I said, "One thing's consistent with what we were just saying about Claire. Picking Peake as a project because she wanted serious pathology. But what if something else happened along the way? In her attempt to open Peake up, she opened herself up-had the poor judgment to talk about herself. In therapist jargon, it's called self-disclosure, and we're taught to be careful about it. But people mess up all the time-focusing on themselves instead of the patient. Claire's specialty was neuropsych. As a psychotherapist, she was a novice."

"She never got personal, but with Peake she related?"

"Precisely because Peake couldn't relate back."

"So," he said, "she tells him something about a box, bad eyes... whatever the hell that means, and he spits it back."

"Maybe a box refers to some kind of bondage game."

"Back to dominance... You really see her that way?"

"I'm just throwing out suggestions," I said. "Maybe Claire selected Peake out of some great sense of compassion. Robin disagrees with my impression of Claire's house. She says it just sounds like Claire wanted privacy."

"Something else," he said. "Something that made my little heart go plink-a-plink when Heidi mentioned Peake's name. At Quantico, his case summary was passed around. I remember relatively seasoned guys looking at the photos and groaning; a couple had to leave the room. It was beyond butchery, Alex. I wasn't a hardened bastard yet. All I could do was skim."

He stopped so suddenly that I walked past him several steps.

"What?" I said.

"One of the photos," he said. "One of the kids. The older one. Peake took the eyes."

Chapter 11

William Swig said, "You think that means something?"

It was just after four P.M. and we were back in his office. Milo's unmarked was low on gas, so he left it at the park and I drove to Starkweather.

On the way, he made two calls on the cell phone. An attempt to reach the sheriff of Treadway, California, resulted in a rerouting to the voicemail system of a private security firm named Bunker Protection. Put on hold for several minutes, he finally got through. The brief conversation left him shaking his head.

"Gone," he said.

"The sheriff?"

"The whole damn town. It's a retirement community now, called Fairway Ranch. Bunker does the policing. I talked to some robocop with an attitude: 'All questions of that nature must be referred to national headquarters in Chicago.' "

The call to Swig connected, but when we arrived at the hospital's front gate, the guard hadn't been informed. Phoning Swig's office again finally got us in, but we had to wait awhile before Frank Dollard showed up to walk us across the yard. This time he barely greeted us. Impending evening hadn't tamed the heat. Only three men were out on the yard, one of them Chet, waving his huge hands wildly as he told stories to the sky.