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shooting. Ryan was en route to meet an informant and happened to be in the alley behind the deli. He’d heard the shots, drawn his weapon and sped in through the back door, too late to save the husband and wife who owned the place, but he had rescued the customers inside, taking a bullet in the leg before the robber fled.
    The story ended with a curious twist: The woman customer had stayed in touch with him. They’d started going out. She was now his wife, Joanne.Ryan had a daughter by his first wife, who’d died of ovarian cancer when the girl was six.
    After delivering the bios, duBois had told me in the car, “That’s pretty romantic, saving her life. Knight in shining armor.”
    I don’t read much fiction but I enjoy history, medieval included. I could have told her that knight’s armor was the worst defensive system ever created; it looked spiffy but made the warrior far more vulnerable than a simple shield, helmet and chain mail or nothing at all.
    I also reflected that getting shot in the leg seemed like a rather unromantic way to get a spouse.
    As we moved through the cluttered family room, Ryan said, “Here it is, a nice Saturday. Wouldn’t you rather be hanging out with your wife and kids?”
    “Actually, I’m single. And I don’t have children.”
    Ryan was silent for a moment, a familiar response. It usually came from suburbanites of a certain age, upon learning they’re talking to an unmarried, family-less forty-year-old. “Let’s go in here.” We entered the kitchen and new smells mingled with the others: a big weekend breakfast, not a meal I’m generally fond of. The place was cluttered, dirty dishes stacked neatly in the sink. Jackets and sweats were draped on the white colonial dining chairs around a blond table. Against the wall the number of empty paper Safeway bags outnumbered the Whole Foods four to one. Schoolbooks and running shoes and DVD and CD cases. Junk mail and magazines.
    “Coffee?” Ryan asked because he wanted some and preferred not to appear rude, only discouraging.
    “No, thanks.”
    He poured a cup while I stepped to the window and looked out over a backyard like ten thousand backyards nearby. I observed windows and doors.
    Noting my reconnaissance, Ryan sipped, enjoying the coffee. “Really, Agent Corte, I don’t need anybody to stand guard duty.”
    “Actually I want to get you and your family into a safe house until we find the people behind this.”
    He scoffed, “Move out?”
    “Should just be a matter of days, at the most.”
    I heard sounds from upstairs but saw no one else on the ground floor. Claire duBois had given me information on Ryan’s family too. Joanne Kessler, thirty-nine, had worked as a statistician for about eight or nine years, then, after meeting and marrying widower Ryan, she had quit to become a fulltime mother to her stepdaughter, who was ten at the time.
    The daughter, Amanda, was a junior at a public high school. “She makes good grades and is in three advanced placement programs. History, English and French. She’s on the yearbook. She volunteers a lot.” I’d wondered if some of the organizations were hospitals or devoted to health care because of her mother’s death. DuBois had continued, “And she plays basketball. That was my sport. You wouldn’t think it. But you don’t have to be that tall. Really. The thing is you have to be willing to bump. Hard.”
    Ryan now said, “Look, I’m just a cop handling some routine nonviolent cases. No terrorists, no Mafia, no conspiracies.” He sipped more of the coffee, snuck a look at the doorway and added twomore sugars, stirring quickly. “Agent Fredericks said this guy needed the information, whatever it is, by Monday night? There’s nothing I’m working on that has a deadline like that. In fact, I’m in a down period now. For the past week or so, I’m mostly on some departmental administrative assignment. Budget. That’s all. If I thought there was something to it, I’d let you