‘Well, when teams go out to investigate the odd ghost story or some other instance of paranormal activity, they usually discover the origin of the event behind a neighbor’s garage in the form of three small children laughing their tails off.’

‘But this isn’t funny. Sally’s gone nuts. I can’t sit in the same room with her, she’s such a basket case. And she’s always staring at me. It just never lets up. Every time something happens, we’re all together, but I get the blame.’ Justin kicked at a box. ‘It isn’t fair. I need somebody on my side. Somebody has to listen to me.’

As Charles was facing the boy, they both heard the noise to the left. Charles turned to see the knife sticking out of the target, the blade still wafting with the vibration.

Justin’s eyes were wide this time. This was no flying pencil, no ball on a wire.

‘Now you’ll never believe me,’ said the boy. He turned and ran in an uncoordinated jagged stagger, out of the circle of light and into the dark, hitting against cartons and trunks in his mad flight, his wild search for a way out, for the light of an exit. His thin, flailing arms were poor versions of moth wings.

Memory guided Charles through the darkness and swiftly to the door. He opened it to a rectangle of bright light. In a moment, the boy was through it and flying up the stairs, shoes slapdashing the iron work. On the top landing, Justin fell. Charles lifted him to an upright stand and held him by the shoulders.

‘Are you all right?’ No, he could see that the boy was not all right. Justin’s eyes were filling up with tears. The child slumped against his chest, and Charles held him until the racking stopped.

Captain Judd Thomas of the West Side precinct sat dead center in the hierarchy of arranged chairs in Jack Coffey’s office. The captain was wearing his diplomatic smile, just enough teeth showing to say he wanted to keep this meeting friendly, no blood drawn, not today.

‘Palanski wants in on this case.’

‘I don’t think so, Judd,’ said Jack Coffey, who was overworked, understaffed, and only wanted the meeting done with. All of this was in his face, the shadows of too little sleep, the lines of too much stress.

‘Palanski has a way of getting information from these people.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Mallory.

Captain Thomas’s tiny eyes became even smaller as he turned on her. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

Mallory rose from her chair and left the room so quickly, there was no time for Coffey to threaten her with a look that promised charges of insubordination, charges which would have meant nothing to her.

Riker smiled.

Coffey was looking at Captain Thomas with something approaching temper in his eyes, but not crossing the line with the words.

‘Who told Palanski she was working that building?’

‘He’s got sources in that crowd.’

Riker leaned forward. ‘And I’ll bet his sources don’t stop with the doorman. He can work those wealthy people like street weasels. Is it just me? Am I the only one in this room that finds that interesting?’

Coffey shot Riker a look that said, Shut up.

Captain Thomas ignored him and looked at Coffey with raised eyebrows, clearly asking if Riker was housebroken and leash trained. ‘Palanski is one of the best detectives I have. He’d be an asset to any investigation.’

‘It’s Mallory’s case, Judd. You don’t get squat. That’s it.’

‘Commissioner Beale and I go back a long ways, Jack.’

‘As far as Beale is concerned, the sun only shines on Kathy Mallory this week. The little bastard’s grinning like a ghoul. She’s the only cop ever commended by the Civilian Review Board for shooting a citizen. She can do no wrong.’

‘But what about you, Jack? You’re in line for promotion. This is a high-profile case – big money, big names in that building. Palanski’s got sixteen years’ experience. Mallory’s a kid. You don’t want her to blow that promotion out of the water, do you?’

‘Judd, if I thought you were threatening me, I’d have Mallory blow you out of the water, ’cause I just really hate that.‘

Riker sat back in his chair. If Coffey kept up this insubordination with superiors, then one day he might have to stop ragging the kid and show him a little respect. Then what would he do for fun?

‘Tell Palanski to back off, Judd.’

The captain sighed. ‘You know, Jack, with all the moonlighting and the free food and discounts for cops, all the little fiddles getting worked all over town, if we ever enforced the rules, we wouldn’t – ’

‘I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, Judd,’ said Coffey. ‘You got something on one of mine, you spit it out! Now!’

Thomas put up his hands to say, Okay, enough, and he lifted his bulk out of the chair and left the room.

And Riker knew that was too damn easy. He was wondering what the captain’s own fiddle might be when Coffey turned on him, angry.

‘Do you know what Mallory has on Palanski?’

‘No idea. She’d never rat out another cop. She might shoot him if he gets in her way, but she’ll never rat on him.’

‘You went too far with Judd Thomas.’

‘It’s her life on the line. You know Palanski is dirty and I know it. He’s responsible for all the damn leaks. One of those leaks could get her killed.’

‘You went too far, Riker. Thomas finds Palanski useful the way I find Mallory useful. If all she’s got on him is flashy clothes and fifty-dollar haircuts – Mallory’s clothes are tailor-made, for Christ’s sake, and she doesn’t cut her hair over the bathroom sink, does she? Right now, we’re real lucky the captain got his new job with politics instead of brains. But let’s not count him a complete moron. Let’s not push our luck, okay?’

Riker hated it when Coffey was right. ‘You want me to see what I can turn up on Palanski?’

‘No. I’ve got someone else working Palanski undercover. So just table that, okay? No more speculation, even if your lips don’t move.’

‘You didn’t put it through Internal Affairs?’

‘No, no IA men. I want to keep this one in the family. When you see Mallory, tell her to get her ass back in here. I think it would be nice if she went through the formality of handing in reports – just to be polite.’

‘You know, this might be her version of professional courtesy. Maybe she thinks you’d rather not know what she’s doing and how she’s doing it. She might have something there. Think about your pension.’

‘I’ve already got a problem with the way she’s handling the case. She’s trying to cover three suspects by herself. It’s a scattergun approach for one cop. If she doesn’t get him soon, she’ll lose him.’

‘Oh, I think she knows which one it is. If she tells you she has three suspects, you can figure two of them for smoke. She thinks you don’t trust her to run her own investigation, and that’s wise on your part. I haven’t trusted her since she was ten.’

‘It’s nothing supernatural, I promise you,’ said Charles.

Justin was deathly quiet, his small face turned to the cab window, to the fall of snowflakes silently crashing against the glass.

‘When I get home, I’ll go back down to the cellar and have a close look at the target. I’ll find that the old mechanism was triggered by accident. You probably jostled it when you leaned on the target. It’s that simple. In fact, I don’t even need to look. And I won’t look, that’s how much faith I have in you. There’s no other explanation, Justin. The knife came from the other side of the target. No one made it fly through the air. All right?’

The boy turned to him. In that small face, there was clearly a will to smile.

When they exited the cab in front of the school on the Upper East Side, Charles stayed awhile to watch Justin join the other boys who were standing about the yard in groups of threes and fours. But Justin did not join them. Hands in his pockets, head down, he stood alone by tacit agreement of the yard.