"Which we have."

"Yes. In spades. But the most important issue is whether any suggestions were implanted."

"How could any court tell that?"

He templed his fingers, gazed at me over the steeple. "The key is whether there was a permanent record of the hypnosis itself."

"And...?"

"Heather," Kite said, a tone of triumph in his voice.

Her heels clicked on the hardwood floor. I heard a cabinet being opened, the sound of snapping plastic. I felt her come up behind me. She gently placed a standard audio cassette into my lap and stepped back.

"I presume you have an adequate machine available?" Kite asked.

"Sure."

"What you have is a copy, Mr. Burke. I plan to introduce the entire history of Miss Dalton's sessions into evidence. And then I shall step back and simply say what I have waited to say all my life as a lawyer: res ipsa loquitur."

He raised his eyebrows, but I didn't take the bait. "It's Latin," he said. "It literally means 'the thing speaks for itself.' And the tapes do. Eloquently, I assure you. And, unlike Borawick, in which the refreshed testimony was not allowed, our hypnotist is not some amateur with a high school education and no formal training who didn't keep adequate records. In our case, Mr. Burke, if you will remember, the hypnotist was a psychiatrist. And a psychiatrist who not only kept written records of his sessions; they were all preserved exactly as they occurred. If ever one searched for the classic case to rebut the soacalled 'False Memory syndrome,' one could not do better than what we have."

Most investigators don't even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes they'd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often. There're plenty of wellameaning amateurs, but they run around like headless chickens on crystal meth. Private eyes? They're mostly exacops with some contacts. Or findaoutaifayourahusbandaisacheatingaonayou keyhole peepers. Or hypertech guys who know all about codeagrabbers and digital scramblers but don't get the concept of tire irons and duct tape.

I don't have a license, but the humans I learned from were the best teachers in the world. You want someone to find secrets, use a man who has plenty of his own.

When games have no rules, they're only games to the players who made them up. I never made up the games, but they made me a player. When I was just a kid: ugly secrets, dark corridors, terror around every corner. I learned how to hide real good. And now it's real hard to hide from me.

Plus I was working my own city. Where I know how to find the best slipaandaslide men in the world. The Prof might have lost a step- maybe he wasn't up to bank vaults or highasecurity buildings anymore- but he could still go in and out of a regular apartment house like smoke through pantyhose.

"Seven G," I told him, unfolding a floor plan. "It's a twoabedroom, top floor, rear. No doorman. I'll make sure she's not around when you go in."

"She bunks alone?"

"Guaranteed," I said, relying on Wolfe.

"And the other one?"

"That's a threearoom. Third floor, right off the elevator. Furnished. Six and a quarter a month, utilities included. It's not a hotel, but nobody stays there that long. Mostly studios- she's got one of the bigger units."

"Same deal?"

"Same deal. You need The Mole to take down the basement?"

"That ain't the plan, man. I figure amateur locks, right? What you want, I'll be through in a half hour tops."

"Be a ghost, Prof."

"A holy ghost, Schoolboy."

"You can't imagine what it feels like," the man said. "If you haven't been through it, you'll never understand."

"I can't be you," I said softly. "I know that. But maybe, if you'll help, I can get close."

"Mr. Kite saved my life," the man said, standing on the back porch of his Upper Westchester house, looking out over a rushing gorge. He was in his sixties, thinning brown hair neatly combed to the side over a fineaboned face. His right hand was locked over his left wrist as tight as a handcuff. "He asked me to talk to you- that's good enough for me."

"How did it...happen?"

"'Happen.' That's a good word for it. Like a train wreck. I had no warning. My son had a wonderful life. We had the...resources to give him everything a boy could want. He was a soccer star, you know. When he was small. He lost interest when he started high school, but that's common, I guess. Once puberty hits....

"He had everything, as I said. His junior year in Europe. The whole Continent, Grand Tour. A new car when he was only sixteen. A Corvette. A black convertible- just what he wanted. We did everything together. As a family. Ski trips, Disneyland, ball games...the whole nine yards. He graduated fourth in his class. Phi Beta Kappa at my alma mater. Then he got a Master's degree in English literature. And a wonderful teaching position." The man's voice trailed off, his eyes focusing somewhere out by the gorge. He never looked at me.

