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them in any other way. Fentress’ wife had no idea and in fact vehemently denied that her husband was in any way involved with marijuana. Based on his photograph, nobody in the Russian River area owned up to having seen him before. A couple of Rio Verdi residents admitted to having heard rumors that Mears grew and sold pot to a carefully selected group of local customers. Who those customers were they couldn’t or wouldn’t say.
    All pretty standard stuff, at least on the surface. Ex-con is released from prison, gets a dealer’s name somewhere, goes off to make a buy, there’s trouble over price or amount, and both men end up dead. Still, there were a lot of unanswered questions. The ones Heidegger and I had discussed. And others: Why would Fentress have driven all the way up to the Russian River to make a buy, even if he knew Mears, when you can score pot on just about any street corner in San Francisco? Why had he taken a gun with him? Protection? To rip off Mears? Neither of those answers seemed likely: small-time dealer, relatively small amounts of weed, no large amount of cash on the premises, and Fentress had no record of violent crime other than his drunken assault on the cop. Before that Fentress had worked for a Millbrae-based landscaping firm—from all indications, just another average law-abiding citizen.
    The media played up the mystery angle a bit, especially in Sonoma County, but there wasn’t enough juice for the story to have legs. It was already beginning to fade under the weight of more sensational news by the morning of the third day. Fading in my mind, too, by force of will as much as anything else. Too many crime scenes, too much blood and gore for me to dwell on it as it was.
    I was home that third day, a Friday. One of my nonworking, free to enjoy my semiretirement days. Right. What I was doing when Tamara called was replacing a defective P trap on the kitchen sink. Down on the floor on my already-aching back, wrench in hand and face speckled with scummy drip as I dismantled the old trap and replaced it, Shameless the cat rubbing around me and purring as if he thought I was playing a game for his amusement. I had just finished tightening the upper ring seal on the new trap when my cell phone went off. I would not have answered it if the thing hadn’t been in my shirt pocket and I wasn’t ready for a break to ease the stiffness in my back.
    â€œSorry to bother you,” Tamara said, “but I figured you’d want to know.”
    â€œKnow what?”
    â€œYou busy? You sound busy.”
    â€œI was, but I’m almost done. Know what?”
    â€œA woman came in a few minutes ago asking for you. I told her it was your day off and you’d be in the office on Monday, but she doesn’t want to wait that long. Practically begged me to call you. She’s waiting out in the anteroom now.”
    â€œWhat does she want?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t tell me. Has to be you.”
    â€œWhy? Who is she?”
    â€œDoreen Fentress. Ray Fentress’ widow.”

 
    5
    Doreen Fentress was one of the saddest-looking women I’d ever seen. It was not just the obvious grief she was suffering; it was a deeply ingrained melancholy, a defining part of her like something in her DNA. She was a too-thin dishwater blonde about the same age as her late husband, or maybe a few years older. It was difficult to be sure because of the lines in a narrow face that gave the impression of drooping, as if it were pale-colored wax instead of flesh that formed her features. One long look at her and another into liquidy brown eyes like those of an abandoned puppy and I was pretty sure of two things: I was not going to like what she wanted of me, yet I might be disposed to accommodate her anyway if I could.
    She didn’t seem to mind the fact that it had taken me more than an hour to get cleaned up and drive down to South Park from Diamond Heights. She hadn’t