A family is a system.

WHEN YOU HAVE spent your life running from the Bad Thing, you have to wonder what it will feel like one day when it finally catches you. I guess my father never had to know.

The cops said he stepped off the curb and the speeding taxi killed him instantly Sent his body soaring twenty feet through the air. His forehead connected with a metal lamppost, caving in his face.

I was twenty-two. Finally done slogging through an endless procession of schools. I worked at Starbucks. I walked a lot. I saved up money for a sewing machine. I started my own business, making custom-designed window treatments and matching throw pillows.

I liked Boston. Returning to the city of my youth had not left me paralyzed with fear. Quite the opposite, in fact. I felt safe amid the constantly moving masses. I enjoyed strolling through the Public Garden, window-shopping on Newbury Street. I even liked the return of fall, where the days became oak-scented and the nights cool. I found an impossibly small apartment in the North End where I could walk to Mike's and eat fresh cannolis any time I wanted. I hung curtains. I got a dog. I even learned to cook corn tamales. While at night I stood at my barred fifth-story window, cradling my mother's ashes in the palm of my hand and watching the nameless strangers pass below.

I told myself I was an adult now. I told myself I had nothing left to fear. My father had directed my past. But I owned my future and I would not spend it running anymore. I had picked Boston for a reason, and I was here to stay

Then one day it all came together. I picked up the Boston Herald and read it on the front page: Twenty-five years later, I'd finally been found dead.

Phone ringing.

He rolled over. Grabbed a pillow. Stuffed it over his ear.

Phone ringing.

He threw down the pillow, yanked up the covers instead.

Phone ringing.

Groan. He grudgingly peeled open one eye. Two thirty-two a.m. "Frickin', frickin', frickin…" He slapped out a hand, fumbled with the receiver, and dragged the phone to his ear. "What?"

"Cheerful as always, I see."

Bobby Dodge, Massachusetts's newest state police detective, groaned louder. "It's only my second day. You can't tell me I'm being called out my second day Hey" His brain cells belatedly kicked to life. "Wait a sec-"

"Know the former mental hospital in Mattapan?" Boston Detective D.D. Warren asked over the line.

"Why?"

"Got a scene."

"You mean BPD has a scene. Good for you. I'm going back to sleep."

"Be here in thirty."

"D.D…" Bobby dragged himself to sitting, awake now in spite of himself and not feeling amused. He and D.D. went way back, but two-thirty in the morning was two-thirty in the morning. "You and your friends want to harass a rookie, pick on your own department. I'm too old for this shit."

"You need to see this," she said simply

"See what?"

"Thirty minutes, Bobby. Don't turn on the radio. Don't listen to the scanner. I need you to view it clean slate." There was a pause. More quietly, she added, "Bobby, keep it tight. This one's gonna be ugly." And then she was gone.

BOBBY DODGE WAS no stranger to being called out of bed. He'd served nearly eight years as a police sniper with the Massachusetts State Police Special Tactics and Operations Team, on call twenty-four/seven, and inevitably activated most weekends and major holidays. Hadn't bothered him at the time. He'd enjoyed the challenge, thrived on being part of an elite team.

Two years ago, however, his career had derailed. Bobby hadn't just been called out to a scene; he'd shot a man. The department ultimately declared it justifiable use of deadly force, but nothing had felt the same. Six months ago, when he submitted his resignation from the STOP team, no one had argued. And more recently, when he'd passed the detectives' exam, everyone had been in agreement: Bobby's career could use a fresh start.

So here he was, a two-day-old Homicide detective, already assigned half a dozen active but not urgent cases, just enough to get his feet wet. Once he proved he wasn't a complete and utter moron, they might actually let him lead an investigation. Or he could always hope to catch a case, be the lucky on-call suit who was roused out of bed for a major incident. Detectives liked to joke that homicides only occurred at 3:05 a.m. or 4:50 p.m. You know, just in time for the day shift to start early and last all night.

Midnight phone calls were definitely part of the job. Except those phone calls should be coming from another state police officer, not a Boston detective.

Bobby frowned again, trying to puzzle this one out. As a general rule, Boston detectives loathed inviting state suits to their parties. Furthermore, if a BPD detective honestly did think she might need state expertise, her commanding officer would contact Bobby's commanding officer, with everyone operating with all the openness and trust you would expect from such an arranged marriage.

But D.D. had called him directly. Which led Bobby to theorize, as he dragged on his pants, struggled into a long-sleeved shirt, and splashed water on his face, that D.D. wasn't looking for state help. She was looking for his help.

And that made Bobby suspicious.

Last stop in front of his dresser now, operating by the glow of the night-light. He found his detective's shield, his pager, his Glock.40, and-the weapon prized most highly by the working detective-his Sony mini-recorder. Bobby glanced at his watch.

D.D. had wanted him there in thirty He'd make it in twenty-five. Which gave him five extra minutes to figure out what the hell was going on.

MATAPAN was a straight shot down I-93 from Bobby's triple-decker in South Boston. Three to five a.m. were probably the only two hours a day 93 wasn't a bloated snake of vehicles, so Bobby made good time.

He took the Granite Avenue exit and headed left down Gallivan Boulevard, merging onto Morton Street. He pulled up next to an old Chevy at a stoplight. The two occupants, young black males, gave his Crown Vic a knowing look. They pinned him with their best dead-man's stare. Bobby responded with a cheery wave of his own. The instant the light turned green, the kids made a hard right and sped away in disgust.

Just another glorious moment in community policing.

Strip malls gave way to housing. Bobby passed side streets choked with rows of triple-deckers, each building looking more tired and dilapidated than the last. Huge sections of Boston had been revitalized in the past few years, housing projects giving way to luxury condos on the waterfront. Abandoned wharfs becoming convention centers. The whole city being strategically and cosmetically rearranged to fit the vagaries of the Big Dig.

Some neighborhoods had won. Mattapan obviously had not.

Another light. Bobby slowed, glanced at his watch. Eight minutes to ETA. He swung his car left, looping around Mt. Hope Cemetery From this angle, he could peer out his side window as the enormous no-man's-land that was Boston State Mental Hospital finally came into view.

At one hundred and seventy acres of lushly wooded inner-city green space, the Boston State Mental Hospital was currently the most hotly contested development site in the state. It was also, as former home to a century-old lunatic asylum, one of the spookiest damn places around.

Two dilapidated brick buildings perched on top of the hill, winking down at the population with windows gone crazy with shattered glass. Huge overgrown oaks and beeches clawed at the night sky, bare limbs forming silhouettes of gnarled hands.

Story went that the hospital was built in the middle of forested grounds to provide a "serene" setting for the patients. Several decades of overcrowded buildings, strange midnight screams, and two violent murders later, the locals still talked of lights that randomly came on the middle of the ruins, of spine-tingling moans that whispered from beneath the crumbling piles of brick, of flickering silhouettes spotted among the trees.