But that's my story, Julia thought as she pinned her badge to her coat, then followed Foley through the window. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Poor and pitiful as it may be.

Julia stepped down from the windowsill to find herself standing between two pairs of unmade bunk beds set against opposite walls of a bedroom. The drawers of a narrow chest positioned next to an open door were scattered over the wall-to-wall carpeting, as were a dozen wire hangers from the empty closet. The Nortons had been moving fast when they packed the kids up. Had they already received a phone call from their sponsors? Or had all parties realized, the minute Anja vanished, that the game was up, that losses would inevitably be cut?

Foley and Julia covered the first floor quickly, glancing into rooms, looking for a home office which they finally discovered on the second floor at the front of the house. Here, too, they found evidence of a hasty retreat. The floor was virtually covered with the scattered contents of a two-drawer filing cabinet.

"I'll get the computer." Foley removed a utility tool from a case on his belt, extracted a screwdriver, and went to work on a Gateway computer resting on a particle board workstation. Quickly, while Julia sifted through the paperwork, he pulled the casing, set it to the side, then carefully extracted the computer's hard drive, a green circuit board striped with gold wire. "If they made a mistake," he told Julia as he laid the hard drive on the desk, "it's in here."

"You don't think they deleted the files?"

"That's what I'm hoping." He unb.u.t.toned his coat removed a small padded envelope from his front pocket, finally pulled a second hard drive, which he held up for Julia's inspection before installing it in the Gateway. "Now if the feds seize the computer," he said as he replaced the casing, "they won't know it's been touched."

"What did you mean," Julia asked without looking up, "about hoping the files were deleted?" She was scanning the doc.u.ments on the floor, Medicaid forms and correspondence with one or another city, state or federal agency: welfare, home care, children's services, food stamps, disability. The Nortons had led busy lives trying to satisfy the city's many bureaucracies. One letter, addressed to an a.s.sistant Deputy Commissioner named Mauritano, began, This is the fourth time I have written to you on this matter.. ..

"Deleting a file," Foley said, "does not erase the file." He pulled a drawer out, closed it, then pulled out another. "It remains where it was written until the s.p.a.ce is needed for something else. There are programs that overwrite the files with zeros, effectively erasing the data, but I'm hoping the Nortons didn't know about them, or didn't have one available."

"That's a.s.suming they deleted the files in the first place."

Foley began to rummage through the wastebasket. "If the files haven't been deleted, then there's nothing on them to help us. You find anything interesting?"

"Forms," Julia replied. "Government forms dating back to 1992, all carefully filled out. Tell ya, Foley, I wish my detectives were as thorough. I spend half my time demanding they do the paperwork over." She laughed shrugged her shoulders, settling down. "What I don't find, on the other hand, are phone bills, mortgage receipts, bank statements, brokerage statements .. . It's like I'm searching a government office."

They lapsed into silence then, a silence extending until their stay could no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, be termed a cursory search for the missing children. No matter that they'd found nothing of value beyond the hard drive, they had to get out.

If IT H J U LIA in the lead, they were halfway through the kitchen when they heard the sound for the first time. Foley initially thought he was listening to the rush of wind in a chimney, but even through the curtain-covered windows he could see that the day was perfectly calm. Julia first thought it the creak of a floorboard, then the mewing of a cat in a closet. Her head swiveled as she tried to gauge direction.

They stood there for nearly a minute, the two of them, before they heard the noise again. Julia was prepared this time, and she followed the sound to a door off to their right. The door gave way to a flight of stairs leading into the bas.e.m.e.nt. Though Julia had opened the door a few minutes earlier, neither she nor Foley had gone down.

"That's a cat, right?" She looked over at Foley to find that he'd drawn his weapon, a 9-mm Browning. Without hesitation, she followed suit. "Talk to me, Foley? What are you hearing?"

Foley didn't respond. His eyes were riveted to the cellar door when the motor of a large refrigerator suddenly kicked on with a soft, yet clearly perceptible squeak. A moment later a bird began to call from the shrubbery just outside the window to Julia's left, an intermittent chirping insistent enough to draw her attention. From below, she heard the steady rumble of the furnace.

For a moment Julia tried to make it work, the refrigerator, the bird, the furnace. She told herself the sound that had stopped her in her tracks was one of these, or one of a hundred natural sounds made by a home as it settled.

It was a decent argument, but one Julia found unconvincing. After more than a decade on the job, her cop instincts quickly dismissed each rationalization. That sound, that faint mewing she'd heard a moment before was wrong, a square peg jammed into a round hole. She could not make it fit.

