I drafted a bunch of subpoenas for telephone records, even though no results would be available until the business offices opened again on Monday. I used numbers Paige had given me that were in my trial folder to call several of her coworkers at the investment bank-her supervisor and two friends-to notify them about the murder before they read about it in the newspapers. Mostly, I sat at a desk feeling useless and unhappy.

At one-thirty I went downstairs and hailed a cab, calling Jake to tell him I would meet him on Lexington Avenue, at the restaurant.

"A bit of good news for you, Alex. Peter Robelon just called again. He said to tell you that both he and Graham Hoyt had calls from Dulles Tripping today. The boy sounded fine. Said he had saved his allowance and taken a bus back upstate to the town he had lived in with his grandmother. Quite a mature ten-year-old. He was going to a friend's house. And yes, darling, he did have caller ID on the phone. The operator confirms he was calling from a pay phone upstate. I'll bring the number with me."

"Thank God he's all right," I said. "I've got my cell phone with me. You could have told Robelon to call me."

"After you said you didn't want phone records showing up between the two of you? I was trying to do the right thing, Alex. Sorry if I made another mistake."

"No, no, no. You're right. I'm just so anxious to resolve this with the kid. I don't want him spinning further out of control when he finds out that Paige was killed."

I took a Post-it out of my checkbook. "Read me the number of the pay phone. I'll call it in to the detectives and they can pinpoint exactly what town it's in." I wanted to get the business out of the way before I met him for lunch.

Jake was seated at a small, round table for two, surrounded by a chic-looking assortment of Upper East Side regulars.

"Did you take care of that message?"

"Yes, I did. The cops had actually tried to find the principal of the school in Tonawanda, to get a list of kids' names and addresses. Can't be done until tomorrow. The school's shut down completely for the weekend."

I paused while the waiter took my order of a chopped Cobb salad and a Virgin Mary. It wasn't worth drinking in case we got lucky with a break in the case. Jake got the twinburgers with a vodka and tonic.

"Shall we start the day over? Aren't you going to ask me how I feel?" I asked.

"Sure," Jake said, smiling. "As long as you want to talk about it."

I described how painful it was to learn about Paige's murder, and how much more it hurt to have some of the detectives think that I had failed to protect her in her final hours. I explained her complexities and how much she had chosen to keep hidden from me, despite my best efforts to elicit her trust. I talked about her willingness to tell me she had accidentally killed the burglar, without any probing, but that she had withheld information about one of her sexual partners.

"Do you think you know everything there is to know?"

"I don't believe that ever happens," I answered. "Subconsciously or not, we always filter what we tell other people."

"Always?"

I looked up at him. "Most of the time. And certainly to those with whom we're not intimate. People like Paige wanted me to think better of her, not be judgmental, not second-guess her choices."

"So what do the cops make of this Harry Strait character?"

"A classic case of identity theft. The real Strait died of a heart attack while sitting at his desk at Langley. No controversy, no scandal, no crime. Someone plucked his date of birth and death out of the records or off his tombstone, no doubt forged a set of documents to accompany the name, and is walking around pretending to be Strait."

"Any idea why?"

"Not a clue. And if he throws the stuff in a garbage pail tomorrow and decides to be somebody else, they may never figure out who he is. They'll go through everything in Paige's apartment and office pretty carefully. Maybe he left some contact information or something else that will reveal him to us."

We walked back to the apartment and spent a few quiet hours together before Jake left for the airport. Everything about being with him soothed me and made me happy, if I kept it in the present tense. It was only when I thought about our future, and the barriers that had presented themselves in the past, that I made myself anxious.

I closed the door behind him and settled down on the sofa for the evening with Thomas Hardy and the D'Urbervilles. The bleak Dorset landscape and the workings of the malevolent forces of the universe suited me beautifully.

Monday morning, I left the house early for the dreaded trip to my office, to prepare for the fallout when news of Vallis's death spread, and to go before Judge Moffett.

I kept my door closed until I went to the courtroom, researching the law on-line. I didn't find what I needed. When I got upstairs, the scene was not what I expected. Tripping, Robelon, and Frith were again seated at counsel table. They all looked relaxed and calm. Behind them was Graham Hoyt, and next to him were the lawyers for the hospital and child welfare agency.

Now, however, the two rows behind them were filled with courthouse reporters. I knew that the tabloids had connected the TriBeCa murder with the fact that Paige Vallis had been on the witness stand in the case, but my guess was that Robelon had invited them to come and watch him secure a dismissal of the charges against his client. I had hoped to put this matter to rest out of the glare of press coverage.

Judge Moffett was the last to arrive. The media had always been fair to him, and he would play with them to get himself some favorable ink. He took the bench and began by making a statement in open court about Paige Vallis's murder and the great coincidence that she had spent her last day testifying before him.

"Do you have an application, Mr. Robelon?" Moffett asked.

"Yes, Your Honor. At this time, on behalf of my client, I move to dismiss all the charges against him. We are, obviously, entitled to a mistrial. I had been looking forward to the now-impossible opportunity of cross-examining Ms. Vallis. Not only do we mourn her death, but we regret that this deprives Mr. Tripping of the chance to completely exonerate himself."

Robelon's grandstanding went on for ten minutes. The judge asked me to respond. I rambled more than I intended, talking about the rape charge first, disagreeing-most respectfully-with the court's conclusion that Vallis's death was coincidental to the trial, and making the point that she was not the sole victim in this matter. There were still counts in the indictment-assault and endangerment-that referred to the missing boy.

"What's the solution, Ms. Cooper?" Moffett asked facetiously. "I'm supposed to move to strike an entire direct exam? Just ask the jury to forget what they heard and move on to your other witnesses? You got law on it?"

"No, sir. I haven't been able to find a single case on point. I'd like some time to-"

"You don't need time. You need a miracle," Moffett said, looking to see how many of the reporters were taking down his repartee.

"We had open issues on the table. Dulles Tripping is still missing-"

Robelon stood and interrupted me. "Mr. Hoyt and I can give you an update on that. The boy is fine. He's upstate with friends. We're happy to arrange a meeting with Ms. Cooper so she can speak with him herself as soon as we get him back here."

Graham Hoyt was standing behind Robelon and winked at me, as though to confirm he had brokered that deal for me to see Dulles.

"May I have a few hours to consult with the head of our Appeals Bureau?" I asked. The most brilliant legal scholar in our office was John Bryer. Whenever our shoot-from-the-hip trial dogs got into trouble in court, the fastest solution was to call Bryer. If anyone could fashion a creative solution to keep my case alive, it would be he. "I might want to submit papers-to write on this, Your Honor."