She drove to the beach, parked, and then walked, trying to see every person who passed within range of her eyes. Weiss hadn’t been doing any kidnapping here since he’d been out. Any crime of that sort would have come up during her research and in the FBI reports. In the old days he had worked with two accomplices, and then with three. But his dungeon for kidnapping was new. He hadn’t even completed the finishing touches. He hadn’t taken anyone yet, and she’d seen nothing in his preparations that implied more people would be involved when he did.

He was alone, and he was planning a kidnapping that he could do alone. She felt sure that he was going for the easiest kind of kidnapping—a child or a young woman. She walked along the beach and looked. It was too late for children to be playing, or for their parents to be distracted so Weiss could snatch one. There were four young people, two couples who were probably on a date, strolling along and enjoying the cool air and the beauty of the night and the ocean. She sat and watched. It was too late even for them to be out on the beach. They veered toward the place where the beach rose up to street level and disappeared.

Leah was alone again. She stood and brushed the sand off the back of her pants, went up through the trees to the street, and got into her rental car. She drove along the streets from Twelfth Avenue to Fifth searching for places where she might have lain in wait if she were a kidnapper. As she looked and thought about Weiss, it occurred to her that the trick was like being a spider. He would be in the darkest spot he could find, watching the edible creatures moving around in the lighted spaces until he found one that was alone and off guard.

She kept driving, studying the clubs and restaurants that were still open, and then scanning the curbs and parking lots for the blue Chrysler 300. She parked her rental car among the other cars in each lot, waiting for him in each place while she studied the people coming out of each establishment. Most of the restaurants stopped serving food at ten or eleven o’clock, and the people who stayed to drink and talk tended to be members of celebrations—engagements, birthdays, anniversaries. They were well dressed and mostly happy, and few had obvious signs of inebriation.

The places that were still crowded at this hour were something else. The younger the crowd, the later they stayed and the more they drank. The bars stopped serving at 2:00 a.m., and at the ones she thought were most promising, a last burst of liveliness began around 1:00.