plates on the car, just to keep that kind of thing from happening. So how would they even have found him?

I thought of the specific words that Lawrence, lying in his hospital bed, hooked up to umpteen wires, had said.

Watch. Out. After. You.

When I got up to my desk in the Metropolitan newsroom, I found Steve Trimble’s card in my wallet and called his office phone. When I got his voicemail, I hung up and tried the cell number that was listed.

“Trimble.”

“Detective Trimble, Zack Walker here.”

“Yeah. What can I do for you?” His offer didn’t sound particularly sincere.

“I’m doing a story on all this for tomorrow and wanted to make a last-minute check with you to see whether there’s been any progress in the investigation, to find out who tried to kill Lawrence. You’re in charge of the investigation, right?”

“Yeah.” Man of few words.

“So, has there been any progress in the investigation?”

“We’re following up on a variety of leads at this time.” Strictly by the book, this guy was.

“Do you have any actual suspects?”

“Like I said, we’re following up on a variety of leads at this time.”

“Does it look to you like this was the work of more than one person, or a single individual?”

Trimble paused. “At this point I’d have to say there’s nothing that specifically indicates more than one person, but there’s nothing that specifically rules it out, either. What makes you ask?”

“Just asking,” I said.

“Look,” said Trimble, his tone softening a bit, “I’m willing to work a two-way street here. You were there, you know Lawrence. If there’s something you know that you think might be relevant, you share it with me, and anything I get, I give it to you first. We make an arrest, I call you.”

“Even before Dick Colby?”

Trimble actually laughed. “Even before Dick Colby. I’ve given him lots of stuff in the past. Preferably over the phone, if you get my drift.”