"Not really. I feel a little disoriented."

"It's still there. How do you think I paid for dinner?" Mike asked.

"Great cartographer, born Gerhard Kremer in 1512, who coined the word 'atlas'-after the mythical Titan he idolized-for his collection of world maps, renamed himself this," Trebek said.

"Help yourself to another twenty. I'm out," I said.

The three contestants drew the same blank I did.

"I guess Rand and McNally weren't born in 1512," Mike said.

"Baby needs new shoes," Mercer said, holding out his hand to Mike. "Who was Mercator? Gerardus Mercator."

"Sometimes you surprise me," Mike said. "The old man?"

Mercer's father had been a mechanic for Delta Airlines. "He used to bring home maps all the time, so I could study the pilot's routes. Don't you guys remember Mercator's projections, with those rectilinear rhumb lines?"

"Sorry, Mercer. I'm fading on you."

"I have one little present I've been saving," Mercer said. "Transit's got the MetroCard decoded-the one from the pocket of the Silk Stocking Rapist. They faxed it up to the office this afternoon. You'll have it tomorrow."

"Any surprises?"

"Lexington Avenue subway. Seventy-seventh Street mostly. Just where we figured he was living or working. You can grid it out yourself when you get home. See if it tells you anything."

By nine o'clock, I could barely hold my eyes open. The guys were playing gin at my bedside.

"Give in to it, Coop. You're whipped," Mike said. He put down his hand and walked out to ask the nurse for my medications.

I was fighting sleep because I was terrified of my dreams. The pain had subsided but the feeling of being entombed infused every one of my senses. I ached to shut down my body and brain, but dreaded the nightmares to come.

The nurse came in with the white paper cup and dumped some pills into my hand. I didn't even ask what they were before I swallowed them.

Mercer stood up to pull the chain that turned off the light over my pillow.

"Leave it on, please," I said.

He kissed the tip of my nose. "I'll keep the one next to my chair on all night. I'm not going anywhere, Alex."

I turned on my side and tried to get comfortable. Think wonderful thoughts, happy thoughts, my mother used to tell me as a child, when I awakened during the night. Then I would close my eyes and imagine myself walking on the beach with my father, holding his hand while he told me stories about his youth and his romance with my mother, or think of my last trip to my grand-mother's farm, and how she indulged me whenever I visited there. Now I called up memories of the happiest events I could conjure, but they were interrupted by dark visions of the day barely over.

I remember opening my eyes, seeing Mike and Mercer engrossed in their card game, and closing them again. I felt the pills start to do their magic. I fell asleep.

It must have been seven o'clock when I awakened. The morning routine in a hospital never allows sleeping in. Nurses and aides changing shifts, meal trolleys carting forty trays down the hall, and janitors mopping floors overcame the strongest sleeping potions.

I stirred and looked up. Mercer and Mike were gone, but the deck of cards was on the table next to my water pitcher.

I sat up and outside the door of my room saw the back of a cop's uniform. The officer seemed to be dozing in his chair, his head hanging forward. I pushed down the bed railing and started toward him. He must have heard the noise and stood up immediately, walking into the room.

"Miss Cooper? Morning. I'm Gerry McCallion, from the Thirteenth-"

"Where's Wallace? Where's Chapman?"

"They were gone when I got here, about oneA.M. Don't worry, ma'am. You were never alone. There was an interim shift-"

"I'm not worried about that. It's not like them to leave once they told me they'd be here."

"It's the one from Homicide, Miss Cooper. Around midnight, he got a call with some bad news."

"What-?"

McCallion spoke over me. "His ladyfriend was in some kind of accident up in Canada. Broke her neck in a fall is what I was told. The girl is dead."

"Where are you?" I asked Mercer. "Can you talk?"

"Yeah. I just stepped out of the car when my phone rang. Mike's out cold. He fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago. What time is it?"

"Almost eight o'clock. What happened? Where-"

"Val's brother called Mike on his cell phone. I had gone to the other room to put my head down for an hour or so-must have come in around twelve. This ski business, you know about it?"

"Val talked about it a bit. A helicopter flies them out somewhere in the wilderness, drops them on top of a mountain. Pure powder, that kind of thing. Experts only."

"Yeah, well, one of the dangers is that those uncharted runs can be pretty unstable," Mercer said, pausing. "The group of them jumping, or something the chopper did letting them down, set off some kind of cataclysmic reaction."

"She fell, is that what did it?"

"Three of them, Alex, they went off into a crevasse. The snow shifted and exposed an enormous break in the surface. Val and two others just-just went over the edge. Her brother was in the pack behind them. He watched it happen."

I thought of the courage with which Valerie Jacobsen had fought to conquer the cancer that had ravaged her body, only to lose her life to a treacherous sport.

"This happened yesterday?"

"The day before. It took them twenty-four hours to recover the bodies."

"And Mike only got the call last night? What are those people thinking? Don't they have any idea how much he loves her?"

"His fix on it? He's sure Val's parents didn't want him out there. I don't think they knew how serious the relationship was. He thinks they just didn't want to know."

"The funeral?"

"First thing this morning. Nine o'clock, in Palo Alto. Family only. He couldn't have gotten there in time if he wanted to. Maybe they planned it that way."

I always thought it was one of the things the Jewish religion dealt with best. Don't sit with the body in a room for a week. Get the burial done before the next day's sundown and then get on with the grieving. It was so at odds with the practices Mike had grown up with in the Catholic Church, and so foreign to his personal experience.

"There's going to be a memorial service in two weeks, according to the brother," Mercer said. "I'm telling you, Alex, Mike's in a blind rage. He doesn't know who to lash out at."

"Where are you?"

"That's a good question," Mercer said. "Ever hear of Jamestown, Rhode Island?"

"Sure, right over the bridge from Newport. Why?"

"We're parked behind a gas station here," Mercer answered softly. "We've been jackassing all over the place since we left Manhattan. It's like he's trying to find a piece of Val, something concrete to hang on to. I can't explain it any better than that."

"But there?"

"When his phone vibrated, he left your room so he wouldn't wake you up. Of course, he had no idea who was calling or why. He came in and woke me up-must have been just after he got the news."

"What'd he do?"

"He-he was just out of control. He was angry-he knew he had to get out of the hospital before he turned the place upside down. I'd say he was more furious than he was sad."

"Mike will have all the time in the world to be sad."

"Then he started calling the airlines. See what time he could get a flight. Val's brother called back to talk him out of that."

"Have you stayed with him the whole time?"

"Most of it. He needed to go to Val's place. That's the first thing he wanted to do. And he wanted to go there alone. I thought he needed that."

"I'm sure he did."

"He was up there about an hour. When he came downstairs he told me he wanted to take a ride, to drive somewhere. He's got a pocketful of pictures of her and an armful of her favorite books. I told him he wasn't going anywhere without me."