"If you think you're going to lay this murder charge on him-"

"I do not think any such thing. He's cleared of that. And by clearing him-a person known, without question, to have an unhealthy dislike of me-we can now focus on other leads and avenues in the matter of the murder of Roy Squire. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm on my way to do just that."

"You didn't have to drag him out of his own home in cuffs." He sounded tired now, she noted. She felt the same damn way.

Anger was energizing, but when it started to drip away with fatigue, it could easily form into bitterness.

"No, and he wouldn't have been if he hadn't called Detective Alberta a fucking cunt among other pleasantries, and taken a swing at Detective Sykes while threatening to beat him bloody. He swung at

Alberta, too, and those officers were forced to subdue him.

"I believe your son is twenty-seven years old? I hope to God in twenty years' time my daughter's woman enough to stand up for herself, and doesn't need her mama to do it for her."

Phoebe wrenched open the door. "Don't you come around here anymore to rattle your saber at me. You go right on to IAB, or the chief, the mayor or the damn governor of Georgia. But don't you come here again to push your face into mine over your pathetic offspring." She swung out into the squad room. "Detective Sykes? Would you come with me now?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sykes pushed back from his desk, didn't bother to disguise the snarky grin as he looked over at Sergeant Meeks. Then he strolled out in Phoebe's wake.

She started with the oldest case first. She'd been Special Agent MacNamara then. Still fresh from Quantico. She wouldn't meet Roy for another few weeks, she remembered.

A pretty day, late fall, a breeze stirring the air.

Her hair had been longer then, hadn't it? Yes, past her shoulders in those days, and she'd habitually pulled it back into a twist or knot because she'd thought it looked more official. More professional.

And because it made her feel sexy at the end of the day to pull out the pins and let it fall free.

Ava was still in the suburbs. Carter in high school and gangly with a growth spurt. And Mama's world shrunk down to a square of about six blocks, but no one talked about it then.

"Botched kidnapping. Woman walked out of a hospital nursery down in Biloxi with a newborn baby girl. Posed as a nurse. She brought the baby here, to Savannah, to pass it off as her own. This was a surprise to her husband, who believed she'd gone south to visit her sister for a few days. She told him that she'd found the baby, abandoned, that it was a sign from God, as she hadn't been able to conceive in their eight years of marriage, despite spending several thousand dollars on fertility treatments."

"He buy that?"

"He did not. But he loved her."

She sat at a light. Over the hum of the car's AC, she heard the clipclop as a mounted cop turned into the park.

"He'd also seen the news reports on this stolen baby girl, and put it together. He tried to talk to his wife-Brenda Anne Falk, age thirtyfour. She wouldn't listen. Couldn't he see how that baby had her eyes?

He called her sister, whom she had never seen on that trip south, and her parents, who were frightened and concerned. Then, not knowing what else to do, he tried to take the baby away from her."

Phoebe stopped in front of a tidy office building. And continued when Sykes joined her on the sidewalk. "She got her husband's thirtytwo revolver, pointed it at his head and told him to put her baby down, that it was time for her nap."

"Off the tracks."

"Well off." Inside the building, Phoebe pushed the button on the elevator. "He was afraid the baby could be hurt, so he put her down, tried to reason with his wife, who proceeded to shoot him."

"Off the tracks and over the cliff."

"Yes. Fortunately, she hit the meat of his bicep for a through-and through. She locked herself in with the baby, shoved the dresser in front of the door. He called the hotline number he'd seen on the TV bulletins. And shortly thereafter, I came on as negotiator."

"The baby make it through?"

"Yes, the baby came out fine. Screaming-hungry by that timebut right as rain." She could hear it, Phoebe realized, she could hear that baby crying in her head. "Brenda Anne Falk, however, did not make it through. After over two hours of negotiations, of believing I was getting through to her, she told me that she thought it was time she gave up after all. And by giving up, she meant putting that thirtytwo to her temple and pulling the trigger."

She stepped off the elevator, checked the names on the doors along the corridor, then opened the one marked COMPASS TRAVEL.

It was a small operation with two desks on opposite sides of the room and a long counter at the back. Stands held a bounty of brochures, while the walls were decorated with large posters of exotic locales.

She recognized Falk immediately, though his hair had thinned some, and there were glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He tapped keys on a computer, but Phoebe shook her head at the woman at the counter and stepped over to Falk's desk.

"Excuse me, Mr. Falk?"

"That's right. I'm happy to help you if you don't mind waiting. Or Charlotte can help you now."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Falk, but I need to speak with you." Phoebe palmed her badge so he could see it.

"Oh. Well, w h a't…"

She saw it come, carving slowly through the puzzlement, that recognition, and the shock. And the shadow of old grief.

"I know you," he said. "You were… you were talking to Brenda when she-"

"Yes, I was. I was with the FBI at that time. I'm Phoebe MacNamara, Mr. Falk. I'm with the Savannah-Chatham Police Department. This is Detective Sykes."

"What do you want?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Falk, is there somewhere private we can talk?" He took his glasses off, set them on the desk. "Charlotte? Would you put the 'Closed' sign up and lock the door? Charlotte and I are engaged. I don't need to be private from her. She knows everything about what happened with Brenda."

Charlotte locked up, came immediately to Falk's side. She was a pretty, sturdy-looking woman, and Phoebe judged her to be in her early forties. Her hand, with its simple, round-cut diamond ring, lay supportively on Falk's shoulder.

"What's this about?" she demanded. "You're getting married?"

"Two weeks from Friday."

"Congratulations. Mr. Falk, I know you went through a very, very difficult time. You did the right thing, and I wasn't able to help you."

"I did the right thing?" His hand came up to squeeze Charlotte's. "No, I didn't."

"Pete-"

"No, I didn't," he repeated. "I didn't get help for Brenda. I knew how much she wanted a baby… I thought I knew," he corrected. "But I didn't get help for her. I didn't see, didn't want to see, didn't look. We had a good life, didn't we? That's what I kept telling her. I bought her a kitten, like that was a substitute."

"Oh, Pete, don't-"

But he shook his head. "We were married eight years, and together nearly two before that, and I didn't know what was inside her. That awful need. I didn't see that what was inside her snapped. Going to her sister's for a few days, well, hallelujah. That's what I thought. She'd stop moping around one minute and rushing around the next. Shouldn't I have seen something was broken in her?"

"I can't tell you that, Mr. Falk."

"Something was broken in her, and I never tried to fix it. She couldn't live that way, couldn't live with what was broken, knowing you were going to take the baby away."

"Rough," Sykes commented when they stepped out into the thick air. "It's a crappy thing to do, taking him back through that."

"It's a crappy thing to do, blowing some poor bastard to juice." Sykes winced. "Sorry, Lieutenant, I forgot for a minute."