that they thought of themselves as ... sort of one person in two bodies."
"Proof? What proof?" Joshua demanded.
"The letter you found in the safe-deposit box in that San Francisco bank. In it, Bruno wrote that he had been killed in Los Angeles. He didn't say his brother had been killed. He said he, himself, was dead."
"You can't prove anything by that letter," Joshua said. "It was all mumbo-jumbo. It didn't make any sense."
"In a way it does make sense," Tony said. "It makes sense from Bruno's point of view--if he didn't think of his brother as another human being. If he thought of his twin as part of himself, as just an extension of himself, and not as a separate person at all, then the letter makes a lot of sense."
Joshua shook his head. "But I still don't see how two people could possibly ever be made to believe they were only one person."
"You're accustomed to hearing about split personalities," Tony said. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The woman whose true story was told in The Three Faces of Eve. And there was a book about another woman like that. It was a best-seller several years ago. Sybil. Sybil had sixteen distinct, separate personalities. Well, if I'm right about what became of the Frye twins, then they developed a psychosis that's just the reverse of split personality. These two people didn't split into four or six or eight or eighty; instead, under tremendous pressure from their mother, they ... melted together psychologically, melted into one. Two individuals with one personality, one self-awareness, one self-image, all shared. It's probably never happened before and might never happen again, but that doesn't mean it can't have happened here."
"The two would have found it virtually essential to develop identical personalities in order to take turns living in the world beyond their mother's house," Hilary said. "Even small differences between them would ruin the charade."
"But how?" Joshua demanded. "What did Katherine do to them? How did she make it happen to them?"
"We'll probably never know for certain," Hilary said. "But I've got a few ideas about what she might have done."
"So do I," Tony said. "But you go first."

***

By mid-afternoon, the amount of light coming through the east-facing attic windows grew steadily less. The quality of the light began to decrease as well; it no longer radiated out from the shaft form that the shape of the window imparted to it. Darkness slowly claimed the corners of the room.
As shadows crept across the floor, Bruno began to worry about being caught in the dark. He couldn't simply snap on a lamp because the lamps weren't in working order. There hadn't been any electric service to the house for five years, since his mother's first death. His flashlight was useless; the batteries were drained.
For a while, as he watched the room sink into purple-gray gloom, Bruno fought panic. He didn't mind being outdoors in the dark, for there was almost always some light spilling from houses, streetlamps, light from passing cars, the stars, the moon. But in a totally lightless room, the whispers and the crawling things returned, and that was a double plague he must prevent somehow.
Candles.
His mother had always kept a couple of boxes of tall candles in the pantry, off the kitchen. They were for use in the event of a power failure. He was pretty sure there would also be matches in the pantry, a hundred or more of them in a round tin with a tight-fitting lid. He hadn't touched any of those things when he had moved out; he had taken nothing but a few personal possessions and some of the collections of artwork that he had acquired himself.
He leaned over to peer into the face of the other Bruno, and he said, "I'm going downstairs for a minute."
The cloudy, blood-muddied eyes stared up at him.
"I won't be gone long," Bruno said.
Himself said nothing.
"I'm going to get some candles so I won't be caught in the dark," Bruno said. "Will I be all right alone here for a few minutes while I'm gone?"
His other self was silent.
Bruno went to the set of steps in one corner of the room. They led down into a second-floor bedroom. The stairwell was not totally dark, for some light from the attic window fell into it. But when Bruno pushed open the door at the bottom, he was shocked to find that the bedroom below was black.
The shutters.
He had opened the shutters in the attic when he'd awakened in the dark this morning, but the windows were still sealed elsewhere in the house. He hadn't dared open them. It wasn't likely that Hilary-Katherine's spies would look up and notice just one pair of opened attic shutters; but if he were to let light into the entire house, they would certainly spot the change and come running. Now the place was like a sepulcher, shrouded in eternal night.
He stood in the stairwell and peered into the lightless bedroom, afraid to advance, listening for whispers.
Not a sound.
No movement either.
He thought of going back to the attic. But that was no solution to his problem. In a few hours, night would have come, and he would be without a protective light. He must forge on to the pantry and find those candles.
Reluctantly, he moved into the second-floor bedroom, holding open the stairwell door to take advantage of the meager, smoky light that lay behind and above him. Two steps. Then he stopped.
Waited.
Listened.
No whispers.
He let go of the door and hurriedly crossed the bedroom, feeling his way between pieces of furniture.
No whispers.
He reached another door and then stepped into the second-floor hallway.
No whispers.
For a moment, enveloped in seamless velvety blackness, he could not remember whether to turn left or right to reach the stairs that led to the ground floor. Then he regained his bearings, and he went to the right, arms extended in front of him and hands opened with fingers spread in blindman fashion.
No whispers.
He almost fell down the stairs when he came to them. The floor suddenly opened under him, and he saved himself by reeling to the left and clutching the unseen bannister.
Whispers.
Clinging to the bannister, unable to see anything at all, he held his breath, cocked his head.
Whispers.
Coming after him.
He cried out and lumbered drunkenly down the steps, lost touch with the railing, then with his balance, windmilled his arms, tripped, sprawled on the landing, face down in the musty carpet, pain shooting through his left leg, just a flash of pain and then the dull echo of it in his flesh, and he lifted his head, and he heard the whispers getting closer, closer, and he got up, whimpering in fear, limped rapidly down the next flight, stumbled when he abruptly reached the ground floor, and looked back, stared up into darkness, heard the whispers rushing toward him, building to a roaring hiss, and he shouted--"No! No!"--and started toward the rear of the house, along the first-floor corridor, toward the kitchen, and then the whispers were all around him, rolling over him, coming from above and below and every side, and the things were there, too, the horrible crawling things--or thing; one or many; he didn't know which--and as he careened toward the kitchen, bouncing from wall to wall in his terror, he brushed and slapped at himself, desperately trying to keep the crawling things off him, and then he crashed into the kitchen door, which was a swinging door, which swung open to admit him, and he felt along the perimeter of the room, felt over the stove and the refrigerator and the cupboards and the sink until he came to the pantry door, and the things slithered over him all this time, and the whispers continued, and he screamed and screamed at the top of his raspy voice, and he pulled open the pantry door, was assaulted by a nauseating stench, stepped into the pantryn in spite of the overpowering odor that wafted from it, then realized he couldn't see and wouldn't be able to find the candles or the matches by touch among all the other jars and cans, whirled around, into the kitchen again, screaming, flailing at himself, wiping the wriggling things off his face as they tried to scurry into his mouth and nose, found the outside door that connected the kitchen to the back porch, fumbled with the stiff latches, finally freed them, and threw the door open.
Light.
Gray afternoon light, slanting down the Mayacamas Mountains from the west, rained through the open door and illuminated the kitchen.
Light.
For a while, he stood in the doorway, letting the wonderful light wash over him. He was sheathed in perspiration. His breath came hard and ragged.
When he finally calmed down, he returned to the pantry. The sickening stench came from old cans and jars of food that had swelled and exploded, spraying spoiled goods and giving rise to green-black-yellow molds and fungi. Trying to avoid the mess as best he could, he located the candles and the can of matches.
The matches were still dry and useful. He struck one to be sure. The spurting flame was a sight that lifted his heart.

***

To the west of the northward-streaking Cessna, a couple of thousand feet below the aircraft, at the seven- or eight-thousand-foot level, storm clouds steadily approached from the Pacific.
"How?" Joshua asked again. "How did Katherine make the twins think and act and be one person?"
"As I said," Hilary told him, "we'll probably never know for certain. But for one thing, it seems to me that she must have shared her delusions with the twins almost from the day she brought them home, long before they were old enough even to understand what she was saying. Hundreds and hundreds of times, perhaps thousands upon thousands of times over the years, she told them that they were the sons of a demon. She told them they'd been born with cauls, and she explained what that meant. She told them their sex organs weren't like those of other boys. She probably told them that they would be killed if other people found out what they were. By the time they were old enough to question all those things, they would have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they wouldn't have been able to doubt her. They'd have shared her psychosis and her delusions. They'd have been two extremely tense little boys, afraid of being found out, afraid of being killed. Fear is stress. And a lot of stress would make their psyches highly malleable. It seems to me that tremendous, unrelenting, extraordinary stress over a long period of time would provide exactly the right atmosphere for the melting together of personalities in the way that Tony has suggested. Massive, prolonged stress wouldn't, by itself, cause that melting together, but it would sort of set the stage for it."
Tony said, "From the tapes we heard in Dr. Rudge's office this morning, we know Bruno was aware that he and his brother were born with cauls. We know that he was familiar with the superstition connected with that rare phenomenon. From the way he sounded on the tape, I think we can safely assume he believed, as his mother did, that he was marked by a demon. And there's other evidence that points to the same conclusion. The letter in the safe-deposit box, for instance. Bruno wrote that he couldn't ask for police protection against his mother because the police would discover what he was and what he'd been hiding all these years. In the letter, he said that if people found out what he was, they would stone him to death. He thought he was the son of a demon. I'm sure of it. He had absorbed Katherine's psychotic delusions."
"All right," Joshua said. "Maybe both twins believed the demon bunk because they'd never had a chance not to believe it. But that still doesn't explain how or why Katherine shaped the two of them into one person, how she got them to ... melt together psychologically, as you put it."
"The why part of your question is the easiest to answer," Hilary said. "As long as the twins thought of themselves as individuals, there would be differences between them, even if only very minor differences. And the more differences, the more likely it was that one of them would unintentionally blow the entire masquerade someday. The more she could force them to act and think and talk and move and respond alike, the safer she was."
"As for the how of it," Tony said, "you shouldn't forget that Katherine knew the ways and means to break and shape a mind. After all, she had been broken and shaped by a master. Leo. He had used every trick in the book to make her what he wanted her to be, and she couldn't have helped but learn something from all of that. Techniques of physical and psychological torture. She could probably have written a textbook on the subject."
"And to make the twins think like one person," Hilary said, "she'd have to treat them like one person. She'd have to set the tone, in other words. She'd have to offer them the exact same degrees of love, if any. She'd have to punish both for the actions of one, reward both for the actions of one, treat the two bodies as if they were in possession of the same mind. She had to talk to them as if they were only one person, not two."
"And every time she caught a glimpse of individuality, she'd either have to make them both do it, or she'd have to eradicate the mannerism in the one who displayed it. And pronoun usage would be very important," Tony said.
"Pronoun usage?" Joshua asked, perplexed.
"Yes," Tony said. "This is going to sound pretty damned far-out. Maybe even meaningless. But more than anything else, our understanding and use of language shapes us. Language is the way we express every idea, every thought. Sloppy thinking leads to a sloppy use of language. But the opposite is also true: Imprecise language causes imprecise thinking. That's a basic tenet of semantics. So it seems logical to theorize that the selectively-twisted usage of pronouns would aid in the establishment of the kind of selectively-twisted self-image that Katherine wanted to see the twins adopt. For example, when the twins spoke to each other, they could never be allowed to use the pronoun 'you.' Because 'you' embodies the concept of another person other than one's self. If the twins were forced to think of themselves as one creature, then the pronoun 'you' would have no place between them. One Bruno could never say to the other, 'Why don't you and I play a game of Monopoly?' He'd have to say, instead, something like this: 'Why don't me and I play a game of Monopoly?' He couldn't use the pronouns 'we' and 'us' when talking about himself and his brother, for those pronouns indicate at least two people. Instead, he'd have to say 'me and myself' when he meant 'we.' Furthermore, when one of the twins was talking to Katherine about his brother, he couldn't be permitted to use the pronouns 'he' and 'him.' Again, they embody the concept of another individual in addition to the speaker. Complicated?"
"Insane," Joshua said.
"That's the point," Tony said.
"But it's too much. It's too crazy."
"Of course, it's crazy," Tony said. "It was Katherine's scheme, and Katherine was out of her mind."
"But how could she possibly enforce all of those bizarre rules about habits and mannerisms and attitudes and pronouns and whatever the hell else?"
"The same way you'd enforce an ordinary set of rules with ordinary children," Hilary said. "If they do the right thing, you reward them. If they do the wrong thing, however, you punish them."
"But to make children behave as unnaturally as Katherine wanted the twins to behave, to make them totally surrender their individuality, the punishment would have to be something truly monstrous," Joshua said.
"And we know it was something monstrous," Tony said. "We all heard Dr. Rudge's tape of that last session with Bruno, when hypnosis was used. If you remember, Bruno said that she put him into some dark hole in the ground as punishment--and I quote--'for not thinking and acting like one.' I believe he meant she put both him and his brother in that dark place when they refused to think and act like a single person. She locked them in a dark place for long periods of time, and there was something alive in there, something that crawled all over them. Whatever happened to them in that room or hole ... it was so terrible that they had bad dreams about it every night for decades. If it could leave that strong an impression so many years afterwards, I'd say it was enough of a punishment to be a good brainwashing tool. I'd say Katherine did exactly what she set out to do with the twins: melted them into one."
Joshua stared at the sky ahead.
At last, he said, "When she came back from Mrs. Yancy's whorehouse, her problem was to pass off the twins as the one child she'd talked about, thereby salvaging the Mary Gunther lie. But she could have accomplished that by locking up one of the brothers, making him a house son, while the other twin was the only one allowed to go out of the house. That would have been quicker, easier, simpler, safer."
"But we all know Clemenza's Law," Hilary said.
"Right," Joshua said. "Clemenza's Law: Damned few people ever do anything the quickest, easiest, simplest, and safest way."
"Besides," Hilary said, "Maybe Katherine just didn't have the heart to keep one of the boys locked up forever while the other one was permitted to lead at least a little bit of a normal life. After all the suffering she'd been through, maybe there was a limit to the amount of suffering she could force her children to endure."
"It seems to me she made them endure a whole hell of a lot!" Joshua said. "She drove them mad!"
"Inadvertently, yes," Hilary said. "She didn't intend to drive them mad. She thought she was doing what was best for them, but her own state of mind didn't make it possible for her to know what was best."
Joshua sighed wearily. "It's a wild theory you've got."
"Not so wild," Tony said. "It fits the known facts."
Joshua nodded. "And I guess I believe it, too. At least most of it. I just wish all of the villains in this piece were thoroughly vile and despicable. It seems wrong, somehow, to feel so much sympathy for them."

***

After they landed in Napa, under rapidly graying skies, they went straight to the county sheriff's office and told Peter Laurenski everything. At first, he gaped at them as if they had lost their minds, but gradually his disbelief turned into reluctant, astonished acceptance. That was a pattern of reactions, a transformation of emotions that Hilary expected they would all witness a few hundred times in the days ahead.
Laurenski telephoned the Los Angeles Police Department. He discovered that the FBI already had contacted the LAPD in regard to the San Francisco bank fraud case involving a look-alike for Bruno Frye, now believed at large in the LAPD's jurisdiction. Laurenski's news, of course, was that the suspect was not merely a look-alike, but the genuine article--even though another genuine article was dead and buried in the Napa County Memorial Park. He informed the LAPD that he had reason to believe the two Brunos had taken turns killing women and had been involved in a series of murders in the northern half of the state over the past five years, although he could not yet provide hard evidence or name specific homicides. The evidence was thus far circumstantial: a grisly but logical interpretation of the safe-deposit box letter in light of recent discoveries about Leo and Katherine and the twins; the fact that both of the twins had made attempts on Hilary's life; the fact that one of the twins had covered for the other last week when Hilary had first been attacked, which indicated complicity in at least attempted murder; and finally the conviction, shared by Hilary and Tony and Joshua, that Bruno's hatred for his mother was so powerful and maniacal that he would not hesitate to slaughter any woman who he imagined was his mother come back to life in a new body.
While Hilary and Joshua shared the railback bench that served as an office couch, and while they drank coffee provided by Laurenski's secretary, Tony took the phone at Laurenski's request and spoke with two of his own superiors in L.A. His support for Laurenski and the corroboration of facts that he provided were apparently effective, for the call concluded with a promise that L.A. authorities would take immediate action at their end. Operating under the assumption that the psychopath would be keeping a watch on Hilary's home, the LAPD agreed to establish around-the-clock surveillance on the Westwood house.
With the cooperation of the Los Angeles police assured, the sheriff quickly composed a bulletin, outlining the basic facts of the case, for distribution to all law enforcement agencies in Northern California. The bulletin doubled as an official request for information on any unsolved murders of young, attractive, brown-eyed brunettes, in jurisdictions beyond Laurenski's, during the past five years--and especially any murders involving decapitation, mutilation, or evidence of blood fetishism.
As Hilary watched the sheriff issuing orders to clerks and deputies, and as she thought about the events of the past twenty-four hours, she had the feeling that everything was moving too fast, like a whirlwind, and that this wind--filled with surprises and ugly secrets, just as a tornado is filled with swirling clods of uprooted earth and chunks of debris--was carrying her toward a precipice that she could not yet see, but over which she might be flung. She wished she could reach out with both hands and seize control of time itself, hold it back, slow it down, take a few days out to rest and to consider what she had learned, so that she would be able to follow the final few twists and turns of the Frye mystery with a clear head. She felt sure that continued haste was foolish, even deadly. But the wheels of the law, now engaged and rolling, could not be blocked. And time could not be reined in as if it were a runaway stallion.
She hoped there was no precipice ahead.
At 5:30, after Laurenski had gotten the law enforcement machinery moving, he and Joshua used the telephone to track down a judge. They found one, Judge Julian Harwey, who was fascinated by the Frye story. Harwey understood the necessity of retrieving the corpse and putting it through an extensive battery of tests for identification purposes. If the second Bruno Frye was apprehended, and if he somehow managed to pass a psychiatric examination, which was highly unlikely but not altogether impossible, then the prosecutor would need physical proof that there had been identical twins. Harwey was willing to sign an exhumation order, and by 6:30, the sheriff had that paper in hand.
"The workmen at the cemetery won't be able to open the grave in the dark," Laurenski said. "But I'll have them out there digging at the crack of dawn." He made a few more phone calls, one to the director of the Napa County Memorial Park where Frye was buried, another to the county coroner who could conduct the exhumation of the body as soon as it was delivered to him, and one to Avril Tannerton, the mortician, to arrange for him to transport the corpse to and from the coroner's pathology lab.
When Laurenski finally got off the telephone, Joshua said, "I imagine you'll want to search the Frye house."
"Absolutely," Laurenski said. "We want to find proof that more than one man was living there, if we can. And if Frye really had murdered other women, maybe we'll turn up some evidence. I think it would be a good idea to go through the house on the cliff, too."
"We can search the new house as soon as you like," Joshua said. "But there's no electricity in the old place. That one will have to wait until daylight."
"Okay," Laurenski said. "But I'd like to have a look at the vineyard house tonight."
"Now?" Joshua asked, getting up from the railback bench.
"None of us has had dinner," Laurenski said. Earlier. before they had told him even half of what they'd learned from Dr. Rudge and Rita Yancy, the sheriff had called his wife to tell her he wouldn't be home until very late. "Let's get a bite to eat at the coffee shop around the corner. Then we can head on out to Frye's place."
Before they left for the restaurant, Laurenski told the night receptionist where he would be and asked her to let him know immediately if word came in that the Los Angeles police had arrested the second Bruno Frye.
"It's not going to be that easy," Hilary said.
"I suspect she's right," Tony said. "Bruno has concealed an incredible secret for forty years. He may be crazy, but he's also clever. The LAPD isn't going to lay hands on him that fast. They'll have to play a lot of cat-and-mouse before they finally nail him."

***

When night had begun to fall, Bruno had closed the attic shutters again.
Now there were candles on each nightstand. There were two candles on the dresser. The flickering yellow flames made shadows dance on the walls and ceiling.
Bruno knew that he should already be out looking for Hilary-Katherine, but he could not find the energy to get up and go. He kept putting it off.
He was hungry. He suddenly realized that he hadn't eaten since yesterday. His stomach was growling.
For a while, he sat on the bed, beside the staring corpse, and he tried to decide where he should go to get some food. A few of the cans in the pantry hadn't swelled up, hadn't burst, but he was sure that everything on those shelves was spoiled and poisonous. For almost an hour, he struggled with the problem, trying to think of where he could go to get something to eat and still be safe from Katherine's spies. They were everywhere. The bitch and her spies. Everywhere. His state of mind was still best described as confused, and even though he was hungry, he had difficulty keeping his thoughts focused on food. But at last, he remembered there was food in the vineyard house. The milk would have spoiled during the past week, and the bread would have gotten hard. But his own pantry was full of canned goods, and the refrigerator was stocked with cheese and fruit, and there was ice cream in the freezer. The thought of ice cream made him smile like a small boy.
Driven by the vision of ice cream, hoping that a good supper would give him the energy he needed to begin looking for Hilary-Katherine, he left the attic and made his way down through the house with the aid of a candle. Outside, he snuffed out the flame and tucked the candle into a jacket pocket. He descended the crumbling switchback stairs on the face of the cliff and strode off through the dark vineyards.
Ten minutes later, in his own house, he struck a match and relit the candle because he was afraid that he would attract unwanted attention if he switched on the lights. He got a spoon from a drawer by the kitchen sink, took a one-gallon, cardboard tub of chocolate ripple from the freezer, and sat at the table for more than a quarter of an hour, smiling, eating big spoonfuls of ice cream right out of the carton, until at last he was too full to swallow even one more bite.
He dropped the spoon in the half-emptied carton, put the ice cream back in the freezer, and realized that he ought to pack up canned goods to take back to the clifftop house. He might not be able to find and kill Hilary-Katherine for days, and during that time he didn't want to have to sneak back here for every meal. Sooner or later, the bitch would think to have some of her spies put a watch on this place, and then he would be caught. But she'd never look for him in the cliff house, not in a million years, so that was where he ought to have his food supply.
He went into the master bedroom and got a large suitcase from the closet, took that into the kitchen, and filled it with cans of peaches, pears, mandarin orange slices, jars of peanut butter and jars of olives, and two kinds of jelly--each jar wrapped in paper towels to cushion it and keep it from breaking--and tins of little Vienna sausages. When he finished packing, the big suitcase was extremely heavy, but he had the muscles to handle it.
He had not showered since last night, at Sally's house in Culver City, and he felt grimy. He hated being dirty, for being dirty somehow always made him think of the whispers and the awful crawling things and the dark place in the ground. He decided he could risk taking a quick shower before he carried the food back to the clifftop house, even if that meant being naked and defenseless for a few minutes. But as he walked through the living room on his way to the bedroom and master bath, he heard cars approaching along the vineyard road. The engines sounded unnaturally loud in the perfect stillness of the fields.
Bruno ran to a front window and parted the drapes just an inch and looked out.
Two cars. Four headlights. Coming up the slope toward the clearing.
Katherine.
The bitch!
The bitch and her friends. Her dead friends.
Terrified, he ran to the kitchen, grabbed the suitcase, put out the candle that he was carrying, and pocketed it. He let himself out by the back door and dashed across the rear lawn, into the sheltering vineyards, as the cars stopped out front.
Crouching, lugging the suitcase, anxiously aware of every small sound he made, Bruno moved through the vines. He circled the house until he could see the cars. He put down the suitcase and sprawled beside it, hugging the moist earth and the darkest of the night shadows. He watched the people getting out of the cars, and his heart hammered faster each time that he recognized a face.
Sheriff Laurenski and a deputy. So the police were among the living dead! He had never suspected them.
Joshua Rhinehart. The old attorney was a conspirator, too! He was one of Katherine's hellish friends.
And there she was! The bitch. The bitch in her sleek new body. And that man from Los Angeles.
They all went into the house.
Lights came on in one room after another.
Bruno tried to remember if he'd left any signs of his visit. Maybe some drippings from the candle. But the droplets of wax would be cold and hard already. They would have no way of knowing if the drippings were fresh or weeks old. He'd left the spoon in the ice cream carton, but that might have been done a long time ago, too. Thank God, he hadn't taken a shower! The water on the floor of the stall and the damp towel would have given him away; finding a recently used towel, they would have known instantly that he was back in St. Helena, and they would have intensified their search for him.
He got to his feet, hefted the suitcase, and hurried as fast as he could through the vineyards. He went north toward the winery, then west toward the cliff.
They would never come to the cliff house looking for him. Not in a million years. He would be safe in the cliff house because they would think he was too afraid to go there.
If he hid in the attic, he would have time to think and plan and organize. He didn't dare rush into this. He hadn't been thinking too clearly lately, not since the other half of him had died, and he didn't dare move against the bitch until he had planned for every possible contingency.
He knew how to find her now. Through Joshua Rhinehart.
He could get his hands on her whenever he wanted.
But first he needed time to formulate a foolproof plan. He could hardly wait to get back to the attic to talk it over with himself.

***

Laurenski, Deputy Tim Larsson, Joshua, Tony, and Hilary spread out through the house. They searched drawers and closets and cupboards and cabinets.
At first, they couldn't find anything that proved two men had been living in the house instead of one. There seemed to be quite a few more clothes than one man would need. And the house was stocked with more food than one man usually kept on hand. But that wasn't proof of anything.
Then, as Hilary was going through desk drawers in the study, she came across a stack of recently received bills that hadn't been paid yet. Two of them were from dentists--one in nearby Napa, the other in San Francisco.
"Of course!" Tony said as everyone gathered around to have a look at the bills. "The twins would have had to go to different doctors and, especially, different dentists. Bruno Number Two couldn't walk into a dentist's office to have a tooth filled when that same dentist had filled the same tooth in Bruno Number One just the week before."
"This helps," Laurenski said. "Even identical twins don't get the same cavities in the same places on the same teeth. Two sets of dental records will prove there were two Bruno Fryes."
A while later, while searching a bedroom closet, Deputy Larsson made an unsettling discovery. One of the shoe boxes did not have shoes in it. Instead, the box contained a dozen wallet-size snapshots of a dozen young women, driver's licenses for six of them, and another eleven licenses belonging to eleven other women. In each snapshot and in each license photo, the woman looking out at the camera had things in common with all the other women in the collection: a pretty face, dark eyes, dark hair, and an indefinable something in the lines and angles of the facial structure.
"Twenty-three women who vaguely resemble Katherine," Joshua said. "My God. Twenty-three."
"A gallery of death," Hilary said, shivering.
"At least they're not all unidentified snapshots," Tony said. "With the licenses, we've got names and addresses."
"We'll get them out on the wire right away," Laurenski said, sending Larsson out to the car to radio the information to HQ. "But I think we all know what we'll find."
"Twenty-three unsolved murders spread over the past five years," Tony said.
"Or twenty-three disappearances," the sheriff said.
They spent two more hours in the house, but they didn't find anything else as important as the photographs and driver's licenses. Hilary's nerves were frayed, and her imagination was stimulated by the disturbing realization that her own driver's license had nearly wound up in that shoe box. Each time she opened a drawer or a cupboard door, she expected to find a shriveled heart with a stake through it or a dead woman's rotting head. She was relieved when the search was finally completed.
Outside, in the chilly night air, Laurenski said, "Will the three of you be coming to the coroner's office in the morning?"
"Count me out," Hilary said.
"No thanks," Tony said.
Joshua said, "There's really nothing we can do there."
"What time should we meet at the cliff house?" Laurenski asked.
Joshua said, "Hilary and Tony and I will go up first thing in the morning and open all the shutters and windows. The place has been closed up for five years. It'll need to be aired out before any of us will want to spend hours poking through it. Why don't you just come on up and join us whenever you're finished at the coroner's?"
"All right," Laurenski said. "See you tomorrow. Maybe the Los Angeles police will get the bastard during the night."
"Maybe," Hilary said hopefully.
Up in the Mayacamas Mountains, soft thunder roared.

***

Bruno Frye spent half the night talking to himself, carefully planning Hilary-Katherine's death.
The other half, he slept while the candles flickered. Thin streams of smoke rose from the burning wicks. The dancing flames cast jiggling, macabre shadows on the walls, and they were reflected in the staring eyes of the corpse.

***

Joshua Rhinehart had trouble sleeping. He tossed and turned, getting increasingly tangled in the sheets. At three o'clock in the morning, he went out to the bar and poured himself a double shot of bourbon, drank it fast. Even that didn't settle him down a whole lot.
He had never missed Cora so much as he did that night.
Hilary woke repeatedly from bad dreams, but the night did not go by slowly. It swept past at rocket speeds. She still had the feeling that she was hurtling toward a precipice, and she could do nothing to stop her forward rush.

***

Near dawn, as Tony lay awake, Hilary turned to him, came against him, and said, "Make love to me."
For half an hour, they lost themselves in each other, and although it was not better than before, it was not one degree worse either. A sweet, silken, hushed togetherness.
Afterwards, she said, "I love you."
"I love you, too."
"No matter what happens," she said, "we've had these few days together."
"Now don't get fatalistic on me."
"Well... you never know."
"We've got years ahead of us. Years and years and years together. Nobody's going to take them away from us."
"You're so positive, so optimistic. I wish I'd found you a long time ago."
"We're through the worst of this thing," he said. "We know the truth now."
"They haven't caught Frye yet."
"They will," Tony said reassuringly. "He thinks you're Katherine, so he's not going to stray too far from Westwood. He'll keep checking back at your house to see if you've shown up, and sooner or later the surveillance team will spot him, and it'll all be over."
"Hold me," she said.
"Sure."
"Mmmm. That's nice."
"Yeah."
"Just being held."
"Yeah."
"I feel better already."
"Everything's going to be fine."
"As long as I have you," she said.
"Forever, then."

***

The sky was dark and low and ominous. The peaks of the Mayacamas were shrouded in mist.
Peter Laurenski stood in the graveyard, hands in his pants pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill morning air. Using a backhoe for most of the way, then tossing out the last eight or ten inches of dirt with shovels, workmen at Napa County Memorial Park gouged into the soft earth, tearing open Bruno Frye's grave. As they labored, they complained to the sheriff that they were not being paid extra for getting up at dawn and missing breakfast and coming in early, but they got very little sympathy from him; he just urged them to work faster.
At 7:45, Avril Tannerton and Gary Olmstead arrived in the Forever View hearse. As they walked across the green hillside toward Laurenski, Olmstead looked properly somber, but Tannerton was smiling, taking in great lungfuls of the nippy air, as if he were merely out for his morning constitutional.
"Morning, Peter."
"Morning, Avril. Gary."
"How long till they have it open?" Tannerton asked.
"They say fifteen minutes."
At 8:05, one of the workmen climbed up from the hole and said, "Ready to yank him out?"
"Let's get on with it," Laurenski said.
Chains were attached to the casket, and it was brought out of the ground by the same device that had lowered it in just last Sunday. The bronze coffin was caked with earth around the handles and in the frill work, but overall it was still shiny.
By 8:40, Tannerton and Olmstead had loaded the big box into the hearse.
"I'll follow you to the coroner's office," the sheriff said.
Tannerton grinned at him. "I assure you, Peter, we aren't going to run off with Mr. Frye's remains."

***

At 8:20, in Joshua Rhinehart's kitchen, while the casket was being exhumed at the cemetery a few miles away, Tony and Hilary stacked the breakfast dishes in the sink.
"I'll wash them later," Joshua said. "Let's get up to the cliff and open that house. It must smell like hell in there after all these years. I just hope the mildew and mold haven't done too much damage to Katherine's collections. I warned Bruno about that a thousand times, but he didn't seem to care if--" Joshua stopped, blinked. "Will you listen to me babble on? Of course he didn't care if the whole lot of it rotted away. Those were Katherine's collections, and he wouldn't have cared a damn about anything she treasured."
They went to Shade Tree Vineyards in Joshua's car. The day was dreary; the light was dirty gray. Joshua parked in the employees' lot.
Gilbert Ulman hadn't come to work yet. He was the mechanic who maintained the aerial tramway in addition to caring for all of Shade Tree Vineyards' trucks and farm equipment.
The key that operated the tramway was hanging on a pegboard in the garage, and the winery's night manager, a portly man named Iannucci, was happy to get it for Joshua.
Key in hand, Joshua led Hilary and Tony up to the second floor of the huge main winery, through an area of administrative offices, through a viniculture lab, and then onto a broad catwalk. Half the building was open from the first floor to the ceiling, and in that huge chamber there were enormous three-story fermentation tanks. Cold, cold air flowed off the tanks, and there was a yeasty odor in the place. At the end of the long catwalk, at the southwest corner of the building, they went through a heavy pine door with black iron hinges, into a small room that was open at the end opposite from where they entered. An overhanging roof extended twelve feet out from the missing wall, to keep rain from slanting into the open chamber. The four-seat cable car--a fire-engine-red number with lots of glass--was nestled under the overhang, at the brink of the room.

***

The pathology laboratory had a vague, unpleasant chemical odor. So did the coroner, Dr. Amos Garnet, who sucked vigorously on a breath mint.
There were five people in the room. Laurenski, Larsson, Garnet, Tannerton, and Olmstead. No one, with the possible exception of the perennially good-natured Tannerton, seemed happy to be there.
"Open it," Laurenski said. "I've got an appointment to keep with Joshua Rhinehart."
Tannerton and Olmstead threw back the latches on the bronze casket. A few remaining chunks of dirt fell to the floor, onto the plastic dropcloth that Garnet had put down. They pushed the lid up and back.
The body was gone.
The velvet- and silk-lined box held nothing but the three fifty-pound bags of dry mortar mix that had been stolen from Avril Tannerton's basement last weekend.

***

Hilary and Tony sat on one side of the cable car, and Joshua sat on the other. The attorney's knees brushed Tony's. Hilary held Tony's hand as the red gondola moved slowly, slowly up the line toward the top of the cliff. She wasn't afraid of heights, but the tramway seemed so fragile that she could not help gritting her teeth.
Joshua saw the tension on her face and smiled. "Don't worry. The car seems small, but it's sturdy. And Gilbert does a fine job with maintenance."
As it ground gradually upward, the car swung slightly in the stiff morning wind.
The view of the valley became increasingly spectacular. Hilary tried to concentrate on that and not on the creaking and clattering of the machinery.
The gondola finally reached the top of the cable. It locked in place, and Joshua opened the door.
When they walked out of the upper station of the tramway system, a fiercely-white arc of lightning and a violent peal of thunder broke open the lowering sky. Rain began to fall. It was a thin, cold, slanting rain.
Joshua, Hilary, and Tony ran for shelter. They stomped up the front steps and across the porch to the door.
"And you say there's no heat up here?" Hilary asked.
"The furnace has been shut down for five years," Joshua said. "That's why I told both of you to wear sweaters under your coats. It's not a cold day, really. But once you've been up here awhile in this damp, the air will cut through to your bones."
Joshua unlocked the door, and they went inside, switching on the three flashlights they'd brought with them.
"It stinks in here," Hilary said.
"Mildew," Joshua said. "That's what I was afraid of."
They walked from the foyer into the hall, then into the big drawing room. The beams of their flashlights fell on what looked to be a warehouse full of antique furniture.
"My God," Tony said, "it's worse than Bruno's house. There's hardly room to walk."
"She was obsessed with collecting beautiful things," Joshua said. "Not for investment. Not just because she liked to look at them, either. A lot of things are crammed into closets, hidden away. Paintings stacked on paintings. And as you can see, even in the main rooms, there's just too damned much stuff; it's jammed too close together to please the eye."
"If every room has antiques of this quality," Hilary said, "then there's a fortune here."
"Yeah," Joshua said. "If it hasn't been eaten up by worms and termites and whatnot." He let his flashlight beam travel from one end of the room to the other. "This mania for collecting was something I never understood about her. Until this minute. Now I wonder if.... As I look at all of this, and as I think about what we learned from Mrs. Yancy...."
Hilary said, "You think collecting beautiful things was a reaction to all the ugliness in her life before her father died?"
"Yeah," Joshua said. "Leo broke her. Shattered her soul, smashed her spirit flat and left her with a rotten self-image. She must have hated herself for all the years she let him use her--even though she'd had no choice but to let him. So maybe ... feeling low and worthless, she thought she could make her soul beautiful by living among lots of beautiful things."
They stood in silence for a moment, looking at the overfurnished drawing room.
"It's so sad," Tony said.
Joshua shook himself from his reverie. "Let's get these shutters open and let in some light."
"I can't stand this smell," Hilary said, cupping one hand over her nose. "But if we raise the windows, the rain will get in and ruin things."
"Not much if we raise them only five or six inches," Joshua said. "And a few drops of water aren't going to hurt anything in this mold colony."
"It's a wonder there aren't mushrooms growing out of the carpet," Tony said.
They moved through the downstairs, raising windows, unbolting the inward-facing latches on the shutters, letting in the gray storm light and the fresh rain-scented air.
When most of the downstairs rooms had been opened, Joshua said, "Hilary, all that's left down here is the dining room and the kitchen. Why don't you take care of those windows while Tony and I tend to the upstairs."
"Okay," she said. "I'll be up in a minute to help out."
She followed her flashlight beam into the pitch-black dining room as the men went down the hall toward the stairs.
 
When he and Joshua came into the upstairs hallway. Tony said, "Phew! It stinks even worse up here."
A blast of thunder shook the old house. Windows rattled icily. Doors stuttered in their frames.
"You take the rooms on the right," Joshua said. "I'll take the ones on the left."
Tony went through the first door on his side and found a sewing room. An ancient treadle-powered sewing machine stood in one corner, and a more modern electric model rested on a table in another corner; both were bearded with cobwebs. There was a work table and two dressmaker's forms and one window.
He went to the window, put his flashlight on the floor, and tried to twist open the lock lever. It was rusted shut. He struggled with it as rain drummed noisily on the shutters beyond the glass.
 
Joshua shone his flashlight into the first room on the left and saw a bed, a dresser, a highboy. There were two windows in the far wall.
He crossed the threshold, took two more steps, sensed movement behind him, and he started to turn, felt a sudden cold thrill go through his back, and then it became a very hot thrill, a burning lance, a line of pain drawn through his flesh, and he knew he had been stabbed. He felt the knife being jerked out of him. He turned. His flashlight revealed Bruno Frye. The madman's face was wild, demoniacal. The knife came up, came down, and the cold thrill shivered through Joshua again, and this time the blade tore his right shoulder, from front to back, all the way through, and Bruno had to twist and jerk the weapon savagely, several times, to get it out. Joshua raised his left arm to protect himself. The blade punctured his forearm. His legs buckled. He went down. He fell against the bed, slid to the floor, slick with his own blood, and Bruno turned away from him and went out to the second-floor hall, out of the flashlight's glow, into the darkness. Joshua realized he hadn't even screamed, had not warned Tony, and he tried to shout, really tried, but the first wound seemed to be very serious, for when he attempted to make any sound at all, pain blossomed in his chest, and he could do no better than hiss like a goddamned goose.
 
Grunting, Tony put all of his strength against the stubborn window latch, and abruptly the rusted metal gave--sweeek--and popped open. He raised the windows, and the sound of the rain swelled. A fine spray of water misted through a few narrow chinks in the shutters and dampened his face.
The inward-facing bolt on the shutters also was corroded, but Tony finally freed it, pushed the shutters open, leaned out in the rain, and fixed them in their braces so they wouldn't bang about in the wind.
He was wet and cold. He was anxious to get on with the search of the house, hoping the activity would warm him.
As another volley of thunder cannonaded down from the Mayacamas, into the valley, over the house, Tony walked out of the sewing room and into Bruno Frye's knife.
 
In the kitchen, Hilary opened the shutters on the window that looked onto the back porch. She fixed them in place and paused for a moment to stare out at the rain-swept grass and the wind-whipped trees. At the end of the lawn, twenty yards away, there were doors in the ground.
She was so surprised to see those doors that, for a moment, she thought she was imagining them. She squinted through the sheeting rain, but the doors didn't dissolve miragelike, as she half expected.
At the end of the lawn, the land rose up in one of its last steps to the vertical ramparts of the mountains. The doors were set into that hillside. They were framed with timbers and mortared stones.
Hilary turned away from the window and hurried across the filthy kitchen, anxious to tell Joshua and Tony about her discovery.
 
Tony knew how to protect himself against a man with a knife. He was trained in self-defense, and he'd been in situations like this one on two other occasions. But this time he was caught off guard by the suddenness and total unexpectedness of the attack.
Glaring, his broad countenance split by a hideous rictus grin, Frye swung the knife at Tony's face. Tony managed to turn partly out of the blow, but the blade still tore along the side of his head, ripping scalp, drawing blood.
The pain was like an acid burn.
Tony dropped his flashlight; it rolled away, causing the shadows to leap and sway.
Frye was fast, damned fast. He struck again as Tony was just going into a defensive posture. This time the knife scored solidly if peculiarly, coming down point-first on the top of his left shoulder, driving through jacket and sweater, through muscle and gristle, between bones, instantly taking all the strength out of that arm and forcing Tony to his knees. Somehow Tony found the energy to swing his right fist up from the floor, into Frye's testicles. The big man gasped and staggered backwards, pulling the knife out of Tony as he went.
Unaware of what was happening above her, Hilary called up from the foot of the stairs. "Tony! Joshua! Come down here and see what I've found."
Frye whirled at the sound of Hilary's voice. He headed for the steps, apparently forgetting that he was leaving a wounded but living man behind him.
Tony got up, but a napalm explosion of pain set fire to his arm, and he swayed dizzily. His stomach flopped over. He had to lean against the wall.
All he could do was warn her. "Hilary, run! Run! Frye's coming!"
 
Hilary was about to call up to them again when she heard Tony shouting to her. For an instant, she couldn't believe what he was saying, but then she heard heavy footsteps on the first flight, thumping down. He was still out of sight above the landing, but she knew he couldn't be anyone but Bruno Frye.
Then Frye's gravelly voice boomed: "Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch!"
Stunned, but not frozen with shock, Hilary backed away from the foot of the stairs, and then she ran as she saw Frye reach the landing. Too late, she realized she should have gone toward the front of the house, outside, to the cable car; but she was streaking toward the kitchen instead, and there was no turning back now.
She pushed through the swinging door, into the kitchen, as Frye jumped down the last few steps and into the hallway behind her.
She thought of searching the kitchen drawers for a knife.
Couldn't. No time.
She ran to the outside door, unlocked it, and bolted from the kitchen as Frye entered it through the swinging door.
The only weapon she had was the flashlight she had been carrying, and that was no weapon at all.
She crossed the porch, went down the steps. Rain and wind battered her.
He was not far behind. He was still chanting, "Bitch, bitch, bitch!"
She would never be able to run around the house and all the way to the cable car before he caught her. He was much too close and gaining.
The wet grass was slick.
She was afraid of falling.
Of dying.
Tony?
She ran toward the only place that might offer protection: the doors in the ground.
Lightning flickered, and thunder followed it.
Frye wasn't screaming behind her any more. She heard a deep, animal growl of pleasure.
Very close.
Now she was screaming.
She reached the doors in the hillside and saw that they were latched together at both the top and bottom. She reached and threw back the top bolt, then stooped and disengaged the one on the bottom, expecting a blade to be slammed down between her shoulders. The blow never came. She pulled open the doors, and there was inky blackness beyond.
She turned.
Rain stung her face.
Frye had stopped. He was standing just six feet away.
She waited in the open doors with darkness at her back, and she wondered what was behind her other than a flight of steps.
"Bitch," Frye said.
But now there was more fear than fury in his face.
"Put the knife down," she said, not knowing if he would obey, doubting it, but having nothing to lose. "Obey your mother, Bruno. Put the knife down."
He took a step toward her.
Hilary stood her ground. Her heart was exploding.
Frye moved closer.
Shaking, she backed down the first step that lay beyond the doors.
 
Just as Tony reached the head of the stairs, supporting himself with one hand against the wall, he heard a noise behind him. He looked back.
Joshua had crawled out of the bedroom. He was splashed with blood, and his face was nearly as white as his hair. His eyes seemed out of focus.
"How bad?" Tony asked.
Joshua licked his pale lips. "I'll live," he said in a strange, hissing, croaking voice. "Hilary. For God's sake ... Hilary!"
Tony pushed away from the wall and careened down the stairs. He weaved back down the hall toward the kitchen, for he could hear Frye shouting out on the rear lawn.
In the kitchen, Tony pulled open one drawer, then another, looking for a weapon.
"Come on, dammit! Shit!"
The third drawer held knives. He chose the largest one. It was spotted with rust but still wickedly sharp.
His left arm was killing him. He wanted to cradle it in his right arm, but he needed that hand to fight Frye.
Gritting his teeth, steeling himself against the pain of his wounds, lurching like a drunkard, he went out to the porch. He saw Frye at once. The man was standing in front of two open doors. Two doors in the ground.
Hilary was nowhere in sight.
 
Hilary backed off the sixth step. That was the last one. Bruno Frye stood at the head of the stairs, looking down, afraid to come any farther. He was alternately calling her a bitch and whimpering as if he were a child. He was clearly torn between two needs: the need to kill her, and the need to get away from that hated place.
Whispers.
Suddenly she heard the whispers, and her flesh seemed to turn to ice in that instant. It was a wordless hissing, a soft sound, but growing louder by the second.
And then she felt something crawling up her leg.
She cried out and moved up one step, closer to Frye. She reached down, brushed at her leg, and knocked something away.
Shuddering, she switched on the flashlight, turned, and shone the beam into the subterranean room behind her.
Roaches. Hundreds upon hundreds of huge roaches were swarming in the room--on the floor, on the walls, on the low ceiling. They were not just ordinary roaches, but enormous things, over two inches long, an inch wide, with busy legs and especially long feelers that quivered anxiously. Their shiny green-brown carapaces appeared to be sticky and wet, like blobs of dark mucus.
The whispering was the sound of their ceaseless movement, long legs and trembling antennae brushing other long legs and antennae, constantly crawling and creeping and scurrying this way and that.
Hilary screamed. She wanted to climb the steps and get out of there, but Frye was above, waiting.
The roaches shied away from her flashlight. They were evidently subterranean insects that survived only in the dark, and she prayed that her flashlight batteries would not go dead.
The whispering grew louder.
More roaches were pouring into the room. They were coming out of a crack in the floor. Coming out by tens. By scores. By hundreds. There were a couple of thousand of the disgusting things in the room already, and the chamber was no more than twenty feet on a side. They piled up two and three deep in the other half of the room, avoiding the light, but getting bolder by the moment.
She knew that an entomologist would probably not call them roaches. They were beetles, subterranean beetles that lived in the bowels of the earth. A scientist would have a crisp, clean, Latin name for them. But to her they were roaches.
Hilary looked up at Bruno.
"Bitch," he said.
Leo Frye had built a cold storage cellar, a common enough convenience in 1918. But he had mistakenly built it on a flaw in the earth. She could see that he had tried many times to patch the floor, but it kept opening each time that the earth trembled. In quake country, the earth trembled often.
And the roaches came up from hell.
They were still gushing from the hole, a wriggling, kicking, squirming mass.
They mounted up on one another, five- and six- and seven-deep, covering the walls and the ceiling, moving, endlessly moving, swarming restlessly. The cold whisper of their movement was now a soft roar.
For punishment, Katherine had put Bruno in this place. In the dark. For hours at a time.
Suddenly, the roaches moved toward Hilary. The pressure of them building up in layers finally caused them to spill at her like a breaking wave, in a roiling green-brown mass. In spite of the flashlight, they surged forward, hissing.
She screamed and started up the steps, preferring Bruno's knife to the hideous insect horde behind her.
Grinning, Frye said, "See how you like it, bitch." And he slammed the door.
 
The rear lawn was no more than twenty yards long, but to Tony it appeared to be at least a mile from the porch to the place where Frye was standing. He slipped and fell in the wet grass, taking some of the fall on his wounded shoulder. A brilliant light played behind his eyes for a moment, and then an iridescent darkness, but he resisted the urge to just lay there. He got up.
He saw Frye close the doors and lock them. Hilary had to be on the other side, shut in.
Tony covered the last ten feet of the lawn with the awful certainty that Frye would turn and see him. But the big man continued to face the doors. He was listening to Hilary, and she was screaming. Tony slipped up on him and put the knife between his shoulder blades.
Frye cried out in pain and turned.
Tony stumbled backwards, praying that he had inflicted a mortal wound. He knew he could not win in hand-to-hand combat with Frye--especially not when he had the use of only one arm.
Frye reached frantically behind, trying to grab the knife that Tony had rammed into him. He wanted to pull it out of himself, but he could not reach it.
A thread of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
Tony backed up another step. Then another.
Frye staggered toward him.
 
Hilary stood on the top step, pounding on the locked doors. She screamed for help.
Behind her, the whispering in the dark cellar grew louder with each shattering thump of her heart.
She risked a glance backward, shining the light down the steps. Just the sight of the humming mass of insects made her gag with revulsion. The room below appeared to be waist-deep in roaches. A huge pool of them shifted and swayed and hissed in such a way that it seemed almost as if there was only one organism down there, one monstrous creature with countless legs and antennae and hungry mouths.
She realized that she was still screaming. Over and over again. Her voice was getting hoarse. She couldn't stop.
Some of the insects were venturing up the steps in spite of her light. Two of them reached her feet, and she stamped on them. Others followed.
She turned to the doors again, screaming. She pounded on the timbers with all her strength.
Then the flashlight went out. She had thoughtlessly hammered it against the door in her hysterical effort to get help. The glass cracked. The light died.
For a moment, the whispering seemed to subside--but then it rose rapidly to a greater volume than ever before.
Hilary put her back to the door.
She thought of the tape recording she had heard in Dr. Nicholas Rudge's office yesterday morning. She thought of the twins, as children, locked in here, hands clamped over their noses and mouths, trying to keep the roaches from crawling into them. All of that screaming had given both of them coarse, gravelly voices; hours and hours, days and days of screaming.
Horrified, she stared down into the darkness, waiting for the ocean of beetles to close over her.
She felt a few on her ankles, and she quickly bent down, brushed them away.
One of them ran up her left arm. She clapped a hand on it, squashed it.
The terrifying susurration of the moving insects was almost deafening now.
She put her hands to her ears.
A roach dropped from the ceiling, onto her head. Screaming, she plucked it out of her hair, threw it away.
Suddenly, the doors opened behind her, and light burst into the cellar. She saw a surging tide of roaches only one step below her, and then the wave fell back from the sun, and Tony pulled her out into the rain and the beautiful dirty gray light.
A few roaches clung to her clothes. and Tony knocked them from her.
"My God," he said. "My God, my God."
Hilary leaned against him.
There were no more roaches on her, but she imagined she could still feel them. Crawling. Creeping.
She shook violently, uncontrollably, and Tony put his good arm around her. He talked to her softly, calmly, bringing her down.
At last she was able to stop screaming.
"You're hurt," she said.
"I'll live. And paint."
She saw Frye. He was sprawled on the grass, face down, obviously dead. A knife protruded from his back, and his shirt was soaked with blood.
"I had no choice," Tony said. "I really didn't want to kill him. I felt sorry for him ... knowing what Katherine put him through. But I had no choice."
They walked away from the corpse, across the lawn.
Hilary's legs were weak.
"She put the twins in that place when she wanted to punish them," Hilary said. "How many times? A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand times?"
"Don't think about it," Tony said. "Just think about being alive, being together. Think about whether you'd like being married to a slightly battered ex-cop who's struggling to make a living as a painter."
"I think I'd like that very much."
Forty feet away, Sheriff Peter Laurenski rushed out of the kitchen, onto the back porch. "What's happened?" he called to them. "Are you all right?"
Tony didn't bother to answer him. "We've got years and years together," he told Hilary. "And from here on, it's all going to be good. For the first time in our lives, we both know who we are, what we want, and where we're going. We've overcome the past. The future will be easy."
As they walked toward Laurenski, the autumn rain hammered softly on them and whispered in the grass.



