Courting Trouble

LISA SCOTTOLINE

To my readers, with my deepest thanks

For your dedication, I offer my own

May you always be courageous.

—BOB DYLAN, “Forever Young”

Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz (singing): When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot.

—I Love Lucy,

“Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress,”

Episode No. 69, October 19, 1953,

singing Cole Porter’s “Friendship”

1

Anne Murphy barreled through the bustling lobby of the William Green Federal Courthouse, her long, auburn hair flying. She was about to do something crazy in court and couldn’t wait to get upstairs. If she won, she’d be a hero. If she lost, she’d go to jail. Anne didn’t think twice about the if-she-lost part. She was a redhead, which is a blonde with poor impulse control.

“Ms. Murphy, Ms. Murphy, just one question!” a reporter shouted, dogging her heels, but Anne charged ahead, trying to ditch him in the crowd.

Federal employees, lawyers, and jurors crisscrossed the lobby to the exits, hurrying home to start the Fourth of July weekend, but heads turned at the sight of the stunning young woman. Anne had wide-set eyes of willow-green, a straight nose dusted with freckles, and a largish mouth, glossy with an artful swipe of raisiny lipstick. Very female curves filled out a suit of cream-colored silk, and her long, lean legs tapered to fine ankles, ending in impractical Manolo Blahnik heels. Anne looked like a model, but given her past didn’t even think of herself as pretty. None of us outgrows the kid in the bathroom mirror.

“Uh-oh, here comes trouble!” called one of the court security officers, as Anne approached the group of dark polyester blazers clustered around the metal detectors. Manning the machines were five older guards, all retired Philly cops, flashing appreciative grins. The guard calling to Anne was the most talkative, with a still-trim figure, improbably black hair, and a nameplate that read OFFICER SALVATORE BONANNO. “Gangway, fellas! It’s Red, and she’s loaded for bear!”

“Right again, Sal.” Anne tossed her leather briefcase and a Kate Spade messenger bag onto the conveyor belt. “Wish me luck.”

“What’s cookin’, good-lookin’?”

“The usual. Striking a blow for justice. Paying too much for shoes.” Anne strode through the security portal as her bags glided through the X-ray machine. “You gentlemen got plans for the holiday weekend?”

“I’m takin’ you dancin’,” Officer Bonanno answered with a dentured smile, and the other guards burst into guffaws made gravelly by cigarette breaks at the loading dock off of Seventh Street. Bonanno ignored them cheerfully. “I’m gonna teach you to jitterbug, ain’t I, Red?”

“Ha!” Officer Sean Feeney broke in, grinning. “You and the lovely Miss Murphy, Sal? In your dreams!” Feeney was a ruddy-faced, heavyset sixty-five-year-old, with eyebrows as furry as caterpillars. “She’s an Irish girl and she’s savin’ herself for me.” He turned to Anne. “Your people from County Galway, right, Annie? You got pretty skin, like the girls in Galway.”

“Galway, that near Glendale?” Anne asked, and they laughed. She never knew what to say when someone commented on her looks. The X-ray machine surrendered her belongings, and she reached for them as two reporters caught up with her, threw their bags onto the conveyor belt, and started firing questions.

“Ms. Murphy, any comment on the trial next week?” “Why won’t your client settle this case?” “Isn’t this ruining Chipster’s chance to go public?” They kept interrupting each other. “Anne, what’s this motion about today?” “Why do you want to keep this evidence from the jury?”

“No comment, please.” Anne broke free, grabbed her bags, and bolted from the press, but it turned out she didn’t have to. Officer Bonanno was confronting the reporters, hard-eyed behind his bifocals.

“Yo, people!” he bellowed, Philly-style. “You know the rules! None o’ that in the courthouse! Why you gotta give the young lady a hard time?”

Officer Feeney frowned at the first reporter and motioned him over. “Come ‘ere a minute, sir. I think you need a full-body scan.” He reached under the security counter and emerged with a handheld metal detector. “Come on, in fact, both of youse.” He waved the wand at the second reporter, and the other security guards lined up behind him like an aged phalanx.

“But I’m the press!” the reporter protested. “This is my beat! You see me every day. I’m Allen Collins, I have an ID.” Behind him, his canvas briefcase stalled suddenly in the X-ray machine, and the guard watching the monitor was already confiscating it. The reporter turned back, puzzled. “Hey, wait a minute!”

Officer Bonanno dismissed Anne to the elevators with a newly authoritative air. “Go on up, Miss!”

“Thanks, Officer,” Anne said, suppressing a smile as she grabbed the open elevator and hit the button for the ninth floor. She hadn’t asked for the assist and felt vaguely guilty accepting it. But only vaguely.

Minutes later, Anne reached the ninth floor and entered the spacious, modern courtroom, which was packed. The Chipster case, for sexual harassment against Gil Martin, Philadelphia’s best-known Internet millionaire, had attracted press attention since the day it was filed, and reporters, sketch artists, and the public filled the sleek modern pews of dark wood. Their faces swiveled almost as one toward Anne as she strode down the carpeted center aisle.

Bailiffs in blue blazers stopped conferring over the docket sheets, law clerks straightened new ties, and a female court reporter shot daggers over her blue steno machine, on its spindly metal legs. Anne had grown accustomed to the reaction; men adored her, women hated her. She had nevertheless joined the all-woman law firm of Rosato & Associates, which had turned out to be a very redheaded career move. But that was another story.

She reached counsel table and set down her briefcase and purse, then looked back. A young man dressed in a lightweight trench coat was sitting, as planned, on the aisle in the front row behind her. Anne acknowledged him discreetly, then took her seat, opened her briefcase, and pulled out a copy of her motion papers. The motion and the young man on the aisle had been Anne’s latest idea. Chipster.com was her first big client at Rosato, and Gil Martin had hired her because they’d known each other at law school. She had never tried a case of this magnitude, and in the beginning wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew. Then she decided that she had, and stopped wondering.

“Happy Fourth!” whispered a voice at her ear, and she looked up.

Matt Booker was a year older than Anne’s twenty-eight, and he stood over her, with dark, wavy hair, light-blue eyes, and eyelashes too thick to be wasted on a man. She would have been wildly attracted to him if he hadn’t been opposing counsel, but that was an alternate reality. Matt represented the plaintiffs in this case, a female programmer named Beth Dietz and her husband Bill, who had filed a derivative claim against Chipster. Though Anne hadn’t dated anyone for the year she’d been in Philly, Matt Booker was the first time she’d been tempted. Really tempted, but opposing counsel was about as forbidden as fruit gets.

“Go away,” she said, but Matt leaned closer.

“I just want you to know that I’m not asking you out today.” His whisper smelled like Crest. “You’ve turned me down 329 times, and I’m detecting a pattern. Stop me before I ask again.”

Anne blushed. “Matt, has it occurred to you that you are sexually harassing me, in a sexual harassment lawsuit?”

“Come on, my advances are welcome, aren’t they? Sort of?”

Anne didn’t answer. She was deciding. It had been so long since she’d let herself trust anyone. But she had known Matt for almost a year, since the complaint in this case was filed, and he was an overconfident pain in the ass, which she liked in a man.

“A little? Slim to none?” Matt was asking, bracing a hand on the polished counsel table, and she took a chance.

“Okay. After the trial is over, I will go out with you. But only after.”

“Really?” Matt’s voice cracked, which Anne found cute. He was always so cool, it was as if his veneer had cracked, too. He looked astounded, his jaw dropping unselfconsciously. “Anne, are you on drugs?”

“No.”

“Will you sign an affidavit to that effect?”

“Go away.” Anne studied her brief. “I’m preparing to kick your ass.”

“What if I win this case?”

“Not possible. You’re in the wrong, and you’re against me.”

“I won the last evidentiary motion, remember?”

“That was a battle, not the war.” Anne eyed the bailiffs over her papers. “Now go away. Everyone knows you’re flirting.”

“You’re flirting back.”

“I don’t flirt with opposing counsel.”

“I’m not opposing, you are.” Matt snorted, then stepped away and crossed to plaintiff’s counsel table. Beyond it lay the jury box, a polished mahogany rail cordoning off fourteen empty chairs in various states of swivelhood. They made an interesting backdrop, and Anne wondered if Matt would still want to see her after the verdict came back. She thought of the young man sitting behind her and suppressed a guilty twinge. That made a total of two guilty twinges she’d had in her whole life, and Anne wasn’t good at suppressing them, on account of such sporadic practice.

“All rise!” the bailiff cried, from beyond the bar of the court. The golden seal of the United States Courts rose like the sun on the paneled wall, behind a huge mahogany dais of contemporary design. Gilt-framed portraits of past judges hung on the walls, their thick oil paint glistening darkly in the recessed lights. The bailiff stood near one, his chest puffed out as if it bore medals. “All rise! Court is now in session! The Honorable Albert D. Hoffmeier, presiding.”

“Good afternoon, everybody,” Judge Hoffmeier called out, emerging from the paneled pocket door, carrying a thick accordion case-file. The gallery greeted the stocky little judge in return, and he bustled into the courtroom, the hem of his shiny black robes brushing the carpet as he chugged past the American flag and onto the large, wooden dais, then plopped the file onto the cluttered desktop, seated himself in his chair, and pushed up his tortoiseshell glasses.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Murphy.” Judge Hoffmeier smiled down at her, his eyes bright. His wiry hair was flecked salt-and-pepper, and he wore a Stars-and-Stripes bow tie that evidenced a sense of humor legendary on the district court bench. “What is it you’re troubling us with, young lady? My favorite holiday is almost upon us, and we should all be out buying hot dogs and sunblock.” The gallery chuckled, as did the judge. “Yes, I like sunblock on my hot dogs.”

The gallery laughed again, and Anne rose and took her brief to the lectern. “Sorry to keep you, Your Honor, but I do have this pesky evidentiary motion. As you know, I represent Chipster.com, the defendant company in this matter, and I am asking the Court to exclude the testimony of Susan Feldman, whom plaintiff intends to call as a witness at trial next week.”

“You don’t think the jury should meet Ms. Feldman, counsel?” If Judge Hoffmeier appreciated Anne’s beauty he hid it well, and she didn’t kid herself that he’d let it influence him. It took more than a pretty face to win in a federal forum. Usually.

“Not at all, Your Honor. I think Ms. Feldman and her testimony should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 401, because it is irrelevant. Ms. Feldman alleges that one of Chipster’s programmers, named Phillip Leaver, sexually harassed her, in a rather bizarre incident.” The judge’s already-twinkling eye told Anne that he knew the underlying facts. “Neither Ms. Feldman nor Mr. Leaver have anything to do with this case or either of the parties at issue. The incident concerning Ms. Feldman occurred in a different department, at a different time, between different people.”

“I read your motion papers.” Judge Hoffmeier patted the accordion file. “Am I correct that defendant company concedes that the incident involving Ms. Feldman is true?”

“Correct, Your Honor.” Anne took a deep, preparatory breath. “We concede that this incident took place, but we do not concede that it constitutes sexual harassment. The incident was a prank, and even though Mr. Leaver’s conduct wasn’t actionable, Chipster found it inappropriate and terminated him that very day.”

“Oh really? A prank?” Judge Hoffmeier peered in amusement over the top of his glasses. “Let’s talk turkey, Ms. Murphy. Mr. Leaver came out of his cubicle at work—and he was naked as a jaybird!”

“True.” Anne suppressed her smile, and the gallery reacted with muffled laughter. “But it was a joke, Your Honor. And, just for the record, Mr. Leaver was wearing ankle bands with little wings. They were made out of Reynolds Wrap.”

“Ankle bands with wings, of course. A fan of Hermes, or Pan, perhaps, eh?” Judge Hoffmeier chuckled, and the gallery with him, since they’d been given judicial permission. “Why wings, counsel?”

“Why not, Your Honor? Though I doubt Mr. Leaver studies mythology. He’s twenty-three years old and watches way too much Jackass.”

“Jackass?”

“It’s a show on MTV. Young men skateboard naked or dressed like gorillas.” Anne loved the show, but wasn’t eager to reveal as much to a sixty-year-old judge with Article III powers. “In any event, Mr. Leaver came out of his cubicle and stood for a moment in front of Ms. Feldman, but said nothing inappropriate and made no lewd gesture. He merely flapped his arms and pretended to fly, which I admit is silly and tasteless, but is not yet a violation of federal law.”

Judge Hoffmeier burst into laughter. “This is why NASDAQ’s in the crapper! This is the Internet revolution we hear so much about! The nation’s economy is run by children wearing kitchen supplies!”

Anne waited until the laughter in the gallery had subsided. The holiday mood had already started, and she hoped it would flow in her favor, five minutes hence. “It is funny, Your Honor, and in fact, Ms. Feldman clearly took Mr. Leaver’s actions as a joke. When he started flapping, she laughed until she fell off her chair. Mr. Leaver was so embarrassed, he ran into the men’s room and refused to come out until the close of business.”

The gallery laughed louder, and Judge Hoffmeier let it spend itself, then turned serious. “Well. This is a unique fact situation, to be sure. Your client, Chipster.com, doesn’t want Ms. Feldman to tell the story about the tinfoil wings at trial?”

“No. Her story, her evidence, is irrelevant. The upcoming trial, Dietz v. Chipster, is a quid pro quo case of sexual harassment. In it, plaintiff alleges that Gil Martin, the company’s CEO, forced Beth Dietz, a female programmer, to have sex with him in his office on a number of occasions, in order to keep her job. What happened between Mr. Martin and Ms. Dietz is a credibility question for the jury, and we will prove that plaintiff’s allegations are false. But whether Mr. Leaver streaked, flapped, or struck a pose for Ms. Feldman doesn’t make it any more or less likely that Gil Martin harassed Beth Dietz.”

“Standard relevance analysis, eh, Ms. Murphy?”

“Exactly, with one addition.” Anne rechecked her brief. “While that evidence may be admissible in a ‘hostile environment’ theory, in which the number and pervasiveness of alleged other incidents are relevant, it is clearly inadmissible as irrelevant in this, a quid pro quo case.”

“So, you rest on the difference between a hostile environment theory and a quid pro quo theory of sexual harassment.” Judge Hoffmeier frowned in thought. “It’s quite a technical argument.”

“Think of it as precise, Your Honor.” To Anne, precision mattered in the law, brain surgery, and lipliner. Otherwise it was no fun at all. “The distinction makes a difference because of the impact the evidence will have. Plaintiff’s counsel will be using this incident involving Mr. Leaver to bootstrap his meager proofs regarding Mr. Martin.”

Judge Hoffmeier rubbed his chin, clean-shaven even at this hour. “Any guidance from upstairs, Ms. Murphy? I’ve found no appellate cases on point.”

“Frankly, no, Your Honor. I briefed Becker v. ARCO, which supports my position, but it’s not precisely on point. It does emphasize the danger in admitting evidence of this kind, in that it enables the plaintiff to prove the defendant’s liability only in the loosest and most illogical fashion, like guilt by association.”

“Thank you. I have your argument, Ms. Murphy.” Judge Hoffmeier nodded and turned to plaintiff’s counsel table. “You want in, Mr. Booker?”

“Sure do, Your Honor.” Matt went to the lectern as Anne stepped back. “Your Honor, I like a joke as much as the next guy, and I agree this incident may sound funny to us now. But contrary to defense counsel’s assertion, Ms. Feldman did not think this supposed prank was funny. Mr. Leaver’s conduct constitutes indecent exposure in this and most jurisdictions.”

Judge Hoffmeier’s mouth’s flattened to a politically correct line of disapproval. Anne wondered if she could rescind her flirting.

“Your Honor, we think Ms. Feldman’s testimony is admissible,” Matt continued. “This is proof positive of the type of ‘locker room’ conduct that is encouraged at Chipster.com and at an increasing number of Internet companies. Sexual harassment suits are on the rise in the Internet companies because computer programming is so male-dominated. In fact, ninety-five percent of Chipster’s programmers are male, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, and none of the company’s fifteen supervisors are women. This creates the raucous ‘boys only’ pattern of conduct, which permits conduct like Mr. Leaver’s and Mr. Martin’s to flourish.”

“What about Ms. Murphy’s point that this is a quid pro quo case and not a hostile environment case?”

“I agree with Your Honor that that is a hypertechnical argument. Sexual harassment is sexual harassment. And Becker v. ARCO notwithstanding, the law in the Third Circuit is not settled on whether evidence proving a hostile environment case can be admitted in a quid pro quo case.”

Judge Hoffmeier rested his chin on his hand. “It does seem probative to me, especially considering that it is undisputed.”

“I agree, Your Honor, and it is for the jury—not for any of us—to decide whether the corporate culture at Chipster is one in which sexual harassment is permitted. The defendant in the present case is the very CEO of the company, Gilbert Martin.”

“Thank you for your argument, counsel,” Judge Hoffmeier said with finality, and Anne couldn’t tell which way he would rule. She couldn’t take a chance on losing. The evidence would kill her case. Time for Plan B.

“Your Honor, if I may, I have rebuttal,” Anne said, and Judge Hoffmeier smiled.

“The fighting Irish. Okay, counsel, but keep it short.”

“Your Honor, in the alternative, defendant argues that even if the Court thinks the evidence is relevant, it should be excluded under Federal Rule 403 because of the danger of unfair prejudice. Imagine how distracted the jury would be if this evidence came in. Your Honor, we’re talking here about a naked man.”

On cue, the young man sitting behind Anne in the gallery stood up, stepped into the aisle, then unbuttoned his raincoat and let it drop in a heap at his feet. The man was sandy-haired, handsome—and buck-naked. The gallery let out a collective gasp, the court reporter covered her mouth, and the bailiff reached for his handcuffs, but Anne continued her legal argument:

“The image of a naked man commands instant and total attention. It is a riveting, galvanizing image, especially in a courtroom. If it’s permitted, the jury will be so distracted—”

“What is this?” Judge Hoffmeier exploded. He was craning his neck and fumbling for his gavel. Crak! Crak! “Order! Order! My God in Heaven! Get dressed, young man! Put your clothes on!”

Matt sprang to his feet, pounding the table. “Your Honor, we object! This is an outrage!”

Pandemonium broke out in the gallery as the naked man grabbed his raincoat and took off, flapping his arms and sprinting down the center aisle and out of the courtroom doors, with the bailiff in hot pursuit. The gallery burst into spontaneous applause at his performance, and Anne decided on the spot to pay him a bonus.

Crak! Crak! “Order! I will have order in my courtroom! Settle down, everybody! Settle down!” Judge Hoffmeier stopped banging the gavel, and the redness ebbed from his face. He straightened his glasses and glared down at Anne. “Ms. Murphy, I cannot believe my own eyes! Did you arrange that ridiculous stunt?”

“Think of it as a demonstration, Your Honor. It proves my point that if a naked man enters the courtroom, all else stops—”

“Was that man Mr. Leaver?” Judge Hoffmeier’s hooded eyes widened.

“No, he works for Strippergram. He sings, too, but the case didn’t call for it.”

“I object, Your Honor!” Matt was yelling, but Judge Hoffmeier waved him into his seat, never taking his stern gaze from Anne.

“Ms. Murphy, are you telling me you paid a stripper to come here today?”

“Who else would get naked for money?”

“Ms. Murphy! I could cite you for contempt for this sort of thing! Send you to jail! My courtroom is not a peep show!”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I couldn’t think of any other way to show you. I mean, look around.” Anne gestured at the gallery, now in complete disarray. People were half-standing and half-seated, laughing and talking among themselves, unable to get back in order. “See? The naked man is gone, but everybody was completely distracted by him. I was making a valid legal argument when he dropped his coat, but everybody stopped listening, including you.”

Judge Hoffmeier bristled, but Anne went on.

“With all due respect, Your Honor, what just happened proves my point. If a naked man is on the jury’s mind, they won’t be able to focus on Mr. Martin, and he’s the one on trial. They’ll go into that jury room to deliberate, and a naked man is all they’ll talk about. That’s exactly what Federal Rule 403 was designed to prevent.”

