"Yeah?" the older woman said, slurring her words, almost stuporous. She stood in a flowered housedress that hung on her frame, oblivious to the cold air sweeping in from the door. Her hair, gone gray-white, was sprayed stiff and uncombed from her head. Spittle oozed from the corner of her mouth, and her lips were parched and blistered.

"Mrs. Bristow?" Vicki asked, in surprise.

The woman's brown eyes registered no response. They had sunk in their sockets; deep folds creased the corners of her eyes and mouth, and she was almost emaciated, her skin stretched so tight that her face was more skull than flesh. Her body swayed slightly, her bony hand evidently hanging on to the doorknob to remain upright, her stick legs in half nylons almost giving out on her. Vicki didn't know if she was seeing the ravages of cancer, drugs, or both. If the woman was Mrs. Bristow, she should have been about fifty-five years old, but she looked twenty years older, and Vicki wondered if this was the right house.

"Are you Arissa Bristow?"

"Yeah, you got anythin' for me?" the woman mumbled. Her pupils were a pinpoint and seemed to focus on Vicki without seeing her. "I need to hit, I need to hit. You got anythin' for me, you got anythin'?"

Drugs. "I wanted to talk to you, about Reheema."

"Reheema? Reheema?" Mrs. Bristow sounded as if she'd never heard the name.

"Yes, your daughter, Reheema. May I come in?"

Mrs. Bristow opened the door and walked ahead, leaving the front door hanging open, then she shuffled out of the room, as if Vicki hadn't been there at all.

"Mrs. Bristow?" Vicki called to the receding form, but there was no answer.

A cold draft blew in, so she shut the door behind her and took a quick look around the small living room. The lack of curtains and a southern exposure guaranteed the room would be incongruously sunny, its neglect brightly illuminated. Sun shone on a tattered brown couch, next to a blue beach chair with ripped plastic lattice. Dirt, cigarette wrappers, and old newspapers littered the dark red rug, and the air was thick with filth and stale cigarette smoke. There was no TV, stereo, or radio, and it was almost as cold in here as it was outside. Against the wall, the old-fashioned white radiator had cracked, spilling blackish water onto the floor. The heat must have been turned off, so the pipes had burst. Vicki went into the next room, where she gasped.

Mrs. Bristow lay on a dirty, bare mattress, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open.

Please don't be dead. Vicki hurried to Mrs. Bristow's side, searching her still face, and grabbed her wrist. She was feeling for a pulse when the older woman snored deeply. Vicki started, then relaxed.

"Mrs. Bristow?" she asked softly, jostling her, but the woman didn't stir. How could Vicki interview her now?

Damn! She scanned the room, stumped for a moment. The floor was strewn with empty Gallo and Thunderbird bottles, and the end table next to the mattress overflowed with crack paraphernalia: an orange glass pipe, another plain pipe, and matches. Empty glassine envelopes of nickel bags, one-inch square, came in pink and purple plastic.

Vicki picked up one of the bags and caught the sweetish whiff of crack; she had prosecuted drug cases in state court and had sniffed more than her share. Her gaze went automatically to Mrs. Bristow's hands, resting palms up. Burns on her fingerpads, where she'd held a hot glass pipe, confirmed the obvious. Vicki was looking at a long-standing crack habit; she didn't know if Mrs. Bristow ever had cancer or if she had beaten it, or if those were lies that Reheema had told her boss.

Vicki had questions, but no answers. She checked her watch:

4:45. Reheema would be released from the FDC soon and shemight come here to see her mother. Vicki left the sleeping Mrs. Bristow and went into the next room. Fifteen minutes later, she had snooped around the first floor, having learned nothing probative. Empty liquor bottles lay everywhere, some broken. The refrigerator held only fast food and take-out debris; the cabinets were empty except for canned peas, a few loose Newport cigarettes, an open box of Frosted Flakes, and, inexplicably, Libby's pumpkin pie mix. The grimy kitchen was overrun with cockroaches too bold to run even from a federal prosecutor.

Vicki checked on Mrs. Bristow, determined she was sleeping deeply, then went upstairs to snoop some more. At the top of the stairs was a small bathroom, and she peeked inside. The stench of human feces almost overpowered her, though the toilet lid was closed. The floor was wet with filth and urine that it was luckily too dark to see. Old rust streaked the sink, and water had frozen in a colossal teardrop at the faucet. A white plastic trash can overflowed with trash and toilet paper. She shuddered, left the bathroom, and went down the hall to the nearest bedroom, in the back of the house.

It was darker here, and cold, but the bedroom was empty, unused. The radiator had cracked in two, draining black water, and the bed and mattress were gone, as was the box spring and the metal rack to hold it; only a darker square remained on the floorboards to tell where a bed had been. A battered end table sat in one corner, and there was no lamp or dresser. Vicki left the room and went back down the hall. If the row house was typical, there'd be another bedroom in the front, facing the street.

She opened the door onto another bedroom, also disemboweled, with everything of value sold off. A lighter square in the floorboards sat against the interior wall, where a double bed used to be, facing the sunny windows. The rug was gone, the empty closet hung open, and a lone battered chair sat in front of a bare corner. She figured a desk used to be there because a cork bulletin board clung to the wall, colorful and cluttered with items, the one cheery sign of human habitation.

She crossed the room and found the bulletin board covered with high school paraphernalia. REHEEMA BRISTOW, read a certificate for the National Honor Society, with a tiny metal pin sunk into the corkboard. A large W made of maroon felt was next to it, with ribbons in red, white, and blue. One ribbon read PENNSYLVANIA TRACK CLASSIC in gold letters, and next to the ribbons, a handwritten list, in a girlish high school scrawl, that was titled Personal Record: 800 meter run

2:15. 71, one mile 5:02. And underneath had been written: GOALS, 800 meter run 2:11, 1 mile 4:55.

She didn't get it. Reheema had been a good student and a track star in high school. When had she gone so wrong? How had she ended up in the FDC? Vicki stared at a photo of Reheema in a black track singlet, in a formal group photo with her teammates. Their singlets read Willowbrook Lady Tigers, and Vicki felt a start of recognition. Willowbrook High was her father's alma mater! He never talked about his high school days, except to say that he was in chess club, but she knew he'd graduated from Willowbrook.

Her gaze fell to another snapshot of Reheema, lovely and smiling in the middle of her track pals, and they all stood in front of an old Ford Econoline van with a homemade sign painted on a bedsheet: PENN RELAYS OR BUST. In the driver's seat of the van sat a tall woman with a mature version of Re-heema's camera-ready features and an equally dazzling smile. The driver had to be Mrs. Bristow, before she'd become a ghost of herself.

The image turned Vicki's emotions on their head. She'd thought she knew about crack addiction, but she had learned it from cases she'd tried, in a legal context. She had never seen it up close, viewed as part of a family. And in this case, it wasn't the daughter who was the user, it was the mother. And Vicki had always thought of criminal defendants as simply "the defendant"; she had never personalized a felon. But here it was, staring her in the face. She was prosecuting a girl who graduated from high school only a year ahead of her, and in National Honor Society, as she had been. A girl who worked a job and was "super-reliable," as she was. A track star who had borne up, even excelled, under odds that Vicki never had to deal with, like a mother who had disintegrated into powder. And what if Mrs. Bristow had gotten worse after Justice had put her daughter away for the straw purchase?