Rehabilitation

by L.M.Lewis

The unfortunate consequences of being a day late and a dollar short.

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them

Author's Note: This first appeared in volume four of the Star for BK 'zines. Thanks again to all who supported the cause and especially to Wendy, who made a special request and a very generous donation for this and for Arianne's story "A Man I Can Trust".

Deanna very kindly lent me a plot bunny that went like this: "In 'Black Widow' (I love the first season stuff), what if Hardcastle had not been in time to keep Mark from being shot? Something along the lines of shot and/or buried alive?" Now there's a bunny with some meat on its bones. I'm going to beg the indulgence of a little AU space here. This will take some time that doesn't exist in the canon.

The Episode "Black Widow" first aired in October of 1983. In it, the judge and Mark investigate the attractive but shady Tina Gray, who is frequently associated with soon-to-be-dead mobsters. Mark throws himself into his work, romancing Ms. Gray and coming to her rescue when she is threatened by her current boyfriend, mobster Joe Beiber. He doesn't realize she's setting him up. While Beiber goes after Mark, Hardcastle figures out that Tina actually works for a crooked police captain, Don Filapiano. Mark and Tina are kidnapped and taken to the desert by Beiber's goons, to be executed and buried. Hardcastle, who confronts Filapiano and discovers that Mark had been set up, shakes down one of Beiber's other employees, gets the details of the plan, and arrives in the absolute nick of time.

But just ten minutes later and things might have been completely different . . .

Rehabilitation

By L. M. Lewis

"You're really something, McCormick. I'm sitting

here for two hours. I figure you're dead, or worse—"

"What's worse than dead?"

(Scene 51, The Black Widow)

"And then the ambulances arrived. We really only needed the one. The woman was dead. They worked on her some, but she was gone. One shot to the head." Hardcastle ended the story there.

He'd kept it flat, succinct. The guy from Internal Affairs most likely didn't want to know the details—how Beiber's goons had scattered like cockroaches as he'd screeched up in the Coyote. Carlton and the back-up had been only a minute behind him. That had been good, because he'd had no time to spare for chasing the mob guys down; he'd seen what the one had been doing as he first pulled up.

The shovel was lying there, where it had been tossed down in the man's haste to flee. He hadn't even finished the job and one familiar sleeve still protruded from the loose, sandy soil. Hardcastle was on his knees digging with both hands, not deep at all, but seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours.

McCormick had fallen face down, with the other arm bent and up by his head, as if he'd reached out to stop the inevitable. Tina Gray was alongside him, on her back, the entry wound centered neatly in her forehead—past all hope—but McCormick must have lunged, done something unexpected at the very last second.

And he was still breathing. Hardcastle dug more desperately, pulling him free, turning him over. He heard sirens. Carlton must've summoned more help.

The judge lifted his head and shouted, "Over here."

00000

"Captain Filapiano is saying that you interfered in an ongoing police investigation. He says you were warned off—he warned you off," the IA guy droned on.

Hardcastle snapped back into the present. Lord knew he hadn't had much sleep the past two days, and this tendency to drift off—drift back—to replay the scene, and the ones that had preceded it . . . damn annoying. Get a grip.

"He warned me off because he was using an informant who was engineering the deaths of mob guys to cover her tracks. Filapiano as much as admitted it to me."

"He's not admitting it now," the investigator said dryly.

"He said he'd suggested to Gray that she use McCormick for her latest patsy."

"He's denying that, too. He's denying any knowledge of Ms. Gray's more questionable activities and, of course, she's not available for questioning." The investigator's gaze had edged to the left, past where Hardcastle sat, to the man in the bed behind him. "Any chance . . . ?"

Hardcastle frowned. He supposed it was considerate of Internal Affairs to send someone to take his statement here. He'd flat out refused to make himself available anywhere else. He wouldn't deny it had been at least partly a calculated gambit on his own part. He wanted these guys to see the damage that Filapiano's scheme had caused. Somehow a body count wasn't enough.

"Nobody's sure about anything. There's the gunshot wound, and the fall, and something they're calling 'encephalopathy'—he wasn't breathing too good for that couple of minutes before I got him dug out. About the only thing they are sure of is that he's lucky to be alive."

Or unlucky, to be half-alive. He'd seen nothing to indicate any reason for hope, no movement except for breathing, and even that was being assisted by a machine.

Yet he hadn't quite given up hope. He'd questioned everyone involved in McCormick's care. He'd gotten no solid predictions, no reason for hope. Yet there it was, because the alternative was damning.

Carlton had come to the hospital. He'd sat with him that first afternoon and told him that he wasn't responsible for this debacle.

"The hell I'm not. I shoulda reined him in. I shouldn'ta let him go after her."

"From all I heard, Mark practically dragged you into this one kicking and screaming. And you let him have the woman over for dinner, Milt, at your own estate. That's hardly sending him off into the jungle without back-up. You didn't know Beiber was crazy enough to stage a kidnapping on your front lawn." The lieutenant frowned. "But I suppose what I meant to say, is that you aren't responsible."

Hardcastle had sat staring at the man for a long moment. He thought he knew what was being said, but it was something he didn't understand at all. Carlton had seen McCormick when they'd hauled him to the ambulance, had heard the first grim reports about the probable extent of the damage. He was obviously laying a foundation for an argument that would be dragged out again and built on, if necessary, in a week's time, or a month's—not your responsibility.

"I told him," he'd begun, slow and firm and absolutely certain, "I told him a couple days ago—we were looking at the file, Gray's file. I said I was responsible for his life . . . I meant it."

He had said it back then, though at that particular moment his motives might have been a little unclear. Carlton had looked at him and shook his head slowly.

"All I'm saying, Milt—"

"Don't say it," he'd interrupted sharply.

Carlton had taken the cue. He'd eventually left him to his vigil.

Other people came and left. Most of them were visiting him, he realized. Very few were there solely on McCormick's account, but no one stayed long. It was awkward, and there wasn't much to say, especially since there were things Hardcastle wasn't willing to listen to.

And now the guy from Internal Affairs was packing up his papers, too.

"Where can I reach you if there are any more questions?"

"Here," the judge said distractedly, "most likely."

00000

The doctors talked about what needed to be done, not the emergency things that had been required at first, but now the more mundane matters necessary to maintain a failing life. 'He'll need a feeding tube. It's a simple procedure.' 'A tracheostomy, it's better long-term than the tube he has now, if we can't wean him off the ventilator. Does he have any next-of-kin?'

Hardcastle didn't have to consult the file. He knew the answer. 'No family,' he'd said. No guardian, either, though that would have to be remedied. He called a friend of his, Jenkins, and got him to handle the paperwork and the processing. It was the merest of routines for a man whose only assets were a car and a few personal possessions.

The feeding tube got placed but the ventilator was removed. The room was quieter now, and the effect was strange, as though he could almost roust him with a shake of the shoulder: 'Come on, you said you'd get at the lawn this morning.'

"They're talking about nursing homes, kiddo," he said, in what was a continuation of an ongoing monologue. "How do you like that? Only four days, but they say you gotta plan ahead. What kinda plans are those?" He frowned.

Sensible ones.

"You really oughta think about giving them a sign here, ya know?"

The man in the bed yawned.

Hardcastle stared in utter disbelief, then let out a holler that brought one of the nurses trotting in, only to pull up short at the bedside and his explanation.

"Oh," she said, "that happens, you know. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Just a reflex." She checked all the wires and tubes and leaned over with her stethoscope briefly. "Of course," she glanced back at him, "it's not a bad sign. I just wouldn't bank on it too much."

He didn't, not too much, anyway, just enough. And he kept the monologue just shy of hectoring. "They're gonna want a little more than that, ya know. Maybe something with a little purpose to it. Open your eyes, maybe, or say something."

He did neither. He didn't even yawn again, but the hand Hardcastle had unconsciously been squeezing during this lecture now gave a brief, almost flickering squeeze back.

This time Hardcastle knew better than to shout. He waited patiently for the next appearance of the nurse. He told her what he'd felt. He was very definite about it.

She listened, equally patient and obviously used to pruning back unwarranted optimism. "Might still be—"

"A reflex?"

"Not exactly," she admitted, "but sometimes it doesn't go any further than that. We'll just have to wait and see."

He waited. He held on. There might have been a couple more movements, or it could have been his imagination, working on too little sleep and too much worry. He finally sat back in the chair next to the bed and dozed off.

And when he awoke, the hand was holding on, fingers curled around his in a loose but definite grip that didn't let go even as he sat forward, pulling on them gently.

"Hey," he said quietly. No hollering at all this time, as though he couldn't risk breaking the spell. The younger man's eyes opened. There was nothing like a sense of recognition, no sharpness to it, but it was obviously in response to him.

Purposeful enough.

He grinned. The eyes didn't acknowledge that, either, just drifted slowly shut as though that had been entirely enough effort for one day.

00000

There was no more immediate talk of nursing homes, but Hardcastle's hope that the next awakening would include a smart remark also went unfulfilled. Instead, there were two more days of testing and assessing, and gradual, almost glacial progress.

At the end of that Mark was staying awake for longer periods, and even moving some, though clumsily and not often enough on command to be much more than random. Worse yet, he didn't seem to be frustrated by any of it, though Hardcastle most certainly was.

And the conversation remained one-sided, though there was a steady stream of that—comments, encouragement, and simple requests that occasionally seemed to coincide with whatever random thing McCormick did next. The response was just enough to not completely flatten hope, but nothing miraculous.

Toward the end of the second day he was given a report—cold, sober, and well-considered. The repeat CAT scan showed the brain swelling had diminished. Functional testing was inconclusive: good preservation of simple motor functions, very severe expressive and receptive aphasia. In that context, any assessment of general cognition would be inconclusive. It went on like that for several minutes with brief bursts of translation in-between.

By the time they were done, Hardcastle had gotten the message. No odds were being given for the ultimate level of recovery. They couldn't even tell him exactly where he was now, let alone whether there'd be any further improvement, but they would start therapy.

He'd been sitting in the chair next to McCormick's bed when he heard all this. Some of the bluntness of it had made him wince, but he figured if he was having a hard time wading through the lingo, it wasn't likely to be alarming the kid. When they were done and had shuffled out, heading on to the next case, he let out a sigh and turned back to the bed.

"See, kiddo?" He noticed it again, the one reliable thing. Maybe it really was just a reflex, but when he spoke, the eyes usually opened, at least for a moment, and tracked toward him.

"Yeah, you're still in there. I know. And now they're gonna make you work a little."

He stretched a bit in the chair; he'd been spending too many hours sitting down. The gaze was wandering this time, as though the kid were taking in his surroundings.

He patted the sheet to get his attention. Nothing. "You gotta do that, okay? Work hard so we can get ya outta this place eventually. Get back home."

It might have just been his voice, but the eyes returned, and were now on him more fixedly. Hardcastle leaned forward. It almost felt like a conversation. He frowned. He knew better than to get carried away by hope. It could take you up a hundred feet and then drop you flat onto the concrete.

He patted the hand on top of the sheet just once, to let the kid know the frown wasn't anything to worry about. Then, as he started to sit back, Mark reached out. It was awkward, almost flailing, and not fast enough to catch up with him before he'd withdrawn, but Hardcastle would have sworn it was with intent. A look, an expression. It might have been disappointment, a glimmer of frustration. The judge wasn't sure, but it was something.

"Sorry," he said, extending his hand back through the side-rails of the bed, where it was latched onto, clumsily. Eyes closed again, no further expression on the younger man's face.

But it had been enough, most certainly enough, for one day.

00000

Things started to happen, infinitesimally small miracles. Now there were most definitely emotions—mostly frustration—and sounds, though nothing that was clearly a word.

"Don't be surprised if the first one is 'no'," the physical therapist said, at the end of a week that had found the patient stronger, but not very coordinated. He was sitting up, though there was a certain amount of propping involved. He seemed to favor his left hand, slightly, and even with that one it was a crap shoot every time he reached for something.

The feeding tube had been taken out, but eating was a shambles. Hardcastle had to resist the urge to take over the project every time, but after two days of passively allowing himself to be fed, on the third morning McCormick had grabbed for the spoon and refused to relinquish it. It was oatmeal, and things had gotten ugly before he was done, but the therapist approved of the attempt, and from then on it was plastic on the floor before every meal, and often a hair washing afterwards.

And the first word, when it finally arrived, was 'uh-uh', which was uttered with a variety of inflections that made it cover a lot of territory all the way from 'no' to something that might have charitably been called 'please', but was more likely 'gimme'.

But on the eighth day came a miracle of a different magnitude. Hardcastle arrived halfway through breakfast—it helped his patience to miss some of it. Mark, sitting in a chair and only slightly slumped to the right, was grimly trying to connect spoon, eggs and mouth in that order.

"Hey, kiddo."

The younger man looked up and stared, very focused for a moment.

"Whatsa matter?" Hardcastle frowned.

"Uh-uh."

It sounded pretty much like he meant it, this time. Then the word was followed by something the judge hadn't seen in a while—a lopsided but very familiar grin. He noticed the gaze was both fixed and directed slightly below his own eye level.

He looked down at himself, resplendent in the green parrot number which had always been a particular favorite of McCormick's. He looked up again sharply and smiled. "You like it?"

"Uh-uh." But the grin hadn't faded, only gone a little more lopsided.

"I'll take that as a yes. You gonna eat those eggs or wear them?"

00000

'No' came next, and after that 'wanna', 'gimme', and the inevitable, 'why?' That last one mostly meant 'why not?' and was invoked with alarming frequency.

At the end of two weeks, he was up, out of the chair, and taking actual steps, supported on one side by the physical therapist and on the other by Hardcastle. At the end of the hallway, near the nurses' desk and the bank of elevators, he balked.

"Come on, gotta turn around and go back."

"Uh-uh."

"Well, if you're not tired, I sure am. Let's go."

"Go—"

"Yeah."

"Home."

Hardcastle turned toward him sharply. This time there was something intensely determined about the younger man's expression, though he was swaying slightly.

"Not yet," the judge replied quietly, and then, at the grimace he saw cross McCormick's face, he added, "soon."

"Why?"

He definitely meant 'why not?' and Hardcastle didn't have an answer that could be put in words he thought would be understood. He just repeated himself.

"We will, soon, I promise."

00000

"Why not?" Hardcastle asked the neurologist. "I think maybe he'd do better at home."

He thought he'd done a pretty good job of laying out ways and means. He was still waiting to hear any real objections beyond the rather vague supposition that some sort of institutional setting would be more appropriate.

The doctor was frowning. "I'm not sure you understand the extent of Mr. McCormick's disabilities . . . or the degree of supervision and care he'll require, not to mention continued therapy."

"The hell I don't." His own vehemence surprised him. It was as if he'd been waiting for someone to raise the issue all along. "I'm the only one here who knows what he was like before—and I've spent a lot of hours in that room with him since he—"

"Yes," the neurologist interrupted sharply. "Now picture that, stretching out over months, years. He's a young, healthy man, physically—and there's a good chance that he'll never be the person you knew before."

"He still hates the parrot shirt," Hardcastle muttered. Then, at a puzzled look from the other man, he said, "There's still some of him left. I wasn't sure until the last couple of days, but I'm seeing it now. You guys haven't been able to tell me how much—"

"It's still difficult to assess his cognitive functions in the face of such severe global deficits—"

"Speak English, dammit." Hardcastle bit down hard. He realized that his anger was not proportionate, that it was coming from another place and might even hurt his cause.

He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, doc. Been a long couple of weeks, like you said. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up. I owe him a fair shot and I think I have a pretty good idea of what he'd want, what's best for him. Anyway," he added, with a slightly embarrassed huff, "I'm his legal guardian."

