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starting to pull the same shit, but the system doesn’t work that way.”
    I wanted to tell Buck that the system did not work at all, but thought better of it. He was already cranked.
    Police agencies, local and federal, tend to be linear. If an approach is not in the manual—if it does not pass the test of hard, unrelenting logic—it is not used. There is no role for instinct.
    The courts are worse, true theaters of the absurd, with witnesses rehearsed like actors, and evidence little more than polished props. Televised trials have done better in the Nielsen ratings than the afternoon soaps.
    “Lane isn’t about to compromise your investigation,” I told Semple. “She could be of some help to you. I’m the one who could be the pain in your ass, and I’m not doing much of anything right now.”
    “You switched off the security system,” Buck said. “The afternoon you were hit.”
    “Yes, yes I did. Chuck was bringing up some wood. Lane was due to arrive. I was getting into the shower.”
    “How did the shooter know?”
    I have no phone to tap. Never use the things. No one had been out to the house in two weeks. I use the fax sparingly.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Somebody you locked up?”
    “Some of my patients weren’t exactly enamored of me. So, yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of computer disks at the house with lists of the dangerous and the delirious.”
    He reminded me that it was his case, told me he would be in touch, then stomped out.
    Long after Buck—only somewhat mollified—had gone, I stared at the ceiling. Despite his grouchiness, the chief’s arrival had interrupted a conversation that was headed in a direction I did not want to go.
    My daughter needed to talk about things that two days ago were nicely straightforward in my head—and now were ominously less so.
    EARLY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, LANE AND I HEADED for my place at the lake. Buck didn’t want us anywhere near there, but I was not about to be evicted from my home.
    “You could both end up as targets,” he had said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”
    He was right, of course. I figured that I might have to break out some of my unused arsenal, but I was
not
going into Buck’s version of a witness protection program over at the Lakeside Motel.
    I had trouble getting into Lane’s little car and was starting to hurt from bouncing around on the dirt roads in her aqua sardine can. “Why didn’t you use the Jeep? Or gotten something bigger?” I complained.
    “Wouldn’t make any sense in the city. We’ll be there soon.”
    “Not soon enough,” I said, gripping the overhead handle as if my life depended on it. Which it did. “Buck check the house?”
    “First thing this morning.”
    “We won’t be there for long. Maybe a couple of days.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “My horoscope said there was a trip in my future.”
    “You read that stuff?”
    “Religiously. That and the comics. The rest of the newspaper isn’t worth a damn.”
    “You believe it? The horoscopes?”
    “About as much as I believe the comics. They’re more entertaining than reading about how Washington is finding new and creative ways to fuck over the poor, the disabled, and the elderly.”
    We drove in silence for several minutes, then Lane said, “Pop, we’re not dealing with some asshole running around the lake taking potshots. This guy was gunning for you and we’ve got no idea who the hell he is. What are we gonna do?”
    I looked at Lane’s profile, watched as she brushed her hair back from her face. She had driven to Lake Albert expecting to relax—do some fishing, soak up some sun—and to have a serious talk with her old man about his homicidal behavior. Instead, she had found me in the hospital, the house a crime scene, and no one having any idea what murderous wretch might be wandering the woods. It was no wonder that Lane’s grip on her control had slipped a notch.
    “I need a little time,” I