Hard News

is public record. Why don’t you—?”
    “I’ve got the transcript. I need the police report. It’s got the names of all the witnesses and the bullet angles and pictures of the exit wounds. All the good stuff. Come on, Sam.” She kissed his neck.
    “There’s nothing I can do. Sorry.”
    “The man’s innocent. He’s serving time for something he didn’t do. That’s terrible.”
    “You can talk to the public information officer. They’ll give you the department’s side of the case.”
    “Bullshit is all he’ll tell me.”
    “She,”
Healy said. “Not he.” He stood up and walked into the galley. “You have anything substantial?”
    “Well, first, everybody I’ve interviewed said that no way in the world could Randy Boggs kill anyone. Then—”
    “I mean to eat.”
    “Oh.” She squinted into the galley. “No.”
    “Don’t mope.”
    “I’m not,” she said quickly. “I just don’t have anything substantial. Sorry. Maybe some Fruit ‘N Fiber cereal.”
    “Rune …”
    “A banana. It’s pretty old.”
    “I can’t get the report. I’m sorry.”
    “A can of tuna. That’s a pretty icky combination, though, if you mix it with the cereal. Even with the high fiber.”
    Healy wasn’t buying it. “No file. Give it up.” He walked back with pretzels and cottage cheese. “So where’s your little girl?”
    She was hesitating. “I took her to Social Services.”
    “Oh.” He was looking at her, his face blank. Not saying anything, eating the cottage cheese. He offered her a forkful she wasn’t interested in.
    She said defensively, “They were a really, really good bunch of people there. They were, you know, real professional.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What they’ll do is keep her in a foster home for a while then they’ll track down her mother….” She was avoiding his eyes, looking everywhere else. Studying his buttons, the stitching of his shirt seams, the trapezoid of floor between his shoes. “Well, it was a good idea, wasn’t it?”
    “I don’t know. Was it?”
    “I had to.”
    “When I was a portable, walking a beat, we found kids sometimes. If there’s any suspicion of neglect or abuse you have to bring them in or get a caseworker out to see them.”
    Rune said, “Those people are okay, aren’t they?”
    “I guess so.”
    She stood up and paced slowly. “What was I supposed to do? I can’t take care of a baby.”
    “I’m not saying—” Healy began.
    “Yes, you are. You’re saying ‘I guess so,’ ‘I don’t know.’”
    “You did what you thought was right.”
    Clench, loosen. Her short, unpolished nails dug into her palm, then relaxed. “You make it sound like I gave her away to the gypsies.”
    “I’m just a little surprised is all.”
    “What am I going to do? Keep her with me all the time? It cost five hundred dollars to fix the camera because of her. I had to reshoot eight hours of film. I can’t afford a baby-sitter—”
    “Rune—”
    Volume and indignation rose. “You make it sound like I abandoned her. I’m not her mother. I don’t even want her.”
    Healy smiled. “Don’t be so paranoid about it. I’m sure they’ll take fine care of her. Have some cottage cheese. What’s in here?”
    Rune looked. “Apple? Pear? Wait, I think it’s a zucchini.”
    “Should it be that color?”
    She said, “It’s only until they find Claire.”
    Healy said, “Just a couple days probably.”
    Rune stood at the round porthole, looking out over the water, at the way the lights in Hoboken made lines in the waves like runway approach lights. With her eyes she traced them to the land and back again. She watched them for a few minutes, until they were shattered by a passing speedboat. When the colors began to regroup she turned to Healy and said, “I did the right thing, didn’t I, Sam?”
    “Sure you did.” He capped the cottage cheese. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
    PIPER SUTTON SENSED THE POWER SHE HAD OVER HIM and it made her uncomfortable because it was purely the power of sex.
    And therefore a power she couldn’t exercise. Or, rather, wouldn’t
let
herself exercise.
    As she looked at the man across the desk from her she crossed her legs and her cream-colored stockings whispered in a reminder of that power. She was sitting in an office exactly two floors above hers—the penthouse of the parent company’s monolith.
    “We’ll have coffee,” the man said.
    “No, thank you.”
    “Then I will.” Dan Semple was a trim