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On reading this report, my employer noted that I didn't mention Foster's motive. To tell the truth, we didn't investigate this at the time. I think we were just glad the case was over, and we were both uncomfortable with how it had been resolved, but of course there was a trial and it all came out there.

Ron had wanted to know from the first night, and she had been rather miffed that we didn't have all the answers at out fingertips. Not that she cared why Foster had committed the crime, but she did seem to think that solving a crime without knowing the motive was sloppy workmanship.

We did do a thorough investigation before the trial, and it became clear almost immediately that there had been a disagreement between Foster and Barney about a drug deal they had been working on together. This led us into a whole different and much more complex investigation, which I will chronicle in its own right at some point.

Barney had wanted to sell the drugs to their friends in U-town. His main concerns had been breaking even and having a good time. Foster had needed cash, however, and had wanted to sell the drugs over in the city, where there was much more profit to be made, but also the chance of arrest.

However, as I said, that's another story.

The End

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We ended up getting takeout food and bringing it back to our room to eat. This was partly because I thought Ron had been through enough without also being subjected to a birthday celebration that she didn't want, but mostly it was because I knew she was wondering why this argument (disagreement) that her mother and I were going to have had to be done later in the evening, when she wouldn't be there.

And she was right; there was no reason to exclude her. We couldn't talk about those things in a public place, where we might be overheard, but that was a different question.

So, we sat around our small bedroom and ate Chinese food out of containers and talked about what had happened, and Jan said later that she had learned quite a lot from that talk. It had been a process, over quite a long time, for her to accept the fact that she couldn't think her way out of every situation, that some problems require more long-term solutions, if they can be solved at all.

But what Jan did not say that night was that the biggest part of learning that lesson was Ron herself. Our daughter had been outside of normal life, living on the street with no friends. Then she had discovered U-town, and had found a place to live and a few friends, and then we had adopted her (or she had adopted us), and all of this had been a process of bringing her back from the wild, as it were. That was a slow and complex process, and it was still going on.

And what I realized as we talked (though I didn't say it until Jan and I were in bed together and Ron was gone to sleep in her own room with her friends) was that this must be what Pete must be doing with starling. Slowly and carefully bringing her back to human society. That was pretty clearly demonstrated in her quick transition from torturing a man into a confession to protecting Ron from seeing something that she might find upsetting.

Jan commented that this was a loose analogy at best, trying to compare our 13-year old daughter, a former street urchin, with a mass murderer who was probably in her mid-forties. But then I reminded her about Ron's abrupt and unprovoked attack on her own sister and her subsequent indifference to her sister's violent murder, and she conceded that there might be more of a parallel there than she had thought.

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We walked for a block or so, the three of us, and I noticed that Ron had her hands jammed deep in her jacket pockets and her shoulders were hunched. It wasn't that cold, so I knew she was wrestling with something.

She looked up at Jan. "Mom?" she asked.

Jan looked startled. Her thoughts had been far away. "Yes, dear?" she asked.

Ron looked around for a moment, then looked up again. "What's wrong?" she asked.

We had to conceal our surprise. It was the first time she had ever asked either of us about anything to do with our feelings.

"Oh, it's..." Jan said, and then her voice trailed off. She put her arm around Ron's shoulders and squeezed as we walked. "I was about to say, 'Oh, it's nothing,' but that would have been far from accurate.

"To tell the truth, Ron, I'm rehearsing an argument that your father and I are going to have later this evening."

"A disagreement," I amended.

She nodded. "A disagreement."

"About what?" Ron asked.

"About the fact that a murderer is now in custody because he was... you would have to say he was tortured into confessing. And that is wrong. Always."

Ron thought about this, then she looked at me for my side of the disagreement.

"You're not complicit if your life is under immediate threat," I said. "What was done was wrong, sickening to watch, and morally indefensible, but we didn't have any options. We were not in control of that situation."

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I had known, of course, that my employer hadn't arrived alone. Not with the report of a gunshot and the possible involvement of starling. She had told everybody else to wait outside while she went in and investigated.

As the medics tended to Foster, I made it clear to them that he was in custody. Lenore and Mac had pulled beer cans from the paper bag, and she was lighting a cigarette for him. They looked shell shocked. Somerset started to say a few things, but his heart wasn't in it and nobody paid any attention, so he stopped. Pete picked up his bass guitar and put it into its case, then he and starling moved to leave.

A second after Pete and starling went out, I head a familiar voice yell, "Fuck!"

Imagining the worst, I hurried to the door, where I saw starling squatting, her hand on Ron's shoulder, saying, "–Marshall's daughter, aren't you? I've seen you around town. I'm Katherine. I don't think you should go in there right now. Look, here's your father."

Ron rushed over to me and hugged me, and Pete and starling walked away. I blinked in the bright sunshine, breathing in the cool autumn air. I felt like I'd been in that dark, dank space for days. Looking around, I saw Christy and a reporter from the U-town newspaper. He was about to go inside, but I motioned him over and made it clear that the article should say that starling had assisted Jan Sleet in apprehending a murderer. Which was true, after all.

I looked at Christy, who had a definite bruise under one eye.

"Lucky punch," she said.

I pointed at Ron and raised an eyebrow.

Christy nodded. "When we heard the shot, she really wanted to go in. I almost had to tie her up."

I squatted to address Ron, putting my hand on her shoulder. "Do you remember the phrase 'in loco parentis'?"