The doctor nodded once in apparent acceptance, though he still looked dubious. He began again slowly. "I don't think I can describe Mr. McCormick's functional capabilities as a simple age level. It doesn't really work like that. He'll have to relearn a great deal; he may remember some of the rest, and it's entirely possible that he'll never regain the language abilities that would make him able to express what he does know. As for his motor skills—"

"I know, but he's starting to walk. At this rate, in a couple more days I think he'll be doing it without help."

"And then the real adventure begins," the physician said, with a wan smile. "I said I couldn't assign him an exact age correlate, but based on my last examination I'd say he's functioning somewhat similarly to a four-year-old—five, tops. And that is not," he added pointedly, "the age of reason."

Hardcastle gave him a considering look, not quite convinced, but not having much ground to argue with the assessment.

"You don't see it, to some degree, because he can't speak clearly and because you did know him as he was before," the neurologist added kindly. "And I think there will be continued improvement, though where he'll plateau is anyone's guess."

"Maybe a few more days here," Hardcastle said soberly. "It'd help if he could walk on his own, and I'll need some time to set things up."

"He'll need therapists. That can be arranged." The doctor jotted some notes on the chart in front of him. "And a few more days. I think that's a good idea."

00000

The next morning he found Mark curled on his side, snoring softly, his breakfast on the tray table, untouched. Hardcastle frowned and shook his shoulder lightly. Not even getting a muttered 'uh-uh', he went in search of the nurse.

"The night shift gave him a shot of lorazepam," she said. "They'd found him in the stairwell."

"He fell?"

"No, just sitting in the landing, but he'd made it that far before he ran out of steam and he wasn't too happy about coming back. It was the sedative or restraints."

"But he got there on his own," Hardcastle said, trying to look on the bright side. Then he frowned. "How long before the damn stuff wears off?"

She looked down at the chart and then up at the clock. "Might be another hour. You could go get some breakfast and come back."

"Nah," the judge shook his head, "I'll stick around."

He went back to the room, settling in for the long haul. He thought he'd already made his mind up about that, but this was sobering. There were stairs at the estate, doors, a pool, a cliff, an ocean. He frowned. He hadn't really thought about child-proofing the place since—

He hmmphed softly to himself.

The guy in the bed opened his eyes, blinked drowsily, and looked even more confused than usual.

"'Sokay kid," he said quietly. "Nothing's wrong, not your fault." He paused for a moment and then added, "But no more sneaking out, okay?"

The eyes were already closed again. Hardcastle thought he preferred rambunctious to this. "We're getting out of here tomorrow," he said firmly.

00000

The staff would have preferred a wheelchair, at least as far as the lobby, but Mark couldn't be persuaded. Apparently a steady week of being encouraged to walk by the therapist was not to be overcome by hospital policy. The truth was, he seemed to need only directional guidance along with some occasional steadying, rather than all that much support. Though his gait was still stiff, and occasionally awkward, Hardcastle thought they were getting him discharged in the nick of time. The kid's next attempt to go over the wall might have been successful.

They made it to the elevator, Hardcastle doing the steering and keeping up a steady patter of encouragement. McCormick didn't apparently have any attention to spare for responding.

He felt the younger man tense slightly as the doors opened onto the lobby; whether he was eager, or wary, wasn't clear. They traversed the few dozen more steps through the busy public area. The judge tried to keep his voice pitched low, but still audible above the hubbub. They were through the foyer and the outer door, Hardcastle silently relieved. The truck was parked in the patient pick-up area.

The tenseness turned into a complete halt once they were outside. Hardcastle looked sideward.

"What's the matter? You wanted to go home. There's the truck, see?"

Not even an 'uh-uh'. The man had dropped his head down, his eyes tightly shut. He reached up with his left hand, clasping it to the stubble that overlay the healing scar above his ear.

"Hurts."

Hardcastle thought that was a new word. He squelched his momentary pleasure at that achievement.

"Sorry, kiddo, I shoulda brought your sunglasses. But ya gotta come on, now, just a little ways more and we'll be in the truck. See?"

He pointed, but McCormick wasn't looking. Instead, he felt the right hand reaching blindly for his.

"Okay," he sighed, "just keep 'em shut until you get used to it. But we gotta get you in the truck, right? So I can drive ya home. Hey," he added, leading the younger man the last few steps, "Sarah's home. Remember Sarah?"

He had the door open on the passenger side and was trying to get McCormick to unlatch his grip. It took some doing. He half wondered to himself if his last description to Sarah of Mark's progress was going to quite prepare her for what he was bringing home. He'd mentioned maybe eating in the kitchen for a while, possibly even out on the patio.

He supposed it didn't matter. Sarah's first response to the news had been the quick assessment that Mark would need a first floor room converted to sleeping quarters 'until he was more himself'. There had never been the slightest mention of inconvenience.

The judge wondered if he'd missed something somewhere along the way in the past two months, some point at which Mark had stopped being merely a nuisance to his devoted housekeeper. Sarah's strengths had always lain more in the direction of fierce loyalty rather than overt affection.

"Come on, kiddo, up," he pushed. "She's probably making you some peanut butter cookies."

Up and in was finally accomplished, and McCormick even had one eye squintily open, though his expression appeared deeply reproachful.

"I said I'm sorry, kiddo. It's not my fault about the sun, though. This is California."

Hardcastle clambered into the driver's side and put the key in the ignition. As the engine turned over the younger man's face was transformed, both eyes open, a hint of a smile and a look of wonderment.

"Drive," he said, more cheerful commentary than command.

00000

There'd been peanut butter cookies, and banana bread. And the woman herself had been standing at the bottom of the back stairs as he'd pulled in by the garage. Hardcastle took his time getting out. He'd been watching Mark, quick surreptitious glances, as he'd driven the last bit of the way home. Maybe he'd been hoping for some signs of recognition; he wasn't sure.

At least there'd been alertness and, now that they were here, maybe even excitement. It might just have been the novelty of it all, Hardcastle thought, and, as if to confirm this, Mark said "Home?" with the definite inflection of a question.

The judge wasn't sure why he was disappointed. He hadn't really expected the kid to suddenly flash on a memory of all of this. After all, it had only been his home for a couple of months. And this was a far cry from that first midnight arrival, cracking wise about everything from the Lone Ranger to Hardcastle's inner psychological make-up.

"We're home," Mark said with a greater note of certainty. He was fumbling unsuccessfully with the handle on the inside of the truck door.

Hardcastle looked at him in astonishment for a moment. "Hey, that's a sentence," he finally said. He stuck his head out the window and repeated the news to Sarah, then climbed out and went round to help the younger man.

"Well, lunch is ready." She frowned. To the judge's discerning eye, it looked like practical-minded concern. "He looks thinner," she said, then added—with a disapproving 'tsk'—"hospital food."

00000

Things settled into a routine: physical therapist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and speech therapist on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mark's preferences were obvious. On the second Wednesday after his return to Gulls Way, when Rico, the therapist arrived, McCormick was nowhere to be found. The judge fought down a brief moment of panic. It wasn't like the kid could've gone far. The gatehouse was still locked; there were no bodies floating in the pool.

He headed for the cliff and from there surveyed an even more dangerous possibility. He frowned, then turned around and waved down the therapist, who was helping to search the rest of the grounds.

"I think this might take a while," he said, when Rico had trotted over. "Maybe we'll call off the session for today."

"How the hell did he get down there?" the other man said.

"Carefully, I guess," Hardcastle replied. "And I think he was trying to make a statement—I specifically reminded him you were coming this morning."

The therapist grinned. "Well, there's a few things that might need refining, but I guess he can handle walking on uneven surfaces and stairs." He shrugged. "Call me if you want to set up any further appointments." He shook his head, still smiling, and turned to leave.

Hardcastle sighed and headed down the path to the beach. Mark didn't look up at his approach. He was sitting cross-legged in the sand and seemed intent on watching the waves, though the judge didn't think that was what had drawn him down there.

"Playing hooky, huh?" he asked, not too sharply.

McCormick looked up at him, more worried than defiant.

The judge shook his head and spoke again, this time more slowly. "Listen, just 'cause you got back home, doesn't mean you get to quit working."

Mark seemed to be thinking about that one, frowning deeply. He finally waved his left hand in something that must have been intended as a gesture, maybe to himself.

"Walk," he said.

Hardcastle did a little frowning of his own. He had it on strong advice from Sylvie, the speech therapist, that he wasn't supposed to be settling for single words anymore.

Mark waited a moment, then seemed to get it. He took a breath and said, "I walk." Then he quirked a smile, looking pleased with himself.

"Kinda pithy today, huh?" the judge muttered. "Okay, hotshot, you got down here. You think you can get back?" He jerked his chin toward the path and the steps.

More puzzlement from the guy on the ground. Hardcastle punctuated it by turning away and taking a few steps. He kept it slow, but very certainly away. He heard a couple of faster breaths behind him and then, finally, an 'uh-uh'. He figured he had to cut the kid a little slack for backsliding in a moment of panic.

He stopped, glanced over his shoulder, but made no further moves. McCormick was staring at the ground between them intently, still breathing pretty fast. He finally cocked his head up a little and said, "Help?" which was followed, a long pause later, by "Me."

"Sylvie wouldn't count that one," Hardcastle said wearily. "But I'll let it go just this once." He walked back and extended a hand down, hauling the kid upright and half-clasping him until he got his balance back. "Rico on Friday, okay? And no more running off."

He kept a steadying hand under the younger man's arm. He was never sure how much of these longer things were getting through, but the therapist said to speak naturally, and only break it down if he obviously wasn't understanding. This time there was a nod, given from a position of head mostly down. Maybe he was keeping an eye on the ground, but it seemed more likely an apology.

Hardcastle definitely wasn't going to explain that he had mixed feelings about the whole thing—that this had been the first spark of anything resembling the old McCormick's stubborn independent streak. He'd kind of like to have that back, as soon as the kid was capable of some independence.

00000

He was right there, in the hallway the next morning, almost as soon as the doorbell had rung. Hardcastle was sitting in the den. He glanced over his shoulder, looking out the window, then turned back in his seat at the desk and nodded to him.

"Yeah, it's her. You wanna get it?"

The guy who used to be able to get in and out of just about anywhere, even without a key, fumbled with the knob of a door that had been intentionally left unlocked for just this purpose. Hardcastle listened, and counted seconds, but didn't get up. He did heave a sigh of relief when he finally heard the latch give and Sylvie's, "Hello, Mark. How are you today?"

There was something pleasantly old-fashioned about it. No one would have guessed the speaker was a woman only in her late twenties, ash-blonde and Southern California lithe.

"I am . . . fine."

Hardcastle smiled to himself at McCormick's equally proper and almost scripted reply. Sylvie got complete sentences out of him, and no hiding out on the beach, either. His smile turned to a frown. Lithe ash blonds had been pretty much McCormick's cup of tea, not that he'd turned his nose up at curvaceous brunettes.

He returned her wave as she and Mark went by the door, heading down the hall toward the dining room. It was their usual location for these sessions. Hardcastle returned to his paperwork. How much trouble could the guy get into learning to speak in complete sentences?

But the issue that had raised itself—and all the ramifications thereof—refused to quite leave him alone. When the hour was up, he watched McCormick escort Sylvie back to the door with what now looked suspiciously like a mix of puppy-like devotion, and actual gallantry.

"Next Tuesday," she said, touching him lightly on the arm. "Don't forget to practice." Whether or not McCormick understood, he was nodding enthusiastically.

Hardcastle was on his feet, joining them in the hallway as Sylvie opened the door.

"Got a minute?" he said to her, trying to make it look dull and ordinary. She turned to him with a questioning smile on her face. He pointed back toward the kitchen and said to McCormick, "Why don'tcha see if Sarah needs any help with lunch."

The old McCormick would have seen through this ploy in a New Jersey second, but this one tended to take everything at face value, Hardcastle thought. You mean he trusts you.

This time was no different. He smiled at the therapist one last time and headed off to the kitchen, his left hand straying to the wall from time to time for balance. Hardcastle watched him depart, saying nothing until he was well away. Sylvie's expression was a little puzzled.

"He's really doing remarkably well," she finally said, "considering where he started out. He gets a little lazy from time to time, if you let him—"

"Oh, yeah," Hardcastle nodded. "He'll make that 'uh-uh' do a lot of his work for him."

"But that's really natural speech, in a way."

"He could talk the ears off a mule," the judge said, casting a glance over his shoulder at the now-empty hallway. "Before . . . But I didn't want to talk to you about that, I mean, not just about that." He took in another long breath and said, "Has McCormick said anything, um, inappropriate to you?"

Sylvie tilted her head slightly. "Well," she smiled, "there've been a couple of words. It's not all that unusual, considering the frustration involved. It's one of the ways we know there's remembered language from—"

"I don't mean cuss words," Hardcastle said, feeling a little frustrated himself. "I mean . . ." he searched her face for understanding and, seeing none, plunged in deeper, "um, flirting, stuff like that."

He saw her smile, and got the feeling he'd been had—gently and just a little.

She leaned in slightly and spoke in a confidential tone. "It happens a lot."

He could understand that—ash blonde, lithe.

"It's not really my area of expertise," she added, "non-language development, but I sort of think of it as a sign of improvement, at least as long as they don't get pesty about it."

Her smile was still very genuine. Hardcastle let out the breath he'd been holding.

"I showed him a picture of my son." She patted the purse hanging over her shoulder. "I have one in my wallet from his last birthday party. He's four and a half. That seemed to work pretty well." She knitted her brows just slightly. "In fact, Mark said something interesting—spontaneous language is really a big step forward," she added, almost as an aside. "He asked me if my son had a father."

"He was still hitting on you?" Hardcastle asked glumly.

"Oh, no," she shook her head gently. "I think he just wanted to know."

There was a long pause, with Hardcastle lost in thought. He heard her start up again, hesitant.

"Like I said, it's not my area, the non-language developmental stuff, but I suppose you'll need to talk to him about it. You know The Talk. It might be easier if you wait a bit; his language skills are improving but—"

She broke off with a shrug. He thought some of his newly-horrified bemusement must have slipped out onto his face.

"I mean, someone has to do it," she added, still smiling. "Make sure he knows what's what."

"Maybe the psychologist . . ."

"Well, I suppose, but everything's pathology for those guys." She wrinkled her nose just slightly. She smiled again blithely and turned to reach for the doorknob. "See you on Tuesday. Keep insisting on sentences. He can do it if he applies himself."

Then she was out, and gone, his only comfort being the advice that McCormick's language skills might not quite be up to handling the nuances yet. Hell, mine aren't either. He sighed. He tried to remember how he'd dealt with it the first time. He thought Nancy had sent them off on a fishing trip with the advice that they not come back until Tom knew the difference between a bird and a bee and how not to get stung.

He stood there for a moment, trying to picture McCormick 'uh-uhing' his way through that lecture. He heard Sarah saying lunch was ready. He stopped rubbing the bridge of his nose and headed for the kitchen.

The table was set. It showed signs of McCormick's assistance though, honestly, his baseline skills in proper flatware alignment hadn't been all that hot. It seemed as though Sarah was more tolerant of his non-standard placements now; that was all that had changed.

He glanced around as he started to sit. Mark wasn't there and the back door was ajar.

"I had him take out the trash," Sarah said as she carried the casserole to the table. Then she looked over her shoulder at the door. "It's been a few minutes."

Hardcastle frowned, straightened up, and headed that way—no Mark in sight over by the trash cans. "I'll find him," he said casually, and headed down the stairs.

