Caitlin took a stab in the dark. “Were you talking about Katy Royal?”

“Katy Ann Royal!” Mrs. Regan barked. “You get those shoes off and get ready for dinner!” Then she answered in a child’s plaintive voice, as though acting two roles in a play. “Yes, ma’am, I will.” Then a third voice, oddly detached, began to chant: “Katy Ann, tall and tan. She was a good girl, but she’s gone again. All gone. Nobody left now … nobody but me. Daddy and Dr. Borgen made sure of that.”

“Dr. Borgen?” Caitlin said, wishing the Sony were still on.

Katy gave her an eerie, knowing look. “Mm-hm. You’d know him if you saw him. His eyes sparkle, and his hair is made of blue fire.”

Caitlin jumped as her Treo vibrated in her purse, but she didn’t dare reach for it. Mrs. Regan’s eyes tracked the sound like the buzzing of a rattlesnake. “Are you still taping me, Miss Priss?”

“No! I promise. That was my cell phone. I’m going to set it to silent so we won’t be interrupted.”

Katy looked uncertain, then nodded her assent.

As Caitlin reached for the vibrating phone, an idea struck her. As casually as she could, she opened her Treo’s voice note program and hit the record button. Then she switched off the vibrate setting and laid the phone atop the pistol in her purse.

“Katy … you were talking about your time in the Borgen Institute?”

The woman raised up her hands and hugged herself as though she’d been airdropped into the middle of an ice storm. “Shhhh. That’s not its real name. That’s what they call it on the outside. But when you go there, when they lock you in, you learn its real name. The secret name.”

“What was its secret name?”

Katy Regan lifted her chin and spoke in an exaggerated whisper. “Hay-des. The main building was built over a humongous hole. Down under the basement there’s a hole that goes all the way to the center of the earth. It has an electric door that crackles and burns. Dr. Borgen has the switch that works the door.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure how to respond to this.

“They have a furnace, too. A furnace where they burn people they don’t want anymore.”

Caitlin shivered at the conviction in the woman’s voice. “Katy … are you all right? Can I get you something?”

Mrs. Regan giggled, then let her arms fall and said: “No drinky-poo for Katy-boo! She’s had too much already.”