Bones

48

MONDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 18

Las Piernas

On Monday morning, while Jack was my sitter, we were able to pick up the van from the impound yard. I washed it more thoroughly than I have ever washed any vehicle. We took the Jeep back to Ben, who was able to use it in time to get to his first class. He seemed amazed that it came back to him in one piece.

I called Jo Robinson to complain about the hours she had arranged, and she told me that she had not expected that Wrigley would come up with this schedule. She was angry about it, but her calls to the Express apparently made no difference.

I kept calling Newly.

Travis called. He had been good about keeping in touch, although he was clearly having the time of his life with Stinger Dalton and as far as I could tell, was in no hurry to come back to Las Piernas. He had already soloed in small helicopters, and ecstatically related to me that Stinger was now teaching him to fly the big Sikorsky.

“So, are you still off work?” he asked me.

“No, in fact, I’m working tomorrow night.” I told him about my unique working hours.

“That really sucks,” he said, making me think he had spent a little too much time with Stinger.

“It’s only temporary,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll come and visit you soon. I miss the dogs.”

“Thanks.” I laughed.

“That’s not what I meant!”

“I know, I know. We all look forward to seeing you whenever you get a chance to come by.”

I was approaching the first night shift with some trepidation. Normally, I wouldn’t mind driving alone on deserted streets after midnight or working alone in an office on a graveyard shift, but nothing in my life was normal then. I had no doubt that Parrish would be stalking me on those streets, that Parrish would come to hunt me down in those empty hallways.

He’ll hunt you wherever you are, I told myself. I couldn’t hole up in the house forever. A life spent cowering was no life at all.

I was in that frame of mind when Frank told me he wanted to make sure that I was never unaccompanied at the newspaper on night shifts. I flatly refused to take a sitter into work with me. That argument livened things up for a few hours. He drove off, came back an hour later and handed me a cell phone.

“What’s this?”

“My peace of mind.”

“You expect me to carry this around with me—”

“And to have it on. Yes.”

“Can we afford this?”

“It’s cheaper than a funeral.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay. Just carry it around for my peace of mind, please?”

I gave in.

I didn’t do much of anything in connection with the Sayre case for the next week; I was too busy adjusting my sleep schedule and catching up with the paperwork that had piled up on my desk at the Express. Those first nights, the paper had already been put to bed by the time I arrived. I talked to the printers down in the basement, and to Jerry and Livy, the computer maintenance staff.

Frank tested me a few times, making sure I had the cell phone turned on, until I finally told him that if he didn’t quit making me jump out of my skin by making the damned phone chirp, I was going to roll the thing between a couple of presses. That took care of that.

I tried calling Newly at eleven-thirty. No answer.

The newsroom was empty and quiet.

I was well on my way to being unnerved by that quiet when my cousin Travis called at 11:55 P.M.

“Go up onto the roof,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re coming to see you!” he said over loud noise in the background.

“Who is coming to see me?”

“Stinger and I.”

“Great. When?”

“Right now.”

“Now? Is this some practical joke, Travis?”

“Go up onto the roof of the Express. We’ll be near there in about ten minutes.”

“Are you nuts?”

“No, I told Stinger that you were going to have to work late at the paper and that you didn’t sound too happy about being there by yourself at night. So we decided it would be fun to surprise you there. Stinger says there’s a landing pad on top of your building.”

“There is, but—”

“Who’s going to know?” he asked, anticipating my objection.

“One of the computer maintenance guys goes up there for a smoke every now and then.”

“Is he the type that would tell on you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Hurry, then! We’re almost there!”

Wondering if Wrigley might call to check up on me, I set the phone on my desk to forward calls to the cell phone.

I took the stairs to the top of the building — a good workout — and opened the door marked ROOF ACCESS.

This actually opened on to another stairway. When I opened the final door, and stepped out onto the roof, I took a moment to enjoy my surroundings. It was good to be out in the open. The night air was cool but not chilly enough to make me long for a jacket. A slight sea breeze blew away the worst of the city smells. Sounds came to me — muffled traffic sounds, the hum of transformers and machinery housed on the roof, the sharp ching-ching-ching of the cables on the flagpoles, the soft flapping of the brightly lit flags (the Stars and Stripes and the California Bear). Within this mix I could also hear the steady pulse of an approaching, but still distant, helicopter.

Peering over the edge of the building, I could see some of the gargoyles and other ornamentation that in my childhood had put me in awe of this building, and had long since endeared it to me. I remembered the first time my father told me that this was the place where the newspaper was made, the Las Piernas News Express that landed so unfailingly on our driveway each morning, a grand publication that could have only come from so grand a place.

I reached over the waist-high guardrail and trailed my fingers across the sooty masonry, remembering my youthful veneration. “And look where that got me, old girl.”

I looked up at the flat, featureless face of the skyscraper next door, a dark gray nothingness broken up only by an office light left on here and there. The Box, I sometimes called it. The Box had other names — so many, in fact, it kept signmakers busy changing the logo at the top every few years. For all its shiny newness, it had never filled all of its rooms. Some of the Wrigley’s were empty now, too, but we had been around a lot longer. I stroked the stonework again.

I brushed off my fingertips and began walking. Although newer, taller buildings nearby have made it less spectacular than it once was, the view from the roof of the Wrigley Building is still breathtaking.

I wasn’t at the highest point of the building; part of the roof held several structures — some of them fairly tall — that were clustered at the end of the roof nearest the stairway. A series of narrow alleyways ran between the housing for the huge air-conditioning unit, various utilities, the high mounting block of the satellite dishes and others. The flagpoles and a spindly lightning rod were on top of one of the tallest and longest of these, most of the space below used for storage.

Despite these obstructions, one could walk all around the perimeter of the roof and still see quite a distance. I didn’t have time to take the grand tour that night — I could hear the helicopter coming closer.

I hurried to the other side of the building, and stood near an area with a special flat surface, painted with markings — the helicopter pad.

By now, I had seen the big Sikorsky. Its noise drowned out all other sound, a bright light shone down from beneath it, and a stinging cloud of dust and grime was raised in counterpoint to its slow descent to the landing pad.

I found myself grinning, pleased with Travis’s skills, wondering what my mother’s shy sister would have thought of her son’s outlandish arrival. I waved and waited for them to shut down the engines, then to crawl out of the cockpit.

“Were you piloting just now?” I asked Travis, after we exchanged greetings, knowing full well that he had been.

“Yes,” he said. “My first night landing on top of a city building!”

“Your first?” I echoed, then tried not to let him see how much that statement unnerved me. “You did great.”

“Sorry about all that dust,” Stinger said, shaking my hand. “Been a while since anybody landed here?”

“Yes. The Express used to have its own helicopter, but that was before budget cutbacks. Now the paper has a contract with a company at the airport. They’ll come here and pick up reporters and photographers and take us to anything we need to get to,” I said. “I think we were better off with our own, because we could respond more quickly, get to the scene we were covering without waiting for the contract pilots to pick us up. We’re a little slower now. Of course, most of the time, Wrigley just wants us to drive to the scene.”

“Hell,” Stinger said, pointing back at the Sikorsky, “this will get you most places you need to go a damned sight faster than a car — especially on the L.A. freeways.”

“Too bad you have to stay at work,” Travis said. “I could take you for a ride.”

“I’d like that,” I said, “we’ll definitely have to set that up for another time. How did you manage to call from the helicopter?”

“Pappy — Stinger’s ground crew — stays in radio contact with us while we fly. He patches calls through from Fremont Enterprises to the helicopter, and vice versa. Most of the calls are Stinger’s girlfriends—”

“Now, that’s enough out of you, Short Stuff,” Stinger said, although Travis was easily a head taller than he. “Time we were going. Irene’s got to get back to work.”

“But you just got here!” I protested.

“We might stay overnight in Las Piernas,” Travis said. “Jack said he could put us up. We’re just going to do a little more night flying and then go out to the airport after this.”

“There’s room at our place, too,” I said. “Do you need the van back?”

“I might want to borrow it for a little while tomorrow. I’m thinking of making an offer on a place not far from your house.”

Pleased by this news, I talked with him for a few more minutes about his plans. When I looked over at Stinger, his head was tilted to one side as he studied me. “When’s your next night shift?” he asked.

“Thursday.”

“Be back Thursday — same time, same station.”

I laughed. “Giving Travis more practice?”

“Call it that,” he said, nodding.

“Okay, why not?”

“Well, now that you mention it,” he said, scratching his chin, “could be a reason why not. Here, let me borrow your cell phone for a minute.”

I handed it to him, and he programmed a number into it. He handed the phone back, and showed me how to retrieve the number he had labeled “Stinger@FE.”

“That’s ‘Stinger at Fremont Enterprises.’ That will get you Pappy, and Pappy can patch you through to us. If your boss is hanging around or it’s otherwise inconvenient to have a chopper landing here, give a call. Otherwise, we’ll see you on Thursday.”

They took off.

I walked back toward the stairway access in a much happier frame of mind. I strolled a little more slowly, and found myself thinking that staying at the paper was worth overcoming any obstacles one member of the current generation of Wrigleys might toss in my way. Otherwise, I thought, I might end up in a building that looked like the Box.

I had just reached that corner of the Wrigley Building rooftop where the Box came into full view. I stopped. Something was odd about one window, a window nearly at the same height as the level on which I stood. There was some light in that office, but not enough to work by. Stranger still — this light was moving.

Fluorescent ceiling panels don’t move. A bright flashlight? Was I witnessing a robbery?

I had not rounded the corner that would place me in full view of the Box, and as the light bounced off the windowpane a few times, I stepped back into the shadows and took the cell phone out.

The light went out. I stayed where I was, kept watch on the window. Soon I saw a shadowy and indistinct figure standing close to the glass. I could barely make out the outline of this person. Nick Parrish?

Or was I only imagining him again?

I couldn’t be sure. But I hadn’t imagined that flashlight.

I crouched farther into the shadows and dialed the police.

49

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 12:15 A.M.

The Roof of the Wrigley Building

Next I called home.

“Irene? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. Did I wake you?”

“No. I’m waiting up for you.”

“You know how you said I should tell you if I thought I saw Parrish again?”

“Yes. Where is he?”

I told him that I had just reported a possible burglary in progress in the building next door, and quickly explained why I was on the roof. “But now I’m wondering if I should have mentioned Parrish after all,” I admitted. “I don’t want them to be unprepared if it is him.”

“Get inside, and find Jerry or Livy or anyone else who’s working there. Promise me you’ll do that until a unit gets there. And alert the security guard in the lobby.”

I agreed to do as he asked, and began my descent.

I had entered the second stairwell when I heard footsteps. I halted, listening.

I heard a door close below me. The metal rails were vibrating, as most of the building does when the presses are running. The rumble comes pulsing up from the basement, not loud at this height, but persistent. I felt my hand trembling in a different rhythm. I took the phone out again and tried to dial security, every little beep of the keypad seeming to blast out like a brass band. I waited for the call to go through, but nothing happened. I looked at the display — no signal. The stairwell wasn’t a great place for reception.

I waited. I thought I heard another sound below me.

Jerry or Livy, I told myself. Moving from floor to floor to work on the computers. I waited.

When one of those three-minute years had gone by without my hearing any other sounds, I crept down to the next level and reached a doorway; I tried it — it was locked. I was frustrated, but not surprised. Even by elevator, these upper-level offices could only be accessed if you had a special key, and the doors to the stairway opened only from the other side.

I listened, and still not hearing any other noises, went for broke — completely unnerved now, I made a mad dash down the stairs. I swung around the last turn on the landing above the newsroom just as the door to the newsroom flew open. A man in dark clothing stepped out. He was pointing a gun at me.

I stopped, threw my hands up, and tried to say something. My mouth worked something like a guppy’s, but no sound came out.

The security guard spoke first. “Jesus Christ, Kelly!” he said, lowering his gun to my kneecaps. “You just scared the shit out of me.”

“Put the gun away, please,” I said, wishing I could recall his name. “You’re still scaring the shit out of me.” Barely shaving, but he had a gun. Geoff, the day-shift guard, was nearing eighty (some swore it would be for the second time) and never wore a weapon. Guess who made me feel safer?

He holstered it, and hiked up his belt. “Your husband called. He said you had called him from the roof on your cell phone, but when he tried to call you back, there was no answer. He just got the phone’s voice mail. So he tried to call your desk, but he got the cell phone again.”

“This warrants an armed response?”

“Oh — well, as for that — just before I heard from him, I heard a call on the scanner — they think Parrish is in the building next door. I figured he might be after you, so I came prepared.”

This was spoken with an easy confidence that did not indicate the slightest awareness that I might have been the recipient of a few rounds of whatever caliber he had in the clip. He was smiling now, and extended a hand, ready to assist me down the stairs. I let him guide me into the newsroom, where I all but collapsed into the nearest chair.

He picked up his radio and talked into it. “This is Unit One calling in.”

When there was no reply, he frowned in consternation and tried again. “Unit One to Central. You there, Jerry?”

“Leonard?” came the reply. “You calling the front desk? What’s with this ‘Unit One to Central’ horseshit?”

Leonard. How could I have forgotten that name?

“Do not use profanity on the security radio, Jerry! Totally against regulations. Totally!”

Leonard rolled his eyes and turned the radio off. “I better get down to the desk,” he said to me. “Are you okay? You want me to get you a glass of water or anything?”

He hurried off to the water cooler before I could answer. A man of action, our Leonard. But I found myself starting to like him.

“I’ve got a bottle of spring water already started,” I said, and he detoured with a smart about-face to fetch it from my desk.

“You should call your husband, let him know you’re okay,” he said sternly, handing the bottle to me.

“I will.”

“He’s with LPPD Homicide, right?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Bring him by sometime. I’d like to meet him. By the way — that was cool about throwing the monitor and all, but don’t break anything on my shift, okay?”

“I’ll try not to.”

A thorough search of the building next door did reveal that the office I had indicated had been broken into, although it did not appear that anything had been taken.

There was no sign of Parrish. It hadn’t been easy to look for him in every nook and cranny of the Box, but no one on the Las Piernas Police force acted put out by the effort they had exerted. That doesn’t mean they weren’t irritated — but better trained than Leonard, they didn’t threaten to shoot me.

When I came in to work the next shift on Thursday, there was a note stuck to the screen of my computer monitor:

Kelly, please do try to work one shift without bringing the cops in here.

John

I saved it to show to Frank the next time he asked me to let him hover over my desk.

Stinger was true to his word. On Thursday night, Jerry and Livy joined me to watch the landing, and were duly impressed. They then went downstairs to give Leonard a chance to take a look.

While we were waiting for the young man whom Stinger had (sight unseen) dubbed “Leonardo DaGung-ho,” I asked them to show me what was done to sabotage the helicopters up in the mountains.

Stinger showed me the drain plug.

“Why do helicopters have something like this on them?” I asked.

“In the normal course of a day,” he said, “moist air gets inside the fuel tank. The tank is made of metal, right? So as the metal in the tank cools, the water in the air condenses and drops into the fuel. Because water is heavier than the fuel, the water then goes to the bottom of the tank.”

“If water is in your tank,” Travis said, “and it gets mixed in with your fuel, it causes problems. When you start up and try to run, your engines might not run smoothly — they might misfire.”