-------------

NEW AFTERWORD
BY
DEAN KOONTZ

-------------




AFTERWORD


In 1979, when I wrote Whispers, I was less well-known than the young Harrison Ford before he appeared in American Graffiti--and a lot less handsome. I was slightly better looking than J. Fred Muggs, a performing chimpanzee on TV at that time, but also less well-known than he was. Although I had been a full-time writer for several years, and though I had a file drawer full of good reviews, I had never enjoyed a bestseller and, in fact, had never known enough financial security to guarantee that I would always be able to earn a living at my chosen art and craft. Writing novels was the only work for which I'd ever had a passion. Although I put in sixty- and seventy-hour weeks at the typewriter, I worried that I might eventually have to find new work. Because I had no other talent, skill, or ability, I would no doubt have turned to a life of crime. Robbing banks, hijacking airliners to hold the passengers for ransom, and knocking over armored cars is undeniably more exciting than sitting at a typewriter all day; however, with associates named Slash and Scarface and Icepick, the office Christmas party each year tends to be deadly.
Whispers was the last book I wrote in total obscurity and the last book I wrote on a typewriter. In those days, personal computers were not universally in use, though a few writers had them. (To help you understand this ancient era: Most of the dinosaurs had died off by that time; we had indoor plumbing, electricity, and the internal-combustion engine; abductions by extraterrestrials were not yet an everyday occurrence back then; but most people were naive enough to believe that Elvis Presley was dead--when, as we now know, he had moved to a fabulous mansion on a moon of Jupiter.) My wife, Gerda, had been urging me to trade my typewriter for a computer. When I finished Whispers, she informed me that she had tracked our office supplies, and that for every page in the final manuscript, I had used thirty-two pages of typing paper, which meant that I had done thirty-one discarded drafts of every page, typing eight hundred pages of text again and again to polish it. Although I was aware of my obsessive-compulsive rewriting, I hadn't realized quite how many revisions I usually undertook. With a computer, revision didn't require retyping an entire page to make half a dozen changes. I bought an IBM Displaywriter (now as extinct as the T-Rex) and never looked back.
During the last few months that I sat at the typewriter, working on this novel, I lost twenty pounds. I was not overweight when I started the project, and I didn't diet while writing. When I finished the script--which took nearly a year of long hours--I was not only thinner but both physically and emotionally exhausted. For years, I didn't realize why this project drained me. A decade later, I could look back on the book and understand that I was writing out of painful personal experience, which I couldn't acknowledge at the time. Virtually all the characters in Whispers suffer terrible, violent childhoods. Some overcome those traumas, and some do not; indeed, one of them becomes a serial killer. I, too, had lived through a childhood marked by physical and psychological violence. Although my experience was not like that of Hillary in Whispers, and certainly not like that of Bruno, I was nevertheless drawing upon my own life for the emotional content of the novel, while only half realizing what I was doing, which is why the writing of it left me so depleted.
When the book was delivered to the publisher, I was asked to slash the manuscript in half. I was told that the story was too long and that I was "a mid-list suspense writer" who had overreached. The publisher was smart, successful, and perceptive, but I felt that this particular judgment was wrong. Although I desperately needed to be paid for the acceptance of the manuscript, I found only five pages to cut out of eight hundred pages of manuscript, less than one percent, and I declined to delete any more.
For the next four months, as the debate continued and my career seemed doomed, I studied the help-wanted ads with growing panic. I had taught highschool English for a year and a half before becoming a full-time writer; perhaps I could return to the classroom. Perusing the employment opportunities, I saw that exotic dancers earned more than teachers, but to achieve the highest earnings as a stripper, I would need to have a sex-change operation as well as a great deal of body contouring.
At last, the publisher reluctantly accepted the book and issued it without enthusiasm in a small printing of seven thousand hardcovers, which wasn't enough to put even one copy in every bookstore. Fortunately, I was kept afloat by a motion-picture rights sale, a bookclub sale, and the enthusiasm of a paperback publisher who believed Whispers could be a major success. Eventually, when issued in paperback, it rose into the top five of the New York Times's paperback bestsellers list. As I write this afterword, Whispers has been published in thirty-three languages and has been continuously in print for nearly two decades.
The lesson for me was one I had already learned well as a child under the thumb of an alcoholic father: In the face of adversity, it's important to persevere, to be optimistic, and to be true to your personal vision. This insight is, in fact, expressed by the actions of the lead characters--Hillary and Tony--in Whispers, and is one of the themes of the novel.
Primarily, however, Whispers explores the forces that affect our lives but that we often do not--or refuse to--contemplate. Geography and climate (in this novel, California) deeply influence us in more ways than we generally recognize on a conscious level. The subculture in which we choose to involve ourselves can either inspire us to be great or diminish us. And family history, for better or worse, shapes us more profoundly than anything else.
I still like this novel and feel that it was a milestone for me. I regret only the rigid Freudian nature of the psychology underlying the history. In the years since, I've come to believe that Freudianism is pure bunkum and to deplore the culture of victimization that it has generated. John D. MacDonald--the brilliant novelist whose work most influenced mine when I was young--might say, "Kid, don't worry about it. Freud or no Freud, the yarn is still good." That is, of course, the right attitude, and I hope that the yarn in Whispers is, indeed, still good.
Anyway, this is the book that saved me from a life of crime. No banks robbed. No airliners hijacked. No armored cars hit. I've had a couple speeding tickets over the past two decades, but in neither case did the authorities consider the offense serious enough to throw me in the slammer. Furthermore, I've gained back the twenty pounds--plus a few.
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cQõkéñ÷�¼|ßÚKÇ]â½´(XO¥Åq�iYZÙWÃíÖólk>˜€×ðâzÚ±iº^6m|ýÛãÓšú­ó½SPë�EÍ¡V¾ÖÏÞ?ðWATCHERS
Dean R. Koontz
 
This book is dedicated to
Lennart Sane
who is not only the best at what he does but who is also a nice guy.
And to
Elisabeth Sane
who is as charming as her husband.
 
 
 
PART ONE
Shattering the Past
The past is but the beginning of a beginning,
and all that is and has been
is but the twilight of the dawn.
—H. G. Wells
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: 
if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
—C. G. Jung
 
ONE
1
On his thirty-sixth birthday, May 18, Travis Cornell rose at five o’clock in the 
morning. He dressed in sturdy hiking boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved, 
blue-plaid cotton shirt. He drove his pickup south from his home in Santa 
Barbara all the way to rural Santiago Canyon on the eastern edge of Orange 
County, south of Los Angeles. He took only a package of Oreo cookies, a large 
canteen full of orange-flavored Kool-Aid, and a fully loaded Smith & Wesson .38 
Chiefs Special.
During the two-and-a-half-hour trip, he never switched on the radio. He never 
hummed, whistled, or sang to himself as men alone frequently do. For part of the 
drive, the Pacific lay on his right. The morning sea was broodingly dark toward 
the horizon, as hard and cold as slate, but nearer shore it was brightly 
spangled with early light the colors of pennies and rose petals. Travis did not 
once glance appreciatively at the sun-sequined water.
He was a lean, sinewy man with deep-set eyes the same dark brown as his hair. 
His face was narrow, with a patrician nose, high cheekbones, and a slightly 
pointed chin. It was an ascetic face that would have suited a monk in some holy 
order that still believed in self-flagellation, in the purification of the soul 
through suffering. God knows, he’d had his share of suffering. But it could be a 
pleasant face, too, warm and open. His smile had once charmed women, though not 
recently. He had not smiled in a long time.
The Oreos, the canteen, and the revolver were in a small green nylon backpack 
with black nylon straps, which lay on the seat beside him. Occasionally, he 
glanced at the pack, and it seemed as if he could see straight through the 
fabric to the loaded Chiefs Special.
From Santiago Canyon Road in Orange County, he turned onto a much narrower 
route, then onto a tire-eating dirt lane. At a few minutes past eight-thirty, he 
parked the red pickup in a lay-by, under the immense bristly boughs of a 
big-cone spruce.
He slipped the harness of the small backpack over his shoulders and set Out into 
the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. From his boyhood, he knew every slope, 
vale, narrow defile, and ridge. His father had owned a Stone cabin in upper Holy 
Jim Canyon, perhaps the most remote of all the inhabited canyons, and Travis had 
spent weeks exploring the wild land for miles around.
He loved these untamed canyons, When he was a boy, black bears had
roamed the woods; they were gone now. Mule deer could still be found, though not 
in the great numbers he had seen two decades ago. At least the beautiful folds 
and thrusts of land, the profuse and varied brush, and the trees were still as 
they had been: for long stretches he walked beneath a canopy of California live 
oaks and sycamores.
Now and then he passed a lone cabin or a cluster of them. A few canyon dwellers 
were half-hearted survivalists who believed the end of civilization was 
approaching, but who did not have the heart to move to a place even more 
forbidding. Most were ordinary people who were fed up with the hurlyburly of 
modern life and thrived in spite of having no plumbing or electricity.
Though the canyons seemed remote, they would soon be overwhelmed by encroaching 
suburbs. Within a hundred-mile radius, nearly ten million people lived in the 
interconnecting communities of Orange and Los Angeles counties, and growth was 
not abating.
But now crystalline, revelatory light fell on the untamed land with almost as 
much substance as rain, and all was clean and wild.
On the treeless spine of a ridge, where the low grass that had grown during the 
short rainy season had already turned dry and brown, Travis sat upon a broad 
table of rock and took off his backpack.
A five-foot rattlesnake was sunning on another flat rock fifty feet away. It 
raised its mean wedge-shaped head and studied him.
As a boy, he had killed scores of rattlers in these hills. He withdrew the gun 
from the backpack and rose from the rock. He took a couple of steps toward the 
snake.
The rattler rose farther off the ground and stared intensely.
Travis took another step, another, and assumed a shooter’s stance, with both 
hands on the gun.
The rattler began to coil. Soon it would realize that it could not strike at 
such a distance, and would attempt to retreat.
Although Travis was certain his shot was clear and easy, he was surprised to 
discover that he could not squeeze the trigger. He had come to these foothills 
not merely to attempt to recall a time when he had been glad to be alive, but 
also to kill snakes if he saw any. Lately, alternately depressed and angered by 
the loneliness and sheer pointlessness of his life, he had been wound as tight 
as a crossbow spring. He needed to release that tension through violent action, 
and the killing of a few snakes—no loss to anyone—seemed the perfect 
prescription for his distress. However, as he stared at this rattler, he 
realized that its existence was less pointless than his own: it filled an 
ecological niche, and it probably took more pleasure in life than he had in a 
long time. He began to shake, and the gun kept straying from the target, and he 
could not find the will to fire. He was not a worthy executioner, so he lowered 
the gun and returned to the rock where he had left his backpack.
The snake was evidently in a peaceable mood, for its head lowered sinuously to 
the stone once more, and it lay still.
After a while, Travis tore open the package of Oreos, which had been his 
favorite treat when he was young. He had not eaten one in fifteen years.
They were almost as good as he remembered them. He drank Kool-Aid from the 
canteen, but it wasn’t as satisfying as the cookies. To his adult palate, the 
stuff was far too sweet.
The innocence, enthusiasms, joys, and voracities of youth can be recalled but 
perhaps never fully regained, he thought.
Leaving the rattlesnake in communion with the sun, shouldering his backpack once 
more, he went down the southern slope of the ridge into the shadows of the trees 
at the head of the canyon, where the air was freshened by the fragrant spring 
growth of the evergreens. On the west-sloping floor of the canyon, in deep 
gloom, he turned west and followed a deer trail.
A few minutes later, passing between a pair of large California sycamores that 
bent together to form an archway, he came to a place where sunlight poured into 
a break in the forest. At the far side of the clearing, the deer trail led into 
another section of woods in which spruces, laurels and sycamores grew closer 
together than elsewhere. Ahead, the land dropped steeply as the canyon sought 
bottom. When he stood at the edge of the sunfall with the toes of his boots in 
shadow, looking down that sloped path, he could see only fifteen yards before a 
surprisingly seamless darkness fell across the trail.
As Travis was about to step out of the sun and continue, a dog burst from the 
dry brush on his right and ran straight to him, panting and chuffing. It was a 
golden retriever, pure of breed by the look of it. A male. He figured it was 
little more than a year old, for though it had attained the better part of its 
full growth, it retained some of the sprightliness of a puppy. Its thick coat 
was damp, dirty, tangled, snarled, full of burrs and broken bits of weeds and 
leaves. It stopped in front of him, sat, cocked its head, and looked up at him 
with an undeniably friendly expression.
Filthy as it was, the animal was nonetheless appealing. Travis stooped, patted 
its head, and scratched behind its ears.
He half-expected an owner, gasping and perhaps angry at this runaway, to follow 
the retriever out of the brush. Nobody came. When he thought to check for a 
collar and license, he found none.
“Surely you’re not a wild dog—are you boy?”
The retriever chuffed.
“No, too friendly for a wild one. Not lost, are you?”
It nuzzled his hand.
He noticed that, in addition to its dirty and tangled coat, it had dried blood 
on its right ear. Fresher blood was visible on its front paws, as if it had been 
running so long and so hard over rugged terrain that the pads of its feet had 
begun to crack.
“Looks like you’ve had a difficult journey, boy.”
The dog whined softly, as if agreeing with what Travis had said.
He continued to stroke its back and scratch its ears, but after a minute or two 
he realized he was seeking something from the dog that it could not Provide: 
meaning, purpose, relief from despair.
On your way now.” He gave the retriever a light slap on its side, rose, and 
stretched
The dog remained in front of him.
He stepped past it, heading for the narrow path that descended into darkness.
The dog bolted around him and blocked the deer trail.
“Move along, boy.”
The retriever bared its teeth and growled low in its throat.
Travis frowned. “Move along. That’s a good dog.”
When he tried to step past it, the retriever snarled. It snapped at his legs.
Travis danced back two steps. “Hey, what’s gotten into you?”
The dog stopped growling and just panted.
He advanced again, but the dog lunged at him more ferociously than before, still 
not barking but growling even deeper and snapping repeatedly at his legs, 
driving him backward across the clearing. He took eight or ten clumsy steps on a 
slippery carpet of dead spruce and pine needles, stumbled over his own feet, and 
fell on his butt.
The moment Travis was down, the dog turned away from him. It padded across the 
clearing to the brink of the sloping path and peered into the gloom below. Its 
floppy ears had pricked up as much as a retriever’s ears can.
“Damn dog,” Travis said.
It ignored him.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, mutt?”
Standing in the forest’s shadow, it continued to stare down the deer trail, into 
the blackness at the bottom of the wooded canyon slope. Its tail was down, 
almost tucked between its legs.
Travis gathered half a dozen small stones from the ground around him, got up, 
and threw one of the missiles at the retriever. Struck on the backside hard 
enough to be stung, the dog did not yelp but whipped around in surprise.
Now I’ve done it, Travis thought. He’ll go for my throat.
But the dog only looked at him accusingly—and continued to block the entrance to 
the deer trail.
Something in the tattered beast’s demeanor—in the wide-set dark eyes or in the 
tilt of its big squarish head—made Travis feel guilty for having stoned it. The 
sorry damn dog looked disappointed in him, and he was ashamed.
“Hey, listen,” he said, “you started it, you know.”
The dog just stared at him.
Travis dropped the other stones.
The dog glanced at the relinquished missiles, then raised its eyes once more, 
and Travis swore he saw approval in that canine face.
Travis could have turned back. Or he could have found another way down the 
canyon. But he was seized by an irrational determination to forge ahead, to go 
where he wanted to go, by God. This day of all days, he was not going to be 
deterred or even delayed by something as trivial as an obstructive dog.
He got up, shrugged his shoulders to resettle the backpack, took a deep breath 
of the piny air, and walked boldly across the clearing.
The retriever began to growl again, softly but menacingly. Its lips skinned back 
from its teeth.
Step by step, Travis’s courage faded, and when he was within a few feet of the 
dog, he opted for a different approach. He stopped and shook his head and gently 
berated the animal: “Bad dog. You’re being a very bad dog. You know that? What’s 
gotten into you? Hmmmm? You don’t look as if you were born bad. You look like a 
good dog.”
As he continued to sweet-talk the retriever, it ceased growling. Its bushy tail 
wagged once, twice, tentatively.
“That’s a good boy,” he said slyly, coaxingly. “That’s better. You and I can be 
friends, huh?”
The dog issued a conciliatory whine, that familiar and appealing sound all dogs 
make to express their natural desire to be loved.
“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” Travis said, taking another step toward the 
retriever with the intention of stooping and petting it.
Immediately, the dog leaped at him, snarling, and drove him back across the 
clearing. It got its teeth in one leg of his jeans, shook its head furiously. He 
kicked at it, missed. As Travis staggered out of balance from the misplaced 
kick, the dog snatched the other leg of his pants and ran a circle around him, 
pulling him with it. He hopped desperately to keep up with his adversary but 
toppled and slammed to the ground again.
“Shit!” he said, feeling immeasurably foolish.
Whining again, having reverted to a friendly mood, the dog licked one of his 
hands.
“You’re schizophrenic,” Travis said.
The dog returned to the other end of the clearing. It stood with its back to 
him, staring down the deer trail that descended through the cool shadows of the 
trees. Abruptly, it lowered its head, hunched its shoulders. The muscles in its 
back and haunches visibly tensed as if it were preparing to move fast.
“What’re you looking at?” Travis was suddenly aware that the dog was not 
fascinated by the trail itself but, perhaps, by something on the trail. 
“Mountain lion?” he wondered aloud as he got to his feet. In his youth, mountain 
lions—specifically, cougars—had prowled these woods, and he supposed some still 
hung on.
The retriever grumbled, not at Travis this time but at whatever had drawn its 
attention. The sound was low,, barely audible, and to Travis it seemed as if the 
dog was both angry and afraid.
Coyotes? Plenty of them roamed the foothills. A pack of hungry coyotes might 
alarm even a sturdy animal like this golden retriever.
With a startled yelp, the dog executed a leaping-scrambling turn away from the 
shadowed deer trail. It dashed toward him, past him, to the other arm of the 
woods, and he thought it was going to disappear into the forest. But at the 
archway formed by two sycamores, through which Travis had come Only minutes ago, 
the dog stopped and looked back expectantly. With an air of frustration and 
anxiety, it hurried in his direction again, swiftly circled him, grabbed at his 
pants leg, and wriggled backward, trying to drag him with it.
"Wait, wait, okay,” he said. “Okay.”
The retriever let go. It issued one woof, more a forceful exhalation than a 
bark.
Obviously—and astonishingly—the dog had purposefully prevented him from 
proceeding along the gloomy stretch of the deer trail because something was down 
there. Something dangerous. Now the dog wanted him to flee because that 
dangerous creature was drawing nearer.
Something was coming. But what?
Travis was not worried, just curious. Whatever was approaching might frighten a 
dog, but nothing in these woods, not even a coyote or a cougar, would attack a 
grown man.
Whining impatiently, the retriever tried to grab one leg of Travis’s jeans 
again.
Its behavior was extraordinary. If it was frightened, why didn’t it run off, 
forget him? He was not its master; it owed him nothing, neither affection nor 
protection. Stray dogs do not possess a sense of duty to strangers, do not have 
a moral perspective, a conscience. What did this animal think it was, anyway—a 
freelance Lassie?
“All right, all right,” Travis said, shaking the retriever loose and 
accompanying it to the sycamore arch.
The dog dashed ahead, along the ascending trail, which led up toward the canyon 
rim, through thinning trees and brighter light.
Travis paused at the sycamores. Frowning, he looked across the sun-drenched 
clearing at the night-dark hole in the forest where the descending portion of 
the trail began. What was coming?
The shrill cries of the cicadas cut off simultaneously, as if a phonograph 
needle was lifted from a recording. The woods were preternaturally silent.
Then Travis heard something rushing up the lightless trail. A scrabbling noise. 
A clatter as of dislodged stones. A faint rustle of dry brush. The thing sounded 
closer than it probably was, for sound was amplified as it echoed up through the 
narrow tunnel of trees. Nevertheless, the creature was coming fast. Very fast.
For the first time, Travis sensed that he was in grave peril. He knew that 
nothing in the woods was big or bold enough to attack him, but his intellect was 
overruled by instinct. His heart hammered.
Above him, on the higher path, the retriever had become aware of his hesitation. 
It barked agitatedly.
Decades ago, he might have thought an enraged black bear was racing up the deer 
trail, driven mad by disease or pain. But the cabin dwellers and weekend 
hikers—outriders of civilization—had pushed the few remaining bears much farther 
back into the Santa Anas.
From the sound of it, the unknown beast was within seconds of reaching the 
clearing between the lower and higher trails.
The length of Travis’s spine, shivers tracked like melting bits of sleet 
trickling down a windowpane.
He wanted to see what the thing was, but at the same time he had gone cold with 
dread, a purely instinctive fear.
Farther up the canyon, the golden retriever barked urgently.
Travis turned and ran.
He was in excellent shape, not a pound overweight. With the panting retriever 
leading, Travis tucked his arms close to his sides and sprinted up the deer 
trail, ducking under the few low-hanging branches. The studded soles of his 
hiking boots gave good traction; he slipped on loose stones and on slithery 
layers of dry pine needles, but he did not fall. As he ran through a false fire 
of flickering sunlight and shadow, another fire began to burn in his lungs.
Travis Cornell’s life had been full of danger and tragedy, but he’d never 
flinched from anything. In the worst of times, he calmly confronted loss, pain, 
and fear. But now something peculiar happened. He lost control. For the first 
time in his life, he panicked. Fear pried into him, touching a deep and 
primitive level where nothing had ever reached him before. As he ran, he broke 
out in gooseflesh and cold sweat, and he did not know why the unknown pursuer 
should fill him with such absolute terror.
He did not look back. Initially, he did not want to turn his eyes away from the 
twisting trail because he was afraid he would crash into a low branch. But as he 
ran, his panic swelled, and by the time he had gone a couple of hundred yards, 
the reason he did not look back was because he was afraid of what he might see.
He knew that his response was irrational. The prickly sensation along the back 
of his neck and the iciness in his gut were symptoms of a purely superstitious 
terror. But the civilized and educated Travis Cornell had turned over the reins 
to the frightened child-savage that lives in every human being—the genetic ghost 
of what we once were—and he could not easily regain control even though he was 
aware of the absurdity of his behavior. Brute instinct ruled, and instinct told 
him that he must run, run, stop thinking and just run.
Near the head of the canyon, the trail turned left and carved a winding course 
up the steep north wall toward the ridge. Travis rounded a bend, saw a log lying 
across the path, jumped but caught one foot on the rotting wood. He fell 
forward, flat on his chest. Stunned, he could not get his breath, could not 
move.
He expected something to pounce on him and tear out his throat.
The retriever dashed back down the trail and leaped over Travis, landing 
sure-footedly on the path behind him. It barked fiercely at whatever was chasing 
them, much more threateningly than when it had challenged Travis in the 
clearing.
Travis rolled over and sat up, gasping. He saw nothing on the trail below. Then 
he realized the retriever was not concerned about anything in that direction but 
was standing sideways on the trail, facing the underbrush in the forest to the 
east of them. Spraying saliva, it barked stridently, so hard and loud that each 
explosive sound hurt Travis’s ears. The tone of savage fury in its voice was 
daunting. The dog was warning the unseen enemy to stay back.
“Easy boy,” Travis said softly. “Easy.”
The retriever stopped barking but did not glance at Travis. It stared intently 
into the brush, peeling its pebbly black lips off its teeth and growling deep in 
its throat.
Still breathing hard, Travis got to his feet and looked east into the woods. 
Evergreens, sycamores, a few larches. Shadows like swatches of dark cloth were 
fastened here and there by golden pins and needles of light. Brush. Briars. 
Climbing vines. A few well-worn toothlike formations of rock. He saw nothing out 
of the ordinary.
When he reached down and put a hand upon the retriever’s head, the dog stopped 
growling, as if it understood his intention. Travis drew a breath, held it, and 
listened for movement in the brush.
The cicadas remained silent. No birds sang in the trees. The woods were as still 
as if the vast, elaborate clockwork mechanism of the universe had ceased 
ticking.
He was sure that he was not the cause of the abrupt silence. His passage through 
the canyon had not previously disturbed either birds or cicadas.
Something was out there. An intruder of which the ordinary forest creatures 
clearly did not approve.
He took a deep breath and held it again, straining to hear the slightest 
movement in the woods. This time he detected the rustle of brush, a snapping 
twig, the soft crunch of dry leaves—and the unnervingly peculiar, heavy, ragged 
breathing of something big. It sounded about forty feet away, but he could not 
pinpoint its location.
At his side, the retriever had gone rigid. Its floppy ears were slightly 
pricked, straining forward.
The unknown adversary’s raspy breathing was so creepy—whether because of the 
echo effect of the forest and canyon, or because it was just creepy to begin 
with—that Travis quickly took off his backpack, unsnapped the flap, and withdrew 
the loaded .38.
The dog stared at the gun. Travis had the weird feeling that the animal knew 
what the revolver was—and approved of the weapon.
Wondering if the thing in the woods was a man, Travis called out: “Who’s there? 
Come on out where I can see you.”
The hoarse breathing in the brush was now underlaid with a thick menacing gnarl. 
The eerie guttural resonance electrified Travis. His heart beat even harder, and 
he went as rigid as the retriever beside him. For interminable ticking seconds, 
he could not understand why the noise itself had sent such a powerful current of 
fear through him. Then he realized that what frightened him was the noise’s 
ambiguity: the beast’s growl was definitely that of an animal . . . yet there 
was also an indescribable quality that bespoke intelligence, a tone and 
modulation almost like the sound that an enraged man might make. The more he 
listened, the more Travis decided it was neither strictly an animal nor human 
sound. But if neither . . . then what the hell was it?
He saw the high brush stirring. Straight ahead. Something was coming toward him.
“Stop,” he said sharply. “No closer.”
It kept coming.
Now just thirty feet away.
Moving slower than it had been. A bit wary perhaps. But closing in nevertheless.
The golden retriever began to growl threateningly, again warning off the 
creature that stalked them. But tremors were visible in its flanks, and its head 
shook. Though it was challenging the thing in the brush, it was profoundly 
frightened of a confrontation.
The dog’s fear unnerved Travis. Retrievers were renowned for boldness and 
courage. They were bred to be the companions of hunters, and were frequently 
used in dangerous rescue operations. What peril or foe could provoke such dread 
in a strong, proud dog like this?
The thing in the brush continued toward them, hardly more than twenty feet away 
now.
Though he had as yet seen nothing extraordinary, he was filled with 
superstitious terror, a perception of indefinable but uncanny presences. He kept 
telling himself he had chanced upon a cougar, just a cougar, that was probably 
more frightened than he was. But the icy prickling that began at the base of his 
spine and extended up across his scalp now intensified. His hand was so slick 
with sweat that he was afraid the gun would slip out of his grasp.
Fifteen feet.
Travis pointed the .38 in the air and squeezed off a single warning shot. The 
blast crashed through the forest and echoed down the long canyon.
The retriever did not even flinch, but the thing in the brush immediately turned 
away from them and ran north, upslope, toward the canyon rim. Travis could not 
see it, but he could clearly mark its swift progress by the waist-high weeds and 
bushes that shook and parted under its assault.
For a second or two, he was relieved because he thought he had frightened it 
off. Then he saw it was not actually running away. It was heading 
north-northwest on a curve that would bring it to the deer trail above them. 
Travis sensed that the creature was trying to cut them off and force them to go 
out of the canyon by the lower route, where it would have more and better 
opportunities to attack. He did not understand how he knew such a thing, just 
that he did know it.
His primordial survival instinct drove him into action without the need to think 
about each move he made; he automatically did what was required. He had not felt 
that animal surety since he had seen military action almost a decade ago.
Trying to keep his eye on the telltale tremble of the brush to his right, 
abandoning his backpack and keeping only the gun, Travis raced up the steep 
trail, and the retriever ran behind him. Fast as he was, however, he was not 
fast enough to overtake the unknown enemy. When he realized that it was going to 
reach the path well above him, he fired another warning shot, which did not 
startle or deflect the adversary this time. He fired twice into the brush 
itself, toward the indications of movement, not caring if it was a man out
there, and that worked. He did not believe he hit the stalker, but he scared it 
at last, and it turned away.
He kept running. He was eager to reach the canyon rim, where the trees were thin 
along the ridge top, where the brush was sparse, and where a brighter fall of 
sunlight did not permit concealing shadows.
When he arrived at the crest a couple of minutes later, he was badly winded. The 
muscles of his calves and thighs were hot with pain. His heart thumped so hard 
in his chest that he would not have been surprised to hear the echo of it 
bouncing off another ridge and coming back to him across the canyon.
This was where he had paused to eat some Oreos. The rattlesnake, which earlier 
had been sunning on a large flat rock, was gone.
The golden retriever had followed Travis. It stood beside him, panting, peering 
down the slope they had just ascended.
Slightly dizzy, wanting to sit and rest but aware that he was still in danger of 
an unknown variety, Travis looked down the deer trail, too, and scanned what 
underbrush he could see. If the stalker remained in pursuit of them, it was 
being more circumspect, climbing the slopes without disturbing the weeds and 
bushes.
The retriever whined and tugged once at Travis’s pants leg. It scurried across 
the top of the narrow ridge to a declivity by which they could make their way 
down into the next canyon. Clearly, the dog believed they were not out of danger 
and ought to keep moving.
Travis shared that conviction. His atavistic fear—and the reliance on instinct 
that it invoked—sent him hurrying after the dog, over the far side of the ridge, 
into another tree-filled canyon.
 
 
 
2
Vincent Nasco had been waiting in the dark garage for hours. He did not look as 
if he would be good at waiting. He was big—over two hundred pounds, six-three, 
muscular—and he always seemed to be so full of energy that he might burst at any 
moment. His broad face was placid, usually as expressionless as the face of a 
cow. But his green eyes flashed with vitality, with an edgy nervous 
watchfulness—and with a strange hunger that was like something you expected to 
see in the eyes of a wild animal, some jungle cat, but never in the eyes of a 
man. Like a cat, in spite of his tremendous energy, he was patient. He could 
crouch for hours, motionless and silent, waiting for prey.
At nine-forty Tuesday morning, much later than Nasco expected, the dead-bolt 
lock on the door between the garage and the house was disengaged with a single 
hard clack. The door opened, and Dr. Davis Weatherby flicked on the garage 
lights, then reached for the button that would raise the big sectional door.
“Stop right there,” Nasco said, rising and stepping from in front of the 
doctor’s pearl-gray Cadillac.
Weatherby blinked at him, surprised. “Who the hell—”
Nasco raised a silencer-equipped Walther P-38 and shot the doctor once in the 
face.
Ssssnap.
Cut off in midsentence, Weatherby fell backward into the cheery yellow and white 
laundry room. Going down, he struck his head on the clothes dryer and knocked a 
wheeled metal laundry cart into the wall.
Vince Nasco was not worried about the noise because Weatherby was unmarried and 
lived alone. He stooped over the corpse, which had wedged the door open, and 
tenderly put one hand on the doctor’s face.
The bullet had hit Weatberby in the forehead, less than an inch above the bridge 
of his nose. There was little blood because death had been instantaneous, and 
the slug had not been quite powerful enough to smash through the back of the 
man’s skull. Weatherby’s brown eyes were open wide. He looked startled.
With his fingers, Vince stroked Weatherby’s warm cheek, the side of his neck. He 
closed the sightless left eye, then the right, although he knew that postmortem 
muscle reactions would pop them open again in a couple of minutes. With a 
profound gratefulness evident in his tremulous voice, Vince said, “Thank you. 
Thank you, Doctor.” He kissed both of the dead man’s closed eyes. “Thank you.”
Shivering pleasantly, Vince plucked the car keys off the floor where the dead 
man had dropped them, went into the garage, and opened the Cadillac’s trunk, 
being careful not to touch any surface on which he might leave a clear 
fingerprint. The trunk was empty. Good. He carried Weatherby’s corpse out of the 
laundry room, put it in the trunk, closed and locked the lid.
Vince had been told that the doctor’s body must not be discovered until 
tomorrow. He did not know why the timing was important, but he prided himself on 
doing flawless work. Therefore, he returned to the laundry room, put the metal 
cart where it belonged, and looked around for signs of violence. Satisfied, he 
closed the door on the yellow and white room, and locked it with Weatherby’s 
keys.
He turned out the garage lights, crossed the darkened space, and let himself out 
the side door, where he had entered during the night by quietly loiding the 
flimsy lock with a credit card. Using the doctor’s keys, he relocked the door 
and walked away from the house.
Davis Weatherby lived in Corona Del Mar, within sight of the Pacific Ocean. 
Vince had left his two-year-old Ford van three blocks from the doctor’s house. 
The walk back to the van was very pleasant, invigorating. This was a fine 
neighborhood boasting a variety of architectural styles; expensive Spanish casas 
sat beside beautifully detailed Cape Cod homes with a harmony that had to be 
seen to be believed. The landscaping was lush and well tended. Palms and ficus 
and olive trees shaded the sidewalks. Red, coral, yellow, and Orange 
bougainviflaeas blazed with thousands of flowers. The bottlebrush
trees were in bloom. The branches of jacarandas dripped lacy purple blossoms. 
The air was scented with star jasmine.
Vincent Nasco felt wonderful. So strong, so powerful, so alive.
 
 
3
Sometimes the dog led, and sometimes Travis took the lead. They went a long way 
before Travis realized that he had been completely jolted out of the despair and 
desperate loneliness that had brought him to the foothills of the Santa Ana 
Mountains in the first place.
The big tattered dog stayed with him all the way to his pickup, which was parked 
along the dirt lane under the overhanging boughs of an enormous spruce. Stopping 
at the truck, the retriever looked back the way they had come.
Behind them, black birds swooped through the cloudless sky, as if engaged in 
reconnaissance for some mountain sorcerer. A dark wall of trees loomed like the 
ramparts of a sinister castle.
Though the woods were gloomy, the dirt road onto which Travis had stepped was 
fully exposed to the sun, baked to a pale brown, mantled in fine, soft dust that 
plumed around his boots with each step he took. He was surprised that such a 
bright day could have been abruptly filled with an overpowering, palpable sense 
of evil.
Studying the forest out of which they had fled, the dog barked for the first 
time in half an hour.
“Still coming, isn’t it?” Travis said.
The dog glanced at him and mewled unhappily.
“Yeah,” he said, “I feel it too. Crazy . . . yet I feel it, too. But what the 
hell’s out there, boy? Huh? What the hell is it?”
The dog shuddered violently.
Travis’s own fear was amplified every time he saw the dog’s terror manifested.
He put down the tailgate of the truck and said, “Come on. I’ll give you a lift 
out of this place.”
The dog sprang into the cargo hold.
Travis slammed the gate shut and went around the side of the truck. As he pulled 
open the driver’s door, he thought he glimpsed movement in nearby brush. Not 
back toward the forest but at the far side of the dirt road. Over there, a 
narrow field was choked with waist-high brown grass as crisp as hay, a few 
bristly clumps of mesquite, and some sprawling oleander bushes with roots deep 
enough to keep them green. When he stared directly at the field, he saw none of 
the movement he thought he had caught from the corner of his eye, but he 
suspected that he had not imagined it.
With a renewed sense of urgency, he climbed into the truck and put the revolver 
on the seat beside him. He drove away from there as fast as the
washboard lane permitted, and with constant consideration for the four-legged 
passenger in the cargo bed.
Twenty minutes later, when he stopped along Santiago Canyon Road, back in the 
world of blacktop and civilization, he still felt weak and shaky. But the fear 
that lingered was different from that he’d felt in the forest. His heart was no 
longer drumming. The cold sweat had dried on his hands and brow. The odd 
prickling of nape and scalp was gone—and the memory of it seemed unreal. Now he 
was afraid not of some unknown creature but of his own strange behavior. Safely 
out of the woods, he could not quite recall the degree of terror that had 
gripped him; therefore, his actions seemed irrational.
He pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine. It was eleven o’clock, 
and the flurry of morning traffic had gone; only an occasional car passed on the 
rural two-lane blacktop. He sat for a minute, trying to convince himself that he 
had acted on instincts that were good, right, and reliable.
He had always taken pride in his unshakable equanimity and hardheaded 
pragmatism—in that if in nothing else. He could stay cool in the middle of a 
bonfire. He could make hard decisions under pressure and accept the 
consequences.
Except—he found it increasingly difficult to believe something strange had 
actually been stalking him out there. He wondered if he had misinterpreted the 
dog’s behavior and had imagined the movement in the brush merely to give himself 
an excuse to turn his mind away from self-pity.
He got out of the truck and stepped back to the side of it, where he came 
face-to-face with the retriever, which stood in the cargo bed. It shoved its 
burly head toward him and licked his neck, his chin. Though it had snapped and 
barked earlier, it was an affectionate dog, and for the first time its 
bedraggled condition struck him as having a comical aspect. He tried to hold the 
dog back. But it strained forward, nearly clambering over the side of the cargo 
hold in its eagerness to lick his face. He laughed and ruffled its tangled coat.
The retriever’s friskiness and the frenzied wagging of its tail had an 
unexpected effect on Travis. For a long time his mind had been a dark place, 
filled with thoughts of death, culminating in today’s journey. But this animal’s 
unadulterated joy in being alive was like a spotlight that pierced Travis’s 
inner gloom and reminded him that life had a brighter side from which he had 
long ago turned away.
“What was that all about back there?” he wondered aloud.
The dog stopped licking him, stopped wagging its matted tail. It regarded him 
solemnly, and he was suddenly transfixed by the animal’s gentle, warm brown 
eyes. Something in them was unusual, compelling. Travis was half-mesmerized, and 
the dog seemed equally captivated. As a mild spring breeze rose from the south, 
Travis searched the dog’s eyes for a clue to their special Power and appeal, but 
he saw nothing extraordinary about them. Except. . . well, they seemed somehow 
more expressive than a dog’s eyes usually were, more intelligent and aware. 
Given the short attention span of any dog, the retriever’s unwavering stare was 
damned unusual. As the seconds ticked past and as neither Travis nor the dog 
broke the encounter, he felt
increasingly peculiar. A shiver rippled through him, occasioned not by fear but 
by a sense that something uncanny was happening, that he was teetering on the 
threshold of an awesome revelation.
Then the dog shook its head and licked Travis’s hand, and the spell was broken.
“Where’d you come from, boy?”
The dog cocked its head to the left.
“Who’s your owner?”
The dog cocked its head to the right.
“What should I do with you?”
As if in answer, the dog jumped over the truck’s tailgate, ran past Travis to 
the driver’s door, and climbed into the pickup’s cab.
When Travis peered inside, the retriever was in the passenger’s seat, looking 
straight ahead through the windshield. It turned to him and issued a soft woof, 
as if impatient with his dawdling.
He got in behind the wheel, tucked the revolver under his seat. “Don’t believe I 
can take care of you. Too much responsibility, fella. Doesn’t fit in with my 
plans. Sorry about that.”
The dog regarded him beseechingly.
“You look hungry, boy.”
It woofed once, softly.
“Okay, maybe I can help you that much. I think there’s a Hershey’s bar in the 
glove compartment . . . and there’s a McDonald’s not far from here, where 
they’ve probably got a couple hamburgers with your name on them. But after that 
. . . well, I’ll either have to let you loose again or take you to the pound.”
Even as Travis was speaking, the dog raised one foreleg and hit the 
glove-compartment release button with a paw. The lid fell open.
“What the hell—”
The dog leaned forward, put its snout into the open box, and withdrew the candy 
in its teeth, holding the bar so lightly that the wrapping was not punctured.
Travis blinked in surprise.
The retriever held forth the Hershey’s bar, as if requesting that Travis unwrap 
the treat.
Startled, he took the candy and peeled off the paper.
The retriever watched, licking its lips.
Breaking the bar into pieces, Travis paid out the chocolate in morsels. The dog 
took them gratefully and ate almost daintily.
Travis watched in confusion, not certain if what had happened was truly 
extraordinary or had a reasonable explanation. Had the dog actually understood 
him when he had said there was candy in the glove box? Or had it detected the 
scent of chocolate? Surely the latter.
To the dog, he said, “But how did you know to press the button to pop the lid 
open?”
It stared, licked its chops, and accepted another bit of candy.
He said, “Okay, okay, so maybe that’s a trick you’ve been taught. Though it’s 
not the sort of thing anyone would ordinarily train a dog to do, is it? Roll 
over, play dead, sing for your supper, even walk on your hind feet a little ways 
. . . yeah, those’re things that dogs are trained to do . . . but they’re not 
trained to open locks and latches.
The retriever gazed longingly at the last morsel of chocolate, but Travis 
withheld the goody for a moment.
The timing, for God’s sake, had been uncanny. Two seconds after Travis had 
referred to the chocolate, the dog had gone for it.
“Did you understand what I said?” Travis asked, feeling foolish for suspecting a 
dog of possessing language skills. Nevertheless, he repeated the question: “Did 
you? Did you understand?”
Reluctantly, the retriever raised its gaze from the last of the candy. Their 
eyes met. Again Travis sensed that something uncanny was happening; he shivered 
not unpleasantly, as before.
He hesitated, cleared his throat. “Uh . . . would it be all right with you if I 
had the last piece of chocolate?”
The dog turned its eyes to the two small squares of the Hershey’s bar still in 
Travis’s hand. It chuffed once, as if with regret, then looked through the 
windshield..
“I’ll be damned,” Travis said.
The dog yawned.
Being careful not to move his hand, not holding the chocolate out, not calling 
attention to the chocolate in any manner except with words, he addressed the big 
tattered dog again: “Well, maybe you need it more than I do, boy. If you want 
it, the last bit’s yours.”
The retriever looked at him.
Still not moving his hand, keeping it close to his own body in a way that 
implied he was withholding the chocolate, he said, “If you want it, take it. 
Otherwise, I’ll just throw it away.”
The retriever shifted on the seat, leaned close to him, and gently snatched the 
chocolate off his palm.
“I’ll be double-damned,” he said.
The dog rose onto all fours, standing on the seat, which brought its head almost 
to the ceiling. It looked through the back window of the cab and growled softly.
Travis glanced at the rearview mirror, then at the side-mounted mirror, but he 
saw nothing unusual behind them. Just the two-lane blacktop, the narrow berm, 
the weed-covered hillside sloping down on their right side. “You think we should 
get moving? Is that it?”
The dog looked at him, peered out the rear window, then turned and sat with its 
hind legs tucked to one side, facing forward again.
Travis started the engine, put the truck in gear, pulled onto Santiago Canyon 
Road, and headed north. Glancing at his companion, he said, “Are you really more 
than you appear to be . . . or am I just cracking up? And if you are more than 
you appear to be . . . what the devil are you?”
At the rural eastern end of Chapman Avenue, he turned west toward the McDonald’s 
of which he’d spoken.
He said, “Can’t turn you loose now or take you to a pound.” And a minute later, 
he said, “If I didn’t keep you, I’d die of curiosity, wondering about you.”
They drove about two miles and swung into the McDonald’s parking lot.
Travis said, “So I guess you’re my dog now.”
The retriever said nothing.
 
