We didn't talk about it. Ginny had a pinched look between her eyes, the one that meant she was thinking hard. I had no idea what she was thinking about, but I learned long ago to leave her alone when she looks like that.

I didn't even ask her where we were going. She headed straight for her Olds, opened the door and got in. I wedged myself into my Torino and followed.

We ended up at Mountain Junior High, where we had another session with Vice-principal Rumsfeld. She wasn't exactly overjoyed to see us again, but this time Ginny had a much clearer idea of what she wanted to know, and the vice-principal wasn't the kind of woman who could turn us down if there was any chance at all of helping one of her students. She took us to meet Alathea's PE teacher, and the two of them showed us Alathea's shortcut between her fifth and sixth periods.

"We don't normally allow our students outside the school buildings unsupervised," Ms. Rumsfeld said sternly, "but I understand that this was something of a special case."

"Alathea had an awkward schedule," the PE teacher said. "She had a hard time getting from the gym to her next class before it started. She asked permission to take this shortcut. I didn't see any reason to turn her down. She was a very dependable girl."

Very dependable. Yes. That's what I had to keep in mind. I didn't know any of the seven dead girls. For all I knew, every one of them might've been a raving lunatic.

But I knew Alathea. She wasn't crazy, or on drugs, or a whore.

With the vice-principal and the PE teacher guiding us, we needed about five seconds to see why Alathea had wanted to use the outside route. For someone in a hurry, it was much easier than going through the buildings. But it was also a perfect place to disappear from, if that's what you had in mind. The buildings stood close to the street, and on that side most of them-the gym, the auditorium, one end of the library-didn't have any windows. Alathea hadn't just been alone, she'd been out of sight.

Which fit with what Ginny'd learned about Rosalynn Swift and Esther Hannibal. But it didn't mean anything to me. If you wanted to run away from school, would you do it when you were surrounded by kids and teachers, or when you were alone?

But Ginny seemed satisfied with whatever it was we'd learned. She thanked Ms. Rumsfeld and the PE teacher, told them we wouldn't bother them again if we could help it. Then we left.

This time she led me all the way down Paseo Grande to the Murchison Building. Back to her office.

Ted was there waiting for us. He looked like he'd spent the day in a dryer at the laundromat-hot, thirsty, and about two sizes smaller. But his eyes weren't bulging the way they did last night. They were sunken and sizzling, as if they were being cooked from inside by whatever he was thinking.

He didn't say anything until we were settled in Fistoulari Investigations' back room. Then he confronted Ginny. Standing in front of her with his hands on his hips, he looked like the losing end of a cockfight, plucked half to death and still ready to peck anything in sight. "You're wasting my time," he said.

That surprised her. She looked at him hard. "I thought you wanted to help." Even sitting down, she was practically his size.

"I want to find Mittie. This way isn't getting me anywhere."

Well, off and on I'd been thinking the same thing myself, but for some reason it irritated me to hear him say it. Apparently I felt that nobody but me was allowed to disagree with Ginny-which makes even less sense when you think about it. But I didn't get a chance to argue with him. She was working on what he said faster than I was. "Why not? Didn't you get anything?" she asked.

"Oh, I got what you wanted, all right." He took two half sheets of paper out of his pocket and tossed them on the desk. "I know we're in a grubby business, but it isn't supposed to be this bad. Nailing people who screw around, clearing people who don't-that's what we're supposed to do. Not this. It was bad enough talking to those Consciewitz people. They're lunatics-all that stuff about an 'uncle in Detroit'-but they miss their daughter so much it's making them sick. They were practically desperate to make me take their note. They say it proves she didn't run away. I don't know how, their explanations didn't make any sense. As far as I can tell, believing she didn't run away is the only thing that stops them from killing themselves.

"But May-Belle Podhorentz's parents-My God, Ginny! I practically had to extort that note out of them. It's the only piece of her they had left. After what happened to her, they had to put up with some half-wit cop who gave them a bunch of shit. They spent ten months being eaten alive by fear and shame and God knows what else. Then I came along. Next time, just ask me to rape the rest of their kids. It'll be easier."

Ginny still hadn't even glanced at the notes on her desk. But if Ted made her mad, she kept it to herself. She just held her eyes on him and asked, "Did they say if they thought May-Belle's note was written under duress?"

"They didn't say, and I didn't ask. I was too ashamed of myself."

She considered for a moment, then said, "All right. I don't really need that. What about the schools?"

"Nothing," Ted rasped. "May-Belle Podhorentz and Dottie Ann Consciewitz were just like Mittie: They disappeared when nobody was watching them."