"We're gonna check out the bas.e.m.e.nt," she told Foley. "You'll notice that being your superior officer, I didn't pose that as question."

Resigned, Foley smiled. Though the sound hadn't repeated, the hair at the back of his neck was still standing on end. "Lemme go first, lieutenant," he finally said, crossing the room to open the cellar door. "Lemme take the bullet for you."

I HO UGH BOTH cops tried to keep their weight as close to the wall as possible, the simple planks that made up the cellar stairs creaked at every step. The sound was so loud and distinctive that Foley simply gave up a third of the way from the bottom, taking the last four steps in a single jump. He landed with his weapon raised, Julia following an instant later. She quickly moved off to Foley's left, putting some distance between them as she swept the room. There was no movement of any kind, save for the heave of her chest, and the odd sound they'd heard in the kitchen did not repeat.

The element of surprise now irreparably lost, Julia decided to play it by the book. You always announced your presence and your authority. Otherwise, if you got your a.s.s blown away, your killer would claim self-defense.

"Police. Is anybody down here?" She was staring at a closed door in the center of a roughly finished wall maybe twenty feet away. To her left, the rush of the furnace was augmented by a slight rattle somewhere in its sheet-metal housing. The laundry was to her right, a washer and a dryer, a cast iron sink, a Formica-topped counter piled with wrinkled sheets. "Police," she repeated. "Is anybody down here?"

The furnace continued to roar, its housing to rattle. Beyond that, the only sound Julia detected was her own shallow breathing. She crossed the room to crouch next to the door. The sheetrock wall offered little protection beyond concealment and there was no point to offering a larger target than necessary. Ten feet away, she watched Foley drop to one knee, pin the sights of his Browning on the door, finally nod.

Julia reached for the k.n.o.b, spun it, pushed the door open, then jerked her hand back to her side as what appeared to be a ball of knitting wool flew through the open door, dashed across the room to the stairway, then leaped onto the fourth step before stopping long enough to become a gray Persian cat.

"Jesus Christ," Foley muttered. The animal, which was now preening its tail, had pa.s.sed within a foot of his face.

"I was right. It was a cat."

Without warning, as if her initial terror had suddenly turned around to reveal its hidden face, Julia was seized by a powerful urge to laugh.

"Tell me something," Foley said. "Why are we both still sighting in on the poor cat?"

"I don't know about you, but I wanna be ready." Julia lowered the barrel of her weapon. "In case it goes for its wallet." She giggled once, then twice, then heard the sound again. Heard it and knew absolutely that it was the m.u.f.fled cry of a young child, coming from somewhere deeper in the bas.e.m.e.nt, from the other side of the house.

Julia went through the doorway first, stepping quickly to her right. The room, about as large as the one she'd left, was crowded with department-store racks holding children's clothing on wire hangers. Perhaps four feet high, the racks had been pushed to one side, creating a corridor down the center of the room. The corridor led to another door, this one with a lock above the k.n.o.b. There was no key in the keyhole.

"Announce your presence," Julia said to Foley. "Let whoever's in there know I'm not alone."

"Police. Come out of there."

Nothing. Not a sound.

"Police," Julia shouted. "Is anybody in there?"

Nothing, then a whimper, then another.

"This is the pits," Foley muttered.

Julia nodded agreement. The clothing racks had been pushed close to the walls on either side of the room and might conceal a dozen bad guys. No matter how much she wanted to dash along that corridor and burst through the door at the other end, they had to clear this room first. They could not risk being ambushed from behind.

"Call it in to the locals, Foley," she said, her voice surprisingly calm in her own ears. "Request backup." She waited until she heard Foley's cell phone chirp, then dropped to her knees and swept all four walls. She didn't find any telltale legs, but a rack against the opposite wall had boxes piled beneath it, blocking her view. Slowly, remaining close to the wall, she began to circle the room in an effort to come upon the rack from the side. From behind, she heard Foley identify himself to a 911 operator, then ask to be connected to the 112th Precinct. From in front, the crying of the child on the other side of the wall suddenly became continuous, a thin choking wail, arousing all Julia's protective instincts, inspiring a nearly overwhelming rage. It was only with a great effort that she continued on course, one step at a time, eyes moving in little jerks until she came up against the front wall and saw that the s.p.a.ce behind the rack was empty.

As Foley walked up beside her, Julia peered into a small gap between the door and the frame. The bolt on the lock had been thrown.

"Done," Foley whispered. "The cavalry's on the way."

Julia turned slightly, kept her voice as low as Foley's. "Take it down," she said, pointing to the door.

