"There'll be an arraignment tomorrow, probably by midafternoon, and if you call Laura around eleven, I'll tell you exactly when to be in court, if you'd like to see it. Then, once . the fireworks are over, it'll be a typical Friday afternoon t slow, I hope and I'll give you an hour or so on the case and the investigation." Battaglia wouldn't mind, I thought, because she's writing a piece that won't appear for months, rather than a story about this particular arrest.

Ellen obviously liked that offer and thanked me for it.

"Why don't I give you a lift home?" she countered warmly.

"Really, I won't pester you. I see how tired you are and I'll just drop you off and plan on seeing you and having all my questions answered in the afternoon."

I hesitated and she seemed to sense exactly why. My reflexes were slowing down and she continued to speak.

"Don't worry about your privacy, Alex. I already know where you live.

Remember, I dropped those flowers off for you the day after your friend was killed? You had canceled our first interview, don't you remember?

I told you I've done my research that's not the kind of thing I want to write about."

I was relieved and, of course, her reminder was correct. It made me smile 'cause I remembered Mike's comment when I referred to the sender of the flowers as a 'nice reporter, and he told me that was an oxymoron.

"Sure, Ellen, that'd be lovely. As long as you don't think I'm abrupt for not asking you up for a nightcap."

"C'mon. I understand. I'm parked right across the street."

We checked the traffic and jaywalked over to the car she pointed out at the corner of the block. She unlocked the driver's side and my door latch popped up automatically.

As I lowered myself into the passenger seat, I could hear someone calling my name from the front of the station house.

"Cooper, hey, Miss Cooper! Miss District Attorney!"

I could see in the rearview mirror that a couple of heads turned from the crowd of news people to see if I was somewhere in the vicinity. But I had already climbed into the car and was not about to walk back into that media circus without a pithy sound bite the last thing Battaglia would want to hear from me anyway.

The voice shouted out, "Cooper, call for you! C'mon back."

Ellen put the key in the ignition and the engine started, but she looked over at me with concern before she set the car in drive.

"It's okay," I told her, 'you'll have me home in five minutes and I'll return my calls from there. It's just a feeding frenzy with all those reporters at the precinct. I'll be much happier once I'm home. Let's go."

I leaned my head against the backrest of the seat in Ellen Goldman's car, somewhat grateful that I had exchanged the adventure of a cab ride home in a fleet car with no springs or shock absorbers for the smoother trip in her later model rental that would simply cost me some chatter and forced girl-talk "What's the best way to get through the park from here?" she asked as we pulled away when the traffic light changed to green.

"South on Columbus. You can pick up the transverse on Sixty-fifth Street."

I closed my eyes against the bright reflection of the overhead streetlights as the car moved down the avenue, and wondered whether Montvale's victims would sleep any differently tonight.

"Must be very satisfying to get someone you've been after for a while, isn't it?" Ellen asked.

I had hoped she would have had the good sense not to interview me on the way home, but her natural curiosity apparently took over. I reminded myself not to let my guard down completely and not to answer the question as though I were talking to a friend who could be trusted with the information. Yeah, I would say to Sarah or Nina or David or Mike, it feels better than you could ever imagine, and it is one of the great satisfactions of my professional life to know this bastard is going to spend the foreseeable future in a woefully unpleasant place where he can't hurt anybody else. But because I knew how a reporter could twist my words in print to make me sound like Torquemada or some man-hating witch, I simply said, "Yes."

Goldman made a left turn on Seventy-second Street and headed toward Central Park West.

"Don't you ever worry that one of these guys you prosecute is going to come back after you?" she queried.

I had been asked that question a million times, most often by my mother. That's not the kind of thing that keeps people in my business up at nights.

"That happens in the movies, Ellen. You can't let that drive you when you do this work. We'd never get anything done."

"I read the clips about that case of yours that was just overturned on appeal. The serial rapist in Central Park wasn't his name Harold McCoy?" she continued. It was the case I had just reminded Wallace about, in which the judge had thrown out half the evidence we had seized because the captain had refused to call us to get a search warrant.

