“Haw-aw-aw-aw-aw-nky-tonk women,” Kate brayed.

They set the dishwasher going and went to bed early that night.

And were awakened when Jon came in at two in the morning, singing quietly to himself a half-familiar tune, the chorus of which came into Kate’s mind as she was drifting off again: “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.” She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

IN THE DARK OF the night, while Kate had slept the sleep of the just and the overworked and Jon found joy in a pair of brown arms, the Ladies struck again. Kate sat and read all about it in the morning Chronicle. This time their attack involved the torching of the shiny, new, phallic-shaped car of a man who had been seen slapping his wife around in the park across the street. She had gone across to fetch their son from an afternoon soccer game, become involved in a conversation with the other mothers, and not been at her place in the kitchen when he arrived home from work. He went looking for her and literally dragged her home. The note the fire department found duct-taped to the fence near the burnt-out wreck read:

YOUTOUCHHER,WE TORCHYOU.

the Ladies

The reporter did not think much of the theory that the second verb was a typographical error. Kate folded the paper and threw it on the floor, thinking that it was time she just stopped reading anything that came before the comics.

“I went to see Roz yesterday,” she told Lee, taking a bagel from the toaster and reaching for the jar of Maj’s blackberry jam. “Just in case I wasn’t busy enough, she called me and thought I’d like to look into another suspicious death.”

“The Indian girl?”

“You know about her?” Kate asked in surprise.

“Maj called to warn me that Roz was setting off on another Campaign. I figured she’d drag you into it.”

“I don’t know how draggable I am at the moment. These last two cases are going to eat up a lot of hours.”

“Kate, if Roz wants you to do this, you know you’re going to end up doing it. Easier to admit it now and get on with it.”

“I thought the woman was supposed to be writing her doctoral thesis,” Kate complained. “Why isn’t she doing that, or painting the baby’s room, or starting a bookmobile service for the homeless, or something?”

“She’s probably doing all of them,” Lee said, adding darkly, “I used to have that kind of energy.”

“You never had that kind of energy. You just never slept.”

“That’s true. Not like now.”

“God no, you do nothing but snooze. Must be up to, what—six hours a day? Lazy pig.”

Lee stuck out a purple, crumb-covered tongue, a childish gesture that pleased Kate inordinately because there had been so few of them in the two years since Kate’s job had cost Lee so dearly. The two women sat across the table from each other grinning like a pair of schoolgirls, and Kate’s heart swelled in joy and pride and the precious nature of what they had and she picked up Lee’s hand and kissed the palm.

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes, my Kate?”

“Back in…” No, not Back in the had time, although that was how Kate thought of it. “Last year, you said you wanted to have a baby. I… overreacted, because I didn’t think you were ready. Physically. I mean, you were barely walking. And more than that, because I wasn’t ready. I just want to say that if you still feel the same way, and if the doctors think you won’t, I don’t know, blow any fuses, then I’m willing to go into it with you.”

Lee’s head was drooped so far that Kate couldn’t see her face, so she had no warning when Lee’s shoulders began to heave silently. Kate’s hand tightened on Lee’s in distress.

“Lee, love, what is it? Don’t cry, I only meant—”

Lee’s head shot back and her free hand slapped down hard on the table, and Kate realized belatedly that her lover was laughing uncontrollably.

“What?” she demanded. “What?”

Lee shook her head and spluttered, “ ‘Blow any fuses’? Oh God, Kate, the technical language. The subtle grasp of medical terminology you’ve picked up—”

Both relieved and affronted, Kate retrieved her hand and her dignity.

“I can’t seem to do anything right,” she said plaintively, which made Lee laugh even harder. So Kate took herself back to the relatively simple business of tracking down killers.

Chapter 10

BEFORE SHE BUCKLED DOWN to her own caseload, however, Kate dutifully dug up the detective in charge of investigating Pramilla Mehta’s death. Tommy Boyle had caught the call, so Kate left a message to have him phone her, and went back to her report.

Or she tried to go back to her report. She became increasingly aware of a small, dark woman, little more than a child, standing quietly in the corner of her vision, waiting with the self-effacing patience that had characterized her whole short life, and may have led to her death. Try as Kate might, she could not ignore the girl, and when Boyle came into the Homicide room with a question on his face, she abandoned the paperwork with even more gratitude than such an interruption usually earned.

“Want a cup of coffee?” she offered, already on her feet.

“Sure,” he said.

Kate had known Boyle for a couple of years, but not well, and they happened not to have actually worked a case together. He was a red-haired, green-eyed man with Hispanic features and brown skin, who had impressed Kate as a person interested mainly in getting on with his work; when in a group, he tended to be seen with his nose in a sheaf of case notes or a book on forensics. She liked him, but didn’t know him well enough to know how to approach him on what could be taken as a touchy business, intruding on another’s investigation. Kate spooned coffee grounds into the machine and tried to put together a question that wouldn’t sound either nuts or pushy, and in the end gave it up.

“It’s about that burn victim you caught Tuesday night. Pramilla Mehta.”

“What about her?”

“You haven’t written it off as an accident, have you?”

“Of course not. Haven’t even got the path report back yet.” He waited for her to tell him why she was interested.

“You know the name Rosalyn Hall?”

“Rosalyn—you mean Roz Hall, that minister? Oh jeez. Is she involved in this?”

“I’m afraid so. She thinks the husband did his wife.”

“The husband’s a true flake,” he offered in agreement.

“Thing is, Roz is convinced that this is an American incident of bride burning, which they get a lot of in India.”

“People in India burn their brides?” he asked dubiously. “I heard of widows throwing themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, but I always thought that was old women. And isn’t it illegal there now? There was something about it in a novel I once read,” he added, as if to explain away his knowledge.

“I think that’s a different thing. This is young brides. They have this complicated system in India with the bride’s family giving a dowry to the groom’s family—not just money, but stuff like motorbikes and kitchen appliances—and if the groom’s family is greedy and demands more, and doesn’t get it, they sometimes get pissed and kill the bride. Especially if there are also no babies.”

“That sounds insane.”

“I know. And Roz may be off her rocker and be seeing demons in the dark, but on the off chance she’s on to something, I told her I’d make sure it’s treated like a possible homicide, not just a domestic accident.”

Boyle narrowed his incongruous emerald eyes at her. “It sounds like she’s a friend of yours.”

“Longtime acquaintance,” she admitted, repressing a twinge of guilt at her disloyalty. “You probably know how she works. She’s a politician, she goes to someone on the inside to get things done. So she came to me, and to get her off my back I told her I’d make sure it was being done right. One thing the department does not need is Roz Hall raising a stink about due process.”

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