"What about the seat belt?"

"The driver…" She stuttered immediately, shocked by her coldness at using that impersonal word.

Quincy didn't say anything and the silence loomed huge this time, a giant black void between them. They couldn't get this right, Rainie thought suddenly, desperately. Even when they were trying, they couldn't get this right.

"Mandy reported the seat belt broken a month before the accident," she tried again, her voice meek now, humbled by her mistake. "She made an appointment with the garage that serviced her vehicle, then canceled at the last minute."

"She'd been driving without a working seat belt for a month?"

"It would appear so."

"Why didn't someone pull her over? I thought there were seat belt laws in this state!"

Rainie didn't reply to his outburst. She knew he didn't expect her to.

"What had happened to the seat belt?" he redirected his line of questioning. "How did it break?"

"We don't know yet. Officer Amity is helping me locate the vehicle so I can examine it, but fourteen months later makes things difficult. Most likely the Explorer has already been broken down for parts at some salvage yard."

"I want to know what happened to the seat belt."

"I'll find it, Quincy. You know I'll find it."

"And the man, the one she was supposedly seeing?"

"First thing tomorrow morning, I meet with Mary Olsen. Hopefully she can point me in his direction. I'll also check in with Mandy's local AA group. They probably know more about her personal life."

"AA has policies about giving out information."

"Then I'll just have to turn on my charm again."

"Rainie – "

"I'm on top of the case, Quincy. Things are beginning to happen and I know you need answers. Ill get them."

His silence was subdued now, a long soft spell where they both sat not too many miles apart and yet still too far away. She wondered if he was sitting in a darkened room. She wondered if he'd skipped dinner again, the way he'd probably skipped lunch before that and breakfast before that. She wondered how many hours he'd pace before finally falling in a restless, exhausted sleep. And then she wondered how they could know each other so well, and still have this chasm between them.

"I should go," Quincy said. "I want to speak to Everett first thing in the morning."

" Everett?"

"Special Agent in Charge. He'll want to know about the phone calls, assuming he doesn't already. Plus, I need to type up this list of names."

Rainie glanced at the clock. It was now after midnight.

" Quincy," she began.

"I'm fine."

"I'm not that far away. One hour tops, I can be at your front door."

"And then what, Rainie? Then everything's all right, because now I'm your charity case?"

"Hey, it's not like that at all!"

"Yes? And what do you think it is I've been trying to say? Understanding is not pity. Oh, but excuse me, in your world it is."

" Quincy…"

"Thank you for the update, Investigator Conner. Good night."

The phone punctuated his sharp sentence with a click. Rainie thinned her lips, shook her head, and replaced her own receiver much more slowly.

"But my case was different," she muttered. Her motel room remained silent. She figured that was an appropriate enough reply.

Later, six hours later, the motel alarm clock beeped to life and Rainie crawled blearily out of bed. Jet lag had caught up with her. She gulped down twelve ounces of Coke for breakfast and still felt half dead.

She hit the four-lane street, running for thirty minutes through the concrete maze of a seemingly endless strip mall tucked conveniently off Interstate 95. Middle-aged men in rumpled suits poured out of the motel. A line of cars sat impatiently at a McDonald's drive-through.

Rainie ran through parking lot after parking lot, dodging reckless cars and people already fed up with their morning commute. Tall maple trees and dark waxy magnolias beckoned lushly in the distance. Wild honeysuckle grabbed at cement barriers lining the parking lots as if the vine would reclaim the urban jungle as its own. Rainie coughed on diesel fumes from spewing trucks and fought her way back to Motel 6, wishing the green landscape didn't make her think of Bakersville again and long for the feel of salty ocean air upon her face.

She took a five-minute shower, towel-dried her hair, and combed in mousse. Expecting another long day, she donned a pair of worn jeans and a clean white T-shirt, the official uniform of the aspiring PI. She checked her phone messages on her home answering machine while lacing up her shoes. The weather was already brutally hot outside. Man, what she would give to wear sandals and shorts.

She blew the thought aside while hearing that she had six new messages, a personal record. She grabbed the motel pen and pad of paper.

First two messages were from clients wanting updates. She really should do that. The next three messages were all hang ups, received in hourly intervals. If the person couldn't be bothered to leave a message, she decided, she couldn't be bothered to wonder about who they were. The final message was from some lawyer she'd never heard of, requesting a basic information packet.

She eyed the clock, judged it to be four A.M. Pacific Coast time, and shrewdly called back the law firm to tell the lawyer that her secretary would send him something in the mail. Then she left her number at Motel 6, just in case the lawyer wanted a more immediate reply. She now felt industrious and exceedingly clever and it was not even noon.

Rainie finished lacing her shoes. After a moment's hesitation, she slid her Glock.40 into a shoulder holster. A simple black jacket covered the bulge.

Seven A.M., she picked up her notes and headed out the door. The sun glared harsh white, causing her to blink. Her tiny rental car felt like it was two hundred degrees inside. Damn, she thought. It was going to be a killer of a day.

Quantico, Virginia

"The first call arrived at two thirty-two P.M., Tuesday afternoon." Back in the bowels of the earth, Quincy reported last night's events in his crispest voice to Special Agent in Charge Chad Everett, while the SAC nodded attentively and a fluorescent bulb buzzed ominously overhead. "At ten-eighteen P.M., I personally handled a call from Miguel Sanchez. There have been more calls since; given the circumstances, I've been letting the machine pick up." Quincy handed over copies of the freshly made case file to the assembled agents. They accepted the information while continuing to regard him gravely.

"Enclosed you will find a complete list of caller activity and the corrections departments currently involved in the situation," he continued. "Eight officers checked in with me, which you will see noted. In some cases, they reported my personal information being passed along from inmate to inmate in the yard. More interesting, however, is the last two officers, who identified the source of the information as being an ad currently running in their local prison newsletters. In one newsletter, I'm a producer looking to interview inmates for an upcoming documentary on prison life. Interested parties are encouraged to contact me directly at the number listed below. In another newsletter, I'm eagerly seeking a prison pen pal, again, please contact me at the number listed below."

Quincy smiled tightly. "I'm still waiting to hear back from a few sources, but it would appear that similar ads just appeared in at least six other newsletters, including Cellpals, Freedom Now, and my personal favorite, Prison Legal News, which has a monthly circulation of over three thousand. Then there are the Web sites, such as PrisonPenPals.com, which apparently has been paid to e-mail my ad to dozens of prisoners 'seeking a new friend.' Look at me. I'm a groupie."