“We just want to impress upon you how important it is that you tell us now, without further delay, who your source is.”

“And where he is,” put in Collins, the DEA agent. Why DEA? That was still troubling her.

“I can’t answer those questions.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Okay, to be precise, I won’t answer the first, but I can’t answer the second.”

“You told Howard County police that he left town.”

“He or she. That’s my understanding, yes. I haven’t spoken to the source directly, however. In fact, I haven’t had any contact with the source since I arranged the meeting with the Beacon-Light reporters a week ago.”

“Tell us this,” said the prosecutor, Dalesio, the one who struck Tess as the odd man out. “Was your source a number-one male?”

Tess actually understood the police jargon, although it seemed strange for a federal prosecutor to speak as if he were on police radio.

“A black man,” Jenkins supplied when she didn’t answer right away. “African-American.”

“I’m not going to answer that question.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to provide any identifying information. And I want to point out that I still haven’t assigned a gender to the source. You may use ‘he’ and ‘him’ if you like, but I’m not going to do that.”

Jenkins rested his hands on his belly in the manner of a beloved uncle settling in after a particularly satisfying Thanksgiving meal. “African-American, that’s not exactly a big clue in a city that’s sixty-six percent black-and where ninety percent of the homicide victims are black men.”

Tess raised an eyebrow. She was conscious of what she was doing-by refusing to give the expected answer, she was making them consider the possibility that the source was white, throwing them off the trail. The main thing was not to say anything untrue, no matter how trivial. That required a lot of self-control for Tess, who was used to lying in work situations.

“So if the source isn’t a black man,” Jenkins continued, his voice a calm and easygoing drone, “then we can rule out that he’s the young man who was staying at your home last week.”

Any sense of control she had vanished.

“Collins here canvassed your neighborhood yesterday, asked some questions about you. Your neighbors find you a, uh, colorful personality. Your comings and goings attract more attention than you might realize.”

This was news to Tess, who thought she had successfully disappeared into this leafy, quiet neighborhood, taking on the camouflage of seminormalcy, just another working gal. Oh, sure, there were her dogs, especially Esskay, who was notorious for trying to eat the smaller dogs in Stony Run Park, mistaking them for squirrels and rabbits. And Crow, with his handsome face and exuberant personality, was much beloved by the not-so-desperate housewives who swapped recipes with him at the local coffeehouse. There was the time she had come home to find an intruder in the house and had ended up crawling across the yard on her belly, skirt up to her hips, gun in hand. But even this had seemed all so Anne Tyler idiosyncratic, the kind of gentle lunacy on which North Baltimoreans prided themselves. Certainly she was no more notable than Mr. Parrish, with his nightly drunken coasts.

Mr. Parrish. Fuck. And the police report on the incident. What was that fake name that Crow had given?

“Bob Smith,” the prosecutor read from a photocopy. “Believed to be age sixteen, of 400 Battery Avenue, an address that would put him in the middle of the harbor. Is Bob Smith the correct name for the young man who was staying with you?”

“If it’s the name in the report, then it’s the name my boyfriend gave the police. He’s the one who brought the kid home.”

“Yes, and given that the police decided that fault couldn’t be ascertained in the accident and left it to the insurance companies to untangle, they probably don’t care if the name is correct or not. But we do. Is this the name of the young man who stayed with you, Miss Monaghan? And is this young man the source you’re protecting?”

There’s no time limit, she reminded herself, no penalty for not speaking immediately. Think this through, anticipate where they’re going.

“I should probably have my lawyer with me,” she ventured.

“As I said, we can go downtown to wait for him.”

She should do that. But she was tired and hungry, two factors on which they were clearly banking, and she didn’t want to sit in some uncomfortable chair all evening, waiting for Tyner to return home. The opera, she remembered. He and Kitty had season tickets. Box seats-hardly an indulgence for a man in a wheelchair. She imagined them holding hands, lost in some nineteenth-century melodrama while she was caught up in this twenty-first-century one.

“I can’t lie to you,” she said, her voice sorrowful.

Jenkins nodded in kind empathy, while the younger men just stared at her, sharp and impatient.

“I can’t lie to you-because it’s a federal crime to lie to you. If there was anything for the average American to glean from the exhaustive coverage of the Martha Stewart case, it’s that it’s against the law to lie to federal investigators. So I can’t lie to you. I just won’t answer that question, if that’s okay.”

Jenkins’s smile vanished. “This is your source,” he said, pointing to the photocopy of the police report. “This is your source, and your boyfriend made a false statement to a police officer, and he can be prosecuted for that.”

Tess said nothing, focusing all her energy on remaining impassive. It took an amazing amount of effort, but she imagined herself as the Sphinx. Of course, Oedipus had defeated the Sphinx, but these three men didn’t appear to be anointed by destiny.

“We can’t find Bob Smith at his nonexistent address on Battery Avenue. But we did find a Bob Smith in the database of people who have been convicted of drug crimes. Can we assume that’s your Bob Smith?”

Sphinx. Sphinx, sphinx, sphinx. The word repeated in her head like a key on a tinny piano, pressed over and over again, or a drip from a faucet. Sphinx, sphinx, sphinx. Plink, plink, plink.

“Okay, we’re going to assume that it is. And given that Mr. Smith has served time for distribution-related charges, we’re going to assume that you’re working with him. And given that Mr. Smith had permission to use your vehicles, we can seize those, along with your personal and professional accounts. To keep that from happening, all you have to do is set the record straight and tell us who stayed at your house last week. Once we establish that your Bob Smith is not the convicted drug dealer, we won’t have to pursue these charges against you.”

Tess did not doubt that they could do everything they said they could. But she was reasonably certain they could not do it this very minute and that they were not prepared to charge her with anything. If they were, they would have taken her downtown at the outset. They were bullies and bluffers-for now. They were trying to do an end run around the grand jury proceedings, bigfoot the case on the sly, and grab all the glory for themselves.

“What’s the DOB on your Bob Smith?” she asked on a hunch.

“January thirtieth, 1969,” the prosecutor said swiftly, one of those bright boys who can’t resist giving an answer he knows, even as the older man frowned at him.

“Well, as you said, you’re looking for a teenager.”

“Enough,” said Jenkins. “Tell us the name of the boy who stayed here. You’ll regret it if you don’t, Miss Monaghan. I’m sure you think you’re being noble, but your loyalties are misplaced.”

“I can’t continue this conversation without my lawyer,” she said, much the way a polite child might say, The brussels sprouts look delicious, but I happen to be full.

It was the kind of moment that actually deserves to be called pregnant, a full and bursting moment in which it was clear that something was about to happen, but not what or how.