"Then he got married," the man said. "A wonderful girl from a fine family- we all loved her. I gave them the down payment on their house as a wedding present."

"You were very generous..."

"Oh, I had it to give," he said. "I've done very well for myself. In business. And what good is money if you can't spend it on your loved ones? It was my pleasure. Always my pleasure."

"When did...?"

"He got divorced. It was so...sudden. A very nice divorce, actually. No name calling, no public displays. She had money of her own, anyway- there was no need to....

"And teaching...well, that doesn't pay very much. He never said why they broke up but I found out later. He was gay."

"He told you?"

"No. He told his mother. That was before..."

"Before...?"

"Before it all...happened. When he was still speaking to her. To us."

"How did you...?"

"A telephone call. The most terrifying phone call a parent can ever receive. It was Tyler. Calling me from his therapist's office. He said it was time to 'confront' me. That's the exact word he used, 'confront.' God."

"What did he say?"

"He said I had molested him," the man said, so quietly I had to strain to pick up the words. "My own son. Saying that to me over the phone. He didn't want to be gay- that's where it all started."

"What do you mean?"

"That's why he went to that therapist. He was gay. Or at least he thought he was. Naturally, he was...disturbed about it. So he went for counseling. That's what he told me, that time on the phone. The therapist helped him 'unlock the memories'..."

He was quiet for a few minutes, crying soundlessly, tears on his face. But his hands didn't move, still vised together.

"'Unlock the memories,' that's what he said. Of me...molesting him. When he was a little boy. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I thought it was some kind of sick...I don't know, joke, maybe. I was in shock."

"Is that all he said?"

"No. He said...a lot. He wanted to meet with me. Faceatoaface, he said. I said I had always talked to him that way. Manatoaman. And you know what he said to me? He said: 'You're not a man.' I almost died. Right there on the phone, I almost died."

"Did you ever talk to him. I mean...that way?"

"No. Never. Mr. Kite told me not to do it. He said it was extortion. A common thing, he told me. He knew the therapist. Knew him by reputation, anyway. He...this therapist...does this a lot. Convinces young people who come to him- who come to him for help, for God's sake- that they were...abused when they were children. Mr. Kite said there would be a demand for money. To be ready for it."

"And did it come?"

"Oh yes. Tyler didn't call it that exactly. He said it was 'reparations' or some such garbage. He wanted money. And an apology. That apology, it was very important to him, he said."

"Did you pay him?"

"I did not," the man said. He drew a harsh intake of breath through his nose. "So he got some twoabit publicity seeker of a lawyer and he sued me. But that didn't work either."

"Because...?"

"Mr. Kite got it thrown out of court. Thrown right out. Tyler didn't have any evidence or anything. Just what he said. And it wasn't really him saying it anyway, it was that damn therapist."

"So you never did speak to- "

"No I have not. I haven't spoken to him, his mother hasn't spoken to him, and his sister hasn't either."

"His sister. Is she older or...?"

"Two years older. A fantastic girl. Married, with three beautiful children. He called her too. He tried to turn her against me, but she wouldn't budge. Brittany knows something about loyalty..."

"Maybe he thought she would be loyal to- "

"To him? Why? What kind of loyalty would that be? To a person who ruined an entire family."

"But if...?"

"He did ruin our family," the man said. "Nothing is the same. Oh, his little scheme didn't succeed. He didn't get his 'apology' for something I never did. But my wife and I...it just shattered us. It changed everything we had. And Brittany, she has no relationship with him at all. He actually told her she could never leave her little boy alone with me. Can you imagine that? Can you feel what that must feel like? My own grandson...

"When you're an innocent man, an accusation like he made hurts worse than if it was the truth. A false allegation of child abuse is the ugliest thing one human being can do to another, I know that now. If it hadn't have been for Mr. Kite, I might have done something very stupid."

"Such as...?"

