“It’s my day off,” I said. “Is something going on?”

I meant a public-safety emergency, all hands needed. But the afternoon outside was quiet, no sirens in the distance.

“No, nothing like that,” Van Noord said. “But you left so abruptly yesterday, in the middle of your shift, that Prewitt was worried. He asked me to check on the situation.”

“I was sick,” I said blankly. “I told you that yesterday.”

“I know, and I told him, but he still asked me to check on you, and then we couldn’t reach you, not on your cell or your pager-”

“Why didn’t you call here?” I asked again.

“We did, and kept getting a busy signal.”

“The phone’s off the hook,” I said, remembering only now the decision I’d made very early that morning. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”

But it still didn’t make any sense, Prewitt sending Van Noord here. “Are you shorthanded?” I asked. “I’m feeling a lot better today. I could come in.”

“Oh, no, no,” he said, waving off the suggestion. “You stay home, take care of that ear. But you might want to keep your cell on. Just so we can get in touch if we need you,” he advised.

“Sure,” I agreed.

When he was gone, I went into the kitchen and put the phone receiver back on its cradle. Then I poured myself a glass of water and washed down the first dose of antibiotics. I’d bought them just after leaving Cicero ’s, at a 24-hour pharmacy, waiting at the counter with a nonchalance so forced it would have clearly broadcast my paranoia to anyone who’d truly been paying attention.

The world had gone crazy, I thought. I was scamming prescription drugs. Lieutenant Prewitt was sending his detectives around to check on sick personnel. The sanest person I’d dealt with in the last forty-eight hours was Cicero Ruiz.

Cicero. Now, there was a problem.

In the brief time that I’d known Cicero Ruiz, I’d seen him not only give an examination and dispense medical advice, but also perform something that qualified as minor surgery. Then he’d revealed himself to be in possession of a prescription pad and willing to write a prescription; I had only his word that he was making a solitary exception in my case. Cicero had incriminated himself as readily and thoroughly as if I’d written a script for him to follow. But I couldn’t turn him in, not now. It was as simple as this: I’d given him my word.

He’d extracted that promise from me only in relation to the illegal prescription and the prospect that I’d get caught with it. But in principle, I’d promised something much larger. I do not need to get arrested, Cicero had said. I’d promised I wouldn’t get him in trouble with the law.

Even if I hadn’t made that promise, would I be on more solid ground right now? The greater issue was my own behavior. I hadn’t faked an ear infection. That had been genuine, and I’d accepted medical care from Cicero for it, which had to be the ethical equivalent of buying stolen goods from a fence or placing a bet with an illegal bookmaker. Then I’d participated in a prescription fraud. And just for good measure, I’d become sexually involved with a suspect.

Whatever happened, I couldn’t turn him in now. I’d crossed too many lines.

“I feel really bad,” I said.

I was standing on the Hennessys’ doorstep. Marlinchen had answered my knock, tinier than I remembered in faded jeans and what looked like a child’s T-shirt with a pencil-line dark-blue heart at the center. She’d listened with guarded patience as I’d explained about the illness that had made me a little more than twenty-four hours late in keeping our appointment.

Only late yesterday had I remembered it, my promise to drive out and talk with Marlinchen again. What made me feel worse was that when I’d checked the messages on my cell phone, there’d been nothing from her. She’d written me off as an adult who’d dismissed her and her problems as insignificant.

“I thought you’d changed your mind,” Marlinchen told me. “You made a point of saying that Aidan was way out of your jurisdiction.”

“I wouldn’t just stand you up,” I said. “Can I come in now, or is this a bad time?”

“It’s fine,” Marlinchen said, stepping aside to let me into their entryway. “But I thought you worked in the afternoon and evening.”

“I do, but this is my day off,” I said. “And anyway, I’m rotating back onto day shifts soon.”

Marlinchen led me back toward the kitchen and family room where we’d been earlier. Nowhere in the house could I hear activity, but there was a live feel in the air, and I knew the boys were around.

The kitchen, in fact, was occupied, but not by anyone cooking or eating. Instead, Donal sat in a chair that was elevated by an encyclopedia volume under each leg. He had a beach towel wrapped around his chest and shoulders. A pair of shears lay on a nearby counter, and a small corona of light-brown hair lay on the floor around the chair legs.

“Donal, you remember Detective Pribek,” Marlinchen said, picking up the shears.

“Hello,” Donal said.

“Hey,” I said. On second inspection, he looked younger than 11, his face still soft and pale with childhood.

To Marlinchen, I said, “Maybe I should wait until you’re done with Donal’s haircut before we get into… what we talked about the other day.”

But she disagreed. “All my brothers know the situation,” she said. “We can discuss it now.”

“All right,” I said. “Let me start with a broad question: Why wasn’t Aidan living at home?”

Marlinchen finger-combed Donal’s hair until a half inch stuck out at the ends, then cut. “Dad is a widower. He was raising five small children. That was just too many,” she said. “Aidan was the oldest, and the best suited to adapt to life away from home.”

“I thought Aidan was your twin,” I said.

Marlinchen smiled. “I make that mistake a lot, calling Aidan ‘the oldest.’ I don’t know why I do that, he was only born fifty-seven minutes before me.” She smoothed Donal’s hair down over his ear, then took up another thick strand and trimmed the end. “It’s ironic, too, because Aidan was held back to repeat the fourth grade, so after that, a lot of people assumed he was younger than me.”

That didn’t really tell me anything; I tried to get back on track. “That was the only reason Aidan was sent away?” I reiterated. “Your father just had too many kids?”

“Do you have children, Detective Pribek?” Marlinchen asked. Her voice had that faint shimmer of patronization that mothers have when asking single friends this question.

“No,” I admitted.

“Of course, I don’t either,” she said, “but I know it’s very, very difficult raising five kids on your own. Dad tried, but he just had his hands too full, with his teaching and his writing. He also had pretty severe pain sometimes, from a degenerative disk. There were episodes where it was almost disabling.” More hair fell. “Later, he developed an ulcer, I think from the pressure of working and raising a family on his own.”

“Mmm,” I said, noncommittal. “When was the last time you heard from Aidan?”

“We don’t really hear from him,” Marlinchen said. Her eyes were down, on her work. “The last I saw him was when he left for Illinois.” Another tiny sheaf of light-brown hair fluttered to the floor.

“ Illinois?” I said.

“Before he went to Georgia, he lived with our aunt, Brigitte, outside of Rockford, Illinois,” Marlinchen explained. “He would have stayed there, but Aunt Brigitte died five months later, and that was when Pete Benjamin offered to let Aidan live on his farm.”

“How did your aunt die?” I asked.

“A car accident,” Marlinchen said.

“How did your father and Pete Benjamin know each other?” I said.

“They grew up in Atlanta together,” she said. “Pete inherited a lot of land and went to farm it. Dad went to college, and the rest was history.” She paused to concentrate, lining up hair. “I think Dad thought Aidan would learn a lot from living on a farm. Dad left college at 19 and traveled through America, and he worked a lot of manual jobs, like farm labor. He said he learned more about life working on the road than in any classroom.”