I pushed back from the desk and got up, turning abruptly so that I could survey the room. I checked the front door, but there was no indication that anyone had tampered with the double-key dead bolt. It was possible that someone had made a duplicate of the key, though, and I'd have to have the lock replaced. I've never worried about security, and I don't run around doing tricky things to assume that my domain is inviolate – no talcum powder on the floor near the entrance-way, no single strands of hair affixed across the window crack. I resented the fact I was going to have to deal with this break-in, surrendering a sense of safety I'd always taken for granted. I checked the windows, moving carefully around the perimeter of the room. Nothing. I went into the bathroom and examined the window there. Someone had used a glass cutter to make a small square opening just above the lock. Electrical tape had evidently been used to eliminate any sound of breaking glass. Where the strips of tape had been peeled off, I could still see remnants of adhesive. The aluminum screen was skewed in one corner. It had probably been popped out and then put back. The job had been cleverly done, set up in such a way that I might not have discovered it for weeks. The hole was large enough to allow someone to unlock the window, sliding it up to permit ingress and egress. There's a curtain at that window and with the panels in place, the small hole in the glass wasn't even visible.

I went back into the other room and did a thorough search. Nothing seemed to be missing. I could see that someone had eased sly fingers between my folded clothes in the chest of drawers, had deftly gone through the files, leaving everything much as it had been, but with faint disarrangements here and there. I hated it. I hated the cunning and the care with which it had all been done, the satisfaction somebody must have felt at pulling it off. And what was the point? For the life of me, I couldn't see that anything was gone. I didn't own anything of value and the files themselves were not worth much. Most of the ones I kept at home had been closed out anyway and my notes on Elaine Boldt were at the office. What else did I have that someone might want? What worried me too was the suspicion that this might be Pat Usher's handiwork. Somehow she seemed much more dangerous if, along with savagery, she was also capable of craftiness and stealth.