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Glitsky said. “And without a trail, finding her is going to be problematic.”
    Ruth asked, “What are you looking for?”
    “A reason,” Glitsky replied. “Something that makes sense, that leads somewhere, possibly to where she is now.”
    “You mean, in her life?” Ruth asked. “What could that be? I mean, she was, is, a stay-at-home mother of infants. I don’t say that disparagingly. I raised two boys, and it can be a noble calling. Are you saying she might have been involved in something that got her in trouble? That seems a stretch.”
    “It might be,” Glitsky agreed. “If there’s a rational answer at all.”
    “What if it was a random crazy person?” Warren asked. “He saw Hal leave, and he looked through the window and saw Katie here alone and knocked at the door and had a weapon . . .”
    Glitsky nodded. “Entirely possible. I don’t have any idea. I’ve barely begun with this.” He sipped his tea. “At least I’m not trying to build a case against Hal. I’m trying to find out what happened to Katie and why. I’m not working with the police. Really. If there’s an answer to be found, wherever it leads, I’ll try to run it down. That’s what I’m here for.”
    “If there’s an answer . . .” Hal said. “What if there isn’t?”
    “Let’s not go there,” Glitsky said. “Not for a while, anyway.”

9
    A T ABOUT THE same moment, JaMorris and Abby knocked at the front door of the Dunne home on Guerrero Street in the Mission District. It was a three-story structure on its own lot that gave the impression of having been the project of several shabbily genteel architects over its thirty years of life. Odd angles jutted from corners and roofs; the entire second floor seemed to float behind plate-glass windows; a fountain splashed over perennial reeds into a koi pond in the half-covered courtyard that doubled as the welcoming lobby on the first floor.
    Exposing a fairly common vein in San Francisco’s über-liberal culture, some past owners (or perhaps the Dunnes themselves) had spent serious money in an effort to render the home aggressively proletarian.
    The detectives, negotiating around the bicycles parked along the walls, followed the head of the household down the hallway that ran inside along the courtyard, and came to a large family room at the back of the house, where three women sat on stools in front of a bar, turned to face their incoming visitors. Each had a full glass of white wine at her elbow, and all of their eyes showed signs of tears.
    With an air of exhaustion, Curt Dunne stopped just inside the door and said with some formality, “These are Inspectors Monroe and Foley. Inspectors, my wife, Carli—Katie’s mother—and my daughters, Barbara and Sherrie. My son, Daniel, couldn’t get off work, but he told me he’d be glad to talk to you by appointment; I believe you have his numbers.”
    “We do, thank you.” JaMorris turned to the women. “Thank you all for agreeing to sit down with us this afternoon. I know it’s been, and continues to be, a tremendously difficult time.”
    He silently ceded the floor to Abby, who picked up where he left off. “As you know, it’s been nearly five full days since Katie’s gone missing, and in that time we haven’t heard from any third parties, such as kidnappers demanding a ransom. We haven’t gotten any messages from Katie, and we don’t have a record of her having accessed her credit cards or used her cell phone.” She paused. “Given all of these realities, we are forced to consider the possibility that Katie was the victim of foul play, perhaps even—I know you’ve all considered this—murder.”
    At the word, Carli Dunne brought her hand to her mouth. Curt crossed over to stand directly behind her, his arm along the bar. The younger women, in tandem, reached for their wine.
    JaMorris pulled up a stool from near the wall, sat down, and picked up the narrative. “This means that we’re shifting the