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listening to that bond form, and making sure that when the transference linked us, it pulled the hostage taker into me, not the other way around. The intimacy between the negotiator and the hostage taker can overwhelm everything we’ve learned. It can turn on you, and draw you in too deep. Negotiators have trusted too much, and they’ve died. It would be Murakawa’s job to see that I stayed out of the line of fire.
    “You ready, Smith?” Inspector Doyle asked.
    “Ready, sir.”
    “Smith—”
    I had the feeling he’d been about to pat me on the butt and tell me the whole game was riding on my throwing arm. And that he’d thought better of the pat. “Get him to talk, Smith. We don’t want half the team going in there blind.”
    I started down the creek crevice, hanging on to a live oak branch, bracing my feet against the rocks. I wanted to move silently. I’d clipped the loudspeaker to my belt. But I couldn’t keep it from banging sharply into my thigh and loudly against the rock. The flashlight next to it rattled. I sounded like the entire offensive line rushing down the cement hall to the dressing room. Murakawa, behind me, sounded like the rest of the team. I just hoped the perp wasn’t near enough to hear.
    All around the canyon the Tac Team would be inching their way down, eyeing the dark terrain around them for signs that the perp had been there, trying to discern drag marks of the victim.
    The stream gurgled anemically. In the distance I could hear a rubbing noise. The perp? Or a deer? There was supposed to be a herd of deer in the canyon, fat, happy deer who moved from garden to garden devouring rosebuds. Deer, and raccoons, possums, and skunks. And snakes. Critters a city cop shouldn’t have to deal with.
    Above, the cars still had to be idling in first gear waiting to move to the upper level of the Arlington, the radios still spraying calls, brakes still screeching. But I couldn’t hear any of it. It was as if I were in a swimming pool and someone had pulled the canvas cover over it.
    Murakawa eased down onto the rock behind him. I started forward, pushing a branch out of the way, holding it till I could feel Murakawa take it. In the dark I could make out a narrow path, but I couldn’t see more than a yard on either side. And that nursing home light that might have been a landmark wasn’t visible at all.
    The cold nipped at my face, but under the black coverall I was sweating. The ground was mushy. Down here the pungent aromas of bay and eucalyptus leaves were muffled by the smell of mud. I stopped, listening. There was no sound but indistinguishable rustling. Wind in the leaves?
    The Tac Team would stop halfway down the hill. They didn’t want to spook the perp. They couldn’t take him out before they knew the status of the hostage.
    I moved forward slowly, making a visual sweep of the area on either side with every few steps. The fog was sinking into the canyon like sludge. If the perp wasn’t moving, he could be a yard away and I wouldn’t spot him. But he wouldn’t be on this entry path, not unless he’d abandoned the hostage, and one of the things I’d learned was that hostage takers understand the value of their hostages; they know that without them they’re dead.
    I almost fell over the lean-to—the kids’ clubhouse. Lean-to was too grand a word for this rotting door propped on cement bricks. One side backed in toward the canyon wall. I crouched down under the door and looked around at a stash of soda cans, a clutter of magazines—I couldn’t read the print but I could make out the naked female bodies. Some things never changed. Stuffed in the back was a blanket. The stench of wet wool battled the smell of mold. Even skunks wouldn’t have bedded down on it. And just beyond the far edge of the roof was a small three-legged pot, probably about a quart. I pointed it out to Murakawa. “A caldron. Maybe we’ve got a community center here, horny adolescents Tuesdays, witches