Whittier looked at his wife. "You saw someone on our balcony?"

"Yes, from Lee's," she said, an odd note of dread in her voice. "And yes, there were two of them."

"Who also apparently tried to chop down your potted trees," Fierenzo went on.

The reaction this time was pure surprise, with no guilt or hidden knowledge mixed in. "The trees?"

Whittier asked. "Why?"

"No idea," Fierenzo said. "Who's Cyril?"

The sudden change of subject caught both of them by surprise, and in the half second before they could cover it up, Fierenzo spotted the twin flashes of recognition.

Whittier tried the dumb approach anyway. "Cyril?"

"He called your apartment while we were there," Fierenzo told him. "He said that if you didn't return Melantha to him thousands of New Yorkers were going to die." He let his gaze harden. "I trust I don't need to tell you how we react to threats like that these days."

Whittier winced. "No, sir."

"Then tell me what's going on."

Whittier sighed. "Before God, I have no idea," he said. "Like we told the other detective, Melantha was handed over to us at gunpoint. We've been bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls in a hurricane ever since."

Fierenzo suppressed a grimace. Unsatisfying though the answer might be, Whittier's voice and body language were finally carrying the ring of truth. "And Cyril?"

"Melantha told me he was one of her people," Mrs. Whittier said, lifting her hands helplessly. "That's all I know."

"I get the impression he was involved with some agreement, too," Whittier offered. "But what agreement, and between whom, I don't know."

"Possibly with someone named Halfdan," Mrs. Whittier offered. "Melantha mentioned that name, too."

"What about the thousands of dead New Yorkers?" Fierenzo asked. "Any idea what he was talking about?"

The Whittiers looked at each other again. "Melantha told me the Greens and the Grays would all die if she didn't go back," she said hesitantly. "But I didn't think there were that many of them."

"The Greens, as in Melantha Green?" Fierenzo asked.

"Yes, though that might just be a coincidence," Mrs. Whittier said. "But then she said they all wanted her dead."

"Did Cyril say anything else?" Whittier asked.

"Nothing that made sense," Fierenzo said, deciding not to mention the references to Sylvia and Aleksander just yet. "We let the machine take the message. You can listen to the whole thing later if you want."

"So what happens now?" Whittier asked cautiously.

For a moment Fierenzo gave him what Lieutenant Cerreta referred to as the Official NYPD Stare. "If you mean are you under arrest, the answer is no," he said. "But this is not the end of this. If the girl shows up, or if you learn anything else, you will call me immediately. Understand?"

Whittier swiped the tip of his tongue across his upper lip. "Yes, sir."

Standing up, Fierenzo pulled out his wallet and slid out a card. "Here are my office and cell phone numbers," he said, handing it to Whittier. "Call me any time."

"Yes, sir," Whittier said again, handling the card carefully.

"Then I'll say good-night," Fierenzo said, nodding to each of them. "I suggest you lock the door behind me."

Powell was waiting for him in the hallway. "You get any of that?" Fierenzo asked.

The other shook his head. "Not really. That door's pretty thick."

"To summarize: they don't know Cyril, they don't know where the girl went, and they don't know anything else."

"Did you tell them Umberto had matched Cyril's voice with the ringleader of his polite break-ins?"

"No, I thought we'd keep that to ourselves for the moment," Fierenzo said. "Because for all their wide-eyed surprise at the news that someone had tried to get into their apartment from their balcony, neither of them remembered to ask how someone could have gotten up there in broad daylight in the first place."

"So how does someone do that?"

"Damned if I know," Fierenzo conceded, heading toward the stairs. "But I'm pretty sure they do."

"You want to haul them in for obstruction?"

Fierenzo shook his head. "I'd rather put them on a leash and let them run."

"I doubt Cerreta will spring for the extra manpower," Powell warned.

"I wasn't planning to ask him," Fierenzo said as they headed downstairs. "I figured we could cover this ourselves."

Powell turned a dark look on him. "As in, there goes my weekend?"

"The blood of thousands of New Yorkers, Jon," Fierenzo reminded him.

"Easy for you to say," Powell grumbled. "With Claire and the girls gone, you can keep whatever crazy hours you want."

"Sandy will understand," Fierenzo assured him.

"Sandy's getting tired of understanding," Powell countered. "What the hell. We're starting right away, I suppose?"

"They're not going anywhere tonight," Fierenzo said. "If they really don't know where the girl went, they're bound to stick around at least until morning in case she comes back."

"And if she does?"

"She won't," Fierenzo said grimly. "Wherever she went, I get the feeling she didn't go voluntarily."

They crossed the entryway alcove past the duty cop and stepped out into the chilly night air. The CSU investigators were closing down shop, their lights switched off and being broken down. A

pickup truck with the Department of Parks and Recreation logo on the side was parked at the curb, and a pair of figures were dragging the broken tree limb toward it. "I still don't think we should let them out of our sight," Powell said.

"We won't," Fierenzo assured him. "I think I can find someone who'll baby-sit the building until we get back in the morning."

Even without looking, he could feel Powell's eyes on him. "You wouldn't," the other said. "Smith?"

"Why not?" Fierenzo countered, pulling out his cell phone. "He wants to be a detective. It's only fair that we show him what the job entails."

"I suppose you even have his number memorized?"

"Don't be silly," Fierenzo admonished him. "I've got it on speed-dial."

Roger locked the door behind the detective, fastening both the deadbolt and chain. Then he went through the apartment, making sure every window was locked.

Caroline was still on the couch, gazing into her teacup, when he returned. "How are you doing?" he asked.

She gave a little shrug. "Okay."

"How's your side?" he asked, his own chest throbbing a little harder in sympathy.

Another shrug. "It's okay."

With a sigh, he sat down beside her. "It's not your fault, Caroline," he told her quietly. "It really isn't."

"I'm the one who let her go into the courtyard," she said, her lower lip trembling visibly as she fought back the tears. "I could have said no, but I didn't. How can it not be my fault?" She shook her head. "That woman came straight out of the tree," she murmured with a sudden shiver. "I know you don't believe that part, but she did."

"Where she came from doesn't really matter," Roger said, ducking the implied question. Caroline had only been able to give him a quick summary before the cops marched them back to the apartment, and the mysterious woman and her baffling appearance had been one of the many things he hadn't understood. "My point is that if you had stayed inside, Melantha would have been here when my two gorillas showed up. There was going to be trouble no matter what you did or didn't do."

Caroline sniffed back some tears. "They must have followed the cab."

"We don't know that," he said, determined to snap her out of this quagmire of self-recrimination.

"Maybe they followed me."

"No, it was me," she insisted. "We saw them climbing our building, just as we were leaving Lee's."

"They were climbing?" Roger asked, frowning. "You mean the outside?"

She nodded. "And Melantha called them Grays."