Two minutes later, Special Agent Matthews was informed that the FBI agents he was asking about were more than likely Howard C. Jernigan and Raymond Leibowitz.

"They're with the Anti-Terrorist Group, working out of the Bureau. But they go all over, of course," he was told.

"Thank you very much," Matthews said. "We may have to get back to you."

"Well?" Davis asked.

"According to the Bureau, sir, there are agents named Jernigan and Leibowitz. They're a.s.signed to the Anti-Terrorist Group working out of headquarters."

"What?" Davis exclaimed, but before Matthews could repeat what he had told him, he picked up his telephone and issued an order to his secretary: "Helen, would you please ask Mr. Towne, Mr. Williamson, and Mr. Young to come in here immediately?"

He put the telephone back in its cradle and looked at Matthews.

"There is very probably a very reasonable explanation for all of this, Matthews," he said. "Which we shall probably soon have."

"Yes, sir."

"When this meeting is over, I want an official report of your meeting with Detective Payne. If what I suspect has happened is what has happened, I'm going to the a.s.sistant director with this, and I want everything in writing."

"Yes, sir."

"Good morning," Amelia Payne, M.D., said as she entered Cynthia Longwood's room.

"What's good about it?" Cynthia replied, tempering it with a smile.

"I've been wondering the same thing. It's still raining and I didn't get enough sleep. When I was in medical school, and an intern, they told us when we entered practice, we could expect to get some sleep. They lied."

"When were you an intern? Last year?"

"I will take that as a compliment. I don't look old enough to have been a doctor very long?"

"Not even in your doctor suit," Cynthia said, making reference to the stethoscope hanging around Amy's neck and her crisp white smock, onto which was pinned a plastic badge reading, "A. A. Payne, M.D."

"When I finish here, I'm going to make what they call rounds. We take medical students with us. I wear my doctor suit so that the visiting firemen don't mistake me for one of them."

"Visiting firemen?"

"Visiting distinguished pract.i.tioners of the healing arts," Amy said. "Who, when I offer an opinion, take one look at me and decide I couldn't possibly be an adjunct professor of psychiatry, and therefore are dealing with an uppity young female who doesn't know her place."

Cynthia giggled.

"You don't look old enough to be a doctor, much less a professor."

"I'm getting perilously close to thirty," Amy said. "I got my M.D. at twenty-two."

"Twenty-two?" Cynthia asked incredulously. "I thought it took six years Cynthia asked incredulously. "I thought it took six years after after you got out of college to be a doctor." you got out of college to be a doctor."

"When I got my M.D., I already had a Ph.D.," Amy said. "I was what you could call precocious."

"You're a genius?"

"So they tell me."

"I'm impressed," Cynthia said.

"On one hand, that's good," Amy said. "I'm smart and I am a good doctor. Statement of fact. Keep that in mind when you get annoyed with me."

"Am I going to be annoyed with you?"

"If you extend my temporary appointment as your physician, if you want me to try to help you, we can count on that happening sooner or later."

"Why's that?"

"Because what we're going to have to do is get your problem out in the open, and you're not going to like that."

Cynthia considered that.

"No, I wouldn't."

"It's your call, Cynthia. First, you're going to have to face the fact that something happened in your life that's made you ill. Next, that you can't deal with it yourself and need help. And finally, whether or not you really believe that Amy Payne-Dr. Amy Payne-can help you." Amy Payne-can help you."

"When do I have to decide?"

"First answer that will annoy you: right now. Putting off decisions is something you can't do. That sort of thing feeds on itself."

Cynthia considered that for fifteen seconds.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

"Okay," Amy said. "Your mother and father are outside."

"Oh, G.o.d!"

"I called her last night and asked her to bring you some clothes, your makeup, et cetera. You're going to have to deal with them. You don't have to tell them anything that makes you uncomfortable-tell them I said that, if you like-but I think it would help them, and you, if you told them you think I can help."

"You must have been pretty sure I'd . . . make you my doctor last night," Cynthia challenged.

"No, I wasn't. Last night, when I called your mother, that was one young female taking care of another. I hate those d.a.m.ned hospital gowns myself."

"Thank you."

"I'm going to keep you in here for at least of couple of days," Amy said. "But that doesn't mean in bed. If you'd like, put some clothes on, and we can have lunch in the cafeteria. The food isn't any better, but it's not on a tray."

"Thank you," Cynthia said.

Amy smiled at her and walked out of the room.

When Inspector Peter Wohl walked into the Investigations Section of Special Operations, he found just about the entire staff, plus Staff Inspector Mike Weisbach and Captain Dave Pekach, in the former cla.s.sroom. Pekach, in the unique uniform-breeches and boots-of the Highway Patrol, was the only one in uniform.

