“When?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. One of the days after Conway was killed. I suppose Monday or Tuesday. It wasn’t right after, I know that. Probably Monday or Tuesday.”

“Who was there?”

“That’s harder. Leslie must have been there—”

“Leslie who, Miss Griffiths?”

“Sorry. Leslie Smith. And Jennifer—she always eats lunch with us. Jennifer Delisle. And I think Sarah Wilcox was there, too.” She shook her head again. “Jessica Martin might have been in the room, too. She usually eats lunch with us.”

“Do you know if any of those girls told anyone else?”

Amanda tried to shrug her shoulder and failed. “Probably. I never asked them not to tell anyone. But you’d have to talk to them.”

Sanders snapped his notebook shut and stood up. “Thanks. Would you like that miserable specimen out there to come in and keep you company?” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll send him in. Don’t feed him all your chocolate.”

It only took them four minutes to travel between the lively Amanda and the surgical waiting room. McInnes was sitting there patiently, among the anxious parents and spouses, flipping through a magazine. “Any word?” asked Sanders.

“No, sir, not yet,” he said, getting to his feet. “I brought a tape recorder—they said we could try it in the recovery room, in case she comes to.” There seemed no response to this, and a gloomy silence fell over the room again.

It was at least twenty minutes before they were beckoned to the door by a tired and irritable-looking man. “Sorry,” he said. “We did what we could, but there never was much of a chance, you know. It was a miracle she hung on as long as she did.”

“You mean she’s dead?” said Dubinsky, startled.

“That’s right,” replied the surgeon. “And I trust you’ll find who did it to her before I have to treat any more like this.” His voice was cold and angry.

Thirty minutes later four very apprehensive girls were ushered into a small seminar room at Kingsmede Hall. They relaxed visibly at the sight of a pair of plain-clothes policemen. A group summons out of class like this usually got you Miss Johnson and a whole lot of trouble; this looked like twenty minutes’ relief from sweating through some dreary novel. They giggled themselves into four chairs and prepared to waste time. All four reluctantly denied knowing anything useful, however. Jessica Martin had to deny knowledge of any Honda or anyone in it. She had been sick last week and couldn’t possibly have been at lunch that day.

“I remember that conversation, though,” interposed Leslie. “We were trying to figure out if the guy was her husband or her boyfriend—only seriously, this time. But I don’t think I ever told anyone about it. Honest.” She looked at him with innocent brown eyes. He sighed and wished he were better at distinguishing truth from falsehood in adolescent females.

“Wasn’t it Amanda who said that a friend of her aunt knew someone in the police who said that the murder was done by the rapist?” asked Jennifer. “So the man in the gray Honda wasn’t important and it didn’t matter who he was. I told my dad, but he didn’t believe me.”

“What didn’t he believe? That Amanda’s aunt—”

Jennifer broke out in fits of giggles. “No,” she said, gasping for breath. “That Amanda had seen someone outside the house—Conway’s house.” She giggled again. “He said that girls our age have very fertile imaginations and we probably couldn’t tell the difference between a gray Honda and a beige Pinto.”

“I told my dad, and he thought it was clever of Amanda to notice something like that,” said Sarah, blushing furiously. “But I never told anyone else. I mean, except my mom and little brother, too.”

Sanders looked intently at the four faces in front of him. “Thank you,” he said morosely, “you’ve been a big help,” and watched them swarm from the room.

“So,” said Sanders, “there we have it. Not one of them, if you can believe them, told anyone except members of their own families. I wish I knew if they were telling the truth, or if they think they’ll get into trouble by saying they told other friends. They all sounded as if they were lying through their teeth. If I got a performance like that out of a suspect, I’d be on the phone to the Crown, working up charges.”

“I think,” said Dubinsky, “that they giggle and blush even when they’re telling the truth.”

“They also do it when they’re lying,” growled Sanders. “But let’s assume we heard the truth. Then we’d better find out something about their parents, wouldn’t you say?” He strode off in search of the principal.

Roz was standing in the hall watching uniformed bodies hurtle by her on their way to class. Sanders raced to grab her before she disappeared again. “Do you have information on those girls’ parents? Like what they do and where they work? We’re trying to establish a link between Amanda and the men who attacked her.” Roz looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and walked back into Annabel’s office.

“Pull the admission files for those four girls, please, and bring them into the seminar room. Thanks.” She turned to him. “I hope that’s what you need,” she said, then she smiled dismissively and left.

In a matter of minutes, Annabel dropped four file folders on the table in front of them. “That’s confidential information, you know,” she said tartly. “Ordinarily we don’t let anyone look at it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask me.” With a mildly poisonous look, she swept out.

“Okay,” muttered Sanders. “Eliminate the Martin girl, since she wasn’t at school—although I suppose we should check that.” He placed her folder to one side. “Right. Smith. Mr. Geoffrey Smith.” He scribbled down both addresses, home and business. “He’s an architect; they live on MacNiece Street, a few houses away from the victim’s apartment building.” He picked up the next folder. “Delisle. Dr. Martin Delisle. A plastic surgeon. I wonder if he makes millions doing face lifts.” He continued scribbling. “And last, Wilcox. Mr. Paul Wilcox. Well, look at that—Wilcox the MPP. They have everything at this place, don’t they?” He looked up. “Which one of these guys had any connection with Jimmy, do you suppose?”

Dubinsky shrugged. “Could have been any of them. I’d put my money on the politician, though. A man with Jimmy’s connections could be very useful to someone like that.”

“How about the architect? I’d be willing to bet Jimmy’s network extends to construction and building contracts, wouldn’t you?” He piled all the files neatly once again. “Or, of course, it could have been anyone of them telling somebody else, or it could have been someone connected with one of the other girls who passed it on after she heard it through the grapevine.” He yawned again. “Let’s go back to Mrs. Conway’s old friends and try out the trafficking scenario. I like it—it seems to fit some of them very nicely.”

It was one o’clock in the afternoon when he stumbled out of his sweat-soaked bed and into the bathroom. The face that peered back at him from the mirror belonged to someone else. It was flabby and covered with stubble; the right cheek was hideously disfigured with claw marks. He shuddered in disgust. He had fallen asleep in his underwear; now he reached over and pulled on a pair of wrinkled cords and a sweatshirt, picked up his dirty socks and dragged them on. He grabbed a pile of quarters from the change on the dresser and stumbled down the winding stairs, yanking on boots as he passed the door. His destination was the row of newspaper boxes at the corner. He blinked as his eyes hit daylight. For four days now he had been sitting inside the house with curtains drawn, sleeping erratically and infrequently, sending out for pizza on the few occasions that he noticed hunger. He was living besieged, surrounded by enemies, enemies so powerful and clever that they could manipulate the news. They were lulling him into a false sense of security in order to set traps for him.