Lullaby

And Duncan says, "The model of refrigerator?" Little spits of his saliva flash in the office lights.

Amana, I say.

"They have a calendar?" Little touches of Duncan's spit spray my hand, my arm, the side of my face. The spit's cold from the air-conditioning.

The calendar had a painting of an o[misprint for 30 letters] mill, I tell him, the waterwheel kind. Sent out by an insurance agent. Written on it was the baby's next appointment at the pediatrician. And the mother's upcoming GED exam. These dates and times and the pediatrician's name are all in my notes.

And Duncan says, "Damn, you're good."

His spit's drying on my skin and lips.

The kitchen floor was gray linoleum. The countertops were pink with black cigarette burns creeping in from the edge. On the counter next to the sink was a library book. Poems and Rhymes from Around the World.

The book was shut, and when I set it on its spine, when I let it fall open by itself, hoping it would show how far the reader had cracked the binding, the pages fluttered open to page 27. And I make a pencil mark in the margin.

My editor closes one eye and tilts his head at me. "What," he says, "kind of food dried on the dishes?"

Spaghetti, I say. Ca

Two hundred milligrams of salt per serving. One hundred fifty calories of fat. I don't know what I ever expect to find, but like everybody at the scene, it pays to look for a pattern.

Duncan says, "You see this?" and hands me a proof sheet from today's restaurant section. Above the fold, there's an advertisement. It's three columns wide by six inches deep. The top line says:

Attention Patrons of the Treeline Dining Club

The body copy says: "Have you contracted a treatment-resistant form of chronic fatigue syndrome after eating in this establishment? Has this food-borne virus left you unable to work and live a normal life? If so, please call the following number to be part of a classaction lawsuit."

Then there's a phone number with a weird prefix, maybe a cell phone.

Duncan says, "You think there's a story here?" and the page is dotted with his spit.

Here in the City Room, my pager starts to beep. It's the paramedics.

In journalism school, what they want you to be is a camera. A trained, objective, detached professional. Accurate, polished, and observant.

They want you to believe that the news and you are always two separate things. Killers and reporters are mutually exclusive. Whatever the story, this isn't about you.

My third baby is in a farmhouse two hours downstate.

My fourth baby is in a condo near a shopping mall.

One paramedic leads me to a back bedroom, saying, "Sorry we called you out on this one." His name is John Nash, and he pulls the sheet off a child in bed, a little boy too perfect, too peaceful, too white to be asleep. Nash says, "This one's almost six years old."

The details about Nash are, he's a big guy in a white uniform. He wears high-top white track shoes and gathers his hair into a little palm tree at the crown of his head.

"We could be working in Hollywood," Nash says. With this kind of clean bloodless death, there's no death agonies, no reverse peristalsis—the death throes where your digestive system works backward and you vomit fecal matter. "You start puking shit," Nash says, "and that's a realistic-type death scene."

What he tells me about crib death is that it occurs most between two and four months after birth. Over 90 percent of deaths occur before six months. Most researchers say that beyond ten months, it's almost impossible. Beyond a year old, the medical examiner calls the cause of death "undetermined." A second death of this nature in a family is considered homicide until proven otherwise.

In the condo, the bedroom walls are painted green. The bed has fla

When someone presses a pillow over the face of a child, the medical examiner calls this a "gentle homicide."

My fifth dead child is in a hotel room out by the airport.

With the farmhouse and the condo, there's the book Poems and Rhymes... Open to page

27. The same book from the county library with my pencil mark in the margin. In the hotel room, there's no book. It's a double room with the baby curled up in a queen-size bed next to the bed where the parents slept. There's a color television in an armoire, a thirtysix-inch Zenith with fifty-six cable cha

The front door swings open, and inside is a woman holding a cell phone to her ear, smiling at me and talking to somebody else.

"Mona," she says into the phone, "you'll have to make this quick. Mr. Streator's just arrived."

She shows me the back of her free hand, the tiny sparkling watch on her wrist, and says, "He's a few minutes early." Her other hand, her long pink fingernails with the tips painted white, with her little black cell phone, these are almost lost in the shining pink cloud of her hair.

Smiling, she says, "Relax, Mona," and her eyes go up and down me. "Brown sport coat," she says, "brown slacks, white shirt." She frowns and winces, "And a blue tie."

