CINDY WAS ON THE PHONE with Yuki, loading the dishwasher as she talked.

"He's just too funny," Cindy said about Whit Ewing, the good-looking reporter from the Chicago Tribune she'd met about a month ago at the Municipal Hospital trial.

"The guy with the glasses, right? The one who tore out of the courtroom by way of the emergency exit? Set off the alarm?" Yuki chuckled, remembering.

"Yeah. See… and he can goof on himself. Whit says he's Clark Kent's nerdy younger brother." Cindy laughed. "He's been threatening to fly into town and take me out to dinner. He's even angling to be assigned to the Brinkley trial."

"Oh, so wait a minute," Yuki said. "You're not thinking of doing what Lindsay did. I mean, Whit lives in Chicago. Why start up an LDR when they're so freaking doomed?"

"I'm thinking… it's been a while since I've had any, uh, fun."

"Been a while for me, too." Yuki sighed. "I not only don't remember when, I don't remember with whom!"

Cindy cackled, then Yuki put her on hold so she could take an incoming call. When Yuki came back on the line, she said, "Hey, girl reporter, Red Dog wants me. Gotta scoot."

"Go, go," Cindy said. "See you in court."

Cindy hung up and turned on the dishwasher, then emptied the trash can. She tied a knot in the bag, went out into the hallway, and hit the elevator call button, and when the car clanked to a stop, she checked to make sure it was empty before she got in.

She thought again about Whit Ewing, and about Lindsay and Joe, and about how long-distance relationships were, by definition, roller-coaster rides.

Fun for a while, until they made you sick.

And now here was another reason to have a boyfriend who stayed in town – the sheer creepiness of living in this building alone. She hit B for "basement," and the newly paneled old elevator rocked as it descended. A minute later, Cindy stepped out into the dank bowels of the building.

As she walked toward the trash area, she heard the sound of a woman crying, a sobbing that echoed and was joined by the screaming of a baby!

What now?

Cindy rounded a bend in the underground vault of the building and saw a blond-haired woman about her own age holding a baby over her shoulder.

There was a black trash bag lying open at the woman's feet.

"What's wrong?" Cindy asked.

"My dog," the stricken woman cried. "Look!"

She bent, spread open the mouth of the trash bag so that Cindy could see the small black-and-white dog that was covered with blood.

"I left him outside for only a few minutes," she said, "just to take the baby into my apartment. Oh, my God. I called the police to report that someone had stolen him, but look. Someone who lives here did this. Someone who lives here beat Barnaby to death!"

IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, 8:30 a.m., four days after Madison Tyler's abduction. Conklin and I were parked in a construction zone near the corner of Waverly and Clay, steam from our coffee condensing on the car windows as we watched the traffic weave around double-parked delivery vans, pedestrians spilling into the narrow, gloomy streets of Chinatown.

I was eyeballing one building in particular, a three-story redbrick house halfway down Waverly. Wong's Chinese Apothecary was on the ground floor. The top two floors were leased to the Westwood Registry.

My gut was telling me that we'd find at least partial answers in that house – a link between Paola Ricci and the abduction… something.

At 8:35 the front door to the brick house opened and a woman stepped out, took the trash down to the curb.

"Time to rock and roll," said Conklin.

We crossed the street and intercepted the woman before she disappeared back inside. We flashed our badges.

She was white, thin, midthirties, dark hair falling straight to her shoulders, her prettiness marred by the worry lining her brow.

"I've been wondering when we'd hear from the police," she said, one hand on the doorknob. "The owners are out of town. Can you come back on Friday?"

"Sure," Conklin said, "but we have a couple of questions for you now, if you don't mind."

Brenda, our squad assistant, swoons over Conklin, says he's a "girl magnet," and it's true. He doesn't work it. He's just got this natural, hunky appeal.

I watched as the dark-haired woman hesitated, looked at Conklin, then opened the door wide.

"I'm Mary Jordan," she said. "Office manager, bookkeeper, den mother, and everything else you can think of. Come on in…"

I shot a grin at Conklin as we followed Ms. Jordan across the threshold and down a hallway to her office. It was a small room, her desk at an angle facing the door. Two ladder-back chairs faced the desk, and a framed picture of Jordan surrounded by a dozen young women, presumably nannies, hung on the wall behind her.

I found Jordan's apparent anxiety noteworthy. She chewed on her lower lip, stood up, moved a stack of three-ring binders to the top of a file cabinet, sat down, picked at her watch strap, twiddled a pencil. I was getting seasick just watching her.

"What are your thoughts on the abduction of Paola and Madison Tyler?" I asked.

"I'm at a complete loss," Jordan said, shaking her head, and then she continued, barely pausing to take a breath.

Jordan said that she was the registry's only full-time employee. There were two tutors, both women, who worked when needed. Apart from the co-owner, a fifty-year-old white man, there were no men associated with the registry and no minivans, black or otherwise.

The owners of the Westwood Registry were Paul and Laura Renfrew, husband and wife, Ms. Jordan told us. At the moment, Paul was calling on potential clients north of San Francisco and Laura was off recruiting in Europe. They'd left town before the kidnappings.

"The Renfrews are nice people," Jordan assured us.

"And how long have you known them?"

"I started working for the Renfrews just before they relocated from Boston, about eight months ago. The business isn't breaking even yet," Jordan went on. "Now, with Paola dead and Madison Tyler… gone… that's not very good publicity, is it?"

Tears filled Mary Jordan's eyes. She pulled a pink tissue from a box on her desk, blotted her face.

"Ms. Jordan," I said, leaning across her desk, "something's eating at you. What is it?"

"No, really, I'm fine."

"The hell you are."

"It's just that I loved Paola. And I'm the one who matched her up with the Tylers. It was me. If I hadn't done that, Paola would still be alive!"

"THE RENFREWS HAVE AN APARTMENT down here," Ms. Jordan said as she walked us around the administrative floor. She pointed to the green-painted, padlocked door at the end of a hallway.

"Why the padlock?" I asked.

"They lock up only when they're both away," Jordan said. "It's a good thing. This way I don't have to worry about the girls poking around where they don't belong."

The bumping sound of footsteps came through the floor above.

"The common room is over there," Jordan said, continuing the tour. "The conference room is on your right, and the dorm is upstairs," she said, looking up at the wooden stairway.

"The girls live at the registry until we place them with families. I live up there, too."

"How many girls are here?" I asked.

"Four. After Laura gets back from her trip, we'll probably bring over four more."

Conklin and I spent the remainder of the morning interviewing the young women as they came downstairs, one by one, to the conference room. They ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-two, all European, with good-to-excellent English.