All he could offer was that the caller had been a man. “I should have known better,” he said. “I’ve had people try all sorts of scams. Calling up pretending to be parole officers. You name it. But Daniels is a free man. Why would anyone pull a stunt like that?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie told him. “Can you just check on him tonight, take a look at that cut in the morning, and make sure he’s delivered to his parents in one piece?”

“You bet I can. He’ll be safe with me.”

I believed him. The guy was close to six and a half feet tall and well muscled. Bobby would be safe under his care, especially now.

Maggie made a phone call as soon as she returned to her car, despite the lateness of the hour. “It’s me. I’m only a few minutes away.” She paused. “Thanks. I’ll be right over.”

So, I thought, she has a lover after all. And though sexual desire had disappeared, apparently the desire for possession had not. I felt a stab of jealousy and brooded all the way to a house on the edge of a middle-class neighborhood. I recognized the block. I had once been called out there to chronicle the death of a young boy who had been hit by an ice-cream truck.

My god, had Danny and I really joked about that one? Danny had said to me in the car afterward, “If you’re a kid, that’s the way to go. It’s like me getting hit by an Old Crow delivery truck!” And I had actually laughed.

How had I been so lost?

Maggie sat in the front seat of her car for a moment after we reached the house, collecting the odds and ends of her life that were strewn about and storing them in her backpack. Lights blinked on inside the home, the porch light revealing an overgrown lawn and neglected flower beds.

Perhaps this was not a lover’s house after all. It seemed oddly dated, as if it belonged to a simpler time when marriages were rock solid, public schools were safe, and mosquito trucks crawled down the streets at dusk, leaving clouds of insecticide in their wake for the children of the neighborhood to romp in.

I had grown up on a block just like it.

An old man in a wheelchair opened the door before Maggie could knock, greeting her with a hug that lingered—he knew what she had been through.

“The lawn needs mowing,” Maggie told him. “I can do it this weekend.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the old man said as he made room for Maggie to enter. “Come in and tell me all about it.”

“It’s bad, Dad,” she said as they entered a small living room. Maggie threw herself down on the overstuffed couch as her father positioned himself a few feet away. It was a ritual they had performed many times, I could tell. This was Maggie’s home. He was her family.

She led him through the events of the night and he listened with the wary attention of a former cop, seldom interrupting, usually a step ahead, understanding the implications of every development.

“The daughter doesn’t know where Hayes is going when he disappears at night?” he asked when Maggie was done explaining about the search of the Hayes home and what they had found.

Maggie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as she shook her head. “She has no idea. It could be anywhere. And I think that’s where he took the girls he killed.” She looked up at her father. “Where he is taking them.”

“You’ll get him,” her father said firmly. “If anyone can get him, you will. Just don’t move too soon, my Maggie May. Make sure you have him locked down tight before you bring him in.”

“I know. I know. Patience and thoroughness. It’s worth it in the end.”

“That and ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ ”

“Yes, I know. I’ve already used that one tonight, thank you very much.”

They smiled at each other, not needing to say aloud the things that passed between them. Theirs was a lifelong bond. I could feel the tension in Maggie lifting, I could feel her faith in life being renewed. But I also felt a shared sadness between them, a painful memory they both worked to block out. The father had come to terms with it more than Maggie. He carried the sadness inside him with grace and dignity. But for her, the wound was still raw and insurmountable, so deep she could not confront it even in memory. I did not know what it was, but I knew it was part of what made Maggie so aloof when it came to other people.

She told her father about the rest of the evening and he was not surprised to hear what had happened to Bobby Daniels at the Double Deuce. But he didn’t want to believe Danny was working with Hayes.

“A lot of the guys don’t take kindly to being second-guessed,” he told Maggie. “They can do crazy things when they are. You remember what happened to Frankie Z back in ’76? They let those two rapists out of prison because of a new witness and he went to his grave swearing everyone had been suckered but him. It was all he could talk about for twenty-three more years. Maybe Bonaventura had nothing to do with the slashing. Maybe he just went too far trying to prove he was right about Daniels. And you don’t know it’s the same yellow sundress Alissa Hayes was wearing when she died. It could just be a copy. A clumsy attempt to make Daniels look guilty.”

Maggie was shaking her head. She didn’t buy it. “You know he’s dirty, Dad. He was there with Hayes. He has to be working with him.”

Her father sighed. “He may be dirty. He probably is dirty, Maggie. I always had a feeling about him. And I know some other fellows in IA looked into Bonaventura and his partner more than once.”

They had? I had never known, or even suspected, it.

“What did they find?” Maggie asked, sounding more interested in what her father had to say.

“Nothing. They came up empty-handed.”

“So Fahey was a good cop?” she asked. It thrilled me to hear my name coming from her lips.

“I don’t know that I’d say he was a good cop.”

Ouch.

“I think he was a clean cop, though,” the old man conceded.

“What was he like?” Maggie asked her father. “Tell me about him.”

“What’s Fahey got to do with anything?” her father demanded. “He’s dead, Maggie. Stick to the living.”

I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about me.

