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honest, Mr. Sturgis. Do you have any hope of finding this monster?”
    “I’ll do my best, Mr. Carmeli, but I deal in details, not hope.”
    “I see .   .   . I’m not a religious man, never attend synagogue except for official business. But if there is a life after death I’m fairly certain I’m going to heaven. Do you know why?”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’ve already been to hell.”

Chapter
    8
     
     
     
    Descending in the elevator, Milo said, “That room. Wonder if Gorobich and Ramos merited his private office.”
    “Putting some distance between the murder and his work?”
    “Distance is a big issue for him, isn’t it?”
    “Can you blame him?” I said. “Losing a child is bad enough without attributing it to your career choice. I’m sure he considered the political angle right from the beginning. The entire consulate probably did, and they decided it wasn’t a factor. As you said, if they thought it was, they’d handle it themselves. And what Carmeli said about terrorism as attention-seeking backs that up. The same thing applies to counterterrorism: Send a message. Someone’s out for your kids, come down hard and fast and with enough publicity to provide strong deterrence. And something else: Carmeli’s demeanor wasn’t that of a man who’s achieved even the slightest closure. He’s hurting, Milo. Starving for answers.”
    He frowned. “And we haven’t given him any. Maybe that’s another reason he doesn’t like the department.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “That crack about having worked with us before. Someone probably screwed up on his parade or something. Sticking with the baseball analogies, I’m starting out with two strikes against me.”
    The car was where we’d left it. He gave the parking attendant another tip, backed out, and drove down the exit ramp. Traffic was heavy on Wilshire and he waited to turn left.
    “That room,” he said, again. “Did you see the way the smoke got sucked up into the ceiling? Maybe he’s not James Bond but my Mossad fantasies are taking over and I keep flashing images of secret tunnels up there, all this cloak-and-dagger crap.”
    “License to cater,” I said.
    “And cynical old me thinks: protesting too much .   .   . any other impressions of him?”
    “No, just what I said.”
    “No special antenna-twang?”
    “Why?”
    He shrugged. “I can understand his wanting to keep distance between the murder and his job but don’t you think he could have been a little more forthcoming? Like volunteering to turn over the consulate’s crank mail .   .   . not that I blame him, I guess. From his perspective we’re clowns who haven’t done squat.”
    He made the turn.
    “Changing the subject,” I said. “The hearing aid. I keep thinking it was left there deliberately. Maybe the killer’s telling us that’s why he chose her.”
    “Telling us? A game-player?”
    “There’s a gamelike quality to it, Milo. Malignant play. And what Carmeli told us about Irit’s turning off the hearing aid, retreating to her own private world, would have made her a perfect target. For children, private worlds often mean overt self-stimulation: fantasizing, talking to themselves, strange-looking body movements. The killer could have watched and seen all that: first the hearing aid, then Irit wandering away from the others, acting preoccupied, lost in fantasy. He pulled her out of her script and into his.”
    “Wandered off,” he said. “So maybe we’re just talking real bad luck.”
    “A mixture of bad luck and victim characteristics.”
    A moment later something else hit me.
    “There’s a whole other possibility,” I said. “It was someone who knew her. Knew that even when she wore the aid, she turned it off and was easy to sneak up on.”
    He drove slowly, jaws knotted, squinting at more than sun-glare. We traveled for three blocks before he spoke.
    “So back to the old acquaintance list. Teachers, the bus driver. And neighbors, no