He drove past the house slowly, looking for any sign of activity inside and finding none. He recalled now that when he’d arrived last night, there had been no evidence of anyone being inside then either.

Where had Elise parked her car?

When she’d ambushed him at his town house, she’d parked on another street to prevent her car from being seen. Deducing she might have used that same technique last night, he turned at the next corner and drove around the block.

The houses on this street were in no better condition than their neighbors behind them. He parked in front of the house that backed into the one belonging to Elise’s unnamed friend, although he wondered if there was such a person.

Before getting out, he took a flashlight from his glove box. He welcomed the weight of his service weapon tucked beneath his arm, although, unlike last night, he wasn’t worried about Savich right now.

Breakfast smells wafted from a few of the houses. A television was playing inside one, tuned to morning cartoons. Basically, however, he had the street to himself. He walked up and down it on both sides, going several blocks in each direction, searching for anything that might indicate that Elise had parked along the curb. He found nothing except the same crumbling sidewalk as on the next street.

He returned to his car. From there, he followed the hedge between the two houses. Both were shuttered and silent, seemingly vacant. Nothing challenged him except sticker patches, the uneven ground, and a cat with a nasty disposition that hissed at him for trespassing.

As he moved along, he searched the ground carefully. At one point he found a small, circular depression in the dirt that might have been made by the short heel on Elise’s sandal. But he was no expert tracker. It could have been made by something else just as easily.

He crossed the alley. The house where they’d met looked even more dilapidated from the rear. He vaulted the unstable chain link fence and jogged through the tall weeds of the backyard. The screen door squeaked when he pulled it open. He froze, held his breath, and listened. Hearing nothing after several moments, he wedged himself between the screen door and its solid counterpart and tried the knob. It was locked, but the lock was old and flimsy, and with the help of his pocketknife, he had it open within seconds.

The door opened directly into the kitchen. He switched on his flashlight and shined it around the dim room. There was no sign that anyone had been there in a long while. He crossed the cracked and curling linoleum floor and pushed through the swinging door leading into the long central corridor. His flashlight cut through the gloom, catching nothing in motion except dust motes.

When he called her name, his voice echoed eerily. He moved swiftly toward the living room, and when he reached it, he realized he was holding his breath in anticipation.

Except for the scent of her, of them, the room was empty.

He’d been called to the scene of Napoli ’s murder shortly after three o’clock. Almost five hours ago. And during all that time, while he’d been investigating the crime scene, trying to reconstruct what had taken place and surmising Elise’s fate, he had clung to the slender hope that he would find her where he’d last seen her, perhaps disoriented by trauma, cowering in fright, or eluding capture. In whatever condition he might have found her, at least she would have been alive.

Now he expelled a sigh of profound disappointment, and despair settled over him like a mantle of chain mail. A desultory search of the other rooms on the first floor yielded nothing. He forced himself to climb the creaky staircase and check the upstairs rooms, but they were all empty save for one of the bedrooms that contained a rusty iron bedstead with even rustier springs.

He returned to the living room. Although he realized it was pathetically maudlin, he sat down on the sofa and ran his hand over the nap of the upholstery, imagining it to be still warm from the heat their bodies had generated.

What had happened here after he walked out? What? What had she done next?

Even if he hadn’t confessed to the sexual encounter, perhaps he should have told his colleagues about his meeting with Elise in this house. It was material to their investigation.

It wasn’t too late. He could call DeeDee now, give her this address. She would make record time getting here. He could give her a condensed version of what had transpired in this room last night. Telling her about it would be a relief, would make his burden of guilt lighter.

But DeeDee would do the right thing. No question of that. She would go straight to Gerard. Gerard might think that his clandestine meeting with Elise was reason enough to take him off the case, put him on suspension.

He couldn’t let that happen. So for the time being, it would remain his secret, and he was stuck with carrying his guilt.

He had a lot to feel guilty about. Elise had implored him to believe her. She was in desperate fear for her life. She had begged for his help. He had refused. By doing so, he had either caused her to kill Napoli, or he had handed her over to Napoli to be killed, or, rejected by her last hope for help, she had thrown herself off the bridge and killed herself.

“Christ.” He covered his face with his hands and fell against the back of the sofa.

When he was seven years old, the family cat had given birth to a litter of kittens. His parents had said that he could choose one to keep. The others they would give away.

He knew immediately the one he wanted. It was the cutest of the litter by far. Around the clock, he kept vigil over the box of kittens. He asked every day when he could take his kitten to his room to live.

His mother told him repeatedly, “As soon as he’s weaned, Duncan.”

That became a little too long. He was afraid that one of the adopting families would lay claim to that kitten before he could establish his ownership of it. One night after his parents had gone to bed, he sneaked into the kitchen and took the newborn from its mother. He placed it in bed with him. The frightened kitten was still mewling when Duncan drifted off to sleep.

The following morning, it was dead.

He cried for days and couldn’t be consoled. Even though his mistake hadn’t been malicious, even though his parents didn’t scold him, he blamed himself and couldn’t get over what he’d done. He had wanted that kitten more than anything in the world. He had loved it with the unrestrained passion of a seven-year-old. But his selfishness had killed it.

For more than an hour, he sat in abject misery where, only hours before, he had known ecstasy. He should be wishing that he’d never met her. Short of that, he should be wishing that he’d never gone near her, never touched her. Instead, he wished he had taken more time to touch her. He wished his touch had been gentler. He wished they had shared at least one tender kiss.

But if he had taken more time and shown her more tenderness, would that have alleviated the heat of this personal hell, or made it worse?

And, despite the angry roughness with which they’d coupled, had she sensed his yearning for it to be different? Had she been aware of the emotion he wanted to express, but couldn’t? Had she?

He would never know.