"Who was driving the car?" I said.

"I was," the aide said. "Absolutely."

One of the girls giggled.

"No, he wasn't," the man in the bathrobe shouted, from the other side of the car. "He was driving it. And he couldn't get out of the car without falling down."

"Christ, fucking zoo," Senator Rowe said, rubbing his head.

"Detective," the aide said, "I was driving the car and these two women here will testify that I was." He gestured to the girls in party dresses. Giving them a look.

"That's a goddamn lie," the man in the bathrobe said.

"No, that's correct," the handsome man in the tuxedo said, speaking for the first time. He had a suntan and a relaxed manner, like he was used to having his orders obeyed. Probably a Wall Street guy. He didn't introduce himself.

"I was driving the car," the aide said.

"All gone to shit," Rowe muttered. "Want to go to my hotel."

"Was anyone hurt here?" I said.

"Nobody was hurt," the aide said. "Everybody is fine."

I asked the patrolmen behind me, "You got a one-ten to file?" That was the report of property damage for vehicular accident.

"We don't need to," a patrolman said to me. "Single car, and the amount doesn't qualify." You only had to fill it out if the damage was more than two hundred dollars. "All we got is a five-oh-one. If you want to run with that."

I didn't. One of the things you learned about in Special Services was SAR, situational appropriate response. SAR meant that in the case of elected officials and celebrities, you let it go unless somebody was going to press charges. In practice, that meant that you didn't make an arrest short of a felony.

I said to the aide, "You get the property owner's name and address, so you can deal with the damage to the lawn."

"He already got my name and address," the man in the bathrobe said. "But I want to know what's going to be done."

"I told him we'd repair any damage," the aide said. "I assured him we would. He seems to be - "

"Damn it, look: her planting is ruined. And she has cancer of the ear."

"Just a minute, sir." I said to the aide, "Who's going to drive the car now?"

"I am," the aide said.

"He is," Senator Rowe said, nodding. "Jerry. Drive the car."

I said to the aide, "All right. I want you to take a breatholyzer - "

"Sure, yes - "

"And I want to see your driver's license."

"Of course."

The aide blew into the breatholyzer and handed me his driver's license. It was a Texas license. Gerrold D. Hardin, thirty-four years old. Address in Austin, Texas. I wrote down the details, and gave it back.

"All right, Mr. Hardin. I'm going to release the senator into your custody tonight."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate it."

The man in the bathrobe said, "You're going to let him go?"

"Just a minute, sir." I said to Hardin, "I want you to give this man your business card, and stay in contact with him. I expect the damage to his yard to be resolved to his satisfaction."

"Absolutely. Of course. Yes." Hardin reached into his pocket for a card. He brought out something white in his hand, like a handkerchief. He stuffed it hastily back in his pocket, and then walked over to give his card to the man in the bathrobe.

"You're going to have to replace all her begonias."

"Fine, sir," Hardin said.

"All of 'em."

"Yes. That's fine, sir."

Senator Rowe pushed off the front fender, standing unsteadily in the night. "Fucking begonias," he said. "Christ, what a fucking night this is. You got a wife?"

"No," I said.

"I do," Rowe said. "Fucking begonias. Fuck."

"This way, Senator," Hardin said. He helped Rowe into the passenger seat. The girls climbed into the back seat, on either side of the handsome Wall Street guy. Hardin got behind the wheel and asked Rowe for the keys. I looked away to watch the black and whites as they pulled away from the curb. When I turned back, Hardin rolled down the window and looked at me. "Thank you for this."

"Drive safely, Mr. Hardin," I said.

He backed the car off the lawn, driving over a flower bed.

"And the irises," the man in the bathrobe shouted, as the car pulled away down the road. He looked at me. "I'm telling you, the other man was driving, and he was drunk."

I said, "Here's my card. If things don't turn out right, call me."

He looked at the card, shaking his head, and went back into his house. Connor and I got back into the car. We drove down the hill.

Connor said, "You got information on the aide?"

"Yes," I said.

"What was in his pocket?"

