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so badly that she’d been hospitalized, and Paltry had been arrested. He was out on bail when he disappeared. His car had been found parked, engine running, behind a Dairy Queen in Tisdale. His checkbook and wallet were on the passenger seat. He was never seen again, and the Bureau believed that Clara Rinker may have paid him a visit.
    Rinker’s mother had almost nothing useful to tell the Bureau. Her memory of Clara seemed uneven; and when she went to get family pictures, she found that all the photos of Clara were gone.
    The Bureau had tracked Roy through a series of minor crime reports, and eventually found him in Santa Barbara, California, where he was involved in a lightweight prostitution ring. Roy and a man named Charles Green ran teenaged hookers around to country clubs. The Bureau report quoted one source as saying, “You could get your shoes and your knob polished at the same place and time. It was convenient for everybody.”
    Roy was two years older than Rinker and had left home two years after she had. He had seen her twice, when she’d stopped in Santa Barbara looking for their younger brother, Gene, who was also someplace in California. Roy didn’t know anything about anything, though he said that Rinker appeared to be doing well, and drove nice cars. He had no photographs of her, and denied having sexually abused her. The interviewer thought he was lying.
    Rinker’s younger brother, Gene, had shown up on three police reports in California, all three for minor drug offenses. He was listed as “homeless” on the police reports and was apparently living on the beaches between Venice and Santa Monica. The Bureau had been unable to find him. Next to this paragraph, a female hand had scrawled, “Lucas: ask me—M.”
    Lucas reached forward and tapped Malone’s arm. “There’s a note here to ask you about Gene Rinker.”
    She turned and said, “Yes. We found him yesterday. He was working for a pool-cleaning company in Pacific Palisades—Los Angeles. We’re holding him on a drug charge.”
    “Good charge?”
    “He was in possession of marijuana.”
    “How much?”
    “Maybe a gram.”
    “A joint? Jesus, is that…?”
    “It’s more than enough, is what it is. As soon as we get done here, I’m going to L.A. to talk to him. See if he has anything interesting on Clara.”
    “Okay.” Malone turned away, and Lucas sank back into the report.
     
    RINKER HAD WORKED for a bar in St. Louis, then for Ross, who was a liquor distributor. She’d also worked off and on as a bookkeeper-secretary for a mobster named Allen Kent, whose mother’s family was closely tied to the old Giancana outfit in Chicago. Eventually, Rinker had put together enough money to buy a bar in Wichita, which had done well until she’d fled after her disastrous involvement in a series of killings in Minneapolis. Where she’d gone immediately after Minneapolis was unknown. She’d eventually popped up in Cancún, where she’d worked illegally as a bookkeeper at a boutique hotel called Passages.
    Lucas had danced with her once, not knowing who she was, at her club in Wichita, The Rink. They’d had a good time, for a little time, that night. She’d even chatted with Mallard and Malone. She must’ve known who they were, although they hadn’t known who she was. Later, she’d tried to kill Lucas in his own front yard. She’d missed almost purely by chance…as he’d missed her.
     
    READING ABOUT HIS own encounter with Rinker, Lucas was struck with the strangeness of writerly synthesis. He was in the story, but it didn’t sound like him, or feel like him. He felt as though he were looking at himself in an old 8-millimeter movie, something that wasn’t quite true, but was undeniably accurate…and he wondered if the entire report was like that, accurate but not especially true.
    Rinker came across as Mallard saw her, as the daughter of the devil. At the same time, almost against the will of the writer, another picture was