Arlene stepped closer and removed official ID and an official-looking letter on city stationery and handed them to the guard. Kurtz stood back from the overhead lights, keeping his face in shadow and the bandaged side of his head turned away.

"D.A.'s office?" said the guard after he'd read the paper with his lips moving only slightly. "What do you want tonight? Everything's closed. Everyone's gone home."

"You read it," said Arlene. "The D.A. himself has a nine A.M. hearing in front of Judge Garman, of all people, and half the paperwork on this parolee hasn't been sent over."

"Well, Miz… uh… Johnson… I shouldn't really…"

"This has to be done quickly, Officer Jefferson. The D.A.'s tired of the incompetence here. If he's embarrassed tomorrow by not getting these files tonight…" Arlene had taken out her cell phone and flipped it open.

"Okay, okay," said Officer Jefferson. "Give me your bag and go through the detectors."

Kurtz went through first and stepped back into the relative shadows. Jefferson was holding a heavy portable diskdrive with dongles hanging out and looking dubious.

"That's a portable hard drive," said Arlene, barely restraining a sigh and eye roll. "You don't think we're going to copy these files by hand, do you?"

Jefferson shook his head, set the memory drive back, and lifted out a black rectangular box about twelve inches long with slots in it and an attached cord.

"That's my portable copier for files that do have to be copied by hand," said Arlene, glancing at her watch. "The District Attorney needs these files no later than ten-thirty, Mr. Jefferson. He hates staying up late."

Jefferson zipped up her giant purse and handed it back to her. "I didn't get a call about this, Miz Johnson."

Arlene smiled. "Officer, this is the D.A.'s office. Have you dealt with us before? The District Attorney is a wonderful man, but he's lucky to remember to zip up his fly."

"Ms. Feldman's on bereavement leave this week," said the officer.

"We know," said Arlene. "But the district attorney still needs her files."

Jefferson smiled. "Yeah." He glanced at Kurtz. "I should show you the way up to Ms. Feldman's parole office, but it'll be a couple of minutes. Leroy's still making his rounds."

Arlene held up a silver key. "Carol's sister gave us her key. This will just take a few minutes." She handed the heavy bag to Kurtz. "Here, Thomas, carry this."

Kurtz followed dutifully as she clacked her way across the lobby and summoned an elevator. Jefferson gave a half-salute as they stepped in.

"This will be on security video," said Kurtz as the doors closed.

Arlene shrugged. "No crime, no need to check the security videos."

"I presume that Ms. Feldman's office is near O'Toole's."

"A few doors away."

"Someday the D.A. will trace all this fun back to his predecessor's former executive secretary," said Kurtz.

"Not in this lifetime," said Arlene.

In another, less obvious pocket of Arlene's bag was the breaking and entering tool kit that Kurtz had always used for black bag jobs. He opened Feldman's office door first, turned on the lights, and then locked it behind them. There were three strands of yellow crime scene tape across O'Toole's doorway, but the door opened inward and they could step through. Kurtz took fifteen seconds to jimmy this lock as well.

They lowered the Venetian blinds, took out a pocket-sized low-light, no-flash infrared digital camera and took four photos so they could set everything back exactly the way it was. Then they clicked on halogen penlights. Both had pulled on gloves. Peg O'Toole's computer was still there on the desk extension. Arlene found a power outlet for the backup drive, ran a USB cord to O'Toole's computer, fired up the parole officer's machine and her own, and whispered that they were set to go.

"How long will this take?" whispered Kurtz.

"Depends on how many files she has," whispered Arlene, tapping her gloved fingers on O'Toole's keyboard. "It took me forty-eight minutes to back up the WeddingBells-dot-com files."

"We don't have forty-eight minutes!" hissed Kurtz.

"That's all right," said Arlene. "WeddingBells has three thousand, three hundred and eighty files. Ms. O'Toole has one hundred and six." The backup disk drive blinked a green light and began to whir. "Eight minutes and we're out of here."

"What if they're encrypted or password protected or whatever?" whispered Kurtz.

"I don't think they will be," said Arlene. "But we'll deal with that when we get the drive back to the office. Go do your file thing." She handed him the travel scanner.

The files were locked. He had them open in twenty seconds. He used the penlight to look over several years worth of parolees' thick files. What he needed was a recent list… here it was. Peg O'Toole currently had thirty-nine active "clients," including one Joe Kurtz. He made a space, plugged in the digital copier/scanner, and began running pages through the small device. There were smaller scanners—some pen-sized—but this one was reliable and gobbled entire documents quickly, eliminating the need to run the scanner tip over lines of type. Kurtz fed in lists of current clients, addresses, phone numbers.

Arlene looked around the office and found a cassette tape recorder and racked stacks of cassettes. "She must record her notes, Joe," whispered Arlene. "Then transcribe them. And the last three weeks of cassettes are missing."

"Cops," whispered Kurtz. He was digitizing O'Toole's DayMinder, using the slower wand, playing the light over O'Toole's handwritten entries. "We'll just have to hope she had time to type her notes into the computer files." He finished copying the top three pages in each of the active thirty-nine cons' files, including his own, set the originals back, locked the file cabinets and came over to the desk.

The disk drive had already blinked that it was finished. Arlene left it attached and set a CD into the tray on O'Toole's computer. "I want her e-mail," whispered Arlene.

Kurtz shook his head. "That'll be password protected for sure."

Arlene nodded. "The program that I just loaded… ah… there it is. Will lie hidden in there and if anyone else knows her password and uses this computer, the program will quietly e-mail us a record of all the keystrokes."

"Is that possible?" whispered Kurtz. The idea appalled him and made his headache worse.

"I just did it," whispered Arlene. She unloaded the CD and put it in her bag.

"So all the hard-drive stuff is on the CD now?"

"No. Officer O'Toole didn't have a writable CD drive on this old machine. I just sent the data to the hard drive backup."

"Won't the cops find your keystroke program if they look again?"

Arlene smiled. "It would eat itself first. God, I wish I could smoke in here."

"Don't even think about it," whispered Kurtz. "Now move, I need to get into that desk."

"It's locked," whispered Arlene.

"Uh huh," said Kurtz. He used two bent pieces of metal and had the drawers open before Arlene got completely out of his way. The usual desk bric-a-brac in the center drawer—pens, paper clips, a ruler, pencils. Stationery and official stamps in the top right drawer. Old appointment journals in the right center drawer.

O'Toole had pulled the amusement park photographs out of the lower right drawer yesterday.

There were a few personal things there—tampons modestly pushed to the back, toothpaste, a toothbrush in a travel tube, some cosmetics, a small mirror. No photos. No envelope of the kind she'd taken the photos from. Kurtz checked everything again to make sure and then closed the drawers. The photos hadn't been among the loose paperwork or in the recent files he'd checked.

"Police?" whispered Arlene. She knew what he was looking for.