Judge Hoffmeier went speechless, and Matt simmered. The courtroom fell suddenly silent as everyone gazed, stunned, at Anne. She remained uncharacteristically mute, wondering if she could post bail with a Visa card. After a minute, Judge Hoffmeier sighed, nudged his glasses needlessly into place, and met Anne’s eye.

“Ms. Murphy, I will not sanction this sort of foolishness in my courtroom. I maintain a relaxed atmosphere here, but you have evidently gotten the wrong message.” The judge squared his shoulders in the voluminous robes. “I am therefore citing you for contempt, to the tune of $500. Thank your lucky stars I’m not locking you up for the weekend. But as I said, the Fourth of July is my favorite national holiday, and every American should celebrate our individual freedoms. Even Americans as absurdly free as you.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Anne said. As for the $500, she’d have to take it out of her personal savings, which would leave $17.45. She couldn’t very well charge the client for keeping the lawyer out of jail. She was pretty sure it was supposed to be the other way around.

“And, Ms. Murphy, you’re on notice.” Judge Hoffmeier wagged his finger. “I will not tolerate another such display in my courtroom next week, or any week thereafter. Next ‘demonstration’ like this, you go directly to jail.”

“Understood, Your Honor.”

“Fine.” Judge Hoffmeier paused. “Now. Well. As for defendant’s motion to exclude evidence, I hereby grant the motion, albeit reluctantly. I am loathe to reward Ms. Murphy’s misconduct, but I cannot penalize the defendant company for its lawyer’s hare-brained schemes. I therefore rule that Ms. Feldman will not be permitted to testify at the trial of this matter, and that there will be no naked men in evidence next week, either in word or deed. So ordered!” Judge Hoffmeier banged the gavel, shaking his head.

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Anne wanted to cheer, but didn’t. She won. She won!

Matt rose briefly, with a scowl. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Now, Ms. Murphy, get out of my courtroom before I return to my senses.” Judge Hoffmeier got up and left the dais. “Have a good holiday, everybody.”

Anne stood up as soon as the judge had left, felt a soft caress on her back, and turned. Two lawyers in fancy suits stood behind her. They were hot, successful, and evidently patronized the same custom tailor.

“That was amazing, Anne!” the one said, touching her again, though she didn’t know him at all. He wore a practiced smile and a wedding band.

The other lawyer stepped closer. “Where’d you get that idea? And didn’t we meet at—”

“Thanks,” Anne said politely, but she didn’t want to get picked up in federal court unless it was by Matt Booker. She peered past their padded shoulders at Matt, who was hunching over his briefcase, shoving papers inside. She waved, trying to get his attention, but his forehead was knitted with anger and he wouldn’t look up. Then her view was blocked by the lawyers.

“How did you get the guts to do that?” the married lawyer asked, but Anne stepped around him.

“Matt!” she called, but he’d grabbed his briefcase, hurried down the center aisle, and left through the double doors. Anne didn’t go after him. She couldn’t apologize for representing her client. She couldn’t say she was sorry she’d won. She stood there, suddenly aware that two suits were hovering over her, an entire gallery was gawking at her, and several reporters were rushing at her with notebooks drawn.

“Anne,” the married lawyer said, in low tones. “I was wondering if you were busy tonight. I’d love to take you out to celebrate.”

A reporter elbowed him out of the way, shouting questions in Anne’s face. “Ms. Murphy, that was great! What a trick! What was the stripper’s name?” The press glommed suddenly around her, like bees to a Pulitzer. “Did you think you’d go to jail?” “What did your client think about that stunt?” “Would you consider a photo shoot this week, for our ‘up-and-coming’ feature?”

Anne shoved her way back to counsel table for her briefcase and bag, answering none of the questions and ignoring all of the stares. She screened out the world around her, which left her feeling the way it always did, a little dead inside. But at least she’d won the motion, and she’d deserved to win. Even without any case precedent, Anne knew in her heart she was right on the law.

Mental note: Only a beautiful woman can understand the true power of a naked man.

2

ROSATO & ASSOCIATES, read the brass nameplate affixed to the sky-blue wall, and Anne stepped off the elevator into the air-conditioned cool of the empty reception area. Navy club chairs, a blue-patterned Karastan, and a glass table covered with a slick magazine-fan formed a corporate oasis after the heat and hubbub outside. Holiday traffic had already started, and Anne couldn’t get a cab from the courthouse, so she had walked the twenty-five blocks in her Blahniks, which constituted cruel and unusual punishment. She kicked off her shoes and they tumbled over each other in a taupe blur.

“Faithless ones,” she said, then went over and rescued them.

She tucked them into her briefcase and padded barefoot to the reception desk, which was also empty. The receptionist must have gone home early, and a quick glance around told Anne that the whole place had cleared out. It was silent except for the echo of laughter at one of the far offices, near the corner of the building. She knew who that would be.

She picked up the clipboard they kept on the reception desk and scanned the list of sign-ins and outs. Bennie Rosato had signed out all day in depositions, and Anne breathed a relieved sigh. She would have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do for the naked-man motion. The telephone rang on the reception desk, and she picked it up. “Rosato and Associates,” she answered.

The caller was a man. “This is the Daily News, is Anne Murphy in? We’d like to ask her a few questions about—”

“I’m sorry, I’m not here.” Anne let the receiver drop into the cradle, and when the phone began ringing again, pretended it was background music. She set down the clipboard and sorted through the while you were out pink slips to collect her own, then grabbed her mail and FedExes from the black tray bearing her name. She padded, stuff in hand, to her office.

Sunlight poured through the window behind her chair, bathing her messy desktop in a too-white glare and illuminating the dust motes in the air, agitated by the slightly damp lawyer. Her desk sat flush against the left wall and above it hung wooden bookshelves stuffed with law books, thick copies of the Federal Rules, a couple of legal thrillers, and outdated Neiman Marcus catalogs full of clothes she deserved to own but didn’t yet. Her office contained no photographs, and nothing hung on her walls except for her diplomas from UCLA and Stanford Law.

Anne dropped her messenger bag and briefcase on a chair, her mail and messages on the desk, then walked to her chair and sat down. The laughter sounded louder now that she was closer to the source, the two older associates, Mary DiNunzio and Judy Carrier. They were hanging out in Mary’s office, which doubled as their clubhouse.

She thumbed through her messages but her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t sit still. She felt jiggered up from her victory. She had called Gil on the cell to tell him about the win, but he hadn’t answered and she’d left a message. She hadn’t told him about the naked man, either; she’d wanted him to have deniability in case of her arrest. Now it would play out beautifully. She won!

Anne felt like celebrating. She heard the laughter again. Maybe she could take Mary and Judy out for drinks. She never had before, but why not? She had nothing else to do tonight except go to the gym, and she’d love to skip that for once. She worked out to burn off stress, but hated it so much it was stressing her. If this kept up, she’d have to go back to charging things.

Anne got up from her chair and walked barefoot down the hallway, toward the laughter. Its lighthearted sound was contagious, and her own smile grew unaccountably as she approached Mary’s office and leaned in the door. “What’s so funny, guys?” she asked.

The laughter stopped so quickly it was as if somebody had flicked the off switch.

“Oh, it was nothing,” answered Judy Carrier, sitting on Mary’s credenza. But her china-blue eyes were wet from giggling, and her unlipsticked lips still bore the trace of a smile.

Mary DiNunzio frowned from behind her neat desk. “Sorry if we were loud. Did we disturb you?”

“No, not at all.” Anne’s cheeks went hot. She should have known better. This law firm was worse than high school, and she felt like a D student crashing National Honor Society.

“How was court?” Mary asked. If she’d heard about the naked guy, it didn’t show. Her expression was interested, if only politely. Her dark-blond hair had been swept back into a French twist, and she was wearing her trademark khaki suit from Brooks Brothers, in contrast to Judy, who flopped on the credenza in denim overalls, a white tank, and a red bandanna in her Dutch-boy haircut. These two were so different, Anne could never understand their close friendship, and had given up trying.

“Uh, court was fine.” Anne’s smile morphed into a professional mask. Mary had been filling in on Chipster, and Anne always sensed that they could have been friends, if things had been different. Like if they both lived on Pluto, where women were nice to each other. “I won, which is good.”

“Jeez! You won?” Mary smiled. “Congratulations! How’d you do that? It was a tough motion.”

“Hoffmeier just agreed, I guess.” Anne didn’t even consider telling them the story. It had been a mistake to come here. By here she meant Philadelphia.

Mary looked puzzled. “What’d he agree with? The cases weren’t any help.”

“Who knows? He bought the argument. I have to go, I’m really late. I just thought I’d say good-bye.” Anne edged out of the office and faked a final smile. “Happy Fourth of July. Have a great weekend, guys.”

“You probably have plans. Dates, right?” Mary asked, and Anne nodded.

“Yep. See ya.”

“Tonight, too? Because I—”

“Yes. Big date tonight. Gotta go now.”

“Okay, well, happy Fourth.”

Judy nodded. “Have a good one.”

But Anne was already out of the office and down the hall, padding quickly away. An hour later she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt, baggy shorts, and Reeboks, and standing in a practically empty gym, squaring off against a Life Fitness elliptical exerciser, a costly machine that simulates running for people who hate to run for free. select workout, ordered the display, and tiny red lights blinked a helpful arrow that pointed to the enter button.

Anne hit the button, cycling through fat burn, cardio, and manual, until she got to random, which resonated. random would place huge hills in her path without warning. random would keep her on her toes. random equaled life.

She hit the button, grabbed the handles, and started fake-running. The gym was deserted except for a muscleman on the leg-lift machine, watching himself in the mirror, Narcissus on Nautilus. It was so quiet she could hear the humpa-humpa of spinning music throbbing through the wall next to her. She had tried spinning once, but you had to do it with a class, which meant that somebody, male or female or maybe both, would hit on her. So Anne worked out alone in front of the row of mounted TVs, looking straight ahead and wearing earphones from a Sony Walkman. The Walkman’s batteries were long dead; it was just a way for nobody to bother her. She got her heart pounding, watching CNN on mute and trying not to hate exercise, CNN, or anything else about her life.

She had won, after all.

The thought made her smile. A baby hill rose ahead of her, and she fake-jogged up its simulated incline, her eyes on the TV. Across the bottom of the screen slid two stacks of stock quotes, with their mysterious acronyms and red and green arrows. There were lots of red arrows, pointing down. If Anne had money invested in the market she’d be worried, but she invested in shoes.

“Hi, Anne,” said a voice beside her, and she looked over. It was a girl climbing on the exerciser next to her and selecting fat burn. The chick was too thin to need fat burn, but it was the only lie bigger than one-size-fits-all.

“Hi,” Anne said, wracking her brain for the girl’s name. The girl started walking at a leisurely pace, with her eyes focused at some imaginary point in the wall, and Anne finally remembered it. Willa Hansen. Willa was a brooding artist-type and she’d dyed her hair again, this time a normal human-being color. It was even a red shade close to Anne’s.

“I like your new haircolor, Willa,” Anne blurted out, after a minute. She gathered she was trying to strike up a conversation, but wasn’t sure why. Maybe to prove she remembered Willa’s name. Mental note: It is pointless to remember someone’s name and not get credit for it.

“Thanks.”

“How’d you get the blue out?” Anne asked, then wanted to kick herself. Somehow it sounded wrong. She’d always had a hard time talking to women. Men were so much easier; to talk to a man, all she had to do was listen, which they counted as the same thing.

“The blue came out right away. It was Kool-Aid.”

“Huh?” Anne tugged out her silent earphones. Maybe she hadn’t heard right. “You put Kool-Aid, the drink, on your hair?”

“Sure.” Willa smiled. “Just add water.”

Anne wasn’t sure what to say, so she fake-jogged for a moment in silence. There were things she would never understand about her generation, and her experiments with haircolor tended to the more conventional. When she started practice, she dyed her hair Professional Brown, but it had proved futile. She’d remained Unprofessional, only with really boring hair, so she’d gone back to her natural Lucille Ball Red. She took another conversational stab. “I didn’t know you could put Kool-Aid in your hair.”

“Sure,” Willa answered, strolling along in her T-shirt and shorts. “I used to use Manic Panic, but Kool-Aid works just as well. The blue was Blueberry, and to get rid of it, I just put Cherry on top, and my hair turned black.”

“Blackberry?”

“I guess.” Willa didn’t get the joke. “Then I hennaed it, and it turned out kind of coppery.”

Anne fake-scaled another hill and kept going. The lighted display on the treadmill told her she had fake-jogged for only 2:28, which meant she had approximately 3 years and 23 hours left. She let her glance slip sideways and checked Willa’s display. Willa didn’t have any hills ahead, which meant she lacked sufficient stress in her diet.

“What are you doing for the Fourth, Anne?”

“I have to hole up in my house and work all weekend. I have a big trial on Tuesday.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re a lawyer.”

Anne felt the urge to tell Willa about her big victory in court today, naked man and all, but it would be pathetic. She didn’t know Willa very well and they’d talked only a few times about their respective personal lives, or lack thereof. Like Anne, Willa lived alone and wasn’t from Philly. Anne sensed that she had a trust fund, which was where the similarities between the two girls came to the proverbial screeching halt. “Do you have plans for the holiday?”

“Not anymore. I was gonna dog-sit this weekend for this couple, but they broke up.”

“The couple?”

“The dogs.”

Anne didn’t ask. She was fake-puffing too hard anyway. “I didn’t know you dog-sat.”

“I do, sometimes, for fun. I love dogs. When I dog-sit, I use the time to sketch them.” Willa strolled along on her machine. “There’ll be a lot else to sketch this weekend, I guess. There’s something called the Party on the Parkway, and fireworks at the Art Museum on Monday night.”

“Oh, no. I live right off the Parkway.” This would be Anne’s first Independence Day in Philly, and she hadn’t thought of it. How would she get any work done? Damn. Kilimanjaro loomed on her Life Fitness display. Another example of random. “I have to work this weekend. How am I gonna do that?”

“Don’t you have an office?”

“Yeah, but—” Anne didn’t want to run into Mary and Judy. Or worse, Bennie. Work would be okay if it weren’t for coworkers.

“Offices suck, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So why don’t you take off?” Willa’s saunter slowed to a crawl. Soon she would be going in reverse, and the gym would have to pay her.

“Take off?”

“Aren’t you single?”

“Very.”

“So go to the Jersey shore. I was on North Cape May once, and there’s a national park there. Very quiet and peaceful. I got a lot of sketching done.”

“Down the shore?” It was code for the Jersey shore. Everybody in Philadelphia vacationed in South Jersey. Unlike L.A., Philly wasn’t a summer-in-Provence kind of town, thank God. “I suppose I could go.”

Willa resumed her slow walk, and Anne fell instantly in love with the idea of a weekend getaway. What a way to celebrate her big win! She didn’t own a car, but she always rented the same convertible, mainly to go food-shopping on the weekends. The manager at the Hertz in town usually saved it for her; it was a fire-engine red Mustang that would embarrass most pimps. She planned to buy it as soon as she got out of credit-card debt and hell froze over.

“Why not?” Anne said. “I could go away for the weekend!”

“Sure you could. Get crazy. Dye your hair purple.”

“Or not.” Anne giggled, her mood lifting. “But I could call a realtor. I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get a cancellation.”

“From some lawyer who had to stay in the hot city.” Willa laughed, and so did Anne.

“Sucker.”

“Totally.”

Then Anne remembered Mel. “But I have a cat. I can’t leave him.”

“I guess I could sit for a cat. I like cats. I could sketch a cat.”

Anne hesitated at the thought of letting a stranger into her house, since what had happened with Kevin. But Willa was a woman, and she seemed honest and, most importantly, not a psycho. Anne, who had never given a thought to going down the shore, now could hardly wait to get there. She could work like crazy, and she’d never seen the Atlantic Ocean. She was pretty sure she could find it. “Please, would you cat-sit for me this weekend, Willa?” she asked.

“Okay, I’ll sketch the cat, and maybe even the fireworks. If you’re near the Parkway, your place’ll have a great view.” Willa’s walk slowed to a standstill. “You want to go now and beat the traffic? I’ll finish my run on the way to your house. I can clean up at your place.”

“Great!” Anne pressed the clear button. “To hell with this! I’ll run tomorrow morning on the beach, in the fresh ocean breeze! Or maybe I won’t! Ha!”

Anne had scored both Mustang and seashore rental by the time she made it home, hurrying in gym clothes to her Fairmount neighborhood, which lay just outside of Philly’s business district. It was a gentrified section of the city, characterized by art museums, the Free Library, and the family court, interspersed with blocks of colonial town houses with repointed brick facades and freshly painted shutters. Bennie Rosato owned a house in the area, and Fairmount was a quiet, safe neighborhood, which was all Anne cared about after her move east. Parking she could live without.

The house she rented stood three-stories high but was downright anorexic; only one-room wide, it was a cozy, two-bedroom trinity, which was what Philadelphians called houses with one room on each floor. Anne hit her front door running, ignoring the bills and catalogs spilling through the mail slot and onto the rug in the tiny entrance hall. She locked and latched the door, dropped her briefcase and purse on the living room floor, and tore upstairs with her gym bag.

“Mel! Mel! We won our motion!” Anne called to the cat, which confirmed for her she’d been living alone too long. She bounded into her bedroom and dropped the gym bag on the floor, startling into wakefulness the chubby brown tabby curled at the foot of her unmade bed. Mel flattened his ears in Attack Cat until he realized it was only her, then relaxed, blinking his large, green eyes slowly. Anne went to the bed, cupped his furry face in her palms, and kissed the hard, spongy pink of his nose.

“We won, handsome!” she said again, but Mel only yawned, his teeth bright white spikes. When he closed his mouth, the tips stayed on the outside, and he morphed into Halloween Cat. Mel was acting very scary today, and Anne wondered if he had his holidays mixed up.

“Mel, the good news is that we won. The bad news is that I’m going away, but you’re going to be fine. You’ll meet a very nice girl who wants to draw your picture, okay?” Anne gave him another quick kiss, but he didn’t purr, which told her he was worried about being left alone with a total stranger who dyed her hair blue. Mental note: People project all sorts of emotions onto their cats, and cats like it that way.

Anne gave Mel a final kiss, hurried to her messy bureau, and pulled out clean undies, two T-shirts, a denim skirt, and an extra pair of shorts. She plucked her leopard-print mules from the bottom of the closet, because they always made her feel festive and she was celebrating.

“Did I mention that we won our motion, Mel?” Anne asked, stuffing the clothes into her gym bag. She’d shower at her new apartment at the beach, though she hurried into the bathroom, fetched her Kiehl’s shampoo, conditioner, and grapefruit body lotion, as well as her makeup in its I Love Lucy tin, which bore a colorized scene of the road trip to California. She couldn’t leave without Lucy or grapefruit moisturizer. That would be camping.

“I’m outta here, Mel!” she sang out as she hustled back to the bedroom, but Mel had fallen asleep and didn’t wake up when she stuffed the toiletries into the bag and zipped it closed, or even when the doorbell rang. It had to be Willa, and Anne slung the bag over her shoulder and scooped up the slumbering cat, who draped his stripy front legs on either side of her forearms and permitted himself to be carted downstairs. Sedan Chair Cat.

“Coming!” Anne called out when she reached the first floor and went to the peephole, just to be sure. The action was automatic at this point, even though Kevin was in jail a zillion miles away. She dreaded the day he got out, but that was two years from now. Standing on the front stoop was Willa Hansen, huffing and puffing in her workout clothes.

“Come on in!” Anne unlatched and opened the door, and Willa cooed the moment she saw Mel.

“Oooooh! Isn’t he just so pretty!”

And Anne and Mel knew everything was going to be just fine.

Cars, minivans, and pickup trucks stretched in three lanes as far as the eye could see, with brake lights that formed dotted red lines. It was just another example of random, and Anne resigned herself to not getting to the shore until way after dark. She put the Mustang convertible in park and leaned her head against the black headrest. The night air blew cool and blessedly free of humidity. The sky was deepening to a rich sapphire, the stars brightening slowly, diamonds in relief.

