I feel horrible. Actually I’m not even sure how I feel, how I should feel, how anybody should feel. It’s as if I had a chance to change Elisa Vandersteel’s destiny, and I didn’t. She was in front of me twice today mere hours before her death. But it made no difference. If only I could have stopped her. If only I’d suggested she fasten the chin strap of her helmet or that she get out of the heat. Maybe I could have gotten her to think twice.

Maybe she would have changed the ultimate route she took or changed something, anything at all. If only I could have delayed or diverted her, maybe told her not to ride alone after dark through a deserted park. Of course I didn’t know she was going to do that. I didn’t know enough to tell Elisa Vandersteel a damn thing that might have prevented her from dying. And I need to stop this or I’ll drive myself crazy.

“Her father was Alexander Vandersteel, and he committed suicide in 2009 at the age of forty-one,” Lucy tells me what she’s finding so far, and I hear keys click in the background as she continues her searches. “I got his obituary right here, and it looks like he ran a charity that got decimated by some Madoff-like investment scam. He hanged himself from a rafter in the garage,” she says, and I can’t imagine a detail like that was in his obituary.

“What about Elisa’s mother?” I stand up and zip the coveralls to my chin but save the dreaded hood for later.

“Not sure yet,” Lucy says. “But her parents were divorced.”

“So let me see if I have this straight. The father’s dead, who knows about the mother, and they were divorced,” I repeat. “I guess we go to plan B because it would seem that Elisa Vandersteel’s familial relationships may not help us with her identity.”

I sit back down and start pulling on a new pair of shoe covers.

“We’re probably not going to be able to confirm who she is,” I add, “until we recover certain personal items such as her toothbrush, her hairbrush.”

“I’m guessing she was staying with someone around here,” Lucy says. “And I can promise that somebody at the theater is going to have at least some of the answers we need. I thought I’d wander over there before everyone’s gone for the night, just do a little snooping, maybe find out where the boyfriend lives and where she’s been staying. I’ll find something.”

I glance at the time on my phone. The evening performance at the repertory theater will have ended more than an hour ago.

“How will you explain your interest?” I inquire. “We want to be careful about word getting out.”