“Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . was she familiar to you, that drowning case? There’s a hint, a rumor, that she might have been a dancer. Perhaps at the Club, one of those closed-door events. You know I’m not into that sort of thing, but maybe you saw something? Or heard something?”

She settled herself against the warm, comfortable upholstery of the back seat and closed her eyes to better see the view in her imagination.

—

The chair behind the huge desk with its stacks of sloping files would be unoccupied. Inst’ead they would both sit on the fat leather couch before the large bay window that looked out onto busy streets and beige brick buildings and, far beyond those, the blue-gray harbor. Khabir would be slumped, hands laced over his belly, fingertips lightly tapping. His eyes would be lazy in an effort to convey the impression that nothing about the situation was remarkable. Dr. Boadu’s posture would be slightly tense and a little too upright.

“Drownings are difficult,” Dr. Boadu would make haste to explain, his hands in nervous motion. “The features are so disfigured, you see.”

Perhaps Khabir would use the shrug then. “Please, Allen, don’t think you’re being accused. It’s been niggling at me, that’s all . . . the last unraveled thread of a knotty case.”

Dr. Boadu . . . would he lean back and sigh regretfully? Or would it be a forward lean, seeking sympathy and understanding? “I may have seen her, or a woman like her. She was a dancer at a forenight I attended.”

Ah, the forenight. The final fling of a soon-to-be-married man. Of course they’d have such parties in abundance at the Club.

“What was her name?”

A pause, then, “I don’t remember.”

“Did she stay till the end of the party?”

“I don’t know, Khabir. I was very drunk by then.”

—

The little play in Miranda’s head stuttered for a moment, then disintegrated. She opened her eyes and sighed. “I want her name. Patience, I’m still walking; I haven’t given up yet. Let me walk her labyrinth—only a little way, only far enough to know her name.”

Later it would be easy to say that tiredness and stress and the leisurely drive homeward had lulled her to sleep and that her speculations about the conversation between Khabir and Boadu created the content of her dreams. In that moment, she was only aware of a fierce pain—not the pain of being broken past repair, but the pain of muscles and ligaments stretched to the limits of their training, a pain that was almost unbearable and nearly pleasurable all at the same time, mingled as it was with a strong shot of adrenaline.

—