A blue Voyager minivan next to her had two kid’s bicycles strapped to a rack on the back, their spokes laced with red, white, and blue crepe paper, and the rear compartment of the van had been packed with Acme grocery bags, folded sheets, and a Big Bird doll, his beak smashed against the smoked glass. Anne could barely make out the family inside, but here was evidence of them—kids bouncing on the seats, and a mother and a father in front.

She looked away and flicked on the radio, suddenly restless. She scanned but there was nothing on but oldies older than her and sports scores, which reminded her of exercise. She turned it off. The night fell silent except for the idling of three thousand minivans bearing happy families to the shore, undoubtedly poisoning the air of women refusing to be lonely in their Mustang convertibles. Anne plucked a can of Diet Coke from the cupholder and raised it in a toast. “To carbon monoxide, and to me,” she said. She took a sip of warm, flat soda, then got an idea:

She had won, and there was one person she could tell. She didn’t stop to wonder why—for once didn’t pause to observe herself observing herself—or to make even a single mental note. She was just going to do it. Just do it!

She set down the soda can and rummaged in her purse for her cell phone and little red address book, and opened both. She had to hold the address book up in the headlights of the car behind her to read it, and she thumbed to the M listings and found the phone number. There were five old numbers before it, all crossed out, and she didn’t know if the most recent number would work. It hadn’t for a few months, but it was all she had.

She pushed in the area code for L.A., then the phone number. It would be dinnertime there. The tinny rings started, one, two, three rings, with faint crackling on the signal. She waited for the call to be picked up, and despite the fact that she just had a slug of soda, her throat went suddenly dry. After a moment, the rings stopped and a mechanical voice came on:

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check your records . . .”

Anne felt her heart sink, a reaction she hated as soon as she had it, and gritted her teeth. She was determined not to be a victim, a wimp, or a total loser. So she let the mechanical voice drone away in a continuous loop and delivered her message anyway:

“Hi, how are you? I thought you might like to know that I won a very important motion today in court. I thought it up by myself, and it was a little crazy, but it worked. Other than that, I’m fine, really, and don’t worry about me.” She paused. “I love you, too, Mom.”

Then she pressed End and flipped the cell phone closed.

3

Seagulls squawked over a greasy brown bag in a trash can, and dappled pigeons waddled along the weathered boardwalk, their scaly pink-red feet churning like so many wind-up toys. Saturday morning had dawned clear, hot, and sunny at the Jersey shore, and Anne had learned that the Atlantic Ocean looked exactly like the Pacific. Wet, big, blue, and moving a lot. Her idea of natural beauty remained the King of Prussia Mall.

She was finishing her morning run, having hated every step of three miles down the windy boardwalk, at fourteen minutes per. Okay, it wasn’t the fastest pace, but Anne was sweating respectably through her big T-shirt and bike shorts. She was panting, too, but that was because her sports bra was cutting off her oxygen supply. Mental note: Satan exists and he works for Champion.

While Anne waited for her breathing to return to normal, she wiped her eyes behind black Oakley sunglasses and smoothed her hair back into its damp ponytail. A generous dollop of zinc oxide concealed her top lip. Other runners jogged by in smugly oversized triathlon watches and brand-new Sauconys, their cushioned footsteps thundering on the old gray boards. There were so many more people on the boardwalk than when Anne had started her run. The Fourth of July weekend had evidently begun, and a family pedaled past in a rental surrey with a red-and-white striped awning. A few male runners broke stride to check her out on the fly, which was when Anne decided to go home to her little apartment and get to work.

She started to walk back, but the breeze was too warm to cool anything and she stopped at a newsstand on the corner for a bottle of water and a Philly newspaper. She bought both with soggy bills, stepped away from the newsstand, and was about to crack the white plastic cap to the Evian when she unfolded the newspaper, saw the headline, and froze.

LAWYER FOUND MURDERED, it screamed, and plastered underneath it was Anne’s own law-school graduation picture. Cheap inks colored her eyes the candy-coated green of M&Ms, and her hair was an orange-red seen only on hunting gear. A black band framed her photo, but the caption read simply, Anne Murphy.

She laughed, nervously. The lead story was evidently about her death, but she wasn’t dead. Tired, yes, and retaining water. But not dead. It was obviously a mistake, a huge mistake. She opened the newspaper, but a gust of wind pungent with she-crab and diesel fuel whipped off the ocean, catching the pages like a sail. She defeated the unruly paper and read the lead paragraphs:

Anne Murphy, 28, an attorney representing Internet company Chipster.com, was found slain at her home last night. Police have ruled the death a homicide resulting from gunshots fired at close range. Murphy was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital at approximately 11:48 p.m. Friday night.

Police were called to Murphy’s home at 2257 Waltin Street when a neighbor reported hearing shots. There was no sign of forced entry, and police have no suspects in the slaying at the present time.

Anne took off her sunglasses and read the paragraph again. Her sense of humor vanished. She had to be seeing things. It didn’t make sense. Maybe the address was wrong? She double-checked it. 2257 Waltin Street. It was her house, but she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even there.

Oh, my God. Suddenly her throat caught. She realized with a horrifying jolt what must have happened. It must have been Willa’s body the police found.

Could this be? Could this really be? Was Willa dead? Anne’s heart stalled in her chest. Her eyes welled up suddenly, blurring the busy boardwalk. She slipped her Oakleys back on with a trembling hand.

Kevin did this, whispered a voice in her head, a voice she’d thought she’d finally banished. You know Kevin did this.

She struggled against the voice and the conclusion, but she couldn’t help it. Willa, dead? No! Anne needed to know everything, all the details. She reread the article, but it was only a summary of her legal career, with a group photo of the Rosato lawyers under the subhead a woman’s touch. It told her nothing more about the murder.

She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She held off panic vainly, like a hand raised against the ocean tide. What had happened? How could this be? She blinked tears from her eyes and ripped through the rest of the paper, but it was all Independence Day highlights: red, white, and blue sidebars about parade schedules and fireworks at the Art Museum. A cyclist with sculpted thighs eyed her as he sped past, followed by a trio of lanky runners, turning toward her as one. She tore back to the main story and read it over and over, trying to comprehend what had happened.

Kevin got out, but how? Why didn’t they tell me?

Anne couldn’t stop the voice, or the questions. Had the cops mistaken Willa for her? How? They didn’t look anything alike. Willa had brown eyes, her nose was different, and she had no scars. Who had identified the body? Then Anne thought again. She and Willa were roughly the same height—both five foot five—and the same size, a six. Willa’s hair was as long as Anne’s, and her new haircolor was so similar.

Anne felt her heart wrench. Then she remembered that before she’d left, she had lent Willa her T-shirt from the office, the one with ROSATO & ASSOCIATES printed across the front. But so what? Anne didn’t understand anything all of a sudden. The cops didn’t rely on clothes, hair, or dress size to identify bodies. They used DNA, dental records, scientific methods, stuff like that, didn’t they?

Kevin would know it wasn’t me.

It didn’t make sense. Or maybe he’d hired somebody? No. Never, not even from prison. He’d want to do it himself. She felt stricken. Who was killed in her house? Why did they think it was her? Her head throbbed. The newspaper itched in her hand. She didn’t want to hold it a minute longer. She whirled around, dropped her water bottle, and collided with another runner, a middle-aged man who looked delighted to catch her in his arms.

“Excuse me, Miss,” he said, then frowned behind glasses strapped on by thick red Croakies. “Are you all right? You’re shaking so much—”

“I’m fine,” Anne answered, breaking away. She stumbled to a wastebasket chained to the boardwalk rail and threw the newspaper into a nest of empty Budweiser cans and Fritos bags. Her knees went loose, as if somebody had kicked out the jambs.

She steadied herself against the trash can. Her heartbeat hurried out of control. The sun burned. The garbage reeked. Flies droned. A wave of nausea swept over her and she lurched away from the wastebasket, but she suddenly couldn’t see anything around her. The sun bleached the people bone-white. The sky and clouds swirled together like boardwalk spin-art.

“Miss?” said a man’s voice, and through the whiteness Anne could barely make out another man coming toward her. Then more, running to her.

The middle-aged man was saying something. The second man was in her face, his breath like coffee, and he gripped her arm and hoisted her. A third man pulled her other arm as if he were helping her to her feet, but Anne didn’t think she had fallen. Their grips closed like handcuffs on her wrists. Her heart fluttered with fear. Her brain struggled to function. She had no protection. No gun, no cell phone. Not even a restraining order.

Adrenaline flooded her system. Her heart threatened to explode. She struggled against the men, twisting out of their grasp, shouting words even she couldn’t hear. They backed off and stood stunned as Anne pulled herself to her feet, bit back the bile in her mouth, and fixed her gaze on the seesawing horizon. She stared down the sky until it righted itself. The sun resumed its position, and the clouds took their places. She grew steady, and the men surrounding her came back into focus as the volume came up:

“Don’t try to stand, you’re having a seizure! Are you diabetic?” “I’ll call a doctor! I have my cell with me!” “Honey, can you hear me?” “Miss? What’s your name?” “I’m telling you, she’s dehydrated. She needs water, I have a bottle.” “Here, let me help you up.” “I’m calling 911!”

Kevin is back.

Fear cleared Anne’s head. Chased her nausea and set her leg muscles twitching. Reminded her body of that most ancient of instincts. She took off, sprinting away without another word. The men would forgive her her bad manners. She was running for her life.

Her feet thudded on the boardwalk. Her thighs strained with sudden effort. The steel railing along the boardwalk blurred to a silver bullet. The Atlantic streaked to a choppy blue. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her sneakers thundered on the boards, barely landing before she took off again.

She tore down the stairs to the empty beach, then raced toward the water. Hot sand sprayed from her heels. Sea air filled her lungs. A fishy chill cooled her cheeks. Her legs pumped hard, and she hit speed, then began to fly. A twelve-minute pace, then quicker, breathing easily, her heart squeezing and body functioning on its own now. She’d never run this fast, but fear fueled her.

Salt stung her eyes. The wind blew harder, buffeting her ears. Her Reeboks crunched on shards of seashells. She reached hard sand at the water’s edge and ran in sea foam that splashed against the back of her calves. Water soaked her socks and shoes. She leapt over a broken bottle, its green glass glinting jaggedly in the sun, and hurtled forward, straight down the beach, parallel to the sea. She raced the horizon, flying into the distance until they both disappeared.

The sun burned high by the time Anne reached the clapboard duplex she was renting, and she chased up the weathered wooden steps to the second floor. She hit the front door with her chest heaving, her shirt and shorts so sweat-soaked she looked as if she’d gone swimming in her clothes. Her sneakers left blurry, sopping footprints on the splintery floorboards. Gritty, wet sand caked her ankles.

Her hands trembled as she fumbled inside her hidden shorts-pocket for the door key. Behind her came the carefree sounds of vacationers heading to the beach, chatting and laughing as they carried striped umbrellas on their shoulders. Their kids toddled along swinging plastic pails, and one boy rode a tricycle with a tiny American flag duct-taped to the handlebars. Anne unlocked her door and hurried inside, snatching her sunglasses off before her eyes had adjusted to the sudden darkness.

The apartment was a one-bedroom, its paneled walls festooned with hokey fish-netting, desiccated starfish, and a red plastic snow crab. Childproof fabric covered a cushy tan sofa flanked by white wicker chairs and end tables, with glass tops. Anne crossed quickly to the telephone on the end table. She couldn’t believe Willa was dead. She snatched up the phone and punched in her own phone number, praying there’d be an answer.

She counted one, two, three, and four rings, then her answering machine picked up. She hung up quickly, not wanting to hear it, a sourness in the pit of her stomach. Was Willa really dead? Why else wouldn’t she pick up? Where was she? She could be out, maybe running. But no answers came out of the blue, and the only sound in the still apartment was Anne’s ragged breathing. She picked up the receiver and dialed her number again, just in case she had it wrong the first time.

Please, Willa, pick up. Again, the answering machine was the only reply.

Anne struggled to make her brain function, her fingers curling around the receiver. What next? Who would know where Willa was? Her family, but Anne had no idea where they lived. She didn’t even know where Willa lived. Maybe Willa was just out. Maybe she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be.

Anne’s thoughts tumbled over one another in confusion. Okay, she didn’t know where Willa was yet, but she had to tell the world she was alive. She thought of her own family, then skipped it. She couldn’t find her mother to tell her, and she’d never met her father, a studio guitarist who had simply moved on before she was born. So much for that.

She thought of Gil and Chipster. Gil would need to know she was alive and that his case was going forward to trial on Tuesday. Chipster.com was on the line, and a jury verdict against it would kill a coming IPO, delayed once already. She picked up the receiver and called Gil’s cell phone. Four rings, then five, then voice mail clicked on. She waited for his message to end, then the tone sounded and a mechanical voice said, “This service is presently accepting no more messages.” The line went dead.

“Damn!” Anne pressed the button and tried again. Gil’s voice mail must have been full. She listened again to the message and the aborted beep. She slammed down the receiver, her thoughts racing. God knows, there were plenty of other calls to make.

She picked up the receiver and phoned the office. Somebody should be at work. Mary was taking a deposition for her today, of a witness in Chipster, and it was being held at the office at one o’clock. The call connected almost instantly: “You have reached Rosato & Associates,” said the office answering machine. “We are closed until Tuesday, July fifth, in observance of the death of our associate Anne Murphy. Please leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as possible.”

Anne hung up the phone, amazed. They had closed the office? They didn’t even like her! She thought about reaching Mary on her cell phone, but what was her number? Anne didn’t know it, but her cell phone did.

She hung up the living room phone and ran into the bedroom, where she’d pitched her temporary war room. The double bed had been transformed into a desk, sleep, and staging area; her thick Dell laptop sat open on its pillow-desk, and black binders filled with notes lay in a semicircle on the double bed. Her silvery cell phone, a Motorola Timeport, glinted in the sunlight streaming through the open window. She dove for the phone and flipped it open.

The screen was an opaque black. The batteries had run out. In her hurry last night, she had forgotten to recharge it in the car. “Shit!” Anne shouted, slamming the cell into the mattress.

Kevin is out. Kevin is free. Kevin did this.

The thought momentarily paralyzed her. Last year, she had moved cross-country, to get as far away from Kevin Satorno as possible. She had met him at the supermarket at home in L.A.; he’d told her he was a Ph.D. candidate in history at UCLA. She had gone out with him once, a dinner date that had ended in a chaste kiss, but that single date had turned her life upside-down.

Afterward Kevin had started calling her all the time, talking marriage and kids, sending her gifts and red roses. Somehow he had gotten the idea that she loved him. At first she felt terrible that somehow she’d led him on, but she turned fearful when he began dropping in at her office unannounced and his ten phone calls a day grew to thirty. In no time Kevin began following her everywhere, stalking her.

She had gone to the authorities, where she learned about erotomania, or de Clérambault’s syndrome, in which a person had the delusional belief that someone was in love with them. She’d gotten a restraining order as soon as she could, but it hadn’t protected her the night Kevin attacked her at her door—and pulled a gun on her. It had been profound good luck that a passerby heard her scream, and Anne had moved to the East Coast to get safe and start over. Kevin had ended up in prison, but only for two years, on an aggravated assault charge. She’d put an entire country between them, changed her life and her job. Now Willa could be dead, because of her.

She closed her eyes in pain. But she opened them in anger. She was supposed to be calling the police to tell them she was alive, but first she had to find out if Kevin had been paroled. She grabbed the bedroom phone and called L.A. information for the district attorney’s office. The DA who convicted Kevin might know where he was, but when she reached his office, his voice mail said: “The district attorney you have reached—Antonio Alvarez—will not return to the office until July fifteenth. Press one to leave a message, press two to return to the receptionist . . .”

Anne hung up, flipping through a mental Rolodex to remember who else was on the prosecution. It was reliving an awful memory; identifying Kevin in the police line-up, testifying against him, pointing him out as he sat at the defendant’s table, which provoked his leaping up and lunging at the witness stand. She found herself shuddering despite the warm house, but a name entered her consciousness:

Dr. Marc Goldberger, the court-appointed psychiatrist who had evaluated Kevin and testified against him. The psychiatrist had explained to the jury about erotomania, and the graveness of the threat to Anne for some years to come. Most erotomanics were intelligent, well-educated, and resourceful enough to pursue the object of their obsessions for as long as a decade.

She snatched up the phone, called L.A. information again, and got the psychiatrist’s office number. There was no answer, but she took down the emergency number that the answering machine gave her and called it directly. The call connected, and Anne recognized the sympathetic voice, like an echo in her memory. “Dr. Goldberger?”

“Yes, who is this?”

Anne was about to give her name, then stopped. He might be bound by privilege, and maybe he wouldn’t talk to her if he knew who she was. “My name is Cindy Sherwood. I was a reporter on the Satorno trial, if you recall.”

“I don’t, I’m sorry. It’s quite early in the morning, Ms. Sherwood, and on a holiday weekend. I don’t speak with reporters and I don’t remember being interviewed in connection with that case.”

“Please, I was wondering if you had any information on the current whereabouts of Mr. Satorno. I am trying to do a follow-up story.”

“As far as I know, Mr. Satorno is in prison. If you want to know more, speak with Mr. Alvarez, the district attorney.”

“If you do happen to learn more about Mr. Satorno, would you please call me? The area code is Philadelphia, where I live now, since I got married.” Anne left her cell number, and he was kind enough to take it down before they hung up.

She hung up the phone, thinking ahead, trying to keep her cool. If she lost control she’d be that girl racing down the beach, running scared. In a way, she had been doing that until this very minute, every day since she’d met Kevin Satorno, and she couldn’t let that happen anymore. She was already getting a better idea.

She sprang to wet sneakers, but this time it wasn’t flight, it was fight. She grabbed her briefcase and gym bag, and hurried to pack her papers and clothes. For the first time since she’d seen the morning newspaper, she was functioning. She had to get back to Philly, and find out if Willa was dead and who had killed her. And there was only one way to do it. If the world believed Anne was dead, then she was going to stay dead. Play dead.

For now, it was the only way to stay alive.

4

Half an hour later, Anne had turned in her apartment key to a puzzled realtor and was streaking toward the Atlantic City Expressway in the red Mustang. She had twisted her shower-wet hair into an up-knot under a white baseball cap, and its rounded bill rode low on her forehead. With the cap she wore a white T-shirt, the jeans skirt, and the leopard-print mules, because her sneakers were soaked. Her eyes were still puffy behind her Oakleys, from tears shed in the hot shower. She sensed they wouldn’t be the last.

The Mustang zoomed along the highway, and she tightened her grip on the thick, padded wheel, sheathed in fake leather. The yellow spike of the speedometer jittered at seventy, then seventy-five. Traffic was next-to-nothing, because everybody was heading to the beach for the Fourth, looking forward to a sunny holiday weekend. Anne hit the Power button on the radio, found the all-news station, and suffered through sunburn indexes, traffic reports, and ocean temperatures until the hard news finally came on. She cranked up the volume:

“Police still have no suspects or motive in the shooting death last night of Rosato & Associates attorney Anne Murphy.”

Anne bit her lip. It was so hard to hear, surreal and awful. Her alleged death was the big news, and poor Willa remained nameless.

“The Center City law firm of Rosato & Associates is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and capture of the person or persons involved. Anyone with information is asked to call homicide detectives at—”

It took Anne by surprise. She hadn’t even thought about a reward, much less that the office would offer one.

“Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted on developments as they occur. For in-depth coverage of the story, visit our website at—”

Anne turned off the radio. A boxy Harrah’s bus blocked the fast lane but she accelerated to pass it. When she found open road, she plugged in her cell phone and called her house again. Still no answer. Then she called Mary again. Also no answer. She declined to leave a Hi, I’m alive message and hit End. She would have to keep trying. When her speed went below eighty.

An hour later, having temporarily given up on raising Mary, she reached Philly. She got off the Expressway at Twenty-second Street and took a right toward the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a six-lane boulevard that thronged with red, white, and blue activity. The Parkway was closed by a line of painted sawhorses, and traffic was being diverted.