He didn't have to go far. The garage door was standing open; he'd been out there this morning looking for a measuring tape. Now Mark was standing just inside, over by the Coyote, staring down at it raptly. He lifted his gaze at the judge's approach.

"Mine," he said, all thought of complete sentences banished by what looked to be intense excitement.

Hardcastle thought he'd probably been putting this off, too—that he'd been somewhat particular about keeping Mark away from the garage. ('A lot of sharp stuff out there, tools, might be dangerous' was how the internal argument had gone.) The part where McCormick might remember the Coyote had not been a conscious concern, he was pretty sure, but now it was here, or so it seemed.

Mark was grinning. "I drive it."

One part of the judge's brain thought distractedly, Subject-verb-object, that's more like it. Another part moved in for damage control.

"Not yet." He was vaguely aware that he was talking in incomplete sentences. He hastened to correct that. "Someday, later, maybe." He was still missing a noun and a verb, but he thought both of them knew what those were. McCormick . . . driving.

Hardcastle tried to keep a bland smile on his face, to not give it the attractive air of the forbidden; he knew all about McCormick and the forbidden. The dreaded talk about the facts of life paled in comparison to this particular attraction.

"Sarah's got lunch ready," he said with a cheery clap of his hands. "Better hustle."

Mark drifted away from his new discovery with apparent reluctance. The judge closed the garage door carefully behind them and shepherded him up the steps.

00000

The pressing need for eating in the kitchen had passed. There were only occasional lapses of coordination and, though there wasn't much finesse to it, silverware was no longer clutched in a death-grip. But somehow they continued on with the habit. Sarah usually joined them for meals there, and her firm prodding had produced something resembling table manners. Requests made by pointing were ignored. Condiments had made it into the vocabulary and were mostly kept off the floor.

The subject of that day's conversation was Thanksgiving, only a week away.

"I don't need to go back to my sister's so soon," Sarah said pointedly, handing Mark another napkin and gesturing to his face. "I can stay if you need me here."

"Nah, we're doing fine. You go on up there and have a good visit. We'll just take it easy here."

"Well," she looked doubtful, "I'll have the turkey and all that made up the day before. You'll just need to do the warming. And I'll be back on Monday." She reached out and took charge of the napkin and the wiping. Mark grimaced but put up with it.

"Don't rush back. We'll be fine." Hardcastle smiled broadly. Mark, now free from the clean-up effort, mirrored it perfectly. Sarah merely shook her head and still looked not quite convinced.

00000

She went off in a cab the following Wednesday afternoon. The kitchen still smelled of turkey, and yams, and pumpkin pie. McCormick seemed a bit at ends, even having heard the explanation several times, both from the judge and from Sarah herself:

'Back on Monday.' Hardcastle had even showed it to him on a calendar, after she left.

He looked confused. He didn't even say 'uh-uh', just moped around. He drifted into the kitchen a few times, perhaps drawn by the smells, but looked as if he were checking to see if she'd snuck back in somehow.

The judge eventually gave up trying to explain something as abstract as the future. It was these little episodes that reinforced the gulf between what was there, and normal.

"Come on, kiddo," he finally said. "We'll sneak a little turkey preview and find a movie to watch, okay?"

They did that, though Mark kept turning his eyes toward the door and seemed to be listening for the return of the strange vehicle that had removed Sarah. Eventually the judge persuaded him to take the couch, and from there it was a short slide into sleep—that was one thing that hadn't changed whatsoever; McCormick could sleep almost anywhere.

00000

He'd left him on the sofa rather than risk waking him for a move up the stairs to his current quarters in the spare bedroom; Mark still wasn't too good at steps when half asleep. And still on the sofa was where he'd expected to find him, early on Thanksgiving morning.

He wasn't there.

No immediate panic, of course. Hardcastle headed for the first-floor room that had been temporarily converted to his use when Mark had first come home. Empty, as well. No one out by the pool and, more importantly, no one in the pool. Hardcastle started breathing again, but was moving faster.

A quick trip to the cliff side of the yard: the path, the steps, and the beach were deserted. He turned and surveyed the estate, deceptively quiet and yielding no clues. The gatehouse was locked, but he headed that way anyhow to confirm it. No one on the basketball court either. He was breathing a little hard now, as he rounded the patio and headed back toward the main house from this new direction. Time for some phone calls.

That was when he saw the door open on the garage and the dim, shadowy, empty corner, not yet lit by the morning sun. The Coyote was gone.

He closed his mouth, which had gone dry. He hustled up the garage steps to the back door. He briefly considered dialing 911 but was opting for Carlton at home. He knew the whole story and wouldn't ask stupid questions. Most important, Carlton would give him an APB if he asked for one.

He heard the phone ringing as he entered the house. He lunged for it and tried to catch a breath before he said 'Who is it?' rather than a more-standard 'hello'.

It was the lieutenant, sounding as if he'd also just been woken up. "You missing McCormick?"

Hardcastle avoided shouting, but only by an act of supreme self-control. What came out was a terse, "Yes," and then, "you found him?"

"Not me, but some guys up in Ventura County. Is he supposed to be driving already?"

Hardcastle didn't even have enough sputter to get out a 'no'. Carlton seemed to pick up on his speechlessness and continued on, "—No license, nothing. They ran the car but they thought it might be hot, and since Mark didn't have any ID on him, they printed him and put him in the lock-up. Took till this morning to put it all together—there was somebody up there who remembered the Beiber thing, and they called me."

"He's okay? There wasn't an accident?"

"Nah, he was parked up on one of the overlooks, out on the PCH at three a.m. That was suspicious enough for those county guys. They thought he was drunk, or maybe on drugs."

"Which lock-up?" Hardcastle asked in exasperation, looking up at the clock. It was already past seven.

00000

Address in hand, he was out the door within five minutes. He'd already attempted one call to the Ventura County authorities, but he recognized holiday understaffing and chaos when he heard it. He decided he could be up there faster than explaining himself would take.

He'd been right about the chaos, but the guy at the desk was worryingly helpful once he'd seen Hardcastle's ID. The judge had a feeling that Carlton had already given them a talking-to.

"You can understand," the desk guy looked apologetic, "under the circumstances. He was acting a little goofy."

"I could understand," Hardcastle said stiffly, "that if you've got someone like that, you might want to see that they got a medical evaluation."

The officer looked chagrined. It hadn't been his call and the previous shift had left him holding the bag. His lips thinned a little and he said, flatly, "We've got him in one of the holding cells."

"Still?" Then the judge looked round, surveying the noisy, crowded surroundings. "Okay, if someone can bring him, I'll get out of your hair."

"Maybe you could, um, step back there?" He was gesturing to one of the other officers and opening the door alongside the counter area. "This way."

Hardcastle didn't ask any more questions. He fought a sinking feeling that came on in double force when he went back into the inner passage. He was being led by a man who obviously didn't want to be any more involved in this than he had to be. Keys, a lock, a door on a corridor that was set apart from the general population. At least it was quieter than up front.

It was quiet enough that after the door had finally opened, rasping on its hinges, he heard something from within—fast, shallow breathing punctuated by some muttered 'uh-uhs'. The man inside was sitting on the far end of the single bunk, wedged into the corner with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He hadn't lifted his head up enough to see who was entering, hadn't shown any awareness of the door opening, and clearly he'd been in this state for a while. The voice that repeated the two syllables was rusty, almost hoarse.

"Oh . . . kiddo," the judge said quietly.

The muttering stopped. There was still no effort at eye contact.

Hardcastle turned back to his guide angrily. "I can't believe this." Then, just as quickly, he shot another look at McCormick, and softened his tone. "Time to get you home, huh, kid? Got all that food Sarah left."

Nothing from the huddled man except a loud sniffle and a more audible, "Uh-uh." But one arm had unwrapped itself, and his legs were unfolding, cautiously.

"Yeah," Hardcastle coaxed, "that's it."

He extended a hand. McCormick was looking at him now—him, not the guard—and it was with a strangely familiar wariness. Hardcastle thought this part was recalled, not newly acquired, though who could tell what mixed up jumble of past and present had produced it?

"Home," the judge said again, complete sentences be damned.

He saw the wariness recede a little, replaced by something more closely resembling hope. McCormick didn't reach out and take the hand that was offered— Hardcastle couldn't tell if it was pride or fear that was mostly at work there—but he did inch forward on the cot's thin mattress, finally edging off of it and into a standing position.

The judge conceded, stepped back a bit, and let the kid slip past him toward the corridor. He shook his head as he followed. The guard tagged along behind them both. Mark made it as far as the door to the front area before his courage apparently failed him. The judge eased forward, opening the door, and slipping a hand under the younger man's arm at the same time.

Hardcastle spared a glare for the guy behind the counter. "You got anything I need to sign?"

The man slid a clipboard forward and pointed to the line.

Hardcastle picked up the pen with his free hand, feeling Mark tugging a little at the hold-up. He jotted his own name quickly, and then, as if to make a point about something, added beneath that 'legal guardian'.

"The car, the one he was in, where is it?" he asked, trying to be polite.

He desk man looked down at the papers in front of him and then said, "Looks like it got impounded. That's what they do when they find one that's hotwired."

Hardcastle, who'd already been letting Mark tug him toward the door, froze. He gave the desk guy a long stare, becoming quickly convinced that he'd heard it right the first time. He shot a glance at McCormick, who appeared oblivious to what had been said.

Remembered, obviously, not relearned, though the old McCormick had pointed out to him on several occasions that it wasn't rocket science. The whole thing made sense, now that he'd had a moment to think about it. After all, he hadn't left any keys lying around.

Now he frowned, deep and hard. The implications were alarming, though McCormick's expression was the picture of innocence.

"Home," the younger man said, tugging again, and then, as if remembering the proprieties, he amended it to, "Go home now."

00000

They headed home, Hardcastle having decided that doing anything more about the Coyote that morning would require more paperwork and explaining than he felt up to. Mark's air of docility seemed to indicate he knew he'd screwed up, though exactly how might still be a mystery to the kid.

The judge tried to come up with a simple, understandable explanation as he drove. He finally settled for, "There's things you can't do yet. You understand that, right?"

He spared a sideward glance, not expecting an answer, but hoping for at least an attentive look.

"No car," Mark said glumly, then, not quite so docilely, "Was mine."

"It's still yours," Hardcastle said. "You're just not ready to drive it, okay?"

"I drive good." This was followed by a smile, the first one the judge had seen from him this morning.

"Not 'good'," Hardcastle said grumpily. "You say 'well' when it's with a verb—when it's something you do . . . or 'okay', I guess that works for everything."

Mark pondered that for a moment, frowning briefly, then said, "Uh-uh, not okay—good. Fast." He was smiling outright now.

Hardcastle thought about how much food had ended up on the kitchen floor the past three weeks and suppressed a shudder.

"Okay, you were fast, hotshot, but not anymore. Not yet. No driving till I say so, got it?"

Mark frowned again, then nodded slowly, his expression gone back to serious. For a long moment the judge thought that would be it, and he wondered if the kid really got it—that 'no' meant 'no'.

"I was bad," McCormick finally muttered. "Went to jail." Another long moment of silence, as though he were trying to dredge up a few more words. He settled for one, and it was almost whispered, though still with intensity.

"Prison."

00000

That was it for conversation on the way home. Mark had settled into silence and the judge didn't have anything to say, either. He'd wondered about that—how much the kid remembered from before. He'd maybe even half-hoped for a little selective amnesia, at least for a little while longer until they got the talking thing sorted out.

But even though that box of memories had apparently been opened up, the younger man seemed more weary than resentful. As soon as they'd pulled up and parked in the back drive, he carefully opened the passenger door and got out. There was a long look at the empty side of the garage and something that sounded like a sigh. Then he turned and followed Hardcastle up the steps to the kitchen door.

"You hungry?" the judge asked and then, when the kid shook his head, he said, "Go take a nap. I'll let you know when it's ready. " He made a shooing gesture. "Upstairs, okay? A real bed."

This time a nod, and Mark left, the fatigue adding a shuffle to his walk. Hardcastle watched him depart, giving him a full ten minutes to get down the hall, up the stairs, and, he hoped, out of earshot.

00000

Dinner was served in the dining room, as befit the holiday occasion. Hardcastle had pushed it back to almost three, only partly to let Mark get some sleep. He stood back and looked at the table, set for two. He tried not to think about the last time he'd had the fancy china on this table—that had been the dinner McCormick had hosted for Tina Gray, the night before the kidnapping.

He smiled grimly. He'd fussed like crazy over the whole scam, him standing by as a butler while McCormick had wined and dined the woman—all that fast patter, but awkward as a teenager, and really only trying to help. And it was clear the kid had fallen for her, hook, line, and sinker. He shook his head. He wasn't sure if he was ever going to be able to explain the facts of life to someone like that.

He heard a noise behind him and turned sharply. It was the hopeless idealist himself, standing in the doorway and rubbing his eyes, looking not quite awake.

"Food?" Mark said.

The judge ignored him pointedly. He was going to catch hell from Sylvie on Tuesday if he let McCormick backslide completely.

Mark frowned, took a breath and said, "You made food."

Hardcastle smiled his approval—proper tense and all. "Well," he said, "I heated it up, anyway. Siddown. Let's eat."

Mark sat, looking a little mystified at the setting. That slowly gave way to something like worry, as if he had stumbled into the same memory that the judge had been dealing with.

"Where is she?" McCormick asked.

The judge raised one eyebrow. "Sarah?"

"No," Mark shook his head. "Tina,"

Hardcastle grimaced. "Gone," he said flatly.

Mark didn't reply. There was still a look of puzzlement on his face.

The judge ignored it as he turned to serve up the meal. "Try cutting your turkey." He pointed to Mark's plate and the knife sitting next to it. Then he picked up his own knife and fork to demonstrate. This was a damn sight easier than explaining the real facts of life, and the consequences of mistaken trust and calculated betrayal.

Mark seemed willing to be distracted, as though he already knew the answer was something he didn't want to hear. He did a fairly good job with the knife. Hardcastle realized the hotwiring hadn't been such a stretch. He should have supposed his abilities would come along unevenly, and the things McCormick had been best at might take precedence.

The meal was punctuated by comments. A few of them were even what Sylvie would approvingly call 'spontaneous language'. Some were even complete sentences. McCormick seemed to have recovered from his early morning adventure and ate like someone who'd missed breakfast and lunch.

After they finished he handled the cleaning up, sorting and rinsing and washing, with minimum supervision and the loss of only one plate. Glimpsed in small fragments, from the corner of the eye, his movements were only slightly clumsy, and might have passed as normal to someone who didn't know him.

Hardcastle put the last of the leftovers in the fridge and said, "I'll be in the den. We got a game—Dallas versus the Cardinals." He checked his watch. "They've probably already kicked-off."

"Cowboys," McCormick said, almost contemplatively.

"Yeah, I'm favoring them, too," Hardcastle said with a grin, willing to read more into it than had probably been meant.

There was a beat, no more than that, and then the younger man said, "What's the spread?"

Maybe habit, or a glimmering of memory without any attached meaning, but the younger man's enigmatic expression left enough room for hope. The judge quickly mastered his surprise, still grinning back. "Seven points, but you're not in Vegas, kiddo, so it's strictly academic."

Mark said nothing more, nothing to dispel what might have merely been an illusion of understanding. He turned back to the dishes and Hardcastle, smiling, headed for the other room.

00000

He'd settled himself into one of the leather chairs, and found the channel. The first quarter was well underway before he heard McCormick in the hallway. He was used to periods of silence from him these days, and after the burst of complete, and nearly-complete sentences that had been heard over dinner, he wasn't surprised that he had nothing more to say.

