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sense.”
    “He couldn’t have gotten some funky, off-hours job?”
    “He didn’t dress for any kind of job I’ve ever heard of.”
    “How did he dress?”
    “Wrong usually. He’d wear a windbreaker in the middle of winter and a sweater in the middle of summer. He was always in jeans and sneakers. But not nice jeans, dirty jeans.”
    “And not nice sneakers either?”
    “No. The canvas kind.”
    What did that mean? I wondered. Did it mean anything? It sounded like he didn’t have any money. That went just fine with his not having a job, but not so well with his being married to a dentist. His wife must have given him money. But when she did, he didn’t spend it on clothes. So what did he do with it? And he seemed impervious to the weather. Or at least unaware of it.
    “Is that all? How was he with the kids?”
    “Erratic. Sometimes he was the best dad ever and then other times he didn’t seem to want anything to do with them.”
    I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. I was too distracted by something that had occurred to me. There may have been another woman, but there was also a lot more to this and I wasn’t sure yet exactly what that was. Before I hung up I mentioned that I might like to talk to her again. In her little girl voice she said she’d better not. I said I understood and crossed my fingers that I hadn’t just managed to discourage one of the few people willing to talk on Madeline’s behalf.
    I pulled out my portable typewriter and spent an hour typing up my notes. I was out of the habit of writing reports. For my investigation into Operation Tea and Crumpets I was prohibited from writing them, so my reports for the Levine-Berkson case would be the first I’d done in almost a year and a half. I debated with myself about how much information I should include about my interview with Melody Oddy, since I’d already discussed it with Owen, but then I remembered that he dealt with hundreds of details every day, he might need to look at the report to remember what he already knew. I tried to put down everything I could think of about that interview and the two short ones I’d conducted over the phone. By the time I was done I had three double-spaced pages. As things became clearer I’d type them up so they were less random and made more sense.
    It was almost lunchtime, so I decided to call Lana Shepherd and arrange to meet her. As Madeline’s best friend she was likely to have as much information as her sister, possibly more. I expected the interview to be rather long. When I called I got an answering machine.
    “Hi, this is Nick Nowak. I’m working on your friend Madeline’s case. I’d like to meet with you and ask a few questions.” I left her my office number and said I hoped to hear from her soon.  
    I’d hung up and begun to think about where I wanted to go for lunch when there was a knock on my door. I’d never had my name put on the door so it was always a little disconcerting when someone arrived that way. It meant they’d had to find the street address, figure out that the unmarked door downstairs led somewhere, climb the stairs, glance at the two other doors on the second floor, both of which featured the names of their occupants, and then take a chance on the blank door.
    Despite the fact that it could be anyone on the other side, including some lawless nutcase with a gun, I yelled, “Come in.”  
    The door opened a bit tentatively and there was Father Joseph Biernacki. He wore civilian clothes—jeans and a button down shirt with a windbreaker—rather than the traditional black suit and white collar people still expected from a priest. His hair was red-ish brown and he’d let it grow out a bit; he smiled at me, showing his broken tooth, making his fair skin crinkle around the eyes. His nose, cheeks, neck, and what I could see of his chest through his open collar, were all spattered with freckles. Freckles that made me think of Jackson Pollack paintings, of