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    Her voice came back as gentle as a kiss.
    â€œThat’s my World’s Greatest.”
    â€œI love you, Luce.”
    â€œAs a friend.”
    â€œSure. Friends.”
    â€œI love you, too.”
    â€œWe could be friends with benefits.”
    â€œYou never give up.”
    â€œPart of the benefit package.”
    â€œI’d better get going. Call me.”
    â€œCall you what?”
    She hesitated, and I knew she was smiling. I could feel her smile from two thousand miles away, but then my own smile faded.
    I said, “Do you think I’m kidding myself?”
    â€œI think you want to be convinced. One way or the other, you’ll have to convince yourself.”
    I stared at the black canyon below, and the lights showing warm on the ridges.
    â€œIf Byrd didn’t kill them, then someone else did.”
    â€œI know.”
    She was silent for a while, then her voice was soft and caring.
    â€œYou told me the facts were on their side. If you don’t like their facts, find your own facts. That’s what you do, World’s Greatest. No one does it better.”
    She hung up before I could answer.
    I held the phone for a while, then called Pike. His machine picked up with a beep. Pike doesn’t have an outgoing message. You just get the beep.
    I said, “You’re a good friend, Joe. Thanks.”

PART TWO
U P IN THE C ANYON

8
    THE WIND died during the night, leaving the canyon behind my house still and bright the next morning. I brought in the paper, then went into the kitchen, where the cat who shared the house was waiting. He’s large and black, with delicate fur and more scars than an Ultimate Fighter after a bad run. He loves me, he worships Joe Pike, and he pretty much hates everyone else. All the fighting has had an effect.
    I said, “How’s life in Cat Land?”
    When your girlfriend lives two thousand miles away, you talk to your cat.
    He was sitting by his dish where he waits for breakfast, only this time he brought his own. The hindquarters of a tree rat were on the floor by his feet.
    The cat blinked at me. Proud. Like I should fall to and dig in.
    He said, “Mmrh.”
    â€œGood job, m’man. Yum.”
    I cleaned it up with paper towels, then gave him a can of tuna. He growled when I threw away the legs, but the tuna helped him get over it.
    I made a cup of instant coffee, then put on a pot of real coffee to brew while I read the newspaper’s coverage of Lionel Byrd: Killer Leaves Bloody Album of Death.
    The Times had done a good job with so little time. The story was tight and direct, describing how uniformed officers had discovered Byrd dead by his own hand while evacuating Laurel Canyon during the recent fires. The “death album” and the pictures within it were described in tasteful detail. A photograph of Marx and Councilman Wilts appeared on page six, along with a sidebar article identifying the seven victims and showing the locations of their murders. Yvonne Bennett’s description left me feeling sad. She had draped herself in lies like summer scarves to convince people she was other than she was, but now a cold five-word phrase summed up her life: twenty-eight-year-old prostitute.
    Only a single paragraph mentioned that Byrd had been charged with her murder, focusing more on his history of violence toward prostitutes than why the charges had been dropped. As with the newscast the night before, neither Levy nor I was mentioned. After the way Marx carried on when we met, I had expected him to publicly condemn us, but he had not.
    I finished the story, but hadn’t learned much more than I already knew. Marx had spoken much about the album and Byrd’s criminal history, but presented no additional evidence linking Byrd to the victims or the crime scenes. No comment was made about DNA, witnesses before or after the fact, how Byrd selected and stalked his victims, or how he