Still, he hadn't come in and sat down. Hardcastle looked up from the completed play and studied him, standing at the bottom of the steps leading into the den. The kid was obviously staring, not at the TV, but off to his right.

"Whatssamatter?" Hardcastle said, though he suspected he knew.

The thing the kid was staring at was the cabinet alongside the steps. It was usually locked and displayed the judge's long barreled collection—shot guns and rifles. Now it was empty. It had been since earlier that afternoon when Hardcastle had moved the weapons to what he hoped was a more secure location. Mark brought his gaze back to him slowly, his expression unreadable.

"Why?" he said, and it was obvious that he had no intention of enlarging it to a sentence.

"I didn't want anybody to get hurt," Hardcastle said flatly.

"Not mine," Mark muttered sullenly. "Don't steal." Syntax had been chucked out the window, but the meaning was clear.

The judge let out a slow breath. He'd half hoped the change in arrangements would pass unnoticed, or at least uncommented on. He still felt justified, but before he could launch an explanation McCormick muttered again. "You don't trust me." It was entirely clear. Damn fluent, Hardcastle thought, and a little unfair.

He scrapped the explanation and went right for the main question. "Why'dja take the car last night?"

Mark's frown deepened. He looked a little more defensive. "Mine," he said, and then apparently decided that wasn't enough. "Went to find Sarah."

Hardcastle pulled his rising eyebrow down sharply. Four more words, but of course it would have to be the beginning of an argument. "Hmmph," he said. "Where'dja think you were gonna look for her?"

McCormick was wearing a scowl of his own, but apparently he had to think about that one for a while.

"And you took the car, even though I'd told you not to."

"Why?" the kid asked. That was most definitely a 'Why not?'

"Because you aren't ready to drive yet. Listen," Hardcastle lowered his voice, "I shouldn't even have to tell you that, not if you remember anything about how you used to drive. And if you don't remember, well, then you really aren't ready."

It was probably too much all at once, but at least McCormick looked focused; he was trying to understand.

"And you decided, in the middle of the night, that it'd be a good thing for you to take the Coyote and look for Sarah, huh?"

Mark shrugged guiltily and kept his eyes down.

"Well, where I come from, that's what we call an impulse, and it was a bad one. You're lucky you didn't have an accident. You coulda been hurt, or somebody else mighta been."

He said it sternly, and McCormick's head hung a little lower, but his gaze crept back up, still defiant. "Wouldn't steal," he said, apparently dumping the unwinnable argument and moving back to the previous one. "Wouldn't steal from you."

The judge eased back in his chair. "I know. I figured that out before. But that was when I knew you better." He paused, he thought that one through for a moment, wondering when and how he'd known. He gave up. He just had, that was all. "Listen," he said wearily, "how can I know what's going on inside your head if you don't talk to me?"

A long silence followed. "It's . . . hard," Mark finally said quietly. His forehead furrowed, as if to emphasize the point. "Can't think of words sometimes."

"Okay," Hardcastle nodded, "but you won't get better at it unless you try. You have to practice."

McCormick raised his head and looked at him steadily. He finally nodded once and said, "I'll try." Then a moment later he quirked a smile. "Should practice driving, too."

00000

They went together on Friday to retrieve the Coyote. Mark looked on wistfully as the judge made arrangements to have it towed home, but this time, wisely, he said nothing. There were also no words—only the occasional reproachful glance—about the still-empty gun cabinet.

But when Sarah called that evening to ask how things were going Hardcastle wasn't lying when he said, "Better." He didn't point out that 'better' included having heard Mark mutter the word 'donkey' under his breath. He doubted that Sarah would find that an improvement.

The judge did, though—that and a whole slew of other words, most of them not as cheerfully incendiary. By evening he found himself almost wishing for the old new McCormick, the one who stuck to the two word sentences and less than that if he could get away with it.

He'd settled back in his chair, hoping to at least get through the day's mail in peace. He briefly wondered where the kid had gotten off to, but figured all that practice talking might have worn him out, too. Maybe he'd decided to skip the usual evening movie and hit the sack early.

Now there were footsteps on the stairs again, slow, steady progress. A moment later McCormick was in the doorway, holding something in his left hand. "You," he said with an air of certainty.

Hardcastle put his pen down and briefly thought this might go under the heading of 'be careful what you wish for'. He supposed it couldn't be all steady upward progress but he hoped they weren't going back to single, not very helpful words. Mark was looking at him impatiently, holding out what he'd brought and apparently thinking he'd already made his point.

"You," he repeated insistently, bringing it close enough for Hardcastle to see.

A Lone Ranger comic book, the Masked Man on the cover. There'd been a stash of them in a box in the spare-room closet upstairs. Hardcastle took them out, now and then. The kid had given him a merciless ribbing about it, back in the beginning, but he'd also latched on to the fact that it somehow all meant something to the judge. He'd never really minded being called 'Kemosabe', and after a while it hadn't been all in jest.

"You," Mark said quietly, almost to himself. He put the magazine down on the desk and paged it open clumsily. "Look." He was pointing at the first picture on the first page. "Hi-yo Silver, away." It didn't say that right there, but it was a picture of the horse, and Mark seemed delighted with himself. He pulled one of the chairs up to the side of the desk and dropped down in it, leaning forward. "Some bad guys in here," he said, conspiratorially, trying to turn the pages one at a time, but not always succeeding.

"Look," he said again, pointing with satisfaction. "Tonto." He was absolutely right. The Masked Man's faithful companion was there on page three, in a fringed buckskin outfit with a rather incongruous six-shooter strapped to his waist. Mark cocked one eyebrow, a spectacular feat of coordination, and said, "The Lone Ranger trusts Tonto."

"Yeah, well, Tonto didn't take a slug of lead to the noggin," Hardcastle muttered, trying hard to suppress any hint of a smile, "'Least not in this issue."

Mark was ignoring him, thumbing the pages over a few at a time. "Here's the bad guys," he said. He was right; he'd found them, busy threatening the ranchers on page nine. He was frowning down at the small print. It really wasn't necessary in order to get the gist of the story, Hardcastle supposed, but it would make a lot more sense if you knew what everybody was saying.

"Here," he said, scooting his own chair over a bit and turning the magazine so it was oriented half-way between the two of them. "But we better go back to the beginning."

Mark was perched on the edge of his seat, leaning forward. He nodded.

"You point to the picture and I'll tell you what the words say, okay?"

Another nod.

00000

The rest of the weekend passed with fewer wistful and reproachful looks. McCormick was preoccupied with his Rosetta stones, and from time to time brought a new issue down for inspection. He was even getting better at turning the pages. Hardcastle was somewhat relieved not to be pressed into service to read every one of them out loud.

They ate their way through several meals of turkey sandwiches and most of the remaining pumpkin pie. At lunchtime on Sunday, Hardcastle, not entirely thinking about a change of pace from leftovers, remarked that it'd be nice to have Sarah back.

He realized his mistake almost before the words left his lips. Mark had been sitting across from him at the kitchen table, deeply immersed in Number 17—"The Valley of Danger", but at this remark his gaze came up sharply and fastened itself on the judge.

"Not till tomorrow, kiddo," Hardcastle added hastily. "Got that?"

Maybe, or maybe not. It was hard to tell. What he did have the rest of the afternoon was a bad case of the fidgets. Hardcastle finally grabbed a basketball from the crate in the laundry room and took him outside. "I'm gonna show you something, okay?"

He would have sworn there was a flash of recognition in the younger man's expression, though he said nothing to indicate he remembered the game as it was played on the court at Gulls' Way. At any rate, Hardcastle had no intention of playing that kind of basketball; he didn't want the kid to do any more damage to his brain cells than he already had.

"Nothing fancy—a nice, two-handed set-shot," he said, as he stationed himself an easy distance directly in front of the basket. "Watch." He sank one, using both hands, and no jump at all. "Got it?"

Mark nodded again, with more interest. The judge retrieved the ball and handed it to him.

"Stand here." He pointed to a spot a little closer than the free throw line. "You're gonna hav'ta use both hands."

Mark was almost biting down on his tongue. His first try was considerably short.

"Both hands," Hardcastle reminded him, catching the rebound and passing it over again.

Wide, then short again, then one off the backboard that ricocheted toward him unexpectedly. Mark came near to stumbling backward as he caught it, but seemed pleased with the interception.

Hardcastle was regretting his idea. It was almost painful to watch, another reminder of what had been lost, but McCormick didn't seem dismayed. He went at it undiscouraged.

The judge stepped back, out of the way. The younger man was fielding his own rebounds and seemed pretty intent on getting at least one through the hoop no matter how many tries it took.

"Okay," Hardcastle said, smiling sadly, "you practice that a bit. You'll get it." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned back toward the house. If nothing else, he thought McCormick would wear himself out chasing the ball down.

He heard a raucous hoot and shot a quick, surprised look over his shoulder, just in time to see one circle the inside of the rim and fall through the net.

"Two points," Mark said, with an irrepressible grin as he gathered up the ball and went back at it.

Hardcastle's smile lightened and stayed with him all the way up to the house.

00000

Nearly an hour passed. He'd left the front door open and could faintly hear the sound of basketball occasionally connecting with backboard. It was frequent enough to suggest some improvement in accuracy, if not actual points. He finally checked his watch. It was after four-thirty and pushing sunset. Pizza sounded like a good idea—as long as it didn't have any turkey on it.

As he pulled the phone toward him, intending to place an order at Tony's, he heard a shout from the direction of the court. Maybe another basket, but the timbre was different and he looked over his shoulder, frowning. No further sounds and, for a moment, nothing else to see. He was half on his feet, intending to go out there and get the kid in, when he made out some indistinct movement near the corner of the gatehouse.

More shouting, brief and frantic, no intelligible words, but clearly the movement was a scuffle and one of the parties involved was McCormick. Hardcastle was on his feet and lunging for the gun cabinet. Habit collided with sharp realization, and he made a hundred and eighty degree turn for the desk, fiddling with the bottom drawer lock and grabbing for the .45 he kept there.

He'd unloaded that one, and it was another moment before he could retrieve the ammunition from the other drawer and remedy that, cursing his well-meant intentions the whole time. What had felt interminable was, in reality, probably less than a minute, but the scuffle had gone to the ground, and now there was a string of cursing that was too deep and too fluent to be from McCormick.

Hardcastle was through the door, down the steps, and onto the front drive, gun leveled and shouting a warning to back off, before he realized that the assailant also had a weapon out and raised, glinting in the light of the setting sun.

He didn't bother with another warning. He fired, and saw the man slammed backward—not the same impact as a rifle but enough to knock him off his feet. McCormick was still down. The judge closed the remaining distance. He thought he couldn't have missed hearing an earlier shot, not even in his mad scramble to get at a weapon, but the kid wasn't moving and the other man's gun might have been just as lethal used as a bludgeon.

He spared one quick glance at the assailant. A shotgun could not have been more efficient. Dead was dead. It was no one he recognized. The dead man's weapon was a Luger, and the holster, tucked under his arm and now visible with his suit jacket fallen away, looked eminently professional.

He was shaking his head as he turned back to Mark, wondering why the hell he hadn't thought of this possibility, especially after McCormick's little debut back into society on Thanksgiving morning. Just lucky this time—the would-be victim was now sitting up, obviously still frightened but just as obviously wide awake.

"Hold on, lemme take a look," he set his own weapon down and grabbed for a shoulder, steadying it. "He hit ya?"

Mark was looking past him, at the body on the ground. Hardcastle interposed himself. The kid's eyes tracked upward to him for a moment, then he shook his head. There was a bruise already blossoming on his chin that belied that, though there was a good chance that it had all happened so fast that McCormick didn't even know what had hit him. And it had hardly been a fair match, a guy who looked like a professional against one who still needed help tying his shoes.

Hardcastle looked around quickly. He suspected this was a loner since the shot hadn't brought down a barrage of answering fire. Still, sunset was giving way to deeper shadows and they were potentially vulnerable out here.

"Come on." He got a hand under Mark's arm. "Inside, okay? You can walk? I'll help ya, see?"

The patter, kept quiet and matter-of-fact, seemed to finally drag McCormick back to the task at hand. He was up, taking fairly steady steps, still gawking over his shoulder at the man splayed out on the concrete.

The judge steered him away from that, over to the front door. He was tempted to keep going, all the way to the rear of the house, but instead he parked him on the sofa and pulled the shutters on the window closed. He gave him another slightly more thorough looking-at, just enough to decide he didn't need to request an ambulance, and then he made the necessary phone call.

00000

Carlton arrived shortly after the beat car. Hardcastle explained the whole thing over again wearily and with an increasing level of irritation, though that was mostly directed at himself.

"Beiber, you think?" the lieutenant asked cautiously.

"Who the hell else?" the judge muttered. "The guy's got reach, you know that, even from inside. And three days after you-know-who goes for that little joyride and lands in lock-up, Beiber's got to be thinking he's recovered enough to be back on the witness list."

The joy rider was sitting across the room at one end of the sofa, knees drawn up tightly. If he was aware that he was the topic of the conversation, he wasn't letting on. Instead he looked distracted, distant.

"You sure it was him the guy was after?" Carlyle glanced over at the younger man and then back at the judge, dubiously.

"Yeah . . . and if I'd been a couple seconds slower this one would've finished what Beiber's other goons started." Hardcastle had lowered his voice, though none of this appeared to be reaching Mark's ears either. "I think the only thing that slowed him down is that he wanted to do it without firing the gun . . . that and Mark had a lot more fight in him than he was expecting."

"Well, you got off a damn lucky shot, I'd say, with a revolver and all. It was what was handiest, I suppose." Carlton's puzzled look was taking in the empty gun case. He jerked his thumb toward it. "You did some redecorating?"

"Bad timing," Hardcastle muttered. "I'm putting 'em back as soon as your team clears out."

"Okay, well, we're almost done . . . but I'm posting a car here for tonight. I'll tell the guys downtown we've got a potential threat against a former member of the judiciary. That'll probably sit better than the taxpayers shelling out to protect a brain-damaged ex-con."

Hardcastle knew the lieutenant was only putting voice to what others would think, but the harshness of it was a shock. How every single word could be true and yet the whole thing absolutely false was something he wouldn't be able to explain.

"He sank a basket tonight," the judge said absently. "I sent him outside because he was too excited to sit still—he knew Sarah's coming back tomorrow."

Carlton grimaced, half-apologetically. "He's a good kid."

"Yeah," Hardcastle said, "and none of this shoulda happened."

He frowned. Just how far back he was willing to take that logic worried him some.

00000

The company eventually departed, along with the corpse—who was still short a name and a provable motive. A lone black-and-white remained. Hardcastle wondered if it would be gone before Sarah returned in the morning and, if not, how he was going to explain it.

Mark was persuaded back into the kitchen. He didn't seem much interested in food, but Hardcastle could hardly blame him. He was also off his feed after the evening's events. More worrisome, though, was the nearly complete silence. Yes or no answers were the most he'd gotten out of the younger man since he'd hauled him back inside, and even those seemed more random than reasoned out.

Worse yet was the tenseness, the tendency to flinch at the slightest of sounds, along with the bruises, now more readily apparent. He'd explained that the threat was gone—there'd be no more bogey men with Lugers—but it might have been more convincing if he'd believed it himself. He finally gave up and ushered his charge off to bed, hoping time and rest would put the thing behind McCormick.

After he'd gotten Mark settled, he attended to an overdue ritual of his own, carefully restoring the contents of the gun cabinet, everything precisely where he was accustomed to having it. This was false security, he knew, but necessary if he ever hoped to get any sleep himself. He cast one more look out the window at the police car in its vigil, then retreated back upstairs, the fully-reloaded .45 in his hand.

