He remembered specifically the knobs on the rolltop desk. The mail he had looked through.

He had given them the Altair address more than two hours ago. For all he knew, they had already been there and already had his fingerprints. The whole question might be a trap set to snare him.

"The door was unlocked," Pierce said. "I went in to make sure she wasn't in there.

Needing help or something."

Renner was leaning slightly forward across the table. His eyes came up to Pierce's and held. Pierce could see the line of white below his green irises.

"You were inside that house?"

"That's right."

"Why didn't you tell us that before?"

"I don't know. I didn't think it was necessary. I was trying to be brief. I didn't want to take up anyone's time, I guess."

"Well, thanks for thinking of us. Which door was unlocked?"

Pierce hesitated but knew he had to answer.

"The back."

He said it like a criminal in court pleading guilty. His head was down, his voice low.

"Excuse me?"

"The back door."

"Is it your custom to go in the back door of the home of a perfect stranger?"

"No, but that was the door that was unlocked. The front wasn't. I told you, I wanted to see if something was wrong."

"That's right. You wanted to be a rescuer. A hero."

"It's not that. I just -"

"What did you find in the house?"

"Not a lot. Spoiled food, a giant pile of mail. I could tell she hadn't been there in a long while."

"Did you take anything?"

"No."

He said it without hesitation, without blinking.

"What did you touch?"

Pierce shrugged.

"I don't know. Some of the mail. There's a desk. I opened some drawers."

"Were you expecting to find Miss Quinlan in a desk drawer?"

"No. I just…"

He didn't finish. He reminded himself that he was walking on a ledge. He had to keep his answers as short as possible.

Renner changed his posture, leaning back in his seat now, and changed questioning tacks as well.

"Tell me something," he said. "How did you know to call Wainwright?"

"Because he's the landlord."

"Yes, but how did you know that?"

Pierce froze. He knew he could not give an answer that referred in any way to the phone book or mail he had taken from the house. He thought of the phone book hidden behind the stacks of paper in the office's copy room. For the first time he felt a cold sweat forming along his scalp.

"Um, I think… no, yeah, it was written down somewhere on the desk in her house. Like a note."

"You mean like a note that was out in the open?"

"Yeah, I think so. I…"

Again he stopped himself before he gave Renner something else with which the detective could club him. Pierce lowered his eyes to the table. He was being walked into a trap and had to figure a way out. Making up the note was a mistake. But now he could not backtrack.

"Mr. Pierce, I just came from that house over on Altair and I looked all through that desk.

I didn't see any note."

Pierce nodded like he agreed, even though he had just said the opposite.

"You know what it was, it was my own note I was picturing. I wrote it after I talked to Vivian. She was the one who told me about Wainwright."

"Vivian? Who is Vivian?"

"Lilly's mother. In Tampa, Florida. When she asked me to look for Lilly she gave me some names and contacts. I just remembered, that's where I got Wainwright's name."

Renner's eyebrows peaked halfway up his forehead as he registered his surprise again.

"This is all new information, Mr. Pierce. You are now saying that Lilly Quinlan's mother asked you to look for her daughter?"

"Yes. She said the cops weren't doing anything. She asked me to do what I could."

Pierce felt good. The answer was true, or at least truer than most of the things he was saying. He thought he might be able to survive this.

"And her mother in Tampa had the name of her daughter's landlord?"

"Well, I think she got a bunch of names and contacts from a private detective she had previously hired to look for Lilly."

"A private detective."

Renner looked down at the statement in front of him as if it had personally let him down for not including mention of the private investigator.

"Do you have his name?"

"Philip Glass. I have his number written down in a notebook that is in my car. Take me back to the apartment -my car's there -and I can get it for you."

"Thank you, but I happen to know Mr. Glass and how to reach him. Have you talked to him?"

"No. I left a message and didn't hear back. But from what Vivian told me, he hadn't had much success in finding Lilly. I wasn't expecting much. I never knew if he was good or just ripping her off, you know?"

It was an opportunity for Renner to tell him what he knew about Glass but the detective didn't take it.

"What about Vivian?" he asked instead.

"I have her number in the car, too. I'll give you everything I've got as soon as I can get out of here."

"No, I mean what about Vivian in Florida? How did you know to contact her there?"

Pierce coughed. It was like he had been kicked in the gut. Renner had trapped him again.

The phone book again. He could not mention it. His respect for the taciturn detective was rising at the same time he felt his mind sagging under the weight of his own lies and obfuscation. He now saw only one way out.

Pierce had to give her name. His own lies had left him no other way out. He told himself that Renner would eventually get to her on his own anyway. Lilly Quinlan's site was linked to hers. The connection was inevitable. At least by giving Robin's name now, he might be able to control things. Tell them just enough to get out of there, then he would call her and warn her.

"A girl named Robin," he said.

Renner shook his head once in an almost unnoticeable way.

"Well, well, another new name," he said. "Why doesn't that surprise me, Mr. Pierce? Tell me now, who is Robin?"

"On Lilly Quinlan's web page she mentions the availability of another girl she works with. It says, 'Double your pleasure.' The other girl's name is Robin. There is a link from Lilly's page to Robin's page. They work together. I went to the page and called Robin's number. She couldn't help me very much. She said she thought Lilly might have gone home to Tampa, where her mother lived. So later on I called Information in Tampa and got phone numbers for people named Quinlan. Eventually, that led me to contacting Vivian."

Renner nodded.

"Must've been a lot of names. Good Irish name like Quinlan's not too rare."

"Yes, there were."

"And Vivian being at the end of the alphabet. You must've called information in Tampa quite a few times."

"Yes."

"What's the area code for Tampa, by the way?"

"It's eight one three."

Pierce felt good about finally being able to answer a question without having to lie and worry about how it would fit with other lies he had told. But then he saw Renner reach into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket and pull out a cell phone. He opened it and punched in the number for 813 information.

Pierce realized he would be caught directly in a lie if Vivian Quinlan's phone number was unlisted.

"What are you doing? It's after three in the morning in Tampa. You'll scare her to death if you -"

Renner held up a hand to silence him and then spoke into the phone.

"Residential listing for Tampa. The name is Vivian Quinlan."

Renner then waited and Pierce watched his face for reaction. As the seconds passed it felt as though his stomach were being twisted into a double helix formation.

"Okay, thank you," Renner said.

He closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. He glanced at Pierce for a moment, then withdrew a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a phone number down on the outside of the file. Pierce could read the number upside down. He recognized it as the number he had gotten out of Lilly Quinlan's phone book.