Kat checked out other residences the Phelps might have owned. There was, of course, a chance that a wealthy family from Greenwich might own a place on the Upper East Side, but nothing in Manhattan came up. She ran Brandon’s cell phone number through the system. Whoa. It was a prepaid phone. Most rich kids from Greenwich don’t use those. Most people who use them either have poor credit ratings or, well, don’t want to be traced. Of course, what most people didn’t know was that it was rather easy to trace disposable phones. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had ruled that you could even “ping” a location without getting a warrant. She didn’t need to go that far. At least not yet.

For now, she played a hunch. All prepaid phone sales are registered in a data bank. She typed in the number and found out exactly where Brandon had purchased his phone. The answer didn’t surprise her. He bought it at a Duane Reade, located at, yep, 1279 Third Avenue.

Maybe that explained why he chose that address.

Okay, maybe. But it explained nothing else.

There were other links to explore, but they’d take more time. Brandon Phelps had a Facebook account, but it was set on private. It would probably take only a phone call or two to find out how Brandon’s father had died, but really, what was the relevance of that? The kid had come to her because his mother had run off with some guy.

And there was the rub: So what?

This could all be nothing but a stupid hoax. Why was she wasting her time with this nonsense anyway? Didn’t she have anything better to do? Maybe, maybe not. Truth was, work was slow today. This was a welcome distraction until Stagger got back.

Okay, she thought. Play it out.

Let’s say this was a hoax. Well, for one thing, if this was a joke on Brandon’s part, it was almost pathetically lame. The hoax wasn’t funny or clever in the slightest. There didn’t seem to be much of a punch line or big payoff.

It didn’t add up.

Cops loved to buy into their self-created myth that they have some innate ability to “read” people, that they were all human lie detectors, that they could suss out truth from deception from body language or the timbre in a voice. Kat knew that that sort of hubris was complete nonsense. Worse, it too often led to life-altering disaster.

That said, unless Brandon was either a pure sociopath or a recent graduate of the Lee Strasberg school of method acting, the kid truly was distraught about something.

The question was: What?

The answer: Stop wasting time and call him.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number Brandon gave her. Kat half expected him not to answer, to have given up on whatever little game, real or not, he was playing, and hustled his butt back to UConn or Greenwich or wherever. But he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Brandon?”

“Detective Donovan.”

“Right.”

“I bet you didn’t find my mother yet,” he said.

She decided there was no reason to play coy. “No, but I did visit the Duane Reade at 1279 Third Avenue.”

Silence.

“Brandon?”

“What?”

“Are you ready to come clean now?”

“Wrong question, Detective.”

There was an edge in his tone now.

“What are you talking about?”

“The question is,” Brandon said, “are you?”

 • • •

Kat switched the phone from her right ear to her left. She wanted to take notes. “What are you talking about, Brandon?”

“Find my mom.”

“You mean your mom who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut?”

“Yes.”

“I’m NYPD. You need to go to the Greenwich police station.”

“I did that already. I spoke to a Detective Schwartz.”

“And?”

“And he didn’t believe me.”

“So what makes you think I will? Why come to me? And why all the lies?”

“You’re Kat, right?”

“What?”

“I mean, that’s what they call you. Kat.”

“How do you know that?”

Brandon hung up.

Kat stared at the phone. How had he known she went by Kat? Had he overheard someone in the precinct call her that? Maybe. Or maybe Brandon Phelps just knew a lot about her. He had, after all, come to her specifically, this college kid from Greenwich looking for his mommy. If indeed Dana Phelps was his mommy. If indeed he really was Brandon Phelps. She hadn’t found pictures of them online yet.

None of this made any sense. So what to do?

Call him back. Or better yet, ping his location. Pick him up.

For what?

False report maybe. Lying to a police officer. Maybe he was a random psycho. Maybe he had done something to his mother or to Dana Phelps or . . .

She was considering the alternatives when the phone on her desk rang. Kat picked it up. “Donovan.”

“This is your secretary calling.” It was Sergeant Inchierca. “You wanted to know when the captain came back, right?”

“Right.”

“The answer would be ‘now.’”

“Thanks.”

Just like that, concerns about Brandon and his maybe-missing mom fled. Kat was already out of her seat and rushing down the steps. As she reached his floor, Kat could see Stagger entering his office with two other cops. One was her direct supervisor, Stephen Singer, a guy so skinny he could hide behind a stripper pole. The other was David Karp, who supervised the uniformed cops on the street.

Stagger was about to close the door, but Kat got there just in time, blocking it with her hand.

She forced up a smile. “Captain?”

Stagger stared at the hand on the door as though it had offended him.

“Did you get my message?” Kat asked.

“I’m busy right now.”

“This can’t wait.”

“It’s going to have to. I have a meeting with—”

“I got the visitors’ logs from the day after Leburne got arrested,” she said. Kat kept her eyes on him, looking for a tell. Okay, so she wasn’t above reading body language. She just didn’t do it with hubris. “I really think I need your help on this.”

Stagger’s tell might as well have been a neon sign in Vegas. His hands clenched. His face reddened. Everyone, including Kat’s displeased supervisor, could see it.

Through clenched teeth, Stagger managed to say, “Detective?”

“Yes?”

“I said I’m busy right now.”

The two supervisors, especially Singer, whom she liked and respected, glared at her seeming insubordination. Somewhat stunned, Kat found herself stepping out of his office. He closed the door behind her.

 • • •

The text came in ten minutes later. It was from Brandon’s prepaid phone:

I’m sorry.

Enough. She picked up the phone and dialed his number. Brandon answered on the first ring. His voice was tentative.

“Kat?”

“What the hell is going on, Brandon?”

“I’m at the Hunter College Bookstore on the corner. Can you meet me?”

“I’m really tired of being jerked around here.”

“I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

She sighed. “On my way.”

Brandon was sitting on a bench outside, on the corner of Park Avenue. He fit in here, surrounded by other kids his age rushing back and forth with backpacks and hoodies and exhaustion. He huddled into himself as though he were cold. He looked young and scared and fragile.

She sat down next to him. She didn’t ask anything. She just looked at him. This was his call. Let him be the first to speak. It took some time. He stared down at his hands for a while. She rode out his silence.

“My dad died of cancer,” Brandon began. “It was slow. Just ate him up. Mom never left his side. He and Mom were high school sweethearts. They were good together, you know? I mean, I go over to my friends’ and their folks are, like, always in different rooms. My folks weren’t like that. When Dad died, I was devastated, sure. But not like Mom. It was like half of her died.”

Kat opened her mouth, closed it. She had a million questions, but they’d keep.