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physician with the friendly smile and the loaded shotgun.

What had Maia said? Tres Navarre, impeccable judge of character.

"We gotta get out of here," I said.

"Claro. You got any ideas?"

I told him about my door. "You want to try it?"

A long pause. "Yeah, but wait a few hours. Let the party die down."

His voice sounded heavy.

It made me realize how tired I was. The long day was catching up with me - too much adrenaline, too much worry. As dangerous as it was to wait, if I tried to pick a fight in my present condition, I'd be committing suicide.

"You're right," I said. "A few hours sleep."

I lay back on Franklin White's bed and stared at the ceiling.

I told my body to wake me up at 3:00 A.M. Then we would make our escape. With luck, Ana would be conscious tomorrow. She'd get us all off the hook.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach as I fell asleep. Maybe I knew, even then, how incredibly wrong things would go.

Chapter 15

ETCH WAS UP WHEN THE CHURCH BELLS STARTED RINGING.

After thirty years in the neighborhood, he could anticipate St. John's sunrise service. Every Sunday, he rose before the bells and dressed in coat and tie, though he hadn't been to mass since Lucia died.

It wasn't that Etch had stopped believing in God. He just figured the two of them had nothing more to say to each other.

Still, the bells comforted him, the way watching family picnics comforted him when he was riding in a police car. He liked knowing some people could have a normal life.

He chose a brown wool Italian suit, teal shirt, mauve tie, leather loafers. The temperature outside had dropped below freezing. He could tell from the knock in the water pipes, the color of the sky out his window. A Blue Norther had rolled in - a snap of Arctic air that had no business in Texas.

He turned and stared at his empty living room.

He was down to a coffee table and sofa. No television. No knickknacks. No photos.

Over the last year, anticipating retirement, he had slowly pared his possessions down to nothing. Every week, another box went down the street to the church's donation bin, until his entire life seemed to have dissolved.

Travel had been the idea, originally. Etch told his colleagues he was buying an RV, striking out to see the United States. Except for his college years, and a few business trips here and there to pick up fugitives, Etch had never left San Antonio. He deserved to travel.

The problem was Etch never bought the RV.

He kept just minimizing his possessions without making preparations for anything new. He felt like he was erasing himself, a little at a time, and something about it felt satisfying.

He loaded his nine-millimeter, attached the silencer.

Not many people in San Antonio owned silencers, but Etch had a collection. He enjoyed shooting in the early morning.

The parishioners didn't want their prayers interrupted. The neighbors didn't want their dreams punctuated by small arms fire. Etch tried to be sensitive to their wishes.

He loaded a fresh clip. He went out the back door.

Etch's house sat on a stretch of Basse Road that hadn't changed much in the last three decades. To the north, the city grew like a cancer, eating up more rural land every year, but here on the West Side, nobody much cared about progress, or strip malls, or adding a Starbucks to every block.

The boulevard was lined with weeds and cactus and scraggly live oaks. The houses on either side were shotgun shacks on huge lots. Etch's own was a two-bedroom clapboard, painted the color of provolone cheese. It wasn't really so small, but it looked that way surrounded by fields of spear grass.

In the spring, the back acre would be flooded with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, but now, in the winter, there was nothing but yellow grass.

Etch's target range was an old olive Frigidaire, sitting in the field between his house and the church. At least once a week, he opened the refrigerator and loaded it with cans, bottles, boxes, whatever he had left in the pantry. Etch still did grocery shopping, though somehow he never got around to eating much. He liked to shoot the contents of the refrigerator, then hose out the remains.

He worked his first clip. He took out three cans of sardines, blew up a two-liter soda bottle, plugged a few shots into the door and watched the recoil whap it back and forth