Even in the dusky fog, it was apparent the working class residents of O'Malley's neighborhood had little time for - or perhaps little interest in - gardening, painting or even basic window washing.

A paperboy peddled toward the two-story, two-flat structure that was also Catherine's destination. He flipped a rolled-up newspaper in the general vicinity of the house and rapidly pumped down the sidewalk.

"Ya little fuck!"

Catherine paused, fingers wrapped around door handle, Rover door half open. The screech had a banshee quality and seemed to be originating from the shadows of the porch that was protected by a silver wrought-iron gate.

"I've told you a thousand times to put the fucking newspaper inside the fucking gate, you little Chink fuck!"

Catherine slammed her car door and crossed the pavement, eyeing the wheel-chair bound gnome who banged her palms against the back side of the gate, metal bars rattling against metal lock.

"You know what they say, Inspector O'Malley: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

"If I wanted to catch flies, I'd plop down a big ole pile of fresh dog shit." The woman stared with a surly expression. "You're running for what - Miss fucking Congeniality?" She sounded like Wolfman Jack in desperate need of a nicotine patch.

Catherine tried to reconcile the information Wilson had compiled with the concave-chested, chalky-skinned woman with long, gray-streaked, fly-away hair.

Gold medal swimmer, 1974 Olympics. B.A. in Sociology, Ohio State University, 1977. Lieutenant, Senior Grade, U.S. Navy - honorably discharged, 1981. First in her class at the Police Academy; first female motorcycle cop in California. Weightlifting champion, Police Athletic Competition, Women's Division, 1987-1994. Mezzo-soprano, soloist, Grace Cathedral Choir.

"You don't believe kindness helps you get what you want, Inspector?" "It's 'former Inspector'," she corrected. "Connections get you what you want." Her tone was bitter. She pointed a ragged-nailed finger at the rubber-banded Chronicle on the spiky lawn.

Catherine picked up the newspaper and slid it between the rusting bars. The woman shoved wheels and rolled backward through the opening, one of two doors that stood side-by-side on the tiny concrete apron. O'Malley reached toward a button on the wall; the gate lock buzzed and released.

Catherine stepped tentatively through the opening and followed the wheelchair down a dim hallway. The place smelled like spaghetti sauce and hospital disinfectant.

O'Malley rolled to a shelf that held a small boom box. She cranked the volume until Mexican music reverberated off the walls.

The space was configured as an all-in-one: traditional family room to the left, separated from the kitchen/eating area to the right by a hip-high, yellow formica-topped counter. A musty, blue plaid sofa and a scarred, unpainted pine coffee table shared the center of the small living space; matching end table was bare except for the yellow shine of an economy-size Juicy Fruit package. Curtains with the brown geometric designs of the '70's closed out fog and dusk; florescent tubes cast heavy shadows and leached life from colors.

Maureen O'Malley rolled between the tables and repositioned the dingy, Navajo blanket that wrapped her legs and covered the bottom half of her olive sweatshirt. Catherine stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed over her chest. "How do you know what they found at the crime scene?" she shouted over the music.

"I still have contacts."

Catherine read her lips as much as heard the words. "Sounds like a conflict of interest - can we kill the mariachis?" she asked and marched to the radio, twisting the dial.

"Now you've got an audience," O'Malley said.

Catherine looked around the room. No one else was present.

O'Malley nodded upward and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "The cunt that lives upstairs - she listens to everything. Keeps me incarcerated - against my will." She screamed the last words and the sound made Catherine's throat hurt. "You want her to hear us discuss your legal problems that's ok by me."

Catherine twisted the dial until Mexican trumpets were loud, but not deafening.

O'Malley sat perfectly still and stared at Catherine with hostile blue eyes; she looked like a House of Wax mannequin who might - or might not - come to life.

Catherine crossed the dingy carpet and stopped near O'Malley. "Do your contacts know you're passing information to a former suspect?"

"None of your fucking business."

Catherine folded her arms over her chest. "You said in your message that you're my angel of salvation, but only if I am yours. What does that mean?"

Maureen picked up the Juicy Fruit package, removed three sticks of gum, unwrapped them and wadded them into her mouth. She smashed the gum wrappers into a tight ball and tossed them over her shoulder; they hit the wall and rolled under the sofa. She chewed like a baseball pitcher. "You didn't kill Forsster." She stated it with certainty.

"You're not going to win any blue ribbons with that kind of no-alarm chili," Catherine said, further convinced of the uselessness of this meeting.

"You've been framed. Big time. There's enough evidence to lock you on Mars."