Ginny sat up straighter in her chair. "What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean? None of them walked away from their friends or disappeared in the middle of a class or snuck out the back way during lunch. They all waited until they were alone. May-Belle was a piano student. One of the practice rooms was assigned to her during her third period. She didn't show up for her fourth-period class. Dottie Ann liked PE, and she had a job in the gym during fifth period. She sorted uniforms and equipment. Alone. She didn't make it to sixth period. And Mittie-"

He started to shout. "It was the same goddamn thing with Mittie!" He couldn't help himself. "What the hell do you care? What does all this prove? We're not getting anywhere, and you know it!"

Ginny never flinched. "I think that what we're doing is pretty obvious. What else would you suggest?"

That stopped him. But not because he didn't have ideas of his own. His expression reminded me of the way he'd left the diner the night before. He had something in mind, no question about it. Whatever it was, however, he stopped because he didn't want to say it out loud.

"Spill it, Ted," I said softly. "We're all in this together."

He didn't move a muscle.

I went on. "And you need us. You don't have a client. You can't hire yourself to look for your own daughter. You'll lose your license."

I knew a thing or two about losing a license.

Then he turned to face me. His cheeks were as pale as frostbite. "I don't give a shit about that," he said. "I don't want any of this to be true."

I held his eyes.

Thickly he asked, "What do you think about-about prostitution? Where does that fit in?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I was trying to guess what he really had in mind. "That's probably the only thing the coroner was right about. They have to get money somewhere. How else are girls that age going to do it?"

Something like a spasm of rage or disgust jumped across Ted's face. He turned on his heel and left the office.

Ginny stared after him for a long time, frowning grimly. Then she picked up the notes he'd left on her desk. She read them, studied them, checked the watermarks, then handed them to me.

They fit the pattern exactly-paper, watermark, torn edge, handwriting, everything. When I compared them with the notes we already had, I saw that May-Belle Podhorentz' was word-for-word identical with Mittie's.

After all, sixteen months is a long time for whatever bastard dictated these notes to remember exactly what they said.

"I should have told him what we've got," Ginny said. Still thinking about Ted.

"He didn't want to hear it." That was my first reaction. Then I said, "Besides, we haven't got anything."

"That depends on what you're looking for," she replied in a musing tone. "Things are starting to fit together."

"Oh, good." Being sober doesn't do much for my temper. "Now if the fit just made sense, we'd be getting somewhere."

It was her turn to stay calm. "We are getting somewhere. If Marisa Lutt's parents have a note like these, we'll have a case that can stand up under any kind of pressure-even if that fucker Acton tries to get us out of the way."

"That isn't what I meant." Even I knew how important those notes were.

She looked at the ceiling for a moment, then said, "I take it you didn't notice anything interesting in what Ted told us? About how Mittie, May-Belle, and Dottie Ann disappeared?"

"It's the same story as Alathea," I said sourly. "I knew all that already. I read it in Kirke's files. So what?"

"I'm going to have to check it out with the other schools. This is too iffy to take chances with. But I think there's something important in those files. According to them, these girls didn't just run away from school-they ran away during school. Never after or before. During. And every one of them was alone on a regular basis at some point in the school day. Being alone didn't happen by accident on a particular day."

"Which proves what?" She was on the edge of something. I could feel it. But I didn't have the dimmest notion what it was. I was like Ted-I had ideas of my own, and they didn't seem to relate to what Ginny was thinking.

"I don't know yet. Files don't always give a very clear picture of what really happens."

That was true enough. But it still didn't mean anything to me. Even if the other files checked out with the schools themselves, that only showed that every one of the girls had a regular chance to run away. Opportunity, nothing more.

I used to know some cops, back in the days when I was still on speaking terms with some of them, who believed that opportunity creates crime. People do things for the simple reason that they get the chance. Wives shoot their husbands because there's a gun in the house. Kids become junkies because drugs exist. Responsible executives take money out of the till and blow it in Las Vegas because Las Vegas is there. Opportunity. Those cops used to talk about preventing crime by getting rid of opportunity.

I think that's a crock of manure. In my opinion, people commit gratuitous crimes, crimes they aren't forced into, the way a starving man sometimes feels forced to steal, or a woman whose husband is cheating on her sometimes feels forced to shoot him, for the sake of power. If they can get away with it, it puts them on top of the world.

