Ignorance was a kind of nervous bliss, on that fine day. In the end we hadn’t gone to Pawtucket, where Family Finders was located, but to the airport in Providence. And there in Arrivals we’d been introduced to baby Tomas, scrawled our names on a few sheets of paper and walked out to the parking lot as parents. Ted had hidden a car seat in the trunk, but I insisted on holding the baby. Sitting in the back, in the so-called safe seat, cooing at the beautiful baby and crying and giggling and talking a mile a minute while Ted drove us home. Both of us knowing we’d never be the same, that two had become three. Never imagining that three would become two again. Or that two might, in some terrible way, become one.

“You okay?” Shane wants to know.

“I’m fine.”

Shane checks his watch. “Should be answering the phones at the town offices in another hour or so. We’ll just have to hold tight until then.”

Long before the hour is up, a car pulls into Shane’s driveway. Looking through the drapes, I see Maria Savalo open the door to her BMW, stick out her bare feet and put on her heels. As she takes her briefcase from the seat and makes for Shane’s front door, I’m thinking she doesn’t look happy, but maybe she’s not a morning person.

Wrong.

“Bad news,” she tells me. “You’re going to be arrested.”

3 THE GOOD HEART

31 no stinking badges

Cutter knew what his line was going to be long before the door opened.

“Dr. Munk, I presume?”

Of course, he’d had to flash the NYPD shield at the peephole, also as planned. The badge was a cheap fake, but looked mighty impressive through a fish-eye lens.

He could have written Dr. Munk’s lines, too, because he knew exactly what he was going to say. Peering through the crack in the door with one nervous, twitching eye as he keeps the chain on the lock. “There must be some mistake,” the good doctor manages to say. Sounds like he swallowed a hockey puck, has trouble getting the words out. “My name is, uh, Barnes. Luther Barnes.”

Cutter lifts his coat jacket, revealing a holstered handgun. “Your name is going to be ‘dead body in room 512’ if you don’t take the chain off the hook right now.”

Only two ways it can go from here. Munk will either do as ordered, or he will make a move to slam the door, run to the bathroom and attempt to call the front desk, reporting an intruder. Cutter sees it in his eyes—maybe some doubt about the dime-store shield—and he kicks through the chain before Munk can react.

The guy ends up on his butt, looking astonished as Cutter closes and locks the door and tosses him the broken chain. “Stanley Joseph Munk, M.D.,” he says. “Looking good, Doc. Tell you what, scoot back and you can lean against the wall, make yourself comfortable.”

Munk glances nervously at the laptop computer open on the desk, LCD screen glowing. Catches himself and pretends he wasn’t looking. “Who the hell are you?” he demands without much force. “You’re not a cop. What do you want?”

Munk is an imposing-looking man in his late forties, with curly, salt-and-pepper hair shaped by a stylist to the stars. Strong chin, highly intelligent gray eyes, and the long, elegant hands of a classical pianist. In fact, he does play quite competently, although not professionally. Even on his butt, with his back against the wall, he has a commanding presence. Type A personality, used to getting his own way, and confident that he’s one of the meritocracy, the self-invented masters of the universe. Not as easy to dominate as, say, your average enemy combatant, or your average suburban housewife. Definitely a challenge.

“I don’t believe this,” Munk mutters, shifting on his haunches. Obviously considering his options for some sort of escape mechanism that has not, as yet, presented itself.

Cutter drags over a chair, takes a seat, gives the doc his best stone-cold-killer smile. An evildoer grin that he’s practiced in the mirror until he damn near scared himself. Killer grin that got him through Iraq without a scratch, physically at least. Dr. Munk blanches. The man is shit-scared, but even so he’s desperate enough to be thinking about launching himself at Cutter, wrestling him for the gun.

He’s at a disadvantage, is Stanley, but he’s not without balls.

“Don’t even think about it,” Cutter advises him. “Thing is, even if you manage to take the gun from me—very unlikely—you’ll still have to shoot me. Won’t look good, ‘Famous Surgeon Murders Federal Agent.’”

As intended, his target is confused by the retort. “You said you were a cop,” Munk protests. “A city cop.”

“I lied,” Cutter responds cheerfully. “That was just to get through the door. Here’s my real badge.”

Cutter tosses him the absolutely genuine Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent shield, along with the matching photo ID that helps seal the deal. Badge is real but the ID is fake—and a civilian will never be able to tell the difference.

“Take note of the name,” he suggests. “Paul Allen Defield. After our conversation if you decide to file a complaint, they’ll need a name.”

Munk is handling the badge like it’s radioactive. Cutter can almost see the wheels turning in the doc’s big, fast-reactor brain. FBI masquerading as NYPD, what’s the deal here, how bad is it? Can’t be a good thing, that’s for sure. Starting to grasp that the unexpected visit has to do with what’s on the laptop, but not quite believing it. Letting himself hope it’s something else entirely, and not quite believing that, either. Very expressive face, has Stanley, while under stress. Something of the boy showing through, under all those layers of sangfroid and studied confidence.

“Just try and relax, Dr. Munk,” Cutter suggests amiably. “We don’t need no stinking badges, do we? You want to know what this is all about? It’s all about you. You the man, Stan.” He lets that sink in before delivering the zinger. “You’re the man with the sick kink for kiddy porn.”

That does it, Munk’s eyes dim just a little, like he’s lost crucial amperage. And now he knows there’s no hope that the sudden intrusion isn’t connected to what he’s got on the laptop, and what that forbidden connection means to his business, his career, his life.

“Funny thing about secrets,” Cutter says, enjoying himself, taking strength from Munk’s reaction. “Lots of fun when you control the secret, am I right? You’ve been getting a real kick out of your secret life for years. You put on your dress-down disguise, the baseball cap and jeans. Then you saunter over here with your laptop in the briefcase, and once the door is closed, you’re in another world. A world where you and your special friends can openly discuss what, exactly, turns you on.”

“You have no right,” Munk protests weakly.

“In your case, what turns you on is girls between the ages of ten and twelve. Very age specific, your kink.”

“How could you possibly know something like that?” Munk says, his face going even paler. Tiny droplets of cold sweat appear on his forehead, make his eyes blink rapidly.

“I know because it’s all there,” Cutter says, indicating the laptop. “Every sick conversation you’ve had online. Every photo you’ve downloaded, every film clip you viewed.”

“That’s not possible. You’re bluffing.”