“Hello?”

“Hey, handsome, I just got your message.”

It was Gail Berruti, his contact from the phone company. He had forgotten all about the crank calls referring to him as a “bastard.” It seemed unimportant now, just some sort of childish prank, except that maybe, just maybe, there was a connection. Claire had noted that Myron brought destruction. Maybe someone from his past was out to get him. Maybe somehow Aimee had gotten tangled up in that.

It was the longest of long shots.

“I haven’t heard from you in forever,” Berruti said.

“Yeah, I’ve been busy.”

“Or not busy, I guess. How are you?”

“I’m pretty good. Were you able to trace the number?”

“It’s not a trace, Myron. You said that in your phone message. ‘Trace the number.’ It’s not a trace. I just had to look it up.”

“Whatever.”

“Not whatever. You know better. It’s like on TV. You ever watch a phone trace on TV? They always say to keep the guy on the line so they can trace the call. That’s nonsense, you know. You trace it right away. It’s immediate. It doesn’t take time. Why do they do that?”

“It’s more suspenseful,” Myron said.

“It’s dumb. They do everything ass-backward on TV. I’m watching some cop show the other night, and it takes five minutes to do a DNA test. My husband works in the crime lab at John Jay. They’re lucky if they get a DNA confirmation in a month. Meanwhile the phone stuff—all of which can be done in minutes with the touch of a computer—that takes them forever. And the bad guy always hangs up just before they get the location. Have you ever seen the trace work? Never. Pisses me off, you know?”

Myron tried to get Berruti back on track. “So you looked up the number?”

“I got it here. Curious though: Why do you need it?”

“Since when do you care?”

“Good point. Okay, let’s get to it then. First off, whoever it was wanted to be anonymous. The call was from a pay phone.”

“Where?”

“The location is near one-ten Livingston Avenue in Livingston, New Jersey.”

The center of town, Myron thought. Near his local Starbucks and his dry cleaner. Myron thought about that. A dead end? Maybe. But he had a thought.

“I need you to do me two more favors, Gail,” Myron said.

“Favor implies nonpayment.”

“Semantics,” Myron said. “You know I’ll take care of you.”

“Yeah, I know. So what do you need?”

Harry Davis taught a lesson on A Separate Peace by John Knowles. He tried to concentrate, but the words were coming out as if he were reading off a prompter in a language he didn’t quite understand. The students took notes. He wondered if they noticed that he wasn’t really there, that he was going through the motions. The sad part was, he suspected that they didn’t.

Why did Myron Bolitar want to talk to him?

He did not know Myron Bolitar personally, but you don’t walk around the corridors of this school for more than two decades without knowing who he was. The guy was a legend here. He held every basketball record the school ever had.

So why had he wanted to talk to him?

Randy Wolf had known who he was. His father had warned him not to talk to Myron. Why?

“Mr. D? Yo, Mr. D?”

The voice fought through the fog in his head.

“Yes, Sam.”

“Can I, like, go to the bathroom?”

“Go.”

Harry Davis stopped then. He put down the chalk and looked over the faces in front of him. No, they weren’t beaming. Most of them were eyes-down in their notebooks. Vladimir Khomenko, a new exchange student, had his head down on his desk, probably asleep. Others looked out the window. Some sat so low in their chairs, with spines seemingly created from Jell-O, Davis was surprised that they didn’t slip to the floor.

But he cared about them. Some more than others. But he cared about all of them. They were his life. And for the first time, after all these years, Harry Davis was starting to feel it all slip away.

CHAPTER 31

Myron had a headache, and quickly realized why. He hadn’t had coffee yet that day. So he headed over to Starbucks with two thoughts in mind—caffeine and pay phone. The caffeine was taken care of by a grunge barista with a soul patch and long frontal hair that looked like a giant eyelash. The pay phone problem would take a little more work.

Myron sat at an outdoor table and eyed the offending pay phone. It was awfully public. He walked over to it. There were stickers on the phone advertising 800 numbers to call for discount calls. The most prominent one was offering “free night calls” and had a picture of a quarter moon in case you didn’t know what night was.

Myron frowned. He wanted to ask the pay phone who had dialed his number and called him a bastard and said that he’d pay for what he’d done. But the phone wouldn’t talk to him. It had been that kind of day.

He sat back down and tried to figure out what he needed to do. He still wanted to talk to Randy Wolf and Harry Davis. They probably wouldn’t tell him much—they probably wouldn’t talk to him at all—but he would figure a way to get a run at them. He also needed to interview that doctor who worked at St. Barnabas, Edna Skylar. She had purportedly seen Katie Rochester in New York. He wanted some details on that.

He called St. Barnabas’s switchboard and after two brief explanations, Edna Skylar got on the phone. Myron explained what he wanted.

Edna Skylar sounded annoyed. “I asked the investigators to keep my name out of this.”

“They have.”

“So how do you know it?”

“I have good contacts.”

She thought about that. “What’s your standing in this, Mr. Bolitar?”

“Another girl has gone missing.”

No response.

“I think there may be a connection between this girl and Katie Rochester.”

“How?”

“Could we meet? I can explain everything then.”

“I really don’t know anything.”

“Please.” There was a pause. “Dr. Skylar?”

“When I saw the Rochester girl, she indicated that she didn’t want to be found.”

“I understand that. I just need a few minutes.”

“I have patients for the next hour. I can see you at noon.”

“Thank you,” he said, but Edna Skylar had already hung up.

Lithium Larry Kidwell and the Medicated Five shuffled into Starbucks. Larry headed right for his table.