"You asked me which direction I was facing."

I nodded dumbly.

"And I said I'd tell you everything I could remember." She looked me up and down.

"Now?" she countered almost wistfully.

"Can't it wait?"

I swallowed hard.

"Now. Later I won't remember my damn name, never mind Saturday."

And Bernie. And Hong.

She sighed.

"All right."

Deliberately she shut her eyes. For a moment she frowned in concentration. Then she turned to face away from me, toward the wall of her bedroom.

"I'm in the lobby," she murmured through thunder and rain.

"The main entrance is there." She nodded at the wall.

"I arrived before Alex did. He's usually late, I knew that. But I hoped I'd see you, so I came a few minutes early."

Fortunately she didn't look at me while she spoke. The lines of her back and neck were alluring enough. Her eyes might've made me lose myself completely.

"There aren't very many people in the lobby. You aren't one of them, and I don't recognize anybody else." Her tone sounded dreamy, distant with recollection.

"I find a place to wait where I can watch the front doors and the hallway to the convention center, just in case. When Alex arrives, I turn more toward the doors.

"He starts his usual flirting. I smile and talk without playing his game. He stands close to me, on my right, so he can touch my arm and stare at my breasts."

I visualized the lobby with her, tried to see what she saw. The registration desk at 10 o'clock. The doors at noon. Alex leering at 3. The convention center hallway at 7:30 or 8.

The short corridor toward the restrooms at 8 or 8:30.

"Eventually Anson joins us. He comes from the convention center. He stands two or three feet away on that side, facing Alex." 9 o'clock.

"Alex stops flirting. We make small talk.

"Occasionally I glance behind me. I see you leave the hallway. I smile at you, but you don't respond. You hesitate, looking around.

Then you head for the men's room. You're almost running." She chuckled softly.

"I wonder if you've eaten something that doesn't agree with you.

"How am I doing?"

"Don't stop," I warned her quickly.

"Keep your eyes closed."

She continued to face her bedroom wall.

Keeping my voice low so that it wouldn't shake, I asked, "Did you see Sternway leave the convention center? Or did he just show up on your left?"

Had she simply assumed ?

Without hesitation, she answered, "I didn't see him at first. Alex glanced in that direction, and I turned my head. He was ten or fifteen feet away."

"So you didn't actually see him leave the convention center?"

"No," she admitted dubiously.

"I guess not. But where ?"

"As far as you know, he could've come from the men's room?"

Abruptly she turned back to me. Distress filled her eyes, darkened them until they looked bottomless. Her hands held her glass as if she'd forgotten it.

"Brew " she began, then bit her lip.

"I don't want to say that."

"Why not?"

"Because," she protested, "it sounds like I think he could have killed Bernie Appelwait. And I don't.

"My God, Brew, he's the Director of the IAMA! He's had his own school in Garner for fifteen years. Every martial artist I talk to thinks he sits on the right hand of God."

I knew what she meant.

"I know I called him a coward around women." She might've been pleading with me.

"But that doesn't make him a murderer. The world is full of men who are terrified of women, and they don't go around killing hotel security guards."

As she spoke, slow relief eased into my heart. One small muscle at a time, my distrust began to let me go. She didn't plead for him personally. My nerves were sure. Instead she pleaded for her reality.

In her world killers were people she didn't know and couldn't understand, men and women driven by demons that her mind refused to acknowledge.

A different heat rose along my pulse.

Of course, I ached to believe that she was exactly and only what she seemed. I couldn't hide that detail from myself. It affected my own reality. As a general rule, however, crooks who needed to protect their accomplices didn't try to convince me that other potential suspects were innocent.

But I still had to be careful. Distrusting her was one thing.

Distrusting myself was entirely another. Quietly I asked, "Did you say any of this to that cop, Detective Moy?"