Your Heart Belongs to Me

was not part of the web that unknown others seemed to be spinning around Ryan.
    He couldn’t properly call her a red herring, because no one had planted her photograph in the ring binder with the intention of misdirecting him. In his eagerness to seize the moment, to act, he had raced to the conclusion that her presence in this collection of faces was the illuminating thing he had come to Las Vegas to discover.
    But here, sixteen months and twelve pages later in the album, a greater astonishment and the true key lay before him: Ismay Clemm, the fiftysomething cardiology nurse, who had not only assisted with the myocardial biopsy but also had checked on him repeatedly, after the procedure, when he had been on the bed in the prep room, sleeping off the lingering effects of the sedative.
    There, he had for the first time experienced the dreams that for a while plagued him: the black lake, the haunted palace, the city in the sea. As much as anything, those repetitive nightmares—and the paranoia that they reinforced, the suspicion of being drugged or poisoned that they enflamed—had motivated him to make that first trip to Vegas while waiting for Dr. Gupta to report the results of the biopsy.
    Although Ryan now knew beyond doubt that Ismay Clemm was the pivot point on which he could turn from confusion to clarity, he paged through the rest of the ring binder, studying faces. He needed to be certain he did not make the same mistake now that he had made when he leaped to the conclusion that Teresa would be the key to the door of truth.
    The remaining faces were those of strangers. He returned to the nurse. Not Ismay, surely. Ismay’s other.
    If these events had a theme, it was identical twins. Samantha and Teresa. Lily and her deranged sister with the switchblade.
    Ryan heard a rapping, but it was Zane or Sienna in another room, sounding out a wall for indications of a hidden cache.
    He had no idea in what town Ismay Clemm lived. Because her name was unusual, Ryan used his cell to avail himself of a new information service that searched for listings not by city but by area code. He could find no number for Ismay in either the 949 or 714 areas, which might only mean that her phone was unlisted.
    At four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, reaching Dr. Gupta to ask after Nurse Clemm would be difficult. Getting to him on a week-day would be no easier.
    A year ago, after discovering that his patient had been under the care of Dr. Dougal Hobb for more than a month, Dr. Gupta had sent Ryan’s records to Hobb, and a curt note to Ryan expressing dismay that he had not been informed sooner of this decision. He was not likely to take or return a call.
    As a consequence of all this, Ryan had changed internists, as well. He moved from Forry Stafford to Dr. Larry Kleinman, who offered a concierge medical practice.
    He considered calling Kleinman’s 24/7 contact number to ask if the doctor would be willing to seek from the hospital the name of the other cardiology nurse who had assisted Gupta in the biopsy that day. But as he stared at the death portrait of Ismay’s twin, he remembered the lean nurse whose body fat was less than a cricket’s. Whippit. No. Whipset. First name Kara or Karla.
    Of the Whipsets that he found in the 949 area code, one had a first name similar to what he recalled. He recognized it at once: Kyra.
    He placed the call, and she answered on the third ring.
    After he identified himself and apologized for intruding on her privacy and on her Sunday, Ryan said, “I’m hoping you might know how I can get in touch with Ismay Clemm.”
    “I’m sorry. Who?”
    “The other nurse who assisted in the procedure that day.”
    “Other nurse?” Kyra Whipset said.
    “Ismay Clemm. I very much need to talk to her.”
    “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
    “But she assisted during the biopsy.”
    “I was the only nurse on the procedure, Mr. Perry.”
    “A black woman. Very pleasant face. Unusual dark-green eyes.”
    “I don’t know anyone like that.”
    “Could she have been…assisting unofficially?”
    “I think I would remember. Anyway, it’s not done.”
    “But she was there,” he insisted.
    His conviction made Nurse Whipset uncertain. “But how did she assist, what did she do?”
    “When the first tissue sample was taken, she told me not to hold my breath.”
    “That’s it? That’s the extent of it?”
    “No. She also…she monitored my pulse.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, she stood