Though few at Baruch knew, Persaud was that rare thing in India, rarer in Guyana, and rarer still in New York: a true Brahmin. And a Brahmin with a pandit (a priest) for a father. Kristine Kupka was a kind of reverse Rudy Persaud. They represented two different versions of the romance of migrating to New York City -- colliding examples of the postmodern melting pot. He moved here as part of an esteemed ethnic family, part of an ambitious community of immigrants who had a literal caste system. She moved to New York in a quasi-bohemian fashion: a white, blue-eyed Midwesterner drawn to milieus in which she was the racial minority. Baruch has a predominantly nonwhite student body; and Negril, where she worked, has a largely Caribbean clientele. Many of the men she had dated were black. Anthon Grant says, "I don't think Kristine saw color."

Where Persaud maintained the formality and reserve of the Anglo-Indian culture, Kristine, a graduate of the Forum, a modified reincarnation of Werner Erhard's est seminars, "revealed herself," Denise Lilien says. "She didn't hold back; she really developed intimacies. She was willing to put so much on the table so quickly. She was 'This is who I am; this is what I can give.' That's how she was with men, too. It was often too much. It could be overwhelming."

On October 24, a little past 11 a.m., Persaud pushed the buzzer at Kristine's house. He had called the night before, she told her roommate Ozlem, a 22-year-old Near Eastern college student (who asked New York to withhold her last name), to tell her he had found an apartment in Queens and wanted her to see it. But Kristine had overslept; she called out to Ozlem to let Rudy in. Ozlem says she sensed that Rudy did not want to come upstairs. When he did, "he was pacing around. He had his hands in his pockets, like he was distressed." Kristine came out of her bedroom in her pajamas and sat with Rudy, eating her health-food breakfast. Ozlem then went to her room; another housemate glimpsed Kristine, in a long black skirt and black sweater, leaving with Rudy. That was the last time any of Kristine's friends or family saw her. Her last communication was a message left on her sister Kathy's answering machine, apparently just before she walked out the door: "I'm going to look at Rudy's new apartment in Queens. I'll call you later this afternoon. See ya."

When Kathy didn't hear from her sister that afternoon or that night, she began to worry. When Ozlem called the next morning to say Kristine had still not returned, Kathy's worry turned to alarm and dread. She and her husband, Kevin Moore (he's a parole officer, she's a teacher), bundled up their toddler, Marshall, and rushed to the 70th Precinct.

At the 70th, Kathy and Kevin were given a stock response: Because Kristine was over 16 and under 65 years old and of sound mind and body, a missing-person report could not yet be filed. Maybe she took a trip home to Wisconsin or a vacation to Bermuda, it was suggested. Kristine wouldn't do that! Kathy protested, to no avail. It would be two days before the police called her to take an "informational account" of Kristine's disappearance.

The couple raced back to their Brooklyn apartment, with its pictures of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Frida Kahlo, and Huey Newton, to plot their next move. Both former caseworkers and political activists, Kathy is cool and wry, and Kevin, who is African-American, has the efficient manner of a young executive. They immediately started making calls and designing a flyer. Kathy left a message for her and Kristine's mother. Ellie Bodell, 64, is as much a freethinker as her daughters: At age 56, she became a long-distance truck driver. She was on the road and didn't get Kathy's frantic message until October 31. When she heard it, she says, "I just sat here in total shock." Then she flew to New York.