"LIEUTENANT!" I heard a loud knocking on my glass.

I bolted up. My watch read 6:30 A.M. I must have dozed off waiting for Molinari to report with more news on Danko.

Paul Chin was at my door. "Lieutenant, you better get on line three. Now..."

"Danko?" I blinked myself awake.

"Better. We got a woman from Wisconsin who thinks her daughter is tied up with Stephen Hardaway. I think she knows where she is!"

In the seconds it took to knock the sleep out of my brain, Chin went back to his desk and got a backup recording going. I picked up the phone.

"Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer," I cleared my throat and said.

The woman started in as if she had left off in mid-sentence with Chin, her voice upset, maybe not too educated. Midwestern.

"I always told her something with this smart-ass guy didn't add up. She said he was so brilliant. Brilliant, my ass... She always wanted to do good, my Michelle. She was easy to take advantage of. I said, `Just go to the state school. You can be anything you want.'"

"Your daughter's name is Michelle?" I picked up a pen. "Ms....?"

"Fontieul. That's right, Michelle Fontieul."

I scribbled down the name. "Why don't you just tell me what you know?"

"I seen him, you know," the woman recounted. "That fel-low on TV. The one everybody's looking for. My Michelle's hooked up with him.

"Course his name wasn't Stephen then. What'd she call him on the phone? Malcolm? Mal. They drove through here heading out west. I think he was from Portland or Washing-ton. He got her into this `protesting' thing. I didn't even understand half of what it meant. I tried to warn her."

"You're sure this was the same man you saw on TV?" I pressed.

"I'm sure. Course, his hair's different now. And he didn't have no beard. I knew -"