But right then I wasn't so sure of anything. If Ginny wanted to blame it on opportunity, I wasn't going to argue with her. I didn't have anything better to offer. Instead I said, "There's plenty of daylight left. What do you want me to do while I've still got wheels?"

"Marisa Lutt," she said without hesitation. "Let's make sure we've got everything. I'm tempted to call Encino, ask him to go farther back than two years. But I'm half afraid to find out if there're any more of these cases. And I got the impression that he's going to work on it anyway. Maybe he didn't know about the notes before, but he does now. He'll probably call us himself if he finds anything we need to know."

I agreed with that. "You're going to do the rest of the schools?"

"Yes. Ensenada and North Valley. I think that covers it, doesn't it?"

I made a quick mental check. "That's it."

"OK." She got to her feet. "Call my answering service when you're finished. Then you might as well get rid of that clunker."

"Yeah." I heaved myself up out of the chair. Collected all the notes and stuffed them in my pocket. This time I went out first. I wasn't trying to prove anything, no matter what Kirke had said. It was her office, and she had to lock up after me.

Alone again, I dug the Torino out of the garage and headed in the direction of the Heights. The Lutts lived in one of those newish suburbs where all the houses look nice even though they're crammed together on lots you can hardly lie down crosswise on, and all the streets and even the developments have cute irrelevant names. The Lutts' development was called Sherwood Forest-in this part of the world, of all places-and they lived on Friar Tuck Road between Little John Street and Maid Marian Lane. As first impressions go, it didn't raise my expectations about Carson and Lillian Lutt, but I suppose with real estate prices being what they are you pretty much have to live wherever you find a house you can afford. If I wasn't mistaken, Sherwood Forest's big selling point was that the houses were less expensive than they looked. That, and a chance to send your junior-high kids to Ensenada Middle School.

I parked in the street, even though that left precious little room for the rest of the traffic, and went up the walk to the Lutts' front door. Paint and trim aside, their place was identical to every fourth house on the block. And they had one chest-high piñon growing out of their front lawn, just like every other property in sight.

Unfortunately you can't tell what's going on inside a house from the outside. When Carson Lutt opened the door, it took me just one second to be sure that he was drunk.

He looked me up and down blearily, as if I were some kind of obnoxious consequence of his drinking, then said, "What the hell do you want?" His voice was smeared around the edges in a way that showed he wasn't really very good at drinking. It takes practice to learn how to speak clearly when you're full of booze.

I groaned to myself. The smell of his breath made me as thirsty as a dog. And I was already in no mood to put up with a belligerent drunk. I had to make a special effort not to sound too hostile myself. "My name is Axbrewder. I'd like to talk to you about your daughter."

"That punk?" he snorted. "What's she done now?"

"Nothing as far as I know."

"Oh." That seemed to surprise him. For a minute he forgot to be angry at me. "Come on in." He waved me into the house and shut the door. "Have a drink."

"No, thanks." The living room looked better than I'd expected. Whoever decorated it had spent enough money to make the atmosphere soothing and the furniture comfortable, but stopped before the place looked like those implausible pictures in home decorating magazines. It was the kind of room where you'd expect a quietly successful businessman and his wife to give quiet parties for friends they actually enjoyed.

Well, Lillian Lutt was sitting there on the couch quietly enough-but if she'd looked any more miserable you could've stuck her head on a pole and used her to ward off evil spirits. She had a tall glass in her hands, the kind you use for heavy drinking. It took me a couple of seconds to pull myself together enough to add, "I'm on the wagon today."

Carson Lutt peered at me. "Did I hear you say no?"

"Offer him a drink, Carson," Lillian Lutt said from the couch. "I hate to drink alone."

"You're not drinking alone," he said. "I'm drinking with you."

"That's nice." She almost smiled.

"Have a drink," he said to me. "I'm serious."

I said, "So am I. I don't want a drink. I want to talk about your daughter."

"What's she done now?" Mrs. Lutt asked. The pain in her face was terrible to look at.

"Nothing," I snapped. The smell of all that alcohol made my nerves jumpy. My control wasn't as good as it should've been. "She's been dead a little too long for that."

That took a minute to sink in. Lillian gave me one straight look as if she were about to scream, then got up and walked out of the room.

"All right, you, whatever your name is." Suddenly Lutt's voice was clear and sharp and determined. "Get out of here."

"Tell me about Marisa first."

He didn't even blink. "You're a lot bigger than I am. I don't think I can throw you out. But I'm going to try. And I'm going to keep trying until you"-his voice jumped into a yell-"get the hell out of here!"