00000

The cab arrived a little after ten the next morning. Hardcastle had been watching for it, and was up and out the door, cheerfully smiling. He paid off the cabbie, took charge of the bags, and kept his pleasant expression in place as he escorted Sarah into the house. He doubted that she was fooled for even a moment, and her first words confirmed this.

"How's Mark doing?" It was not spoken with the tone of routine inquiry.

"You heard, huh?"

"I could hardly not have, your Honor; even that cab driver was very well informed. You might have called."

"It was pretty late by the time the dust settled."

She shook her head. "And where is he?"

"Seemed kinda at ends this morning. I gave him a job to do."

He gestured with a thumb in the general direction of the back of the house and the pool. The truth was, he was surprised that the kid hadn't been peskier once the appointed hour had arrived. It was as though he'd gotten a sudden case of the shys.

Sarah nodded once, briskly. "It's good to stay busy. I'll go have a word with him and then make some cookies. You can take them round to the neighbors later." She frowned. "There must've been a terrible commotion."

"One shot," Hardcastle said defensively. "Really. Nobody's even complained."

"Hmmph," she looked at him doubtfully. "Did you do the shopping?"

Another vaguely apologetic look from the judge. It was met with a sigh but no indications of surprise from his housekeeper.

"Is there enough turkey left for a casserole?" she asked hopefully as she bustled past him toward the kitchen.

"I hope not," Hardcastle muttered, fetching the bags along behind.

00000

The doorbell rang again as he was settling the luggage in Sarah's room. This would be Rico, and maybe that accounted for Mark's absence a little while ago. For a guy with a poor grasp of 'tomorrow' he had an almost instinctual understanding of the patterns of things—that there were Rico days, alternating with Sylvie days, with weekends in-between.

After a second ring he heard Sarah heading for the front door. He went out the back to the pool to corral the possibly reluctant McCormick. He found the kid stalking leaves with the skimmer. It was a far sight better than the old McCormick's lackadaisical approach to the same task, but it wouldn't count as physical therapy.

"Sarah's home," he announced first, by way of making up for the rest.

McCormick nodded. He swung the skimmer clumsily to pounce on a drifting leaf. He dragged it in and, having done that, he muttered something without looking up.

"Huh?" Hardcastle moved in closer, prepared to confiscate the skimmer if necessary, so the kid could go do something more official for physical therapy. "Whadja say?"

"Sarah's mad."

Hardcastle's second, more surprised 'huh?' was accompanied by a quick look over his shoulder.

"She looked mad," Mark said worriedly. "It's 'cause I took the Coyote and went looking for her, huh?"

Hardcastle almost failed to notice the length of the statement in his puzzlement over the content. He was still stuck back on the first concept. He flashed on what must've happened a few moments ago; he hadn't warned her about how the kid looked—bruises were always showiest the next day

"She's not mad at you, kiddo," he said reassuringly. "She's mad at the guy who did it to you. Sheesh. Besides, she's gonna make some cookies; would she be making cookies if she was mad?"

Mark put the skimmer down. He seemed to be giving that some thought and he couldn't really focus and skim at the same time.

"And Rico's here," Hardcastle added off-handedly.

McCormick made a face. It was a fairly colorful one, even without the bruises.

00000

Carlton telephoned that afternoon. Hardcastle was in the kitchen, poaching a couple of peanut butter cookies. When he'd realized who the call was from, he'd headed off to the den, having signaled Sarah to hang up once he got to the other phone. Mark was left behind, hopefully distracted enough by a glass of milk, a plate of cookies, and Issue 18—"Treachery on the Wide Missouri".

The corpse had a name now. Several, actually, but the one voted most likely to be on his birth certificate was Douglas Ritman.

"Not a family guy," Carlton informed him. "Local talent, but no prior relationship with Beiber's organization."

"'Course not," Hardcastle huffed. "Wouldn't make any sense to take out a witness with someone who could be traced back to him."

"Oh, it's worse than that," the lieutenant said with audible worry. "Beiber and his attorney are in heavy-duty negotiations with the feds."

"Since when?"

"Since the feds moved in and took over—there's always the income tax stuff with these guys, and federal racketeering charges. Might be Beiber is trying to get himself better accommodations, a guilty plea even, if it'll get him into a nice, minimum-security federal pen. You think he'd risk screwing that up with a try at taking out a witness?"

"Sure, if it couldn't be tagged back on him. All the more reason to want to distance himself from any of his previous murders. Can't go to camp if you've got too many notches on your gun. And, hell," Hardcastle grumped, "maybe he even still blames McCormick for breaking things up between him and Tina Gray. Who knows how these mob guys think? All I know is the kid looks like a punching bag, and the guy had his gun out."

00000

He thought he'd gotten clean away with it. McCormick was right where he'd left him, appearing still deeply immersed, but a look from Sarah got Hardcastle's attention. He followed her out of the kitchen, nearly back to the den.

"He's gotten much more . . . articulate," she said, though this was obviously not the reason she'd dragged him away. She looked pensive. "Right after you left he told me not to worry, that the bad guy wouldn't be back because he was dead. I'm quoting, Your Honor," she added with a flat smile. "He didn't look all that convinced, himself. I think he was just trying to reassure me. Anyway," she sighed, "I just thought you should know, he seems a lot more aware of what's going on than one might think."

"Oh, yeah," Hardcastle sighed, "there's a whole lot of him under there and he was always pretty good at figuring the odds."

"Do you think there will be another attempt?"

Hardcastle frowned for a moment and finally said, "Wouldn't surprise me a bit."

00000

But for the rest of the day, McCormick was the soul of reticence. He stuck mostly to the yes and no answers, and even his nods had a far-away quality to them. There didn't seem to be anything intentional about it, more that he was preoccupied.

Sarah put him to work in the kitchen, helping her sort and package the cookies. She reported no unexpected difficulties in that department. He'd been willing and mostly able.

They had dinner in the kitchen, too, and Mark moved through the process of eating, and then cleaning up, with now practiced efficiency. Most of the little jerking motions that had plagued him were a thing of the past, but the looks of concentration had been replaced by something equally distant.

It was afterwards—and maybe in an effort to pierce through the fog—that the judge said, "It's a long driveway." The comment was made over peanut butter cookies in the den.

Mark frowned, as though he were considering this. It was potentially another yes or no thing, but clearly not intended to be, and it appeared that there was still a spark or two of curiosity left.

But he finally resorted to a tentatively agreeing 'Yes', tempered by a very understandable, "Why?" though from the slightly irritated tone, it was clearly intended to mean, 'Why the hell did you bring that up?' and maybe even had an implicit 'donkey' tagged on the end.

"Rico said you did pretty good with the physical therapy thing this morning. He's very impressed with your progress . . . I told him you sank a basket yesterday."

The twitch was back, like dousing rod, now that they'd arrived at the well-spring of the anxiety. But the kid was getting better at covering-up, too, it seemed. It was only a long second or two before he flashed an awkward smile and said, "Some baskets . . . a few."

"Wanna talk about it?" Hardcastle asked point-blank, temporarily abandoning the issue of lengthy driveways.

Mark looked startled and then hastily shook his head. "He's dead. Not coming back." He'd repeated the party line loyally. The judge was beginning to regret having resorted to it in a moment of weakness.

"Right," Hardcastle nodded, "he won't. So it's okay to talk about it, won't make anything bad happen."

He didn't get a yes or no to that one, not even an 'uh-uh', but he wasn't ready to throw in the towel. He was opening his mouth to continue when Mark, still frowning, said, "The driveway's very long."

Hardcastle bit back what he'd been about to say, but couldn't avoid a smile. If it wasn't an open discussion, it was at least a deft change of subject.

"Yeah," he said, "I was thinking maybe you could practice out there, with the Coyote, ya know?"

This time it was a look of disbelief, and it rapidly became clear there was not unalloyed delight behind it.

"The driveway?" Mark said, in a tone that was so fundamentally familiar that Hardcastle had to suppress a grin that probably wouldn't have been well received. He heard the next bit coming before it even left McCormick's mouth. "Ju-udge." Just that, but backed by enough indignation that it had to be fueled by some memory of what he'd been before. And then, with something approaching real anger, "I can drive."

"Okay," he said in hurried appeasement, "not the driveway. But I want to see what you can do first, somewhere where there isn't any traffic, out of town or—"

"The desert," Mark said.

It was said so quietly that Hardcastle almost missed it, but there was no missing the look on the younger man's face. It was obvious that driving wasn't the only thing he'd remembered and that the other part hadn't occurred to him just now.

Hardcastle filled in the awkward silence with an equally awkward, "Yeah, not much traffic out there." He had hoped to God that that particular memory had fallen victim to the bullet that had almost taken the kid's life. If this was what McCormick had been digging up since the previous night, he wasn't sure he wanted to lend a hand.

"Okay," he finally said, trying not to appear as reticent as he felt. He suspected Mark was pretty good, even now, at picking up on unspoken wishes. "What happened? Do you remember some of it?"

"It's important."

Hardcastle tried not to look surprised. He simply said, "Yes, it is. You may know things that we can use."

"Tina's dead."

That was the easiest part for Hardcastle. He thought maybe that wouldn't be so for Mark. But the younger man was frowning again. "She set me up. It didn't work."

Good, he remembered that part. Better acknowledged betrayal than some sort of lingering grief for the woman. But this was all just the bones of the thing, stated dryly. Hardcastle wondered if maybe he wasn't the only one who was hoping to avoid the more gruesome details.

"Him—"

"Joe Beiber?"

"Yeah. She told him she loved him, that I was . . . nobody."

"She was a professional," Hardcastle said grimly. "She set people up for a living. She set a lot of guys up."

"I believed her." He said it flatly; there was a heart in among the bones but it had long ago given up the ghost of hope. Mark's expression had gone flat, too. "He . . . Beiber . . . he said take us to the desert. Kill us. That's where we went. They gave me a shovel. Hah."

There was a touch of wry bitterness to that memory. Hardcastle strongly suspected the kid had told them where to put their shovel.

"She kept on trying . . . trying to get them to let her go. Then she started screaming. They shot her. . . and then . . " Mark's gaze was directed down, as though he were inspecting his own grave, whoever the hell had dug it. He looked up, obviously bewildered. Memory had apparently finally failed. "How come . . .?"

There might be things worse than not knowing, Hardcastle thought. This was possibly one of them. But it was a question, and the missing moments couldn't be much more frightening than the part that had led up to them.

"I think you gave 'em a hard time," he said. "And I got there, but not quite soon enough."

"Oh," Mark looked around, looked down at himself, then smiled gently, "the thing that comes after the nick of time . . . can't think of words sometimes."

"It's called 'a day late and a dollar short'," Hardcastle said grimly.

00000

The rest of the evening passed quietly enough, but without the silent tension that had preceded it. He waited until Mark had gone to bed to make the after-hours phone call to Carlton.

"He remembers it all. Well, maybe not the last couple of minutes, thank God, but enough to put Beiber on the scene, ordering the murders. He even remembers them putting a bullet into Tina Gray."

"How much coaching did he get, Milt?"

"None. You know me better than that," the judge said stiffly. "And why the hell would I wait this long to put it on the table? But tell me that doesn't beat tax evasion and racketeering. We've got murder and attempted murder. I want Mark's statement down on paper, and filed. I don't want Beiber thinking he can weasel out of this with another quick hit."

"You think Mark'll be able to take the stand?"

Hardcastle hesitated, then stated staunchly, "He's getting better every day . . . except maybe for the days when some sleazy mobster takes another whack at him, dammit. If we can get the right prosecutor and—"

"Try to keep him alive long enough," Carlton interjected soberly.

"Yeah." Hardcastle took a breath and finally let it out as, "But I won't let it all just get swept under the rug—Beiber packing off to Club Fed and Filapiano getting a bye on account of Tina Gray being gone—"

"You didn't hear?" Carleton interjected in a tone of surprise. "Hell, I figured you were the one behind it. I remember you bringing it up a couple of times."

"Hear what?"

"Internal Affairs continued Filapiano's suspension. Made the ruling last week."

Hardcastle frowned. "But I heard—"

"Yeah, they thought the Gray thing was a little iffy, on account of there being no witnesses, but they did do a background review. They decided there's enough of a pattern to warrant further investigation. They went all the way back to his street days. That Johnson shooting raised a bunch of red flags. That's why I figured you were in on it."

Hardcastle said nothing for a moment and what he finally did say was a simple, and slightly vengeful, "Good."

He liked to believe he wasn't the vengeful type, though he thought it was mostly because he counted on the system to exact appropriate retribution. Of course it hadn't worked for Filapiano's previous victim, Siler Johnson, and it hadn't done much for Mark McCormick, either. But the other issue—

"Everybody figures I'm the one pushing the IA investigation, huh? Do they think it's unfair?"

"Well," there was a slight, almost embarrassed pause from the other end of the line; he could imagine a slight shrug, "you know how it is. I won't say Filapiano hasn't ridden pretty close to the line, and this thing with Gray was way over it, but there are always guys who get things done, and Filapiano's been one of them. Hell, look at that stunt I pulled for you in the interrogation room. If you were sitting on the bench, you'd've called me on that one. And the Johnson thing, that was almost twenty years ago."

"You think I should back off?" Hardcastle said quietly. "Hell, it's not even me anymore. All I told the IA guy was what Filapiano let slip about Gray. That must not've held much weight, coming from me," he added bitterly.

This time there was almost undoubtedly a shrug and Carlton said, "Maybe so, but I know one guy who thinks you're in charge of making his life miserable."

"You mean besides McCormick," the judge snorted.

"Yeah, besides him."

00000

On Tuesday morning, Sylvie seemed impressed with McCormick's progress. This time, though, when Hardcastle attempted to shag him off on Sarah after his session in order to have a few words with his therapist, the younger man balked.

"You don't want me around," he said—a complete and pointed sentence. "So you can talk about me," he added glumly.

The judge was momentarily surprised but then said, "Yeah," and gave him an honest shrug. "You wanna know what about?"

Mark frowned for a moment, then finally nodded.

"Yesterday, what you remembered, you need to tell all that to the police. It's what they call a statement. You talk to them, tell 'em what happened. They record it, write it all down." He realized he was keeping it very flat, and the sentences had been short and simple.

McCormick still had a serious expression, but now there was an edge of wariness to it. His brow furrowed. "Go there?"

For some reason, Hardcastle suspected he meant Ventura County and the lock-up he'd spent the night in only five days earlier.

"No," he said hastily, though it wasn't sure that the LA County facilities would be any less fraught for McCormick. Then he amended it further, "You remember Lieutenant Carlton, right?"

He watched Mark's frown go briefly more intense, then lighten, followed by a slow nod.

"We'll go to his office, do it there. That'd be okay, wouldn't it?" There was no immediate refusal and Hardcastle directed the next question to Sylvie, "He could do it, don'tcha think? I mean, he seems pretty clear to me—"

"Ask me." The younger man's tone was insistent, and snapped Hardcastle's attention back to him. It wasn't as if the kid's face revealed any great confidence about the answer, but he was obviously intent on being part of the discussion.

"Okay," the judge acquiesced, "you think you could handle it? They'd want to make sure you really remembered it, not just saying what somebody else mighta told you happened. They'll ask you a bunch of questions; maybe even try to trip you up."

"A confession," Mark said hazily, as though he had stumbled over a new word somewhere in his memory and was trying it out.

"No," the judge said sharply, "you didn't do anything wrong. This is a statement."

"Did that . . . Carlton," McCormick continued on, vaguely. The correction hadn't seemed to register but the haziness seemed to clear suddenly and, in its place an almost shocked expression. "You said we had to tell him. There were dogs."

