"You worked organized crime, right?" Julia asked. She knew the answer, that Serrano had spent four years with the Organized Crime Control Bureau, but she wanted everybody else to know it as well.

"Four years."

"You still have friends there?"

Serrano's generous mouth widened into a full grin. "With my charm, loo, I make friends wherever I go."

"What I'm looking for here is some sort of an overview of Yugoslavian gangs, possibly with ties to the s.e.x trade. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, whatever's out there. The shooter who came out of that closet was a professional. He's gotta be mobbed up."

"Sure, I can definitely do that. What else you have in mind?"

"This one's a little trickier. There's probably a dozen crime-victim support groups in New York. It's possible that our actor visited them, looking for a way to let the anger out. Take the e-mail he sent to Robert Reid and ask around." Julia ran a finger across her forehead, shifted an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. "Better use all your Latin charm here, Carlos, because you'll be an outsider and people are gonna be reluctant to open up."

"Maybe I can invent myself a little crime-victim background, talk about the abuse I been hidin' all these years."

"Really, I didn't know. And thank you for sharing."

Julia's feeble attempt at humor broke the tension and the detectives began to stir, ignoring Foley who looked up at Julia, his gaze mildly curious. Julia met his eyes, but did not return his smile. She thought of herself as a hard woman, but she wasn't hard enough for that.

"Serrano," she said without turning away from Peter Foley, "in my office. I need to talk to you."

II H EN YOU check out those support groups," Julia told Serrano once the door closed behind them, "I want you to do it in person, no telephones."

Serrano stroked his mustache. He had a very sweet manner that concealed a deeply en grained macho att.i.tude. Whenever faced with a specific a.s.signment, he inevitably found something to criticize. "Ya know, I didn't wanna say anything out there, but this business with the support groups, it's not goin' nowhere. Think about it, loo. All I got to offer is angry and male and mid-twenties. I need something more specific."

"Well how about this, Carlos." Julia sat behind her desk, crossed her legs, listened for a moment to the patter of rain on the window. It was going to be a miserable night, and a long one, too. Corry was spending the weekend with her father, and Julia had no reason to be home at any specific time. "I want you to take a photo of Peter Foley and show it around. Find out if anybody's seen him, if he's got any special friends." She noted her detective's surprise with a good deal of satisfaction and wondered if Foley would be equally surprised. "I've got a civilian computer tech coming over, a woman named Olga Pavan. I want you to go online with her, check out any crime victim website with a chat room. You've seen the e-mail, look for someone with the same att.i.tude. And while you're at it, have Pavan work on the e-mail's return address, heavenlyfire.com."

Serrano thought it over briefly, then said, his tone completely professional now, "You think Foley put someone up to killing the Mandrakes and the warehouse vies?"

"How'd our boy target his victims, Carlos? I'm talking about the Mandrakes and Teddy Goodman. How'd he find them if he didn't have somebody to point the way?" She leaned forward, unaware that her mouth had turned down, that the expression on her face was somewhere between a sneer and a snarl. "How do we even know the man who killed the Mandrakes also killed the warehouse victims? The Mandrakes' killer was having a good time, but the warehouse killer was all business. The similarity is that they were each shot with a small-caliber handgun, but there's no forensic evidence proving they were killed with the same weapon. Look, Carlos, I know I'm fishing here, but we've got unlimited overtime and I want to cast as many lines as possible. In any event, whatever you hear about Peter Foley, you report it to me and n.o.body else. There's no reason to let the bosses know what we're doing, not until we have something solid."

Julia pinned her detective with a speculative stare. Commander Clark had reinstated C Squad much too quickly. That meant he probably had a rat on the inside, someone to keep him up to date. She could only hope it wasn't Serrano.

"What I'm gonna do," he said, his brown eyes seeming perfectly innocent to Julia, "is get the computer tech started, then run over to organized crime. Tomorrow morning I'll put in a call to the social workers, see if I can get a list of victims' support groups."

"Alright, Carlos, as long as we're in sync." Julia's tone softened. Serrano would be up most of the night, as would the rest of C Squad, herself included. "Remember," she said, "unlimited overtime. Now you can replace that leaky washing machine your wife is always complaining about."

ETER FOLEY was sitting at a desk, fiddling with a Palm Pilot, when Julia re-entered the squad room. He did not look up, and she waited patiently until Serrano was gone before speaking.

