He drove much too fast all the way to the freeway. As we swooped up the on-ramp, he said, "I was up there for a good part of yesterday, checking out the street, talking to neighbors. Home's the big killing spot for females, so I told the crime-scene guys to take their time. Unfortunately, it looks like time ill spent. Got some prelims this morning: no blood or semen, no evidence of break-in or disruption. Lots of prints all over the place, which you'd expect in anyone's house, but so far, the only matches are to Claire's. Final autopsy's scheduled for tomorrow if we're lucky and no drive-bys stuff up the pipeline."

"What did the neighbors have to say?"

"Take a guess."

" 'She kept to herself, never caused problems.' "

"I'm hanging with the Answer Man." He pressed down on the accelerator. "No one spoke two words to her. No one even knew her name."

"What about visitors?"

"None that anyone saw," he said. "Just like Richard. She did have an ex-husband, though. Guy named Joseph Stargill. Lawyer, lives down in San Diego now. I put a call in to him."

"How'd you find him?"

"Came across some divorce papers she kept in her home office. I called Dr. Theobold this morning; he'll be happy to engage in shrink talk with you. He had some vague recollection of Claire getting divorced. Only reason he found out is each year staff members update their resumes. In the past, Claire had put 'Married' in the marital-status blank. This year she whited it out and typed 'Divorced.' "

"So it was recent," I said. "Theobold didn't ask her about it?"

"He said she just wasn't the type you got personal with."

"Maybe that's why she took the job at Starkweather."

"What do you mean?"

"Great escape. Show up on time, don't make waves, no one bugs you. Like Dr. Aldrich said, the staff gets leeway. Maybe she wanted to do clinical work but was afraid of having to relate to patients. Surrounding herself with psychotics took the pressure off, and as long as none of her patients got violent, she could do what she wanted with them. The perfect escape."

"Escape from what?"

"Academia. And emotional entanglement. Her divorce was recent. Just because she didn't talk about it doesn't mean she wasn't still hurting. People going through life changes sometimes try to simplify."

"You see Starkweather as simple."

"In a sense, it is."

He didn't answer, put on even more speed.

A few miles later, I said, "On the other hand, she got entangled with someone. The person who cut her throat."

The house was like so many others.

Single-story white stucco aged to a spoiled-milk gray, roofed with black composite shingle. Attached single garage, double parking space instead of a front yard. One of those unadorned late-fifties hillside knockups posing as intentionally contemporary but really the product of a tight construction budget. The street was called Cape Horn Drive-a short, straight afterthought of a slit into the north side of Woodrow Wilson, dead-ending at a huge tipu tree. Matching trees tilted over the pavement. The sidewalk was bleached and dry where the branches didn't hover.