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could operate from a phone booth, from a moving car. So we fought fire with fire.”
    “I bet that was your idea,” I said.
    “I helped,” she said, sipping her martini, then replacing it on the bedside table. “I infiltrated their network. I mean, I found them out there, in the Visa system, and I followed them home, so to speak. Not only was I able to get into their computers, but I set up a dummy network around them. Every time they logged on, wherever they were, I could hack their computers. Pretty soon, they thought they were stealing real credit card numbers, but they were really in this dummy network.” The big smile, the amazing mouth. “Yeah, I guess I did good. And I got lucky—they got careless, just like street scumbags get careless.”
    “So how’d you get them?”
    “You won’t even believe it, Dave. Once we got into their computers, we could get into every file. So it wasn’t hard to figure out the real identities. One guy, we got him when he logged onto AOL to check his personal e-mail. So two days ago, police in three countries carried out simultaneous raids. A dozen were arrested. I felt like sending a virus that would pop up on their screens just before the cops kicked the door in, and it would say, ‘You’re busted!’ I didn’t, sad to say. Anyway, all that came to a head while you were in Portland, love. And I never had to leave the study in there”—she nodded toward the other end of the house—“except to sit through excruciating meetings with the FBI.”
    “Did you meet a guy named Pham?”
    “Eric Pham? No, he’s the SAC.” Special agent in charge. “I just dealt with his minions. Minions in search of Meester Beeg.” She had a nice laugh. I told her about my encounter with Pham, the homeless man in the swimming pool, and the long-missing FBI badge.
    “I think El Jefe is a prick for making you work the minute you get back, especially after what you’ve been through. He lost his father last year. He ought to have a little more emotional intelligence.”
    It was true. Judge Peralta’s death had barely registered on him, on the outside at least. It was just the way he was.
    “I always loved the judge,” Lindsey said. “So courtly, so old school. You’d think Mike would be more of a sensitive guy considering his wife is such a big time psychologist.”
    “I knew them when he was just a deputy, and she was just a scared housewife.”
    “You are an old guy, Dave.” She tickled me, and I nearly upset what was left of my drink.
    “Yeah, kid, I remember you on my very first case back at the sheriff’s office. Seems like only yesterday. I said, ‘Who is this babe in the miniskirt and the nose stud.’”
    “I saved your ass, Dave.”
    “True enough.”
    She snuggled against me. “You saved me back,” she said.
    “Anyway,” Lindsey said conspiratorially. “Dr. Sharon living in San Francisco, what does that mean for the sheriff’s marriage?”
    I shrugged. “They have their own thing, and it’s survived for thirty years or so. I think her radio syndicator wanted her in San Francisco. And the daughters live in the Bay Area. I still can’t imagine Mike and Sharon as grandparents. But Sharon says she’s just commuting there during the week.” I listened to the wind, stroked her soft hair. “Do you regret we didn’t go to San Francisco?”
    She said, “Sometimes.” Before the dot-com bubble blew up, Lindsey had what seemed like a stack of offers from companies in the Bay Area.
    “I would have gone with you,” I said.
    “Damn right you would have,” she said. “But I wanted to do something that mattered. It’s never been about money. And this is your home, Dave. I know how much that means to you.”
    “Sometimes I wish it weren’t,” I said, thinking about the premature hundred-degree day on April first. Suddenly, I lost the high that Lindsey and sex and Bombay Sapphire had conjured in me.
    Dan Milton disdained Phoenix as a barbarous place, all