“Apart from these gallery-goers, there are now no witnesses ...” He paused and gave me a look very much like what you might see if cobras ever learn to smile. “No surviving witnesses” he said, “to anything that happened, in any of these ... circumstances.” He made a slight movement of his shoulders that was probably a shrug. “And so ...” He did not finish the sentence, letting it dangle so it might mean, “and so I will kill you myself” or, “and so I will simply arrest you” or even, “and so that's the end of it.” He watched me for a moment and then repeated, “And so,” this time so that it sounded like a question. Then he nodded and turned away, leaving me with the image of his bright and lidless gaze burned into my retina.

And so.

That was, happily, just about the last of it. There was a minor bit of excitement provided by the stylish lady from the front of the crowd, who turned out to be Dr Elaine Donazetti, a very important figure in the world of contemporary art. She pushed her way through the perimeter and began taking Polaroids, and had to be restrained and led away from the bodies. But she used the pictures and some of the video tape Weiss had made and published a series of illustrated articles that made Weiss semi-famous with the people who like that sort of thing. So, at least he got his last request for pictures. It's nice when things work out, isn't it?

Detective Coulter was just as lucky. Department gossip told me that he had been passed over for promotion, twice, and I suppose he thought he could jump-start his career by making a dramatic arrest single-handed. And it worked! The department decided it needed some good publicity out of this whole dreadful mess, and Coulter was all they had to work with. So he was promoted posthumously for his heroism in single-handedly almost saving Rita.

Of course, I went to Coulter's funeral. I love the ceremony, the ritual, the outpouring of all that rigid emotion, and it gave me a chance to practice some of my favorite facial expressions —solemnity, noble grief, and compassion, all rarely used and in need of a workout.

The whole department was there, in uniform, even Deborah.

She looked very pale in her blue uniform, but after all, Coulter had been her partner, at least on paper, and honor demanded that she attend. The hospital fussed, but she was close enough to being released anyway that they didn't stop her from going. She did not cry, of course —she had never been nearly as good at hypocrisy as I was. But she looked properly solemn when they lowered the coffin into the ground, and I did my best to make the same kind of face.