“You felt comfortable with that? You didn’t send her elsewhere for a test?”

“I really am a doctor,” he reminded me. “I’m as competent here as I would be in an office. Any doctor would have told her the same thing. Particularly in the age of HMOs, not one doctor in a hundred would have ordered a mammogram based on what she reported and I felt.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. Besides, you haven’t heard the whole thing yet. She cheered up and agreed she was probably overreacting. Then she put her shirt back on and said that she had something for me.”

“Here it comes,” I said.

“Right. The prescription pad. She was sweet as saccharine. She told me she wanted me to have it, because she knew I could do a lot of good with it, for my patients. Then she asked me to write her a scrip for Valium.”

“Are you kidding?” But I knew he wasn’t.

“It all made sense then. She never thought there was a lump in her breast. She decided she’d soften me up by showing me her goods, and I’d be willing to do anything for her. I don’t know if she wanted the Valium for herself, or more likely, if she had a boyfriend who could turn around and sell it. I didn’t want to know.”

“You told her no, obviously,” I said. The reason for Ghislaine’s small scowl in the diner, when the subject of “Cisco” had first come up, was now quite clear.

“I told her no, I wasn’t going to get into the scrip-writing business, not even to help my patients, much less to start perpetrating prescription fraud. So she asked for the pad back. Again, I said no. I wasn’t going to use it, but I saw no reason she should have it.” Cicero paused, remembering. “Then she asked me what would happen if she told the cops about me. I said, ‘The same thing that would happen if I told the cops you stole a prescription pad, so let’s both pretend this never happened.’ She got up and said, ‘Fine, keep it.’ I was still worried about her threat to turn me in, so I told her she could take her forty dollars back. She did.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“When she picked up the money, she asked if I’d always been a paraplegic. I said no. She said, ‘I guess that’s why you can afford to let forty dollars walk out the door. Since you don’t have working equipment, you’re not paying for sex anymore.’ ”

I winced. When people can quote verbatim like that, it’s usually because the words in question had ricocheted around inside the psyche like the fragments of a hollow-point bullet.

“Hey, don’t look like that,” Cicero said. “She was ignorant.”

The truth was that I’d been nearly as naive as Ghislaine, shocked when Cicero had taken my hand and guided it down to where I could feel him stiffening under my touch. Later, he’d explained to me about reflex erections.

“Ignorant is excusable,” I said. “Spiteful is something else.”

“She probably doesn’t feel very good about herself,” Cicero said. “Unkind people often don’t.”

“You’re so charitable,” I said.

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

I looked out the window at the city below. “We don’t live in a world that rewards that anymore,” I said. “If it ever did.”

My first day back on daytime shifts was about as unproductive as I’d expected. I reported for work with shadows under my eyes and helped my body clock to readjust with a lot of coffee. On my lunch break, I went to Family Services and made the required minors-at-risk report on the Hennessys. I didn’t allow myself to feel as though I was letting Marlinchen down. The system was there to help kids like her; my report was part of that.

The most significant job of the day was a robbery. I took the call and interviewed witnesses. The details were familiar: two young white guys with nylon-stocking masks taking down a convenience store at gunpoint, quite similar to the robbery I’d investigated last week. We love patterns, I imagined telling the anonymous young gunmen, consolidating the two reports into one folder. Don’t quit while you’re ahead; just keep on doing it like you’re doing it. We’ll meet someday.

My phone rang, and I picked it up with my mind still half on the young robbers.

“Ms. Pribek?” The voice was clearly coming across long-distance wires. “This is Pete Benjamin.”

“Mr. Benjamin,” I said. Hugh Hennessy’s friend, who’d taken Aidan in. “Thank you for calling back.”

“I’ve already spoken to the authorities here, Ms. Pribek,” said Benjamin. “I’d be happy to tell you what I told Mr. Fredericks: Aidan didn’t disappear. He left of his own accord, which is unfortunate but not terribly unusual. There’s a long history of young people striking out on their own when they tire of the life a farm provides. And Aidan, unlike many young people, didn’t even have family ties to keep him here.”

When he fell silent, I asked him a question. “But specifically, what do you think led Aidan to leave when he did?”

“Well, as I said, the rural lifestyle is very unsatisfying to young people.”

“Other than that, I mean,” I said.

There was a beat of silence. “I’m not sure why there has to be an ‘other than that.’ ”

“Let me put it this way: Did you talk to Aidan about what was going on in his life?” I asked.

“Aidan and I spoke daily,” Benjamin said.

I let the silence underline the evasiveness of his answer.

“I was not Aidan’s father. But if something were troubling him, I think I would have known,” Benjamin said.

“If I can ask,” I said, “why did you agree to take on Hugh Hennessy’s oldest son? It seems like a huge burden, even for a friend of the family.”

“Well,” Benjamin said, “Hugh and I went way back. Our families knew each other, and we grew up in the same neighborhood in Atlanta.” He paused. “I’ve had a lifelong interest in literature, so I guess you could also say I’m an admirer of Hugh’s work as well as an old friend.”

“So you were a frequent visitor at Hugh’s home, a familiar figure to Aidan?” I asked.

Another beat of silence. “Not really. Hugh and I were quite close in younger years, but he lived up north as an adult, and I inherited the farm and went home to work it. We really didn’t see each other as adults.” He anticipated my follow-up question. “Largely, I think Hugh thought of me to take in Aidan, and I agreed to do it, because I have a sizable farm and no one to help with it. Hugh was struggling to raise five children on his own; I had none. It seemed like an imbalance easily fixed. Hugh also sent money for Aidan’s needs: school clothes and so on.”

“Did Hugh pay for room and board?” I asked.

“No, I thought in light of the help Aidan would be to me, that wasn’t necessary.” He cleared his throat. “I should point out that the chores I asked of Aidan weren’t excessive. I was careful to give him time for his homework and such socializing as he wanted to do, which wasn’t much.”

“Right,” I said. “On Hugh’s end, do you know what motivated him to send Aidan away?”

“He was raising five children on his own,” said Benjamin. “I think it was terribly difficult for him. You know, Deputy Fredericks didn’t get into such personal detail during our talks.”

“We all have different ways of approaching the job,” I said, beginning to sketch on the pad on my desk. “Aidan ran away before,” I said. “Tell me about that.”

Benjamin cleared his throat. “That happened early on,” he said. “I think it’s not an uncommon reaction for children who’ve just been sent to live someplace new. They run away, because they don’t think two or more steps ahead. They simply think that if they can physically reach their old home, everything will be fine. The idea seems to be, ‘If I can get home, they’ll keep me.’ Aidan seemed to feel the same.”

“But he was sent back?”

“Yes.”

“Did Aidan try to run away again?” I asked. “Before this last time?”