“Alex? . . . I guess you’re not in . . . we were supposed to fly to Canada, but we’ve been held over in Seattle—doing an extra show . . . there were some equipment modifications that needed to be done before the concert, so I was tied up . . . I guess you’re out again . . . anyway, I’m at the Four Seasons in Seattle. They gave me a nice room . . . it’s raining. Alex, I hope you’re okay. I’m sure you are. Bye, honey.”

Bye, honey.

No I love you.

She always said I love you.

CHAPTER

17

At 1 A.M., I called the Four Seasons in Seattle. The operator said, “It’s past the time where we put calls through, sir.”

“She’ll talk to me.”

“Are you her husband?”

“Her boyfriend.”

“Well . . . actually, it looks like you’re going to have to leave a message. I’ve got her as out of her room, her voice mail’s engaged, here you go.”

She put me through. I hung up, trudged to bed, fell into something that might’ve been called sleep had it been restful, found myself sitting up at 6:30 A.M. dry-mouthed and seeing double.

At seven, I phoned Milo. His voice was fuzzy, as if filtered through a hay bale.

“Yo, General Delaware,” he said, “isn’t it a little early for my field report?”

I told him what I’d learned about Caroline Cossack and Michael Larner.

“Jesus, I haven’t even brushed my teeth . . . okay, let me digest this. You figure this Larner did a favor for the Cossacks by stashing Caroline and they paid him back—what—fifteen years later? Not exactly immediate gratification.”

“There could’ve been other rewards along the way. Both Larner and the Cossacks were involved in independent film production.”

“You find any film link between them?”

“No, but—”

“No matter, I’ll buy a relationship between Larner and Caroline’s family. She was a screwy kid, and Larner ran a place for screwy kids. It says nothing about what got her in there in the first place.”

“The behavioral warning on her chart says plenty. My source says Caroline was the only one tagged. Anyway, do what you want with it.”

“Sure, thanks. You all right?”

Everyone kept asking me the same damn question. I forced amiability into my voice. “I’m fine.”

“You sound like me in the morning.”

“You rarely hear me this early.”

“That must be it. Behavioral warning, huh? But your source didn’t know why.”

“The assumption was some kind of antisocial or aggressive behavior. Add to that Dr. Schwartzman’s dead Akita, and a picture starts forming. A rich kid doing very bad things would explain a cover-up.”

“Your basic disturbed loner,” he said. “What would we homicide folk do without them?”

“Something else,” I said. “I was thinking maybe the reason Caroline never got a social security card was because eventually she did act out and ended up in—”