Two
1
Nora Devon was afraid of the television repairman. Although he appeared to be 
about thirty (her age), he had the offensive cockiness of a know-it-all 
teenager. When she answered the doorbell, he boldly looked her up and down as he 
identified himself—”Art Streck, Wadlow’s TV”—and when he met her eyes again, he 
winked. He was tall and lean and well-scrubbed, dressed in white uniform slacks 
and shirt. He was clean-shaven. His darkish-blond hair was cut short and neatly 
combed. He looked like any mother’s son, not a rapist or psycho, yet Nora was 
instantly afraid of him, maybe because his boldness and cockiness seemed at odds 
with his appearance.
“You need service?” he asked when she hesitated in the doorway.
Although his question appeared innocent, the inflection he put on the word 
“service” seemed creepy and sexually suggestive to Nora. She did not think she 
was overreacting. But she had called Wadlow TV, after all, and she could not 
turn Streck away without explanation. An explanation would probably lead to an 
argument, and she was not a confrontational person, so she let him inside.
As she escorted him along the wide, cool hallway to the living-room arch, she 
had the uneasy feeling that his good grooming and big smile were elements of a 
carefully calculated disguise. He had a keen animal watchfulness, a coiled 
tension, that further disquieted her with every step they took away from the 
front door.
Following her much too closely, virtually looming over her from behind, Art 
Streck said, “You’ve got a nice house here, Mrs. Devon. Very nice. I really like 
it.”
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, not bothering to correct his misapprehension of 
her marital status.
“A man could be happy here. Yeah, a man could be very happy.”
The house was of that style of architecture sometimes called Old Santa Barbara 
Spanish: two stories, cream-colored stucco with a red-tile roof, verandas, 
balconies, all softly rounded lines instead of squared-off corners. Lush red 
bougainvillea climbed the north face of the structure, dripping bright blossoms. 
The place was beautiful.
Nora hated it.
She had lived there since she was only two years old, which now added up to 
twenty-eight years, and during all but one of them, she had been under
the iron thumb of her Aunt Violet. Hers had not been a happy childhood or, to 
date, a happy life. Violet Devon had died a year ago. But, in truth, Nora was 
still oppressed by her aunt, for the memory of that hateful old woman was 
formidable, stifling.
In the living room, putting his repair kit beside the Magnavox, Streck paused to 
look around. He was clearly surprised by the decor.
The flowered wallpaper was dark, funereal. The Persian carpet was singularly 
unattractive. The color scheme—gray, maroon, royal blue—was unenlivened by a few 
touches of faded yellow. Heavy English furniture from the mid-nineteenth 
century, trimmed with deeply carved molding, stood on clawed feet: massive 
armchairs, footstools, cabinets suitable for Dr. Caligari, credenzas that looked 
as if they each weighed half a ton. Small tables were draped with weighty 
brocade. Some lamps were pewter with pale-gray shades, and others had maroon 
ceramic bases, but none threw much light. The drapes looked as heavy as lead; 
age-yellowed sheers hung between the side panels, permitting only a 
mustard-colored drizzle of sunlight to enter the room. None of it complemented 
the Spanish architecture; Violet had willfully imposed her ponderous bad taste 
upon the graceful house.
“You decorate?” Art Streck asked.
“No. My aunt,” Nora said. She stood by the marble fireplace, almost as far from 
him as she could get without leaving the room. “This was her place. I . . . 
inherited it.”
“If I was you,” he said, “I’d heave all this stuff out of here. Could be a 
bright, cheery room. Pardon my saying so, but this isn’t you. This might be all 
right for someone’s maiden aunt . . . She was a maiden aunt, huh? Yeah, thought 
so. Might be all right for a dried-up maiden aunt, but definitely not for a 
pretty lady like yourself.”
Nora wanted to criticize his impertinence, wanted to tell him to shut up and fix 
the television, but she had no experience at standing up for herself. Aunt 
Violet had preferred her meek, obedient.
Streck was smiling at her. The right corner of his mouth curled in a most 
unpleasant way. It was almost a sneer.
She forced herself to say, “I like it well enough.”
“Not really?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “What’s the matter with the set?”
“The picture won’t stop rolling. And there’s static, snow.”
He pulled the television away from the wall, switched it on, and studied the 
tumbling, static-slashed images. He plugged in a small portable lamp and hooked 
it to the back of the set.
The grandfather clock in the hall marked the quarter-hour with a single chime 
that reverberated hollowly through the house.
“You watch a lot of TV?” he asked as he unscrewed the dust shield from the set.
“Not much,” Nora said.
“I like those nighttime soaps. Dallas, Dynasty, that stuff.”
“I never watch them.”
“Yeah? Oh, now, come on, I bet you do.” He laughed slyly. “Everybody watches 
‘em, even if they don’t want to admit it. Just isn’t anything more interesting 
than stories full of backstabbing, scheming, thieving, lying . . . and adultery. 
You know what I’m saying? People sit and watch it and cluck their tongues and 
say, ‘Oh, how awful,’ but they really get off on it. That’s human nature.”
“I . . . I’ve got things to do in the kitchen,” she said nervously. “Call me 
when you’ve fixed the set.” She left the room and went down the hall through the 
swinging door into the kitchen.
She was trembling. She despised herself for her weakness, for the ease with 
which she surrendered to fear, but she could not help being what she was. A 
mouse.
Aunt Violet had often said, “Girl, there are two kinds of people in the 
world—cats and mice. Cats go where they want, do what they want, take what they 
want. Cats are aggressive and self-sufficient by nature. Mice, on the other 
hand, don’t have an ounce of aggression in them. They’re naturally vulnerable, 
gentle, and timid, and they’re happiest when they keep their heads down and 
accept what life gives them. You’re a mouse, dear. It’s not bad to be a mouse. 
You can be perfectly happy. A mouse might not have as colorful a life as a cat, 
but if it stays safely in its burrow and keeps to itself, it’ll live longer than 
the cat, and it’ll have a lot less turmoil in its life.”
Right now, a cat lurked in the living room, fixing the TV set, and Nora was in 
the kitchen, gripped by mouselike fear. She was not actually in the middle of 
cooking anything, as she had told Streck. For a moment she stood by the sink, 
one cold hand clasped in the other—her hands always seemed to be cold—wondering 
what to do until he finished his work and left. She decided to bake a cake. A 
yellow cake with chocolate icing. That task would keep her occupied and help 
turn her mind away from the memory of Streck’s suggestive winking.
She got bowls, utensils, an electric mixer, plus the cake mix and other 
ingredients out of the cupboards, and she set to work. Soon her frayed nerves 
were soothed by the mundane domestic activity.
Just as she finished pouring the batter into the two baking pans, Streck stepped 
into the kitchen and said, “You like to cook?”
Surprised, she nearly dropped the empty metal mixing bowl and the battersmeared 
spatula. Somehow, she managed to hold on to them and—with only a little clatter 
to betray her tension—put them into the sink to be washed. “Yes. I like to 
cook.”
“Isn’t that nice? I admire a woman who enjoys doing woman’s work. Do You sew, 
crochet, do embroidery, anything like that?”
“Needlepoint,” she said.
“That’s even nicer.”
“Is the TV fixed?”
“Almost.”
Nora was ready to put the cake in the oven, but she did not want to carry
the pans while Streck was watching her because she was afraid she would shake 
too much. Then he’d realize that she was intimidated by him, and he would 
probably get bolder. So she left the full pans on the counter and tore open the 
box of icing mix instead.
Streck came farther into the big kitchen, moving casually, very relaxed, looking 
around with an amiable smile, but coming straight toward her. “Think I could 
have a glass of water?”
Nora almost sighed with relief, eager to believe that a drink of cold water was 
all that had brought him here. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said. She took a glass 
from the cupboard, ran the cold water.
When she turned to hand it to him, he was standing close behind her, having 
crept up with catlike quiet. She gave an involuntary start. Water slopped out of 
the glass and splattered on the floor.
She said, “You—”
“Here,” he said, taking the glass from her hand.
“—startled me.”
“Me?” he said, smiling, fixing her with icy blue eyes. “Oh, I certainly didn’t 
mean to. I’m sorry. I’m harmless, Mrs. Devon. Really, I am. All I want is a 
drink of water. You didn’t think I wanted anything else—did you?”
He was so damned bold. She couldn’t believe how bold he was, how smart-mouthed 
and cool and aggressive. She wanted to slap his face, but she was afraid of what 
would happen after that. Slapping him—in any way acknowledging his insulting 
double entendres or other offenses—seemed sure to encourage rather than deter 
him.
He stared at her with unsettling intensity, voraciously. His smile was that of a 
predator.
She sensed the best way to handle Streck was to pretend innocence and monumental 
thick headedness, to ignore his nasty sexual innuendos as if she had not 
understood them. She must, in short, deal with him as a mouse might deal with 
any threat from which it was unable to flee. Pretend you do not see the cat, 
pretend that it is not there, and perhaps the cat will be confused and 
disappointed by the lack of reaction and will seek more responsive prey 
elsewhere.
To break away from his demanding gaze, Nora tore a couple of paper towels from 
the dispenser beside the sink and began to mop up the water she had spilled on 
the floor. But the moment she stooped before Streck, she realized she’d made a 
mistake, because he did not move out of her way but stood over her, loomed over 
her, while she squatted in front of him. The situation was full of erotic 
symbolism. When she realized the submissiveness implied by her position at his 
feet, she popped up again and saw that his smile had broadened.
Flushed and flustered, Nora threw the damp towels into the waste can under the 
sink.
Art Streck said, “Cooking, needlepoint . . . yeah, I think that’s real nice, 
real nice. What other things do you like to do?”
“That’s it, I’m afraid,” she said. “I don’t have any unusual hobbies. I’m not a 
very interesting person. Low-key. Dull, even.”
Damning herself for being unable to order the bastard out of her house, she 
slipped past him and went to the oven, ostensibly to check that it was finished 
preheating, but she was really just trying to get out of Streck’s reach.
He followed her, staying close. “When I pulled up out front, I saw lots of 
flowers. You tend the flowers?”
Staring at the oven dials, she said, “Yes . . . I like gardening.”
“I approve of that,” he said, as if she ought to care whether he approved or 
not. “Flowers . . . that’s a good thing for a woman to have an interest in. 
Cooking, needlepoint, gardening—why you’re just full of womanly interests and 
talents. I’ll bet you do everything well, Mrs. Devon. I mean everything a woman 
should do. I’ll bet you’re a first-rate woman in every department.”
If be touches me, I’ll scream, she thought.
However, the walls of the old house were thick, and the neighbors were some 
distance away. No one would hear her or come to her rescue.
I’ll kick him, she thought. I’ll fight back.
But, in fact, she was not sure that she would fight, was not sure that she had 
the gumption to fight. Even if she did attempt to defend herself, he was bigger 
and stronger than she was.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you’re a first-rate woman in every department,” he repeated, 
delivering the line more provocatively than before.
Turning from the oven, she forced a laugh. “My husband would be astonished to 
hear that. I’m not too bad at cakes, but I’ve still not learned to make a decent 
piecrust, and my pot roast always turns out bone-dry. My needlepoint's not half 
bad, but it takes me forever to get anything done.” She slipped past him and 
returned to the counter. She was amazed to hear herself chattering on as she 
opened the box of icing mix. Desperation made her garrulous. “I’ve got a green 
thumb with flowers, but I’m not much of a housekeeper, and if my husband didn’t 
help out—why, this place would be a disaster.”
She thought she sounded phony. She detected a note of hysteria in her voice that 
had to be evident to him. But the mention of a husband had obviously given Art 
Streck second thoughts about pushing her further. As Nora poured the mix into a 
bowl and measured out the required butter, Streck drank the water she had given 
him. He went to the sink and put the empty glass in the dishpan with the dirty 
bowls and utensils. This time he did not press unnecessarily close to her.
“Well, I better get back to work,” he said.
She gave him a calculatedly distracted smile, and nodded. She began to hum 
softly as she returned to her own task, as if untroubled.
He crossed the kitchen and pushed open the swinging door, then stopped and said, 
“Your aunt really liked dark places, didn’t she? This kitchen would be swell, 
too, if you brightened it up.”
Before she could respond, he went out, letting the door swing shut behind him.
In spite of his unasked-for opinion of the kitchen decor, Streck seemed to have 
pulled in his horns, and Nora was pleased with herself. Using a few white lies 
about her nonexistent husband, delivered with admirable equanimity, she had 
handled him after all. That was not exactly the way a cat would have dealt with 
an aggressor, but it was not the timid, frightened behavior of a mouse, either.
She looked around at the high-ceilinged kitchen and decided it was too dark. The 
walls were a muddy blue. The frosted globes of the overhead lights were opaque, 
shedding a drab, wintry glow. She considered having the kitchen repainted, the 
lights replaced.
Merely to contemplate making major changes in Violet Devon’s house was dizzying, 
exhilarating. Nora had redone her own bedroom since Violet’s death, but nothing 
else. Now, wondering if she could follow through with extensive redecoration, 
she felt wildly daring and rebellious. Maybe. Maybe she could. If she could fend 
off Streck, maybe she could dredge up the courage to defy her dead aunt.
Her upbeat self-congratulatory mood lasted just twenty minutes, which was long 
enough to put the cake pans in the oven and whip up the icing and wash some of 
the bowls and utensils. Then Streck returned to tell her the TV set was repaired 
and to give her the bill. Though he had seemed subdued when he left the kitchen, 
he was as cocky as ever when he entered the second time. He looked her up and 
down as if undressing her in his imagination, and when he met her eyes he gave 
her a challenging look.
She thought the bill was too high, but she did not question it because she 
wanted him out of the house quickly. As she sat at the kitchen table to write 
the check, he pulled the now-familiar trick of standing too close to her, trying 
to cow her with his masculinity and superior size. When she stood and handed him 
the check, he contrived to take it in such a way that his hand touched hers 
suggestively.
All the way along the hail, Nora was more than half-convinced that he would 
suddenly put down his tool kit and attack her from behind. But she got to the 
door, and he stepped past her onto the veranda, and her racing heart began to 
slow to a more normal pace.
He hesitated just outside the door. “What’s your husband do?”
The question disconcerted her. It was something he might have asked earlier, in 
the kitchen, when she had spoken of her husband, but now his curiosity seemed 
inappropriate.
She should have told him it was none of his business, but she was still afraid 
of him. She sensed that he could be easily angered, that the pent-up violence in 
him could be triggered with minor effort. So she answered him with another lie, 
one she hoped would make him reluctant to harass her any further: “He’s a. . . 
policeman.”
Streck raised his eyebrows. “Really? Here in Santa Barbara?”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a house for a policeman.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Didn’t know policemen were paid so well.”
“Oh, but I told you—I inherited the house from my aunt.”
“Of course, I remember now. You told me. That’s right.”
Trying to reinforce the lie, she said, “We were living in an apartment when my 
aunt died, and then we moved here. You’re right—we wouldn’t have been able to 
afford it otherwise.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m happy for you. I sure am. A lady as pretty as you deserves 
a pretty house.”
He tipped an imaginary hat to her, winked, and went along the walk toward the 
street, where his white van was parked at the curb.
She closed the door and watched him through a clear segment of the leaded, 
stained-glass oval window in the center of the door. He glanced back, saw her, 
and waved. She stepped away from the window, into the gloomy hallway, and 
watched him from a point at which she could not be seen.
Clearly, he hadn’t believed her. He knew the husband was a lie. She shouldn’t 
have said she was married to a cop, for God’s sake; that was too obvious an 
attempt to dissuade him. She should have said she was married to a plumber or 
doctor, anything but a cop. Anyway, Art Streck was leaving. Though he knew she 
was lying, he was leaving.
She did not feel safe until his van was out of sight.
Actually, even then, she did not feel safe.
2
After murdering Dr. Davis Weatherby, Vince Nasco had driven his gray Ford van to 
a service station on Pacific Coast Highway. In the public phone booth, he 
deposited coins and called a Los Angeles number that he had long ago committed 
to memory.
A man answered by repeating the number Vince had dialed. It was one of the usual 
three voices that responded to calls, the soft one with a deep timbre. Often, 
there was another man with a hard sharp voice that grated on Vince.
Infrequently, a woman answered; she had a sexy voice, throaty and yet girlish. 
Vince had never seen her, but he had often tried to imagine what she looked 
like.
Now, when the soft-spoken man finished reciting the number, Vince said, ‘It’s 
done. I really appreciate your calling me, and I’m always available if you have 
another job.” He was confident that the guy on the other end of the line would 
recognize his voice, too.
“I’m delighted to hear all went well. We’ve the highest regard for your 
Workmanship. Now remember this,” the contact said. He recited a seven-digit 
telephone number.
Surprised, Vince repeated it.
The contact said, “It’s one of the public phones at Fashion Island. In the 
open-air promenade near Robinson’s Department Store. Can you be there in fifteen 
minutes?”
“Sure,” Vince said. “Ten.”
“I’ll call in fifteen with the details.”
Vince hung up and walked back to the van, whistling. Being sent to another 
public telephone to receive “the details” could mean only one thing: they had a 
job for him already, two in one day!
3
Later, after the cake was baked and iced, Nora retreated to her bedroom at the 
southwest corner of the second floor.
When Violet Devon had been alive, this had been Nora’s sanctuary in spite of the 
lack of a lock on the door. Like all the rooms in the large house, it had been 
crammed with heavy furniture, as if the place served as a warehouse instead of a 
home. It had been dreary in all other details as well. Nevertheless, when 
finished with her chores, or when dismissed after one of her aunt’s interminable 
lectures, Nora had fled to her bedroom, where she escaped into books or vivid 
daydreams.
Violet inevitably checked on her niece without warning, creeping soundlessly 
along the hall, suddenly throwing open the unlockable door, entering with the 
hope of catching Nora in a forbidden pastime or practice. These unannounced 
inspections had been frequent during Nora’s childhood and adolescence, dwindling 
in number thereafter, though they had continued through the final weeks of 
Violet Devon’s life, when Nora had been a grown woman of twenty-nine. Because 
Violet had favored dark dresses, had worn her hair in a tight bun, and had gone 
without a trace of makeup on her pale, sharp-featured face, she had often looked 
less like a woman than like a man, a stern monk in coarse penitential robes, 
prowling the corridors of a bleak medieval retreat to police the behavior of 
fellow monastics.
If caught daydreaming or napping, Nora was severely reprimanded and punished 
with onerous chores. Her aunt did not condone laziness.
Books were permitted—if Violet had first approved of them—because, for one 
thing, books were educational. Besides, as Violet often said, “Plain, homely 
women like you and me will never lead a glamorous life, never go to exotic 
places. So books have a special value to us. We can experience most everything 
vicariously, through books. This isn’t bad. Living through books is even better 
than having friends and knowing . . . men.”
With the assistance of a pliable family doctor, Violet had kept Nora out of 
public school on the pretense of poor health. She had been educated at home, so 
books were her only school as well.
In addition to having read thousands of books by the age of thirty, Nora had 
become a self-taught artist in oils, acrylics, watercolors, pencil. Drawing
and painting were activities of which Aunt Violet approved. Art was a solitary 
pursuit that took Nora’s mind off the world beyond the house and helped her 
avoid contact with people who would inevitably reject, hurt, and disappoint her.
One corner of Nora’s room had been furnished with a drawing board, an easel, and 
a cabinet for supplies. Space for her miniature studio was created by pushing 
other pieces of furniture together, not by removing anything, and the effect was 
claustrophobic.
Many times over the years, especially at night but even in the middle of the 
day, Nora had been overcome by a feeling that the floor of the bedroom was going 
to collapse under all the furniture, that she was going to crash down into the 
chamber below, where she would be crushed to death beneath her own massive 
four-poster bed. When that fear overwhelmed her, she had fled onto the rear 
lawn, where she sat in the open air, hugging herself and shuddering. She’d been 
twenty-five before she realized that her anxiety attacks arose not only from the 
overfurnished rooms and dark decor of the house but from the domineering 
presence of her aunt.
On a Saturday morning four months ago, eight months after Violet Devon’s death, 
Nora had abruptly been seized by an acute need for change and had frantically 
reordered her bedroom-studio. She carried and dragged out all the smaller pieces 
of furniture, distributing them evenly through the other five crowded chambers 
on the second floor. Some of the heavier things had to be dismantled and taken 
away in sections, but finally she succeeded in eliminating everything but the 
four-poster bed, one nightstand, a single armchair, her drawing board and stool, 
the supply cabinet, and the easel, which was all she needed. Then she stripped 
off the wallpaper.
Throughout that dizzying weekend, she’d felt as if the revolution had come, as 
if her life would never be the same. But by the time she had redone her bedroom, 
the spirit of rebellion had evaporated, and she had left the rest of the house 
untouched.
Now this one place, at least, was bright, even cheerful. The walls were painted 
the palest yellow. The drapes were gone, and in their place were Levolor blinds 
that matched the paint. She had rolled up the dreary carpet and had polished the 
beautiful oak floor.
More than ever, this was her sanctuary. Without fail, upon passing through the 
door and seeing what she had wrought, her spirits lifted and she found some 
surcease from her troubles.
After her frightening encounter with Streck, Nora was soothed, as always, by the 
bright room. She sat at the drawing board and began a pencil sketch, a 
Preliminary study for an oil painting that she had been contemplating for Some 
time. Initially, her hands shook, and she had to pause repeatedly to regain 
sufficient control to continue drawing, but in time her fear abated.
She . was even able to think about Streck as she worked and to try to imagine 
just how far he might have gone if she had not managed to maneuver
him out of the house. Recently, Nora had wondered if Violet Devon’s pessimistic 
view of the outside world and of all other people was accurate; though
it was the primary view that Nora, herself, had been taught, she had the nagging 
suspicion that it might be twisted, even sick. But now she had encountered Art 
Streck, and he seemed to be ample proof of Violet’s contentions, proof that 
interacting too much with the outside world was dangerous.
But after a while, when her sketch was half finished, Nora began to think that 
she had misinterpreted everything Streck had said and done. Surely he could not 
have been making sexual advances toward her. Not toward her.
She was, after all, quite undesirable. Plain. Homely. Perhaps even ugly. Nora 
knew this was true because, regardless of Violet’s faults, the old woman had 
some virtues, one of which was a refusal to mince words. Nora was unattractive, 
drab, not a woman who could expect to be held, kissed, cherished. This was a 
fact of life that Aunt Violet made her understand at an early age.
Although his personality was repellent, Streck was a physically attractive man, 
one who could have his choice of pretty women. It was ridiculous to assume he 
would be interested in a drudge like her.
Nora still wore the clothes that her aunt had bought for her—dark, shapeless 
dresses and skirts and blouses similar to those that Violet had worn. Brighter 
and more feminine dresses would only call attention to her bony, graceless body 
and to the characterless and uncomely lines of her face.
But why had Streck said that she was pretty?
Oh, well, that was easily explained. He was making fun of her, perhaps. Or, more 
likely, he was being polite, kind.
The more she thought about it, the more Nora believed that she had misjudged the 
poor man. At thirty, she was already a nervous old maid, as fear-ridden as she 
was lonely.
That thought depressed her for a while. But she redoubled her efforts on the 
sketch, finished it, and began another from a different perspective. As the 
afternoon waned she escaped into her art.
From downstairs the chimes of the ancient grandfather clock rose punctually on 
the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour.
The west-falling sun turned more golden as time passed, and as the day wore on 
the room grew brighter. The air seemed to shimmer. Beyond the south window a 
king palm stirred gently in the May breeze.
By four o’clock, she was at peace, humming as she worked. When the telephone 
rang, it startled her.
She put down her pencil and reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Funny,” a man said.
“Excuse me?”
“They never heard of him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I think you’ve got the wrong number.” “This is you, 
Mrs. Devon?”
She recognized the voice now. It was him. Streck.
For a moment, she could not speak.
He said, “They never heard of him. I called the Santa Barbara police and
asked to speak with Officer Devon, but they said they don’t have an Officer 
Devon on the force. Isn’t that odd, Mrs. Devon?”
“What do you want?” she asked shakily.
“I figure it’s a computer error,” Streck said, laughing quietly. “Yeah, sure, 
some sort of computer error dropped your husband from their records. I think 
you’d better tell him as soon as he gets home, Mrs. Devon. If he doesn’t get 
this straightened out . . . why, hell, he might not get his paycheck at the end 
of the week.”
He hung up, and the sound of the dial tone made her realize that she should have 
hung up first, should have slammed down the handset as soon as he said that he’d 
called the police station. She dared not encourage him even to the extent of 
listening to him on the phone.
She went through the house, checking all the windows and doors. They were 
securely locked.
4
At McDonald’s on East Chapman Avenue in Orange, Travis Cornell had ordered five 
hamburgers for the golden retriever. Sitting on the front seat of the pickup, 
the dog had eaten all of the meat and two buns, and it had wanted to express its 
gratitude by licking his face.
“You’ve got the breath of a dyspeptic alligator,” he protested, holding the 
animal back.
The return trip to Santa Barbara took three and a half hours because the 
highways were much busier than they had been that morning. Throughout the 
journey, Travis glanced at his companion and spoke to it, anticipating a display 
of the unnerving intelligence it had shown earlier. His expectations were 
unfulfilled. The retriever behaved like any dog on a long trip. Once in a while, 
it did sit very erect, looking through the windshield or side window at the 
scenery with what seemed an unusual degree of interest and attention. But most 
of the time it curled up and slept on the seat, snuffling in its dreams— or it 
panted and yawned and looked bored.
When the odor of the dog’s filthy coat became intolerable, Travis rolled down 
the windows for ventilation, and the retriever stuck its head out in the wind. 
With its ears blown back, hair streaming, it grinned the foolish and charmingly 
witless grin of all dogs who had ever ridden shotgun in such a fashion.
In Santa Barbara, Travis stopped at a shopping center, where he bought Several 
cans of Alpo, a box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits, heavy plastic dishes for pet food 
and water, a galvanized tin washtub, a bottle of pet shampoo With a flea- and 
tick-killing compound, a brush to comb out the animal’s tangled coat, a collar, 
and a leash.
As Travis loaded those items into the back of the pickup, the dog watched
him through the rear window of the cab, its damp nose pressed to the glass. 
Getting behind the wheel, he said, “You’re filthy, and you stink. You’re
not going to be a lot of trouble about taking a bath, are you?” The dog yawned.
By the time Travis pulled into the driveway of his four-room rented bungalow on 
the northern edge of Santa Barbara and switched off the pickup’s engine, he was 
beginning to wonder if the pooch’s actions that morning had really been as 
amazing as he remembered.
“If you don’t show me the right stuff again soon,” he told the dog as he slipped 
his key into the front door of the house, “I’m going to have to assume that I 
stripped a gear out there in the woods, that I’m just nuts and that I imagined 
everything.”
Standing beside him on the stoop, the dog looked up quizzically.
“Do you want to be responsible for giving me doubts about my own sanity? 
Hmmmmm?”
An orange and black butterfly swooped past the retriever’s face, startling it. 
The dog barked once and raced after the fluttering prey, off the stoop, down the 
walkway. Dashing back and forth across the lawn, leaping high, snapping at the 
air, repeatedly missing its bright quarry, it nearly collided with the 
diamond-patterned trunk of a big Canary Island date palm, then narrowly avoided 
knocking itself unconscious in a head-on encounter with a concrete birdbath, and 
at last crashed clumsily into a bed of New Guinea impatiens over which the 
butterfly soared to safety. The retriever rolled once, scrambled to its feet, 
and lunged out of the flowers.
When it realized that it had been foiled, the dog returned to Travis. It gave 
him a sheepish look.
“Some wonder dog,” he said. “Good grief.”
He opened the door, and the retriever slipped in ahead of him. It padded off 
immediately to explore these new rooms.
“You better be housebroken,” Travis shouted after it.
He carried the galvanized washtub and the plastic bag full of other purchases 
into the kitchen. He left the food and pet dishes there, and took everything 
else outside through the back door. He put the bag on the concrete patio and set 
the tub beside it, near a coiled hose that was attached to an outdoor faucet.
Inside again, he removed a bucket from beneath the kitchen sink, filled it with 
the hottest water he could draw, carried it outside, and emptied it into the 
tub. When Travis had made four trips with the hot water, the retriever appeared 
and began to explore the backyard. By the time Travis filled the tub more than 
half full, the dog had begun to urinate every few feet along the whitewashed 
concrete-block wall that defined the property line, marking its territory.
“When you finish killing the grass,” Travis said, “you’d better be in the mood 
for a bath. You reek.”
The retriever turned toward him and cocked its head and appeared to listen when 
he spoke. But it did not look like one of those smart dogs in the movies. It did 
not look as if it understood him. It just looked dumb. As soon as he
stopped talking, it hurried a few steps farther along the wall and peed again. 
Watching the dog relieve itself, Travis felt an urge of his own. He went
inside to the bathroom, then changed into an older pair of jeans and a T-shirt 
for the sloppy job ahead.
When Travis came outside again, the retriever was standing beside the steaming 
washtub, the hose in its teeth. Somehow, it had managed to turn the faucet. 
Water gushed out of the hose, into the tub.
For a dog, successfully manipulating a water faucet would be very difficult if 
not impossible. Travis figured that an equivalent test of his own ingenuity and 
dexterity would be trying to open a child-proof safety cap on an aspirin bottle 
with one hand behind his back.
Astonished, he said, “Water’s too hot for you?”
The retriever dropped the hose, letting water pour across the patio, and stepped 
almost daintily into the tub. It sat and looked at him, as if to say, Let’s get 
on with it, you dink.
He went to the tub and squatted beside it. “Show me how you can turn off the 
water.”
The dog looked at him stupidly.
“Show me,” Travis said.
The dog snorted and shifted its position in the warm water.
“If you could turn it on, you can turn it off. How did you do it? With your 
teeth? Had to be with your teeth. Couldn’t do it with a paw, for God’s sake. But 
that twisting motion would be tricky. You could’ve broken a tooth on the 
cast-iron handle.”
The dog leaned slightly out of the tub, just far enough to bite at the neck of 
the bag that held the shampoo.
“You won’t turn off the faucet?” Travis asked.
The dog just blinked at him, inscrutable.
He sighed and turned off the water. “All right. Okay. Be a wiseass.” He took the 
brush and shampoo out of the bag and held them toward the retriever. “Here. You 
probably don’t even need me. You can scrub yourself, I’m sure.”
The dog issued a long, drawn-out woooooof that started deep in its throat, and 
Travis had the feeling it was calling him a wiseass.
Careful now, he told himself. You’re in danger of leaping off the deep end, 
Travis. This is a damn smart dog you’ve got here, but he can’t really understand 
what you’re saying, and he can’t talk back.
The retriever submitted to its bath without protest, enjoying itself. After 
ordering the dog out of the tub and rinsing off the shampoo, Travis spent an 
hour brushing its damp coat. He pulled out burrs, bits of weeds that hadn’t 
flushed away, unsnarled the tangles. The dog never grew impatient, and by Six 
o’clock it was transformed.
Groomed, it was a handsome animal. Its coat was predominantly medium gold with 
feathering of a lighter shade on the backs of its legs, on its belly and 
buttocks, and on the underside of the tail. The undercoat was thick and soft to 
provide warmth and repel water. The outer coat was also soft but not as thick, 
and in some places these longer hairs were wavy. The tail had a
slight upward curve, giving the retriever a happy, jaunty look, which was 
emphasized by its tendency to wag continuously.
The dried blood on the ear was from a small tear already healing. The blood on 
the paws resulted not from serious injury but from a lot of running over 
difficult ground. Travis did nothing except pour boric-acid solution, a mild 
antiseptic, on these minor wounds. He was confident that the dog would 
experience only slight discomfort—or maybe none at all, for it was not 
limping—and that it would be completely well in a few days.
The retriever looked splendid now, but Travis was damp, sweaty, and stank of dog 
shampoo. He was eager to shower and change. He had also worked up an appetite.
The only task remaining was to collar the dog. But when he attempted to buckle 
the new collar in place, the retriever growled softly and backstepped out of his 
reach.
“Whoa now. It’s only a collar, boy.”
The dog stared at the loop of red leather in Travis’s hand and continued to 
growl.
“You had a bad experience with a collar, huh?”
The dog stopped growling, but it did not take a step toward him.
“Mistreated?” Travis asked. “That must be it. Maybe they choked you with a 
collar, twisted it and choked you, or maybe they put you on a short chain. 
Something like that?”
The retriever barked once, padded across the patio, and stood in the farthest 
corner, looking at the collar from a distance.
“Do you trust me?” Travis asked, remaining on his knees in an unthreatening 
posture.
The dog shifted its attention from the loop of leather to Travis, meeting his 
eyes.
“I will never mistreat you,” he said solemnly, feeling not at all foolish for 
speaking so directly and sincerely to a mere dog. “You must know that I won’t. I 
mean, you have good instincts about things like that, don’t you? Rely on your 
instincts, boy, and trust me.”
The dog returned from the far end of the patio and stopped just beyond Travis’s 
reach. It glanced once at the collar, then fixed him with that uncannily intense 
gaze. As before, he felt a degree of communion with the animal that was as 
profound as it was eerie—and as eerie as it was indescribable.
He said, “Listen, there’ll be times I’ll want to take you places where you’ll 
need a leash. Which has to be attached to a collar, doesn’t it? That’s the only 
reason I want you to wear a collar—so I can take you everywhere with me. That 
and to ward off fleas. But if you really don’t want to submit to it, I won’t 
force you.”
For a long time they faced each other as the retriever mulled over the 
situation. Travis continued to hold the collar out as if it represented a gift 
rather than a demand, and the dog continued to stare into his new master’s eyes. 
At last, the retriever shook itself, sneezed once, and slowly came forward.
“That’s a good boy,” Travis said encouragingly.
When it reached him, the dog settled on its belly, then rolled onto its back 
with all four legs in the air, making itself vulnerable. It gave him a look that 
was full of love, trust, and a little fear.
Crazily, Travis felt a lump form in his throat and was aware of hot tears 
scalding the corners of his eyes. He swallowed hard and blinked back the tears 
and told himself he was being a sentimental dope. But he knew why the dog’s 
considered submission affected him so strongly. For the first time in three 
years, Travis Cornell felt needed, felt a deep connection with another living 
creature. For the first time in three years, he had a reason to live.
He slipped the collar in place, buckled it, gently scratched and rubbed the 
retriever’s exposed belly.
“Got to have a name for you,” he said.
The dog scrambled to its feet, faced him, and pricked its ears as if waiting to 
hear what it would be called.
God in heaven, Travis thought, I’m attributing human intentions to him. He’s a 
mutt, special maybe but still only a mutt. He may look as if he’s waiting to 
hear what he’ll be called, but he sure as hell doesn’t understand English.
“Can’t think of a single name that’s fitting,” Travis said at last. “We don’t 
want to rush this. It’s got to be just the right name. You’re no ordinary dog, 
fur face. I’ve got to think on it a while until I hit the right moniker.”
Travis emptied the washtub, rinsed it out, and left it to dry. Together, he and 
the retriever went into the home they now shared.
5
Dr. Elisabeth Yarbeck and her husband Jonathan, an attorney, lived in Newport 
Beach in a sprawling, single-story, ranch-style home with a shake-shingle roof, 
cream-colored stucco walls, and a walkway of Bouquet Canyon stone. The waning 
sun radiated copper and ruby light that glinted and flashed in the beveled glass 
of the narrow leaded windows flanking the front door, giving those panes the 
look of enormous gemstones.
Elisabeth answered the door when Vince Nasco rang the bell. She was about fifty, 
trim and attractive, with shaggy silver-blond hair and blue eyes. Vince told her 
his name was John Parker, that he was with the FBI, and that he needed to speak 
with her and her husband in regards to a case currently Under investigation.
“Case?” she said. “What case?”
“It involves a government-financed research project on which you were Once 
involved,” Vince told her, for that was the opening line that he had been told 
to use.
She examined his photo ID and Bureau credentials carefully.
He was not concerned. The phony papers had been prepared by the same People who 
had hired him for this job. The forged documents had been
provided ten months ago to assist him on a hit in San Francisco, and had served 
him well on three other occasions.
Though he knew the ID would meet with her approval, he was not sure that he, 
himself, would pass inspection. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, 
blue tie, and highly polished black shoes—correct attire for an agent. His size 
and his expressionless face also served him well in the role he was playing. But 
the murder of Dr. Davis Weatherby and the prospect of two more murders within 
the next few minutes had wildly excited him, had filled him with a manic glee 
that was almost uncontainable. Laughter kept building within him, and the 
struggle to repress it grew more difficult by the minute. In the drab green Ford 
sedan, which he had stolen forty minutes ago expressly for this one job, he had 
been seized by a fit of the shakes induced not by nervousness but by intense 
pleasure of an almost sexual nature. He’d been forced to pull the car to the 
side of the road and sit for ten minutes, breathing deeply, until he had calmed 
down a bit.
Now, Elisabeth Yarbeck looked up from the forged ID, met Vince’s eyes, and 
frowned.
He risked a smile, though there was a danger of slipping into uncontrollable 
laughter that would blow his cover. He had a boyish smile that, by its marked 
contrast with his size, could be disarming.
After a moment, Dr. Yarbeck also smiled. Satisfied, she returned his credentials 
and welcomed him into her house.
“I’ll need to speak with your husband, too,” Vince reminded her as she closed 
the front door behind them.
“He’s in the living room, Mr. Parker. This way, please.”
The living room was large and airy. Cream-colored walls and carpet. Pale-green 
sofas. Big plate-glass windows, partly shielded by green awnings, provided views 
of the meticulously landscaped property and of houses on the hills below.
Jonathan Yarbeck was stuffing handfuls of wood chips in among the logs that he’d 
piled in the brick fireplace, getting ready to light a fire. He stood up, 
dusting his hands together, as his wife introduced Vince. “. . . John Parker of 
the FBI.”
“FBI?” Yarbeck said, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.
“Mr. Yarbeck,” Vince said, “if there are other members of the family at home, 
I’d also like to speak with them now, so I don’t have to repeat myself.”
Shaking his head, Yarbeck said, “There’s just Liz and me. Kids are away at 
college. What’s this all about?”
Vince drew the silencer-equipped pistol from inside his suit jacket and shot 
Jonathan Yarbeck in the chest. The attorney was flung backward against the 
mantel, where he hung for a moment as if nailed in place, then fell atop the 
brass fireplace tools.
Sssssnap.
Elisabeth Yarbeck was briefly frozen by astonishment and horror. Vince quickly 
moved on her. He grabbed her left arm and twisted it up behind her
back, hard. When she cried out in pain, he put the pistol against the side of 
her head and said, “Be quiet, or I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out.”
He forced her to accompany him across the room to her husband’s body. Jonathan 
Yarbeck was face-down on top of a small brass coal shovel and a brass-handled 
poker. He was dead. But Vince did not want to take chances. He shot Yarbeck 
twice in the back of the head at close range.
A strange, thin, catlike sound escaped Liz Yarbeck—then she began to sob.
Because of the distance and the smoky tint on the glass, Vince did not believe 
even the neighbors could see through the big windows, but he wanted to deal with 
the woman in a more private place. He forced her into the hall and headed deeper 
into the house, looking in doors as they went until he found the master bedroom. 
There, he gave her a hard shove, and she sprawled on the floor.
“Stay put,” he said.
He switched on the bedside lamps. He went to the big sliding-glass doors that 
opened onto the patio and began to close the drapes.
The moment his back was turned, the woman scrambled to her feet and ran toward 
the hall door.
He caught her, slammed her up against the wall, drove a fist into her stomach, 
knocking the wind out of her, then threw her to the floor again. Lifting her 
head by a handful of hair, he forced her to look him in the eyes. “Listen, lady, 
I’m not going to shoot you. I came here to get your husband. Just your husband. 
But if you try to slip away from me before I’m ready to let you go, I’ll have to 
waste you, too. Understand?”
He was lying, of course. She was the one he was being paid to hit, and the 
husband had to be removed simply because he was there. However, it was true that 
Vince was not going to shoot her. He wanted her to be cooperative until he could 
tie her up and deal with her at a more leisurely pace. The two shootings had 
been satisfying, but he wanted to draw this one out, kill her more slowly. 
Sometimes, death could be savored like good food, fine wine, and glorious 
sunsets.
Gasping for breath, sobbing, she said, “Who are you?”
“None of your business.”
“What do you want?”
“Just shut up, cooperate, and you’ll get out of this alive.”
She was reduced to urgent prayer, running the words together and sometimes 
punctuating them with small desperate wordless sounds.
Vince finished closing the drapes.
He tore the phone out of the wall and pitched it across the room.
Taking the woman by the arm again, he pulled her to her feet and dragged her 
into the bathroom. He searched through drawers until he found first-aid 
Supplies; the adhesive tape was just what he needed.
In the bedroom once more, he made her lie on her back on the bed. He Used the 
tape to bind her ankles together and to secure her wrists in front of
her. From a bureau drawer, he got a pair of her flimsy panties, which he wadded 
up and stuffed into her mouth. He sealed her mouth shut with a final strip of 
tape.
She was shaking violently, blinking through tears and sweat.
He left the bedroom, went to the living room, and knelt beside Jonathan
Yarbeck’s corpse, with which he had unfinished business. He turned it over.
One of the bullets that had entered the back of Yarbeck’s head had punched
out through his throat, just under his chin. His open mouth was full of blood.
One eye was rolled back in his skull, so only the white showed.
Vince looked into the other eye. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, reverently. 
“Thank you, Mr. Yarbeck.”
He closed both eyelids. He kissed them.
“Thank you.”
He kissed the dead man’s forehead.
“Thank you for what you’ve given me.”
Then he went into the garage, where he searched through cabinets until he found 
some tools. He selected a hammer with a comfortable rubberized handle and a 
polished steel head.
When he returned to the quiet bedroom and put the hammer on the mattress beside 
the bound woman, her eyes widened almost comically.
She began to twist and squirm, tried to wrench her hands loose of the looped 
adhesive tape, to no avail.
Vince stripped out of his clothes.
Seeing the woman’s eyes fix on him with the same terror with which she had 
regarded the hammer, he said, “No, please, don’t worry, Dr. Yarbeck. I’m not 
going to molest you.” He hung his suit jacket and shirt on the back of a chair. 
“I have no sexual interest in you.” He slipped out of his shoes, socks, and 
trousers. “You won’t have to suffer that humiliation. I’m not that sort of man. 
I’m just removing my clothes to avoid getting blood all over them.”
Naked, he picked up the hammer and swung it at her left leg, shattering her 
knee. Perhaps fifty or sixty hammer strikes after he began, The Moment arrived.
Sssssnap.
Sudden energy blasted through him. He felt inhumanly alert, acutely sensitive of 
the color and texture of everything around him. And he felt far stronger than 
ever before in his life, like a god in a man’s body.
He dropped the hammer and fell to his bare knees beside the bed. He put his 
forehead on the bloodied bedspread and took deep breaths, shuddering with 
pleasure so intense it could almost not be borne.
A couple of minutes later, when he had recovered, when he had adjusted to his 
new and more powerful condition, he got up, turned to the dead woman, and 
bestowed kisses on her battered face, plus one in the palm of each of her hands.
“Thank you.”
He was so deeply moved by the sacrifice she had made for him that he
thought he might weep. But his joy at his own good fortune was greater than his 
pity for her, and the tears would not flow.
In the bathroom he took a quick shower. As the hot water sluiced the soap from 
him, he thought about how lucky he was to have found a way to make murder his 
business, to be paid for what he would have done anyway, without remuneration.
When he had dressed again, he used a towel to wipe off the few things he had 
touched since entering the house. He always remembered every move he’d made, and 
he never worried about missing an object in the wipe-down and leaving a stray 
fingerprint. His perfect memory was just another part of his Gift.
When he let himself out of the house, he discovered that night had fallen.
 
 
THREE
1
Throughout the early part of the evening, the retriever exhibited none of the 
remarkable behavior that had stirred Travis’s imagination. He kept a watch on 
the dog, sometimes directly, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, but he saw 
nothing that engaged his curiosity.
He made a dinner of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches for himself, and he 
opened a can of Alpo for the retriever. It liked the Alpo well enough, consuming 
the stuff in great gulps, but it clearly preferred his food. It sat on the 
kitchen floor beside his chair, looking at him forlornly as he ate two 
sandwiches at the red Formica-topped table. At last he gave it two strips of 
bacon.
Nothing about its doggy begging was extraordinary. It performed no startling 
tricks. It merely licked its chops, whined now and then, and repeatedly employed 
a limited repertoire of sorrowful expressions designed to elicit pity and 
compassion. Any mutt would have tried to cadge a treat in the same fashion.
Later, in the living room, Travis switched on the television, and the dog curled 
up on the couch beside him. After a while it put its head on his thigh, wanting 
to be petted and scratched behind the ears, and he obliged. The dog glanced 
occasionally at the television but had no great interest in the programs.
Travis was not interested in TV, either. He was intrigued only by the dog. He 
wanted to study it and encourage it to perform more tricks. Although he tried to 
think of ways to elicit displays of its astonishing intelligence, he could come 
up with no tests that would reliably gauge the animal’s mental capacity.
Besides, Travis had a hunch that the dog would not cooperate in a test. Most of 
the time it seemed instinctively to conceal its cleverness. He recalled its 
witlessness and comical clumsiness in pursuit of the butterfly, then contrasted 
that behavior with the wit and agility required to turn on the patio water 
faucet: those actions appeared to be the work of two different animals. Though 
it was a crazy idea, Travis suspected that the retriever did not wish to draw 
attention to itself and that it revealed its uncanny intelligence only in times 
of crisis (as in the woods), or if it was very hungry (as when it had opened the 
glove compartment in the truck to obtain the candy bar), or if no one was 
watching (as when it had turned on the water faucet).
This was a preposterous idea because it suggested that the dog was not
only highly intelligent for one of its species but was aware of the 
extraordinary nature of its own abilities. Dogs—all animals, in fact—simply did 
not possess the high degree of self awareness required to analyze themselves in 
comparison to others of their kind. Comparative analysis was strictly a human 
quality. If a dog was especially bright and capable of many tricks, it would 
still not be aware it was different from most of its kind. To assume this dog 
was, in fact, aware of such things was to credit it not only with remarkable 
intelligence but with a capacity for reason and logic, and with a facility for 
rational judgment superior to the instinct that ruled the decisions of all other 
animals.
“You,” Travis told the retriever, gently stroking its head, “are an enigma 
wrapped in a mystery. Either that, or I’m a candidate for a rubber room.”
The dog looked at him in response to his voice, gazed into his eyes for a 
moment, yawned—and suddenly jerked its head up and stared beyond him at the 
bookshelves that flanked the archway between the living and dining rooms. The 
satisfied, dopey, doggy expression on its face had vanished, replaced by the 
keen interest Travis had seen before, which transcended ordinary canine 
alertness.
Scrambling off the sofa, the retriever dashed to the bookshelves. It ran back 
and forth beneath them, looking up at the colorful spines of the neatly arranged 
volumes.
The rental house came fully—if unimaginatively and cheaply—furnished, with 
upholstery chosen for durability (vinyl) or for the ability to conceal 
ineradicable stains (eye-searing plaids). Instead of wood, there was lots of 
wood-finish Formica that was resistant to chipping, scratching, abrasion, and 
cigarette burns. Virtually the only things in the place reflecting Travis 
Cornell’s own tastes and interests were the books—both paperbacks and 
hardcovers— that filled the shelves in the living room.
The dog appeared to be intensely curious about at least some of those few 
hundred volumes.
Getting to his feet, Travis said, “What is it, boy? What’s got your tail in an 
uproar?”
The retriever jumped onto its hind feet, put its forepaws on one of the shelves, 
and sniffed the spines of the books. It glanced at Travis, then returned to its 
eager examination of his library.
He went to the shelf in question, withdrew one of the volumes to which the dog 
had pressed its nose— Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson— and held it 
out. “This? You’re interested in this?”
The dog studied the painting of Long John Silver and a pirate ship that adorned 
the dust jacket. It looked up at Travis, then down at Long John Silver again. 
After a moment, it dropped back from the shelf, onto the floor, dashed to the 
shelves on the other side of the archway, leaped up again, and began sniffing 
other books.
Travis replaced Treasure Island and followed the retriever. It was now applying 
its damp nose to his collection of Charles Dickens’s novels. Travis Picked up a 
paperback of A Tale of Two Cities.
Again, the retriever carefully studied the cover illustration as if actually 
trying to determine what the book was about, then looked up expectantly at 
Travis.
Utterly baffled, he said, “The French Revolution. Guillotines. Beheadings. 
Tragedy and heroism. It’s . . . uh . . . well, it’s all about the importance of 
valuing individuals over groups, about the need to place a far greater value on 
one man’s or woman’s life than on the advancement of the masses.”
The dog returned its attention to the tomes shelved in front of it, sniffing, 
sniffing.
“This is nuts,” Travis said, putting A Tale of Two Cities back where he’d gotten 
it. “I’m giving plot synopses to a dog, for God’s sake!”
Dropping its big forepaws down to the next shelf, the retriever panted and 
snuffled over the literature on that row. When Travis did not pull any of those 
books out for inspection, the dog tilted its head to get into the shelf, gently 
gripped a volume in its teeth, and tried to withdraw it for further examination.
“Whoa,” Travis said, reaching for the book. “Keep your slobber off the fine 
bindings, fur face. This one’s Oliver Twist. Another Dickens. The story of an 
orphan in Victorian England. He gets involved with shady characters, the 
criminal underworld, and they—”
The retriever dropped to the floor and padded back to the shelves on the other 
side of the archway, where it continued to sniff at those volumes within its 
reach. Travis could have sworn it even gazed up wistfully at the books that were 
above its head.
For perhaps five minutes, in the grip of an eerie premonition that something of 
tremendous importance was about to happen, Travis followed the dog, showing it 
the covers of a dozen novels, providing a line or two of plot description of 
each story. He had no idea if that was what the precocious pooch wanted him to 
do. Surely, it could not understand the synopses he provided. Yet it seemed to 
listen raptly as he spoke. He knew he must be misinterpreting essentially 
meaningless animal behavior, attributing complex intentions to the dog when it 
had none. Still, a premonitory tingle coursed along the back of his neck. As 
their peculiar search continued, Travis half-expected some startling revelation 
at any moment—and at the same time felt increasingly gullible and foolish.
His taste in fiction was eclectic. Among the volumes he took off the shelves 
were Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. 
Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Two 
books by Richard Condon and one by Anne
Tyler. Dorothy Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise and Elmore Leonard’s 52 Pick- Up.
At last the dog turned away from the books and went to the middle of the room, 
where it padded back and forth, back and forth, clearly agitated. It stopped, 
confronted Travis, and barked three times.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
The dog whined, looked at the laden shelves, walked in a circle, and peered up 
at the books again. It seemed frustrated. Thoroughly, maddeningly frustrated.
“I don’t know what more to do, boy,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re after, 
what you’re trying to tell me.”
The dog snorted and shook itself. Lowering its head in defeat, it returned 
resignedly to the sofa and curled up on the cushions.
“That’s all?” Travis asked. “We’re just giving up?”
Putting its head down on the sofa, it regarded him with moist soulful eyes. 
Travis turned from the dog and let his gaze travel slowly over the books, as if 
they not only offered the information printed on their pages but also contained 
an important message that could not be as easily read, as if their colorful 
Spines were the strange runes of a long-lost language and, once deciphered, 
would reveal wondrous secrets. But he could not decipher them.
Having believed that he was on the trembling edge of some great revelation, 
Travis felt enormously let down. His own frustration was considerably worse than 
what the dog had exhibited, and he could not merely curl up on the sofa, put his 
head down, and forget the whole thing as the retriever had done.
“What the hell was that all about?” he demanded.
The dog looked up at him, inscrutable.
“Was there any point to all of that stuff with the books?”
The dog stared.
“Is there something special about you—or have I popped the pull-tab on my brain 
and emptied it?”
The dog was perfectly limp and still, as if it might close its eyes at any 
moment and doze off.
“If you yawn at me, damn you, I’ll kick your butt.”
The dog yawned.
“Bastard,” Travis said.
It yawned again.
“Now there. What does that mean? Are you yawning on purpose because of what I 
said, because you’re playing with me? Or are you just yawning? How am Ito 
interpret anything you do? How am Ito know whether any of it has meaning?”
The dog sighed.
With a sigh of his own, Travis went to one of the front windows and stared out 
at the night, where the feathery fronds of the large Canary Island date palm 
were backlit by the vaguely yellow glow of the sodium-vapor streetlamps. He 
heard the dog get off the sofa and hurry out of the room, but he refused to 
inquire into its activities. For the moment, he could not handle more 
frustration.
The retriever was making noise in the kitchen. A clink. A soft clatter. Travis 
figured it was drinking from its bowl.
Seconds later, he heard it returning. It came to his side and rubbed against his 
leg.
He glanced down and, to his surprise, saw the retriever was holding a can of 
beer in its teeth. Coors. He took the proffered can and discovered it was cold.
“You got this from the refrigerator!”
The dog appeared to be grinning.
 
 
2
When Nora Devon was in the kitchen making dinner, the phone rang again. She 
prayed it would not be him.
But it was. “I know what you need,” Streck said. “I know what you need.” I'm not 
even pretty, she wanted to say. I’m a plain, dumpy old maid, so what do you want 
with me? I’m safe from the likes of you because I’m not pretty. Are you blind? 
But she could say nothing.
“Do you know what you need?” he asked.
Finding her voice at last, she said, “Go away.”
“I know what you need. You might not know, but I do.”
This time she hung up first, slamming the handset down so hard that it must have 
hurt his ear.
Later, at eight-thirty, the phone rang again. She was sitting in bed, reading 
Great Expectations and eating ice cream. She was so startled by the first ring 
that the spoon popped out of her hand into the dish, and she nearly spilled the 
dessert.
Putting the dish and the book aside, she stared anxiously at the telephone, 
which stood on the nightstand. She let it ring ten times. Fifteen. Twenty. The 
strident sound of the bell filled the room, echoing off the walls, until each 
ring seemed to drill into her skull.
Eventually she realized she would be making a big mistake if she did not answer. 
He’d know she was here and was too frightened to pick up the receiver, which 
would please him. More than anything, he desired domination. Perversely, her 
timid withdrawal would encourage him. Nora had no experience at confrontation, 
but she saw that she was going to have to learn to stand up for herself—and 
fast.
She lifted the receiver on the thirty-first ring.
Streck said, “I can’t get you out of my mind.”
Nora did not reply.
Streck said, “You have beautiful hair. So dark. Almost black. Thick and glossy. 
I want to run my hands through your hair.”
She had to say something to put him in his place—or hang up. But she could not 
bring herself to do either.
“I’ve never seen eyes like yours,” Streck said, breathing hard. “Gray but not 
like other gray eyes. Deep, warm, sexy eyes.”
Nora was speechless, paralyzed.
“You’re very pretty, Nora Devon. Very pretty. And I know what you need.
I do. I really do, Nora. I know what you need, and I’m going to give it to 
you.,,
Her paralysis was shattered by a fit of the shakes. She dropped the phone into 
its cradle. Bending forward in bed, she felt as if she were shaking herself to 
pieces before the tremors slowly subsided.
She did not own a gun.
She felt small, fragile, and terribly alone.
She wondered if she should call the police. But what would she tell them? That 
she was the object of sexual harassment? They’d get a big laugh out of that. 
Her? A sex object? She was an old maid, as plain as mud, not remotely the type 
to turn a man’s head and give him erotic dreams. The police would suppose that 
she either was making it up or was hysterical. Or they would assume she had 
misinterpreted Streck’s politeness as sexual interest, which is what even she 
had thought at first.
She pulled a blue robe on over the roomy men’s pajamas that she wore, belted it. 
Barefoot, she hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where she hesitantly withdrew a 
butcher’s knife from the rack near the stove. Light trickled like a thin stream 
of quicksilver along the well-honed cutting edge.
As she turned the gleaming knife in her hand, she saw her eyes reflected in the 
broad, flat blade. She stared at herself in the polished steel, wondering if she 
could possibly use such a horrible weapon against another human being even in 
self-defense.
She hoped she would never have to find out.
Upstairs again, she put the butcher’s knife on the nightstand, within easy 
reach.
She took off her robe and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging herself and trying 
to stop shaking.
“Why me?” she said aloud. “Why does he want to pick on me?”
Streck said that she was pretty, but Nora knew it was not true. Her own mother 
had abandoned her to Aunt Violet and had returned only twice in twenty-eight 
years, the last time when Nora was six. Her father remained unknown to her, and 
no other Devon relatives were willing to take her in, a situation which Violet 
frankly attributed to Nora’s uncomely appearance. So although Streck said she 
was pretty, it could not possibly be her that he wanted. No, what he wanted was 
the thrill of scaring and dominating and hurting her. There were such people. 
She read about them in books, newspapers. And Aunt Violet had warned her a 
thousand times that if a man ever came on to her with sweet talk and smiles, he 
would only want to lift her up so he could later cast her down from a greater 
height and hurt her all the Worse.
After a while, the worst of the tremors passed. Nora got into bed again. Her 
remaining ice cream had melted, so she put the dish aside, on the nightstand. 
She picked up the novel by Dickens and tried to involve herself once more with 
Pip’s tale. But her attention repeatedly strayed to the phone, to the butcher’s 
knife—and to the open door and the second-floor hail beyond, Where she kept 
imagining she saw movement.
3
 
