I smiled, expecting the usual lecture on working too hard and becoming too caught up in the lives of my victims.

“Jake Tyler’s not the one.”

My back stiffened and I sat up straight in the saddle. No wonder Nina hadn’t wanted to talk about him last night.

“You know I’m right, Alex. He’s too self-centered, too distant. You need a guy with more heart.”

I dug my heels into the side of the horse and she carried me up and over the dunes, back toward the woods. The wind had kicked up and I could let Nina think I hadn’t heard what she said as I rode away from her.

I was quiet on the short ride home, letting the car radio fill the heavy silence between us.

“Call Mercer,” Val said, greeting us at the back door. “Kind of urgent. He’s at SVU.”

I speed-dialed the number and Mercer Wallace answered. “Thought you ought to know. Bad scene. I’m here with Vandomir. That kid you interviewed with him last week, Angel Alfieri?”

“Yeah, the fourteen-year-old. What about her?”

“Disappeared during the night. Told her old lady she was sleeping over at her girlfriend’s house. Be home today. Mother calls over there a few hours ago to find out whether she’d be back in time for dinner. Finds out Angel never got there last night.”

“Shit. Any ideas?”

“Mrs. Alfieri came in here all hysterical. The precinct won’t take a missing person’s case yet.” That was typical. The NYPD usually required that someone be gone for forty-eight hours before they took police action.

“Anyone tried Covenant House? The Eighth Avenue strip? Video arcades?” Teenage runaways had a regular network in the city. The usual suspects often went straight to the usual hangouts.

“Vandomir’s doing that now.”

“Can’t be Felix. He’s still on Rikers.”

Mercer was slow to comment. “I think maybe you were so busy working on the murder case that you forgot to get his bail raised. He got out before the weekend.”

I cursed again. There were too many things on my plate, and dropping the ball on any one of them could be a matter of life or death.

“I, uh, I could come back tonight. I can get right on this.”

“Stay put. You’re the last person she wants to see. Her mother says she hasn’t stopped talking about how mean you were to her since she left your office. Thinks it’s your fault the kid ran off. I’m just calling to give you a heads-up. Nobody wants you back around here.”

I pleaded with Mercer, even though the matter was not in his control. “Please find her for me. Find her before she gets hurt.”

We flew out of the Vineyard at 7A.M., as soon as the veil of fog lifted from the short runway, on Monday morning, the twenty-seventh of May, which was the Memorial Day holiday.

Quentin Vallejo was to reclaim his plane at Teterboro to fly back to California. I greeted him, hugged Nina good-bye, and walked outside the chain-link fence with Val to find Mike Chapman, waiting in his car.

He whistled a familiar Dylan tune as he opened the trunk of the car for the two suitcases. I knew it was “The Mighty Quinn,” just as I knew he would change that name when he sang the chorus. “…when Clem the Eskimo gets here, Alex Cooper’s gonna jump for joy.”

“Glad to see you’re in such a good mood. See if you can find a song by this afternoon that won’t offend her before she even opens her mouth. You hear anything from Mercer on my missing kid?”

“Still missing. So is the perp. Felix seems to have skipped out of town as soon as his brother posted bail. He’s in the wind. Vandomir’s thinking maybe he took Angel with him.”

My stomach started to churn. “Ouch. Won’t they make an exception to the forty-eight-hour rule and put out an interstate on it?”

“Done. Detective Wallace was very persuasive, on your behalf.” We were on the highway on our way into the city.

“Val, we’ll drop you at your office and head over to Natural History.”

“Fine,” Val said. “Any news?”

“We had the entire squad, and Special Victims, running raps all weekend on museum employees from both sides of the park.”

“Surprises?” I asked.

“Not too many. Anna Friedrichs is the only one of our people with an arrest. Disorderly conduct, about eight years ago. Looks like some kind of civil disobedience thing. A demonstration about some African political situation at the UN.”

The sober anthropologist was an unlikely looking radical.

“And Erik Poste’s been fingerprinted. No record.”

“Why?”

“Routine application for a gun permit, five years back. Must have changed his mind ‘cause he never got the gun or completed the application.”

“Son of the great white hunter thing, I guess.”

“The rest of the professional crew is just what you’d expect. Very few with criminal histories. A couple of young staffers with drug priors. But belowdecks, watch out. You got a locksmith at the Met with a long sheet for burglary, a handful of guys with petty thefts, and about five in both houses with physical assaults. We’ll talk to all of them, but nothing seems to be an obvious connection.”

We had almost reached Val’s building when my beeper went off. I looked at the dial and saw that it was McKinney’s extension. I took out my phone to return the call.

“Isn’t your office closed today?” Val asked.

“Yeah, but if McKinney sits home with his wife and kids,” Mike explained, “then his idiot girlfriend doesn’t get to sit under his desk and give him a blow job all day. Heard they created a new position for Gunsher.”

I dialed the number and pressedSEND. “Yeah, this new position’s even more useless than her warrant apprehension unit, which caught nobody. Here’s an acronym for you: GRIP. Gun Recovery Information Program. Firearm trafficking stuff.”

“Don’t the feds do that? Isn’t that what the United States Attorney’s expertise was?” Val asked.

“They do it better than anybody. Just meant to be a feel-good thing for Gunsher. Gives her a title with no work to do. Cops recover a gun from a perp and she calls the feds and asks them to track the piece. A chimp could do her work.”

“Maybe not the blow-”

“She sits in McKinney’s office all day and tells him he’s a genius. Every time she comes up for air. Hey, Pat, what is it?”

“Where are you?”

“On my way to interview a witness.” I could tell from the tone of surprise in his voice that he figured he had caught me out of town and unable to respond to whatever he was about to ask me to do.

“I hate to seem like I’m picking on you when you’ve got so much to do. How’s the murder investigation coming along?”

“I didn’t realize there was a gun involved in the Grooten case. Why else would you be the least bit interested?”

“I’d like you to get right over to the Waldorf-Astoria this morning before you do anything else. Ask for the head of security-Rocco Bronzini. One of your buddies is staying at the hotel, causing him big headaches. Get over there and clear it up before you drag the office into your personal life.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone who’s-”

“Do me a favor, take ten minutes out of your day and get to the hotel.”

I flipped the lid to end the conversation. “Slight detour, Mike. Val, we’ll drop you and then swing by the Waldorf. Was there a full moon? I didn’t notice.”

By nine-fifteen we were at the concierge’s desk in the lobby of the old hotel, waiting for Rocco. He led us to an empty table in the Peacock Alley bar and spread out his paperwork.

“We’ve been stiffed for twenty-five grand. Third time it’s happened. Looks like the broad is a friend of yours.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Hard to believe. Don’t you return her calls? She leaves you plenty of messages.”

“If you’d stop being cryptic and give me her name I’d be happy to help.”