I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO to the hospital to be examined, but I wouldn't do it. Not yet. Joe Molinari and I went with the red-haired girl back to the Hall. We interrogated Annette Breiling for several hours, and then this revolutionary, this terrorist, this person who could shoot the vice president in cold blood, she cracked.

Annette Breiling told us everything we needed to know, and more, about the plot at the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

It was four in the morning when we arrived in an upscale neighborhood in Kensington, a couple of towns over from Berkeley. There were at least half a dozen patrol cars there and everybody was heavily armed. The street was in the hills and had a view of the San Pablo Reservoir. Very pretty, sur-prisingly posh. It didn't look as if anything bad could happen here.

"He lives well," said Molinari, but that was it for small talk. "Let's you and I do the honors."

The front door was opened by the Lance Hart Professor of Romance Languages, Roger Lemouz. He had on a terry-cloth robe, and his curly black hair was in disarray. His eyes were glassy and red, and I wondered if he had been drinking that night, if Lemouz had been celebrating.

"Madam Inspector," he said in a throaty whisper, "you're beginning to wear out your welcome. It's four A.M. This is my home."

I didn't bother to exchange unpleasantries with Lemouz, and neither did Molinari. "You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder," he said, then pushed his way inside.

Lemouz's wife and two children appeared, entering the living room behind him, which was unfortunate. The boy was no more than twelve, the girl even younger. Molinari and I holstered our guns.

"Charles Danko is dead," I told Lemouz. "A young woman you know named Annette Breiling has implicated you in the murder of Jill Bernhardt, all of the murders, Lemouz. She told us that you were the one who set up Stephen Hardaway's cell. You delivered Julia Marr and Robert Green into the cell. And you controlled Charles ............