"You have a prior engagement, detective?" Except for the two of them, the squad room was now empty.

"I just consulted my social calendar," Foley explained, "and it turns out I'm free this evening."

"Then I guess it's your lucky night."

"How so?"

"Because we're gonna go to your place right now and have us a little threesome. Just you and me and the Nortons' hard drive. From what I hear, it doesn't get any better than that."

TWENTY-NINE.

HO UGH IT was after seven o'clock, Julia Brennan drove downtown through extremely heavy traffic. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the vehicles ahead were throwing up a mix of gasoline, oil, antifreeze, and New York City mud that coated the windshield evenly, a greasy film made worse by the wipers. Unsure of the last time she'd filled the reservoir, Julia was using the Jeep's washer fluid sparingly. Thus, as she drove, she leaned forward, little by little, until she was hunched over the wheel, peering between the streaks. It was only then that Foley decided to break the silence.

"There's a problem," Foley declared as they entered an underpa.s.s running beneath the United Nations complex, "with the hard drive." He gave it a second, then explained that while the files on the Nor-tons' drive were intact, the names given to them provided no clue to their contents. Thus he and Julia would have to retrieve and examine each file in the hope they'd come upon some sort of address book, or maybe a cache of deleted e-mail, or even a diary. Anything to point them in the right direction.

"It seems that one of the Nortons," Foley continued, "or maybe both of them, was a game nut. I've already recovered a couple of dozen computer games and I guarantee there are more to come. Also, every doc.u.ment we found in their office was scanned into the hard drive. There are files upon files. Every doc.u.ment, every piece of correspondence, a separate file for each agency."

"How big?" Julia interrupted.

Foley smiled. "I'm afraid to ask what you mean by that."

"I mean how big is the hard drive?"

"Ah, I see. Thirty gigabytes."

"Giga means billion, right?"

"Exactly."

"That's big."

"Yeah," Foley agreed, "gigantic."

Suddenly they were both laughing, the sound explosive in the confines of the Jeep, yet at the same time purely intimate, a signal, as Foley read it. As if a third party, watching, had rendered a judgment from which there was no appeal.

"You think there were other children?" Julia asked. "Brought over from Europe."

"We won't know until we find the right person to ask."

"But there should be, right? The professional way it was set up, using the Mandrakes and the Nortons for cover. That kind of organization, it's bound to have its grubby fingers in more than one pie."

Foley nodded. "You remember the file I showed you? Anja Das-calescu's file?"

"Sure."

"Well, I didn't put my finger on it until last night, but something's missing. There's no adoption agency listed on the visa application. What's the chance Joe Norton navigated the Romanian bureaucracy on his own? And how long would it take him for each child? Six months? Ten months? Meanwhile, we know the Nortons were foster parents for years and n.o.body we spoke to in that neighborhood said anything about them going off to Europe for months at a time."

A hundred yards ahead, Julia saw a yellow cab parked in the right lane. Its hood was up and its red emergency blinkers splashed across the Jeep's greasy windshield. The driver was standing outside the vehicle, a Sikh whose rain-soaked turban drooped over his ears. Julia flipped the turn signal and edged to the left. From behind, a horn blared ferociously.

IS THAT her?" Julia asked, even though the small photo displayed on the Gateway monitor was clearly labeled, Patricia Foley.

"That's her." Foley's tone betrayed no more than mild curiosity. Julia had gone directly to the computer, typed a simple request into Yahoo's search engine: missing children + photographs. Then, aided by a DSL line that transmitted huge chunks of information, she'd chosen a site maintained by the federal government where she'd found Patti Foley's photo. "It's computer-aged, though. She was much younger when the original was taken."

Julia continued to stare at the smiling little girl, and Foley continued to watch her closely. He was certain that she was feeling very sorry for him, imagining a grief he'd shed a month after his wife's suicide, a skin he did not intend to re-grow. If he wished to, he decided, he could bring her to her feet, bury his mouth in hers, that she would not refuse him, that it would be a mercy f.u.c.k for the ages.

But he didn't do it. He restrained himself because he wanted her at her hardest, with her instincts on full alert. Nothing less would do.