Travis went into the kitchen, and the dog followed him.
He pointed to the refrigerator and said, “Show me. Do it again. Get me a beer. 
Show me how you did it.”
The dog did not move.
Travis squatted. “Listen, fur face, who got you out of those woods, away from 
whatever was chasing you? I did. And who bought hamburgers for you? I did. I 
bathed you, fed you, gave you a home. Now you owe me. Stop being coy. If you can 
open that thing, do it!”
The dog went to the aging Frigidaire, lowered its head to the bottom corner of 
the enamel-coated door, gripped the edge in its jaws, and pulled backward, 
straining with its entire body. The rubber seal let loose with a barely audible 
sucking sound. The door swung open. The dog quickly insinuated itself into the 
gap, then jumped up and braced itself with a forepaw on each side of the storage 
compartment.
“I’ll be damned,” Travis said, moving closer.
The retriever peered into the second shelf, where Travis had stored cans of 
beer, Diet Pepsi, and V-8 vegetable juice. It plucked another Coors from the 
supply, dropped to the floor, and let the refrigerator door slip shut again as 
it came to Travis.
He took the beer from it. Standing with a Coors in each hand, studying the dog, 
he said, more to himself than to the animal, “Okay, so somebody could have 
taught you to open a refrigerator door. And he could even have taught you how to 
recognize a certain brand of beer, how to distinguish it from other cans, and 
how to carry it to him. But we still have some mysteries here. Is it likely that 
the brand you were taught to recognize would be the same one I’d have in my 
refrigerator? Possible, yes, but not likely. Besides, I didn’t give you any 
command. I didn’t ask you to get me a beer. You did it on your own hook, as if 
you figured a beer was exactly what I needed at the moment. And it was.”
Travis put one can down on the table. He wiped the other on his shirt, popped it 
open, and took a few swallows. He was not concerned that the can had been in the 
dog’s mouth. He was too excited by the animal’s amazing performance to worry 
about germs. Besides, it had held each can by the bottom, as if concerned about 
hygiene.
The retriever watched him drink.
When he had finished a third of the beer, Travis said, “It was almost as if you 
understood that I was tense, upset—and that a beer would help relax me. Now, is 
that crazy or what? We’re talking analytical reasoning. Okay, so pets can sense 
their masters’ moods a lot of the time. But how many pets know what beer is, and 
how many realize what it can do to make the master more mellow? Anyway, how’d 
you know there was beer in the fridge? I guess you could’ve seen it sometime 
during the evening when I was fixing dinner, but still . .
His hands were shaking. He drank more of the beer, and the can rattled lightly 
against his teeth.
The dog went around the red Formica table to the twin cabinet doors below the 
sink. It opened one of these, stuck its head into the dark space, and pulled out 
the bag of Milk-Bone biscuits, which it brought straight to Travis.
He laughed and said, “Well, if I can have a beer, I guess you deserve a treat of 
your own, huh?” He took the bag from the dog and tore it open. “Do a few 
Milk-Bones mellow you out, fur face?” He put the open bag on the floor. “Serve 
yourself. I trust you not to overindulge like an ordinary dog.” He laughed 
again. “Hell, I think I might trust you to drive the car!”
The retriever finessed a biscuit out of the package, sat down with its hind legs 
splayed, and happily crunched up the treat.
Pulling out a chair and sitting at the table, Travis said, “You give me reason 
to believe in miracles. Do you know what I was doing in those woods this 
morning?”
Working its jaws, industriously grinding up the biscuit, the dog seemed to have 
lost interest in Travis for the moment.
“I went out there on a sentimental journey, hoping to recall the pleasure
I got from the Santa Anas when I was a boy, in the days before . . . everything
turned so dark. I wanted to kill a few snakes like I did when I was a kid,
hike and explore and feel in tune with life like in the old days. Because for
a long time now, I haven’t cared whether I live or die.”
The dog stopped chewing, swallowed hard, and focused on Travis with undivided 
attention.
“Lately, my depressions have been blacker than midnight on the moon. Do you 
understand about depression, pooch?”
Leaving the Milk-Bone biscuits behind, the retriever got up and came to him. It 
gazed into his eyes with that unnerving directness and intensity that it had 
shown before.
Meeting its stare, he said, “Wouldn’t consider suicide, though. For one thing, I 
was raised a Catholic, and though I haven’t gone to Mass in ages, I still sort 
of believe. And for a Catholic, suicide is a mortal sin. Murder. Besides, I’m 
too mean and too stubborn to give up, no matter how dark things get.”
The retriever blinked but did not break eye contact.
“I was in those woods searching for the happiness I once knew. And then I ran 
into you.”
“Woof,” it said, as if it were saying, Good.
He took its head in both his hands, lowered his face to it, and said, 
“Depression. A feeling that existence was pointless. How would a dog know about
those things, hmmm? A dog has no worries, does it? To a dog, every day is a joy. 
So do you really understand what I’m talking about, boy? Honest to God, I think 
maybe you do. But am I crediting you with too much intelligence, too much wisdom 
even for a magical dog? Huh? Sure, you can do some amazing tricks, but that’s 
not the same as understanding me.”
The retriever pulled away from him and returned to the Milk-Bone package. It 
took the bag in its teeth and shook out twenty or thirty biscuits onto the 
linoleum.
“There you go again,” Travis said. “One minute, you seem half human— and the 
next minute you’re just a dog with a dog’s interests.”
However, the retriever was not seeking a snack. It began to push the biscuits 
around with the black tip of its snout, maneuvering them into the open center of 
the kitchen floor one at a time, ordering them neatly end to end.
“What the hell is this?”
The dog had five biscuits arranged in a row that gradually curved to the right, 
it pushed a sixth into place, emphasizing the curve.
As he watched, Travis hastily finished his first beer and opened the second. He 
had a feeling he was going to need it.
The dog studied the row of biscuits for a moment, as if not quite sure what it 
had begun to do. It padded back and forth a few times, clearly uncertain, but 
eventually nudged two more biscuits into line. It looked at Travis, then at the 
shape it was creating on the floor, then nosed a ninth biscuit into place.
Travis sipped some beer and waited tensely to see what would happen next. With a 
shake of its head and a snort of frustration, the dog went to the far end of the 
room and stood facing into the corner, its head hung low. Travis wondered what 
it was doing, and then somehow he got the idea that it had gone into the corner 
in order to concentrate. After a while, it returned and pushed the tenth and 
eleventh Milk-Bones into place, enlarging the pattern.
He was stricken again by the premonition that something of great importance was 
about to happen. Gooseflesh dimpled his arms.
This time he was not disappointed. The golden retriever used nineteen biscuits 
to form a crude but recognizable question mark on the kitchen floor, then raised 
its expressive eyes to Travis.
A question mark.
Meaning: Why? Why have you been so depressed? Why do you feel life is pointless, 
empty?
The dog apparently understood what he had told it. All right, okay, so maybe it 
didn’t understand language exactly, didn’t follow every word that he spoke, but 
it somehow perceived the meaning of what he was saying, or at least enough of 
the meaning to arouse its interest and curiosity.
And, by God, if it also understood the purpose of a question mark, then it was 
capable of abstract thinking! The very concept of simple symbols— like 
alphabets, numbers, question marks, and exclamation points—serving as shorthand 
for communicating complex ideas . . . well, that required abstract thinking. And 
abstract thinking was reserved for only one species on earth: humankind. This 
golden retriever was demonstrably not human, but somehow it had come into 
possession of intellectual skills that no other animal could claim.
Travis was stunned. But there was nothing accidental about the question mark. 
Crude but not accidental. Somewhere, the dog must have seen the
symbol and been taught its meaning. Statistical theorists said an infinite 
number of monkeys, equipped with an infinite number of typewriters, would 
eventually be able to recreate every line of great English prose merely by 
random chance. He figured that this dog forming a Milk-Bone question mark in 
about two minutes flat, merely by purest chance, was about ten times as unlikely 
as all those damn monkeys recreating Shakespeare’s plays.
The dog was watching him expectantly.
Getting up, he found he was a bit shaky in the legs. He went to the carefully 
arranged biscuits, scattered them across the floor, and returned to his chair.
The retriever studied the disarranged Milk-Bones, regarded Travis inquiringly, 
sniffed at the biscuits again, and seemed baffled.
Travis waited.
The house was unnaturally quiet, as if the flow of time had been suspended for 
every living creature, machine, and object on earth—though not for him, the 
retriever, or the contents of the kitchen.
At last, the dog began to push the biscuits around with its nose as it had done 
before. In a minute or two, it formed a question mark.
Travis chugged some Coors. His heart was hammering. His palms were sweaty. He 
was filled with both wonder and trepidation, with both wild joy and fear of the 
unknown, simultaneously awestricken and bewildered. He wanted to laugh because 
he had never seen anything half as delightful as this dog. He also wanted to cry 
because only hours ago he’d thought life was bleak, dark, and pointless. But no 
matter how painful it was sometimes, life was (he now realized) nonetheless 
precious. He actually felt as if God had sent the retriever to intrigue him, to 
remind him that the world was full of surprises and that despair made no sense 
when one had no understanding of the purpose—and strange possibilities—of 
existence. Travis wanted to laugh, but his laughter teetered on the brink of a 
sob. Yet when he surrendered to the sob, it became a laugh. When he attempted to 
stand, he knew that he was even shakier than before, too shaky, so he did the 
only thing he could do: he stayed in his chair and took another long swallow of 
Coors.
Cocking its head one way and then the other, looking slightly wary, the dog 
watched him as if it thought he had gone mad. He had. Months ago. But he was all 
better now.
He put down the Coors and wiped tears out of his eyes with the backs of his 
hands. He said, “Come here, fur face.”
The retriever hesitated, then came to him.
He ruffled and stroked its coat, scratched behind its ears. “You amaze me and 
scare me. I can’t figure where you came from or how you got to be what you are, 
but you couldn’t have come where you’re more needed. A question mark, huh? 
Jesus. All right. You want to know why I felt life had no purpose or joy for me? 
I’ll tell you. I will, by God, I’ll sit right here and have another beer and 
tell it to a dog. But first . . . I’m going to name you.”
The retriever blew air out of its nostrils, as if to say, Well, it’s about time.
Holding the dog’s head, looking straight into its eyes, Travis said, “Einstein. 
From now on, fur face, your name is Einstein.”
4
 
Streck called again at ten minutes past nine.
Nora snatched up the phone on the first ring, fiercely determined to tell him 
off and make him leave her alone. But for some reason she clenched up again and 
was unable to speak.
In a repulsively intimate tone of voice, he said, “You miss me, prettiness? 
Hmmmm? Do you wish I’d come to you, be a man for you?”
She hung up.
What’s wrong with me? she wondered. Why can’t I tell him to go away and stop 
bothering me?
Maybe her speechlessness grew from a secret desire to hear a man—any man, even a 
disgusting specimen like Streck—call her pretty. Although he was not the kind 
who would be capable of tenderness or affection, she could listen to him and 
imagine what it would be like to have a good man say sweet things to her.
“Well, you’re not pretty,” she told herself, “and you never ever will be, so 
stop mooning around. Next time he calls, tell him off.”
She got out of bed and went down the hall to the bathroom, where there was a 
mirror. Following Violet Devon’s example, Nora did not have mirrors anywhere in 
the house except the bathrooms. She did not like to look at herself because what 
she saw was saddening.
This one night, however, she wanted to take a look at herself because Streck’s 
flattery, though cold and calculated, had stirred her curiosity. Not that she 
hoped to see some fine quality that she had never seen before. No. From duckling 
to swan overnight . . . that was a frivolous, hopeless dream. Rather, she wanted 
to confirm that she was undesirable. Streck’s unwanted interest rattled Nora 
because she was comfortable in her homeliness and solitude, and she wanted to 
reassure herself that he was mocking her, that he would not act upon his 
threats, that her peaceful solitude would endure. Or so she told herself as she 
stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light.
The narrow chamber had pale-blue tile from floor to ceiling with a white-tile 
border. A huge claw-foot tub. White porcelain and brass fixtures. The large 
mirror was somewhat streaked with age.
She looked at her hair, which Streck said was beautiful, dark, glossy. But it 
was of one shade, without natural highlights; to her, it wasn’t glossy but oily, 
although she had washed it that morning.
She looked quickly at her brow, cheekbones, nose, jaw line, lips, and chin. She 
tentatively traced her features with one hand, but she saw nothing to intrigue a 
man.
M last, reluctantly, she stared into her eyes, which Streck had called lovely. 
They were a dreary, lusterless shade of gray. She could not bear to meet her own 
gaze for more than a few seconds. Her eyes confirmed her low opinion of her 
appearance. But also . . . well, in her own eyes she saw a smoldering anger that 
disturbed her, that was not like her, an anger at what she had let
herself become. Of course, that made no sense whatsoever because she was what 
nature had made her—a mouse—and she could do nothing about that.
Turning from the mottled mirror, she felt a pang of disappointment that her 
self-inspection had not resulted in a single surprise or reevaluation. 
Immediately, however, she was shocked and appalled by that disappointment. She 
stood in the bathroom doorway, shaking her head, amazed by her own befuddled 
thought processes.
Did she want to be appealing to Streck? Of course not. He was weird, sick, 
dangerous. The very last thing she wanted was to appeal to him. Maybe she 
wouldn’t mind if another man looked on her with favor, but not Streck. She 
should get on her knees and thank God for creating her as she was, because if 
she were at all attractive, Streck would make good on his threats. He’d come 
here, and he’d rape her . . . maybe murder her. Who knew about a man like that? 
Who knew what his limits were? She wasn’t being a nervous old maid when she 
worried about murder, not these days: the newspapers were full of it.
She realized that she was defenseless, and she hurried back to the bedroom, 
where she had left the butcher’s knife.
 
 
5
Most people believe psychoanalysis is a cure for unhappiness. They are sure they 
could overcome all their problems and achieve peace of mind if only they could 
understand their own psychology, understand the reasons for their negative moods 
and self-destructive behavior. But Travis had learned this was not the case. For 
years, he engaged in unsparing self-analysis, and long ago he figured out why he 
had become a loner who was unable to make friends. However, in spite of that 
understanding, he had not been able to change.
Now, as midnight approached, he sat in the kitchen, drank another Coors, and 
told Einstein about his self-imposed emotional isolation. Einstein sat before 
him, unmoving, never yawning, as if intently interested in his tale.
“I was a loner as a kid, right from the start, though I wasn’t entirely without 
friends. It was just that I always preferred my own company. I guess it’s my 
nature. I mean, when I was a kid, I hadn’t yet decided that my being friends 
with someone was a danger to him.”
Travis’s mother had died giving birth to him, and he knew all about that from an 
early age. In time her death would seem like an omen of what was to come, and it 
would take on a terrible importance, but that was later. As a kid, he wasn’t yet 
burdened with guilt.
Not until he was ten. That was when his brother Harry died. Harry was twelve, 
two years older than Travis. One Monday morning in June, Harry talked Travis 
into walking three blocks to the beach, although their father had expressly 
forbidden them to go swimming without him. It was a private
cove without a public lifeguard, and they were the only two swimmers in sight.
“Harry got caught in an undertow,” Travis told Einstein. “We were in the water 
together no more than ten feet apart, and the damn undertow got him, sucked him 
away, but it didn’t get me. I even went after him, tried to save him, so I 
should’ve swum straight into the same current, but I guess it changed course 
just after it snatched Harry away, ‘cause I came out of the water alive.” He 
stared at the top of the kitchen table for a long moment, seeing not the red 
Formica but the rolling, treacherous, blue-green sea. “I loved my big brother 
more than anyone in the world.”
Einstein whined softly, as in commiseration.
“Nobody blamed me for what happened to Harry. He was the older one. He was 
supposed to be the most responsible. But I felt . . . well, if the undertow took 
Harry, it should’ve taken me, too.”
A night wind blew in from the west, rattled a loose windowpane.
After taking a swallow of beer, Travis said, “The summer I was fourteen, I 
wanted very badly to go to tennis camp. Tennis was my big enthusiasm then. So my 
dad enrolled me in a place down near San Diego, a full month of intense 
instruction. He drove me there on a Sunday, but we never made it. Just north of 
Oceanside, a trucker fell asleep at the wheel, his rig jumped the median, and we 
were wiped. Dad was killed instantly. Broken neck, broken back, skull crushed, 
chest caved in. I was in the front seat beside him, and I came out of it with a 
few cuts, bruises, and two broken fingers.”
The dog was studying him intently.
“It was just like with Harry. Both of us should have died, my father and me, but 
I escaped. And we wouldn’t have been making the damn drive if I hadn’t agitated 
like hell about tennis camp. So this time, there was no getting around it. Maybe 
I couldn’t be blamed for my mother dying in childbirth, and maybe I couldn’t be 
pinned with Harry’s death, but this one . . . Anyway, although I wasn’t always 
at fault, it began to be clear that I was jinxed, that it wasn’t safe for people 
to get too close to me. When I loved somebody, really loved them, they were sure 
as shit going to die.”
Only a child could have been convinced that those tragic events meant he was a 
walking curse, but Travis was a child then, only fourteen, and no other 
explanation was so neat. He was too young to understand that the mindless 
violence of nature and fate often had no meaning that could be ascertained. At 
fourteen, he needed meaning in order to cope, so he told himself that he was 
cursed, that if he made any close friends he would be sentencing them to early 
death. Being somewhat of an introvert to begin with, he found it almost too easy 
to turn inward and make do with his own company.
By the time he graduated from college at the age of twenty-one, he was a 
confirmed loner, though maturity had given him a healthier perspective On the 
deaths of his mother, brother, and father. He no longer consciously thought of 
himself as jinxed, no longer blamed himself for what had happened to his family. 
He remained an introvert, without close friends, partly because he had lost the 
ability to form and nurture intimate relationships and partly
because he figured he could not be shattered by grief if he had no friends to 
lose.
“Habit and self-defense kept me emotionally isolated,” he told Einstein.
The dog rose and crossed the few feet of kitchen floor that separated them. It 
insinuated itself between his legs and put its head in his lap.
Petting Einstein, Travis said, “Had no idea what I wanted to do after college, 
and there was a military draft then, so I joined up before they could call me. 
Chose the army. Special Forces. Liked it. Maybe because . . . well, there was a 
sense of camaraderie, and I was forced to make friends. See, I pretended not to 
want close ties with anyone, but I must have because I put myself in a situation 
where it was inevitable. Decided to make a career out of the service. When Delta 
Force—the antiterrorist group—was formed, that’s where I finally landed. The 
guys in Delta were tight, real buddies. They called me ‘The Mute’ and ‘Harpo’ 
because I wasn’t a talker, but in spite of myself I made friends. Then, on our 
eleventh operation, my squad was flown into Athens to take the U.S. embassy back 
from a group of Palestinian extremists who’d seized it. They’d killed eight 
staff members and were still killing one an hour, wouldn’t negotiate. We hit 
them quick and sneaky—and it was a fiasco. They’d booby-trapped the place. Nine 
men in my squad died. I was the only survivor. A bullet in my thigh. Shrapnel in 
my ass. But a survivor.”
Einstein raised his head from Travis’s lap.
Travis thought he saw sympathy in the dog’s eyes. Maybe because that was what he 
wanted to see.
“That’s eight years ago, when I was twenty-eight. Left the army. Came home to 
California. Got a real-estate license because my dad had sold real estate, and I 
didn’t know what else to do. Did real well, maybe ‘cause I didn’t care if they 
bought the houses I showed them, didn’t push, didn’t act like a salesman. Fact 
is, I did so well that I became a broker, opened my own office, hired 
salespeople.”
Which was how he had met Paula. She was a tall blond beauty, bright and amusing, 
and she could sell real estate so well that she joked about having lived an 
earlier life in which she had represented the Dutch colonists when they had 
bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads and trinkets. She was smitten with 
Travis. That’s what she’d told him: “Mr. Cornell, sir, I am smitten. I think 
it’s your strong, silent act. Best Clint Eastwood imitation I’ve ever seen.” 
Travis resisted her at first. He did not believe he would jinx Paula; at least, 
he didn’t consciously believe it; he had not openly reverted to childhood 
superstition. But he did not want to risk the pain of loss again. Undeterred by 
his hesitancy, she pursued him, and in time he had to admit he Was in love with 
her. So in love that he told her about his lifelong tag game With Death, 
something of which he spoke to no one else. “Listen,” Paula said, “you won’t 
have to mourn me. I’m going to outlive you because I’m not the type to bottle up 
my feelings. I take out my frustrations on those around me, so I’m bound to 
shave a decade off your life.”
They had been married in a simple courthouse ceremony four years ago,
the summer after Travis’s thirty-second birthday. He had loved her. Oh God, how 
he had loved her.
To Einstein, he said, “We didn’t know it then, but she had cancer on our wedding 
day. Ten months later, she was dead.”
The dog put its head down in his lap again.
For a while, Travis could not continue.
He drank some beer.
He stroked the dog’s head.
In time he said, “After that, I tried to go on as usual. Always prided myself in 
going on, facing up to anything, keeping my chin up, all that bullshit. Kept the 
real-estate office running another year. But none of it mattered any more. Sold 
it two years ago. Cashed in all my investments, too. Turned everything into cash 
and socked it in the bank. Rented this house. Spent the last two years . . . 
well, brooding. And I got squirrelly. Hardly a surprise, huh? Squirrelly as 
hell. Came full circle, you see, right back to what I believed when I was a kid. 
That I was a danger to anyone who gets close to me. But you changed me, 
Einstein. You turned me around in one day. I swear, it’s like you were sent to 
show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders— and that only a 
fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”
The dog was peering up at him again.
He lifted his beer can, but it was empty.
Einstein went to the fridge and got another Coors.
Taking the can from the dog, Travis said, “Now, after hearing the whole sorry 
thing, what do you think? You think it’s wise for you to hang around with me? 
You think it’s safe?”
Einstein woofed.
“Was that a yes?”
Einstein rolled onto his back and put all four legs in the air, baring his belly 
as he had done earlier when he had permitted Travis to collar him.
Putting his beer aside, Travis got off his chair, settled on the floor, and 
stroked the dog’s belly. “All right,” he said. “All right. But don’t die on me, 
damn you. Don’t you dare die on me.”
 
 
6
 
Nora Devon’s telephone rang again at eleven o’clock.
It was Streck. “Are you in bed now, prettiness?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wish I was there with you?”
Since the previous call, she had thought about how to handle him and had come up 
with several threats she hoped might work. She said, “If you don’t leave me 
alone, I’ll go to the police.”
“Nora, do you sleep in the nude?”
She was sitting in bed. She sat up straighter, tense, rigid. “I’ll go to the
police and say you tried to . . . to force yourself on me. I will, I swear! 
will.”
“I’d like to see you in the nude,” he said, ignoring her threat. “I’ll lie. I’ll 
say you r-raped me.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to put my hands on your breasts, Nora?”
Dull cramps in her stomach forced her to bend forward in bed. “I’ll have the 
telephone company put a tap on my line, record all the calls I get, so I’ll have 
proof.”
“Kiss you all over, Nora. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
The cramps were getting worse. She was shaking uncontrollably, too. Her voice 
cracked repeatedly as she employed her final threat: “I have a gun. I have a 
gun.”
“Tonight you’ll dream about me, Nora. I’m sure you will. You’ll dream about me 
kissing you everywhere, all over your pretty body—”
She slammed the phone down.
Rolling onto her side on the bed, she hunched her shoulders and drew up her 
knees and hugged herself. The cramps had no physical cause. They were strictly 
an emotional reaction, generated by fear and shame and rage and enormous 
frustration.
Gradually, the pain passed. Fear subsided, leaving only rage.
She was so wrenchingly innocent of the world and its ways, so unaccustomed to 
dealing with people, that she couldn’t function unless she restricted herself to 
the house, to a private world without human contact. She knew nothing about 
social interaction. She had not even been capable of holding a polite 
conversation with Garrison Dilworth, Aunt Violet’s attorney—Nora’s attorney 
now—during their meetings to settle the estate. She had answered his questions 
as succinctly as possible and had sat in his presence with her eyes downcast and 
her cold hands fidgeting in her lap, crushingly shy. Afraid of her own lawyer! 
If she couldn’t deal with a kind man like Garrison Dilworth, how could she ever 
handle a beast like Art Streck? In the future, she wouldn’t dare have a 
repairman in her home, no matter what broke down; she would just have to live in 
ever-worsening decay and ruin because the next man might be another Streck—or 
worse. In the tradition established by her aunt, Nora already had groceries 
delivered from a neighborhood market, so she did not have to go out to shop, but 
now she would be afraid to let the delivery boy into the house; he had never 
been the least aggressive, suggestive, or in any way insulting, but one day he 
might see the vulnerability that Streck had Seen .
She hated Aunt Violet.
On the other hand, Violet had been right: Nora was a mouse. Like all mice, her 
destiny was to run, to hide, and to cower in the dark.
Her fury abated just as her cramps had done.
Loneliness took the place of anger, and she wept quietly.
Later, sitting with her back against the headboard, blotting her reddened eyes 
with Kleenex and blowing her nose, she bravely vowed not to become a recluse. 
Somehow she would find the strength and courage to venture out Into the world 
more than she’d done before. She would meet people. She
would get to know the neighbors that Violet had more or less shunned. She would 
make friends. By God, she would. And she wouldn’t let Streck intimidate her. She 
would learn how to handle other problems that came along as well, and in time 
she would be a different woman from the one she was now. A promise to herself. A 
sacred vow.
She considered unplugging the telephone, thus foiling Streck, but she was afraid 
she might need it. What if she woke, heard someone in the house, and was unable 
to plug in the phone fast enough?
Before turning out the lights and pulling up the covers, she closed the lockless 
bedroom door and braced it shut with the armchair, which she tilted under the 
knob. In bed, in the dark, she felt for the butcher’s knife, which she’d placed 
on the nightstand, and she was reassured when she put her hand directly upon it 
without fumbling.
Nora lay on her back, eyes open, wide awake. Pale amber light from the 
streetlamps found its way through the shuttered windows. The ceiling was banded 
with alternating strips of black and faded gold, as if a tiger of infinite 
length were leaping over the bed in a jump that would never end. She wondered if 
she would ever sleep easily again.
She also wondered if she would find anyone who could care about her— and for 
her—out there in the bigger world that she had vowed to enter. Was there no one 
who could love a mouse and treat it gently?
Far away, a train whistle played a one-note dirge in the night. It was a hollow, 
cold, and mournful sound.
 
 
7
Vince Nasco had never been so busy. Or so happy.
When he called the usual Los Angeles number to report success at the Yarbeck 
house, he was referred to another public phone. This one was between a 
frozen-yogurt shop and a fish restaurant on Balboa Island in Newport Harbor.
There, he was called by the contact with the sexy, throaty, yet little-girl 
voice. She spoke circumspectly of murder, never using incriminating words but 
employing exotic euphemisms that would mean nothing in a court of law. She was 
calling from another pay phone, one she had chosen at random, so there was 
virtually no chance that either of them was tapped. But it was a Big Brother 
world where you didn’t dare take risks.
The woman had a third job for him. Three in one day.
As Vince watched the evening traffic inching past on the narrow island street, 
the woman—whom he had never seen and whose name he didn’t know—gave him the 
address of Dr. Albert Hudston in Laguna Beach. Hudston lived with his wife and a 
sixteen-year-old son. Both Dr. and Mrs. Hudston had to be hit; however, the 
boy’s fate was in Vince’s hands. If the kid could
be kept out of it, fine. But if he saw Vince and could serve as a witness, he 
had to be eliminated, too.
“Your discretion,” the woman said.
Vince already knew that he would erase the kid, because killing was more useful 
to him, more energizing, if the victim was young. It had been a long time since 
he’d blown away a really young one, and the prospect excited him.
“I can only emphasize,” the contact said, driving Vince a little nuts with her 
breathy pauses, “that this option must be exercised with all due speed. We want 
the deal concluded tonight. By tomorrow, the competition will be aware of what 
we’re trying to swing, and they’ll get in our way.”
Vince knew the “competition” must be the police. He was being paid to kill three 
doctors in a single day—doctors, when he had never killed a doctor before—so he 
knew there was something that linked them, something the cops would pick up on 
when they found Weatherby in the trunk of his car and Elisabeth Yarbeck beaten 
to death in her bedroom. Vince didn’t know what the link was because he never 
knew anything about the people he was hired to kill, and he didn’t really want 
to know anything. It was safer that way. But the cops would link Weatherby with 
Yarbeck and both of them with Hudston, so if Vince did not get to Hudston 
tonight, the police would be providing the man with protection by tomorrow.
Vince said, “I wonder. . . do you want the option exercised in the same way as 
the other two deals today? You want a pattern?”
He was thinking maybe he should burn the Hudston house to the ground with them 
in it to cover the murders.
“No, we absolutely do want a pattern,” the woman said. “Same as the others. We 
want them to know we’ve been busy.”
“I see.”
“We want to tweak their noses,” she said, and laughed softly. “We want to rub in 
the salt.”
Vince hung up and walked to the Jolly Roger for dinner. He had vegetable soup, a 
hamburger, fries, onion rings, coleslaw, chocolate cake with ice cream, and (as 
an afterthought) apple pie, all of which he washed down with five cups of 
coffee. He was ordinarily a big eater, but his appetite increased dramatically 
after a job. In fact, when he finished the pie, he wasn’t full. Understandable. 
In one busy day, he had absorbed the life energies of Davis Weatherby and the 
Yarbecks; he was overcharged, a racing engine. His metabolism was in high gear; 
he would need more fuel for a while, until his body stored the excess life 
energies in biological batteries for future use.
The ability to absorb the very life force of his victim was the Gift that made 
him different from all other men. Because of the Gift, he would always be 
Strong, vital, alert. He would live forever.
He had never divulged the secret of his splendid Gift to the throaty-voiced 
Woman or to any of the people for whom he worked. Few people were imaginative 
and open-minded enough to consider seriously such an amazing talent. Vince kept 
it to himself because he was afraid they’d think he was crazy.
Outside the restaurant, he stood on the sidewalk for a while, just breathing 
deeply, savoring the crisp sea air. A chilly night wind blew off the harbor, 
sweeping scrap paper and purple jacaranda blossoms along the pavement.
Vince felt terrific. He believed he was as much of an elemental force as were 
the sea and wind.
From Balboa Island, he drove south to Laguna Beach. At eleven-twenty, he parked 
his van across the street from the Hudston house. It was in the hills, a 
single-story home slung on a steep slope to take advantage of ocean views. He 
saw lights in a couple of windows.
He climbed between the seats and sat down in the back of the van, out of sight, 
to wait until all of the Hudstons had gone to bed. Soon after leaving the 
Yarbeck house, he had changed out of his blue suit into gray slacks, a white 
shirt, a maroon sweater, and a dark-blue nylon jacket. Now, in the darkness, he 
had nothing to do except take his weapons out of a cardboard box, where they 
were hidden beneath two loaves of bread, a four-roll package of toilet tissue, 
and other items that gave the impression he had just been to the market.
The Walther P-38 was fully loaded. After finishing the job at the Yarbeck house, 
he had screwed a fresh silencer onto the barrel, one of the new short ones that, 
thanks to the high-tech revolution, was half the length of older models. He set 
the gun aside.
He had a six-inch switchblade knife. He put it in the right front pocket of his 
trousers.
When he had wound the wire garrote into a tight coil, he tucked it into the left 
inside pocket of his jacket.
He had a sap weighted with lead pellets. That went into his right exterior 
jacket pocket.
He did not expect to use anything but the gun. However, he liked to be prepared 
for any eventuality.
On some jobs he had used an Uzi submachine gun that had been illegally converted 
for automatic fire. But the current assignment did not require heavy armament.
He also had a small leather packet, half the size of a shaving kit, which 
contained a few simple burglary tools. He did not bother to inspect those 
instruments. He might not even need them because a lot of people were amazingly 
lax about home security, leaving doors and windows unlocked during the night, as 
if they believed they were living in a nineteenth-century Quaker village.
At eleven-forty he leaned between the front seats and looked through the side 
window at the Hudston house. All the lights were out. Good. They were in bed.
To give them time to fall asleep, he sat down in the back of the van again, ate 
a Mr. Goodbar, and thought about how he’d spend some of the substantial fees 
that he had earned just since this morning.
He’d been wanting a power ski, one of those clever machines that made it 
possible to water-ski without a boat. He was an ocean lover. Something about
the sea drew him; he felt at home in the tides and was most fully alive when be 
was moving in harmony with great, surging, dark masses of water. He enjoyed 
scuba diving, windsailing, and surfing. His teenage years had been spent more on 
the beach than in school. He still rode the board now and then, when the surf 
was high. But he was twenty-eight, and surfing now seemed tame to him. He wasn’t 
as easily thrilled as he had once been. He liked speed these days. He pictured 
himself skimming over a slate-dark sea on power skis, hammered by the wind, 
jolted by an endless series of impacts with eternally incoming breakers, riding 
the Pacific as a rodeo cowboy would ride a bronco .
At twelve-fifteen he got out of the van. He tucked the pistol under the 
waistband of his trousers and crossed the silent, deserted street to the Hudston 
house. He let himself through an unlocked wooden gate onto a side patio 
brightened only by moonlight filtered through the leafy branches of an enormous 
sheltering coral tree.
He paused to pull on a pair of supple leather gloves.
Mirrored by moonbeams, a sliding glass door connected the patio with the living 
room. It was locked. A penlight, extracted from the packet of burglary tools, 
also revealed a wooden pole laid in the interior track of the door to prevent it 
from being forced.
The Hudstons were more security-conscious than most people, but Vince was 
unconcerned. He fixed a small suction cup to the glass, used a diamond cutter to 
carve a circle in the pane near the door handle, and quietly removed the cutout 
with the cup. He reached through the hole and disengaged the lock. He cut 
another circle near the sill, reached inside, and removed the wooden pole from 
the track, pushing it under the drawn drapes, into the room beyond.
He did not have to worry about dogs. The woman with the sexy voice had told him 
that the Hudstons had no house pets. That was one reason why he liked working 
for these particular employers: their information was always extensive and 
accurate.
Easing the door open, he slipped through the closed drapes into the dark living 
room. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, listening. 
The house was tomb-silent.
He found the boy’s room first. It was illuminated by the green glow of the 
numerals on a digital clock-radio. The teenager was lying on his side, snoring 
softly. Sixteen. Very young. Vince liked them very young.
He moved around the bed and crouched along the side of it, face-to-face With the 
sleeper. With his teeth, he pulled the glove off his left hand. Holding the 
pistol in his right hand, he touched the muzzle to the underside of the boy’s 
chin.
The kid woke at once.
Vince slapped his bare hand firmly against the boy’s forehead and simultaneously 
fired the gun. The bullet smashed up through the soft underside of the kid’s 
chin, through the roof of his mouth, into his brain, killing him instantly.
Ssssnap.
An intense charge of life energy burst out of the dying body and into Vince. It 
was such pure, vital energy that he whimpered with pleasure as he felt it surge 
into him.
For a while he crouched beside the bed, not trusting himself to move. 
Transported. Breathless. At last, in the dark he kissed the dead boy on the lips 
and said, “I accept. Thank you. I accept.”
He crept cat-swift, cat-silent through the house and quickly found the master 
bedroom. Sufficient light was provided by another digital clock with green 
numerals and the soft glow of a night-light coming through the open bathroom 
door. Dr. and Mrs. Hudston were both asleep. Vince killed her first— Ssssnap.
—without waking her husband. She slept in the nude, so after he received her 
sacrifice, he put his head to her bare breasts and listened to the stillness of 
her heart. He kissed her nipples and murmured, “Thank you.”
When he circled the bed, turned on a nightstand lamp, and woke Dr. Hudston, the 
man was at first confused. Until he saw his wife’s staring, sightless eyes. Then 
he shouted and grabbed for Vince’s arm, and Vince clubbed him over the head 
twice with the butt of the gun.
Vince dragged the unconscious Hudston, who also slept in the nude, into the 
bathroom. Again, he found adhesive tape, with which he was able to bind the 
doctor’s wrists and ankles.
He filled the tub with cold water and wrestled Hudston into it. That frigid bath 
revived the doctor.
In spite of being naked and bound, Hudston tried to push up out of the cold 
water, tried to launch himself at Vince.
Vince hit him in the face with the pistol and shoved him down into the tub 
again.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Hudston spluttered as his face came up out of 
the water.
“I’ve killed your wife and your son, and I’m going to kill you.”
Hudston’s eyes seemed to sink back into his damp, pasty face. “Jimmy? Oh, not 
Jimmy, really, no.”
“Your boy is dead,” Vince insisted. “I blew his brains out.”
At the mention of his son, Hudston broke. He did not burst into tears, did not 
begin to keen, nothing as dramatic as that. But his eyes went dead— blink—just 
that abruptly. Like a light going out. He stared at Vince, but there was no fear 
or anger in him any more.
Vince said, “What you’ve got here is two choices: die easy or die hard. You tell 
me what I want to know, and I let you die easy, quick and painless. You get 
stubborn on me, and I can draw it out for five or six hours.”
Dr. Hudston stared. Except for bright ribbons of fresh blood that banded his 
face, he was very white, wet and sickly pale like some creature that swam 
eternally in the deepest reaches of the sea.
Vince hoped the guy wasn’t catatonic. “What I want to know is what you have in 
common with Davis Weatherby and Elisabeth Yarbeck.”
Hudston blinked, focused on Vince. His voice was hoarse and tremulous “Davis and 
Liz? What are you talking about?”
“You know them?”
Hudston nodded.
“How do you know them? Go to school together? Live next door at one time?”
Shaking his head, Hudston said, “We. . . we used to work together at Banodyne.”
“What’s Banodyne?”
“Banodyne Laboratories.”
“Where’s that?”
“Here in Orange County,” Hudston said. He gave an address in the city of Irvine.
“What’d you do there?”
“Research. But I left ten months ago. Weatherby and Yarbeck still work there, 
but I don’t.”
“What sort of research?” Vince asked.
Hudston hesitated.
Vince said, “Quick and painless—or hard and nasty?”
The doctor told him about the research he had been involved with at Banodyne. 
The Francis Project. The experiments. The dogs.
The story was incredible. Vince made Hudston run through some of the details 
three or four times before he was finally convinced the story was true.
When he was sure he had squeezed everything out of the man, Vince shot Hudston 
in the face, point-blank, the quick death he’d promised.
Ssssnap.
Back in the van, driving down the night-draped Laguna Hills, away from the 
Hudston house, Vince thought about the dangerous step he had taken. Usually, he 
knew nothing about his targets. That was safest for him and for his employers. 
Ordinarily he didn’t want to know what the poor saps had done to bring so much 
grief on themselves, because knowing would bring him grief. But this was no 
ordinary situation. He had been paid to kill three doctors—not medical doctors, 
as it turned out now, but scientists—all of them upstanding citizens, plus any 
members of their families who happened to get in the way. Extraordinary. 
Tomorrow’s papers weren’t going to have enough room for all the news. Something 
very big was going on, something SO important that it might provide him with a 
once-in-a-lifetime edge, with a shot at money so big he would need help to count 
it. The money might come from selling the forbidden knowledge he had pried out 
of Hudston. . . if he could figure out who would like to buy it. But knowledge 
was not only saleable; it was also dangerous. Ask Adam. Ask Eve. If his current 
employers, the Sexy-voiced lady and the other people in L.A., learned that he 
had broken the most basic rule of his trade, if they knew that he had 
interrogated one of his victims before wasting him, they would put out a 
contract on Vince. The hunter would become the hunted.
Of course, he didn’t worry a lot about dying. He had too much life stored up in 
him. Other people’s lives. More lives than ten cats. He was going to live 
forever. He was pretty sure of that. But . . . well, he didn’t know for certain 
how many lives he had to absorb in order to insure immortality. Sometimes he 
felt that he’d already achieved a state of invincibility, eternal life. But at 
other times, he felt that he was still vulnerable and that he would have to take 
more life energy into himself before he would reach the desired state of 
godhood. Until he knew, beyond doubt, that he had arrived at Olympus, it was 
best to exercise a little caution.
Banodyne.
The Francis Project.
if what Hudston said was true, the risk Vince was taking would be well-rewarded 
when he found the right buyer for the information. He was going to be a rich 
man.
 
 
8
Wes Dalberg had lived alone in a stone cabin in upper Holy Jim Canyon on the 
eastern edge of Orange County for ten years. His only light came from Coleman 
lanterns, and the only running water in the place was from a hand pump in the 
kitchen sink. His toilet was in an outhouse with a quarter-moon carved on the 
door (as a joke), about a hundred feet from the back of the cabin.
Wes was forty-two, but he looked older. His face was wind-scoured and 
sun-leathered. He wore a neatly trimmed beard with a lot of white whiskers. 
Although he appeared aged beyond his true years, his physical condition was that 
of a twenty-five-year-old. He believed his good health resulted from living 
close to nature.
Tuesday night, May 18, by the silvery light of a hissing Coleman lantern, he sat 
at the kitchen table until one in the morning, sipping homemade plum wine and 
reading a McGee novel by John D. MacDonald. Wes was, as he put it, “an 
antisocial curmudgeon born in the wrong century,” who had little, use for modern 
society. But he liked to read about McGee because McGee swam in that messy, 
nasty world out there and never let the murderous currents sweep him away.
When he finished the book at one o’clock, Wes went outside to get more wood for 
the fireplace. Wind-swayed branches of sycamores cast vague moonshadows on the 
ground, and the glossy surfaces of rustling leaves shone dully with pale 
reflections of the lunar light. Coyotes howled in the distance as they chased 
down a rabbit or other small creature. Nearby, insects sang in the brush, and a 
chill wind soughed through the higher reaches of the forest.
His supply of cordwood was stored in a lean-to that extended along the entire 
north side of the cabin. He pulled the latch-peg out of the hasp on the double 
doors. He was so familiar with the arrangement of the wood in the storage space 
that he worked blindly in its lightless confines, filling a sturdy tin hod with 
half a dozen logs. He carried the hod out in both hands, put it down, and turned 
to close the doors.
He realized the coyotes and the insects had all fallen silent. Only the wind 
still had a voice.
Frowning, he turned to look at the dark forest that encircled the small clearing 
in which his cabin stood.
Something growled.
Wes squinted at the night-swaddled woods, which suddenly seemed less well 
illuminated by the moon than they had been a moment ago.
The growling was deep and angry. Not like anything he had heard out there before 
in ten years of nights alone.
Wes was curious, even concerned, but not afraid. He stood very still, listening. 
A minute ticked by, and he heard nothing further.
He finished closing the lean-to doors, pegged the latch, and picked up the hod 
full of cordwood.
Growling again. Then silence. Then the sound of dry brush and leaves crackling, 
crunching, snapping underfoot.
Judging by the sound, it was about thirty yards away. Just a bit west of the 
outhouse. Back in the forest.
The thing grumbled again, louder this time. Closer, too. Not more than twenty 
yards away now.
He could still not see the source of the sound. The deserter moon continued to 
hide behind a narrow filigree band of clouds.
Listening to the thick, guttural, yet ululant growling, Wes was suddenly uneasy. 
For the first time in ten years as a resident of Holy Jim, he felt he was in 
danger. Carrying the hod, he headed quickly toward the back of the cabin and the 
kitchen door.
The rustling of displaced brush grew louder. The creature in the woods was 
moving faster than before. Hell, it was running.
Wes ran, too.
The growling escalated into hard, vicious snarls: an eerie mix of sounds that 
seemed one part dog, part pig, part cougar, part human, and one part something 
else altogether. It was almost at his heels.
As he sprinted around the corner of the cabin, Wes swung the hod and threw it 
toward where he judged the animal to be. He heard the cordwood flying loose and 
slamming to the ground, heard the metal hod clanging end Over end, but the 
snarling only grew closer and louder, so he knew he had missed.
He hurried up the three back steps, threw open the kitchen door, stepped inside, 
and slammed the door behind him. He slipped the latch bolt in place,
a security measure he had not used in nine years, not since he had grown 
accustomed to the peacefulness of the canyon.
He went through the cabin to the front door and latched it, too. He was 
Surprised by the intensity of the fear that had overcome him. Even if a hostile 
animal was out there—perhaps a crazed bear that had come down from the
mountains—it could not open doors and follow him into the cabin. There was no 
need to engage the locks, yet he felt better for having done so. He was 
operating on instinct, and he was a good enough outdoorsman to know that 
instincts ought to be trusted even when they resulted in seemingly irrational 
behavior.
Okay, so he was safe. No animal could open a door. Certainly, a bear couldn’t, 
and it was most likely a bear.
But it hadn’t sounded like a bear. That’s what had Wes Dalberg so spooked:
it had not sounded like anything that could possibly be roaming those woods. He 
was familiar with his animal neighbors, knew all the howls, cries, and other 
noises they made.
The only light in the front room was from the fireplace, and it did not dispel 
the shadows in the corners. Phantoms of reflected firelight cavorted across the 
walls. For the first time, Wes would have welcomed electricity.
He owned a Remington 12-gauge shotgun with which he hunted small game to 
supplement his diet of store-bought foods. It was on a rack in the kitchen. He 
considered getting it down and loading it, but now that he was safely behind 
locked doors, he was beginning to be embarrassed about having panicked. Like a 
greenhorn, for God’s sake. Like some lardass suburbanite shrieking at the sight 
of a fieldmouse. If he had just shouted and clapped his hands, he would most 
likely have frightened off the thing in the brush. Even if his reaction could be 
blamed on instinct, he had not behaved in accordance with his self-image as a 
hard-bitten canyon squatter. If he armed himself with the rifle now, when there 
was no compelling need for it, he’d lose a large measure of self-respect, which 
was important because the only opinion of Wes Dalberg that Wes cared about was 
his own. No gun.
Wes risked going to the living room’s big window. This was an alteration made by 
someone who held the Forest Service lease on the cabin about twenty years ago; 
the old, narrow, multipane window had been taken out, a larger hole cut in the 
wall, and a big single-pane window installed to take advantage of the 
spectacular forest view.
A few moon-silvered clouds appeared phosphorescent against the velvety blackness 
of the night sky. Moonlight dappled the front yard, glistered on the grill and 
hood and windshield of Wes’s Jeep Cherokee, and outlined the shadowy shapes of 
the encroaching trees. At first nothing moved except a few branches swaying 
gently in the mild wind.
He studied the woodland scene for a couple of minutes. Neither seeing nor 
hearing anything out of the ordinary, he decided the animal had wandered off. 
With considerable relief and with a resurgence of embarrassment, he started to 
turn away from the window—then glimpsed movement near the Jeep. He squinted, saw 
nothing, remained watchful for another minute or two. Just when he decided he 
had imagined the movement, he saw it again:
something coming out from behind the Jeep. He leaned closer to the window.
Something was rushing across the yard toward the cabin, coming fast and low to 
the ground. Instead of revealing the nature of the enemy, the moonlight
made it more mysterious, shapeless. The thing was hurtling at the cabin. 
Abruptly—Jesus, God!—the creature was airborne, a strangeness flying straight at 
him through the darkness, and Wes cried out, and an instant later the beast 
exploded through the big window, and Wes screamed, but the scream was cut short.
 
 
9
Because Travis was not much of a drinker, three beers were enough to insure 
against insomnia. He was asleep within seconds of putting his head on the 
pillow. He dreamed that he was the ringmaster in a circus where all the 
performing animals could speak, and after each show he visited them in their 
cages, where each animal told him a secret that amazed him even though he forgot 
it as soon as he moved along to the next cage and the next secret.
At four o’clock in the morning, he woke and saw Einstein at the bedroom window. 
The dog was standing with its forepaws on the sill, its face limned by 
moonlight, staring out at the night, very alert.
“What’s wrong, boy?” Travis asked.
Einstein glanced at him, then returned his attention to the moon-washed night. 
He whined softly, and his ears perked up slightly.
“Somebody out there?” Travis asked, getting off the bed, pulling on his jeans.
The dog dropped onto all fours and hurried out of the bedroom.
Travis found him at another window in the darkened living room, studying the 
night on that side of the house. Crouching beside the dog, putting a hand on the 
broad furry back, he said, “What’s the matter? Huh?”
Einstein pressed his snout to the glass and mewled nervously.
Travis could see nothing threatening on the front lawn or on the street. Then a 
thought struck him, and he said, “Are you worried about whatever was chasing you 
in the woods this morning?”
The dog regarded him solemnly.
“What was it out there in the forest?” Travis wondered.
Einstein whined again and shuddered.
Remembering the retriever’s—and his own—stark fear in the Santa Ana foothills, 
recalling the uncanny feeling that something unnatural had been stalking them, 
Travis shivered. He looked out at the night-draped world. The spiky black 
patterns of the date palm’s fronds were edged in wan yellow light from the 
nearest streetlamp. A fitful wind harried small funnels of dust and leaves and 
bits of litter along the pavement, dropped them for a few seconds and left them 
for dead, then enlivened them again. A lone moth bumped softly against the 
window in front of Travis’s and Einstein’s faces, evidently mistaking the 
reflection of the moon or streetlamp for a flame.
“Are you worried that it’s still after you?” he asked.
The dog woofed once, quietly.
“Well, I don’t think it is,” Travis said. “I don’t think you understand how far 
north we’ve come. We had wheels, but it would have, had to follow on foot, which 
it couldn’t have done. Whatever it was, it’s far behind us, Einstein, far down 
there in Orange County, with no way of knowing where we’ve gone. You don’t have 
to worry about it any more. You understand?”
Einstein nuzzled and licked Travis’s hand as if reassured and grateful. But he 
looked out the window again and issued a barely audible whimper.
Travis had to coax him back into the bedroom. There, the dog wanted to lie on 
the bed beside his master, and in the interest of calming the animal, Travis did 
not object.
Wind murmured and moaned in the bungalow’s eaves.
Now and then the house creaked with ordinary middle-of-the-night settling 
noises.
Engine purring, tires whispering, a car went by on the street.
Exhausted from the emotional as well as the physical exertions of the day, 
Travis was soon asleep.
Near dawn he came half awake and realized that Einstein was at the bedroom 
window again, keeping watch. He murmured the retriever’s name and wearily patted 
the mattress. But Einstein remained on guard, and Travis drifted off once more.
 
 
FOUR
1
The day following her encounter with Art Streck, Nora Devon went for a long 
walk, intending to explore parts of the city that she had never seen before. She 
had taken short walks with Violet once a week. Since the old woman’s death, Nora 
still went out, though less often, and she never ventured farther than six or 
eight blocks from home. Today, she would go much farther. This was to be the 
first small step in a long journey toward liberation and self-respect.
Before setting out, she considered having a light lunch later at a restaurant 
chosen at random along the way. But she had never been in a restaurant. The 
prospect of dealing with a waiter and dining in the company of strangers was 
daunting. Instead, she packed one apple, one orange, and two oatmeal cookies in 
a small paper bag. She would eat lunch alone, in a park somewhere. Even that 
would be revolutionary. One small step at a time.
The sky was clear. The air was warm. With vivid green spring growth, the trees 
looked fresh; they stirred in a breeze just strong enough to take the searing 
edge off the hot sunlight.
As Nora strolled past the well-kept houses, the vast majority of which were in 
one style of Spanish architecture or another, she looked at doors and windows 
with a new curiosity, wondering about the people who lived within. Were they 
happy? Sad? In love? What music and books did they enjoy? What food? Were they 
planning vacations to exotic places, evenings at the theater, visits to 
nightclubs?
She had never wondered about them before because she had known their lives and 
hers would never cross. Wondering about them would have been a
waste of time and effort. But now.
When she encountered other walkers, she kept her head down and averted her face, 
as she had always done before, but after a while she found the Courage to look 
at some of them. She was surprised when many smiled at her and said hello. In 
time, she was even more surprised when she heard herself respond.
At the county courthouse she paused to admire the yellow blossoms of the Yucca 
plants and the rich red bougainvillea that climbed the stucco wall and twined 
through the ornate wrought-iron grille over one of the tall windows.
At the Santa Barbara Mission, built in 1815, she stood at the foot of the
front steps and studied the handsome façade of the old church. She explored the 
courtyard with its Sacred Garden and climbed the west bell tower.
Gradually, she began to understand why, in some of the many books she had read, 
Santa Barbara had been called one of the most beautiful places on earth. She had 
lived there nearly all her life, but because she had cowered in the Devon house 
with Violet and, on venturing out, had looked at little more than her own shoes, 
she was seeing the town for the first time. It both charmed and thrilled her.
At one o’clock, in Alameda Park within sight of the pond, she sat on a bench 
near three ancient and massive date palms. Her feet were getting sore, but she 
did not intend to go home early. She opened the paper bag and began lunch with 
the yellow apple. Never had anything tasted half as delicious. Famished, she 
quickly ate the orange, too, dropping the pieces of peel into the bag, and she 
was starting on the first of the oatmeal cookies when Art Streck sat down beside 
her.
“Hello, prettiness.”
He was wearing only blue running shorts, running shoes, and thick white athletic 
socks. However, he clearly hadn’t been running, for he wasn’t sweating. He was 
muscular with a broad chest, deeply tanned, exceedingly masculine. The whole 
purpose of his attire was to display his physique, so Nora at once averted her 
eyes.
“Shy?” he asked.
She could not speak because the bite she had taken from the oatmeal cookie was 
stuck in her mouth. She couldn’t work up any saliva. She was afraid she would 
choke if she tried to swallow the piece of cookie, but she couldn’t very well 
just spit it out.
“My sweet, shy Nora,” Streck said.
Looking down, she saw how badly her right hand was trembling. The cookie was 
being shaken to pieces in her fingers; bits of it dropped onto the paving 
between her feet.
She had told herself that she would go for a daylong walk as a first step toward 
liberation, but now she had to admit there had been another reason for getting 
out of the house. She had been trying to avoid Streck’s attentions. She was 
afraid to stay home, afraid that he’d call and call and call. But now he had 
found her in the open, beyond the protection of her locked windows and bolted 
doors, which was worse than the telephone, infinitely worse.
“Look at me, Nora.”
No.
“Look at me.”
The last of the disintegrating cookie fell from her right hand.
Streck took her left hand, and she tried to resist him, but he squeezed, 
grinding the bones of her fingers, so she surrendered. He put her hand palm down 
on his bare thigh. His flesh was firm and hot.
Her stomach twisted, and her heart thumped, and she did not know which she would 
do first—puke or pass out.
Moving her hand slowly up and down his bare thigh, he said, “I’m what you need, 
prettiness. I can take care of you.”
As if it were a wad of paste, the oatmeal cookie glued her mouth shut. She kept 
her head down, but she raised her eyes to look out from under her brow. She 
hoped to see someone nearby to whom she could call for help, but there were only 
two young mothers with their small children, and even they were too far away to 
be of assistance.
Lifting her hand from his thigh, putting it on his bare chest, Streck said, 
“Having a nice stroll today? Did you like the mission? Hmmm? And weren’t the 
yucca blossoms pretty at the courthouse?”
He rambled on in that cool, smug voice, asking her how she had liked other 
things she’d seen, and she realized he had been following her all morning, 
either in his car or on foot. She hadn’t seen him, but there was no doubt he bad 
been there because he knew every move she had made since leaving the house, 
which frightened and infuriated her more than anything else he had done.
She was breathing hard and fast, yet she felt as if she could not get her 
breath. Her ears were ringing, yet she could hear every word he said too 
clearly. Though she thought she might strike him and claw at his eyes, she was 
also paralyzed, on the verge of striking but unable to strike, simultaneously 
strong with rage and weak with fear. She wanted to scream, not for help but in 
frustration.
“Now,” he said, “you’ve had a real nice stroll, a nice lunch in the park, and 
you’re in a relaxed mood. So you know what would be nice now? You know what 
would make this a terrific day, prettiness? A really special day? What we’ll do 
is get in my car, go back to your place, up to your yellow room, get in that 
four-poster bed—”
He’d been in her bedroom! He must have done it yesterday. When he was supposed 
to have been in the living room fixing the TV, he must have sneaked upstairs, 
the bastard, prowling through her most private place, invading her sanctuary, 
poking through her belongings.
“—that big old bed, and I’m going to strip you down, honey, strip you down and 
fuck you—”
Nora would never be able to decide whether her sudden courage arose from the 
horrible realization that he’d violated her sanctuary, whether it was that he 
had spoken an obscenity in her presence for the first time, or whether both, but 
she snapped her head up and glared at him and spat the wad of uneaten cookie in 
his face. Flecks of spittle and damp spatters of food stuck on his right cheek, 
right eye, and on the side of his nose. Bits of oatmeal Clung in his hair and 
speckled his forehead. When she saw anger flash into Streck’s eyes and contort 
his face, Nora felt a surge of terror at what she’d done: But she was also 
elated that she had been able to break the bonds of emotional paralysis that had 
immobilized her, even if her actions brought her grief, even if Streck 
retaliated.
And he did retaliate swiftly, brutally. He still held her left hand, and she
was unable to wrench free. He squeezed hard, as he had done before, grinding her 
bones. It hurt, Jesus, it hurt. But she did not want to give him the 
satisfaction of seeing her cry, and she was determined not to whimper or beg, so 
she clenched her teeth and endured. Sweat prickled her scalp, and she thought 
she might pass out. But the pain was not the worst of it; the worst was looking 
into Streck’s disturbing ice-blue eyes. As he crushed her fingers, he held her 
not merely with his hand but with his gaze, which was cold and infinitely 
strange. He was trying to intimidate and cow her, and it was working— by God, it 
was—because she saw in him a madness with which she would never be able to cope.
When he saw her despair, which evidently pleased him more than a cry of pain 
could have done, he stopped grinding her hand, but he did not let go. He said, 
“You’ll pay for that, for spitting in my face. And you’ll enjoy paying for it.”
Without conviction, she said, “I’ll complain to your boss, and you’ll lose your 
job.”
Streck only smiled. Nora wondered why he did not bother to wipe the bits of 
oatmeal cookie from his face, but even as she wondered about it she knew the 
reason: he was going to make her do it for him. First, he said, “Lose my job? 
Oh, I already quit working for Wadlow TV. Walked out yesterday afternoon. So I’d 
have time for you, Nora.”
She lowered her eyes. She could not conceal her fear, was shaken by it until she 
thought her teeth would chatter.
“I never do stay too long in a job. Man like me, full of so much energy, gets 
bored easy. I need to move around. Besides, life’s too short to waste all of it 
working, don’t you think? So I keep a job for a while, till I’ve got some money 
saved, then I coast as long as I can. And once in a while I run into a lady like 
you, someone who has a powerful need for me, someone who’s just crying out for a 
man like me, and so I help her along.”
Kick him, bite him, go for his eyes, she told herself.
She did nothing.
Her hand ached dully. She remembered how hot and intense the pain had been.
His voice changed, became softer, soothing, reassuring, but that frightened her 
even more. “And I’m going to help you, Nora. I’ll be moving in for a while. It’s 
going to be fun. You’re a little nervous about me, sure, I understand that, I 
really do. But believe me, this is what you need, girl, this is going to turn 
your life upside down, nothing’s ever going to be the same again, and that’s the 
best thing could happen to you.”
 
