"Yeah, I saw that on the calendar pad," Quirk said. "Whoever he is, I haven't found him."

"You got anything on the shooting?"

"One of the neighbors is a nurse. Husband's a gastroenterologist at Brigham. She was coming home from Faulkner Hospital after work, says she saw a yellow van parked by the pond a little before the shooting. Said she noticed it because of how it was kind of ugly for the neighborhood."

"She didn't get a plate number."

"'Course not. Doesn't know what kind of van or what year. Just an ugly yellow van."

"Anything on the bullets?"

"They were nine millimeter Remingtons, we found the brass."

"That narrows it down," I said.

"Yeah," Quirk said. "In Proctor they sell them in vending machines."

"You think it's connected to Lisa?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't have to be," I said.

"That's right, what do you think it's connected to?"

"Lisa," I said. "Let me know when you get something on the prints."

"Sure," Quirk said.

The slim gray-haired woman with the young face came into the room and took away the dishes. There was a single silver streak in her hair. She was dressed in jeans and a pink sweatshirt. She neither looked at Lisa nor spoke. She was careful not to look at the glowing video monitors where the tapes ran their endless loops. As the woman left, Lisa could see past her into the hallway outside the door, where a man in a flowered shirt open over his undershirt leaned on the wall. She could see the butt of a handgun stuck into his belt, to the right of the buckle. The door closed. She heard the key turn. Then silence, except for the soft electronic hum of the monitors. She walked about the room. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing a safari outfit today, like Deborah Kerr in King Solomon's Mines. He had chosen it, and she didn't argue. She had decided soon after she was captured that she wouldn't fight the small battles. He wanted her to dress up like the movies, it would do her no harm. She was waiting for the big battle. She would have only one chance and she didn't want to squander it. She couldn't do it yet because it would do her no good to hit him and flee when an armed guard stood outside the door. The less trouble she gave him, the more he might be careless. And maybe once the door would be unlocked. Maybe once there would be no armed guard. And if the door were always locked and the guard always there and the chance never materialized?… Frank would come, sooner or later, he'd show up. She knew that. And knowing something certain was a handhold on sanity. She smoothed her hair back from her forehead and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like she always looked. It was probably a truth about tragedy, she thought, while the tragedy is going on people look pretty much the way they looked when it wasn't. She turned and walked back into the bedroom. The monitors were looping the tape of her kidnapping, herself lying bound on the floor in the back of his van. She paid them no attention. She was hardly aware of the monitors at all. They had become so much a part of her limited landscape that they were barely tangible.

Behind her she heard the key in the door lock, and then he came into the room.

"Chiquita, " he said. "You look just as I'd hoped. Turn around, please. All the way around. Now walk toward me. Yes. It is just as I'd hoped."

He was wearing a loose-fitting white shirt, with big sleeves. The shirt was open at the neck and unbuttoned halfway to his waist. He wore tan riding breeches and high cordovan-colored riding boots. She tried to remember the movie poster he was modeling. Lives of a Bengal Lancer? Elephant Walk? She couldn't remember. But she knew that he coordinated what he would wear with the way he dressed her. He would lay out her clothes before he left her the night before, if it was night. She never knew. When he came in the next day, if it was the next day, he would be costumed to match. His very own, anatomically correct mannequin, she thought as she modeled her outfit. He smiled at her and put out his arm, crooked, as if for a promenade. "Come, querida, I have a treat for you."

She remained unmoving, not sure what he wanted.

"Come, come," he said. "We will take a little walk. It is time the queen toured her realm."

She walked slowly to him, and put her hand on his arm lightly. And they turned and walked out the door.

Chapter 14

I took off my tool belt and hung it on a nail on one of the bare studs in the torn-out living room of the old farm house we were rehabbing in Concord, Mass., about three miles from the rude bridge that arched the flood. It was lunchtime. Susan had gone out and bought us some smoked turkey sandwiches on homemade oatmeal bread at Sally Ann's Food Shop. Now she was back and we sat out at our picnic table on the snow-melt marshy grass in the yard and ate them, and drank Sally Ann's special decaf blend from large paper cups.

"I don't know why you kvetch so about decaffeinated coffee," Susan said. "I think it tastes perfectly fine."

Pearl the Wonder Dog hopped up onto the picnic table and stared at my sandwich from very close range.

I broke off a piece and gave it to her. It disappeared at once and she resumed the stare.

"You lack credibility, Suze," I said. "You could live on air and kisses sweeter than wine."

Susan gave half her sandwich to Pearl.

"This is true," Susan said. "But I still can't tell the difference."

Pearl stared at my sandwich some more, her eyes shifting as I took a bite.

"You know, when I was a kid," I said, "neither my father nor my uncles would let the dog up on the dining room table. Not even Christmas."

"How old fashioned," Susan said.

It was one of the first warm days of the year, and the sun was very satisfying as it seeped through my tee shirt. I took one final bite of the sandwich and gave the rest to Pearl. It was big enough to be taken someplace, so Pearl jumped off the table and went into the house with it. Susan looked at me with something which, in a lesser woman, would have been a smirk.

"It's the gimlet eye," I said. "I get worn down."

"Anyone would," she said. "How is Frank?"

"I guess he's going to make it, but he's still in intensive, still full of hop and drifting in and out. And they still don't know when he'll walk."

"Are you making any progress finding Lisa St. Claire?"

"I've found an old boyfriend," I said.

"Cherchez l'homme," Susan said.

"Maybe. He's an Hispanic guy from Proctor named Luis Deleon. He might be the one on her answering machine that might have had an accent and said he'd stop by later. I played the tape for Lisa's friend Typhanie-with a y and a ph-and she couldn't say for sure, but it might be him. He's apparently the guy Lisa was with before Belson."

"And you think she might be with him?"

"I don't know. Awful lot of might-be's. But I don't have anyplace else to look, so I'll look there."

"I hope she's not with someone," Susan said.

"Yeah. But, in a sense, if she is, Belson will know she's not dead, and he'll know what he has to fight."

"The voice of experience."

"Disappearance is terrifying," I said. "Whether me or him is painful, but it's clear."