The room behind the left hand door was lined with file cabinets. And it was windowless. He flipped on the light and pulled on the handle of the nearest drawer. It wouldn't budge. Same with all the others. Every cabinet was locked.

Ed spent a few moments cursing Dr. Gates with every four-, ten-, and twelve-letter word he knew. He'd never imagined he might run into locked files inside a locked office.

As he turned to make his way back to the consultation room, he noticed that the third door was standing ajar. He pushed it open and shone his flashbeam inside.

Another windowless room, only empty. But the walls… they were covered with fabric. Thick fabric. The floors and ceilings too. He stepped inside and checked the inner surface of the door. That was covered too. He touched it. Soft. Then he realized where he was.

In a padded cell.

February 21

12:05 A.M.

Kara hung up the phone. She was grateful that Rob cared enough to call and check on her, but was uncomfortable with the implication that she needed someone to watch over her. Or was she being too analytical?

She lay back in bed and waited for the Halcion to work.

No dreams tonight. Please, no dreams.

She wasn't up to any sex tonight, real or imagined. Peace, that was all she wanted. And a reasonably normal life, one in which she would feel safe sleeping in the same house as her daughter.

Actually, she was spending more time than usual with Jill these past five days. And Jill, with the adaptability of a nine year old, had been quite content to go to parks and places like the Museum of Natural History when her mother was around, and watch the VCR when she wasn't. Today Kara had tried to watch a Disney movie with Jill. But it was Freaky Friday, the one in which Jodie Foster switches bodies with her mother. It struck Kara as too much like that damn crazy note. She'd had to leave the room.

And her book… her book was going nowhere while the deadline kept creeping up. She didn't want to blow this. She was counting on that second payment on the advance. But more than that, she believed in her book, knew it would be an important contribution to the women's movement. If only she could get back to work on it.

Tomorrow… she'd force herself to work on it tomorrow…

Right now she felt sleep creeping over her. She blanked her mind and welcomed it.

▼

Rob sat in his car, smoking and sipping Dunkin' Donuts coffee as he watched Gates' townhouse. He was waiting for the lights to go out so he could call it a night.

Rob had been asking around about Gates. Nobody knew too much about him. Seemed to be a real homebody. Took vacations from his practice but never left town. No social life that anyone knew of. His world seemed to consist of his home and his office, and occasionally a trip to the hospital. Gates could walk to all three: a few blocks downtown on Seventh Avenue and he was at his office. A few blocks further down and he was at St. Vincent's on Eleventh Street in the village. That was his world. Family dead, no friends, no close ties to the medical community. The guy lived in a vacuum.

Actually, he lived in a Victorian townhouse. Rob knew the type well: four floors and a basement. Once upon a time, before the recent regentrification of Chelsea, he had lived in one of these townhouses, two blocks down on Nineteenth. He had been a rookie then and had been rooming with Tony Morano, a friend from the Academy. But they had shared one of seven apartments in a subdivided building just like Gates'. Two apartments per floor and one in the basement.

Gates had a whole townhouse to himself. That took bucks. Big bucks.

Rob flipped the cigarette butt out the window.

Come on, Lazlo Gati. Lock up your castle and go to bed.

Just then the front door opened and Gates came down the steps. He started toward Seventh Avenue, just as he had last night. He was heading back to his office.

Muttering under his breath, Rob started his car and prepared to follow.

▼

Ed flipped the light switch in the padded cell. A fluorescent tube flickered to life behind a metal grille in the ceiling. There was no furniture, just the door, four walls, floor and ceiling, all padded.

It was the damnedest thing. Whoever heard of a padded cell in a psychiatrist's office? What for? In case someone went berserk during a session? Ed smiled. Maybe it was for after they got the doc's bill.

Seriously, though, what kind of people did this Dr. Gates treat that he needed a padded cell?

And who cared, anyway? This wasn't helping him help Kara.

As Ed turned to go, he noticed a row of buttons on the inside of the door. He recognized it immediately as an electronic combination lock. Six push-button numbers, and a "Lock" button.

It struck him as odd that there would be a "Lock" button on the inside. He could see providing a way to let yourself out should you get locked in accidentally, but why would you want to lock yourself in here? Weirder and weirder.

But again, this wasn't what he had come here for. He turned off the light and returned to the consultation room, making sure to leave the door closed behind him, just as he had found it.

It was time to get out of here.

He entered the waiting area and closed the consultation room door behind him. As he started toward the outer door, the glowing blip on the computer screen caught his eye.

I wonder…

He slipped behind the desk and looked at the screen. One word glowed in the upper left next to the blinking cursor.

READY?

Ed typed in YES and hit the Return key.

The screen beeped and replied with: CODE?

Oh, sure. Didn't that figure. Everything else was locked up tight, so why shouldn't Gates have access codes for his computer files.

For the hell of it, Ed typed in GATES and hit Return. He was rewarded with:

INELIGIBLE COMMAND

CODE?

Ed tried again with LAWRENCE, LARRY, MD, NUTS and made a final stab with SHIT. Each was answered with the same message as the first. He was about to give up when he remembered that reference book in the library, the one used by all shrinks to code their diagnoses. The DSM-III-R. He racked his brain trying to remember the code for Multiple Personality Disorder. He'd read it so many times he could almost picture it in his mind. In fact, he could picture it. And the code number was 300.14. He punched that in.

The screen beeped and a list of names popped up.

Now we're cookin!

He hit the Scroll button and searched for "Wade" as the list of names slid up the screen.

▼

Rob pulled into the curb half a block down from the Kramer building and waited for Gates to catch up. The only way this sort of move could backfire was if Rob had guessed wrong and Gates was not going to his office.

Nope. There he came. Striding along like he was out for his morning constitutional.

Crap. Another long night.