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Hardy got up, walked first over to the window where he looked down on Sutter Street, then came around to another recessed cabinet on the wall across from his desk, this one holding his dartboard. He opened the doors of the cabinet and slid them back into wherever they went, then grabbed his tungsten beauties from their slots and retreated to the dark cherrywood throw line in his polished white oak hardwood floor.

Twenty. Double twenty. Five.

From the board to the line.

One. Five. Twenty. Then one, one, five. Another four or five lost rounds-terrible, atypical shooting-before he finally rang up twenty, twenty, twenty.

Okay.

Leaving those darts where they’d landed, he lifted himself back onto the desk.

Chiurco, again in his coat and tie, sat in a wing chair across from Hardy in the more informal of the two seating arrangements in the office. He seemed nervous, so Hardy did the initial lifting. “So. Levon Preslee.”

“Okay.”

“Remind me. How did his name come up in the first place?”

“Wyatt had put me on Dylan’s old robbery conviction. He thought there might be some tie-in to whatever he was using to blackmail Maya. Or, even better, we might turn up somebody else who wanted to kill him.”

“So how’d you get to Preslee?”

“I just did a Web search. I found Vogler. That gave me the robbery in 1997. And there’s his codefendant, Levon. So I run him on the Web and find out he’s working for ACT. You’re not going to believe this, but he’s also listed in the phone book. I figure he works in the theater, he’s probably home during the day, so I drove out there. I didn’t even know that Wyatt had run across him, too, until I heard about that from you guys.”

“You didn’t call him first?”

“No, sir. I thought in case he wasn’t right with all this stuff, I might get better answers if I caught him off guard.”

“So then what?”

“Then I get into his lobby, and there’s this woman standing there at the door.”

“How’d you know it was Maya? Had you met her before?”

“No, but she’s our client. I saw her picture in the paper. It was her.”

“As it turns out, you’re right.”

“But anyway, I didn’t know what she was doing there, or what I should do, so I just stood there for a minute.”

“Then what?”

“Well, she told me he wasn’t home, and walked out past me. Mr. Hardy, honest to God, I think she was jiggling the doorknob like she was trying to get in, but I got there a split second too late, and I can’t be absolutely positive. But really, that’s what I think I saw.”

“Well, then, if that’s the best you can do for us, then that’s what we’re going to go with. At least it’s something. If I call you to testify, don’t try to improve it. That’s what you’ve got to say. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, then. So write it up just like that and sign it, because if I decide to call you, I’ll need to give the discovery to the DA.”

“Cool.”

“Okay, then. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

“She’s an old lady,” Wyatt Hunt said, “but I don’t know where they got senile.”

Hardy had remembered to call home and tell Fra

Now they sat on high stools, sharing a tiny two-top in the front window, the only two customers, eating shrimp and pork and no sign of souvlaki lo mein à la Lou the Greek’s. A good thing.

“So what’s her story?”

Hardy chewed and listened while Hunt laid it out. For all of its simplicity the implications, Hardy realized, might be enormous-nothing less than a complete restructuring of the theory of the case. More importantly, there was no set of facts he could imagine that would be consistent with Maya having been involved in this two-shot scenario.

“No,” he told Hunt, “think about it. There’s only one shot from the supposed murder weapon, right? Right. So what did she do, shoot once-at what? Dylan? Some kind of warning shot? Unlikely. But the main thing is if there’s that second shot from the one gun, the magazine would have been light two bullets, and it wasn’t, just one. And to get back to that one, she would have had to reload. And that’s just plain absurd.”

“Stier’s going to say it didn’t happen, period. He’ll even use your own argument of no evidence. No second casing, no second slug, no nothing. It didn’t happen. It was a backfire.”

“Yeah. Right. I know. But let’s pretend for a minute.”

“All right. So what do you see?”

“Got to be two guns.”

“Two?”

Hardy, into it, put down his chopsticks. “Whoever came to shoot Dylan had his own gun and knew Dylan carried, so he stuck him up at gunpoint for the other gun first.”

“Why? Why didn’t he just shoot him, bang?”

“He knew him. Maybe first he thought they could talk it out, whatever their differences were. Maybe Dylan tried to stall him somehow.”

“So they had a meeting pla

Hardy shook his head. “I don’t have that one figured yet. How would this woman, the one you saw tonight-”

“Lori.”

“Right. How would she be on the stand?”

“Pretty good, I’d say. Sincere and smart. Knew exact times for the shots and remembered the day and date even after all this time. She’s no dummy, Diz.”

“So. What is it? Did Stier just not believe her? I mean, why leave her out up front instead of trying to find some way to explain her story? And, PS, it’s pretty easily explained, as you’ve already done about a minute ago.”

“He might not have known about her.”

“Till when?” Then Hardy pointed a finger, recalling the tense lunchtime gathering at Lou’s with Glitsky and Jackman and the inspectors. “Maybe lunchtime today, huh?”

“The thought crossed my mind, to be honest.”

“This could do it,” Hardy said. “For the verdict, I mean.”

Hunt popped a shrimp. “It might,” he said, then cocked his head with a question. “Is there something else? Besides the verdict?”

“There’s who really did it, Wyatt. If it wasn’t Maya. And if there were two guns…”

The idea set back Hunt in his chair. “Well, now,” he said, and stared out the window into the misty street. “An i

“I know. He’ll be devastated, but he’s been wrong before.”

After a minute, Hunt came forward again, elbows on the table. “But so, on the other thing, I’ve been dying to know what you found out.”

“What other thing?”

“Tess Granat? The hit-and-run? I Googled it after lunch.”

“Thank God for Google,” Hardy said, really wishing that Hunt hadn’t brought this up again. “Everything that’s ever happened, there it is.”

“Except Dylan Vogler. His early life, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that except for the few days right after he got shot, I think our friend Dylan might be the only human being Google hasn’t found and chronicled.”

“You looked?”

“Diz. Google’s half my life, maybe three quarters. It’s where you look first. Which brings us back to Tess Granat, who was very real and very chronicled. So what’d you find out?”

Hardy picked up his tea and blew on it. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? She wouldn’t say, or what? Even if she wasn’t involved, she must have known all about it.”

Hardy could see there wasn’t anything to do but come clean. “It was a privileged conversation, Wyatt. I can’t talk about it.”

Hunt broke a smile. “Diz. Dude. I’m your investigator. I’m covered by the privilege.”

“Well, just because I can tell you doesn’t mean I should. And don’t think it doesn’t break my heart.” Hardy put his cup down, moved on. “But, listen, I don’t know if we’re going to need that anyway. This Lori Bradford, as I said, might do it all by herself. We’ve got to get her subpoenaed.”