"My attorney says they don't have a case - that they would have charged me and kept me in jail if they did."

"You're too high visibility for the DA to go circumstantial. He wants Hiller to wrap up a few details before he files." O'Malley chewed contemplatively. "Hiller's like a hawk on a field mouse. I guarantee he'll nail you."

Catherine stuck out her chin defiantly, but her heart rate increased. "He's got nothing to nail me with. I didn't do it."

"You're right. You didn't."

She studied O'Malley. "If Hiller can't figure that out, why are you so certain?"

"The evidence is too clean - too convincing. You're too smart to leave a trail like that."

She didn't know how O'Malley had come to that conclusion, but she let it pass. "Then Hiller will figure it out, too."

O'Malley gave a short, barking laugh. "Hiller's two years away from retirement and embittered as hell about rich people buying their way out of justice. He'll go for you like white on rice."

"All he has is a photo of me on the beach with Stephen." Catherine paced. "The scarf - if he actually has it - doesn't mean anything." She paused. "You said you have other things."

"We deal first."

Catherine re-crossed her arms and stared silently at O'Malley.

Maureen gave the gum one last chew, pulled it from her mouth and stuck it to the bottom edge of the coffee table where it hung like a large, ugly mole. She reached into the side pocket of her wheelchair and pulled out a gun.

"Wait..." Catherine locked on O'Malley's steely gaze, her heart pumping harder, feeling as if she were trapped in some Wild West time machine. Two crazy people - two guns - in three days.

O'Malley steadied the weapon with both hands, right index finger poised against the trigger; she aimed it at Catherine's chest and cocked it.

Catherine's heartbeat lunged into her throat and her eyes bugged; she rocked back a quarter inch.

With a fluid, practiced motion, O'Malley swiveled the gun 180 degrees, dropped her lower jaw and put the barrel between her teeth; she never lost eye contact with Catherine.

"What the …" Catherine reached out her right hand as she started forward.

O'Malley pulled the trigger. Catherine froze as the gun clicked on an empty chamber. Even above the Mexican singer, she heard it. Once. Twice. Three times. Through it all, O'Malley sat unblinking, unflinching.

"What the hell are you doing!" Catherine yelled, her heart pounding so hard her whole body trembled. She rushed O'Malley, snatched the gun from her hands and quickly opened the cylinder. No bullets.

"Holy shit! You are fucking crazy!" Catherine stomped around the kitchen, looking for a towel to wipe down the gun.

"You should meet my brother," O'Malley said calmly. "He says the same thing. Except not the 'holy shit' part."

Catherine marched back and forth, working off the adrenaline rush, polishing her prints from the revolver with a damp cloth, never taking her eyes off O'Malley. "Did that little demo have a purpose, or are you preparing an insanity plea?"

She picked up the package of gum. "I want a box of rounds. .38 caliber. Nothing special. You deliver and I'll work for you. I'll use my knowledge and my contacts to help you beat Hiller. And you'd better believe, without me, he'll fry your ass."

Catherine laid the gun on the yellow countertop and stared at her. "Rounds? You want bullets."

O'Malley watched silently.

"You're going to kill yourself."

She pulled three fresh sticks from the package and unwrapped them.

"I'm not in the business of helping people shake hands with the hereafter."

O'Malley shrugged. "Your life for mine. Make your choice."

Catherine snatched up her handbag. "You want to drill skylights in your brain cavity, go buy your own goddamned bullets."

"Can't get out."

"Of what? Your own way?"

"The house."

"A big-time detective who can't find her way out her own front door? Yeah, sure I need you for Hiller. You'll be about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine," Catherine rumbled.

"Look around you, bimbo." O'Malley stuffed the gum into her mouth and chewed while she talked. "My brother has rigged this house - my house - " she thumped her chest, "- like a jail."

"Let your fingers do the walking. Try mail order."

"My brother cancelled my credit cards."

"Ever hear of COD?"

"Ever hear of a court order restricting deliveries except those received by -" she tilted her head toward the ceiling and yelled in her throaty rasp, "- the fucking cunt upstairs who monitors my every inhalation - my every fart."

"Ask the paperboy, call Waiters on Wheels." Catherine threw up her hands. "How hard can this be in a country where any nine-year-old can buy a gun and ammo?"

"Waiters on Wheels...Ummm." O'Malley chewed and wadded the wrappers. "Hadn't thought of that one." She banked the yellow wad off the corner of the coffee table. It hit the arm of the sofa and rolled to the middle of the floor.

"You really want to die - hang yourself from a light fixture. Slit your wrists with a kitchen knife. I'm not believing a hotshot homicide detective can't get creative with a suicide attempt."

