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that it ain’t only Zrbny you got to worry about.”
    I shoved Kirkland into the alley.
    THE TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES SWUNG OPEN the doors for a man who was as wide as the doorway. He carried a straight staff and brushed snow from his brown wool cassock. I could not decide which of Robin Hood’s friends he more resembled, Friar Tuck or Little John. His hair was thin on top, but flowed below his shoulders. His beard stopped immediately above a large wooden cross that hung on a length of rawhide.
    Bolton warmly greeted the man. “It’s been a long time, Neville,” he said.
    The gentleman I had pegged for Sherwood Forest was Bolton’s former detective, Neville Waycross.
    “I thought you’d want to avoid this,” Bolton said.
    “May slapped me with a subpoena. It wasn’t necessary. I would have been here anyway.”
    Waycross turned and introduced himself. “You’re Lucas Frank,” he said. “I remember you from TV years ago. Ray talked a lot about you. He used to complain that when you nailed down a profile, you didn’t tell him whether the perp would be wearing boxers or briefs.”
    “I figured Ray could do that when he booked the bastard,” I said.
    Waycross smiled. His dark, deep-set eyes added to the intensity he radiated. He was a walking power plant, ready to infuse with his energy whatever he touched.
    “Ray mentioned that you were involved with the church,” I said.
    “Not the church. The Brotherhood of the Earth in Christ. Our mission is on the Roxbury streets. Our monastery is a storefront on Humboldt Avenue.”
    “I’m familiar with the area. I lived there when I was a kid, in a tenement on Wakullah Street.”
    “Then you were on intimate terms with some of the neighborhood’s early problems. Now we’ve got drugs and guns, the absence of adequate work, food, and clothing, a welfare system that’s a farce. Roxbury has its own secessionist group. They want to split from Boston and establish an independent city government, and there’s considerable merit in their arguments. When the Brothers organized twenty years ago, they fed breakfasts to schoolkids, soup and sandwiches to the homeless. Now we dodge bullets like everyone else on the streets.”
    At that instant the doors exploded open, slamming one deputy to the floor. The second deputy never had a chance to draw his weapon; slugs from a Mac-10 spun him around and down.
    Waycross dove for the floor. I groped for a gun Idid not have. Bullets smashed into the wall, ripping away two antique judges and chunks of plaster.
    Bolton’s nine was in his hand. “On the floor, Lucas,” he screamed.
    As I dropped to the floor, Devaine’s chambers’ door opened. The judge and a deputy emerged and were hit immediately. I did not see May Langston.
    Bolton fired rapidly, followed by four shotgun blasts, then silence.
    “Who’s hit?” Bolton yelled.
    “The judge and a deputy at the front,” I said.
    “Okay here,” Waycross called.
    “One officer dead, one injured at the rear,” another voice snapped. “The shooter’s dead.”
    “Outside?” Bolton asked.
    “Steps are clear.”
    “Lucas, check the two at the front,” Bolton said.
    I pushed myself to my feet and glanced at the doors. Two shotgun-wielding tactical officers had ended the assault. No more than thirty seconds had passed since the courthouse erupted with gunfire. In that time, the presumed sanctity of the halls of justice had been violated, officers of the court lay dead or dying, and the rule of law had become a sick joke.
    “Give me your boot gun,” I told Bolton.
    He handed me his .38 from an ankle holster. I walked to the front, watching the doors on both sides of the bench. May Langston sat at theprosecution table, what remained of her head resting on a legal pad.
    “Langston’s dead,” I called.
    I kneeled beside the deputy. “Where are you hit?”
    “My thigh. It stings like a bastard, but I’m okay. I think the judge is dead.”
    I felt Devaine’s neck for a pulse.