"You're working missing persons?"

I hadn't meant the question to sound like she'd been demoted.

"Not just missing," she said. "Gone. Like off the face of the earth missing. Not runaways, or gone on a lark, or start over somewhere else missing."

"OK," I said. Her tone made me think she'd already heard one too many skeptics on this.

"Similar circumstances? Hours? Physical appearances?" I asked, turning my former cop process on, giving her the professional courtesy she deserved.

"Yes. Thank you," she said. "Enough of a pattern for somebody to take them seriously."

OK, I thought. There's enough sarcasm there to know she's been butting heads with command.

"So, how can I help, Sherry?"

"You know a guy named Colin O'Shea? Former Philadelphia cop. Might have worked patrol during your time?"

It didn't take long for me to come up with the face. Colin O'Shea. Kid from the neighborhood. St. Marie's High School. Touch of the Irish. Good-looking guy. I'd run into him on the corners and after some football games when we were coming up. I got to know him a little better when we both became cops. He was a third- generation cop, like me. After a few at McLaughlin's, when the others were half bagged and horseplaying, we'd talked. He gave off the hint that he wasn't convinced that the blue tradition was his true calling, either.

But he was also a manipulative son of a bitch. Angry. The two traits had come together one night in the streets and O'Shea had, in a way, saved my ass.

"Yeah," I said. "I knew him from back then. Haven't seen him for years. He helping you somehow on this?"

"Not exactly," she answered. "He's my suspect."

CHAPTER 2

The manager at Hammermills let her close down the bar early. It had been slow since the Monday Night Football game had ended in a blowout of the home team. The regulars had lasted through the hopeful first quarter and the suspicious second.