"They were."

"Shouldn't powder be present if he fired a gun?"

"Yes."

"How can that be?"

LaManche lifted one shoulder and both brows.

Charbonneau rounded out my morning's list of callers.

"Menard and Catts knew each other," he said without preamble.

"Really."

"I managed to locate one of Menard's former profs at Cal StateChico. Guy's been teaching since Truman started redecorating the White House, but his memory's primo. He put me onto one of Menard's old girlfriends. Woman named Carla Greenberg."

The name meant nothing to me.

"Greenberg's on faculty at some small college in Pennsylvania. Says she and Menard dated their first year of grad school, then she left for Belize. Menard didn't land a job on the dig, or on any other project, for that matter, so he stayed in Chico that summer. When Greenberg got back Menard was spending most of his time with some guy in Yuba City."

"Catts?"

"Our hero."

"How did Catts and Menard hook up?"

"They look alike."

"Come on."

Charbonneau held up a hand. "I'm not making this up, Doc. According to Greenberg, people kept telling Menard some p.a.w.nbroker in Yuba City was his dead-ringer double. The archaeology students liked to prowl this guy's shop, being as he wasn't overly rigid about laws pertaining to antiquities, if you catch my meaning."

"And?"

"Menard went for a look-see and the two became buds. At least that's the story Menard laid on Greenberg."

"That sounds preposterous."

"Greenberg e-mailed this."

Charbonneau handed me a color photo printed on computer paper. In it three people stood arm in arm on a pier.

The woman was squat and muscular, with straight brown hair and wide-set eyes. The men flanking her looked like bookends. Both were tall and thin, with wild red hair and freckles gone mad.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"According to Greenberg, Menard spent less and less time in Chico, eventually blew off the program. She was wrapped up in her thesis that fall and never really gave him much thought."

"Could you find anyone in Yuba City who remembered Catts?"

"One old couple. Still live in a trailer next to the one Catts rented."

"Let me guess. Nice young man. Quiet. Kept to himself."

"You've got it."

Charbonneau reclaimed Greenberg's picture and looked at it as one might look at a t.u.r.d on the lawn.

"Luc and I are going to spin down to Vermont, flash the pic, see if we can goose a few memories."

After Charbonneau left, I dialed Anne's cell. "We're sorry. The party..." "We're sorry. The party..."

I tried working my way through the journals the librarian had pulled for me. British Journal of Psychiatry. Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Medicine and Law. Bulletin of the American Academy of Science and the Law. British Journal of Psychiatry. Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Medicine and Law. Bulletin of the American Academy of Science and the Law.

It was no good. My mind kept wandering.

I phoned Anne again. Her cell was still off.

I phoned Tom. No word from his wife.

I phoned Anne's brothers in Mississippi. No Anne. No call.

I forced myself back to the stack.

One article focused on Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, the California geniuses who'd built underground bunkers to house female s.e.x slaves.

At trial, Ng's lawyers argued that their client was a mere bystander, a dependent personality waiting to be led. According to the defense, Lake's ex-wife was the real heavy.

Right, Charlie. You were a victim. Like poor little Karla h.o.m.olka.

In 1991, Leslie Mahaffy, fourteen, was found dismembered and encased in concrete in an Ontario lake. The following year, Kristin French, fifteen, turned up naked and dead in a ditch. Both had been brutalized, raped, and murdered.

Paul Bernardo and his wife, Karla h.o.m.olka, were subsequently arrested. Young and blond and beautiful, the press dubbed the couple the Ken and Barbie Killers.

In exchange for testimony against her ex-husband, h.o.m.olka was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Bernardo was convicted of murder one, aggravated s.e.xual a.s.sault, forcible confinement, kidnapping, and performing an indignity on a human body.

Like Lake and Ng, the Bernardos filmed their little orgies. When the tapes finally surfaced, footage showed bride and groom as equal enthusiasts in the torture and murder. But Karla had already cut her deal.

I was moving on to the next article, when my phone rang again.

