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the page: Stumpf’s Baselard .
    He remembered Mickey Paz: Stoomp bassard. . . .
    â€œStumpf’s Baselard,” he whispered into the quiet of the sleeping house. “What the hell’s a baselard?”
    The search engine displayed the first two lines of the entry: By Gretchen Dankl. This abstract explores the history and legend surrounding a missing 15th-century dagger. . . .
    A missing 15th-century dagger. . . . He tried to keep his mind easy, but he sensed that he had hit on something. More than that, the semi-accidental way he’d hit on it had an aura of providence about it, like it was a Meant Thing. Wouldn’t be the first time. Every cop depended on such heaven-sent coincidences. Hunches. Random chains of discovery. Nothing mystical about it, just something that happened from time to time. Every cop had a collar with a story like that attached.
    Zach hit the link.
    The page you have requested is no longer available.
    He was midway through a curse of frustration when a new e-mail appeared, and he clicked over to the e-mail page and saw it was from her, from Margo.
    Darling. I know you got my text today. I need to talk to you. Please don’t ignore me. Not after what we’ve meant to each other. M.
    His whole body recognized her old fraught style. His whole soul soured at it. What we’ve meant to each other. It was black-magical in its power. Zach could picture her, in her Westchester mansion, sitting in her dark living room as he was in his, sitting at her computer as he was at his, pressing SEND . What we’ve meant to each other. Like casting a spell on him from a distance. The familiar melodrama of her diction seemed to suck him out of his life into a vortex that pulled him down, down, down. . . .
    â€œZach?”
    His breath caught as he looked up and saw Grace on the stairway. Wifely in her flowery nightgown. All the love life he had ever cared about or wanted.
    â€œYou all right?” she asked.
    â€œYeah, baby, I’m okay,” he told her. Margo’s e-mail glaring at him from the laptop monitor. What if Grace came over and sat beside him, laid her head on his shoulder, saw? “I just couldn’t sleep, thought I’d get some work done. You go on back to bed.”
    â€œAll right. But come to bed soon. You need your rest.”
    â€œI will.”
    He deleted the e-mail even as she shuffled sleepily back up the stairs. As full of rage as his heart was, as full of fear and woe as it was, he couldn’t hate her—Margo—only himself.
    He slouched back against the sofa cushions. Stared at the empty screen, his sick soul leaden.
    His thoughts went random. The name Gretchen Dankl swam back into his mental ken. The woman who had written the article about Stumpf’s Baselard. He leaned toward the computer again. Typed in Dankl’s name, thinking, Could she be pregnant? Meaning Margo. But no, it had been six months since they had been together. Too late now for her to run that game on him.
    Did you mean Gretchen Kunkel? Gretchen Runkel?
    But underneath the suggested substitutions was a bona fide hit: Ludwig Wilhelm University, Freiberg. Gretchen Dankl, adjunct professor, literature. [email protected].
    Dear Professor Dankl , he wrote to her. My name is Agent Zach Adams. I am a United States law enforcement officer with Homeland Security’s Extraordinary Crimes Division based in New York City. I am writing in connection with a murder investigation here, and looking for any information you might have about Stumpf’s Baselard. . . .
    When he was finished, he snapped the laptop shut. With the monitor light gone, the living-room darkness was even deeper. He sat in it—the darkness—for several silent seconds—leaning back again, his arms stretched out on either side of him, rested along the tops of the sofa cushions—just sitting there with the whole Margo disaster a dead weight in his gut. He was unable even to muster a puling