Diagnostically, Miss Koenig reveals an obsessive-compulsive character disturbance, with marked decompensation in intellectual and emotional functioning.

The physical examination reveals Miss Koenig to be in exceptionally good health except for a transient infection (gonorrhea). For this I have put her on a series of antibiotic injections, the standard remedy in young adults. The physical prognosis is excellent.

The psychiatric prognosis is less happy. While Miss Koenig shows a degree of resiliency and rational recoverability, her primary orality, obsessive distortive tendencies, and feelings of worthlessness indicate an inadequately substructured personality. Adolescence will almost certainly see the onset of major depressive episodes, with or without concomitant acting-out. Long-term psycho- and psychopharmacological therapy, as well as close monitoring, are absolutely indicated.

Flora Z. Vogelsang, M.D., Ph.D.

“Mrs. Devens please. Lieutenant Cardozo calling.” He took a stinging hot swallow of coffee.

There was a click and then her voice was on the line, that wonderfully warm voice, coming alive at the sound of his.

“Nice to hear your voice, Vince.”

“Just a quick question. Who was your husband’s doctor seven years ago?”

He could feel her wondering why he was asking.

“We both used the same doctor—Fred Hallowell on Park.”

The manager pointed Cardozo into the depth of the garage.

Cardozo’s steps echoed. It was a dimly lit space, badly ventilated, smelling of gasoline. Light reflected on the floor, pulling murky rainbows out of the oil spills.

He watched the lower half of a man wriggling under a blue ’86 Pontiac. He nudged the man’s foot with his own.

The rest of Waldo Flores wriggled out.

“Pontiac’s looking good, Waldo. Maybe I’ll bring my Honda here for a tune-up.”

Waldo looked as though he wanted to give Cardozo a mouthful of the greasy wrench he was holding. “We don’t do Hondas.”

“That’s a shame. What I’m here about, Waldo, I have another job for you.” Cardozo handed him the piece of paper with Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s Park Avenue address and office hours. He explained that there would be a number of cards in Scott Devens’s file and all he needed was the card for September of seven years ago. “Go in over the July Fourth weekend, okay?”

35

AT 12:35 CARDOZO WAS sitting in Danny’s Bar and Grill working through a Reuben sandwich with a Diet Pepsi, lemon on the side. He’d already decided dessert was going to be strawberry cheesecake when Ellie Siegel came through the door.

She sat at the table and plunked her Crazy Eddie shopping bag on the empty chair next to her. She looked at the menu. “Think I have time for crabcakes?”

Danny, the owner and waiter, said sure, crabcakes took five minutes. Siegel ordered crabcakes and potato skins and asked Cardozo if she could have a glass of Chablis on duty.

“Think you can handle it?” he said.

“Make that a double,” she told Danny. She then got comfortable in her chair and said, “Okay, Vince, why have you invited me out for a fancy lunch? What’s bothering you?”

“This.” He handed her Vogelsang’s report.

As Siegel read, her features creased into a frown. When she had finished she leaned back in her chair. “That was then, Vince. This is now.”

He felt a naked flash of anger. “It doesn’t stop mattering just because a D.A. bought a plea.”

“But is it any business of yours? Vince, you got a job.”

“Babe Devens was my case. I blew it.”

“You didn’t blow anything. You’re only a cop. You don’t control the D.A.”

“I’m a detective and I didn’t even sniff this.”

“You’re homicide. This is child abuse, morals, narcotics—and it’s a hell of a long time ago.”

“The creep that fucked her should go free just because he’s been on the loose seven years fucking other thirteen-year-olds? If that’s the law, the law’s nuts. I have a girl who’s going to be thirteen and I’d murder the guy that touched her.”

“First of all, there’s no way you’re going to find out who molested Cordelia Koenig six years ago, and second of all the girl in this report is not your daughter.”

“The guy in this report is the guy that tried to kill Babe Devens.”

“Mrs. Devens didn’t die.”

“He took seven years from her, he should be allowed to do that? Fuck the kid, take seven years from the mother?”

“Okay, life’s not fair.”

“You scream about porno hurts women and sexism on the job hurts women but when it comes to something in real life that hurts two real women all you can say is life’s not fair. You take my breath away, Ms. Siegel. You really do.”

Siegel raised her eyebrows at him. Her gaze was interested and curious and cool. “Vince, there’s no homicide here, this doesn’t connect to any ongoing investigation. She’s one of two million people in this town who was battered when she was a kid and she’s been using it ever since as an excuse for getting high and getting by. Why are you fixating on her?”

Cardozo handed Siegel the pages that Waldo Flores had brought him that morning: Dr. Frederick Hallowell’s record on Scott Devens’s September checkup seven years ago.

She took the document with an expression of mild expectation, and she read it with a look of mild surprise. What impressed Cardozo was how very mild the surprise was.

“Looks like Scott Devens gave his stepdaughter the clap when she was thirteen,” she said.

“Looks it.” A terrible sense of loss possessed him.

Siegel stared at him, her face registering concern. “Vince, are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know what was happening within him. He didn’t want to think about it. “Yeah. I’m fine. Am I acting weird or something?”

“Or something.”

“I don’t know why this hits me the way it does. I feel I’ve been sandbagged. How many corpses have I seen, how many raped kids, why does my mind say no to this?”

Her eyes hooked his. “Vince, we both know that where Cordelia is headed will be a hell of a lot worse than where she is now. The road she’s taking, there’s only one direction—down. I think you should talk to her mother.”

He thought about telling Babe. The whole thing was taking on a numbing sadness.

Siegel touched his hand. She had a firm, clear gaze, no agitation, no uncertainty. “It’s not as though you had to tell her her kid’s dead—yet.”

She was on crutches and she seemed happy to see him. “Iced tea on the terrace?”

“No—no iced tea. Let’s talk inside.”

She looked at him with an expression of curiosity, then led him into the large den beyond the dining room.

“You’re doing well on those crutches,” he said.

“I add a half hour a day. It takes a human being two years to learn to walk—I’m hoping to do it in two months.”

He admired her: she accepted that the game was tough, but she had a quiet determination to keep playing.

“Drink?” she offered.

“You sit, I’ll fix them,” he said. “What’ll you have?”

“Scotch and a little water. There’s ice in the bucket.”

It was a handsome bucket, silver, engraved with the emblem of the New York Racquet and Tennis Club and beneath that the words Scott Devens, Squash Championship, 1978.

He fixed two stiff Scotches and handed her one. She was sitting in an armchair, crutches resting against her and forming a little barricade.

Outside the windows, sun splashed the private park.

“How much pain can you take?” he asked.

“How much are you offering?”

“The psychiatrist’s report on your daughter.”

Her whole expression changed. She was looking him straight in the eye, the way people do when they’re scared of showing they’re scared.

He opened the manila envelope. It was a calculated risk: it meant showing her that people she’d trusted had taken her life apart.

He handed her Flora Vogelsang’s pages.