Anne cruised to the corner, and a cop waved pedestrians across the street. She lowered the bill of her baseball cap. She couldn’t afford to be recognized. The Mustang’s engine idled, low on gas and superheated from the long trip, and she eyed the crowds crossing in front of its muscular grille. Families held hands as they headed to the Art Museum, where aluminum bleachers and temporary tents of parachute silk had been set up, and runners loped to the Schuylkill. Art students flung Frisbees to Labs in bandannas, and kids skipped down the gum-spattered sidewalk, flying Mylar balloons. Hot-dog steam scented the air, and vendors hawked American flags, Uncle Sam hats, inflatable Liberty Bells, and T-shirts that read i got banged on the fourth of july. Eeek.

Anne tensed at being back in the city. Her neighborhood began only five blocks from here, and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d walked through this very intersection on the way to and from work, but now it didn’t feel familiar at all. It had been changed forever, taken from her. If Kevin was free, she’d lost her chance to start over. And even so, she knew her loss was nothing compared with Willa’s. If she really were dead.

The cop waved her ahead, and she looked down as she crossed the street under his nose. A wind from the Schuylkill River whipped down the wide boulevard, setting the multicolored flags of all countries flapping, rattling the chains that affixed them to the streetlights. A man crossing the street watched her as she drove by, and Anne pulled over and put up the convertible top. The cloth roof slid smoothly into place, and she felt safer with it covering her like a factory-installed security blanket.

She took off again, and in a few blocks—Greene, Wallace, then her street, Waltin—crossed the unofficial border into Fairmount. She turned left onto Waltin and stopped at an unusually long line of traffic inching down its single lane. Out-of-towners, coming into the city for the celebration on the Parkway. Strangers, swarming over her street. Was one of them Kevin? Anne eyed them under her brim. None looked like him. She came to a stop behind a white Camaro. Her stomach tightened. Everything felt different now.

She scanned the block with new eyes. Rowhouses lined it, American flags hung from the second floors, and a gay neighbor flew his rainbow-colored flag with pride. The scene looked normal enough, though it was completely parked up on both sides, with only a few cars displaying the white residential-parking sticker. The sidewalk was crowded with people, but Anne didn’t know if they were her neighbors because she didn’t know her neighbors.

An older man walked a fawn-colored pug down the street, and the dog’s curlicued tail bopped along, its rolling gait jaunty. She watched it with a pang, worrying about Mel. She craned her neck and peered down the street. The cat wasn’t anywhere in sight. Her rowhouse stood midway down the block; its red brick had been newly power-washed and its oak door stripped of old green paint and shellacked a natural varnish. The usually chummy sight left her cold.

The traffic eased and the Camaro moved forward a car-length. Anne inched a few feet ahead, affording a closer view of her house. A piece of torn yellow plastic flapped from the top of her doorjamb. The sight pressed her back into the cushy driver’s seat, a weight on her chest. It was crime scene tape. Willa had to be dead. It was only denial to think she wasn’t. And Anne’s home had become the scene of her murder.

She held back her tears. She had to know who did this; if it was Kevin. She had examined a few crime scenes in her time at Rosato & Associates, and she resolved to treat this scene like any other, even though she paid the rent. And Willa might have been murdered inside.

She drove ahead when the Camaro moved, her gaze trained on her house. There was no cop standing guard outside her front door, logging in official visitors, keeping out the curious, and otherwise preventing evidence from being contaminated. The absence signaled that the crime scene had been released. It was surprising. Cops generally didn’t release a scene until the second or even third day.

The Mustang rolled ahead, and as she got closer, Anne noticed something else odd about her house. Passersby were lingering in front of her doorway, and when they moved on, she could see that on her front stoop lay a few cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers. She looked out the window, puzzled. She’d guessed they’d been left for her, but she didn’t have even that many friends. She squinted behind the Oakleys, trying vainly to read the cards from a distance. She couldn’t help wondering if one was from Matt. Did he believe she was dead? Was he hurting for her today? She felt a twinge she couldn’t shrug off.

HONK! A beep jolted her out of her reverie, and she glanced at her rearview mirror. A minivan driver, itching to let the kids out of the car. She rolled forward. She had to get into her house, but people were everywhere. She had to enter without being recognized. Then she had an idea.

Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Sam himself rounded the corner onto Waltin Street. He was wearing a red-white-and-blue stovepipe hat, a fake beard of thick cotton, and joke-sunglasses with superwide blue plastic frames—along with a jeans skirt, leopard-print mules, and a T-shirt that read HAPPY FOURTH FROM AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN! The outfit was completely ridiculous, but it was all the street vendors were selling, and fit in with the crowds of wacky tourists. Since she bought the stuff, Anne had already seen four girl Uncle Sams, one in Tod loafers.

She strode down the street and paused at the wrapped bouquets on her step. A dozen white roses lay on the top step, and she recognized the handwriting. Matt’s. She reached for it reflexively, then caught herself. There wasn’t time to dwell on it. She continued down the street until she reached the alley, where she slowed her step. She eyeballed the street behind the cartoon sunglasses. The coast was clear.

She sidestepped and slipped out of sight. The alley ran behind the line of rowhouses on her side of the street, and their backyards bordered it. Nobody ever used the alley for anything; there had been a flyer that circulated early this year, suggesting that the neighbors chip in and gate it for security reasons, but no one had bothered. It was hard to get Philadelphians excited about anything but the Sixers.

She scooted down the alley and almost fell on the moss-covered brick that sloped down toward a French drain, but grabbed a wooden privacy fence and righted her beard. She ducked low to account for the stovepipe as she hurried toward her house. She looked around for Mel, but the cat was nowhere in sight. He’d never been outside and even though he was chubby enough to survive without food for a while, she hated to think of him in city traffic. A dog started barking from one of the houses, and she darted toward the gray cinder-block wall, about six feet high, which enclosed her tiny backyard.

When she reached it, she slammed both hands on the scratchy blocks at the top, then boosted herself one, two, three bounces for a running start. She scrambled up the wall but stalled at the top, flopping on both sides like an Uncle Sam doll, then gritted her teeth and heaved herself over, landing with a hard bump on the unforgiving flagstone of her own backyard. Her mules flew off, and she gathered them up, otherwise taking inventory. She hadn’t broken her legs, arms, or a nail, so she got up, dusted soot from her skirt, and crept to her back door. Getting into her house would be easier than getting into her yard.

Anne reached into her skirt pocket for the keys.

5

The smell that greeted Anne when she opened the door into her kitchen wasn’t one she’d ever come home to. Strong, faintly metallic, and totally creepy. Suddenly she didn’t know how professional she could be, after all. She couldn’t stop thinking about Willa. She unhooked the big sunglasses from behind her ears and slid an earpiece into the collar of her T-shirt. She glanced around the kitchen, trying to appraise it with an objective eye. It was so small, made from a corner of the single room that once constituted the entire first floor.

Cherry veneer cabinets ringed the room on three sides, the countertop was butcher block, and the sink was stainless steel, clean only because she’d been too busy to cook lately, meaning last year. One of the cabinet doors was partway open, and Anne peeked inside. It contained the usual glazed clay mugs, jelly glasses, and a wiggly stack of oversized coffee cups used for late-night Captain Crunch.

She considered the open cabinet. She didn’t usually leave them that way, because she’d bonk her head on them if she did. Maybe Willa had. What had she taken? Anne peeked and realized what was missing almost immediately, because it was a souvenir. A pink mug with Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory, from “Job Switching.” Episode No. 39, September 15, 1952. Anne knew all the I Love Lucy episodes by heart, but kept that as secret as her spending habits and several hundred other things. Where was her Lucy mug? Had Willa used it? Did it matter?

She scanned the room. No mug anywhere, and no sign of a struggle. Nor was there any fingerprint dust, the sooty grime left behind by mobile crime technicians. The cops evidently hadn’t taken prints from the kitchen. It told Anne that the crime must have taken place elsewhere. She couldn’t shake the smell, or the dread, but she willed herself to go ahead. She had to learn what had happened to Willa.

She walked into the dining room, reached by a narrow doorway to the right. The dining room wasn’t much bigger than the kitchen, and there was a pine table against the wall on the left. Unopened Visa bills, offers for preapproved credit cards, and collection service notices sat stacked on the corner of the table, next to several Bic pens that Anne had personal knowledge did not work. Again, everything was as she’d left it, and there were no fingerprint smudges on the table or the two pine chairs that customarily sat catty-corner. On the rug near a table leg lay a catnip mouse with its gray fuzz loved off.

“Mel,” she called softly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. The cat would normally come trotting at the sound of his name, but this time he didn’t. Anne felt like she shouldn’t be thinking about her cat at a time like this, but she couldn’t help it. “Mel!” she called again, but there was no answer.

She bit her lip. Had he gotten out? Was he alive? Had Kevin taken him? Hurt him? Anger drove her through another doorway, also narrow, and she scanned her living room. It was darker than the dining room and kitchen, the unhappy result of a northern exposure, and Anne was tempted to turn on a lamp but couldn’t risk the neighbors catching Uncle Sam on a B & E.

Again, still no sign of Mel, or of a struggle. A brown sisal rug covered the floor, and a TV, stereo, and bookshelves sat across from a gray couch, which was flush under the windows against the north wall. In front of the couch stood a glass coffee table covered with dark fingerprint smudges, and she walked over to it. Black powder dusted the edge of the table, and in the middle of the smudge was a mug-sized circle. It must have been from the Lucy mug, and the police must have collected the mug for evidence. Anne tried to reconstruct the scene. Willa had probably been watching TV and drinking something. Where had she been killed?

The smell was thick here, and Anne looked almost involuntarily toward the entrance hall, separated from the living room by a door with a frosted-glass pane. The door hung partway open but the entrance hallway was dark. She stepped closer and peered inside. What she saw made her gag.

The entrance hall was an abattoir. Blood was everywhere, splattered across the dark-gray walls and drenching the gray wall-to-wall carpet with a horrific red-brown stain. The door was covered with blood, drying in uneven patches like the most awful crimson paint. Formless, dark-red bits of tissue stuck to the glass of the door and on the far wall. A jagged shard of bone had been driven into the far wall. A patch of scalp with bloodied hair still on it stuck grotesquely to the near wall.

Anne felt her gorge rise, but held it down and forced herself to objectify the sight. Her gaze found the faint chalk outline of the body, sketched thickly into the rug. The legs of the outline—Willa’s legs—lay slightly apart and its feet lay close to the front door. The head—My God, Willa—lay straight behind it. It looked as if Willa had been shot as soon as she opened the front door.

Please God, the poor thing. Anne looked again at the blood on the rug. Most of it lay where Willa’s head would have been, which suggested that she had been shot in the head. More precisely, in the face, if she had been killed when she opened the door.

Anne looked again at the outline and noticed something else on the rug. She stepped forward, squinting toward the door, trying not to breathe in the awful carnal smell. Next to Willa’s body outline lay another chalk outline, on her left side, about a foot long. The smaller chalk shape looked blurry at a distance, then Anne realized what it was. A gun. Bennie had told her that cops always chalked a dropped gun. Had the murder weapon been left behind? The newspaper hadn’t reported that. But they wouldn’t.

She knelt down and examined the gun outline, covering her mouth with her Uncle Sam beard, only partly because of the odor. Since the outline lay on the left side of the body, it would have been the killer’s right side, and was only roughly the shape of a gun, with the handle nearest the door and the barrel slightly longish. It looked most like the outline of a sawed-off shotgun. Anne gasped.

Kevin’s weapon of choice.

It was what he had used on her when he attacked her at the door. He had put it to her head, but, incredibly, the DA hadn’t even charged him with attempted murder because he hadn’t gotten a shot off. She shed her resentment to concentrate on Willa. It had to have been Kevin who killed her. He was right-handed and smart enough to know he was better off dropping the weapon at the scene than getting caught in possession.

Then she flashed on the newspaper article she’d seen this morning. It had said something about “gunshots” at “close range.” She considered it. If Kevin had used a sawed-off shotgun and fired more than one shot at close range, Willa’s face—her very features—would have been completely blown off.

Anne felt her stomach wrench but maintained control. The wound would have made the misidentification possible. And all of the circumstances would point to Anne as the murder victim; it was Anne’s house and she would be expected to be in it. She and Willa had the same hair, were the same height and weight. And Willa was wearing her Rosato & Associates T-shirt. But Anne still didn’t get it. Who had identified Willa’s body? Was it somebody from the office? And one critical piece of the puzzle remained missing:

Why would Kevin kill a woman he knew wasn’t me?

She scanned the entrance hall for an answer, trying to ignore the blood soaked into the dry wall, and her gaze traveled to the ceiling fixture. It was a cheap builder’s-grade model with fake Victorian frosted glass, and was turned off. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used it. No one ever visited her.

She reached for the switch and flicked it, but the light didn’t go on. Maybe it had burned out. Wait a minute. She couldn’t remember ever putting a bulb in it when she had moved in. She was too short to reach it and hadn’t bothered.

If the light had been out in the entrance hall, there would have been no illumination on Willa when she went to answer the door. If the living room light had been on, which it probably was at night—since Willa had evidently been sitting in the living room, watching TV and drinking something—the light from the living room would backlight her, at best. Willa would be a silhouette when she answered the door, and one that was the same size and shape as Anne. In Anne’s shirt.

Anne gazed at the scene in her mind’s eye, heartsick. It all made sense, now. Kevin had shot Willa, thinking he had shot Anne. He still might not know that he had killed the wrong woman. She had been right to play dead. She felt both relieved and horrified. But how had Kevin gotten out of prison? Was it possible it wasn’t Kevin? She rose bewildered from bended knee and stood staring at the spot, her thoughts coming around to Mel. Had Kevin taken him? Where could he be? Then she remembered a place the cat hid when the gas man came.

“Mel! Mel!” she called out, then turned around and hurried upstairs, into her bedroom. He wasn’t on the bed but the louvered door to her closet lay partway open.

“Mel?” Anne ran over and slid open the door at the same moment as she heard an indignant meow. Mel had been sleeping among the Jimmy Choos and was stretching his front legs straight out.

“SuperCat!” Anne scooped him up, and his warm throat thrummed in response. She teared up at the softness of him, though she knew her emotions had only partly to do with his recovery. “Let’s get outta here,” she said, her voice thick. She left the room but the cat stiffened when they reached the top of the stairs.

“It’s okay, baby,” she soothed, but then she heard the sound of footsteps on the front stoop, outside her house. Then the metallic jiggling of the knob on her front door.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. Somebody was at her door. She edged backward, out of the line of sight.

Right before the front door swung wide open.

6

Anne stood in her second-floor hallway, scratching Mel to keep him quiet and listening to the shuffle of feet below. It sounded like a crowd, and she hoped it wasn’t the mobile crime unit. She could hear the noises of holiday traffic coming in through the open doorway. Whoever had come in the door must have been standing in the entrance hall, where Willa had been killed. Then she heard a man’s voice:

“It looked pretty clear to us, from the spatter pattern on the east wall, here, and against the entrance-hall door. Typical full-force spatter, from the shotgun. See, here, on the frosted glass? And the floor. The rug.”

Shit! He sounded like a cop or a detective, and Anne drew away from the stairs, hugging Mel. As much as she wished she could go to the police and tell them everything, she would never do that again. They hadn’t been able to protect her last time, and she couldn’t forget the image of a steel gun-barrel pointed at her.

The detective was saying, “The young lawyer, Murphy, answers the front door. The shooter hits twice, two shots to the face. She falls in the entrance hall. The shooter drops the gun and takes off. He leaves the front door open. He’s gone. He’s outta there.”

Upstairs, Anne felt vaguely sick and clutched Mel, for comfort this time. She had been right about the way it had happened, but it was so awful to contemplate. Poor Willa.

A woman spoke next. “He dropped the gun? This guy’s no dummy.”

Anne felt a start of recognition at the voice. It’s Bennie Rosato. What’s she doing here? She’d never been in Anne’s house before, even though she lived less than five minutes away. But Bennie visited the crime scene in murder cases she defended. It was the first step in any investigation, to meet the arguments of the prosecution and build the defense case. So why was she here?

The detective again: “Yeh, he’s good. Ballistics has the gun. They’ll check it for prints, but that’ll take days, given the holiday. Fourth a July weekend, we had to dig to get anyone at all. My guess is it’ll turn up nothin’.”

“I agree,” Bennie said. “This guy had this planned. Perfect timing, perfect execution.”

“No pun,” added another man, with an abrupt laugh.

“What did you say?” Bennie demanded.

“That’s not funny,” chorused another voice, a woman’s.

Another surprise. It was Judy Carrier. She must be down there, too. Judy had never come to Anne’s house when she was alive; she had turned Anne down every time she asked her to lunch. And if Judy was down there, then so was Mary, because they were joined at the hip. Anne almost laughed at the absurdity. Bennie, Mary, and Judy in my house? What provoked all this sudden interest in my life? My death?

“I won’t waste my time teaching you manners, Detective,” Bennie said coldly. “Your apology is accepted. But I want you to know that Anne Murphy was in my care. She was my associate. She moved here to work for me and she was killed on my watch. I told her mother I’d take care of her, and I failed.”

Told my mother? What? When? Anne was astounded. How had Bennie found her mother, much less spoken to her? And why? What was going on here?

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rosato—”

“Not sorry enough. Hear me—holiday or no holiday, you better find who murdered Anne Murphy before I do.”

Upstairs, Anne felt stunned. Bennie was going to do what? Why?Anne could count on one hand the number of conversations she’d had with Bennie Rosato during the entire year she’d worked for her.

“Now, tell me you surveyed the neighbors,” Bennie was saying.

“Last night and this morning. Nobody saw anybody running down the street from the house, or anything suspicious at all. Everybody was either at the Party on the Parkway, or out of town, avoiding the Party on the Parkway.”

“May I have the specifics?” From below came the sound of papers rustling, and Anne guessed that Bennie was pulling out a legal pad, and the detective his notes. But Anne couldn’t get over what she’d already heard. Told my mother she’d take care of me?

“Here goes. House number 2255, Rick Monterosso, not home, he’s the neighbor on the east side. House number 2259, Millie and Mort Berman, neighbors on the west side, not home either. The couple across the street in 2256, Sharon Arkin and Rodger Talbott, the same. 2253, no answer at door last night or this morning, possibly out of town. 2254, the Kopowski family, out to dinner at Striped Bass. 2258, the Simmons, they were at the Parkway and didn’t get home until after the murder.”

“So both next-door neighbors were out. Who called 911 on the gunshots? If the door was open when he shot her, which it had to be, then the shots would be heard easily down the street. And it’s not a big street.”

“People musta thought it was firecrackers. We only got the one 911 call, guy named Bob Dodds, in 2250. I interviewed him last night, and that’s all he knows.”

“But you have at least the one good lead, don’t you? Kevin Satorno, the stalker. If he’s out of prison.”

What?! How did Bennie know about Kevin? Anne almost gasped. She hadn’t told anyone in Philly about him. She had wanted to put the past behind her when she moved here, and had kept him a secret. Nor had she breathed a word about Kevin in her interview with Bennie. She wanted the job and didn’t want to seem like the kind of loser who dated psychos. So how did Bennie find out? Anne felt completely bewildered. Mental note: It’s confusing to be alive after your own death.

Bennie was saying, “Given what I read in the court file, if Satorno is out, he has to be the number-one suspect. He tried to kill her once. He may have escaped and tried to kill her again. It’s a no-brainer. I had the case file hand-delivered to you. Did you read it?”

“I read the file, of course,” the detective replied, testy. “I called the DA in charge in Los Angeles. I’m waiting on the call back, but it’s Fourth a July in California, too, Ms. Rosato. He’s on vacation.”

“They told me that, too, but they wouldn’t give me his number in Hawaii. Do you have it?”

“I didn’t ask. He’s on vaca—”

“I don’t get something. Kevin Satorno is a state prisoner in California. How hard can it be to find him?” Bennie laughed without mirth. “You’re supposed to know where he is, at least most of the time.”