"You don't want to wait for backup?"

"Nope." She could feel Foley's breath against the side of her face. "No more announcements, either. You take it down. I'll go in first. Let's do it."

"Right."

The lock was a Medeco, of fairly good quality, and would have resisted a great deal of abuse before giving way. The door frame, on the other hand, was constructed of cheap pine. It splintered under Foley's heel, allowing the door to trace a half-circle on its hinges before crashing into the wall. An instant later, Julia was inside, tracing her own half-circle, trying to see everything at once, the cots, the small black refrigerator, the closed door on the other side of the room, the four children huddled together, round-eyed faces seeming as pale as the rumpled white sheets on the cots. One of the children, the youngest and smallest, her face already streaked with tears, began to sob.

Again Julia had to struggle with an impulse to rush to the children, gather them in her arms, tell them it was all right now, they'd be protected at last. Instead, she held her position, the barrel of her Glock raised slightly, her finger on the trigger. Her head swiveled, very slowly, away from the closed door on the far side of the room, to the right and the left, patiently, until she found the little piece that was out of place.

"Get the kids out of here," she told Foley. "Get them upstairs."

"Julia___"

"The key, Foley. It's still in the lock. In the wrong side of the lock."

Foley glanced at the door behind them, muttered, "Yeah, I should have caught it." If the key was on the inside of the lock, it had been used not to contain the children but to keep Peter Foley and Julia Brennan out.

Julia dropped to one knee, then trained her weapon on the closed door at the far end of the room, her anger focused at last. Though her gaze didn't waver, she was aware of Foley as he asked the children to follow him, and of an answering wail that sprang from all four throats.

"We're the police," Foley said. "It's okay. We're going to take care of you. Just come outside with me."

He took a step toward them and they backed into the wall, clinging to each other, almost a single organism. A dark-haired girl raised a hand, palm out. Her eyes began to blink rapidly, as if expecting a blow, then she shouted something, her voice betraying utter panic. An instant later, the door at the back of the room flew open and Julia found herself transported to a place beyond calm or terror. She recorded the figure of an adult male, the revolver in his left hand, her right index finger as it squeezed the trigger, the Glock jumping in her hands, a lacy red spray from the back of the man's skull. What she didn't record, not until she looked down to find the Glock's slide open and no bullet in the chamber, was that she'd fired her weapon sixteen times in just over five seconds.

TWENTY-FIVE.

"WHAT A spot for the bosses," Julia told Robert Reid and Corry. It was nine o'clock in the evening and they were gathered around the kitchen table. "News vans backed up for two blocks. Children sold into slavery. Children rescued from slavery. The bad guy dispatched without further injury. Where do you go with that?"

Julia was running on and on, and she knew it, knew also that she'd dropped the reins somewhere along the line and was just along for the ride. She could still hear the roar of gunfire, incredibly loud in that confined s.p.a.ce, and the screams of the children. She could still see Peter Foley, squatting next to the corpse, rummaging through the man's pockets, calm and methodical, in a vain search for identification.

"I'll tell ya where they went," she continued. "They went to a place called hero cops. I knew that was where they'd end up when Internal Affairs accepted my statement without running me through an interrogation. The bosses didn't want anything on the record to impugn my integrity. Which is not to say they were happy. I went from IAB to Chief Linus Flannery, Commander Harry Clark, and Inspector Edward Thurlow."

"Out of the frying pan," Corry said.

"Yes, but I'm sure the fire wasn't all that hot." Robert Reid stroked his beard. He could see the stress building in Julia, as he'd seen it before in the the bulging eyes and rapid-fire speech of other cops who'd killed in the line of duty. "I should know because I sat through the longest press conference in the history of the New York Police Department. The mayor, the commissioner, Flannery, Clark, even Lily Han from s.e.x Crimes in the DA's office. They each had something to say, and each found a moment to praise the work of their crack detective, Julia Brennan."

"Way to go, Mom." Corry used her finger to ease the last bit of a raspberry tart onto a fork. "You said you were gonna find them, and you did."

Julia looked down at her untouched dessert, at what must have been her sixtieth cup of coffee. "The kids were told that we'd come to kill them," she said. "That's why they didn't respond when we announced ourselves. The man I shot, they called him Uyak Juso. Uyak means uncle in Serbo-Croatian."

"You mean," Corry asked, glancing at Robert Reid, "they, like, loved him?"

