"All except O'Shea," I said.

"He never admitted any part of it and was never seen in the city again."

"Christ, IAD must have done some knuckle pounding," I said. "Was this guy Fried the lead on the case?"

The table again went dead still. No one would look up from their whiskey. No sipping, no head shaking.

"And what else, Uncle Keith?" I finally said.

"Well, Maxey. You got somebody else over in that office that you have some recollection of from the past," he said, looking up through those d.a.m.n bushy eyebrows that had scared me as a kid. I waited him out. "Meagan Montgomery is her name now."

"Meagan?" I said. "As in my ex-wife, Meagan?"

He nodded and said: "Yes. She would be the lieutenant for the unit now, after she caught the Faith Hamlin case and sent five cops down the slide."

I let the vision of my wife of two years sit in my head, as it had too many times on the plane trip back here. The one memory I thought I could escape was dead in the middle of my investigation.

"Well," I finally said. "I'll bet she can cut some b.a.l.l.s off over there, eh?"

The old men in the crew sighed their relief, and then a bit boisterously I lifted a toast to women lieutenants and we drank, yet again.

At the end of the night I promised Keith I would stop by the house to see my aunt and shook hands all around. My head was swimming with the booze and music and smoke and faces. Outside, the sky had cleared and the temperature had dropped. The air felt like a slap. When I tried to breathe deeply through my nose to sober myself I caught that old familiar feeling of the air crystallizing in my nose and my eyes started watering. February in the Northeast, I thought and pushed my hands into the pockets of my new coat. I took a cab back to the Gaskill. Last thing I needed was a DUI. I'd get the rental in the morning on my way to the police roundhouse and my appointment with the IAD contact. As I sat in the back of the cab I tried not to think of Meagan Montgomery and the possibilities.

I woke at nine in the big four-poster bed of the blue room and panicked in fear. I had no idea where I was. The thick comforter around me, dark maple wardrobe, a fireplace on the opposite wall. Gaskill. Philadelphia, Scotch whiskey. In seconds it tumbled into focus but I was still unsettled that it had taken longer to right myself than it should have. When I stood I felt uncomfortably old.

Thirty minutes later I was downstairs in the kitchen drinking coffee, eating one Guy's fabulous omelets and scanning the first few pages of the Philadelphia Daily News. Philadelphia Daily News. Guy was devilishly accounting his own story of booking the entire house to a contingent in town for the Republican National Convention a few years earlier and their slow realization after they arrived that his was a gay- owned and -managed establishment. Guy was devilishly accounting his own story of booking the entire house to a contingent in town for the Republican National Convention a few years earlier and their slow realization after they arrived that his was a gay- owned and -managed establishment.

"Of course when they left the next day I charged them for the full four days and they paid without a peep."

I got a cab to my rental and it took fifteen teeth-chattering minutes to get the heater up to speed. I was at the roundhouse near Franklin Square at eleven for an eleven-fifteen with Detective Fried and I parked in the visitors' lot.

On the third floor there were few uniforms. Shirts and ties. Suit jackets. Secretaries and doors with bra.s.s nameplates. Pure administration. I'd worn my collared shirt. Guy had read the extra-close shave and hint of cologne and had lent me an expensive sweater. The cuffs of my pleated chinos came down far enough to disguise the black work boots that still had a manufacturer's shine.

I checked in with the IAD a.s.sistant and waited uncomfortably in an anteroom for Fried. There was a large corner office that I knew would belong to the lieutenant. The door was shut. I didn't have to make out the name on the bra.s.s plate. I paced, fidgeting, and realized I was surrept.i.tiously looking for a flash of blonde hair.

"Mr. Freeman?"

I turned on the male voice, wishing it quieter, questioning why I hadn't set this up as an outside meeting.

"Rick Fried," the man said, shaking my hand in a strong grip. "Good to meet you. Come on in."

I followed the back of Fried's suit into a small office and since he hadn't closed the door, I did. He slipped his coat off and hung it on the back of his chair before sitting.

"Your uncle speaks very highly of you, Mr. Freeman. And when Sergeant Keith speaks, the smart ones around here listen."

"He's a good man," I said.

"One of the best," Fried answered, unb.u.t.toning his cuffs and rolling back his sleeves, just us working guys here. It was probably a technique for IAD interviews. He was younger than my uncle, older by ten years than me, at least that's what I was telling myself.

"He tells me you're a P.I. in Florida now."

I nodded.

"Nice tan."

I nodded again.

