"Mm." He glanced at the paper on his desk. He had bristly gray hair and bushy eyebrows that looked like they came out of a Halloween disguise kit. "You have a gap of almost two years between the end of your DOC job and now."

"I was a stay-at-home mom for a while." She had been a frantic paddling-to-keep-their-heads-above-water mom. The crap jobs she had been forced to take-scooping ice cream, handing out brochures, walking around in high heels and a bathing suit at a car dealership-weren't worth putting down on paper.

"How come you're applying for a position as a patrolman? I mean, patrol officer. I'd've thought you'd be looking for a job with the New York DOC. The pay's better."

She shook her head. "The nearest correctional facility they're hiring women guards for is Dannemora. I need to stay in this area."

"Because of the kids?"

She shrugged.

"Look, I'm not supposed to ask this, so if you get pissed off you can report me to the EEOC, but have you thought about what you, a single woman, are going to do about your kids? We can't guarantee mommy hours, you know."

He was right. He wasn't supposed to ask her this, and it did piss her off. She tried to keep it from showing in her voice. "We're living with my grandfather, Glenn Hadley. He has a part-time job with flexible hours."

The deputy chief slitted his eyes. Hadley could almost see a list of names clicking through his mind. He might look like an over-the-hill hayseed, but she suspected it wouldn't do to underestimate MacAuley's smarts. She wondered if the illegal question was just another kind of test.

"Glenn Hadley." His eyes popped open. "Works at St. Alban's?"

"Yeah. He's the sexton. That's what they call the custodian there."

"Don't mention that when you talk to the chief."

The surge of hope-she was going to talk to the chief! She was a serious candidate!-almost made her ignore MacAuley's weird advice. Almost.

"What, that granddad's a janitor?"

"Just don't mention St. Alban's or anything to do with it."

She frowned. "He doesn't have something against Christians or something, does he? Because I'm not super devoted or anything, but I do go to church."

"No, no, no, nothing like that." MacAuley compressed his lips. Thought for a moment. "The chief lost his wife this past January."

"I'd heard that."

"He was… with the minister of St. Alban's when it happened. Not with her like there was anything funny going on," he added, so quickly she couldn't help but think there must have, in fact, been something funny going on. "It's just that he feels if he hadn't been with Clare-with Reverend Fergusson-he could have saved his wife. So now, being reminded of her bothers him. Being reminded of Clare. Reverend Fergusson. You understand?"

"Uh-huh," she said, not understanding. Not caring. "I won't mention St. Alban's."

"Okay." He shoved his chair back. Stood up. "Let's go see the chief."

Hadley stood, working her face into the right expression. Ready, willing, and eager. Not desperate. She couldn't afford to look desperate. The prisons were out of commuting range. The private security firms had turned her down. There were only a handful of places where a high school grad could make a decent living, and not one of them was hiring. If she couldn't land this, it was going to be waitressing in Lake George or Saratoga, living off tips and praying nobody got sick or broke a leg. The MKPD had dental. Dental! It had been more than two years since she and the kids had seen a dentist.

MacAuley led her down a short hall, through the dispatcher's station, and rapped on a door with a pebbled glass window and CHIEF RUSSELL VAN ALSTYNE painted in gold. "C'min," a voice said.

She followed MacAuley into a messy office, heaps of magazines and papers piled on a battered credenza, the walls covered with posters and bulletins and a huge map of the tricounty area. A leggy philodendron was dying atop two old file cabinets.

The chief was on the phone, one hand cupped over the receiver. "Hang on," he said. MacAuley tossed her folder onto an equally messy desk. She watched as the chief picked it up one-handed. Long, square fingers. Brown hair with an equal sprinkling of blond and gray, as overgrown as the philodendron.

"Yeah," he told the phone. "Okay. Put us on the list if you find out anything." He laid the folder down without opening it. "No, but send us any prints. We'll run comparisons when we do the ground search in August." Looking at Russ Van Alstyne, she found it hard to picture August. His face was winter-pale, with deep lines etched on either side of his mouth. Ice-blue eyes. She figured him to be about her dad's age, although there was a solidness to the chief that her dad, the king of adult ADD, had never had.

Van Alstyne hung up the phone. "Chief, this is Hadley Knox," MacAuley said. The chief nodded to her. "What's up?" MacAuley went on.

"The rental truck." He glanced at Hadley, including her in the story. "Somebody abandoned a Ryder truck last week at a local farm stand that's still closed for the winter." He looked at Lyle. "Stolen from Kingston. We're getting copies of any prints CADEA pulls."

"Cad-dee-ay?"

Both men looked at Hadley. Uh-oh. Maybe she was supposed to know what that was?

"Capital Area Drug Enforcement Association. It's a sort of regional cooperative, with investigators from departments all over the area." The chief handed another folder to MacAuley. "Their lab tech agreed with your theory that the bales were shrink-wrapped. They didn't find a trace of plant material or THC on any surfaces."

MacAuley tapped his sizable honker. "They don't have this."

"Mmm. Maybe we should hire you out."

"What was it?" Hadley asked. In for a penny, in for a pound, she figured. "In the truck, I mean."

"Marijuana," MacAuley said.

"Pot?" She didn't mean to sound so disbelieving, but pot? Who cared?

"Ten million dollars' worth." Van Alstyne tapped the paper on his desk. "If the truck was full."

"Holy shit!" The second it was out of her mouth, she wanted to call it back. Swearing on a job interview. Genius. "Sorry," she said.

MacAuley looked amused. "I'll just leave you both to it, shall I?"

"Thanks, Lyle," Van Alstyne said. MacAuley exited the office, leaving the door ajar. "Sit down, Ms. Knox."

There was only one chair that didn't have junk on it. She took it.

For a minute, he studied her. If it had been someone else, she would have been getting the creepy vibes that came with unwanted sexual interest. But Van Alstyne wasn't looking at her like a man looks at a woman. It was more like a doctor examining an X-ray. Diagnostic.

"You ask questions," he said.

Was that a complaint? A compliment? She swallowed. "I have two kids, and I'm always telling them there's no such thing as a bad question. I guess it's rubbed off on me."

"Why do you want to be a cop?" His question caught her off guard. Damn, she had prepped for this. What had she been going to say?

"I worked as a prison guard for three years in California." She nodded toward the folder still lying on his desk, unopened. "I found it challenging and fulfilling-"

"Why do you want to be a cop?"

She was left with her mouth half open from her incomplete canned response.

"Just give it to me straight."

She shut her mouth. "I've got a family to support. I need a good-paying job here in Millers Kill. I don't have any college, but my DOC training in California means I already qualify as a probationary peace officer, if I'm enrolled in the Police Basic course."

"What about administering justice? What about getting the bad guys off the street and behind bars?"

She let out a puff of air. "When I was working as a prison guard, I met a lot of guys who claimed they were innocent. I don't know. I figure, administering justice is somebody else's job. As for getting-uh, the bad guys…" She trailed off. "I suppose everybody wants that."