“So you open the valve and let the water drain out of the tank before you start up?” I asked.

“Right.”

“So if it hadn’t been raining, the Forest Service crew might have smelled all the fuel leaking out of the helicopters that night in the mountains?”

“Might have,” Stinger agreed. “But what could they have done about it anyway? The person who sabotaged those helicopters walked off with the drain plugs.”

“So the rangers couldn’t have refilled the tanks without replacements.”

“Right. The Forest Service and the cops have had metal detectors out, trying to find those plugs. I think whoever sabotaged them still has his souvenirs.”

“They’re small enough to carry in a pocket,” I said.

“Yes, they are. You find those drain plugs, you’ve got Parrish’s helper.”

Leonard was bouncing with excitement when he met Stinger and Travis. “Wait here, man, wait here!” He hurried over to one of the rooftop buildings. A few minutes later, the helicopter pad was illuminated by a series of lights set into the roof itself.

He strutted back, hiking his pants again. “I’ll show Irene where the switch is,” he said. “You can land in style.”

They thanked him, and stayed a few minutes more. Just before they took off, Leonard asked Travis, “How old are you?”

When Travis told him, his eyes widened, and he said, “Dude! Not much older than me.”

He stood watching the helicopter long after they had taken off. “Thinking of giving up law enforcement?” I asked.

“No way. Air patrol!” He looked around the roof and said, “They said they’re coming back tomorrow. I’m going to fix it so you can relax up here.” He smiled. “Jerry’s up here smoking all the time, so we’ll make a nonsmoking section.”

He showed me where the lights for the landing pad were, and then we walked back to the access door. I forced myself to look up at the Box. The window where I had seen the burglar was dark tonight.

“Too bad they didn’t catch him,” Leonard said, following my gaze.

“The burglar?”

“Parrish,” he said.

“Maybe he wasn’t there.”

“He was there,” he said authoritatively. “But don’t you worry — I’m not going to let him come into the Wrigley Building — no way.”

This from a guy who nearly shot me. But I thanked him, and then thanked him again a little later, when he sneaked us on to one of the executive-level floors and into the elevator.

Better yet, he let me on it again for the trip up to the roof on Friday. Nearly bursting with pride, he took me to “Café Kelly,” as he referred to a cluster of four plastic chairs and a metal table borrowed from the cafeteria. “Don’t worry, I got permission,” he said. “These were in storage by the kitchen. They were glad to have the room.” At his own expense, he had also purchased a cooler. He opened it to show me a six-pack of spring water.

“See? I even noticed your brand.” He nodded. “I’m a trained observer.”

“Leonard, this is very kind — but you didn’t need to go to all this effort.”

“Well, I like you. I like helping people. And maybe someday you might put in a good word about me, maybe have someone come by and meet me or something.”

I smiled. “Oh, so it’s a bribe to meet Frank.”

He protested quickly and vehemently, until I told him that I was just teasing.

“Oh.”

He still seemed offended. I made a big show of sitting in one of the chairs and opening a bottle of water and exclaiming over how great it was to have such a nice setup. He seemed pleased by all of this, and was soon back in his usual good humor. He heard the helicopter and turned on the landing pad lights, then stood entranced as the chopper blew dirt and dust all over Café Kelly. Afterward, he must have asked Travis a dozen times if the lights had helped him land “that baby.”

His radio crackled, and he knocked his plastic chair over standing up to answer it. “This is Unit One.”

“Unit One, this is Central,” Jerry’s voice said. “You ever going to give me a turn up there? I’m dying for a smoke.”

“You should quit that filthy habit,” he said, but excused himself and left.

I talked to Stinger and Travis for a while, learning that Travis had decided to buy the house he had looked at. He told me that he was taking Stinger to meet my eighty-year-old great-aunt, Mary Kelly. “She wants us to stay there for a few days.”

“I think you and Mary will get along fine,” I said to Stinger.

Stinger grinned. “Travis tells me she’s full of piss and vinegar.”

“She is,” I agreed. “She’ll give you a run for your money, Mr. Dalton.”

“She’s already asked him about helicopters,” Travis said.

“She wants a ride?”

“Yeah, but I mean, she wants to fly them, too.”

“God help us.”

Jerry came upstairs for his smoke, and Stinger and Travis soon left. They hovered, shining a bright light down on the roof, watching my progress to the access door the way someone might watch to make sure his date got safely inside the house. I waved to them and headed back down to the newsroom, reflecting on how much more tolerable this shift was because of their visits, outrageous as some might deem their method of arrival.

They helped me to get through this sentence Wrigley had passed on me, even allowed me to secretly thumb my nose at him. If Travis felt reassured that I was safe by checking up on me in this way, I could live with it.

The truth was, I did feel less vulnerable. Yes, I now parked close to the building and Jerry — on his own initiative — escorted me to and from the van. But these precautions were becoming routine. And each night as I passed the Box, I was becoming more and more certain that it had only been a burglar after all, and not Parrish.

The drive home at the end of these late shifts was always virtually free of traffic, but, like the newsroom, a little too shadowy and quiet. This night, fog had started to roll in, and as I drove down dark and empty, misty streets, I found myself thinking of science fiction shows where the protagonist somehow is the sole survivor of a neutron bomb attack or annihilation by aliens. He has the town to himself, but no one to share it with.

Well, I thought, I have someone to share it with — I should call Frank. But I knew that just hearing the phone ring would be enough to make him feel a few moments of fear that I was in trouble, so I decided to wait. I was only ten minutes from home.

I kept hearing a soft, intermittent thumping sound from the rear of the van, and worried that the LPPD had damaged it somehow when they towed it to the impound yard. The exact location of the noise was elusive; I couldn’t quite figure out what might be causing it.

I turned the radio on. A talk show was in progress. I listened to a so-called therapist berate a caller, who responded with masochistic groveling. It made me appreciate Jo Robinson. I switched to a jazz station.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled into the driveway. I turned the radio off and was unplugging the cell phone from its dashboard charger when I noticed that its display showed that I had voice mail.

Shit! I should have checked it sooner — I pressed the button that retrieves messages, wondering if Wrigley had called to check up on me after all.

There were two messages. This did not bode well.

“First message,” the automated voice of the phone service said. “Sent today at 12:11 A.M.”

Not Wrigley, but John. Good news, actually. His message was that Wrigley had agreed to change my schedule to a solid week of late shifts, Monday through Friday. I would still only work part-time, but I didn’t have to try to get myself out of bed on three hours’ sleep to go in on Saturday morning. I would have the weekend off.

I listened to the overly pleasant recorded voice on the service saying, “To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press two. To save this message . . .”

I pressed two.

“Second message. Sent today at 12:16 A.M.”

Expecting that the second one would be John trying again, I wasn’t ready for what I heard.

Parrish’s voice.

“It has been so long since we’ve talked, my dear. I really have missed you, but we’ve both been busy, haven’t we? Tell me, is your phone cellular or digital? I did leave a digital message for you . . .” He gave a soft laugh.

“I wonder if you’ve taken a good look at yourself lately? You’re looking a little tired. Not getting enough sleep? Careful, you’ll wear yourself to the bone.”

More laughter. I opened the door and got out of the van and stumbled toward the house.

“Now, even though you locked your doors like a good girl this time, I do need to let you know that locks won’t stop me. I’ve left something a little perishable — or should I say, ‘Parrishable’? — for you in the van.”

I turned back toward the van and shouted for Frank.

“I think Ben Sheridan will enjoy it,” Parrish went on. “Tell him I did. And tell him that I’m about to take you out of his reach.”

There was a click. After a slight pause, the pleasant recorded voice on the voice mail service said, “To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press two. To save this message . . .”

But pleasant voices were beyond my hearing at that moment. I tossed the phone on the lawn as if I had suddenly found myself handling a snake; I hurried to open the sliding side door on the van.

Frank ran out of the house with Deke and Dunk. “Irene?” he asked frantically. “What’s wrong?”

I pointed toward the phone as I crawled into the van and saw him go to pick it up.

“Irene, no!” he shouted, as I opened the refrigerator.

Too late.

A little light went on inside the tiny, aquamarine-colored space.

A human skull stared back at me.

50

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2:45 A.M.

Las Piernas

I’ve tried, but even now I cannot remember most of what happened in the first few minutes immediately after I saw it. I vaguely recall that at some point Frank held me tightly by the shoulders and shouted at me, angry in his fear for my safety, his terror over imagining what trap I might have sprung by responding so unthinkingly to Parrish’s taunting.

He was right, of course — I never should have touched it.

He tells me I responded to his ranting by calmly saying, “I thought he only cut off her fingers and toes. I didn’t know she was decapitated.”

“He didn’t decapitate her! That’s how we knew her hair and eye color!”

Suddenly unable to stand, I sat down on the porch steps.

He closed the van door, then sat next to me, keeping an arm around me as he called the police. Cody, my cat, came outside and sat on my lap. Deke and Dunk had our feet covered.

To some degree, the arrival of the detectives and the crime scene unit roused me from my cocoon of numbness, so that by the time they left I was feeling more myself. I had told them what I could — that Parrish had probably dialed my number at work, and the call had been forwarded; that the van had been locked; that yes, there were security cameras on the parking lot at the Express, but they were notoriously inadequate.

The officers called the paper, and learned that three weeks earlier, Leonard had dutifully reported that the camera that covers the parking lot had been vandalized. Wrigley’s response had been to post a larger sign that said, PARK AT YOUR OWN RISK. OWNER OF LOT ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO VEHICLES OR THEIR CONTENTS. Nor for additions to their contents, evidently.

The next morning — technically, the same morning, but after we had been asleep — we found ourselves a little shy of each other; Frank for losing his temper, me for losing my mind. All the same we never moved far from each other, nor were we out of each other’s sight for more than a few moments at a time. Gradually, feeling safer than I had at three in the morning, I began to relax, we began to talk, and by the end of the day, something like balance returned.

“I wish Rachel were in town,” he said on Saturday night.

He wasn’t longing for another woman — he wanted to hire a bodyguard. His partner’s wife was a retired homicide detective and completely capable of kicking ass if need be. But Rachel’s work as a private eye had taken her out of state that week.

Though there was a patrol car in front of our house, Frank wasn’t just worried about my safety. “I don’t want you to feel scared,” he said. “You should have company.”

I didn’t object, which, as far as he was concerned, was probably the most worrisome thing that had happened that day.

On Sunday morning, I awoke to see him putting on his suit. “Sorry — I was trying to let you get a little more sleep. I have to go in. But Ben’s going to come over with Bingle — okay?”

I told him that I’d enjoy seeing both Ben and his dog.

I thought I was telling him the truth, but while Bingle would have been welcomed to stay, by midday, I was ready to send Ben packing.

It was around one o’clock when I ventured to ask him if he was the one who was trying to make the identification on the skull.

“Yes, I am,” he snapped at me, “and no, I don’t know whose skull it is. I’d rather not guess. Especially not in front of a reporter.”

“Go home,” I said.

“What?”

“Go home. I am barely holding it together here, buster, and you keep making rude remarks. At least two dozen today, and I don’t see any end to the supply you seem to have so handy. So get lost.”

He frowned, and said, “If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you very much. Very sincerely said. Good-bye.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not. Stop being childish.”

“Get the hell out of here!”

“If it were just for your sake, believe me, I’d go. But I promised Frank I would stay with you.”

“If you don’t get out of here, you won’t have to worry about Parrish killing me. By the end of the day, I’ll want to kill myself!”

“That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“You’re right, it is. And I accept that as the highest plaudit from the Master of Horrible Things to Say! Excuse me while I go to make a note of it in my special Horrible Ben Sheridan Diary! I keep it in our special Make Tribute to Ben Sheridan Shrine Room! Be right back — maybe!”

I stomped off into the bathroom and shut the door with a bang. I locked it and turned around.

Someday, when I am very wealthy, I am going to build a house with a bathroom that will allow a person to have a snit fit in it in true comfort. I wasn’t wealthy that day.

In fact, everywhere I looked, there was some change we had made to accommodate Ben’s disability when he stayed with us. My hands itched to pull it all apart.

I looked in the bathroom cabinet for something that I could break without feeling bad. Nothing. Not even a computer monitor. I sat down on the edge of the tub, head in hands.

I heard him walking quickly down the hall. His gait sounded odd to me, as if he was favoring his right leg. I forgot about that when I heard him take hold of the doorknob and try to turn it.

“Don’t you dare try to come into this room!” I shouted.

“Come out of there now!”

I took hold of a towel, stuffed it in my mouth, and screamed into it.

“Are you screaming into a towel?”

It almost struck me as funny. Almost.

“Open this door,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Don’t ask me if I’m all right, you insincere bastard,” I said. “You don’t really give a shit. I’m tired of taking crap from you. I’m tired of everything!”

I heard him walk off, then walk back. He was definitely limping.

Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the middle panel of the three-panel bathroom door splintered into pieces as Frank’s long-handled flashlight came crashing through it. Outside, all three dogs were barking.

Ben’s hand reached through the hole in the door and unlocked the doorknob.

I stared up at him in amazement as he opened the shattered door.

“Why in God’s name did you do that?” I asked.

“I wanted to apologize.”

It hit me first. I started laughing. He started laughing. I nearly lost my perch on the tub.

The doorbell rang. I went to answer it, wiping tears from my face. It was one of the patrolmen.

“Mrs. Harriman?” he asked, looking past my shoulder, then back at me. “We heard a loud noise — and the dogs. Are you all right?”

“Oh yes,” I said, straining to keep my composure.

The officer looked at me warily.

“I made the sound,” Ben said sheepishly. “I broke a door.”

“I locked myself in the bathroom and couldn’t get out,” I said quickly. “Dr. Sheridan kindly rescued me.”

“Oh,” the officer said, and after a fleeting look back at Ben, left us.

We had cleaned up the wood splinters and tacked some brown parcel paper over the opening in the bathroom door when I saw him wincing and rubbing his thigh.

“Ben, rest for a while.”

I half expected an argument, but he moved off to the couch. By the time I walked into the living room, all the color had drained from his face.

“I think I overdid it yesterday,” he said. “Lately, I’ve noticed that’s the only time the phantom pain really bothers me.”

“You tried to keep up with Bingle’s SAR group?” I asked.

He nodded. “I would have been fine, I think, but just when I got home they called to tell me about the skull, so I went into the lab, too. I stayed on my feet too long.”

“So why are you keeping your rig on? Take it off.”

“Some protection I’ll be to you then.”

“You’re right — besides, it’s better entertainment to watch you writhe in agony.”

He smiled a little. “More entries for your Horrible Ben Diary.”

“That bathroom door would probably still be in one piece if you had just admitted that pain was making you crabby. Give me your car keys and I’ll get your chair out of the trunk.”

“Do you still have that extra set of crutches here?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll just use those,” he said, reaching down to push the release button on his prosthesis.

There were two basic sections to Ben’s rig: the socket, worn over the end of his leg, and the Flex-Foot itself. A liner between his skin and the socket held the socket on by suction. A long metal pin extended from the bottom of the socket and fit into a clutch lock, which in turn was attached to his Flex-Foot. By pressing the button on the lock, he removed everything except the socket and liner. The socket and liner couldn’t be pulled off, they had to be slowly rolled off. While he went to work on those, I got the crutches.

