One Door From Heaven

in this category. Maybe it was an offense she had given without intention. Maybe it was just a matter of bad chemistry. Whatever the reason, she was on F's list now, and she knew the woman well enough to suspect that F made her list with a pencil that had no eraser.
        Finally, Micky said, "No. Nothing personal between Leilani's mother and me. I'm just worried about the girl, that's all."
        "The father's name?"
        "Preston."
        F's face at last became marginally more expressive than the screen in front of her, and she looked at Micky again. "You don't mean the Preston Maddoc."
        "I guess he is. I'd never heard of him until last night."
        Eyebrows arched, F said, "You'd never heard of Preston Maddoc?"
        "I haven't had a chance to read up on him yet. According to Leilani… well, I don't know, but I guess he must've been accused of murdering some people, but he got away with it somehow."
        The light texture of surprise in F's face quickly smoothed away under the trowel of bureaucratic neutrality, but the caseworker was not entirely able to soften her voice, which cut with a honed edge of disapproval: "He was acquitted, Ms. Bellsong. Not guilty in two separate trials. That isn't the same as 'getting away with it.' "
        Micky found herself on the edge of her seat again, hunched in that supplicatory posture once more, but she didn't straighten her shoulders this time or slide back on the chair. She licked her lips, discovered they were salty from perspiration. She felt as if she'd been basted. "Ms. Bronson, I don't know about him being acquitted, but I do know there's a little girl who's been through a lot in her life, and now she's stuck in this godawful situation, and someone has to help. Whatever Maddoc was supposed to have done, maybe he didn't do it, all right, but Leilani had an older brother, and he's gone missing. And if she's right, if Preston Maddoc killed her brother, then her life is on the line, too. And I believe her, Ms. Bronson. I think you'd believe her, too."
        "Killed her brother?"
        "Yes, ma'am. That's what she says."
        "So she's a witness to a murder?"
        "No, she didn't actually see it. She-"
        "If she didn't actually see it, how does she actually know it happened?"
        Counting on patience to prevail, Micky said, "Maddoc took the boy away and then came back without him. He-"› “Took him away where?"
        “Into the woods. They were…”
        "Woods? Not very much in the way of woods around here."
        "Leilani says this was in Montana. Some UFO contact site-" "UFO?" Like a nest-building bird worrying threads from a scrap of fabric, F seemed determined to pick relentlessly at Micky's story, though not with the intention of building anything, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of reducing it to a scattering of scrambled fibers. In the service of this goal, she seized upon the mention of UFOs. Her eyes sharpened a hawk glare fit to pin a mouse from a thousand feet; and if she'd had slightly less self-control, her next two words would have come out as a birdy screak of cold delight. "Flying saucers?"
        "Mr. Maddoc is a UFO buff. Alien contact, that weird stuff-"
        "Since when? Seems if this were true, the media would've made a lot out of it. Don't you think? They're pretty merciless, the press."
        "According to Leilani, he was into this UFO stuff since at least back when he married her mother. Leilani says-"
        "Have you asked Mr. Maddoc directly about the boy?"
        "No. What would be the point?"
        "So you're operating entirely on the word of a child, are you?"
        "Don't you often do the same in your line of work? Anyway, I've never met him."
        "You've never met Mr. Maddoc? Never met him or the mother-"
        "Like I told you, I met the mother once. She was so high, she was bumping her head on the moon. She probably wouldn't even remember meeting me."
        "You saw her actually taking drugs?"
        "I didn't have to see her take them. She was saturated. They were virtually squirting out her pores. You ought to remove Leilani from that home if only because her mother's wrecked half the time."
        On F's phone, the intercom beeped, but the receptionist didn't say anything. Another beep. Like an oven timer: The goose is cooked.
        "Be right back," F promised, and again she left the room. Micky wanted to tear the cat posters off