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pocket.
    â€œWhat about it? Did you see her with a cell phone?”
    â€œI’m pretty sure I didn’t,” says Posner. “We only spoke for a few seconds. You’re not supposed to use a cell phone on the Jitney.”
    Wisdom nods. Something in his manner makes Posner definitely realizes the man is a long way from some bumbling cop. He is more like that shrewd, yet modest, television detective he watched years ago. That’s it. Colombo. Except that Wisdom has neither a cigar nor a raincoat.
    â€œIt seems she made a call to her boyfriend. Another doctor. A guy named Henry Stern sometime that afternoon. The day she disappeared. Said she was calling from some nice house in the area with ocean views.”
    Wisdom puts his notepad down and his eyes rise to see through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
    â€œLots of houses out here have ocean views,” is all Posner thinks of saying, but it is the right comment.
    â€œYou’re right about that,” says Wisdom and returns his gaze to his notebook.
    As Wisdom studies his notes, Posner’s memory fixates on the cell phone. The incessant ringing on the front seat of his car, until the last chimes die away, and his ultimate race the next morning to a local beach where he finds a stone and pummels the amalgam of plastic and metal into tiny bits; and then the drive to the town recycling center later that day to scatter the remnants, then little more than powder, amidst the piles of nonrecycling garbage; the chicken bones, orange peels, and assorted household waste that have become man’s footprint.
    But the cell phone only rang sometime after seven that evening, he remembers. She must have called Henry earlier. From his house. It had to be from his house. When she was in the bathroom, but she used her cell phone, not his house phone. That’s good. Very good. So there is no further basis to connect him with Heidi except that his house has an ocean view, but as he explains to Wisdom, such a vista is far from unusual in the area.
    Wisdom rises to leave. Thanks him again for his time and help. There is no hint of nausea this time when Wisdom moves across the tile floor toward the door. Posner begins to believe he is getting past all of this, and that he is not only in the clear, yet beyond any evidence to remotely connect him to Heidi. He breathes deeply and goes upstairs. He pours a glass of wine. That night he sleeps deeply and late into the next morning. He has two weeks of such mindless solitude.
    And then he gets a visit from Dr. Henry Stern.

CHAPTER 4
    Dr. Henry Stern is a tall man, over six feet, with straight brown hair and green eyes. He is thirty-two when he first meets Heidi at a hospital Christmas party a year before.
    â€œDo you celebrate Christmas?” she asks her voice throaty and European accented, as she sips a glass of eggnog.
    They stand with two other staff members in white coats and a well-dressed man who announces he is in administration. Stern shakes his head slightly.
    â€œNo. I’m Jewish. By the way that’s not spiked, you know,” he says pointing to her glass as she looks up at him, her dark eyes wide as globes.
    â€œSpiked?”
    â€œI mean there’s no booze in it. No liquor at all. Can’t have the hospital pushing alcohol during business hours.”
    The others all laugh, and he did mean it as a joke, since business hours equaled a twenty-four-hour day, but her eyes seize his and stop his own laughter. That’s when he turns away, as he feels a flush creep across his face. He drifts across the room and joins two other radiologists, but for a change he doesn’t feel like discussing shadows on x-rays; the indications of something ranging from either benign to inoperable. He has learned to control his emotions when he speaks with patients and their primary physicians. He has built up a wall of false bravado during such conversations, always faking the positive,which will give them a