“But you decided to check the Fox footage instead? Smart, Sammy. So do you have a theory to explain all this? Does tonight-the tunnel and this video-does it change your thinking about her disappearance? You still sure she’s a runaway?”

“I have a few theories,” he said. “How many do you have?”

He waited for me to answer.

When I didn’t, he added, “Thought so. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

I left the show-and-tell right there. “You still want to run in the morning? I’m happy to bag it if you’re too busy.”

“I want to run,” he said. “No excuses. Since it’s Saturday, I’ll let you sleep in. Come outside at seven-thirty-I don’t want to ring the bell.”

I finally made it home from the police station, took the dogs out for a last time, climbed into bed, and rubbed Lauren’s back until she awakened. Although I left a few names and a few details out of my story, I told her enough of what I knew that she understood the magnitude of my dilemma. I finished by asking for her advice.

Her counsel was succinct. “Higher, on my neck. Right there.”

“That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it. On one hand you know a lot. On the other hand you don’t know much. You need to leverage what you have. Save Diane no matter what it takes, screw the rest.”

“It’s all that clear to you? I could get censured, lose my license.”

She rolled over and faced me. My eyes were adjusting to the dark and I could see the shimmer of her irises. She said, “You’d have to sleep with a patient, kill her, and then have sacrilegious sex with her dead body before that spineless state board would yank your license, and you know it. But what if they do? You and me and Grace? We’ll make it if you have to change careers. We will. Will you make it if you knew you could have done something that might have helped Diane and you didn’t do it? I don’t think so. You’re pussyfooting around this, Alan. The rules need to be broken sometimes. This is one of those times. Break the damn rules, save your friend, suffer the consequences. You won’t be able to live with any other choice, you know that.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She reached a warm arm out from under the comforter, put her fingers on the side of my neck, and lowered her voice to a late-night whisper. “There’s some things I know about you, sweetie: You’re a better cook when you’re not too hungry. You’re a better dad when you’re not feeling too protective. And you’re a better lover when you’re not too horny.”

“You have a point?”

“You want this to be right too much, and it’s clouding your judgment. Step back. Take off your therapist hat. Be a friend, first. You’ll know what to do.”

I didn’t have to think long to know that her advice was sound.

“What?” she said, sensing something.

“I’m a better lover when I’m not too horny? Really?”

She smiled and shrugged. She dropped her hand so that it slid down my bare chest. “You want to prove otherwise?”

The truth was, I didn’t. Not right then.

The way he told it to me later, Raoul’s evening, like mine, ended with just the slightest ray of hope.

More quarry tile than he had seen in a long, long time. Big tiles-eighteen-inch squares. Brick-red, uneven surfaces, with dirty grout lines as fat as a grown man’s finger. The tile extended through every doorway, down every hall. This house was apparently where the awful quarry tile from that dubious ’70s design burp had gone to die.

Raoul had expected to find a posse surrounding Canada, a jury of pathetic hangers-on. He’d expected to have to weed through a motley assortment of tougher-than-shit Cristal and Courvoisier-and-Coke-drinking parasites.

Instead he found a fit, barefoot man wearing crinkled linen slacks and a faded polo shirt that was the color of the flesh of a ripe mango. The man was sitting on one of two big armchairs that shared a large, mismatched ottoman and faced floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors in the living room. His legs were crossed at the ankles. One toenail on his left foot had turned the brown-black of just-roasted coffee beans. It was the toe next to the pinky.

Canada was alone.

“Sit,” he said to Raoul.

Tico loitered across the room near the back door where the parking lot of quarry tile started, or ended. He said, “You cool, Boss?”

“Yeah, get yourself something to eat.”

Tico saluted with a motion of two fingers flying out from his right nipple. Raoul figured it meant, “Yes, sir.” Or something in that vicinity. Tico spun. His flip-flops squealed once before they began a percussive smack-smack against the hard floor as he made his way toward the kitchen.

“I can’t find her,” Canada said. “Come on, sit.” He pointed at the chair beside him. “You want something to drink?”

Raoul did, but it could wait. You can’t find whom? That’s what he wanted to know. That couldn’t wait. He said, “No, thank you.”

He was thinking that U.P. North was late thirties, maybe forty. The man was fair-skinned with a full head of curly jet-black hair, and he apparently went to some trouble to avoid the desert sun. He was strong. Not I-live-in-the-weight-room strong, but I’ve-got-a-personal-trainer and I-play-a-heck-of-a-lot-of-tennis strong.

Raoul fought an instinct that was telling him that he knew the man, or at least knew his type. Sometimes in Boulder he met the smug, self-assured, I’ve-got-shit-going-on-you-don’t-even-know-about types at parties. At first impression, U.P. North could be one of them, just another Boulder trust-fund baby. But Raoul cautioned himself that North probably wasn’t one of them. Not by a long shot.

Intimidating? Not to Raoul, not yet.

Blood? Northeast U.S., sure. Whatever that means anymore. Some French ancestry, and maybe something else. Could North have some Eastern European blood, maybe Jewish? Raoul wasn’t certain. Didn’t know if he had enough clues.

Raoul sat. “You can’t find her? My wife?”

Three sets of sliding glass doors were open to the night air. The pattern meant that every other panel was glass, every other panel was screen. The prodigious sweat that Raoul had developed while doing time inside the Airstream and then compounded in the cramped front seat of Tico’s bug wasn’t evaporating at all. No breeze was blowing across the wide desert that night.

“I like the heat,” the man said as though he’d anticipated Raoul’s thoughts. “Hate AC.”

Raoul duly noted that his question hadn’t been answered and decided not to press it. North wasn’t actually talking to Raoul, he was talking to Raoul’s reflection in the glass. Raoul adjusted his gaze, found the mirrored image of his host against the black hollow, and did the same. He said, “I changed my mind. I’d love a beer, thank you.”

Canada called out, “Tico? A brew for our guest.”

Tico came and went. He left behind a long-necked Bud that was sweating even more than Raoul. The bottle immediately left a round tattoo on the table.

“You like the desert?” Canada asked.

“I grew up on the Mediterranean,” Raoul said as a way of answering. “Live in the mountains now.”

“I grew up on Long Island, not far from Jones Beach. I like the desert better.”

“Taste,” Raoul said. “It’s a personal thing.”

North chewed on that for a moment. “There’s some shit we do that has nothing to do with taste. It has to do with cycles. Ebb and flow. Moon and tides. Sunrise, sunset. You play golf?”

“Some. I suck,” Raoul said.

North laughed. “Bastard game. In golf… in business… with women… dear Lord, with women… all the time, I’m big on mulligans. I… treasure the living that happens in the echoes. Like to think I do some of my best work in the echoes.”

“The echoes?”