"They're gone." Ryan sounded like he was calling from Ura.n.u.s.

"Who's gone?"

"Anique Pomerleau and Tawny McGee."

34.

"HOW CAN THEY BE GONE?"

"When the day nurse checked, their beds were empty."

"There was no guard?"

"We told Feldman security wasn't an issue."

"Had they been released?"

"No."

"Were they alone?"

"No one saw them leave."

"Had they had visitors?" My voice was too loud. "A family member?"

"We've yet to locate any of Pomerleau's relatives. McGee's sister flew east from Alberta last night. Sandra something. She and the mother are en route from Maniwaki now."

Adrenaline surge.

"Menard!"

"I floated his description around the floor. No one spotted anyone resembling him."

"Tawny McGee was hysterical yesterday. These geniuses are now suggesting she and Pomerleau just pulled on their panties and waltzed out?"

"The head nurse thinks they may have split during a shift change. Or during the night."

"They didn't have clothes!"

"Two coats and two pair of boots are missing from the staff lounge. Along with seventeen dollars from the coffee fund."

"Where would two disoriented, homeless women go?"

"Calm down."

I closed my eyes and willed the adrenaline back to its myriad sources.

"They may not have gone anywhere. General's a warren of tunnels and crannies, the bas.e.m.e.nt's some kind of medieval maze. I'm at the hospital now. If they don't turn up inside, we'll canva.s.s the neighborhood."

"And then?"

"When the McGees arrive I'll find out if Tawny knew anyone in Montreal."

"Jesus Christ, Ryan. That poor woman loses her child, probably gives her up for dead, then finally gets word her daughter is alive. Now we have to tell her the kid's missing again?"

"We'll find her." Ryan's voice was tempered steel.

"I'll call the women's shelters," I said.

"Worth a try."

It was a dead end. No one had seen or admitted any woman fitting either of the descriptions I provided.

I went back to my research, but it was worse than before. I couldn't sit. Couldn't read. I was charged with enough energy to blast through granite.

These women had been kidnapped years ago, Angela Robinson in 1985, Anique Pomerleau in 1990, Tawny McGee in 1999. Their abductor was now dead.

So why this growing sense of dread?

Had we blown it? Was Catts the sole abductor? Had Stephen Menard been Neal Wesley Catts's accomplice in his twisted little game, or vice versa? Was Menard still out there?

Were Pomerleau and McGee again in Menard's hands? Had he forced them from the hospital? Had the women gone willingly, still under his spell?

Had Catts killed Menard? When? Why?

Catts should have had gunpowder on his hands. LaManche found none. Was it the other way around? Had Menard killed Catts?

I remembered McGee's pleas to be taken from the hospital.

Had McGee persuaded Pomerleau to leave? Had the women simply fled? Had the unaccustomed environment frightened them into flight? But flight to where?

Why this intense feeling that McGee and Pomerleau were in danger? That I could rescue them if I was just clever enough to sort things out?

Why didn't Ryan call?

I'd squeezed every detail I could from the bones. I'd gone over and over the MP lists. What else could I do?

The videos.

Shoving back from my desk, I hurried across the hall and unlocked the conference room. The tapes lay where Ryan and I had left them the previous afternoon. I hit PLAY PLAY and watched scene after scene of hooded young women with goth-white bodies. and watched scene after scene of hooded young women with goth-white bodies.

By repeatedly rewinding and replaying in slow motion, I was able to distinguish what I thought were three victims. One woman had larger b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One had a mole to the left of her navel. One appeared taller in relation to background objects.

The setting never varied, though props came and went. A whip. An electric prod. A gla.s.s vial. Occasionally Catts appeared on camera brutalizing or menacing one victim or another.

I was repulsed and sickened. These girls should have been worrying about algebra, falling in love, picking out china. Not hanging by their wrists in a stench-filled bas.e.m.e.nt. This was Canada, not sixteenth-century Transylvania.

Rarely had I felt such overpowering anger.

Be objective, Brennan. Look for a.s.sociations. Trends.