belt. 'No grenades?'
'Very funny.'
'You need to get out of here.'
'I' m not done.'
'Yes, you are,' Morelli said. 'You're done. I found Helen.'
'Tell me.'
'Not here.' He took my hand and tugged me forward, toward the street.
The light over Eddie's back stoop went on, and the back screen door creaked open. 'Somebody out here?'
Morelli and I froze against the side of the house.
A second door opened. 'What is it?' Leo said. 'What's going on?'
'Somebody's creeping around the house. I heard voices.'
'Betty,' Leo yelled, 'bring the flashlight. Turn on the porch light.'
Morelli gave me a shove. 'Go for your car.'
Keeping to the shadows, I ran around the neighboring duplex, cut back through the driveway and scuttled across yards, heading for Cherry. I scrambled over a four-foot-high chain-link fence, caught my foot on the cross section and sprawled facedown on the grass.
Morelli hoisted me up by my gun belt and set me in motion.
His pickup was directly behind my CRX. We both jumped in our cars and sped away. I didn't stop until I was safely in my own parking lot.
I slid from behind the wheel, locked my car and assumed what I hoped was a casual pose, leaning against the CRX, ignoring the fact that my knees were scraped and I had grass stains the entire length of my body.
Morelli sauntered over and stood back on his heels, hands in his pockets. 'People like you give cops nightmares,' he said.
'What about Helen?'
'Dead.'
My breath caught in my chest. 'That's terrible!'
'She was found in an alley four blocks from the Seven-Eleven. I don't know much except it looks like there was a struggle.'
'How was she killed?'
'Won't know for sure until they do the autopsy, but there were bruises on her neck.'
'Someone choked her to death?'
'That's what it sounds like.' Morelli paused. 'There's something else. And this is not public information. I'm telling you this so you'll be careful. Someone chopped her finger off.'
Nausea rolled through my stomach, and I tried to pull in some oxygen. There was a monster out there . . . someone with a sick, twisted mind. And I'd unleashed him on Helen Badijian by involving her in my case.
'I hate this job,' I said to Morelli. 'I hate the bad people, and the ugly crimes, and the human suffering they cause. And I hate the fear. In the beginning, I was too stupid to be afraid. Now it seems like I'm always afraid. And if all that isn't bad enough, I've killed Helen Badijian.'
'You didn't kill Helen Badijian,' Morelli said. 'You can't hold yourself responsible for that.'
'How do you get through it? How do you go to work every day, dealing with all the bottom feeders?'
'Most people are good. I keep that in front of me so I don't lose perspective. It's like having a basket of peaches. Somewhere in the middle of the basket is a rotten peach. You find it and remove it. And you think to yourself, Well, that's just the way it is with peaches . . . good thing I was around to stop the rot from spreading.'
'What about the fear?'
'Concentrate on doing the job, not on the fear.'
Easy to say, hard to do, I thought. 'I assume you came to Kuntz's house looking for me?'
'I called to give you the news,' Morelli said, 'and you weren't home. I asked myself if you'd be dumb enough to go after Kuntz, and the answer was yes.'
'You think Kuntz killed Helen?'
'Hard to say. He's clean. Has no record. The fact that he knew you were seeing Helen might have no bearing on this at all. There could be someone out there working entirely independently, turning up the same leads you're turning up.'
'Whoever they are, they're ahead of me now. They got to Helen.'
'Helen might not have known much.'
That was possible. Maybe all she had were the matches.
Morelli locked eyes with me. 'You aren't going back after Kuntz, are you?'
'Not tonight.'
