Keegan dropped to one knee, careful to avoid the slick oval of blood that lay congealing around the corpse, half on the kitchen tile and half on the parquet floor of the hallway. He bent close to the old man’s face. Even in the dim moonlight coming through the kitchen blinds, Keegan could tell the coloring of his skin was all wrong. His cheeks sagged like warmed wax. His empty eyes stared blindly down the empty hallway.

Judging by the small tear in the front of his blood-soaked collar, the bullet had entered at the base of his throat. The old man hadn’t died instantly, Keegan guessed, but he wouldn’t have suffered long.

Keegan stood, feeling the ache in his knees. The body at his feet seemed so small and inconsequential now—nothing like the big, blustering man who had stood among his mother’s roses.

Keegan stepped over Ormsby’s outstretched leg, again careful to avoid the pooled blood, and made his way down the hallway, scanning the floor for his revolver. He found it at the hall’s far end, half hidden under a tea cart that had been pushed against the wall. He looked back down the hall to where Ormsby’s leg jutted out from the doorway. It had to be a good thirty feet—probably more—quite a shot for a snub nose in a dark hallway. She’d wanted to shoot at the stump from farther away. Hadn’t he told her it would be better to run?

He stood looking down the dim hallway as the precious seconds ticked away. He thought of Eve, crumpled in the big armchair up in the cottage. How would she stand up to the scrutiny, the ham-fisted sleuthing of the LAPD? He’d lived in that world for decades and he knew its cruel machinations. He’d seen the corruption, the railroading, the hunger for accolades. A celebrity killing, with a speedy conviction? It was any junior DA’s wet dream. A man could ride a case like that up South Broadway—like a Rose Parade float—to a better office, a household name, a shot at something bigger. Justice be damned. It was all about the headlines. Keegan knew; he’d written enough of them.