Give ’em hell, Bennie. Anne felt heartened. She went to the banister and peeked over, with Mel tight in her arms. She could see Bennie standing in her living room, a tangle of long blond hair trailing untamed down the back of her blue workshirt, which she wore with faded jean shorts and beat-up New Balance sneakers. Her legs were superbuff from rowing, a sport Bennie seemed to like, despite the exercise required. At present Anne was revising her views on the woman, but not on exercise.

The detective was out of eyeshot, but Anne could hear him explaining, “If it weren’t the weekend this would be easy. We know he was sentenced to twenty-four months and started out in L.A. County, but they transferred him a few times, and we’re not sure where he ended up. He could be on parole.”

“But you would know if he was paroled, or even escaped.”

“Not yet. Paroled, we got the same problem as finding out where he’s incarcerated. Gotta talk to the right people, and they’re not in the holiday weekend. Escaped, it’s still no picnic.”

Bennie snorted. “I can’t believe that. You can’t even find out if he’s escaped?”

“From the joint in California? Believe it. If some knucklehead gets outta state prison in any state, somebody has to enter his name in NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, outta Washington. Nobody knows nothin’ ‘til the name gets entered, and it has to get entered by a person, who has the time and is workin’ the Fourth a July weekend.” The detective paused. “Even if it gets entered, we get about a million of those teletypes a day. We never look through ’em, we don’t have the time, or any reason to.”

“Now you have a reason to.”

“I got a gal goin’ through them right now, but you have any idea how many we’re talkin’ about? There are 75,000 walk-aways in Philly alone, right now. And fifty of them are wanted for murder.”

“What’s a ‘walk-away’?” Bennie asked. “What it sounds like?”

“Yeh. Fugitives at large. Bad guys, who walk away from work release or skip bail. Failures to appear, all wanted on bench warrants. This Kevin Satorno wasn’t even locked up for murder, only ag assault. In the scheme of things, he’s a nobody. And he’s not even one of our nobodies. He’s a California nobody.”

A nobody? Upstairs, Anne felt sick. She knew Kevin had started out in L.A. County Jail but had lost track of him after that, too. She’d wanted to put the past behind her. Only it wasn’t the past anymore.

“So what is the department doing to find Satorno, if he’s out?” Bennie was asking, downstairs. “He clearly intended to kill Anne, and only to kill her. There wasn’t even an attempt at robbery, and no evidence of rape.”

“The department can’t proceed on the assumption that he’s out, Ms. Rosato. We don’t have that luxury. It’s not like we got the manpower. We got only forty uniformed cops total in the Center City District, twenty in the Sixth District and twenty in the Ninth. They got all they can handle with the holiday, that’s why we released the scene. I can’t assign them to look for a guy that may be locked up.” The detective paused. “You wouldn’t know if Satorno has contacted the victim recently, would you?”

“No.” Bennie turned to her left, out of Anne’s view. “Do you guys know? Carrier? DiNunzio?”

Anne peeked farther over the banister, and Mel stiffened. He didn’t want to get anywhere downstairs, near the bloodstained entrance hall. She caught sight of Judy, in her well-loved overalls, a fresh yellow T-shirt, and a lemony bandanna.

Judy was shaking her head. “No. Sorry. I didn’t know anything about Satorno until you told me today.”

Suddenly, a hiccupy sob interrupted the conversation, a sound so emotional that it was almost embarrassing in public. Instantly Bennie turned around on her heels, as did Judy, just as a second sob came from the right, where Mary must have been. Anne couldn’t help but hang over the banister, and the sight made her own throat catch with surprise:

Mary was weeping, making a petite, crestfallen figure sunk into Anne’s sofa. She had buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders shuddered with sobs. Her hair was in disarray, and khaki shorts and sleeveless white shirt lacked their usual neatness.

“It’s all right, Mary,” Judy soothed, coming over and looping an arm around her friend. “They’ll catch the guy, you’ll see.”

“I . . . can’t think about that.” Mary’s voice quavered though her sobs. Her cheeks looked mottled and her neck blotchy. “I just can’t . . . believe this happened. It’s so terrible that . . . she was killed. The way she was killed.”

Upstairs, Anne watched the scene, mystified by their reactions as well as her own. Mary DiNunzio, who doesn’t even know me, is crying for me. And, for some reason, I feel like shit.

Bennie went to Mary and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Mary, maybe we should get you back to the office.”

“That’s all right, I’m all right.” Mary’s sobs began to subside. Pain ebbed from her features and she held her palms against her cheeks as if to cool them. “I mean, there’s blood everywhere. It’s her blood!”

“I know, I know,” Judy was saying, stroking Mary’s back. “You want to wait outside? Why don’t you wait outside?”

Bennie turned briefly to the detectives. “Maybe you could give us a few minutes alone,” she said.

“Sure thing,” they answered, in grateful unison. In the next minute, the front door opened again, a square of light reappearing on the living room carpet and the outside noise resurging. The detectives left and shut the door only partway behind them, and they stood on the stoop. In the next second, Anne smelled cigarette smoke wafting through the open front door. She moved closer to the landing, and her gaze returned to Mary.

“I mean, Bennie, do you see this?” Mary was stretching a small hand toward the entrance hall, and Anne could see the trembling of her fingers. “There’s blood all over it. But we’re standing here, the three of us, talking like it’s a case or something. But it’s Anne we’re talking about!” Her voice rose, thinning out with anxiety. “Anne Murphy was killed here! Not a client, one of us! And she’s gone! Murdered! Did you both forget that?”

Wow! Upstairs, Anne stood transfixed by the outburst. It was so unlike Mary to criticize anybody, much less Bennie and Judy, and they looked completely astonished.

Judy stopped stroking Mary’s back. “We know it’s her, Mary. We didn’t forget that. We’re here trying to figure out who did this, to bring him in.”

“What’s the difference?” Mary shouted. “We can find the guy, but it doesn’t bring her back. She’s dead, and you know what? We didn’t know the first thing about her. We worked with her for a year and we never even got to know her. I dated Jack for two months and knew more about him!”

“We were busy,” Judy said, defensive. “We were working. We had the Dufferman trial, then Witco. Maybe that’s why you’re upset, because of your breakup—”

“That’s not it, it’s Anne! It’s Murphy, whatever she wants to be called. Wanted to be called.”

“Murphy,” Judy supplied, but Bennie was shaking her head.

“No, I think she went by that because I called her that. I think. She introduced herself as Anne, at her interview.”

“Whatever!” Mary exploded. “It’s us! We didn’t make the time for her! We didn’t even try. We don’t even know her name. She told us she had a date tonight. Did she? Who was the date? Is he the killer? We don’t even know! And now it turns out she had a stalker who tried to kill her last year, and who she even prosecuted! We never even knew that!”

Judy looked defensive. “Murphy kept it all a secret, she was so private—”

“What about the motion, Judy? She wasn’t keeping that so private. She brought a stripper into court, and we had to learn it from the news! She probably wanted to tell us when she came to my office last night, but we cut her off!” Mary’s eyes welled up again, but she blinked them clear. “We’re supposed to be an all-woman firm, what a joke! We don’t even support each other. What’s the difference between us, anyway? Men or women, in the end we acted just like lawyers.”

“You’re just feeling guilty, Mare.”

“I agree! I feel very guilty! And you know what, I should! You should, too!” Mary turned on her best friend, beside her on the couch. “You know what the truth is, Jude? You never liked Murphy. Anne. Whatever. You didn’t like her at all. That’s why you’re not upset.”

Whoa. Anne was shocked. She felt like she shouldn’t be watching, but she couldn’t help herself. It was such good gossip, the fact that it was about her was almost beside the point.

“I am upset!” Judy insisted, but Mary was out of control.

“You are not! That whole time I was out sick, you avoided her. She asked you out to lunch, you turned her down all the time. You didn’t like her from the beginning. And you know why? Because she was so gorgeous! You thought she wore too much makeup, with the lipstick all the time.”

They talk about my lipstick? Anne couldn’t believe the irony.

“She did wear too much makeup!” Judy was going red in the face, too. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not upset—”

“Why were we that way? I swear, it’s some kind of biological thing, to compete with other women for men, even when there are no men around. It’s sick! And when are we gonna rise above it?”

“It wasn’t just her looks—”

“You thought she used her looks!” Mary erupted, pointing. “You said it yourself, Judy! That Anne never would have gotten Chipster if she weren’t so hot.”

Yikes! Upstairs, Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wasn’t supposed to know any of this and suddenly didn’t want to. Kind of.

“Well, that much is true!” Judy finally shouted back. “How does a rookie get a case that big? The client knew her in law school? Gimme a break! You want to get real, Mary? Okay, let’s get real. Gil Martin never would have hired Anne if she hadn’t looked the way she did.” Judy’s head snapped around to Bennie, the bandanna flopping. “You had to wonder about it, Bennie. Why did Gil hire Anne, the youngest of all of us? The lawyer with the least experience? How many cases has she tried? One?”

But Bennie was already waving her hands, trying to settle the fight. “Calm down, both of you,” she said, her voice even as a judge’s. “Mary, you know, you’re right. We all could have been more welcoming to Anne, and we weren’t. We were busy—as Judy says—but that’s no excuse.” Bennie leaned over, squeezed Mary’s shoulder, and gave her a gentle shake. “But blaming each other won’t help Anne now. It didn’t cause her murder.”

“Can you be so sure?” Mary looked up at Bennie, her forehead creased with fresh grief. “Who knows what difference it would have made? If we had talked to her, taken her to lunch even once, maybe she would have told us about this stalker. Or if we’d been friends, maybe we would have been with her last night when he came. She’d be alive now, if we’d been together.” Mary almost started to cry again, and even Judy was looking regretful.

“That’s true,” she added, her bandanna droopy. “That much is true.”

I can’t stand this. Anne couldn’t watch them feel bad for nothing. First, she was alive. Second, not everything was their fault. She wasn’t any good at women. She always had tons of dates, but no girlfriends. For as long as she could remember, she’d thought of herself as Lucy, without Ethel.

“I’m not pretending anything,” Bennie was saying. “We did wrong by Anne, and we can all mourn her in our own way. For me, the best way is to find whoever killed her. I suggest you follow suit.” She gave Mary a final pat. “I want to check out the back. You stay here, okay? Carrier, stay with her.”

“I need a Kleenex.” Mary rose slowly, her hand cupping her nose, and she looked around the living room. “Anybody see a box?”

Maybe I can tell them I’m here. Anne had to be able to get their attention without tipping off the cops. She eyed the front door. The detectives were outside, and something down the block was holding their attention. She decided to go for it. She shifted Mel to her right arm, tore off her red-white-and-blue stovepipe, and waved it wildly.

“Mary! Mary!” she called out in a stage whisper, but the women didn’t look up. “Mary!” she whispered again, but Mary was preoccupied with her drippy nose and Judy was looking for the Kleenex. The detectives, apparently sensing that the sobfest was over, were heading back inside, the smoker flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter.

“There’s no Kleenex anywhere,” Judy said, checking the top of the TV. “There must be a bathroom, with toilet paper you can use. In trinities like this, it’s usually upstairs, at the top of the stairs.”

The bathroom! Yes! It’s here! Behind me!

“Good idea,” Mary said, and headed for the stairs.

Without thinking twice, Anne turned, ducked inside the bathroom, and closed the door.

7

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Mary gasped, just before Anne clamped a firm hand over her mouth and backed her against the bathroom door. Mel’s tail curled into a question mark against the small pedestal sink, where he’d been dumped.

“I’m alive, Mary!” Anne whispered. She yanked down the Uncle Sam beard. “See? It’s me, Anne. I’m alive. I’m not dead!”

“Mmph!” Mary’s reddened eyes rounded with shock, and Anne’s hand pressed down harder.

“Shhh! I don’t want the police to know.”

“Mmmpu!” Mary shook her head, her eyes like brown marbles.

“I’m going to take my hand from your mouth, but don’t say anything, okay? The cops can’t know I’m here.”

“Mmph!” Mary nodded vigorously.

“Don’t be upset, okay?”

“Mmph!”

“Everything’s all right.”

“Mpphuo!”

“It’s really me, and I’m alive.” Anne removed her hand, and Mary started screaming.

“HELP! HELP, POLICE!!!!”

No! “Mary, shhhh! What are you doing!?”

“I saw you dead! On the table! You’re a ghost! A devil!” Mary blessed herself in record time, and Anne looked around in panic. She could already hear shouting and footsteps clattering up the stairs. Loud, like clogs.

“Mare? Mare?” Judy shouted. “Is that you?”

“HELP! JUDY!” Mary hollered. “POLICE! ANYBODY! HELP! BENNIEEEEEE!!”

I can’t believe this. “Shut up! I’m alive! It’s me! It was my cat-sitter who got killed! See the cat?” Anne pointed behind her at the sink, where Mel’s tail had straightened to an exclamation point.

“No, you’re dead! I know it! I saw you! Dead, dead, dead! You had on your shirt! You were shot downstairs! Blood—”

“It was my cat-sitter, her name was Willa. I lent her the shirt!” Anne grabbed Mary’s shoulders. “It wasn’t me!”

“DiNunzio! I’m coming!” Bennie yelled, joined by the detectives.

“Miss DiNunzio? Miss DiNunzio?” They were almost at the landing, the voices were so loud.

Anne freaked. She’d run out of time. The damage was done. The doorknob was turning. She whirled around, jumped into the bathtub, and pulled the shower curtain closed just as the bathroom door swung open. Nobody would be able to see her through the shower curtain. It was opaque, a fancy flower print from Laura Ashley with a thick white liner. If it got her out of this, maybe it was worth the forty-six dollars. Mental note: Shoes, clothes, and makeup were allowed to be overpriced, but shower curtains had to prove themselves.

“Mary, Mary, are you all right?” It was Judy, alarmed.

“Miss DiNunzio!” It was the detective’s voice. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“DiNunzio? You okay?” It was Bennie, who must have burst into the room and flung open the door, because the shower curtain billowed. “Why did you scream?”

Please, Mary, don’t blow it. Anne held her breath behind the curtain and stayed perfectly still against the white tile wall.

“Uh . . . I don’t know,” Mary answered, her voice shaky.

“But you screamed,” Judy said, then laughed. “Oh, I see. The cat.”

Bennie laughed, too. “A cat!”

The detectives laughed along. Everybody was ha-ha-haing. It was suddenly a bathroom party. “The cat startled you.”

Mary, get a clue. They’re feeding you lines.

“Yes, that’s it,” Mary said finally. “The cat. It surprised me. When I came in, it was sitting in the sink. Just like that. Sorry I screamed.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Anne thought with relief, though she was hardly on a first-name basis.

“I guess Anne had a cat,” Judy said. “The litter box is right there, under the sink. See?”

“I remember now,” said the detective. “We made a note of the cat box last night, but we didn’t find the cat. Well, here he is.”

Excellent detective work. And the guy in prison is where?

“You should take him, Mare,” Judy was saying. “He needs a home now. Can you have a cat in your apartment?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want a cat.”

Judy scoffed. “Somebody has to take him, and me and Bennie have dogs. You had a cat once, didn’t you?”

Take him, you idiot. I’m not dead, remember?

“Okay, I’ll take him. Well, maybe we should go now.”

“That’s the spirit, DiNunzio,” Bennie said, and the next sound was the opening of the bathroom door. “Maybe taking this cat is the thing you can do for Anne, huh?”

“Maybe,” Mary answered, and the curtain ruffled again as the three lawyers, two detectives, and one confused cat left the bathroom.

Anne climbed out of the tub after she heard the front door close, then slipped out of the bathroom and hurried downstairs. She knew Mary would tell the others she was alive as soon as she had the chance. That meant Uncle Sam had to get to the office.

She slipped on her cartoon sunglasses and skedaddled.

Anne had parked the Mustang in the closest lot she could get, five blocks up Locust Street, so she had to hoof it past small shops, businesses, and a string of rowhouses converted to architect, accountant, and law offices. She kept her head down but everybody thinking she was dead was a damn good disguise. Not to mention that the sidewalks were full of people dressed in green foam Statue of Liberty crowns, George W. Bush masks, and red-white-and-blue umbrella hats. Anne counted two more Uncle Sams, and they waved.

Locust Street was a tangle of traffic. Like most of Philadelphia, the street was wide enough to accommodate only a horse-drawn buggy, and permitted just one-way traffic. She had been told ad nauseum that Ben Franklin himself had designed the city, but she thought his famous grid lead only to gridlock. She looked ahead, down the street in front of the building that housed Rosato & Associates. The traffic bottlenecked there, because of news vans from ABC, Court TV, CNN, and the local networks parked illegally. Even at this distance Anne could see that reporters, photographers, videocams, and satellite feeds besieged the office building. The press presence had more than doubled. Who would have guessed that a pretty lawyer being murdered before a sex trial was news?

Anne pushed up her cartoon sunglasses and plowed ahead. She scanned the street almost constantly. Kevin could be here. In a twisted way, he would want to be near her, even if she were dead. He might even want to catch a glimpse of Bennie. Or Judy. It worried her. Could they be in danger from Kevin? Not likely, but not impossible. She had learned from Erotomania 101 that the delusional often transferred their fixations.

She checked her watch. 12:30. The deposition was at one o’clock, but she didn’t know how the press had found out about it. It wasn’t public record, and she was sure Rosato & Associates hadn’t leaked it. She hurried closer to the melee, lowering her stovepipe. Two blocks away, then one. No one should be looking for her, but a few of the reporters had come to know her from chasing her around on the Chipster. She pulled her red brim down. She had been worrying so much about Kevin, she hadn’t focused on the fact that Uncle Sam would have to withstand media scrutiny, too.

Anne reached her office building and threaded her way through the crowd of media, keeping her eyes peeled behind the big glasses. Reporters sweated through their summer suits and TV makeup. She spotted one TV anchorwoman she knew and tilted her head down, checking her watch. 12:45. Tourists and onlookers thronged on the sidewalk, adding to the glut. She had to get going. She waded into the thumpa-thumpa of a rap CD and inhaled a puff of cigarette smoke.

Suddenly a cell phone started ringing, and it took Anne a minute to realize it was hers. Who could be calling? The whole world thought she was dead. She unlatched her messenger bag, withdrew her cell phone, and flipped it open. “Yes?” she said, keeping her voice low.

“Ms. Sherwood, this is Dr. Marc Goldberger.”

“Yes, of course,” Anne answered, surprised.

“I understand now why you were calling me. I just spoke with my supervisor. You weren’t completely honest with me, Ms. Sherwood. If that is your name.”

Oh, no. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. Kevin Satorno escaped from prison a few days ago. Did you know that when you called?”

“Escaped?” Anne felt her heart stop. She had guessed as much, but it terrified her to think it was really true.

“Are you going to tell me that you didn’t know that? That it was just a coincidence that you called me today?”

Kevin is out. Kevin is free.

Anne couldn’t reply. She couldn’t speak. She pressed End and fought a frantic urge to crawl under something and hide. She didn’t know what to do, except not panic. She forced herself to breathe until her heartbeat returned to normal. Suddenly alone in the noisy, smoky crowd, she looked up at her office building. It took her only a second to punch in the number on her cell.

Mary must have been waiting for her call. “Anne, where are you? Are you here?”

“Help!” was all Anne could say, then she got it together. “I’m right outside. Can you get me past security?”

“It’s Herb, and we told him to expect a new messenger, dressed funny. You still wearing your beard?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way down.”

Thank God. Anne flipped her phone closed, suddenly eyeing every passerby. Her stomach tensed with fear. There. A blond man, with his hair Kevin’s color and cut short, as if he’d been in prison. Anne was about to scream when the blond man looped his arm around the woman next to him. On his bicep was a tattoo that read Semper Fi. A marine, not an inmate. Not Kevin.

