I could feel her voice on my face. I didn't open my eyes. "Yeah," I told her. "Just...processing it all."

"He's an evil man," she said.

"Brother Jacob?"

"Yes. An evil man. A liar. That's the worst thing you can be."

"The worst thing?"

"Lying is the root. Every time. But he wasn't just lying for himself, was he? He made her a liar too. He changed the truth for her."

"Heather, have you ever talked to her?"

"Well...sure."

"I don't mean here. Anyplace else? Just you and her, alone?"

"No. I mean...when would I?"

"I don't know. I was just asking."

"I'd tell you if I had. I'll tell you everything, if you want to know."

"When?"

"Someday," she whispered, leaning so close her lips were against me. I felt the kiss on my face. Right under my cheekbone, next to the bruise. Then I heard her heels tap away until she was standing behind me, waiting for Kite.

When I opened my eyes, they were on Kite's reposed face. He'd slipped back into his chair as quietly as a bird landing on a branch.

"It bothers me too," he said. "The whole hypnosis thing. You know about the soacalled 'false memory' controversy?"

"I heard about it," I said, neutral.

"The water is very murky. There is no question but that the recovery of repressed memory is a documented, scientific fact. Repression? Of course it exists."

I listened to him. Wishing some of my memories were repressed. Maybe there wouldn't have been that dead kid in that basement in the Bronx...

"You can't 'remember' pain," Kite went on. "You'd go stark raving mad if you could. Not physical pain, anyway. But some memories certainly can be repressed...and then surface without warning. Take the 'Vietnam Vet' syndrome. I actually provided some help to the defense in one such case- a man who committed a series of rapes while reexperiencing combat in Vietnam. Flashbacks caused him to- "

"That guy was convicted, right?" I said. I remembered the case. One of Wolfe's, before she got fired. The perp said he'd been flashbacking, believed he was back in Vietnam when he committed the rapes. But he'd robbed the women after he was through with them every time- and he came unglued when Wolfe asked him how many gold chains he'd snatched in Vietnam.

"Society is not always alert to scientific advances," Kite replied, undisturbed. His face shifted into harsh lines, and his voice tightened. "But that does not change the truth. We will never succeed as professional debunkers, we will never be able to testify credibly in a court of law, we will never be able to make a real contribution to society...to the world...if we persist in the overheated rhetoric that none of those with recovered memories are telling the truth!"

I heard the tap of Heather's heels behind me, but she wasn't moving, just shifting her weight, caught up in Kite's juryasummation voice.

"I realize I may be dismissed from the movement for this," he said, letting a deeper organastop into his voice, as though he realized it was getting shrill. "But I will not be humiliated in court the way I have seen it happen to my colleagues. 'Have all the cases you've investigated turned out to be false allegations, Mr. Kite?' he said in a sarcastic imitation of a highapitched woman's voice. 'And if you ever found out an allegation was true, you'd go right to the police, wouldn't you, Mr. Kite? I will never go through such an experience. I need one victim, one real victim, one whose memories are just resurfacing. And now, I've found one. At least, I believe I have..."

"A legit- ?"

"Trauma is scar tissue over memory," he said, his voice changing to a reasonable tone. "There have been cases of violent bank robberies, for example. A woman teller is terrified, goes into traumatic shock. She can't identify the robbers, not even their age or race or height. She undergoes clinical hypnosis at the hands of an experienced, trained professional. And she recovers her memory to the point where she can describe the robbers perfectly. The defense says that you can't trust memories like that- too many other factors might have interfered with the 'picture' the woman's getting. But the videotape from the bank surveillance camera shows her description of the robbers was dead accurate. So we know it can happen. But..."

"You don't always have videotapes."

"No. And there seems to be no question but that charlatans with agendas of their own can implant memories. Especially when the subject is in a highly confused state. Or drugaimpaired. Or suffering from a delusional disorder. With certain disorders, there is an enormous need to confabulate. Do you know what that- ?"

"Fill in the blanks," I said. "Some people lose time. They can't account for whole blocks of it, sometimes even weeks. It's scary to them."

"Multiple personalities especially," Kite said, an intensity to his voice. "But they test perfectly. A multiple would survive any conventional psychological screen. The MMPI, for example. That could explain accounts of alien abductions."

"Multiples who need to fill in the missing time?"

"It could be; that's all I can commit to at this time. But it remains a possibility, one that cannot be discounted."

"You think she could be a- ?"

"No. She's been tested. And there's other evidence."

"Such as?"

"We took her down the same road."

"Hypnosis?"

"Sodium amytal. She went right back to it. We had her in the room. Brother Jacob's room. When she was a little girl. She even remembered his cologne."

"A twelveayearaold girl knew his- ?"

"Not the name," Kite said, anticipating, "the smell. She described it. And the next time, we brought samples, a whole variety. She picked it right out."

"It happened a long time ago," I said. "Can you- ?"

"We know we have a statute problem," Kite interrupted, answering the question he thought I was going to ask. "New York has been a strict jurisdiction, very hostile to delayed discovery."

