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tree up and running.”
    “Phone tree?”
    “Neighborhood Watch. That’s how we do things here. Everyone comes together to help everyone else.”
    Lauren allowed a smile to spread across her face.
    “Thank you, Carla.”
    “Tonight at, say, seven o’clock, we’ll all gather in the middle school gym. Don’t be late.”
    Lauren found herself nodding. “I’ll be there.”
    Lauren drove to her office in Cameron Park, a ten-minute ride west of Placerville. As she approached the exit off U.S. 50, she dabbed at the perspiration across her brow. Freeway driving was one of the more difficult tasks for an agoraphobic to handle. Blaring music made the ride more tolerable by minimizing all other surrounding stimuli. In this case, an Elton John love-songs CD Michael had bought her a few months ago provided the diversion. She lowered the music, slowed onto the Cameron Park exit ramp, then turned right into the small office complex.
    Lauren pushed through the door to her office and sat down at her desk. Six files were piled to her left, and another was lying on her blotter with a microcassette recorder tossed across it. She realized she had never dictated the notes on her new patient, Steven Simpson, the one with the sadistic torture fantasies. She looked down at her pad of scribbled notes and shook her head. Only next week’s visit would tell her if she’d had a positive effect on Steven’s behavior.
    Lauren opened her drawer, again trying to locate the slip of paper, pad, or message slip on which she’d written Michael’s information. She had searched her office yesterday, to no avail. Now she was back, hoping that a fresh look at things would produce a different result.
    She rummaged through her files, checked her wastebasket, which had since been emptied, and then cradled her head in her hands, elbows resting atop her desk. In her mind, she walked herself through Michael’s phone call. It was hectic; she had just taken a call from another psychologist about a patient. As she hung up, her late appointment came running out of the elevator—and then the receptionist informed her that Michael was on the phone.
    She opened her eyes and looked around the office. She remembered walking in and grabbing something to write on as Michael was rattling off his itinerary. She kept telling him to slow down, but he said he would leave a note for her and that he had to go before the traffic made him miss his plane.
    Her eyes roamed the office and came to rest on an issue of
Sports Illustrated.
“That’s it!” she said, rising from her chair. She lifted the magazine and looked for her handwriting. Finding it clean, she walked out of the room and into the waiting area where the other magazines were haphazardly tossed on a large coffee table in between two couches.
    None of the issues had her handwriting on the back. But she remembered it all now, from Michael’s phone call to scribbling her notes across the back of a magazine. After making sure no stray issues were beneath the couches or in the empty rack on the wall, she walked up to the receptionist, who was fielding a phone call.
    Lauren knew that either a patient had taken the magazine home with him or her, or-—
    The receptionist disconnected her call and was looking at Lauren. “Yes, Doctor?”
    “Do you know if there are any other magazines floating around the suite? I wrote something down on the back of one of them and I can’t seem to find it.”
    “I did a clearing just before the patients went in, about half an hour ago. I put all of them on the table.”
    “Do you remember seeing one that had my writing on the back?”
    “Not offhand. But you know how patients are. Sometimes they ask to borrow one, but most of the time they just take them.”
    “If you find it, would you please call me immediately?” Lauren then turned toward the stairwell. “And do me a favor and reschedule tonight’s and tomorrow’s patients for another time. I’ve got some... personal