"I follow the Cubs."

"See what I mean?" Slumping back, Ryan stubbed out his cigarette and chugged his beer.

Tight bands squeezed my chest. Anger? Resentment?

Fear of closeness?

I sipped my Coke. Silence roared between us.

The waitress looked our way but knew better than to interrupt. The couple beside us paid their check and left. Another horse clopped by on Church. Or maybe it was the same horse I'd followed in my car. My mind slid sideways.

Did the horse mind walking the same brainless loop? Did it dutifully obey day after day out of fear of the whip? Did it pass the time dreaming equine dreams, or did it know only the world between blinders?

Was Ryan right? Did I wall myself off? Had I put on emotional blinders? Barricaded myself against troubling memories and troubling issues of the present?

A sudden pang struck deep in my chest. Was Pete one of those issues? Was I being fully honest with Ryan? With myself?

"What is it you want?" My mouth felt dry, my throat constricted.

"Lutetia was very curious about you. I didn't have answers for most of her questions. That surprised her. I said the things she was asking about weren't important. She told me that might be true, but, nevertheless, I should know them.

"Motoring solo allows for a lot of introspection. On that long drive I came to understand that Lutetia is right. There are areas of noncommunication, Tempe. Our relationship has borders."

Relationship? Borders? I couldn't believe I was hearing this from Andrew Ryan. The bad boy. The player of the field. The Don Juan of Montreal homicide.

"I don't intentionally keep things from you," I mumbled.

"It's not what a person shares, but that a person shares. Intentional or not, you often close me out."

"I don't."

"Why do you call me Ryan?"

"What?" The question threw me. "It's your name."

"My last name. My family name. Other cops call me Ryan. The guys in my hockey league. You and I have been as intimate as two people can be."

"You call me Brennan."

"When we're working as professionals."

My eyes remained fixed on my hands. Ryan was right. I didn't know why I did that. A distancing measure?

"What is it you want?" I asked.

"We could start with conversation, Tempe. I don't need a busload. Just tell me things. Begin with family, your friends, your first love, your hopes and fears…" Ryan threw up a hand. "… your views on mind and anomalous monism."

I ignored the attempt at a lighter touch.

"You've met Katy. Anne. My nephew Kit."

Harry.

In the early years, when Ryan was inviting and I was declining personal involvement, my sister, Harriet, came to Montreal in search of Nirvana. She ended up sandbagged by a cult, and Ryan and I saved her ass. One night the two went missing, and, I suspect, did the biblical deed. I've never inquired. Neither Ryan nor Harry has ever explained.

"And Harry."

"How is Harry?" Ryan's voice sounded a fraction less taut.

"Living in Houston with a harpsichord maker."

"Is she happy?"

"She's Harry."

"Introduce me to your parents." Dr. Phil prompting a talk show guest.

"Michael Terrence Brennan, litigator, connoisseur, and good-time drunk. Katherine Daessee Lee, known to one and all as Daisy."

"Thus your unpronounceable middle name."

"Like Daisy, with a soft s."

"Daisy. I kind of like-"

"Don't even think of saddling me with that moniker."

Ryan flourished two scout's-honor fingers.

I swallowed and began.

"Michael's Chicago Irish, Daisy's old-line Charlotte. College sweethearts, they marry in the fifties. Michael signs on with a big Chicago law firm and the happy couple settle in Beverly, an Irish neighborhood on Chicago's south side. Daisy joins the Junior League, the Ladies' Auxiliary, the Rosary Society, and the Friends of the Zoo. Temperance Daessee, their firstborn, puts an end to Mrs. Brennan's social ambitions. Harriet Lee follows in three years. Three more, and it's Kevin Michael."

Almost four decades and the pain still sliced me in two. I was aware I was speaking in third-person present tense, but couldn't help myself. Somehow the ploy helped. Ask Freud.

"Nine months later, baby Kevin succumbs to leukemia. Devastated, Daddy sets a land speed record for the single-malt sprint into unemployment, cirrhosis, and an overpriced coffin. Mama retreats into debilitating neurosis, eventually slinks back to Charlotte with young Temperance and Harriet. The trio take up residence with Grandma Lee."

Ryan reached out and thumbed a tear from my cheek. "Thanks." Spoken so softly, I barely heard.

"Next installment, the Charlotte years." I arced a hand, suggesting a movie marquee.

Pub sounds swirled around us. Seconds passed. A minute. When Ryan's gaze met mine some of the tension had eased in his face.

Leaning back, Ryan raised his brows as though seeing me for the first time. The man loved raising his brows. And it worked for him. Gave him an air of unruffled curiosity.

I imagined my appearance. Smudged mascara. Tear-streaked face. River-rat hair yanked up in a knot.

I knew what was coming. An unspoken question as to today's events. OK. Business. Familiar ground. Neutral.

"It's a long story," I said.

"Involving mud wrestling?"

"Involving a reptile named Ramon."

"Loved Henry Silva as the big-game hunter."

Blank stare.

"Alligator. 1980. Heartlessly flushed in his youth, Ramon grows to thirty feet and wants out of the Chicago sewer system. Great film. Classic B creature feature."

"Do you want to hear this?"

"I do."

"Can I have a cheeseburger?"

Ryan signaled the waitress, ordered, then chest-crossed his arms and thrust out his legs, ankles crossed.

"You know about the Dewees skeleton," I began.

"The one your students unearthed."

I nodded. "He was a white male, probably in his forties. Probably dead at least two years. I found an odd fracture on one of his neck vertebrae, and nicks on his twelfth rib and on several lower back vertebrae. He'd had dental work, but nothing popped when we ran his identifiers through NCIC. Ditto for a match with local MPs. One item of interest. I found an eyelash with the bones. The Dewees guy is blond. The lash is black. Emma's sent it to the state lab for DNA testing."

"Emma?"

"Emma Rousseau is the Charleston County coroner." I couldn't handle discussing Emma right then.

"The Dewees skeleton is body number one."

"Yes. Pete's in Charleston doing a financial investigation and searching for a client's daughter. Helene Flynn disappeared over six months ago while working at a street clinic operated by God's Mercy Church, the brainchild of a local televangelist named Aubrey Herron.

"When Helene vanished, her father, Buck Flynn, hired a private investigator named Noble Cruikshank. Two months into the investigation, Cruikshank pulled his own vanishing act. Cruikshank drank. He'd been on benders before where he just disappeared for a time, so no major search was launched. Last Monday, kids found a body hanging from a tree in a national forest just north of town. We got prints, ran them through AFIS. Bingo. The dangler was Cruikshank, who, by the way, was carrying the wallet of a guy named Chester Pinckney, a local swamp rat."

"Why?"

"No idea. Pinckney says his wallet was stolen. More likely, he lost it."

My cheeseburger arrived. I added lettuce, tomato, condiments.

"Cruikshank was male, white, forty-seven. He had a neck fracture like the man on Dewees. Same vertebra, same side, though the noose was knotted at the back of his head."

"Nicks in the ribs and lower back?"

"No."

I took a moment to devour a significant portion of my burger.

"Gullet, that's the Charleston County sheriff, got Cruikshank's belongings from the guy's landlord. Among them was a disc of photos showing people coming and going from the clinic at which Helene Flynn worked. Another box held files. Some contained the stuff you'd expect on a PI's cases. Notes, canceled checks, copies of letters and reports. There was one file on Helene Flynn. Others held nothing but clippings on missing persons. Still others held only handwritten notes."