more: "Why not?"

Pete hides the ball in his glove before a.s.suming the split-finger grip, but alters no other part of his delivery. The whole point of the split-finger is to fool the batter into thinking it's an ordinary fastball, to 'eave the batter unprepared for its sudden downward break. The catcher, on the other hand, having called for the pitch, is totally prepared. Ordinarily.

d.i.c.k Foley's glove is still knee-high, has in fact not moved an inch, when the ball catches the edge of the plate and ricochets into his crotch. He doubles over in pain, despite the cup he wears, then pulls off his mask and begins to vomit onto the gra.s.s. He and his son never return to the back yard.

Now, in the darkness, though Foley's lips move, his plea is soundless. "Forgive me." He tries again, this time managing a whisper. "Forgive me." Then, finally, he sleeps.

Foley's sleep is so peaceful that when he awakens to a light that seems to come from every place and no place, he does not open his eyes. He feels as if the light has nothing to do with his retina or his pupils, or the neurons deep in his brain. He cannot summon the will to move any part of his body, and he is no longer cold or in pain.

Again, he senses the presence of death, hovering over him, waiting. But not that spectral creature wielding his scythe, not the grim reaper. No, Foley senses the presence of a being infinitely more patient, infinitely more tender. He wants to go to this being, suddenly convinced that he has yearned all his life to rest within its embrace, that everything he's ever wanted or needed was no more than an expression of that yearning.

From a great distance, Foley hears a voice. He believes at first that he's been called, that he's been directed to those enfolding arms. But when the voice sounds again, he hears the words clearly and knows, without doubt, that he was not addressed by a patron saint or a guardian angel, and certainly not by the Creator of all the many worlds. No, there was something about heaven that precluded the insistent message expressed now for the third time.

"Yo, Goober, you still breathin' down there?"

FIFTY-ONE.

THE FUNERAL ma.s.s was held at Holy Savior Church on a warm Tuesday in the middle of March. Julia sat in the first row of pews, Corry and Robert Reid to her left. Spread out behind her and on the other side of the aisle were Serrano, Lane, Turro, and Griffith, along with their families. Linus Flannery, Harry Clark, and a small entourage of ranking officers unknown to Julia filled the last two pews at the rear of the church.

The ma.s.s was conducted in Latin, as were all the ma.s.ses at Holy Savior. Julia would have been lost, as she'd been on her prior visit, if not for Peter Foley, who'd supplied her with a missal that included a translation of the Latin chanted by Father Lucienne. Foley sat to Julia's right, his ankle-to-hip plaster cast thrust into the aisle. Though Foley's expression didn't change, from time to time he used both hands to adjust the position of his injured leg.

"Agnus Dci, qui tollispeccata mundi, dona eis requiem."

Lamb of G.o.d who take st away the sins of the world, give unto them rest.

Julia looked up at Anja Dascalescu's white coffin, thinking, Yes, please, give her rest. For the prior two months, Anja had been laying on a slab in the morgue while a fruitless effort was made to locate her family in Romania. The information in her INS file (as well as that in the business records of Pancevski and Markovic) was pure fiction, the address of the orphanage from which she'd supposedly been adopted an empty lot on the outskirts of Bucharest. The media in Romania had been no help, either. Though Anja's story had been covered in great detail almost from the day she'd been identified, for some inexplicable reason no one had come forward to admit that a child had been sold into slavery.

Julia watched Father Lucienne raise the Host, then glanced at Corry. She was watching the priest intently, her mouth slightly open, lips parted. It was the same expression she'd worn on the night Julia introduced her to Peter Foley. Foley was lying in a hospital bed at the time, his leg imprisoned in a steel cage that looked like an instrument of medieval torture. Despite the pain, the blood loss, and his thoroughly vulnerable position, the man had retained his confidence and his charisma, not to mention his good looks. "Awesome," was the way Corry had put it on the way home.

Julia did not take communion, though she helped Foley stand while he arranged his crutches beneath his arms. She was still on her feet when Linus Flannery and Harry Clark pa.s.sed on their way to the communion rail. They wore similar disapproving expressions that reminded Julia of the nuns who'd ruled the cla.s.srooms of her childhood. Julia was a member of the Holy Name Society and there could be no good reason for her not to take communion.

