Artie had never been anyone's favorite. Even though his mother had named him after King Arthur, she still loved Lindsey and Elaine the best. He knew it. After all, Elaine was the only girl. That he could understand. But Lindsey! He thought he was better than everybody else, except for Saint Elaine! And he was such a pain in the butt. When their mother died, Artie thought that would be an end to the godawful music his mother had insisted on playing on the battered old radio that she treasured. But Lindsey kept playing that same station, with nothing but music from old dead guys with strange German and Italian names like Beethoven and Verdi. And, of course, dear Elaine liked it too! He couldn't get anywhere with either of them.

Arthur Rex (Latin for King) MacDonald had been the fourth child and third son of Mary Margaret and Michael MacDonald. After Lindsey and Elaine Lily, named after the girl who died for love of Sir Lancelot, had come Richard Leon, named after Richard the Lion Hearted. Yeah, sure! Dickie was a whiny little sneak. He remembered the time Dickie had spied on Lindsey to find out where he had hidden the money from his paper route. Lindsey actually pulled him over his knee and whaled the tar out of him, and Lindsey was only three years older! Dad had given both of them a whipping. Well, let Mom love Lindsey and Elaine the best. Dad loved him. He knew that Dad blamed Lindsey for everything that had happened to him. As if Lin could have helped being born! That was Dad's and Mom's fault. But as long as Dad took good care of Artie, who was he to complain?

Things weren't too bad until Dad lost his job at the taxi company for being drunk and wrecking his cab. The passenger sued the company, so naturally Dad was fired. That was just about the time Mom came down with pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. They had to sell their house and move into a tiny apartment. But they were evicted from that for non-payment of rent and had to move into the shack without any running water. Then Mom got pregnant with the twins. Artie didn't understand why they had to have two more babies. Weren't four kids enough? He was all of four years old when Lancelot & Guinevere (such ridiculous names) were born. Mom couldn't do anything around the house anymore, so Elaine took over the cooking. Lindsey made everybody else clean. Finally he went to Grandfather Lindsey for help. Grandfather appreciated Lindsey's guts and gave them enough money to move into another small apartment. But it was too late for Mom. She died the two days after the twins.

Artie and Dickie were good at stealing cigarettes, so Dad took them everywhere with him. Lindsey refused to have anything to do with it. All he cared about was taking care of Elaine, his paper route, and baseball. Artie had to admit that Lin was really good, although it was a sissy sport compared to football, which he wanted to play. When Artie was 10, he got a job as a numbers runner and a courier for one of the local gangs. He made some good money, which he shared with Dad. Now Lin and Elaine didn't have Mom to give them preferential treatment. Dad made Elaine take care of the house and do all of the cooking. Lin didn't care for that or for Elaine having to share a bedroom with her three brothers, so he begged Grandpa Lindsey to take them in. And he did! So no more of Lin's bossing and, thank goodness, no more of his horrible classical music.

Eventually the inevitable happened. Dickie was caught stealing a car and sent to juvenile hall. Artie joined the Cougars, the gang he had been working for. As part of his initiation, he had to steal the money for his jacket, so he robbed a gas station. He was smart enough and lucky enough not to get caught. Dad drifted into and out of jobs and drank a lot. Meanwhile Lin was the hotshot shortstop at Holy Cross High; he and his pal Tony Antonelli, the second baseman, had taken their team to three state finals and two state championships. Elaine was a cheerleader and Tony's girl. Artie had to go to school and listen to all the teachers say, "Why can't you be more like your brother Lindsey? He was such a great student and such a nice boy." Artie skipped school whenever he felt like it and was finally expelled. He had to go to public school. When he was 13, Elaine and Tony got married; Tony had signed a minor league contract with the Dodgers. And of course Mr. Perfect Lindsey was offered a contract too, but he turned it down to go to college on a scholarship.

Artie was really good at football and made South LA's team as a freshman. But he was almost cut from the team for his grades. He decided that he'd better work a little, because he wanted to play. As it turned out, he was smarter than he thought. With just a little effort he could have made the Honor Roll, but between the football team and the Cougars, he didn't want to spend the effort.

In his junior year, Artie was blindsided as he threw a pass and suffered a serious concussion. The doctor refused to let him play again, and the coach sided with him. So, with no more football to look forward to, Artie dropped out of school. He got a job to keep himself in cigarettes and to pay the rent. The Cougars became his life. He refused to do drugs because he wasn't stupid. He had seen what happened to too many of the guys who did crack or heroin. And he stayed away from the robberies. Dickie had gone back into juvenile hall for another stupid crime. Now that was a dumb kid! Evidently Lin got all the brains. Elaine had just made it through high school and didn't want anything more than to be married to Tony and have lots of babies.

As it turned out, one baby was one too many for Elaine. She died giving birth to a stillborn daughter. Then Tony took the easy way out. Maybe not. Maybe he really didn't try to drive into the tree, but everyone was sure he just couldn't stand to live without Elaine.

Then one beautiful California day Artie's life turned around. He was walking down the street with Chris, a cute little kid about 7 or 8 who was a runner for the gang. Artie had taken a liking for him and had even had a little Cougars jacket made for him. Suddenly a bunch of Barracudas came roaring around a corner in a car. Spotting Chris and Artie in their jackets, they started shooting. Artie dropped to the ground, trying to shield Chris with his body. But one of the bullets got Chris right through the back of his head. When Detective Kate Lockley arrived at the scene, Artie was holding little Chris in his arms and sobbing. There were enough people around who had seen what happened that she soon found out that he wasn't the killer but instead had tried to save the boy. She took Artie in to the station and arranged to put him in protective custody, as she knew he could testify against the killers. When the medical examiner arrived, he had to convince Artie to let go of the little boy's body. Artie couldn't stop crying. The poor little kid didn't deserve to die. Even though he hadn't had much of a life, being the abused son of a crackhead hooker, he still should have had a future.