 
2
Einstein loved the park.
When Travis slipped off the leash, the retriever trotted to the nearest bed
of flowers—big yellow marigolds surrounded by a border of purple 
polyanthuses—and walked slowly around it, obviously fascinated. He went to a 
blazing bed of late-blooming ranunculuses, to another of impatiens, and his tail 
wagged faster with each discovery. They said dogs could see in only black and 
white, but Travis would not have bet against the proposition that Einstein 
possessed full-color vision. Einstein sniffed everything—flowers, shrubbery, 
trees, rocks, trash cans, crumpled litter, the base of the drinking fountain, 
and every foot of ground he covered—no doubt turning up olfactory “pictures” of 
people and dogs that had passed this way before, images as clear to him as 
photographs would have been to Travis.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the retriever had done nothing 
amazing. In fact, his I’m-just-an-ordinary-dumb-dog behavior was so convincing 
that Travis wondered if the animal’s nearly human intelligence came only in 
brief flashes, sort of the beneficial equivalent of epileptic seizures. But 
after all that had happened yesterday, Einstein’s extraordinary nature, though 
seldom revealed, was no longer open to debate.
As they were strolling around the pond, Einstein suddenly went rigid, lifted his 
head, raised his floppy ears a bit, and stared at a couple sitting on a park 
bench about sixty feet away. The man was in running shorts, and the woman wore a 
rather baggy gray dress; he was holding her hand, and they appeared to be deep 
in conversation.
Travis started to turn away from them, heading out toward the open green of the 
park to give them privacy.
But Einstein barked once and raced straight toward the couple.
“Einstein! Here! Come back here!”
The dog ignored him and, nearing the pair on the bench, began to bark furiously.
By the time Travis reached the bench, the guy in running shorts was standing. 
His arms were raised defensively, and his hands were fisted as he warily moved 
back a step from the retriever.
“Einstein!”
The retriever stopped barking, turned away from Travis before the leash Could be 
clipped to the collar again, went to the woman on the bench, and Put his head in 
her lap. The change from snarling dog to affectionate pet was so sudden that 
everyone was startled.
Travis said, “I’m sorry. He never—”
“For Christ’s sake,” said the guy in running shorts, “you can’t let a vicious 
dog run loose in a park!”
not vicious,” Travis said. “He—”
Bullshit,” the runner said, spraying spittle. “The damn thing tried to bite me. 
You enjoy lawsuits or something?”
don’t know what got into—”
Get it out of here,” the runner demanded.
Nodding, embarrassed, Travis turned to Einstein and saw that the woman had 
coaxed the retriever onto the bench. Einstein was sitting with her, facing her, 
his forepaws in her lap, and she was not merely petting him but hugging
him. In fact, there was something a little desperate about the way she was 
holding on to him.
“Get it out of here!” the runner said furiously.
The guy was taller, broader in the shoulders, and thicker in the chest than 
Travis, and he took a couple of steps forward, looming over Travis, using his 
superior size to intimidate. By being aggressive, by looking and acting a little 
dangerous, he was accustomed to getting his way. Travis despised such men.
Einstein turned his head to look at the runner, bared his teeth, and growled low 
in his throat.
“Listen, buddy,” the runner said angrily, “are you deaf, or what? I said that 
dog’s got to be put on a leash, and I see the leash there in your hand, so what 
the hell are you waiting for?”
Travis began to realize something was wrong. The runner’s self-righteous anger 
was overdone—as if he had been caught in a shameful act and was trying to 
conceal his guilt by going immediately and aggressively on the offensive. And 
the woman was behaving peculiarly. She had not spoken a word. She was pale. Her 
thin hands trembled. But judging by the way she petted and clung to the dog, it 
wasn’t Einstein that frightened her. And Travis wondered why a couple would go 
to the park dressed so differently from each other, one in running shorts and 
the other in a drab housedress. He saw the woman glance surreptitiously and 
fearfully at the runner, and suddenly he knew that these two were not 
together—at least not by the woman’s choice— and that the man had, indeed, been 
up to something about which he felt guilty.
“Miss,” Travis said, “are you all right?”
“Of course she’s not all right,” the runner said. “Your damn dog came barking 
and snapping at us—”
“He doesn’t seem to be terrorizing her right now,” Travis said, meeting and 
holding the other man’s gaze.
Bits of what appeared to be oatmeal batter were stuck on the guy’s cheek. Travis 
had noticed an oatmeal cookie spilling from a bag on the bench beside the woman, 
and another one crumbled on the ground between her feet. What the hell had been 
going on here?
The runner glared at Travis and started to speak. But then he looked at the 
woman and Einstein, and he evidently realized that his calculated outrage would 
no longer be appropriate. He said sullenly, “Well . . . you should still get the 
damn hound under control.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll bother anyone now,” Travis said, coiling the leash. “It 
was just an aberration.”
Still furious but uncertain, the runner looked at the huddled woman and said, 
“Nora?”
She did not respond. She just kept petting Einstein.
“I’ll see you later,” the runner told her. Getting no response, he refocused on 
Travis, narrowed his eyes, and said, “If that hound comes nipping at my heels—”
“He won’t,” Travis interrupted. “You can get on with your run. He won’t bother 
YOU.”
Several times as he jogged slowly across the park to the nearest exit, the man 
glanced back at them. Then he was gone.
On the bench, Einstein had settled down on his belly with his head on the 
woman’s lap.
Travis said, “He’s sure taken a liking to you.”
Without looking up, smoothing Einstein’s coat with one hand, she said, “He’s a 
lovely dog.”
“I just got him yesterday.”
She said nothing.
He sat down on the other end of the bench, with Einstein between them. “My 
name’s Travis.”
Unresponsive, she scratched behind Einstein’s ears. The dog made a contented 
sound.
“Travis Cornell,” he said.
At last she raised her head and looked at him. “Nora Devon.”
“Glad to meet you.”
She smiled, but nervously.
Though she wore her hair straight and lank, though she used no makeup, she was 
quite attractive. Her hair was dark and glossy, her skin flawless, and her gray 
eyes were accented with green striations that seemed luminous in the bright May 
sunshine.
As if sensing his approval and frightened of it, she immediately broke eye 
contact, lowered her head once more.
He said, “Miss Devon . . . is something wrong?”
She said nothing.
“Was that man . . . bothering you?”
“It’s all right,” she said.
With her head bowed and shoulders hunched, sitting there under a ton-weight of 
shyness, she looked so vulnerable that Travis could not just get up, walk away, 
and leave her with her problems. He said, “If that man was bothering you, I 
think we ought to find a cop—”
“No,” she said softly but urgently. She slipped out from under Einstein and got 
up.
The dog scrambled off the bench to stand beside her, gazing at her with 
affection.
Rising, Travis said, “I don’t mean to pry, of course—”
She hurried away, heading out of the park on a different path from the One the 
runner had taken.
Einstein started after her but halted and reluctantly returned when Travis 
called to him.
Puzzled, Travis watched her until she disappeared, an enigmatic and troubled 
woman in a gray dress as drab and shapeless as the garb of an Amish lady or a 
member of some other sect that took great pains to cloak the female figure in 
garments that would not lead a man into temptation.
He and Einstein continued their walk through the park. Later, they went to the 
beach, where the retriever seemed astounded by the endless vistas of rolling sea 
and by the breakers foaming on the sand. He repeatedly stopped to stare out at 
the ocean for a minute or two at a time, and he frolicked happily in the surf. 
Later still, back at the house, Travis tried to interest Einstein in the books 
that had caused such excitement last evening, hoping this time to be able to 
figure out what the dog expected to find in them. Einstein sniffed without 
interest at the volumes Travis brought to him—and yawned.
Throughout the afternoon, the memory of Nora Devon returned to Travis with 
surprising frequency and vividness. She did not require alluring clothes to 
capture a man’s interest. That face and those green-flecked gray eyes were 
enough.
 
 
3
After only a few hours of deep sleep, Vincent Nasco took an early-morning flight 
to Acapulco, Mexico. He checked into a huge bayfront hotel, a gleaming but 
soulless high-rise where everything was glass, concrete, and terrazzo. After he 
had changed into ventilated white Top-Siders, white cotton pants, and a 
pale-blue Ban-Lon shirt, he went looking for Dr. Lawton Haines.
Haines was vacationing in Acapulco. He was thirty-nine years old, five-eleven, 
one hundred and sixty pounds, with unruly dark brown hair, and he was purported 
to look like Al Pacino, except that he had a red birthmark the size of a 
half-dollar on his forehead. He came to Acapulco at least twice a year, always 
stayed at the elegant Hotel Las Brisas on the headland at the eastern end of the 
bay, and frequently enjoyed long lunches at a restaurant adjacent to the Hotel 
Caleta, which he favored for its margaritas and its view of Playa de Caleta.
By twelve-twenty in the afternoon, Vince was seated in a rattan chair with 
comfortable yellow and green cushions at a table by the windows in that same 
restaurant. He’d spotted Haines on entering. The doctor was at another window 
table, three away from Vince, half-screened by a potted palm. Haines was eating 
shrimp and drinking margaritas with a stunning blonde. She was wearing white 
slacks and a gaily striped tube-top, and half the men in the place were staring 
at her.
As far as Vince was concerned, Haines looked more like Dustin Hoffman than like 
Pacino. He had those bold features of Hoffman’s, including the nose. Otherwise, 
he was exactly as he’d been described. The guy was wearing pink Cotton trousers 
and a pale-yellow shirt and white sandals, which seemed, to Vince, to be taking 
tropical resort attire to an extreme.
Vince finished a lunch of albondiga soup, seafood enchiladas in salsa verde, and 
a nonalcoholic margarita, and paid the check by the time Haines and the blonde 
were ready to leave.
The blonde drove a red Porsche. Vince followed in a rental Ford, which had too 
many miles on it, rattled with the exuberance of percussion instruments in a 
mariachi band, and had fragrant moldy carpet.
At Las Brisas, the blonde dropped Haines in the parking lot, though not until 
they stood beside her car for at least five minutes, holding each other’s asses 
and soul-kissing in broad daylight.
Vince was dismayed. He expected Haines to have a stronger sense of propriety. 
After all, the man had a doctorate. If educated people did not uphold 
traditional standards of conduct, who would? Weren’t they teaching manners and 
deportment in the universities these days? No wonder the world got ruder and 
cruder every year.
The blonde departed in her Porsche, and Haines left the lot in a white Mercedes 
560 SL sports coupe. It sure wasn’t a rental, and Vince wondered where the 
doctor had gotten it.
Haines checked his car with the valet at another hotel, as did Vince. He tailed 
the doctor through the lobby, out to the beach, where at first they seemed 
embarked on an uneventful stroll along the shore. But Haines settled down beside 
a gorgeous Mexican girl in a string bikini. She was dark, superbly proportioned, 
and fifteen years younger than the doctor. She was sunbathing on a lounge, her 
eyes closed. Haines kissed her throat, startling her. Evidently, she knew him, 
for she threw her arms around him, laughing.
Vince walked down the beach and back, then sat on the sand behind Haines and the 
girl, with a pair of sunbathers interposed between them. He was not concerned 
that Haines would notice him. The doctor seemed to have eyes only for choice 
female anatomy. Besides, in spite of his size, Vince Nasco had a knack for 
fading into the background.
Out on the bay, a tourist was taking a parachute ride, hanging high in the air 
behind the towboat. Sun fell like an endless rain of gold doubloons on the sand 
and the sea.
After twenty minutes, Haines kissed the girl on the lips, and on the slopes of 
her breasts, then set off back the way he had come. The girl called out, 
“Tonight at six!” And Haines said, “I’ll be there.”
Then Haines and Vince went for a pleasure drive. At first Vince thought Haines 
had a destination in mind, but after a while it seemed they were just heading 
aimlessly down the coast road, taking in the scenery. They passed Revolcadero 
Beach and kept going, Haines in his white Mercedes, Vince following as far back 
as he dared in his Ford.
Eventually they came to a scenic overlook, where Haines pulled off the road and 
parked beside a car from which four garishly dressed tourists were emerging. 
Vince parked, too, and Walked to the iron railing at the outer edge of the 
escarpment, where there was a truly magnificent view of the coastline and of 
waves breaking thunderously on the rocky shore more than a hundred feet below.
The tourists, in their parrot shirts and striped pants, finished exclaiming Over 
the sights, took their last pictures, discarded their last bits of litter, and 
departed, leaving Vince and Haines alone on the cliff. The only traffic on the
highway was an approaching black Trans Am. Vince was waiting for the car to 
pass. Then he was going to take Haines by surprise.
Instead of going by, the Trans Am pulled off the road and parked beside Haines’s 
Mercedes, and a gorgeous girl, about twenty-five, got out. She hurried to 
Haines. She looked Mexican but with a measure of Chinese blood, very exotic. She 
was wearing a white halter top and white shorts, and she had the best legs Vince 
had ever seen. She and Haines moved farther along the railing, until they were 
about forty feet from Vince, where they went into a clinch that made Vince 
blush.
For the next few minutes, Vince edged along the railing toward them, leaning out 
dangerously now and then, craning his neck to gawk down at the crashing waves 
that threw water twenty feet into the air—saying “Whooo boy!” when a 
particularly big breaker hit the craggy outcroppings of stone— trying to make it 
look as if his movement in their direction was entirely innocent.
Though they had turned their backs to him, the breeze carried bits of their 
conversation. The woman seemed worried that her husband might find out that 
Haines was in town, and Haines was pushing her to make up her mind about 
tomorrow night. The guy was shameless.
The highway cleared of traffic again, and Vince decided he might not get another 
opportunity to nail Haines. He closed the last few feet between him and the 
girl, grabbed her by the nape of the neck and the belt of her shorts, plucked 
her off the ground, and threw her over the railing. Screaming, she plummeted 
toward the rocks below.
It happened so fast that Haines didn’t even have time to react. The instant the 
woman was airborne, Vince turned on the startled doctor and punched him in the 
face, twice, splitting both his lips, breaking his nose, and knocking him 
unconscious.
As Haines crumpled to the ground, the woman hit the rocks below, and Vince 
received her gift even at that distance: Ssssnap.
He would have liked to lean over the railing to take a long look at her 
shattered body on the rocks down there, but unfortunately he had no time to 
spare. The highway would not long be free of traffic.
He carried Haines back to the Ford and put him in the front seat, letting him 
slump against the door as if sleeping peacefully. He made sure the man’s head 
tipped back to let the blood from his nose trickle down his throat.
From the coast highway, which was twisty and frequently in poor repair for such 
a major route, Vince followed a series of lesser unpaved roads, each narrower 
and more rugged than the one before, traveling from gravel to dirt surfaces, 
heading deeper into the rain forest, until he came to a lonely dead end at a 
green wall of immense trees and lush vegetation. Twice during the drive, Haines 
had begun to regain consciousness, but Vince had quieted the doctor by thumping 
his head against the dashboard.
Now, he dragged the unconscious man out of the Ford, through a gap in the brush, 
and deep under the trees, until he found a shady clearing floored with hairy 
moss. Cawing and trilling birds fell silent, and unknown animals with peculiar 
voices moved off through the underbrush. Large insects, including a beetle as 
big as Vince’s hand, scuttled out of his way, and lizards scampered up tree 
trunks.
Vince returned to the Ford, where he had left some interrogation equipment in 
the trunk. A packet of syringes and two vials of sodium pentothal. A leather sap 
weighted with lead pellets. A hand-applied Taser that resembled a remote-control 
device for a television set. And a corkscrew with a wooden handle.
Lawton Haines was still unconscious when Vince returned to the clearing. His 
breath rattled in his broken nose.
Haines should have been dead twenty-four hours ago. The people who had employed 
Vince for three jobs yesterday had expected to use another freelancer who lived 
in Acapulco and operated throughout Mexico. But that guy had died yesterday 
morning when a long-awaited air-mail package from Fortnum & Mason in London 
surprisingly contained two pounds of plastic explosives instead of assorted 
jellies and marmalades. Out of desperate necessity, the outfit in Los Angeles 
had given the job to Vince, though he was getting to be dangerously overworked. 
It was a big break for him, for he was sure this doctor must also be connected 
with Banodyne Laboratories and could provide more details about the Francis 
Project.
Now, exploring the rain forest around the clearing where Haines lay, Vince found 
a fallen tree from which he was able to pull off a loose, curved section of 
thick bark that would serve as a ladle. He located an algae-mottled stream and 
scooped up nearly a quart of water in the bark vessel. The stuff looked foul. No 
telling what exotic bacteria thrived in it. But, of course, at this point the 
possibility of disease would not matter to Haines.
Vince threw the first ladle of water in Haines’s face. A minute later he 
returned with a second scoopful from which he forced the doctor to drink. After 
a lot of spluttering, choking, gagging, and a little vomiting, Haines was at 
last clearheaded enough to understand what was being said to him, and to respond 
intelligibly.
Holding up the leather sap, the Taser, and the corkscrew, Vince explained how 
he’d use each of them if Haines was uncooperative. The doctor—who revealed 
himself to be a specialist in brain physiology and function—proved more 
intelligent than patriotic, and he eagerly divulged every detail of the 
top-secret defense work in which he was engaged at Banodyne.
When Haines swore there was no more to be told, Vince prepared the sodium 
pentothal. As he drew the drug into the syringe, he said, conversationally, 
“Doctor, what is it with you and women?”
Haines, lying on his back in the hairy moss with his arms at his sides, exactly 
as Vince had told him to lie, was not able to adjust quickly to the change of 
subject. He blinked in confusion.
“I been following you since lunch, and I know you got three of them on a String 
in Acapulco—”
“Four,” Haines said, and in spite of his terror a visible pride surfaced. “That 
Mercedes I’m driving belongs to Giselle, the sweetest little—”
“You’re using one woman’s car to cheat on her with three others?”
Haines nodded and tried to smile, but he winced as the smile sent new waves of 
pain through his ruined nose. “I’ve always . . . had this way with the ladies.”
“For God’s sake!” Vince was appalled. “Don’t you realize these aren’t the 
sixties or seventies any more? Free love’s dead. It’s got a price now. Steep 
price. Haven’t you heard about herpes, AIDS, all that stuff?” Administering the 
pentothal, he said, “You must be a carrier for every venereal disease known to 
man.”
Blinking stupidly at him, Haines at first looked baffled and then was deep in a 
pentothal sleep. Under the drug, he confirmed all that he had already told Vince 
about Banodyne and the Francis Project.
When the drug wore off, Vince used the Taser on Haines, just for the fun of it, 
until the batteries wore out. The scientist twitched and kicked like a 
half-crushed water bug, back bowed, digging at the moss with his heels and head 
and hands.
When the Taser was of no further use, Vince beat him unconscious with the 
leather sap and killed him by applying the corkscrew to the space between two 
ribs, angling it up into the beating heart.
Ssssnap.
Throughout, a sepulchral silence hung over the rain forest, but Vince sensed a 
thousand eyes watching, the eyes of wild things. He believed that the hidden 
watchers approved of what he had done to Haines because the scientist’s 
lifestyle made him an affront to the natural order of things, the natural order 
that all the creatures of the jungle obeyed.
He said, “Thank you,” to Haines, but he did not kiss the man. Not on the mouth. 
Not even on the forehead. Haines’s life energy was as invigorating and welcome 
as anyone’s, but his body and spirit were unclean.
 
 
4
Nora went straight home from the park. The mood of adventure and the spirit of 
freedom that had colored the morning and the early afternoon could not be 
recaptured. Streck had sullied the day.
Closing the front door behind her, she engaged the regular lock, the dead-bolt 
lock, and the brass safety chain. She went through the downstairs rooms, drawing 
the drapes tightly shut at all the windows to prevent Arthur Streck from seeing 
inside if he should come prowling around. But she could not tolerate the 
resultant darkness, so she turned on every lamp in every room. In the kitchen, 
she closed the shutters and checked the lock on the back door.
Her contact with Streck had not only terrified her but had left her feeling 
dirty. More than anything, she wanted a long, hot shower.
But her legs were suddenly shaky and weak, and she was seized by a spell of 
dizziness. She had to grab hold of the kitchen table to steady herself. She knew 
she would fall if she tried to climb the stairs just then, so she sat down, 
folded her arms on the table, put her head in her arms, and waited until she 
felt better.
When the worst of the dizziness passed, she remembered the bottle of brandy in 
the cupboard by the refrigerator, and she decided a drink might help steady her. 
She had bought the brandy—Remy Martin—after Violet had died because Violet had 
not approved of any stronger drink than partially fermented apple cider. As an 
act of rebellion, Nora had poured a glass of brandy for herself when she had 
come home from her aunt’s funeral. She had not enjoyed it and had emptied most 
of the contents of the glass down the drain. But now it seemed that a shot of 
brandy would stop her shivering.
First she went to the sink and washed her hands repeatedly under the hottest 
water she could tolerate, using both soap and then a lot of Ivory dishwashing 
liquid, scrubbing away every trace of Streck. When she was done, her hands were 
red and looked raw.
She brought the brandy bottle and a glass to the table. She had read books in 
which characters had sat down with a fifth of booze and a heavy load of despair, 
determined to use the former to wash away the latter. Sometimes it worked for 
them, so maybe it would work for her. If brandy could improve her state of mind 
even marginally, she was prepared to drink the whole damn bottle.
But she did not have it in her to be a lush. She spent the next two hours 
sipping at a single glass of Remy Martin.
When she tried to turn her mind away from thoughts of Streck, she was 
relentlessly tormented by memories of Aunt Violet, and when she tried not to 
think of Violet, she was right back to Streck again, and when she forced herself 
to put both of them out of her mind, she thought of Travis Cornell, the man in 
the park, and dwelling on him gave her no comfort either. He had seemed 
nice—gentle, polite, concerned—and he had gotten rid of Streck. But he was 
probably just as bad as Streck. If she gave him half a chance, Cornell would 
probably take advantage of her the same way Streck was trying to do. Aunt Violet 
had been a tyrant, twisted and sick, but increasingly it seemed that she had 
been right about the dangers of interacting with other people.
Ah, but the dog. That was a different story. She had not been afraid of the dog, 
not even when he had dashed toward the park bench, barking ferociously. Somehow, 
she knew that the retriever—Einstein, his master had called him—was not barking 
at her, that his anger was focused on Streck. Clinging to Einstein, she’d felt 
safe, protected, even with Streck still looming over her.
Maybe she should get a dog of her own. Violet had abhorred the very idea of 
house pets. But Violet was dead, forever dead, and there was nothing to prevent 
Nora from having a dog of her own.
Except . .
Well, she had the peculiar notion that no other dog would give her the profound 
feeling of security she had gotten from Einstein. She and the retriever had 
enjoyed instant rapport.
Of course, because the dog rescued her from Streck, she might be attributing 
qualities to him that he did not possess. Naturally, she would view him as a 
savior, her valiant guardian. But no matter how vigorously she tried to disabuse 
herself of the notion that Einstein was only a dog like any other, she still 
felt he was special, and she was convinced no other dog would give her the 
degree of protection and companionship that Einstein could provide.
A single glass of Remy Martin, consumed over two hours, plus thoughts of 
Einstein, did in fact lift her spirits. More important, the brandy and memories 
of the dog also gave her the courage to go to the kitchen telephone with the 
determination to call Travis Cornell and offer to buy his retriever. After all, 
he had told her he’d owned the dog only one day, so he couldn’t be deeply 
attached to it. For the right price, he might sell. She paged through the 
directory, found Cornell’s number, and dialed it.
He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
On hearing his voice, she realized that any attempt to buy the dog from him 
would give him a lever with which he could attempt to pry his way into her life. 
She had forgotten that he might be just as dangerous as Streck.
“Hello?” he repeated.
Nora hesitated.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She hung up without saying a word.
Before she spoke with Cornell about the dog, she needed to devise an approach 
that would somehow discourage him from thinking he could make a move on her if, 
in fact, he was like Streck.
 
 
5
When the telephone rang at a few minutes before five o’clock, Travis was 
emptying a can of Alpo into Einstein’s bowl. The retriever was watching with 
interest, licking his chops but waiting until the last scraps had been scraped 
from the can, exhibiting restraint.
Travis went for the phone, and Einstein went for the food. When no one answered 
Travis’s first greeting, he said hello again, and the dog glanced away from his 
bowl. When Travis still got no answer, he asked if anyone was on the line, which 
seemed to intrigue Einstein because the dog padded across the kitchen to look up 
at the receiver in Travis’s hand.
Travis hung up and turned away, but Einstein stood there, gazing at the wall 
phone.
“Probably a wrong number.”
Einstein glanced at him, then at the phone again.
“Or kids thinking they’re being clever.”
Einstein whined unhappily.
“What’s eating you?”
Einstein just stood there, riveted by the phone.
With a sigh, Travis said, “Well, I’ve had all the bewilderment I can handle for 
one day. If you’re going to wax mysterious, you’ll have to do it without me.”
He wanted to watch the early news before preparing dinner for himself, so he got 
a Diet Pepsi from the fridge and went into the living room, leaving the dog in 
peculiar communion with the telephone. He switched on the TV, sat in the big 
armchair, popped the tab on his Pepsi—and heard Einstein getting into some kind 
of trouble in the kitchen.
“What’re you doing out there?”
A clank. A clatter. The sound of claws scrabbling against a hard surface. A 
thump, and another.
“Whatever damage you do,” Travis warned, “you’re going to have to pay for. And 
how’re you going to earn the bucks? Might have to go up to Alaska and work as a 
sled dog.”
The kitchen got quiet. But only for a moment. Then there were a couple of 
clunks, a rattle, a rustle, more scrabbling of claws.
Travis was intrigued in spite of himself. He used the remote-control unit to 
mute the TV.
Something hit the kitchen floor with a bang.
Travis was about to go see what had happened, but before he rose from the chair, 
Einstein appeared. The industrious dog was carrying the telephone directory in 
his jaws. He must have leaped repeatedly at the kitchen counter where the book 
lay, pawing it, until he pulled it onto the floor. He crossed the living room 
and deposited the book in front of the armchair.
“What do you want?” Travis asked.
The dog nudged the directory with his nose, then gazed at Travis expectantly.
“You want me to call someone?”
“Woof.”
“Who?”
Einstein nosed the phone book again.
Travis said, “Now who would you want me to call? Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Old 
Yeller?”
The retriever stared at him with those dark, undoglike eyes, which were more 
expressive than ever but insufficient to communicate what the animal Wanted.
“Listen, maybe you can read my mind,” Travis said, “but I can’t read yours.”
Whining in frustration, the retriever padded out of the room, disappearing 
around the corner into the short hallway that served the bath and two bedrooms.
Travis considered following, but he decided to wait and see what happened next.
In less than a minute, Einstein returned, carrying a gold-framed eight-by-ten 
photograph in his mouth. He dropped it beside the phone directory. It was the 
picture of Paula that Travis kept on the bedroom dresser. It had been taken on 
their wedding day, ten months before she died. She looked beautiful—and 
deceptively healthy.
“No good, boy. I can’t call the dead.”
Einstein huffed as if to say Travis was thickheaded. He went to a magazine rack 
in the corner, knocked it over, spilling its contents, and came back with an 
issue of Time, which he dropped beside the gold-framed photograph. With his 
forepaws, he scraped at the magazine, pulling it open and leafing through its 
pages, tearing a few in the process.
Moving to the edge of the armchair, leaning forward, Travis watched with 
interest.
Einstein paused a couple of times to study the open pages of the magazine, then 
continued to paw through it. Finally, he came to an automobile advertisement 
that prominently featured a striking brunette model. He looked up at Travis, 
down at the ad, up at Travis again, and woofed.
“I don’t get you.”
Pawing the pages again, Einstein found an ad in which a smiling blonde was 
holding a cigarette. He snorted at Travis.
“Cars and cigarettes? You want me to buy you a car and a pack of Virginia 
Slims?”
After another trip to the overturned magazine rack, Einstein returned with a 
copy of a real-estate magazine that still showed up in the mail every month even 
though Travis had been out of the racket for two years. The dog pawed through 
that one as well until he found an ad that featured a pretty brunette 
real-estate saleswoman in a Century 21 jacket.
Travis looked at Paula’s photograph, at the blonde smoking the cigarette, at the 
perky Century 21 agent, and he remembered the other ad with the brunette and the 
automobile, and he said, “A woman? You want me to call . . . some woman?”
Einstein barked.
“Who?”
With his jaws, Einstein gently took hold of Travis’s wrist and tried to pull him 
out of the chair.
“Okay, okay, let go. I’ll follow you.”
But Einstein was taking no chances. He would not let go of Travis’s wrist, 
forcing his master to walk in a half-stoop all the way across the living room 
and dining room, into the kitchen, to the wall phone. There, he finally released 
Travis.
“Who?” Travis asked again, but suddenly he understood. There was only one woman 
whose acquaintance both he and the dog had made. “Not the lady we met in the 
park today?”
Einstein began to wag his tail.
“And you think that’s who just called us?”
The tail wagged faster.
“How could you know who was on the line? She didn’t say a word. And what are you 
up to here, anyway? Matchmaking?”
The dog woofed twice.
“Well, she was certainly pretty, but she wasn’t my type, fella. A little 
strange, didn’t you think?”
Einstein barked at him, ran to the kitchen door and jumped at it twice, turned 
to Travis and barked again, ran around the table, barking all the way, dashed to 
the door and jumped at it once more, and gradually it became apparent that he 
was deeply disturbed about something.
About the woman.
She had been in some kind of trouble this afternoon in the park. Travis 
remembered the bastard in the running shorts. He had offered to help the woman, 
and she had refused. But had she reconsidered and phoned him a few minutes ago, 
only to discover that she did not have the courage to explain her plight?
“You really think that’s who called?”
The tail started wagging again.
“Well . . . even if it was her, it’s not wise to get involved.”
The retriever rushed at him, seized the right leg of his jeans, and shook the 
denim furiously, nearly tugging Travis off balance.
“All right, already! I’ll do it. Get me the damn directory.”
Einstein let go of him and raced out of the room, slipping on the slick 
linoleum. He returned with the directory in his jaws.
Only as Travis took the phone book did he realize that he had expected the dog 
to understand his request. The animal’s extraordinary intelligence and abilities 
were now things that Travis took for granted.
With a jolt, he also realized that the dog would not have brought the directory 
to him in the living room if it had not understood the purpose of such a book.
“By God, fur face, you have been well named, haven’t you?”
 
 
6
Although Nora usually ate dinner no earlier than seven, she was hungry. The 
morning walk and the glass of brandy had given her an appetite that even 
thoughts of Streck could not spoil. She didn’t feel like cooking, so she 
prepared a platter of fresh fruit and some cheese, plus a croissant heated in 
the oven.
Nora usually ate dinner in her room, in bed with a magazine or book, because she 
was happiest there. Now, as she prepared a platter to take upstairs, the 
telephone rang.
Streck.
It must be him. Who else? She received few calls.
She froze, listening to the phone. Even after it stopped, she leaned against the 
kitchen counter, feeling weak, waiting for the ringing to start again.
 
 
7
When Nora Devon did not answer her telephone, Travis was ready to go back to the 
evening news on TV, but Einstein was still agitated. The retriever leaped up 
against the counter, pawed at the directory, pulled it to the floor again, took 
it in his jaws, and hurried out of the kitchen.
Curious about the dog’s next move, Travis followed and found him waiting at the 
front door with the phone book still in his mouth.
“What now?”
Einstein put one paw on the door.
“You want to go out?”
The dog whined, but the sound was muffled by the directory in his mouth. 
“What’re you going to do with the phone book out there? Bury it like a bone? 
What’s up?”
Although he received answers to none of his questions, Travis opened the door 
and let the retriever out into the golden, late-afternoon sunshine. Einstein 
dashed straight to the pickup parked in the driveway. He stood at the passenger 
door, looking back with what might have been impatience.
Travis walked to the truck and looked down at the retriever. He sighed. “I 
suspect you want to go somewhere, and I suspect you don’t have in mind the 
offices of the telephone company.”
Dropping the directory, Einstein jumped up, put his forepaws against the door of 
the truck and stood there, looking over his shoulder at Travis. He barked.
“You want me to look up Miss Devon’s address in the phone book and go there. Is 
that it?”
One woof.
“Sorry,” Travis said. “I know you liked her, but I’m not in the market for a 
woman. Besides, she’s not my type. I already told you that. And I’m not her 
type, either. Fact is, I have a hunch that nobody’s her type.
The dog barked.
‘‘NO
The dog dropped to the ground, rushed at Travis, and took hold of one leg of his 
jeans again.
“No,” he said, reaching down and grabbing Einstein by the collar. “There’s no 
point chewing up my wardrobe, because I’m not going.”
Einstein let go, twisted out of his grasp, and sprinted to the long bed of 
brightly blooming impatiens, where he started to dig furiously, tossing mangled 
flowers onto the lawn behind him.
“What’re you doing now, for God’s sake?”
The dog kept digging industriously, working his way through the bed, back and 
forth, apparently bent on totally destroying it.
“Hey, stop that!” Travis hurried toward the retriever.
Einstein fled to the other end of the front yard and commenced digging a hole in 
the grass.
Travis went after him.
Einstein escaped once more to another corner of the lawn, where he began ripping 
out more grass, then to the birdbath, which he tried to undermine, then back to 
what was left of the impatiens.
Unable to catch the retriever, Travis finally halted, gasped for breath, and 
shouted, “Enough!”
Einstein stopped digging in the flowers and raised his head, snaky trailers of 
coral-red impatiens dangling from his mouth.
“We’ll go,” Travis said.
Einstein dropped the flowers and came out of the ruins, onto the lawn— warily.
“No tricks,” Travis promised. “If it means that much to you, then we’ll go see 
the woman. But God knows what I’m going to say to her.”
 
 
8
With her dinner platter in one hand and a bottle of Evian in the other, Nora 
went along the downstairs hallway, comforted by the sight of lights blazing in 
every room. On the upstairs landing, she used her elbow to flick the switch for 
the second-floor hall lights. She would need to include a lot of light bulbs in 
her next grocery order because she intended to leave all the lights burning day 
and night for the foreseeable future. It was an expense she did not in the least 
begrudge.
Still buoyed by the brandy, she began to sing softly to herself as she headed 
for her room: “Moon River, wider than a mile . .
She stepped through the door. Streck was lying on the bed.
He grinned and said, “Hi, babe.”
For an instant she thought he was a hallucination, but when he spoke she knew he 
was real, and she cried out, and the platter fell from her hand, Scattering 
fruit and cheese across the floor.
“Oh my, what an awful mess you’ve made,” he said, sitting up and swinging his 
legs over the edge of the bed. He was still wearing his running shorts, athletic 
socks, and running shoes; nothing else. “But there’s no need to clean it up now. 
There’s other business to take care of first. I been waiting a long time for you 
to come upstairs. Waiting and thinking about you . . . getting Primed for you. . 
.“ He stood. “And now it’s time to teach you what you’ve never learned.”
Nora could not move. Could not breathe.
He must have come to the house directly from the park, arriving before
she did. He had forced entry, leaving no trace of a break-in, and he’d been 
waiting here on the bed all the time she’d been sipping brandy in the kitchen. 
There was something about his waiting up here that was creepier than anything 
else he had done, waiting and teasing himself with the promise of her, getting a 
kick out of listening to her putter around downstairs in ignorance of his 
presence.
When he was finished with her, would he kill her?
She turned and ran into the second-floor hallway.
As she put her hand on the newel post at the head of the stairs and started 
down, she heard Streck behind het.
She plunged down the steps, taking them two and three at a time, terrified that 
she was going to twist an ankle and fall, and at the landing her knee nearly 
buckled, and she stumbled but kept going, leaped down the last flight, into the 
first-floor hall.
Seizing her from behind, catching the baggy shoulders of her dress, Streck spun 
her around to face him.
 
 
9
As Travis swung to the curb in front of the Devon house, Einstein stood on the 
front seat, placed both forepaws on the door handle, bore down with all of his 
weight, and opened the door. Another neat trick. He was out of the truck and 
galloping up the front walkway before Travis had engaged the hand brake and 
switched off the engine.
Seconds later, Travis reached the foot of the veranda steps in time to see the 
retriever on the porch as he stood on his hind paws and hit the doorbell with 
one forepaw. The bell was audible from inside.
Climbing the steps, Travis said, “Now, what the devil’s gotten into you?”
The dog rang the bell again.
“Give her a chance—”
As Einstein hit the button a third time, Travis heard a man shout in anger and 
pain. Then a woman’s cry for help.
Barking as ferociously as he had done in the woods yesterday, Einstein clawed at 
the door as if he actually believed he could tear his way through it.
Pressing forward, Travis peered through a clear segment in the stained-glass 
window. The hallway was brightly lit, so he was able to see two people 
struggling only a few feet away.
Einstein was barking, snarling, going crazy.
Travis tried the door, found it locked. He used his elbow to smash in a couple 
of the stained-glass segments, reached inside, fumbled for the lock, located it 
and the security chain, and went inside just as the guy in running shorts pushed 
the woman aside and turned to face him.
Einstein didn’t give Travis a chance to act. The retriever bolted along the 
hallway, straight toward the runner.
The guy reacted as anyone would upon seeing a charging dog the size of this one: 
he ran. The woman tried to trip him, and he stumbled but did not fall. At the 
end of the corridor, he slammed through a swinging door, out of sight.
Einstein raced past Nora Devon and reached the still-swinging door at full tilt, 
timing his approach perfectly, streaking through the opening as the door rocked 
inward. He vanished after the runner. In the room beyond the swinging door—the 
kitchen, Travis figured—there was much barking, snarling, and shouting. 
Something fell with a crash, then something else made an even louder crash, and 
the runner cursed, and Einstein made a vicious sound that gave Travis a chill, 
and the din grew worse.
He went to Nora Devon. She was leaning against the newel post at the bottom of 
the stairs. He said, “You okay?”
“He almost . . . almost . .
“But he didn’t,” Travis guessed.
“No.”
He touched the blood on her chin. “You’re hurt.”
“His blood,” she said, seeing it on Travis’s fingertips. “I bit the bastard.” 
She looked toward the swinging door, which had stopped moving now. “Don’t let 
him hurt the dog.”
“Not likely,” Travis said.
The noise in the kitchen subsided as Travis pushed through the swinging door. 
Two ladder-back chairs had been knocked over. A large blue-flowered ceramic 
cookie jar lay in pieces on the tile floor, and oatmeal cookies were scattered 
across the room, some whole and some broken and some squashed. The runner was 
sitting in a corner, his bare legs pulled up, hands crossed defensively on his 
chest. One of the man’s shoes was missing, and Travis suspected the dog had 
gotten hold of it. The runner’s right hand was bleeding, which was evidently 
Nora Devon’s work. He was also bleeding from his left calf, but that wound 
appeared to be a dog bite. Einstein was guarding him, staying back out of range 
of a kick, but ready to tear at the runner if the guy was foolish enough to 
attempt to leave the corner.
“Nice job,” Travis told the dog. “Very nice indeed.”
Einstein made a whining sound that indicated acceptance of the praise. But when 
the runner started to move, the happy whine turned instantly to a snarl. 
Einstein snapped at the man, who jerked back into the corner again.
“You’re finished,” Travis told the runner.
“He bit me! They both bit me.” Petulant rage. Astonishment. Disbelief. “flit 
me.”
Like a lot of bullies who’d had their way all of their lives, this man was 
shocked to discover he could be hurt, beaten. Experience had taught him that 
people would always back down if he pressed them hard enough and if he kept a 
crazy-mean look in his eyes. He thought he could never lose. Now, his face was 
pale, and he looked as if he was in a state of shock.
Travis went to the phone and called the police.
 
FIVE
1
Late Thursday morning, May 20, when Vincent Nasco returned from his one-day 
vacation in Acapulco, he picked up the Times at the Los Angeles International 
Airport before taking the commuter van—they called it a limousine, but it was a 
van—back to Orange County. He read the newspaper during the trip to his 
townhouse in Huntington Beach, and on page three he saw the story about the fire 
at Banodyne Laboratories in Irvine.
The blaze had broken out shortly after six o’clock yesterday morning, when Vince 
had been on his way to the airport to catch the plane to Acapulco. One of the 
two Banodyne buildings had been gutted before the firemen had brought the flames 
under control.
The people who had hired Vince to kill Davis Weatherby, Lawton Haines, the 
Yarbecks, and the Hudstons had almost certainly employed an arsonist to torch 
Banodyne. They seemed to be trying to eradicate all records of the Francis 
Project, both those stored in Banodyne files and those in the minds of the 
scientists who had participated in the research.
The newspaper said nothing about Banodyne’s defense contracts, which were 
apparently not public knowledge. The company was referred to as “a leader in the 
genetic-engineering industry, with a special focus on the development of 
revolutionary new drugs derived from recombinant-DNA research.”
A night watchman had died in the blaze. The Times offered no explanation as to 
why he had been unable to flee the fire. Vince figured the guy had been killed 
by intruders, then incinerated to cover the murder.
The commuter van ferried Vince to the front door of his townhouse. The rooms 
were cool and shadowy. On the uncarpeted floors, each footstep was hard and 
clearly defined, echoing hollowly through the nearly empty house.
He had owned the place for two years, but he had not fully furnished it. In 
fact, the dining room, den, and two of the three bedrooms contained nothing 
except cheap drapes for privacy.
Vince believed that the townhouse was a way station, a temporary residence from 
which he would one day move to a house on the beach at Rincon, where the surf 
and the surfers were legendary, where the vast rolling sea was the overwhelming 
fact of life. But his failure to furnish his current residence had nothing to do 
with its temporary status in his plans. He simply liked bare white walls, clean 
concrete floors, and empty rooms.
When he eventually purchased his dream house, Vince intended to have polished 
white ceramic tile installed on the floors and walls in every one of its big 
rooms. There would be no wood, no stone or brick, no textured surfaces to 
provide the visual “warmth” that other people seemed to prize. The furniture 
would be built to his specifications, with several coats of glossy white enamel, 
upholstered in white vinyl. The only deviations that he would permit from all 
those shiny white surfaces would be the necessary use of glass and highly 
polished steel. Then, there, thus encapsulated, he would at last feel at peace 
and at home for the first time in his life.
Now, after unpacking his suitcase, he went down to the kitchen to prepare lunch. 
Tuna fish. Three hard-boiled eggs. Half a dozen rye crackers. Two apples and an 
orange. A bottle of Gatorade.
The kitchen had a small table and one chair in the corner, but he ate upstairs 
in the sparsely furnished master bedroom. He sat in a chair at the window that 
faced west. The ocean was only a block away, on the other side of the Coast 
Highway and beyond a wide public beach, and from the second floor he could see 
the rolling water.
The sky was partially overcast, so the sea was dappled with sunshine and 
shadows. In some places it looked like molten chrome, but in other places it 
might have been a surging mass of dark blood.
The day was warm, though it looked strangely cold, wintry.
Staring at the ocean, he always felt that the ebb and flow of blood through his 
veins and arteries was in perfect sympathy with the rhythm of the tides.
When he finished eating, he sat for a while in communion with the sea, crooning 
to himself, looking through his faint reflection on the glass as if peering 
through the wall of an aquarium, although he felt himself to be within the ocean 
even now, far beneath the waves in a clean, cool, endless world of silence.
Later in the afternoon, he drove his van to Irvine and located Banodyne 
Laboratories. Banodyne was set against the backdrop of the Santa Ana Mountains. 
The company had two buildings on a multiple-acre lot that was surprisingly large 
in an area of such expensive real estate: one L-shaped two-story structure and a 
larger V-shaped single story with only a few narrow Windows that made it look 
fortresslike. Both were very modern in design, a striking mix of flat planes and 
sensuous curves faced in dark green and gray marble, quite attractive. 
Surrounded by an employee parking lot and by immense expanses of well-maintained 
grass, shaded by a few palms and coral trees, the buildings were actually larger 
than they appeared to be, for their true scale was distorted and diminished by 
that enormous piece of flat land.
The fire had been confined to the V-shaped building that housed the labs. The 
only indications of destruction were a few broken windows and soot Stains on the 
marble above those narrow openings.
The property was not walled or fenced, so Vince could have walked onto it from 
the street if he had wished, although there was a simple gate and
guard booth at the three-lane entrance road. Judging by the guard’s sidearm and 
by the subtly forbidding look of the building that housed the research
labs, Vince suspected the lawns were monitored electronically and that, at 
night, sophisticated alarm systems would alert watchmen to an intruder’s 
presence before he had taken more than a few steps across the grass. The 
arsonist must have been skilled at more than setting fires; he must also have 
had a wide knowledge of security systems.
Vince cruised past the place, then turned and drove by from the other direction. 
Like spectral presences, cloud shadows moved slowly across the lawn and slid up 
the walls of the buildings. Something about Banodyne gave it a 
portentous—perhaps even slightly ominous—look. And Vince did not think that he 
was letting his view of the place be unduly colored by the research that he knew 
to have been conducted there.
He drove home to Huntington Beach.
Having gone to Banodyne in the hope that seeing the place would help him decide 
how to proceed, he was disappointed. He still did not know what to do next. He 
could not figure out to whom he could sell his information for a price worth the 
risk he was taking. Not to the U.S. government: it was their information to 
begin with. And not to the Soviets, the natural adversary, for it was the 
Soviets who had paid him to kill Weatherby, the Yarbecks, the Hudstons, and 
Haines.
Of course, he couldn’t prove he had been working for the Soviets. They were 
clever when they hired a freelancer like him. But he had worked for these people 
as often as he had taken contracts from the mob, and based on dozens of clues 
over the years, he had decided they were Soviets. Once in a while he dealt with 
people other than the usual three contacts in L.A., and invariably they spoke 
with what sounded like Russian accents. Furthermore, their targets were usually 
political to at least some degree—or, as in the case of the Banodyne kills, 
military targets. And their information always proved more thorough, accurate, 
and sophisticated than the information he was given by the mob when he 
contracted for a simple gangland hit.
So who would pay for such sensitive defense information if not the U.S. or the 
Soviets? Some third-world dictator looking for a way to circumvent the nuclear 
capabilities of the most powerful countries? The Francis Project might give some 
pocket Hitler that edge, elevate him to a world power, and he might pay well for 
it. But who wanted to risk dealing with Qaddafi types? Not Vince.
Besides, he possessed information about the existence of the revolutionary 
research at Banodyne, but he did not have detailed files on how the Francis 
Project’s miracles had been accomplished. He had less to sell than he’d first 
thought.
However, in the back of his mind, an idea had been growing since yesterday. Now, 
as he continued to puzzle over a potential buyer for his information, that idea 
flowered.
The dog.
At home again, he sat in his bedroom, staring out at the sea. He sat there even 
after nightfall, after he could no longer see the water, and he thought about 
the dog.
Hudston and Haines had told him so much about the retriever that he’d begun to 
realize his knowledge of the Francis Project, although potentially explosive and 
valuable, was not one-thousandth as valuable as the dog itself. The retriever 
could be exploited in many ways; it was a money machine with a tail. For one 
thing, he could probably sell it back to the government or to the Russians for a 
bargeload of cash. If he could find the dog, he would be able to achieve 
financial independence.
But how could he locate it?
All over southern California, a quiet search—almost secret yet gigantic— must be 
under way. The Defense Department would be putting tremendous manpower into the 
hunt, and if Vince crossed paths with those searchers, they would want to know 
who he was. He could not afford to draw attention to himself.
Furthermore, if he conducted his own search of the nearest Santa Ana foothills, 
into which the lab escapees had almost surely fled, he might encounter the wrong 
one. He might miss the golden retriever and stumble upon The Outsider, and that 
could be dangerous. Deadly.
Beyond the bedroom window, the cloud-armored night sky and the sea flowed 
together in blackness as dark as the far side of the moon.
 
