Guilt

'Things don't come back to life,' Abe said, gently but as firmly as he could. 'Dead means you're gone forever. That's what dead is.'

'I know that, Dad, but Merlin was a musician and he could come back if he wanted to, and then he could decide the unicorns could live on the earth.'

He wanted to tell him there were no unicorns, either. The boy was ten years old, closing in on puberty, and he really ought to stop seeking comfort in these fantasies.

But somehow his energy failed him. He let out a long breath. 'Instead of where? Where do they live now?'

O.J. couldn't believe his father's ignorance. 'Well, now they live in the clouds, in Unicorn Land.'

'Okay.'

'And then they could come down and be here on the earth and we could ride them, and maybe even have one as a pet. What if that happened?'

Glitsky tightened his arms around his gangly son, came up with the answer he always wound up with. 'If that happened, O.J., that'd be really neat.'

Isaac was still very wet. He exceeded by several years the twelve-year-old limit for the playground, but dripping as he was, he didn't look it. And even though he was a cop, pledged to enforcing the laws, Abe wasn't going to call him on it.

He and Nat had left their food – French fries and corn dogs – on one of the picnic tables behind them, where the ravenous seagulls had spirited it away and scarfed it all down.

Now the two men stood at the fence that kept the adults in their place. All three of the boys were clustered together, up high in a corner of a climbing structure made of rigging rope. Hanging together.

The killer whales had dumped a couple of swimming pools worth of water into the lower galley. By now, Nat's hair was re-combed, but his clothes stuck to him. He was marching in place, his tennis shoes making squishing noises. 'This is a good place, Abraham, but I wish someone had told me about this getting splashed. They don't mean a little damp, let me tell you.'

'I didn't know.'

'But I noticed you didn't go down yourself, am I right?'

'O.J. didn't want to get so close to the water. That's why I didn't go down.'

'I wish I believed this completely. I don't want to think you sandbagged your old man.'

'I would never do that. You didn't raise that kind of boy.' A sideways glance.

'That's a good answer.' He pulled his shirt away from his body, did a little dance with his pants. 'And O.J., I happened to see, he was on your lap.'

Glitsky nodded. 'He's having a hard time. He's trying to figure it out.'

'And you are back to work?'

'I've got to work, Dad. It's what I do.' But he realized that his father needed more of an explanation. 'Look. The Hardys are great people, Frannie's taking better care of them than I can right now. And the boys are in school anyway most of the day. I'm there for them. I see them. I go over some nights. We go out on weekends. Like now, Dad, like right now. I've got a lot to get set up.'

'I understand this.'

'So?'

'So nothing.'

'But what?'

Nat shrugged. 'Just to think about, that's all.'

He knew what his father was getting at, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He should have taken some more days off, he supposed, gone over every single night to be with the kids, but when he'd gotten the call about Sheila Dooher, his priorities found themselves rearranged.

Or maybe it was just an opportunity to dwell on something other than the emptiness. His father had implied that, to some degree, he was running away, denying what he needed to confront, shunting off his responsibility to his children. And maybe there was an element of that. He had something to do, something that needed to be done, and it was consuming. The simple doing of it – regardless of the outcome – could save him, could pull him through this time.

He didn't know, but he had to try.

This was why on Sunday night, the boys were back at his friend's house and he was at his desk downtown on the 4th floor, reading the autopsy report on Sheila Dooher that had finally come in. He had done legwork all week long – interviewing neighbors and driving-range employees and Dooher's co-workers and anybody else he could think of. Going over the initial lab reports, studying the room-painting videotape, combing the Dooher house (again, with another warrant, while Dooher was downtown working) for fibers and hairs and fluids.

But without the autopsy he was whistling in the wind and he knew it, and there had been some bottleneck on paper coming out of the coroner's. Autopsies normally took almost six weeks to get typed, but he'd asked for a rush on this one.

He had the report in front of him now, and he scanned it once, trying to make sense of it, wondering if it might be the wrong one. For a different body.

Because the autopsy report he was looking at listed the cause of death as poisoning.

And what the hell was that about?

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The woman was waiting at the door to the Rape Crisis Counselling Center when Sam arrived at 9:00 on Monday morning. Slightly matronly though not unattractive, she wore jeans, hiking boots, a brightly colored sweater jacket and a purple beret. She held a designer purse, out of the top of which peeked an Amy Tan paperback. Sam stopped in front of her.

'Hi.'

'Hello.' A cultured voice.

'Are you waiting to get in here?'

Behind the self-conscious expression, not all that unusual in this setting, she projected a strong attitude of resolve. Even as she nodded, her eyes surveyed the street in both direction. 'I thought this would be a good place to start.'

'It often is,' Sam said. 'Let me get the door.'

Diane Price had removed her sweater and beret and sat easily in one of the wingbacks in the tiny room behind the reception desk. Thick gray hair fell over her shoulders. The natural woman, Sam thought, she wore no makeup and, with a gorgeous mouth and gray-green eyes, really didn't need any. Her nails looked professionally manicured, but they were clear.

She'd waited while Sam put on the pots of water and coffee – told herself that she'd waited long enough, a few more minutes wasn't going to hurt. The bell over the front door tinkled again as Terri, the first of the day's volunteers, came into work.

Sam brought the mugs – black coffee for them both – back into the room where Diane was waiting and sat across from her.

'I feel a little awkward about this, but I didn't know where else I should go-'

Sam waited. It would come out.

Diane sipped her coffee and took another moment. Exhaling then, as though satisfied with something, she began. 'I imagine you know why I've come here?'

Sam inclined her head. 'You've been raped.'

'Yes.' Diane took another sip of her coffee, repeating it. 'Yes,' she said, 'I've been raped.'

Sam leaned forward. 'It's difficult to say the words, isn't it?'

'Yes.' The monosyllable hung between them. 'It's been a long time now. I didn't know if I'd ever say it.'

'How long?'

Again, Diane's eyes raked the small room. Sam had the feeling she was trying to decide whether or not she should continue with this, whether it was too late to back out. All the staring around, putting off bringing the rape into focus.

She put her mug down and crossed her hands on her lap. 'A long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago.'

'And you've been silent about it?'

Diane folded her arms, self-protective. 'Now it's called a date rape. I knew him. He seemed so nice. I've been living with it all this time. I don't think I've denied that it happened. I suppose mostly just feeling that it happened so long ago, what difference can it possibly make, you know?'

'But it has, of course.'

A nod. 'I don't really know how I feel about it all anymore. Not clearly. All the parts of it.'

'That's all right. Why don't – as you said – why don't you just start somewhere. What do you feel the most, right now?'