"Look, Detective, I've been thinking. I want out. I don't want this to happen to any more kids. Can I become a cop?"

"You haven't graduated from high school, Artie. If you could finish, I think you could make it into the Academy. You'd probably do well in undercover work. How old are you, 18? You look 15. Think about it. If you really want to do it, you'd have to go back to school or get your GED." Artie didn't have much to do except think while he was in protective custody. He kept seeing little Chris' body in his arms, half his head blown away. Now he understood how Lin and Elaine had felt when the twins died.

Before the trial, he sat down with Kate again. "I have an idea. Suppose I commit a crime and get sent to prison. I could get my GED there and then apply to the Academy."

"And of course they wouldn't take you because you'd have a record. But suppose we make it look like that happened. You could move away and get your GED and then go to the Academy. You'd be something of a hero to the Cougars, and you could get back in easily enough."

Artie moved down to San Diego. In his GED classes, he met a beautiful girl named Maria, who had had to drop out of high school to work and support her family. Like his, her dad was a drunk; unlike his, her dad had beaten her mother to death and was in prison. She had a younger brother and sister to care for, and she had refused to let them go into foster care. After two dates, Artie proposed. Maria said yes, but they would have to wait until he graduated from the Academy. But she agreed to move back to LA with him. He found an apartment with three bedrooms in a run-down area that he could afford. He and her brother shared a bedroom, while she shared one with her sister. Dad had the third. She and her family looked after Dad and worked while Artie went to the Academy. He graduated in the top quarter of his class and was sent back to the Cougars as an undercover agent.

Although he wanted to marry Maria, Kate persuaded him not to while he was undercover with the Cougars. Whenever he had something to tell Kate, he'd get a message to her. She or another officer would come looking for him on one pretext or another, arrest him, and bring him in handcuffed, so the gang wouldn't get suspicious. One day, as he sat at her desk waiting to tell her about an upcoming gang war, he heard a familiar voice. It was his brother! He kept his head turned away and listened. Kate didn't like Lindsey at all; she showed total contempt for him while he was trying to convince her to go after something called a slayer. But evidently Lin was a lawyer now. He certainly wasn't sharing any of his success with his father or brothers!

Dad was not doing well. Maria and her sister Elissa did their best to take care of him, but he was sinking fast from the booze and the cigarettes. Maria had seen the obituary for Lindsey's wife and newborn son in the paper. Dad insisted on going to the funeral, but he didn't want Lindsey to see him because he knew how Lin had despised him for his weaknesses that led to their lives of poverty, and also because he had so often blamed Lin for ruining his life by being born. So Artie took him. They sat in the back where no one saw them, but they stayed long enough to see how devastated Lindsey was. Also, surprisingly, they saw how many people seemed to care about him or his wife. Even Kate Lockley was there.

Two weeks later Artie was out of undercover work when he was shot in the back by another Cougar who had become suspicious of him. Luckily, his assailant was a lousy shot. However, he could have bled to death if a guy named Charles Gunn hadn't found him and brought him to a hospital in time. Kate put him on desk work for a year until he had completely recovered. Then he went out on the street in uniform, but not anywhere near the Cougars' turf.

When he got out of the hospital, he and Maria were married. Elissa was off to college on a scholarship and Raul became a plumber's apprentice. Dad had to go into a hospital because of his cirrhosis and lung cancer. He lasted six months. Maria was pregnant by then; they called their little boy Christopher Michael, after the little boy whose death had changed his life and after his father. Two years later Mary Elisabeth, named after Maria and her sister, was born.

Artie had just taken his sergeant's exam and passed it. He was going to be a detective working under Lt. Kate Lockley Edwards, whose part in the Wolfram & Hart arrests had earned her a promotion. She had fallen in love with the new assistant district attorney and married him.   Now they were expecting a baby. Artie was out on the street tracking down witnesses to a robbery when he heard a woman scream. He ran around the corner to see a guy with a knife attacking a woman and a priest trying to fight him off. Before he could get there, the assailant had stabbed the priest. Artie caught him before he could get very far and handcuffed him to a lamppost. He called 911 and then looked at the victims. The woman was bleeding profusely from her arm; an artery may have been cut. The priest was lying on the ground, blood gushing out of his chest. As Artie knelt to look at him, he said, "Rosemary," smiled, and died.

When Kate arrived, squeezing out of the squad car because she was 8 months pregnant, she saw Artie standing by the victim trying to keep control of himself. That wasn't like him. Then she looked at the priest on the ground. "Oh, my God, it's Lindsey! I didn't know he had become a priest. I can't believe it. Artie, I'm so sorry."

"I'm okay, Lieutenant. The woman is on her way to St. Jude's hospital. She was bleeding pretty badly. I haven't even questioned the suspect yet. I just couldn't do it."

"And you shouldn't. You're emotionally involved. Let's go have a look at him."

The suspect was of medium height, Caucasian, with dark hair that hung limply around his face. He was obviously strung out on drugs and trying to get money for his next fix. As he turned to face Artie and Kate, Artie had his second shock of the day. The man whom he had arrested, who had killed his brother Lindsey, was his other brother Dickie! Artie stood there stunned, while Kate pondered the irony of it all. The three surviving MacDonald brothers had gone such different paths. Lindsey, who had started down the path of evil at Wolfram & Hart, had become a priest who, she soon learned, was beloved in his parish and had especially delighted in performing weddings, baptisms, and First Communions. Artie, who also had been headed down the same path, had become a fine young policeman on his way up and a loving husband and father. Dickie, the lost one, was a drug-addicted murderer who had killed his own brother.