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smile at Sydowski, who began shuffling him to the street. “Let’s go, old man.”
    Sydowski got his father into the cab and on his way to Pacifica. He locked the house and dropped with an angry sigh into the front passenger seat
of the Caprice. Turgeon had them on 101 in good time.
    Walt stared at San Francisco’s skyline rolling by the
Golden Gate in the distance, the majestic spires of the Bay Bridge.
    “Do you believe this case, Linda?”
    “Given what we went through recently, are you kidding?”
    “What could they possibly have that warrants this kind
of reaction?”
    “You had something better to do? You got a life now?”
    “You got a file for me?”
    “You’re sitting on it. So who’s your new honey?”
    Sydowski grunted, fishing for the file.
    “Never mind. How did your reunion date go with your
ex-fiancé architect?” He glanced superficially at papers on Doug Baker.
    “Had animal monkey sex on his dining room table.”
    “Never invite me for dinner.” Sydowski could not find
his glasses. He’d read Baker’s file on the plane.
    “We just talked, Walt. We’re going to take it one step
at a time.”
    “Still thinking about making babies?”
    “Thinking about a lot of things, Dad.”
    “Let’s talk about work now, please?”
    “Your plane tickets are waiting at the counter. We’re on
this together. I am working local checks here with the FBI. It’s their show,
Walt. They’re rushing, putting things together. Moving really fast.”
    “What is your sense of it at this stage?”
    “They told me zero. We do not know all of their
holdback. It’s either a straight up missing kid case…or a mystery.”
    “Well, we have this.” Sydowski held up the file.
    Linda nodded. Dead serious. “I’ll be interested in your
opinion on everything. Got a few pages there, including theories from Montana already.”
    “Based on the information we know, she’s been lost in
the woods, what, about twenty-four, thirty hours?”
    “Yup.”
    “And this is a remote region of Glacier National
Park?”
    “One of the most remote areas of the U.S.”
    “Find out if the family is the avid, outdoors type. Or
if this was an impulse trip. Like why there and why now. What was going on in
their lives.”
    “There’s the old cop I know. Welcome back.”
    Once his jet leveled off, Sydowski slipped on his
bifocals and read every word in the file. Twice. The faxed copy of Pike
Thornton’s fresh notes had currency with Sydowski. He had met him several weeks
ago at a detectives’ conference in Kansas City. They led a panel discussion on
“The Intangibles of Investigation,” the virtue of heeding gut instincts.
    Thornton believed Doug was
hiding something about how he injured his hand, that the Bakers were not
forthcoming, that there seemed to be much more beneath the surface. Doug’s hand
wound was disturbing. Said he did it with an ax, which seemed to be missing
along with the kid. Sydowski went over the recent complaint San Francisco
police had on the family. A neighbor reported that Doug Baker had threatened to
assault his wife and daughter in their backyard. Dispatch sent a car to the
house. There was tension but no assault. Mother said it was a misunderstanding.
That was it.
    Sydowski closed the file folder. There were lots of
troubling points about this case. His heartburn flared; he chewed on a Tums as
his jet banked north toward the Rocky Mountains.

SIX

    “They found her head near Dallas,” the cop on the phone was telling Tom Reed, a crime reporter with the San
Francisco Star .
    Reed drew a small circle in his notebook, placing it in Texas
on his rough map of the country. Other, tiny pieces of a stick person were
scattered throughout the southern United States.
    “The head near Dallas.” Reed looked at the newsroom
clock. His vacation started in a few hours. He was flying to Chicago in a few
days. His wife’s sister was getting married.
    “Hey Reed, you with me, all-star?” Inspector Harry