After bringing him an ice pack, I let the dogs in and fed them.

Frank came home, looking as if he was highly amused over something and greeted me by telling me that it was all over the department that his wife had alarmed the surveillance unit by getting stuck in the bathroom. Ben looked so mortified that I decided to hold off telling Frank the whole story until we were alone.

We invited Jack and Ben to have dinner with us. Afterward, we let Ben have the couch again, and he tried the ice pack once more.

We sat in companionable silence. Cody was on my lap, Deke and Dunk moved back and forth between Frank and Jack, and Bingle refused to let any of them near Ben. Ben had his eyes closed and was stroking Bingle’s ears. “Tell me the rest of Parzival,” he said.

“Jack could tell it better,” I said.

“No, go ahead,” Jack said. “You’ve read it more recently.”

So I told of how Parzival went to Wild Mountain, and noticed that the Fisher King suffered some ailment, but having been warned by his mentor not to appear overly curious or to ask others too many questions, Parzival made no inquiries about the Fisher King’s health.

I described the great feast in the hall of Wild Mountain, during which the Holy Grail itself was brought forth. Parzival noticed that all the people of the castle looked to him in anticipation, and he was filled with curiosity about all that he had seen — but remembering his mentor’s admonitions, he asked no questions.

The next day, after a night of disturbing dreams, he awoke to find himself alone. Thinking it rude of his hosts to abandon him without so much as a servant to help him dress, he donned his clothing and went into the courtyard, where his horse was saddled, his sword and lance nearby. Angry now, he mounted and hurried to the drawbridge. But as he reached the end of it, someone gave the cable a yank, so Parzival nearly fell into the moat. He looked back to see a page, who cursed him and called him a fool. “Why didn’t you ask the question?” the boy asked, shaking his fist at the knight.

“What question?” Parzival asked.

But the boy merely shut the iron portcullis and left Parzival with nowhere to go but away from the castle.

“What was the question?” Ben asked.

“Parzival has to go through a lot to find out what it was he should have asked,” I said. “But basically, it was long ago foretold that only one person would be allowed to ever find the enchanted Wild Mountain, a knight who would end the suffering of the Fisher King by simply asking one question: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ So Parzival blew his big chance.”

“Does he get another one?” Frank asked.

“Yes, but it isn’t easy. Parzival is so ashamed, he loses all faith in himself and in God. Eventually he regains it, and eventually, he meets the Fisher King again. He finally asks, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ The king is healed, and everybody lives happily ever after.”

“Thank God Travis isn’t here,” Jack said, almost angrily.

“Why?”

“I’d hate to have that be his impression of the story! You skipped the most important parts of it!” he grumbled.

Ben yawned. “Don’t give her a hard time. I enjoyed it. And she’s given me something to look forward to when I read it myself. Thanks, Irene.”

Jack said good night, and Ben and Bingle went home. Frank and I stayed up a little longer, talking and not talking, more than satisfied with both, and with few thoughts of medieval poetry.

He fell asleep before I did, and I thought about the next day being Monday, and that he would be leaving again early the next morning. I decided I would try again to get in touch with Phil Newly and Jim Houghton.

Plans or no plans, it would still be a Monday. I started softly humming the song I had heard at Gillian’s apartment — “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

That Monday would be one of my worst ever.

51

MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 25

Las Piernas

The Moth knew about the dog. Because of its work, the dog was trained to be friendly. And even if it had been asked to guard the house, the Moth had spent time getting to know it, and getting to know Ben Sheridan’s schedule as well.

Sheridan had cut back on his work at the college. He was teaching the usual number of courses, but he allowed his graduate assistant, Ellen Raice, to handle more of the duties. Ms. Raice had been very forthcoming about Ben Sheridan’s schedule.

Knowing when the professor would be on campus made it easy to figure out when to start coming by to talk to the dog. The dog was lonely when his owner was gone, and so he liked the visits, wagged his tail when the Moth approached.

It was really not too surprising, then, that the dog hadn’t barked when the Moth once again broke into the garage. Dr. Sheridan had put a different lock on the back door, but not one that prevented breaking the door itself.

The Moth went into the house and carefully searched again.

And failed again.

Angry and frustrated, the Moth swept a gloved hand over a shelf full of videotapes, knocking them to the floor. This time, a little damage should be done. Swinging the crowbar, the Moth watched with glee as other things flew off the shelves — books, framed photographs. The most satisfying moment came when the iron bar hit the screen of the television set with a bang. At the sound of breaking glass, the dog started barking.

This had a slightly sobering effect. If the dog heard it, had the nosy old neighbor heard it? The old woman’s attention to everything going on around here had already forced the Moth to park on another street, to climb fences to get here.

The dog kept barking.

Frightened, the Moth hid in the bathroom. After a while, the dog was quiet again. “What would Nicky say if you were caught?” the Moth asked aloud, but the thought was more irritating than frightening.

Nicky had been ignoring his Moth.

Angry again, but more under control now, the Moth opened the medicine chest, found Ben Sheridan’s pain medication and stole it.

In the kitchen, the Moth did a search of the cabinets and quickly found the dog’s food. The Moth opened a can of this, put a small amount of it into a bowl and began opening the capsules of pain medication over it. Mixing a dozen or so of them in well, the Moth put the cap back on the bottle and was about to take it — then paused. Wouldn’t do to be caught carrying something with Sheridan’s name on it, now would it? Spilling the pills out and pocketing them, the Moth left the container on the counter and went outside.

The dog did not perceive an enemy. This was a familiar person carrying a bowl of food. The dog was alert, and studied the Moth now. The dog was already interested in what the Moth had brought for him.

The Moth opened the gate to the run just slightly, then slid the bowl in.

“Good dog.”

The dog looked up at the Moth, then cocked his head to one side. The dog stared at the food, licked his chops, but didn’t touch it.

Was there some command it was waiting for?

The Moth opened the gate again, reached into the bowl and took a handful of the food and held it under the dog’s nose. The dog looked between the Moth and the food, then gently, almost reluctantly, ate the food out of the gloved hand.

This will take forever!

The Moth heard the neighbor’s dog barking, then several other dogs barking as well. The big shepherd’s ears pitched forward. Was someone approaching the house? The Moth hurried out of the enclosure. Scaling the high back fence, the Moth left through another backyard — a yard whose owners were without a dog, whose owners were never home during the day.

Reaching the car, the Moth closed and locked the door, then sighed, feeling safer now. Driving away, looking in the rearview mirror, satisfied that no one was watching or following, the Moth smiled and said, “Adiós, Bingle.”

52

MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 25

Las Piernas

Jack waited patiently in the van, using his cell phone to have a long talk with Stinger Dalton. This time, the police had left the van, but took my cell phone. They had promised to have it back to me later today, after they had made some recordings of Parrish’s call.

I rang Phil Newly’s doorbell a dozen times, and knocked until my knuckles were sore. Newly didn’t come to the door. I told myself that I should simply accept that he was either not willing to see me or was out of town. I told myself that I should leave — but something kept me from going back to the van. At first, it just seemed to be one of those one-size-fits-all cases of the creeps. I tried to narrow it to something a little more specific.

The house wasn’t just quiet, it seemed abandoned. There were a few handbills and a real estate broker’s notepad on the front porch. And while the lawn and flower beds, which would be watered by automatic sprinklers, were green, the potted plants on the front porch looked dried out.

I walked over to the front window, but the miniblinds were closed. I thought back to my last visit here. No dogs. I opened the gate to the backyard. I called Phil’s name. Nothing.

There were more windows along the back of the house. The blinds were down here, too, but one of them hadn’t closed properly. I realized that it was the room where Phil spent most of his time. I moved closer to the window and peered in.

“What the hell are you doing?” a voice said behind me.

I jumped back, hand over heart. “Damn it, Jack, don’t do that!”

“Don’t sneak up on you when you’re sneaking around?”

“Right.” I looked back into the house, then at Jack. “Something’s wrong here.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Look in there. What do you see?”

He looked, and said, “Nothing much. A couple of chairs, bookshelves, and a little table.”

“A few days ago, there was a pile of books on that table, and he was looking at maps.”

“When?”

I thought about it. “About two weeks ago, I guess.”

“Irene . . .”

“He lives in this room. It’s too neat. I can even see the marks the vacuum cleaner made on the carpet.”

Jack shook his head. “You were in it once and you know for a fact that he never cleans this room? Don’t you think it’s possible that a cleaning lady or someone else with a vacuum cleaner has been through here in the last two weeks?”

“I don’t know, Jack, you’re probably right. But doesn’t the house seem a little empty?”

“Maybe he went off to see his sister again.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe I’m overreacting.”

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me to worry about Newly’s whereabouts while Parrish was on the loose. By the time we were back at home, I was convinced that someone should try to locate the lawyer.

“What is it you’re imagining?” Jack asked. “That he’s been killed? If so, where’s his mail? Where’s the pile of newspapers?”

“Newspapers!” I went to the phone and called circulation. They don’t give out subscriber information as a rule, so I decided to do a little acting.

“Hi, this is Mrs. Phil Newly,” I said, and gave his address. “I just wondered what’s been happening to our newspaper.”

The service rep asked for my phone number. After two seconds of mad panic while I fumbled to find it, I gave them Phil’s. She looked up his records by using the phone number.

“Mrs. Newly, your husband canceled that subscription.”

“He did!” I said in mock outrage. “When did he do that?”

She named the date — it was the day after I visited Phil Newly.

“Do you want to reinstate the subscription, Mrs. Newly?” the rep asked.

“I’d love to,” I said, “but I’d better talk to Phil and see what he’s up to first.”

I called Frank. “Something fishy is going on with Phil Newly,” I said, and told him what I had found out. “Did he give you the number at his sister’s place?”

“I’m sure we have it here somewhere,” he said. “You worried about him or suspicious of him?”

“Both. I suppose — it’s a little difficult for the police to get a search warrant for a criminal defense attorney’s house, right?”

“A little.” He laughed. “I’ll see what I can find out from his sister, though.”

I received a surprise phone call at about three o’clock.

“Irene Kelly?” a male voice said. Familiar, but not someone I had heard recently. Then it struck me.

“Jim Houghton?”

“Listen, I’m a private citizen now, and I don’t have to talk to any reporters. So stay the hell off my tail, would you? You and your PI friend.”

“Rachel contacted you?”

“Yes. Now, she told me if I called you, you would probably leave me alone. So I’ve called you.”

“Wait — I didn’t call you because of the newspaper.”

There was a long pause, then he said, “Oh no? Why then?”

“I just need to talk to other people who survived being up there.”

“I didn’t. You don’t call it surviving when you aren’t there for the action, okay? I wasn’t anywhere near the place. I left with Newly, remember? So, I’m safe and sound, and you’re safe and sound. So’s Parrish. Good-bye, Ms. Kelly. And tell Harriman I said he ought to keep you at home if he wants you to live.”

He hung up.

Jack saw me shaking my head. “What is it?”

“That call. I don’t know what to make of it.” I told him what had been said.

He called Frank, and told him that I had been threatened by a former LPPD cop. I grabbed the phone away.

“Not exactly, Frank.” I thought a verbatim recitation of the call would calm him down, but Frank was as unhappy with Houghton as Jack was.

“I’m going to go over this guy’s background with a microscope,” he said. “And I want Rachel to tell me where she found him. I want him watched.”

“But the department would have checked him out when he signed up, right?”

“Very thoroughly,” he agreed. “But five years ago, when Houghton joined the LPPD, the name Nick Parrish didn’t mean anything to us, so there could be a connection nobody saw back then.”

Ben came by on his way home from work.

“Do you remember those videotapes of Bingle’s training sessions with the search group?” he asked.

“Yes, the ones I brought to you in the hospital. You left them here after you stayed with us. Do you want me to get them for you?”

“Yes, please. I’ve watched the ones I have at home so often I could narrate them for the blind.”

I got the box of tapes from the garage. “How is everything going?” I asked when I came back in.

“Fine — in fact, you should see the place now. I’ve made a few changes. Why don’t you and Jack come over this afternoon?”

Jack was agreeable. We followed him over to the house. I was amused to note that rather than going in through the front door, the first place he headed was to the backyard, to see Bingle.

We followed him through the back gate, where he came to a sudden halt. I nearly plowed into him.

“Bingle?” he said.

The dog wobbled up on all fours, then lurched forward. He fell flat, but got up again, standing unsteadily, looking woozy. He whined softly.

“Hey,” Jack said, “looks like somebody’s busted into your garage again.”

Ben ignored him. We ran to the dog run. Ben opened it and hurried inside.

“Oh God, Bingle!” Ben said, running his hands over the dog as Bingle collapsed in a heap. “Are you okay? Are you okay, Bingle? Shit! How do I say that in Spanish?”

By then, both Jack and I had crowded into the enclosure with him. I figured Bingle’s understanding of Spanish was great for any number of dog commands but probably didn’t extend to conversation. All the same, I understood Ben’s panic, and told him, “¿Estás bien, Bingle?”

He asked it, and when the dog just lay there, Ben looked anxiously at me.

I glanced around and saw Bingle’s dish, which had a little food in it — the food was still moist. I picked up the dish. “Don’t you usually take this away after he’s eaten?”

“Oh Jesus — I didn’t put that in here! I haven’t fed him yet this afternoon. I — I think someone has poisoned him.”

“Let’s get him to the vet,” I said. “We should bring the food with us, too.”

I drove as fast as I dared. Ben sat in the back with Bingle, talking to him, petting him. When we arrived, Bingle was hurried into an examination room.

Jack used his phone to call Frank and tell him what had happened, and mentioned the break-in. “No, we didn’t even have time to look around inside the house.” He looked over at me, then said, “That’s probably a good idea.”

When he hung up, he said, “Frank’s going to try to get a unit over there right away, just to make sure no one else goes in or out, but they’ll wait until Ben gets there. He’s going to go home and make sure Deke and Dunk are okay — just in case . . .”

“Just in case this is Parrish’s doing. Of course it is.” I got up and paced. “Still, I think Parrish has a personal dislike of Bingle. He threatened to shoot Bingle when we were up in the mountains.”

Ben was in with Bingle and the vet for a long time; Frank came by while we were waiting.

“Deke and Dunk are okay,” he said. “I’ve put them inside with Cody and warned the surveillance team about what happened at Ben’s place.”

Ben came out, walking like a zombie. He sat down next to me, said hello to Frank, then told us that the vet had emptied Bingle’s stomach. “They said that he didn’t seem to have eaten much. But . . .” He lowered his head into his hands. “It all depends on what it was that they fed him.”

“Is there any way to find out?” I asked.

“Probably not in time. He checked the food, it looked as if there was some sort of powder in it; mostly it was blended into the food, but sort of haphazardly. It wasn’t anything caustic, but that’s all we know right now. They want to keep him here — keep him under observation.”

Frank said, “Mind if I talk to the vet?”

“Not at all. I need to get back to the house, to see if they left any sign of the poison . . .”

“A unit’s there waiting for you,” Frank said. “Just show them some ID.”

“A unit?”

Jack’s mention of the break-in had apparently never registered with him. We told him about the broken garage door.

“If you don’t mind waiting for me,” Frank said, “I’d like to be there when you walk through. I’ll only be a minute.”

He came out carrying a bag which held the dog food bowl.

