“Perhaps I was busy with other matters. I had to earn a living, you know. A man can’t just go on having fun all the time.”

It was said to test him, and I was pleased to see that he did not wince.

“Do you have other suggested victims?” I went on. “It is hardly useful to propose gaps, unless you have people to fill them.”

“I suspect that you, Dr. Guest, know these statistics far better than I do. But let me state them for the record.” It was his first suggestion that we were being recorded, though I of course had assumed it.

“Confining ourselves to this population area alone,” he went on, “an average of thirty thousand fourteen-year-olds run away each year. Most return home in due course, but close to one-sixth of them remain unaccounted for. Of those, let us assume that only one child in a thousand possesses that standard of physical beauty which satisfies your apparent need. There would still be a suitable candidate, every couple of months, whose permanent disappearance would be indistinguishable from all the rest.”

The thing I liked about Carmelo Diaz was his matter-of-fact manner. No weeping and wailing and accusations from him about the “poor, helpless doomed children.” No suggestions that I was the devil incarnate. It made me wonder if, deep inside, he carried the same needs. He was deliberately, and successfully, matching his speech patterns to my own.

I didn’t let any of this influence me. I learned, long ago, how easy it is to find in others a false resemblance to oneself.

“That’s all you are asking?” I said. “If there were others?”

“Well, not quite.” He hesitated. “You chose such beautiful children, such models of physical perfection. We would like to know who the others were, and where their bodies can be found.”

So far it had all been one-sided. Time to change that. “You have told me what you want,” I said. “Now tell me what you can offer in return, were I to give it to you.”