I could just make out the blackened green body of Hewett’s Studebaker in the graveyard below. It was charred worst on its right front side, but the impact and ensuing fire had been more than enough to speed both the car’s passengers to their final point of termination. I don’t pray, but I did now, for the cold, unforgiving Martha Prentice. My thoughts, for whoever could read them, were that, father or not, I’d try to watch out for her child as best I could.

I looked back and saw Culpepper take a glassine envelope about six inches square from the police officer. Culpepper pocketed it and sent the squad car on its way.

We were alone, high above the world.

Culpepper sidled up to me. “You’re wondering how come all this wreckage hasn’t been cleared yet. There’s a dispute about whose responsibility the heap is. Only been going on for about twenty years, should be resolved by the turn of the century. The property we’re standing on is Oakland. But where the cars land belongs to U.C. Berkeley. Cal says it’s Oakland’s problem; Oakland says it’s Cal’s.”

He began to point out to me landmarks for which I needed no pointing. Literally beneath my feet was the Hotel Claremont, where Gail had first left her note for me, her mother had left her mark on me, and Russ had bid good-bye to me. A seeming stone’s throw to my right, the U.C. campus, its Campanile, and Berkeley Square, where Gail had phoned Adeline Head. Straight ahead, Treasure Island, where Marie Prasquier had died, only to apparently rise like the phoenix atop the tower from which she’d fallen, and where, in a few hours, Gail’s Swing would be rehearsed for the first time. If I looked hard enough on my left, I could see the neighborhood where Gail and I had together created that very same composition.

“You’re an idiot, Sherwood,” said Culpepper softly.

I entertained the possibility that he was going to push me off the cliff. I turned and saw him shaking his head disapprovingly at me. “Nancy was no one to leave just because your life got painful.”

I’d forgotten for a moment that he’d dated Nancy. I was glad they were getting along. Most of the time, he seemed to me to be a good man.

“Has life really been that much better for you alone?” he asked.

“You don’t understand. Did you ever have a partner on the force?”

“Officer Dan Sprayberry. We were squad car eighteen,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.