He got a Grolsch, opened it, and nodded. “Armed robbery, what I was working on in Palms. Little mom-and-pop grocery. Pop died a few months ago, mom's eighty, barely hanging on. Two little shits came in this afternoon, flashed knives, and threatened to rape her and cut off her breasts if she didn't hand over the cashbox. Old lady puts them at around thirteen or fourteen. She's too shook to say much else, chest pains, shortness of breath. They admitted her to St. John's for observation.”

“Poor thing. Thirteen or fourteen?”

“Yeah. The timing of the robbery might mean the little assholes waited till after school to do it—how's that for your extracurricular activities? Or maybe they're just your basic truant psychopaths out for a fun day.”

“Urban Huck and Tom,” I said.

“Sure. Smoke a corncob of crack, gangbang Becky Thatcher.”

He sat down at the table and sniffed the top of the beer bottle. The dog had remained at the refrigerator and was looking at him, as if contemplating approach, but Milo's tone and expression stilled him and he came over and settled at my feet.

I said, “So no one else's prints were on the tape.”

“Not a one.”

“What does that mean? Someone took the trouble to wipe it clean?”

“Or handled it with gloves. Or there were prints and they got smeared when you touched the tape.” He stretched his legs. “So show me this brochure you found.”

I went to the library, got the conference program, and gave it to him. He scanned it, “No one named Silk here.”

“Maybe he was in the audience.”

“You look intense,” he said, pointing to my photo. “That beard—kind of rabbinic.”

“Actually, I was bored.” I told him how I'd become a co-chair.

He put down his bottle. “Nineteen seventy-nine. Someone carrying around a grudge all this time?”

“Or something happened recently that triggered a recollection from seventy-nine. I tried calling Katarina and Rosenblatt, to see if maybe they'd gotten anything in the mail, but she's closed up shop in Santa Barbara and he's no longer practicing in Manhattan. I found a psychologist in New York who may be his wife and left her a message.”

He examined the brochure again. “So what could the grudge be about?”

“I have no idea, Milo. Maybe it's not even the conference, maybe it's someone who sees himself as victimized by the therapist—or the therapy. Maybe the grievance isn't even real—something paranoid—a delusion that would never occur to you or me.”

“Meaning we're normal?”

“Everything's relative.”

He smiled. “So you can't remember anything weird happening at the conference.”

“Nothing at all.”

“This de Bosch—was he controversial in any way? The kind to make enemies?”

“Not that I know, but my only contact with him was through his writings. They're not controversial.”

“What about the daughter?”