I knew I couldn't run much farther. Blood pounded behind my ears. The sinews of my legs sang with a fine pain like high tension wires humming in the wind. I was past the point of rational thought when I noticed motion at the far edge of my peripheral vision. A car was approaching from behind. As it closed in, I checked my mental map of the area. There was a vacant lot ahead that I could cut through. But before I could reach it the car accelerated sharply, swinging around the corner to block my path. I could barely stop before careening into it, my palms smacking against the hood as I tried to keep my balance. Only then did I see who was inside, leaning over to throw open the passenger door of his Jeep. "Jesus, Dugan. Trying to run me over?"

"Get in." It was a sharp command.

"Why?"

He had his jacket pushed back to clear his holster as his eyes scanned the street, on full alert. "Who's chasing you?"

"Nobody." Breathing hard, I wiped sweat out of my eyes with the heel of my hand. "Just getting some exercise."

He stared at me. "Looked like the hounds of hell were after you."

I leaned on the open door, a little dizzy from the sudden stop, and massaged a calf muscle that had tightened painfully. "Not unless you're talking about that obnoxious dachshund down the street, but he's tied up."

"Sit down a minute, anyway, catch your breath." I hesitated, then climbed in. He turned to rummage in a duffel bag on the backseat and handed me a bottle of water. I cracked it open and drank half of it in thirsty gulps.

"When I see people running like that in this neighborhood, it's usually not for exercise," Dugan said.

"So I should drive over to the lakeshore and use the jogging path like normal people?" I said. "This is where I live."

"I know." His affable response felt like a rebuke. Of course he knew where I lived. He'd spent hours all summer helping me transform the neglected scrap of land behind my West Side two-flat into a real garden with a brick terrace and raised flower beds overflowing with color. "You look tired," he said. "Still having trouble sleeping?"

I drank the rest of the water and set the empty bottle on the floor. "I just ran three miles."

"As if the dachshunds of hell were after you. Haven't seen you in a while. How's it going?"

"The garden's a mess. Everything's dying."

"Guess I should have warned you. That happens in the fall."

"All that work, then you get one lousy frost and all that's left is a bunch of dead stalks. What's the point?"

"You get to do it all over again in the spring."

The sun had gone down and the October air was crisp. I rubbed my arms, feeling chilled. My fingers unconsciously found the places on my upper arm where a bullet had passed through, leaving a dimple on the front, a welt of scar tissue where it exited. It had been a minor injury, quickly healed. My closest friend hadn't been so lucky. Though over a year had passed since Jim Tilquist had died, it hadn't gotten any easier to deal with.

I realized Dugan was watching me. Like most cops, he was good at taking things in without giving anything away. Still, I felt exposed, so I untied the hooded jacket I had knotted around my waist and slipped it on. It hid the scars from view, but I could tell Dugan knew what made it hard for me to sleep, what made me run until my thoughts shut down.

Though our careers with the Chicago Police Department had overlapped, Dugan's path hadn't crossed mine until after I'd resigned and took out a private investigator's license. He had taken advantage of the opening at Harrison Area Violent Crimes to transfer from an administrative post at headquarters to a position where he could spend more time on the street. He was a good detective, and unusually free of cynicism given he'd been on the job for seventeen years. Though he was dedicated and hardworking, his true passion was growing things. The moment he first saw the neglected wasteland that was my excuse for a backyard he started imagining the possibilities.

Six months earlier, we had bumped into each other at a Division Street café. Though it was a wintery day, with snowflakes squalling out of a leaden sky, he pulled out an envelope and started sketching out what I could do with my small patch of weeds and dirt. A few days later, in the midst of a sloppy thaw, he showed up at my place with tools and a six-pack of Leinenkugel's, putting me to work until I had blisters on my hands, dirt wedged under my fingernails, and a close acquaintance with back muscles I hadn't even known were there. He came by most Saturdays, but once the growing season came to an end, our get-togethers grew less frequent. We hadn't seen each other for almost a month.

"What brings you up here on a Wednesday evening?" I asked. "One of my neighbors misbehaving?"

"No doubt, but nobody's reported it yet. I had an errand to run. Stopped by your place to see if you had time to grab some dinner. You weren't home, so I figured you must be busy with one of your kids."

"My kids? What a horrible thought."

"Figure of speech. The wayward youth you specialize in."

"I was never convinced I was cut out to be a parent. Now I know for sure I'm not."

"That bad?"

"Not really. They're good kids, just messed up. We only had two crises this month. One of them is in the hospital. The other one's in rehab. Again."

"The one in the hospital — it's not Jim's kid, is it?"

"No. Sophie's been doing fine lately."

By chance, I had found a strange niche in my new profession. After helping the Tilquists find their daughter, who had bipolar disorder and tended to disappear from home during manic episodes, word of mouth led to my working for a handful of North Shore families with troubled teenagers. Whenever they lost track of their off-spring they'd give me a call. I wasn't always able to find the kids before they did something stupid or got themselves hurt, but it gave their desperate parents the sense they were doing something. There was no shortage of potential clients. It wouldn't be hard to make it a full-time specialty, but it was emotionally taxing work, so I balanced it with more routine investigative jobs, most of them for Thea Adelman, a lawyer who specialized in civil rights cases. We didn't get along very well, but her dry irascibility was a refreshing contrast to parental anguish.

"I might have a new client," I told Dugan. "This woman e-mailed me out of the blue a couple of days ago asking if I was free to work on something."

"Another wayward youth?"

"I don't think so. But she didn't tell me what it was about and hasn't responded since. Maybe the rates scared her off." Which was disappointing. I wasn't sure my aging furnace would last through another Chicago winter, and replacing it wouldn't be cheap.

"What about dinner? There's a new Puerto Rican place not far from here that —" His cell phone rang as he spoke and he grimaced. "Shit." He had a cryptic conversation, mostly grunts, before punching it off. "Great timing. Sorry, I —"

"No problem. I know how it goes."

"A guy who's given me decent information before just got picked up on a drug beef. Says he used to run with Diggy Salazar, wants to deal. He probably doesn't know anything, but ..." He shrugged.

"You're working on the Miller case?"

"Everyone is. Highest priority, according to the chief of detectives."

It wasn't surprising, given that the controversial case...