Sylvie appeared increasingly baffled. Hardcastle hastened to reassure. "He means in the impound." She still appeared obviously confused. "It was nothing," the judge added, "just a misunderstanding—"

"We stole stuff," Mark said in what sounded like absolute astonishment. "Important stuff—papers."

Hardcastle realized his attempt at a lighthearted smile had a certain amount of teeth gritting behind it. He turned back to the therapist. "A misunderstanding," he repeated firmly, "really."

He saw Sylvie's nod. It was a little at cross-purposes with the questioning look that still remained in her eyes. He attempted to haul the discussion back to the original question.

"What do you think—is he ready? They might still grill him some, after all they're cops. It's what they do."

Mark remained blessedly silent this time. He looked like he might still be reliving the horror of that last confession.

Sylvie gave McCormick a steady, speculative gaze and finally said, to him, not Hardcastle, "I think you can. You just have to remember all the things we've worked on. Don't get upset when the right word doesn't come. Use the techniques."

Mark glanced up from wherever memory had temporarily taken him. He nodded once, almost absentmindedly.

Hardcastle hoped to hell the techniques didn't include going off on embarrassing tangents. "Thanks," he said to Sylvie, opening the door and ushering her out gently.

"See you Thursday," she said, still mostly to Mark, who nodded as though he might even have a grasp of things again.

But after the door was closed, and the judge had heaved a sigh of relief, the younger man still looked pensive.

"Come on," Hardcastle said, trying to sound confident. "It won't be that bad. You're the victim, for Pete's sake."

McCormick's silence stretched out. He finally said, "Didn't do anything wrong?" The question mark hung on the end of it as clear as could be, but exactly what the question meant temporarily flummoxed the older man. It might have been this confusion that was mistaken for hesitance.

"I did." Mark said, with a deep, exasperated sigh of his own. He was frowning again. "Don't know what."

Hardcastle listened to the sentences going shorter, fear slipping in amid confusion. It was so easy to forget how little information the kid was working with.

"Listen," he said, "you said the Lone Ranger trusts Tonto, right?"

Mark glanced up, suddenly focused again. He nodded.

"Okay," the judge said, returning the nod, "now you gotta tell me, does Tonto trust the Lone Ranger?"

"I am Tonto?" the younger man asked, somehow cutting through all the fog and right to the real question at hand.

Hardcastle hid the wince and decided not to qualify it with tenses. "You're him. Yeah."

McCormick looked pleased, though a little doubtful. It was only self-doubt, it seemed, because a there was hardly a pause before he nodded and said, "I trust you."

The smile that accompanied that was short-lived though, and when it faded he said, sounding almost lost, "How come?" And then, at the look of bemusement on the judge's face, he enlarged it. "How come I'm Tonto?" He looked around, as if he were taking in the surroundings for the first time. "How come I'm here?"

00000

He'd shepherded the kid back into the den, sat him down in a chair, and taken the one across from it. He convinced himself that all this was not a delaying tactic, only that it was probably a good idea for them both to be comfortable, since it might be a long and uncomfortable conversation.

But once they were both sitting, he realized he had no idea how far back he needed to start. It was then that it struck him that he was really almost as in the dark as McCormick.

"It's not my story," he said. "It's yours." He didn't give the younger man a chance to protest before he said, "Tell me who you think you are."

Mark frowned. The silence got pretty thick. He finally said, "I dunno." Then he corrected himself, in some disgust, fresh from an hour with Sylvie. "I don't know."

"We're not gonna stand on ceremony here, kiddo," Hardcastle said firmly. "I'm more interested in content, not style."

McCormick smiled wryly. "Sylvie says I'm lazy."

Hardcastle waved that away. "We'll save the elocution lesson for Thursday. Tell me what you remember from before the hospital."

The slightly less abstract question seemed to help. "I was here," Mark said quickly. "I helped."

"Yeah." Hardcastle grinned. "Sometimes." His smile damped down a little and he hesitated. "Before here, what do you remember?"

Mark stared at him. It seemed for a moment as though there wouldn't be any more answer. Then he finally said, "I was in prison." His voice had gone flat, his expression as well.

"And right before that?" Hardcastle asked, almost gently.

Mark squeezed his eyes shut, as though that part confused him. "Don't remember."

It wasn't clear if that was a statement or an admonition to himself. It seemed evident that not remembering was sometimes a matter of convenience, but what he said next sounded completely convincing.

"I don't know what I did wrong."

Of course not, Hardcastle thought. The kid had never been convinced that he had done anything wrong, merely reclaiming a car that he'd never intended to give away in the first place. He was beginning to think they'd never bridge that difference of opinion, even if the law was entirely on Hardcastle's side. He sighed.

Mark opened his eyes again at that, looking deeply troubled.

"Look, kiddo," the judge began quietly, "that time around you did do something wrong. This time you haven't. You gonna trust me on that?"

"I took the car. You said no."

"Yeah, well, that was wrong, but not illegal. You've always been a little shaky on the details when it comes to that stuff. Nothing new there." He smiled. "We were working on that. Usually you've got it the other way around." He winced, not wanting to admit out loud that there were things that might be illegal, but not wrong.

But Mark didn't seem to understand the faux pas. Hardcastle watched his face clouding over with apparent confusion.

He shook his head once sharply and leaned forward. "Okay, here's what's important. You're here. You're Tonto, and you've been a damn good one. You tried to help Tina Gray, but she wouldn't let you. The bad guys who killed her and tried to kill you are in jail now, and if you tell the police what you remember, it'll help make sure they stay there, them and the guy who was in charge—Joe Beiber."

Mark nodded, still looking a little uncertain.

"But no matter what," Hardcastle continued, "you're staying here."

The change in the kid's expression was slow, but the transformation was impressive. It was as if Hardcastle had answered a question that he hadn't even known was being asked.

But there was still a hint of doubt remaining. "But I'm not Tonto anymore."

"The hell you aren't," Hardcastle said with more conviction than the facts might have warranted, and then, to bolster his assertion, he added, "You held that guy off the other day, long enough for the cavalry to arrive, didn't you?"

Mark nodded mutely.

"And you're gonna testify against Jersey Joe Beiber. That'll be a heckuva good day's work." Hardcastle grinned. "And you got a lot of leaves out of the pool yesterday."

That was it; he'd gotten an answering grin from the other man, who apparently still knew when he was being kidded.

00000

He set things up with Carlton that afternoon, and, after giving it some thought, also called the guy at Internal Affairs, extending him an invitation as well. Hardcastle didn't think anything Mark had remembered would be much help to that investigation, but he knew those guys would want to hear for themselves.

The truth was, any encounter with authority might seem to be an interrogation to McCormick and he didn't know how many of those the kid had in him. It'd be good to get it out of the way all at one time.

He slipped over to the gatehouse later on, while Mark was preoccupied in the kitchen, to fetch a sport coat. He grimaced at the recollection of what had happened to Mark's favorite one. It'd been damaged past salvaging by the shooting and inhumation. He put this second-best jacket and a decent pair of pants in the closet in the guest bedroom. The tie went in the drawer. So far McCormick hadn't seemed to take notice of the gradual appearance of clothes in his otherwise fairly anonymous current quarters.

He also hadn't made any reference to the gatehouse, not even the occasional curious glance. The judge wasn't sure if Mark didn't remember his brief tenure there, or if this was an intentional refusal to acknowledge yet another thing that had changed. Hardcastle was relieved; this was an argument he didn't want to have, not while there were still a dozen good reasons why McCormick wasn't ready to take up residence on his own again.

He went down to the kitchen. They were still mostly having meals there, though more out of habit than necessity. He contemplated mentioning the next morning's appointment but decided against it. He still wasn't sure about McCormick's grasp of future time, and he didn't want to set off another flurry of nerves any sooner than he had to. He thought the kid would do better with a decent night's sleep.

Mark was subdued. It might have been because he'd already figured it out for himself. But he did extend himself to answer the low-key questions Sarah put to him, only occasionally lapsing into monosyllabic and distracted responses.

After dinner, and the cleaning up, he joined the judge in the den. He frowned at the movie for a while, and finally announced, "We've seen this one before." That was most likely true, though it hadn't been in the past couple of weeks. It was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Hardcastle thought he'd probably seen it, personally, upwards of fifteen times.

"It's a good one," he replied firmly.

It was still early on in the film. Jimmy Stewart hadn't hung up his shingle yet. Mark stared at the screen a bit longer and then said, soft but clear, "He gets shot but doesn't remember what happened."

Hardcastle blanched slightly and reached for the remote but McCormick, still staring intently at the black and white images, said, "I like it. Look," the townsfolk were gathered in a makeshift schoolroom, "he's teaching them how to read." There they were, adults and kids both. Hardcastle had always thought of that as just a humorous interlude, a nice bit of counterpoint, the lull before the storm. He turned and looked at Mark, who was staring at the scene as though it was the point of the whole movie.

"I can read," he murmured softly.

Hardcastle wasn't sure if this was a reference to the here and now but Mark seemed more certain, having said it out loud. He broke his gaze away from the screen, now that the movie had moseyed along to the next familiar scene. He seemed to take in the judge's doubt and then lifted his chin and repeated, "I can . . . some."

He leaned over, rummaging on the shelf under the side table. After a moment he found what he'd apparently been searching for. It was one of the Lone Ranger comic books, and not the one Hardcastle had painstakingly read to him on Friday night. He didn't go so far as to ask the judge to open it at random, but he didn't have to search through it for very long before he found what he wanted.

"Here," he said, folding the page over and pointing. "Hi-yo Silver." He frowned down at it. "Lots of 'a's in 'away'. Too many." He shrugged. "And this one is 'Ke-mo-sa-be'. See?" He smiled, serenely confident that he'd aced it.

Hardcastle looked at him for a moment, almost forgetting to smile in his astonishment. Mark looked a little worried, glancing down again as if to double check that last one.

"Yeah," Hardcastle said hastily. "'Kemosabe'—you're right." He got to his feet, the TV forgotten. He went to the desk and retrieved a pad and pencil. He turned and handed them to the younger man. Mark fumbled, putting the magazine down and appearing not certain what to do next.

"Have you tried?" Hardcastle asked.

He shook his head.

"Try an 'M'," the older man coaxed. "That's in Kemosabe." He reached over, took the pencil that McCormick was already holding awkwardly in his left hand, and wrote it out, in block letters: M-A-R-K. He handed the pencil back. "You used to hold a pencil in your other hand—the right one, like me."

Mark switched. It seemed even clumsier over there, but he bit down and put the tip on the paper. His first effort zigzagged unpredictably, and the second one, executed with supreme self-control, almost broke the tip off the pencil.

"You'll get it." Hardcastle said encouragingly. "You just need practice. Reading, too."

00000

They started getting ready plenty early the next morning; there were both shoelaces and a tie to be dealt with. Hardcastle stood behind him for the latter, with a mirror in front of them. He described the movements as he made them.

"You'll do it yourself next time," he said, giving him a quick pat on the shoulder when he was done. Mark nodded. He seemed too nervous to manage even single words, let alone a whole sentence, or maybe he was saving it up for what lay ahead.

He looked otherwise perfectly presentable. Sarah had even persuaded him into getting a trim job yesterday on the patio. Now there was only a moderate amount of unevenness between the area which overlaid the scar, and the rest of it. Hardcastle hadn't tried to convince him to get the whole mop chopped off. Some part of him realized that though he might succeed, it would be taking an unfair advantage.

As for the outfit—jacket and tie and all—Hardcastle had some suspicions about that, too. He thought maybe he was trying to give the kid an edge, to get the people he'd be talking with to give him the benefit of the doubt, to look past the halting speech and sometimes clumsy movements. McCormick didn't object, though he looked vaguely like a well-dressed lamb being led to the slaughter.

The judge heard himself slipping back into the encouraging patter, even before they'd pulled up and parked outside the station. 'You'll do fine' was the gist of it. Mark still wasn't saying much, just the occasional nod to show he really was listening.

Carlton was waiting and had arranged for a conference room, rather than the more sinister confines of an interview room. Hardcastle appreciated the touch. There was a guy named Hirschsprung from the DA's office. Hardcastle had met him before and thought he was a decent prosecutor.

The IA man was the same one who'd talked with him in the hospital. Hardcastle was glad for that—less explaining. He also took some satisfaction from the surprised look on the man's face, as though he'd expected to see some shuffling and drooling. Maybe this wouldn't be such a hard sell.

In fact, this version of McCormick was in some ways an easier sell than the old one. He was quietly polite in the presence of strangers, spoke only when spoken to, and then mostly stuck to yes and no. He seemed to be eyeing the tape recorder with some trepidation, though Hardcastle knew Sylvie used one with him sometimes.

Hardcastle handled the preliminary identifiers at the start, but then carefully sat back. Carlton took over, managing the rest with a minimum of interruptions and redirections. There was something disturbingly stark about McCormick's unadorned version of events that somehow packed more punch than an emotional rendering would have. Even the occasional halting search for words gave the whole thing a thought-out, considered air.

When the story was done, McCormick sat back. He blinked once, then let out a long breath, as if in relief. Carlton seemed thoughtful. The IA guy looked mildly frustrated—there hadn't been a single point that touched directly on Filapiano. It was Hirschsprung, though, who abruptly jumped into the silence.

"And all of what you've told us, Mr. McCormick, is directly from your own recollection?"

Mark blinked again, and then rapidly progressed from a look of confusion to one of worry.

Hardcastle knew exactly what the man was getting at, but this was no time for prompting answers. Fortunately, Carlton stepped in.

"What he wants to know, Mark, is if anyone told you what to say."

Part of the worry evaporated, replaced by a nodding, tentative expression. "Oh . . . yeah."

Carlton's eyes went a little wider and he shot a look at Hardcastle who shook his head and shot back, "Ask him what he means."

Of course Mark was sitting right there, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be accused of coaching the kid right now. Carlton didn't bother to repeat the question, though, just shifted his gaze back to the younger man.

He didn't have to ask again. Mark was smiling helpfully. He spoke directly at the lieutenant. "You told me what to say. You told me to tell you what happened and I did." He waited, a little more worry creeping back into his expression.

Carlton held it back for a moment and then burst out laughing. Hardcastle scratched his head and said, "He's kinda literal sometimes."

Hirschsprung didn't look amused. "'Literal', huh? The defense will have a field day with him."

"No they won't," the judge said quietly. "They won't want him on the stand one minute longer than they have to." He didn't add the rest of what he was thinking, that this was a man who was speaking, as near as such a thing was possible, from the grave.

The assistant DA gave this some thought, then a nod and a grudging, "Maybe you're right." He stood up and slipped his notepad into his briefcase. "We'll keep you apprised of our decision regarding indictments. There is a possibility that we'll let the federal charges take precedent."

He departed, leaving the IA man, frowning and pursing his lips. "Not much there for me," he said dryly.

This time Hardcastle shook his head, trying to salvage something. "Yeah, Tina Gray was too busy trying to wiggle out from under it to say anything about her handler, but it's damn clear she was working for someone, and who else but your organized crime investigator seems like a likely candidate? And I'm sure as hell willing to reconfirm what Filapiano said to me."

But the investigator was on his feet, only saying, "We'll be in touch if there's anything else we need." Then he gathered up his things and left.

Carlton took charge of the tape recorder. "I'll get this typed up." He cast a questioning glance at the judge. "It'll take a day or so. The DA's office will probably kick it around for a while—I hope not with too many people at the meetings." He shook his head. "If they do move to indict Beiber, I think we'll want to talk about your security out at the estate." He smiled at McCormick and added, "I'm glad you're doing better, Mark."