She frowned and then shrugged. "Yeah."

"When your mother and I aren't around, you need to listen to Christy, the same way you would listen to us."

She made a face. Christy had stepped inside, probably mostly to give us some privacy, so I leaned forward and whispered, "You don't have to like her, that's up to you. But you need to do what she says."

She was starting to look upset, so I took her in my arms again so she could bury her face in my jacket and hide her tears. "Would you?" she asked, her voice muffled.

I knew what she meant.

"I would have wanted to go in, just as much as you did, but if anybody had burst into that room at the wrong moment, we might all be dead now. Christy was right."

"Shit."

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Somebody said, "Shit!"

Lenore dropped a lit match and quickly stamped it out.

Mac swallowed as if he was about to be sick.

Somerset stood up and stepped forward, but I pushed him in the center of his chest and he sat down again. starling's guns were holstered and all of her attention seemed to be on Foster, but given how quickly she had just moved I wasn't going to take any chances.

My employer looked uncertain. She had been shocked at first. We had witnessed violence before, some far worse than this, but never anything this quick and unexpected. I had the idea that starling's facial expression hadn't even changed. She wasn't angry at Foster, though he had apparently tried to frame her for murder. Something in what my employer had been saying had told her that Foster was guilty, and this was the most efficient way of getting him to confess.

I'm sparing you a detailed description of Foster's yells, curses, screams, and unsuccessful attempts to pull the knife out of the wall. I have no idea how long this went on, probably nowhere near as long as it seemed, and starling never moved or changed expression until Foster finally yelled his admission that he had shot Barney through the window while starling was in the bathroom, knowing she would be blamed.

She moved forward, planted her foot on the wall for leverage, and pulled the knife free.

Foster crumpled to the floor, clutching his injured hand and crying. starling picked up a dirty towel from the floor and started wiping off the knife. I moved to the door, opened it, and yelled, "Medic!"

Two aides rushed in with their kits.

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The search was very thorough, and starling did not react. Her gaze remained steadily on my face, and I was sure that the slightest wrong move on my part would have resulted in a bullet through my head.

"No ammunition," my employer said. "No other guns. Now, if you're thinking that she reloaded the revolver after shooting it the first time, that would require me to believe that Katherine came here with one loose bullet in her pocket for that purpose. Since I am not an imbecile, I find that hard to believe. So, this was a setup, the whole thing.

"Someone wanted to kill Barney, I have no idea why, and that person wanted a scapegoat. Someone who would be blamed, someone who would not get the benefit of the doubt, someone who people would just assume was guilty. So, what can we say about this plan? That it depended entirely on Katherine's presence here today. Now, Pete, I believe you are not a part of this band. Is that true?"

He nodded, lighting a cigarette. "I am not. I just came to jam."

"So, even Pete's participation was not a certain thing. Katherine, when Pete gets together with other musicians to play, do you always accompany him?"

She shook her head. "Not always. It depends if I feel like it, and sometimes they don't want me there."

"So, the question is who got Pete involved, and who wanted you–"

That was as far as she got. Katherine turned, grabbed Foster's hand, slammed it against the wall. She pulled a large knife from somewhere inside her coat and drove it through his hand, pinning him to the wall.

Then, as he screamed, she stepped back, folded her arms, and looked at him.

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We re-entered the other room, and things appeared to be pretty much the same except that Somerset and Mac looked more tired and disgruntled than they had before, and someone new had been added. He was a bit better dressed than the musicians, with dark curly hair and a nearly-trimmed beard.

"I'm Foster," he said, rising as we came in, "I manage the band. I just..." His voice trailed off as it became obvious that my employer was paying no attention to him. Instead, she went to the center of the room and stood in front of starling, who had apparently not moved since I'd left the room.

"Please let Marshall check your guns," my employer said.

"No."

"Katherine, I am trying to figure out a way to get through this without anybody dying. And I think that's what you want, too."

I went up to starling and said, "Point your gun at my head." She did, the muzzle about an inch from my forehead. "Now hand me the other gun and let me check it."

She nodded. Never taking her eyes off of me, she pulled out the automatic from her shoulder holster, reversed it, and handed it to me. I pulled the clip and checked. "Full." I announced as I handed it back to her. "Now let me see the revolver."

Somerset chose that moment to twitch again, so she swung the automatic around and fired at his foot. He jumped, but I think she missed him, or at least just grazed his sneaker, because he stayed silent.

She pointed the automatic at my head and handed me the revolver. I spun the cylinder. "One shot fired," I said. I handed it back to her. "Do you carry any other guns?" I asked.

She nodded, swinging the revolver back into line and holstering the automatic. "Two," she said. "Pete, would you get them, please?"

Pete came over and reached into the back of her waistband and pulled out another gun, and then squatted and pulled up her jeans, taking a very small gun from an ankle holster. I checked them also, and handed them back to Pete. "Fully loaded," I said.

"I need to search you," my employer said to starling.

She frowned, the revolver still pointed at my forehead. "Why?" she asked.

"To make sure you're not carrying any other guns, or any ammunition."

"What difference does it make if she has bullets?" Somerset demanded. "He got killed with–"

"You don't get your questions answered," my employer snapped at him. "You're an imbecile and your questions are puerile. Marshall, if he tries to say anything else, please stop him." She turned to starling. "May I search you? You may continue to hold your gun on my husband."

starling nodded. "Okay."

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