 
2
On Thursday, one day after Einstein cornered Arthur Streck in Nora Devon’s 
kitchen, Streck was arraigned on charges of breaking and entering, assault and 
battery, and attempted rape. Because he had previously been convicted of rape 
and had served two years of a three-year sentence, his bail was high; he could 
not meet it. And since he could not locate a bondsman who would trust him, he 
seemed destined to remain in jail until his case came to trial, which was a 
great relief to Nora.
On Friday, she went to lunch with Travis Cornell.
She was startled to hear herself accept his invitation. It was true that Travis 
had seemed genuinely shocked to learn of the terror and harassment she had 
endured at Streck’s hands, and it was also true that to some extent she owed her 
dignity and perhaps her life to his arrival at the penultimate moment. Yet years 
of indoctrination in Aunt Violet’s paranoia could not be washed away in a few 
days, and a residue of unreasonable suspicion and wariness clung to Nora. She 
would have been dismayed, maybe even shattered, if Travis had suddenly tried to 
force himself upon her, but she would not have been surprised. Having been 
encouraged since early childhood to expect the worst from people, she could be 
surprised only by kindness and compassion.
Nevertheless, she went to lunch with him.
At first, she did not know why.
However, she did not have to think long to find the answer: the dog. She wanted 
to be near the dog because he made her feel secure and because she’d
never before been the recipient of such unrestrained affection as Einstein 
lavished on her. She had never previously been the object of any affection from 
anyone, and she liked it even if it came from an animal. Besides, in her heart 
Nora knew that Travis Cornell must be completely trustworthy because Einstein 
trusted him, and Einstein did not seem easily fooled.
They ate lunch at a café that had a few linen-draped tables outside on a brick 
patio, under white- and blue-striped umbrellas, where they were permitted to 
clip the dog’s leash to the wrought-iron table leg and keep him with them. 
Einstein was well-behaved, lying quietly most of the time. Occasionally he 
raised his head to gaze at them with his soulful eyes until they relinquished 
scraps of food, though he was not a pest about it.
Nora did not have much experience with dogs, but she thought that Einstein was 
unusually alert and inquisitive. He frequently shifted his position in order to 
watch the other diners, with whom he seemed intrigued.
Nora was intrigued with everything. This was her first meal in a restaurant, and 
although she had read about people having lunch and dinner in thousands of 
restaurants in countless novels, she was still amazed and delighted by every 
detail. The single rose in the milk-white vase. The matchbooks with the 
establishment’s name embossed on them. The way the butter had been molded into 
round pats with a flower pattern on each, then served on a bowl of crushed ice. 
The slice of lemon in the ice water. The chilled salad fork was an especially 
amazing touch.
“Look at this,” she said to Travis after their entrées had been served and the 
waiter had departed.
He frowned at her plate and said, “Something wrong?”
“No, no. I mean . . . these vegetables.”
“Baby carrots, baby squash.”
“Where do they get them so tiny? And look how they’ve scalloped the edge of this 
tomato. Everything’s so pretty. How do they ever find the time to make 
everything so pretty?”
She knew these things that astonished her were things he took for granted, knew 
that her amazement revealed her lack of experience and sophistication, making 
her seem like a child. She frequently blushed, sometimes stammered in 
embarrassment, but she could not restrain herself from commenting on these 
marvels. Travis smiled at her almost continuously, but it was not a patronizing 
smile, thank God; he seemed genuinely delighted by the pleasure she took in new 
discoveries and small luxuries.
By the time they finished coffee and dessert—a kiwi tart for her, strawberries 
and cream for Travis, and a chocolate éclair that Einstein did not have to share 
with anyone—Nora had been engaged in the longest conversation of her life. They 
passed two and a half hours without an awkward silence, mainly discussing books 
because—given Nora’s reclusive life—a love of books was virtually the only thing 
they had in common. That and loneliness. He, seemed genuinely interested in her 
opinions of novelists, and he had some fascinating insights into books, insights 
which had eluded her. She laughed more in one afternoon than she had laughed in 
an entire year. But the
experience was so exhilarating that she occasionally felt dizzy, and by the time 
they left the restaurant she could not precisely remember anything they had 
actually said; it was all a colorful blur. She was experiencing sensory overload 
analogous to what a primitive tribesman might feel if suddenly deposited in the 
middle of New York City, and she needed time to absorb and process all that had 
happened to her.
Having walked to the café from her house, where Travis had left his pickup 
truck, they now made the return trip on foot, and Nora held the dog’s leash all 
the way. Einstein never tried to pull away from her, never tangled the leash 
around her legs, but padded along at her side or in front of her, docile, now 
and then looking up at her with a sweet expression that made her smile.
“He’s a good dog,” she said. “Very good,” Travis agreed. “So well behaved.”
“Usually.”
“And so cute.”
“Don’t flatter him too much.”
“Are you afraid he’ll become vain?”
“He’s already vain,” Travis said. “If he were any more vain, he’d be impossible 
to live with.”
The dog looked back and up at Travis, and sneezed loudly as if ridiculing his 
master’s comment.
Nora laughed. “Sometimes it almost seems he can understand every word you’re 
saying.”
“Sometimes,” Travis agreed.
When they arrived at the house, Nora wanted to invite him in. But she wasn’t 
sure if the invitation would seem too bold, and she was afraid Travis would 
misinterpret it. She knew she was being a nervous old maid, knew she could—and 
ought to—trust him, but Aunt Violet suddenly loomed in her memory, full of dire 
warnings about men, and Nora could not bring herself to do what she knew was 
right. The day had been perfect, and she dreaded extending it further for fear 
something would happen to sully the entire memory, leaving her with nothing 
good, so she merely thanked him for lunch and did not even dare to shake his 
hand.
She did, however, stoop down and hug the dog. Einstein nuzzled her neck and 
licked her throat once, making her giggle. She had never heard herself giggle 
before. She would have clung to him and petted him for hours if her enthusiasm 
for the dog had not, by comparison, made her wariness of Travis even more 
evident.
Standing in the open door, she watched them as they got into the pickup and 
drove away.
Travis waved at her.
She waved, too.
Then the truck reached the corner and began to turn right, out of sight, and 
Nora regretted her cowardice, wished she’d asked Travis in for a while. She 
almost ran after them, almost shouted his name and almost rushed down
the steps to the sidewalk in pursuit. But then the truck was gone, and she was 
alone again. Reluctantly, she went into the house and closed the door on the 
brighter world outside.
 
 
3
The Bell JetRanger executive helicopter flashed over the tree-filled ravines and 
balding ridges of the Santa Ana foothills, its shadow running ahead of it 
because the sun was in the west as Friday afternoon waned. Approaching the head 
of Holy Jim Canyon, Lemuel Johnson looked out the window in the passenger 
compartment and saw four of the county sheriff’s squad cars lined up along the 
narrow dirt lane down there. A couple of other vehicles, including the coroner’s 
wagon and a Jeep Cherokee that probably belonged to the victim, were parked at 
the stone cabin. The pilot had barely enough room to put the chopper down in the 
clearing. Even before the engine died and the sun-bronzed rotors began to slow, 
Lem was out of the craft, hurrying toward the cabin, with his right-hand man, 
Cliff Soames, close behind him.
Walt Gaines, the county sheriff, stepped out of the cabin as Lem approached. 
Gaines was a big man, six-four and at least two hundred pounds, with enormous 
shoulders and a barrel chest. His corn-yellow hair and cornflower-blue eyes 
would have lent him a movie-idol look if his face had not been so broad and his 
features blunt. He was fifty-five, looked forty, and wore his hair only slightly 
longer than he had during his twenty years in the Marine Corps.
Although Lem Johnson was a black man, every bit as dark as Walt was white, 
though he was seven inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter than Walt, though he 
had come from an upper-middle-class black family while Walt’s folks had been 
poor white trash from Kentucky, though Lem was ten years younger than the 
sheriff, the two were friends. More than friends. Buddies. They played bridge 
together, went deep-sea fishing together, and found unadulterated pleasure in 
sitting in lawn chairs on one or the other’s patio, drinking Corona beer and 
solving all of the world’s problems. Their wives even became best friends, a 
serendipitous development that was, according to Walt, “a miracle, ‘cause the 
woman’s never liked anyone else I’ve introduced her to in thirty-two years.”
To Lem, his friendship with Walt Gaines was also a miracle, for he was not a man 
who made friends easily. He was a workaholic and did not have the leisure to 
nurture an acquaintance carefully into a more enduring relationship. Of course, 
careful nurturing hadn’t been necessary with Walt; they had clicked the first 
time they’d met, had recognized similar attitudes and points of view in each 
other. By the time they had known each other six months, it seemed they had been 
close since boyhood. Lem valued their friendship nearly as much as he valued his 
marriage to Karen. The pressure of his job would be harder to endure if he 
couldn’t let off some steam with Walt once in a while.
Now, as the chopper’s blades fell silent, Walt Gaines said, “Can’t figure why 
the murder of a grizzled old canyon squatter would interest you feds.”
“Good,” Lem said. “You’re not supposed to figure it, and you really don’t want 
to know.”
“Anyway, I sure didn’t expect you’d come yourself. Thought you’d send some of 
your flunkies.”
“NSA agents don’t like to be called flunkies,” Lem said.
Looking at Cliff Soames, Walt said, “But that’s how he treats you fellas, isn’t 
it? Like flunkies?”
“He’s a tyrant,” Cliff confirmed. He was thirty-one, with red hair and freckles. 
He looked more like an earnest young preacher than like an agent of the National 
Security Agency.
“Well, Cliff,” Walt Gaines said, “you’ve got to understand where Lem comes from. 
His father was a downtrodden black businessman who never made more than two 
hundred thousand a year. Deprived, you see. So Lem, he figures he’s got to make 
you white boys jump through hoops whenever he can, to make up for all those 
years of brutal oppression.”
“He makes me call him ‘Massah,’ “ Cliff said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Walt said.
Lem sighed and said, “You two are about as amusing as a groin injury. Where’s 
the body?”
“This way, Massah,” Walt said.
As a gust of warm afternoon wind shook the surrounding trees, as the canyon hush 
gave way to the whispering of leaves, the sheriff led Lem and Cliff into the 
first of the cabin’s two rooms
Lem understood, at once, why Walt had been so jokey. The forced humor was a 
reaction to the horror inside the cabin. It was somewhat like laughing aloud in 
a graveyard at night to chase away the willies.
Two armchairs were overturned, upholstery slashed. Cushions from the sofa had 
been ripped to expose the white foam padding. Paperbacks had been pulled off a 
corner bookcase, torn apart, and scattered all over the room. Glass shards from 
the big window sparkled gemlike in the ruins. The debris and the walls were 
spattered with blood, and a lot of dried blood darkened the light-pine floor.
Like a pair of crows searching for brightly colored threads with which to dress 
up their nest, two lab technicians in black suits were carefully probing through 
the ruins. Occasionally one of them made a soft wordless cawing Sound and 
plucked at something with tweezers, depositing it in a plastic envelope.
Evidently, the body had been examined and photographed, for it had been 
transferred into an opaque plastic mortuary bag and was lying near the door, 
waiting to be carried out to the meat wagon.
Looking down at the half-visible corpse in the sack, which was only a vaguely 
human shape beneath the milky plastic, Lem said, “What was his name?”
“Wes Dalberg,” Walt said. “Lived here ten years or more.”
“Who found him?”
“A neighbor.”
“When was he killed?”
“Near as we can tell, about three days ago. Maybe Tuesday night. Have to wait 
for lab tests to pinpoint it. Weather’s been pretty warm lately, which makes a 
difference in the rate of decomposition.”
Tuesday night . . . In the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, the breakout had 
occurred at Banodyne. By Tuesday night, The Outsider could have traveled this 
far.
Lem thought about that—and shivered.
“Cold?” Walt asked sarcastically.
Lem didn’t respond. They were friends, yes, and they were both officers of the 
law, one local and one federal, but in this case they served opposing interests. 
Walt’s job was to find the truth and bring it to the public, but Lem’s job was 
to put a lid on the case and keep it clamped down tight.
“Sure stinks in here,” Cliff Soames said.
“You should’ve smelled it before we got the stiff in the bag,” Walt said. 
“Ripe.”
“Not just . . . decomposition,” Cliff said.
“No,” Walt said, pointing here and there to stains that were not caused by 
blood. “Urine and feces, too.”
“The victim’s?”
“Don’t think so,” Walt said.
“Done any preliminary tests of it?” Lem asked, trying not to sound worried. 
“On-site microscopic exam?”
“Nope. We’ll take samples back to the lab. We think it belongs to whatever came 
crashing through that window.”
Looking up from the body bag, Lem said, “You mean the man who killed Dalberg.”
“Wasn’t a man,” Walt said, “and I figure you know that.”
“Not a man?” Lem said.
“At least not a man like you or me.”
“Then what do you think it was?”
“Damned if I know,” Walt said, rubbing the back of his bristly head with one big 
hand. “But judging from the body, the killer had sharp teeth, maybe claws, and a 
nasty disposition. Does that sound like what you’re looking for?”
Lem could not be baited.
For a moment, no one spoke.
A fresh piny breeze came through the shattered window, blowing away some of the 
noxious stench.
One of the lab men said, “Ah,” and plucked something from the rubble with his 
tweezers.
Lem sighed wearily. This situation was no good. They would not find enough to 
tell them what killed Dalberg, though they would gather sufficient evidence to 
make them curious as hell. However, this was a matter of national defense, in 
which no civilian would be wise to indulge his curiosity. Lem was going to have 
to put a stop to their investigation. He hoped he could intervene without 
angering Walt. It would be a real test of their friendship.
Suddenly, staring at the body bag, Lem realized something was wrong with the 
shape of the corpse. He said, “The head isn’t here.”
“You feds don’t miss a trick, do you?” Walt said.
“He was decapitated?” Cliff Soames asked uneasily.
“This way,” Walt said, leading them into the second room.
It was a large—if primitive—kitchen with a hand pump in the sink and an 
old-fashioned wood-burning stove.
Except for the head, there were no signs of violence in the kitchen. Of course, 
the head was bad enough. It was in the center of the table. On a plate.
“Jesus,” Cliff said softly.
When they had entered the room, a police photographer had been taking shots of 
the head from various angles. He was not finished, but he stepped back to give 
them a better view.
The dead man’s eyes were missing, torn out. The empty sockets seemed as deep as 
wells.
Cliff Soames had turned so white that, by contrast, his freckles burned on his 
skin as if they were flecks of fire.
Lem felt sick, not merely because of what had happened to Wes Dalberg but 
because of all the deaths yet to come. He was proud of both his management and 
investigatory skills, and he knew he could handle this case better than anyone 
else. But he was also a hardheaded pragmatist, incapable of underestimating the 
enemy or of pretending there would be a quick ending to this nightmare. He would 
need time and patience and luck to track down the killer, and meanwhile more 
bodies would pile up.
The head had not been cut off the dead man. It was not as neat as that. It 
appeared to have been clawed and chewed and wrenched off.
Lem’s palms were suddenly damp.
Strange . . . how the empty sockets of the head transfixed him as surely as if 
they had contained wide, staring eyes.
In the hollow of his back, a single droplet of sweat traced the course of his 
Spine. He was more scared than he had ever been—or had ever thought he could 
be—but he did not want to be taken off the job for any reason. It was vitally 
important to the very security of the nation and the safety of the public that 
this emergency be handled right, and he knew no one was likely to perform as 
well as he could. That was not just ego talking. Everyone said he Was the best, 
and he knew they were right; he had a justifiable pride and no false modesty. 
This was his case, and he would stay with it to the end.
His folks had raised him with an almost too-keen sense of duty and 
responsibility. “A black man,” his father used to say, “has to do a job twice
as well as a white man in order to get any credit at all. That’s nothing to be 
bitter about. Nothing worth protesting. It’s just a fact of life. Might as well 
protest the weather turning cold in winter. Instead of protesting, the thing to 
do is just face facts, work twice as hard, and you’ll get where you want to go 
And you must succeed because you carry the flag for all your brothers.” As a 
result of that upbringing, Lem was incapable of less than total, unhesitating 
commitment to every assignment. He dreaded failure, rarely encountered it, but 
could be thrown into a deep funk for weeks when the successful conclusion of a 
case eluded him.
“Talk to you outside a minute?” Walt asked, moving to the open rear door of the 
cabin.
Lem nodded. To Cliff, he said, “Stay here. Make sure nobody—pathologists, 
photographer, uniformed cops, nobody—leaves before I’ve had a chance to talk to 
them.”
“Yes, sir,” Cliff said. He headed quickly toward the front of the cabin to 
inform everyone that they were temporarily quarantined—and to get away from the 
eyeless head.
Lem followed Walt Gaines into the clearing behind the cabin. He noticed a metal 
hod and firewood scattered over the ground, and paused to study those objects.
“We think it started out here,” Walt said. “Maybe Dalberg was getting wood for 
the fireplace. Maybe something came out of those trees, so he threw the hod at 
it and ran into the house.”
They stood in the bloody-orange late-afternoon sunlight, at the perimeter of the 
trees, peering into the purple shadows and mysterious green depths of the 
forest.
Lem was uneasy. He wondered if the escapee from Weatherby’s lab was nearby, 
watching them.
“So what’s up?” Walt asked.
“Can’t say.”
“National security?”
“That’s right.”
The spruces and pines and sycamores rustled in the breeze, and he thought he 
heard something moving furtively through the brush.
Imagination, of course. Nevertheless, Lem was glad that both he and Walt Gaines 
were armed with reliable pistols in accessible shoulder holsters.
Walt said, “You can keep your lip zipped if you insist, but you can’t keep me 
totally in the dark. I can figure out a few things for myself. I’m not stupid.”
“Never thought you were.”
“Tuesday morning, every damn police department in Orange and San Bernardino 
counties gets an urgent request from your NSA asking us to be prepared to 
cooperate in a manhunt, details to follow. Which puts us all on edge. We know 
what you guys are responsible for—guarding defense research, keeping the 
vodka-pissing Russians from stealing our secrets. And since Southern 
California’s the home of half the defense contractors in the country, there’s 
plenty to be stolen here.”
Lem kept his eyes on the woods, kept his mouth shut.
“So,” Walt continued, “we figure we’re going to be looking for a Russian agent 
with something hot in his pockets, and we’re happy to have a chance to help kick 
some ass for Uncle Sam. But by noon, instead of getting details, we get a 
cancellation of the request. No manhunt after all. Everything’s under control, 
your office tells us. Original alert was issued in error, you say.”
“That’s right.” The agency had realized that local police could not be 
sufficiently controlled and, therefore, could not be fully trusted. It was a job 
for the military. “Issued in error.”
“Like hell. By late afternoon of the same day, we learn Marine choppers from El 
Toro are quartering the Santa Ana foothills. And by Wednesday morning, a hundred 
Marines with high-tech tracking gear are flown in from Camp Pendleton to carry 
on the search at ground level.”
“I heard about that, but it had nothing to do with my agency,” Lem said.
Walt studiously avoided looking at Lem. He stared off into the trees. Clearly, 
he knew Lem was lying to him, knew that Lem had to lie to him, and he felt it 
would be a breach of good manners to make Lem do it while they maintained eye 
contact. Though he looked crude and ill-mannered, Walt Gaines was an unusually 
considerate man with a rare talent for friendship.
But he was also the county sheriff, and it was his duty to keep probing even 
though he knew Lem would reveal nothing. He said, “Marines tell us it’s just a 
training exercise.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“We’re always notified of training exercises ten days ahead.”
Lem did not reply. He thought he saw something in the forest, a flicker of 
shadows, a darkish presence moving through piny gloom.
“So the Marines spend all day Wednesday and half of Thursday out there in the 
hills. But when reporters hear about this ‘exercise’ and come snooping around, 
the leathernecks suddenly call it off, pack up, go home. It was almost as if . . 
. whatever they were looking for was so worrisome, so damn topsecret that they’d 
rather not find it at all if finding it meant letting the press know about it.”
Squinting into the forest, Lem strained to see through steadily deepening 
shadows, trying to catch another glimpse of the movement that had drawn his 
attention a moment ago.
Walt said, “Then yesterday afternoon the NSA asks to be kept informed about any 
‘peculiar reports, unusual assaults, or exceedingly violent murders.’ We ask for 
clarification, don’t get any.”
There. A ripple in the murkiness beneath the evergreen boughs. About eighty feet 
in from the perimeter of the woods. Something moving quickly and stealthily from 
one sheltering shadow to another. Lem put his right hand under his coat, on the 
butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
“But then just one day later,” Walt said, “we find this poor son of a bitch 
Dalberg torn to pieces—and the case is peculiar as hell and about as 
‘exceedingly violent’ as I ever hope to see. Now here you are, Mr. Lemuel Asa 
Johnson, director of the Southern California Office of the NSA, and I know you 
didn’t come coppering in here just to ask me whether I want onion or guacamole 
dip at tomorrow night’s bridge game.”
The movement was closer than eighty feet, much closer. Lem had been confused by 
the layers of shadows and by the queerly distorting late-afternoon sunlight that 
penetrated the trees. The thing was no more than forty feet away, maybe closer, 
and suddenly it came straight at them, bounded at them through the brush, and 
Lem cried out, drew the pistol from his holster, and involuntarily stumbled 
backward a few steps before taking a shooter’s stance with his legs spread wide, 
both hands on the gun.
“It’s just a mule deer!” Walt Gaines said.
Indeed it was. Just a mule deer.
The deer stopped a dozen feet away, under the drooping boughs of a spruce, 
peering at them with huge brown eyes that were bright with curiosity. Its head 
was held high, ears pricked up.
“They’re so used to people in these canyons that they’re almost tame,” Walt 
said.
Lem let out a stale breath as he holstered his pistol.
The mule deer, sensing their tension, turned from them and loped away along the 
trail, vanishing into the woods.
Walt was staring hard at Lem. “What’s out there, buddy?”
Lem said nothing. He blotted his hands on his suit jacket.
The breeze was stiffening, getting cooler. Evening was on its way, and night was 
close behind it.
“Never saw you spooked before,” Walt said.
“A caffeine jag. I’ve had too much coffee today.”
“Bullshit.”
Lem shrugged.
“It seems to’ve been an animal that killed Dalberg, something with lots of 
teeth, claws, something savage,” Walt said. “Yet no damn animal would carefully 
place the guy’s head on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. That’s a 
sick joke. Animals don’t make jokes, not sick or otherwise. Whatever killed 
Dalberg . . . it left the head like that to taunt us. So what in Christ’s name 
are we dealing with?”
“You don’t want to know. And you don’t need to know ‘cause I’m assuming 
jurisdiction in this case.”
“Like hell.”
“I’ve got the authority,” Lem said. “It’s now a federal matter, Walt. I’m 
impounding all the evidence your people have gathered, all reports they’ve 
written thus far. You and your men are to talk to no one about what you’ve seen 
here. No one. You’ll have a file on the case, but the only thing in it will be a 
memo from me, asserting the federal prerogative under the correct statute. 
You’re out from under. No matter what happens, no one can blame you, Walt.”
“Shit.”
“Let it go.”
Walt scowled. “I’ve got to know—”
“Let it go.”
“—are people in my county in danger? At least tell me that much, damn it.”
“Yes.”
“In danger?”
“Yes.”
“And if I fought you, if I tried to hang on to jurisdiction in this case, would 
there be anything I could do to lessen that danger, to insure the public 
safety?”
“No. Nothing,” Lem said truthfully.
“Then there’s no point in fighting you.”
“None,” Lem said.
He started back toward the cabin because the daylight was fading fast, and he 
did not want to be near the woods as darkness crept in. Sure, it had only been a 
mule deer. But next time?
“Wait a minute,” Walt said. “Let me tell you what I think, and you just listen. 
You don’t have to confirm or deny what I say. All you’ve got to do is hear me 
out.”
“Go on,” Lem said impatiently.
The shadows of the trees crept steadily across the bristly dry grass of the 
clearing. The sun was balanced on the western horizon.
Walt paced out of the shadows into the waning sunlight, hands in his back 
pockets, looking down at the dusty ground, taking a moment to collect his 
thoughts. Then: “Tuesday afternoon, somebody walked into a house in Newport 
Beach, shot a man named Yarbeck, and beat his wife to death. That night, 
somebody killed the Hudston family in Laguna Beach—husband, wife, and a teenage 
son. Police in both communities use the same forensics lab, so it didn’t take 
long to discover one gun was used both places. But that’s about all the police 
in either case are going to learn because your NSA has quietly assumed 
jurisdiction in those crimes, too. In the interest of national security.”
Lem did not respond. He was sorry he had even agreed to listen. Anyway, he was 
not taking direct charge of the investigation into the murders of the 
scientists, which were almost surely Soviet-inspired. He’d delegated that task 
to other men, so he’d be free to concentrate on finding the dog and The 
Outsider.
The sunlight was burnt orange. The cabin windows smoldered with reflections of 
that fading fire.
Walt said, “Okay. Then there’s Dr. Davis Weatherby of Corona Del Mar. Missing 
since Tuesday. This morning, Weatherby’s brother finds the doctor’s body in the 
trunk of his car. Local pathologists hardly arrive at the scene before NSA 
agents show up.”
Lem was slightly unnerved by the swiftness with which the sheriff evidently 
gathered, coordinated, and absorbed information from various communities that 
were not in the unincorporated part of the county and were not, therefore, under 
his authority.
Walt grinned but with little or no humor. “Didn’t expect me to have made all 
these connections, huh? Each of these things happened in a different police
jurisdiction, but as far as I’m concerned this county is one sprawling city of 
two million people, so I make it my business to work hand in glove with all the 
local departments.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s astonishing to have six murders of upstanding citizens in 
one day. This is Orange County, after all, not L.A. And it’s even more 
astonishing that all six deaths are related to urgent matters of national 
security. So it arouses my curiosity. I start checking into the backgrounds of 
these people, looking for something that links them—”
“Walt, for Christ’s sake!”
“—and I discover they all work—or did work—for something called Banodyne 
Laboratories.”
Lem was not angry. He couldn’t get angry with Walt—they were tighter than 
brothers—but the big man’s canniness was maddening right now. Lem said, “Listen, 
you’ve no right to conduct an investigation.”
“I’m sheriff, remember?”
“But none of these murders—except Dalberg here—falls into your jurisdiction to 
begin with,” Lem said. “And even if it did . . . once the NSA steps in, you’ve 
no right to continue. In fact, you’re expressly forbidden by law to continue.”
Ignoring him, Walt said, “So I look up Banodyne, see what kind of work they do, 
and I discover they’re into genetic engineering, recombinant
DNA—”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“There’s no indication Banodyne’s at work on defense projects, but that doesn’t 
mean anything. Could be blind contracts, projects so secret that the funding 
doesn’t even appear on public record.”
“Jesus,” Lem said irritably. “Don’t you understand how damn mean we can get when 
we’ve got national security laws on our side?”
“Just speculating now,” Walt said.
“You’ll speculate your honky ass right into a prison cell.”
“Now, Lemuel, let’s not have an ugly racial confrontation here.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Yeah, and you’re repeating yourself. Anyway, I did some heavy thinking, and I 
figure the murders of these people who work at Banodyne must be connected 
somehow to the manhunt the Marines conducted on Wednesday and Thursday. And to 
the murder of Wesley Dalberg.”
“There’s no similarity between Dalberg’s murder and the others.”
“Of course there’s not. Wasn’t the same killer. I can see that. The Yarbecks, 
the Hudstons, and Weatherby were hit by a pro, while poor Wes Dalberg was torn 
to pieces. Still, there’s a connection, by God, or you wouldn’t be interested, 
and the connection must be Banodyne.”
The sun was sinking. Shadows pooled and thickened.
Walt said, “Here’s what I figure: they were working on some new bug at Banodyne, 
a genetically altered germ, and it got loose, contaminated some-
one, but it didn’t just make him sick. What it did was severely damage his 
brain, turn him into a savage or something—”
“An updated Dr. Jekyll for the high-tech age?” Lem interrupted sarcastically.
“—so he slipped out of the lab before anyone knew what happened to him, fled 
into the foothills, came here, attacked Dalberg.”
“You watch a lot of bad horror movies or what?”
“As for Yarbeck and the others, maybe they were eliminated ‘cause they knew what 
happened and were so scared about the consequences that they intended to go 
public.”
Off in the dusky canyon, a soft, ululant howl arose. Probably just a coyote. Lem 
wanted to get out of there, away from the forest. But he felt that he had to 
deal with Walt Gaines, deflect the sheriff from these lines of inquiry and 
consideration.
“Let me get this straight, Walt. Are you saying the United States government had 
its own scientists killed to shut them up?”
Walt frowned, knowing how unlikely—if not downright impossible—his scenario was.
Lem said, “Is life really just a Ludlum novel? Killed our own people? Is it 
National Paranoia Month or something? Do you really believe that crap?”
“No,” Walt admitted.
“And how could Dalberg’s killer be a contaminated scientist with brain damage? I 
mean, Christ, you yourself said it was some animal that killed Dalberg, 
something with claws, sharp teeth.”
“Okay, okay, so I don’t have it figured. Not all of it, anyway. But I’m sure 
it’s all tied in with Banodyne somehow. I’m not entirely on the wrong track-am 
I?”
“Yes, you are,” Lem said. “Entirely.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Lem felt bad about lying to Walt and manipulating him, but he did it 
anyway. “I shouldn’t even tell you that you’re chasing after false spoor, but as 
a friend I guess I owe you something.”
Additional wild voices had joined the eerie howling in the woods, confirming 
that the cries were only those of coyotes, yet the sound chilled Lem Johnson and 
made him eager to depart.
Rubbing the nape of his bull neck with one hand, Walt said, “It doesn’t have 
anything at all to do with Banodyne?”
“Nothing. It’s just a coincidence that Weatherby and Yarbeck both worked there 
and that Hudston used to work there. If you insist on making the Connection, 
you’ll just be spinning your wheels—which is fine by me.”
The sun set and, in passing, seemed to unlock a door through which a much 
Cooler, brisker breeze swept into the darkening world.
Still rubbing his neck, Walt said, “Not Banodyne, huh?” He sighed. “I know you 
too well, buddy. You’ve got such a strong sense of duty that you’d lie to your 
own mother if that was in the best interests of the country.”
Lem said nothing.
“All right,” Walt said. “I’ll drop it. Your case from here on. Unless more 
people in my jurisdiction get killed. If that happens . . . well, I might try to 
take control of things again. Can’t promise you that I won’t. I’ve got a sense 
of duty, too, you know.”
“I know,” Lem said, feeling guilty, feeling like a total shit.
At last, they both headed back to the cabin.
The sky—which was dark in the east, still streaked with deep orange and red and 
purple light in the west—seemed to be descending like the lid of a box.
Coyotes howled.
Something out in the night woods howled back at them.
Cougar, Lem thought, but he knew that now he was even lying to himself.
 
 
4
On Sunday, two days after their successful Friday lunch date, Travis and Nora 
drove to Solvang, a Danish-style village in the Santa Ynez Valley. It was a 
touristy place with hundreds of shops selling everything from exquisite 
Scandinavian crystal to plastic imitations of Danish beer stems. The quaint 
architecture (though calculated) and the tree-lined streets enhanced the simple 
pleasures of window-shopping.
Several times Travis felt the urge to take Nora’s hand and hold it while they 
strolled. It seemed natural, right. Yet he sensed that she might not be ready 
for even such harmless contact as hand-holding.
She was wearing another drab dress, dull blue this time, nearly as shapeless as 
a sack. Sensible shoes. Her thick dark hair still hung limp and unstyled, as it 
had been when he’d first seen her.
Being with her was pure pleasure. She had a sweet temperament and was 
unfailingly sensitive and kind. Her innocence was refreshing. Her shyness and 
modesty, though excessive, endeared her to him. She viewed everything with a 
wide-eyed wonder that was charming, and he delighted in surprising her with 
simple things: a shop that sold only cuckoo clocks; another that sold only 
stuffed animals; a music box with a mother-of-pearl door that opened to reveal a 
pirouetting ballerina.
He bought her a T-shirt with a personalized message that he would not let her 
see until it was ready: NORA LOVES EINSTEIN. Though she professed she could 
never wear a T-shirt, that it wasn’t her style, Travis knew she would wear it 
because she did, indeed, love the dog.
Perhaps Einstein could not read the words on the shirt, but he seemed to 
understand what was meant. When they came out of the shop and unhooked his leash 
from the parking meter where they’d tethered him, Einstein regarded the message 
on the shirt solemnly while Nora held it up for his inspection, then happily 
licked and nuzzled her.
The day held only one bad moment for them. As they turned a corner and 
approached another shop window, Nora stopped suddenly and looked around at the 
crowds on the sidewalks—people eating ice cream in big homemade waffle-cookie 
cones, people eating apple tarts wrapped in wax paper, guys in feather-decorated 
cowboy hats they’d bought in one of the stores, pretty young girls in 
short-shorts and halters, a very fat woman in a yellow muumuu, people speaking 
English and Spanish and Japanese and Vietnamese and all the other languages YOU 
could hear at any Southern California tourist spot—and then she looked along the 
busy street at a gift shop built in the form of a three-story stone-and-timber 
windmill, and she stiffened, looked stricken. Travis had to guide her to a bench 
in a small park, where she sat trembling for a few minutes before she could even 
tell him what was wrong.
“Overload,” she said at last, her voice shaky. “So many . . . new sights . . . 
new sounds . . . so many different things all at once. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, touched.
“I’m used to a few rooms, familiar things. Are people staring?”
“No one’s noticed anything. There’s nothing to stare at.”
She sat with her shoulders hunched, her head hung forward, her hands fisted in 
her lap—until Einstein put his head on her knees. As she petted the dog, she 
began gradually to relax.
“I was enjoying myself,” she said to Travis, though she did not raise her head, 
“really enjoying myself, and I thought how far from home I was, how wonderfully 
far from home—”
“Not realty. Less than an hour’s drive,” he assured her.
“A long, long way,” she said.
Travis supposed that for her it was, in fact, a great distance.
She said, “And when I realized how far from home I was and how .. . different 
everything was . . . I clenched up, afraid, like a child.”
“Would you like to go back to Santa Barbara now?”
“No!” she said, meeting his eyes at last. She shook her head. She dared to look 
around at the people moving through the small park and at the gift shop shaped 
like a windmill. “No. I want to stay a while. All day. I want to have dinner in 
a restaurant here, not at a sidewalk café but inside, like other people do, 
inside, and then I want to go home after dark.” She blinked and repeated those 
two words wonderingly, “After dark.”
“All right.”
“Unless, of course, you hoped to get back sooner.”
“No, no,” he said. “I planned on making a day of it.”
“This is very kind of you.”
Travis raised one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“You know.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Helping me step out into the world,” she said. “Giving up your time to help 
someone . . . like me. It’s very generous of you.”
He was astonished. “Nora, let me assure you, it’s not charity work I’m involved 
in here!”
“I’m sure a man like you has better things to do with a Sunday afternoon in 
May.”
“Oh, yes,” he said self-mockingly, “I could have stayed home and given all my 
shoes a meticulous shining with a toothbrush. Could have counted the number of 
pieces in a box of elbow macaroni.”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“By God, you’re serious,” Travis said. “You think I’m here just because I’ve 
taken pity on you.”
She bit her lip and said, “It’s all right.” She looked down at the dog again. “I 
don’t mind.”
“But I’m not here out of pity, for God’s sake! I’m here because I like being 
with you, I really do, I like you very much.”
Even with her head lowered, the blush that crept into her cheeks was visible.
For a while neither of them spoke.
Einstein looked up at her adoringly as she petted him, though once in a while he 
rolled his eyes at Travis as if to say, All right, you’ve opened the door of a 
relationship, so don’t just sit there like a fool, say something, move forward, 
win her over.
She scratched the retriever’s ears and stroked him for a couple of minutes, and 
then she said, “I’m okay now.”
They left the little park and strolled past the shops again, and in a while it 
was as if her moment of panic and his clumsy proclamation of affection had not 
happened.
He felt as if he were courting a nun. Eventually, he realized that the situation 
was even worse than that. Since the death of his wife three years ago, he had 
been celibate. The whole subject of sexual relations seemed strange and new to 
him again. So it was almost as if he were a priest wooing a nun.
Nearly every block had a bakery, and the wares in the display windows of each 
shop looked more delicious than what had been for sale in the previous place. 
The scents of cinnamon, powdered sugar, nutmeg, almonds, apples, and chocolate 
eddied in the warm spring air.
Einstein stood on his hind feet at each bakery, paws on the windowsill, and 
stared longingly through the glass at the artfully arranged pastries. But he 
didn’t go into any of the shops, and he never barked. When he begged for a 
treat, his soulful whining was discreetly low, so as not to bother the swarming 
tourists. Rewarded with a bit of pecan fudge and a small apple tart, he was 
satisfied and did not persist in begging.
Ten minutes later, Einstein revealed his exceptional intelligence to Nora. He 
had been a good dog around her, affectionate and bright and well-behaved, and he 
had shown considerable initiative in chasing and cornering Arthur Streck, but he 
had not previously allowed her a glimpse of his uncanny intelligence. And when 
she witnessed it, she did not at first realize what she was seeing.
They were passing the town pharmacy, which also sold newspapers and magazines, 
some of which were displayed outside in a rack near the entrance. Einstein 
surprised Nora with a sudden lurch toward the pharmacy, tearing
his leash out of her hand. Before either Nora or Travis could regain control of 
him, Einstein used his teeth to pull a magazine from the rack and brought it to 
them, dropping it at Nora’s feet. It was Modern Bride. As Travis grabbed for 
him, Einstein eluded capture and snatched up another copy of Modern Bride, which 
he deposited at Travis’s feet just as Nora was picking up her copy to return it 
to the rack.
“You silly pooch,” she said. “What’s gotten into you?”
Taking up the leash, Travis stepped through the passersby and put the second 
copy of the magazine back where the dog had gotten it. He thought he knew 
exactly what Einstein had in mind, but he said nothing, afraid of embarrassing 
Nora, and they resumed their walk.
Einstein looked at everything, sniffing with interest at the people who passed, 
and he seemed immediately to have forgotten his enthusiasm for matrimonial 
publications.
However, they had taken fewer than twenty steps when the dog abruptly turned and 
ran between Travis’s legs, jerking the leash out of his hand and nearly knocking 
him down. Einstein went directly to the pharmacy, snatched a magazine out of the 
rack, and returned.
Modern Bride.
Nora still did not get it. She thought it was funny, and she stooped to ruffle 
the retriever’s coat. “Is this your favorite reading material, you silly pooch? 
Read it every month, do you? You know, I’ll bet you do. You strike me as a 
complete romantic.”
A couple of tourists had noticed the playful dog and were smiling, but they were 
even less likely than Nora to realize there was a complex intention behind the 
animal’s game with the magazine.
When Travis bent down to pick up Modern Bride, intending to return it to the 
pharmacy, Einstein got to it first, took it in his jaws, and shook his head 
violently for a moment.
“Bad dog,” Nora said with evident surprise that Einstein had such a devilish 
streak in him.
Einstein dropped the magazine. It was badly rumpled, and some of the pages were 
torn, and here and there the paper was damp with saliva.
“I guess we’ll have to buy it now,” Travis said.
Panting, the retriever sat on the sidewalk, cocked his head, and grinned up at 
Travis.
Nora remained innocently unaware that the dog was trying to tell them something. 
Of course, she had no reason to make a sophisticated interpretation of 
Einstein’s behavior. She was unfamiliar with the degree of his genius and did 
not expect him to perform miracles of communication.
Glaring at the dog, Travis said, “You stop it, fur face. No more of this. 
Understand me?”
Einstein yawned.
With the magazine paid for and tucked into a pharmacy bag, they resumed their 
tour of Solvang, but before they reached the end of the block, the dog began to 
elaborate on his message. He suddenly gripped Nora’s hand gently
but firmly in his teeth and, to her startlement, pulled her along the sidewalk 
to an art gallery, where a young man and woman were admiring the landscape 
paintings in the window. The couple had a baby in a stroller, and it was the 
child to whom Einstein was directing Nora’s attention. He wouldn’t let go of her 
hand until he had forced her to touch the pink-outfitted infant’s chubby arm.
Embarrassed, Nora said, “He thinks your baby’s exceptionally cute, I guess— 
which she certainly is.”
The mother and father were wary of the dog at first but quickly realized he was 
harmless.
“How old’s your little girl?” Nora asked.
“Ten months,” the mother said.
“What’s her name?”
“Lana.”
“That’s pretty.”
Finally, Einstein was willing to release Nora’s hand.
A few steps away from the young couple, in front of an antique shop that looked 
as if it had been transported brick by brick and timber by timber from 
seventeenth-century Denmark, Travis stopped, crouched beside the dog, lifted one 
of its ears, and said, “Enough. If you ever want your Alpo again, cut it out.”
Nora looked baffled. “What’s gotten into him?”
Einstein yawned, and Travis knew they were in trouble.
In the next ten minutes, the dog took hold of Nora’s hand twice again and led 
her, both times, to babies.
Modern Bride and babies.
The message was painfully clear now, even to Nora: You and Travis belong 
together. Get married. Have babies. Raise a family. What’re you waiting for?
She was blushing furiously and seemed unable to look directly at Travis. He was 
somewhat embarrassed, too.
At last Einstein seemed satisfied that he had gotten his point across, and he 
stopped misbehaving. Until now, if asked, Travis would have said that a dog 
could not look smug.
Later, at dinnertime, the day was still pleasantly warm, and Nora changed her 
mind about eating inside, in an ordinary restaurant. She chose a place with 
sidewalk tables under red umbrellas that were, in turn, sheltered by the boughs 
of a giant oak. Travis sensed that she was not now intimidated by the prospect 
of a real restaurant experience but wanted to eat in the open air so they could 
keep Einstein with them. Repeatedly throughout dinner, she looked at Einstein, 
sometimes glancing surreptitiously at him, sometimes studying him openly and 
intently.
Travis made no reference to what had happened and pretended to have forgotten 
the whole affair. But when he had the dog’s attention, and when Nora was not 
looking, he mouthed threats at the mutt: No more apple tarts. Choke chain. 
Muzzle. Straight to the dog pound.
Einstein took every threat with great equanimity, either grinning or yawning or 
blowing air out his nostrils.
 
 
5
Early Sunday evening, Vince Nasco paid a visit to Johnny “The Wire” Santini. 
Johnny was called “The Wire” for several reasons, not least of which was that he 
was tall and lean and taut, and he looked as if he was constructed of knotted 
wires in various gauges. He also had frizzy hair the shade of copper. He had 
made his bones at the tender age of fifteen, when to please his uncle, Religio 
Fustino, don of one of New York’s Five Families, Johnny had taken it upon 
himself to strangle a freelance shit-and-coke dealer who was operating in the 
Bronx without the permission of the Family. Johnny used a length of piano wire 
for the job. This display of initiative and dedication to the principles of the 
Family had filled Don Religio with pride and love, and he had wept for only the 
second time in his life, promising his nephew the eternal respect of the Family 
and a well-paid position in the business.
Now Johnny The Wire was thirty-five and lived in a million-dollar beach house in 
San Clemente. The ten rooms and four baths had been remade by an interior 
designer commissioned to create an authentic—and expensive— private Art Deco 
retreat from the modern world. Everything was in shades of black, silver, and 
deep blue, with accents of turquoise and peach. Johnny had told Vince that he 
liked Art Deco because it reminded him of the Roaring Twenties, and he liked the 
twenties because that was the romantic era of legendary gangsters.
To Johnny The Wire, crime was not just a means to make money, not simply a way 
to rebel against the constraints of civilized society, and not only a genetic 
compulsion, but it was also—and primarily—a magnificent romantic tradition. He 
saw himself as a brother of every eye-patched hook-handed pirate who ever sailed 
in search of plunder, of every highwayman who had robbed a mail coach, of every 
safecracker and kidnapper and embezzler and thug in all the ages of criminal 
endeavor. He was, he insisted, mystical kin to Jesse James, Dillinger, Al 
Capone, the Dalton boys, Lucky Luciano, and legions of others, and Johnny loved 
them all, these legendary brothers in blood and theft.
Greeting Vince at the front door, Johnny said, “Come in, come in, big guy. Good 
to see you again.”
They hugged. Vince didn’t like hugging, but he had worked for Johnny’s Uncle 
Religio when he’d lived back in New York, and he still did a West Coast job for 
the Fustino Family now and then, so he and Johnny went back a long way, long 
enough that a hug was required.
“You’re looking good,” Johnny said. “Taking care of yourself, I see. Still mean 
as a snake?”
“A rattlesnake,” Vince said, a little embarrassed to be saying such a stupid 
thing, but he knew it was the kind of outlaw crap that Johnny liked to hear.
“Hadn’t seen you in so long I thought maybe the cops busted your ass.”
“I’ll never do time,” Vince said, meaning that he knew prison was not part of 
his destiny.
Johnny took it to mean that Vince would go down shooting rather than submit to 
the law, and he scowled and nodded approval. “They ever get you in a corner, 
blow away as many of ‘em as you can before they take you out. That’s the only 
clean way to go down.”
Johnny The Wire was an astonishingly ugly man, which probably explained his need 
to feel that he was a part of a great romantic tradition. Over the years Vince 
had noticed that the better-looking hoods never glamorized what they did. They 
killed in cold blood because they liked killing or found it necessary, and they 
stole and embezzled and extorted because they wanted easy money, and that was 
the end of it: no justifications, no self-glorification, which was the way it 
ought to be. But those with faces that appeared to have been crudely molded from 
concrete, those who resembled Quasimodo on a bad day—well, many of them tried to 
compensate for their unfortunate looks by casting themselves as Jimmy Cagney in 
Public Enemy.
Johnny was wearing a black jumpsuit, black sneakers. He always wore black, 
probably because he thought it made him look sinister instead of just ugly.
From the foyer, Vince followed Johnny into the living room, where the furniture 
was upholstered in black fabric and the end tables were finished in glossy black 
lacquer. There were ormolu table lamps by Ranc, large silver-dusted Deco vases 
by Daum, a pair of antique chairs by Jacques Ruhlmann. Vince knew the history of 
these things only because, on previous visits, Johnny The Wire had stepped out 
of his tough-guy persona long enough to babble about his period treasures.
A good-looking blonde was reclining on a silver-and-black chaise longue, reading 
a magazine. No older than twenty, she was almost embarrassingly ripe. Her 
silver-blond hair was cut short, in a pageboy. She was wearing Chinese-red silk 
lounging pajamas that clung to the contours of her full breasts, and when she 
glanced up and pouted at Vince, she seemed to be trying to look like Jean 
Harlow.
“This is Samantha,” Johnny The Wire said. To Samantha, he said, “Toots, this 
here is a made man that nobody messes with, a legend in his own time.”
Vince felt like a jackass.
“What’s a ‘made man’?” the blonde asked in a high-pitched voice she’d no doubt 
copied from the old movie star Judy Holliday.
Standing beside the longue, cupping one of the blonde’s breasts and fondling it 
through the silk pajamas, Johnny said, “She doesn’t know the lingo, Vince. She’s 
not of the fratellanza. She’s a valley girl, new to the life, unaware of our 
customs.”
“He means I’m no greaseball guinea,” Samantha said sourly.
Johnny slapped her so hard that he nearly knocked her off the chaise longue. 
“You watch your mouth, bitch.”
She put a hand to her face, and tears shimmered in her eyes, and in a 
little-girl voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Johnny.”
“Stupid bitch,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what gets into me,” she said. “You’re good to me, Johnny, and I 
hate myself when I act like that.”
To Vince, it appeared to be a rehearsed scene, but he supposed that was just 
because they’d been through it so many times before, both privately and 
publicly. From the shine in Samantha’s eyes, Vince could tell she enjoyed being 
slapped around; she smart-mouthed Johnny just so he’d hit her. Johnny clearly 
liked slapping her, too.
Vince was disgusted.
Johnny The Wire called her a “bitch” again, then led Vince out of the living 
room and into the big study, closing the door behind them. He winked and said, 
“She’s a little uppity, that one, but she can just about suck your brains out 
through your cock.”
Half-sickened by Johnny Santini’s sleaziness, Vince refused to be drawn into 
such a conversation. Instead, he withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket. “I 
need information.”
Johnny took the envelope, looked inside, thumbed casually through the wad of 
hundred-dollar bills, and said, “What you want, you got.”
The study was the only room in the house untouched by Art Deco. It was strictly 
high-tech. Sturdy metal tables were lined up along three walls, and eight 
computers stood on them, different makes and models. Every computer had its own 
phone line and modem, and every display screen was aglow. On some screens, 
programs were running; data flickered across them or scrolled from top to 
bottom. Drapes were drawn over the windows, and the two flexible-neck work lamps 
were hooded to prevent glare on the monitors, so the predominant light was 
electronic-green, which gave Vince a peculiar feeling of being under the surface 
of the sea. Three laser printers were producing hard copies with only vague 
whispering sounds that for some reason brought to mind images of fish swimming 
through ocean-floor vegetation.
Johnny The Wire had killed half a dozen men, had managed bookie and numbers 
operations, had planned and executed bank robberies and jewelry heists. He had 
been involved in the Fustino Family’s drug operations, extortion rackets, 
kidnapping, labor-union corruption, record and videotape counterfeiting, 
interstate truck hijacking, political bribery, and child pornography. He had 
done it all, seen it all, and although he had never exactly been bored by any 
criminal undertaking, no matter how long or often he had been involved in it, he 
had grown somewhat jaded. During the past decade, as the Computer opened 
exciting new areas of criminal activity, Johnny had seized the opportunity to 
move where no mafia wiseguy had gone before, into challenging frontiers of 
electronic thievery and mayhem. He had a gift for it, and he soon became the 
mob’s premier hacker.
Given time and motivation, he could break any computer security system and pry 
through a corporation’s or a government agency’s most sensitive information. If 
you wanted to run a major credit-card scam, charging a million bucks worth of 
purchases to other people’s American Express accounts, Johnny The Wire could 
suck some suitable names and credit histories out of TRW’s files and matching 
card numbers from American Express’s data banks, and you were in business. If 
you were a don under indictment and about to go to trial on heavy charges, and 
if you were afraid of the testimony to be given by one of your cronies who had 
turned state’s evidence, Johnny could invade the Department of Justice’s most 
well-guarded data banks, discover the new identity that had been given the stool 
pigeon through the Federal Witness Relocation Program, and tell you where to 
send the hit men. Johnny rather grandly called himself the ‘Silicon Sorcerer,” 
though everyone else still called him The Wire.
As the mob’s hacker, he was more valuable than ever to all the Families 
nationwide, so valuable that they didn’t even mind if he moved to a comparative 
backwater like San Clemente, where he could live the good beach life while he 
worked for them. In the age of the microchip, Johnny said, the world was one 
small town, and you could sit in San Clemente—or Oshkosh— and pick someone’s 
pocket in New York City.
Johnny dropped into a high-backed black leather chair equipped with rubber 
wheels, in which he could roll swiftly from one computer to the next. He said, 
“So! What can the Silicon Sorcerer do for you, Vince?”
“Can you tap into police computers?”
“It’s a snap.”
“I need to know if, since last Tuesday, any police agency in the county has 
opened a file on any particularly strange murders.”
“Who’re the victims?”
“I don’t know. I’m just looking for strange murders.”
“Strange in what way?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Maybe . . . somebody with his throat torn out. Somebody 
ripped to pieces. Somebody all chewed up and gouged by an animal.”
Johnny gave him a peculiar look. “That’s strange, all right. Something like that 
would be in the newspapers.”
“Maybe not,” Vince said, thinking of the army of government security agents that 
would be working diligently to keep the press in the dark about the Francis 
Project and to conceal the dangerous developments on Tuesday at the Banodyne 
labs. “The murders might be in the news, but the police will probably be 
suppressing the gory details, making them look like ordinary homicides. So from 
what the papers print, I won’t be able to tell which victims are the ones I’m 
interested in.”
“All right. Can do.”
“You’d also better prowl around at the County Animal Control Authority to see if 
they’re getting any reports of unusual attacks by coyotes or cougars or other 
predators. And not just attacks on people, but on livestock—cows, sheep. There 
might even be some neighborhood, probably on the eastern
edge of the county, where a lot of family pets are disappearing or being chewed 
up real bad by something wild. If you run across that, I want to know.”
Johnny grinned and said, “You tracking down a werewolf?”
It was a joke; he did not expect or want an answer. He had not asked why this 
information was needed, and he would never ask, because people in their line of 
work did not poke into each other’s business. Johnny might be curious, but Vince 
knew that The Wire would never indulge his curiosity.
Vince was unnerved not by the question but by the grin. The green light from the 
computer screens was reflected by Johnny’s eyes and by the saliva on his teeth 
and, to a lesser extent, by his wiry copper-colored hair. As ugly as he was to 
begin with, the eerie luminescence made him look like a revived corpse in a 
Romero film.
Vince said, “Another thing. I need to know if any police agency in the county is 
running a quiet search for a golden retriever.”
“A dog?”
“Yeah.”
“Cops don’t usually look for lost dogs.”
“I know,” Vince said.
“This dog got a name?”
“No name.”
“I’ll check it out. Anything else?”
“That’s it. When can you put it together?”
“I’ll call you in the morning. Early.”
Vince nodded. “And depending on what you turn up, I might need you to keep 
tracking these things on a daily basis.”
“Child’s play,” Johnny said, spinning around once in his black leather chair, 
then jumping to his feet with a grin. “Now, I’m gonna fuck Samantha. Hey! You 
want to join in? Two studs like us, going at her at the same time, we could 
reduce that bitch to a little pile of jelly, have her begging for mercy. How 
about it?”
Vince was glad for the weird green lighting because it covered the fact that he 
had gone ghost-pale. The idea of messing around with that infected slut, that 
diseased whore, that rotting and festering round-heeled pump, was enough to make 
him sick. He said, “Got an appointment I can’t break.”
“Too bad,” Johnny said.
Vince forced himself to say, “Would’ve been fun.”
“Maybe next time.”
The very idea of the three of them going at it . . . well, it made Vince feel 
unclean. He was overcome by a desire for a steaming-hot shower.
6 
Sunday night, pleasantly tired from a long day in Solvang, Travis thought he 
would fall asleep the moment he put his head on his pillow, but he did not. He 
couldn’t stop thinking about Nora Devon. Her gray eyes flecked with green. 
Glossy black hair. The graceful, slender line of her throat. The musical sound 
of her laughter, the curve of her smile.
Einstein was lying on the floor in the pale-silver light that came through the 
window and vaguely illuminated one small section of the dark room. But after 
Travis tossed and turned for an hour, the dog finally joined him on the bed and 
put his burly head and forepaws on Travis’s chest.
“She’s so sweet, Einstein. One of the gentlest, sweetest people I’ve ever 
known.”
The dog was silent.
“And she’s very bright. She’s got a sharp mind, sharper than she realizes. She 
sees things I don’t see. She has a way of describing things that make them fresh 
and new. The whole world seems fresh and new when I see it with her.”
Though still and quiet, Einstein had not fallen asleep. He was very attentive. 
“When I think about all that vitality, intelligence, and love of life being 
suppressed for thirty years, I want to cry. Thirty years in that old dark house. 
Jesus. And when I think of how she endured those years without letting it make 
her bitter, I want to hug her and tell her what an incredible woman she is, what 
a strong and courageous and incredible woman.”
Einstein was silent, unmoving.
A vivid memory flashed back to Travis: the clean shampoo smell of Nora’s hair 
when he had leaned close to her in front of a gallery window in Solvang. He 
breathed deep and could actually smell it again, and the scent accelerated his 
heartbeat.
“Damn,” he said. “I’ve only known her a few days, but damn if I don’t think I’m 
falling in love.”
Einstein lifted his head and woofed once, as if to say it was about time that 
Travis realized what was happening, and as if to say that he had brought them 
together and was pleased to take credit for their future happiness, and as if to 
say that it was all part of some grand design and that Travis was to stop 
fretting about it and just go with the flow.
For another hour, Travis talked about Nora, about the way she looked and moved, 
about the melodic quality of her soft voice, about her unique perspective on 
life and her way of thinking, and Einstein listened with the attentiveness and 
genuine interest that was the mark of a true, concerned friend. It was an 
exhilarating hour. Travis had never thought he would love anyone again. Not 
anyone, not at all, and certainly not this intensely. Less than a week ago, his 
abiding loneliness had seemed unconquerable.
Later, thoroughly exhausted both physically and emotionally, Travis slept.
Later still, in the hollow heart of night, he came half awake and was dimly 
aware that Einstein was at the window. The retriever’s forepaws were on the 
windowsill, his snout against the glass. He was staring out at the darkness, 
alert.
Travis sensed that the dog was troubled.
But in his dream, he had been holding Nora’s hand under a harvest moon, and he 
did not want to come fully awake for fear he would not be able to regain that 
pleasant fantasy.
 
