"What about his face, Roberta? What kind of expression did he have?"

"I didn't see his face."

Monks blinked. "Not at all?"

"Just his hands."

She did not seem to realize that this weakened her story even more. Monks decided not to point it out. He asked a few more questions, then thanked her, and promised her he would be in touch with her soon.

Roberta walked out the door with him. "It's not easy, living here," she said. 'There's a lot of sin around. I pray hard to keep from falling back in."

Monks glanced at the surrounding trailers, quiet, but brimming with the sense of secretive and illicit goings-on.

"I don't have any trouble believing that," he said.

"I pray for Dr. D'Anton, too. I haven't just forgiven him. I thank him for bringing me to Jesus."

"That takes a big soul, Roberta," Monks said.

Bigger than his, that was for sure.

Monks found his way back out through the trailer court's shabby maze to the endless strip of El Camino Real, then took Woodside Road toward Interstate 280, pondering this new pool of information.

He could accept that Roberta had not gone to the police because, in her world, they were even more frightening than someone who had tried to kill her. That nightmare was over. Being under the heavy boot of the law, unfairly or not, could last years, even the rest of her life.

But her story would still be worthless in court. Any decent defense attorney could convince a jury of exactly what D'Anton's lawyer had said – that Roberta had been drunk and drugged, had piled up her car, and had made up the incident in an attempt to get money. She didn't know where it had taken place. She hadn't even seen her attacker's face. The physician who treated her hadn't commented on the nature of the cut. And why had D' Anton let her live? He would have had to stage the accident, roughen the scalpel incision with glass. Had he abducted her in a moment of impulse, then come to his senses and realized she would be traced to the party? Regained a touch of humanity at her screams, or just lost his nerve?

Monks believed that Roberta thought she was telling the truth. He speculated about recovered memory – the kind of fantasy that abuse victims sometimes constructed, out of guilt, fear, the need to block out traumatic events. Surely she was familiar with rumors about girls who disappeared. Could she have incorporated that, in a drug-induced psychosis, into a rationalization for the accident and her behavior leading to it? Her religious conversion, soon afterward, indicated that guilt feelings were already present in her.

But it was so damned outlandish and, at the same time, grounded in real possibility. This was not about sex experiments on alien spacecraft, or human sacrifice at Satanic rituals. Even her admission of not seeing D' Anton's face added the ring of truth.

And then there was Katie Bensen. Who had been a patient of D'Anton's, and had modeled for Julia D'Anton. Who was also an attractive young woman of about Roberta's age, and also a free spirit who liked drugs and parties.

Who also had vanished, and D' Anton had been upset enough to get rid of the nurse who knew.

Interstate 280 was a pretty road along this stretch, if you ignored the fact that it ran right on top of the San Andreas fault. The area was hilly and wooded, with a miles-long wildlife refuge on the coastal side. Traffic was relatively light going north, with the thickening commuter momentum from San Francisco coming the other way.

Monks reached Burlingame within a few minutes, and then he did something he had promised himself he would not. He took the Trousdale exit toward Martine Rostanov's house. He wanted badly to see her, to be in her presence – to inhale the warmth from her skin and help take away the chill that had settled under his own.

He approached her driveway slowly and started to turn in. Then he stopped. Another car was parked in the drive behind hers – a handsome black Saab.

Monks drove on past and went back to the freeway, berating himself. He should have called first. He was acting like a teenager. It was insane to assume that the Saab might belong to a lover, and he had no right to expect otherwise, anyway.

The urge was upon him to pick up where he had left off last night – to check into one of the Union Square hotels near John's Grill, with its great portrait of Dashiell Hammett, and spend the evening at that fine bar. It was another thing he had not done in a long time.

But he kept the Bronco pointed north, up Nineteenth Avenue, through the greenery-laced Presidio, into the mist that had settled over the Golden Gate Bridge. The party that he was invited to tonight was at D' Anton's Marin County house – the same house where Roberta claimed to have been abducted. It would be good to get the feel of the place.

Monks started to realize that something in his mind was calling attention to itself – something Roberta had said that he hadn't paid much attention to at the time.

She had not been able to describe the person who had led her to the couch where she passed out. But she was certain that it had been a woman.

Monks arrived at D'Anton's Marin County house – the event site – just at dusk. He had driven the last few miles on a narrow asphalt road in the coastal mountains, north of Mount Tamalpais. The road followed a ravine, a creek bed that was dry like most this time of year, until it opened into a small secluded valley. He stopped at the top of the rise.

The air had the feel of the sea and the fragrance of the surrounding eucalyptus groves. The Pacific was another two or three miles west, glimmering with the day's last light, a hazy sheen of reflection and mirage streaked by the wakes of passing ships. The gray band of fog on the horizon would probably move in again tonight, then burn off by midday. Like the peninsula to the south, it was sunny here most of the year, and rarely too hot or cold.

The place looked like it originally had been a farm, with a barn and several outbuildings. The house was an ornate Victorian, replete with finely proportioned bay windows and intersecting roof-lines, and a veranda that wrapped around two sides. It was built against a cliff, a natural rock formation, and it was huge. It must have cost a fortune, like the real estate itself.

Lights showed through the windows and around the grounds, with sconces marking a pathway from the parking area. That was filled with cars, thirty or forty, a canopy of expensive burnished metal. A few people were strolling toward the house. It was a picture of affluence, luxury, the leisure of the upper class.

And it was the place where Eden Hale, Katie Bensen, and Roberta Massey had all been guests.

Monks drove down to join the party.

He parked, and was walking toward the house, when someone called, "Hey, how's it going?"

Monks turned and recognized Todd, the maintenance man from the clinic, unlocking the door of an older-looking cinder-block building. Monks glimpsed inside and realized it was a wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles in racks and cases stacked up against the walls.

"This is my third run in the last hour," Todd said. "They're going through it fast." If he was surprised to see Monks here, it didn't show.

"Gwen told me you're the man they can't do without. Are you the bartender, too?"

"Naw, I just help take care of the place. When they have a party, I set up tables, keep the supplies coming, all that."

D'Anton's devoted staff, Monks thought.

"This your first one of these?" Todd asked.

"Yes."

"Knock yourself out. There's a lot going on." Todd stepped into the wine cellar and picked up one of the cases, tucking it under a muscular arm. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and jeans, still in surfer mode. He was handsome, vital, and it occurred to Monks that Todd might attract a fair amount of attention from D'Anton's female clientele. And that he probably knew a lot about what was going on behind the scenes at the clinic.