him to examine the tank. Many of them sounded sympathetic at first, but when they heard it was Albert Moore they were being asked to reverse, they backed off. Apparently Moore had a reputation as a street fighter, and few were willing to risk his anger. A couple of jurists didn’t seem to mind that challenge, but when Lassiter mentioned that it was Benny Fleck who’d requested the sanction, they all suddenly found new reasons to refuse his request.
Lassiter had learned many valuable lessons during his years on the force. He had studied the Reid Technique to master the three components of interrogation. He had taught himself how to maneuver his way through an uncooperative bureaucracy. He had even figured out how to get the mechanics at the SBPD to make sure the air conditioner in his unmarked sedan would keep working through the worst of the Santa Barbara summer. But the most important thing he’d learned was that if a murder isn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the odds of the case ever being closed plummeted to almost nothing.
The man in the tank had been dead for thirty-six of those forty-eight hours and Lassiter was no closer to finding his killer. The clock was ticking and its hands were dripping blood.
When Lassiter left the station in his unmarked sedan-the air conditioner blowing a stream of cool into his face-he told himself he was just going for a drive to clear his head. When he pulled up in the parking lot down the hill from the Fortress of Magic, he pretended there were some rooms he might not have checked out thoroughly the night of the drowning.
But now that he was standing outside the closed showroom, the blade trembling over the paper seal, there was no way he could hide from what he had really intended all along. He was going to violate the principles that had driven him his entire life. He was going to flout that court order, slash through the seal, and find out what trick the missing magician had used to make his escape.
Lassiter pressed the tip of the blade into the crack between door and jamb, just above the top edge of the seal. One swift move and it would be done-the same motion as shaking someone’s hand, that was all. And if the hand he was shaking belonged to chaos, anarchy, and the destruction of the rule of law, he was willing to do it as long as that would keep a killer from walking free.
Lassiter’s mind sent an order through his neural pathways down to his arm. Time to move. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly, he quoted to himself. Lassiter couldn’t remember where that phrase came from, but he was pretty sure that whoever said it had some unpleasant job to complete and felt much better when he’d gotten it all over with. His mind repeated its order. But his unconscious seemed to be blocking it. His hand trembled, but no more. Irritated at himself, the detective placed his other hand on top of the one holding the knife and pressed down.
The knife hand pressed back up.
This was unacceptable. Lassiter had made the decision to break the commandments he lived by for the greater good. How dare one of his body parts rebel like this? Did his hand really believe it was better than the rest of him? He pressed down harder on the knife hand. The paper at the top of the seal began to crinkle down. Another second and it would be done.
“Carlton, stop!”
Lassiter cursed under his breath. It was bad enough his arm was trying to reverse his decision. Now his conscience was speaking to him like Jiminy Cricket. Well, he’d spent his entire life following the orders of his extremely controlling conscience, and this time it could get out of his way-even if it did speak in a melodious, oddly familiar female voice.
“Yo, Lassie, give it up!”
Lassiter froze. He was willing to accept the concept that his conscience would actually speak to him in words. But there was no way his own personal conscience, a resident of his own personal brain, would ever speak in that voice. He turned to see that Detective Juliet O’Hara had come up behind him, and she was followed by Shawn and Gus. For some reason Gus was carrying a dinged-up scuba tank.
“You have to leave this area, Detective,” Lassiter said with all the sternness he could muster. “For the sake of your career, you must not be a part of this.”
“That’s very generous, Carlton-”
“Generous?” Lassiter interrupted. “I am about to violate every precept to which we swore loyalty when we donned the proud blue of the Santa Barbara Police Department. When this case is over, I will have to turn myself over to Internal Affairs. They will strip me of my badge, my gun, and my honor, and I will spend the rest of my unhappy life working as a security guard at malls and multiplexes.”
“That could be pretty sweet,” Shawn said. “Just think, if we bought a ticket to one movie, you could let us sneak in to all the others.”
“Only on weekdays, though,” Gus said. “We don’t want to get you in trouble if there are sell-outs.”
Lassiter was so used to Shawn’s and Gus’ callous disregard for anyone but themselves that their obvious pleasure at the tragic consequences of his noble self-sacrifice didn’t surprise him. But he was shocked to his core when he noticed his partner stifling a smile.
“Is this funny to you?” Lassiter said. “I am one knife stroke away from ending my career to further justice.”
“It’s okay, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “We’ve come to help you.”
“You can’t. This is my task alone. Like the poor Hob-bit carrying that ring through Mordor to the Crack of Doom, I must bear my burden and do-”
Shawn reached past Lassiter, and the detective saw a quick glint of metal. Shawn stepped back. Lassiter looked at the door. To his horror, there was a deep slash all the way through the seal.
“Oops,” Shawn said.
“If you think that’s going to make any difference, it won’t,” Lassiter said. “If I use this act of vandalism to further my investigation, I am still guilty. In fact, unless I arrest these two and see them prosecuted for their crime, I’m as guilty as they are.”
As he said the words, Lassiter had to admit he felt a slight temptation to do just that-to say to hell with the murder and use this defacement of the entire judicial system to put these two delinquents in jail once and for all. But he knew that just as he was willing to sacrifice his own career to catch a killer, he’d have to be willing to sacrifice this pleasure.
“No one’s guilty of anything, Carlton,” O’Hara said soothingly.
“There was a court order-”
“Which we have followed to the letter,” O’Hara said.
“And not just any letter,” Shawn added. “This letter.”
Shawn turned to Gus, who reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a much-folded piece of paper, and slapped it into Shawn’s outstretched hand like an OR nurse handing the surgeon a scalpel. Shawn unfolded the paper and held it up for Lassiter to see.
“The letter states that we have been employed by Benny Fleck to find his missing client,” Shawn said. “That makes us his duly authorized agents.”
“And the court order written by the Honorable Albert Moore of the California Superior Court for Santa Barbara County prohibits you from examining the device without the express permission of P’tol P’kah or his duly authorized agents,” Gus said.
“And we’re even better than that, because we’re duly authorized agents of a duly authorized agent,” Shawn said. “That makes us dually duly authorized. You don’t get more authorized than that. Or more duly.”
Lassiter stared at them suspiciously, then turned to O’Hara. “Is this true?”
“All the papers seem to be in order,” O’Hara said. “And we witnessed Fleck hiring these two ourselves.”
She was right. They did. It all seemed to make sense. Even if there was a court challenge later, Lassiter knew he’d be on firm ground. He could see justice done without sentencing himself to a life of inhaling popcorn fumes. It was everything he’d hoped for.
“So let’s go,” Shawn said. “That tank isn’t going to investigate itself.”
Shawn reached past Lassiter and pushed the door open. Lassiter took one step toward the threshold, then stopped. This was too good to be true.
“Wait one minute,” Lassiter said. “Why are you doing this? What’s the catch?”
“Don’t be so suspicious, Lassie,” Shawn said. “All we want is a little interagency cooperation. And Jules said