"What's delayed discovery?"

"Ah," he said, changing tone, finally on ground where I didn't know the way. "The analogy is to medical malpractice. An operation is performed and a surgical instrument is left inside the patient. She doesn't discover the error until a long time later. Perhaps when she has other medical problems as a result. The statute of limitations doesn't begin to run until she actually knows malpractice was committed."

"But Jennifer did know..."

"She knew it when it was happening, yes. But the perpetrator's own conduct- the shock of the sudden knowledge that she was a victim- literally drove it out of her mind. She was in a psychiatric coma. She didn't discover it until later. And that's another doctrine we plan to utilize: equitable estoppel. It simply means a wrongdoer cannot profit from his own bad acts. Do you understand?"

"I hit someone in the head with a tire iron. He goes into a coma. Years pass, he's still in a coma. The statute of limitations runs out. He wakes up. Remembers it was me who did it. It was me who took his memory, so I don't get a free pass for doing it."

"Yes! Not the most graceful explanation, but certainly a cogent one."

"But that was physical," I said. "This was..."

"Emotional. Of course. The hardest thing to prove in law is the soacalled softatissue injury. Any lawyer representing a car accident victim would rather have a broken finger than the worst whiplash. And the human heart is the softest tissue of all," Kite intoned in that juryasummation voice.

"So how are you going to...?"

"Laws change," he said. "Some cases actually make law. I have never heard of a better case to prove the viability of the 'delayed discovery' doctrine than this one. And times are changing. Many states recognize that a child may not have the internal resources to come forward in a case of sexual abuse, especially when the perpetrator is a powerful figure in the child's life. Connecticut has already extended the statute. So has Vermont. And California. I don't fear the odds. In fact, I look forward to the opportunity."

"Okay. You said there was other proof. Could I- ?"

"Take this with you," he said, handing me a pile of paper. And a bunch of letters, neatly tied in a black ribbon. I put them into the aluminum case.

At the grille, Heather said goodbye in a soft voice. When I turned toward her, she put her forehead against my chest, whispered, "Could I have another chance?"

"Who knows?" I lied.

I didn't want to use my Arnold Haines ID for a plane ticket, in case something went wrong out of town. And I knew better than to pay cash. Michelle booked me a roundatrip on USAir through a travel agent she knows. Now that the federales finally figured out that any crew of drooling dimwits with a rental van and enough money to buy a few tons of fertilizer can level an entire office building, they want photo ID at airports. What they haven't figured out is that anyone with the coin and the contacts can score a complete set of papers in a couple of days. When I showed the uniformed woman at the ticket counter a driver's license that matched the Stanley Weber name on my firstaclass ticket, she didn't give it a second glance.

I couldn't contract the job out, not in Buffalo. In a few cities, you still have oldatime thieves working. Guys who'll do a house as fine as pouring it through a strainer and turn over whatever they find- never even look at what they lift, much less make copies. The oldatimers have a professional's pride: "If I take a fall, I take it all," the Prof used to say- no rats allowed in that exclusive club.

But those kind of burglars are a dying breed. Hell, burglary itself is a dying art. Today, it's mostly smashaandasnatch punks, junkies and fools, amateurs who think a fence is what you climb over to get to the windows...which you break with a brick. They don't know how to bypass an alarm, don't even know enough to start at the bottom with a chest of drawers. They leave their trail like it was blazed in neon, counting on the cops' being too busy to do anything but give you a complaint number for your insurance report. And if they ever run into a dog, all they're going to get is bit.

There're no standards now, the way there used to be. I remember a guy who wanted to join our crew years ago, when we were stealing all the time. Hercules, we'd called him in prison, a big, handsome kid, strong as the stench from a twoadayaold corpse. He had a deep weakness for the ladies, but he was standaup- if he got popped, he'd go down by himself, the way you were supposed to. Still, the Prof had nixed him off. "He's a stone amateur, bro- gets his nose open like a subway tunnel. Never keeps his mind on business. Old Herc, he's a hopeless pussyahound. The boy can't run with us- he's a rooster, not a booster."

So I was never tempted, always stayed with a trueapro crew even if I had to pass up something that looked luscious. And I can still get it done in a few cities. Chicago has one of the best thieves I've ever known, almost in the Prof's class. There's a real slick guy who works San Francisco, one of those small, compact boys who can move like smoke. And in New Orleans, there's a doubleajointed woman who could find a diamond in a vat of zircons with her nose. But they're few and far between, an aging class. And every prison jolt thins the ranks.

In Buffalo, I didn't know a soul. I wasn't going to trust some secondhand recommendation- and without a local bondsman and a good lawyer already lined up, it's not righteous to ask your own people to take a risk.

Besides, whatever Brother Jacob had lying around that might help me was probably in his head, not in some desk drawer. I decided this was a oneathief job.

The flight took under ninety minutes, nonstop. I fly first class because it's more anonymous. The seats are separated- the whole setup doesn't encourage the guy next to you to get into a conversation. And you can board the plane after everyone else but still be first off when you land. If you don't check luggage, you can slip on and off the plane like it was a taxicab.

