'Whoa!'he said, reeling a little.

    'Welcome,'Jessica said.

    'Myname is Jukka Tolonen,' the tall blond man said, introducing himself.

    'JayBowman,' said the other. Jessica scanned the table, found the name tags she waslooking for, handed them both a tag and a program.

    'Thanks,'the two men said in tandem, both sounding a little embarrassed for theirfriend.

    'Youknow,' the drunk one said, 'I've been coming to this convention for, I don'tknow, five years? Most of the women look like Mrs. Marble.'

    Jessicawas pretty sure the man meant Miss Marple. 'What's your name?' she asked.

    Theman looked at his friends. 'You hear that? She asked my name, dude.She's hitting on me!'

    'Ithink she wants to give you your name tag,' Tolonen said. He had an accent.Maybe Finnish. 'Oh.'

    Thedrunk man made a production of reaching into his pocket for his wallet. Hepulled it out, made a bigger deal of extracting one of his business cards, abig smile on his face as if this were the cleverest bit ever. 'It looks likeI'm somebody named Barry Swanson,' he said. 'Like the frozen dinner.'

    Likethe frozen adolescence, Jessica thought. She handed Barry Swanson his IDand a program. Swanson immediately dropped it all on the floor. Tolonen pickedup the material, clipped the name tag on his wobbly friend.

    'Sorry,'Bowman said to Jessica. 'He's a forensic chemist. He doesn't get out much.'

    Jessicawatched them walk away, wondering how crimes ever got solved.

    WhenJessica was relieved by a member of the task force, a detective out of WestDivision named Deena Yeager, she walked over to the front desk, surveyed thecrowded lobby. David Albrecht had not gotten permission to film inside theballroom, but he was allowed to shoot footage in the lobby and out on thestreet. Jessica saw that he had snagged some talking-head interview time withsome pretty heavy hitters.

    Just abouteveryone in the room had some connection to law enforcement. There were retireddetectives, prosecutors, forensic professionals of every discipline, men andwomen who worked in the processing of fingerprints, hair and fiber, blood,documents. There were pathologists, anthropologists, psychologists, people whoworked in behavioral science and mathematics. She'd heard there was a smallcontingent from Keishicho, the Metropolitan Tokyo Police Department.

    Shesaw Hell Rohmer and Irina Kohl, pretending to be merely colleagues. It didn'ttake a seasoned detective to detect the occasional brush of hands, or the morethan occasional longing glance. She saw judges, lawyers, bailiffs, along with ahandful of ADAs.

    Shedid not see Kevin Byrne.

Chapter 75

    LucyDoucette stood at the end of the hallway on the twelfth floor.

    Hershift ended at six-thirty, but she asked Audrey Balcombe if there were anycredits to be had and it turned out that three of the guests had requested housekeepingtwice a day. She imagined these people were in some kind of lab or forensicwork and had a serious germ phobia. Regardless, she was able to stay on for anextra two hours. Now she was just killing time.

    Lucyknew that the moment she swiped her card in the electronic lock on the door to1208 it would go on the record. She was scared out of her wits to go back inthere, but she had been scared so long it just didn't matter anymore.

    Shelooked over her shoulder. The hallway was deserted, but Lucy knew she was notalone, not technically. She had once been in the main security station and hadseen the big monitors. All staff knew where the closed-circuit cameras were. Atleast, the cameras they knew about, the obvious ones on the ceiling. At the endof each hallway was a sideboard and a mirror, and Lucy always wondered if themirrors were two-way mirrors and maybe had a camera behind them.

    Beforeshe could stop herself, Lucy knocked on the door to Room 1208.

    'Housekeeping.'

    Nothing.She knocked again, repeated the word. Silence from within. She leaned closer tothe door. There was no sound of a TV, a radio, a conversation. The general rulewas two announcements, then enter.

    Lucytried one last time, got no response, then swiped her card, eased open thedoor.

    'Housekeeping,'she said once more, her voice barely above a whisper. She slipped inside, letthe door close behind her. It shut with a loud and final click, meaning thatthe lock had irrevocably registered that she was in Room 1208.

    Theroom looked exactly the same as it had the last time. The minibar wasuntouched, the bed had not been slept in, the wastebasket beneath the desk wasempty. She peeked into the bathroom. Nothing had been disturbed in there, either.The toilet paper was still in a point, the soaps wrapped. Sometimes the nicerguests tried to hang the towels back the way they were, but Lucy could alwaystell. They never got them exactly right. She could also tell if someone hadtaken a shower or bath, just by the smell, the damp sweetness of body gel andshampoo that hung in the air.

    Shestepped back to the door, put her ear to it, listened for sounds in thehallway. It was silent. She walked to the closet, opened the door. The garmentbag hung there like a body at a gallows. She reached out slowly, turned overthe ID tag, her hand shaking.

    Thisbag belongs to George Archer.

    Lucyfelt a chill ripple through her body. His name was George Archer. All theseyears she had tried to imagine her kidnapper's name. Everyone had a name.Whenever she read a newspaper or a magazine, whenever she watched a movie or aTV show, whenever she was in a place like a doctor's office or the Bureau ofMotor Vehicles and someone said a name out loud she wondered: Is that hisname? Could that person be the man in her nightmares? Now she knew. GeorgeArcher. It was, at the same moment, the most benign and the most frighteningname she'd ever heard.

    Sheclosed the closet door, walked quickly over to the dresser, her heart pounding.She eased open the bottom drawer. The same shirts were inside - one blue, onewhite, one white with thin gray stripes. She mind-printed the way they werearrayed in the drawer so she could put them back in precisely the same manner.She bunched the three shirts together, lifted them. They seemed almost hot toher touch. But when she looked beneath the shirts, she saw that the picture wasgone.

    Hadshe imagined it?

    No.It had been there. She had never seen that particular photograph before,but she knew where it had been taken. It had been taken at the ice-cream parloron Wilmot Street. It was a photo of her mother, and her mother was wearing thered pullover sweater that Lucy had taken from Sears at the mall.

    Lucyturned, looked at the rest of the room. It suddenly seemed foreign, as if shehad never been here before. She put the shirts back in the drawer, arrangingthem carefully. She noticed something in the pocket of the shirt on top, theblue one. It was a piece of paper, a piece of Le Jardin notepad paper.

    Lucyslipped her fingers gently into the pocket, took out the paper. It read:

    Meetme here on Sunday night at 9:30. Love, Lucy.

    Itwas her handwriting.

    Itwas a note she had written and had left in the room for Mr. Archer to find.

    Shelooked at her watch. It was 9:28.

    Theroom began to spin. It felt for a moment as though the floor beneath her wasabout to give way. She slammed the drawer shut. It no longer mattered if shedidn't get everything back the way it was supposed to be. The only thing thatmattered was getting out of this room.

    Sherecoiled from the dresser as if it were on fire, and suddenly heard—