The woman tells the phone, "Middle-aged. Five-ten, maybe one hundred seventy pounds. Caucasian. Brown, green." She winks at me and says, "His hair's a little messy and he didn't shave today, but he looks harmless enough."

She leans forward a little and mouths, My secretary.

Into the phone, she says, "What?"

She steps aside and waves me in the door with her free hand. She rolls her eyes until they come around to meet mine and says, "Thank you for your concern, Mona, but I don't think Mr. Streator is here to rape me."

Where we're at is the Gartoller Estate on Walker Ridge Drive, a Georgian-style eightbedroom house with seven bathrooms, four fireplaces, a breakfast room, a formal dining room, and a fifteen-hundred-square-foot ballroom on the fourth floor. It has a separate six-car garage and a guesthouse. It has an in-ground swimming pool and a fire and intruder alarm system.

Walker Ridge Drive is the kind of neighborhood where they pick up the garbage five days a week. These are the kind of people who appreciate the threat of a good lawsuit, and when you stop by to introduce yourself, they smile and agree.

The Gartoller Estate is beautiful.

These neighbors won't ask you to come inside. They'll stand in their half-open front doors and smile. They'll tell you they really don't know anything about the history of the Gartoller house. It's a house.

If you ask any more, people will glance over your shoulder at the empty street. Then they'll smile again and say, "I can't help you. You really need to call the Realtor."

The sign at 3465 Walker Ridge Drive says Boyle Realty. Shown by appointment only.

At another house, a woman in a maid's uniform answered the door with a little fiveor six-year-old girl looking out from behind the maid's black skirt. The maid shook her head, saying she didn't know anything. "You'll have to call the listing agent," she said, "Helen Boyle. It's on the sign."

And the little girl said, "She's a witch."

And the maid closed the door.

Now inside the Gartoller house, Helen Hoover Boyle walks through the echoing, white empty rooms. She's still on her phone as she walks. Her cloud of pink hair, her fitted pink suit, her legs in white stockings, her feet in pink, medium heels. Her lips are gummy with pink lipstick. Her arms sparkle and rattle with gold and pink bracelets, gold chains, charms, and coins.

Enough ornaments for a Christmas tree. Pearls big enough to choke a horse.

Into the phone, she says, "Did you call the people in the Exeter House? They should've run screaming out of there two weeks ago."

She walks through tall double doors, into the next room, then the next.

"Uh-huh," she says. "What do you mean, they're not living there?"

Tall arched windows look out onto a stone terrace. Beyond that is a lawn striped with lawn mower tracks, beyond that a swimming pool.

Into the phone, she says, "You don't spend a million-two on a house and then not live there." Her voice is loud and sharp in these rooms without furniture or carpets.

A small pink and white purse hangs from a long gold chain looped over her shoulder.

Five foot six. A hundred and eighteen pounds. It would be hard to peg her age. She's so thin she must be either dying or rich. Her suit's some kind of nubby sofa fabric, edged with white braid. It's pink, but not shrimp pink. It's more the color of shrimp pate served on a water cracker with a sprig of parsley and a dollop of caviar. The jacket is tailored tight at her pinched waist and padded square at her shoulders. The skirt is short and snug. The gold buttons, huge.

She's wearing doll clothes.

"No," she says, "Mr. Streator is right here." She lifts her penciled eyebrows and looks at me. "Am I wasting his time?" she says. "I hope not."

Smiling, she tells the phone, "Good. He's shaking his head no."

I have to wonder what about me made her say middle-aged.

To tell the truth, I say, I'm not really in the market for a house.

With two pink fingernails over the cell phone, she leans toward me and mouths, Just one more minute.

The truth is, I say, I got her name off some records at the county coroner's office. The truth is, I've pored over the forensic records for every local crib death within the past twenty-five years.

And still listening to the phone, without looking at me, she puts the pink fingernails of her free hand against my lapel and keeps them there, pushing just a little. Into the phone, she says, "So what's the problem? Why aren't they living there?"

Judging from her hand, this close-up, she must be in her late thirties or early forties. Still this taxidermied look that passes for beauty above a certain age and income, it's too old for her. Her skin already looks exfoliated, plucked, scruffed, moisturized, and made up until she could be a piece of refinished furniture. Reup-holstered in pink. A restoration. Renovated.