Thus he'd waited for hours, until after they discovered a cache of photographs so obscene Julia's fair complexion faded to porcelain white before she spun away. Until after they discovered a spread sheet in which the Nortons had recorded their financial lives, and a phone-address book that meticulously listed e-mail addresses. Until after Julia made a rea.s.suring phone call to her daughter, then took a phone call from her highly excited uncle who'd received an e-mail from somebody claiming credit for the Renker killing. Until after he, Foley, set the alarm he'd installed that morning, watching Julia as she regarded the key pad on the wall, a smile playing faintly on her lips, the fact that he'd only installed the alarm after his address became known to the job inescapable. Only then did he draw her close and kiss her.

She came to him eagerly, her body closing on his, her mouth demanding, as if she would swallow him whole. Seared, he pulled away far enough to look into her eyes, to see all that he expected to see, yet know she'd revealed absolutely nothing, that he couldn't even be sure whether he'd done the seducing or been seduced. In the brief moment before her fingers began to unb.u.t.ton his shirt and her lips and tongue found his throat, he asked himself who was taking the risk here, who was crossing lines now? Then he was gone.

THIRTY.

CELL PHONE in hand, Julia sat on the closed lid of the John in Peter Foley's tiny bathroom, watching him through the open door as he slept. He was lying on his side, facing her, and the bedding had fallen back to reveal his broad flat chest and the twisting musculature of his abdomen. A hunk, to be sure, a man-toy who might turn on you at any moment, become that psychopath out of every woman's blackest nightmare.

Still, regret was the furthest thing from Julia's mind, though she hadn't decided to f.u.c.k (that was the word for it, she had to admit, there just wasn't any other) Peter Foley until after he set the alarm. That was when she remembered that the alarm was off when they entered the apartment, that Foley wasn't locking the bad guys out, he was locking them both inside, as if the question of whether or not she'd spend the night had already been addressed. Another challenge, to be sure, one she'd accepted without hesitation, her body on fire. They'd battled to an unacknowledged draw, falling back onto a sweat-drenched sheet with the full knowledge that nothing was settled, nothing at all.

It was a first, nevertheless, the first time in her life that she'd been to bed with a man she could not even imagine as a suitable mate. True, her imagination had been wrong every time so far, her definition of the word suitable on occasion reeking of desperation. But not even a crack-addicted New York street psychotic would be fool enough to mistake Peter Foley for a long-term proposition. No, it was easier to imagine herself ushering him to a holding cell than standing by his side while a priest led them through the marriage vows. In Latin, of course.

So it was definitely a first, the impulsive one-night stand she'd missed as an adolescent when she'd clung to poor Sam Brennan like a starfish to an oyster. Though at times she'd honestly believed she loved Sam, love was beside the point. Having a boyfriend who would eventually become a husband was just one more responsibility to be faced unflinchingly.

Foley rolled onto his stomach and turned his head to the wall, yanking Julia back into the present. It was six o'clock in the morning and Julia wanted to reach Carlos Serrano before he left home. In fact, she caught his sleepy-voiced wife, who pulled him out of the shower. Nevertheless, when he finally picked up the receiver, his voice was cheery enough.

"Morning, loo, what's up?"

"There's been an e-mail claiming credit for the Renker homicide."

"Sent to Robert Reid?"

"Right. I had him fax it to my office. I want you to check it out, compare it to the first one."

"You know, loo, we've got a sergeant down at the big house who does profiling. Myself, I think we've already done the profiling part. It's the suspect part we're havin' trouble with. But if you wanna give it a shot .. ."

"Actually, my goal is to keep the investigation in the house. But why don't you try to arrange something informal, a look at the evidence, a quick response, no paperwork. And tell him it's gotta be right now. A week from Thursday is not gonna help us. If he can't offer a snap judgment, don't let him see the evidence. And don't leave copies under any circ.u.mstances."

"Got it."

As she rang off, Julia looked over at Foley. She couldn't see his face, didn't know if his eyes were open or closed. She didn't care all that much, either. They were past the point where it mattered.

TELL ME what you did," Julia asked Peter Foley an hour later. She was again seated on the closed lid of the toilet, watching Foley through a pale-blue shower curtain as he soaped his chest. She might have been in there with him, but the shower was much too small for romance.

"When?"

