“I finally got permission to see him yesterday, drove out to Riverside.”

“How’s the place they put him in?”

“Grim,” I said. “Assisted care facility, a hundred Alzheimer’s patients and Billy.”

“Learn anything?”

“He’s in shock and disoriented. I got about three minutes before the attorney-on-premises ended it.”

“Why?”

“Billy started crying.”

“Because of you?”

“That was learned counsel’s opinion,” I said. “Mine was that Billy has lots to cry about and not letting him express it will only make matters worse. I told learned counsel Billy needs a full-time therapist, I wasn’t volunteering for the job, only suggesting he find someone. He begged to differ. When I got back, I phoned the judge who wrote the placement order. Haven’t heard from her yet but I’m thinking of other judges who might be willing to help.”

“You see Billy as totally clean?” he said.

“Unless you find something more ominous at his duplex than Star Wars action figures and Disney videos.”

He shook his head. “Like a kid’s place. Boxes of sugar cereal, bottles of chocolate milk.”

I said. “Being a kid’s hard enough. Being neither boy nor man is something else. Any sign of Billy’s allowance money?”

“Nope, just coins in a piggy bank. Some of the pennies date back to the sixties.”

“Fifteen hundred a month and all he spent on was pizza and Thai food and rental movies. It explains Reynold Peaty’s drop-ins. He pretended to be Billy’s friend, had his way with the cash.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Except no money showed up in Peaty’s dive.”

“A guy like Peaty would have ways to spend it,” I said. “Or, if his relationship with Brad went beyond janitor and boss, maybe the money found its way back to Cuz. Then Cuz set him up to die.”

He frowned. A muscle just below his left eye jumped.

I said, “What?”

“What a family.” He found a stale cigar in a drawer, rolled it, and bit off the end. Spat it into his wastebasket.

“Two points.” I stood and walked to the door. “Time to view the disk.”

He stayed put. “It’s really a bad idea, Alex.”

“I want to get it over with.”

“Even if someone does subpoena you, it could be months away,” he said.

“No sense harboring fantasies all that time.”

“Trust me, your fantasies can’t be worse than reality.”

“Trust me,” I said. “They can.”

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 45

Cold, yellow room.

The interview table had been pushed to one side. Metal table, same battleship gray as the bomb shelter.

The things you notice.

Two chairs faced a thirty-inch plasma TV on a wheeled table. A DVD player sat on the bottom shelf. Lots of snarled cables. A sticker affixed to the bottom of the monitor warned against anyone outside the D.A.’s office touching the equipment.

I said, “Suddenly the prosecutors turn generous?”