Anne wedged her way through the press and hurried through the revolving door to the building, which delivered her into the air-conditioned chill of a large marble lobby with restored plaster walls. She took a deep, relieved breath, but the mahogany security desk stood like a hurdle in front of the elevator bank. Mary may have called down to get Anne admitted, but there was still a chance the guard would recognize her, especially Hot And Heavy Herb. She had disguised her face but not her chest, which was all he ever noticed. Thanks to him, Rosato & Associates had the safest breasts in Philadelphia.

Herb’s gaze zoomed in on her independent woman as she reached the desk. “Hello, honey,” he said, with what he hoped was a sexy smirk. He reeked of Aramis, and his navy uniform fit taut against his short, heavyset frame. He wore his pants with the belt buckled high, like Fred Mertz. “Why are you dressed like Uncle Sam, for a job interview?”

“It got me past the reporters, didn’t it?” Anne kept her head down, pulled over the black spiral log book, and scribbled 36C on the solid line. “If I’m hired today, I don’t want them recognizing me and following me everywhere.”

“So why don’t you take it off? You’re inside now.”

“I like the power.”

Suddenly the elevator doors opened with a discreet ping, and Mary rushed out like the cavalry. She couldn’t hide her smile. “Dressing for success?”

“You must be Mary DiNunzio.” Anne extended a hand as if they hadn’t met, just as a commotion began at the entrance, behind her. They turned around in time to see a familiar figure coming through the revolving door, with a group of people.

Oh, no. Now Anne was in real trouble.

8

Anne fled to the back corner of the elevator as Matt Booker stepped in with his clients, Beth Dietz and her ponytailed husband, Bill. On his right side stood Janine Bonnard, a pretty young woman in a gray Gap suit, who was being deposed today. Anne kept her stovepipe down and prayed Matt wouldn’t recognize her, though he seemed so preoccupied he wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been Godzilla.

She stole a sideways glance at him. Dark circles ringed his normally bright eyes, his broad shoulders slumped in a navy suit with no tie, and his thick hair wasn’t neat enough for a deposition. She wondered if he was upset because of her. His briefcase at his side, he looked over at Mary.

“Mary, I’m so sorry about Anne,” he said. Grief weighed down his usually confident voice. “Have you heard anything more from the police, since we talked? Don’t they have any leads on who . . . killed her?”

Oh, jeez. Anne’s face was on fire. She felt terrible, seeing him like this.

“Not yet,” Mary said. “But they’re working on it, I know.”

“Please give my condolences to her family, and if there’s anything I can do to help you . . . or the police, please let me know. Keep me in the loop, okay? I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“I will, thanks.”

“I can’t imagine who would do this. I just can’t . . .” Matt’s voice trailed off and he hung his head.

“None of us can,” Mary told him, her face tight. Obviously, she didn’t like lying as much as Anne did.

“Please give our sympathy to her family, as well.” It was Beth Dietz, and her husband nodded.

“I will,” Mary said. “Listen, I’m running a little late for the deposition. I have to get this new messenger started.” She gestured quickly at Anne, who kept her head down. “Can you let me have an extra ten minutes?”

“Of course. Like I told you on the phone, I would have agreed to move the dep back if you wanted to.”

“Thanks, but it won’t be necessary.”

“Who will be trying the case, now that Anne is—”

“God knows.”

Ping! The elevator doors slid open on the third floor. Rosato & Associates, read the brass letters on the wall, above the familiar rug, cloth chairs, and glass coffee table. Anne felt strangely as if she were coming back into her own life, but she couldn’t risk lingering. She got off the elevator last and hurried out of the reception area, with her back turned to Matt.

Mary lead Matt and his clients to one of the two conference rooms off the reception area and opened the door for them. “If you’ll wait for me in there, I’ll be right out. The bathrooms are on the left, and the court reporter’s already set up inside. I’ll be back in ten.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, and Mary scooted down the hall, right behind Anne.

“You’re alive!” Mary bear-hugged a startled Anne, yanking her close to a linen blouse that smelled of Ivory soap and powdery antiperspirant. Anne’s Uncle Sam disguise lay discarded on Mary’s neat desk, where Mel was sniffing her fake beard delicately. His coat looked silky in the sunlight streaming through the window, a fuzzy cat against smooth legal briefs. Lawyer Cat. Mary was beside herself. “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! This is so great!”

“Let her go before you kill her,” Judy said from the door to Mary’s office, but even she was smiling. Bennie stood next to her, grinning over a white porcelain mug that read java diva.

“I’m so happy!” Mary segued into rocking Anne. “I’m so happy you’re alive!”

“Is she always like this?” Anne asked as she swayed back and forth, and Bennie nodded.

“Yes, I’ve delegated all of my emotions to her. She has them for me, Carrier, and the entire Philadelphia Bar Association. It frees us up to bill time.”

“This is so great!” Mary finally released Anne and stood in front of her tan credenza near the door. Her hair was still a messy ponytail and her brown eyes flashed with animation. “Tell us everything, girl! I thought you were a ghost!”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Anne said, but Mary’s forehead wrinkled.

“Of course there is.”

Chick is a little crazy. Anne let it go and reached for Mel to give him a kiss hello. He greeted her with a where-were-you sniffing of the tip of her nose. Eskimo Cat.

“Tell us what happened, from the beginning,” Bennie said. She eased onto the credenza with her coffee, and her smile faded. “I identified you, Murphy. I swear I saw you, dead, at the morgue. It was horrifying.”

“But the face had to be—”

“It was, I could hardly bring myself to look at it. Your—or her—face was a mess, and there was cotton wadding from the blast, embedded where your eyes would have been. We all saw the body, but I made the ID, I signed the papers. I didn’t think to question it. She had on your clothes, and her hair was red, even though it was covered with—”

Anne waved her off. “I get the picture. And I could see how you made the mistake.”

“So, tell us what really happened,” Judy chimed in quickly, eager to change the subject. She hopped up on the credenza and took a seat beside Bennie, dangling her red clogs. With her overalls she wore long silver earrings that swung whenever she moved.

How weird. The four of us together, in Mary’s office. Anne knew it had never happened before, and they stood in the same office she had crashed only yesterday. She was having a hard time looking Judy in the eye, knowing what she felt inside, but the girl was so cute, with her face round as a circle, Campbell’s-kid smile, and chopped-off crayon-yellow hair. Anne suppressed her resentment and let it rip. She told them everything, starting last year with Kevin, then fast-forwarding to Willa’s murder, and how she had seen them at her house, then the call from Dr. Goldberger about Kevin’s escape. She edited out her eavesdropping on their conversation, and if anybody realized she had overheard them, they didn’t mention it.

Even Judy stilled as the story ended, her baby face positively colicky, but Mary looked shaken and grave. On the credenza, Bennie’s gaze remained out the window, and her empty coffee mug hung from a thumb. She spoke first:

“I’m wondering about a critical assumption you’re making, Murphy. You assume that the killer is Kevin and he meant to kill you, and I see why. The facts look like that, especially given his escape.” Bennie looked at Anne directly, her blue eyes cutting like ice. “But it’s at least a possibility that the killer isn’t Kevin, and also that, whoever he is, he did mean to kill Willa.”

Anne didn’t get it. “Bennie, you said exactly the opposite to the cops. You said it was a no-brainer that it was Kevin.”

“I didn’t know then that Willa was at your house, so that changes the facts for me. It should for you, too.” Bennie’s eyes narrowed. “Was Willa seeing anyone? I assume she wasn’t married, if she agreed to cat-sit for you.”

“She was single, and I know she wasn’t dating anyone.”

“How old was she?”

“About my age.”

“Where did she work?”

“At home, I think. She was an artist, she worked alone.”

“She must have had friends, family.”

“I guess so, but I don’t know anything else about her, except that I think she lived off a trust fund. I know she’s not from here, originally. She told me that once. I have no idea where her family lives or how to reach them.”

“We have to find them. She was their daughter, their sister. They have a right to know she’s dead. Where did she live?”

“In town, somewhere. I only knew her from the gym.”

“You can find out where she lived, how hard can that be?” Bennie didn’t wait for an answer. “Tell me about the last time you saw Willa. You said she ran to your house from the gym. Did she have anything on her? A purse or a gym bag? Keys? The police found no identification on her.”

Anne flashed on Willa, huffing on her front step. “No. Her hands were empty.”

“Do you need to show ID or a membership card to use your gym?”

“Yes.” Anne finished the thought. “So Willa would have had to bring her ID and her purse with her, to get into the gym. It may still be there, with her keys, and the lockers are usually unlocked. I never leave my stuff there. I bring just my keys, membership card, and a dollar for a bottle of Evian.”

“We’ll follow up on that, too.” Bennie paused. “Another thing. Did you really have a date last night? Was that true?”

Anne avoided Mary’s eyes. “No date. I haven’t gone out in a year. Kevin Satorno was my last date.” She had to get Bennie back on track. “That’s why I know Willa wasn’t the intended victim. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was Kevin and he wanted to kill me. He’s been in prison, probably following my career, maybe even reading about me and Chipster. The Philly papers are on-line. And the sawed-off shotgun, the attack at the front door, everything is the same as before, in L.A. He’s probably been watching my house since he escaped.”

Bennie cocked an eyebrow. “Then why didn’t he see you leave for the shore last night? Why didn’t he see Willa come over?”

“Maybe he wasn’t watching at that moment, and I didn’t go until it was almost dark, a little after nine o’clock. I hung around, we talked a little and played with Mel. I lent Willa my shirt and a pair of clean shorts, since she’d come straight from the gym. What time did the murder take place, do they know?”

“About eleven o’clock, they think so far.” Bennie mulled it over. “And your hallway light didn’t work? How do you know it didn’t burn out this morning, when you turned it on?”

“I never used it, not once. I doubt there’s even a bulb in it.” Anne kicked herself for not checking. “Bennie, I’m telling you, it was Kevin who came to shoot me last night, just like before, and I’m certain he thinks he killed me.”

Judy was shaking her head slowly. “But Bennie could be right. It’s at least a logical possibility somebody meant to kill Willa, for some reason. We know so little about her.”

Mary shot her a sidelong look. “No, I think Anne is right. An attempt was made on her life, just a year ago. Kevin was the one who tried to kill her before, and he’s escaped from prison. He’s obsessed with her, he’s a stalker. She’s the much likelier victim. No doubt.”

Eeek. Our first fight. Anne could feel battle lines being drawn. Mel chose her side, even though he had fallen asleep on Mary’s desk. Loyalty Cat.

Bennie raised a hand like a traffic cop. “Hold on, let’s table the discussion for a minute. There’s another assumption I don’t like, Murphy. If the killer is Kevin, why do you assume he’s still in town? If he’s a fugitive and he killed you, why wouldn’t he just run? His job is done and he doesn’t want to get caught. Any murderer would bolt.”

“Not an erotomanic. That’s not the way they think. Kevin views himself as linked to me, romantically, forever. It’s all imagined, of course, but it’s strong. He’ll want to see where I worked, maybe even see you guys.”

“I agree, stalkers are in a league of their own,” Mary said quietly. Her brown eyes flickered, and she raked a dark-blond strand back with manicured fingernails. “You know, once I had a problem with . . . someone.”

“Really, you?” Anne looked over in surprise, though she knew the statistics. Three out of every ten women will be stalked in their lives. So she and Mary did have something in common, after all. She just wished it were something good, like compulsive spending.

“My case was a little different, because I didn’t realize I was being stalked. But I remember, you have to be careful how you deal with a stalker, and it’s no win. If you go to the cops, it makes him crazy. If you don’t, you’re unprotected.”

Right. It was so nice to finally be understood, and by somebody who wasn’t court-appointed. “That’s why I never should have gotten the restraining order against Kevin. It punctured his delusion that I loved him. It was the ultimate rejection, one even he couldn’t deny, and it became a declaration of war.”

“But you had every right to go to court!” Judy said, and next to her Bennie nodded.

“You did the right thing. You were trying to protect yourself.”

Anne tried to explain. “Ten percent of women in abuse or stalking scenarios are killed right after they apply for a restraining order. In New York, they found one woman dead—with her restraining order knifed to her chest.” She fell silent at the horrible image. “These obsessive types, they’re different from normal murderers, if there is such a thing. That’s why Kevin will stay in town. He’ll want to be around me, to walk places I walked. To stay near me, even in death.”

Mary shuddered. “I would bet this guy won’t leave Philly before your funeral.”

“True,” Anne said, though she hadn’t thought far enough ahead to a funeral. “But it’s Willa’s body in the morgue. What will they do?” They all looked at Bennie, since she always knew everything.

“The medical examiner won’t release the body for two or three weeks, given the holiday and the backlog.”

“Backlog?” Anne asked. The term applied to bills, not bodies.

“July Fourth, in the City of Brotherly Love? The fireworks are in the ERs. The medical examiner has a small staff, too. They’ll do blood and DNA tests on Willa’s body, but the results won’t be in until next week, since the ID is unquestioned. If we don’t say anything, it’s possible that they’ll release her body for burial, thinking it’s yours.” A pall fell over all of them for a minute, then Bennie continued. “We can’t have that, for Willa’s sake. We have to find Willa’s family, and we have to call the cops, Murphy. Tell them that Satorno escaped and that you’re alive. And that they have the wrong person reported dead.”

“Absolutely not. I won’t tell the cops, but I agree with you about Willa’s family. We can find them and tell them, maybe convince them to work with us to find her killer.”

“No, that’s not tenable. Hear me out.” Bennie held up a finger with the mug slung on it. “Kevin is a dangerous fugitive, and the cops can find him sooner than we can. They have the manpower, the resources, the expertise. They can put out an APB to all uniforms, contact the FBI, interface with the California authorities.”

“You heard what they said, they only have forty cops covering all of Center City. They can’t even cover my house. Besides, I trusted the cops once to protect me and almost ended up dead. They couldn’t even charge Kevin with attempted murder, that’s why he got so little time. I won’t rely on the justice system. It almost killed me.”

Bennie looked grim. “Murphy. You are in real danger from this man, and it’s no time for amateurs.”

“No cops.”

“I don’t agree.”

“It’s not your life.”

Bennie didn’t flinch. “Murphy, you mistake me. I own this law firm, and you are my employee. I am chargeable with your actions, which means that I am responsible for everything that happens here and everything that you do. Like hiring naked men, for starters.” She couldn’t find her smile. “I cannot have this information and not disclose it to the police. It approaches obstruction of justice. They’re investigating the murder of the wrong person, and we have material information about the whereabouts of a major suspect.” Bennie folded her arms, and Anne folded hers, too. Judy and Mary watched the showdown in silence.

“Bennie, if you tell them, I’m outta here.”

“Child, if you leave, you’re fired. And I tell the cops anyway.”

Ouch. Anne had to get better at folding her arms or she was sunk. “Wait, I got an idea. How about we compromise? You tell the cops that Kevin’s escaped, but don’t tell them I’m alive. Then I get to play dead and keep looking for him. You get to tell the cops and let them get busy. This way we’re all working to find Kevin, us and the cops!”

“No, it’s too dangerous,” Bennie answered, but she hesitated. “Let the professionals find Satorno. They know what they’re doing.”

“They can’t even find him in jail! He’s a nobody to the Philly police! You heard the detective!”

Mary nodded. “Like Anne says, none of us can judge her until we’re in her shoes. Even I can’t know what that’s like. If it’s her life at stake, we should do it her way, with her compromise.”

Judy finally spoke. “I agree. Let’s tell the cops he’s escaped, but let’s follow up, too. We run our own murder investigations all the time, parallel to whatever the cops are doing. This is nothing new, not to us.”

Whoa. Anne glanced over in surprise, but said nothing. Judy’s words clearly carried weight with Bennie, who was looking at the three associates with exasperation.

“But what do I tell the cops, girls? How would I know that Kevin has escaped if Murphy’s really dead? She’s the one who got the call from the shrink, not me.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Anne answered. “You found my mother, didn’t you? Go ahead, call the cops, but let me stay dead at least until Tuesday morning.”

“Why Tuesday morning?”

“Tuesday morning I try Chipster.”

Bennie looked at Anne like she was crazy. “You can’t think you’re trying that case! No way will you be ready for trial with what’s going on, and God knows it would be a miracle if the cops find Satorno that quick. Murphy, staging a full civil trial is a complicated thing. You have to postpone.”

“I can’t. Gil wanted to go forward, to stay on track with his IPO. In this climate, everybody wants funding and it’s a coup to get it. If there’s a hiccup of any type, the funding will take a pass. That’s why we didn’t settle the case in the first place—Gil wanted to be completely vindicated for his Board and the venture capital guys. If we derail the case now, he loses the IPO. End of Chipster.”

“So don’t postpone, but don’t you try the case. Not with what’s going on with Satorno. Be practical, Murphy!” Bennie slid off the credenza and onto her running shoes. “Look, I’ll reshuffle some deps and try it for you.”

“Thank you, but I want to try it myself.” Anne felt surprised at the strength of her feelings, until she understood their source. “Kevin Satorno has taken quite enough from me. A new friend. My new home. My feeling of safety. My peace of mind. He’s not going to take my job, too. It’s my case and my client.” She folded her arms again, at least mentally. “I call these shots.”

Bennie sighed. “Okay, fair enough. You brought the client in, you make the decisions.” She checked her watch. “Let’s rock and roll. I have to call the cops. DiNunzio, you gotta take the dep. The court reporter must be threatening to leave by now. Murphy, you stay here, so no one can see you.”

“Thanks.” Relieved, Anne turned to Mary, who was already getting up from her desk. “Mary, you know what to do, right? Get Bonnard to talk about the incident last May. You know, she claims Gil Martin hit on her, at a seminar they went to at the Wyndham. Gil says she’s pissed because she didn’t get a raise, and we can document that with the e-mails she wrote. Pin her down on the details, so we can try to predict her testimony at trial.”

“Got it. It shouldn’t take long.” Mary went around her desk, collecting her notes and exhibits. “Feel free to use anything in the office, but stay inside, at least until the dep’s over.”

“Right.” Bennie paused at the doorway, her hand on the knob. “And one last thing. You should know that I spoke with Gil last night. He was obviously upset about your murder, and so was his wife. How are you going to handle that? Are you going to tell them you’re alive?”

“I was going to. I trust Gil. He’ll keep it confidential.” Anne felt Judy’s eyes boring into her back. What was it she had said? Gil Martin would never have hired Anne if she hadn’t looked the way she did.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Bennie asked. “Why don’t you hold off on telling the client for now? You have to lay low, and with Gil thinking that I’m handling the case, just let it be for now. Think about it.” Bennie opened the door and let Mary out. “And find out more about Willa, okay? We have to talk to her family. And I’m not convinced she wasn’t the target. Get on it. Humor me.”

Damn. So she hadn’t convinced Bennie. Anne felt vaguely defeated as the office door closed, leaving her and Judy alone in the small, clean office. They looked at each other, then looked away. They didn’t like each other. Anne didn’t know what to say. If I can’t talk about lipstick, I’m fresh out of conversation.

“Thanks for the support, with Bennie,” Anne said finally, because that needed saying.

“No problem.”

Okay, now go. “You don’t have to hang with me or anything, Judy. I’m fine, and you probably have work to do.”

“Nope, I’m good. My cases are nice and quiet. It’s summertime.”

“Then why stick around the office? You probably have something better to do, for the holiday. You have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

“Yes, Frank Lucia, from the Lucia case. You met him, remember?”

No. “Sure.”

“He went fishing for the weekend. I was just painting at home, when this happened. I’ll stick around and keep you company.”

GO AWAY! “Whatever.”

The office fell quiet except for the crowd of media outside. The window overlooked Locust Street, and Judy turned toward it, gesturing. “Noisy out there,” she said.

“Reporters.”

“Let’s go drop water balloons.” Judy went to the window, but Anne hung back. It drove her nuts that Judy was trying to be nice to her. Mental note: Some feelings make no sense.

Judy turned and waved her over. “Come here, look at this. It’s a zoo!”

Anne went to the window, of smoked glass, and looked out. A sea of people shifted and moved in front of the building, bigger than before. Reporters with microphones, tape machines, and notepads, and photographers with videocameras, print cameras, and klieg lights. A hot-dog vendor with a red-striped umbrella peddled lunch, and a young black kid handed out advertising flyers. Anne counted three Uncle Sams and one uniformed cop.