"I'd say it was a pair of women's panties."

"So would I," Connor said.

Of course there was nothing we could do. Personally, I would have liked to spin the smug bastard around, push him up against the car and search him, right there. But we both knew our hands were tied: we had no probable cause to search Hardin, or to arrest him. He was a young man driving with two young women in the back seat, either of whom might be without her panties, and a drunken United States senator in the front seat. The only sensible thing to do was to let them all go.

But it seemed like an evening of letting people go.

The phone rang. I pushed the speaker button. "Lieutenant Smith."

"Hey, buddy." It was Graham. "I'm over here at the morgue, and guess what? I have some Japanese bugging me to attend the autopsy. Wants to sit in and observe, if you can believe that shit. He's all bent out of shape because we started the autopsy without him. But the lab work is starting to come back. It is not looking good for Nippon Central. I'd say we have a Japanese perp. So: you coming here or what?"

I looked at Connor. He nodded.

"We're heading there now," I said.

The fastest way to the morgue was through the emergency room at County General Hospital. As we went through, a black man covered in blood was sitting up on his gurney, screaming "Kill the pope! Kill the pope! Fuck him!" in a drug-crazed frenzy. A half-dozen attendants were trying to push him down. He had gunshot wounds in his shoulder and hand. The floors and walls of the emergency room were spattered with blood. An orderly went down the hall, cleaning it up with a mop. The hallways were lined with black and Hispanic people. Some of them held children in their laps. Everyone looked away from the bloody mop. From somewhere down the corridor, we heard more screams.

We got onto the elevator. It was quiet.

Connor said, "A homicide every twenty minutes. A rape every seven minutes. A child murdered every four hours. No other country tolerates these levels of violence."

The doors opened. Compared to the emergency room, the basement corridors of the county morgue were positively tranquil. There was a strong odor of formaldehyde. We went to the desk, where the thin, angular deaner, Harry Landon, was bent over some papers, eating a ham sandwich. He didn't look up. "Hey, guys."

"Hey, Harry."

"What you here for? Austin prep?"

"Yeah."

"They started about half an hour ago. Guess there's a big rush on her, huh?"

"How's that?"

"The chief called Dr. Tim out of bed and told him to do it pronto. Pissed him off pretty good. You know how particular Dr. Tim is." The deaner smiled. "And they called in a lot of lab people, too. Who ever heard of pushing a full workup in the middle of the night? I mean, you know what this is going to cost in overtime?"

I said, "And what about Graham?"

"He's around here someplace. He had some Japanese guy chasing after him. Dogging him like a shadow. Then every half hour, the Japanese asks me can he use the phone, and he makes a call. Speaks Japanese a while. Then he goes back to bothering Graham. He says he wants to see the autopsy, if you can believe that. Keeps pushing, pushing. But anyway, the Japanese makes his last call about ten minutes ago, and suddenly a big change comes over him. I was here at the desk. I saw it on his face. He goes mojo mojo like he can't believe his ears. And then he runs out of here. I mean it: runs."

"And where's the autopsy?"

"Room two."

"Thanks, Harry."

"Close the door."

"Hi; Tim," I said, as we came into the autopsy room. Tim Yoshimura, known to everyone as Dr. Tim, was leaning over the stainless-steel table. Even though it was one-forty in the morning, he was as usual immaculate. Everything was in place. His hair was neatly combed. His tie was perfectly knotted. The pens were lined up in the pocket of his starched lab coat.

"Did you hear me?"

"I'm closing it, Tim." The door had a pneumatic self-closing mechanism, but apparently that wasn't fast enough for Dr. Tim.

"It's only because I don't want that Japanese individual looking in."

"He's gone, Tim."

"Oh, is he? But he may be back. He's been unbelievably persistent and irritating. The Japanese can be a real pain in the ass."

I said, "Sounds funny coming from you, Tim."

"Oh, I'm not Japanese," he said seriously. "I'm Japanese-American, which means in their eyes I'm gaijin. If I go to Japan, they treat me like any other foreigner. It doesn't matter how I look, I was born in Torrance - and that's the end of it." He glanced over his shoulder. "Who's that with you? Not John Connor? Haven't seen you in ages, John."