 
7
On Monday morning, May 24, Lemuel Johnson and Cliff Soames were at the small 
zoo—mostly a petting zoo for children—in sprawling Irvine Park, on the eastern 
edge of Orange County. The sky was cloudless, the sun bright and hot. The 
immense oaks did not stir a leaf in the motionless air, but birds swooped from 
branch to branch, peeping and trilling.
Twelve animals were dead. They lay in bloody heaps.
During the night, someone or something had climbed the fences into the pens and 
had slaughtered three young goats, a white-tailed deer and her recently born 
fawn, two peacocks, a lop-eared rabbit, a ewe and two lambs.
A pony was dead, though it had not been savaged. Apparently, it had died of 
fright while throwing itself repeatedly against the fence in an attempt to 
escape whatever had attacked the other animals. It lay on its side, neck twisted 
in an improbable angle.
The wild boars had been left unharmed. They snorted and sniffed continuously at 
the dusty earth around the feeding trough in their separate enclosure, looking 
for bits of food that might have spilled yesterday and been missed until now.
Other surviving animals, unlike the boars, were skittish.
Park employees—also skittish—were gathered near an orange truck that belonged to 
the county, talking with two Animal Control officers and with a young, bearded 
biologist from the California Department of Wildlife.
Crouching beside the delicate and pathetic fawn, Lem studied the wounds in its 
neck until he could no longer tolerate the stench. Not all of the foul odors 
were caused by the dead animals. There was evidence that the killer had 
deposited feces and sprayed urine on its victims, just as it had done at 
Dalberg’s place.
Pressing a handkerchief against his nose to filter the reeking air, he moved to 
a dead peacock. Its head had been torn off, as had one leg. Both of its clipped 
wings were broken, and its iridescent feathers were dulled and pasted together 
with blood.
“Sir,” Cliff Soames called from the adjoining pen.
Lem left the peacock, found a service gate that opened into the next enclosure, 
and joined Cliff at the carcass of the ewe.
Flies swarmed around them, buzzing hungrily, settling upon the ewe, then darting 
off as the men fanned them away.
Cliff’s face was bloodless, but he did not look as shocked or as nauseated as he 
had been last Friday, at Dalberg’s cabin. Perhaps this slaughter didn’t
affect him as strongly because the victims were animals instead of human beings. 
Or perhaps he was consciously hardening himself against the extreme violence of 
their adversary.
“You’ll have to come to this side,” Cliff said from where he crouched beside the 
ewe.
Lem stepped around the sheep and squatted beside Cliff. Though the ewe’s head 
was in the shadow of an oak bough overhanging the pen, Lem saw that her right 
eye had been torn out.
Without comment, Cliff used a stick to lever the left side of the ewe’s head off 
the ground, revealing that the other socket was also vacant.
The cloud of flies thickened around them.
“Looks like it was our runaway, all right,” Lem said.
Lowering his own handkerchief from his face, Cliff said, “There’s more.” He led 
Lem to three additional carcasses—both lambs and one of the goats— that were 
eyeless. “I’d say it’s beyond argument. The damn thing that killed Dalberg last 
Tuesday night, then roamed the foothills and canyons for five days, doing . .
“What?”
“God knows what. But it wound up here last night.”
Lem used his handkerchief to mop the sweat off his dark face. “We’re only a few 
miles north-northwest of Dalberg’s cabin.”
Cliff nodded.
“Which way you think it’s headed?”
Cliff shrugged.
“Yeah,” Lem said. “No way of knowing where it’s going. Can’t begin to outthink 
it because we haven’t the slightest idea how it thinks. Let’s just pray to God 
it stays out here in the unpopulated end of the county. I don’t want to even 
consider what could happen if it decides to head into the easternmost suburbs 
like Orange Park Acres and Villa Park.”
On the way out of the compound, Lem saw that the flies were gathered on the dead 
rabbit in such numbers that they looked like a piece of dark cloth draped over 
the carcass and rippling in a light breeze.
 
 
Eight hours later, at seven o’clock Monday evening, Lem stepped up to the 
lectern in a large meeting room on the grounds of the Marine Air Station at El 
Toro. He leaned toward the microphone, tapped it with a finger to be sure it was 
active, heard a loud hollow thump, and said, “May I have your attention, 
please?”
A hundred men were seated on metal folding chairs. They were all young, 
well-built, and healthy-looking, for they were members of elite Marine 
Intelligence units. Five two-squad platoons had been drawn from Pendleton and 
other bases in California. Most of them had been involved in the search of the 
Santa Ana foothills last Wednesday and Thursday, following the breakout at the 
Banodyne labs.
They were still searching, having just returned from a full day in the hills and 
canyons, but they were no longer conducting the operation in uniform. To deceive 
reporters and local authorities, they had driven in cars and pickups and Jeep 
wagons to various points along the current search perimeter. They had gone into 
the wilds in groups of three or four, dressed as ordinary hikers:
jeans or khaki pants in the rugged Banana Republic style; T-shirts or cotton 
safari shirts; Dodger or Budweiser or John Deere caps, or cowboy hats. They went 
armed with powerful handguns that could be quickly concealed in nylon backpacks 
or under their loose T-shirts if they encountered real hikers or state 
authorities. And in Styrofoam coolers, they carried compact Uzi submachine guns 
that could be brought into service in seconds if they found the adversary.
Every man in the room had signed a secrecy oath, which put him in jeopardy of a 
long prison term if he ever divulged the nature of this operation to anyone. 
They knew what they were hunting, though Lem was aware that some of them had 
trouble believing the creature really existed. Some were afraid. But others, 
especially those who had previously served in Lebanon or Central America, were 
familiar enough with death and horror to be unshaken by the nature of their 
current quarry. A few oldtimers went as far back as the final year of the 
Vietnam War, and they professed to believe that the mission was a piece of cake. 
In any event, they were all good men, and they had a wary respect for the 
strange enemy they were stalking, and if The Outsider could be found, they would 
find it.
Now, when Lem asked for their attention, they immediately fell silent.
“General Hotchkiss tells me that you’ve had another fruitless day out there,” 
Lem said, “and I know you’re as unhappy about that as I am. You’ve been working 
long hours in rugged terrain for six days now, and you’re tired, and you’re 
wondering how long this is going to drag on. Well, we’re going to keep looking 
until we find what we’re after, until we corner The Outsider and kill it. There 
is no way we can stop if it’s still loose. No way.”
None of the hundred even grumbled in disagreement.
“And always remember—we’re also looking for the dog.”
Every man in the room probably hoped that he would be the one to find the dog 
and that someone else would encounter The Outsider.
Lem said, “On Wednesday, we’re bringing in another four Marine Intelligence 
squads from more distant bases, and they’ll spell you on a rotating basis, 
giving you a couple of days off. But you’ll all be out there tomorrow morning, 
and the search area has been redefined.”
A county map was mounted on the wall behind the lectern, and Lem Johnson pointed 
to it with a yardstick. “We’ll be shifting north-northwest, into the hills and 
canyons around Irvine Park.”
He told them about the slaughter at the petting zoo. He gave a graphic 
description of the condition of the carcasses, for he did not want any of these 
men to get careless.
“What happened to those zoo animals,” Lem said, “could happen to any of you if 
you let your guard down at the wrong place and time.”
A hundred men regarded him with utmost seriousness, and in their eyes he saw a 
hundred versions of his own tightly controlled fear.
 
 
8
Tuesday night, May 25, Tracy Leigh Keeshan could not sleep. She was so excited 
she felt as if she might burst. She pictured herself as a dandelion gone to 
seed, a puffball of fragile white fuzz, and then a gust of wind would come along 
and all the bits of fluff would be sent spinning in every direction— poof—to the 
far corners of the world, and Tracy Keeshan would exist no more, destroyed by 
her own excitement.
She was an unusually imaginative thirteen-year-old.
Lying in bed in her dark room, she did not even have to close her eyes to see 
herself on horseback—on her own chestnut stallion, Goodheart, to be 
precise—thundering along the racetrack, the rails flashing past, the other 
horses in the field left far behind, the finish line less than a hundred yards 
ahead, and the adoring crowds cheering wildly in the grandstand .
In school, she routinely got good grades, not because she was a diligent student 
but because learning came easily to her, and she could do well without much 
effort. She didn’t really care about school. She was slender, blond, with eyes 
the precise shade of a clear summer sky, very pretty, and boys were drawn to 
her, but she didn’t spend any more time thinking about boys than she did 
worrying about her school work, not yet anyway, although her girlfriends were so 
fixated on boys, so consumed by the subject that they sometimes bored Tracy half 
to death.
What Tracy cared about—deeply, profoundly, passionately—was horses, racing 
thoroughbreds. She had been collecting pictures of horses since she was five and 
had been taking riding lessons since she was seven, though for the longest time 
her parents had not been able to afford to buy her a horse of her own. During 
the past two years, however, her father’s business had prospered, and two months 
ago they had moved into a big new house on two acres in Orange Park Acres, which 
was a horsey community with plenty of riding trails. At the back end of their 
lot was a private stable for six horses, though only one stall was occupied. 
Just today—Tuesday, May 25, a day of glory, a day that would live forever in 
Tracy Keeshan’s heart, a day that just proved there was a God—she had been given 
a horse of her own, the splendid and beautiful and incomparable Goodheart.
So she could not sleep. She went to bed at ten, and by midnight she was more 
awake than ever. By one o’clock Wednesday morning, she could not stand it any 
longer. She had to go out to the stables and look at Goodheart. Make sure he was 
all right. Make sure he was comfortable in his new home. Make sure he was real.
She threw off the sheet and thin blanket and got quietly out of bed. She
was wearing panties and a Santa Anita Racetrack T-shirt, so she just pulled on a 
pair of jeans and slipped her bare feet into blue Nike running shoes.
She turned the knob on her door slowly, quietly, and went out into the hail, 
letting the door stand open.
The house was dark and quiet. Her parents and her nine-year-old brother Bobby 
were asleep.
Tracy went down the hall, through the living room and the dining room, not 
turning on lights, relying on the moonlight that penetrated the large windows.
In the kitchen, she silently pulled open the utility drawer on the corner 
secretary and withdrew a flashlight. She unlocked the back door and let herself 
out onto the rear patio, stealthily easing the door shut behind her, not yet 
switching on the flashlight.
The spring night was cool but not chilly. Silvered by moonlight above but with 
dark undersides, a few big clouds glided like white-sailed galleons across the 
sea of night, and Tracy stared up at them for a while, enjoying the moment. She 
wanted to absorb every detail of this special time, letting her anticipation 
build. After all, this would be her first moment alone with the proud and noble 
Goodheart, just the two of them sharing their dreams of the future.
She crossed the patio, went around the swimming pool, where the reflection of 
the moon rippled gently in the chlorinated water, and stepped out onto the 
sloping lawn. The dew-damp grass seemed to shimmer in the lambent lunar beams.
Off to the left and right, the property line was defined by white ranch fencing 
that appeared vaguely phosphorescent in the moonglow. Beyond the fences were 
other properties of at least an acre and some as large as the Keeshan place, and 
all across Orange Park Acres the night was still but for a few crickets and 
nocturnal frogs.
Tracy walked slowly toward the stables at the end of the yard, thinking about 
the triumphs that lay ahead for her and Goodheart. He would not race again. He 
had placed in the money at Santa Anita, Del Mar, Hollywood Park, and other 
tracks throughout California, but he had been injured and could no longer race 
safely. However, he could still be put to stud, and Tracy had no doubt that he’d 
sire winners. Within a week they hoped to add two good mares to the stable, and 
then they’d take the horses immediately to a breeding farm, where Goodheart 
would impregnate the mares. All three would be brought back here, where Tracy 
would care for them. Next year two healthy colts would be born, and then the 
young ones would be boarded with a trainer near enough so Tracy could visit 
constantly, and she’d help out with their training, learn all there was to learn 
about rearing a champion, and then—and then—she and the offspring of Goodheart 
would make racing history, oh yes, she was quite confident of making racing 
history— Her fantasizing was interrupted when, about forty yards from the 
stables,
she stepped in something mushy and slippery, and nearly fell. She didn’t smell 
manure, but she figured it must be a pile left by Goodheart when they’d had
him out in the yard last evening. Feeling stupid and clumsy, she switched on the 
flashlight and directed it at the ground, and instead of manure she found the 
remains of a brutally mutilated cat.
Tracy made a hissing sound of disgust and instantly switched off the flashlight.
The neighborhood was crawling with cats, partly because they were useful for 
controlling the mouse population around everyone’s stables. Coyotes regularly 
ventured in from the hills and canyons to the east, in search of prey. Although 
cats were quick, coyotes were sometimes quicker, and at first Tracy thought a 
coyote had dug under the fence or leaped over it and had gotten hold of this 
unfortunate feline, which had probably been prowling for rodents.
But a coyote would have eaten the cat right on the spot, leaving little more 
than a bit of tail and a scrap or two of fur, for a coyote was a gourmand rather 
than gourmet and had a ravenous appetite. Or it would have carried the cat away 
for leisurely consumption elsewhere. Yet this cat had not looked even 
half-eaten, merely torn to pieces, as if something or someone had killed it 
merely for the sick pleasure of rending it apart .
Tracy shuddered.
And remembered the rumors about the zoo.
In Irvine Park, which was only a couple of miles away, someone apparently had 
killed several caged animals in the small petting zoo two nights ago. 
Drug-crazed vandals. Thrill killers. The story was just a hot rumor, and no one 
was able to confirm it, but there were indications that it was true. Some kids 
had bicycled out to the park yesterday after school, and they’d not seen any 
mangled carcasses, but they’d reported that there seemed to be fewer animals in 
the pens than usual. And the Shetland pony was definitely missing. Park 
employees had been uncommunicative when approached.
Tracy wondered if the same psychos were prowling Orange Park Acres, killing cats 
and other family pets, a possibility that was spooky and sickening. Suddenly, 
she realized that people deranged enough to slaughter cats for the sheer fun of 
it would also be sufficiently twisted to get a kick out of killing horses.
An almost crippling pang of fear flashed through her as she thought of Goodheart 
out there in the stable all by himself. For a moment, she could not move.
Around her, the night seemed even quieter than it had been.
It was quieter. The crickets were no longer chirruping. The frogs had stopped 
croaking, too.
The galleon clouds seemed to have dropped anchor in the sky, and the night 
appeared to have frozen in the ice-pale glow of the moon.
Something moved in the shrubbery.
Most of the enormous lot was devoted to open expanses of lawn, but a score of 
trees stood in artfully placed groups—mostly Indian laurels and jacarandas, plus 
a couple of corals—and there were beds of azaleas, California lilac bushes, Cape 
honeysuckles.
Tracy distinctly heard shrubbery rustling as something pushed roughly and 
hurriedly through it. But when she switched on the flashlight and swept the beam 
around the nearest plantings, she could not see anything moving.
The night was silent again.
Hushed.
Expectant.
She considered returning to the house, where either she could wake her father to 
ask him to investigate, or she could go to bed and wait until morning to 
investigate the situation herself. But what if it was only a coyote in the 
shrubbery? In that case, she was in no danger. Though a hungry coyote would 
attack a very young child, it would run from anyone Tracy’s size. Besides, she 
was too worried about her noble Goodheart to waste any more time; she had to be 
sure that the horse was all right.
Using the flashlight to avoid any more dead cats that might be strewn about, she 
headed toward the stable. She had taken only a few steps when she heard the 
rustling again and, worse, an eerie growling that was unlike the sound of any 
animal she’d ever heard before.
She began to turn, might have run for the house then, but in the stable 
Goodheart whinnied shrilly, as if in fear, and kicked at the board walls of his 
stall. She pictured a leering psycho going after Goodheart with hideous 
instruments of torture. Her concern for her own welfare was not half as strong 
as her fear that something terrible would happen to her beloved breeder of 
champions, so she sprinted to his rescue.
Poor Goodheart began kicking even more frantically. His hooves slammed 
repeatedly against the walls, drummed furiously, and the night seemed to echo 
with the thunder of an oncoming storm.
She was still about fifteen yards from the stable when she heard the strange 
guttural growling again and realized that something was coming after her, 
bearing down on her from behind. She skidded on the damp grass, whirled, and 
brought up her flashlight.
Rushing toward her was a creature that had surely escaped from Hell. It let out 
a shriek of madness and rage.
In spite of the flashlight, Tracy did not get a clear look at the attacker. The 
beam wavered, and the night grew darker as the moon slipped behind a cloud, and 
the hateful beast was moving fast, and she was too scared to understand what she 
was seeing. Nevertheless, she saw enough to know it was nothing she had ever 
seen before. She had an impression of a dark, misshapen head with asymmetrical 
depressions and bulges, enormous jaws full of sharp curved teeth, and amber eyes 
that blazed in the flashlight beam the way a dog’s or a cat’s eyes will glow in 
a car’s headlights.
Tracy screamed.
The attacker shrieked again and leaped at her.
It hit Tracy hard enough to knock the breath clear out of her. The flashlight 
flew from her hand, tumbled across the lawn. She fell, and the creature came 
down on top of her, and they rolled over and over toward the stable. As they 
rolled, she flailed desperately at the thing with her small fists, and she felt 
its
claws sinking into the flesh along her right side. Its gaping mouth was at her 
face, she felt its hot rank breath washing her over, smelled blood and decay and 
worse, and she sensed that it was going for her throat—she thought, I’m dead, oh 
God, it’s going to kill me, I'm dead, like the cat—and she would have been dead 
in seconds, for sure, if Goodheart, less than fifteen feet away now, had not 
kicked out the latched half-door of his stall and bolted straight at them in 
panic.
The stallion screamed and reared up on its hind feet when it saw them, as if it 
would trample them underfoot.
Tracy’s monstrous attacker shrieked again, though not in rage this time but in 
surprise and fear. It released her and flung itself to one side, out from under 
the horse.
Goodheart’s hooves slammed into the earth inches from Tracy’s head, and he 
reared up again, pawing at the air, screaming, and she knew that in his terror 
he might unwittingly trample her skull to mush. She threw herself out from under 
him, and also away from the amber-eyed beast, which had disappeared in the 
darkness on the other side of the stallion.
Still, Goodheart reared and screamed, and Tracy was screaming as well, and dogs 
were howling all over the neighborhood, and now lights appeared in the house, 
which gave her hope of survival. However, she sensed that the attacker wasn’t 
ready to give up, that it was already circling the frantic stallion to make 
another try for her. She heard it snarling, spitting. She knew she would never 
reach the distant house before the thing dragged her down again, so she 
scrambled toward the nearby stable, to one of the empty stalls. As she went, she 
heard herself chanting, “Jesus, oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus . .
The two halves of the Dutch-style stall door were bolted firmly together. 
Another bolt fastened the entire door to the frame. She unlatched that second 
bolt, pulled open the door, rushed into the straw-scented darkness, shut the 
door behind her, and held it with all the strength she possessed, for it could 
not be latched from inside.
An instant later, her assailant slammed into the other side of the door, trying 
to knock it open, but the frame prevented that. The door would only move 
outward, and Tracy hoped the amber-eyed creature was not smart enough to figure 
out how the door worked.
But it was smart enough— (Dear Lord in Heaven, why wasn’t it as dumb as it was 
ugly!)
—and after hitting the barrier only twice, it began to pull instead of push. The 
door was almost yanked out of Tracy’s grasp.
She wanted to scream for help, but she needed every ounce of energy to dig in 
her heels and hold the stall door shut. It rattled and thumped against the frame 
as her demonic assailant wrestled with it. Fortunately, Goodheart was still 
letting loose shrill squeals and whinnies of terror, and the assailant was also 
shrieking—a sound that was strangely animal and human at the same time—so her 
father could have no doubt where the trouble was.
The door jerked open a few inches.
She yelped and pulled it shut.
Instantly the attacker yanked it partway open again and held it ajar, striving 
to pull the door wider even as she struggled to reclose it. She was losing. The 
door inched open. She saw the shadowy outline of the malformed face. The sharply 
pointed teeth gleamed dully. The amber eyes were faint now, barely visible. It 
hissed and snarled at her, and its pungent breath was stronger than the scent of 
straw.
Whimpering in terror and frustration, Tracy drew back on the door with all of 
her strength.
But it opened another inch.
And another.
Her heart was hammering loud enough to muffle the first shotgun blast. She 
didn’t know what she’d heard until a second shot boomed through the night, and 
then she knew her father had grabbed his 12-gauge on the way out of the house.
The stall door slammed shut in front of her as the attacker, frightened by the 
gunfire, let go of it. Tracy held fast.
Then she thought that maybe, in all the confusion, Daddy might believe that 
Goodheart was to blame, that the poor horse had gone loco or something. From 
within the stall she cried out, “Don’t shoot Goodheart! Don’t shoot the horse!”
No more shots rang out, and Tracy immediately felt stupid for thinking her 
father would blow away Goodheart. Daddy was a cautious man, especially with 
loaded guns, and unless he knew exactly what was happening, he wouldn’t fire 
anything but warning shots. More likely than not, he’d just blasted some 
shrubbery to bits.
Goodheart was probably all right, and the amber-eyed assailant was surely 
hightailing it for the foothills or the canyons or back to wherever it had come 
from— (What was that crazy damn thing?)
—and the ordeal was over, thank God.
She heard running footsteps, and her father called her name.
She pushed open the stall door and saw Daddy rushing toward her in a pair of 
blue pajama bottoms, barefoot, with the shotgun cradled in his arm. Mom was 
there too, in a short yellow nightie, hurrying behind Daddy with a flashlight.
Up near the top of the sloped yard stood Goodheart, the sire of future 
champions, his panic gone, unhurt.
Tears of relief sprang from Tracy at the sight of the unharmed stallion, and she 
stumbled out of the stall, wanting to go have a closer look at him. With her 
second or third step, a fiercely hot pain flamed along her entire right side, 
and she was suddenly dizzy. She staggered, fell, put one hand to her side, felt 
something wet, and realized that she was bleeding. She remembered the claws 
sinking into her just before Goodheart had burst from his stall, frightening off 
the assailant, and as if from a great distance she heard herself saying, “Good 
horse . . . what a good horse . .
Daddy dropped to his knees beside her. “Baby, what the hell happened, what’s 
wrong?”
Her mother arrived, too.
Daddy saw the blood. “Call an ambulance!”
Her mother, not given to hesitation or hysterics in time of trouble, turned 
immediately and ran back toward the house.
Tracy was getting dizzier. Creeping in at the edges of her vision was a darkness 
that was not part of the night. She wasn’t afraid of it. It seemed like a 
welcoming, healing darkness.
“Baby,” her father said, putting a hand on her wounds.
Weakly, realizing she was slightly delirious and wondering what she was going to 
say, she said, “Remember when I was very little . . . just a little girl . . . 
and I thought some horrible thing. . . lived in my closet. . . at night?”
He frowned worriedly. “Honey, maybe you’d better be still, be quiet and still.”
As she lost consciousness, Tracy heard herself say, with a seriousness that both 
amused and frightened her, “Well . . . I think maybe it was the boogeyman who 
used to live in the closet at the other house. I think maybe . . . he was real . 
. . and he’s come back.”
 
 
9
At four-twenty Wednesday morning, only hours after the attack at the Keeshan 
house, Lemuel Johnson reached Tracy Keeshan’s hospital room at St. Joseph’s in 
Santa Ana. Quick as he was, however, Lem found Sheriff Walt Gaines had arrived 
ahead of him. Walt stood in the corridor, towering over a young doctor in 
surgical greens and a white lab coat; they seemed to be arguing quietly.
The NSA’s Banodyne crisis team was monitoring all police agencies in the county, 
including the police department in the city of Orange, in whose jurisdiction the 
Keeshan house fell. The team’s night-shift leader had called Lem at home with 
news of this case, which fit the profile of expected Banodyne-related incidents.
“You relinquished jurisdiction,” Lem pointedly reminded Walt when he joined the 
sheriff and doctor at the girl’s closed door.
“Maybe this isn’t part of the same case.” “You know it is.”
“Well, that determination hasn’t been made.”
“It was made—back at the Keeshan’s house when I talked with your men.” “Okay, so 
let’s say I’m just here as an observer.”
“My ass,” Lem said.
“What about your ass?” Walt asked, smiling.
“It’s got a pain in it, and the name of the pain is Walter.”
“How interesting,” Walt said. “You name your pains. Do you give names to 
toothaches and headaches as well?”
“I’ve got a headache right now, and its name is Walter, too.”
“That’s too confusing, my friend. Better call the headache Bert or Harry or 
something.”
Lem almost laughed—he loved this guy—but he knew that, in spite of their 
friendship, Walt would use the laughter as a lever to pry himself back into the 
case. So Lem remained stone-faced, though Walt obviously knew that Lem wanted to 
laugh. The game was ridiculous, but it had to be played.
The doctor, Roger Selbok, resembled a young Rod Steiger. He frowned when they 
raised their voices, and he possessed some of the powerful presence of Steiger, 
too, because his frown was enough to chasten and quiet them.
Selbok said the girl had been put through tests, had been treated for her 
wounds, and had been given a painkiller. She was tired. He was just about to 
administer a sedative to guarantee her a restful sleep, and he did not think it 
was a good idea for policemen of any stripe to be asking her questions just now.
The whispering, the early-morning hush of the hospital, the scent of 
disinfectants that filled the hall, and the sight of a white-robed nun gliding 
past was enough to make Lem uneasy. Suddenly, he was afraid that the girl was in 
far worse condition than he had been told, and he voiced his concern to Selbok.
“No, no. She’s in pretty good shape,” the doctor said. “I’ve sent her parents 
home, which I wouldn’t have done if there was anything to worry about. The left 
side of her face is bruised, and the eye is blackened, but there’s nothing 
serious in that. The wounds along her right side required thirty-two stitches, 
so we’ll need to take precautions to keep the scarring to a minimum, but she’s 
in no danger. She’s had a bad scare. However, she’s a bright kid, and 
self-reliant, so I don’t think she’ll suffer lasting psychological trauma. 
Still, I don’t think it’s a good idea to subject her to an interrogation 
tonight.”
“Not an interrogation,” Lem said. “Just a few questions.”
“Five minutes,” Walt said.
“Less,” Lem said.
They kept at Selbok, and at last they wore him down. “Well . . . I guess you’ve 
got your job to do, and if you promise not to be too insistent with her—”
“I’ll handle her as if she’s made of soap bubbles,” Lem said.
“We’ll handle her as if she’s made of soap bubbles,” Walt said.
Selbok said, “Just tell me . . . what the devil happened to her?”
“She hasn’t told you herself?” Lem asked.
“Well, she talks about being attacked by a coyote . .
Lem was surprised, and he saw Walt was startled, too. Maybe the case had nothing 
to do with Wes Dalberg’s death and the dead animals at the Irvine Park petting 
zoo, after all.
“But,” the physician said, “no coyote would attack a girl as big as Tracy.
They’re only a danger to very small children. And I don’t believe her wounds are 
like those a coyote would inflict.”
Walt said, “I understand her father drove the assailant off with a shotgun. 
Doesn’t he know what attacked her?”
“No,” Selbok said. “He couldn’t see what was happening in the dark, so he only 
fired two warning shots. He says something dashed across the yard, leaped the 
fence, but he couldn’t see any details. He says that Tracy first told him it was 
the boogeyman who used to live in her closet, but she was delirious then. She 
told me it was a coyote. So. . . do you know what’s going on here? Can you tell 
me anything I need to know to treat the girl?”
“I can’t,” Walt said. “But Mr. Johnson here knows the whole situation.”
“Thanks a lot,” Lem said.
Walt just smiled.
To Selbok, Lem said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I’m not at liberty to discuss the 
case. Anyway, nothing I could tell you would alter the treatment you’d give 
Tracy Keeshan.”
When Lem and Walt finally got into Tracy’s hospital room, leaving Dr. Selbok in 
the corridor to time their visit, they found a pretty thirteen-year-old who was 
badly bruised and as pale as snow. She was in bed, the sheets pulled up to her 
shoulders. Though she had been given painkillers, she was alert, even edgy, and 
it was obvious why Selbok wanted to give her a sedative. She was trying not to 
show it, but she was scared.
“I wish you’d leave,” Lem told Walt Gaines.
“If wishes were filet mignon, we’d always eat well at dinner,” Walt said. “Hi, 
Tracy, I’m Sheriff Walt Gaines, and this is Lemuel Johnson. I’m about as nice as 
they come, though Lem here is a real stinker—everybody says so— but you don’t 
have to worry because I’ll keep him in line and make him be nice to you. Okay?”
Together, they coaxed Tracy into a conversation. They quickly discovered that 
she’d told Selbok she’d been attacked by a coyote because, though she knew it 
wasn’t true, she didn’t believe she could convince the physician—or anyone 
else—of the truth of what she’d seen. “I was afraid they’d think I’d been hit 
real hard on the head, had my brains scrambled,” she said, “and then they’d keep 
me here a lot longer.”
Sitting on the edge of the girl’s bed, Lem said, “Tracy, you don’t have to worry 
that I’ll think you’re scrambled. I believe I know what you saw, and all I want 
from you is confirmation.”
She stared at him disbelievingly.
Walt stood at the foot of her bed, smiling down at her as if he were a big, 
affectionate teddy bear come to life. He said, “Before you passed out, you told 
your dad you’d been attacked by the boogeyman who used to live in your closet.” 
“It was sure ugly enough,” the girl said quietly. “But that’s not what it, was, 
I guess.”
“Tell me,” Lem said.
She stared at Walt, at Lem, then sighed. “You tell me what you think I
should’ve seen, and if you’re close, I’ll tell you what I can remember. But I’m 
not going to start it ‘cause I know you’ll think I’m looney tunes.”
Lem regarded Walt with unconcealed frustration, realizing there was no way to 
avoid divulging some of the facts of the case.
Walt grinned.
To the girl, Lem said, “Yellow eyes.”
She gasped and went rigid. “Yes! You do know, don’t you? You know what was out 
there.” She started to sit up, winced in pain as she pulled the stitches in her 
wound, and slumped back against the bed. “What was it, what was it?”
“Tracy,” Lem said, “I can’t tell you what it was. I’ve signed a secrecy oath. If 
I violated it, I could be put in jail, but more important . . . I wouldn’t have 
much respect for myself.”
She frowned, finally nodded. “I guess I can understand that.”
“Good. Now tell me everything you can about your assailant.”
As it turned out, she had not seen much because the night was dark and her 
flashlight had illuminated The Outsider for only an instant. “Pretty big for an 
animal . . . maybe as big as me. The yellow eyes.” She shuddered. “And its face 
was . . . strange.”
“In what way?”
“Lumpy . . . deformed,” the girl said. Though she had been very pale at the 
start, she grew paler now, and fine beads of sweat appeared along her hairline, 
dampening her brow.
Walt was leaning on the footrail of the bed, straining forward, intensely 
interested, not wanting to miss a word.
A sudden Santa Ana wind buffeted the building, startling the girl. She looked 
fearfully at the rattling window, where the wind moaned, as if she was afraid 
something would come smashing through the glass.
Which was, Lem reminded himself, exactly how The Outsider had gotten to Wes 
Dalberg.
The girl swallowed hard. “Its mouth was huge . . . and the teeth . .
She could not stop shaking, and Lem put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s 
okay, honey. It’s over now. It’s all behind you.”
After a pause to regain control of herself, but still shivering, Tracy said, “I 
think it was kind of hairy . . . or furry . . . I’m not sure, but it was very 
Strong.”
“What kind of animal did it resemble?” Lem asked.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like anything else."
“But if you had to say it was like some other animal, would you say it was more 
like a cougar than anything else?”
“No. Not a cougar.”
“Like a dog?”
She hesitated. “Maybe . . . a little bit like a dog.”
“Maybe a little bit like a bear, too?”
“No.”
“Like a panther?”
“No. Not like any cat.”
“Like a monkey?”
She hesitated again, frowned, thinking. “I don’t know why . . . but, yeah, maybe 
a little like a monkey. Except, no dog and no monkey has teeth like that.”
The door opened from the hall, and Dr. Selbok appeared. “You’re already past 
five minutes.”
Walt started to wave the doctor out.
Lem said, “No, it’s okay. We’re finished. Half a minute yet.”
“I’m counting the seconds,” Selbok said, retreating.
To the girl Lem said, “Can I rely on you?”
She matched his gaze and said, “To keep quiet?”
Lem nodded.
She said, “Yeah. I sure don’t want to tell anybody. My folks think I’m mature 
for my age. Mentally and emotionally mature, I mean. But if I start telling wild 
stories about . . . about monsters, they’re going to think I’m not so mature 
after all, and maybe they’ll figure I’m not responsible enough to take care of 
the horses, and so maybe they’ll slow down the breeding plans. I won’t risk 
that, Mr. Johnson. No, sir. So as far as I’m concerned, it was a loco coyote. 
But . .
“Yes?”
“Can you tell me . . . is there any chance it’ll come back?”
“I don’t think so. But it would be wise, for a while, not to go out to the 
stable at night. All right?”
“All right,” she said. Judging by her haunted expression, she would remain 
indoors after dusk for weeks to come.
They left the room, thanked Dr. Selbok for his cooperation, and went down to the 
hospital’s parking garage. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the cavernous concrete 
structure was empty, desolate. Their footsteps echoed hollowly off the wails.
Their cars were on the same floor, and Walt accompanied Lem to the green, 
unmarked NSA sedan. As Lem put the key in the door to unlock it, Walt looked 
around to be sure they were alone, then said, “Tell me.”
‘‘Can’t.”
‘‘I’ll find out.”
“You’re off the case.”
“So take me to court. Get a bench warrant.”
“I might.”
“For endangering the national security.”
“It would be a fair charge.”
“Throw my ass in jail.”
“I might,” Lem said, though he knew he would not.
Curiously, though Walt’s doggedness was frustrating and more than a little 
irritating, it was also pleasing to Lem. He had few friends, of which Walt was 
the most important, and he liked to think the reason he had few friends was 
because he was selective, with high standards. If Walt had backed off entirely,
if he had been completely cowed by federal authority, if he’d been able to turn 
off his Curiosity as easily as turning off a light switch, he would have been 
slightly tarnished and diminished in Lein’s eyes.
“What reminds you of a dog and an ape and has yellow eyes?” Walt asked. “Aside 
from your mama, that is.”
“You leave my mama out of this, honky,” Lem said. Smiling in spite of himself, 
he got into the car.
Walt held the door open and leaned down to look in at him. “What in the name of 
God escaped from Banodyne?”
“I told you this has nothing to do with Banodyne.”
“And the fire they had at the labs the next day . . . did they set it themselves 
to destroy the evidence of what they’d been up to?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lem said wearily, thrusting the key into the ignition. 
“Evidence could be destroyed in a more efficient and less drastic manner. if 
there was evidence to destroy. Which there isn’t. Because Banodyne has nothing 
to do with this.”
Lem started the car, but Walt would not give up. He held the door open and 
leaned in even closer to be heard above the rumble of the engine: “Genetic 
engineering. That’s what they’re involved with at Banodyne. Tinkering with 
bacteria and virus to make new bugs that do good deeds like manufacture insulin 
or eat oil slicks. And they tinker with the genes of plants as well, I guess, to 
produce corn that grows in acidic soil or wheat that thrives with half the usual 
water. We always think of gene tinkering as being done on a small scale—plants 
and germs. But could they screw around with an animal’s genes so it produced 
bizarre offspring, a whole new species? Is that what they’ve done, and is that 
what’s escaped from Banodyne?”
Lem shook his head exasperatedly. “Walt, I’m not an expert on recombinant DNA, 
but I don’t think the science is nearly sophisticated enough to work with any 
degree of confidence on that sort of thing. And what would be the point, anyway? 
Okay, just supposing they could make a weird new animal by fiddling with the 
genetic structure of an existing species—what use would there be for it? I mean, 
aside from exhibition in a carnival freak show?”
Walt’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Listen, research money is always damn tight, and there’s fierce competition for 
every major and minor grant, so no one’s going to be able to afford to 
experiment with something that has no use. Get me? Now, because I’m involved 
here, you know this has to be a matter of national defense, which would mean 
Banodyne was squandering Pentagon money to make a carnival freak.”
“The words ‘squander’ and ‘Pentagon’ have sometimes been used in the Same 
sentence,” Walt said drily.
“Be real, Walt. It’s one thing for the Pentagon to let some of its contractors 
Waste money in the production of a needed weapons system. But it’s altogether 
another thing for them to knowingly hand out funds for experiments with no 
defense potential. The system is sometimes inefficient, sometimes even corrupt, 
but it’s never outright stupid. Anyway, I’ll say it one more time: This
entire conversation is pointless because this has nothing to do with Banodyne.” 
Walt stared in at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Jesus, Lem, you’re
good. I know you’ve got to be lying to me, but I half-think you’re telling the 
truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
“You’re good. So tell me . . . what about Weatherby, Yarbeck, and the others? 
Got their killer yet?”
“No.” In fact, the man Lem had put in charge of the case had reported that it 
appeared as if the Soviets had used a killer outside of their own agencies and 
perhaps outside of the political world entirely. The investigation seemed 
stymied. But all he said to Walt was, “No.”
Walt started to straighten up and close the car door, then leaned down and in 
again. “One more thing. You notice it seems to have a meaningful destination?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It’s been moving steadily north or north-northwest ever since it broke out of 
Banodyne,” Walt said.
“It didn’t break out of Banodyne, damn it.”
“From Banodyne to Holy Jim Canyon, from there to Irvine Park, and from there to 
the Keeshan house tonight. Steadily north or north-northwest. I suppose you know 
what that might mean, where it might be headed, but of course I daren’t ask you 
about it or you’ll heave me straight into prison and let me rot there.”
“I’m telling you the truth about Banodyne.”
“So you say.”
“You’re impossible, Walt.”
“So you say.”
“So everyone says. Now will you let me go home? I’m beat.”
Smiling, Walt closed the door at last.
Lem drove out of the hospital garage to Main Street, then to the freeway, 
heading home toward Placentia. He hoped to make it back into bed no later than 
dawn.
As he piloted the NSA sedan through streets as empty as midocean sea-lanes, he 
thought about The Outsider heading northward. He’d noticed the same thing 
himself. And he was convinced that he knew what it was seeking even if he did 
not know where, precisely, it was going. From the first, the dog and The 
Outsider had possessed a special awareness of each other, an uncanny instinctual 
awareness of each other’s moods and activities even when they were not in the 
same room. Davis Weatherby had suggested, more than half seriously, that there 
was something telepathic about the relationship of those two creatures. Now, The 
Outsider was very likely still in tune with the dog and, by some sixth sense, 
was following it.
For the dog’s sake, Lem hoped to God that was not the case.
It had been evident in the lab that the dog had always feared The Outsider, and 
with good reason. The two were the yin and yang of the Francis Project, the 
success and the failure, the good and the bad. As wonderful, right, and
good as the dog was—well, The Outsider was every bit as hideous, wrong, and 
evil. And the researchers had seen that The Outsider did not fear the dog but 
hated it with a passion that no one had been able to understand. Now that both 
were free, The Outsider might single-mindedly pursue the dog, for it had never 
wanted anything more than to tear the retriever limb from limb.
Lem realized that, in his anxiety, he had put his foot down too hard on the 
accelerator. The car was rocketing along the freeway. He eased back on the 
pedal.
Wherever the dog was, with whomever it had found shelter, it was in jeopardy. 
And those who had given it shelter were also in grave danger.
 
 
SIX
1
Through the last week of May and the first week of June, Nora and Travis— and 
Einstein—were together nearly every day.
Initially, she had worried that Travis was somehow dangerous, not as dangerous 
as Art Streck but still to be feared; however, she’d soon gotten through that 
spell of paranoia. Now she laughed at herself when she remembered how wary of 
him she had been. He was sweet and kind, precisely the sort of man who, 
according to her Aunt Violet, did not exist anywhere in the world.
Once Nora’s paranoia had been overcome, she’d then been convinced that the only 
reason Travis continued to see her was because he pitied her. Being the 
compassionate man he was, he would not be able to turn his back on anyone in 
desperate need or trouble. Most people, meeting Nora, would not think of her as 
desperate—perhaps strange and shy and pathetic, but not desperate. Yet she 
was—or had been—desperately unable to cope with the world beyond her own four 
walls, desperately afraid of the future, and desperately lonely. Travis, being 
every bit as perceptive as he was kind, saw her desperation and responded to it. 
Gradually, as May faded into June and the days grew hotter under the summer sun, 
she dared to consider the possibility that he was helping her not because he 
pitied her but because he really liked her.
But she couldn’t understand what a man like him would see in a woman like her. 
She seemed to have nothing whatsoever to offer.
All right, yes, she had a self-image problem. Maybe she was not really as 
hopelessly drab and dull as she felt. Still, Travis clearly deserved—and could 
surely have—better female companionship than she could provide.
She decided not to question his interest. The thing to do was just relax and 
enjoy it.
Because Travis had sold his real-estate business after the death of his wife and 
was essentially retired, and because Nora had no job either, they were free to 
be together most of the day if they wanted—and they were. They went to 
galleries, haunted bookstores, took long walks, went on longer drives into the 
picturesque Santa Ynez Valley or up along the gorgeous Pacific coast.
Twice they set out early in the morning for Los Angeles and spent a long day 
there, and Nora was as overwhelmed by the sheer size of the city as she was by 
the activities they pursued: a movie-studio tour, a visit to the zoo, and a 
matinee performance of a hit musical.
One day Travis talked her into having her hair cut and styled. He took her to a 
beauty parlor that his late wife had frequented, and Nora was so nervous that 
she stuttered when she spoke to the beautician, a perky blonde named Melanie. 
Violet always cut Nora’s hair at home, and after Violet’s death, Nora cut it 
herself. Being tended by a beautician was a new experience, as unnerving as 
eating in a restaurant for the first time. Melanie did something she called 
“feathering,” and cut off a lot of Nora’s hair while somehow still leaving it 
full. They did not allow Nora to watch in the mirror, did not let her get a 
glimpse of herself until she was blown dry and combed out. Then they spun her 
around in the chair and confronted her with herself, and when she saw her 
reflection, she was stunned.
“You look terrific,” Travis said.
“It’s a total transformation,” Melanie said.
“Terrific,” Travis said.
“You’ve got such a pretty face, great bone structure,” Melanie said, “but all 
that straight, long hair made your features look elongated and pointy. This 
frames your face to its best advantage.”
Even Einstein seemed to like the change in her. When they left the beauty shop, 
the dog was waiting for them where they had left him tethered to a parking 
meter. He did a canine double-take when he saw Nora, jumped up with his front 
paws on her, and sniffed her face and hair, whining happily and wagging his 
tail.
She hated the new look. When they had turned her to the mirror, she’d seen a 
pathetic old maid trying to pass for a pretty, vivacious young thing. The styled 
hair was simply not her. It only emphasized that she was basically a plain, drab 
woman. She would never be sexy, charming, with-it, or any of the other things 
that the new hairstyle tried to say she was. It was rather like fastening a 
brightly colored feather duster to the back end of a turkey and attempting to 
pass it off as a peacock.
Because she did not want to hurt Travis’s feelings, she pretended to like what 
had been done to her. But that night she washed her hair and brushed it dry, 
pulling on it until all the so-called style had been tugged from it. Because of 
the feathering, it did not hang as straight and lank as it had previously, but 
she did the best with it that she could.
The next day, when Travis picked her up for lunch, he was clearly startled to 
find that she had reverted to her previous look. However, he said nothing about 
it, asked no questions. She was so embarrassed and afraid of having hurt his 
feelings that, for the first couple of hours, she was not able to meet his eyes 
for more than a second or two at a time.
 
 
In spite of her repeated and increasingly vigorous demurrals, Travis insisted On 
taking her shopping for a new dress, a bright and summery frock that she could 
wear to dinner at Talk of the Town, a dressy restaurant on West Gutierrez, where 
he said you could sometimes see some of the movie stars
who lived in the area, members of a film colony second only to that in Beverly 
Hills—Bel Air. They went to an expensive store, where she tried on a score of 
dresses, modeling each for Travis’s reaction, blushing and mortified. The 
saleswoman seemed genuinely approving of the way everything looked on Nora, and 
she kept telling Nora that her figure was perfect, but Nora couldn’t shake the 
feeling that the woman was laughing at her.
The dress Travis liked best was from the Diane Freis collection. Nora couldn’t 
deny that it was lovely: predominantly red and gold, though with an almost 
riotous background of other colors somehow more right in combination than they 
should have been (which apparently was a trait of Freis’s designs). It was 
exceedingly feminine. On a beautiful woman it would have been a knockout. But it 
just was not her. Dark colors, shapeless cuts, simple fabrics, no ornamentation 
whatsoever—that was her style. She tried to tell him what was best for her, 
explained that she could never wear such a dress as this, but he said, “You look 
gorgeous in it, really, you look gorgeous.”
She let him buy it. Dear God, she really did. She knew it was a big mistake, was 
wrong, and that she would never wear it. As the dress was being wrapped, Nora 
wondered why she had acquiesced, and she realized that, in spite of being 
mortified, she was flattered to have a man buying clothes for her, to have a man 
take an interest in her appearance. She never dreamed such a thing would happen 
to her, and she was overwhelmed.
She couldn’t stop blushing. Her heart pounded. She felt dizzy, but it was a good 
dizziness.
Then, as they were leaving the store, she learned that he had paid five hundred 
dollars for the dress. Five hundred dollars! She had intended to hang it in the 
closet and look at it a lot, use it as a starting point for pleasant daydreams, 
which was all fine and dandy if it had cost fifty dollars, but for five hundred 
she would have to wear it even if it made her feel ridiculous, even if she did 
look like a poseur, a scrubwoman pretending to be a princess.
The following evening, during the two hours before Travis was to pick her up and 
escort her to Talk of the Town, she put the dress on and took it off a half 
dozen times. She repeatedly sorted through the contents of her closet, searching 
frantically for something else to wear, something more sensible, but she didn’t 
have anything because she had never before needed clothes for a dressy 
restaurant.
Scowling at herself in the bathroom mirror, she said, “You look like Dustin 
Hoffman in Tootsie.”
She suddenly laughed because she knew she was being too hard on herself. But she 
couldn’t go easier on herself because that was how she felt: like a guy in drag. 
In this case, feelings were more important than facts, so her laughter quickly 
soured.
She broke down and cried twice, and considered calling him to cancel their date. 
But she wanted more than anything to see him, no matter how horribly humiliating 
the evening was going to be. She used Murine to get the red out of her eyes, and 
she tried the dress on again—and took it off.
When he arrived at a few minutes past seven, he looked handsome in a dark suit.
Nora was wearing a shapeless blue shift with dark-blue shoes.
He said, “I’ll wait.”
She said, “Huh? For what?”
“You know,” he said, meaning, Go change.
The words came out in a nervous rush, and her excuse was limp: “Travis, I’m 
sorry, this is terrible, I’m so sorry, but I spilled coffee all over the dress.”
“I’ll wait in here,” he said, walking to the living room archway.
She said, “A whole pot of coffee.”
“Better hurry. Our reservation is for seven-thirty.”
Steeling herself for the amused whispers if not outright laughter of everyone 
who saw her, telling herself that Travis’s opinion was the only one that 
mattered, she changed into the Diane Freis dress.
She wished she had not undone the hairstyle that Melanie had given her a couple 
of days ago. Maybe that would help.
No, it would probably just make her look more ludicrous.
When she came downstairs again, Travis smiled at her and said, “You’re lovely.”
She didn’t know whether the food at Talk of the Town was as good as its 
reputation or not. She tasted nothing. Later, she could not clearly remember the 
decor of the place, either, though the faces of the other customers— including 
the actor Gene Hackman—were burned into her memory because she was certain that, 
all evening, they were staring at her with amazement and disdain.
In the middle of dinner, evidently well aware of her discomfort, Travis put down 
his wineglass and leaned toward her and said quietly, “You really do look 
lovely, Nora, no matter what you think. And if you had the experience to be 
aware of such things, you’d realize that most of the men in the room are 
attracted to you.”
But she knew the truth, and she could face it. If men really were staring at 
her, it was not because she was pretty. People could be expected to stare at a 
turkey with a feather duster trying to pass itself off as a peacock.
“Without a trace of makeup,” he said, “you look better than any woman in the 
room.”
No makeup. That was another reason they were staring at her. When a Woman put on 
a five-hundred-dollar dress to be taken to an expensive restaurant, she made 
herself look as good as possible with lipstick, eyeliner, makeup, skin blush, 
and God knew what else. But Nora had never even thought about makeup.
The chocolate mousse dessert, though surely delicious, tasted like library paste 
to her and repeatedly stuck in her throat.
She and Travis had talked for long hours during the past couple of weeks, and 
they had found it surprisingly easy to reveal intimate feelings and thoughts to 
each other. She had learned why he was alone in spite of his good looks
and relative wealth, and he had learned why she harbored a low opinion of 
herself. So when she could not choke down any more of the mousse, when she 
implored Travis to take her home right away, he said softly, “If there’s any 
justice, Violet Devon is sweating in Hell tonight.”
Shocked, Nora said, “Oh, no. She wasn’t that bad.”
All the way home, he was silent, brooding.
When he left her at her door, he insisted she set up a meeting with Garrison 
Dilworth, who had been her aunt’s attorney and now took care of Nora’s minor 
legal business. “From what you’ve told me,” Travis said, “Dilworth knew your 
aunt better than anyone, so I’d bet dollars to doughnuts he can tell you things 
about her that will break this goddamn stranglehold she has on you even from the 
grave.”
Nora said, “But there’re no great dark secrets about Aunt Violet. She was what 
she appeared to be. She was a very simple woman, really. A sort of sad woman.”
“Sad my ass,” Travis said.
He persisted until she agreed to make the appointment with Garrison Dilworth.
Later, upstairs in her bedroom, when she tried to take off the Diane Freis, she 
discovered she didn’t want to undress. All evening, she had been impatient to 
get out of that costume, for it had seemed like a costume on her. But now, in 
retrospect, the evening possessed a warm glow, and she wanted to prolong that 
glow. Like a sentimental high school girl, she slept in the five-hundred-dollar 
dress.
 
