"I'm getting that impression myself. Where was she last seen?"

"The estate. She was visiting her mom. Then she left, said good-bye, said she was headed back to her condo. It's in one of those luxury high-rises overlooking the Strip. But she never got there. Staff never saw her come in, she didn't show up on security video. It should be, what, a twenty-minute drive? Maybe up to forty with Strip traffic, if she didn't take the back roads. Which she would have done, since she's a native and knows her way around. Still, say between twenty and forty, tops. But it's been seventy-eight hours." Spitzer glanced at his watch. "And change. Fifteen, sixteen minutes and counting. She's just gone. Poof. Vanished. Like I said, aliens. She's on a flying saucer headed for the Crab Nebula."

"And there haven't been any ransom demands?"

"No communication with the family at all, from her or anyone making any claims about her. They haven't publicized her disappearance, so as not to bring out the wackos. But if it was a garden-variety kidnap for profit, we'd have heard something by now."

"Have you located her vehicle?"

"We're still looking for it."

"You think I can get a copy of the crime-scene report on her condo?" Catherine asked.

Detective Spitzer rubbed the end of his nose. Catherine had never known the cop well, but she had heard stories about him and met him several times on different cases. He had been a hotshot, right out of the police academy, had gone into uniform determined to make a difference. He'd been so gung-ho that it had caused him problems, reprimands for getting in over his head, trying to make busts he wasn't good enough for yet. His approach had soured a few high-profile investigations, ended up getting cases kicked out of court because he had violated procedure or failed to amass the proper evidence.

But that early ambition had been tempered with time and experience. He had become an exemplary street cop and had finally made detective. His career had seemed to be climbing a steadily upward path. Then, in the space of less than a year, his partner had been busted for graft – he'd been taking payoffs, in cash and favors, from a prostitution ring to look the other way when its girls operated – and Spitzer's wife of three years had left him for another man… a criminal defense attorney with a big house, a handful of fancy cars, and a seemingly unlimited financial future.

Joe Spitzer had taken the double whammy hard. He crashed and burned, coming to work drunk and getting into fights with fellow officers and suspects alike. He was on the verge of losing his job and his pension when he pulled himself together. He'd been on an even keel since, but his early enthusiasm had never returned. These days, he seemed mostly to be piling up the years to retirement, doing the least he could do without earning a reprimand or another black mark in his jacket.

The way he had investigated the Daria Cameron case did nothing to alter Catherine's opinion of him. He was a smart cop, but he had turned lazy. If he had been one of her CSIs, she would have found a way to get rid of him. Lazy and law enforcement didn't go together. Every profession had its good members and bad, she knew, but when the job was on the cops, she wanted everyone to be at the top of their game.

"There isn't one," he told her. "Condo's not considered a crime scene. She never got there, right? If we find her car, that'll most probably be a crime scene. But the condo? It's clean."

"I see. Does Daria have a boyfriend?"

"She's single and unattached, according to the family. Last guy resembling any kind of steady boyfriend was more than a year ago. She was never big on dating anyway. Way they talk about her, she sounds like kind of a nun. Half a nun, anyhow."

"Does she work?"

"Not that she needs to, with that family money. She did have a job at an art gallery, but she quit when she got sick. Hasn't been in touch with anybody there since she left."

"So she never saw anybody except family?"

"That's about the size of it. The staff at her building, I guess. She had a couple of close friends, other women around her age and social station, but none of them has heard from her, either. They all describe her pretty much the same way. She's serious. She doesn't go out much. She reads a lot. She's very close to her mother. That's the picture I got. Half a nun."

"There are a lot of blank spaces in that picture."

The detective shrugged. "What can I tell you? I'm trying to fill those in. I'm one guy, and I have a caseload like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, I'd believe it," Catherine said. She was no stranger to the Las Vegas Police Department's ways. But a heavy caseload didn't excuse laziness. "You can trust me on that."

Seventy-eight hours gone by. For evidentiary purposes, Daria Cameron's condo was already a bust. It hadn't been secured, which meant that anyone could have come and gone over the past several days. Anything inside it that might have told Catherine where Daria had gone could already have been compromised, altered, or taken away.

Still, Catherine wanted to see the place. She stopped at the front desk in a marble-floored lobby that soared at least three stories high. The desk was surrounded by a profusion of potted plants, and a young woman with the vitality of a personal trainer at a fitness center greeted her with a smile. She wore a navy-blue polo shirt tucked into snug red shorts, white sneakers, and her brown hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Her teeth were so white Catherine regretted leaving her sunglasses in the Yukon.

Catherine showed her badge and introduced her self. "I need to get into Daria Cameron's unit," she said. "I'm investigating her disappearance."

The young woman made a face as if she had just bit into something spoiled. "Oh, that's sucky," she said. "But… I can't let you into her place. That's totally against the rules."

"I'm sure the rules can be bent for law enforcement."

"Do you have a… whaddyacallit?"

"A warrant?"

"Yeah, that!"

"I don't have a warrant," Catherine said. "I just want to take a look around, see if I can find anything that might help us find her."

"Yeah, I get that, only I like my job, you know? Anybody found out I let you in, I'd be back at the mall selling smoothies. And I hated that."

"Is there someone else I can talk to?" Catherine asked. Seventy-eight hours so far – by the time I turn this ditz around, it'll be a hundred and eight. "A manager? Building security, maybe?"

"Oh, yeah, totally. Hang tight." The young woman swiveled in her chair, snatched up a telephone, and touched a couple of buttons. In a moment, she explained to somebody that there was a cop outside with no whaddyacallit who wanted to go upstairs to look for somebody who was missing.

A minute later, a well-groomed, crisply efficient woman in a tailored suit emerged from a door at the back of the lobby. In the cool stillness, her heels clicked loudly against the marble. "Yes?" she asked. Her hair was dark and as crisp as the rest of her. She snapped a business card into Catherine's palm. "I'm the chief security officer on duty."

Once again, Catherine explained her mission. "Of course," the woman said. "Come with me."

An elevator door slid open as they approached it. The woman boarded, and Catherine followed her. The woman didn't push any of the floor buttons, but the one for seventeen illuminated on its own. The perky thing at the desk was controlling it, Catherine figured. She had been in other buildings with similar systems, but that didn't mean they weren't always a surprise when she saw one in action.

On the seventeenth floor, the woman led her out into a carpeted, softly lit hallway that had the hush of a cathedral. Downstairs, Ms. Perky had at least given the place a feeling of life, but this corridor felt almost funereal by contrast. "Cheery," Catherine said, unable to help herself.