‘Isn’t everything?’ said Tom.

*

Tom’s stomach churned, part shock at the previous night’s events, part excitement. Bits of the jigsaw were slowly emerging from the darkness and starting to drop into place. Finally he had enough to start putting the puzzle together, even though he couldn’t yet see the picture he was trying to build. At least he was convinced now that pretty much all the pieces were from the same puzzle.

He knocked on Jan Ryland’s door and she opened it in pink pyjamas, still with bed hair.

‘We working today?’ he asked, without preamble.

She shook her head. ‘Why? You got somewhere to be?’

‘LA. Not for long, though.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Did the cops tell you about the trailer?’

She sighed. ‘Yes. We’ll have to start again.’

He handed her the key and turned away.

‘Tom?’

He looked back at her.

‘Last night. Thanks for going after them.’

He shrugged and walked away. He wasn’t about to take credit for trying to catch Munro’s killers when he might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on the man’s chest.

He went back to his room and packed.

As Tom was throwing his gear into the trunk of his rental in the hotel lot, Pete pulled up and helped a woman he knew must be Lenny Munro’s widow out of his car. He glanced around for someplace he could duck out of sight but his heart sank as Pete saw him and raised a ‘hold-on’ hand.

He clicked the trunk closed and slowly walked across the lot, noticing that police tape now cordoned off the corner where the Jeep had been parked last night. Next to the space was a police cruiser, a bored-looking cop securing the scene.

‘Tom Patrick, this is Gloria Munro.’

Lenny Munro’s wife was a small, homely woman with laugh lines round every one of her features. Even now, she smiled at him with real warmth and held out her hand for shaking. The words ‘sorry for your loss’ stuck in his throat and he could barely look at her as he mumbled, ‘Hello.’ He wondered how often Lenny Munro had told his wife what a prick he was.

‘Mr Patrick, Pete tells me you went after them. Thank you so much.’

He nodded dumbly and she squeezed his hand, as if he was the one who’d just lost his life partner.

Tom noticed that she held a clear plastic Ziploc bag in her other hand. Lenny Munro’s personal effects, as collated by the Tulsa Police Department morgue, stuff he must have had in his pockets. He could see Munro’s cheap leather wallet, a watch, a couple of slips of paper.

And Lemon’s bolt.

Right there. In the bag.

Munro must have kept it on him. Stuffed it casually into a pocket, little knowing that this was what they wanted; this was what he was going to die for.

Tom almost whooped in relief and had to resist the urge to yank the Ziploc out of the grieving widow’s grasp and tear it open right there in the parking lot. It took all his restraint.

‘Will you join us for a drink, Tom?’ Her eyes shone with gratitude through the pain, and he thought that if he’d known Gloria Munro before all this, maybe he’d have liked Lenny more.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘It was so nice to meet you.’

‘Sorry for your loss,’ he finally managed to croak out, feeling the empty formality of those by-rote words more fiercely than he ever had.

He walked back to his car, got in and quickly drove away before they reached the front porch where Lenny Munro had died.

He wanted them to see him go.

*

Pete LaBello’s retirement date seemed to be receding, rather than getting closer. Like some Hitchcockian vortex, he could see it spinning away from him, just out of reach of his grasping fingers. On days like today he thought he’d never get there, that his personal Hell was to remain on the brink of retirement while all the time his job became more and more complex; more and more surreal.

The thing with Tom Patrick had been bad enough; now here he was sipping red wine over dinner with what remained of the Go Team and Lenny Munro’s widow. To add to the weirdness, it was Gloria Munro who was holding them all together. No doubt it would hit her later: a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, she’d be pressing a cantaloupe at the grocery store and realize her husband Lenny – boring old Lenny who wore button-down shirts and kept pens in his top pocket – had been gunned down by men in a big black Jeep, like some rap star. But for now Gloria Munro was being mother to the stricken Jan Ryland, the silent, tight-jawed Mike Carling and Bryce Potts, as they took for ever over their salads so they wouldn’t have to speak to one another.

Pete sighed and took another sip of red wine. He didn’t even like red wine – it gave him a headache – but he needed something to stop him staring endlessly at the tablecloth as Gloria tried to draw them out of themselves, leading by example with a tender little story of how Lenny had screwed up on an early case and immediately mailed a letter of resignation. Gloria had chased after the mailman on her six-year-old daughter’s Barbie bicycle to beg for the letter back.

They all smiled, although Jan’s chin wobbled.

Pete knew he should be doing this. It was his job to keep them on track, to steer them carefully back to normality, to remind them there was work to be done. But it was hard. Gloria had lost Lenny Munro, sure, but in an abstract way from a thousand miles off; Jan and Mike and Bryce had watched him die at their feet. Mike and Bryce didn’t even have the macho comfort of having followed Tom Patrick’s brave – stupid – gesture in running after the killers and getting a face full of ricochet for his pains.

Pete’s heart seemed to have done nothing but sink steadily over the past year; it was nothing new to feel it drop again now as he realized his team was good for nothing on this investigation. He’d have to bring Jan back to DC and send Mike and Bryce home to Texas. Have them brief new agents. Start again. He would begin working on it in the morning. The press and the families would understand a short delay, but no more than that. He wished he could hand it to Tom Patrick but that brilliant sonofabitch had backed them both into the same corner and then jumped before Pete had been forced to push him.

Pete wanted nothing more than to throw down his napkin, push back his chair and get the hell out of there. But Gloria was still doing her best to help them all through the meal, and if she could stay through her grief, he could find no excuse to go.

Finally it was over. They all feigned fullness so they could skip dessert, and Gloria hugged each of them as if absolving them from the sin of still being alive.

Pete walked her to the first-floor room he’d had Kitty reserve. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked, at the door.

‘I’m sure I will be. You’ve been so kind.’

‘We all liked and respected Lenny very much.’ It wasn’t strictly true, but at a time like this, Pete almost felt it might have been. He pecked her on the cheek and she opened the door.

And screamed.

In the darkness a shadow skittered across the room.

Pete pushed past Gloria, yelling, ‘Go get help!’ and went after the man. He cracked his knee on the bed as he rounded it, swore, and stopped briefly at the sharp pain.

The man was behind the drapes now, half out of the window. Pete made a grab for him, missed, and the shadow dropped out of sight.

If it had been anyone’s room but Gloria Munro’s, Pete would have let him go and been relieved that he’d done his bit without having to confront anyone. But he owed Lenny Munro’s widow more than that. He clambered out of the window, snagging the leg of his pants on the catch, and fell heavily – onto something that grunted as he knocked the air out of its lungs.