Shadowfires

gifts when there was no occasion requiring them.
    Life was not only unfair but sometimes decidedly cruel. That was
not a new thought to Reese. It was not even inspired by
Janet's untimely and brutal death-or by the fact that Agnes's warm,
loving, generous nature was trapped forever inside a body that most
men, too focused on appearances, could never love. As a policeman,
frequently confronted by the worst in humankind, he had learned a
long time ago that cruelty was the way of the world-and that the only
defense against it was the love of one's family and a few close friends.
    His closest friend, Julio Verdad, arrived as Reese was pouring a
third cup of black coffee. Reese got another cup from the cabinet and
filled it for Julio, and they sat at the kitchen table.
    Julio looked as if he'd had little sleep, and in fact Reese was probably the only person capable of detecting the subtle signs of overwork in the lieutenant. As usual, Julio was well dressed: smartly tailored dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, perfectly knotted maroon-and-blue tie with gold chain, maroon pocket handkerchief, and oxblood Bally loafers. He was as neat and precise and alert as always, but vague sooty smudges were visible under his eyes, and his soft voice was surely if immeasurably softer than usual.
    “Up all night?” Reese asked.
    “I slept.”
    “How long? An hour or two?
That's what I thought. You worry me,” Reese said. “You'll wear
yourself down to bone someday.”
    “This is a special case.”
    “They're all special cases to you.”
    “I feel a special obligation to the victim, Ernestina.”
    “This is the thousandth victim you've felt a special obligation toward,” Reese noted.
    Julio shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Sharp wasn't bluffing.”
    “About what?”
    “About pulling this out of our hands. The names of the victims-
Ernestina Hernandez and Rebecca Klienstad-are still in the files, but only the names. Plus a memorandum indicating that federal
authorities requested the case be remanded to their jurisdiction for
'reasons of national security.' This morning, when I pushed Folbeck
about letting you and me assist the feds, he came down hard. Said,
'Holy fuckin' Christ, Julio, stay out of it. That's an order.' His
very words.”
    Folbeck was chief of detectives, a devout Mormon who-could hold
his own with the most foulmouthed men in the department but who never took the
Lord's name in vain. That was where he drew the line. In spite of his vivid and frequent use of four-letter words, Nicholas Folbeck was capable of angrily lecturing any detective heard to mutter a blasphemy. In fact, he'd
once told Reese, “Hagerstrom, please don't say 'goddamn' or 'holy
Christ' or anything like that in my presence ever again. I purely hate that shit, and I won't
fuckin' tolerate it.” If Nick Folbeck's warning to Julio had included
blasphemy as well as mere trash talk, the pressure on the department
to stay out of this case had come from higher authorities than Anson
Sharp.
    Reese said, “What about the file on the body-snatching case, Eric
Leben's corpse?”
    “Same thing,” Julio said. “Removed from our jurisdiction.”
    Business talk had taken Reese's mind off last night's bloody
dreams of Janet, and his appetite had returned a little. He got
another doughnut from the breadbox. He offered one to Julio, but
Julio declined. Reese said, “What else have you been up to?”
    “For one thing… I went to the library when it opened and read
everything I could find on Dr. Eric Leben.”
    “Rich, a scientific genius, a business genius, ruthless, cold, too
stupid to know he had a great wife-we already know about him.”
    “He was also obsessed,” Julio said.
    “I guess geniuses usually are, with one thing or another.”
    “What obsessed him was immortality.”
    Reese frowned. “Say what?”
    “As a graduate student, and in the years immediately following his
acquisition of a doctorate, when he was one of the brightest young
geneticists doing recombinant DNA research anywhere in the world, he
wrote articles for a lot of journals and published research papers
dealing with various aspects of the extension of the human life span.
A flood of articles; the man is driven.”
    “Was driven. Remember that garbage truck,” Reese said.
    “Even the driest, most technical of those pieces have a… well,
a fire in them, a passion that grips you,” Julio said. He
pulled a sheet of paper from one of his inside jacket pockets,
unfolded it. “This is a