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office of the biggest pain-in-the-ass private eye in town is box-office magic. I had just hit the street when I spotted Jason Figueroa leaping from the door of a press van. It said a lot that he had beaten print reporters, particularly the undergraduate from the Daily Californian who probably lived in a dorm a couple of blocks away. I moved on before Figueroa spotted me.
    In an hour a medical examiner would have eye-balled Hemming and given Inspector Doyle a rough estimate of the time of death. Ott’s stuffy office, in a building in which the heat had been turned off for the summer in 1954, provided as controlled conditions you’re likely to find outside. The medical examiner would have no trouble giving us the murderer’s window of opportunity. And when he did, I needed to know if Ott had still been here in Berkeley to look through it. Or if he’d clambered into that dark sedan before then.
    I needed Charles Edward Kidd to be a lot more specific than he’d been before. I headed to Ott’s car again; perhaps Kidd figured that having found him there once, I would cross it off my list. But, alas, he wasn’t that naive. I called in to the university police with a description of Kidd. The campus, with its hillocks and knolls, stream banks and undersides of bridges, its outside stairwells and protected spaces between shrubs and building walls, provided a myriad of lurking spots. I drove on around People’s Park, the focus of decades of demonstrations. It was empty now; the nocturnal curfew prevailed, and it would take a more savvy lurker than Kidd to hide in there. I tried the familiar spots, behind shops, apartments, churches. No Kidd.
    I tried to see through his eyes. I think better in proximity to liquid. The shower’s best, but on the go, a latte’s a close second. I got the latte from the Med and stood outside, with the wind fingering my short hair, the fog slipping its icy mitten around my neck. Kidd was bright; he prided himself on originality. He was brash, impatient; he’d make enemies. No wonder he wasn’t in the normal hiding places. He’d already chosen one unusual sleeping spot tonight, found because of his insider knowledge of Ott. What else, where else—
    I gulped another mouthful of coffee, put a lid on the latte, swung back into the car, and beelined up Telegraph to the street below Ott’s building. If you can’t drive with a full cup of hot coffee, you’ve got no business being a cop. I pulled up, took another swallow, and called the dispatcher.
    “This is Adam sixteen. My ten-twenty’s Channing below Tele. I’m headed into the alley behind the Tele buildings.”
    “Ten-four.”
    “Ten-four.”
    In the thirty yards between Telegraph and the alley I spotted two guys scrunched up in dim doorways; one who might have been eighteen looked, in sleep, as if he should have a teddy bear in the curl of his arm. By the alley a man sat against the building, a damp paper cup ever ready for spare change, his foot moving slowly to the beat of that different drummer who still tapped out the drug beat of decades gone by.
    A pedestrian would have dismissed the alley altogether, assuming it was no more than a path to the garbage cans. I would have overlooked it myself if I hadn’t chased more than one suspect down its narrow path.
    I pulled out my flashlight, a hefty metal cylinder fourteen inches long. At least one officer had defended himself with one—and got suspended for a month without pay for improper use of equipment.
    I recalled Leonard’s assessment of the alley: “Getting through here’s like crawling through someone’s intestines.” Had he been talking sudden sharp turns or garbage? If I’d asked, the answer would have been: Both. I aimed my light down and watched for rats. And tried to close my nose against the stink of urine. Twenty feet in I passed two nameless, numberless metal doors—business back doors, sealed tightly against break-ins. The scrapes on them indicated there had been some