He rubbed his eyes. “Oh, nuts, Vic. I could sleep in here on your couch, but there’d be hell to pay at the station for why I didn’t call in a team as soon as I saw it. Let alone why I spent the night here. I’ve got to call it in. Didn’t you say you’d crash at your neighbor’s?”

“I said it, but I don’t want to do it. Look, call the boys in blue if you have to, but let me go to bed.”

He agreed after an examination of the bedroom. My clothes had been turned out of their drawers, but no furniture was broken. I looked in the closet. They’d rifled the clothes, but had missed the little wall safe at the back. Amateurs. And angry, at that.

“You know anything about this, Ms. W.? Why someone would go to all the trouble? You know, if they were just street punks they would’ve given up after they found they couldn’t trash the front door.”

“My brain isn’t working, Sergeant. Call your pals if you want, but leave me alone.” My voice was cracking now, but I was past minding.

Rawlings gave me a long look, seemed to decide he wouldn’t get anything more out of me even if he beat me, and walked back down the hall to the living room. I could hear his mike crackling as he went.

Even so, I couldn’t go to bed until I’d stood under the shower for twenty minutes, washing the grime from the canal out of my pores. The troops were arriving as I returned to my bedroom. I ostentatiously slammed my door, then fell deeply and heavily asleep, into dreams of climbing walls, trying to reach a Buddha who sat always just out of my reach while giant men chased me in trucks. At one point I slipped and fell from a high scaffolding. Just before smashing into the concrete I woke with a jolt. It was twelve-thirty.

I made a half-hearted effort to get up, but my legs and arms seemed too thick to move. I sank back against the mattress and watched sun motes dancing between the top of the curtains and the ceiling.

If someone asked me to recommend a good private eye about now, I’d have to send them to one of the big suburban firms. I was trying to be an advocate for a woman sunk deep in senility whose life when sane had been pretty dreadful. After a week of prodding Diamond Head Motors to give me information on Mitch Kruger, the only thing I had to show for my pains was sore muscles, a rusty gun, and a busted-up apartment. Oh, no. Also a two-thousand dollar repair bill for the Trans Am. And Lotty Herschel hurt, scared, and angry up in Evanston.