"Doing fine until this news."

"Sit down," he said, stepping away from his desk chair and turning it over to me. Space was at a premium in the outdated old squad rooms of most precincts.

"No, thanks. Stay where you are," I said, refusing the offer.

"I need to have my back to the guys while I say a couple of things to you. Get something off my chest. Do me a favor and sit down."

Squeeks went around the desk so that he could talk directly into my face. "Sorry about the frigid greeting, Alex. A couple of them have a problem with this."

"With what?" What I had thought was empathy was something else altogether.

"We understand the deceased was a witness of yours. Paige Vallis. That right?"

"Yes. What's the problem?"

Squeeks paused. "I mean, they want to know why she didn't have any kind of protection, any-"

Mike jumped to my defense. "What are you, nuts? This broad's a complaining witness in a garden-variety sexual assault case. She was-"

I was steamed, too. "There's no such thing as a 'garden-variety' rape, Mike. Let me handle this myself. What do you guys think this is-Hollywood? When's the last time you know a witness who's been guarded during a trial in Manhattan Supreme Court? We've got forty felony cases going every day, and witnesses walk in and out of the place like it's an ordinary office building. This isn't a mob case, there's no drug cartel connection, Tripping wasn't a gunrunner or a Mafia kingpin. Who's the asshole who's blaming me for this murder?" I stood up. "Let's clear the air about this right now."

I came around from behind the desk and started for the group of detectives huddled between the coffee machine and the door to the lieutenant's office. Mike grabbed me by the arm and tried to hold me in place, but I shook loose.

"She feels like shit already, Squeeks," Mike said. "The broad is dead. What was Coop supposed to do different?"

"Could have let the Terrorist Task Force know what was going on," he answered.

I stopped in my tracks and turned back. "What?"

"A couple of the guys are just saying you could have told the task force your witness was at risk because of her background," Squeeks said.

"Well, I'd have to know about it first in order to tell them, wouldn't I? The defendant claimed a lot of things that turned out not to be true. There's no middle ground with you guys. I ask you to go to the mats in order to get me evidence for my cases and you tell me there's no manpower to do it, or that no one will authorize the overtime. Now you're accusing me of not seeing conspiracies where I don't believe they exist-like the task force would have taken this schizophrenic wanna-be spy seriously if I had thought to call them? That's a load of crap."

"Not Andrew Tripping. I don't mean him."

"Exactly who do you mean, Squeeks? I'm running clean out of guesses."

"The terrorist. The guy she killed down in Virginia."

Mike was sitting on the edge of the desk. "Who'd she kill?"

"Let's back up a few steps," I said. "I know she accidentally killed a man, and I thought she had told me everything I needed to know. You obviously know more about that incident than I do."

"That's unusual, Alex. The guys who've worked with you," Squeeks said, cocking his thumb over his shoulder to point behind him, "they say you know more about your victims than they know about themselves. Say you don't go to trial until you've pulled every last ounce of information out of them."

"That's the truth," Mike said. "Get your hands off your hips, blondie, and lighten up. That's a good thing."

"They figure you're aware of all this, Alex."

I raised both arms in bewilderment and shook my head at Squeeks.

He went on. "After we found the body, we ran her. Just a name check, not even fingerprints. That's routine. Never expected to get anything-and bingo-came back with a homicide arrest down in Fairfax."

"I know that. I spoke to the DA there myself," I said. "He gave me the whole file. There was nothing in it about a terrorist."

"Maybe someone sanitized the file," Mike said. "Can you show them what you've got, Coop?"

"Drive me over to my office and I'll get the whole thing. What I thought I had was a copy of the original court papers. You can see the entire record," I said to Squeeks.

I picked up the phone on the desk and dialed Battaglia's home number. "Paul? Sorry to wake you. I've got some very tough news," I said, telling him about the murder of Paige Vallis, which would certainly be Sunday morning's headlines in a few hours.

"And I need a couple of things from you. Right now, if you can. There's a prosecutor in Virginia who gave me information on an old case. There's a chance his boss made him purge some details from it," I said, asking him to place an emergency call to the district attorney in Fairfax, to grease the wheels to get the real story.

"One more thing. Your contact at the CIA? Would you call and ask them for information on an agent called Harry Strait? He may have something to do with this."

I paused and waited for a response. "I know it's the middle of the night, Paul, but they're not going to give this stuff to anyone else."

Squeeks was waiting for me to get off the phone. "Why don't you tell me what you did know about Vallis's case."

Mike listened as I laid out the facts for both of them.

Paige's eighty-eight-year-old father had died, of natural causes, at his home in Virginia. Paige had gone down there to organize the funeral service and arrange for his personal belongings to be moved or sold.

"The prosecutor told me it was a part of a pattern, a scam that a burglary team was operating," I said. "The obituary listed the date and time of the funeral, as they always do. That's when the burglars check out the address of the deceased, figure that anyone who knew and loved him would be in church at the ceremony, and they break into the house because they figure it will be unattended."

I went on, "Paige said she came home from the cemetery and went in via the back door, surprising the burglar. He lunged at her with a knife, they struggled, and when they fell to the floor, he landed on it."

"Hoist on his own petard," Mike said.

"Exactly. The case went to the grand jury, Paige told her story, and if I remember correctly, the jurors actually stood up and applauded her."

Squeeks opened his case folder and looked at his notes. "You got the guy's name?"

"In my office. I want to say it's something like Nassan. Abraham Nassan."

"Close. It's Ibrahim."

"What's your point?" Mike asked.

"That it's clearly an Arabic name. That Cooper should have known-"

"I'm telling you that the court papers I have say Abraham. I even have a photograph of the guy. What should I have known?"

"They didn't tell you he was part of a cell? An arm of al Qaeda?" Squeeks asked.

"They told me he was Abie the burglar. Abie the second-story man," I said, slamming my hand on the desktop. "A rash of funeral-related thefts. Close this case out, close them all."

"Coop thought he was one of her boys, not Abie the Arab," Mike said.

I fished in my evening bag for my set of keys. "Send one of the guys over to Hogan Place. Here's the key to my office. The folder's in the third cabinet from the bookcase. Bring the whole goddamn case and look at it for yourself. Why the hell is any prosecutor going to purge a file to give to me?"

Squeeks answered me. "The police chief thinks the district attorney in Fairfax had orders from the feds. There was a major investigation in progress, a follow-up to the Pentagon plane crash, and the feds were running a pretty tight ship. They didn't want the public to panic. Figured if one of the terrorists was dead and the death was justifiable, no need to alarm the good citizens of the Commonwealth. Still can't believe they didn't tell you the truth."