 
Garrison Dilworth’s office had been carefully decorated to convey 
respectability, stability, and reliability. Beautifully detailed oak paneling. 
Heavy royal-blue drapes hung from brass rods. Shelves full of leather-bound law 
books. A massive oak desk.
The attorney himself was an intriguing cross between a personification of 
Dignity and Probity—and Santa Claus. Tall, rather portly, with thick silver 
hair, past seventy but still working a full week, Garrison favored three-piece 
suits and subdued ties. In spite of his many years as a Californian, his deep 
and smooth and cultured voice clearly marked him as a product of the upper-class 
Eastern circles in which he had been born, raised, and educated. But there was 
also a decidedly merry twinkle in his eyes, and his smile was quick, warm, 
altogether Santalike.
He did not distance himself by staying behind his desk, but sat with Nora and 
Travis in comfortable armchairs around a coffee table on which stood a large 
Waterford bowl. “I don’t know what you came here expecting to learn. There are 
no secrets about your aunt. No great dark revelations that will change your 
life—”
“I knew as much,” Nora said. “I’m sorry we’ve bothered you.”
“Wait,” Travis said. “Let Mr. Dilworth finish.”
The attorney said, “Violet Devon was my client, and an attorney has a 
responsibility to protect clients’ confidences even after their death. At least 
that’s my view, though some in the profession might not feel such a lasting 
obligation. Of course, as I’m speaking to Violet’s closest living relative and 
heir, I suppose there’s little I would choose not to divulge—if in fact there 
were any secrets to reveal. And I certainly see no moral constraint against my 
expressing an honest opinion of your aunt. Even attorneys, priests, and doctors 
are allowed to have opinions of people.” He took a deep breath and frowned. “I 
never liked her, I thought she was a narrow-minded, totally self-involved woman 
who was at least slightly . . . well, mentally unstable. And the way she raised 
you was criminal, Nora. Not abusive in any legal sense that would interest the 
authorities, but criminal nonetheless. And cruel.”
For as long as Nora could recall, a large knot had seemed to be tied tight 
inside of her, pinching vital organs and vessels, leaving her tense, restricting 
the flow of blood and making it necessary for her to live with all her senses 
damped down, forcing her to struggle along as if she were a machine getting 
insufficient power. Suddenly, Garrison Dilworth’s words untied that knot, and a 
full, unrestricted current of life rushed through her for the first time.
She had known what Violet Devon had done to her, but knowing was not enough to 
help her overcome that grim upbringing. She needed to hear her aunt condemned by 
someone else. Travis had already denounced Violet, and Nora had felt some small 
release at hearing what he said. But that had not been enough to free her 
because Travis hadn’t known Violet and, therefore, spoke without complete 
authority. Garrison knew Violet well, however, and his words released Nora from 
bondage.
She was trembling violently, and tears were trickling down her face, but she was 
unaware of both conditions until Travis reached out from his chair to put one 
hand consolingly upon her shoulder. She fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief. 
“I’m sorry.”
“Dear lady,” Garrison said, “don’t apologize for breaking through that iron 
shell you’ve been in all your life. This is the first time I’ve seen you show a 
strong emotion, the first time I’ve seen you in any condition other than extreme 
shyness, and it’s lovely to behold.” Turning to Travis, giving Nora time to blot 
her eyes, he said, “What more did you hope to hear me say?”
“There are some things Nora doesn’t know, things she ought to know and that I 
don’t believe would violate even your strict code of client privilege if you 
were to divulge them.”
“Such as?”
Travis said, “Violet Devon never worked yet lived reasonably well, never in 
want, and she left enough funds to keep Nora pretty much for the rest of her 
life, at least as long as Nora stays in that house and lives like a recluse. 
Where did her money come from?”
“Come from?” Garrison sounded surprised. “Nora knows that, surely.”
“But she doesn’t,” Travis said.
Nora looked up and saw Garrison Dilworth staring at her in astonishment. He 
blinked and said, “Violet’s husband was moderately well-to-do. He died quite 
young, and she inherited everything.”
Nora gaped at him and could barely find sufficient breath to speak. “Husband?”
“George Olmstead,” the attorney said.
“I’ve never heard that name.”
Garrison blinked rapidly again, as if sand had blown in his face. “She never 
mentioned a husband?”
“Never.”
“But didn’t a neighbor ever mention—”
“We had nothing to do with our neighbors,” Nora said. “Violet didn’t approve of 
them.”
“And in fact,” Garrison said, “now that I think about it, there might have been 
new neighbors on both sides by the time you came to live with Violet.”
Nora blew her nose and put away her handkerchief. She was still trembling. Her 
sudden sense of release from bondage had generated powerful emotions, but now 
they subsided somewhat to make room for curiosity.
“All right?” Travis asked.
She nodded, then stared hard at him and said, “You knew, didn’t you? About the 
husband, I mean. That’s why you brought me here.”
“I suspected,” Travis said. “If she’d inherited everything from her parents, she 
would have mentioned it. The fact that she didn’t talk about where the money 
came from . . . well, it seemed to me to leave only one possibility— a husband, 
and very likely a husband with whom she’d had troubles. Which made even more 
sense when you think about how down she was on people in general and on men in 
particular.”
The attorney was so dismayed and agitated that he could not sit still. He got up 
and paced past an enormous antique globe that was lighted from within and seemed 
made of parchment. “I’m flabbergasted. So you never really understood why she 
was bitterly misanthropic, why she suspected everyone of having her worst 
interests at heart?”
“No,” Nora said. “I didn’t need to know why, I guess. It was just the way she 
was.”
Still pacing, Garrison said, “Yes. That’s true. I’m convinced she was a 
borderline paranoid even in her youth. And then, when she discovered that George 
had betrayed her with other women, the switch clicked all the way over in her. 
She got much worse after that.”
Travis said, “Why did Violet still use her maiden name, Devon, if she’d been 
married to Olmstead?”
“She didn’t want his name any more. Loathed the name. She sent him packing, very 
nearly drove him out of the house with a stick! She was about to divorce him 
when he died,” Garrison said. “She had learned about his affairs with other 
women, as I’ve said. She was furious. Ashamed and enraged. I must say. . . I 
can’t entirely blame poor George because I don’t think he,
found much love and affection at home. He knew the marriage was a mistake within 
a month of the wedding.”
Garrison paused beside the globe, one hand resting lightly on top of the world, 
staring far into the past. Ordinarily, he did not look his age. Now, as he gazed 
back across the years, the lines in his face seemed to deepen, and his blue eyes 
appeared faded. After a moment he shook his head and continued:
“Anyway, those were different times, when a woman betrayed by a husband was an 
object of pity, ridicule. But even for those days, I thought Violet’s reaction 
was overblown. She burned all his clothes and changed the locks on the house . . 
. she even killed a dog, a spaniel, of which he was fond. Poisoned it. And 
mailed it to him in a box.”
“Dear God,” Travis said.
Garrison said, “Violet took back her maiden name because she didn’t want his any 
more. The thought of carrying George Olmstead’s name through life repelled her, 
she said, even though he was dead. She was an unforgiving woman.”
“Yes,” Nora agreed.
His face pinched with distaste at the memory, and Garrison said, “When George 
was killed, she didn’t bother to conceal her pleasure.”
“Killed?” Nora half-expected to hear that Violet had murdered George Olmstead 
yet had somehow escaped prosecution.
“It was an auto accident, forty years ago,” Garrison said. “He lost control on 
the Coast Highway driving home from Los Angeles, went over the edge where, in 
those days, there wasn’t a guardrail. The embankment was sixty or eighty feet 
high, very steep, and George’s car—a large black Packard— rolled over several 
times on the way down to the rocks below. Violet inherited everything because, 
though she had initiated divorce proceedings against him, George had not gotten 
around to changing his will.”
Travis said, “So George Olmstead not only betrayed Violet but, in dying, left 
her with no target for her anger. So she directed that anger at the world in 
general.”
“And at me in particular,” Nora said.
 
 
That same afternoon, Nora told Travis about her painting. She had not mentioned 
her artistic pursuits before, and he had not been in her bedroom to see her 
easel, supply cabinet, and drawing board. She was not sure why she had kept this 
aspect of her life a secret from him. She had mentioned an interest in art, 
which was why they had gone to galleries and museums, but Perhaps she had never 
spoken of her own work because she was afraid that, On seeing her canvases, he 
would be unimpressed.
What if he felt that she had no real talent?
Aside from the escape provided by books, the thing that kept Nora going
through many grim, lonely years was her painting. She believed that she was 
good, perhaps very good, though she was too shy and too vulnerable to voice that 
conviction to anyone. What if she was wrong? What if she had no talent and had 
been merely filling time? Her art was the primary medium by which she defined 
herself. She had little else with which to sustain even her thin and shaky 
self-image, so she desperately needed to believe in her talent. Travis’s opinion 
meant more to her than she could say, and if his reaction to her painting was 
negative, she would be devastated.
But after leaving Garrison Dilworth’s office, Nora knew that the time had come 
to take the risk. The truth about Violet Devon had been a key that had unlocked 
Nora’s emotional prison. She would need a long time to move from her cell, down 
the long hall to the outside world, but the journey would inevitably continue. 
Therefore, she would have to open herself to all the experiences that her new 
life provided, including the awful possibility of rejection and severe 
disappointment. Without risk, there was no hope of gain.
Back at the house, she considered taking Travis upstairs to have a look at a 
half dozen of her most recent paintings. But the idea of having a man in her 
bedroom, even with the most innocent intentions, was too unsettling. Garrison 
Dilworth’s revelations freed her, yes, and her world was rapidly broadening, but 
she was not yet that free. Instead, she insisted that Travis and Einstein sit on 
one of the big sofas in the furniture-stuffed living room, where she would bring 
some of her canvases for viewing. She turned on all the lights, drew the drapes 
away from the windows, and said, “I’ll be right back.”
But upstairs she dithered over the ten paintings in her bedroom, unable to 
decide which two she should take to him first. Finally she settled on four 
pieces, though it was a bit awkward carrying that many at once. Halfway down the 
stairs, she halted, trembling, and decided to take the paintings back and select 
others. But she retreated only four steps before she realized that she could 
spend the entire day in vacillation. Reminding herself that nothing could be 
gained without risk, she took a deep breath and went quickly downstairs with the 
four paintings that she had originally chosen.
Travis liked them. More than liked them. He raved about them. “My God, Nora, 
this is no hobby painting. This is the real thing. This is art.”
She propped the paintings on four chairs, and he was not content to study them 
from the sofa. He got up for a closer look, moved from one canvas to another and 
back again.
“You’re a superb photorealist,” he said. “Okay, so I’m no art critic, but by God 
you’re as skilled as Wyeth. But this other thing . . . this eerie quality in two 
of these . .
His compliments had left her blushing furiously, and she had to swallow hard to 
find her voice. “A touch of surrealism.”
She had brought two landscapes and two still lifes. One of each was, indeed, 
strictly a photorealist work. But the other two were photorealism with a strong 
element of surrealism. In the still life, for example, several water glasses, a 
pitcher, spoons, and a sliced lemon were on a table, portrayed in excruciating
detail, and at first glance the scene looked very realistic; but at second 
glance you noticed that one of the glasses was melting into the surface on which 
it stood, and that one slice of lemon was penetrating the side of a glass as if 
the glass had been formed around it.
“They’re brilliant, they really are,” he said. “Do you have others?”
Did she have others!
She made two additional trips to her bedroom, returning with six more paintings.
With each new canvas, Travis’s excitement grew. His delight and enthusiasm were 
genuine, too. Initially she thought that he might be humoring her, but soon she 
was certain he was not disguising his true reaction.
Moving from canvas to canvas and back again, he said, “Your sense of color is 
excellent.”
Einstein accompanied Travis around the room, adding a soft woof after each of 
his master’s statements and vigorously wagging his tail, as if expressing 
agreement with the assessment.
“There’s such mood in these pieces,” Travis said.
“Woof.”
“Your control of the medium is astonishing. I’ve no sense that I’m looking at 
thousands of brush strokes. Instead, it seems as if the picture just appeared on 
the canvas magically.”
“Woof.”
“It’s hard to believe you’ve had no formal schooling.”
“Woof.”
“Nora, these are easily good enough to sell. Any gallery would take these
in a minute.” -
“Woof.”
“You could not only make a living at this . . . I think you could build one hell 
of a reputation.”
Because she had not dared to admit how seriously she had always taken her work, 
Nora had often painted one picture over another, using a canvas again and again. 
As a consequence, many of her pieces were gone forever. But in the attic she had 
stored more than eighty of her best paintings. Now, because Travis insisted, 
they brought down more than a score of those wrapped canvases, tore off the 
brown paper, and propped them on the living-room furniture. For the first time 
in Nora’s memory, that dark chamber looked bright and welcoming.
“Any gallery would be delighted to do a show of these,” Travis said. “In fact, 
tomorrow, let’s load some of them into the truck and take them around to a few 
galleries, hear what they say.”
“Oh no, no.”
“I promise you, Nora, you won’t be disappointed.”
She was suddenly in the clutches of anxiety. Although thrilled by the prospect 
of a career in art, she was also frightened by the big step she would be taking. 
Like walking off the edge of a cliff.
She said, “Not yet. In a week . . . or a month . . . we’ll load them in the
truck and take them to a gallery. But not yet, Travis. I just can’t . . I can’t 
handle it yet.”
He grinned at her. “Sensory overload again?”
Einstein came to her and rubbed against her leg, looking up with a sweet 
expression that made Nora smile.
Scratching behind the dog’s ears, she said, “So much has happened so fast. I 
can’t absorb it all. I keep having to fight off attacks of dizziness. I feel a 
little bit as if I’m on a carousel that’s whirling around faster and faster, out 
of control.”
What she said was true, to an extent, but that was not the only reason she 
wished to delay going public with her art. She also wanted to move slowly in 
order to have time to savor every glorious development. If she rushed into 
things, the transformation from reclusive spinster to a full-fledged participant 
in life would go too fast, and later it would be just a blur. She wanted to 
enjoy every moment of her metamorphosis.
As if she were an invalid who had been confined since birth to a single dark 
room full of life-support equipment, and as if she had just been miraculously 
cured, Nora Devon was coming cautiously out into a new world.
 
 
Travis was not solely responsible for Nora’s emergence from reclusion. Einstein 
had an equally large role in her transformation.
The retriever had obviously decided that Nora could be trusted with the secret 
of his extraordinary intelligence. After the Modern Bride and baby business in 
Solvang, the dog gave her glimpse after glimpse of his undoglike mind at work.
Taking his lead from Einstein, Travis told Nora how he had found the retriever 
in the woods and how something strange—and never seen—had been pursuing it. He 
recounted all the amazing things the dog had done since then. He also told her 
of Einstein’s occasional bouts with anxiety in the heart of the night, when he 
sometimes stood at a window and stared out at the darkness as if he believed the 
unknown creature in the woods would find him.
They sat for hours one evening in Nora’s kitchen, drinking pots of coffee and 
eating homemade pineapple cake and discussing explanations for the dog’s uncanny 
intelligence. When not cadging bits of cake, Einstein listened to them with 
interest, as if he understood what they were saying about him, and sometimes he 
whined and paced impatiently, as if frustrated that his canine vocal apparatus 
did not permit him to speak. But they were mostly spinning their wheels because 
they had no explanations worth discussing.
“I believe he could tell us where he comes from, why he’s so damn different from 
other dogs,” Nora said.
Einstein busily swept the air with his tail.
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Travis said. “He’s got a humanlike self-awareness.
He knows he’s different, and I suspect he knows why, and I think he’d like to 
tell us about it if he could only find a way.”
The retriever barked once, ran to the far end of the kitchen, ran back, looked 
up at them, did a frantic little dance of purely human frustration, and finally 
slumped on the floor with his head on his paws, alternately chuffing and whining 
softly.
Nora was most intrigued by the story of (he night that the dog had gotten 
excited over Travis’s book collection. “He recognizes that books are a means of 
communication,” she said. “And maybe he senses there’s a way to use books to 
bridge the communications gap between him and us.”
“How?” Travis asked as he lifted another forkful of pineapple cake.
Nora shrugged. “I don’t know. But maybe the problem was that your books weren’t 
the right kind. Novels, you said?”
“Yeah. Fiction.”
She said, “Maybe what we need is books with pictures, images he can react to. 
Maybe if we gathered up a lot of picture books of all kinds, and magazines with 
pictures, and maybe if we spread them out on the floor and worked with Einstein, 
maybe we’d find some way to communicate with him.”
The retriever leaped to his feet and padded directly to Nora. From the 
expression on his face and from the intent look in his eyes, Nora knew that her 
proposal was a good one. Tomorrow, she would collect dozens of books and 
magazines, and put the scheme into operation.
“It’s going to take a lot of patience,” Travis warned her.
“I’ve got oceans of patience.”
“You may think you have, but sometimes dealing with Einstein gives a whole new 
meaning to the word.”
Turning to Travis, the dog blew air out of his nostrils.
The prospects for more direct communication looked bleak during the first few 
sessions with the dog on Wednesday and Thursday, but the big breakthrough was 
not long in coming: Friday evening, June 4, they found the way, and after that 
their lives could never be the same.
 
 
2
“...reports of screaming in an unfinished housing tract, Bordeaux Ridge—”
Friday evening, June 4, less than an hour before nightfall, the sun cast gold 
and copper light on Orange County. It was the second day of blistering 
temperatures in the mid-nineties, and the stored heat of the long summer day 
radiated off the pavement and buildings. Trees seemed to droop wearily. The air 
was motionless. On the freeways and surface streets, the sound of traffic was 
muffled, as if the thick air filtered the roar of engines and blaring of horns.
“—repeat, Bordeaux Ridge, under construction at the east end—”
In the gently rolling foothills to the northeast, in an unincorporated area of 
the county adjacent to Yorba Linda, where the suburban sprawl had only recently 
begun to reach, there was little traffic. The occasional blast of a horn or 
squeal of brakes was not merely muffled but curiously mournful, melancholy in 
the humid stillness.
Sheriff’s Deputies Teel Porter and Ken Dimes were in a patrol car—Teel driving, 
Ken riding shotgun—with a broken ventilation system: no air-conditioning, not 
even forced air coming out of the vents. The windows were open, but the sedan 
was an oven.
“You stink like a dead hog,” Teel Porter told his partner.
“Yeah?” Ken Dimes said. “Well, you not only stink like a dead hog, you look like 
a dead hog.”
“Yeah? Well, you date dead hogs.”
Ken smiled in spite of the heat. “That so? Well, I hear from your women that you 
make love like a dead hog.”
Their tired humor could not mask the fact that they were weary and 
uncomfortable. And they were answering a call that didn’t promise much 
excitement: probably kids playing games; kids loved to play on construction 
sites. Both deputies were thirty-two, husky former high school football players. 
They weren’t brothers—but, as partners for six years, they were brothers.
Teel turned off the county road onto a lightly oiled dirt lane that led into the 
Bordeaux Ridge development. About forty houses were in various stages of 
construction. Most were still being framed, but a few had already been stuccoed.
“Now there,” Ken said, “is the kind of shit I just can’t believe people fall 
for. I mean, hell, what kind of name is ‘Bordeaux’ for a housing tract in 
Southern California? Are they trying to make you believe there’s going to be 
vineyards here one day? And they call it ‘Ridge,’ but the whole tract’s in this 
stretch of flatland between the hills. Their sign promises serenity. Maybe now. 
But what about when they pitch up another three thousand houses out here in the 
next five years?”
Teel said, “Yeah, but the part gets me is ‘miniestates.’ What the fuck is a 
miniestate. Nobody in his right mind would think these are estates—except maybe 
Russians who’ve spent their lives living twelve to an apartment. These are tract 
homes.”
The concrete curbs and gutters had been poured along the streets of Bordeaux 
Ridge, but the pavement had not yet been put down. Teel drove slowly, trying not 
to raise a lot of dust, raising it anyway. He and Ken looked left and right at 
the skeletal forms of unfinished houses, searching for kids who were up to no 
good.
To the west, at the edge of the city of Yorba Linda and adjacent to Bordeaux 
Ridge, were finished tracts where people already lived. From those residents, 
the Yorba Linda Police had received calls about screaming somewhere in this 
embryonic development. Because the area had not yet been annexed into the city, 
the complaint fell into the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department.
At the end of the street, the deputies saw a white pickup that belonged to
the company that owned Bordeaux: Tulemann Brothers. It was parked in front of 
three almost-completed display models.
“Looks like there’s a foreman still here,” Ken said.
“Or maybe it’s the night watchman on duty a little early,” Tee! said.
They parked behind the truck, got out of the stiflingly hot patrol car, and 
stood for a moment, listening. Silence.
Ken shouted, “Hello! Anybody here?”
His voice echoed back and forth through the deserted tract.
Ken said, “You want to look around?”
“Shit, no,” Teel said. “But let’s do it.”
Ken still did not believe anything was wrong at Bordeaux Ridge. The pickup could 
have been left behind at the end of the day. After all, other equipment remained 
on the tract overnight: a couple of Bob-cats on a long-bed truck, a backhoe. And 
it was still likely that the reported screaming had been kids playing.
They grabbed flashlights from the car because, even if electric service to the 
tract had been connected, there were no lamps or ceiling lights in the 
unfinished structures.
Resettling their gunbelts on their hips more out of habit than out of any belief 
that they would need weapons, Ken and Teel walked through the nearest of the 
partially framed houses. They were not looking for anything in particular, just 
going through the motions, which was half of all police work.
A mild and inconstant breeze sprang up, the first of the day, and blew sawdust 
ghosts through the open sides of the house. The sun was falling rapidly 
westward, and the wall studs cast prison-bar shadows across the floor. The last 
light of the day, which was changing from gold to muddy red, imparted a soft 
glow to the air like that around the open door of a furnace. The concrete pad 
was littered with nails that winked in the fiery light and clinked underfoot.
“For a hundred and eighty thousand bucks,” Tee! said, probing into black corners 
with the beam of his flashlight, “I’d expect rooms a little bigger than these.”
Taking a deep breath of sawdust-scented air, Ken said, “Hell, I’d expect rooms 
as big as airport lounges.”
They stepped out of the back of the house, into a shallow rear yard, where they 
switched off their flashes. The bare, dry earth was not landscaped. It was 
littered with the detritus of construction’: scraps of lumber, chunks of broken 
concrete, rumpled pieces of tarpaper, tangled loops of wire, more nails, useless 
lengths of PVC pipe, cedar shingles discarded by roofers, Styrofoam soft-drink 
cups and Big Mac containers, empty Coke cans, and less identifiable debris.
No fences had yet been constructed, so they had a view of all twelve backyards 
along this street. Purple shadows seeped across the sandy soil, but they could 
see that all the yards were deserted.
“No signs of mayhem,” Tee! said.
“No damsels in distress,” Ken said.
“Well, let’s at least walk along here, look between buildings,” Teel said. “We 
ought to give the public something for their money.”
Two houses later, in the thirty-foot-wide pass-through between structures, they 
found the dead man.
“Damn,” Teel said.
The guy was lying on his back, mostly in shadow, with only the lower half of his 
body revealed in the dirty-red light, and at first Ken and Teel didn’t realize 
what a horror they’d stumbled across. But when he knelt beside the corpse, Ken 
was shocked to see that the man’s gut had been torn open.
“Jesus Christ, his eyes,” Teel said.
Ken looked up from the ravaged torso and saw empty sockets where the victim’s 
eyes should have been.
Retreating into the littered yard, Tee! drew his revolver.
Ken also backed away from the mutilated corpse and slipped his own gun out of 
his holster. Though he had been perspiring all day, he felt suddenly damper, 
slick with a different kind of sweat, the cool, sour sweat of fear.
PCP, Ken thought. Only some asshole stoned on PCP would be violent enough to do 
something like this.
Bordeaux Ridge was silent.
Nothing moved except the shadows, which seemed to grow longer by the second.
“Some angel-dust junkie did this,” Ken said, putting his fears about PCP into 
words.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Teel said. “You want to look any farther?”
“Not just the two of us, by God. Let’s radio for assistance.”
They began to retrace their steps, warily keeping a watch on all sides as they 
moved, and they did not go far before they heard the noises. A crash. A clatter 
of metal. Glass breaking.
Ken had no doubt whatsoever where the sounds came from. The racket originated 
inside the closest of the three houses that were nearing completion and that 
would serve as sales models.
With no suspect in sight and no clue as to where to begin looking for one, they 
would have been justified in returning to the patrol car and calling for 
assistance. But now that they’d heard the disturbance in the model home, their 
training and instinct required them to act more boldly. They moved toward the 
back of the house.
A plyboard skin had been nailed over the studs, so the walls were not open to 
the elements, and chicken wire had been fixed to the tar-papered boards, and 
half the place was stuccoed. In fact, the stucco looked damp, as if the job had 
been started only today. Most of the windows were installed; only a few cutouts 
were still covered with tattered sheets of opaque plastic.
Another crash, louder than the first, was followed by the sound of more glass 
shattering inside.
Ken Dimes tried the sliding glass door that connected the rear yard and the 
family room. It was not locked.
From outside, Tee! studied the family room through the glass. Although some 
light still entered the house by way of undraped doors and windows, shadows 
ruled the interior. They could see that the family room was deserted, so Tee! 
eased through the half-open door with his flashlight in one hand and his Smith & 
Wesson clutched firmly in the other.
“You go around front,” Tee! whispered, “so the bastard doesn’t get out that 
way.”
Bending down to stay below window level, Ken hurried around the corner, along 
the side of the house, around to the front, and every step of the way he 
half-expected someone to jump on him from the roof or leap out through one of 
the unfinished windows.
 
 
The interior had been Sheetrocked, the ceilings textured. The family room opened 
into a breakfast area adjoining the kitchen, all of it one large flowing space 
without partitions. Oak cabinets had been installed in the kitchen, but the tile 
floor had not yet been put down.
The air had the lime odor of drywaller’s mud, with an underlying scent of wood 
stain.
Standing in the breakfast area, Tee! listened for more sounds of destruction, 
movement.
Nothing.
If this was like most California tract homes, he would find the dining room to 
the left, beyond the kitchen, then the living room, the entrance foyer, and a 
den. If he went into the hallway that led out of the breakfast area, he would 
probably find a laundry room, the downstairs bath, a coat closet, then the 
foyer. He could see no advantage of one route over another, so he went into the 
hall and checked the laundry first.
The dark room had no windows. The door was standing half-open, and the 
flashlight showed only yellow cabinets and the spaces where the washer and dryer 
would be placed. However, Teel wanted to look at the section behind the door, 
where he figured there was a sink and work area. He pushed the door all the way 
open and went in fast, swinging the flashlight and the gun in that direction. He 
found the stainless-steel sink and built-in table that he expected, but no 
killer.
He was more on edge that he had been in years. He could not keep the Image of 
the dead man from flickering repeatedly through his mind: those empty eye 
sockets.
Not just on edge, he thought. Face it, you’re scared shitless.
 
 
 
Out front, Ken jumped across a narrow ditch and headed for the house’s double 
entrance doors, which were still closed. He surveyed the surrounding
area and saw no one trying to escape. As twilight descended, Bordeaux Ridge 
looked less like a tract under development than like a bombed-out neighborhood. 
Shadows and dust created the illusion of rubble.
 
 
In the laundry room, Teel Porter turned, intending to step into the hail, and on 
his right, in the group of yellow cabinets, the two-foot-wide, six-foot-high 
door of a broom closet flew open, and this thing came at him as if it were a 
jack-in-the-box, Jesus, for a split second he was sure it must be a kid in a 
rubber fright mask. He could not see clearly in the backsplash of the 
flashlight, which was pointed away from the attacker, but then he knew it was 
real because those eyes, like circles of smoky lamplight, were not just plastic 
or glass, no way. He fired the revolver, but it was aimed ahead, into the hall, 
and the slug plowed harmlessly into the wall out there, so he tried to turn, but 
the thing was all over him, hissing like a snake. He fired again, into the floor 
this time—the sound was deafening in that enclosed space— then he was driven 
backward against the sink, and the gun was torn out of his hand. He also lost 
the flashlight, which spun off into the corner. He threw a punch, but before his 
fist was halfway though its arc, he felt a terrible pain in his belly, as if 
several stilettos had been thrust into him all at once, and he knew instantly 
what was happening to him. He screamed, screamed, and in the gloom the misshapen 
face of the jack-in-the-box loomed over him, its eyes radiantly yellow, and Teel 
screamed again, flailed, and more stilettos sank through the soft tissue of his 
throat— Ken Dimes was four steps from the front doors when he heard Tee! scream.
A cry of surprise, fear, pain.
“Shit.”
They were double doors, stained oak. The one on the right was secured to the 
sill and header by sliding bolts, while the one on the left was the active 
door—and unlocked. Ken rushed inside, caution briefly forgotten, then halted in 
the gloomy foyer.
Already, the screaming had stopped.
He switched on his flashlight. Empty living room to the right. Empty den to the 
left. A staircase leading up to the second floor. No one anywhere in sight.
Silence. Perfect silence. As in a vacuum.
For a moment Ken hesitated to call out to Teel, for fear he would be revealing 
his position to the killer. Then he realized that the flashlight, without which 
he could not proceed, was enough to give him away; it did not matter if he made 
noise.
“Teel!”
The name echoed through the vacant rooms.
“Teel, where are you?”
No reply.
Teel must be dead. Jesus. He would respond if he was alive.
Or he might just be injured and unconscious, wounded and dying. In that case, 
perhaps it would be best to go back to the patrol car and call for an ambulance.
No. No, if his partner was in desperate shape, Ken had to find him fast and 
administer first aid. Tee! might die in the time it took to call an ambulance. 
Delaying that long was too great a risk.
Besides, the killer had to be dealt with.
Only the vaguest smoky-red light penetrated the windows now, for the day was 
being swallowed by the night. Ken had to rely entirely on the flashlight, which 
was not ideal because, each time the beam moved, shadows leaped and swooped, 
creating illusory assailants. Those false attackers might distract him from real 
danger.
Leaving the front door wide open, he crept along the narrow hall that led to the 
back of the house. He stayed close to the wall. The sole of one of his shoes 
squeaked with nearly every step he took. He held the gun out in front of him, 
not aimed at the floor or ceiling, because for the moment, at least, he didn’t 
give a damn about safe weapons procedure.
On the right, a door stood open. A closet. Empty.
The stink of his own perspiration grew greater than the lime and wood-stain 
odors of the house.
He came to a powder room on his left. A quick sweep of the light revealed 
nothing out of the ordinary, though his own frightened face, reflected in the 
mirror, startled him.
The rear of the house—family room, breakfast area, kitchen—was directly ahead, 
and on his left was another door, standing open. In the beam of the flashlight, 
which suddenly began to quiver violently in his hand, Ken saw Teel’s body on the 
floor of a laundry room, and so much blood that there could be no doubt he was 
dead.
Beneath the waves of fear that washed across the surface of his mind, there were 
undercurrents of grief, rage, hatred, and a fierce desire for vengeance.
Behind Ken, something thumped.
He cried out and turned to face the threat.
But the hall to the right and the breakfast area to the left were both deserted.
The sound had come from the front of the house. Even as the echo of it died 
away, he knew what he’d heard: the front door being closed.
Another sound broke the stillness, not as loud as the first but more unnerving: 
the clack of the door’s dead bolt being engaged.
Had the killer departed and locked the door from the outside, with a key? But 
where would he get a key? Off the foreman that he had murdered? And Why would he 
pause to lock up?
More likely, he had locked the door from inside, not merely to delay Ken’s 
escape but to let him know the hunt was still under way.
Ken considered dousing the flashlight because it pinpointed him for the enemy, 
but by now the twilight glow at the windows was purple-gray and did not reach 
into the house at all. Without the flashlight, he would be blind.
How the hell was the killer finding his way in this steadily deepening darkness? 
Was it possible that a PCP junkie’s night vision improved when he was high, just 
as his strength increased to that of ten men as a side effect of the angel dust?
The house was quiet.
He stood with his back to the hallway wall.
He could smell Teel’s blood. A vaguely metallic odor.
Click, click, click.
Ken stiffened and listened intently, but he heard nothing more after those three 
quick noises. They had sounded like swift footsteps crossing the concrete floor, 
taken by someone wearing boots with hard leather heels—or shoes with cleats.
The noises had begun and ended so abruptly that he had not been able to tell 
where they were coming from. Then he heard them again—click, click, click, 
click—four steps this time, and they were in the foyer, moving in this 
direction, toward the hall in which he stood.
He immediately pushed away from the wall, turning to face the adversary, 
dropping into a crouch and thrusting both the flashlight and the revolver toward 
where he had heard the steps. But the hallway was deserted.
Breathing through his open mouth to reduce the noise of his own rapid 
respiration, which he feared would mask the movements of the enemy, Ken eased 
along the hall, into the foyer. Nothing. The front door was closed all right, 
but the den and the living room and the staircase and the gallery above were 
deserted.
Click, click, click, click.
The noises arose from an entirely different direction now, from the back of the 
house, in the breakfast area. The killer had fled silently out of the foyer, 
across the living room and dining room, into the kitchen, into the breakfast 
area, circling through the house, coming around behind Ken. Now the bastard was 
entering the hall that Ken had just left. And though the guy had been silent 
while flitting through the other rooms, he was making those noises again, 
obviously not because he had to make them, not because his shoes clicked with 
every step the way Ken’s shoes squeaked, but because he wanted to make the 
noises again, wanted to taunt Ken, wanted to say: Hey, I’m behind you now, and 
here I come, ready or not, here I come.
Click, click, click.
Ken Dimes was no coward. He was a good cop who had never walked away from 
trouble. He had received two citations for bravery in only seven years on the 
force. But this faceless, insanely violent son of a bitch, scurrying through the 
house in total darkness, silent when he wanted to be and making
taunting sounds when it suited him—he baffled and scared Ken. And although Ken 
was as courageous as any cop, he was no fool, and only a fool would walk boldly 
into a situation that he did not understand.
Instead of returning to the hall and confronting the killer, be went to the 
front door and reached for the lever-action brass handle, intending to get the 
hell out. Then he noticed the door hadn’t merely been closed and dead-bolted. A 
length of scrap wire had been wound around the handle on the fixed door and 
around that on the active door, linking them, fastening them together. He would 
have to unwind the wire before he could get out, which might take half a minute.
Click, click, click.
He fired once toward the hallway without even looking and ran in the opposite 
direction, crossing the empty living room. He heard the killer behind him. 
Clicking. Coming fast in the darkness. Yet when Ken reached the dining room and 
was almost to the doorway that led into the kitchen, intending to make a break 
for the family room and the patio door by which Tee! had entered, he heard the 
clicking coming from in front of him. He was sure the killer had pursued him 
into the living room, but now the guy had gone back into the lightless hallway 
and was coming at him from the other direction, making a crazy game of this. 
From the sounds the bastard was making, he seemed just about to enter the 
breakfast area, which would put only the width of the kitchen between him and 
Ken, so Ken decided to make a stand right there, decided to blow away this 
psycho the moment the guy appeared in the beam of the light— Then the killer 
shrieked.
Clicking along the hallway, still out of sight but coming toward Ken, the 
attacker let out a shrill inhuman cry that was the essence of primal rage and 
hatred, the strangest sound that Ken had ever heard, not the sound a man would 
make, not even a lunatic. He gave up all thought of confrontation, pitched his 
flashlight into the kitchen to create a diversion, turned away from the 
approaching enemy, and fled again, though not back into the living room, not 
toward any part of the house in which this game of cat and mouse could be 
extended, but straight across the dining room toward a window that glimmered 
vaguely with the last dim glow of twilight. He tucked his head down, brought his 
arms up against his chest, and turned sideways as he slammed into the glass. The 
window exploded, and he fell out into the rear yard, rolling through 
construction debris. Splintery scraps of two-by-fours and chunks of concrete 
poked painfully into his legs and ribs. He scrambled to his feet, spun toward 
the house, and emptied his revolver at the broken window in case the killer was 
in pursuit of him.
In the settling night, he saw no sign of the enemy.
Figuring he had not scored a hit, he wasted no time cursing his luck. He 
sprinted around the house, along the side of it, and out to the street. He had 
to get to the patrol car, where there was a radio—and a pump-action riot gun.
3
On Wednesday and Thursday, the second and third of June, Travis and Nora and 
Einstein searched diligently for a way to improve human-canine communications, 
and in the process man and dog had almost begun to chew up furniture in 
frustration. However, Nora proved to have enough patience and confidence for all 
of them. When the breakthrough came near sunset on Friday evening, the fourth of 
June, she was less surprised than either Travis or Einstein.
They had purchased forty magazines—everything from Time and Life to McCall’s and 
Redbook—and fifty books of art and photography, and had brought them to the 
living room of Travis’s rental house, where there was space to spread everything 
out on the floor. They had put pillows on the floor as well, so they could work 
at the dog’s level and be comfortable.
Einstein had watched their preparations with interest.
Sitting on the floor with her back against the vinyl sofa, Nora took the 
retriever’s head in both hands and, with her face close to his, their noses 
almost touching, she said, “Okay, now you listen to me, Einstein. We want to 
know all sorts of things about you: where you came from, why you’re smarter than 
an ordinary dog, what you were afraid of in the woods that day Travis found you, 
why you sometimes stare out the window at night as if you’re frightened of 
something. Lots more. But you can’t talk, can you? No. And so far as we know, 
you can’t read. And even if you can read, you can’t write. So we’ve got to do 
this with pictures, I think.”
From where he sat near Nora, Travis could see that the dog’s eyes never wavered 
from hers as she spoke. Einstein was rigid. His tail hung down, motionless. He 
not only seemed to understand what she was telling him, but he appeared to be 
electrified by the experiment.
How much does the mutt really perceive, Travis wondered, and how many of his 
reactions am I imagining because of pure wishful thinking?
People have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, to ascribe human 
perceptions and intentions to the animals where none exist. In Einstein's case, 
where there really was an exceptional intelligence at work, the temptation to 
see profound meaning in every meaningless doggy twitch was even greater than 
usual.
“We’re going to study all these pictures, looking for things that interest you, 
for things that’ll help us understand where you came from and how you got to be 
what you are. Every time you see something that’ll help us put the puzzle 
together, you’ve got somehow to bring it to our attention. Bark at it or put a 
paw on it or wag your tail.”
“This is nuts,” Travis said.
“Do you understand me, Einstein?” Nora asked.
The retriever issued a soft woof.
“This will never work,” Travis said.
“Yes, it will,” Nora insisted. “He can’t talk, can’t write, but he can show us 
things. If he points out a dozen pictures, we might not immediately understand 
what meaning they have for him, how they refer to his origins, but in time we’ll 
find a way to relate them to one another and to him, and we’ll know what he’s 
trying to tell us.”
The dog, his head still trapped firmly in Nora’s hands, rolled his eyes toward 
Travis and woofed again.
“We ready?” Nora asked Einstein.
His gaze flicked back to her, and he wagged his tail.
“All right,” she said, letting go of his head. “Let’s start.”
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, for hours at a time, they leafed through scores 
of publications, showing Einstein pictures of all kinds of things— people, 
trees, flowers, dogs, other animals, machines, city streets, country lanes, 
cars, ships, planes, food, advertisements for a thousand products— hoping he 
would see something that would excite him. The problem was that he saw many 
things that excited him, too many. He barked at, pawed at, woofed at, put his 
nose to, or wagged his tail at perhaps a hundred out of the thousands of 
pictures, and his choices were of such variety that Travis could see no pattern 
to them, no way to link them and divine meaning from their association to one 
another.
Einstein was fascinated by an automobile ad in which the car, being compared to 
a powerful tiger, was shown locked in an iron cage. Whether it was the car or 
the tiger that seized his interest was not clear. He also responded to several 
computer advertisements, Alpo and Purina Dog Chow ads, an ad for a portable 
stereo cassette player, and pictures of books, butterflies, a parrot, a forlorn 
man in a prison cell, four young people playing with a striped beach ball, 
Mickey Mouse, a violin, a man on an exercise treadmill, and many other things. 
He was tantalized by a photograph of a golden retriever like himself, and was 
downright excited by a picture of a cocker spaniel, but curiously he showed 
little or no interest in other breeds of dogs.
His strongest—and most puzzling—response was to a photo in a magazine article 
about an upcoming movie from 20th Century—Fox. The film’s story involved the 
supernatural—ghosts, poltergeists, demons risen from Hell— and the photo that 
agitated him was of a slab-jawed, wickedly fanged, lantern-eyed demonic 
apparition. The creature was no more hideous than others in the film, less 
hideous than several of them, yet Einstein was affected by only that one demon.
The retriever barked at the photograph. He scurried behind the sofa and peeked 
around the end of it as if he thought the creature in the picture might rise off 
the page and come after him. He barked again, whined, and had to be coaxed back 
to the magazine. Upon seeing the demon a second time, Einstein growled 
menacingly. Frantically, he pawed at the magazine, turning its pages until, 
somewhat tattered, it was completely closed.
“What’s so special about that picture?” Nora asked the dog.
Einstein just stared at her—and shivered slightly.
Patiently, Nora reopened the magazine to the same page.
Einstein closed it again.
Nora opened it.
Einstein closed it a third time, snatched it up in his jaws, and carried it out 
of the room.
Travis and Nora followed the retriever into the kitchen, where they watched him 
go straight to the trash can. The can was one of those with a foot pedal that 
opened a hinged lid. Einstein put a paw on the pedal, watched the lid open, 
dropped the magazine into the can, and released the pedal.
“What’s that all about?” Nora wondered.
“I guess that’s one movie he definitely doesn’t want to see.”
“Our own four-footed, furry critic.”
That incident occurred Thursday afternoon. By early Friday evening, Travis’s 
frustration—and that of the dog—were nearing critical mass.
Sometimes Einstein exhibited uncanny intelligence, but sometimes he behaved like 
an ordinary dog, and these oscillations between canine genius and dopey mutt 
were enervating for anyone trying to understand how he could be so bright. 
Travis began to think that the best way to deal with the retriever was to just 
accept him for what he was: be prepared for his amazing feats now and then, but 
don’t expect him to deliver all the time. Most likely the mystery of Einstein’s 
unusual intelligence would never be solved.
However, Nora remained patient. She frequently reminded them that Rome wasn’t 
built in a day and that any worthwhile achievement required determination, 
persistence, tenacity, and time.
When she launched into these lectures about steadfastness and endurance, Travis 
sighed wearily—and Einstein yawned.
Nora was unperturbed. After they had examined the pictures in all of the books 
and magazines, she collected those to which Einstein had responded, spread them 
out across the floor, and encouraged him to make connections between one image 
and another.
“All of these are pictures of things that played important roles in his past,” 
Nora said.
“I don’t think we can be certain of that,” Travis said.
“Well, that’s what we’ve asked him to do,” she said. “We’ve asked him to 
indicate pictures that might tell us something about where he’s come from.”
“But does he understand the game?”
“Yes,” she said with conviction.
The dog woofed.
Nora lifted Einstein’s paw and put it on the photograph of the violin. “Okay, 
pooch. You remember a violin from somewhere, and it was important to you 
somehow.”
“Maybe he performed at Carnegie Hall,” Travis said.
“Shut up.” To the dog Nora said, “All right. Now is the violin related to any of 
these other pictures? Is there a link to another image that would help us 
understand what the violin means to you?”
Einstein stared at her intently for a moment, as if pondering her question. Then 
he crossed the room, walking carefully in the narrow aisles between the rows of 
photographs, sniffing, his gaze flicking left and right, until he
found the ad for the Sony portable stereo cassette player. He put one paw on it 
and looked back at Nora.
“There’s an obvious connection,” Travis said. “The violin makes music, and the 
cassette deck reproduces music. That’s an impressive feat of mental association 
for a dog, but does it really mean anything else, anything about his past?”
“Oh, I’m sure it does,” Nora said. To Einstein she said, “Did someone in your 
past play the violin?”
The dog stared at her.
She said, “Did your previous master have a cassette player like that one?”
The dog stared at her.
She said, “Maybe the violinist in your past used to record his own music on a 
cassette system?”
The dog blinked and whined.
“All right,” she said, “is there another picture here that you can associate 
with the violin and the tape deck?”
Einstein stared down at the Sony ad for a moment, as if thinking, then walked 
into another aisle between two more rows of pictures, this time stopping at a 
magazine open to a Blue Cross advertisement that showed a doctor in a white coat 
standing at the bedside of a new mother who was holding her baby. Doctor and 
mother were all smiles, and the baby looked as serene and innocent as the Christ 
child.
Crawling nearer to the dog on her hands and knees, Nora said, “Does that picture 
remind you of the family that owned you?”
The dog stared at her.
“Was there a mother, father, and new baby in the family you used to live with?”
The dog stared at her.
Still sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa, Travis said, “Gee, 
maybe we’ve got a real case of reincarnation on our hands. Maybe old Einstein 
remembers being a doctor, a mother, or a baby in a previous life.”
Nora would not dignify that suggestion with a response.
“A violin-playing baby,” Travis said.
Einstein mewled unhappily.
On her hands and knees in a doglike position, Nora was only two or three feet 
from the retriever, virtually face-to-face with him. “All right. This is getting 
us nowhere. We’ve got to do more than just have you associate one picture with 
another. We’ve got to be able to ask questions about these pictures and somehow 
get answers.”
“Give him paper and pen,” Travis said.
“This is serious,” Nora said, impatient with Travis as she had never been with 
the dog.
“I know it’s serious,” he said, “but it’s also ridiculous.”
She hung her head for a moment, like a dog suffering in summer heat, then 
suddenly looked up at Einstein and said, “How smart are you really, pooch?
You want to prove you’re a genius? You want to have our everlasting admiration 
and respect? Then here’s what you have to do: learn to answer my questions with 
a simple yes or no.”
The dog watched her closely, expectantly.
“If the answer to my question is yes—wag your tail,” Nora said. “But only if the 
answer is yes. While this test is under way, you’ve got to avoid wagging it out 
of habit or just because you get excited. Wagging is only for when you want to 
say yes. And when you want to say no, you bark once. Just once.”
Travis said, “Two barks mean ‘I’d rather be chasing cats,’ and three barks mean 
‘Get me a Budweiser.’ “
“Don’t confuse him,” Nora said sharply.
“Why not? He confuses me.”
The dog did not even glance at Travis. His large brown eyes remained focused 
intently on Nora as she explained the wag-for-yes and bark-for-no system again.
“All right,” she said, “let’s try it. Einstein, do you understand the yes-no 
signs?”
The retriever wagged his tail five or six times, then stopped.
“Coincidence,” Travis said. “Means nothing.”
Nora hesitated a moment, framing her next question, then said, “Do you know my 
name?”
The tail wagged, stopped.
“Is my name . . . Ellen?”
The dog barked. No.
“Is my name . . . Mary?”
One bark. No.
“Is my name . . . Nona?”
The dog rolled his eyes, as if chastising her for trying to trick him. No 
wagging. One bark.
“is my name . . . Nora?”
Einstein wagged his tail furiously.
Laughing with delight, Nora crawled forward, sat up, and hugged the retriever.
“I’ll be damned,” Travis said, crawling over to join them.
Nora pointed to the photo on which the retriever still had one paw. “Did you 
react to this picture because it reminds you of the family you used to live 
with?”
One bark. No.
Travis said, “Did you ever live with any family?”
One bark.
“But you’re not a wild dog,” Nora said. “You must’ve lived somewhere before 
Travis found you.”
Studying the Blue Cross advertisement, Travis suddenly thought he knew all the 
right questions. “Did you react to this picture because of the baby?”
One bark. No.
“Because of the woman?”
No.
“Because of the man in the white lab coat?”
Much wagging: Yes, yes, yes.
“So he lived with a doctor,” Nora said. “Maybe a vet.”
“Or maybe a scientist,” Travis said as he followed the intuitive line of thought 
that had stricken him.
Einstein wagged a “yes” at the mention of scientist.
“Research scientist,” Travis said. Yes.
“In a lab,” Travis said. Yes, yes, yes. “You’re a lab dog?” Nora asked. Yes.
“A research animal,” Travis said. Yes.
“And that’s why you’re so bright.” Yes.
“Because of something they’ve done to you.” Yes.
Travis’s heart raced. They actually were communicating, by God, not just in 
broad strokes, and not just in the comparatively crude way he and Einstein had 
communicated the night that the dog had formed a question mark out of 
Milk-Bones. This was communication with extreme specificity. Here they were, 
talking as if they were three people—well, almost talking—and suddenly nothing 
would ever be the same again. Nothing could possibly be the same in a world 
where men and animals possessed equal (if different) intellects, where they 
faced life on equal terms, with equal rights, with similar hopes and dreams. All 
right, okay, so maybe he was blowing this out of proportion. Not all animals had 
suddenly been given human-level consciousness and intelligence; this was only 
one dog, an experimental animal, perhaps the only one of his kind. But Jesus. 
Jesus. Travis stared in awe at the retriever, and a chill swept through him, not 
a chill of fear but of wonder.
Nora spoke to the dog, and in her voice was a trace of the same awe that had 
briefly rendered Travis speechless: “They didn’t just let you go, did they?”
One bark. No.
“You escaped?”
Yes.
“That Tuesday morning I found you in the woods?” Travis asked. “Had you just 
escaped then?”
Einstein neither barked nor wagged his tail.
“Days before that?” Travis asked.
The dog whined.
“He probably has a sense of time,” Nora said, “because virtually all animals 
follow natural day-night rhythms, don’t they? They have instinctive clocks, 
biological clocks. But he probably doesn’t have any concept of calendar days.
He doesn’t really understand how we divide time up into days and weeks and 
months, so he has no way of answering your question.”
“Then that’s something we’ll have to teach him,” Travis said.
Einstein vigorously wagged his tail.
Thoughtfully, Nora said, “Escaped . .
Travis knew what she must be thinking. To Einstein, he said, “They’ll be looking 
for you, won’t they?”
The dog whined and wagged his tail—which Travis interpreted as a “yes” with a 
special edge of anxiety.
 
 
4
An hour after sunset, Lemuel Johnson and Cliff Soames, trailed by two additional 
unmarked cars carrying eight NSA agents, arrived at Bordeaux Ridge. The unpaved 
street through the center of the unfinished housing tract was lined with 
vehicles, mostly black-and-whites bearing the Sheriffs Department shield, plus 
cars and a van from the coroner’s office.
Lem was dismayed to see that the press had already arrived. Both print 
journalists and television crews with minicams were being kept behind a police 
line, half a block from the apparent scene of the murder. By quietly suppressing 
details of the death of Wesley Dalberg in Holy Jim Canyon and of the associated 
murders of the scientists working at Banodyne, and by instituting an aggressive 
campaign of disinformation, the NSA had managed to keep the press ignorant of 
the connections among all these events. Lem hoped that the deputies manning 
these barriers were among Walt Gaines’s most trusted men and that they would 
meet reporters’ questions with stony silence until a convincing cover story 
could be developed.
Sawhorses were lifted out of the way to let the unmarked NSA cars through the 
police line, then were put into place again.
Lem parked at the end of the street, past the crime scene. He left Cliff Soames 
to brief the other agents, and he headed toward the unfinished house that 
appeared to be the focus of attention.
The patrol cars’ radios filled the hot night air with codes and jargon—and with 
a hiss-pop-crackle of static, as if the whole world were being fried on a cosmic 
griddle.
Portable kliegs stood on tripods, flooding the front of the house with light to 
facilitate the investigation. Lem felt as if he were on a giant stage set. Moths 
swooped and fluttered around the kliegs. Their amplified shadows darted across 
the dusty ground.
Casting his own exaggerated shadow, he crossed the dirt yard to the house. 
Inside, he found more kliegs. Dazzlingly bright light bounced off white walls. 
Looking pale and sweaty in that harsh glare were a couple of young deputies, men 
from the coroner’s office, and the usual intense types from the Scientific 
Investigation Division.
A photographer’s strobe