There was a crime scene unit on hand — they greeted me by name — and much more investigative power than most citizens would get for a burglary call, but this break-in had merited special attention. Nick Parrish or his accomplice might have paid this visit. The police were giving the place a thorough inspection, looking for trace evidence, hoping to find something that might help them identify that accomplice or lead them to Parrish. Ben, who had numbly walked past the destruction in his living room, underwent a change when he discovered the empty plastic medicine container on the kitchen counter.

“Codeine!” he shouted, just barely restraining himself from touching it before Frank needed to warn him. “Codeine! I have to call the vet!” He started to reach for the phone, thought better of it, and momentarily looked lost.

Jack pulled out his cell phone, pushed a button to recall the most recently dialed numbers, found the one he wanted, and handed the phone to Ben.

Ben told the vet what he had learned, then looked at the bottle without touching it. He read off the dosage level, then said, “I just had it refilled over the weekend. It was for thirty capsules. I hadn’t taken any of them yet. They’re all gone.” He looked over at the dog food can on the counter. “I think just about half of one can . . . almost thirteen ounces. Three hundred and sixty-one grams. It looks as if he didn’t eat much of it. At that level . . . yes, I understand. Yes, a big dog, but not an adult’s body weight.” He listened for a while, then said, “Yes, I’d appreciate that.” He wrote down a number.

He hung up and said, “All thirty at once is a heavy dosage — enough to kill him.” His voice caught, but he went on. “They can’t tell how much Bingle ingested, because it wasn’t distributed evenly through the food. But he thinks that it probably wasn’t so much, because Bingle seems to be doing better.”

Later, Frank asked him, “What’s on these videotapes — the two that really got smashed?”

“They’re training tapes. When the Las Piernas Search and Rescue group gets together — including the cadaver dog team — we tape our sessions.”

“So these are tapes of Bingle?”

“Bingle and the other dogs and their handlers. David is in most of these. I’ve been watching him and Bingle. I’ve only been to one session so far. The other handlers tell me that it’s a two-way learning process, that Bingle is already trying to work with me, trying to read me as much as I’m trying to read him.”

“These are the original tapes?”

“Yes, although David made copies for the other members of the group.”

“Do you have a roster for this SAR group?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I think we’re going to want to see who was on these tapes.”

“I can tell you that,” he said. “I’ve watched them a lot.”

Frank looked around at the mess. “Why don’t you stay at our place tonight? Closer to the vet.”

“I work tonight,” I said, “but don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow until the afternoon. I can help you clean up during the day.”

“We’ll get your back door boarded shut,” Frank said, “and we’ll be watching this place, too, from now on.”

“Okay, okay.” He laughed. “I’m sold. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to staying here without Bingle tonight.”

Ben gathered a change of clothes and put them in the back of his car. He was going to follow us back to the house. He started to get into his Jeep, then hurried over to the van. “Wait a minute,” he said. “There are some tapes that didn’t get smashed — the ones from your house — they should still be in the back of the van.”

“Irene, I can see what we’ll be doing before you go in tonight,” Jack said, eyeing the twenty or so tapes in the box. “Want me to make popcorn?”

53

MONDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 25

Las Piernas

He was enraged. He didn’t reveal it.

“Poor Moth,” he said into the telephone, “you should have come to me in the first place, of course.”

He was glad of the long cord on the telephone in the garage. It allowed him to pace as he listened to one lame excuse after another. Really, this was too much!

He halted in front of the freezer, ran his fingers over the lid. It calmed him.

“Yes, my dear Moth, but I already knew about that first visit to David Niles’s home . . . you didn’t doubt that did you?”

In truth, Nick had known nothing of the sort, but it wouldn’t hurt the Moth to believe a little more strongly in his omniscience. He had been wounded and escaping to that rathole in Oregon when the break-in occurred. He should have wondered how the Moth had learned certain things about Sheridan.

“I have to hang up now,” he said into the phone. “You and I must meet later. Left on your own, this would have been a hopeless mess. Luckily for you, I’m here to take care of you, my Moth. Wait for my call — and I mean that, little Moth. You must simply wait. You wouldn’t want to displease me — would you?”

He listened with satisfaction to the Moth’s pleading tone. “I thought not.” He hung up.

He put the phone back in the cradle and returned to the freezer. He unlocked it and lifted the lid, enjoyed the rush of cold air that drifted up to his face.

He looked down at the frozen, nude corpse and said, “I know it’s rather difficult to answer questions under the circumstances, my dear, but would you care to dance?”

He smiled.

“I knew I should have left your head on, just in case questions like these might arise. I have others, mostly about you-know-who. But you know, I think I have the answers to those questions anyway. You’re something of a cold fish.”

He slammed the lid closed and laughed uproariously.

It took him a few moments to regain his composure.

When he did, he put his gloves on and opened the freezer once more. He stared down at her a moment, then with one gloved finger, traced the outline of a birthmark on her inner thigh.

“You were his whore, of course, so he must have seen this. Did he love it, or did he hate it? Was it one of your imperfections or one of your charms?”

The plastic beneath the body crinkled as he lifted her. For a moment, he hugged her to himself, saying, “I’m so sorry we didn’t have more time together, darling. But you can’t blame a boy like me for trying to get a head!”

He admonished himself once his levity was back under control — if he didn’t stop being so witty, the poor little darling would thaw before they found her.

He waltzed toward the car, clutching her to him.

His mind slipped a little then, and he thought of Irene Kelly, and his rage returned. “We’ll show them, won’t we, sweetheart?” he said to his dancing partner, and tenderly placed her in the trunk of the car.

54

MONDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 25

Las Piernas

We soon realized that watching tapes of Bingle and David was not such a great idea. After two minutes of the first tape, Ben turned it off and called the vet’s office; Bingle was asleep, his heartbeat was normal.

Good news, but Ben looked miserable. He blamed himself, and wondered if he should have kept Bool, so that Bingle would not have been left alone. “Why won’t Parrish just come after me?” he asked. “Leave the dog out of it.”

Later, he said, “Bingle’s not used to being caged at night. What if he wakes up and thinks I’m giving him away?”

Frank called to say that Houghton had been living near Dallas, in Irving, Texas. “Doesn’t look like he’s left the Dallas area in months, but we’re still checking that out.”

That night, Jack came with me to work, an arrangement John approved, sort of. “If it will keep me from having a uniformed cop inside the newsroom, fine,” he said. “Just don’t tell Wrigley. As it is, seeing all the police surveillance of the building, he’s nervous as a turkey in late November. Called the chief of police this afternoon to complain about it.”

“He’d rather have Nick Parrish in his newsroom?”

“I don’t think he, uh, exactly believes the suggestion that Parrish is hanging out around here. Maybe he doesn’t want to believe it.”

I took Jack up to Café Kelly that night. When Stinger, Travis, and Leonard learned what had happened to Bingle, I thought Stinger just might go on a house-to-house hunt for Nick Parrish, with Leonard and Travis riding posse.

I asked him about Aunt Mary, and his mood changed immediately. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d ask her to marry me,” he said with a grin.

When I got home, I discovered Cody had stretched himself out on Frank’s chest, but the dogs were nowhere in sight. “They’re in with Ben,” Frank said sleepily.

I don’t know if a dream awakened me, or if I heard Ben go outside. Either way, at about four in the morning, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. I dressed and went out to the patio, where Ben was sitting, already dressed and drinking coffee, petting Deke and Dunk.

“I called the vet,” he said. “They say Bingle got up and he’s barking. They think he’s going to be fine.”

“Great news,” I said. “If he’s barking, he must be getting better.”

“Yes. I told them how to say ‘be quiet’ in Spanish. They said I could pick him up at eight.”

“So here you are with a mere four hours to wait.”

He smiled. “Right. At first I was too worried to sleep. Now, I’m too relieved. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“No. You know I’m one of Bingle’s biggest fans. And if anything happened to one of these guys, or Cody, I’d be a basket case. What’s your schedule tomorrow? Can you catch up on sleep?”

“I’ll be okay as far as sleep goes. I did sleep a little tonight — as much as I need. I’m supposed to be your . . .”

“Bodyguard?”

“How about — companion? What’s your schedule?”

“I have an appointment with Jo Robinson in the afternoon. Then I’m working from ten at night until two in the morning, but I think Frank is planning to relieve you from duty before then.”

We sat in silence for a time. I thought about my assignments from Jo. I hadn’t done too badly, but there was this Parzival business.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?”

“Before Parrish escaped—”

“Before the others were killed,” he insisted, always annoyed at my attempt to avoid saying it.

“Before the others were killed,” I conceded, “even before we found Julia Sayre, something was bothering you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Ben — to quote good old Parzival — ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”

He looked away from me.

“I have a feeling it has something to do with reporters.”

He didn’t answer.

“Or was it an instant dislike of me, personally?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what troubled you? What made you so angry? Why couldn’t you sleep at night?”

“Many things,” he answered softly.

I waited. He tried to fob me off with a list of the mass disaster cases he had worked recently.

“David told me about them,” I said. “And while I’m not saying that I’d have the fortitude to work one of those cases, let alone as many as you have, David hinted there was something else going on with you.”

“He did?” he said. “I’m surprised. David was usually better at keeping confidences.”

“Don’t try to make this about David. Unless you had some particularly awful experience with a reporter on one of those disaster cases, I don’t think that’s what made you snap at me from the moment I joined the team.”

He hesitated, then said, “I’m tempted to make something up. It would be easier than telling you the truth.” He sighed. “But after all you’ve done for me, the least I can do is be honest.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Tell me because we’re friends, or don’t tell me at all.”

He looked out at the garden. In a low voice, he said, “It has a rather sordid beginning, I’m afraid. The end of a relationship. You remember Camille?”

“Yes — the blond bombshell who visited you at the hospital.”

He nodded. “Camille is bright and funny, loves the outdoors, and yes, when we dated, I knew that every guy who saw her on my arm was green with envy.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Me, I guess. She finally realized that I wasn’t going to change in the ways she hoped I would.”

“What was she hoping would change?”

“My work, mostly. She didn’t mind dating an anthropologist, but she hated everything about the forensic work — the demands on my time, the thought of what I was doing, the smell of my clothes when I came home. She kept hoping that I’d weary of it, and take a position with a museum. I finally made it clear to her that I’d never leave forensic work, that it was important to me. She asked me if it was more important than she was, and I’m afraid I answered with my usual lack of tact.”

“So you ended up moving out.”

“Yes. I missed her a lot at first, but on the whole, I knew we were better off apart. I enjoyed living with David and Bingle and Bool. And I needed David’s support not long after that.”

He was silent for so long, I began to think he had changed his mind about talking to me. Eventually, though, he went on.

“A few weeks after I had moved out, Camille asked me to meet her for lunch. She said she had some things to give me, things I had left behind at the house — a few CDs and an old alarm clock. So we met and she gave them to me. She told me that she was seeing someone new. That hurt — my pride mostly, I suppose — but I lied and told her I was happy for her.

“Then she asked me what I was working on. I had no business telling her anything, but I was working on a case that had received a lot of attention. Five years ago, two young high school students had gone hiking in the desert and had disappeared. One partial set of remains was found, and it looked as if it might be one of the boys. I had been asked to work on it. I did, and I was close to making an identification.

“I was telling her what made the identification difficult — the passage of time, exposure to weather, animals damaging the bones, and so on. I said that I was going back to where the bones had been found and taking a team with me to see if we could recover more remains.”

He shook his head. “Then she asked, ‘Which boy do you think it is?’ And — and I don’t know why, but I guessed. I told her more than once that I wasn’t at all sure. It doesn’t matter. It was something that I never, ever should have done.”

“She told someone.”

“Oh, she told someone, all right. In all my self-involvement, I had failed to ask Camille who her new boyfriend was, what he did for a living. I believe the phrase he used in the first television newscast — which took place on the front lawn outside of the home of one of the families — was, ‘Sources close to forensic anthropologists working on the case . . .’ He was a damned sight closer to the source than I was at that point.”

“Nasty thing for her to do to you — but ‘hell hath no fury’ and all of that. More than a little sloppy of him not to verify the information with someone other than your ex. But I can promise you, Ben, you are not the first man to leak something to the press by way of a girlfriend or spouse. Think of John Mitchell back in the Watergate days.”

He looked at me and sighed. “If that was all there was to it, Irene, I’d be thanking God and counting it as a lesson learned.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was the wrong boy.”

“You mean—”

“Yes, I mean a man and a woman and their two younger children, people who had waited for five years to learn what had happened to their son, their brother — those people had a reporter on their front lawn, asking them on camera if they had heard the news from the police yet, that their boy’s remains had been found in the desert over a week ago, and that an announcement of positive identification was imminent.”

“Oh, God.”

“He also made statements about the condition of the remains that were almost word-for-word what I had told her.”

“Making you feel worse.”

“Not any worse than the family must have felt.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“The coroner called and said they’d been asked to verify that an identification was about to be made. Carlos Hernandez, you know him?”

“Yes.”

“He had seen it live on the five o’clock news, and told me to watch it at six.” He shook his head. “Their faces as that reporter told them! Jesus! I’ll never forget that as long as I live. By six o’clock, they had invited him into their living room and were showing him photos of the boy. Worst of all, I also knew that they would also feel a sense of relief and resolution after years of worry and wonder, and I’d have to tell them that it was all a mistake, that their son hadn’t been found at all.”

“And you figured you were the one who was torturing them, not that guy?”

“It was my responsibility! The coroner had trusted me with those remains. Trusted me to keep my mouth shut. Do you know where that trust comes from? From families like that boy’s. They give it to Carlos, he extends it to me, and I betrayed it — and over what? A need to brag to a former girlfriend? Pathetic!”

“Human. And Carlos is fair-minded, Ben. He must have—”

“Oh, he was more than fair to me. I told him what had happened, fully expecting it was my last case for his office. He tried to help me — to help me! He gave me advice on how to handle the inevitable media frenzy that would follow. And it did. I must have said ‘no comment’ about a million times. The campus police had to keep reporters away from the lab where I do my work. There are no windows in the lab itself, but we had to have someone guard the door after one of the photographers tried to get a shot of the bones. Eventually, the media gave up.”

“Ben, sometimes—”

“No, that isn’t the last of it. The media gave up, but that didn’t change anything for that family. They were naturally very angry. They asked to meet with Carlos and me. The press had told them their boy had been found, and we wouldn’t comment one way or the other. They thought we were torturing them. But all we could say was that we were not prepared to make any identification at this time, and then promise them that they would be the first to know if we had any news.”

“Which naturally made them think they were being given the brush-off.”

“I felt terrible the whole time, but Carlos had made me promise that I wouldn’t say more than that to them. They told Carlos that the reporter said I was the one that leaked the story. He told them, quite honestly, that neither of us had ever talked to that reporter, and no one that worked with either of us had ever mentioned the case to him. They weren’t entirely satisfied, and spoke of getting an attorney, but fortunately things never reached that point. Carlos deserves the credit for that.”

“What else did you do?”

“What?”

“I haven’t known you all that long, Ben, but I know you well enough to realize that you wouldn’t just say ‘no comment’ and wait for things to blow over.”