I didn't have anything to say to that. It was his house. And I understood what he was doing with his pain. So I just shrugged and let myself out the front door.

But I didn't leave. Instead I sat down on the front porch and tried to think of a way to handle the situation.

Part of me wanted to go back and accept his offer. I had a feeling that he'd tell "me everything I wanted to know and more if I just had a few drinks with him. People who aren't used to being drunk are like that. But I wasn't ready to pay that much for the answers to a few questions. Once I got started, I wouldn't stop. On the other hand, I was seriously tempted to go back into the house and pound on him for a while.

I was still considering my nonexistent options when a kid came up the driveway toward the house. She looked to be about nine or ten-a cute kid with straight blonde hair, braces, and one of those loose-jointed tomboy bodies that promises a lot of future development. She stopped in front of me, studied me gravely for a long minute.

Not having any better ideas, I said, "Hi."

"Hi," she said. Then abruptly, "Are they drunk again?"

That sounded like a dangerous question, and I was leery of it. But the seriousness in her child-face demanded an honest answer. Finally I said, "I think so."

"Oh, damn," She made damn sound as innocent as sunlight. All at once, she dropped herself onto the porch beside me and put her chin on her knees. "They're going to blame it on me,"

"Why would they do that?"

"I'm late. When I'm late, they always use it as an excuse. They say they're worried sick about me." Her sarcasm underlined the hurt in her voice.

I waited a moment. Then I said, "But you don't think that's the real reason."

"Of course not." This time I heard real bitterness. "I come home late because I know they're going on one of their binges. I stay away as late as I can."

I nodded. "It must be rough."

"Yeah." She stared in front of her as if her whole future were a desert. "They think I'm going to turn out like Marisa."

All of a sudden, the Lutts went click in my head and started to make sense. Now I knew what they were going through. I'd seen a lot of it in the last two days. Your thirteen-year-old daughter suddenly runs away for no reason in the world, and when she turns up dead months later you're told she's a junky whore. So who do you blame? It must be your fault, she's a little too young for you to pin it all on her, but to save your soul you can't think what you did wrong. Pretty soon you start to think that you did everything wrong. You can't trust yourself anymore-and that means you can't trust anybody. Not even your ten-year-old.

"That's why they drink," I said quietly. "Because of what happened to her."

"Yeah," she assented. "And then that pig came. The cop. At first I thought you were him. He was big, too. I didn't hear what he said, but when he was gone Mom was crying and couldn't stop, and Dad looked like he was going to be sick."

I was thinking fast now-and what I came up with disgusted me. I felt rotten just considering it. But I didn't see any other way. After a minute I said, "My name is Brew."

She looked over at me, made an effort to smile. "I'm Denise."

"Denise," I said carefully, "I'm a private investigator. I'm trying to find a girl who ran away from home. Just like Marisa. Right now, it looks like they're connected. The same thing is going to happen to this girl unless I can find her in time. But I'm not getting anywhere, and I need help. Your parents-well, they're too upset to understand why I need to talk to them."

She peered at me intensely. "You can ask me. I know all about it. They didn't want me to hear, but I listened at the door." She was eager to help. Probably her own self-respect wasn't exactly in great shape. She needed to do something, make a positive contribution in some way.

I gave her the best smile I could muster. "There's just one thing I really need. After she ran away, Marisa wrote your parents a note. That's where the connection is. In the note. I need it."

For a second while she looked at me, her eyes brightened. Then she jumped up. "I know where it is." Before I could regret what I'd gotten her into, she hurried into the house.

She wasn't gone long. I heard shouts as if her parents were yelling at her. Then she came back out and handed me a piece of paper.

A half sheet of good twenty-pound bond, neatly torn along one edge. What the messy handwriting had to say wasn't more than three words different than Alathea's note. By this time I could recognize the watermark at fifty paces.

I got to my feet. Talking fast so that I could finish before either of the Lutts came out after Denise, I said, "Now listen. When your parents are sober, I want you to tell them about me. Tell them Marisa didn't run away. She was kidnapped. I don't know how or why, but I'm going to find out. I'm going to nail whoever did it. Your parents don't have any reason to hate themselves. And they don't have any reason to be worried about you."

If Ginny had been there, she would've tried to stop me during that whole speech. I didn't have any business making promises like that, and I knew it. But I felt dirty about the way I'd used Denise, gotten her in trouble with her parents when she already had more than she could handle. I had to give her something in return.

If it turned out that I couldn't keep my promises, I could always go back to drinking. One shame more or less wouldn't make any difference. Alcohol doesn't care about details like that.