He asked Conni to show him her coat. It was a Dartmouth jacket. Realizing that ninety percent of the students wore Dartmouth jackets, Spencer nonetheless couldn't shake off the feeling that the girl who had hurried past a crowd and an ambulance was Conni Tobias.

'All right, back to Albert. You spent the night together?'

'Yes.'

'And the following morning?'

'We got up, went to Thayer for breakfast, and then left for Long Island.'

'Remember seeing Kristina Wednesday morning?'

Conni thought about it, or pretended to think about it. 'No.'

No, of course not, thought Spencer.

'Did you see Jim that morning?'

'No.'

'Did you see Kristina's dog?'

'Oh, yes. We took him with us.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. We felt bad for him.'

'Why?' Spencer wasn't about to give this up.

'We thought it would be fun for him at my house.' A forced smile. 'We have a nice backyard.'

I'm sure you do, Spencer thought. I'm sure you do, all manicured like exquisite nails. Leaves all picked up, bushes trimmed. Topiary bushes, maybe.

'Did you call your mother and ask her if it would be okay to bring a dog with you?'

Conni waved him off. 'Nah, my mom doesn't mind. When Kristina came with us for Christmas two years ago, we brought Aristotle.'

'Constance, you took Aristotle and didn't tell Kristina you were taking him?'

'I left her a note.'

'You left her a note that you were taking her dog with you?'

'She knew the dog would be happy with us.'

'Yes, but how could you just take the dog without telling her?'

'Well, Albert mentioned that Kristina seemed reluctant to keep the dog with her for Thanksgiving because she didn't know what she'd be doing. She's at work all the time, and at practice. In any case, we didn't think she'd mind at all. I thought she was kind of hoping someone would offer.'

Spencer thought very carefully about what he'd just heard. Finally he asked, 'How would Albert know Kristina was reluctant to keep Aristotle with her?'

'I'm not sure,' said Conni, and her voice became uncertain.

'Do you know if she had any plans at all for Thanksgiving?'

'No, I don't. She said something about a girl she was tending to who was supposed to have twins over the holidays.'

'At Red Leaves?'

Conni nodded. 'How'd you know?'

Thinking that these kids badly needed a crash course in who was the interrogator and who the interrogated, Spencer said, 'That doesn't sound very busy to me. Why would she be reluctant to keep her dog? She'd be staying right here.' God, and I thought she'd be going home to her family, Spencer thought. As it turned out, we were both here for the holidays. Except that she was under three feet of snow.

Spencer clenched his fists and brought them under the table to lay them, still clenched, on his lap. Nothing would've changed. I was already too late.

'Kristina always felt better when we were around to pick up the slack of walking Aristotle. That's why she never locked her door, you know.'

'I didn't know. She never locked her door?'

'No, never,' said Conni, flushing. Spencer noticed.

'So you took her dog, left her a note, and left. When did you come back?'

'Monday afternoon. We kind of blew off our classes,' Conni said sheepishly.

'Did you return the dog to Kristina?'

'Well, actually we gave him to Jim.'

'Had anyone seen Kristina?'

'Not me.'

'Was that unusual?'

'Not at all.'

'That was Monday. Did you see her Tuesday?'

'No!'

'Did you see her Wednesday?'

'No.'

'Did you see her earlier today?'

'No.'

'I see. Well, having not seen her for four days, and having not seen her before Thanksgiving, did you at any moment get the least bit concerned?'

'No, not really.'

'How often did you usually see her?'

'Oh, every day.' There was a long pause. 'We were always together. She was really like my best friend at Dartmouth.' But Conni said it without effort, without conviction, and without the remorse that should've flowed like tears at the thought of having one's best friend dead. The kind of tears that had flowed earlier tonight. She dabbed at her dry eyes, hoping it would help. Conni looked at Spencer's face. It obviously hadn't.

Spencer continued, 'So usually you see her every day, but now you haven't seen or heard from her in over a week, and you don't get worried?'

'No, like I said, she would sometimes disappear and no one would know where she was.'

She really disappeared good and proper this time, didn't she, Conni? thought Spencer, squinting at her.

'Conni,' he said, 'what are you hiding?'

'Hiding?' she said, in a voice higher than her usual soprano. 'Not hiding anything.'

'Nothing, Conni?'

'Nothing.'

'You walked past a crowd of people earlier tonight, didn't you, walked past an ambulance without even stopping?'

'What are you talking about?' she said. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

'Was it you, yes or no?'

'Me?'

'Yes, you.'

'Oh, me ... no, I don't think it was me. I don't remember a crowd of people. No, not really.'

'Ah. When I spoke to Albert, he told me when you had come to his room, you still had your jacket on.'

Spencer almost felt bad for her.

'Oh, yes, well,' she said nervously. 'I remember, yes, I think I did, come you know I might've been too busy to you know stop, I meant to, it was very interesting, I was just in a ... you know hurry.'

The more flustered Conni became, the calmer Spencer became. He leaned back and folded his hands across his chest.

'I'm curious,' he said. 'How is it possible to walk past a commotion with ambulances, police cars, crowds, and not stop and ask what happened?'

Conni had no answer other than an anxious shrug of the shoulders. Spencer was getting increasingly irritated by her. Her cutesy-pie fidgets were getting on his nerves. He had nearly forgotten his annoyance with Jim, who was nothing compared with her.

Breathing in, Spencer said, 'A few more things, Constance.'

Spencer pretended to write in his notebook. Actually, he was making straight, short, hard marks with his felt pen.

Then he looked up at her. 'That's a nasty scratch on your face.'

She touched herself quickly below the eye. Spencer noticed her hands were unsteady. 'Oh, this,' she said. 'It's nothing.' Before he had a chance to ask her, Conni said, 'My brother and I were playing over the weekend. I kind of got scraped up.'

'I see that. Looks painful.'

'Nah. It's nothing.'

Spencer leaned into the table to get a closer look, and Conni moved back almost imperceptibly. That's all Spencer wanted to see, her moving back. He'd already taken a very good look at the scratches.

'Conni, let me ask you something. Did you kill Kristina Kim?'

She giggled and then became gravely serious. 'No, of course I didn't, lieutenant.'

'Detective,' said Spencer.

'Detective.' Conni's blue eyes smiled at Spencer.

'Okay,' he said. 'You won't mind giving us a fingerprint and hair and blood sample, will you?'

Becoming visibly nervous, Conni said, 'Hair and blood? What for?'

'Police procedure. Just routine,' Spencer assured her. 'Nothing to worry about. I'm going to make Ray Fell, one of our patrolmen, give his hair and blood sample too.' He was only kidding about Ray, for Will's benefit mostly, but Conni was not amused. And Will just snickered. 'Don't worry, Conni,' Spencer said, getting up. 'Albert and Jim volunteered their prints and blood.'

'They did? Jim did?'

'Sure. They want to cooperate,' Will said.

'Is there some reason you'd prefer not to do it?' asked Spencer.

'Of course not, of course not,' said Conni, on the way out the door.

While Will was fingerprinting Conni and taking a blood and hair sample from her as he had from Jim and Albert, Spencer went to talk to Jim.

Jim looked awful. Spencer sat down next to him.

'Just a couple more questions, Jim, and then you can go home. I talked to Conni, who told me that she called your room around one in the morning and you weren't there.'

Spencer waited for a response. When there wasn't any, Spencer cleared his throat.

Jim spoke. 'I was there. I just turned the phone off.'

'Why would you do that?'

'Because I didn't want anybody calling me.'

'Why not?'

'Because,' Jim said, 'I was upset, mad, whatever. I just wanted to be left alone.'