"And ticking."

"He loves kids. Always has. I watch him on the child abuse cases and he's great with kids."

"You are, too."

"Yeah, but he likes all of them. Me, I like the ones I know and love. I worship my nieces and nephews. I cherish my friends' kids. But I don't sit in an airport lounge listening to the whining toddlers, watching them wipe their noses on their sleeves, see the parents fighting with their petulant adolescents, thinking there's some great hole in my life. I'd choose a dog every time."

"People think you're nuts for staying in this job. Most of 'em think there's something screwy in your head, that you like it so much."

"I learned a long time ago not to worry about what other people think. Unless they're people I care about. You love what you do. You don't understand why I like my end of it?"

"Different thing."

"What are you talking about? You're sniffing around dead bodies day and night. I get to help people. Live ones. People who've survived the trauma, who recover from it, who get to see a bit of justice restored because we make the system work for them."

I realized I had raised my voice in answering Mike, so I said more calmly, "Twenty years ago, prosecutors couldn't get convictions in these cases in a court of law. Now, the guys in my unit do it every day. Different thing? According to who? To you? 'Cause your narrow-minded, parochial upbringing wants you to think that women shouldn't do this kind of work, right?"

My pitch had gone up again. There was no point trying to explain what he already knew.

We were stopped in the middle of the driveway at my building, the doorman standing at the passenger side to let me out, but waiting till our argument stopped before daring to approach the car. I was sure he could hear my agitated voice through the window.

Mike lowered his tone a notch and spoke to me softly. "'Cause I think you've got to start thinking about the rest of your life, Coop."

"I think about it every day. Know what my thoughts are? That if a fraction of the people I knew did something that was as emotionally rewarding as what I do, they'd be a pretty satisfied bunch. I've got loyal friends who happen to have a great time working together, with one another and with the good cops like you and Mercer."

"And you're going home, by yourself, to an empty apartment. With nothing to eat in the refrigerator, nobody to keep you warm when the heat goes off, and no way for anyone to know if you're dead or alive until it's time to show up for work on Monday. It's pathetic. You should have been on the last shuttle to Washington, slippin' into Jake's hotel room-"

I stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind me. "When you straighten out your own love life, instead of going home and playing with yourself every night, then you can start giving advice to the lovelorn."

He accelerated over the speed bumps and raced out of the driveway.

"Sorry." I nodded to the doorman. "Thanks for waiting."

"Miss Cooper? There was someone here an hour or two ago asking questions about you."

I shivered. "Do you know who he was?"

"No, it wasn't a man. It was a young woman, actually. Wanted to know if you lived here."

"What did you say?"

"Well, it was the new guy she spoke to, the one covering for the holiday break. He thought she looked harmless enough. He told her that you did live in the building before he even thought about why she might be asking."

Great security. Must be why my rent is so high. "What else did she say?"

"She wanted to know if anybody else lived with you. She wanted to know if you usually came home alone at night."

The light was flashing on my answering machine when I walked into my bedroom at midnight. Jake said he and the film crew had gone out for dinner, but he was back in his hotel room and would wait up awhile for my call. The second caller was an unfamiliar voice.

"Miss Cooper? Hello? This is, um, Joan Ryan. I'm one of the counselors in the Witness Aid Unit at the DA's office. We haven't met yet, and this isn't exactly the way I, uh, wanted to introduce myself. But I need to tell you about a problem on one of your cases.

"I've been counseling one of your victims, Shirley Denzig, you know the one who claims the delivery guy attacked her? She was flirting with him in the deli when she bought her dinner, and then she paid him to bring up the dessert half an hour later?" Ryan was rambling now, in that way people do on answering machines so it seems to the listener that the story will be interminable. What's the point, Joan?

"I, um-I probably should have given you a heads-up about this yesterday, when she showed up at my office. But then, you know, whatever she tells me is privileged, 'cause I'm a social worker and she's a victim. It was only when she showed up again tonight that the supervisor called me. She really seemed out of control, asking all kinds of questions about you. Anyway, if you want to call me at home, here's my number. You'll probably want to know what Shirley was saying. My supervisor thinks I have to tell you."

I cut off her confessional narrative and dialed the number.

"Joan? It's Alex Cooper. Sounds like I woke you up."

"That's okay. This is really my fault."

I knew who Denzig was, so there was no need to go through the story again. It was during her second interview with me a couple of weeks ago, in our discussion of her psychiatric history, that I had set her off on a tirade. While I was asking the routine pedigree questions, Denzig had told me she was a student at Columbia College. Considering the other information she had provided, I was skeptical of her claim and asked to see her identification. She had presented me with a photo ID that had expired two years earlier. It looked fairly generic, with no Columbia crest, or any of the characteristic blue-and-white university markings.

When I pressed further, Shirley admitted that she had never attended the college, and had purchased the phony card on Forty-second Street, where just about any kind of counterfeit document is available for a price. I clipped the fake ID to her case file and continued asking questions.

From then on, she avoided eye contact while staring at the file. Once the interview about the alleged attack was completed, she asked for her ID back. I refused, explaining that it was forged and had no legal validity. I had steered her down to Witness Aid, where she could get help with her counseling needs and the problems with her landlord, who was trying to evict her because she was four months in arrears in her rent. The next day I learned she was wanted for shoplifting at a store near her parents' home in Maryland.

"What stirred her up yesterday?"

"Well, when she read about the professor who was murdered- the Dakota woman-she said it made her think about you again, and how mad she was that you took her ID."

"Did she tell you what made her angry?"

"You'll think it's crazy. But then, you know she's got an extensive psych history, right? She's been on medication for two years. Says she's gained more than eighty pounds. Shirley says that ID has the only pretty picture of her that she's got, and she wants it back."

"And you didn't call to tell me that she wanted it?" It would have been easy to deal with. I could have given her the photo without the bogus identification card.

"Well, Ms. Cooper, I know I learned it in graduate school, but I forgot completely about the whole 'duty to warn' doctrine. I mean, everybody says you're so independent, it never occurred to me that poor little Shirley Denzig could really get to you."

My heart was beating faster. I was standing at the side of my bed, with my coat and gloves still on, listening to this conversation about the unhinged young woman who had apparently just shown up at my door. "Warn me about what?"