“Too soon to say. Out of curiosity, what kind of alibi does Tom Baker have for the evening of his son’s disappearance?”

“He doesn’t. His story is he was working late, alone, at his office.”

Elliot started to reply, but he noticed the clock in the dashboard read a quarter after seven. He needed to get over to Steilacoom fast or he’d be spending the night at his dad’s. He said reluctantly, “Noted. I’m about to miss my ferry. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Later,” Tucker replied instantly.

Elliot clicked off and turned the key in the ignition. The 350Z purred into life.

It had been harder to disconnect than it should have been. Why? Maybe just the relief that they were actually talking. Elliot was not antagonistic by nature. He didn’t usually hold grudges. Anyway, it wasn’t like Tucker was the only person in the world he could discuss the case with. He could talk it over with his dad, seeing that Roland was the one who’d lured Elliot into this in the first place. Except…realizing his dad had feelings for Pauline Baker made it hard to discuss the grim possibilities objectively.

Besides, Elliot decided as he pulled out of the parking lot, he didn’t want company. He wanted to go home to his quiet, comfortable cabin and spend a peaceful night reading plagiarized essays—

Essays.

“Shit!” He’d left Leslie’s essay and the reviews Kyle had been reading over in his office at Hanby Hall. He needed them for Monday. Ah. But it was Friday, and that meant the final ferry to Goose Island didn’t depart until five after ten. He had more time than he’d thought. He spared another glance for the dashboard clock. Plenty of time, in fact. And the university was on his way.

Elliot merged onto the WA-99, busy and moving sluggishly at that hour. Once he reached the I-5 South he punched the accelerator and made excellent time. It took him only slightly over forty minutes to reach the campus. He parked in his usual place in the back lot near the chapel.

The brick buildings were dark, the grounds deserted as Elliot cut through the arboretum. On Fridays the campus emptied out early and there seemed to be no one around. The stands of tall Douglas firs and dawn redwoods gave the illusion of walking in a forest, far from civilization. The sweet scent of damp earth and pungent wood filled the cold night. Elliot’s breath clouded the moist air as he trudged through the museum of trees.

Hanby Hall had that eerie after-hours feeling. Elliot let himself into his office, grabbed the papers from his desk, shoved them in his briefcase. He glanced around, made sure he hadn’t forgotten anything else and turned off the overhead light. Locking his office door, he started for the front entrance. The emergency lights cast a thin glare over the walls and utilitarian carpet as he walked.

A phantom noise down the hall stopped him in his tracks. He turned and listened closely. A cleaning cart sat at the end of the corridor, but there was no sight or sound of any maintenance staff. There were the usual mysterious ticking noises and creaks of any large, institutional building, nothing to account for his sudden unease.

Elliot waited, ears attuned to the silence of the empty hallway.

No sound reached his ears.

Still he waited. He wasn’t, by nature, jumpy. Far from it, but one thing he’d learned during his months of training at Quantico was to pay attention to his instinct.

At last, though, he began to feel foolish. University buildings were secured by key control and electronic card access. The chances of an unauthorized person gaining admittance were slim. Campus security was constantly on the prowl for doors left unsecured or propped open. He pushed out through the entrance door, sliding his ID card to relock it.

The chirp of crickets filled the crisp night air. Elliot went down the steps thoughtfully. It had been after eleven-thirty when Terry Baker had left the library the Thursday evening he disappeared. In terms of how deserted the campus was, roughly the equivalent of nine o’clock on a Friday night—in other words, it would have been pretty much a ghost town as Terry had started back for his dorm. Assuming he had headed for his dorm.

Elliot checked his watch beneath the pallid glow of one of the old fashioned street lamps lining the walkway. At this time of night it shouldn’t take him much more than twenty minutes to make it over to Steilacoom. He had time for some physical investigation.

Instead of heading back toward the chapel parking lot, he turned off toward the gymnasium and tennis pavilion. Behind the green netting of the high fences he could hear the hollow plop of a ball being volleyed back and forth. It was the only sign of life, although he could see lights shining from the residence halls through the low hanging tree branches.

He passed the music building, currently silent, and cut across Otter Circle with its stone benches and odd statuary. As he’d expected, the library was closed.

Kingman Library was one of the oldest buildings on campus. It looked pleasantly Ivy League with its diamond-paned windows and vine-covered brick. Elliot walked its perimeter slowly. The surrounding hedges and stone walls offered a number of places for concealment, but so what? Baker had been an adult-sized male and this was the middle of campus. No matter how deserted it had been that night, it was hard to believe that no one would have heard Baker yelling for help. Campus security wasn’t SWAT but they did put in regular appearances.

Assuming Baker had a chance to yell. But Elliot couldn’t quite wrap his brain around the idea of knocking a young, adult-sized male out in the middle of campus and then lugging him…where?

Besides, this part of the campus was all covered by security cameras.

Maybe Baker had been jumped on his way back to Tetley Hall? Elliot considered the possibility skeptically. It wasn’t impossible, of course. If Baker had been a female, he’d be seriously considering the theory, so maybe he needed to be more open-minded and less sexist.

He decided to walk the path Baker would have been most likely to take.

Tetley Hall was one of the furthest residences, a comfortable distance from the noise and bustle of the main campus. Elliot followed the curving paved walkway through the tunnel of trees. Moonlight caught and illuminated the bowed branches of white birch, leaves cascading in flickering shades of silver and bone.

It was quiet and it was dark. The trees provided plenty of hiding places as well as blocking visibility from the residences, and this part of the campus was not under video surveillance.

It took Elliot fifteen minutes to reach Baker’s dorm, but Baker would probably have done it in about ten.

When he reached the dorm he noted the number of lights still on—not so many on a Friday night—and the blue flicker of television and computer screens in windows. He tried both entrances and, per school security policy, they were safely locked.

But then he didn’t think Baker had been snatched out of his dorm. If he had been grabbed, it would have been in that short stretch when he was out of range of the surveillance cameras and out of view of the dorms. About seven minutes where he would have been invisible.

Of course he could have taken a shortcut, in which case his travel time would be shorter but his time off the security radar longer. But at that time of night most people stuck to lights and walkways. Elliot massaged his knee absently, thinking it over, then he started back the way he came.

If someone had been waiting for Baker here in the shelter of the trees, he wouldn’t have tried to lug his victim across campus to the main parking lots. The most likely scenario was that he would park in the back, probably in the chapel parking lot which was always empty except on church service occasions.

Elliot stopped and tried to calculate the fastest way to reach the chapel parking lot. The safest way—the way that offered least visibility—would be to skirt behind the long rectangle of the ceramics building and then cut right across the chapel garden. The chances of running into anyone would be about nil, although one would have to have observed campus patterns for a while to know that.