Wendy hit the dirt beside him. “Tommy? Are you okay?”

Tommy was coughing as he fought to sit up. “No,” he croaked.

They both looked over at Dennis, who was in a blind rage, screaming and cursing and hitting and kicking at Mr. Alvarez.

They looked at each other, then they looked at the ground where Dennis had dropped the thing he had been trying to shove into Wendy’s mouth: a human finger, blackened and rotted like a bad banana.

The offices of Peter Crane, DDS, were located in a renovated white stucco, Spanish-style building on a bustling, beautiful, tree-lined pedestrian plaza near the college. Shoppers wandered in and out of upscale boutiques and galleries on the three-block stretch. Sidewalk cafes and coffeehouses were busy with a mix of students, adults, and older people. A guitarist playing classical music sat on a bench outside the bookstore.

Nice town, Vince thought, spying an Italian place that advertised Chicago-style pizza. He could smell the olive oil and garlic as if he were swimming in it.

They went inside the dentist’s office and Vince took in the waiting area with its leather chairs and a huge saltwater aquarium built into one wall. Even the magazines on the coffee table were upscale: Town & Country, Architectural Digest, Scientific American. Mendez showed his badge to the elegant African American woman behind the curved wood counter.

She raised her pencil-thin brows. “How may I help you, Detective?”

“Can you tell us if a woman named Karly Vickers had an appointment here last Thursday?”

She flipped back a couple of pages in the appointment book. “Yes. She had a four o’clock cleaning and exam. She arrived at three fifty-five.”

“We’ll need to speak with Dr. Crane and whoever did the cleaning.”

The receptionist led them into an examination room to wait out of sight of patients. Vince helped himself to a seat in the big chair.

“My mother wanted me to be a dentist,” he said, staring up at the mural on the ceiling-a blue sky crowded with plump white clouds. “I’ve got hands the size of catcher’s mitts. Can you imagine having one of these in your mouth?”

A male face loomed over and blocked his view of the clouds. Good-looking guy, midthirties, dark hair, dark eyes.

Vince exited the chair.

“Detective Mendez,” Crane said, shaking hands. “And?”

“Detective Leone,” Vince said.

“Ava said you had some questions about a patient.”

“Karly Vickers,” Mendez said, producing a snapshot from his pocket. Karly hugging her dog. “You saw her Thursday afternoon, late in the day.”

Crane took the photo and stared at it for a moment. “Her hair was different, but yes, I remember her. I gave her a routine exam after her cleaning, and we took a set of X-rays. She needs a couple of crowns, but that’s not a crime,” he said, handing the photograph back. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Miss Vickers is missing,” Vince said. “You may be the last person to have seen her.”

Crane was nonplussed. “Missing? And you think I might know something about that? I looked at her teeth.”

“We’re just trying to retrace her movements that day,” Vince reassured him. “Her appointment here was her last of the day that we know of. Did she happen to say if she was going anywhere after she left here? Perhaps dinner with a friend, anything like that?”

“Oh my God,” Crane said. “First there’s a murder, now there’s a woman missing? Nothing like that ever happens here.”

“It’s disturbing,” Vince agreed.

“Are the two things related?”

“We don’t know yet,” Mendez said.

“Probably not,” Vince added. “You’d be talking about a very rare kind of criminal if the cases were linked. It’s highly unlikely.”

“We’ve already talked about the possibility of a serial killer,” Crane said.

Vince looked at Mendez, who looked a little sheepish. “In theory,” he said.

“After we spoke yesterday, I started thinking,” Crane said. “About a year or so ago-wasn’t there a woman found murdered outside of town? Do you think that murder is connected to this one?”

“I’m not free to speculate,” Mendez said.

“I’m not sure which answer would be worse,” Crane said. “More than one ordinary killer on the loose, or one extraordinary killer on the loose.”

“We’re aiming for C: None of the above,” Vince said.

“The woman in the park,” Crane said, “have you found out who she was?”

“Yes, she’s been identified as Lisa Warwick, a nurse-”

“Lisa Warwick?” he said, shocked. “No.”

“Did you know her?”

“Enough to say hello. She used to work at the Thomas Center. Oh, man, that’s terrible.”

“You do a lot of work for the center?” Vince asked.

“I give a break to their clients and employees,” Crane said. “It’s a good cause. My wife volunteers there as well. She helps with getting donations of clothing for work wardrobes and bringing in successful businesswomen to speak.”

“Had you seen Ms. Warwick recently?” Mendez asked.

“No. I couldn’t say when.”

He leaned back against the counter, crossed his arms, and shook his head. “How did she die?”

“We’re waiting on the full results of the autopsy,” Mendez said. “But it appears she was strangled.”

Crane closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his forehead as if the revelation had pained him.

“I hope she didn’t suffer,” he said quietly. “She was a nice girl.”

“How is Tommy doing?” Mendez asked.

“He’s pretty undone by the whole thing.”

“Dr. Crane’s son was one of the kids that found the body,” Mendez explained.

Crane looked sharply at Vince.

“I was out of town that night,” Vince said easily. “What a terrible thing for kids to have to see.”

“He doesn’t understand how one human being could do that to another human being,” Crane said. “He asked me last night if I thought the man who killed that lady was crazy or just really angry with her.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I don’t think anyone really understands why someone turns out to be a killer.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Vince said.

“My son is ten, and he’s very bright, Detective. He knows if someone is lying to him. I told him he shouldn’t worry about it, that just because a bad thing happened to that woman doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen to him; that he has a lot of people looking out for him, to keep him safe.”

“Did he buy that?”

“I don’t think so,” Crane said honestly.

“Do you remember what time Ms. Vickers left here last Thursday?” Mendez asked.

“A cleaning and exam usually runs around an hour, so it must have been around five. Ava will remember,” Crane said. “Ava remembers everything.”

“How did Miss Vickers seem to you?” Vince asked.

Crane shrugged. “She didn’t make much of an impression on me. She sat with her mouth open and I looked at her teeth. She seemed upset when I told her she would need the two crowns. She was getting ready to start a new job at the Quinn, Morgan law offices. She was worried about having to take time off.

“I told her I doubted it would be a problem. I know everybody at Quinn, Morgan. I told her she should talk to the office manager and we would work something out together. Maybe she went by there on her way home.”

“Do you have patient parking here, Dr. Crane?” Vince asked.

“I have three spots behind the building. If those are full, they have to use public parking.”

“It’s all right if we take a look back there,” Vince said. “There’s a back door, right?”

“Yes. I’ll show you.”

He led them down a hall and out a door into the shadowed alley behind the building. Vince took it all in-the surrounding buildings, the lack of activity. The building directly next door had a large FOR LEASE sign up on the wall. JAMESON REAL ESTATE with the phone number of the agency and a photo of a pretty, smiling agent inviting interested parties to call.