I could call the hotline, but that might raise too many questions. I preferred the anonymity of Internet searches. Well, at least the appearance of anonymity, since God knows the proliferation of spyware probably meant Big Brother, or at least a marketing mega-machine, was following my every move.

I knew another site to try. I didn't go there as much. It made me sad.

I typed into my Internet search engine: www.doenetwork.org. And in two seconds, I was there.

The Doe Network deals primarily with old missing-persons cases, trying to match skeletalized remains found in one location with a missing-persons report that might have been filed in another jurisdiction. Its motto: "There is no time limit to solving a mystery"

The thought gave me a chill as I sat, one hand now clasping the vial of my mother's ashes, the other hand typing in the search parameter: Massachusetts.

The very first hit sent me reeling. Three photos of the same boy, starting when he was ten, then age-progressed to twenty, then to thirty-five. He had gone missing in 1965 and was presumed dead. One minute he'd been playing in the yard, the next he was gone. A pedophile doing time in Connecticut claimed to have raped and murdered the child, but couldn't remember where he'd buried the body So the case remained open, the parents working as feverishly now to find their son's remains as they must have once worked, forty years ago, to find their child.

I wondered what it was like for the parents to have to look at these age-progressed photos. To get that glimpse of who their son might have been, had the mom not gone inside to answer the phone or the father not rolled under the car to change the oil…

Fight, my father always told me. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are murdered are killed within the first three hours. Survive those three hours. Don't give the bastard a chance.

I was crying, I don't know why. I never knew this little boy. Most likely, he died over forty years ago. But I could understand his terror. I felt it every time my father started one of his lectures or training exercises. Fight? When you are a fifty-pound child against a two-hundred-pound male, whatever in the world can you do that will honestly make a difference? My father may have had his illusions, but I have always been a realist.

If you are a child and someone wants to hurt you, chances are, you'll wind up dead.

I moved to the next case: 1967. I looked at just the dates now; I didn't want to see the pictures. It took me five more clicks. Then, November 12,1982.

I was staring at Dori Petracelli. I was looking at her photo, age-progressed to thirty. I was reading the case study of what had happened to my best friend.

Then I went into the bathroom and vomited until I dry-heaved.

Later, twenty, forty, fifty minutes, I didn't know anymore, I had the leash in one hand, the Taser in the other. Bella danced around my feet, practically tripping me in her haste to get downstairs.

I clipped the leash to her collar. And we ran. We ran and we ran and we ran.

By the time we returned home, a good hour and a half later, I thought I had composed myself. I felt cold, even clinical. I still had my family's luggage. I would start packing immediately

But then I turned on the news.

BOBBY ARRIVED HOME shortly after nine p.m., a man on a mission: He had approximately forty minutes to shower, eat, chug a Coke, then return to Roxbury. Unfortunately South Boston parking had other ideas. He worked an eight-block radius around his triple-decker before getting pissed off and parking up on the curb. A Boston cop would take great personal delight in ticketing a state trooper, so he was living dangerously.

A pleasant surprise: One of his tenants, Mrs. Higgins, had left him a plate of cookies. "Saw the news. Keep up your strength," her note said.

Bobby couldn't argue with that, so he started his dinner by eating a lemon square. Then three more as he sorted through the pile of mail scattered on his floor, picking out key envelopes bearing bills, rent checks, leaving the rest.

One more lemon square for the road, chewing without even tasting anymore, he headed down the long narrow hallway to his bedroom at the back of the unit. He unbuttoned his shirt with one hand, emptied his pants pockets with the other. Then shrugged out of his shirt, kicked off his pants, and hit the tiny blue-tiled bathroom in beige dress socks and tighty whities. He got the shower going to full roar. One of the best things he still remembered from his tactical team days-coming home to a long, hot shower.

He stood under the scalding spray for endless minutes. Inhaling the steam, letting it sink into his pores, wishing, as he always did, that it would wash the horror away.

His brain was a spin cycle of overactive images. Those six little girls, mummified faces pressed against clear plastic garbage bags. Old photographs of twelve-year-old Catherine, her pale face hollowed out by hunger, her eyes giant black pupils from spending a month alone in the dark.

And, of course, the other image he was forced to see, would probably be seeing for the rest of his life: the look on Catherine's husband's face, Jimmy Gagnon's face, right before the bullet from Bobby's rifle shattered his skull.

Two years later, Bobby still dreamed about the shooting four or five nights a week. He figured someday it would become three times a week. Then twice a week. Then maybe, if he was lucky, he would get down to three or four times a month.

He'd done counseling, of course. Still met with his old LT, who served as his mentor. Even attended a meeting or two of other officers who'd been involved in critical incidents. But from what he could tell, none of that made much difference. Taking a man's life changed you, plain and simple.

You still had to get up each morning and put on your pants one leg at a time like everyone else.

And some days were good, and some days were bad, and then there were a whole lotta other days in between that really weren't anything at all. Just existence. Just getting the job done. Maybe D.D. was right. Maybe there were two Bobby Dodges: the one who lived before the shooting and the one who lived after. Maybe, inevitably, that's how these things worked.

Bobby ran the shower till the water turned cold. Toweling off, he glanced at his watch. He had a whole minute left for dinner. Microwave chicken, it was.

He stuck two Tyson chicken breasts into the microwave, then retreated to the steamy bathroom and attacked his face with a razor.

Now officially five minutes late, he threw on fresh clothes, popped open a Coke, stuck two piping-hot chicken breasts onto a paper plate, and made his first critical mistake: He sat down.

Three minutes later, he was asleep on his sofa, chicken falling to the floor, paper plate crumpled on his lap. Four hours of sleep in the past fifty-six will do that to a man.

HE JERKED AWAKE, dazed and disoriented, sometime later. His hands lashed out. He was looking for his rifle. Jesus Christ, he needed his rifle! Jimmy Gagnon was coming, clawing at him with skeletal hands.

Bobby sprang off his sofa before the last of the image swept from his mind. He found himself standing in the middle of his own apartment, pointing a greasy paper plate at his TV as if he were packing heat. His heart thundering in his chest.

Anxiety dream.

He counted forward to ten, then slowly back down to one. He repeated the ritual three times until his pulse eased to normal.

He set down the crumpled plate. Retrieved the two chicken breasts from the floor. His stomach growled. Thirty-second rule, he decided, and ate with his bare hands.

First time Bobby had met Catherine Gagnon, he'd been a sniper called out to the scene of a domestic barricade-report of an armed husband, holding his wife and child at gunpoint. Bobby had taken up position across from the Gagnon residence, surveying the situation through his rifle scope, when he'd spotted Jimmy, standing at the foot of the bed, waving a handgun, and yelling so forcefully that Bobby could see the tendons roping the man's neck. Then Catherine came into view, clutching her four-year-old son against her chest. She'd had her hands clasped over Nathan's ears, his face turned into her, as if trying to shield him from the worst.