The kitchen opened into a large, attractive area that was both a dining and a living room. Hardwood floors glowed under the stream of light pouring through the windows at the far end, and I saw a terrace beyond.

I noted that the richly upholstered and dark-wood furnishings were in neat, apple-pie order.

My second look made my heart slam to a stop.

A woman was curled up on a sofa, turned toward the windows, reading a magazine, the white cords of an iPod dangling from her ears.

I was too shocked to move.

Or speak a word.

MY HEART RATE ZOOMED as my focus narrowed to the woman on the couch, a sandwich and cup of tea beside her on the coffee table.

I took in her black tank top and workout pants, the thick, blond-streaked hair knotted behind her head, her bare feet.

My body felt bloodless except for the tingling in my finger-tips. Had Joe been leading a double life while I was in San Francisco, waiting for his calls and visits?

My face flushed with anger but also shame. I didn't know whether to shout or run.

How could Joe have been cheating on me?

The woman must have caught my reflection in the glass. She dropped her magazine, put her hands to her face, and screamed.

I screamed, too. "Who the hell are you?"

"Who are you!" she shouted back, her hair tumbling out of its knot as she ripped the iPod out of her ears.

"I'm Joe's girlfriend," I said. I felt naked and raw, wishing I had a badge to flash at her. Any badge.

Oh, Joe, what have you done?

"I'm Milda," she said, jumping up from the couch, leading me into the kitchen. "I work here. I clean house for Mr. Molinari."

I laughed, not out of humor but out of shock.

She yanked a check out of her pants pocket and stuck it out for me to see.

But I was barely focusing on her. Images from the last few days were flying around inside my head.

And now this young woman's presence was undoing whatever hold I had over my emotions.

"I finished early and I just thought I'd sit for a few minutes," she said as she washed the dishes she'd used. "Please don't tell him, okay?"

I nodded numbly. "No. Of course not."

"I'm leaving now," she said, turning off the taps. "I don't want to be late to pick up my son, so I'm going now, okay?"

I nodded.

I went down a hall, pushed open the door to the bathroom. I opened the medicine chest and scanned the boxes and bottles, looking for nail polish, tampons, makeup.

Coming up empty, I went to the bedroom, a large carpeted space with a view of the courtyard. I threw open Joe's closet door, checked the floor for women's shoes, ran my hands through the rack. No skirts, no blouses. What was I doing?

I knew Joe, didn't I?

I turned back to the bed and was about to undo the bedding and inspect the linens when I saw a photo on the night table. It was of me and Joe six months ago in Sausalito, his arm around me as the breeze whipped my hair across my face. We both looked in love.

I pressed my hands to my eyes.

I was so ashamed. The sobs simply poured out of me. I just stood there in Joe's bedroom and cried.

And then I left and went back to California.

MADISON TYLER HOPSCOTCHED over the lines in the sidewalk, then raced back to her nanny's side, grabbing her hand as they walked toward Alta Plaza Park, Madison saying, "Were you listening, Paola?"

Paola Ricci squeezed Madison 's small hand.

Sometimes the little girl's enchanting five-year-old precocity was almost more than Paola could understand.

"Of course I was listening, darling."

"As I was saying," the girl said in the funny grown-up way she had, "when I play Beethoven's Bagatelle, the first notes are an ascending scale, and they look like a blue ladder -"

She trilled the notes.

"Then, the next part, when I play C-D-C, the notes are pink-green-pink!" she exclaimed.

"So you imagine that those notes have colors?"

"No, Paola," the little girl said comically, patiently. "The notes are those colors. Don't you see colors when you sing?"

"Nope. I guess I'm a ninny," Paola said. "A ninny-nanny."

"I don't know what a ninny-nanny is," Madison said, her dazzling smile setting off sparks in her big brown eyes. "But it sounds very funny."

The two laughed hard, Madison grabbing Paola around the waist, burying her face in the young woman's coat as they passed the exclusive Waldorf School, only a block and a half from where Madison lived with her parents.

"It's Saturday," Madison whispered to Paola. "I don't have to even look at school on Saturday."

Now the park was only a block away, and seeing the stone walls surrounding it, Madison got more excited and changed subjects.

"Mommy says I can have a red Lakeland terrier when I get a little older," Madison confided as they crossed Divisadero. "I'm going to name him 'Wolfgang.' "

"What a serious name for a little dog," Paola said, intent on crossing the street safely. She barely glanced at the black minivan idling outside the park's fence. Expensive black minivans were as common as crows in Pacific Heights.

Paola swung Madison 's arm, and the child jumped up onto the curb, then stopped suddenly as someone got out of the vehicle and came quickly toward them.

Madison said to her nanny, "Paola, who is that?"

"What's wrong?" Paola called to the man stepping out of the van.

"Trouble at home. You've both got to come with us right now. Madison, your mom took a fall down the stairs."

Madison stepped out from behind her nanny's back, shouting, "My daddy told me never to ride with strangers! And believe me, you're strange."

The man picked up the child like a bag of birdseed, and as she shouted, "Help! Put me down," he tossed her into the backseat of the van.

"Get in," the man said to Paola. He was pointing a handgun at her chest.

"Either get in or kiss this kid good-bye."

RICH CONKLIN AND I had just returned to the squad room after a grim morning of investigating a brutal drive-by shooting when Jacobi waved us into his office.

We crossed the gray linoleum floor to the glass box and took our seats, Conklin perched on the edge of the credenza where Jacobi used to sit, me in the side chair next to Jacobi's desk, watching him get comfortable in the chair that was once mine.

I was still trying to get used to this turn of events. I looked around at the mess Jacobi had made of the place in just under two weeks: newspapers piled on the floor and windowsill, food odors coming out of the trash can.

"You're a pig, Jacobi," I said. "And I mean that in the barnyard sense."

Jacobi laughed, a thing he'd done more in the last few days than he'd done in the last two years, and despite the chop to my ego, I was glad that he wasn't huffing up hills anymore. He was a great cop, good at managing the unmanageable, and I was working myself around to loving him again.

Jacobi coughed a few times, said, "We've got a kidnapping."

"And we're catching it?" Conklin asked.

"Major Crimes has been on it for a few hours, but a witness came forward and now it looks like there could be a murder," said Jacobi. "We'll be coordinating with Lieutenant Macklin."

A humming sound came from the computer as Jacobi booted up, a thing he'd never done before getting his new badge. He pulled a CD off the pile of crap on his desk and clumsily slid it into the CD/DVD tray of his computer.