"What about the girls themselves? Where are they coming from?"

"I'll tell you this – college newspapers were my gold mine. These kids think they can handle anything. A lot of them already despise men. Some just want an adventure. I advertised in a lot of places, but you'd be surprised." She pointed at the pocket where I'd put away Caroline's picture. "She might have been paying her way through law school. Even medical school, believe it or not. I had a future surgeon as one of my very best girls."

She stopped then and leaned toward me to see into my eyes. "I'm sorry, but… did this girl mean something to you? If you don't mind my asking. You seem… sad."

Normally, I might have minded, but Marcella Weaver had been nothing but helpful and open with me so far.

"Caroline was my niece," I told her.

She sat back again with a manicured hand over her mouth. "I never even saw the slightest violence against any of my girls. Whoever did this deserves to die a painful death, if you ask me."

It seemed like I'd said enough already, but if that lawyer hadn't been sitting there, I probably would have told Marcella Weaver that I felt exactly the same way.

I COULD FEEL some positive movement on the case, but the rest of the day was all dreaded missing-persons follow-up. Sampson hooked up with me for the afternoon, and we interviewed one distraught family member after another.

By the time we got to Timothy O'Neill's parents, the only thing I felt we'd accomplished for sure was stirring up bad feelings.

The O'Neills lived in a brick-and-stone colonial in Spring Valley. It was modest for the neighborhood but still seven figures, I was pretty sure. Like a lot of people up here, the O'Neills were part of the Washington machinery. They struck me as a "good" Irish Catholic family, and I wondered how that jibed with the story of their missing son.

"We love Timothy very much" was Mrs. O'Neill's first response to my questioning. "I know what his file says, and I'm sure you'll think we're naive, but our love for Timmy is unconditional."

We were standing in their living room, next to a baby grand with family photos spread out over the top. Mrs. O'Neill held on to one of Timothy, a larger version of the same picture I had on my bulletin board at home. I hoped for their sake he had just moved away from Washington.

"You said he was working as a bartender?" Sampson asked.

"As far as we knew," Mr. O'Neill said. "Tim was saving up for his own place."

"And where was that job?"

Their eyes went to each other first. Mrs. O'Neill was already in tears. "That's what's so very hard," she said. "We don't even know. It was some kind of private club. Timothy had to sign a confidentiality agreement. He said he couldn't tell us anything about it – for his own protection."

Mr. O'Neill picked up for his wife. "We thought he was being a little grandiose at the time, but… now I don't know what to believe."

I think he did know what to believe, but it wasn't my job to convince the O'Neills either way. These people were desperate to have their son back. I wasn't going to begrudge them whatever it took to get through a difficult interview with two police detectives.

Finally, I asked to see Timothy's room.

We followed the two of them back through the kitchen and attached laundry room to what I assumed had once been a maid's quarters. There was a separate entrance from the back hall and a bedroom with its own bathroom – small but with lots of privacy.

"We haven't touched anything," Mr. O'Neill said, and then he added almost affectionately, "You can see what a slob he was."

My first reaction was that messes are good for hiding things in. The room had as much strewn on the floor as anywhere else. Timothy had never really grown up, had he?

There were clothes piled everywhere – on the bed, over the easy chair, on top of the desk. Some of it was just jeans and T-shirts, but there was a lot of expensive-looking stuff, too. The one thing he seemed to keep hung up was a collection of suits and jackets, and three leather coats. Two of them were Polo, one Hermès.

That's where I found the haystack needle. Sampson and I had been sifting for about fifteen minutes when I pulled a piece of paper out of one of the blazer pockets.

It had a string of ten letters written on it – like the ones from Caroline's date book. This one said AFIOZMBHCP.

I held it up for Sampson to see. "Check this out, John."

Mrs. O'Neill stepped back into the room. She'd been waiting outside the door. "What is it? Please tell us."

"Could be a phone number, but I'm not sure," I said. "I don't suppose Timothy left his cell phone behind."

"No. He was attached to that thing twenty-four/seven. I mean, who isn't these days?"

She tried a weak smile, and I tried one back, but it was hard. All I could think about was how much more likely it had just gotten that she would never see Timothy again.

JOHNNY TUCCI HAD stuck to a rigid system for survival since the trooper car stopped him on I-95. For starters, he never traveled in the same direction for two days in a row and never spent more than twenty-four hours in any one place. In fact, if the skinny girl working the register at the 7-Eleven in Cuttingsville hadn't been such an easy, willing young thing, or if he could even remember the last time he'd gotten laid, he probably would have been long gone by now.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, he was thinking.

He was in the middle of his second time around with the register girl when the flimsy door to room 5 at the Park-It Motel opened. Two men in gray suits strolled in like they had a key or something. How the hell had they gotten in the door? Whatever. They were in.

Johnny jumped about three feet off the bed and pulled the sheet up to cover himself. So did the girl. Liz? Lisl?

"Johnny Tucci? The Johnny Tucci?"

One intruder – the speaker – was a white guy, the other Hispanic. Maybe Brazilian? Johnny had no clue who they were, but he sure knew why they'd come to the motel. All the same, he gave it his best. "You got the wrong room, man. Never heard of John whatever-you-said. Now, please get out!"

The Hispanic guy fired before Johnny even saw he had a gun in his hand. He flinched hard and almost had a heart attack on the spot. When he looked, the girl, Liz/Lisl, was sitting cockeyed against the headboard with a hole in her forehead and blood seeping down to the tip of her nose, then onto her breasts.

"Jesus Christ!" Johnny fell off the bed more than got off, and then crab-walked himself back into a corner. He'd never actually been shot at before.

"Let's try this again. Johnny Tucci?" said the white dude. "The Johnny Tucci?"

"Yeah, yeah, okay!" He kept his hands up, one of them at the side of his face so he wouldn't have to see the girl lying there dead and leaking blood. "How'd you find me? What do you want? Why'd you hurt her?"

The two guys looked at each other and laughed at his expense.

These guys obviously weren't Family. They were too "white" for that, even the dark one. "What the hell are you? CIA or something?"

"Worse for you, John. We're former DEA. Less paperwork, if you know what I mean."

Johnny was pretty sure he did. They weren't going to write up what had happened to poor Liz or Lisl. What – like she'd tried to pull a gun on them from her pussy?

The white guy crossed the floor in a couple of fast steps and kicked him a swift one in the groin. "That doesn't mean we like wasting our time running after pathetic garbage like you, though. Let's go. Get your pants on."

"I… can't. Where are we going?" Johnny was doubled over, with his hands on his crotch, only wishing he could hurl. It felt like his stomach had turned inside out. "Just… shoot me and get it over with."