"IA was on my tail?" Slowly, his chair spun round to face her. "What the hell for?"

"They got an anonymous tip." Mallory examined her perfectly manicured fingernails, as if one of them might be flawed or chipped – as if his desk could sprout wings and fly. "Some citizen told them you were doing a lot of heavy lifting for a cop on full disability. They followed you for months with cameras. They wanted something incriminating on video. Nobody told them you never cashed the city's checks."

"But you knew, didn't you?" Mrs. Ortega could have supplied her with that information, but long before the cleaning woman's discovery of the checks, Mallory had known that he was not opening his mail. Her invasion of his private life was tabled, for he had a larger issue with her just now. "So it was an anonymous tip?"

Something in his voice – oh, perhaps the heavy sarcasm – gave away his disbelief, and he could see that old look in her eye. She was getting ready for the grand denial. And this told him that his own partner had turned him in to Internal Affairs. It fitted so well with her stealing his gun tonight. Mallory had not trusted him to stay alive, and so she had sicced the IA watchdogs on him, cops to keep an eye on him when she could not be there. In his alternate theory, she had used the Internal Affairs fumble to embarrass the commissioner, just a dab of blackmail to grease the forms for Riker's appeal. It had taken less than the usual ninety days for his reinstatement; it had taken one hour. And now it occurred to him that his partner had also diddled a computer to send out those bogus disability checks, for he had never asked for any assistance from the city of New York.

He lit a cigarette and waited for her to lie her way out of this – and he waited.

Unpredictable brat, she sat on the edge of his desk, legs dangling in the old familiar manner of Kathy the child. And, though a clock hung on every wall, she pulled out her pocket watch and pretended interest in the hour. It was Lou Markowitz's gold watch, handed down through four generations of police. Mallory was reminding him that she was Markowitz's daughter, the only child of his oldest friend. This was such a clumsy tactic, for she had little understanding of sentiment or sympathy; she had none of her own. Offense was her best game. Her crippled idea of defense only saddened him. He had no more heart for this. Thus wounded, he pocketed all his questions and accusations. An hour would pass before he realized that Mallory's inept ploy had been a roaring success, that she had expertly distracted him by creeping up on his sentimental blind side and slaying him with sympathy.

"We should get moving." She slid off the desk and turned her back on him. Heading toward the hallway, she said, "Your friend Agent Hennessey is waiting in the interview room. I picked him for the token fed."

"Good job." As Riker rose from his desk and followed her down the narrow hall, he was only beginning to appreciate Mallory's long-range planning. Her best scheme had begun with Agent Hennessey following a doppelganger while Ian Zachary was ambushed in the parking garage. The next piece of FBI incompetence, MacPherson's murder, had only sweetened her deal. In exchange for files on the Reaper and a clear field for NYPD, all federal foul-ups would be overlooked during press conferences, and New York agents would share the spotlight at endgame, hence the "token fed."

Riker knew that Lou Markowitz would have approved of his foster child's work. She was manipulating the system even better than her old man. Lou, in his prime, had outwitted the FBI – but never actually extorted them.

The partners talked as they walked, and now he learned that the fake blind man was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue Hospital at the insistence of a lawyer. The public defender would not believe that his client could competently waive the right to representation. And while they awaited the return of Victor Patchock, another interview subject was being held in the lockup cage. This one was an elderly attorney named Horace Fairlamb.

"So you busted a lawyer," said Riker.

That's my girl.

They entered the larger of the two interview rooms, the formal one with the long table and a one-way glass for covert observation. Riker shook hands with Agent Hennessey, then suffered a bear hug from Janos. The detective had just heard the news of Riker's reinstatement and greeted him like a returning prisoner of war. While Janos made the introductions to Horace Fairlamb, retired attorney at law, only Riker was positioned to see his partner pirating paperwork from cartons piled at one end of the table. Each box bore the stamp of the FBI. Thick documents and manila folders from the Reaper file were now disappearing underneath Mallory's blazer.

Suspicious brat.

Riker had no doubt that Hennessey would honor the deal of full disclosure, but Mallory trusted no one. And now she excused herself from the room after stealing all that she could covertly carry.

The men took their seats at the table, law enforcement on one side and Horace Fairlamb on the other. The old man was asked to repeat his story, what he had told of it so far. Detective Janos, showing the wear of this baby-sitting detail, pleaded with the elderly lawyer to stick with the pertinent facts, then rolled his eyes as Fairlamb insisted on beginning his story at the beginning. And so they all listened to the drawn-out details of a beloved wife's death, culminating with the funeral. "That was the day I gave my New York law practice to my son." The old man had then traveled to Chicago to live with his daughter and grandchildren.

And now three men with grim smiles admired his wallet photographs as they were passed around the table.

"But after a few days," said Horace Fairlamb, "I could see that it wasn't working out. I spent most of that time staring at the walls and crying – quite a burden for my family. So one day, I left my daughter's house, checked into a hotel and stepped out on a ledge."

Janos raised his head, interest renewed. Evidently, he had not heard this part before. "A jumper."

"A would-be jumper," the attorney corrected him. "One of the hotel residents was a psychiatrist, and that was the day I met Dr. Apollo."

Riker leaned forward. "So she always lived in hotels, even in Chicago?"

"As long as I've known her – three years. Anyway, I became her patient. She treated me for depression. Part of my therapy was studying for the state bar exam. At my age – imagine if you will. But I passed the exam. Well, I was back at work and somewhat useful again. Then one day, I had a breakthrough in therapy. I finally admitted to myself that I had never cared for the practice of law." He sighed. "Half a century wasted in utter boredom. And probate is about as boring as you can – "

"So that's when you took on the little freak with the red wig?" Riker was not quite so patient as Detective Janos. "Then life got interesting, right?" And this was his euphemism for Speed it up, old man, or I'll shoot you.

The lawyer was mildly surprised. "I never had an attorney-client relationship with Victor Patchock. Is that what you thought? Oh, my word, no. I performed other services for Victor – things of a covert nature. I arranged for his move from Chicago to New York, him and another fellow."

"MacPherson?"

"I never knew the other man's real name. He was even more distrustful than Victor. So I got them both credentials with fake names, credit cards, passports and the like. Lodging them in New York was simple enough since I own several buildings here. Then there were the disguises and running around as a decoy in the middle of the night. Oh, I must say it was miles more fun than lawyering. Then I procured firearms for them, and that's not as easy as you might think. You can't just walk into a gun store, you know. There are forms to fill out, serial numbers that can be traced. So there was no legal way to proceed. I went through a dozen bartenders before I found – "