It had taken the rampage of a madman to bring Henry Ardullo's nightmare home.

A family obliterated. An entire town wiped off the map. Once sentimentality had been taken care of, high real estate values had done the rest.

Sad, but I couldn't see any connection to Claire or the demons hissing in Ardis Peake's head.

Could she have had a family connection to the Ardullos? Her parents hadn't mentioned it. There seemed no reason for them to conceal history. Still, people often hid their reasons. I found a pay phone just outside the reading room, phoned the Flight Inn, and asked for the Argents' room. Rob Ray's familiar rumble said, "Yes?"

"Mr. Argent? Dr. Delaware."

"Oh. Hello."

"Sorry to bother you again, sir, but I had one more question."

"Lucky you caught us," he said. "We're on our way out the door and back home."

"I'll be quick, Mr. Argent. Do you have any relatives in California? Specifically, in the farming business?"

"Farming? Nope."

"Does the name Ardullo mean anything to you?"

"No again. I thought you might be calling about some progress-what's this all about?"

"The Ardullos were a family Claire showed some interest in-she'd read up on them, held on to some newspaper clippings."

"Were a family?" he said. "Something happened to them?"

"Unfortunately, they were murdered. Fifteen years ago, and Claire seemed to be interested in the case."

"Murdered. The whole family?" He nearly choked on the last two words. "So what- I don't mean, so what they were murdered. So what about Claire? No, I don't know them, never did. It was probably just something ... professional. Doing her work. Have to go, good-bye."

"Have a good flight," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "It's going to be a great flight-at least I'm getting out of your lousy city."

His anger rang in my head and I hung up feeling foolish and intrusive. What had I hoped to accomplish? What did big money and land deals have to do with Claire's murder? Now that I was thinking straight, I realized there was a simple explanation for the clippings: knowing she was transferring to Starkweather, Claire had plugged the hospital's name into some data banks, come across the description of Peake's bloody night. Once she got there, she looked him up, found him near vegetative. A challenge.

So many madmen, so little time.

After all those years in the lab, she was hungry for clinical raw meat-for a firsthand look at astounding criminal madness. Maybe she'd even intended to write Peake up, if she made some kind of progress.

She'd entered the world of madness, but-Milo's enthusiasm for Wendell Pelley aside-I wondered if that had anything to do with her death. Right at the beginning, my gut had told me someone organized-twisted but sane-had cut her throat, stashed her in the car trunk, made off with the bit of cash in the as yet undiscovered purse. Left no clues.