“I’ll go talk to him, see what he has to say.” Sellitto pulled on his coat. It was always better to drop in on witnesses unexpectedly. Phoning ahead gave them a chance to think up lies, whether or not they had anything to hide.

“Wait, Lon,” Rhyme said.

The big detective glanced his way.

“What if he didn’t sell the clock to the Watchmaker?”

Sellitto nodded. “Yeah, I thought of that—what if he is the Watchmaker or a partner or buddy of his?”

“Or maybe he’s behind the whole thing and the Watchmaker’s working for him.”

“Thought of that too. But, hey, not to worry. I’ve got it covered.”

With a sound track of Irish harp music pulsing in her ears, California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance was absently watching the streets of lower Manhattan stream past, en route to Kennedy Airport.

Christmas decorations, tiny lights and tacky cardboard.

Lovers too. Arm in arm, gloved hands in gloved hands. Out shopping. On vacation.

She was thinking of Bill. Wondered if he would’ve liked it here.

Funny, the small things you remember so perfectly—even after two and a half years, which is such a huge gulf of time under other circumstances.

Mrs. Swenson?

This is Kathryn Dance. My husband’s name is Swenson.

Oh. Well, this is Sergeant Wilkins. CHP.

Why would the Highway Patrol call her at home and not refer to her as Agent Dance?

Forever challenged in the kitchen, Dance had been making dinner, singing a Roberta Flack song, sotto voce, and trying to figure out a food processor attachment. She was making split pea soup.

I’m afraid I have to tell you something, Mrs. Dance. It’s about your husband.

Holding the phone in one hand, the cookbook in the other, she’d stopped moving and stared at the recipe as she took in his words. Dance could still picture the page in the cookbook perfectly, though she’d read it only that one time. She even remembered the caption under the picture. A hearty, tasty soup that you can whip up in no time. And it’s nutritious too.

She could make the soup from memory.

Though she never had.

Kathryn Dance knew it would still be some time before she healed—well, “heal” was the word her grief counselor used. But that wasn’t right, because you never did heal, she’d come to realize. A scar that replaces slashed skin is still a scar. In time a numbness replaces the pain. But the flesh is forever changed.

Dance smiled to herself now, in the cab, as she noted that she’d crossed her arms and curled up her feet. A kinesics expert knows what those gestures are all about.

The streets seemed identical to her—dark canyons, gray and dim brown, punctuated with bright neon: ATM. Salad Bar. Nails $9.95. Such a contrast to the Monterey Peninsula, with the pine and oak and eucalyptus and sandy patches dotted with succulent groundcover. The passage of the smelly Chevy taxi was slow. The town she lived in, Pacific Grove, was a Victorian village 120 miles south of San Francisco. Populated with eighteen thousand souls and nestled between chic Carmel and hardworking Monterey, of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row fame, Pacific Grove could be traversed in the time it had taken the cab to drive four blocks.