April Waylon’s red sedan was nowhere in sight. Kronewald’s people must have tracked the woman down before she could get back on the road.

Inside the diner, there were no empty tables or stools and not much hope of fast service, either. Frazzled Sally was pulling sodas from the cooler when three customers invaded her territory behind the counter. The waitress did not struggle when the women captured her by each arm and led her to a table. With the gentlest hands and smiling all the while, they forced her to sit down and relax. Other people had quickly formed an assembly line of waving butter knives coating bread, more hands slapping down meat, and sharper knives at work thin-slicing tomatoes and blocks of cheese. Tw o men at the end of the line acted as sandwich wrappers and bag stuffers, and they called out the menu prices to a woman who noted the cost of the food as they packaged it up for the road.

At the center of the room, the waitress was studying posters and photographs laid out on a table for her inspection. The shake of her head said, no, she could not remember having seen any of these faces. And more pictures were laid out before her.

“Take your time,” said a caravan woman, raising her voice to be heard above the babble of twenty conversations.

Over and over again, Sally said, “Sorry, no. Sorry, not that one, either.”

An elderly man in the far corner booth succeeded in catching Mallory’s eye. He gave her a nod that was both a greeting and a recognition, though they had never met. Since April Waylon had not yet caught up with her friends, Mallory laid the blame on Sally. Apparently, the waitress had been very chatty while her only lodger had been napping in a tourist cabin.

Did all of these people know that she was a cop?

Heads were turning all around the room, smiles and more nods. Every table held a stack of posters for missing children. These people would be in the habit of meeting and greeting the police everywhere they went. At least Sally had not been able to tell them what was in the trunk of the green Ford.

Mallory remained by the door to study the old man in the back booth. He was a standout in this company. Though these people were a jumble of sizes and shapes, races and generations, no one else approached his advanced age. His hair was a mass of white curly tufts and his wrinkles were deep. Also, though the room was crowded, he had a table to himself. Some of the caravan people had formed a short line, stopping by his booth, one by one, to speak with him, then moving on and finally leaving the old man alone again with his collection of spread maps. He was more than their navigator; he was their leader.

The old man’s suit jacket was a loose fit, as if he had come through a long illness, and she guessed by the cut and the cost of the material that he was not poor. His face was gaunt, and this made his sunken dark eyes seem larger. Smiling, he stood up and gestured to a seat in his booth, inviting her to join him, or he might be pointing to the plate of doughnuts on his table-every civilian’s idea of cop bait.

Why not? She was hungry.

She sat down at his table and started to work on the doughnuts before he had a chance to introduce himself as “Paul Magritte. And you could only be Mallory. Is that your first name or your last? The waitress didn’t-”

“Just Mallory.” A group of three people moved to one side, and now she had a view of two dark-haired, blue-eyed children sitting together. A facial resemblance made them sister and brother. Though the little girl was five or six years old, the boy, closer to the age of ten, was feeding her ice cream from a bowl, as if she were too young to wield a spoon. “Those kids should be in school,” said Mallory, always on the lookout for leverage in every confrontation, friendly or hostile.

“I hope you don’t plan to turn them in,” said the old man. “I think, just now, they’re better off with their father. He’s traveling with them.”

That admonition was Mallory’s first warning sign; she had a radar for the psychiatric trade and distrusted all of its practitioners as a species. This profession would explain his suit of good threads and his polyester followers. Now she made him the owner of the only luxury car in the parking lot, for all doctors were rich, and, judging by the rest of the customers, this one lived off the poor.

She glanced at the table where the caravan’s o nly children were seated. They had been joined by a man with the same dark hair and light eyes. He had a well-muscled build and a face that had taken too many blows. By the one ear gone to cauliflower, she took him for a boxer. It was odd to see this hulk of a man so tender with the little girl; he stroked her hair and spoke to her in soft, lilting tones. Another patron, a nervous little man with a tray piled too high with food, accidentally jostled the girl’s c hair. The child abandoned her ice cream to rock back and forth. Arms tightly wrapped around her body to keep herself safe, she hummed the same four notes over and over. The girl was insane, and this was more evidence against the old man who led this group. Paul Magritte was definitely a shrinker of heads, analyst of dreams and secrets-a damn witch doctor.

After wrapping one protective arm around his sister, the little boy glared at the detective, suspicious of any pair of eyes that might fall upon the smaller child, the crazy one. The boy was that rare individual who could win a staring contest with Mallory. She was the first to look away.

“So-no mother. She’s the one they’re looking for?”

“No,” said Paul Magritte. “The missing are mostly youngsters like little Dodie there. A few teenagers like Ariel Finn. She’s Dodie’s sister. I’m sorry, I thought you were aware of the situation. The state trooper hasn’t been very communicative.” The corners of his mouth tipped up even in serious moments, and his somber brown eyes seemed to be forever apologizing. “Our waitress said you carried a badge, but you’re not here to talk to us about the missing children?”

Mallory tapped the window glass to point out the green sedan in the parking lot, but she never took her eyes off Paul Magritte. “Ever see that car before? The Ford with the Colorado plate?”

He was too quick to snap his head toward the window glass; he stared at the car for too long, and now he had become fascinated by the flies gathered around the trunk. Perhaps he even understood what the insects wanted-and yet he smiled. “No, I don’t recognize it.”

Shrinks so rarely gave anything away without a warrant.

“Then I don’t need to talk to you.” Mallory picked up a doughnut and rose from the table, as if she planned to eat it elsewhere, not wanting his company anymore. Paul Magritte raised one veined hand in a gesture to stop her from leaving him.

She knew he would.

“What!” she said, as Kronewald would say it-implying that the old man should spit it out now, or leave her be.

“I know a man from Colorado. He was supposed to join our caravan yesterday, but he never showed up at the meeting place.”

“Which was where?”

He only hesitated for a moment, for it was hardly privileged information. “In Chicago.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a plastic pen imprinted with a hotel logo and address. “This place.”

“I need your friend’s name and address.” She sensed a stall in the making. No time to think, old man. “Give me his name-now.”

“Gerald Linden. He’s from Denver. I have a phone number,” he said, fumbling with the zippered pockets of a nylon knapsack. “I’m afraid I never knew his street address. We communicated by e-mail. Did something happen to him?” Paul Magritte’s concern was the genuine article.

She knew the Ford was registered to Gerald C. Linden of Denver, Colorado. However, because Mallory was in the business of getting information and not giving it out, she said, “We’re done.”