I sipped the coffee, tasted copper and dishwater and something vaguely javalike. Fighting the urge to spit, I said, “Decide on any new scenarios?”

“No, I’ve decided to go steady with the one you gifted me with: Cherish tried the shrink bit, moved too fast, scared the hell out of Rand, Drew caught on.” He stuffed what was left of the bear claw in his mouth. Sugary lips twisted upward. “Here I was thinking all that pacing you therapy folk do— all those months of ‘Uh huhs’ and ‘I hear you’s’— was to keep the payment rolling in.”

“Here I was thinking cops didn’t always sacrifice their pancreases to sucrose.” I yawned. “Are we off somewhere this morning or is there more to talk about?”

“We’re off when Sean calls.”

“When’s that?”

“I told him to start watching the house at seven and touch base hourly. Finish your coffee, get cleaned up and dressed.”

“Two out of three ain’t bad,” I said, and left the cup on the table.

* * *

When I got back he was sprawled in the living room, cell phone to his ear, nodding and pumping his left leg. “Thanks, great, really great.” Snapping the phone shut, he stood. “You still look half-asleep.”

“You don’t,” I said. “What’s fueling you?”

“The remote possibility that things could fall into place. That was Sue Kramer, God bless her. She was up with the birds, too, following leads in other time zones. If I were of the hetero persuasion I’d betroth her.”

“She’s already married.”

“Picky, picky. Anyway, she found out a few things about both our boys. Let’s get going, I’ll tell you in the car.”

He asked me to drive and when I started up the Seville, his head dropped onto his chest. As I took the Glen toward the Valley, he snored with gusto. At Mulholland, his head shot up and he began reciting as if there’d been no lull.

“The cowboy was born in Alamogordo, like I said. Moved to Los Alamos when he was ten because the ranch where his dad worked shut down and Pops got a janitorial gig at the nuke lab. The family lived there for ten years. One sib, an older sister, married with kids, works for the city of Cleveland. After high school, Barnett did a couple of years as truck driver, then he got a job with Santa Fe P.D.”

“He was a cop?”

“Worked patrol for eighteen months until a couple of complaints about undue force brought him and the department to a mutual understanding.”

“He quit, no prosecution.”