He took the phone out and glanced at the screen—Summer, wanting to FaceTime him. He wished he could turn the phone off, but he couldn’t. She’d been trying to get hold of him since last night, and if he ignored her again, she’d probably call the cops.

He hurried out of the room, through the lobby and out of the building, to the safety of the steps and the stone lions and the crowded sidewalks below. Summer was trying Quentin for the third time in a row by the time he finally responded.

“Where the hell have you been?” On the small screen, Summer resembled a horror movie heroine with that paperwhite skin, those huge, wide eyes that seemed to be in a permanent state of shock. She had a way of looking at you too, as though she could see all the way through to your every thought.

Quentin tried not to make eye contact with the face on his screen. “Hello to you too.” He reached for his pocket. “I lost my sunglasses.”

“Aw, the ones Dean gave you?” She sounded genuinely upset.

“I’ll find them. I’m sure they’re around.”

Summer said, “I hope so.”

“I know you do.”

“So what happened yesterday? Did you ever talk to Robin?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She had no idea who the Inland Empire Killers were.”

“Are you sure?”

Quentin thought back to his phone conversation with Robin Diamond, which had taken place a million years ago on the previous day. It had been just a few hours past his arrival on a red-eye flight. He’d managed to get thirty minutes of fitful, Klonopin-aided sleep at his Newark airport hotel, and if anything, it had made him feel more exhausted than he’d been in the first place. He probably should have waited until he’d had some real rest before contacting Robin. But back then—when he was taking his first skipping steps onto that yellow brick road of questions-yet-to-be-answered—Quentin had been excited and hopeful and therefore short on patience. Like her parents, Robin Diamond had an unlisted phone number and home address, and Quentin did not want to think about Closure or Robin Diamond or her parents, especially her parents. Her father . . . “I’m positive.”

“Okay, no worries,” Summer said. “I’m going to go back to Duarte and try and get George to reconsider going on record.”

“Do you think there’s any hope in that?”

She smiled. It tracked weirdly on his screen, a slow-motion grimace, an image out of a dream. “There’s hope in everything, Q.”

He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a real story here.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“But the postcard from New York . . .”

“Lots of students loved Mrs. Brixton. That postcard could have been from anyone.”

“Come on. You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe.”

“Quentin, the ticket stub—”