"At this hour?"

"I'm tired."

"David! You have a psychiatrist's appointment in half an hour. You've got to get going."

"I don't," came the sleepy reply.

"Yes, you do. Open this door right now," she bellowed.

"I don't feel well, I'm going to cancel."

"You can't cancel. He'll charge me anyway."

David opened the door and showed his tired face. "He won't charge you if I'm sick, will he?"

"Of course he will, he doesn't know you're not faking." Janice softened at the sight of him. Her baby.

"But what if I'm really sick?" he asked, quite reasonably, she thought.

"Well, frankly, David, he doesn't give a damn. He wants to be paid anyway. And today, you've been a bad boy. You have plenty to talk about."

"Nooooo, Mom, please. I feel like shit."

"Well, you are shit, David. I'm very angry at you for all this and so his your father."

"Is Dad here?"

"He's on his way. He was tied up in traffic."

"He'd say I can cancel."

"He would not. These are expensive fees, and we're paying them to make you well, so put your shoes on and get out of here." She gave him a not unfriendly swat on the bottom.

"Don't do that, Mom," he protested.

"Come on, you know your mommy loves you. Just get going and learn something useful. Then you can pass it on to me. Ha ha. I need to know what's going on with you."

"Jesus Christ," he muttered.

"And none of that language," she barked.

When he was out of the house, she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't wanted to show too much interest before but now she went into his room and sniffed around some more. She didn't have a clue what drugs she was searching for or what they looked like. But she had at least an hour and a half to check things out. She knew marijuana looked like oregano, and pills were pills. How hard could it be? And the paraphernalia they used for drugs was pretty self-explanatory, too. If she found it, he was never going out again.

She searched his closet, his knapsack, his bed, none of it smelled good. The sheets and pillowcase on his bed smelled horrible. The kid had to bathe more often. Use deodorant, something. She picked up rank underwear. She tried to think of everything, even went through the plastic containers the CDs came in. Nothing.

When she got to the computer, she paused. It occurred to her that David's secrets might somehow be in there. She booted the thing up and looked into the document file. There was nothing but school stuff in there. She knew he went on the Internet at night. Sometimes when she woke up in the middle of the night, her phone light showed his line in use. When she pushed the intercom to find out whom he was talking with, there was only music playing softly. His download files were listed in My Docs. "David's Friends" consisted of E-mails back and forth, mostly jokes. She checked the file "Teen" and found some interesting titles. "Mommy 1" was the one she opened first.

"Jesus Christ!" Her mouth fell open when she saw what Mommy was doing with a boy about David's age. "Jesus Christ. He's a pervert."

She didn't know whom to call first. The psychiatrist who was treating David, or her husband, Bill. She opened "Mommy and Daddy" and couldn't believe her eyes. This was worse than drugs, worse than bad grades, worse than ADD. Her son was a pervert of the worst kind. She called her husband. Bill's secretary answered.

"I need to talk to my husband."

"Bill's gone for the day."

"Where did he go?"

"He didn't say."

"When did he leave?"

"Oh, an hour ago, maybe longer."

Janice swore and tried his cell phone, but Bill must have turned it off. Like his son, he broke the connection whenever he didn't want her to reach him. She hated to break down and have a drink to calm her nerves, so she got more and more disturbed about the whole family situation as she waited for them to come home.

Fifty-three

Mike was back at Midtown North at half past four. He was ruminating about Brandy Fabman's acting out with the tongue pierce, the tight sweaters, the beer drinking/pot smoking in Central Park, and, of course, the playing hooky, all to compete with her sexy divorcee mother. The boy was obviously smitten by her. Their stories were the same. They claimed that what they'd been attracted to-the sole reason they'd been targeted by police on the scene-was their interest in dog tracking. They'd been drawn to the scene by the appearance of Slocum's dog, Freda. April said there was something odd about them. There was certainly something upsetting about them. But did they know anything about Maslow Atkins? Had they known Pee Wee James? He wasn't sure yet.

When he returned to the station, the detective rooms were still mobbed. April was in her office with Assistant DA Leonore Jacobi. The two were in deep conversation when he came in and occupied the empty chair. The DA was a small, thin woman with a face that was all jutting bones and nervousness who liked to grab people by the hand and hold on, peering deeply into their eyes. She did that to Mike as soon as he plopped down beside her.

"Hey, Mike, nice to see you. You look like a different guy," she said, locking him in one of her famous visual embraces. "Nice shirt. Well, this case definitely needs your touch," she joked.

Even though their moment together had been short-lived and long ago, she was giving him the treatment just for the fun of it, and he liked her the better for it. April was inscrutable.

"Same here, Leo. Haven't seen you around in a while. You look great, nice haircut, nice suit." He smiled at her cap of short curly black hair and the newest look in fall suits, winter white in a heavy fabric that was definitely rushing the season. Her nails were still bitten to the quick, her cuticles were bloody, and she'd eaten off all her cinnamon-stick lipstick. Only the dark lip liner remained. Same old Leonore.

"It's too heavy. I'm sweating like a pig," she said, writhing on the chair a little for him.

Mike blew air through his nose, laughing. "Well, better to sweat like one than look like one. Speaking of pigs, querida, you still with that deadbeat boyfriend of yours?"

Leonore glowed with the attention. "Yeah, Sam's still defending the bad guys. We try not to talk about it over dinner. He thinks he'll flip me one day." She smiled at Mike, radiant. "You've been reading about those death row cases in Illinois?"

"Uh-uh.Tell me about it."

"This is no joke. They've started testing the DNA of convicted rape/murders on death row. Turns out more than one in ten is innocent in Illinois. They had to stop executing there. I wouldn't want to get arrested in a state like Texas. Makes you wonder, don't it?" Another big smile at Mike.

"Hey, the meter's running," April murmured.

Leonore turned to her. Smooth. "Thank God we know what we're doing here in New York. Maybe some day we'll have an accredited lab. What do you have, Mike?"

"Not a lot. Two kids who like dogs and play hooky. What do you have, April?"

April made a face and glanced at her pages of notes. "I've got a mess. A real weird puzzle. I talked to Grace Rodriguez for almost two hours. She works for Atkins's father and has been his girlfriend for twenty-three years. Same old same old. She loved the guy, thought he would leave the wife he hates and marry her. She's a very attractive woman, didn't you think, Mike?" she glanced at him.

"Not my type. I never liked blonds."

April smiled. "I'm not touching that. So two decades pass, and no wedding bells. That would be enough to make any mother crazy."

"Eh, lot of people don't get married anymore. Who needs it?" Leonore cracked.

"Some of us are still traditional, Leo," Mike replied, looking at April and liking her smile.