On this particular morning, she sat at her desk looking at a strange file. A foreign father. Local business owner. Reports from a teacher who suspected an alcohol problem. He’d been one of Lonnie’s cases and according to her notes he’d seemed fully cooperative on the alcohol issue and had agreed to attend meetings at Common Ground.

From the get-go, the case had barely made it into Category Four—some evidence of neglect but not enough to substantiate. CPS allocated thirty days to assess whether a case merited a full-blown investigation and for this one the thirty days seemed to have passed without incident. He’d turned up for meetings. Physical examinations of his eleven-year-old daughter had thrown up no signs of abuse or malnourishment. Lonnie had signed the guy off.

Then another call came in. Source wished to remain anonymous. Nothing unusual there. Teachers and family members often took that route. Unfortunately for the guy in question, Caitlyn was new in her job at Oakland and her workload hadn’t stacked up yet. So she had time to make more inquiries after the anonymous call had come in. She dialed Lonnie’s extension.

Lonnie answered and Caitlyn got straight to the point. The two of them didn’t have a warm relationship. Caitlyn put it all down to Lonnie seeing her as competition. She wished she could have just said to her that she had no intention of encroaching on Lonnie’s hunting grounds.

“We just had an anonymous call through on one of yours, Lonnie.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Abby Burnham.”

There was a pause. Caitlyn sensed something. Was Lonnie bristling?

“OK,” said Lonnie hesitantly. “What’s the scoop?”

“You want me to send you the caller details and what they said?”

There was another pause before Lonnie spoke. This time it was with an uncharacteristic warmth.

“Look, Caitlyn, can I ask you to take this one on?”

“Take your case on?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. You won’t have to do much. Spencer, I mean the father, he’s not . . . You should just leave it at Cat Five.”

“Why so certain?”

Again, Lonnie paused before responding. “He’s mixed up in some shady stuff or something. I had a visit from a couple of detectives about the guy. They were trying to get me to put pressure on him to stop working for some sketchy people, that’s all.”

“‘Sketchy’? As in?”

“Criminal, I guess.”

“OK. And did you?”

“I, uh, tried, but, well, it’s hard to know if it goes in.”

If the conversation had taken place face-to-face, Caitlyn would have seen Lonnie wince at her choice of words.

“From what our caller was saying, it would seem he hasn’t listened to you on anything, Lonnie.”

“You might have more luck with him. I was probably too soft on the guy.”