She squinted against the sun, scanning for Kevin. She wished she could start looking for him right now. He could be down there. It would make sense. The day was slipping away. The weekend was slipping away. She had lost enough of her life to that asshole. And he had killed Willa. Anne had to find him. To make him pay and to make herself, finally, safe.

“You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” Judy asked, reading Anne’s thoughts, which annoyed her.

“Yes.”

“What does he look like?”

“Why?”

“I can look, too. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. It’s four eyes altogether. It’s a lot of eyes.” Judy grinned, and Anne was pretty sure she was kidding.

“Well, he’s good-looking, for a psycho. He has pale blond hair and blue eyes, close together. His nose is long and sort of beaked, a little—”

“Wait.” Judy held up a palm, turned from the window, and began ransacking Mary’s desk. She stopped when she found a small pad of white paper and a sharpened pencil. “Start over, with his eyes.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to draw him.”

“Why?”

“I understand things better when I draw them.”

This chick is crazy, too. Maybe I wasn’t missing anything.

“Start again, with the eyes—”

“They’re blue.” Anne went into a detailed description, surprised that she remembered as much as she did about Kevin’s face. She had read that many stalking victims become obsessed with their stalkers, but she thought it was simply impossible to forget the face of someone who had looked at you with intent to kill. “Light blue, scary blue. And he has a weak chin, by the way. It goes back a little.”

“Recedes.”

“Totally.”

“Got it.” Judy sketched some more, asked a few more questions, then, after ten minutes, flipped the pad over and held it up. “How’s this?”

My God. The likeness was almost dead-on. It looked like Kevin’s face emerging from the sketch. Right in front of Anne.

“You hate it.” Judy’s face fell.

“No! I mean yes! I hate it and it’s him! Exactly. You are incredible!”

Judy turned the pad over, surprised at her own handiwork. “I never did that before, drew from words. Usually I only draw from life. Or pictures.”

“It’s like a composite! A police composite!” Anne came around and stood next to Judy, staring at the sketch. It was almost as good as a mug shot and was already giving her an idea. “Can I have it?”

“Sure.” Judy handed her the pad. “Why?”

Eeek. “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a secret.”

“I can keep a secret.”

Anne didn’t know if she could trust her; she didn’t even know if she wanted to trust her. Judy might try to stop her, tell Bennie, or do something equally sensible. Anne had never confided in a woman she liked, much less one she didn’t.

“Well? You gonna tell me?” Judy cocked her head, her silver earring dangling to the side, and on the desk, even Mel raised his chin, waiting for her response with interest.

Curiosity Cat.

9

Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Sam and her large, stuffed manila envelope were downstairs in the office lobby, being let out the service entrance by Herb, who held open the door to make sure her breasts left unharmed. “You got the job?” he asked. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks.” Anne clasped the manila envelope to her independent woman shirt like a lead shield.

“Hey, what’s your name, honey? I checked the log but I couldn’t read it.”

Heh heh. “Samantha. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Will you let me back in?”

“Sure. Knock. I’ll be listening for you.”

The mouth of the alley opened onto the cross street, around the corner from their office entrance on Locust. Crowds of tourists and other people were making their way down the cross street, going north to the Parkway, and the media was thronging south, trying to get to Rosato & Associates.

Anne waited until the foot traffic was at its densest, then flowed into the crowd as Uncle Sam, with sunglasses, beard, and a package tucked protectively under her arm. She had insisted on making the delivery herself, despite Judy’s arguments to the contrary. Anne was the new messenger, after all, and this was something only she could do. She wanted to be down here in the crowd, in case she could spot Kevin. Any time she saw a blond head, she scrutinized the face. No Kevin. But she couldn’t help but feel that he was here.

Anne walked toward Locust, craning her head to see if the hard-working kid on the corner was still there. He was, and his flyer supply was dangerously low, evidence that he’d been foisting junk onto the public with vigor. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he looked a lot younger down here, maybe sixteen. His hair was shaved into a fade, and he wore a heavy gold chain over his eat at bobo’s T-shirt, which matched his flyers. Damn. Anne wished she’d thought of matching T-shirts to her flyers. Mental note: Law school is useless.

She slowed when she approached the teenager, giving the reporters and tourists a chance to flow around him. When she got next to him, she opened her hand. Inside was a hundred-dollar bill she got from the office kitty, and she flashed it. “You wanna pass some flyers out for me?”

“Sure, clown,” he answered, taking the bill and the manila packet. He opened the brass fastener, slid one of the flyers out, and looked it over.

Anne couldn’t help but read over his shoulder. They’d printed the flyer on red paper, and the top half was a copy of the composite picture Judy had drawn. The text they had written together:

CALLING ALL REPORTERS! HERE’S WHAT THE POLICE ARE HIDING FROM THE MEDIA!

Do you want the hottest lead in the Anne Murphy murder? Find this man!

He’s shown above in a composite drawing. His name is Kevin Satorno and he’s the prime suspect in Anne Murphy’s murder, but the police aren’t telling you that yet. Satorno is Caucasian, age 29, about 6 feet tall, 175 pounds, with light blond hair and blue eyes. He has recently escaped from a penitentiary in California, where he had been jailed last year for aggravated assault, for trying to kill Murphy. Find him and scoop the competition!

Anne thought it was a beautiful flyer and a great idea. The press was as dogged as the cops and were aggressive by occupation. Why not turn the reporters to her advantage? Put them to good use? Get them working for her, instead of against her?

“Fuck is this?” the kid asked, with teenage scorn.

“It’s a flyer. All you gotta do is give one to any reporter you see. TV, newspaper, anything. Anybody with a camera or a microphone. You got me?”

“How ’bout that shortie from Channel Ten?” The kid nodded at a pretty woman in the press crowd. “She’s fine.”

“Fine is good. Hand it to everybody fine. Shorties and tallies. Knock yourself out. Don’t be picky. I’ll be watching you, and if you do a good job, I’ll be back with more.”

“I’m down.” He waded into the crowd with the flyers.

Anne watched him hand them out, and in the next few minutes bright spots of red began blooming in the crowd, like a poppy field. One anchorwoman, orange-faced with TV makeup, paused to read the flyer, and a photographer was handing his copy to the cameraman beside him. Reporters were putting their heads together, and Anne began to hear snippets of conversation, everybody suddenly buzzing: “You think this’s for real?” “You wanna take the chance it’s not?” “News at Six will get on it, they got the staff.” “Not this weekend! I wanted to be home by three. My kid’s got T-ball, my wife’s gonna kill me!”

Hope surged in Ann’s chest, and she was about to go back to the office, according to plan. But then she saw him.

Kevin?

She stopped, breathless. A blond man in the middle of the crowd was reading the flyer, his face lowered. He looked like Kevin. His hair was crudely shorn. He was Kevin’s height. He wore a nondescript white T-shirt, and his shoulders were broad, with powerful caps. He was standing almost directly across from the office entrance, but he didn’t appear to have press credentials. Anne waited for him to look up so she could see his face, but when he did, he turned away. She didn’t get more than a flash of his features.

It’s him, it’s him, it’s him. Is it him?

Suddenly the blond man started moving. He made his way through the crowd, a light patch in the crowd of black cameras. He moved like Kevin. Slow. Deliberate. In control. Didn’t anyone notice he was the guy in the red drawing? Was he the guy in the drawing? She stood on tiptoe, watching him.

He’s getting away!

He was leaving the crowd, calmly. Walking evenly, down Locust toward Broad Street, heading east and out of the action. She couldn’t see the rest of the man’s body, but he was doing what Kevin would be doing if he were handed that flyer. He would get away without drawing attention to himself. Anne was tempted to yell but she didn’t want to blow her cover, not with the media surrounding her. She wasn’t sure enough it was him. She shut her mouth, but she couldn’t let him go. She knew what she had to do.

Stalk him. Stalk him back.

She took off, trailing the blond man toward Broad Street, leaving the media behind but picking up more tourists. Kids waved stiff American flags, fake colonial dames conducted tours with tiny megaphones, and teenagers stampeded past. Anne passed the new hall for the Philadelphia Orchestra and avoided families posing for snapshots on the sidewalk. Her heart started hammering. Her eyes trained on the blond head, moving away with purpose, heading east.

He stopped at a red light at the corner of Broad and Locust, and she picked up her pace not to lose him. She scooted to Broad and, as she got closer, she heard string music plinking on the breeze, with the bass thumping of kettle drums. There had to be a parade marching down Broad, stalling the blond. His back was turned, and she caught a glimpse of his build. His triceps bulged under his T-shirt and a deep crease ran down his back. He was more muscular than the Kevin she knew, but maybe he had started working out in prison.

Anne heard the characteristic ringa-jinga of a summer Mummers string band, and a phalanx of harlequins in orange, magenta, and black sequins began to parade past. The costumes caught the sun in riotous color, and sky-high peacock feathers sprouted from their elaborate headpieces. The crowd burst into applause, except for the blond man pushing his way to the curb.

She wedged her way through people, toward the front. The music, clapping, and cheers got louder but she blocked it all out. The Mummers’ string band surged in full glory, then strutted by. The crowd, finally permitted to cross, pressed forward, with the blond man in the lead, crossing Broad Street, then breaking into a casual run.

No! “Please lemme through. I gotta get through!” Anne shouted and took off after him, fighting the crowd. Everybody was trying to cross at the parade break, west to east and east to west, jostling each other out of the way. She stayed on her feet but when she reached the other side of Broad, she’d lost sight of him.

No! Where was he? Anne looked wildly around. People were streaming toward Broad, and she ran the other way, sprinting upstream. Only an expert could sprint in Blahniks, and she qualified. When the crowd thickened, she jumped into the air to see him above the crowd.

There! Her heart leaped when she did. He was two blocks away! Straight down Locust, and he was taking a left, onto the cross street. She ran for it, confident that he couldn’t detect her now that he’d turned the corner. She banged into only one man and apologized over her shoulder as she turned the corner. Then she stopped. Kevin was nowhere in sight.

Anne looked desperately down the street. A young woman was striding toward her, a block away. She would have been on the block when Kevin turned onto it. Anne straightened her sunglasses and hurried over to her. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for my friend. He’s tall and blond, but he wears his hair really short, almost shaved. Did you see him? I thought I just saw him come around the corner.”

“Was he wearing a white T-shirt?”

“Yes!” Anne couldn’t believe her good luck, and the woman pointed to the top of the street. A windowless storefront lay in the next block, and it appeared to be open for a very active business. A crowd flowed into the place from the sidewalk, and red, white, and blue balloons flew from a sign. “In there?”

“Yeah. He went inside, I think.”

“Thank you!” Anne said. She almost hugged her, but remembered that she was Uncle Sam, so hugging strange women carried federal penalties. She caught her breath and made a beeline for the store.

10

Frankie & Johnny’s, said the sign on the storefront, in funky black letters. The windows had been covered with plywood and painted black, and the large front door, also black, was nondescript. Anne slowed her step, and a man at the end of a group going into the place smiled back at her as she fell into step behind him and went inside.

Dance music blared from the pitch-black within, and the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke assaulted her nose. She recognized the song instantly, The Weather Girls singing “It’s Raining Men.” And when her eyes adjusted to the light, Anne saw that it was. The place was packed with bodies moving to a single beat, and all of the bodies were male. Shirtless, tank-topped, flag-shirted, and tattooed; they were all men, with only one or two women. She turned around and peered through the darkness at the crowd near the door. They were all men, too. She stood, rooted uncertainly to the spot. She was inside a gay bar, for the first time in her life. Mental note: New things are disconcerting at first, then stay that way.

She suppressed the strangeness and tried to find Kevin in the crowd. Where was he? Redheads, shaved heads, brown hair, baldies, and fades; she couldn’t see the blond head for the darkness. The only illumination came from red, white, and blue spotlights roaming over the crowd, flashing with the boom-boom beat of the music. Everybody was moving, shifting, boogying, changing places. It was almost impossible to keep track of any one of them, and Anne couldn’t see a thing for the darkness and smoke. Not to mention her sunglasses. Was Kevin really in a gay bar? He wasn’t gay, not that she knew. He’d been fixated on her.

She lingered, confused. The bar had looked like a small storefront from the outside, but inside it was so much bigger, with a twenty-foot-high ceiling and a half-shell of a balcony that held dancing men and a stage. A long martini bar lined the room’s right side, and affixed to an immense mirror behind the bar flickered a huge martini glass in hot-red neon. Anne used the mirror to try to find Kevin, but all it reflected was an anonymous, sweating throng of men.

Wasn’t there a bouncer at the door? Everybody here was built like a bouncer. She peered through the cigarette smoke at men pouring into the bar. Behind them she spotted a muscle-bound man in a white tank top bearing the bar’s logo. She wedged her way to him, breathing in the commingled odors of chocolate martini and Paco Rabanne. “Excuse me,” she shouted to the doorman, to be heard over the music, “did you see a blond, tall, white guy come in here, just a minute ago? His hair is short and he’s muscular. He was wearing a white T-shirt!”

“Yeah, plenty!” The guard cupped his hands around his mouth. “Why, he underage?”

“No, but I have to find—” Anne started to say, but the crowd came between them, dancing as soon as they came in the door and crossed the threshold. Her heart sank with the realization that Kevin could have gotten past the guard the same way she did, on the far side of a big group. Maybe someone else had seen him come in.

She made her way to the other side of the packed entrance, where a lineup of flat-screen TVs mounted ceiling-height showed a Jennifer Lopez video on mute. Anne sidestepped to two men standing against the dark wall near the door, who were wearing matching white tank tops with jeans shorts. “Excuse me!” she shouted, and they turned to her, still moving to the boom-boom. “Excuse me, did you see a man just come in here, five minutes ago? About thirty, blond, tall, very muscular?”

“Don’t I wish!” shouted one of the men, and they both laughed. Other men stood grouped around the door, all of them drinking and bopping to the music, which was segueing into Grace Jones’s “I Need a Man.” She approached the second group, but they hadn’t seen the man. Neither had the third group. The fourth asked her if she wanted to party, and the fifth told her that her sunglasses were so Six Flags. She agreed, but like Grace Jones, she still needed a man. A blond man in particular.

She looked around. All she could see with any clarity at all was a bartender by the cash register, illuminated by a single pool of halogen. He also wore a white bar-logo tank top and was shaking a gleaming martini shaker. She made her way through the crowd to the bar, which was packed, and finally got the bartender’s attention. “I’m trying to find somebody, a blond man in a T-shirt. It’s really important.”

“Did you ask one of the Muscle Queens?” he shouted, and when Anne looked puzzled, he translated. “Security.”

“I didn’t see any security, I asked the doorman.”

“Then try the manager, in the back office. He can help you.” The bartender waved her off, responding to the clamoring customers, and she edged from the bar, made her way around the dance floor, and found an office, past the rest rooms. She knocked on the black door and laughed with surprise when it opened. The manager was dressed like Uncle Sam, too, but in a classy beard, real satin stovepipe, and a shiny blue jacket with fancy lapels.

“I’m jealous,” Anne said. “You have the jacket.”

“No, I’m jealous! You have the Blahniks.”

Anne laughed. “But my sunglasses are so Six Flags.”

“That’s why they’re great!”

Anne slid them off, feeling fairly safe with him. He wouldn’t recognize her and he certainly wouldn’t hit on her. “Can I bother you a minute?” she asked.

“Sure, come on in.” He ushered Anne into his office. He had a Madonna-type headset hanging around his neck, was about five foot eight or so, with silvering at his close-cropped sideburns, and he was slightly overweight. Mental note: Evidently not all gay men work out, which is to their credit. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Uh. “Sam?”

“What a coincidence,” he said, smiling, and she looked around quickly. The office was crammed with a gray metal desk and a file cabinet, a computer and an old monitor, adding machines, money counters, and a black matte safe with a silver combination lock. Invoices, correspondence, and inventory sheets sat in stacks on the desk; a large clock with manila timecards in slots hung by the door. It was another surprise. Anne had expected The Birdcage and was getting Cigna.

“I’m looking for someone who came in here about five or ten minutes ago.” She liked the manager so much she decided to level with him, almost. “He’s dangerous, a killer. His name is Kevin Satorno and he’s escaped from a prison in California. I know it sounds kind of crazy.”

“Not at all, unfortunately.” The manager didn’t blink. “We do get men released from prison. Parolees, ex-cons. Gay bars are magnets for all kinds of transients. It’s a problem for us, and the community.”

“Even if the man isn’t gay? I mean, I don’t think this man is gay.”

“I love it. Nobody’s gay but we somehow stay in business.” The manager chuckled. “The cons that come in, not all of them are gay, they don’t have to be. They come for the hustle, not the sex. If they’re just out of the joint, they won’t have any money. They hustle for drinks, cigarettes, a warm bed to sleep in. Or sometimes they pick up the customer, go home with him, and roll ‘im.”

“For real?” Anne asked, like a true Philadelphian.

“Sure. It’s dark in here, and the cops don’t exactly drop in for doughnuts. And my staff knows not to pry, all of us do. Too many people in the closet, you know. Each to his own, as long as he spends money.” The manager’s cell phone began ringing from a belt holster, but he ignored it. On separate black holsters hung a beeper and a walkie-talkie. “You’re sure he’s here, at the tea dance?”

Tea dance? Anne hadn’t seen any tea at the tea dance, unless Stoli qualified. “Yes, I’m pretty sure. A woman outside saw him go in.”

“What does he look like, this man you’re looking for?”

Anne wished she’d kept one of her red flyers, but she hadn’t known she’d spot Kevin. She rattled off a description, and the manager’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Light blond hair, almost platinum? Cut close, almost shaved?”

“Yes,” Anne answered, excited. “You saw him?”

“No, but I heard about him. A friend of mine manages The Eagle, and he told me that some asshole took a swing at one of his customers last night. Broke his nose.”

Anne’s heart stopped. Last night. The night Willa was killed. “What time? What happened?”

“After midnight, this good-lookin’ blond guy came in the bar. Everybody noticed because he was new. A queen sent him a few drinks, because he’s into blonds, but when he went over to pick him up, the blond freaked out on him. Called him a faggot and hit him across the face.”

“My God.” Anne felt her chest tighten. Had it been Kevin? At only an hour after the murder, he’d still be jiggered up. Violent. “Did they call the police? Is there a report?”

“No. They threw the guy out, they took care of the queen, and it was over.”

“No! Why didn’t they call 911? A customer was assaulted.”

“I don’t know any bar that would. We sure wouldn’t. We keep the cops out of here, we police ourselves. Especially this weekend. Holidays are pure gold in this business. We’ll pay our rent on this tea dance, then we close up, clean up, and reopen again tonight. Hold on.” The manager crossed to a shelf that held electronics equipment Anne hadn’t noticed before; a VCR, another black box, and a small TV monitor, in black and white. It was a security system!

Her hopes soared. “You have security cameras here?”

“Sure do, for times like this. This is a multiplexer. We have three cameras in the bar and one on the door.”

“I can’t believe it!” Anne stepped over to the monitor. The TV screen was divided into four windows, with a time and date stamp on the upper right. The quartet of images was gray and shadowy, but she could see now that the lower right box was trained on the front door. The front door was opening and closing, and men were piling into the bar. It was hard to tell the true colors of hair and clothes, but the men’s features were discernible, if grainy. “And you have a tape?”

“This is it. You say it was about five, ten minutes ago that this guy came in?” The manager hit the rewind button on the VCR, and the men on the monitor screen started flying out the front door of the bar. The time stamp in the top right corner ran backward. “Here we go.”

Anne watched in nervous silence as the tape stopped rewinding and began to play. The front door kept opening and closing as men piled in on mute, obviously laughing and talking, in large and small groups. “He was wearing a white T-shirt.”

“Honey, that’s half the men in here. Watch the screen and tell me if you see him.”