"OK. The sarge says you're working something on our former Mr. Colin O'Shea and I gather it's gotta be on the defense side, Mr. Freeman, 'cause I see that someone from the, uh, Broward sheriff's office has already made some inquiries on Mr. O'Shea."

"You handle them?" I said.

"Nope. The lieutenant does all outside agency contacts," he said.

Fried was reading from a lined check-out sheet stapled to the front of a file on his desktop. It was lying on top of a second folder.

"Well, I wouldn't say 'defense,' detective. I'm in a sort of neutral position," I said. "I was asked by a friend to offer an opinion because I knew O'Shea, years ago."

"Yeah, right, you two graduated academy together," Fried said, unconsciously, or maybe not, touching his fingers to the second file. "You two ever work the streets together?"

I knew the IAD game. Even if this guy was a friend of my uncle's, his whole existence in this job was give-and-take. Info for info.

"We ran across each other. He was from the neighborhood," I said. "Know what I mean?"

In South Philly, mention of the neighborhood still had a sense of being synonymous with a tribe of sorts. I was here on my uncle's honor. It snapped Fried back.

"Yeah, well, the file's pretty straight up on O'Shea," he said, handing it across his desk.

"Had some complaints. He was written up for excessive use of force. Then he and a couple others out at the Tenth got stopped on a drunk and disorderly, their sergeant handled it, kept it off the books, warned them to clean it up. But O'Shea stayed on the bottle. Another excessive a year later. Then his wife throws a domestic- abuse charge at him."

"Any of these excessive-force complaints involve women?" I said, looking through O'Shea's stats. High number of arrests. Most in districts I remembered as being high-crime spots.

"Naw. Lowlifes mostly. Drug collars on the street. One was a group thing where the bang squad went in on a house full of gang warrants and the hard boys started crying about being beaten afterwards. But I got the feeling that O'Shea didn't exactly shy away from a little extracurricular activity."

"You guys ever do any psych screens on him?" I said.

"Not if it isn't in there," Fried said.

I closed the file and put it back on the desk. As I did I glanced at what I was sure was my own file.

"I don't see anything in there about the Faith Hamlin case," I said, nodding at O'Shea's jacket folder, making the accusation that Fried was holding out on me as bluntly as I could.

The detective laced his fingers and sat back in his chair, like mention of the case had not surprised him.

"That's all part of an ongoing investigation, Mr. Freeman. "It's not public information."

I lowered my voice and leaned forward just as far as Fried had moved back.

"Oh, I thought my uncle's word carried more weight than that. There was once a brotherhood and even you guys were part of that," I said, watching his eyes, their movement, center to right, center to right, giving him away.

He finally leaned in.

"Your uncle doesn't have the power to hire and fire, Freeman," he said, showing his allegiance was with his paycheck. "My boss is where she is because of the Hamlin case. She took those guys down, and I'm not saying they didn't deserve it, but as far as she's concerned, the real perp got away."

"O'Shea," I said, without having to.

Fried nodded and leaned back again.

"Now, you got anything on him from Florida that's gonna help her nail his a.s.s for the killing of Faith Hamlin, I'm more than happy to forward that information along, Mr. Freeman."

I sat back as well, more than happy to increase the personal s.p.a.ce between us. Fried didn't know that I had once been married to his boss. Uncle Keith had been more circ.u.mspect than that.

I stood up and offered my hand.

"If I should come across anything that I think you can use, Detective, you'll be the first to know," I lied. "I appreciate the time."

"Hey, any friend of the sarge. Maybe I'll catch you out some night, buy me one," he said, just one of the boys again.

I grinned the guy grin while he showed me out. In the hallway I found myself shaking my head and thinking some line about six degrees of separation. My ex-wife and now my ex-lover had swapped notes on O'Shea and his connection with the disappearances of Faith Hamlin here, and about the disappearances of the women in Florida. They both had the guy's a.s.s in their rifle sights. I figured I knew that Sherry Richards's motive was this h.e.l.l-bent desire for justice for the victims. Meagan's I was equally sure of: a premier scalp on her already extensive collection, a step up her ambitious ladder to who the h.e.l.l knew where, and yet another man-challenge to conquer. I didn't think either had mentioned my name or my intimate connection to both of them.

"Don't tell me that G.o.d has a plan, Mamma," I whispered to a pale empty wall. "Or he is one bizarre poet."

I was waiting for the elevator when I heard her call my name and there was no denying the voice.

"Max?"

