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ahead of him. She might have been walking alone. It seemed accidental that she was surrounded by a throng of sad people on a common mission. He didn’t find it odd that there was no sheltering arm around her shoulders, no one to take her own arm and give her support.
    Charles quickened his step, and when he came abreast of her, she turned her face up to his. Her eyes were not the portals poets spoke of. They were cool green and gave away nothing. He put one arm around her. Two uniformed police officers walked alongside of them, openly marveling that he would risk that and that she did not shake him off.
    Kathleen she was in all their private conversations, and Mallory she was in the public areas of NYPD. What to call her at the funeral of Louis Markowitz? She was his inheritance, and Charles was wondering just how he was going to explain that. He hoped the letter in his pocket might help.
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    Mallory put down the coffee cup and opened her letter. It began with a list of the deceased’s regrets: Louis Markowitz regretted that his wife, Helen, had died before completing the job of housebreaking Kathy. He regretted being forced to address her as Mallory when she joined the police department. He regretted not being able to teach Kathy that it was not nice to raid other people’s computers, and that he had made such good use of all her thievery and not set a better example for her.
    And now the list of what he did not regret: There were no regrets about arresting her at the age of ten, eleven, or twelve (they could never be sure about her age). He didn’t regret handing the wild child over to gentle Helen Markowitz, who startled young Kathy speechless and kickless with a hug and an outpouring of undeserved and unconditional love. He did not regret that Kathy grew up to be a beauty with an intelligence that sometimes frightened him.
    She had made Helen’s last years an unreasonable joy without boundaries. And so, he could live and die with the fact that she still had the soul of a thief. And he was glad that she had made a friend in Charles Butler, who was as decent a man as God ever made, and would she please not take shameful advantage of him, but go to him if she was in trouble, if she needed help, or in the unlikely event that she needed a little human warmth. And in his postscript, he mentioned that he had loved her.
    She folded her letter and looked up at the man with the sad foolish smile. Charles Butler sat on the other side of the room, quietly staring into his coffee cup.
    She supposed he was waiting for her to cry.
    He would wait forever.
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    Commissioner Beale sat down on the couch. He noted that it was a masculine thing, all dark leather and blending well with the other furnishings, massive and solid. The only feminine touch he could find in Sergeant Mallory’s front room was the perfect order that men found so difficult to create, and he could find no personal effects at all. He might well be sitting in a showroom display for an upscale furniture store—entirely too upscale in his opinion. And the apartment was too large for her salary. It always worried him to see an officer living beyond means, better dressed than himself, or driving a better car. The police commissioner scratched a mental note on his accountant’s soul.
    Sergeant Mallory returned with a tray which could only be silver, and on it was a good grade of sherry and fine crystal glasses. He made more notes.
    She was smiling. So much for Harry Blakely’s comment that he would have to dynamite her office before she would take compassionate leave. She had taken it rather well.
    â€œI think we might make this an indefinite leave, Sergeant.”
    He did respect Blakely’s advice on keeping her out of it until the case was broken, and the Chief was promising results within a few weeks. Mallory was not replaceable, Blakely had counseled. ‘So don’t antagonize her. Tell her it’s policy.’ And