Peering into the alien territory of the ladies’ room, he checked out the porcelain sinks, potpourri in little bowls on a shelf, two stalls with the doors closed tight. He walked farther into the room, his shoes squeaking on terra-cotta tiles. “Alisha?”

No answer came. But this wasn’t uncommon. Often Alisha would play at being coy.

He crouched to scan the floor under each stall. One of them was definitely empty, and when he touched the knife to the door, it swung inward silently. Next he tried the second door and it resisted him. He crouched again. “Alisha, honey . . .”

He straightened up.

He considered kicking open the door, but realized there was no need for that. Instead he went into the vacant stall and stepped up onto the toilet bowl. He looked over the dividing wall into an equally vacant space. No, not true: Alisha’s stiletto-heeled shoes were standing where she’d left them. Rickard grunted, looked at the narrow window where she must have crawled out. It had a security feature, a bar that allowed the window to open only partially. The gap was little more than ten inches wide. No way that a fully grown man could have squeezed through, but a slip like Alisha wouldn’t have had much difficulty.

He should have been enraged, but Rickard felt cool about it, mildly amused even. Alisha had actually pleased him by showing this resourceful side, although it meant she had escaped him. Her betrayal had already harmed him, running off didn’t make that much difference. He thought maybe this was even better. He had planned on murdering her right there in that stall, but that could have proved an inconvenience. It would be difficult getting out of the diner unnoticed if he was covered in her blood. Better then, that he caught up with and killed her somewhere less public.

He stood down from the bowl, exited the stall and headed for the door. When he pulled it open he came face to face with the old man who’d taken too much interest in him earlier. The old man squinted at him, then at the sign on the door.

“You know that’s for the girls, don’t you?” he said.

By way of answer, Rickard dropped his left hand and gripped his own genitals. “Yeah, and so is this.”

The other wasn’t impressed by his lewdness. “I’ve been watching you, boy. I just knew you were a strange one.”

Rickard merely smiled.

The old man tried to peer past him inside the room. “That lady of yours, where’s she at?”

“What’s it to you?”

“You upset her, you did. I want to check she’s okay.”

Rickard moved aside, swung his left thumb over his shoulder. “Go on then. Check all you want.”