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them stories about her cases—most of the time she made up the stories; the kids, two boys, ages eight and ten and very well behaved, could hardly imagine a crime more sinister than jaywalking.
    She liked everything about where she lived except, sometimes, every now and then, the fact that she lived there alone.
    It was hard to have a normal love life if you were a cop. Stockbrokers and corporate lawyers, regular guys of any description, resented the hours and the commitment. They just didn’t understand what it was like, and they didn’t want to understand. Ellen had learned that lesson the hard way.
    She had had three serious relationships since graduating from college, and each had floundered over the intractable problems of reconciling police work with the demands of what most men seemed to regard as the necessary conditions of private life. The last disaster, and the worst, had been Brad the hedge fund manager.
    Everyone’s first impression of Brad was that he was like the hero of a paperback romance novel, and, well, with a name like “Brad” how could he be anything else? He was handsome, intelligent and rich. His conversation could be immensely entertaining. He knew everything there was to know about wine and food and where to buy his clothes. He was one of the Beautiful People. Ellen’s mother was crazy about him.
    They met on a neighbor’s tennis court in Atherton, where they had both grown up in perfect ignorance of one another. For once Ellen had Sunday off and, feeling guilty about her parents, she had gone home to play the suburban princess.
    Ellen’s efforts at physical fitness were restricted to three visits a week to the police gym. She didn’t play tennis—tennis was too obviously patrician, so she had spent her adolescence resolutely refusing to learn—but Daddy did. Brad was some sort of cousin of the neighbor’s, down for the weekend.
    It was an unequal struggle. In three sets Daddy never scored a point, but Brad was enough of a sportsman not to gloat. Ellen sat on the sidelines, wearing an enormous pair of sunglasses and admiring Brad’s perfect tan.
    Then Daddy and the neighbor played, and Brad sat down with Ellen to drink iced tea. He was no end of charming and seemed less impressed with himself than perhaps he had a right to be. Somewhere in the conversation he asked her for a date. They would meet for dinner in the city the following Wednesday.
    It got off to a rocky start. She and Sam had been working a very messy domestic murder since about one in the afternoon, and she didn’t have Brad’s cell phone number. She showed up at the bar at Ernie’s almost three quarters of an hour late. There hadn’t even been time to change.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said. “Things got a little hectic at work.”
    He glanced at her tan corduroy jacket, which was not too bad but probably not up to corporate standards, and asked her what she did.
    â€œI’m a homicide detective.”
    By then Ellen had been on the squad for two months, and she still felt as if she had received an Academy Award. Probably she had expected Brad to be impressed. He wasn’t.
    â€œWell, I hope then you remembered to wash your hands,” was all he said.
    But Brad was the type who could make a quick recovery and the rest of the meal went much better. They talked about growing up in Atherton and discovered they had friends in common. Ellen felt very much at ease with him.
    Probably she should have known better. She should have finished her dinner, given up on Brad, and gone home to feed Gwendolyn. Instead they made another date, and then another, and after the third she decided he was a really nice guy who made her feel like she might genuinely matter to him, so she went back with him to his three-bedroom apartment on Russian Hill and climbed into his bed.
    Brad was very good at sex, if a bit of a technician. Most of the time she was too busy