"Three," he heard Vinnie say from another room.

"Four," Cora said from farther away.

"This is him," Amanda said.

Balenger wasn't sure what she meant. As rain pounded the roof, he looked up and saw her holding a framed photograph.

"Ronnie," she said, pointing at the photograph. "This is Ronnie."

46

Chilled, Balenger came slowly to his feet, fixated on what Amanda showed him. In the black-and-white photograph, an elderly man wearing a suit stood next to a young man wearing a sweater. The old man's broad shoulders would once have looked strong. His large chest would once have been solid. Despite deep wrinkles, his square-jawed face retained a suggestion of his youthful handsomeness. His full head of white hair reminded Balenger of Billy Graham in his later years. Indeed, everything about the old man, especially his piercing eyes, reminded Balenger of an evangelist.

"Morgan Carlisle," he whispered. "This is how Bob described him. Those hypnotic eyes."

In the photograph, Carlisle smiled, as did the young man next to him, who seemed barely out of his teens. A thin face, a thin body. Even his hair, which was trimmed closely at the sides and was thick on top, emphasized his thinness. Unlike Carlisle's eyes, the young man's were not expressive. Nor was his smile, which seemed entirely on the surface.

"Ronnie," Amanda said in disgust. Balenger studied the photograph more intensely. A dark, "wood-paneled wall in the background matched walls in the hotel. Despite the pleasure in Carlisle's smile, the elderly man kept a slight distance from the young man, his arms at his sides. The young man's sweater was a crew neck, a shirt collar tucked under it in a style Balenger remembered seeing in movies from the sixties. He had a plain face, soft at the cheekbones and the chin.

Amanda pointed. "This other man was Ronnie's father."

"Carlisle? No. He couldn't have been."

"Ronnie insisted that this man was his father."

"There's no record that Carlisle married."

"Which means nothing," Vinnie said from the doorway to the surveillance room. He and Cora had finished disarming the explosives. "The child could have been the result of an affair."

"But Carlisle was a watcher. A romantic fling doesn't seem in his nature."

"Unless one of the women he spied on gave him inspiration." Cora came into the room and looked at the photo. "Carlisle. So finally we get to see him. The monster responsible for the Paragon Hotel. How can anybody so twisted look so attractive? I bet this S.O.B. was irresistible in his prime. Those eyes. Finding a willing partner wouldn't have been difficult."

"Or maybe the partner wasn't willing," Vinnie said.

Balenger shook his head from side to side. "Rape doesn't match his profile. Even drugged, the victim might have fought back. Carlisle would have been terrified of cuts and scratches and not being able to stop his bleeding."

"But if Carlisle had a son, he'd have mentioned it in his diary," Cora insisted.

"Not if the boy was illegitimate," Vinnie said. "He might have wanted to keep the child a secret."

Balenger sounded doubtful. "It still doesn't fit his profile. From what I've read about hemophiliacs, I gather many choose not to have children for fear of passing the disease on."

Amanda pointed emphatically at the photograph. "Ronnie told me this was his father."

"How old is the photograph?" Cora asked.

Balenger freed catches at the back of the frame, pulled off the back, and studied the rear of the photograph. "There's a developer's date: July 31, 1968."

"Carlisle would have been eighty-eight."

Balenger heard the crack of nearby lightning. "Amanda, you said Ronnie's in his fifties. That means…"

Vinnie did the math faster. "Thirty-seven years ago. I'm guessing he's in his late teens or early twenties in this picture. Let's say twenty. So that makes him around fifty-seven. Surely to God, five of us can take him."

"He's strong," Amanda said flatly. *

"Tod, anything on the surveillance monitors?"

"Just more rats."

"I'm watching the elevator." Vinnie peered through the medical room toward the exercise room.

"Amanda, what else did Ronnie tell you?" Balenger asked.

"He bragged he never had any trouble getting girlfriends. He often recited their names."

"Names?" Balenger's hands felt cold.

"Iris, Alice, Vivian, Joan, Rebecca, Michelle. A lot more. Always in the same order. The list never varied. He repeated it enough for me to remember the names."

Balenger felt pressure building inside him. He worked to control his emotions, his rapid breathing and heartbeat almost overwhelming him. "I want you to think carefully. When he went through the names, did he ever mention someone called Diane?"

"Diane?" Vinnie frowned. "Who is-"

"Did he, Amanda?" Balenger put a hand on her shoulder. "Did he ever mention a woman called Diane?"

Amanda didn't answer for a moment. "Near the end of the list."

"Who's Diane?" Cora asked, mystified.

Now it was Balenger's turn to pause. He could barely get out the words. "My wife."

3 a.m.

47

"Wife?" Cora whispered in shock..

Balenger looked at Tod in the surveillance room. "What I told you was the truth-I'm not a cop." He hesitated. "But I used to be."

Tod shook his head in disgust. "And that stuff about Iraq and the hood over your head and the guy with the sword?"

"Was true. I was a detective on Asbury Park's police force. My wife and I live… lived here. She works… worked… I have trouble with tenses when I think about her. Two years ago, she disappeared."

They listened so intently that, despite the rain, the bedroom seemed quiet.

"She was blond. Thin. Like Amanda. Thirty-three. But she looked younger, in her twenties. Like Amanda." Balenger stared down at his clenched hands. "When Mack pulled the vault door open and I saw Amanda in there, God help me, at first I thought she was Diane. I thought I'd finally found her, that a miracle had happened and my wife was still alive."

Balenger's chest ached as he stared at Amanda, who reminded him so much of his wife. "Diane worked for a real estate developer here in town. The same developer who'll be tearing down this hotel in two weeks. She often went to New York City to negotiate with the Carlisle trust for the land the Paragon sits on. The trust kept refusing. It's a damned cruel joke that the trust eventually had to surrender the land for taxes. But two years ago, it still had control. And on Diane's last trip to Manhattan, she vanished."

Balenger drew a pained breath. "A lot of people disappear in New York. I used to go there on weekends and unofficially help the missing persons bureau. Leg work. Shoe leather. Finally the case got so cold, I was the only person doing anything. I kept asking for more time off work to look for Diane, until my boss suggested it would be better if I resigned and took all the time I wanted. I ran out of money. Then an ex-Ranger buddy told me about the quick cash to be earned in Iraq guarding convoys, provided I didn't mind dodging booby traps and snipers. Hell, at that point, I didn't much care if I lived or died. What I did care about was the twenty thousand dollars I'd earn for one month's work, so I could get back to trying to find out what happened to my wife."

Balenger forced himself to continue. "After a year, I didn't have much hope she was still alive. But I needed to keep trying. It gives you an idea how desperate I was that I went to Iraq again. Diane had gotten me back on my feet after the first time. Damned Gulf War syndrome. She never tired of nursing me. It was her idea that I use my military experience and apply for a job with the Asbury Park police. Nothing demanding. A way to feel useful. Fucking Iraq. I told you how the second time turned out. But with the cash I got, I made myself keep searching. I followed every lead, every sex criminal who might have come in contact with her, every mugger who was known to work in the areas where she went. Double- and triple-checked. In the end, all I had was the feeling I'd had from the start but couldn't prove, that Diane's disappearance had something to do with the negotiations for the hotel. No, not the negotiations exactly. Something to do with the hotel itself. I asked permission to go inside, but the trust refused. Safety reasons. I did my best to break in, but the Paragon's a damned fortress."