Then a sudden noise to her left lifted hairs on the back of April's neck. Reflexively, her hand brushed the 9mm Glock semiautomatic at her waist.

"Jesus, look at that." Baum shone his light on a rat the size of a lapdog, scurrying across the rock.

All over the city April had seen plenty of those. "Maybe that was the cause of the trouble. Quite a specimen," she said with the cool of a connoisseur.

Farther on, the unmistakable sweet smell of marijuana smoke was trapped in a stagnant pocket of heavy air. The smokers were nowhere to be seen.

For ten minutes April and Woody walked around the area. If they'd found the smokers and they'd been kids, April would have given them a talking-to. She would have taken their names and called their parents. She often took young offenders into the station to give them a taste of the law. She liked to think that occasionally it did the job and scared them straight. But tonight nothing. No sign of the 911 caller, no sign of anyone in trouble. All they saw was the usual array of people minding their own business. And the rat. Finally the two detectives got back in their unit and drove away.

Three

Dr. Maslow Atkins was due at Dr. Jason Frank's office for a supervisory session at eight-fifteen to discuss Allegra Caldera. As Jason waited for him, he couldn't help feeling just a touch manipulated by the younger doctor's urgent request for extra time that evening-not tomorrow or some other more convenient date. Jason did not get paid for supervising analytic candidates, nor for any of the teaching he did, but he rarely thought about that. His problem these days was stamina. He'd already been exhausted in the late afternoon when he agreed to extend his working day another half hour, and Jason wasn't taking fatigue as easily these days as he used to.