“I would have, if it weren’t for David. He got Ellen and some of the other graduate students together, hauled me out of bed in the middle of the night and said, ‘Bool and Bingle want to go looking for bones in the desert.’ We searched for six consecutive weekends. We found more of the first boy’s remains. We were just about to give up when Bingle finally found the second boy’s tibia — some distance from the first boy’s. After that, we made a more intensive search and recovered more.”

“Didn’t that make you feel better about it?”

“Not really. It was better for the family, but I still felt miserable about what I had done. The outcome isn’t the issue. Breaking that code of confidentiality was no more honorable on my part, just because we had found the second boy. It was just as likely that we could have searched and searched and never found him.”

We sat in silence for a while before he said, “Although the blame is mine, really, for behaving unethically in that situation—”

“Ben, aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”

“Let me finish. I wanted to say — I do have a negative attitude toward the press. I was unfair to you. I apologize for that.”

“Apology accepted. We aren’t all as rotten as that idiot.”

“I know, I know — but one guy like that one is enough to make you wary for life. There was a little justice, though — he isn’t on the air anymore.”

“I’m not surprised. And Camille got what she deserved with him, I’m sure.”

“It didn’t last, either. She told David that the guy broke up with her when I refused to let him ‘cover’ our searches. I felt sorry for her, really.”

“Did you ever talk to her about it?”

“No. The only time I’ve seen her since then was when you were there, at the hospital. What would I say? ‘You betrayed me’? To her, that would have been something like saying, ‘Congratulations.’ Besides, I betrayed myself.”

“There’s only one question left, then,” I said. “When are you going to forgive yourself?”

He didn’t answer.

55

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 26

Las Piernas

I had gone back to bed and had about an hour’s sleep when the phone rang. I looked at the clock. A little before six.

Frank answered the call. “Hi, Pete,” he said to his partner, then listened for a while. He sat up and started taking notes. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Coroner’s already been notified? Good . . . yes, I’ll see you in a few.”

He hung up, stretched, and started getting dressed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He hesitated, then said, “The skull in the refrigerator? Looks as if he decided to let us have the rest of the body.”

I shuddered. “Where?”

“Apparently, he’s been keeping it on ice. A group of figure skaters got a rude surprise when they showed up at the local rink for practice this morning.”

“He broke into the ice-skating rink?”

“Yep. First officer on the scene said it looks as if the body is frozen solid. No head.” He paused in the act of putting on his holster. “Hope it’s the one belonging to our skull. He’d probably think it was damned amusing to have more than one out there and mix and match them.”

“You should tell Ben. He’s been trying to do the identification on the skull. Maybe he’ll be able to help out.”

Frank didn’t want to leave me alone, so he hesitated to ask Ben to go with him. So I promised not to write about events at the skating rink for the Express — whose editor-in-chief I was not much in charity with at the moment — and he decided I could come along and wait within the outer perimeter of the crime scene, where the heaviest level of police protection in Las Piernas would be available to keep his wife safe from Nick Parrish.

If the skating rink hadn’t been fairly close to the vet’s office, I’m not sure Ben would have followed Frank and me over there that morning. Sometimes, looking back on it, I’ve wished the two buildings had been farther apart.

There were several black-and-whites parked outside the rink; Frank went in first, while I talked to Ben in the parking lot. A few minutes later, Frank escorted me to what he had decided was a safe place to wait — safe for me, safe for the investigation.

This place turned out to be an overly warm glassed-in waiting area, complete with gas-log fireplace and a snack bar, a place where young skaters’ parents and hockey widows might hang out. Personally, that day or any other, I would have preferred a cold, hard bleacher closer to the action. I couldn’t see much from where I waited. The gargantuan officer Frank posted at the door didn’t improve the view.

I could see that strips of flat carpet — usually used for awards ceremonies, so that nonskating dignitaries can walk out onto the ice — led out to a huddle of men that included Frank, Pete, Carlos Hernandez, and others. I couldn’t see the body itself.

Ben was escorted in by a uniformed officer. When he saw where I was being kept, he gave me a little smile and waved.

He managed getting out to the huddle without any problems; the group parted a little, he went down on one knee to take a closer look at the body and suddenly started screaming.

He screamed words, but I’m not sure what they were, because the sound itself triggered a flood of memories, and made me think of him screaming in the mountains as he ran into the meadow — which made me try in vain to get past the behemoth in blue at the waiting area door.

The words didn’t matter. I just wanted to get to Ben. Before long, I got my wish — Frank was bringing him into the waiting area. He had stopped screaming; his face was drained of color. Frank asked me for Jo Robinson’s number as he set Ben down next to me.

Frank called and left a message with Jo’s service. I held on to Ben, who seemed to be in a state of shock.

“What is it?” I asked him. “What’s wrong?”

“Camille,” he said numbly. “It’s Camille. Out there on the ice.”

“Who’s Camille?” Pete asked, overhearing Ben as he walked into the room.

Ben didn’t answer, so I told them that she was Ben’s ex-girlfriend. “The woman he was living with until last January.”

“Her skull,” Ben said miserably, looking down at his hands as if they were foreign objects. “I’ve been handling her skull!”

Frank and Pete exchanged a look.

“How do you know it’s Camille?” I asked.

I didn’t think he’d answer; he looked as if he might faint. But he whispered, “Her birthmark. She has an unusual birthmark on her upper thigh.”

I could see that Frank and Pete didn’t entirely trust Ben’s identification of the body, but they spoke consolingly, told him just to wait with me, and brought him a cup of coffee. I understood their doubts; Ben had experienced one loss after another, had spent a nearly sleepless night, and perhaps his reaction to the corpse had been a result of the strain he was under lately.

Frank flipped through his notebook, found Camille’s address from his previous visit, and sent a unit to check on her home.

A little later, a uniformed officer leaned his head in the door and said, “They want you out there, Detective Harriman.”

Frank glanced at Pete, then they left together.

Frank was back a few minutes later. He beckoned me away from Ben. In a low voice, he said, “Call John and tell him you aren’t coming in.”

“What?”

“Tell him you aren’t coming into work.”

“Why should I? Do you know how hard it was for me to get the few hours I do have?”

“Tell her,” Pete said, walking up to us. “She’s too damned stubborn for her own good.”

Frank glanced over at Ben, then said, “Parrish left a note for you.”

I felt my stomach clench, and my heart began to hammer against my ribs, as if it wanted somebody to let it out. But I looked at Pete’s smug face, and suddenly my heart slowed. “Really?” I said. “What did it say?”

Frank’s brows drew together. “Irene—”

“What did it say?”

He held out a plastic bag. There was another plastic bag within it; on this one, my name had been neatly written in black felt pen. Within it, a sheet of lined yellow paper from a legal pad contained a short message, written in very precisely printed letters:

No more presents, no more escapes.

You can’t hide from me, Irene.

You can’t go beyond my reach.

Next time, you’re the one who gets iced,

much more slowly than dear Camille.

And Camilles are notorious for dying slowly—

ha! ha! ha!

Please tell Ben Sheridan that I enjoyed her immensely.

He had signed it with a flourish.

“Nothing anonymous about this one, is there?” I said, not as steadily as before.

“He left it under the body,” Pete said. “Don’t be an idiot, Irene. Stay home.”

I glanced up at him.

Frank saw, a little too late, what was inspiring me.

“Irene—” he began.

“It doesn’t change anything. I am going to work, Frank.”

He started to argue, but I motioned toward Ben and said in a low voice, “For God’s sake, we have until ten o’clock tonight to settle this. Let’s not make it any worse for Ben by having a fight in here.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay. But we will talk about this!”

We were interrupted when Frank and Pete were called back out of the room. I could see Frank giving Pete hell as they went to meet the other detectives.

If Parrish’s note left any doubts, before long, few people questioned the identity of the body. Signs of a forcible entry through a rear bedroom window were found at Camille’s home; through that window, police saw overturned furniture and other indications of a struggle. Once inside, the officers also found a photo of Camille in a bathing suit; the photo showed the birthmark on her thigh.

While all of this was taking place, several of us tried to console Ben, but he barely acknowledged our presence. At a little after eight, the alarm on his watch went off. “Bingle,” he said suddenly. “I can’t leave him in that cage! I’ve got to go.”

“Let me go with you,” I said. “You’re not in any shape to drive.” Intentionally keeping any tone of challenge out of my voice, I turned to my husband and said, “Is that okay, Frank? I’ll wait with him back at the house. If Jo Robinson calls, she can reach us there.”

Frank frowned, but perhaps thinking he’d prove to me that he was going to be reasonable, too, gave in. “Okay, but I’m going to ask a unit to follow you — promise me you’ll let them keep you in sight. Parrish is obviously focusing on the two of you right now, and I don’t think it’s wise for you to be alone anywhere.”

No argument from me. There were certain givens, after all.

Bingle’s exuberance over seeing Ben again went a long way toward breaking the awful spell his owner had been under. Ben thanked the vet, paid the bill, and we were on our way. Except for an occasional attempt on Bingle’s part to ride in Ben’s lap, the drive back home was uneventful.

Jo Robinson had left a message, and when Ben called her back, he spent a long time talking to her while I went outside with the dogs and Cody. Cody lounged on my lap while Deke and Dunk, apparently fascinated with whatever scents Bingle’s coat had picked up from the vet’s office, gave the big shepherd a thorough sniffing over.

By the time Frank came back that afternoon, Ben was able to answer his questions fairly calmly. Ben had a few of his own.

“Has anyone called her parents?” he asked.

“We’ve got someone working on that.”

“Why hadn’t she been reported missing?”

“She seems to have been at loose ends lately,” Frank said, “and the truth is, there doesn’t seem to be anyone who had regular contact with her.”

“But she worked for an accounting firm—” Ben said.

“She left her job in June; apparently she’s been looking for a new one, because on her desk she had mail from several places where she had applied for work. She had been filling in applications and had copies of her résumé on her desk.”

“Since June?” he asked.

“Yes, we talked to her then.”

Ben looked away, frowning. “I had forgotten — you had the ridiculous suspicion that she had tried to rob my house and office.”

Frank didn’t allow himself to be baited.

After a moment Ben said, “Sorry. Of course you had to question her. And maybe I didn’t know her so well after all. I never thought she was thrilled with her work, but I’m surprised to hear she left the accounting firm.”

I remembered her visit to the hospital, and Ben’s final angry suggestion that she should be the one to think about finding another line of work. I wondered if that encounter had affected her more than any of us could have guessed. Having no desire to cause Ben further pain, I kept these thoughts to myself.

“People at her former office say she quit unexpectedly,” Frank said, “but she may have been planning to leave for some time. She seemed prepared to be out of work for a while. She still had quite a bit of money in her savings account.”

“She was good with money,” Ben said. “Not just frugal, but also good at choosing investments.”

“But her mail and newspapers—” I asked.

“The house has a mail slot,” Ben said. “The mail would just pile up inside the house. We liked that feature when we used to go camping or traveling. No need to file a hold with the post office.”

“Actually, we think Parrish did file one,” Frank said. “He seems to have forged her name on it.”

“But that still leaves the newspaper,” I said. “Or didn’t she subscribe?”

“Yes, she did,” Frank said. “But she stopped the paper.”

“Wait a minute — are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes, we checked with the Express. She canceled about a week ago.”

“What I mean is, are you sure she’s the one who stopped it?”

“What are you saying?” Ben asked.

“Do you know anyone who is looking for a job who stops taking the newspaper?” I asked. “They want to read the classifieds.”

“She has a point,” Ben said to Frank.

“Two possibilities,” I said. “One is that she called to stop the paper at just about the time she was killed, which is the kind of unbelievable coincidence that makes you wonder if she was being forced to make the call.”

“And the other?” Frank asked.

“Parrish called to stop the paper, to make sure no one started looking for her before he wanted her to be found.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” he said. “But it doesn’t get us any closer to catching Parrish.”

“Maybe it does. I can think of another subscription that got canceled recently.”

“Phil Newly’s,” Frank said.

“Yes. Nick Parrish is someone who has obviously made a study of police and forensic procedures. He knows what might trigger a missing persons investigation. A pile of newspapers on the driveway might be noticed by neighbors who don’t even know the victim’s name.”

“I’ll make another push to take a look at Newly’s house. But as I’ve said, in general, judges don’t like cops to take uninvited tours of defense lawyer’s homes.”

We went early to Jo Robinson’s office. She had arranged to see Ben just before she saw me. “We should try to get a two-for-one rate out of her,” I said, but needless to say, Ben wasn’t in an especially humorous mood.

He ran over into my time, but I didn’t mind. I thought that meant I might be able to cut it a little short, but no deal.

“How’s he doing?” I asked, when she had closed the door to begin our session.

She smiled and said, “You don’t expect me to answer that do you? This is your time. How are you?”

“I’m still working lousy hours,” I said.

“They were supposed to be somewhat improved.”

“They are,” I admitted.

Now that my big gripe was out of the way, I sat studying my toes.

“Otherwise, how have things gone?” she prompted.

I told her about talking to the Sayres.

“Great. And have you thought more about Parzival?”

“A little.” I mentioned that telling the story of Parzival’s visit to Wild Mountain led to my talking to Ben that very morning. I related the gist of our conversation.

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?” I repeated. It isn’t easy to imbue a sound like that with sarcasm. I made it drip with the stuff.

She smiled again. “You know, I think your friend Jack was right. You forgot to tell the best part of the story.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” she repeated. She left out the sarcasm — all but a tinge, anyway.

“It’s not the best part of the story — it’s the saddest part. Parzival goes off in disgrace; he loses his faith. He tells others that he refuses to serve a God who has the power to always be merciful, but who instead is the . . . How does he put it? ‘The godfather of all my troubles.’ ”

“Why would a good God let so many terrible things happen?” she asked.

“Right. Or let someone with good intentions cause so much harm?”

“In the story, how does Parzival feel as he goes riding off on his quest for the Grail?”

“Angry.”

“Hmm.”

I didn’t bother echoing that one.

“Remind me,” she said, “what must he do before he can find Wild Mountain again?”

“Regain his faith.”

“Is that all?”

“No, there’s more to it than that,” I said, trying not to lose my patience. “It’s a story about compassion, but not just toward others. That’s what I was saying to you earlier — about talking to Ben this morning. Parzival has to be compassionate toward himself. He has to forgive himself.”

“Oh,” she said.

I was silent.

“Keep thinking about it, then. Now, despite the horrible hours, how did the return to work go?”

I told her about the support of my friends, the visits by Travis and Stinger, and about Leonard and Café Kelly.

“And since the problem with the van—”

“You mean the fingers and the toes and the skull?” I asked, showing no mercy.

“Any other contact? Any other times when you’ve seen him?”

I hesitated only briefly before recounting it all to her. “Oh, and I almost forgot the underwear business.”

“Underwear business?”

So I told her what had happened on my first day back at work.

“You wrote the article, but you didn’t file it?” she asked.

“Right.”

“You were angry when Parrish sent this package?”

“Yes.”

“But you fought an impulse to get back at him that must have been almost irresistible.”

“When I considered the possible consequences, it didn’t seem worth it.”

“Do you remember what you said to me when you first came here, about feeling out of control?”

“Yes. I don’t feel that way very often now,” I admitted, then added, “does that mean I’m done?”

She laughed. “Keep thinking about Parzival, and we’ll see what can be done about this urgent desire of yours never to see me again.”

