She frowned.

“I wouldn’t mind if a bit of that”—he nodded toward a bottle of old Glenmorangie scotch—“ended up in there.” The nod shifted toward his tumbler. “You might want to keep it quiet, though.”

“Thom?”

A nod. “He enacts Prohibition from time to time. It’s rather irritating.”

Kathryn Dance knew the value of indulging. (Okay, maybe she’d gained six pounds in Tijuana; that had been a long, long week.) She set the dog down and poured him a good healthy dose. She fit the cup into the holder of his wheelchair, arranging the straw near his mouth.

“Thanks.” He took a long sip. “Whatever you’re billing the city for your time, I’ll authorize double pay. And help yourself. Thom won’t give you any grief.”

“Maybe some caffeine.” She poured a black coffee and allowed herself one of the oatmeal cookies that the aide had set out. He’d baked them himself.

Dance glanced at her watch. Three hours earlier in California. “Excuse me for a minute. Check in at home.”

“Go right ahead.”

She made a call on her mobile. Maggie answered.

“Hey, sweets.”

“Mommy.”

The girl was a talker and Dance got a ten-minute account of a Christmas shopping trip with her nana. Maggie concluded with: “And then we came back here and I read Harry Potter.”

“The new one?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many times is that?”

“Six.”

“Wouldn’t you like to read something different? Expand your horizons?”

Maggie replied, “Gee, Mom, like, how many times’ve you listened to Bob Dylan? That Blonde on Blonde album. Or U2?”

Unassailable logic. “You got me there, sweets, only don’t say like.”

“Mom. When’re you coming home?”

“Tomorrow probably. Love you. Put your brother on.”

Wes came on the phone and they too chatted for a while, the conversation more halting and more serious in tone. He’d been dropping hints about taking karate lessons and now he asked her point-blank if he could. Dance, though, preferred he take up something less combative if he wanted a sport other than soccer and baseball. His muscular body would be perfect for tennis or gymnastics, she thought, but those didn’t have much appeal to him.

As an interrogator, Kathryn Dance knew a great deal about the subject of anger; she saw it in the suspects as well as the victims she interviewed following crimes. She believed that Wes’s recent interest in martial arts came from the occasional anger that settled like a cloud over him after his father’s death. Competition was fine but she didn’t think it would be healthy for him to engage in a fighting sport, not at this point in his life. Sanctioned fury can be a very dangerous thing, especially with youngsters.

She talked to him about the decision for some time.

Working on the Watchmaker case with Rhyme and Sachs had made Kathryn Dance very aware of time. She realized how much she used it in her work—and with her children. The passage of time, for instance, diffuses anger quickly (outbursts can rarely be sustained longer than three minutes) and weakens resistance to opposing positions—better than strident argument in most cases. Dance didn’t now say no to karate but got him to agree to try a few tennis lessons. (She’d once overheard him say to a friend, “Yeah, it sucks when your mom’s a cop.” Dance had laughed hard to herself at that.)