"Yesterday, when Uyak Juso came out of the closet." She shook her head. "Uyak. What a joke. I keep hearing this little voice in my head, telling me that Juso was a human being. You know, he was born just like anybody else, just like Anja and the others. But I can't make myself believe it. He's dead and I couldn't care less." She sighed. "Anyway, tell me what you did while I was killing Uyak Juso."

"I dropped down in front of the kids."

"You wanted to shield them?"

"Exactly. I remembered, when I saw the gun, that the best way to preserve innocent life was to eliminate the threat. That's the way we're trained. But I didn't want to draw the shooter's attention and I hesitated for a second. By then it was all over."

Julia rose and left the bathroom as Foley emerged from the shower, retreating a few feet into the other room before turning to face him. "I could have been killed in that second."

Foley laughed. "The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d never had a chance." He wrapped a towel around his waist, then opened the medicine chest in search of his razor and a can of shaving cream. "You know he dropped the gun right away, don't you? With the first shot? His hand jerked like he was having a seizure and the gun went flying."

But Julia couldn't remember the gun falling to the concrete floor, bouncing away. She knew only that it was found against a wall twelve feet from the body. "I f.u.c.ked up," she said. "I'm lucky I'm alive." She watched Foley spread a layer of foam across his face, p.r.o.nounced his att.i.tude noncommittal. "In a situation like that, you don't lose your cool and you have a big advantage. Meantime, I thought I pulled the trigger maybe three or four times when I actually emptied the magazine and I can't remember a single detail after the door opened. I can't remember what the shooter was wearing, what he looked like. I can't remember seeing the gun drop."

It wasn't the full truth. There was one little detail Julia remembered only too well, the back of Uyak Juso's head as it flew into the room behind him.

"According to the ME," Foley said, "you hit the mutt thirteen times. Hard to believe it was just a matter of chance."

Julia refused to be mollified. She would do better in the future, that was the main thing; she would fall back on her training, insufficient though it may have been. Next time out, the man who tried to kill her might not be standing in the open three feet away. Next time, she might have to be more than lucky. She might have to be competent.

"We set?" she finally asked, retreating to a shelf covered with printouts. After the s.e.x, they'd gone back to work, discovering a cache of letters, another of deleted e-mails. Though each had to be pulled up and examined, most of what they found was routine correspondence, and included letters and e-mail addressed to various civil servants involved in the foster-care program. But there were nearly two dozen between Joe Norton and a woman named Elizabeth Nicol-son. Elizabeth was Joe's younger sister, a widow of independent means who lived in Hackettstown, New Jersey, with a perpetually sick parrot named Troy. The Nortons spent their rare vacations with Lizzie Nicolson, while Lizzie was present in the Nortons' Bayside home on every major holiday.

"No." Foley slid the razor down over his chin, raising his head, peering into the mirror along the length of his nose. "No, we're not set. There's something I want to show you first."

THIRTY-ONE.

THE TOPIC of the day in the chat room at little_love.com was HOME SCHOOLING: OPPORTUNITY OR TRAP? Despite the relatively early hour, the spirited discussion among the pedophiles in the room was solidly grounded in the practical.

A chatter who called himself Brahmin wanted to know if schooling your children at home would draw undue attention unless you were affiliated with some religious group.

Zorro advised Brahmin to affiliate.

Papi declared that home schooling was a fundamental right, and would not result in unannounced visits by child-welfare workers. As long as the children performed at grade level, he continued, school boards were happy to forgo the cost of educating the little tykes.

Scholar interrupted to add that home schooling was a useful tool in fostering a sense of us (meaning the child or children with whom he was currently having s.e.x) and them (meaning everyone and everything else in the known universe). The more isolation, he urged, the better.

REMEMBER1. OUR ENEMIES SURROUND US!.

Zorro returned to moderate the tone, urging Brahmin to visit a website maintained by a prominent Pentecostal church in Alabama. Said website, he explained, offered a very detailed, step-by-step guide to successful home schooling.

I DON'T believe what I'm seeing," Julia couldn't take her eyes off the screen. "They're right out in the open. How do they get away with it?"

"A matter of priorities," Foley replied, "allocation of resources, that sort of thing."

"You don't think we take child molesting seriously enough?"

"Like you said, it's right out in the open. These men can be tracked down. I'm not saying we can eliminate pedophilia, but if there was enough money available, we could make it a lot harder for pedophiles to network. Do you know about private chat rooms?"