"Hi, Tim." Connor and I approached the table. I could see the dissection was already well advanced, that the Y-shaped incision had been made, and the first organs removed and placed neatly on stainless steel trays.

"Now maybe somebody can tell me, what is the big deal about this case?" Tim said. "Graham is so pissed off he won't say anything. He went next door to the lab to see the first of the results. But I still want to know why I got called out of bed to do this one. Mark's on duty, but he is apparently not senior enough to do it. And of course the M.E. is out of town at a conference in San Francisco. Now that he has that new girlfriend he is always out of town. So I get called. I can't remember the last time I got called out of bed."

"You can't?" I said. Dr. Tim was precise in all ways, including his memory.

"The last time was January three years ago. But that was to cover. Most of the staff was out with the flu, and the cases were backing up. Finally one night we ran out of lockers. They had these bodies lying around on the floor in bags. Stacked up in piles. Something had to be done. The smell was terrible. But no, I can't remember being called out just because a case was politically tense. Like this one."

Connor said, "We're not sure why it is tense, either."

"Maybe you better find out. Because there's a lot of pressure here. The M.E. calls me from San Francisco, and he keeps saying, 'Do it now, do it tonight, and get it done.' I say, 'Okay, Bill.' Then he says, 'Listen, Tim. Do this one right. Go slow, take lots of pictures and lots of notes. Document your ass off. Shoot with two cameras. Because I got a feeling that anybody who has anything to do with this case could get into deep shit.' So. It's natural to wonder what the big deal is."

Connor said, "What time was that call to you?"

"About ten-thirty, eleven."

"The M.E. say who called him?"

"No. But it's usually only one of two people: the chief of police or the mayor."

Tim looked at the liver, pulling apart the lobes, then placed it on a steel tray. The assistant was taking flash pictures of each organ and then setting it aside.

"So? What've you found?"

"Frankly, the most interesting findings so far are external," Dr. Tim said. "She had heavy makeup on her neck, to cover a pattern of multiple contusions. Bruises of different ages. Without a spectroscopic curve for the hemoglobin breakdown products at the bruise sites, I'd still say these bruises are of variable age, up to two weeks old. Perhaps older. Consistent with a pattern of repeated, chronic cervical trauma. I don't think there's any question: we're looking at a case of sexual asphyxia."

"She's a gasper?"

"Yeah. She is."

Kelly thought so. For once Kelly was right.

"It's more common in men, but it is certainly reported in women. The syndrome is the individual is sexually aroused only by the hypoxia of near-strangulation. These individuals ask their sexual partners to strangle them, or put a plastic bag over their head. When they're alone, they sometimes tie a cord around their neck, and hang themselves while they masturbate. Since the effect requires that they are strangled almost to the point of passing out, it's easy to make a mistake and go too far. They do, all the time."

"And in this case?"

Tim shrugged. "Well. She has physical findings consistent with a sexual asphyxia syndrome of long standing. And she has ejaculate in her vagina and abrasions on her external vaginal labia, consistent with a forced sexual episode on the same night of her death."

Connor said, "You're sure the vaginal abrasions occurred before death?"

"Oh, yes. They are definitely antemortem injuries. There's no question she had forced sex sometime before she died."

"Are you saying she was raped?"

"No. I wouldn't go that far. As you see, the abrasions are not severe, and there are no associated injuries to other parts of her body. In fact, there are no signs of physical struggle at all. So I would consider the findings consistent with premature vaginal entry with insufficient lubrication of the external labia."

I said, "You're saying she wasn't wet."

Tim looked pained. "Well. In crude layman's terms."

"How long before death did these abrasions occur?"

"It could be as much as an hour or two. It wasn't near the actual time of death. You can tell that from the extravasation and swelling of the affected areas. If death occurs soon after the injury, blood flow stops, and therefore the swelling is limited or absent. In this case, as you see, swelling is quite pronounced."