Hutch reeled into the room, shattering Tom’s thoughts and the whole meeting with the sound of the door crashing back against the wall. Hutch didn’t have to speak, they all knew that something had gone wrong with Sarah.

“Which way did she go?” Tom heard Charlie Humphries ask.

Tom waited until he heard Hutch breathe the word “stairs” before he was off.

He headed for the sixteenth floor. Bursting into the reception area, Tom caused the attendant to vault his desk, his nightstick in his hand.

“Is Doctor Roberts up here?”

“Jesus! You goin’ to a fire?”

“IS SHE!”

“Lessee. She signed into room fourteen ten minutes ago. Signed out three minutes later.”

“Goddamnit!” He signed himself in, waited for the attendant to buzz him through the door to the ward, rushed down to Miriam’s room. The special guard sat with his chair tilted against the wall. “Open it.”

The man looked up, recognized Tom. “Hasn’t been a sound since Doctor Roberts left.” He unlocked the door, swung it wide.

The room was cold with the night wind. The window, its bars gone, gaped darkly. “Sarah left here alone?”

“Yeah! Not five minutes ago. She didn’t say a damn thing about this.”

Tom went over to the window. He couldn’t have climbed up or down from there. But Miriam evidently could, because she was gone.

Miriam went swiftly through Central Park, heading for the West Side. She was literally wild with hunger. By the time Sarah had come she had already pushed the bars off the window. It was just as well. Sarah had wanted to be held. Miriam did not trust herself so far, not in this state. She reassured the suffering woman that there would be relief, and told her to meet her at her house in half an hour. Then she had climbed down to the sidewalk, with Sarah leaning far out the window, watching her progress.

She ran across the Sheep Meadow with the soaring cliffs of buildings sparkling beyond the dark trees. She had much to do in half an hour.

Only when she emerged onto Central Park West she did break her run. Now she walked swiftly, crossing to Seventy-sixth Street and counting the houses to the one she would enter.

She chose a house four doors down from the target in case she was seen on the stairway. Taking the steps four at a time, she passed the doors of apartments, the sounds of television, the smell of frying steak. When she got to the top of the house, she climbed the ladder to the roof and let herself out. New York building codes require that tenants have free access to the roof. This made things much more convenient.