"I mean they believed the police were there to murder them." Julia sighed, shook her head. In response to a reporter's question, Lily Han had announced that the kids were already receiving therapy, and that they'd need therapy for a long time to come. "Thurlow and Clark, they were really p.i.s.sed off, but I think Flannery thought it was all very funny. They'd dumped me because they couldn't control me and now I was a hero and Clark was a jerk. Somehow, that made Flannery happy. When Clark told me I was being appointed to head the task force's day-to-day operations, Flannery chortled."

"Chortled?" Reid was smiling now.

"He made this wet sound in the back of his throat. Like he was trying to chuckle and gargle at the same time." Julia pushed her raspberry tart over to Corry's side of the table. Her brain seemed to be running at half speed, yet she felt as if she'd never sleep again. "Clark and Thurlow took off a few minutes later, but Flannery stuck around long enough to lecture me on the chain of command. He told me, straight out, that this was my last chance to get my act together. "You remember that Sicilian business," he said, 'about revenge being a dish best served cold? Well, your promotion to captain depends, to a certain extent, on your conduct as a police officer. Likewise for that gold shield.""

"A potent threat," Reid observed.

"I had a vision of myself commanding a squad of property clerks, shunned by all who matter, put in my place. I think that's why they kept me away from the press conference. And that's why Thurlow's still running the overall investigation. In the end, the bosses always rule."

Eventually they took the conversation into the living room, eventually Corry went to her bedroom to do some homework. By that time it was eleven o'clock and they turned their attention to the local news. Though Julia's name was mentioned twice, her likeness did not appear on the little screen. At 11:30, as Jay Leno began his monologue, Julia re-approached the moment in which she'd taken a life.

"If I hadn't been kneeling down, I wouldn't be talking to you now."

Reid dropped his head, resigned. He did not want even to imagine Julia's life threatened, much less hear the details from her own lips. "Go on," he said.

"When he came out of the bathroom that's what it was, a bathroom. I thought it was a closet at first, but .. ." Julia ran her fingers through her hair. "Anyway, he came out and he fired once. The bullet went over my head and through two walls before it hit the foundation on the other end of the bas.e.m.e.nt. If I'd been standing up, it would've gone right through me. But the funny thing is that I didn't even know he'd fired at me until later. I just saw the gun and went on automatic pilot. When it was all over, I thought I'd fired maybe two or three times, but my Glock was empty." She rubbed her eyes, then resettled herself in the chair. "Here's the amazing part. It seemed like everything was going in slow motion, that I was absorbing every single detail, like I was a camera, you know, getting it down permanently and forever. But I didn't have any idea what was happening, Uncle Bob. And I have to admit, it really bothers me."

Reid started to say, You must have done something right, you killed the man. But then he thought better of it. "Look, Julia, something that's been bothering me. A lot of cops, they kill someone, take time off to ... to adjust. Don't you think .. ."

Julia closed her eyes for a moment. Her uncle was right, of course. The smart move here was to take an administrative leave, keep a low profile until Little Girl Blue was last week's bad news, maybe even repair a few bridges along the way.

"I'm in the middle of an investigation," she finally said. "When it's all over, I'll see how I feel."

FlFTEEN MINUTES later, Julia rose from her chair. "I have a lot to do," she announced. "I have to get some rest." Her voice, in her own ears, had a toneless, almost languid quality.

"Do you mind if I stay over?" In fact, Reid did not intend to leave until he was certain his niece would be all right.

"The bed's made," Julia said as she started up the stairs. "I'm gonna have to be out of here early, so if you want breakfast ..." She left it at that as she climbed to the second floor, made a stop in the bathroom to remove her makeup, then came back along the hallway to her bedroom. Inside, she sat on the edge of the bed, began to unb.u.t.ton her blouse, finally let her hand drop into her lap. She was aware of her things, her possessions, around her, the mission furniture, a teak jewelry box given to her by her uncle on her sixteenth birthday, the overflowing hamper in the corner. A shield-back side chair, its velvet seat a particularly brazen gold, rested next to the dresser. The chair, or so the story went, had been carried to the New-World from Ireland by her great-great-grandfather in 1871. Though Robert Reid insisted it was ma.s.s manufactured and remarkable only for its age, the chair was (by default, there being nothing else) the family treasure.

From the hall, Julia heard Corry advise her great-uncle to change the pillowcase. "I've been meaning to dust the room," she explained, "but I can't seem to get around to it."

"Sloth," Reid declared. "One of the seven deadly sins. As for the pillow, I'll turn it over. It can't be dusty on both sides."

