"Where?" Woody demanded. "Where?"

"Right here, I don't know." Pee Wee's voice slurred.

"What kind of bullshit is this?" Woody barked.

Pee Wee looked hurt. "Do I do bullshit, Detective? The detective here knows me. I keep the peace, I'm the one stops the fights, don't I? I tell you what's up, don't I?"

"It's sergeant now," April said automatically. "Why didn't you say something when you saw us here last night?"

He stood there, shaking his head as if he had a palsy.

"Looks like you're an accessory."

"No way." Pee Wee a.k.a. John Jasper James, an ex-sergeant in the U.S. Army and a Vietnam veteran, protested. "I didn't have nothing to do with it. I thought I saw a guy go down. Maybe I'm wrong. Who's gonna believe an old drunk's story anyway?"

April could have called the detective squad commander of the Park Precinct to come and get Pee Wee James and take him in for questioning. She might have been instantly off the hook in the case and gone quietly on with her day. Any sane detective would have done that. But April wanted to clear up the mystery herself. Whatever mishap to Maslow Atkins occurred, it happened on her watch. And the missing man was Jason's student.

This time April swerved off the straight and narrow and sealed her fate in the matter. She decided to take Pee Wee James into her own house for questioning, then make arrangements to get some uniforms and search dogs out to look for a body. She was on another commander's turf. She thought about calling Mike to discuss the matter before she went any further, but she was in a hurry and figured her notifications could wait.

Nine

Maslow's first awareness was the pain behind his eyes. His head swam, and so did the room. He was lying flat on his back, drenched. His fingers were in a puddle. He moved three fingers, as if over piano keys, and figured out they were in water. He didn't know how his fingers could be in water, too. And the back of his neck. What the-? The world was dark.

His head hurt, he was blind and confused.

"Chloe, open the door." His voice came out a croak. He was a seven-year-old locked in the linen closet the day the pipe from the bathroom cracked open.

The family had been on Cape Cod. Outside a storm was raging. It was one of those terrible northeasters that rocked the coast for days, scaring him to death because it always seemed as if the rain would never end. His twin sister, Chloe, had been the one to discover the drying racks in the linen closet during a game of hide and seek.

On the day of the storm, he'd gone in there to hide. He'd climbed up on one of the racks. Chloe had come by and closed the door hard, locking him in the closet. Then a pipe cracked open, splashing water on his face. The space was so tight he couldn't even get down off the rack to open the door. Now, over twenty years later, he whispered, "Chloe, come back."

Maslow's head throbbed. He didn't know why Chloe had locked him in the closet. She knew he didn't like hide and seek.

"Chloe." He struggled to move and found that he was stuck.

He was terrified and wished he could be more like his sister. She could stay still for fifteen minutes or more. In the middle of a game she could leave her hiding place and find a new one, sneaking like a cat. Chloe wasn't afraid of anything.

"Please don't leave me here, Chloe. I don't want to live without you," he whimpered.

Chloe could sneak up on him anytime she wanted to. "Boo!" She scared him to death.

"Chloe?"

The smell was like the flats where they used to dig for clams at low tide on the Cape. It smelled like the house the day it was opened for the first time in the summer. Once they found a dead bird in the fireplace. The lady who came to clean told them that a downdraft of the wind must have caught the bird and dragged it down the chimney where it couldn't get out. The idea of the bird trapped in the fireplace, beating itself to death against the bricks, upset the twins, and they had taken the small desiccated corpse outside for a proper burial in the sand.

Mold and rot were the odors in his nose, like the space under the house where Chloe and he once hid to escape their second sailing lesson. He'd been eight and a terrible swimmer. The instructor had made them all capsize their little boats and tumble into the freezing choppy bay with all their clothes on. Maslow had panicked in the cold water even though the life jacket kept him bobbing on the surface.

When his father came up for the weekend, Maslow told him he didn't like sailing and didn't want to go out again. His father got so angry he hit him. Hit him really hard. After that Maslow started wetting his bed again.

One morning his mother wrapped him in the wet sheet at breakfast and told him she'd send him to day camp just like that if he ever did it again. So he and Chloe hid under the porch. All morning they heard their parents fighting and looking for them. He'd always hated hide and seek.

He lost consciousness thinking he was a bad boy hiding from life with his sister. Hours later, he woke up again. He still thought he was on the Cape even though the house had been sold soon after Chloe died.

"Close the window, Chloe, it's raining on the bed." Maslow moved his lips. He felt like shit.

A roar came and shook the earth. He couldn't get away from the sound. It came again and again. His mouth was crusted with dirt. Dirt was in his mouth, too. His mind wandered around his life. At one point he was telling the pretty blond doctor taking care of his sister that he'd rather die than Chloe.

He still dreamed about the way the doctor ruffled his hair, and said, "You're a fine child, we don't want to lose you."

He tried to explain that he was the boy, he should be the one. Boys were always picked first.

But she shook her head. "We can't make the change. It doesn't work like that."

Why not? They were twins. They had the same blood. Wasn't he supposed to get whatever she got?

"You're the lucky one. It's not your fault. You just didn't get it."

But would he get it later?

"No," the doctor said. "No. You won't ever get it."

But how could he know that? He wandered on through his life. He lost consciousness again. The next time he heard his own gasping breath he thought he was drunk at a loft party in SoHo.

Ninth grade.

The cool kids had gotten a couple of kegs of beer, marijuana, and some pills he later found out were Ecstasy. About seventy-five kids were there. His friend George had invited him. When Maslow told him he wasn't allowed to go to loft parties, George told him not to worry, it wasn't a real loft party. George had this car service. He said they could leave anytime they wanted. Maslow's father was away on a business trip, as usual, and his mother hadn't cared about anything for a long time. So he went in George's limo.

George got them in the door. Then he gave Maslow some beer. Maslow took it even though he was nervous. It looked like a loft party to him. He drank some beer and started talking to this girl, Gloria. The beer made him feel less nervous. Gloria was very pretty. She asked him how old he was.

He thought his answer over very carefully. Gloria looked pretty old to him, maybe as old as eighteen. She was wearing a tight dress, really short. He was afraid if he said sixteen, she might think he was too young.

"Seventeen," he said.

She made a face. "I'm only fifteen. You're too old for me." She was dancing alone to the music.

Quickly, he changed his tune. "I was just kidding. I'm really only sixteen." He felt stupid; he couldn't even dance with her.

"Why lie about something like that?" She walked away.

He had another beer, and the beer made him feel it didn't matter. After a while he had two more. Then George passed him a bong and he had a few puffs. He'd seen bongs in the Village, but this was the first time he'd had one in his hand. He puffed and the pot smoke nearly took his head off.