"Does that mean he's out of jail now?"

"Don't remind me about him, Ellen. Yeah, Harold McCoy is out. We get to retry him after the first of the year. But in the meantime, his brother posted bail for him and he's on the street."

"I don't know how you do it, Alex. That would give me the creeps every time I go through the park. I'd be looking I'M for him everywhere I went."

"You think I don't? It's not even conscious at this point, I told her.

"Certain places just evoke connections, memories on and they're not always good ones. It's ironic. I happen to think that Central Park is one of the safest places in as the city. Look at the size of it, more than eight hundred ?er acres. You've got more crimes committed in any two- or -he three-square-block area around the park every month than -St. you have inside it. But when something does happen here, ier especially because it's so isolated at night, it's a legitimate public safety issue. It's awfully hard for the police to patrol a space like this."

Goldman was driving east. She passed the guardhouse at the Dakota, and then continued straight on into the park.

As soon as she entered the roadway, I realized her mistake.

"Whoa, I meant the transverse the road that cuts through, from West to East. This is the long way," I complained.

"Oh damn. I just saw this opening and thought it was what you were referring to. My fault," she apologized.

The few extra minutes hardly mattered at this point.

Instead of going directly across, this would lead us on the more rambling route down the West Drive and back up to the exits on the East Side.

"No big deal, Ellen. It's a prettier ride."

The moon was full maybe that had helped us catch Montvale, I thought to myself, if the cops were right about all the lunatics coming out under its spell and it would probably result in an overflow of business in my office tomorrow. Not the quiet Friday I had just predicted.

The park showed itself brilliantly in the lunar glow, the foliage with its dapplings of yellows and auburns having replaced much of the verdant color of summer. The fallen leaves made it possible to see further off the road, into the beautiful park grounds, than you could when the trees were full of thick greens.

I was relaxed now, taking in the quiet view as we rounded the south end of the drive, and noting that the number of late-night runners and dog walkers tapered off as we left the areas of the park closest to the entrances and coursed up the Center Drive, almost smack in the middle of the two sides. Hard to believe this pastoral setting, with its fifty-eight miles of paths, was once the site of stench-filled swamps and pigsties. I enjoyed the tracks it provided for jogging, the lawns that hosted concerts I had attended with friends, and the cheerful zoo where I took my niece and nephew when they visited me in town.

But I knew better than most who loved its lush comfort the danger that could lurk in its bushes, the terrors hidden behind its trees and stone walls. I had enormous respect for the splendor it added to the city, and just as much respect for the power with which it controlled that gift.

We were past the Carousel now, almost parallel to the Bandshell, and nearing the fork that led to the first East Side exit at Seventy-second Street. Ellen knew my address, so it didn't occur to me to remind her to bear right at that point. When she missed the turn and veered off to the left, I groaned at the thought of having to circle around that long loop again.

"Shit, Ellen, you missed the turnoff."

"Oh, sorry, Alex. I'm not that familiar with the park, especially at night. I haven't spent that much time in New York. I... I guess I just lost my bearings. It'll just be a couple of minutes. It's always when I'm rushing to do things right, if you know what I mean."

I did. I guess that's why they always used to say most accidents happen close to home. I straightened up in my seat to try to observe the directions more carefully in order ton to get us back to my apartment as soon as possible. stic Now we were traveling north again, on the portion of the road just beyond the curve that cuts off to the West Side jger at Seventy-second Street. I was watching the light from the the sky dance on the small pond which was below me and off to my right, but was jolted back to attention when the car her veered off the drive to our left and Ellen braked to a stop, almost flush against a large elm tree.

I had instinctively thrown my arms up against the dashboard to protect myself, but my head still smacked against the roof of the low car from the impact it made jumping the curb.

"Jeez, Ellen, take it easy," I mumbled, shaking my head, as though that would clear the stars that started flashing in my eyes, and rubbing my neck, which already seemed to be sore.