“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Maggie admitted. “I can’t explain it. Peggy showed me his photo. I just felt . . . I don’t know. Connected to him. Like he would have wanted me to find out the truth.” She looked up at her father. “Kind of pathetic when you have to turn to dead guys for moral support, I guess.”

I beg your pardon, I thought. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner than me.

“You have plenty of people who love and support you, Maggie,” her father said. “You just need to reach out to them. They’ll be there if you do.”

I was angry at him for steering the conversation away from me. I wanted to hear more about what Maggie thought of me. But her mind was back on Danny.

“If Bonaventura wasn’t working with Hayes to kill Daniels, what the hell was he doing at the Double Deuce?” she asked her father. “He could have planted that evidence on Daniels a lot more easily somewhere else.”

“If Hayes is as smart as you say, maybe he’s using Bonaventura.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe Hayes wanted people to know Bonaventura planted the evidence. Maybe that’s why he proposed such a clumsy approach. Maybe the real person Hayes planned to kill and take the fall for the murder was Bonaventura.”

Good man, I thought to myself. I could see where Maggie got her abilities as a cop. Age had only made the old man smarter.

Maggie was staring at her father intently.

“What?” he asked.

“Sometimes you scare me, Dad,” she said. She kissed him on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re one of the good guys.”

He patted his wheelchair. “No chance of switching sides now.”

“How are you doing anyway?” Maggie asked. “I didn’t get a chance to call you much this week.”

He shrugged. “You know how it is. A little of this. A little of that. I’m drowning in casseroles from that Fitzpat rick woman.”

Maggie laughed. “I’m telling you, she wants to marry you.”

Her father looked disgusted. “Your mother’s not been in her grave a year. Do you really think I want to hook up with someone new?”

“Hook up?” Maggie started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t think ‘hook up’ means what it used to mean,” Maggie patted his knee. “But whatever you decide to do, it’s okay with me.”

“I could say the same to you.” Her father chided as he wheeled to a cabinet nearby and poured them both glasses of whiskey. He handed one to Maggie and they clicked their glasses in an automatic salute.

“I don’t have time for being involved,” Maggie said. “You may as well give up that dream of grandchildren.”

“That’s not what Mrs. Millard says,” her father teased her.

“Mrs. Millard?” Maggie stared at her old man. I could feel her hackles rising. “You said you were going to tell her to stop spying on me. I mean, really, Dad—come on. I got enough troubles without that woman watching every move I make. When I’m home, I like my privacy. She needs to mind her own business.”

“Don’t go poppin’ your cork, Maggie May. I just asked her to keep an eye on you. I haven’t trusted that partner of yours in days, since before he showed up at the Double Deuce. I figure he’s going to come after you and make you look bad, maybe plant something in your apartment or locker. I want you to keep your eyes open. You don’t understand how resentful the old-timers can get when a woman comes in and makes them look bad. Even when the woman is you. And Bonaventura is old school.”

“What exactly did Mrs. Millard see?” Maggie asked skeptically.

“She saw your boyfriend leaving your house at a time of night when respectable men do not leave their girlfriends’ houses.”

Maggie stiffened. “Are you sure?”

Her father’s voice faltered. He knew that something was wrong. “Yes, I’m sure. She called me this morning. It was last night about this time. Two A.M.”

“I wasn’t home, Dad. I was working. What exactly did she see?”

“I don’t know. A guy leaving your house. She said he seemed to have a key. He locked the door behind him.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Millard think it was odd my car wasn’t there?”

“I don’t think she looked for it. It’s not like she’s trained in surveillance.” Her father’s voice took on an edge. “What’s going on, Maggie?”

“I have to go,” Maggie said abruptly.

“You’re not going anywhere,” her father answered in a tone of surprising authority. “Sit down.”

Maggie sat. I was astonished.

“This is bad, Dad. It could be him. It could be Alan Hayes. In my home.”

“It could be anyone. It could be Internal Affairs. It could be that scumbag ex of yours. It could be Bonaventura, trying to find out what you have on him or trying to plant something on you. We just need to think it through.”

“What do I do?” Maggie asked, her voice faltering.

“Nothing tonight,” her father said firmly. “You’re staying right where you are and getting some rest. I’ll get the blankets. You look exhausted and you’re not going back to your house alone in the dark. Both of us are smarter than that.”

“I didn’t even notice,” Maggie said, horrified. “I spent a couple hours there this morning and didn’t notice anything different.”

“We’ll talk about it in the daylight,” her father told her.

Maggie lay down on the couch, weariness overtaking her, unable to resist the comfort and safety of her childhood home. I think she was asleep before her father had even wheeled out of the room. He returned in a few minutes with a blanket and placed it lovingly over his daughter, tucking the ends in around her shoulders with the tenderness of a lifetime.

And then he did something extraordinary.

As his daughter slept through the remaining hours of the night, he sat in the front hallway, staring out a side window at the dark streets of his neighborhood, a gun across his lap, his attention never wavering unless it was to look over and check that his daughter was safe.

The night wore on, the hours wore on. And still the old man did not break his vigil. He kept watch while Maggie slept. And I kept watch beside him.