Frank ate dinner with us, and held off arguing with me about work. But in the middle of the meal, he got a call. He came back from the phone smiling at me, and saying someone had seen a car parked near the ice rink at about three that morning, and could describe it — it matched the description of a car that a neighbor had seen going in and out of Phil Newly’s garage at odd hours.

“A dark green Honda Accord,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder, so that he must have felt my relief.

“Who saw it at the ice rink?” I asked.

“The driver of a delivery truck for the Express,” he said. “Taking papers to a newsstand at a coffee shop near the rink.”

“Did either the neighbor or the truck driver get a look at the person driving the car?” Ben asked.

“No, and neither of them got a plate number. But we’re going to be asking around here and in your neighborhood to see if anyone has seen the car lately. Somewhere, somebody must have seen that driver. Best of all, Pete thinks we’re well on our way to a warrant to search Newly’s place.”

A little later, Frank left to meet Pete — they had another lead on the car. Just before he left, he said, “I won’t ask you to stay home. Maybe you’d be safer there than here. I don’t know. Oh — and here — I brought this back.” He handed the cell phone to me. “Battery is all charged up. Keep it on from the moment you pull out of the driveway, okay? A patrol car will follow you in, but Wrigley’s been a little fussy about letting us on to the property — even so, don’t work alone, okay? Tell Leonard I’ll get him into the academy if he’ll stay next to you all shift. I’ve called Travis and Stinger — they’ll be stopping by. Spend the whole shift up on the roof with them if you have to. And don’t leave the—”

“Frank, any more instructions and Pete’s going to wonder what happened to you.”

“I just don’t want you to be there alone,” he said.

“I’m going with her,” Ben said.

“Ben—” we both protested.

“I can’t sit around here all night. It would make me crazy.”

I wasn’t sure it was a great idea for him to be in the newsroom that night, especially since there might be a certain amount of activity there that centered on covering the story of Camille’s death.

But he told me to remember that he was an expert when it came to dealing with the media — then smiled a little, letting me see that some part of his sense of humor was gradually returning.

Jack came over and offered to go in his stead, but by then Ben was entrenched in the idea of fulfilling his promise to Frank to keep an eye on me that day.

“You’re both wearing on my nerves,” I said, which didn’t faze either of them.

“Okay, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Cody and the dogs,” Jack said, much to Ben’s relief. “If you change your mind about being at the paper, Ben, just call here and we can switch.”

We hadn’t gone very far from the house when the cell phone rang, making me jump. I fumbled a little, and ended up hanging up on the caller.

“Hell.”

“Maybe it was Parrish,” Ben said, in a flat tone of voice that made me worry about him.

The phone rang again. It was Jack.

“Why’d you hang up on me?” he asked.

“Inexperience.”

He laughed. “Frank wanted me to let you know he got the warrant for Newly’s house. Quite a surprise, huh?”

It was going to be a night full of surprises.

56

TUESDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 26

Las Piernas

Alas, my Moth, he thought sadly, watching yet another police cruiser make the turn toward his most recent lair, I will miss the peculiar comfort you gave me in better times.

The Moth had dutifully reported back that there were strange cars on the street, sedans that looked a great deal like unmarked police cars. Indeed, with his own eyes he had seen the Volvo of that cuckold detective, Frank Harriman — which of his wife’s lovers had he so foolishly entrusted her to now? — make the same turn not long ago. Without the Moth’s warning, he might have missed seeing that. Well, yes, he could admit that he might have been caught — even if they caught him, he would escape again. The police could be touchy though, when one had killed one of their own. Strange how they all banded together like that, how dear they were to one another. He grinned a little, letting himself imagine just what that might imply.

But soon he was thinking of the Moth again.

The Moth had been useful in many ways.

There were still one or two matters in which his Moth might be of help, but everything in this place was drawing to a close, and when he was finished here, the Moth must join the other devoted ones. It was only right. The least he could do.

Perhaps one day he would return to the coyote tree and hang a unique tribute there, in honor of the Moth. And a special one to the Ice Dancer, who was, he had to admit, one of his more spectacular accomplishments. Ben Sheridan’s devastation was a thing of beauty. Oh yes, something special for the Ice Dancer, too.

Plans. There were always plans to be made. He loved plans. They kept his superhuman brain busy.

He had not expected the lair to be found at this point, but he was ready for anything — even the unexpected.

He had not expected, for example, that Irene Kelly could make him feel this combination of passion and anger from a distance. Usually, he needed to be much closer before his body reacted as it was reacting now. Her body was calling to his — calling, calling, relentlessly calling. He could feel it the way a deaf man can feel the beat of a bass drum, a pulsing, low, insistent vibration.

She would not leave him alone.

He could continue to outsmart the police as long as he chose to, of course, but he decided that it simply would not be healthy to wait, that she was obviously so longing to reach the sort of fulfillment that only he could provide, that he must be swift with his generosity. Tonight would be the night.

Deadline, he thought, and gave a daring little snort of laughter.

57

TUESDAY NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 26

Las Piernas

I arrived a little early, wanting to take time to answer some of my mail and e-mail, but I wasn’t given a chance to do more than find a place for Ben to sit. Shorthanded and bearing down on a drop-dead deadline — the final opportunity to make any major changes in the next morning’s edition — the newsroom was a hive of activity when I arrived. John Walters was hoping to get a late chase in on a story Mark Baker was covering — the police investigation of Phil Newly’s home. The building was already rumbling with the vibration of rolling presses. Page A-1 couldn’t be held up much longer.

One of Phil Newly’s neighbors had tipped the paper off, saying police were going door-to-door asking questions about whether anyone had seen the lawyer lately, or if they had noticed any cars other than Newly’s parked near the house, or in his driveway or garage.

Other phone calls started coming in, including one from Mark. After taking Mark’s call, John was pacing, barking out orders — most of the front page would have to be reset.

Inside Phil Newly’s garage, the police made a number of gruesome discoveries, including a bloodstained workbench and circular saw, bone fragments, and other tissue. Inside a large freezer in the garage, they found a sheet of plastic covered with frozen blood.

There was no sign of the lawyer.

Frank’s lieutenant was on the scene to handle contact with the press, and stated that Mr. Newly was sought for questioning. When asked if the lawyer was suspected of being an accomplice to Nick Parrish, the lieutenant said “not at this time.” When asked if Mr. Newly might be one of the victims, he said, “Our investigation here is in its very early stages. We do not know who the victims are or how many victims there may be; we are not ruling out the possibility that Mr. Newly may be one of them.” He gave a description of the lawyer and the lawyer’s car — a silver BMW. The car was missing.

Mark’s contacts within the department revealed other information. Two neighbors had seen a dark-colored Honda coming and going from the residence, although they had not been able to get a good look at the driver. The car had entered by using an automatic garage door opener.

Neither blood nor any signs of a struggle were found inside the house itself.

There were indications that Mr. Newly left the residence voluntarily — his toothbrush, razor, and other personal effects were missing. There were also signs that someone other than Newly — someone with blond hair, perhaps bleached — had been staying in one of the lower-floor guest rooms.

We got as many of these details into the paper as we could before the presses just couldn’t be held up any longer. As will happen once a drop-dead deadline has been reached, the newsroom emptied out. John stayed just long enough to allow me to formally introduce him to Ben and to tell me he was still working on getting my hours changed.

“Oh, and, Kelly — this business with the helicopter that I’m hearing rumors of? Not on day shift, should you return. Wrigley’s already scared enough of you, without thinking you’re going to come in here like something out of Apocalypse Now.”

He headed out to try to catch a few hours of sleep.

The nature of the beast; no matter how well we had done this evening, the process of putting a newspaper together would start all over again in the morning.

Still, it was much more excitement than I had expected on my late shift.

Not long after the newsroom emptied, Ben went with me up the stairs to the top of the building. “I tried calling Leonard, to get us into the elevator,” I said. “But he must be roaming around the building somewhere.”

I explained about the elevator access key. “Needless to say, employees forced to seek psychological counseling for throwing heavy objects at the boss are not given this special key.”

“I can manage the stairs,” he said. “They’re good practice for me.” It was lots of practice, all right.

As we reached the final door, Ben said, “That wasn’t so bad.”

It was another pleasant night. I made myself look up at the Box. Nothing. No lights, no movement, not even the sensation of being watched.

“How can a helicopter land on top of all this mess?” Ben asked, looking at the rooftop structures.

“The landing pad is on the other side,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

I took him along the perimeter to the helicopter pad.

While we waited for Travis and Stinger to arrive, I gave Ben the full tour. I pointed out several city landmarks that could be seen from the roof, and started to show him my favorite gargoyles. He didn’t like leaning over the railing to see them, though, so after I had pointed out the wyvern, and the mermaid that was supposedly modeled after the present Wrigley’s grandmother, I told him we could look at the others from the ground.

“That’s the intended view, anyway,” I said, as we settled in at Café Kelly. “Although I have to admit, I wouldn’t have suspected you of having a fear of heights — not after seeing you walk steep trails in the mountains.”

“I don’t mind heights in the mountains,” he said. “It’s all the flat, sheer vertical surfaces in a city, I suppose. But you don’t like being in the mountains, do you?”

I thought about this for a moment and said, “The mountains, I love. It’s the people I’ve encountered up there who’ve made me feel a little wary about going back.”

“Parrish?”

“He’s one of them.”

“Tell me what happened that morning, before we were rescued.”

“Want a bottle of water? You have your choice between that and water. A full selection in our fine establishment.”

“Served with an open-faced plate of bullshit, I see. You’re avoiding the question.”

“For the moment,” I agreed. “Listen, here comes the helicopter. Can you hear it?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh.

I got up to turn the landing lights on; Leonard no longer locked that door.

We had a pleasant visit with Travis and Stinger, who hadn’t seen much of Ben recently. As usual, though, they didn’t stay very long. With promises to get together soon, they took off again. “Travis is a fast learner,” Ben said.

“Yes,” I said, and started to move back toward the door to the roof.

“Hold on,” Ben said, “I haven’t forgotten that promise.”

“I haven’t either,” I said. “I just want to be able to watch for Leonard, and for Jerry, the guy who comes up here to smoke. I don’t want to spill my guts for everybody on staff. I need to be able to see the door.”

I could see that he was irritated, but he went along with it. Before long, he was dogging my heels. I’ll own up to sauntering. I was in no hurry to have this conversation.

“Christ, Irene,” Ben said, passing me by. “I’m missing the last half of my left leg, and I’m going to reach that door first.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said, “you’ve been working out. And I read that stuff you had about the Paralympics — someone wearing one of those Flex-Foot feet was within four seconds of beating one of Carl Lewis’s records.”

“My upper-body strength is much better than before the surgery,” he admitted, “but I don’t run every day like you do. Besides, much as you might want me to leap tall buildings at a single, artificial bound, we don’t all get to be Super Amp, you know.”

“Super Amp or not, you’re nowhere near your full potential, and you know it,” I said. “It hasn’t been so long, you know.”

“I know,” he said, and stopped. He made a little gentlemanly bow when I caught up to him, and said, “After you. Delay all you like. It will not work.”

I reached a corner and stopped. “Okay. I can see the door from here.”

“Sure you don’t want to go and open it?” Ben asked. “Maybe the smoker is on the other side with a parabolic mike.”

“Look,” I said, “you want to hear the unvarnished truth? I’m not anxious to relive that morning with Parrish. Sometimes I think if I ever see his face again . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence, because the door to the roof opened.

“Shit,” Ben said. “I guess you were right about that nicotine fit.”

But even with the blond hair, even from a distance, even in the darkness, I knew who had come out onto the roof.

It wasn’t Jerry or Leonard.

I pulled Ben back around the corner, nearly throwing him off balance.

“What the—”

I put my hand over his mouth. “Parrish!” I whispered. “Run!”

He looked at me in panic and said, “Where?”

Good question.

58

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1:35 A.M.

The Roof of the Wrigley Building

“Back this way!” I whispered, and we quickly ran into the dark and narrow maze of rooftop structures, turning another corner, and another, then hiding behind the air conditioner.

I hoped that Parrish would venture out to the more open end of the roof, so that we could get back to the door.

We heard noises, but it was hard to tell where they were coming from.

“We should split up,” Ben said. “There’s only one of him. He can’t chase both of us.”

“Unless he brought his helper.” I saw a ladder on a nearby wall, one used for access to the flagpoles. “Wait here,” I said. I scurried over to the ladder, climbed up as far as I dared and cautiously peered down into the little alley we had just traveled. Past our alley, but not far away from its entrance, I saw a strange sight, one that took me a moment to comprehend: a single light moving slowly, bobbing several feet above the ground. Then I realized what it was — Parrish had a camper’s headlamp on, a flashlight that would allow him to keep his hands free for — for things I didn’t want to think about.

I watched just long enough to determine one thing, then hurried back to Ben.

“He’s alone, as far as I can tell. He’s bound to come down this alley any minute. But I don’t think we should split up until we have to.”

“Okay,” he whispered.

Then the cell phone rang, shrill and loud. It might as well have sent an electric shock through me.

I swore and fumbled to answer it. It rang a second time and Ben took off running again. I could understand his desire to distance himself from a woman who was wearing a homing device for Parrish.

“Whoever you are,” I said into the phone as I ran in the opposite direction, “call the police!”

“Irene?” a man’s voice said. Familiar, but who was it?

I turned a corner, heard footsteps. I ducked down another narrow alleyway and ran like hell. “Goddamn it, whoever you are, hang up and call the police. Tell them Nick Parrish is on the roof of the Express.”

“This is Phil Newly, I’m—”

“Shit!” I said, and hung up.

Wonderful. Satan’s minion now knew where to find his boss.

Parrish’s headlamp appeared at the other end of the alley.

I turned another corner.

Dead end.

Okay, I thought, okay. Use the cell phone. Call 911, and even if you’re dead, maybe they’ll get here in time to save Ben.

I called, wondering which police department I’d reach. But the call was routed to the Las Piernas Police.

“Nick Parrish is on the rooftop of the Wrigley Building—”

“Hey, Nicky, you Mama’s boy!” Ben called. “Come and get me!”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said weakly. “On the rooftop of the Express. Send help!”

I hung up again. I moved forward, not sure what I’d find. No sign of Parrish. No sign of Ben.

I turned the phone on one more time, pressed the programmed button for “Stinger@FE.”

I made the call as I continued my way back out of the dead-end alley. “Fremont Enterprises,” a sleepy voice answered.

“Pappy?” I whispered.

“Have to speak up,” he said.

“Tell Travis and Stinger to come back to the roof,” I said and hung up, because I had just seen Ben run past the opening to the alley, and Parrish was not far behind.

I ran until I reached the opening, turned in the direction they had gone, and shouted at the top of my lungs, “Nick Parrish, you little weasel, I can’t believe you fell for that dumb trick!”

I heard a small thud, and a light came from behind me. I whirled to see him standing not three feet away from me, grinning. He was standing next to another ladder. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster. That wasn’t his weapon of choice, obviously — in his right hand, he was holding a knife with a long, thin blade.

“I didn’t fall for any tricks,” he said, moving the knife in a lazy figure eight. “You, on the other hand, were stupid enough to run right past me without looking up.”

I backed up a few steps.

“You want to run?” he said, holding up the knife. “Of course you do. Especially now that I’ve killed your little crippled friend.”

