Myron turned around. It was Sophie Mayor. She was wearing dirt-smeared jeans and a plaid shirt, the very essence of the weekend botanist.

Never short of a witty opening gambit, Myron countered, “Go ahead and what?”

“Make the snide remark about hunting.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“Come, come, Myron. Don't you think hunting is barbaric?”

Myron shrugged. “I never really thought about it.” Not true, but what the hey.

“But you don't approve, do you?”

“Not my place to approve.”

“How tolerant.” She smiled. “But you of course would never do it, am I right?”

“Hunt? No, it's not for me.”

“You think it's inhumane.” She gestured with her chin to the mounted deer. “Killing Bambi's mother and all.”

“It's just not for me.”

“I see. Are you a vegetarian?”

“I don't eat much red meat,” Myron said.

“I'm not talking about your health. Do you ever eat any dead animals?”

“Yes.”

“So do you think it's more humane to kill, say, a chicken or a cow than it is to kill a deer?”

“No.”

“Do you know what kind of awful torture that cow goes through before it's slaughtered?”

“For food,” Myron said.

“Pardon?”

“Slaughtered for food.”

“I eat what I kill, Myron. Your friend up there”-she nodded to the patient deer-“she was gutted and eaten. Feel better?”

Myron thought about that. “Uh, we're not having lunch, are we?”

That got a small chuckle. “I won't go into the whole food chain argument,” Sophie Mayor said. “But God created a world where the only way to survive is to kill. Period. We all kill. Even the strict vegetarians have to plow fields. You don't think plowing kills small animals and insects?”

“I never really thought about it.”

“Hunting is just more hands-on, more honest. When you sit down and eat an animal, you have no appreciation for the process, for the sacrifice made so that you could survive. You let someone else do the killing. You're above even thinking about it. When I eat an animal, I have a fuller understanding. I don't do it casually. I don't depersonalize it.”

“Okay,” Myron said, “while we're on the subject, what about those hunters who don't kill for food?”

“Most do eat what they kill.”

“But what about those who kill for sport? I mean, isn't that part of it?”

“Yes.”

“So what about that? What about killing merely for sport?”

“As opposed to what, Myron? Killing for a pair of shoes? Or a nice coat? Is spending a full day outdoors, coming to understand how nature works and appreciating her bountiful glory, is that worth any less than a leather pocketbook? If it's worth killing an animal because you prefer your belt made of animal skin instead of something man-made, is it not worth killing one because you simply enjoy the thrill of it?”

He said nothing.

“I'm sorry to ride you about this. But the hypocrisy of it all drives me somewhat batty. Everyone wants to save the whale, but what about the thousands of fish and shrimp a whale eats each day? Are their lives worthless because they aren't as cute? Ever notice how no one ever wants to save ugly animals? And the same people who think hunting is barbaric put up special fences so the deer can't eat their precious gardens. So the deers overpopulate and die of starvation. Is that better? And don't even get me started on those so-called ecofeminists. Men hunt, they say, but women are too genteel. Of all the sexist nonsense. They want to be environmentalists? They want to stay as close to a state of nature as possible? Then understand the one universal truth about nature: You either kill or you die.”

They both turned and stared at the deer for a moment. Proof positive.

“You didn't come here for a lecture,” she said.

Myron had welcomed this delay. But the time had come. “No, ma'am.”

“Ma'am?” Sophie Mayor chuckled without a hint of humor. “That sounds grim, Myron.”

Myron turned and looked at her. She met his gaze and held it.

“Call me Sophie,” she said.

He nodded. “Can I ask you a very personal, maybe hurtful question, Sophie?”

“You can try.”

“Have you heard anything from your daughter since she ran away?”

“No.”

The answer came fast. Her gaze remained steady, her voice strong. But her face was losing color.

“Then you have no idea where she is?”

“No idea.”

“Or even if she's…”

“Alive or dead,” she finished for him. “None.”

Her voice was so monotone it seemed on the verge of a scream. There was a quaking near her mouth now, a fault line starting to give way. Sophie Mayor stood and waited for his explanation, afraid perhaps to say any more.

“I got a diskette in the mail,” he began.

She frowned. “What?”

“A computer diskette. It came in the mail. I put it in my A drive, and it just started up. I didn't have to hit any keys.”

“Self-starting program,” she said, suddenly the computer expert. “That's not complicated technology.”

Myron cleared his throat. “A graphic came on. It started out as a photograph of your daughter.”

Sophie Mayor took a step back.

“It was the same photograph that's in your office. On the right side of the credenza.”

“That was Lucy's junior year of high school,” she said. “The school portrait.”

Myron nodded, though he didn't know why. “After a few seconds her image started melting on the screen.”

“Melting?”

“Yes. It sort of dissolved into a puddle of, uh, blood. Then a sound came on. A teenage girl laughing, I think.”

Sophie Mayor's eyes were glistening now. “I don't understand.”

“Neither do I.”

“This came in the mail?”

“Yes.”

“On a floppy disk?”

“Yes,” Myron said. Then he added for no reason: “A three-and-a-half-inch floppy.”

“When?”

“It arrived in my office about two weeks ago.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” She put a hand up. “Oh, wait. You were out of the country.”

“Yes.”

“So when did you first see it?”

“Yesterday.”

“But you saw me this morning. Why didn't you tell me then?”

“I didn't know who the girl was. Not at first anyway. Then when I was in your office, I saw the photograph on the credenza. I got confused. I wasn't sure what to say.”

She nodded slowly. “So that explains your abrupt departure.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

“Do you have the diskette? My people will analyze it.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew it. “I don't think it'll be any help.”

“Why not?”

“I took it to a police lab. They said it automatically reformatted itself.”

“So the diskette is blank?”

“Yes.”

It was as though her muscles had suddenly decided to flee the district. Sophie Mayor's legs gave way. She dropped to a chair. Her head lolled into her hands. Myron waited. There were no sounds. She just sat there, head in hands. When she looked up again, the gray eyes were tinged with red.

“You said something about a police lab.”

He nodded.

“You used to work in law enforcement.”

“Not really.”

“I remember Clip Arnstein saying something about it.”

Myron said nothing. Clip Arnstein was the man who had drafted Myron in the first round for the Boston Celtics. He also had a big mouth.

“You helped Clip when Greg Downing vanished,” she continued.

“Yes.”

“I've been hiring private investigators to search for Lucy for years. Supposedly the best in the world. Sometimes we seem to get close but…” Her voice drifted off, her eyes far away. She looked at the diskette in her hand as if it had suddenly materialized there. “Why would someone send this to you?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you know my daughter?”

“No.”

Sophie took a couple of careful breaths. “I want to show you something. Wait here a minute.” It took maybe half that time. Myron had just begun to stare into the eyes of some dead bird, noting with some dismay how closely they resembled the eyes of some human beings he knew, and Sophie was back. She handed him a sheet of paper.