I still needed a drink. Sometimes being sober is like drowning. After a certain point, you know you're going to have to breathe, no matter what. But you don't-not until you pass out. I didn't go to a bar, I went to meet Ginny.

It was a long drive back to the middle of town, but when I got near Central High, where the school board has its offices, I was still a bit early so I stopped to grab a quick lunch. That made it twelve forty-five I pulled into the Central High parking lot.

Central isn't the newest high school in the city, but it is sure as hell the biggest and most bewildering. You could hide a football field in there and never find it again because the school was built in huge square sections that interlock and form a maze. They had to make it a high school because nobody younger than a freshman could find their way around in it. I was lucky I hadn't gone to school there. I've never been very good at mazes.

A couple of minutes later, Ginny wheeled her Olds into the lot and parked it a few spaces down from my rented Torino. I was glad to see her. The sun on all those parked cars gave the day a glare of futility. Everybody in the whole city could go crazy, rape each other, and drop dead, and it wouldn't make one damn bit of difference to the sun. Ginny was a good antidote for that kind of thinking.

I walked over to join her. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but I thought she looked glad to see me, too. I caught her making a sneaky effort to check my breath. Then her face relaxed into a smile. For a second there, I almost hugged her. Sometimes her smile does funny things to me.

Then she said, "What've you got?" and we were back to business.

I showed her the Larsens' note and told her about my morning. I didn't leave anything out. Talking about good old Detective-Lieutenant Acton didn't do my blood pressure any favors, but I've never worried much about my arteries anyway.

She absorbed what I had to say, considered it briefly. Then she told me what she'd come up with.

"Mrs. Swift is a real charmer. I must've gotten her out of bed. She came to the door looking like the wrath of God, wearing one of those polyester bathrobes, turquoise and pink paisley. Gave me a headache just to look at her. She acted like she'd invented bitchiness all by herself. All she could say about her daughter was that she was 'no good.' Ungrateful little slut, running off and leaving her poor mother all alone like that. I had to lean on her to get anything else."

I grinned. "Wish I'd seen that."

"It wasn't fun. And hardly worth the effort. She finally admitted getting a letter, though, sometime after her daughter ran away. She doesn't remember when, and she doesn't remember what it said. She tore it up as soon as she read it. She does remember the cops coming to see her, especially after Rosalynn turned up dead. But she claims she doesn't remember who they were or what they wanted."

She paused, then said, "I don't know, Brew. Maybe Rosalynn Swift doesn't fit the pattern. If I were her, I'd run away from that woman seven days a week."

"Yeah, but don't cross her off the list yet. She went the same route as the others."

Ginny thought a minute before she said, "Right."

"What about the Hannibals?"

"Better." She made the transition with a jerk. "Much better. I caught them both at home. He works the evening shift down at the paper mill, so he was just having breakfast when I got there. He's a feisty little man who likes to fly off the handle, but his heart's in the right place. Mrs. Hannibal is as steady as a rock, so she keeps him in line. At first they didn't want to talk. Some cop told them not to, they don't remember his name. After all, it was a year and a half ago. But after I explained what we were trying to do, they changed their minds.

"Judging from what they told me, I'd say that when Esther disappeared they were nearly paralyzed with anger and fear. Furious at her for running away, and at the same time terrified that something had happened to her. It was all they could do to report her missing. They just couldn't bring themselves to swear out a complaint. Mr. Hannibal probably spent half his time shouting and the other half in a cold sweat. Then they got a letter from her telling them not to worry, she was all right. That gave them an out, an excuse to do nothing,

"Looking back on it, they're pretty bitter about themselves. Esther's death gave them a real shock, which probably explains why they were willing to help me in the end. They say they've changed their whole attitude toward their other children. To prove it, they gave me Esther's letter."

Ginny handed it to me, envelope and all.

It had a local postmark. The handwriting was barely legible. The note was on a half sheet of good twenty-pound bond, neatly torn along one edge. It said, "Dear Mom and Dad, I'm not going to be coming home for a while. Maybe for a long time. I've got something to work out. Don't worry, I'll be all right. Love, Esther." The watermark matched the others.

While I studied it, Ginny went on, "I asked them if there was anything about this that bothered them. At first they couldn't think of anything, but then they said there was one thing. One of the many things that made them ashamed of themselves. Esther always came home from school for lunch, which she always complained about because her friends ate in the school cafeteria. But the Hannibals only live three blocks from the school, and anyway they couldn't afford school lunches.

"The day she disappeared, she didn't come home for lunch. The Hannibals didn't think much about it. They assumed a friend gave her lunch, or she bought her own out of her allowance. Now they feel like they failed her by not realizing something was wrong. As if there was anything they could've done." Abruptly Ginny's voice went stiff with anger. "Heaven help the bastard who's responsible for this when I get my hands on him."

I knew how she felt. But we have a reciprocal relationship-when one of us gets mad, the other tries to stay calm. I said, "If Ted doesn't get to him first." Which wasn't much of a contribution, but it was all I had. "How's he doing, anyway? Has he called in?"

She calmed down again so fast it was almost scary. "He called while I was at the Hannibals. He didn't want to talk about it over the phone, he just wanted me to give him more to do. I told him to check out May-Belle Podhorentz and South Valley Junior High. He's supposed to meet us back at the office in a couple of hours."

It was one o'clock when we headed into Central High's monster building and began hunting for the school board wing. The kids must've all been in class, because we saw only one or two. As we walked along the hollow corridors, I asked Ginny if she'd learned anything at Matthew Pilgrim Junior High.

"It probably doesn't mean anything," she said, "but both Rosalynn Swift and Esther Hannibal disappeared at times when they were routinely alone. Esther was there for her last period before lunch, and gone afterward. As for Rosalynn, apparently she had a tendency to get in trouble. Nothing serious. Just trying to get attention. So as a form of punishment she was assigned to clean up the math classroom every day right after lunch, while the other kids were free. Alone. She'd been doing it for about a month- and doing a good job of it, according to the math teacher- when she disappeared. Just didn't show up for her next class. Nobody saw her leave, which isn't surprising since the math room is in the corner of the building farthest away from the playground and the cafeteria.

"The people I talked to were fairly helpful, but they made it clear that I ought to be talking to the school board instead of bothering them. They kept assuring me the board had all the information I needed. I got the impression they want the board to decide for them whether or not we have any legal right to pry into all this."

"Sounds familiar," I muttered. At Alathea's school, Vice-principal Rumsfeld had given me pretty much the same impression.

Then we found what we were looking for, a frosted-glass door in the middle of a blank wall. The lettering on the glass said,

PUERTA DEL SOL BOARD OF EDUCATION

PAUL M. STRETTO, CHAIRMAN