Dobbis tried to walk around me, but Mike didn't give up. "Last night, did you see Talya after Joe Berk left the dressing room?"

"I had a third act to worry about, Mr. Chapman. The scene with the golden idol from Bayadere. Major set changes with the destruction of the temple, two primas and two male leads onstage as well. It wouldn't have mattered to me if Talya had decided to dance naked in the fountain on the plaza. I had to be in my booth making every second of that performance look seamless. May I?"

I stepped back to let Dobbis pass through and walk away.

"I'm beginning to agree with Mike," I said to Mercer. "Let's knock it off for the night. Maybe we'll have some preliminary findings from the autopsy tomorrow that will jumpstart the conversation."

"You up to going?" Mercer asked Mike. It was part of his duty as the homicide detective who caught the case to attend the autopsy. This would be the first time he'd have to view one since Val's accident.

"You two are spending way too much time psychoanalyzing me. I didn't know this Talya broad. Sorry she's dead but I'm not about to throw myself on top of her grave. The way you look at me, you act like I should be in a transfer to the Auto Theft Squad. C'mon. I haven't had a decent meal in weeks."

"Now that's what I like to hear. Any cravings?"

"Nothing that you could satisfy, Coop. I'm thinking pasta."

"I can't tell you how lonely it's been without your insults. Here you go, putting me down, and I'm smiling about it like you just asked me to the prom," I said, looping my arm in Mike's. "I'll call Primola."

We had to make our way to the front of the opera house and walk around the entire complex to get to where we'd left the car. We drove through the transverse in Central Park and across 65 th Street to one of our favorite watering holes on Second Avenue.

Giuliano hadn't seen Mike in two months. He embraced him enthusiastically and led us to the first table in the corner, ignoring all the couples with nine o'clock reservations who were piled deep at the bar.

Adolfo took the drink order and uncorked a bottle of Tignanello that Giuliano sent over with his compliments. Each of us was familiar with the sophisticated menu that was the restaurant's famous fare but opted for the delicious comfort food that was Primola's Saturday-night special-an appetizer portion of fried zucchini along with three orders of spaghetti and meatballs.

No matter how tired I was from the work of the last twenty-four hours, I could feel myself come alive again in the reuniting of our trio. Family and close friends have provided my emotional sanctuary during years of prosecuting intimate violence for which no formal education could have prepared me. The women I had lived with at Wellesley, my study group from law school at the University of Virginia, and the colleagues with whom I stood shoulder to shoulder in the trenches of the criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street all played a role in maintaining my faith in the goodness of humankind.

But no professional relationship had been forged that compared to my friendship with Mike and Mercer. They had seen the darkest side of man's nature, regularly witnessing the taking of lives by killers motivated by greed, lust, and every other deadly sin. They had helped nourish victims back to stability after the trauma of the most personally invasive violence imaginable. And they understood the meaning of loyalty in ways I had trouble expressing to people who couldn't fathom why each one of us derived such satisfaction in restoring dignity to those who'd been attacked or to their survivors.

Mercer's beeper went off while we were gnawing on thin strips of zucchini and enjoying our wine. He stepped out on the sidewalk to return the call.

"If you're gonna try to ruin my dinner with new business," Mike said when he sat down again, "get yourselves another table for two."

Mercer smiled at me and lifted his glass. "We're one step closer to nailing the Riverside rapist."

"Another attack?"

Joggers who ran the pathway in the slice of parkland along Riverside Drive had been battling an assailant who hid himself in the thick bushes that had started to bloom in March, lying in wait for women who exercised alone. Police expected that the man had some kind of sexual dysfunction, since he had not ejaculated in any of the cases. Lacking a ANA profile of the attacker, we had been unable to search databanks for convicted offenders or links to other unsolved crimes.

"Not quite," Mercer said. "This one was running with her dog, a small mixed-breed special she rescued from the pound. The perp tackled her to the ground and started to tear off her shorts but the mutt wrapped his mouth around the guy's wrist till he pulled free. I've got to go over to the hospital to interview her."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Stay here with Mike. This one will be easy."

"Your man get away again?"

Mercer smiled. "For the moment. But they've got the dog down at the ME's office. Docs are swabbing his teeth. There's still enough of the perp's blood on his canines for a DNA profile this time."

Mike and I both lived on the Upper East Side in circumstances as different as our backgrounds. He referred to his tiny, dark fifth-floor walkup on York Avenue as "the coffin," while I lived on the twentieth floor of a high-rise, in a large sunlit apartment with twenty-four-hour doormen who enabled me to separate myself from the day's demons when I settled in at home.

There was a comfortable chill in the early-spring night when we left Primola, and Mike offered to walk me the few short blocks north to my building.

When I tried to bring the conversation back to the subject of Valerie, he countered by asking questions about my personal life.

"So what are you going home to, Coop? Grind your teeth over the Saturday Times crossword puzzle and sink into a steaming-hot bath to avoid your empty bed? Anything new in your life?"

"Ouch! You're beginning to sound like my mother. I think you and Mercer are going to be stuck with me for a while."

"How much longer you gonna do this?" he said, steering me across to the west side of the avenue, dodging couples arm in arm on their way home from local eateries and bars. "Running around to crime scenes, getting mouthed off at by scumbags, giving up your nights and weekends-"

"Like you do."

"Shit. I get paid for overtime."

"You know anybody who has a better job than I do? Every day I wake up and want to go to work. I like how my gut feels, I like knowing we make things a little bit easier for people who don't expect the system to get it right."

"But you've got to vent somewhere, other than to Mercer and me."

Mike had come to depend on Valerie's love and support after years of trusting no one outside the job. She had fought to get him to open up to her, and now he was struggling to regain the tight grip he'd always held on his emotions.

"That's why my friendships have been so important to me. You know that."

"I'm talking about something else, Coop. Not pals, not girl-friends, not drinking buddies. Don't you ever worry it's all gonna pass you by because you're in over your head with this blood-and-guts stuff? You've taken yourself out of circulation."

More than a decade ago, before I started the work that had so absorbed my interest, the man I had been hours away from marrying had been killed in a car accident. I had experienced a loss as great as Mike's and could give him no assurances that a love as important as this last one-like my love for Adam-would ever sustain him again.

"Don't be ridiculous. I thought the reason I had no takers was because you've been spreading the word about me for so long."