“You haven’t killed him,” I said, hoping I was right.

“How do you know?”

“No gunshot, no blood on you or your knife. As usual, you’re full of shit.”

“I don’t think you’re so certain he’s alive. Call his name. See if he answers.”

“You aren’t going to get me to be the one to help you find him.”

“I’ll find him. He can’t move as fast you can.”

“Shows what you know. I don’t think you can catch him.”

“Oh, I can. Just as I caught his girlfriend, who completely lost her head over me. She was lovely. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to see his tears when he saw the Ice Dancer this morning.”

“Wrong again, Nicky. He wasn’t upset at all. She was his ex, don’t forget. He really didn’t give a rat’s ass.”

“Maybe that’s because he’s been boning you behind your husband’s back.”

Don’t let him get to you, I told myself. Keep him distracted. Let Ben get away.

“Something out of your fantasies, Nicky? Or were you just trying to upset me? You’ll have to do better. Of course, you don’t know anything about friendships or genuine relationships, do you? You can’t have sex with anyone unless you hold them at knifepoint, right? What woman in her right mind would want to get it on with you voluntarily?”

He laughed and lifted the knife. “If I wasn’t going to enjoy your screams so much, I’d start by cutting out that tongue of yours. Maybe I’ll start there, anyway.”

He lunged and I leapt back, instinctively putting my hands out in front of me. I still held the cell phone.

“What?” He laughed. “You’ll call the police? They’ll never reach you in time. And you may rest assured that no one is coming up those stairs to the roof anytime soon. I’ve blocked the door to the stairwell, and even if they manage to push past that, I’ve secured the door to the roof from this side. A rather sturdy locking bar. Do you travel?”

The question was so unexpected, I didn’t answer.

“Every airline magazine advertises these little gems,” he said. “Something to supposedly keep you safe in your hotel room. This one is for industrial use. I’ve found it very handy on other occasions.”

I tried to think of any other access to or from the roof. Only one side of the building adjoined any other buildings; a row of shops that were three stories tall.

“I have the only key,” Parrish was saying. “You and Dr. Sheridan are my captives, you see. The locking bar won’t hold forever, but it will give me all the time I need.”

“You don’t have as much time as you think you do,” I said.

“Then let’s make the most of it. Remember our little game in the mountains? Start running, Irene.”

I took two steps, pivoted toward him, and hurled the cell phone with all my might. The phone didn’t weigh much, but I hit the target, which was gleaming right at me and not more than ten feet away from me — his headlamp. He yelped and seemed stunned, which was fine by me. I took off running again without waiting to see if I had done any other damage.

I might not have done so well in the mountains, I told myself, but here it would be different. No altitude, exhaustion, or dehydration to slow me down. I was wearing running shoes, not hiking boots. The surface was flat and relatively free of obstacles. On the downside, I was running in a cage.

I thought of ducking into the room with the light panel for the landing pad, but I decided I’d be better off knowing where he was, and remaining free to move. One dark row of rooftop structures led to another, and every time I turned a corner, I was afraid I’d meet up with him.

Where was Ben?

I heard a helicopter approaching, then the sound of sirens wailing.

Suddenly it dawned on me that if Travis and Stinger landed again, they’d be in danger of being shot — or shot down by Parrish. Now I really needed to know where he was, and to warn them away. Where could I make sure they could see me, though, and not make a bull’s-eye out of myself?

I headed for the flagpoles.

I climbed the ladder cautiously, but quickly, afraid I’d meet Parrish at the top or have him come at me from below.

To my relief, there was no one else up on this highest of the structures. I was about another twenty or thirty feet above the roof. I heard a sound below me, and saw that Ben was coming this way.

I took my eyes off Ben’s progress when I saw the helicopter coming closer. Not knowing the official signals to get a helicopter to turn away, I made the universal shooing motion with my arms extended over my head, shook my head no and made a double thumbs-down motion. I even tried to pantomime a gun being shot at them. Some part of this bad mime show must have gotten through to them, though, because they pulled away, hovering higher, and to one side of the building. They didn’t completely leave the area, though, and I was afraid Parrish still might shoot them.

I saw Ben’s head at the top of the ladder and hurried over to him. “Get away!” he suddenly shouted, and seemed to lose his footing. He was grasping the top of the ladder, bent over the ledge at the waist, apparently straining to pull himself up.

I ignored his warning and ran closer. I peered over the edge and saw that Parrish, coming up the ladder behind him, had yanked Ben’s right leg from the ladder and was trying to pull him off.

Parrish was not far from me, but now he had hold of both of Ben’s legs with his right arm. His left hand grasped the ladder railing. He began trying to twist Ben off the ladder. I bent over the edge, holding the ladder rail and keeping most of my weight on the ledge. I grabbed Ben’s belt, trying to counteract Parrish’s twisting motion. The blood was rushing to my head, but with our combined resistance, Parrish wasn’t making any progress.

Parrish moved up another rung, so that his face was inches away from mine.

“Now I have both of you. One hard tug, and over you go. Not bad for a panty rustler, eh?” He lurched up and licked my face.

I let go of Ben’s belt and punched Nick Parrish hard in the nose. It started bleeding like crazy, and for a moment, he loosened his grip on Ben. Ben found a ladder rung with his right leg, while Parrish screamed at me in rage. I took advantage of what I hoped was a moment of near blindness for Parrish and reached for his gun in the shoulder holster. Now he did let go of Ben with his right hand, but not fast enough. I cleared the gun from the holster. He grasped my wrist hard, though, and I let the gun fall to the rooftop below.

He started to try to pull me over. Ben, who had stepped up a little higher, landed a mule kick in Parrish’s groin area with his Flex-Foot; he apparently missed the nuts but not the squirrel, because Parrish grunted and let go of my wrist but didn’t fall. Parrish quickly made a grab at Ben’s legs again, but only managed to get a grasp on the prosthesis that had so recently wounded him. I grabbed the socket end of it, trying to pull Ben up, even as Ben held on to the top rung for dear life, kicking at Parrish’s left arm.

There was a bright light above us, and noise and wind; the helicopter was overhead. I couldn’t see them, but knew they could not get too close to us — there were too many poles and wires and other objects up on this part of the roof. The flags were snapping loudly, and the cables beat out a ringing alarm.

“To the left!” I shouted up at Ben, not knowing if he could hear — whether he did or not, he aimed his next kick better, coming down hard on Parrish’s left arm.

Parrish lost his grip and nearly fell, but held on to the Flex-Foot as he tried to find his own footing. He managed to get his feet back on a rung midway up the ladder. Ben had moved his right leg up higher, out of reach, and was trying to pull himself up while Parrish kept all his weight on Ben’s left leg. Still holding the Flex-Foot with his left hand, he grinned and suddenly let go of Ben with his right, swinging free. But instead of reaching for the ladder, he took hold of his knife.

“I’ll make a double amputee out of him,” Parrish said, his bloody nose making his speech sound odd. “But maybe I’ll cut your fingers off first.”

Involuntarily flexing my fingers, I felt a metal button beneath them. The locking pin release. I pressed it.

I heard a click and watched Parrish’s bloodied face register a look of horror as the socket and Flex-Foot separated.

He made wild, futile stabs at the air as he fell backward onto the rooftop with a thumping crack.

He didn’t move after that.

59

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1:55 A.M.

Las Piernas

Ben pulled himself up onto the ledge. I sat up, dizzy after hanging upside down. We were both winded.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “You?”

“Yes. Sorry about your foot.”

“It’s probably okay. But after all that work to get up here, hell if I’m going back down there to find out if it’s damaged.”

“I think someone will bring it to you,” I said, pointing to where the helicopter was landing.

At the same time, we heard a loud bang that made us jump — the SWAT team had made its way through the door to the roof. In no time at all, Parrish was surrounded. When he didn’t move, they edged toward him.

“Irene!”

I turned from the scene directly below to that best-loved voice. Frank was stepping out of the helicopter, running toward us.

I waved and yelled, “We’re okay!”

His face broke into a big smile and he ran faster.

Three members of the SWAT team made it up the ladder before Frank did.

“We’re okay,” Ben told them. “Is Parrish dead?”

“No,” one said, “but damned close to it. Looks like he broke his neck. We’re going to take him over to St. Anne’s. It’s just down the street.”

Frank came up the ladder, carrying Ben’s Flex-Foot.

“Thought you might need this,” he said, handing it to him.

“Thanks,” Ben said. “I was wondering how I was going to get down from here without it.” He looked it over and decided that although it was a little scraped up, it wasn’t badly damaged.

“I don’t think my cell phone fared as well,” I said. When I told him how I’d used it, Frank laughed and took me in his arms. “Parrish just didn’t know what he was up against, did he?” But he was holding me tight, as if needing to reassure himself that I was okay. I held him, too. It felt good, the safest I had felt in a long time.

“Oh!” I said, coming out of that spell of comfort. “I just remembered something! Phil Newly called me, and it was forwarded from my desk to the cell phone. Can you find the number from the cell phone records?”

“No need to,” Frank said. “Newly called us.”

“The police?”

“Yes. That’s how I found out you were here. Newly said he tried calling you, and you told him you were up here with Nick Parrish and were scared and asking for the police.”

“Where has he been?”

“He said he’s been hiding. He’s been afraid of Parrish. He said after you got those bones and roses, he knew that Parrish was back in the area, and he took off. He rented a beach house down the coast, didn’t even tell his sister how to get in touch with him. He heard the news reports tonight and decided to come home.”

“So why call me?”

“He was expecting a hostile reaction from the police, and he thought you might help him meet with me before things got out of hand. I didn’t tell him that you were the one that kept insisting we check him out. He’s hired a defense attorney of his own, but agreed to meet with us tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You found a bloody circular saw and more at his house, right?”

“Right.”

“And those leg bones in the roses might have been cut with a saw, right, Ben?”

“Right.”

“I met with Phil, and that same night the bones showed up on our doorstep. If he left after he heard about the bones, he left after they were worked on in his garage. If he’s innocent, he must also be deaf — because he must not have noticed an awfully loud noise in his garage. Not to mention missing the peculiar sight of a bloody workbench while he was pulling his car out.”

“Not necessarily,” Ben said. “You’re relying on news reports based on secondhand sources.”

“Ben Sheridan—”

“No, I’m not trying to start a fight about the media. Frank, you were in Newly’s garage and saw it with your own eyes. Was the workbench bloody?”

“Yes.”

“If there was any blood, it probably came from Camille’s body.” He looked away for a moment, then said, “Or perhaps from the Jane Doe in the trash container. No matter what, that blood did not come from the Oregon woman’s femurs.”

“Wait a minute—” I protested.

“He’s right,” Frank said. “In general, dead bodies don’t bleed, because the heart isn’t pumping. You can drain blood from a body shortly after death, but the Oregon women were killed several weeks ago. Parrish removed the receptionist’s legs where he left the bodies — a long way from Phil Newly’s house.”

“I examined those femurs,” Ben said. “They weren’t sawed when the bodies were fresh.”

“So you think he’s innocent?” I asked.

“I’m not saying he’s guilty or innocent,” Frank said. “So far, we haven’t found any fragments at Newly’s house that were an obvious match to the femurs. But we haven’t even had a dozen hours to look around. Newly isn’t in the clear. You don’t find this kind of evidence without raising questions about the owner of the house. Newly still has lots of explaining to do.”

When we got down from the ladder, I saw a familiar figure standing away from all the action, looking dejected. I walked over to him.

“Leonard? What’s wrong?”

“I let you down,” he said, glancing nervously at Frank, and then down at his shiny black shoes. “He pulled the oldest trick in the book on me, and I fell for it.”

“What are you talking about?”

He sighed all the way from those shoes and said, “Parrish. Started a trash-can fire on the loading dock. When I went to investigate, he must have gone up the stairs.”

“Any losses from the fire?”

He shook his head.

“Well, then, that’s good, right?”

“I told you I wouldn’t let him in here, and I did.”

“He’s been slipping past the whole department for months,” Frank said, causing Leonard to look up at him. “No one would expect a lone officer to be able to stop him.”

I formally introduced them then, and Frank went on to thank Leonard. “Knowing you were keeping an eye on things made me feel a lot better about her being here at night.”

“It did?” Leonard asked, then quickly added, “I do my best, sir.”

“All anyone asks,” Frank said.

“Lone officer?” I said later, when Leonard had strutted his way out of earshot.

“I was afraid he was going to throw himself over that railing.”

Once John Walters vented his anger over our wild chase on the rooftop occurring after deadline, he asked me to write a story for a special morning edition. I agreed to do it, over the protests of my entourage of protectors, because I wanted to prove to Wrigley that I wasn’t going to be denied a place on A-1 just because he gave me post-deadline hours.

Frank, Ben, Travis, and Stinger refused to let me stay alone in the newsroom. Jack came over with a bottle of champagne and in spite of Leonard’s warnings about explicit company rules forbidding alcohol on the premises (“I am not here, I am not seeing this,” he said), we drank a toast to good friends, present and remembered. John joined us.

Parrish, we learned by taking a look at security tapes, had come into the building from the loading docks, wearing a baseball cap, carrying a toolbox, and moving purposefully past men who were caught up in the problem of delivering papers that were coming off the presses late. He started the fire near another camera, so that Leonard would be certain to see it.

I learned that he then spent some time making sure that it was going to be damned difficult for anyone to follow us up to the roof. He had barricaded the final interior doorway to the roof access stairs and put a heavy-duty locking bar on the door to the roof itself.

I called the hospital for an update. Nicholas Parrish was in critical condition with severe injuries, especially to his head and neck. If he died, I wondered if anyone other than his helper would mourn his passing.

“Ben,” Travis asked, “with all of his weight on your prosthesis, why didn’t the whole socket just pull off sooner?”

“It’s held on by suction,” he explained. “Unless I roll it off, it’s not coming off. For obvious reasons, the socket is designed to stay on until I want to take it off. Which, to be honest, I’d love to do as soon as possible.”

I filed the story and we left. Stinger stayed with Jack, Travis slept on the couch, Ben in the guest room with Bingle.

Frank and I didn’t sleep much at first, but not because of nightmares. There was some drive in both of us that Dr. Robinson probably has some fancy name for, a syndrome or something, but we didn’t need to name it. We had to be a little quieter than usual with such a houseful, but that was no big deal — we had already learned on a previous occasion that Bingle felt inclined to raise an alarm when he heard certain noises issuing from behind a bedroom door.

“I wonder if that’s what first earned him the name Bocazo?” I asked Frank now.

“Who knows?” Frank said, concentrating on other matters. We slept just fine after that.

But the next morning, I awakened with an unwelcome idea in my head, a suspicion I despised and yet no matter how I tried, I could not rid myself of it.

“Frank,” I finally said, “I have a terrible favor to ask of you.”

60

WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON,

SEPTEMBER 27

Las Piernas

The staff at St. Anne’s had been wary of me at first. After all, I was the person who had put their patient here. But they had been reading about their patient for several months now, and knew who he was, so that when, after two hours, I had not tried to suffocate him, I began to overhear remarks about my amazing capacity for forgiveness.

A mistaken diagnosis if I’ve ever heard one.

I held a copy of Parzival, but I wasn’t reading it. I was thinking about a search that was carried out that morning.