Anne bit her lip as a group of men dressed in T-shirts and tank tops boogied in. Suddenly a foursome burst in together, and the fifth, a man hanging in the back, had hair that made a white blotch on the grainy tape. Anne felt her heart seize. It was Kevin! “There! That’s him!”

“Hold on.” The manager hit the pause button, and the image froze on the screen. “Which is he?”

My God. He’s here. Anne found herself pointing. A grainy face on the screen was clearly Kevin’s. She’d found him. She couldn’t speak for a minute, as the manager replayed the tape again in slow motion and stopped it at the best shot of Kevin.

“That him, in the Joe Camel T-shirt?”

“Yes!” Anne squinted at the screen. She hadn’t noticed it because she hadn’t seen Kevin’s chest, but his T-shirt bore a small cartoon of Joe Camel over the breast pocket. “That’s him!”

“I guess he’s making the rounds, lookin’ for a place to hide. I’ll be damned if I’ll let him hurt my people.” The manager was already reaching for his walkie-talkie and withdrawing it from his holster. He pressed the Talk button on the walkie-talkie and rattled off a perfect description of Kevin in the Joe Camel T-shirt. “You read me, Mike? Julio? Barry? Call me as soon as you grab him. Good. Over.”

“Let’s go get him.” Anne was already heading for the door, but the manager frowned.

“No, we stay here. My security guards will get him.”

“I didn’t see any security out there.”

“They’re there, and they know what they’re doing. They’re trained to deal with situations like this.”

“Of course they are, and what do I know? I’ll just stay here and wait.” Yeah, right. Anne held on to her stovepipe, opened the door, and bolted out, leaving the startled manager behind.

“Wait! What are you doing?” he shouted after her. “I can’t have you running around my bar, fucking up my tea dance!”

Anne found herself plunged into darkness again, but this time the manager caught up with her and grabbed her hand, less friendly than before. The two Uncle Sams tugged at each other until he gave up, evidently not wanting to make a scene. He began searching with her, moving them both quickly and expertly through the crowd, looking at everyone and talking into his Madonna headset, looped over the brim of his stovepipe.

Anne didn’t see Kevin yet, but the scene in the bar had changed. Men stuffed the dance floor, but they weren’t dancing, they were clapping at a show on the elevated stage. She looked up. best buns contest, read a placard on an easel, and a row of semidressed men stood on the stage with their backs turned to the audience. They were dressed in only their underwear, a crazy-quilt of tiger print, stars-and-stripes, and zebra stripes, and a drag queen in red sequins was emceeing. She bumped her microphone against a tush in leopard print. “Give it up for Couple Number 1!” she shouted, and the crowd went nuts.

The manager and Anne searched for Kevin, eyeing each face, most of them turned to the stage. Security guards in black T-shirts with white staff lettering on the front prowled through the crowd, and the manager was talking into his headset.

“Let’s hear it for Couple Number 2!” the drag queen shouted, and the clapping intensified. Stars-and-stripes trumped tiger print. It was a patriotic crowd. Too bad they couldn’t serve in the military. But where was Kevin?

Suddenly the manager stopped, holding his earpiece, then turned to Anne. “Head for the front door.”

“Did we get him?” Anne asked, her heart leaping up, but the manager held fast to her hand and pulled her through the crowd to the front door. The doorman she had talked to before was there, and the manager gestured him over.

“Did you see him?” he shouted to the doorman.

“Joe Camel? I think I did. I told Julio, I think I remember him leaving about five minutes ago.”

“You think? Did you or didn’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I saw him.”

“Never let that guy in again, and if he ever comes to the door, call me immediately and don’t let him in.” The manager turned to Anne. “Well, he’s outta here. Sorry,” he said, but she was already shaking her head.

“But, the doorman’s not sure. Maybe he’s wrong. I talked to him before, and he said he hadn’t seen a blond man come in, and we know that’s wrong.”

“That was before I heard about the Joe Camel T-shirt,” the doorman shouted defensively, but the manager placed a heavy hand on Anne’s shoulder.

“Honey, he’s my doorman, and he knows what he’s doing.”

No! “Why don’t we go back to your office and check the tape? It would show for sure if Kevin left.”

“No, it wouldn’t. It sounds like he got out while we were playing it, and it doesn’t record while it’s playing. Now it’s time for you to go.” The manager escorted Anne to the door and opened it, just as the dance music started playing a campy version of “The Party’s Over.”

She would have protested, but she heard her cell phone ringing and she found herself outside the bar, blinking on the sunny sidewalk. She reached in her pocket for her cell phone and opened it up. She couldn’t read the blue numbers in the sunlight. “Hello?” she said into the phone.

“Anne, Anne!” It was Judy. “Where are you?”

Uh. “I’m out!” Of the closet?

“Anne, hold on.” There was silence on the phone, then a new voice came on.

“Murphy! Murphy! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?”

Bennie Rosato, their own Muscle Queen. What to do? Anne didn’t reply, but Bennie didn’t seem to notice.

“Murphy! I don’t want you out there! I can’t believe you and Carrier made these flyers! Are you nuts? Come to the office, right now! Come in through the back! NOW!”

Damn! Anne couldn’t bring herself to give up on Kevin, and she couldn’t say no to Bennie.

Then she got an idea.

11

Fifteen minutes later, a cherry-red Mustang idled in an illegal parking space, pointing toward an unsuspecting gay bar. The car contained four women on their maiden stakeout: Bennie at the steering wheel, Judy riding shotgun, and Mary in the backseat with Anne. Bennie had driven over, but was delayed because the Mustang had been out of gas and they had to stop to fill up. The bar was closing its doors, and the tea dance had ended with no sign of Kevin. Anne had told Bennie and the others everything, but she couldn’t leave without making sure he really hadn’t been inside.

“I think I won’t fire you yet, Murphy,” Bennie was saying, in the front seat. A red flyer lay crumpled on the dashboard, presumably where she’d thrown it. “You either, Carrier. Because that would be too easy. It would be capital punishment instead of life in prison, and I’m philosophically opposed. You get my drift, girls?”

“You want us to suffer?” Anne ventured.

“Exactly. You, in particular.”

Anne kept her eyes trained on the bar. Judy’s and Mary’s were, too. The black door of the entrance had been propped open, and men were leaving in droves. Some dispersed down the street or hailed cabs, but most lingered, laughing, chatting, and smoking in small groups on the sidewalk, enjoying the shade cast by the buildings. There had to be two hundred men that they’d seen leave, and Anne never would have guessed that they had all fit inside. The bar was a clown car for gay men.

Bennie continued, “There’s only one rule at Rosato & Associates, and it’s this—I’m the boss. I’m Bennie Rosato. I own Rosato & Associates. See? It rhymes.”

Anne nodded again. No Kevin. Damn!

“Murphy, I tried to explain to you that I am chargeable with your actions, and it follows from this that nothing happens in my law firm without my approval. No employee of mine does anything insane without clearing it with me first. This is because I pay the salaries and bills, including but not limited to rent, light, water, casebooks, Pilot pens, and fresh coffee beans.”

Anne’s hopes were sinking. The sidewalks were full of naked chests, tank tops, and short shorts, but Kevin’s Joe Camel shirt wasn’t anywhere in evidence.

“I was trying to reach Detective Rafferty when I heard that my newest associate was in a gay bar dressed in an Uncle Sam outfit, trying to catch a psychotic killer. Imagine my surprise at the news.” Bennie paused. “Not only were you supposed to be researching Willa Hansen, you were supposed to be dead. This leads me to believe that you missed the point of my earlier lecture. As I told you once already, Murphy, I was the one who identified your body.” Bennie’s voice caught abruptly, and the sudden silence got everyone’s attention.

Anne checked Bennie in the rearview, and her eyes flickered with pain. Judy looked over, and Mary hung her head.

Bennie was clearing her throat. “The physical details aren’t the point. Mostly what I saw, what all of us saw, lying in a very cold, stainless-steel drawer, is what Kevin Satorno is capable of, if it was him. He didn’t just want to kill you, Murphy. He wanted to destroy you. He aimed right for your beautiful face and he blasted it to kingdom come. Given the opportunity, he will do it again.”

Anne swallowed hard. It sounded as if Bennie had been worried about her. Cared about her. It was a new thing. “I’m sorry, I really am,” she said, meaning it.

“Good.” Bennie checked her watch, and Anne and Judy returned their attention to the bar. But after a minute, Anne became aware that Mary hadn’t lifted her head and she did something she had never done with another woman; she reached over and held Mary’s hand. Just then a familiar stovepipe appeared at the front door of the bar, schmoozing with a crowd of partiers.

“That’s the manager,” Anne said, watching. The manager was withdrawing a large key-ring from his blue satin pants and shooing everybody out of the way. Closing time, at least until they reopened. Then he went back inside the bar, presumably to lock the front door from the inside.

Goddamnit! “Maybe Kevin’s hiding inside,” Anne said, but even she didn’t believe it. She met Judy’s eye, and she looked almost equally bummed. Anne was feeling better about her since the red flyer. Almost.

“I’m sure they get everybody out before they close,” Judy said. “So if he was still there, he’s not anymore. I think we lost him, Anne. At least for now.”

Mary raised a small, manicured fist. “Don’t give up! We’ll get him yet. He will feel the wrath of girls!”

Bennie waved the associates into silence. She opened her cell phone and made a call. “Is Detective Rafferty in yet?” she asked.

But Anne was already thinking ahead. Mary had given her an idea, when they had all met, earlier in the office. Anne would start working on it as soon as she got back to the office.

She could hardly wait.

Bennie and Judy were meeting with the detectives in a conference room, giving them the reconstructed details of the sighting of Kevin at the gay bar. Mary had left for Anne’s neighborhood, to find any witnesses to what happened the previous night. Anne was sitting at her desk with Mel, making the last of her phone calls to set up Plan B. It had taken some doing, but she was pretty sure she could catch Kevin this time, especially now that she knew he was in the vicinity. She would have to tell the others about it, even Bennie, because she’d need their help. And she was trying to play well with others.

The office fell quiet except for the shh-chunk of the printer outside Anne’s office, spitting out copies to further Plan B. Anne’s gaze strayed to her office window, and the smoked glass reflected her latest incarnation. She couldn’t run around forever as Uncle Sam, so she’d chopped her hair into a short cut and dyed it Rich Sable, #67 from Herbal Essences. The box promised a “rich, dark brown” but Anne didn’t like being a brunette. It made her worry about her credit balances. Eek.

Mel sat upright on a stack of depositions, and Anne smoothed his whiskered cheeks. His green eyes elongated with each stroke, transforming him into the politically incorrect Chinese Cat. It was one of Anne’s favorites. She felt mildly fresher, having showered at the office and changed into clean clothes from the firm’s closet of spares; a khaki skirt from Banana Republic and a white T-shirt that read i make boys cry. She kept her Blahniks but wore no lipstick, caving in to peer pressure now that she had peers. Mental note: Progress brings its own downside.

Now that Plan B was almost in place, Anne wanted to find Willa’s family, to notify them. But where to begin? She took a last sip of cold coffee and logged onto whitepages.com, an online phone directory. She typed in “Willa Hansen” and “Philadelphia” for the city, but the answer came back: Sorry, no people match the phone search criteria you entered.

Hmm. It meant Willa was unlisted. Anne felt her energy returning. It wouldn’t make sense to search under Hansen, because she didn’t know where Willa’s family lived. Then she got another idea. She picked up the phone and called her and Willa’s gym. A young man answered, and Anne tried the ditzy voice she’d heard on their solicitations: “Hi, I’m Jenny, the new massage therapist, in the spa? I’m the one who does the in-homes?”

“Jenny? I heard about you. It’s Marc. Wanna do my in-home?”

“Ha!” Anne forced a giggle. “Hi, Marc. I’m calling because I’m on my way over to one of the member’s houses, but I Iost the sheet with her phone number and address. Her name is Willa Hansen. Do you have her info?”

“Sure.” Keystrokes clicked on the other end of the line. “Willa Hansen lives at 2689 Keeley Street. The phone is unlisted, but she put it on her ap. You want it?”

“Please.” He read it off, and Anne took it down. The address was across town around Fitler Square. She knew only because she got her hair cut near there, when she wasn’t cutting it herself. “Do you have any other information about her in the computer? Anything in her member profile that would help me? I need to build up my client base.”

“Let’s see.” A few more keystrokes. “Not much, Jenny. Her account shows she’s a two-year member, but she never took any of the spinning, yoga, or cardio classes. She didn’t fill out the member profile. She checked ‘single’ on her application, but she didn’t sign up for any of the singles nights. She doesn’t sound very friendly.”

“Not at all.” Anne couldn’t avoid the irony. It could easily have been her own member profile. “Anything else? Anything at all?”

“Let’s see, she rents her house and is self-employed. She didn’t fill in the blank for her yearly income, but that was optional. She’s a slow pay on the dues. I’m looking at her picture, we have it on file, but I don’t remember her at all, and I’ve been here three years.”

“Great. Gotta go.”

“Listen, Jenny, I’m having a party on Monday night for the fireworks. If you—”

“Thanks but no.” Anne hung up, thinking. 2689 Keeley Street. She had to get over there. Somewhere in the house would be something that would tell her about Willa’s family and how she could get in touch with them. She would tell Bennie as soon as she got free. It would make Bennie feel better, but it was having the exact opposite effect on Anne. She was the reason Willa was dead.

“Meow,” Mel said loudly. He was walking back and forth across the Chipster depositions, distracting Anne. She would need to memorize the deps for trial. It might do her good to work on the case and not think about Willa for now, or Kevin.

She edged Mel off the deposition of the plaintiff, Beth Dietz. Anne recalled Beth as reserved, with an engineer’s superior air despite her mellow smile, hippie clothes, and ratty Birkenstocks. Beth was smart enough to fabricate her case and so was her husband. The courts had become the real-life version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And the final answer was, everyone. Anne started reading:

Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Now, Ms. Dietz, you allege in your Complaint that Gil Martin forced you to have sex, during a meeting on September 15th of last year. Please tell me everything that happened in that meeting.

A: (Plaintiff) Well, I came into his office at about 8:15 that night. It was a Friday, and he asked me to sit down on this couch he keeps along the wall. I thought it was kind of weird, since his laptop was on the desk, and you can’t work on a web application without a computer.

Q: I see. What happened?

A: I sat down and right away he put his hand on my waist. Near my breast.

Q: How close to your breast?

A: About three inches. On my waist. Then he slid his hand up my shirt and put it on my breast. I pulled away and got his hand out, like pushed it away.

Anne knew not a word of it was true. No way in the world would Gil Martin tussle on his couch with a programmer, with his board in the next room and his funding for a $55 million IPO at stake. Anne had known Gil from law school, and he was always headed for great things; good-looking, witty, with a sharp legal intellect, but a technical mind as well. It didn’t come as a surprise when he quit after first year, started Chipster, and grew it into one of the frontrunners in web applications. Along the way, he’d married his college sweetheart, Jamie. In the credibility contest that was Dietz v. Chipster, Anne knew Gil Martin was telling the truth. This Tuesday, she’d have to prove it. She read on:

Q: Is there anything else that he said, or have you told me everything?

A: He said he thought about me all the time. He said he wanted me to let him make love to me, I had to let him. That I had to let him because he was the boss.

Q: That’s exactly what he said?

A: Exactly. I am the boss.

Boss? Anne kept thinking about the word. She couldn’t imagine Gil using that word. It was so old-fashioned, she didn’t know anyone who used it. Then she remembered. Back in the Mustang, on the stakeout, Bennie had said, “I am the boss.” It was a fortysomething thing, not a twentysomething thing. What did it mean? Anything? Would it help? She returned to the dep.

Q: And what happened next?

A: He forced me to have sex.

Q: Right there, on the couch, in his office?

(Mr. Dietz stands up.) That’s just about enough! She just answered the question, lady! Why do you have to make her say it over and over?

(By Ms. Murphy): Matt, please have Mr. Dietz take his seat and remain silent during the deposition.

(By Mr. Booker): Mr. Dietz, please sit down. Please.

Mr. Dietz: This is absurd! He raped her! He made her fuck him to keep her job! Could it be any clearer? You have to make her spell it out?

(By Mr. Booker): Bill, please!

Mr. Dietz: She loves getting this dirt! She wants to hear every gory detail so she can have a good laugh. Her and that asshole, Martin!

Plaintiff: Bill, please, it’s okay. I’m fine.

Anne read it over again, flashing on the way Bill Dietz had morphed from hippie to psycho at the deposition, yelling in the quiet conference room. The businesslike Courier font of the deposition page, almost embossed on thin onion-skin paper, could never convey that he’d jumped enraged to his feet, stretched his full-six-two frame over the conference table and begun pointing, his finger almost poking Anne in the face. She had found it almost laughable when she took the deposition. Why was it bothering her so much now?

Of course. Kevin.

Anne was seeing the ponytailed Bill Dietz with new eyes. Finding abusive men everywhere. Still, she set the deposition aside and went to the accordion file for the Dietz deposition. She had deposed him for a day in connection with his loss-of-consortium claim, which meant that he was suing Chipster.com in tort, for loss of his wife’s companionship and sex during the marriage. He had kept his temper the whole time, answering even the most personal questions with a cool demeanor. She opened his dep, just to double-check:

Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Where are you employed at the current time?

A: I work at Chipster.com, a web applications company.

Q: In what capacity?

A: I write code for various web applications. I specialize in Cold Fusion, a computer language.

Q: How long have you been employed at Chipster?

A: Five years, since its inception. I was one of the handful of programmers who were there when Gil Martin started the company. It was just six of us, in his garage.

Q: And as such—I’m jumping ahead here—did you receive certain stock options, as part of salary?

A: No, I did not.

Q: Did any of the other programmers receive such stock options?

A: Three did. Basically, ones that Gil knew from his college days. He tends to go with people he knows. I didn’t know him then, and neither did another guy, so we were on the outside.

Anne didn’t like the sound of it. It read as if Dietz were resentful, which he hadn’t seemed at the time, when he had merely stated it as a matter of fact. But there had to be resentment there; those stock options would make its founders millionaires when Chipster went public. Did it matter? Did it have anything to do with the bogus case for sexual harassment? Did it motivate it? Anne hadn’t focused on Dietz before because his claim was derivative, frankly, bullshit. She’d had it dismissed under Third Circuit law, but she had taken his deposition before the dismissal, for free discovery. She thumbed through Dietz’s deposition, to the core of the claim:

Q: (By Ms. Murphy) Now, Mr. Dietz, you allege that as a result of the sexual harassment of your wife, Beth, you and she experienced certain difficulties with respect to intimacy in your marriage, is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: When did they begin?

A: When the harassment began. On September 15th.

Q: And how long did it last?

A: We are just now healing. The effects of sexual harassment are like those of rape. It takes the victim time to recover, and to trust men again. And Beth feels guilty, even though she shouldn’t, for what happened.

Q: And what exactly were the difficulties in your marriage, caused by the alleged sexual harassment?

A: Beth withdrew from me. She kept more to herself and became depressed. She slept poorly, she lost weight. She spent more time on-line, four or six hours at nights and on the weekends. She would be in the chat rooms, role-playing or playing Internet games, silly games. Popcap.com and the like.

Q: Specifically, how did the alleged sexual harassment affect your sex life?

A: She became uninterested in sex, and the frequency of intercourse went from once a week to less than that a month. It became unsatisfying. For both of us.

Anne read the rest of the dep, but it didn’t tell her anything more about Bill Dietz. But that wasn’t all she had on him. She had served him with interrogatories and a document subpoena, routine in employment cases. She reached for that folder, opened it, and skimmed his answers to interrogatories. The opening questions were background, and her gaze fell on the third interrogatory:

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME?

NO.

The veracity of the answers was attested to by Dietz’s signature on the next page, but he wouldn’t be the first person who’d lied in his interrogatory answers. He’d obviously lost control at the dep, almost violently. Had it happened before? Anne’s gut told her it had, and she set the interrogatories aside, turned to her computer, and logged onto the Internet, clicking onto one of the myriad snooper websites. Onto the screen popped a banner:

Check court records for liens, finances, and criminal convictions!