Swig said, "I can't believe this. If we hired him, his credentials had to be in order. The state fingerprints them-"

"He has no arrest record we know of, so prints don't mean much," said Milo, taking the file and flipping pages. "Says here he completed the psych tech course at Orange Coast College.... No point following that up, who cares if he bo-gused his education." To Swig: "Would there be any record if he actually returned his keys?"

"His file's in order. That means he did. Any irregularity-"

"Is picked up by the system. I know. Of course, even if he did return them, seeing as he got to take them home every day, he had plenty of chances to make copies."

"Each key is clearly imprinted 'Do Not Duplicate.' "

"Gee," said De la Torre. "That would scare me."

Swig braced himself against the nearest file. "There was no reason to worry about that. The risk wasn't someone breaking in. Why don't you look for him, instead of harping'? Why would he come back!"

"Must be the ambience," said Milo. "Or maybe the new air-conditioning." He looked up at a small grilled grate in the center of the ceiling. "What about the ductwork? Wide enough for someone to fit?"

"No, no, no," said Swig, with sudden conviction. "Absolutely not. We considered that when we installed, used narrow ducts-six inches in diameter. It caused technical problems, that's why the work took so long to-" He stopped. "Peake's my only concern. Should we keep searching?"

"Any reason to stop?" said Milo.

"If he killed that woman on the freeway, he's miles away."

"And if he didn't?"

"Fine-exactly-got to go, need to supervise."

"Sure," said Milo. "Do your thing."

Outside the main building, the fireflies continued to dance, fragmented sporadically by the downslanting beams of circling helicopters. Milo yelled at a guard to get us out of there.

He and I and the sheriff's detectives reconvened in the parking lot, next to the unmarked. The white coroner's van was still in place, as were the squad cars and a pea-green sedan that had to be Banks and De la Torre's wheels.

Banks said, "So what's the theory here? This Orson, or whatever his real name is, snuck in somehow and got Peake loose? What's his motive?" Milo flourished an open palm in my direction. "Unclear," I said. "It may have had something to do with Peake's original rampage. Crimmins and Peake go way back. It's possible-now I'd say probable-that Crimmins was involved somehow. Either by directly urging Peake to kill the Ardullos or by doing something more subtle." I described the long-term conflict between the Crimminses and the Ardullos, described Peake's prophecies. "Money," said De laTorre.