Dr Ensor entered a code into another keypad and pushed through another set of bright red doors.

'As best anyone can reconstruct it,' she replied, 'Carrie went out with the other patients for this same recreation hour. Her snacks were delivered, and at dinner she was gone.'

We rode the elevator down. She glanced at her watch.

'Immediately, a search began and the police were contacted. Not one sign of her, and that's what continued to eat at me,' she went on. 'How did she get off the island in broad daylight with no one seeing her? We had cops, we had dogs, we had helicopters…'

I stopped her there, in the middle of the first floor hall.

'Helicopters?' I said. 'More than one?'

'Oh yes.'

'You saw them?'

'Hard not to,' she replied. 'They were circling and hovering for hours, the entire hospital was in an uproar.'

'Describe the helicopters,' I said as my heart began to hammer. 'Please.'

'Oh gosh,' she answered. 'Three police at first, then the media flew in like a swarm of hornets.'

'By chance, was one of the helicopters small and white? Like a dragonfly?'

She looked surprised.

'I do remember seeing one like that,' she said. 'I thought it was just some pilot curious about all of the commotion.'

22

LUCY AND I lifted off from Ward's Island in a hot wind and low barometric pressure that made the Bell JetRanger sluggish. We followed the East River and continued to fly through the Class B airspace of La Guardia, where we landed long enough to refuel and buy cheese crackers and sodas from vending machines, and for me to call the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. This time I was connected to the director of student counseling. I took that as a good sign.

'I understand your need to protect yourself,' I said to her from behind the shut door of a pay phone booth inside Signatures terminal. 'But please reconsider. Two more people have been murdered since Claire Rawley was.'

There was a long silence.

Then Dr Chris Booth said, 'Can you come in person?'

'I was planning to,' I told her.

'All right then.'

I called Teun McGovern next to tell her what was going on.

'I think Carrie escaped from Kirby in the same white Schweizer we saw flying over Kenneth Sparkes's farm when we were working the scene,' I said.

'Does she fly?' McGovern's confused voice came back.

'No, no. I can't imagine that.'

'Oh.'

'Whoever she's with,' I said. 'That's the pilot. Whoever helped her escape and is doing all this. The first two cases were warm-ups. Baltimore and Venice Beach. We might never have known about them, Teun. I believe Carrie waited to drag us in. She waited until Warrenton.'

'Then you're thinking Sparkes was the intended target,' she stated thoughtfully.

'To get our attention. To make sure we came. Yes,' I said.

'Then Claire Rawley figures in how?'

'That's what I'm going to Wilmington to find out, Teun. I believe she's somehow the key to all of this. She's the connection to him. Whoever he is. And I also believe that Carrie knows I will think this, and that she's expecting me.'

'You think she's there.'

'Oh yes. I'm betting on it. She expected Benton to come to Philadelphia, and he did. She expects Lucy and me to come to Wilmington. She knows how we think, how we work, at least as much about us as we know about her.'

'You're saying that you're her next hits.'

The thought was cold water in my stomach.

'Intended ones.'

'Not a chance we can take, Kay. We'll be there when you land. The university must have a playing field. We'll get that arranged very discreetly. Whenever you land to refuel or whatever, page me and we'll keep up with each other.'

'You can't let her know you're there,' I said. 'That will ruin it.'

'Trust me. She won't,' McGovern said.

We flew out of La Guardia with seventy-five gallons of fuel and an unbearably long flight to look forward to. Three hours in a helicopter was always more than enough for me. The weight of the headsets and the noise and vibration gave me a hot spot on the top of my head and seemed to rattle me loose at the joints. To endure this beyond four hours generally resulted in a serious headache. We were lucky with a generous tail wind, and although our airspeed showed one hundred and ten knots, the GPS showed our ground speed was actually one hundred and twenty.

Lucy made me take the controls again, and I was smoother as I learned not to overcontrol and fight. When thermals and winds shook us like an angry mother, I gave myself up to them. Trying to outmaneuver gusts and updrafts only made matters worse, and this was hard for me. I liked to make things better. I learned to watch for birds, and now and then I spotted a plane at the same time Lucy did.

Hours became monotonous and blurred as we snuggled up to the coastline, over the Delaware River and on to the Eastern Shore. We refueled near Salisbury, Maryland, where I used the bathroom and drank a Coke, then continued into North Carolina, where hog farms slaughtered the topography with long aluminum sheds and waste treatment lagoons the color of blood. We entered the airspace of Wilmington at almost two o'clock. My nerves began to scream as I imagined what might await us.

'Let's go down to six hundred feet,' Lucy said. 'And lower the speed.'

'You want me to do it.' I wanted to make sure.

'Your ship.'

It wasn't pretty, but I managed.

'My guess is, the university's not going to be on the water, and is probably a bunch of brick buildings.'

'Thank you, Sherlock.'

Everywhere I looked I saw water, condominium complexes, and water treatment and other plants. The ocean was to the east, sparkling and ruffled, oblivious to dark, bruised clouds gathering on the horizon. A storm was on its way and did not seem to be in a hurry but threatened to be bad.

'Lord, I don't want to get grounded here,' I said over my mike as sure enough, a cluster of Georgian brick buildings came into view.

'I don't know about this.' Lucy was looking around. 'If she's here. Where, Aunt Kay?'

'Wherever she thinks we are.' I sounded so sure.

Lucy took over.

'I've got the controls,' she said. 'I don't know if I hope you're right or not.'

'You hope it,' I answered her. 'In fact, you hope it so much it scares me, Lucy.'

'I'm not the one who brought us here.'

Carrie had tried to ruin Lucy. Carrie had murdered Benton.

'I know who brought us here,' I said. 'It was her.'

The university was close below us, and we found the athletic field where McGovern was waiting. Men and women were playing soccer, but there was a clearing near the tennis courts, and this was where Lucy was to land. She circled the area twice, once high, once low, and neither of us spotted any obstructions, except for an odd tree here and there. Several cars were on the sidelines, and as we settled to the grass, I noted that one of them was a dark blue Explorer with a driver inside. Then I realized that the intramural soccer game was coached by Teun McGovern in P.E. gym shorts and shirt. She had a whistle around her neck, and her teams were co-ed and very fit.

I looked around as if Carrie were observing all this, but skies were empty, and nothing offered even the scent of her. The instant we were on the ground and in flight idle, the Explorer drove across the grass and stopped a safe distance from our blades. It was driven by an unfamiliar woman, and I was stunned to see Marino in the passenger's seat.

'I don't believe it,' I said to Lucy.

'How the hell did he get here?' She was amazed, too.

Marino stared at us through the windshield as we waited out our two minutes and shut down. He didn't smile and wasn't the least bit friendly when I climbed into the back of the car while Lucy tied down the main rotor blades. McGovern and her soccer players went on with their staged game, paying no attention to us at all. But I noticed the gym bags beneath benches on the sidelines, and I had no doubt what was inside them. It was as if we were expecting an approaching army, an ambush by enemy troops, and I could not help but wonder if Carrie had made a mockery of us once again.