She merely shook her head. "Don't know how it happened, Tony. Don't have time or energy to care. Frankly, I'm impressed we made it as long as we did."

Rock shrugged philosophically at that. Fifty-six hours under the radar had been a minor miracle. "Well, before the leak, we had a pretty easy time eliminating the whackos. We'd just ask if they buried the remains together or separately. Once they went into elaborate descriptions of the grave site, we could merrily cross them off our list. So yeah, there's been a lot of calls, but it's been pretty smooth sailing. Don't know if you'll find me saying that tomorrow."

"Any good leads?" D.D. pressed.

"Couple. Got a call from a man who claimed to be an attendant nurse at Boston State Mental in the mid-seventies. Said one of the patients at that time was the son of a very wealthy family in Boston. They didn't want anyone to know the kid was there, never paid him a visit. Rumor mill was that the son had done something 'inappropriate' with his little sister. This was the family's way of dealing with it. Patient's name was Christopher Eola. We're running it now, but can't find a current address or driver's license for him. We're working on tracking down the family"

D.D. raised a brow. "Better than I expected," she said. "Gives us at least one person to dangle in front of the press."

"Given the location," Rock said dryly, "I thought we'd have a longer list of crazies to track down. Then again, the night's young."

He took a deep breath, scrubbed at his gray-stubbled cheeks. "And, as you'd expect with these types of cases, we've had some outreach from families with missing kids. I have a list." He held it up for Sergeant McGahagin. "Some of these folks are outta state, so I guess we're getting started on that wider survey you were talking about. And"-he skimmed down the names McGahagin had reported-"I see three matches already: Atkins, Gomez, Petracelli."

D.D.'s expression didn't change. Bobby thought it interesting she hadn't volunteered any details from her conversation with Annabelle Granger yet, including the mention of Dori Petracelli. Then again, D.D. always liked to play things close to the vest.

He'd done some follow-up digging on Dori Petracelli himself, so inclusion of her name on the list of missing girls didn't surprise him. It was the date-November 12,1982-that continued to stump him.

Detective Rock sat down. Detective Sinkus took the floor.

"So, uh, I thought I should have a handout. But when I looked at everything I had to share, it was fifty pages of names, and I thought, hell, no one here has time to read fifty pages of names, so I didn't bother."

"Thank God," someone said.

"Appreciate it," another detective commented.

The deputy superintendent cleared his throat in the corner. They immediately shut up.

Sinkus shrugged. "Look, my job's to assemble a preliminary list of interview subjects. We're talking contractors, neighbors, former lunatic-asylum workers, and known offenders in the area, going back thirty years. List? It's a goddamn phone book. Not saying we can't work it"-he glanced hastily at the deputy superintendent- "I'm just saying we'd have to quadruple the Boston police force to make a dent in this sucker. Basically, without more information to narrow down the suspect pool, like, say, a definitive time line, I don't think the current task is manageable. Honest to God, this is one area where we need the victimology report."

"Well, we don't have it," D.D. said flatly, "so try again."

"Knew you'd say that," Sinkus mumbled with a sigh. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Okay, so I had an idea."

"Spit it out."

"I got an appointment tomorrow to interview George Robbards, former clerk at the Mattapan station. He processed all the incident reports from '72 to '98. I figure if there's anyone who might have a bead on the area-and probably a good recollection of what activities, or what people, cops were talking about, even if they didn't have enough to file on-it would be him."

D.D. was actually stunned into silence. "Well, hell, Roger, that's a brilliant idea."

He smiled sheepishly, hands still in his pockets. "Honestly, it was my wife's. Good news about having a newborn, my wife's always awake now when I go home, so what the hell, we talk. She remembered me saying once that the clerks are the real brains of any police station. We all come and go. The clerks stay forever."

That was true. A cop spent maybe three or four years at a single station. The police clerks, on the other hand, might serve for decades.

"Okay," D.D. said briskly "I like it. Those are the kinds of ideas we need. In fact, I'll even forgive your lack of paperwork right now, as long as you deliver a transcript of tomorrow's interview the second it's completed. I've heard good things about Robbards. And given that six bodies in one location implies a subject who operated in the area for years, yeah, I'd like to hear Robbards's thoughts. Interesting."

D.D. picked up her copies of the reports. Pounded them into a neat pile.

"Okay, people. So this is where we're at: We're manning a machine-gun investigation, spraying the area with bullets and hoping like hell we'll hit something. I know it's tiring, it's messy, it's painful, but this is why we get paid the big bucks. Now, we have"-she glanced at her watch again-"seven hours and counting. So go forth, discover something brilliant, and report back by oh-seven-hundred. First person who tells me something we can use in the press briefing gets to go home to sleep."

She started to push back from the table, half rising out of her chair. But then, at the last moment, she paused, regarded them more gravely.

"We all saw those girls," she said gruffly. "What happened to them…" She shook her head, unable to continue, and around the table, guys looked away uncomfortably. Homicide detectives saw a lot of shit, but the cases that involved children always touched a nerve.

D.D. cleared her throat. "I want to send them home. It's been thirty years. That's too long. That's… too sad for all of us. So let's do this, okay? I know everyone's tired, everyone's stressed. But we gotta push ahead. We're gonna make this happen. We're gonna get these girls home to their families. And then we're gonna stalk the son of a bitch who did this to the bitter ends of the earth, and nail his ass to the floor. Sound like a plan? I thought as much."

D.D. pushed away from the table, strode for the door.

A full minute passed in silence. Then one by one the detectives headed back to work.

BOBBY CAUGHT D.D. in her office. She was hunched over her computer screen, skimming a list of names with a pencil clenched in her fist. She was flying down the list so fast, Bobby wasn't sure she could honestly be reading anything. Maybe she just wanted to look busy, in case someone, such as him, wandered by.

"What?" she asked presently

"Got a call."

She stopped reading, straightened, looked at him. "Thought you weren't my lackey."

"Thought you were my friend."

"Oh Bobby. You're such a jerk."

The insult made him smile. "I never realized until now just how much I missed you. Can I come in yet, or am I supposed to be bearing roses?"

"Fuck roses," she said. "I still want a decent roast beef sandwich." But her voice had lost its edge. She waved to the empty desk chair across from her. He took that as an invitation, plopping down in the high-backed executive chair. D.D. pushed away from the computer. She really did look like hell, purple bags under her eyes, fingernails bitten down to the nubs. Minute she saw herself on TV, she was gonna be pissed.

"Catherine send her regards?" D.D. asked dryly

"Not in so many words, but I'm sure she was thinking of her love for the Boston police the entire time we talked."