Riker made a rolling motion with his hand. “Let’s have it before my hair turns white.”

“I got the background check on Paul Magritte.” Apparently Detective Kronewald assumed that this name would be meaningful to his luncheon guests.

Charles leaned forward to beg a question from the stout policeman. “Sorry, but I’m rather late coming into the details on this matter.” Indeed, he had only recently discovered that Riker and Mallory were working on a case. “Who is Mr. Magritte?” While awaiting a response from Kronewald, he saw relief and thanks on Riker’s face. And what was that about?

Kronewald responded with the hint, “Magritte’s leading that civilian parade.”

No help. What parade?

Charles turned to Riker for clarity. However, the New York detective was apparently clueless on the subject of parades and unwilling to expose his ignorance.

After crossing the state line, Mallory lowered her visor to reach for a tattered old brochure of the Missouri caverns, but it was gone. She checked her knapsack and the glove compartment. Could she have thrown it away by mistake? No, that was not possible. Even in the privacy of her own mind, she was slow to admit to mistakes. She checked under the seats and in the back, and a search of the trunk proved fruitless. After ransacking her duffel bag, she emptied out the contents of her knapsack and checked each buckled and zippered compartment twice. She could not have thrown it away. Her next theory revolved around a light-fingered member of the caravan. Had she forgotten to lock her car?

Yes, that was it.

No, that would not work. Nothing else was missing from her car, and she was the only person on earth who would see any value in a torn and faded brochure with a few notes that matched the handwriting on Peyton Hale’s letters. She searched the car again, every hidy-hole and crevice where her hand would fit, and finally forced herself to stop. Where had her mind gone? And the time? She was running out of time.

Enough.

As Mallory put the car in motion, she decided that the wind had taken the brochure while the convertible’s top was down. Yes, blame it on the wind.

Kronewald handed a sheaf of papers to his fellow detective. “This is background material. If Mallory’s right, all the people in that caravan met on the Internet. Paul Magritte runs online therapy groups for the parents of missing and murdered children, but we can’t b reak into his website.”

“Wait,” said Riker, a man whose credulity had been overstretched of late. “You’re telling me Mallory couldn’t hack her way into a simple-”

“She’s not traveling with a computer,” said Kronewald. “I thought you knew that. Don’t you guys ever talk? Does that kid ever answer her cell phone?”

Charles Butler and Detective Riker exchanged glances of perfect communion, both of them sharing the same thought: How could Mallory have become unplugged from her computers-and why? Riker seemed even more disturbed by this radical change in his partner, for he had often voiced the theory that Mallory was not simply in love with high technology, but actually required batteries in order to walk and talk.

“Now I got techs that can get me into the website,” said Kronewald, “but not the private chat rooms, not without a warrant. Mallory was right about that, too. The old guy’s a bona fide shrink. His site’s protected by doctor-patient confidentiality. And while we’re on the subject of shrinks.” He turned a charming smile of apology on Charles. “Pardon the expression, Dr. Butler.”

“Call me Charles.” No one ever called him doctor, though his business card had a boxcar line of initials that stood for the degrees of a fully accredited and somewhat overqualified psychologist.

Kronewald leaned down to search a bulky briefcase on the floor by his chair. While the Chicago man’s attention was thus diverted, Riker donned his reading glasses-in public-a rare departure from his only vanity. The detective scanned the background information on Magritte, mad to catch up with his missing details. Each finished sheet was handed to Charles, a speed reader who only needed a fraction of the time to cover every line of text, and now he learned that a sorry troop of parents were driving the roads of Illinois in search of lost children. How many of their youngsters were dead and carted away by the FBI as skeletal bones in body bags? And how might this tie in with the murder of a full-grown man?

Oh. On the next sheet, the victim, Gerald C. Linden, was mentioned as a member of numerous Internet groups for parents of missing children. His own child, a little girl, had been taken by “a person or persons unknown.”

“I could use a second opinion on this killer.” Kronewald, frustrated in the search through his papers, lifted the heavy briefcase from the floor and emptied out the file holders on top of the map. He turned to Riker, whose spectacles had vanished in a quick sleight-of-hand. “I just got off the phone with a state trooper. He’s bringing me the flat tire.”

Charles and Riker both smiled and nodded, as if a flat tire might be a perfectly normal thing to drop into the conversation. It made more sense when the Chicago detective had finished laying out Mallory’s t heory on the murder of Mr. Linden.

“So now,” said Kronewald, “we got a slew of new questions. I’ll tell you what the department psychologist told my squad. He says this insane detail work-stealing a phone battery and sabatoging that air valve-he says that indicates a compulsive personality, a control freak. Everything has to be just right.”

The portly detective plucked one folder from the pile and opened a preliminary report on the Linden autopsy. “Our shrink saw this and decided that the perp had to be a small man to make the fatal cut to the throat. The medical examiner agrees that Linden was looking down when his throat was slashed. So-the whole picture? We’re looking for a short detail freak. And he’s probably a very tidy serial killer, not a hair out of place. He’s between twenty and thirty-five years old, and he does this for kicks-a thrill killer. Our shrink also says the guy’s territorial. Now I’m hoping that last part’s solid, ’cause the feds got no right to move in on my case if it doesn’t cross state lines. Tell me what you think, Charles.”

While he waited for a response, Kronewald cleared the paperwork off of Riker’s map so he could mark the requested locations where bones of children had been stolen by the FBI. His pencil stopped in the middle of one of his X’s as he looked up to prompt his civilian guest. “So… you think our guy’s right about everything?”

“No,” said Charles.

“Well, good, ’cause I never trusted that shit-for-brains twerp.” The man sat back in his chair, his smile exuding a charm so at odds with his language and his manner. “What can you tell me?”

“Very little.”

“An honest man,” said Kronewald in an aside to Riker. He turned back to beam at Charles, the new center of his universe. “Okay, gimme what you got.”

“I can’t t e ll you if your killer is short or tall, only that Mallory’s t heory agrees with the autopsy. Her Good Samaritan-if that’s what we’re calling him-he was probably holding the flashlight while Mr. Linden changed that flat tire. Then the killer simply leaned down and slashed the victim’s throat. So you see, the angle of the blade won’t help you with the killer’s height. Linden was most likely looking down at the tire-not a short murderer. And you shouldn’t limit yourself to an age range, either. That’s an FBI cliché.”

Riker leaned forward. “But we can all agree that the killer is male.”

“Not necessarily,” said Charles. “You decide. I’ll tell you what argues for a woman. It’s a certain physical timidity in the act of murder. Hence all the trouble with the cell-phone battery and the tire valve-to eliminate all the warning signs on a desolate road late at night. And Linden would be less suspicious of a woman, wouldn’t he? The detail work only shows a concern that the murder should go smoothly. She wants to avoid combat with her victim-a man. Apart from the murder itself, there’s a great deal of exposure and risk taking. Consider the marks from the tow chain-traveling with the victim’s c ar in tow and a severed hand in the trunk. But there was no risk at all in the act of killing Mr. Linden. That was remarkably well thought out, and women are more detail oriented than men.”