Mahoney pointed behind them out the window. "Right there. Those condos just across the street. The judge got it for her."

"We're almost done, Mary," Chiurco said. "Can you try to remember? Did Staci ever mention Andrea Parisi to you at all, in any context?"

Her collagen-enhanced lips tightened with a few seconds of concentration. "I'm sorry, but I don't really remember anything like that."

"Okay, last one," Tamara said. "Is there anything you remember about Staci that you think might help us? Any reason somebody might have wanted to kill her?"

"I just can't believe anybody wanted to kill her. I think it must have been all about the judge, and she just happened to be there."

"But to your knowledge," Chiurco added, "had she ever gone there before, to his house?"

"No. I'm pretty sure of that, actually. She would have mentioned it."

Tamara seemed to be asking it as much of herself as of Mahoney. "So why then?"

"I don't know." Mahoney offered a broken smile. "Why any of it, you know?"

Hunt and Piersall rode down to the main lobby together in silence, then took the walk around to the basement elevator, got in, and Hunt pressed the button marked "4," where he thought he remembered parking. Still without a word, Piersall reached around him and hit "5."

When the door opened, Hunt stepped out and quickly looked both ways. The only car on that level was a black Miata. He didn't see his own distinctive car and stepped back inside the elevator. At "5," they both got out. At this time of night, theirs were the only two cars on that level. Piersall had put on his suit coat again and carried a large briefcase. He beeped open the trunk of his Lexus, dropped the briefcase inside, and went around to his driver's door. There, he paused, seemed to consider saying something, but instead merely gave Hunt a minimal nod, opened the door, and got in.

Hunt sat in his own front seat, trying to make some decision about what to do next. Next to him, he was vaguely aware of Piersall's car backing out of its spot, then driving off.

While all of Piersall's information about the CCPOA might be relevant to Judge Palmer's murder, Hunt couldn't quite get into focus how it could help him find Andrea. Taking the newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket, he reread it for the fourth or fifth time, wondering what it meant.

If anything.

If, as Piersall seemed to believe, this escaped convict Mowery had anything to do with Palmer's murder, and further if Mowery had come to set his sights on Andrea, then Hunt had little doubt that she would, in fact, be dead by now.

But that was a lot of ifs.

None of them contemplated the reality that Hunt had chosen to believe and act on-that somehow she was still alive. Though as each hour passed, that position became more difficult to sustain. He knew that he would have to call Juhle first thing in the morning and convey Piersall's information, but none of that seemed capable of helping him in his primary objective. Which even now he was beginning to recognize as more of an irrational hope than a realistic possibility.

But until she was found, while she might still be alive, he couldn't abandon the pursuit.

Alone on this parking level, down in the bowels of the building, Hunt suddenly understood with a jolt something that had been nagging at him. Hitting the ignition and throwing the car into reverse, he peeled out with a screech of rubber, got to the end of his row, and turned up, following the exit sign.

Stopping at the entrance to level four, he drove down to the elevator bank and pulled into the space next to the Miata he'd briefly glimpsed on the elevator ride down when the doors had opened and he'd stepped out for a moment to look for his own car.

Getting out of his Cooper, he went to the Miata driver's window and peered in. There was nothing to identify the owner-no purse, no article of clothing, no junk. Just black leather seats. He went around to the back and checked the license plate, trying to remember if he'd even glanced at Andrea's plates when the car had been in her garage. But for the life of him, he couldn't dredge up anything he recognized.

But his adrenaline was up, and though it was irrational, he knew. This was her car.

The scenario flickered in his mind, frames in a silent movie. She'd come to the office on Wednesday after all, not driven directly to the Manions. Her assailant therefore had very possibly not killed her on sight-certainly not by gunshot, anyway, not in the middle of an afternoon in what would have at that time been a crowded parking structure. But had taken her somewhere, where conceivably she might still be alive.

Hunt had to take the elevator back up to the lobby again and get outside before he could get reception on his cell phone. Standing on the dark and empty sidewalk, he listened to the rings on the other end of the line. "Come on, come on, come on. Pick up. Connie! I know, I'm sorry, but it's important. I need to talk to Dev."

Juhle wasn't the happiest Hunt had ever heard him with the idea of running the license plate at this ungodly hour to find out whom the car belonged to, but by the time he called Hunt back, having gotten somebody on the night shift at Central Station to do the two-minute computer check, he sounded wide awake. It was Andrea's car all right.

While he waited for the first black and white to arrive, Hunt used the time to check in with his troops.

Farrell, smart man, was off the clock, his phones either turned off or unplugged, and Hunt left a message, calling a meeting for the morning on Sutter Street at eight o'clock sharp.

Amy and Jason were still awake and watching television, having drawn blanks from Carla Shapiro. Amy mentioned the tenuous, tantalizing near meeting with Betsy Sobo, perhaps on family-law/union-benefits issues, that Parisi had scheduled and then bailed on for Monday afternoon. Brandt and Wu also reported that by now all the local television channels had picked up the story of Andrea's disappearance and were giving it a lot of prominence-they were watching News 4 Late Edition now, and the story was heading up the hour. Amy had also called Parisi's mother, who had already been contacted by several media types. She was now distraught and had no idea where her daughter was or what could have happened to her.

Tamara and Chiurco didn't have much to offer, either, on any possible connection between Staci Rosalier and Andrea Parisi. Hunt only now remembered that he hadn't yet caught up with Mickey Dade, who didn't seem to be answering his cell phone either.

Hunt left a message, asking Mickey to check out Thai restaurants on Ocean Avenue that might have once had a waitress named Staci Rosalier. He knew that if this trail grew hot at all, Juhle would find a way to get some manpower on that aspect of it, and Mickey's work would be largely redundant.

But Hunt couldn't think of any other assignment for the cabbie before the first patrol car finally arrived. It really hadn't been that long since he'd woken up Juhle-maybe twenty minutes. He met the police vehicle at the garage entrance and led the way down. The uniformed officers had him move his own car while they laid out the yellow tape around the Miata. Treating the car as a potential crime scene, which perhaps it was.

Juhle pulled up-no Shiu, no comment-eight or ten minutes later. A CSI unit was on the way to do a once-over before they towed Andrea's convertible downtown. If there was anything on or in the car, Juhle was confident that they'd find it. At this time of the morning, they didn't need crowd control, so Juhle dismissed the uniformed officers. When they'd driven off, he boosted himself onto the hood of the family car he'd driven down and said, "So what do you make of this?"