“You can say no, Hood. But you can only say it once, and that time is now.”

Hood was not a planner. He was a man of the present, used to following his heart, which had gotten him mixed results.

“I’m in.”

“Know the target and you’ll find the shooter. They meet-beach and wave. I want you to bring me the beach. Bring me Terry Laws. Bring me everything he ever did at this department. He’s ours. He’s mine.”

Ia dropped Hood off at the substation, where two of the homicide detectives were waiting at the main entrance. One was big and white and the other was big and black.

“I’m Craig Orr and this is Oliver Bentley,” said Big White. “We’ve got lots of questions and a fresh pot on.”

“Lead the way, Bulldogs.” Hood used the nickname for LASD homicide because he’d worked with them in L.A. for a few weeks, and he had wanted badly to be a Bulldog.

“Want to clean up that face, Hood? Looks nasty.”

“Later.”

Sitting in a small conference room he told them what happened, then told them again. Orr used a digital recorder and Bentley wrote notes. The coffee was bad and they drank a lot of it.

“So,” said Orr. “Did Warren just recruit you to IA?”

“I’m on Terry.”

“Thanks for being square with us,” said Orr. “We all have jobs to do.”

Bentley looked at Hood for a beat, then tapped his fingers on the desk. “Someone cut the battery cables in your cruiser while you and Terry were with Roberts. The door was jimmied to get to the hood latch.”

And I didn’t hear it in the wind, thought Hood.

An hour later Hood put on a canvas jacket with a blanket lining and buttoned it all the way up and got in his old Camaro and drove back to the Legacy development.

It was two in the morning. The investigators were gone and the bullet-riddled cruiser had been towed away. The yellow crime scene tape had torn loose from the peppertree and now it flapped in the wind like it was trying to escape.