It was warm enough to run in shorts and T-shirt, and ten minutes later, he was striding at an easy pace down M Street. He crossed Key Bridge, ran along Teddy Roosevelt Island, then down the riverside path to Memorial Bridge. Once across the bridge, he circled the Lincoln Memorial, then picked up speed for a hard run up the Potomac and back into Georgetown.

Despite the exertion, the dream kept replaying. Skeeter’s head… the pistol… Skeeter just sitting there… a captive actor in a deadly play… the shot.

He finished the run winded, sweaty, and nagged by a rasping sensation that something somewhere somehow had gone very badly wrong.

A half-hour later, showered, shaved, and standing at the kitchen counter, he sipped coffee and scanned the Post. Skeeter’s killing ranked front page above the fold, complete with photos. Bad-boy rating about eight or nine on a scale of ten, Frank figured, reading between the lines. A follower of the flamboyant Juan Brooks. Inherited the business when Juan got life in max security at Marion, Illinois. Then the obligatory boilerplate editorial equation: Young boys plus inner-city poverty plus guns equals crime.

He felt a brushing against his trouser leg and looked down.

“Hello,” he said to Monty.

The big gray cat sat with the steely expression of a drill sergeant. Cats had always intrigued him-how they watched people in the curious but detached way people watched parades. But until Monty, Frank hadn’t thought of himself as a cat person.

Frank tapped the newspaper. “Les Miserables,” he explained.

Monty wasn’t interested.

Monty had literally dropped into Frank’s life. Frank had been laying a patio in his courtyard one Saturday.