Julia listened to the closing of Corry's and her uncle's bedroom doors, then lay back on her bed. She closed her eyes and was instantly transported back to the Nortons' bas.e.m.e.nt, the scene movie-sharp, as vivid as a dream. She saw life and death, a man who breathed, whose heart pumped blood, reduced to carrion. It would take an autopsy to determine how many times he'd been hit, but his torso, when the paramedics cut his shirt away, had been riddled with entrance wounds.

Impatiently, Julia turned her head, as she'd finally turned away from Uyak Juso to confront the terrified children, to feel their terror wash across her body, a hot wind blowing over the desert of their lives. She'd imagined them, at that moment, to be infants again, newborns with the same possibilities, the same hopes, the same capacity for love and wonder and awe as any other child. Now she saw it again, what had been taken from these children, and she wondered exactly what therapeutic strategy could restore their innocence.

She began to cry then, a sudden onrush of tears that overwhelmed her defenses, that quickly escalated into a sob, then another, and then she was gone, returned to an essential loneliness she had not acknowledged for many, many years.

When she came back to herself she was sitting up, with Corry on her left, Robert Reid on her right, each with an arm about her shoulders. Her first instinct was to pull away, to re-establish her independence, but she knew the attempt would prove futile. This was her family, her comfort. This is what was denied Anja Dascalescu, and the other children, and truth be told, Peter Foley as well.

TWENTY-SIX.

PETER FOLEY stood in front of a greengrocer's shop on the corner of Thirty-third Street and First Avenue, sipping at a container of hot chocolate, inhaling the commingled odors of lilies, carnations, and roses. The sky above was cloudy, the temperature close to forty degrees, and the grocer had put his stock of flowers outside his store, hoping to attract pa.s.sersby. Foley had no special interest in the shopkeeper's wares, but he watched an elderly woman sort through a white bucket filled with sunflowers. The woman examined each stalk, picking them up one at a time, squinting through her bifocals until finally satisfied. Then she straightened with a noticeable effort and became aware of Foley's scrutiny.

"I buy summer flowers in the winter, and winter flowers in the summer." She gave her bouquet a little shake. "Only a fool would do otherwise."

She smiled, then made her way inside to pay for her bit of August sun. Foley watched her uncertain progress for a moment, then turned his attention back to the Little Kitty Day Care Center. There was a time, months stretching into years, when he'd come to this spot nearly every day. As if his mere presence would draw Patti through that front door, a skinny, freckle-faced girl in perpetual motion, her braids flying about her face as she skipped down the stairs to the sidewalk.

The story, the way it had come from the other children, and from Nancy Abbot, their teacher, was consistent. Each child had been a.s.signed a partner whose hand they were to hold whenever the cla.s.s was on the move. Patti's partner, Eva Eisenstein, was also her best friend. At the close of the school day on the afternoon Patti disappeared, Nancy Abbot had gathered the children, going so far as to count heads before leading them from the day room where they'd been playing a few moments before. Patti and Eva were at the back of the cla.s.s, holding hands, when Patti suddenly realized that she'd forgotten a finger painting destined for the refrigerator door. She'd let go of Eva's hand, then dashed back to the playroom while Nancy Abbot led the children on.

Outside, when asked where Patti was by Nancy Abbot and an already concerned Kirstin Foley, Eva had initially broken into tears. How could she tell on her best friend? Eva's mother, Miriam Eisenstein had been quick to rea.s.sure her six-year-old daughter. Nothing bad, she'd explained, would happen to either of the two girls. This one time it was okay.

Eva finally did tell, after the loss of a precious moment, and Kirstin Foley had gone into the school, half-expecting to find Patti flying down the hall. But Patti hadn't been in the hall, or in the playroom, or anywhere else.

Kirstin's search, though frantic, had been thorough. Every room, every closet, working from the front of the school to the back, where she found a self-locking fire door slightly ajar.

The detectives uncovered the rest. The fire door's lock had been malfunctioning for a week. Even when pulled tight, the lock released at odd moments, sounding an alarm, a buzzer, which could be heard throughout the school. Rebecca Morone, owner of Little Kitty Day Care, had called a locksmith two days after the initial malfunction and made an appointment to have the door repaired, but the locksmith hadn't shown up. In the meantime, until she could find a moment to consult the Yellow Pages, to find someone more professional, Rebecca had disconnected the alarm. Its buzz, she'd finally admitted, upset the children.

Foley finished his hot chocolate and tossed the container into a wire basket thoughtfully supplied by the city. He was wearing a navy peacoat, a knit cap that hugged his skull, and stiff blue jeans. He called it his sailor-home-from-the-sea outfit.