A smile rose to Julia's lips as she sat down next to her daughter. More than likely Flannery and Clark believed that she'd finally been brought under control when she accepted an a.s.signment to the s.e.x Crimes Unit. But the blessing of the high command hadn't played any part in her decision to join Lily Han in the DA's office. Her first impulse had been to not only refuse the a.s.signment but her promotion to captain as well. As a captain her duties would become purely administrative when she wanted, more than anything else, to stay on the front lines. At some point between the discovery of Anja's body and the suicide of Hal Townsend, the joy of the hunt had invaded her very bones, as penetrating and persistent as a dose of radiation.

Too bad that joy hadn't overridden her ambition. A captain's bars, the extra twenty grand a year, the potential for a promotion down the line? In the end she'd decided to not only have her cake and eat it too, but also to bake the d.a.m.n thing. The investigative arm of the s.e.x Crimes Unit included only fifteen detectives, small enough to allow her to remain personally involved in individual cases. Prior to Julia's appointment it had been supervised by a lieutenant named Roth-kovich, whose hands-off managerial style had resulted in chaos. Julia was being sent over, along with her captain's bars, in response to a series of blistering complaints from District Attorney Robert Morgen-thau, a man who tolerated no slackers and had the ear of the mayor.

"Anybody you want out," Harry Clark had told her, "you let me know and I'll see they're gone by the next morning. Same if you want somebody transferred in. Just let me know."

Six detectives were gone within the first week, another two by the end of the following week. The remaining seven had come to her office and promised eternal fidelity, not to mention their best efforts, if allowed to remain. In the meantime, the incoming replacements, including Bert Griffith, David Lane, and Carlos Serrano, had been told, on arrival, to produce or else.

Bottom line, the unit was her creation and she would be able to personally involve herself in any investigation. She would be the alpha wolf. She would run the pack.

ETER FOLEY stood to receive communion, bending forward as far as he could while the much shorter Father Lucienne rose up on his toes in order to place the Host on Foley's tongue. Afterward, as Father Lucienne turned to Frank Turro who was kneeling at the altar rail, Foley remained standing long enough to allow the Host to soften. He looked directly at Anja Dascalescu's coffin and felt, not sorrow, but an intense grat.i.tude.

Foley was grateful for a number of things. He was grateful for being alive and for wanting to be alive. He was grateful to no longer be a cop. He was grateful for the a.s.surance of his doctors that he would eventually walk without a limp. He was grateful most of all for Julia Bren-nan, for the simple fact that he loved her, for being able to love at all.

"You need a hand?"

Jolted out of his reverie, Foley turned to Frank Turro who stood to his left. "Just thinking," he said as he executed a clumsy U-turn, then headed back to his seat. As he eased himself into the pew, Julia looked up and smiled. "You okay?" she asked.

"Never better."

Julia reached over to squeeze his hand, propelling Foley back to that moment when he'd awakened after three blood transfusions and four hours of surgery to find her sitting alongside the bed. She'd been holding his hand, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her breath ragged in the back of her throat. Utterly beautiful.

Two days later they'd exchanged confidences, Julia admitting that his rescue had not come about through any sudden insight on her part. Instead, Robert Reid had finally recovered his last thoughts before leaving his car, then called Julia on her cell phone. She'd been in the princ.i.p.al's office at Stuyvesant High School, some three hours after Hal Townsend took the plunge, trying to explain things to Corry.

For his part, Foley had revealed the primary reason he could hand over his badge without hesitation. Shortly after Patti's disappearance, when the extent of the negligence at the Little Kitty Day Care Center came to light, he and his wife had begun a lawsuit that eventually resulted in a two-million-dollar settlement. Kirstin had insisted on filing the suit and Peter Foley had gone along because he knew his wife needed someone to blame, someone besides herself. The irony was that she'd committed suicide a week after the settlement check found its way to their mailbox.

