As they wheeled down the block to Danco’s crashed van I climbed in the back of the ambulance to see how Debs was doing. Her eyes were closed and she was very pale, but she seemed to be breathing easier. She opened one eye and looked up at me. We’re not moving, she said.

Dr. Danco crashed his van.

She tensed and tried to sit up, both eyes wide open. You got him?

No, Debs. Just his passenger. I think he was about to deliver it, because it’s all done.

I had thought she was pale before, but she almost vanished now. Kyle, she said.

No, I told her. Doakes says it’s someone named Frank.

Are you sure?

Apparently positive. There’s a tattoo on his neck. It’s not Kyle, Sis.

Deborah closed her eyes and drifted back down onto the cot as if she was a deflating balloon. Thank God, she said.

I hope you don’t mind sharing your cab with Frank, I said.

She shook her head. I don’t mind, she said, and then her eyes opened again. Dexter. No fucking around with Doakes. Help him find Kyle. Please?

It must have been the drugs working on her, because I could count on one finger the number of times I had heard her ask anything so plaintively. All right, Debs. I’ll do my best, I said, and her eyes fluttered closed again.

Thanks, she said.

I got back to Danco’s van just in time to see the older paramedic straighten up from where he had obviously been vomiting, and turn to talk to his partner, who was sitting on the curb mumbling to himself over the sounds that Frank was still making inside. Come on, Michael, the older guy said. Come on, buddy.

Michael didn’t seem interested in moving, except for rocking back and forth as he repeated, Oh God. Oh Jesus. Oh God. I decided he probably didn’t need my encouragement, and went around to the driver’s door of the van. It was sprung open and I peeked in.

Dr. Danco must have been in a hurry, because he had left behind a very pricey-looking scanner, the kind that police groupies and newshounds use to monitor emergency radio traffic. It was very comforting to know that Danco had been tracking us with this and not some kind of magic powers.

Other than that, the van was clean. There was no telltale matchbook, no slip of paper with an address or a cryptic word in Latin scribbled on the back. Nothing at all that could give us any kind of clue. There might turn out to be fingerprints, but since we already knew who had been driving that didn’t seem very helpful.