At least there were no more casually hurtful remarks. That was an improvement, Hardcastle supposed. He tried not to show his frustration now that the rest were gone. The whole thing had acquired the feeling of an act of futility, but the very literal guy sitting across the table from him might not get it if he cussed out loud right now. Instead the judge got up, feeling slow and tired.

"Good job, kiddo. Let's go home, okay?"

Mark was on his feet and followed him out. They were barely out the door when he tugged at the knot on his tie, impatiently loosening it. It was a familiar gesture. There was an accompanying glance over his shoulder at the police building. Hardcastle got the impression that he had a pretty clear notion of what had happened.

"Well," he said with a thin smile, "at least it got you out of a date with Rico."

"Hmmph." Mark yanked at the knot again until he had the whole thing undone. Then he pulled it off and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, one tail left hanging free. "No tie for you," he pointed out.

"Yeah," Hardcastle shrugged, "that's why I became a judge. Once you got the robe, the tie's strictly optional."

Mark was walking along, hands in pockets and eyes down. "Parrots," he said.

Hardcastle looked at him sharply. There'd been no change in the man's expression. The judge's eyes narrowed a little in thought. McCormick had seen him with a parrot shirt on under his judicial robes on only one occasion.

"You remember a lot of stuff now, huh?"

Mark shrugged. "Some, yeah." He looked up, but straight ahead, not making eye contact with the older man. "Still a brain-damaged ex-con."

That was obviously a quote. Hardcastle froze in mid-step and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Oh, kiddo, you gotta cut Carlton a little slack on that one."

"'Sokay." Mark shrugged again. "'sall true."

"Not as far as I'm concerned. They'll figure it out, too." He shook his head and started walking again. "The case against Beiber may not be a slam dunk, but it's a pretty good two-handed set shot."

00000

After the roller coaster that had been the preceding week, things settled down for a while. McCormick still made slow but steady progress. The dreaded final plateau had apparently not yet been reached, but there were no more obvious bursts of achievement. Carlton, possibly by way of penance, made daily calls to update them on the case. There wasn't much to say, but it was a nice touch, Hardcastle thought.

The DA was proceeding with the indictments against Beiber's goons—there was some satisfaction in that. Of course they were being stand-up guys. There might not be any honor among thieves, but when it came to known associates of Jersey Joe, there was definitely caution.

The IA guy didn't even call. Hardcastle heard through the grapevine that Filapiano was still benched, but that, too, didn't look like it was going anywhere, a demotion, at most—he would almost certainly lose his position as the chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force.

McCormick had more or less mastered the set shot, though it had a tendency to drift right when he was tired and anything involving moving his feet reduced his accuracy considerably. He skimmed the pool without being asked. He seemed to almost enjoy doing it, which worried Hardcastle more than anything else.

The days became a week, and the week became two. It was mid-December when Sarah made an unexpected suggestion, over a dinner of meatloaf eaten in the kitchen,.

"I think it would be nice, Your Honor, if we had a tree this year."

There was nothing hesitant about it. Sarah was never tentative in her suggestions, though she more than made up for it with the formal protocols of respect.

Hardcastle paused, fork halfway to his mouth. She'd blindsided him, and he wasn't used to it. The truth was, though he never would have thought of it himself, there wasn't any reason why they shouldn't have a tree. He attempted a frown.

"Lot of work," he said consideringly. It wasn't really, and, after all, he was retired, but he felt a certain reputation for curmudgeonliness that he had to uphold.

"It would look nice in your study," Sarah countered, with a brisk, efficient nod. "It's nice to have when company comes over. It's very seasonal."

He felt as if the other shoe had just dropped. He leaned over, picked it up, and inspected it.

"What company?" he asked innocently.

Sarah cocked her head. "Well, it's the holidays. People ought to have visitors, I think. And, after all, there's Rico, and Miss Sylvie."

They were obviously not all the company she was thinking of, but some things were probably best done in stages.

"And Mark can help fetch the things down from the attic." She nodded toward him.

The younger man looked like he was trying to decipher something. Hardcastle realized in a flash that he was picking up on the unspoken argument. Most of the time Sarah's bidding was Hardcastle's, and there was no conflict of interest. Now he looked worried.

"Okay," the judge conceded gracefully, "a tree, not too big. Maybe on the table."

He was pretty sure that Sarah already had the guest list drawn up for the party and that they would all be people who had been supportive of his latest rehabilitation project and kindly disposed toward its subject. Cookies would get made, and the Christmas record albums would be hauled out and dusted off. He and Nancy had had parties like that, though in recent years his gatherings had been on the smaller scale—colleagues with shared interests and no other family to draw them away on the holidays.

He wasn't sure what he would have planned for this Christmas, if their lives hadn't taken such an odd detour two months ago. He'd known from the file, and from practical experience, that self-reliance had been a necessary virtue for McCormick. The kid might have felt right at home letting the day pass with a minimum of acknowledgment, in the company of near-strangers.

00000

The next afternoon he pulled the truck around, and he and Mark headed off to tackle Sarah's list of holiday errands. The younger man seemed bemused by the prospect, though it was entirely possible that the old McCormick would have been equally out of his element.

But by the last stop, which was the tree lot, he seemed more at ease. They got something more respectable than a table-top tree—the final choice was a handsome Douglas fir that topped seven feet. Even Hardcastle had to admit it made the place smell Christmassy when they'd gotten it carried in and set up.

Sarah seemed pleased with the choice, as much as one could ever tell with Sarah. A tight-lipped smile and a single nod was high praise from her.

"Dinner first," she said. "Everything's ready." She made ushering motions back toward the kitchen and then frowned lightly and pulled a scrap of paper from her apron pocket. "There was a call, Your Honor."

"Carlton?"

"No, the man said he was from Internal Affairs."

"Hmmph, finally. What did he say? Lemme guess, they want me to stop slandering one of LA's finest."

"I'm sure it's nothing like that," Sarah sniffed. "But he didn't leave a message, only a number." She handed the paper over.

Hardcastle took it, glancing down. "The office," he said. Then he looked at this watch: 5:45. One of the few good things about being in the Department of Internal Affairs was that it was, for the most part, a nine to five operation. "Have to call him tomorrow," he said with no particular enthusiasm for the task.

00000

McCormick didn't seem to have any grasp of the fundamentals of tree trimming. Whether that was loss of memory or the absence of experience was hard to say. But he took direction well, though with a tendency to get distracted as they sorted through too many boxes of ornaments, lights, and garlands.

It was okay; Hardcastle got distracted, too. Some of the stuff hadn't seen the light of day in many years and almost everything in there had a story. Sarah knew most of them. She mentioned things as she took over the sorting and the handing out. It wasn't all that long before she found one she didn't recognize. She passed it over to the judge.

"From Arkansas," he murmured. "Aunt Zora made it." He smiled. It was a hen's egg with a bit of red satin ribbon at the top. It had a hole carefully chipped out of one side, and the edge decorated with tiny felt holly leaves. "Look," he held it up, "she put a little piece of a Currier and Ives picture inside. She cut it out of a magazine that had color rotogravure." It was a sleigh, being pulled by a horse.

"I was knee high to a grasshopper and she was in high school when she gave that to me. I'd never seen snow." He grinned. "We used to make all our decorations, except for one box of fancy glass ones that belonged to my grandmother. None of those left. We'd try to be careful, but something always got broke." He swiped his finger across his nose. "Didn't matter. The important stuff wasn't on the tree."

He handed it over to McCormick. "Find a nice place for it, but maybe kinda down low, just in case it falls."

Mark seemed briefly paralyzed with indecision, or maybe he was just afraid to move.

"There." Sarah pointed to a branch in front near the bottom that was still undecorated.

Eventually it was hard to find a spot not already filled, and the unhung ornaments were down to a scattering of broken angels and glass balls with the metal bits at the top missing.

"Needs an official plugging in," the judge said. "Sarah, you get the wall switch."

She flipped it off on cue, as the judge dealt with the plug and the outlet. There was a group 'ah', even from the two who'd been expecting it.

They admired it duly. Sarah retired to the kitchen to make hot chocolate. Then, lights back on, Mark and the judge gathered up all the detritus, nested the boxes, and put them in a downstairs closet.

"Just have to take it all down and put it away again after the holiday," Hardcastle huffed, but it didn't sound very put upon, even to himself.

Sarah, returning with the tray, said, in a tone not low enough to be meant solely for Mark's ears, "Never mind that. He thinks it looks nice, too."

And he did. It was only lacking one more touch. He put his mug of cocoa on the desk, went through the corner cabinet until he found the Christmas albums, dusted off the turntable, and put on the Bing Crosby one that had been Nancy's favorite. He hadn't listened to it for years.

They sat and sipped. Sarah soon departed. "A lot to do tomorrow," she'd said with an air of some secrecy. "You ought to get some rest, as well, young man," she added, giving Mark a not-too-stern glance.

Okay, Hardcastle thought, so the kid's in on it, too. Ought to be easy to weasel it out of him. But, no, as plots went, he suspected this one was fairly innocent.

The record ended and the cocoa did its trick. Hardcastle thought even with no plotting to do in the morning, he was ready for bed. But Mark looked like he'd made himself comfortable, pulling his chair around a bit so it faced the still-lit tree.

"Come on, kiddo. Like Sarah says, it's late. You should hit the sack. You've got a couple of weeks to admire your handiwork."

"Not tired yet." McCormick said. "Not a kid," he added in protest, but it was done with a hint of a smile.

Hardcastle frowned slightly. He supposed he could argue that backsliding into half-sentences might be further evidence of fatigue, but Mark was right, and, aside from whatever was afoot between him and Sarah, there wasn't much of an agenda for Saturday morning.

"Okay, well, don't hang around down here all night." The frown returned briefly. "You know how to unplug the tree?"

Mark made a face.

"Well, you don't pull by the cord—always the plug, right?"

"Not all night. Not the cord," McCormick repeated dutifully. "Go to bed."

Hardcastle didn't smile until he was out of the younger man's line of sight.

00000

For one brief moment the crash and the shout wove themselves into his dream—the same old one where he was driving, lost, and late for something very important—but these sounds didn't quite fit and the shout came a second time, muffled at the end but the voice both frightened and familiar.

He was upright a second later, untangling himself from the covers and aware that there were more sounds and they were coming from downstairs—a thud, something fallen, solid, though not as loud as the first crash had been.

McCormick on the stairs was his first coherent thought, but that was revised almost before he had his feet on the ground. He scrabbled in the bedside table drawer, pulling out the .45—not a regular habit to keep it there, only the past two weeks. More noises, but no more shouting.

Dammit. He was in the hallway, down the stairs, quick but trying for an element of surprise. No more thuds, but at least one person breathing heavily and a sense of someone standing just inside the doorway to the den.

"Hold it," he barked, stepping onto the landing and bringing the gun to bear on the shadowy shape standing over another fallen one.

He realized his mistake even before Mark had finished turning. Too late for that, the younger man's eyes were locked on the gun and even in the poor light Hardcastle could see he was pale, and had frozen where he stood.

"Dammit," the judge muttered, lowering the gun, trying to keep one eye on what was obviously a guy on the floor behind McCormick. He didn't look like a threat anymore, though in the darkened room, with only the light from the fallen tree, it was hard to be sure. "You okay?" he managed to get the anger out of his voice, but not the fear.

He reached for the light switch and squinted when he turned it on. Mark still wasn't moving.

"It's okay, kid," Hardcastle said, everything in slow moves and a quiet voice. There was a bruise on the younger man's cheek and a scrape above his left eye. 'Okay' was a stretch, but the guy on the floor looked worse off, by far.

"How'd he get in?" the judge muttered to himself, then whirled around abruptly at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

"Someone forced the back door," Sarah said quietly, and then, as she caught sight of Mark, "Oh, my." She moved past Hardcastle and took the younger man's arm. He flinched, shied, but then his eyes seemed to snap back into focus and he was unfrozen.

Hardcastle heaved a sigh. "Both of you, out of here," he said gruffly. "Sarah, take him back in the kitchen. Call the cops."

Mark let her lead him up the steps. He looked over his shoulder only briefly at it all. Then they were both gone, him leaning on her, shuffling off down the hallway at a speed clearly set by McCormick.

Hardcastle surveyed the damage. There was a gun on the floor, a Smith & Wesson this time. He retrieved that and put it safely out of reach.

He nudged the latest unsuccessful assassin. The guy wasn't dead, but he was still out of it. Charles Russell bronzes had a lot of sharp corners and the one that had been on the desk weighed a good fifteen pounds. The judge stepped over and found a pair of handcuffs in the middle drawer.

He heard the sirens just as he finished up with the cuffs. All good timing; the bad guy apparently had a hard head, or maybe McCormick had swung right-handed. There was moaning, some retching, and then some miserable and embarrassed cussing.

"Hell," the judge muttered, "Beiber must be down to the second string. Stay put," he said a little louder, "or I'll sic the kid on you again."

The guy did as he was told while Hardcastle lumbered to his feet and greeted the cop at the door.

"In here. He broke in through the back door. Gun's over there." He pointed. "Might need an ambulance." He frowned. He wasn't hearing any further sirens so he assumed Sarah hadn't felt the need to request one for McCormick.

One of the two cops he knew by sight; the name was escaping him at—he glanced over at the clock next to the desk—two fifteen in the morning. He wasn't in the mood for lengthy explanations and he thought the condition of the room spoke for itself. He really just wanted the trash hauled somewhere. He'd deal with it in the morning.

Of course it was never that simple. He sighed and said, "Lieutenant Carlton knows what's been going on."

One of the officers turned to him—the other had the suspect up and was frisking him—"We got a call on the radio. He's working on a homicide down on San Vincente. They said he's heading up here."

Hardcastle frowned. Hence the amazing lack of stupid questions and the general air of cooperation—there was a certain amount of official guilt here.

He jerked his chin toward the miscreant. "Don't forget to read him his rights off the card."

The other officer nodded and fished in his pocket. The suspect just stood there, looking glum and at no risk of not understanding his fundamental right to remain silent.

"And get him the hell out of here," the judge said in weary disgust.

He watched them go, gun and gunsel in hand. Even at this hour, he figured it would take a little while for Carlton to tear himself away from whatever crime scene he was attending and drive the fifteen miles. He closed the door and headed back to the kitchen.

The first aid kit was out on the table and Mark was obviously at the tail-end of a clean up job, wincing slightly as Sarah applied the ointment to his cheek. Hardcastle inspected him, and then the professionally jimmied door. That had probably been done with a minimum of noise.

"Did you hear him come in?"

Mark started to shake his head, got a sharp look from Sarah, who wasn't quite done, then spoke, surprisingly calm and even. "No, musta been asleep."

"Well, if you'd gone to bed—"

"We all might have been murdered in our sleep," Sarah interjected firmly.

Hardcastle had broken off, pursing his lips. "I suppose so. He must not have expected to find you in there." He jerked a thumb back toward the study. He eyed the younger man a little more critically. "How's the head?"

"Hurts," Mark admitted.

"Carlton's coming. You think you're up to talking to him?"

A shadow of worry crossed McCormick's face.

Hardcastle shook his head. "You're not in any trouble, kiddo. That was self-defense. And, anyway, the guy's on his feet. Maybe we'll even get something out of this one." He was doubtful about that last part. Beiber had threats worse than prison to hold over his employees.

The front doorbell rang and the judge broke off and went to answer it. He saw the general outline of Carlton through the diamond panes and opened the door to a man with a grim expression.

"You're all right?" the lieutenant said abruptly.

"Yeah, Sarah and me. McCormick tussled with the guy; got some scrapes and bruises."

