"I said I'd take care of it." She handed him a bill much larger than any of Riker's shabby bribes, instantly renewing this man's friendship and allegiance. He pocketed his money, then gave her a broad smile that said, Screw those poor people. What can I do for you today?

"What did Riker want?"

"Same old thing. He asked if they'd left the building in the last few days. Oh, yeah, and did they have any new visitors."

"And you said?"

"They don't go nowhere. They don't see nobody." He looked over one shoulder to be sure that the lobby was clear of prying eyes. "The missus, she feels sorry for Riker. But the mister's really steamed."

"But no threats, right? They didn't call in a complaint?"

"Naw, they don't want any more trouble with the cops. The truth, Mallory? They were more afraid of their own kid than Riker. Poor bastard. I told 'em the guy's a little nuts, but not the dangerous kind of crazy. Not like that son of – " He stopped abruptly, correctly intuiting that she would do him some damage if he continued with this line of prattle.

"He's not crazy," she said. "Don't you put that idea in their heads one more time."

Mallory felt no compassion for the parents of Riker's shooter. Those poor people had spent a million dollars on lawyers so their son would be free to ambush a cop. "You tell them I don't want to hear about any harassment complaints. Make that real clear."

Had that sounded sufficiently menacing? Yes. The doorman was backstepping.

She wanted fear to be the strong point of his translation when he carried her message back to those millionaires with their psychotic genes and good lawyers. They had always known what kind of monster they had raised, yet they had not locked the boy away. And now they had no right to whine about the damaged man who sometimes haunted Park Avenue.

In honor of Johanna's visit, the dirty laundry had been stashed in his bedroom, where yesterday's socks joined the pairs previously scattered about the front room. While Riker waited, he began to see his apartment through Mrs. Ortega's eyes. He regretted tossing out the cleaning woman before she could do much more than leave her little footprints in the dust. A man could lose a corpse beneath the mound of black plastic garbage bags piling near the door. How much time had passed since he had last been inspired to carry out trash on collection night? Weeks?

A month?

He looked at his watch, then dismissed the idea that Mrs. Ortega might make an emergency house call. After closing the doors to the kitchen and bathroom, two problems were solved. And now he rationalized away the rest of the mess in the front room. The state of this litter pit would take the lady by surprise. She would never see the first shot coming.

And the walls were thick. If she screamed, no one would hear it.

Mallory passed through the stairwell door, and entered the squad room of Special Crimes Unit, a large space with a haphazard arrangement of desks and one wall banked with tall, grimy windows overlooking the narrow SoHo street. Six men were working overtime tonight, filling in the gap left by Riker's forced departure and her own unauthorized sabbatical. The detectives sat amid the clutter and litter of their caseloads, files and notes and coffee cups, shouting questions at one another, barking deli orders to a police aide and holding telephone conversations.

All noise and motion ceased.

The men lifted their heads in the unison of chorus girls with shoulder holsters. Their eyes were trained on the squad's lone female as she crossed the room to her desk, the only desk at perfect right angles to the wall. Three days ago, this had been the most fanatically neat work space on the planet. No more. The locks on the drawers had been pried open, leaving scratch marks on the metal. The contents had been pawed over and jumbled, some of it strewn across her blotter, and the rest was on the floor. Case files and notebooks lay open, and her penchant for compulsive neatness was exposed in the spill of a drawer stocked with cleaning supplies.

But Mallory did not implode.

And hope died all around the room, for the show was obviously over and hardly worth the wait. The frozen tableau came back to life as talking and shouting resumed and papers shuffled.

Mallory turned to Detective Janos, a man with the large and solid build of a refrigerator that could talk and quote Milton. He had a brutal face that appealed to parents and parole officers alike, one that could frighten their charges into good behavior, and his was the most compassionate face in the squad room tonight. But sympathy was not what Mallory wanted.

He rose from his chair and slowly ambled toward her ruined desk, shaking his head to convey the commiserations of Ain't it a shame? and What's this world coming to? His voice was incongruously soft when he said, "I know what it looks like, kid, but nothing was taken." He hunkered down to retrieve a can of metal polish that had rolled under her chair.

"This is Coffey's work," said Mallory. Lieutenant Coffey might as well have gouged his name into the metal alongside all the other scratches. No one else would have dared to desecrate her personal space.

Janos shot a glance at the window that ran the length of the lieutenant's private office. The blinds were drawn, and the door was closed. "I wouldn't go in there right now if I were you. The boss just got rid of two vultures from Internal Affairs. They found out that Riker was working full-time for his brother Ned."

"He doesn't work there anymore. I took care of that." "But he did work there." Janos, the quintessential gentleman, was on his knees, picking up the case files and notes strewn at her feet. "And the whole time Riker was working, he collected checks for full disability."

"He never cashed those checks." Mallory snatched the papers from his hands before he could put them into the wrong drawer. "And Riker only took a job after the department stopped his payroll deposits."

"Oh, the lieutenant knows that," said Janos, gathering pens and paper clips into his large meaty hands. "And that's what he told IA. Then he told 'em Riker was railroaded into a pension and showed 'em a copy of the appeal forms. And then he says, 'Where do you bastards get off harassing a decorated cop, a wounded cop?' So the boss holds up four fingers, and I'm thinkin', naw, that's three too many. But then he yells, 'Four bullet wounds! Count my fingers, you morons'. I thought that was a real nice touch. And then the bastards left – real fast. Case closed."

Mallory stared at her violated desk. "But that's got nothing to do with why Coffey popped all these locks. Right?" "I'm getting to that."

Janos dumped his collection of small objects into her top drawer with no regard for the correct compartments of the plastic desk organizer. Mallory bit back a rebuke and quickly slotted the paper clips, pens and pencils into the proper square and rectangular wells.

'The district attorney sent one of his twits over here to hassle you," said Janos. "He wanted the package you promised. The trial's tomorrow, and he's a little antsy about it."

And that would be all the evidence she had been asked to develop for a pending court case. It had taken only a few hours to gather it, and she had done that three days ago but never turned it in.

"Coffey tried to reach you." The large detective rose to a stand, holding her feather duster delicately between his thumb and forefinger. "But you don't answer your beeper anymore."

"I'm on comp time." She snatched the feather duster and dropped it into its proper place. She planned to close this lower drawer quietly, not wanting to give the other men the satisfaction of a slam.

"But, Mallory, you never actually did the paperwork for time off."