"You don't know what it feels like!" he said, his voice breaking. "You feel so lost, so alone. Tyler even tried to go to the police. To make a criminal complaint against me. But they wouldn't take it..."

"How long ago was this?"

"He said it happened when he was- "

"No. I mean, how long ago did he make that call?"

"More than seven years ago," the man said. "And I still wake up in the night hearing that phone ring. My heart still jumps. For years I couldn't bear to be around any place there was a telephone, afraid it would ring. My business...I've lost everything."

"Did you ever want to get revenge...?"

"Well, I did sue the therapist. But it was a very difficult standard. We had to prove it was malpractice. And with Tyler sticking to his story..."

"And that was the last time you ever heard from your son?"

"I got a letter," he said quietly. "The most hateful letter ever written, I think. I'd show it to you but it's gone. I burned it. Mr. Kite was furious at me for that, but I couldn't sleep another night even knowing that filthy thing was in the world."

He stepped back from the railing, hands still locked. "It can happen to anyone," he said. "Nobody is ever safe from a lie."

It's an industry," the young woman told me, sitting with her legs crossed in a semiareclined ergonomic chair behind a chromeatrimmed bleachedawood desk. "Driven by a combination of ego and economics. The children may have been abused once, I don't deny that. But now they're being exploited. And the perpetrators are their own parents."

"How does it work?" I asked her, watching her brightablue eyes through the oversized glasses she wore perched on the end of a surgically small nose.

"It varies," she replied, "but not all that much. The ingredients are always the same. The child is molested- not by a family member, but not by a stranger either...someone in the 'circle of trust.' A drama teacher, a football coach, a religious counselor, a babysitter...whatever. Eventually, the child 'tells.' And it turns out that the abuse has been going on for a long time. The perpetrator is arrested. There's either a trial or a guilty plea, it doesn't much matter. The essential element is that the child goes public."

"Why is that so important?"

"Because the child then stays public, Mister..."

"Burke."

"Oh yes. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Mr. Kite sent you over on such short notice and- "

"That's okay. By going public, you mean press conferences and all that?"

"No. That's a different manifestation. That's when the parents are operating off their own egos. When they don't see the economics."

"I'm not sure I- "

"The ego part is simple enough. The parents go on the talk shows. Or they talk to reporters. Maybe they're hoping for something like a book or movie deal, but that's not the real motivation. What they're really after is selfaaggrandizement. Attention for themselves. Sympathy. A chance to be important. Of course, parents of molested children don't have the same impact as parents of murdered children. They get the most attention, those valiant symbols of bravery." Her voice was so heavy with sarcasm it dropped from her mouth like a safe off a high building.

"You don't think much of- "

"I certainly don't. They run around lobbying for their little laws- always named after the child, of course- as though having a murdered child makes them experts on criminal justice. It's all a media thing. It has no substance whatsoever."

"Okay, that's ego. You said something about economics...?"

"Ah, yes. Some of these poor children, they become a road show all into themselves. They travel with an entourage- their own makeup people, speechwriters, press secretaries. And of course, they each have their own stage mothers too. It's disgusting. I have some videotapes for you- Mr. Kite said you'd return them...?"

"Yeah, I will."

"Well, the tapes speak for themselves. Canned presentations, as carefully rehearsed as a play. The brave little child standing up to the horrible abuser. Guaranteed to make you reach for your wallet. They produce soacalled 'selfahelp' films, write their 'own' books for children, act as 'consultants.' Like I said, there's a fortune to be made. And there's plenty of these kids making it.

"What's this have to do with false- "

"With false allegations? Very little. But it's another form of child abuse, that's for sure. Most false allegations come from exploitation. Children being encouraged to lie. Rewarded for lying, in fact. And this business of making the children relive the abuse over and over again just to keep media attention...well, that's another side of the same coin."

"She was out of control," the Latina in the beige wool dress said to me. "I had to do a Tarasoff warning- the first one in all my years of clinical practice."

"What's a Tarasoff warning?" I asked her, watching her fuss with a pack of cigarettes on the top of her desk as though deciding if she was going to take a bitter pill.