I left work at four-thirty and swung by the Hôte-Dieu Hospital, hoping LaManche had improved enough to receive visitors. No go. He was stil unresponsive, and his doctors were keeping him in cardiac intensive care, with no visitors except immediate family Feeling helpless, I ordered a smal bouquet in the hospital gift shop, and headed for the parking lot.

In the car I turned on the radio and hit scan. The channel selector ran the band, pausing briefly on a local talk show. Today's topic was the biker war and the upcoming funeral for its latest victim. The host was soliciting comments on police performance. I clicked in to listen.

While opinions varied as to police handling of the gang situation, one thing was clear. Cal ers were nervous. Whole neighborhoods were being avoided. Mothers were walking their kids to school, late-night carousers were changing watering holes, looking over their shoulders as they scurried to their cars.

And the cal ers were angry. They wanted their town released from the threat of these modern-day Mongols.

When I got home Kit was on the phone. He held the mouthpiece to his chest, and informed me that Harry had cal ed from Puerto Val arta.

"What did she say?"

"Buenos dias."

"Did you get a number?"

"She said she was moving around. But she'l cal again later in the week."

Then he resumed his conversation, disappearing into his room.

Good going, Harry.

Wasting no time worrying about my sister, I pul ed out the print Roy had loaned me and laid it on the table. Then I sorted through Kate's photos for the shots of Bernard "Slick" Silvestre's biker funeral down South. I was particularly interested in the graveside scene Kit and I had studied.

I went through the stack three times and came up empty I checked everything in my briefcase. Then the desk in my bedroom. The papers around my computer. Every folder Kate had given me.

The photos were nowhere to be found.

Puzzled, I stuck my head into Kit's room to ask if he'd borrowed them.

He hadn't.

O.K., Brennan. Play the remembering game. When did you last see them?

Saturday night with Kit?

No.

Sunday morning.

In the hands of Lyle Crease.

The anger hit me like a sucker punch, sending heat up my neck, and curling my fingers into fists.

"Goddammit! Sonovabitch!"

I was furious with Crease and more furious with myself. Living alone, I had gotten into the habit of working investigative material at home, a practice discouraged by the lab. Now I was missing a piece of potential evidence.

Slowly I calmed down. And I recal ed something a detective once told me while working a homicide in Charlotte. Media vans surrounded the charred suburban colonial where we were bagging what remained of a family of four.

"Our free press is like a sewer system," he said, "sucking in everyone and grinding them to shit. Especial y those who ain't paying attention."