As he was leaving the Presidio, he hit his redial button again. This time, much to his satisfaction, the phone rang. Pulling quickly to the side of the road, he shut off his engine, and waited.

When a man's voice said hello, Hunt answered with, "This isn't a prank call. Please don't hang up." He identified himself again and gave his phone number, telling the man he could call him back if he'd prefer. Repeating that it was an urgent matter.

The guy heard him out, then said, "We know who Staci Rosalier is. She's the girl who got killed with the judge up in San Francisco."

"That's right," Hunt said. "I told the woman who answered before that we were trying to locate her relatives. I didn't mean to upset her."

"You have the same name as somebody who gets killed, people tend to tell you about it. It's made my wife a little uptight. She thought you were some weirdo. We don't know any Staci Rosalier personally."

In theory, that should have ended the call, but something about his answer struck Hunt. "I don't mean to be difficult, sir, but are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. What kind of question is that?"

"She would be twenty-two years old."

This time, the hesitation was lengthier. "That's what we read."

Now it was Hunt's turn to pause-if only for an instant. He didn't want to lose him. "You said you didn't know a Staci Rosalier personally. But it seemed that the name meant something to you."

He spoke away from the phone. Hunt heard, "No, it's okay, I got it. He seems all right." Then back to him. "It's just that, well, of course our last name is Rosalier. And we've got a daughter, Caitlin, who has just turned twenty-three."

Hunt had no idea where Mr. Rosalier was going with this, but he intended to let him keep talking. "And?"

"And her best friend in high school was named Staci. Staci Keilly. She basically lived here with us for Caitlin's senior year. We used to joke that she really should be in the family." The voice husked up a bit. "That's why when we heard about Staci Rosalier being the name of the woman shot with the judge-"

"Did you call the police?"

"No. We talked about it of course, but Staci Keilly really isn't Staci Rosalier. In the end, we decided it must just be a coincidence."

Except, Hunt thought, that Juhle was right. There were no coincidences in murder cases. And of course the Rosaliers didn't want to become involved in any trouble involving a murdered federal judge. "If you'll bear with me a minute, sir, do you have any idea where Staci Keilly is now? Have you heard from her recently?"

"No. Not in a couple of years, anyway. Caitlin went back East to college. Middlebury. She was always kind of a nerd and a great student, and Staci was more…well, she had kind of a different life. She was very pretty and popular, the way high school girls are, you know. Anyway, after Caitlin left for school, we stopped seeing Staci."

"What about her parents? Do they live in Pasadena?"

"I would imagine, yes. But we didn't know them. I gather the home wasn't very…not much like ours. They didn't seem to care how often Staci slept over here or how late she stayed. They weren't exactly the walking advertisement for quality foster care."

Hunt felt an electric thrill that brought goose bumps to his arms. "You're saying Staci was a foster child?"

"Right. I mean, we got all this information secondhand from Caitlin, but the situation obviously wasn't very good. Which I suppose is why she hung out here." He went silent for a beat. "You don't think the young woman up there…?"

"Was your Staci Keilly? I don't have any idea. That would depend on whether you think it's possible that Staci didn't like her foster parents so much that she renounced their name and took yours."

"That sounds pretty extreme. But I just don't know. I've never heard of anybody doing that. She might have." He cleared his throat. "In which case she's dead, isn't she?"

As her father had said, Caitlin Rosalier was a nerd. Late springtime Friday night, and she was in her apartment in Boston alone, reading. "My parents gave you this number? Really?"

"You could call your home and ask them, Caitlin. I could call you back in three minutes."

"If you don't mind, I think I will. And if I decide to talk to you, I'll call you back." Her mother's daughter, all right. She hung up.

Three or more long minutes later, she called, sounding as though one of her parents, besides vouching for Hunt, had broken the bad news. The voice was tremulous, subdued. "They said you want to know a little more about Staci? I can't believe somebody killed her. Who would ever have done that?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out, Caitlin. Your dad said the Keillys were…well, maybe you could tell me what you know?"

"The main thing is I didn't know them too well. Just from what Staci told me mostly."

"Which was what?"

"She didn't really like them, but also it didn't bother her too much. She was used to it, I guess. It wasn't like a real home exactly."

Hunt had his own fairly well-formed ideas about some foster-home environments, but every one was unique, and he needed to know about Staci's experience. "How was it different?"

"Almost all ways. Except first, I guess, they adopted her." This was unusual, Hunt knew. As a general rule, foster care was intended to be short-term, with eventual placement either back with the original or with adoptive parents. But only rarely did foster parents adopt any of their charges. "I think she was one of the first ones they took in, when she was like three or four."

"Do you know why she was in foster care in the first place?"

"I think-this sounds melodramatic, I know, but I think it's true-she was abandoned at birth. Then bounced around to a whole bunch of places when she was a baby. Evidently, she was pretty high-strung and colicky and cried a lot. In fact, that's what she used to call herself, the High-Maintenance Kid. Which she really wasn't, high maintenance, I mean, not when I knew her. Anyway, until she got placed with the Keillys, and they kept her."

"But there were other kids in the house?"

"Well, that was the thing. By the time Staci and I started hanging out, the foster-care thing was more like a business to her parents. Neither of them had other jobs and, you know, they get paid by the day and by the kid. So they'd just get kids delivered to the house by one of the agencies or another, then keep them a day or a few weeks, maybe a month…"

"Yeah, I know how it works," Hunt said.

"Okay, but what got to Staci was the change. Where suddenly, with all the coming and going, she didn't feel like they loved her or even wanted her as a daughter anymore. She'd caused them nothing but trouble and hadn't been worth it in the end. She wasn't bringing in any money. In fact, she was a drain on them."

"How had she caused them so much trouble?"

"That I don't know. She wouldn't talk about it. Just that she was the High-Maintenance Kid. But I gathered it was before they moved to Pasadena. Something must have happened, though, that changed the whole relationship, where suddenly they didn't think much of her anymore. Like they gave up on her because she was just too much trouble."

"When was that?"

"I think the end of her freshman year. I mean high school."

"And where did they live before that?"

" Fairfield, I think. That's in Northern California."

"I know. I'm calling from San Francisco." He paused for a second. "Caitlin," he said, "do you know if what happened is she got pregnant?"

She hesitated. "One day, we started talking about if we were going to get married and have kids someday. You know, the way you do when you're in high school with your friends. And she started crying. I mean really crying. And then when she finally stopped, I asked her what was the matter, and she said she just didn't want to talk about babies anymore. Never ever ever. Babies were just too painful to her."