Angels Fall

trickles away," Brody decided, "just like cash."
    "Dark side of the moon," Reece murmured. "It wants to click in my head with something. Did I see the  necklace when he strangled her? I can't remember, not quite. But there's something."
    "In fiction land we could go to the cops with all this and they'd get a warrant, get the name. Unfortunately, in this world there's the pesky problem of probable cause."
    "There's positive cause," Reece argued. "Deena's dead, and whoever bought her that necklace is the killer."
    "No proof she's dead. Or even missing. Just gone and considerate enough to turn in the keys to her apartment. Even it we got lucky and nailed down who bought the necklace, it's still no proof. No absolute proof he gave it to her. Certainly none that he killed her." Logically, he was right, but Reece was growing weary of logic. "'Then what the hell are we doing, Brody?"
    "Gathering information. And we have more today than we did yesterday."
    "It's not enough. For weeks, months, after the murders in Boston, the investigators would tell me they were looking, they were compiling information. But there was never an arrest, never a trial, never a conviction. I had to walk away. I had to. But how many times can you walk away?"
    "No one's walking, Reece. We'll figure out a way to get the name from the jeweler. Or we'll find somebody else who knows something else. But no one's walking."
    She said nothing for the next mile. "I could have used you in Boston. I could've used that bullheadedness."
    "It's called tenacity."
    "A rose by any other name." She laid a hand over his. "Listen, if your infatuation trickles out, let me down easy, will you?"
    "Sure. No problem."
    It made her smile as they zoomed across the blooming flats toward Angel's Fist.

    HIS HAND SHOOK as he closed his cell phone. How had they gotten so close? An inch away from him. How could he have covered his trail so carefully, and still they followed it to Deena?
    They knew her name.
    He'd done everything—  everything —that could be done to protect himself, to shield that part of himself. A temporary madness, that's all Deena had been. And when he'd regained his senses, he'd done his best to act honorably.
    When honor hadn't worked, he'd done what was necessary.
    All a man could do was what was necessary.

    He would do so now. For the good of the whole. To preserve what deserved preserving. They weren't part or the Fist. Strangers really, changing what should remain constant. They'd have to be removed, as Deena had been. He had to restore the balance.

    THE SATURDAY CROWD kept Reece busy while she left what she knew, didn't know, wanted to know simmering in the back of her mind.
    She imagined, even now. Brody was picking his way through the Internet, gathering information on Deena Black. But knowing where and when she was born, where she went to school, if she had a criminal record wouldn't point the way to her killer. Not in Reece's mind. Met him at the bar. most likely, she decided. He picked her up, or she picked him. Either way. they started an affair. Or a business arrangement.
    A man didn't want his friends and neighbors to know he was paying a woman to have sex with him—it was embarrassing.
    First, he traveled out of his own sphere to frequent topless bars and engage hookers. Basic preservation of reputation.
    But he'd gotten involved, maybe even believed himself in love for the short term. Enough so that he bought her expensive gifts. Made promises? Reece wondered.
    Older men often fell for younger, inappropriate women. She tried to imagine Doc Wallace or Mac Drnbber with a woman like Deena Black. Reece wondered what it said about her, about them, that it was all too easy to do so.
    Just as someone young, still impressionable like Denny, might fall— or someone used to getting his own way with women, like Lo.
    Maybe they should bypass Sheriff Mardson—as for all she knew, really, he could be a stone killer—and dump all they knew or suspected in the lap of the Jackson police.
    It couldn't be any less productive than doing nothing. And she couldn't keep living with these people, cooking for them and wondering if one was a killer.
    "Talking to yourself again."
    She jumped a little, then glanced over at Linda-gail. "Probably."
    "Well, when you finish your conversation and it's time for your break, can you take a look at something?"
    "Sure, what?"
    "This dress I ordered online. It just came in. I ran and picked it up at the post office on my