I ate a little bit of the blah food they served, watching the letters Brother Jacob had written to Jennifer Dalton come up on the screen in my head. They were all funahouse mirrors, tricky reflections, bending your vision. The handwriting was strong, with a confident rightahand slant. On heavy, creamacolored, watermarked paper, each letter only one sheet, one side. No return address, no monogram. Expensively anonymous.

Dear One, I know it's hard for you, Jennifer. It's hard for me as well. But there is a right way to do everything, even the most difficult tasks. Patience doesn't come easily to someone your age, but the greatest joys in life are always worth the investment.

And another...

Most things in life are all a matter of perspective. How you look at something is more important than what you're looking at. You've seen this for yourself, haven't you, dear?

All the same...

Remember, Jennifer, your feelings are your own. They are private, special things, unique to you and you alone. And you are always entitled to them. They are always yours. The best things in life are always investments. You have to wait for them to pay off. And this takes patience. I know things are hard for you now, but they'll get better, I promise.

I thought about promises. In the hands of an expert, they're like razor cuts- so sharp the target never feels them until he sees the blood.

And when the target trusts you enough, sometimes he doesn't even see the blood. Until it's almost all gone.

I rented a bronze Taurus sedan at the airport and used the City Planning Commission maps to find him. It wasn't hard- the house was in Brother Jacob's name, and I had a pretty good photo that came with the file Kite had given me.

A pearlescent orange Jeep chugged up next to me at a light. The sun blazed on the Jeep's wheels- masterpieces of sculpture with handaset centerpieces, goldaplated. A set like that can set you back a few thousand dollars. Useless- you're paying for the flash. Like twoahundredadollar sneakers. And like the ultraasneakers, there were more people stealing them than working for them. And not even real stealing- the robot mutant psychopaths don't have the brains to boost a car or shoplift some shoes, so they rough it off faceatoaface. Your stuff or your life- either one gratifies the urban punk killing machines.

It was late afternoon by the time I found the place. A freestanding house of weathered white wood on a short block in what looked like a middleaclass neighborhood with aspirations. A matching oneacar garage stood at the end of a driveway, no fence around the small front yard. The house looked well tended, but whoever owned it wasn't obsessive about it- the lawn could have used a trim and one of the trees had branches that wouldn't last through the fastacoming winter.

I parked across the street and settled in to watch. A trio of kids flew past on fatatired trail bikes, shouting each other's names. A woman walked by with a chocolate lab on leash. It was an active block, probably had its share of housebound watchers too. But I wasn't worried about it- if I got out of there without being arrested, the license plate would deadaend with the Stanley Weber ID.

I pulled around the corner and waited. It stayed quiet until evening dropped blackaedged gray over the block. Lights snapped on in houses as kids went back inside. Suppertime. I dialed the number I had for Brother Jacob on the cellular phone I'd brought with me. If a housekeeper answered, I'd have to think of another way.

"Hello?" A man's voice. Middleaaged but vigorous without being aggressive.

"Could I speak to Brother Jacob, please?"

"Speaking."

"My name is Weber, sir. Stanley Weber. I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time. I- "

"I don't ever respond to telephone solicitations," he said. "If you'd like, you can mail- "

"This isn't a solicitation, sir. I'd like to talk to you about a matter of mutual interest. In a way, I guess you're right: I am a salesman. But what I have to sell isn't to the general public- you're the only one who would be interested, I think."

"I don't understand."

"I could explain better in person, sir. I have some documents you might be interested in purchasing."

"Documents?"

"Yes. I'd rather not go into it on the phone, if you don't mind. I believe it's in your interest that we speak. Privately."

"Look, I don't know who you- "

"It concerns a former...student of yours, Brother Jacob. A young lady. Miss Jennifer Dalton."

The phone went silent, but he hadn't hung up. I listened to him breathing- I couldn't tell if the hook was set. Finally he said, "I'm not sure what you're talking about, actually. But if you would like to- "

"Just a few minutes of your time, sir. At your convenience."

"Yes. Very well. Do you know where I- ?"

"I can be at your house in, say, fifteen minutes. Would that be convenient?"

He went back to breathing again. Then: "All right. But I don't have a lot of time. I'm expecting- "

"I'll be right over," I said, cutting the connection.

I gave it ten minutes. Then I locked up the car and walked around the corner to the white house. The door was painted a dull red, with a switch for the bell set into its center. I turned the switch to the right and heard the dingadong sound inside.

A mediumaheight white man opened the door. He had thick dark hair set unnaturally low on his forehead. A toupee, and an expensive one. He was about my height, with a soft round jowly face, and he wore a red flannel shirt over a pair of old puttyacolored corduroy pants, brown bluntatoed brogans on his feet. His eyes were pale blue, set deep into their sockets.

"Mr...." he said.

"Weber," I finished for him. "May I come in?"

My midnightablue suit and white silk shirt reassured him slightly, but he still looked spooked. Maybe because I wasn't wearing a tie.