Ya wning, Riker said, “No, I didn’t. The brat never tells me anything.”

“But you knew Cassandra was originally from Louisiana.” Charles held up the driver’s license to bring his point home. “And Savannah is a southern name.”

Riker grinned. He had met New York hookers from Harlem to the Battery who called themselves Savannah.

Charles Butler wore such a patient smile, waiting for the tired detective to put it all together, not wanting to commit a rudeness by stating the obvious thing.

“All those phone calls would make sense,” said Riker, grudgingly, “if Savannah knew Mallory’s mother in her younger days.” He was thinking of a child’s trademark line on the telephone in the late-night hours: It’s Kathy-I’m lost. All those years ago, had she been trying to find an old friend of the family? Why then, after this happy little reunion, would Savannah Sirus kill herself in Mallory’s apartment? And what was the link to Route 66 and a child killer? He so longed to bang his head against the wall. In his experience, that actually helped.

“Can you find out if Miss Sirus ever lived in Louisiana?”

“No, Charles, I can’t put that name through cop channels-not till I know what happened back in New York. Somebody might get the idea that it wasn’t a suicide. So what else have you got?”

“I found a letter in the suitcase.”

“No way.” The detective had searched the luggage himself. Ah, but he had been sleeping in catnaps for days. So he had missed something else- maybe a lot of things.

“It was in the lining,” said Charles by way of apology for contradicting a friend.

“Read it to me.”

“It’s short,” said Charles. “Mallory dated it months ago. She writes, ‘I want the rest of my letters. I want all of them.’ ”

“What? Mallory isn’t t he letter-writing type. She e-mails.”

“Maybe Savannah doesn’t have a computer,” said Charles, the sworn enemy of technology. “Now consider all the times that Mallory called this woman. Miss Sirus may have stopped answering the phone. Then think about the days that Mallory missed from work-I mean, before she stopped showing up altogether. Maybe she turned up at Miss Sirus’s door in Chicago. Maybe the door was never opened to her. Hence this letter from Mallory. The postman always gets through.” Charles handed him a small black-and-white photograph. “This was also in the lining.”

Riker squinted at the small portrait of a long-haired boy. Reluctantly he pulled out his reading glasses and donned them. Now he could make out the youngster’s T-shirt design as an old album cover from another era. “Early Rolling Stones. The kid had taste.”

“I found that snapshot in here with Mallory’s letter.” He held up a large manila envelope. It was folded twice in order to fit inside the torn suitcase lining. “This is big enough to hold quite a lot of letters.”

The detective nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Letters were all that Mallory had asked for, and it was unlikely that her houseguest would travel to New York empty-handed.

Charles made a show of opening the envelope, turning it upside down and shaking it to demonstrate its emptiness. “Apparently all the letters were surrendered to Mallory. Yet, her houseguest found it necessary to tear the lining in her suitcase-just to hide that photograph. I’m guessing Miss Sirus never went anywhere without it.”

What was this? Witchcraft?

Riker rolled on his side, the better to study the picture by the dim bulb of the bedside lamp. “How the hell would you know that, Charles?”

“Oh, there’s a lot more you can extrapolate from that photograph. Perhaps if you looked at it in a brighter light?”

These were the last words that Riker heard before falling into a deep sleep.

Past the small sleeping townof Galena, Kansas, Mallory departed from a street marked by signs as Historic Route 66. She turned right to travel down a narrow road that cut through countryside and crop fields. Watching her trip monitor, she counted off the miles to her next turn: ten, eleven, almost there. Over the distance of green flatlands, she could see the silhouette of the autobody shop, a garage described as “-the size and shape of an airplane hangar.” And the letter went on to tell her that this place did a round-the-clock business with three full-time crews, and “-old Ray was always up before dawn.”

She turned onto a long dirt driveway, then stopped to select Led Zeppelin music to orchestrate her entrance. Moving forward again, she played it at top volume. “Black Dog” was reported to be Ray Adler’s secret theme song. Mallory roared into the lot, revved her engine and honked her horn to add to the noise of the band. The song was switched off and the visor lowered to hide her face. She sat very still in the shadows of the car, her back to the rising sun.

A man in his fifties came to the door of the garage and stood there squinting into the morning light. And now came the look of recognition- the song and the car. He was running across the lot, grinning and yelling, “You old son of a bitch, is that you?” The man’s e yes were still half blinded by sunrise. “I knew you’d come back.” He all but ripped off the driver’s s ide door in his haste to open it. He bent down to look at her face, and now he wore an expression of dumbfounded surprise. Though he had expected to see someone else behind the wheel, his smile spread wider.

“Even better,” he said, standing back a pace to stare at her. “You’re Peyton’s kid, all right. You got his weird green eyes. Not another pair like ’em. And you got your mama’s pretty face. But this ain’t your daddy’s c ar. We ll, damn. Let’s see what you got, girl.” He started toward the front where the engine ought to be on this recent model, and then he stopped, saying, “No, don’t t e ll me.” He turned around and headed for the trunk, and she obligingly pulled the release lever to open it for him.

“Oh, damn, that’s beautiful!”

She left the car to stand beside him as he admired the Porsche engine.

“You outdid old Peyton, girl. His Porsche was old when he bought it, and that was before you were born. What a damn wreck that car was. Not a bit of the body that wasn’t d e nted or crushed. He got it for a dollar and a promise not to sue the drunk who totaled his Volkswagen. Happened back down the road not twenty miles. God, how Peyton loved that old VW. That would’ve been the Bug’s tenth run down Route 66. Well, your dad was determined to finish the trip the way he started out. When he pulled in here, he was driving the Porsche and towing the Bug. But we couldn’t s plice ’ em together. And I wasn’t about to waste all the best parts of that sports car. So you can see, can’t you-just using the Porsche’s engine was out. Now Peyton once put a V- 8 in another Bug. But that’s another story. So we used the old car’s c o nvertible top-all we could salvage-and we put it on a prefab shell a lot like this one here. Big as a Beetle, and maybe a little longer. Same paint job, too. Now, silver to go with that black ragtop, that was my idea. Back then, there wasn’t another car like it on the road.”

Mallory already knew the history of the other car, but never lost patience with this man’s retelling of the story. She had yet to say a word, and Ray Adler was only now realizing this. His face turned beet red.

“I talk too much. My wife, rest her soul, used to tell me that all the time. Never give folks a chance to get a word in.” He smiled at her, not able to get enough of her green eyes, the eyes of Peyton Hale. “So tell me, how’s your dad and his pretty bride?”

“I never met the man,” said Mallory. “My mother died when I was six, and she was never married.”