Kathy Mallory was standing by the table, her angry eyes cast down as she strung the loops of freshly laundered curtains on a rod. And he could not help but notice that the material was six shades brighter. While she turned her back on him to hang the curtain rod over the window, he looked around the room.

How had she done this in half a morning?

He had forgotten the pattern beneath the dirt on the linoleum, and now the checks of many colors shone through a new wax shine. The mountain of dirty laundry was gone, and the dryer was spinning with a load of wash. His old wooden table had been scrubbed raw, and every last splatter and ring, each memory of past meals was gone. Even the faucet gleamed with maniacal cleaning. Ray guessed that this was payback for her roll bar; he had refused to do money with her. But oh my, this kitchen was insanely tidy.

He sat down at the table and watched her run a rag over a cupboard door handle that could not get any cleaner unless she stripped off the chrome. “Girl, you’re a damn cleaning machine. How is it that you’re not married yet?”

“Never crossed my mind,” she said, setting two cups and saucers on the table.

“But don’t you want kids?”

“No.” Next she brought him a strange coffeepot without a single fingerprint on it.

“Damn,” he said with a bit of wonder. She filled his cup with a brew that smelled better than any he had had since the death of his wife, and he was late to wonder if this might have anything to do with cleaning the pot. When the girl sat down with him, he had to ask, “Why don’t you want kids?”

She gave this a moment of thought before saying, “I don’t know what they’re for.”

The two FBI agents had returned to the sheriff ’s c o nference room. They stood near the door, perhaps as a reminder that they should be leaving soon, and they planned to take the interview subject with them. Nahlman made a point of staring at her watch.

Charles Butler sat at the long table beside Mr. Kayhill, a member of the caravan, who was also known as the Pattern Man. Kayhill was well below average height, not more than a few inches over five feet, and his physical appearance was best described as a distracted pale white pear with black-rimmed eyeglasses. The little man was also rather clumsy, and this he apologized for while mopping up the coffee spilled across his maps. The nervous disposition and clumsiness could be put down to a bad overdose of caffeine.

Horace Kayhill’s record time for driving Route 66, he was proud to say, was three days, fueled on little more than coffee and cola.

Riker’s j aw dropped in a sign of naked admiration. “Back in the sixties, I did it in four days, but I was driving drunk on tequila-the good kind with a worm in the bottle.”

Sheriff Banner allowed that, in his own teenage days, he had once driven Route 66. And he reckoned that he had done it “-under the influence of something, though I couldn’t s ay what.” He had no memory of the entire trip. This story was declared the winner.

Charles, who had never driven the famous road, looked down at the maps as Mr. Kayhill unfolded them and spread them on the table.

The Pattern Man had spent considerably more travel time on his latest expedition, thus accounting for being late to join up with the caravan at the edge of Illinois. He pointed to small crosses drawn to indicate gravesites. “I got some of these from the Internet groups.” And he had discovered others by making inquiries among people who lived along his route. “Now, this grave was found ten years ago. The locals say the remains were mummified. In other places, people told me the bodies were just skeletons-and one guy said the bones turned to dust when they took them out of the ground, but that was a shallow grave in a flood zone.” He reached across the table to run one finger along the desert area of a California map. “As you can see, these three graves are the same distance apart, roughly twenty miles. Now you might read that as a cluster pattern, but you’d be wrong.

I see it as a continuous line, thousands of miles long, at least a hundred graves.” He never saw the startled look on Agent Nahlman’s face when he said, “The FBI agents can back me up on that.”

Charles watched as Nahlman quickly folded her arms and looked up at the ceiling. She did not intend to back this man up on the time of day. Her partner, Agent Allen, pressed his lips in a thin tight line, determined to blow his teeth out rather than confirm or deny. The young man’s e yes were fixed on the California map and its little crosses, each one a grave.

“Tell them!” Kayhill stood up suddenly and glared at Agent Barry Allen.

“Easy now,” said Sheriff Banner, waving the little man back to his chair.

Kayhill was calmer now, even dignified when he said-when he insisted, “The FBI dug up the center grave.” He pointed to the first cross in a row of three. “Now this site here-this one was found by a highway construction crew twenty years ago.” His finger moved on to the last of three. “And this one was found nine years ago. They’re forty miles apart.” He looked up at Agent Allen. “So how could your people dig up that middle ground and find another grave if you didn’t see the larger pattern? You knew right where to dig.”

The two agents maintained their silence. Frustrated, Kayhill unfolded other maps, and these had arcs drawn over the crosses along the road. “I have other patterns. Would you like to know where these children came from?”

Nahlman moved closer to the table, saying, “No, I think we’ve seen enough, Mr. Kayhill. It’s getting late. Agent Allen and I will drive you back to the caravan.”

“No,” he said, edging his chair away from her. “I want to explain my data.”

“We should be leaving now,” said Nahlman, disguising the mild order as a request.

This prompted Riker to ask Horace Kayhill if he wanted another cup of coffee.

Charles picked up one of the maps. Some crosses were drawn in ink. He guessed that the ones done in pencil were projected gravesites, as yet undiscovered. “Isn’t t his a bit like geographic profiling?”

“Yes!” said the Pattern Man, suddenly elated that someone in this company could appreciate his work. “And it’s based on consistent spacing of gravesites. I’ve been able to pin down fourteen bodies dug up on this road, and that’s enough to project numbers for the entire group. Some of my data comes from websites for missing children.” He glanced at Agent Nahlman. “One of them is an FBI website.” Now he leaned toward Charles, who was clearly his favorite audience. “Think of Route 66 as the killer’s home base.”

Sheriff Banner handed a slip of paper to Riker. The detective nodded, then turned to the Pattern Man. “So, Horace, maybe our perp drives a mobile home.”

“Yes, of course!” Horace Kayhill glowed with goodwill for the detective. “That’s very good. So the killer actually lives on this road-the whole road.”

Charles shifted his chair closer to Riker’s at the head of the table, and now he could clearly read the paper in the detective’s hand. It was the vehicle registration for Mr. Kayhill’s mobile home.

The little man was exuberant, unfolding all of his maps to cover every inch of table space. “You see these half circles in green ink? The arcs represent the areas of day trips between abductions and graves. If he’s as smart as I think he is, then he takes the children from one state and buries them in the next one down the road. Of course, that’s based on the only two girls who were ever identified. Police searches for missing children are usually confined to a single state-unless the FBI becomes involved, but they so rarely bother with these children.”

Nahlman stiffened, then signaled her partner by sign language to make a phone call, and Agent Allen promptly left the room.

Riker called after him, “Horace likes his coffee with cream and lots of sugar.” The detective smiled at Nahlman. She looked at the floor.