Private

Andy's weeping was infuriating. The last time he'd sobbed his heart out, I'd felt his grief. Now there was no hiding it from myself: I'd been perfectly played. And my friend had done it to me.

I didn't know Andy Cushman anymore.

I said, "For a bean counter, you're a damned fine actor. Maybe overplaying it a touch right now."

The sobbing stopped, and Andy sobered. "Please, Jack. You don't understand what it was like living in the same house with her. Knowing what she was doing: the junk, the men. I had to do it-but I couldn't do it myself. I did love her, Jack. I honestly did. Please. Don't tell the police."

"Don't worry about it. I won't call the cops. You're a client, you shit."

"And a friend?"

The pleading look just enraged me more.

By way of an answer, I punched him in the face. His chair fell back, and when he was down, I yanked him up by his hair, kicked him everywhere: legs, kidneys, ribs. I poured a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch over his head. I couldn't think of anything else to say, nothing else I could do without actually killing him.

Andy Cushman, my former client, my former friend, was still crying when I left his suite.

Chapter 105

DR. SCI CAME spinning around the corner to Justine's office, grabbed the doorjamb, and leaned straight out as if he were a flag in a gale.

It was ten after ten in the morning, and he'd been working in the lab with Justine's two bar glasses all night.

Justine placed her palms flat on her desk and searched Sci's baby face. He was a scientist, so even if the news was bad, his expression could read happy: happy that he'd solved a problem.

"Tell me something good," Justine said. "Put a smile on my face, boy wonder."

"I've got good news and I've got bad news," Sci said.

Justine put her face in her hands. "Bad news first," she said.

"The good news is that I have isolated the unknown male's DNA. It matches the DNA we found in Wendy Borman's clothing."

"That's the good news?" Justine said. "We only got a forensic hit off that male DNA."

"Yep, he's still unknown. But you saw him. He's alive and well and living in LA."

"Listen, Sci, good news would be that you've got a positive match to Rudolph Crocker. I was sitting right next to him in the bar. I wrapped up his glass like I was swaddling a baby chick. His DNA has to be on that glass."

Sci let go of the doorjamb, came into the office, and sat in the chair across from Justine. He jammed his flip-flops up against the side of her desk. His yellow print aloha shirt picked up the blond streaks in his hair. It made him look like he had just wandered in from a surf shop in Venice Beach.

"The problem isn't that Rudolph Crocker's DNA isn't on that glass. It's that what I got was allele soup. So while I can't exclude him from the sample, I can't positively match his DNA to the DNA we found on Wendy Borman's shirt. I'm sorry, Justine. The sample is crap."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Can you run the test again, try to isolate his DNA somehow-"

Sci watched Justine try to twist the result he'd given her into hope. If he could do it for her, he would.

"-can't you?"

"No. If I were to guess what happened," said Sci, "the barkeep was out of clean glasses. He rinsed out a dirty one in the sink and gave it to Crocker. New glasses came after that, and the barkeep gave a clean glass to the unknown male. Plausible?"

"I can't get another sample from Crocker," Justine said. "Not in time."

"If you can't find what you want on the street, go into his house and take it," said Sci.

"You don't really mean break into his house… Oh. You're saying get a search warrant."

"If that's your best shot."

Shit, Justine thought. She dialed Bobby's number. She knew it by heart, of course.

Chapter 106

JUSTINE SIGHED, then swiveled her chair toward the windows and away from Sci. She lowered her face as she spoke urgently to Petino.

"Bobby. Sci says we can't exclude Rudolph Crocker's DNA from the sample. That means he could have been one of the psychos who kidnapped Wendy Borman.

"Right, Bob," Justine continued into the phone. "The sample is contaminated, but Crocker is included as one of many possibilities-

"Yes, that's true. Crocker is one of many possible contributors, so I need a search warrant-

"Are you serious? I only need to go into his apartment for one second and get his toothbrush-

"Thanks for your time, and thanks for nothing, Bob. Whatever happens is on you."

Justine banged down the receiver, spun around, and said to Sci, "He says even if he could strong-arm a judge, the evidence would be inadmissible. I don't care about the case right now. I want to stop this freak from killing someone tonight."

Sci's phone buzzed on his hip. He glanced at it and said to Justine, "I'll be downstairs if you need me."

Sci took the stairs to the basement lab. He found Mo-bot in her druid cave of an office, incense burning. It smelled like perfumed garbage to him.

Mo didn't look up from the computer. She said, "Morbid has hijacked a screen name and launched a text message to the target."