“What things?”

“I won’t know till I get to the office.”

As badly as I want to crack open the minibar and flop onto my bed wrapped in towels, I know he’s right. I’ll feel worse if I don’t go.

“Give me five minutes.”

Kaiser hangs up, undoubtedly thinking that no woman he ever knew could go from naked in the shower to ready in five minutes.

He’s about to get a lesson.

This time we meet where we did the first time: SAC Bowles’s office. Kaiser leads the way with a perfunctory knock, and though I hear voices, the office appears empty. Through the long window to my right, Lake Pontchartrain looks gray against the afternoon sky, dotted with a few lonely sails.

Walking farther in, I see Baxter, Lenz, and SAC Bowles waiting in the private seating area in the deep leg of the L. Bill Granger, the violent-crimes supervisor, shakes Kaiser’s hand on his way out and gives me an embarrassed nod. Clearly, he was in the loop that heard the transmission from Thalia Laveau’s apartment. Wonderful.

Kaiser and I sit side by side on a sofa, facing Baxter and Lenz. SAC Bowles has a chair to himself on my right. No one looks happy, but neither do they look as dejected as I would have expected. They do look surprised to see me.

“You did a first-rate job today, Jordan,” Baxter says in a chamber-of-commerce voice.

“Too bad I didn’t shake anybody up.”

He looks at Kaiser. “We’ve got forty minutes before the joint task force meets, and I want to go in there solid. As of now, we have two agents on separate planes escorting all the evidence the NOPD gathered today to the lab in Washington. Everything from paintings to DNA samples. The Director himself put an expedite on it, which means a twelve-hour turnaround on some tests, twenty-four to forty-eight on others. Three days on the DNA if we’re insanely lucky.”

“Three days?” says Kaiser. “I’d have been shocked at three weeks.”

“Couple of the victims’ families have a lot of stroke. And thank God for it.” Baxter glances at me as though wondering whether to reassure me that the FBI works every case with equal fervor, but he doesn’t. Everyone in this room knows that if the eleven missing women were crack whores, the evidence on those planes could languish in the lab for weeks.

“Before we decide where we’re going,” he says, “let’s take stock of where we are. Today’s interviews didn’t produce the result we’d hoped for. Why not?”

“Two possibilities,” says Lenz. “One, none of the four suspects is the UNSUB/painter. This theory is unanimously supported by our art experts, who say the Sleeping Women weren’t painted by any of the suspects. Two, one of the suspects did recognize Jordan, but fooled us by keeping his cool when she came in.”

“Or her cool,” Baxter reminds him.

“Nobody fooled us,” says Kaiser. “Except maybe Frank Smith. He was startled by Jordan’s face, but he explained it by saying he’d seen her at a party some time ago, a virtually uncheckable explanation.”

Baxter looks at Lenz. “What did you think about Smith?”

“Brilliant, gifted, sure of himself. Of the four, he’s the most capable of putting this thing together.”

“What about the first possibility? None of the four is our UNSUB?”

“The brush hairs brought us to these four,” says Kaiser. “I trust physical evidence more than I trust art experts.”

“The evidence brought us to those four and the fifty undergraduates who could get access to the special brushes,” Lenz points out. “How are we coming with them?”

“No student has been questioned directly,” Baxter replies. “Because of their age, and because so few could be talented enough to have painted the Sleeping Women, they’re a low-percentage shot. Also, the minute we start interrogating Tulane undergrads, the media’s going to blow this case wide open. We’ve been lucky so far.”

“Very lucky,” I say quietly. “I wonder why.”

“The New Orleans media’s not that aggressive,” says Bowles. “I don’t know why. They could push a lot harder than they do.”

“But once they get hold of it,” says Kaiser, “it’ll be a feeding frenzy. And with Roger Wheaton involved – not to mention rich, pissed-off parents and their lawyers – you’ll get national press.”

“Don’t forget Jordan,” says Bowles, with a nod in my direction. “She adds a little marquee value.”

“Forget the media for now,” says Baxter. “NOPD says none of the suspects seemed anxious about providing a DNA sample. If one of them had snatched the Dorignac’s woman, he wouldn’t have been cool about doing that.”

“If the painter just paints,” says Lenz, “and someone else does the snatches, the painter would have nothing to fear from a DNA test.”

“Even if the UNSUB only does the painting,” says Kaiser, “he should have been stunned by Jordan’s face.”

“True.”

Kaiser looks at Baxter. “What’s the new development you mentioned on the phone?”

I would have led with this question, but I guess these guys have their own rhythm.

“Even though the timing of Wingate’s murder and the Dorignac’s snatch were only two hours apart,” says Baxter, “I’ve had a half-dozen agents working around the clock, checking flight manifests and interviewing passengers who traveled between New York and New Orleans in surrounding hours. It finally paid off.”

“What do you have?”

“One hour after Wingate died, a lone man paid cash for a flight from JFK to Atlanta, then cash again for a flight to Baton Rouge on a different airline.”

“Who was he?” I ask.

Dr. Lenz crosses his legs and answers in a pedantic voice. “A false name, of course. It could be that the UNSUB who killed Wingate was already in New York when you upset the applecart in Hong Kong. He silenced Wingate, then flew straight – or almost straight – to New Orleans to warn his partner. If you study the timing, it could be that he arrived only six hours after the Dorignac’s woman was taken. The plan may have been to paint her, but the New York UNSUB made the prudent decision. Do her and dump her.”

Baxter gives the psychiatrist a sharp look. “That’s possible. But no matter who the New York UNSUB is, or what he did after the Dorignac’s victim was kidnapped, someone already in New Orleans had to kidnap her. Probably the painter.”

A few moments of silence pass as this sinks in.

“You have a description of the New York UNSUB?” asks Kaiser.

“Very general. Mid-thirties to mid-forties, muscular, hard-looking face. Casual dress clothes. He’s probably the guy who flipped Jordan the bird after the fire.”

“Sock cap?” I ask, half jokingly.

“There’s something else,” says Baxter. “Linda Knapp -Gaines’s girlfriend, the one who trashed his painting and left with you guys – turned back up at Gaines’s place thirty minutes ago. NOPD wouldn’t let her near Gaines, but she told them that whatever nights they needed alibis for, he was home with her, getting drunk or screwing her silly.”

I recall how angry and desperate to get away from Gaines the woman had looked. Now she’s back with him, protecting him from the police. This is a common mystery I’ve never understood and am not sure I want to.

“Has Knapp been with Gaines for the past eighteen months?”

“No,” says Baxter. “Gaines named another girlfriend as his alibi for the murders that predate his relationship with Knapp. We’re trying to locate her now. As far as the others’ alibis, here’s where we are. Based on credit-card activity, Roger Wheaton and Frank Smith were both in town for every murder. Leon Gaines and Thalia Laveau don’t even have credit cards. Initial questioning by NOPD hasn’t turned up any rock-solid alibis. It’s not surprising, really. Almost all the kidnappings happened during the week, between ten p.m. and six a.m.”

“What about Smith?” asks Lenz. “Surely he has some sleep-over lovers who could alibi him for at least one murder?”