I nodded. Outside, the woman with the blue hair put money in a plain white envelope and put the envelope in her blouse and walked away. Joyce Steuben talked on the phone. The guard read Tom Clancy. Nobody seemed ready to jump up and give me a hand, but then they rarely do. I said, “Peter doesn’t want anything from you. He doesn’t want to impose on you or to interfere with either your life or the boy’s. He just wants to meet his son. He seems sincere in this. You’re not going to gain anything by acting this way.”

She didn’t move.

I spread my hands. “Karen, you’re found.”

She made a little shrug and shook her head. “I hope you find whoever you’re looking for. I really do. Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

She didn’t move and I didn’t move. Outside, a black man in a New York Yankees baseball cap approached the teller and Joyce Steuben hung up the phone and began to write on a yellow legal pad. Somewhere in the back of the little building the heating system clicked on and warm air came through the vents. I said, “If there’s nothing to anything I’ve said, call the guard and have him throw me out.”

She squinted to make the left eye stop moving. The knuckles on the hand holding the knob turned white. Neither of us said anything for quite a while. Then the tip of her tongue appeared and wet her lips. She said, “I’m sorry that you’ve wasted your time, but I know nothing about any of this.”

I took a deep breath and let it out and then I nodded. “Karen Lloyd.”

“Yes. That’s my name.”

“Never been to Los Angeles.”

“Never.”

“Don’t know Peter Nelsen.”

“I can understand your confusion. I do look very much like the girl in the picture.”

I nodded again. The black man finished his transaction and left and the teller walked over to Joyce Steuben’s desk and sat down. Toby Nelsen appeared in the teller’s window, reached through, took a pencil, then disappeared again. Karen Shipley stood very still, legs together, elbows tight at her sides, right hand on the knob and left hanging down at her side. The left was red as if blood had pooled there. I folded the 8 × 10 and put it in my pocket and stood up. “Sorry,” I said. “You do look very much alike.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be seeing you.”

“Have a nice day.”