Taking advantage of Annie’s temporary calm, I climb the stairs to meet Serenity outside Dolores’s guest room. I wait for half a minute, and then Serenity slips through the door and leaves it cracked enough so that she can monitor her charge. Through the opening I see a woman lying on her side beneath white bedclothes, her arms clenched around a pillow. Even from this distance I get the sense that she is twitching and jerking in her drug-induced sleep.

“How is she?” I ask.

Tee just looks back at me with sadness and anger in her eyes.

“Has she been conscious at all since we talked?”

“Twice. I mentioned the FBI to her. I didn’t want to, but we obviously need some help. Somebody tried to kill that old woman, Penn. All I can see when I’m sitting in there is that shack full of cats waiting for a woman that’ll never come home.”

“I know.”

“That’s on us, Penn.”

“I know it is.” After a few moments of silence, I say, “What do I tell Kaiser when he gets here?”

Serenity bites her lip. “Send him up and tell him to knock very softly. I’ll handle it from there.”

“Okay.”

I hear a rustle from the bedroom.

“Later,” Tee says, and the door shuts in my face.

Back in the kitchen, I speed-dial Quentin’s cell phone, but it kicks me straight to voice mail. He’s probably piloting his wheelchair through a gauntlet of cameras waiting outside the courthouse, with Doris walking point for him. I know better than to worry that he’ll reveal his strategy to reporters, but since he’s doing almost nothing in the courtroom, maybe he plans to try the case in the media?

Our house phone rings, startling me. The caller ID shows my mother’s cell phone.

“Mom?” I answer.

“No, it’s Rusty! We’re stuck in traffic near the courthouse. It’s insane. I’ve got everybody in my Town Car. Tim’s guys are behind us in the Yukon. We won’t have much time when we get there, so I’m going to play you what I recorded of the pathologist’s testimony over your mother’s phone. Then you’ll be on the same page with us.”

“Okay, go.”

“It’s on my little Sony microcassette. Forgive the crap sound.”

After a high-pitched howl of feedback, two voices begin speaking through a digital hiss. One belongs to Shad Johnson, leading the witness so egregiously that I can’t believe Quentin is not objecting; the other to a Dr. Adam Phillips, the state medical examiner.