IT WAS ABOUT TWO HOURS on Highway 80 any way you cut it to Sacramento, and we kept the Explorer at a steady seventy-five over the Bay Bridge. An hour and fifty minutes later we pulled up in front of a slightly run-down fifties-style ranch. We needed a win here, needed it badly.

The house was large but neglected, a slope of faded lawn and a fenced-in lot in back. Danko's father was a doctor, I recalled. Thirty years ago, this might've been one of the nicest houses on the block.

I took off my sunglasses and knocked on the front door. It took a while for someone to answer, and I was feeling impatient, to say the least.

Finally an old man opened and peered out at us. I could see his nose and sharp, pointed chin - a resemblance to the picture of Billy Danko in the Chronicle magazine.

"You the idiots who called on the phone?" He stood there, regarding us warily. "Of course you are."

"I'm Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer," I said. "And this is Homi-cide Inspector Warren Jacobi. Do you mind if we come in?"

"I mind," he said, but he swung the screen door open any-way. "I've got nothing to say to the police if it concerns my son, other than accepting their full apology for his murder."

He led us back through musty, paint-chipped halls into a small den. It didn't seem that anyone else was living with him.

"We were hoping to ask you just a few questions regard-ing your son," Jacobi said.

"Ask." Danko sank himself into a patchwork couch. "Bet-ter time to ask questions was thirty years ago. William was a good boy, a great boy. We raised him to think for himself, and he did, made choices of conscience - the right ones, it was proven out later. Losing that boy cost me everything I had. My wife..." He nodded toward a black-and-white portrait of a middle-aged woman. "Everything."

"We're sorry for what happened." I sat on the edge of a badly stained armchair. "No one's here to cause you more distress. I'm sure you're familiar with what's be............