“Oh, working a fraud case,” Jim said, and they talked shop for a while. They'd met eight years ago when Jim had apprehended a Connecticut robbery suspect. Patrick had been the lead detective, and Jim had done his best to get the suspect sent back to New London with as little fanfare as possible. The two of them had worked well together.

“Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on your message,” Jim said finally, “but I wanted to check things out. To be honest, I thought I'd gotten it wrong the first time—your message said Samantha Mahon was still in Peru—”

“That's right. Traveling with Global Care, from the university . . .”

“I called over there, they wouldn't talk to me,” Jim said. “So I looked Samantha up in the phone book, took a ride over to her house. She lives in a two-family house, not far from the hospital.”

“What do you mean—she was there?”

“That's right. Just came from seeing her today. She got back from Peru a week ago.”

Patrick's stomach fell. That was before he'd talked to Marisa—her sister had returned home and not even told her. He thought of Marisa and Jessica checking e-mail, feeling excited about the possibility of Sam heading up to Cape Hawk when she returned to the States, and here she'd been back a week already.

“What did she say to you?” he asked.

“Not much,” Jim said. “I pretty much had to tell her the truth, to explain why Baltimore PD cared about her whereabouts.”

“Yeah? What'd you tell her?”

“That her sister was worried enough about her to send the cops. I told her she should give her sister a call.”

“How did she react?”

“She said something strange,” Jim said, pausing.

“What?”

“She said that her sister was lost. And then she closed the door in my face.”

“Wow,” Patrick said. “That's cold.”

“Yeah. Family feuds are weird things. That's what it sounded like to me. You want her address and number, or do you just want to give it a rest?”

“Why don't you give it to me?” Patrick said, writing it down. “And while you're at it, why don't you keep tomorrow night free? We can go to some crab place on the harbor, and you can tell me about your fraud case.”

“You've got a hankering for crabs?” Jim asked.

“I've got a friend who misses her sister,” Patrick said. “And she isn't lost at all. See you tomorrow.”

Lily sat at her grandmother's bedside. The air-conditioning hummed, the monitors beeped, and the lights were dim. The nurse had asked her to leave, telling her visiting hours were over, but something in Lily's face had made the nurse leave the room, gently closing the door behind her.