Scott Turow - Personal injuries

She was halfway down the front hall now, spidering along with her backside to the wall. Recently, she'd been playing softball, a Sunday pickup game in a nearby park, kind of a boys-meet-girls event, but many of the participants competed seriously, and she'd bought a black graphite bat last week, which was still propped in a corner a few feet from where she was now, in the living room. Ahead, she saw a shadow move. She flattened herself and held her breath. Voices sputtered up once more. She had just placed the source when a middle-aged slope-bellied copper stopped at the end of the hallway and looked her up and down. He was pug-nosed and fairly cheerful-looking, despite his eyes, which were so small they had barely any whites. He reached to his belt to turn down his radio.

"Lady of the house?" he asked.

"Something like that." She showed him her key.

"Got a report," he said. "Burglary in progress. But I guess we missed them. You want to step back outside, I'll just finish. Take a minute. Or wait in the kitchen. I've already covered that."

The whole apartment had been tossed. Cabinets, dressers. The officer had a flashlight in his hand and was stepping carefully over the drawers of her bedroom wardrobe and their contents, which had been emptied out here on the meal-colored rug. He was agile for a big man, for somebody his age.

In the kitchen, the back door was wide open. There was nothing subtle. The dead bolt had been forced right through the plaster, leaving, even now, bitter white dust in the air and a crater in the wall the shape of a bowler hat. A piece of wallpaper hung down, as if exhausted, and the molding had been pulled straight off, revealing the three-inch straight nails with which the finish carpenters had applied it. Crowbar, she decided and was surprised, stepping to the threshold, to see the tool outside, still resting on the steel fire escape.

"The crowbar they used is on the back porch yet," she called. "You might want it for prints."

She'd returned to the living room. The copper looked back into the bedroom for something and took his time in responding.

"You don't get much from that kind of surface," he said. "But I'll take it along." In the kitchen, an empty plastic bag from the grocery produce section rested on the counter. He asked if she could spare it and he grabbed the crowbar with that He laid it on the white Formica breakfast bar, pulled a tiny spiral notebook from his back pocket, and asked her for her name and date of birth. She panicked for a second until she recollected that the birth dates were the same, Evon Miller's and hers.

"Probably kids," the cop said. "Doesn't look too professional, the way they went through that wall. Must have raised a racket Anything special they'd want with you?" She shook her head mutely. But his question unsettled her. Probably kids, she told herself. She asked if she could look around to see what was missing.

"TV's still there. Looks like most of the big stuff's in place. I must have scared them off. God knows what's in their pockets, though. You'll probably be finding stuff missing for days. But go ahead, look. Anything with some value could turn up in the North End. Be good to know about it."

She walked through the apartment. The wreckage was upsetting. Every closet door was open. They'd gone through her bedroom with vicious speed, probably looking for jewelry. Her dresses were all off their hangers and on most of the garments the pockets had been turned inside out. A small jewelry box on her bureau had been upended, the pieces strewn around the room. She'd never know what was missing, but it was all costume stuff anyway that the Movers had provided. Even her bed had been disturbed, The spread and covers had been ripped off and the mattress now sat crookedly on the box spring. A routine hiding place, under the mattress, jokes notwithstanding. Probably kids, she told herself again.

When she went under, the Movers had given her the option of keeping her FBI credentials. It was a rainy-day measure, worse coming to worst. But if a snoopy boyfriend found them, well, most likely you were blown. That was how the leader, Dorville, had explained it. Agents who were undercover in the world of dope, of fencing, many of them held on to their creds, because they were likely to get arrested. But she didn't figure to have that need and she was relieved now she'd made the decision to leave them behind. Even her gun, much as she missed it, might have been a problem. She finally saw the logic.

She went back to the living room. The drawers had been pulled out on a small desk theme. She had been dictating today's 302 before she left, and she pawed around through what was on the floor, looking for her Dictaphone. It was gone, as well as the spare microcassettes that had been in the drawer beside it. To her best memory, there was not that much yet on the recording-the case file number, her voice referring to herself as `undersigned agent.' Still, that cassette, in the wrong hands, would give her away.

"Anything gone?" called the copper.

"Hard to tell," she answered. There was so much disruption, so many odd things thrown here and there, that she knew the Dictaphone and the tapes could still be here. She picked through clothing, books, CDs on the floor. She went into the bedroom and systematically worked her way around the room. In the living room, she found the Dictaphone, but today's tape had been removed. Hoping, she checked her briefcase, but the microcassette was not in the side pouch where she routinely zipped the tape when she was done. Two inches by one, though, the cassette would be easy to miss. It was going to turn up, she told herself.

She walked around the apartment one more time, looking things over. Nothing else seemed to be missing. Then she realized that a birthday card she'd written to her mother, sealed in its white envelope and addressed, had also been removed from the desk. Fear darkly bloomed near her heart. She'd signed it 'DeDe.' Still, that was nothing, who'd make anything of DeDe? Only Marty Carmody, she realized. And Walter.

As the anxiety began knifing deeper, she added it up. Would kids skip the CDs and go for a birthday card? Would they take the tapes and not the Dictaphone? That's why the pockets of her clothing had been rummaged, why her bed had been overturned. Carmody's information had finally made the circle, from Walter to somebody who cared.

The cop was ready to go. He stooped for his hat on her coffee table. As he did, the white corner of an envelope peeked up out of his rear pocket and Evon missed a breath.

Lots of things came in envelopes, she told herself. Lots of people carried stuff in their back pockets. But she recollected all of Robbie's warnings about Brendan's enduring connections on the Force. The brass, almost all of them, were Brendan's pals. He'd served on the Force with most of the Area Commanders and had cultivated the others over the years. Milacki, in fact, was still on the job.

"How'd this call come in anyway?" Evon asked, trying to sound casual.

The copper wiped a thick hand across his mouth. "One of the neighbors, I suspect."

"You know which one? I really oughta go say thank you."

"Fraid not. Just a 911. Beat hell over here, you know how it is." He was looking around the living room as if he'd left something. Maybe he didn't want to meet her eye, Or perhaps he was already wondering what tipped her.

She'd gone back to the front window and looked through the miniblinds down to the avenue. There was no squad car outside.

"It was just a real surprise to find you in here," she said. "I didn't even see a police car outside."

The copper looked at her with sudden directness. His tiny eyes had hardened and she cursed herself. She might as well have handed the guy a note that he'd been busted. And like a bat suddenly flying through the room, Evon abruptly realized this man was weighing the thought of killing her. It was not necessarily something he wanted to do. It was just that he had never really considered his alternatives. But if she beeped the Bureau for assistance, if they searched him and found that card and her Dictaphone tapes in his pockets, his life was over. There was a Chief's Special, a.38 Smith amp; Wesson, on his hip. And he could use any excuse: she snuck in; he mistook her for another bandit.