Foley struggled through Father Lucienne's eulogy, adjusting the position of his leg every few minutes. When Doctor Goodwin predicted that his patient would recover fully, she'd quickly added a single qualification: "Provided you follow through with your rehab." Later, a physical therapist had elaborated, "A high threshold for pain," he'd flatly declared, "is a good predictor of results with injuries of this kind."

At times it felt as if his bones had re-separated and were boring multiple tunnels through his flesh, especially when he kept his leg in one position for an extended period. Like right now.

Foley rose as soon as the ma.s.s ended, before the coffin was removed. The pain was manageable when he was active, and he wanted to walk around outside before the trip to the cemetery. Thus, his mind was on other things when Julia opened the door and he stepped into a warm breeze that closed around his body as if staking a claim.

The seasons had rolled over, a turning of the dice that had come up seven for Peter Foley. His aims had not changed. He was still Goober in the chat rooms and he was in the process of opening a new website. The game, of course, was riskier now that he'd surrendered his law enforcement cover, but that was all right, too. And it was apparently all right with Julia Brennan who knew all and said nothing, who was satisfied even with the clumsy s.e.x mandated by a cast that weighed thirty pounds.

Foley watched Linus Flannery, trailed by Harry Clark and the flunkies, come up to shake Julia's hand, then walk to their vehicles without so much as a glance in his direction. The slight left him grinning. He knew that he was nothing in their world, the only world they acknowledged, the world to which Julia Brennan aspired. By shaking her hand, they'd p.r.o.nounced her worthy of those aspirations, the gesture as solemn as the ceremony of knighthood.

He wondered if they had any sense of Julia's other side, of her need to break free of restraint, to right the wrongs of the world. Maybe they thought her prior failures were a momentary aberration brought on by a misplaced sympathy for the victim, that in the long run she could be controlled. Or maybe they were simply cowed by her clear intelligence and her hero's status in the eyes of the public.

Carefully balancing his weight on the crutch beneath his left arm, Foley put his right arm around Julia's shoulders. He knew, because she'd told him, that her future, when she examined it, was as impenetrable as the dark in Empire Steel's sub-bas.e.m.e.nt. There would be any number of "paths less taken" branching off from her career path in the years ahead, and any number of choices to make. With luck, he'd be there to watch her make them.

If H E N A N J A Dascalescu's coffin was lowered into the ground, Corry broke into tears. A moment later, Betty Turro and Irena Serrano joined her. The cops did not cry. The stood in a semicircle before the grave, separated from their families, shoulder to shoulder. They'd done all that a cop can do for Anja. They'd punished the men responsible for her death and they'd put a name on her tombstone. Nothing more could be asked of them.

They'd moved on, as well. David Lane had put away a pair of murderers in the two months since the discovery of Anja's body. Frank Turro had been transferred to Internal Affairs, a reward, perhaps, for being Commander Harry Clark's snitch. Julia herself had been up and running for the last three weeks. Along with detectives from Bronx Homicide, the s.e.x Crimes Unit was in pursuit of a serial rapist whose escalating violence had resulted in his last victim being tossed from the roof of a six-story tenement. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that if not stopped he would kill again.

Finally, Julia stepped back, away from her peers, to drape an arm around Corry's shoulder. "C'mon, honey," she said, "it's time to go."

Corry withdrew her hand from Robert Reid's and pointed to the open grave, to the dirt heaped beside it. "How can we leave her like that?"

What could Julia say? That Anja Dascalescu was up in heaven with G.o.d and the angels? Even if she believed that, and she wasn't sure she did, it would sound laughably trite. On the other hand, if she said what she did believe, that unlike a thief or even a rapist, a murderer takes everything, the future, the past, hope itself, Corry would be crying for the next two weeks.

What a cop does, Julia told herself as she steered Corry away from Anja Dascalescu's grave, is pick up one foot and move it forward, then pick up the other, then repeat the process, over and over. In that respect, policing had a lot in common with motherhood. When you gave birth, when you looked at your daughter for the first time, you had no idea how her life would play out. So you kept on going. You kept on going and you lived your life on the journey, wondering what would come next.