"Am I interrupting anything important?" Wohl asked.

"A suitable description of our present labors," Sergeant Jason Washington announced in his deep, sonorous voice, "would be 'spinning our wheels.' "

"What are you doing?" Wohl asked.

"Trying to make sense of Matt's transcriptions of the Kellog tapes," Pekach explained. "And getting nowhere."

"They're useless?"

"They've made me change my mind about nothing dirty going on in Five Squad," Pekach said. "But what, n.o.body seems to be able to figure out, at least from the tapes. And as far as using them as evidence-"

"Is Payne essential?" Wohl asked.

Matt picked up on Wohl calling him by his last name; he suspected it might suggest he was in disfavor.

What did I do?

s.h.i.t, those FBI clowns did report me!

"I fear that all those hours our Matthew put in transcribing the tapes were a waste of time and effort," Washington said.

"Not a waste, Jason," Weisbach said. "Finding nothing we can use, so to speak, has taught us they are (a) up to something and (b) rather clever about whatever it is."

"I stand corrected, sir," Jason said.

"I can have Payne?" Wohl asked.

"He's all yours," Weisbach said. "See me later, Matt."

"Yes, sir," Matt said.

Matt stood up and followed Wohl out of the room. Wohl walked quickly, and Matt almost had to trot to catch up with him.

"What's up?" Matt asked.

Wohl ignored him.

They went down the stairs and then up the corridor to Wohl's office. Matt followed him inside.

Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin-a tall, heavyset, large-boned, ruddy-faced man with good teeth and curly silver hair-was sitting on the couch before Wohl's coffee table in the act of dunking a doughnut in a coffee mug.

For all of Matt's life, Coughlin had been "Uncle Denny" to him. He had been his father's best friend, and Matt had come to suspect that Denny Coughlin, who had never married, had been in love-secretly, of course- with Patricia Stevens Moffitt Payne, Matt's mother, for a very long time.

He also suspected that this was not an occasion on which Chief Inspector Coughlin should be addressed as "Uncle Denny."

"Good morning, Chief," he said.

Coughlin looked at him for a long moment, expressionless, before he replied.

"Matty, what's with you and the FBI?"

"Is that what this is about?"

"I asked you a question," Coughlin said evenly.

"I suppose I shouldn't have taken them on the wild-goose chase like that, but they're-"

"Start at the beginning," Wohl shut him off. "And right now, neither the Chief or I are interested in what you think of the FBI."

Matt related, in detail, his entire encounter with Special Agents Jernigan and Leibowitz. When he came to the part of leading them up and down the narrow alleys of North Philadelphia before finally parking in the Special Operations parking lot, Chief Inspector Coughlin had a very difficult time keeping a straight face.

"Okay," he said finally. "Now let me tell you what's happened this morning. I had a telephone call from Walter Davis. You know who he is?"

"Yes, sir."

"Davis said that he would consider it a personal favor if I would set up a meeting, as soon as possible, between himself, the two agents you got into it with, Peter, and me. And that he would be grateful if I kept the meeting, until after we'd talked, under my hat. Do you have any idea what that's all about, Matty?"

"No, sir."

"Somehow, I think there's more to this than you being a wisea.s.s with his agents," Coughlin said. "I think if that's all there was to this, the Polack would have gotten a formal letter complaining about the uncooperative behavior of one of his detectives."

The Polack was Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich.

"Yeah," Inspector Wohl said thoughtfully.

"And he wants me to keep this under my hat until after we have a meeting," Coughlin went on. "Which makes me think of something else. Did either of the FBI guys do anything they shouldn't have done, Matty?"

"Well, they should have been sure there was was a kidnapping before they started asking a lot of questions," Matt said. a kidnapping before they started asking a lot of questions," Matt said.

"That's not what I mean. Did they violate any of your civil rights? Push you around? Brandish a pistol? Anything like that?"

"No, sir."

"Maybe Matt's onto it with what he said," Wohl said. "Maybe Davis is embarra.s.sed that he had people running around investigating a nonkidnapping. And doesn't want Matt to tell the story to an appreciative audience at the FOP Bar. The FBI is very image conscious."

Detective Payne was enormously relieved that he had become "Matt" again.

"Could be," Chief Coughlin said. "But I have a gut feeling there's more to this than that. I have been wrong before."

Coughlin heaved himself off the couch with a grunt, walked to Wohl's desk, consulted a slip of paper he took from his pocket, and dialed a number.