"Has to be more than an attempt. Watch this." She rolled across the room and turned down the radio until the sound receded completely. She awkwardly positioned the wheelchair so she was facing Catherine. She inhaled deeply, expanding her chest against the olive sweatshirt, and held her breath like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

Catherine watched, waiting to see what O'Malley was up to. After a full minute, Catherine held out both hands in impatient appeal. "You can't kill yourself by holding your breath."

O'Malley put one finger to her lips, quieting Catherine. She glanced at her watch, then silently raised her left hand. Fingers splayed, she began to count down from five. Her face was turning red. At the count of one, O'Malley pointed to a non-descript white plastic box that sat at the other end of the shelf from the radio. It looked like the baby-monitor speaker Joel put in Tati's bedroom so he could hear her when she cried in the night.

Sure enough, the box crackled and a strident voice pierced the room. "Maureen? What are you doing, Maureen?" O'Malley released her breath and gasped three times before she answered. "I'm reminding myself how much my brother loves me. Go back to your soaps, cuntface."

"Don't make me come down there, Maureen. I'll tell your brother -"

O'Malley cranked the radio dial. Twangy guitars drowned out the voice.

"House arrest," she said above the blare of the radio. She wrestled up her sweatshirt and exposed a wide black strap that wrapped her ribs. Med-Alert was stenciled in large red letters around a caduceus. "It's connected to a computer that sends out an alarm if my heart rhythm changes substantially." She held Catherine's gaze. "I have to make sure when I do it that there's no chance for resuscitation."

Catherine studied O'Malley. The woman's fiddle was clearly missing a few strings. Sitting there with Mexican trumpets blaring, soliciting suicide assistance from a total stranger like it was an everyday negotiation. "I'm not gonna Kevorkian you," Catherine said. "Get somebody else."

"Look, you dumb fucking cunt," O'Malley choked. "You think you're not a court of last resort?" She wheeled across the small space and jerked to a stop at Catherine's knees. "I've exercised my other options. I tried to starve myself while I was still in the hospital - they just shoved feeding tubes into my stomach until they convinced me I couldn't win. The first day I was home, I smashed the TV screen and slit my wrists with the glass - waited until the fucking day nurse left, but the alert system kicked in and summoned the fire department and the fuckers got here before I could bleed out. The judge - the one whose cock my brother is undoubtedly sucking - told me if I try this one more time, he'll put me in a loony bin - and, in fact, the only reason he hasn't done so already is because he's known me for twenty years and now he feels sorry for me." Spittle sprayed upward then dropped to her lap; her screech was demonic. "The only fucking thing worse than this fucking wheelchair and every fucking asshole in the world feeling sorry for me, is the threat of being locked up in the fucking loony bin! I'm not gonna fucking let them do that to me!"

She wheeled the chair into a sharp left turn and circled the room. "No one has the right to make me live this way! It's my fucking life," she stopped and beat her chest with her left fist, "and I don't want it anymore." She bowed her head and turned her chair to the wall.

Catherine sank to the edge of the faded sofa. For the first time, she noticed a dark stain that ringed the worn, beige carpet. She tried to imagine what it would be like if her own life were so drastically altered. She knew O'Malley was long-divorced and that she had no children. This most difficult game of her life was apparently one of solitaire. Catherine didn't know this woman, but she felt an overwhelming sadness for the situation Maureen found herself in.

"Why don't you get help? Talk to someone."

"Fuck help. A court-appointed psychiatrist comes here twice a week. He hasn't done a fucking thing to help me get up and walk away from this goddamned chair."

Catherine moved to the window and parted the musty curtains. Smoke shimmied from a chimney two houses away; a streetlight blinked on, creating a rosy pool against the inky sky. Across the chain link fence, a neighbor was spotlighted at her kitchen window, arms and shoulders rotating as if she were washing dishes. Or peeling potatoes.

"I'm sorry for the bad things in your life," Catherine said. "But I can't help you."

"That's your fucking choice." O'Malley turned, tight-jawed, and wheeled toward the kitchen. "I'll find someone who will and you can memorize my obituary while you're passing time on death row."

Catherine pivoted, picked up her handbag from the sofa and started down the short hallway. Police department contacts or not, she was ready to put some pasture between herself and this wild-eyed mare. Just as she reached for the door knob, Maureen's voice stopped her.

"Hiller thinks you killed Forsster because of the video tape."

Catherine turned back, apprehension filling her voice. "What video tape?" The search warrant indicated the police were looking for video equipment and a video location.

"The fuck film."