“What's today? Tuesday . . . Friday's bad and she needs her weekends for total bedrest—Thursday, I guess.”

“If I can catch a flight tonight, how about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow . . . I guess so. But it'll have to be in the afternoon. Mornings she has her therapy, then she naps. Come to my office first—500 Fifth Avenue. Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer. The thirty-third floor. Have you faxed me your credentials yet?”

“Just on my way out to do it.”

“Good, because that'll be a prerequisite. Send me something with a picture, too. If everything checks out, I'll see you, say, two-thirty.”

I found a quick-print place on CaÑon Drive and faxed my documents to New York. Returning home, I postponed telling Robin and called an airline, booking myself a ten p.m. flight out of LAX. I asked the ticket agent about hotels.

She said, “Midtown? I really don't know, sir, but you might try the Middleton. The executives from our company stay there, but it's expensive. Of course, everything in New York is unless you want a real dive.”

I thanked her and phoned the hotel. A very bored-sounding man took my credit card number, then grudgingly agreed to give me a single room for two hundred and twenty dollars a night. When he quoted the price, he suppressed a yawn.

I told Robin about Rosenblatt first.

She shook her head, took hold of my hand.

“Four years ago,” I said. “Another gap filled in.”

“How'd he die?”

“The son didn't go into any details. But if the killer's being consistent, it was probably something to do with a car or a fall.”

“All those people. My God.” Pressing my hand up against her cheek, she closed her eyes. The smell of glue hung in the garage, along with coffee and dust and the sound of the dog's breathing.

I felt him nosing up against my leg. Looked down at his wide, flat face. He blinked a couple of times and licked my hand.

I told Robin of my plan to fly east and offered to have her come with me.

She said, “There'd be no point to it, would there?”

“It's not going to be a vacation, just more digging up people's misery. I'm starting to feel like a ghoul.”

She looked off, at her tools and her molds.

“Only time I've been in New York was a family trip. We went all the way up to Niagara Falls, Mom and Dad squabbling the whole time.”

“I haven't been there, myself, since grad school.”

She nodded, touched my biceps, rubbed it. “You have to go—things are getting uglier and uglier here. When are you leaving?”

“I was thinking tonight.”

“I'll take you to the airport. When will you be coming home, so I can pick you up?”

“Depends on what I find—probably within a day or two.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“I found a hotel.”