I looked back down the hall toward IAD and she was standing in a cerulean-colored suit that I could only imagine her coming up with when the dress code said blue. Even from here I could tell the high cut of her skirt was not regulation. Her head was angled slightly with a questioning look and her honey blonde hair took advantage of the tilt to cascade down over one shoulder. She had called out my name once like that when we were married, late one night while she tried to sleep after a SWAT shooting she'd been in on. Her voice had sounded like she'd needed me, so I'd held her in our bed until she stopped shivering. But the next morning she had no recollection of it and I had been wrong about the needing.

"Max?"

I put my hands in my pockets and took a step toward her. The elevator bell rang and I ignored it. I watched her hand a load of files to a man in a suit next to her and wave him into the office, all without taking her eyes off me. As she approached she looked down once, then raised her eyes and reached up and took a strand of hair that had come loose and in one heartbreaking motion that burned in our past, she tucked it behind her ear. We met halfway.

"Max Freeman, holy s.h.i.t, look at you!"

Her lips were sealed in a barely contained smile but her eyes were undeniably bright. She tossed her arms around my neck and I think I put one hand on her back. Her perfume was new. Her cheek soft and the same. I felt my weight anchor in my heels and the hug might have lasted a second too long for a divorced couple standing in a police headquarters who hadn't seen each other for more than five years. She stepped back, or I did, and she still held my shoulders.

"Jesus Christ, a beach b.u.m? An oil rigger? A d.a.m.n boat captain? What the h.e.l.l have you done with yourself, Max?"

"Hi, Meagan. How have you been?" was all I could manage and my face felt stupid and flushed. She c.o.c.ked her head. She was one of those women whose eyes told you she was smarter and wittier than you, but she was willing to let you try to catch up.

"It's the Florida sun," I said. "Plays h.e.l.l with a guy's complexion."

I wanted to tell her that she hadn't changed a bit. But she did it for me.

"Did you come all this way just to see me?" she said with that teasing smile of hers.

The elevator pinged again and a group got off.

"Uh, yeah, Meg, in a way," I said, lying again. Home must have brought back that special talent in me. I guided her to a bench in the hall and sat.

"I'm actually working for an attorney in West Palm Beach on a case."

"You're a P.I., Max. How perfect for you and that independent streak of yours. Do I know the firm?"

"Uh, I doubt it. He's a one-man show. Kind of independent himself."

"It's just that my husband, Troy Montgomery of Montgomery and Wallace, does a lot of work with real estate attorneys in Florida," she said. She crossed her legs with the grainy shoosh shoosh of fine nylon and rested her left hand on her knee. The ring on her finger flashed, even in the poor fluorescent light. of fine nylon and rested her left hand on her knee. The ring on her finger flashed, even in the poor fluorescent light.

"I, uh, congratulations," I said. "I didn't know you were married."

"Yes you did, Max," she said, fluttering the fingers of her left hand on which a rock the size of Gibraltar clung. "You've always been an observant cop."

"Anyway," I said, avoiding that trap. "I came up to talk with some folks about a former officer, Colin O'Shea. He was a few years younger than me. I think you might have met him."

She looked past me, spinning, I knew, the scenarios through her head. Meagan had been a sharpshooter on the SWAT team when we were married. She was tough, accurate and knew through training, and not just a little of her naturally conniving character, how to see a path in her head before taking it.

"Is this the O'Shea some agency in Florida is looking at as an abduction suspect?"

"Yeah."

Never underestimate a smart woman with skills.

"A detective down there called me. I gave her what we had in the file. You do know I'm heading IAD these days?"

I nodded.

"And I wouldn't be giving you credit, Max, if I didn't suppose that you also know about the Faith Hamlin case."

"Yeah, I do."

Without physically moving, s.p.a.ce of some kind opened up between us on the bench. A step back, without one actually taking place.

"This detective, she was very persistent. Wanted to know more than what we had. Very aggressive."

I nodded again.

"You know her?"

"I've done a couple of overlapping cases."

"Overlapping?" she said, raising that eyebrow of hers. I'd determined years ago it was a skeptical twitch she must have been working on since childhood. I pretended to ignore it. "So, do you know more, Max? About O'Shea?"

Here came the info for info drill, I thought.

"I guess I know that he was your prime suspect in the Hamlin disappearance and that because he couldn't be charged he moved to Florida," I said.

Meagan did not flinch.

"And you also know that your overlapping detective friend is considering him as her main suspect in the disappearance of other victims."