Eleventh Hour

was nothing, just the echo of his own footsteps on the cold stones.
    What did that damned priest have to look happy about? He was dead, for God’s sake.
    He walked quickly out of St. Bartholomew’s Church, paused a moment to breathe in the clean midnight air, and craned his neck to look up at the brilliant star-studded sky. A very nice night, just like it was supposed to be. Not much of a moon, but that was all right. He would sleep very well tonight. He saw a drunk leaning against a skinny oak tree set in a small dirt plot in the middle of the sidewalk, just across the street, his chin resting on his chest—not the way it was supposed to be, but who cared? The guy hadn’t heard a thing.
    There would be nothing but questions with no answers for now, since the cops wouldn’t have a clue. The priest had made him do things differently, and that was too bad. But it was all close enough.
    But the look on the priest’s face, he didn’t like to think about that, at least not now.
    He whistled as he walked beneath the streetlight on Fillmore, then another block to where he’d parked his car, squeezed it between two small spaces, really. This was a residential area and there was little parking space. But that, too, was just the way it was supposed to be. It was San Francisco, after all.
    One more stop to make. He hoped she’d be home, and not working.

TWO
    WASHINGTON, D.C.
    Special Agent Dane Carver said to his unit chief, Dillon Savich, “I’ve got a problem, Savich. I’ve got to go home. My brother died last night.”
    It was early, only seven-thirty on a very cold Monday morning, two weeks into the new year. Savich rose slowly from his chair, his eyes on Dane’s face. Dane looked bad—pale as a sheet, his eyes shadowed so deeply he looked like he’d been on the losing end of a fight. There was pain radiating from his eyes, and shock. “What happened, Dane?”
    “My brother—” For a moment Dane couldn’t speak, and just stood in the open doorway. He felt in his gut that if he actually said the word aloud, it would make it real and true and so unbearable he’d just fold up and die. He swallowed, wishing it were last night again, before four o’clock in the morning, before he’d gotten the call from Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD.
    “It’s all right,” Savich said, walking to him, gently taking his arm. “Come in, Dane. That’s right. Let’s close the door.”
    Dane shoved the door shut with his foot, turned back to Savich, and said, his voice steady and remote, “He was murdered. My brother was murdered.”
    Savich was shaken. Losing a brother to a natural death was bad enough, but this? Savich said, “I’m very sorry about this. I know you and your brother were close. I want you to sit down, Dane.”
    Dane shook his head, but Savich just led him to the chair, pushed it back, and gently shoved him down. He held himself as rigid as the chair back, looking straight ahead, out the window that looked out at the Justice Building.
    Savich said, “Your brother was a priest?”
    “Yes, he is—was. You know, I’ve got to go see to things, Savich.”
    Dillon Savich, chief of the Criminal Apprehension Unit at FBI headquarters, was sitting on the edge of his desk, close to Dane. He leaned forward, squeezed Dane’s shoulder, and said, “Yes, I know. This is a terrible thing, Dane. Of course you have to go take care of it. You’ll have paid leave, no problem. He was your twin, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes, an identical twin. He was my mirror image. But inside, as different as we were from each other, we were still so much alike.”
    Savich couldn’t imagine the pain he must be feeling, losing a brother, a twin. Dane had been in the unit for five months now, transferred in from the Seattle field office, by his request, and strongly recommended by Jimmy Maitland, Savich’s boss, who told Savich that he’d had his eye on Dane Carver for a while. A good man, he’d said, very smart, hard-nosed, tough, sometimes a hot dog, which wasn’t good, but reliable as they come. If Dane Carver gave his word on something, you could consider it done.
    His birthday, Savich knew, was December 26, two hours after midnight. He’d gotten lots of silly Christmas/birthday presents at the office party on the twenty-third. He’d just turned thirty-three.
    Savich said, “Do the local cops know what went down? No, back up a moment, I don’t even know where your brother lived.”
    “In San Francisco. I got two calls,