Carlton had stepped into the hallway and now was looking to the right, obviously taking in the downed Christmas tree and the more general consequences of mayhem.

"Better than where I came from," he said dryly.

"Woulda been worse if the kid hadn't still been up," Hardcastle replied. "Three times in two months. How many chances does Jersey Joe get before someone yanks his ticket?"

"Well . . . that," Carlton exhaled slowly. "Looks like someone did." To the older man's puzzled expression he shrugged and then elaborated. "That's where I was. Someone popped him. Back of the head, execution-style. His driver, too. They were on a side street off San Vincente. Looks like maybe a meet of some sort."

"Old associates getting worried about him dealing with the feds?"

"Probably. He would've been a gold mine if they'd gotten him to cooperate."

"Living by the sword," Hardcastle muttered. Then he took a deep breath and said, "So that's it. Thank God." He waved his hand vaguely toward the den and added, "A parting shot from beyond the grave . . . only he didn't know that was what it was going to be."

Carlton nodded. "Might make it easier to get this guy to talk, knowing Beiber is dead." He cocked his head, looking down the hallway quizzically. "And McCormick, I don't suppose I could—"

Hardcastle shook his head sharply once and said, "On advice of counsel, he's withholding his statement until he's had some sleep. Give the kid a break; it's three in the morning and he took on a Smith & Wesson with a Charles Russell." Hardcastle smiled thinly. "I would've gone with at least a Remington."

"All right," Carlton conceded, "been a long night for everybody. I suppose it can wait until the morning."

Hardcastle saw him out and closed the door behind him. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see McCormick standing there, staring into the den, his expression still worried.

"Sarah said to go to bed," McCormick announced quietly, leaving it open as to who had been included in the order.

"That was the lieutenant. Joe Beiber is dead."

He wasn't sure what sort of response he'd been expecting. Maybe McCormick was just too tired to even process what had been said. There was no outpouring of relief, no perceptible emotion at all. The younger man just nodded and then stepped past him, into the room. He was frowning at the downed tree.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," Hardcastle said quietly, and then, "Come on, let's get it back on its feet." He headed toward it, reaching in among the branches for the trunk. "You get the base. On three, now. One, two—"

At 'three' they righted it, with a jangle of ornaments. Upright, it looked less destroyed than it had originally appeared.

"See," the judge said, trying not to step on anything.

McCormick was stooping to pick something up. He frowned as he held it out—the egg, smashed.

"Sorry," he said again, more woefully.

Hardcastle winced a smile. "Well, guess when I told you to hang it low, I wasn't thinking about the tree falling on it." The smile spread out a little, as if to counter the other man's doleful expression. "It's an egg, McCormick. Didn't I tell ya the important stuff's not on the tree? Besides," he took the forlorn remains and studied them critically, "I bet Aunt Zora would make us another one if I asked her—probably saved the magazine the picture came from, even." He dropped it in the wastebasket.

He turned back to Mark. "Okay, that's it. Bed, now." He shooed toward the hallway and the steps. "I'm just gonna go check the kitchen door."

McCormick shuffled off obediently for once, a certain sign that he was as tired as he looked. Sarah had tidied up the supplies in the kitchen and left for her own room. He studied the door and the non-functional latch for a moment, then turned to get a chair to prop under the knob.

He caught the smallest of silent movements from the corner of his eye—the door opening inward. He had a brief irrational thought that Sarah must've gone outside for some reason. The notion was replaced a split second later by the unexpected but familiar face of Don Filapiano in the now-open edge of the doorway.

Hardcastle started to speak but was silenced by a gesture. The captain had both a gun and a crazed, irrational look to him. The judge rapidly tempered what had been going to be a protest of angry disbelief into something less provoking.

"Kinda off your beat, huh, captain?"

Maybe it hadn't been as conciliatory as he'd hoped. The man standing in his back doorway was wound tight, almost speechless with rage. It took him a moment to even find a curse, which he eventually flung at Hardcastle. This was followed by a low, bitter, "Should have figured after the first time if I wanted it done, I'd have to do it myself. Those scumbags . . . all of 'em. Useless shits." He spat and then gestured again with the gun, stepping further inside and motioning Hardcastle past him toward the door. "Come quiet. If I hafta shoot you here, it's gonna attract some attention. I've got enough bullets for the rest of 'em too."

The judge moved, cooperating, but as slowly as possible, him mind ticking over the new situation even as he was calculating odds.

"Those guys—tonight and two weeks ago—they were yours?"

"Not mine, dammit," Filapiano barked. "Worthless trash. Gave 'em a chance to even things up a little, and neither one of 'em could even get past a witless cripple."

Hardcastle felt anger give way to surprise. "You wanted to kill me? Why?" He heard the disbelief in his own voice. The depth of it surprised him. He wondered where it had come from, the mental block that had prevented him from considering the facts as they now appeared.

"Why the hell not?" the captain snapped back. "It was you or me. You wouldn't let the damn thing go, not ten years ago, not now. All I ever wanted to do was my job. Put the garbage where it belonged."

Hardcastle heard the words, brittle with anger, but was still thinking through his own mental lapse. It was because he was a cop, even though you knew he was a bad cop.

"Guys like you, hah, holier than thou." Filapiano's rant was building by the second to a fever pitch. "How hard did you have to lean on IA, to get my badge permanently? I'm surprised you weren't with 'em when they showed up today to tell me."

They were at the bottom of the steps, at the edge of the illumination from the doorway, and already past the edge of reason. Hardcastle could hear the waves, off and down below, striking the rocks. He wondered how far they'd walk, out into the darkness, before the man would put a bullet in the back of his head.

"You killed Beiber, too, huh?" He didn't even know anymore why it was important to understand this; it just was.

Somehow, Filapiano seemed to have been seized with the same notion. Hardcastle glanced over his shoulder and saw him frozen in place, a grim look on his face.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I always got the job done. Me. The bastard was going to swing a deal with the feds, you know that? Walk away from this with a couple of years in minimum security. He killed Tina Gray."

Hardcastle turned his face away from the man again, fairly certain that the expression on it would only anger him. It seemed pointless; his disgust came out anyway as a muttered, "You set her up to be killed."

"The hell I did," Filapiano hissed. "She handled it the way she wanted." And then, a little louder, frothing with self-righteous indignation, "And how was I any different from you? You did the same thing with that con of yours. I heard about some of the stunts you've pulled with him. At least she was a volunteer. I never held a prison sentence over her head."

Hardcastle took a breath, turning again slowly, trying to think of a reasonable defense, but not sure why this was even more important then the other.

"Don't move." A different voice cut him off before he could speak, an elongated shadow and a backlit form in the doorway to the kitchen.

He only had a fraction of a second—no time to determine if Mark actually had a gun on Filapiano. He swung an elbow up as he turned, catching the man in the ribs and then reaching with his left hand to redirect the gun outward.

The concussion of the gunshot blotted out everything. He wasn't even sure that his right fist had connected until Filapiano started to topple backward, pulling Hardcastle down with him.

There was a small ellipsis of time. There must have been, because he was on his knees, with the police captain's right wrist still locked down. The gun had fallen free from the man's grip. He felt someone shaking his shoulder; looked up to his left and realized it was McCormick, lapsed back into silence.

It wasn't exactly true; the man's lips were moving. It was just that nothing was audible over the roaring sound in his left ear. "Hold on a sec," he said. At least he thought he did; he couldn't hear himself, either. It was possible that he'd shouted it. McCormick looked both relieved and surprised. Sarah appeared in the back doorway.

"I'm okay; call the cops again." This time he was pretty sure he'd shouted and he heard at least a variation in the roaring. He scrabbled for Filapiano's gun. Mark reached down for it, handed it to him, and helped him up.

They stood there, watching the unmoving man on the ground with some wariness until Hardcastle began to hear again—the sound of sirens.

00000

This time they attracted a crowd. The two original beat cops must've still been tied up with booking the first guy, but a rogue police captain on a murder spree brought down several black and whites, Carlton, a slew of higher-ups, and a contingent from IA.

He'd repeated the story several times. He knew he was editing for content, aware that Mark was in the chair off to his right, drooping, but still awake, and occasionally being asked questions as well. All thoughts of putting off statements until the morning had been shelved, but it was enough to say that Filapiano had been angry, had admitted to both the Beiber slayings and the two attacks at Gulls' Way and had fired his weapon.

And now it was morning, finally. He had a dull headache, along with a feeling of cotton in his left ear and a stinging nick at the top of it. The closeness of it hadn't even occurred to him until he'd reached up and touched blood sometime after they'd gotten back into the house.

"Listen," he said, "you've all heard the story as many times as I'm gonna tell it. Repeating it again won't make it any prettier. You take it home and chew on it. Nobody here has had any sleep." He glanced to his right and realized that wasn't exactly true; Mark's chin was down, finally, and his eyes were closed.

Someone from IA started to raise an objection.

"Shh," Hardcastle said firmly. He'd gotten up, grunting a little from the stiffness in his back. He pointed toward the hallway and the front door.

Carlton, who'd stuck around through the whole thing and not asked too many questions, led the exodus but hung back behind the others as they reached the front door. When the rest were outside, he turned back and said, "You gonna be okay, Milt?"

"Yeah," the judge reached up and fingered the divot in his left ear gently. "Close only counts in horseshoes. I'm still talking in complete sentences." He looked over his shoulder and added wearily, "Long night, though. Not sure I'd want to go through another one like that."

He frowned sharply and added, "You just make sure the DA knows Filapiano is a flight risk, and crazy to boot. I don't want to hear he's made bond, at least not till I get a new lock on the back door."

Carlton nodded and then stepped out. The judge latched the front door behind him and turned back to the den, considering whether it wouldn't be better to just let McCormick finish his cat nap where he was.

The decision didn't need to be made. Mark was sitting, eyes open again, watching him.

"You okay?" Hardcastle asked.

Mark nodded and then said, "You?"

"Oh, yeah. Nothing a little iodine can't handle."

"You duck better than me," McCormick murmured, after a moment's consideration.

"This time, yeah," the judge said soberly. "An inch makes a big difference." He stepped back down into the den, hands in his pockets, slouching a little, and not all of that from fatigue.

Mark seemed to be studying him. He didn't say anything more for a moment, but Hardcastle has almost gotten used to the pauses. He no longer felt any need to prod the kid along in a conversation. This time McCormick finally let out a long sigh, after a period of silence that seemed somewhat reflective, and said, "It isn't true."

"What isn't?" the judge asked patiently.

"What he said," Mark replied. "About you being like him. You're not. He didn't care about Tina."

The corollary went unstated, but the judge dropped his chin for a moment, not sure he was willing to accept it.

"I remember." Mark halted for a moment, looking around the room. Then he started up again slowly. "I was sitting right here. You were over there." He pointed to the desk. "I went after Tina and I didn't call and you were scared—"

"Well, not exactly scared," the judge humpfhed. "Worried maybe."

"Might have to find a new Tonto," Mark smiled, "if something happened to me, huh?"

"Well . . . yeah." Hardcastle seized on that explanation with the comfort of familiarity.

McCormick's smile faded some, but wasn't gone entirely. "And I remember . . ." He paused. He frowned. "I didn't know where I was—couldn't move—couldn't talk—didn't know what had happened.

"But I heard someone saying things, talking to me. I didn't understand, but I knew someone was there and that was the important thing.

"You aren't like him," he said with quiet certainty. "Never." He leaned back in his chair like a man who was confident that he'd carried the argument. Then the confidence wavered and he said, "Sorry."

"Huh?"

Mark shrugged in apparent apology. "Not such a hot Tonto anymore. Don't watch your back so good."

Hardcastle was baffled to the point of speechlessness. He finally said, "One thing I was wondering about maybe." He shook his head with a chagrined expression. "The guy two weeks ago, the one I shot, what happened before I finally got out there?"

Mark looked a little fuzzy, as if two weeks ago was a long time. He thought it over for a moment and said, "I put the ball through the hoop and when it came down, it rolled in the bushes, so I went to get it." He frowned harder, as if in concentration. "I saw that guy there, sneaking around back, to the house. I hollered and he came at me and we fought."

"He didn't do that—come after you—till you spotted him and made some noise," Hardcastle said with a sigh. "He was coming here, looking for me, not you. That was it?"

Mark gave that another moment's reflection, as though it might be a trick question since it was so obvious. Then he nodded.

The judge didn't quite know how to phrase the next bit. He finally said it flat out.

"Why the heck didn't you tell me that back then?"

Just as he'd suspected, the younger man looked utterly baffled.

"You just figured I knew?" the judge asked.

Another nod.

"And the part where the bad guys sneak up to the ranch and you just take 'em on—that was just supposed to be business as usual for Tonto, huh?"

"'Cept I'm not so good at it, anymore," Mark muttered.

Hardcastle pinched the bridge of his nose. He took a couple of slow breaths, on account of it took two people to have a misunderstanding so he really couldn't blame it on the kid.

"Okay," he finally said, "I'm only gonna say this once, and I want you to believe it. If there's gonna be a Tonto, you're gonna be him. Got that?"

Mark looked up at him, obviously having understood the qualifier. He was frowning.

"It's just damn dangerous, that's all," the judge said quietly. "I don't care how good you are at it." He shook his head. "An inch one way or the other."

"Always was that way." Mark looked at him, steadily. "I was fast. Took a lot of chances. No good reason for it then, that's all."

It occurred to Hardcastle that the words had become a lot less halting, a lot more intense.

"Yeah," he said grudgingly, "but at least no one's actually trying to kill you out on the racetrack."

McCormick quirked a very knowing smile. "Don't need anybody else when you do it yourself."

00000

Two Weeks Later

Hardcastle wasn't sure Palmdale was far enough off the beaten path. "Maybe the Mojave," he said worriedly.

McCormick snorted, then leaned forward a little impatiently and said, "Come on, Judge, it's New Year's Day. It's morning. We're the only two guys in the whole county who aren't hung over. Just hang a left at Palmdale and find me a nice stretch of two-lane road.

The judge nodded with some trepidation. He didn't point out that the last time he'd come this way it had been a hell-bent-for-leather drive to find McCormick's kidnappers before they killed him.

He wandered off the main drag as directed. The kid was right, with the New Year's sunrise only an hour earlier, there wasn't another car in sight. He pulled over and took the Coyote out of gear. He climbed out slowly and watched Mark execute the same maneuver without any awkwardness. The younger man came round to the driver's side and slipped behind the wheel with an obviously pleased look on his face.

He looked up at Hardcastle, still standing next to the car and said, almost teasingly, "You coming? You don't have to."

Hardcastle scowled. "Sure as hell do." He hustled around to the other side and scooted in, settling himself.

He'd barely gotten seated before he heard McCormick revving the engine like an airplane throttling up to take off, he eased off the gas pedal, then there was only a very quick, "Time this, will ya?" and a "Hold on," and they were off, with his spine buried in the back of the seat and the engine screaming.

"Now," Mark hollered. Hardcastle had barely had time to take his eyes off the watch, and they were slowing again. "How long?"

The judge frowned. "Just shy of five seconds."

He saw Mark make a face.

"How come you pulled up?" Hardcastle asked. "Something wrong?"

The younger man shook his head, easing to a stop.

"How fast were we going?"

"Sixty at the end. I've done it quicker."

"Just sixty?" Hardcastle said in astonishment. "Felt faster." Then he looked puzzled. "I thought you'd wanna open it up."

"Are you kidding?" McCormick said with a grin. "After all we went through, you think I should get us both killed the first time out?"

"Then what the hell was all that 'you don't have to come along' stuff about?"

"Just wanted to know, that's all." Mark's expression diminished to something more enigmatic, but it was still a smile. "I wanted to see if you were still along for the ride."