It hadn’t taken me as long to convince Frank of my ideas as it had taken me to convince myself. While Frank made some calls, and Travis made breakfast, I scanned videotapes of Bingle and David working with their SAR group. I found what I was looking for, and showed it to Frank, which resulted in a few more calls. I made one of my own.

Ben woke up and joined us for breakfast; I asked him what time he had to teach his first class.

“I have a lab at two o’clock, but Ellen might be able to cover it if you need my help. What’s up?”

“Frank received a report about a house where remains may be hidden. Can you bring Bingle?”

“Yes, of course. But we should have more than one dog to confirm it.”

“Can you get Bool’s new owner to join you?”

“I can try.”

“If he can do it, here’s the address where you’ll meet.”

“You aren’t coming with us?”

“No, I have to be somewhere else this morning.”

I could see that he wanted to ask more questions, but he seemed to sense my mood, and held off. He called Ellen Raice, and the bloodhound handler. This second call took a while, and when he hung up, he was smiling.

“What?” I asked.

“He said he’s been meaning to call me. He thinks he may have been wrong before, and that Bool does miss ‘that obstreperous shepherd’ after all. He’s having second thoughts about keeping him.”

“Something tells me you’ve missed Bool, too.”

“I have,” he said. “In a lot of ways he’s just a big silly dog, but he’s very affectionate. A great tracker, too. David always said, ‘If it’s there to be found, then Bool will find it.’ This handler said he’d teach me how to work with Bool if I wanted him back.”

Frank called me at the hospital to say that the initial search with the dogs had been successful, and that they’d probably do a more thorough search that afternoon.

“One other thing,” he said. “As soon as Ben gets the dogs settled in together, he’s going to be coming by to see you there.”

“He’s upset?”

“Yes. I told him it was up to you to tell him what was going on.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

He laughed. “I’ll come by as soon as I can.”

“What are you doing here?” Ben half-shouted at me when he came into the ICU room where I sat next to Parrish.

“Lower your voice, Ben,” I said. “They’ll think you wish to harm poor little Nicky here.”

“I do! I want to unplug the bastard!”

I sighed and closed the book. “You, Ben, are far more merciful than I am.”

“Merciful?!”

“Think about it. He’s trapped in the ultimate prison.”

Ben’s look of rage changed in an instant. He looked at Parrish and said, “He’ll live?”

“Yes, it seems he will. He won’t be able to move, or speak. They think he can hear and understand us, and he can open his eyes. He makes gurgling noises every once in a while. I like to think he’s trying to say something.”

“You like to . . .”

“Yes. Cruel of me, isn’t it? I’m a little surprised at myself. Maybe someday I’ll stop being angry at him for what he’s done, and, like you, I’ll wish him dead.”

He took a seat, studied me. “You won’t convince me that you’re here to gloat.”

“No,” I said. “But as long as I have to be sitting next to him, I find I don’t mind saying terribly mean things to him.”

Parrish made a gurgling sound. Ben, hearing it, made a face.

“Awful,” I agreed.

“Why are you here?” Ben asked again.

“I’m waiting for somebody.”

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Irene—”

He was distracted by a slightly different sound from Parrish, a sort of a humming noise.

“What do you suppose he’s trying to say?” Ben asked, looking at him warily.

I set the book down, stood up, and looked into Parrish’s eyes. “What was it, Nicky?”

“Mmmaaah.”

“Maybe he’s calling for his mommy,” I said, and sat down again.

Ben stared at me, then said, “Have you thought of calling Jo Robinson?”

I laughed. “I’ll probably need a long session with her later. But don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt Nicky or anyone else.”

“Do you mind if I wait here with you?” he asked.

“No, at least — well, no, not at all. Mr. Nick’s conversational abilities are rather limited.”

Ben glanced at him, then said, “I wanted to have that conversation we keep putting off, but I don’t want to talk about it in front of him.”

“What’s he going to do about it?” I said wearily. “Fantasize? Let him. He’s finally in a condition where it’s safe for him to do so.”

“Irene—”

“Sorry, Ben,” I said. “I’m feeling a little cynical today. Let me ask you about something else entirely — if you don’t mind talking about this in front of Nick, here.”

“What?”

“You said that David sometimes talked about—” I glanced at Parrish, and amended what I was going to say. “You said that he rarely talked about certain aspects of his childhood.”

“That’s right,” he said, a little stiffly.

“Except to others who might have experienced the same thing.”

“Right.” He glanced toward Parrish.

“Did David ever tell you the names of people he talked to?”

“No. He would talk to me in general terms, or tell me about someone without mentioning a name. He felt that while . . . such a background should not be a source of shame, he worked hard to gain their trust, and so he would not betray their confidences. He had this ability to identify people who might have been through similar things, but David approached people gently, slowly. He didn’t push them to tell him things. He earned their trust first.”

He paused, then asked, “Why do you want to know about people he talked to?”

“I’m trying to understand someone I know,” I said. “But maybe I won’t ever be able to do that.”

“You are in a cynical mood.”

“Sorry, yes I am. Started when I woke up thinking of a song by the Boomtown Rats called, ‘I Don’t Like Mondays.’ Do you know it?”

“Yes.” He sang a little bit of the chorus.

“Exactly. It triggered a memory. The inspiration for that song was a shooting in San Carlos — that’s in the San Diego area. A sixteen-year-old girl named Brenda Spencer decided to point a rifle at a schoolyard and embark on a sniping marathon. This was in 1979, when it wasn’t so common for shots to be fired in elementary schoolyards.”

“Definitely cynical. I do remember this story, though. She fired from inside her house toward the school for several hours, right?”

“Yes. And during that time, she killed two people and wounded nine others. When they asked her why, she said, ‘I don’t like Mondays.’ ”

“Jesus.”

“She said, ‘I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.’ ”

“And this song reminded you of something else?”

“Yes,” I said. “I like the song. Lots of people do. But it was written in the year of the shootings — a couple of decades ago, now. So until recently, it had been a long time since I had heard it.”

He was about to say something when the officer outside the door stepped in and said, “Ms. Kelly? You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be — thanks,” I said. “Ben, I’m going to have to ask you to wait in the other room with Frank.”

“Frank’s here?” he asked, looking around.

“Yes. Don’t worry. You’ll be able to hear everything we say,” I said, and reached behind my back.

“You’re wearing a wire?” he asked in disbelief. “I’m not sure I—”

“Please, Ben,” I said, “Frank can fill you in on everything.”

He folded his arms.

The officer’s radio crackled.

“Now or never, Mrs. Harriman,” he said.

Ben didn’t budge.

“Ben, if you trust me at all, get out of here now.”

Reluctantly, he left with the officer.

I flipped a switch, gave my name, the date, time, location and said that Nick Parrish was present.

Parrish made his “Mmmaaah” sound.

I looked outside the glass wall toward the nurses’ station. A person who was dressed exactly like a nurse but who wasn’t taking care of any patients nodded to me. In another room, the reel-to-reel was turning. In my mind, wheels that had been whirling all day kept right on spinning.

The elevator door opened.

61

WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON,

SEPTEMBER 27

Las Piernas

I wiped my palms.

She approached cautiously, tentatively. She was dressed in a business-style woman’s suit, the skirt at the most conservative length I had ever seen her wear. She carried a stylish leather handbag. I couldn’t rid myself of the notion that she looked like a child playing at being a grown-up.

There was the slightest sign of surprise on her face when she saw me, but then she came into the room. “Hello, Irene.”

“Hello, Gillian.”

“I — I’m relieved to see you here, Irene. I’m a little afraid to be in here alone with him.”

“Why come at all, then?”

“I had to.” She looked back at me. “Did they search your purse when you came in here?”

“Yes,” I said. “They’ve searched everyone.”

“Why?”

“Someone might want to harm him. At this point, they’re letting God get all the vengeance.”

“Not just God — you, too. I heard about what you did.”

I tried not to let that unnerve me.

“Maybe you’ll think I’m some kind of freak for saying this,” she went on, “but I had to see him. I had to see the man who did those things to my mother. Four years, I’ve waited.”

“But you’ve seen him before,” I said.

Her eyes widened a little.

“He was your neighbor, right?”

“Yes,” she said, creeping closer to the bed. “But that was a long time ago.” She leaned over, and looked into his eyes.

“Mmmaaah,” Parrish said. She turned white and shrank back from the bed.

“Here,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulders, “have a seat. He’s not so scary once you get used to him — although I imagine he looks very different from the last time you saw him.”

“Yes.”

“About four years ago?” I ventured.

“No — yes. I mean, no, longer than that.”

“Strange. Jason thought you saw him when he showed up to stalk your mom.”

“What?”

“You know, the night you were baby-sitting, and Parrish’s car was outside the house?”

“Jason said that? You can’t believe anything that kid says.” She shook her head. “It’s sad.”

I thought it was sad that I hadn’t believed every word Jason told me about his sister, but I said, “Oh, wait, now I remember — he said there was a car, but you went outside and couldn’t find it.”

She shrugged. “Not that I remember.”

“You know, I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you again, anyway,” I said, moving between her and the door. “I thought you might help Ben Sheridan with his dog.”

“The man who lost his leg, you mean?”

“Come on, now, Gillian, you know more about him than just that fact. You had contacted him about your mother’s case.”

“Did I? I contacted so many people. I don’t remember. You said something about helping him with his dog?” she asked uneasily. “What dog?”

“Oh, you know this dog really well — Bingle. He used to be David Niles’s dog.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I saw some interesting videotape this morning. You went out with the SAR group he worked with, right? I saw you on the tapes, talking to David, learning to work with Bingle.”

“Yes,” she said, “I thought maybe if I could learn to work with cadaver dogs, I could go out on searches for my mother.”

“Your dedication to finding her was so inspiring,” I said, and tried a small bluff. “Learning about forensic anthropology, and cadaver dogs, and even talking to Andy Stewart about how botanists can find unmarked graves.”

“Like you said, I wanted to find her.”

“Mmmaaah,” Parrish said again.

“What do you think he’s saying?” I asked.

She shook her head mutely, but those blue eyes were wide, frightened.

“They think he’ll be able to talk again in a few days,” I lied.

“They do?”

“Yes.” Bigger bluff. “A neurologist was just in here, saying he’s improving by the hour. That’s why I’m waiting here. I’ll have a question for him when he can talk.”

“You will?” Gillian asked.

“Yes. About something he said to me not long before he fell. This has been on my mind all morning, and I can’t wait for him to come around so that I can ask him about it.”

“What?”

“You remember that article Frank showed you when we visited you at your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a great apartment, over a garage. On — what street is it?”

“Loma, near Eighth,” she said, staring at Parrish again.

“I think Ben was over that way, earlier today — a search exercise with Bingle. Anyway, about that underwear story—”

“It was so funny,” she said, giggling a little.

Parrish made a gurgling noise.

“You remember it that well?” I asked.

“Sure. It wasn’t that long.” She recited it almost word for word.

“Amazing. You know, it never ran in the Express.”

“No?”

“No. That’s why I was so surprised when Nick here quoted some of it to me last night. How could he have known what was in that column, if he never saw it?”

Gillian finally looked away from Parrish. “It must have been someone else — that lawyer they were looking for—”

I shook my head. “You, Gillian. You.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said quickly. “Why would I have anything to do with Nick Parrish?”

“I don’t know the answer to that. But then again, maybe I do. Maybe I should have listened to what Jason said about that, too. That you’re cold. That you genuinely hated your mother.”

She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. The look in her eyes was one of pure malice. “Nicholas Parrish said this, Jason said that. You say you never showed that article to anyone else, but I don’t believe you.”

“They’ve searched the garage beneath your apartment, Gillian. Frank got a warrant. The dogs were there while you were at work this morning. Even before they went inside, Bingle and Bool and a bloodhound named Beau were alerting to the presence of remains.”

She went back to looking afraid.

“They were right, of course,” I said. “There were remains there. Pieces that match up with the femurs of the woman from Oregon.”

“Femurs?”

“Leg bones.”

“You mean Nicholas Parrish had the nerve to use my own garage—”

“You won’t be able to bluster your way out of this,” I said. “They found your toolbox.”

“What toolbox?”

“The one the dogs refused to bother with when commanded to search for Nicholas Parrish’s scent. You were at the SAR training sessions, so you know how this works. Two bloodhounds were given one of Nicky’s dirty socks, then asked to find him. They alerted all over your garage, even up in your apartment. But they weren’t interested in the toolbox. The one that has the helicopter drain plugs in it — the plugs with your fingerprints all over them.”

She started crying.

“If I thought those tears were for anyone other than yourself, I might be moved by them. Your own mother, Gillian!”

“You don’t understand!” she said.

“God knows I want to!” I said. “You’ve got a reason? Just let me know it.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“My own father never believed me, why should you?”

I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

“Your father,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully, “doesn’t like unpleasantness, does he?”

“Unpleasantness?” she mocked. “No, he doesn’t like to know about anything that’s unpleasant. And my mother controlled him. She tried to control everyone. Jason, my dad — but not me — you understand? Not me! She tried — and tried — and tried — but I won! I did.”

“How did she try?”

“How do you think?” she sneered.

I didn’t answer.

“You think this is the first time I’ve been in this place?” she asked. “You should ask my dad about how ‘accident prone’ I was before Jason was born.”

“But I thought hospitals—”

She gave me a pitying look. “Maybe it was all the time my mother spent chairing the Las Piernas General Hospital Auxiliary — you think? We didn’t come to St. Anne’s very often, but I knew what a nun was before I was five, and we sure as shit weren’t Catholics.”

“So you weren’t always treated by the same doctor?”

Her lips curved into a cold smile. “You’d be surprised how far we had to drive sometimes to get to a hospital.”

“Jason didn’t know about it?”

“I’m not really close to my little brother, you know? I mean, we didn’t have the same childhood — get it? He wasn’t around for the scaldings, the fall down the stairs, things like that. I don’t remember all of it. I was little. After Jason came along, she learned to work it so that I didn’t have to see doctors — didn’t leave marks. He just heard what she said — ‘Gillian’s bad. Gillian disobeys. Gillian’s out of control.’ Out of her control, all right.”

“If you were—”

“If. You see? Why believe me, right?”

“I was going to say, if you were a friend of David’s—”

“I wasn’t, all right? I just wanted to learn about the dogs. What has that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, I’m sorry to say. So your father never saw her mistreat you?” I asked.

“Oh no. She was careful about that.”

“And he wouldn’t believe you?”

“No.” She smiled again. “He said he didn’t.”

“Mmmmaah,” came a sound from the bed.

“Nick Parrish believed you, didn’t he?” I asked.

She nodded, looking over at him again. “Same thing happened in his house when he was a kid. Except his old lady went after him, left his little sister alone.”

“So you went down to Mr. Parrish’s house and told him what was happening?”

She shook her head.

“No?”

“No. I really didn’t know him then. It wasn’t until later, when I saw him watching the house. He remembered my mother, because she looked like his mom, but she was too young. He came back to see her when she was a little older.”

“Mmmmaah!” he said.

“He was so good to me. And he had such . . . such power! He understood me. I knew it from the first time I saw him watching the house — before that night Jason told you about. I saw him. I was the only one who had ever been smart enough to see him before he knew he was being watched. No one had ever been able to sneak up on him. He was impressed.”

“Mmmaaah,” he said again.

“He was ready to make his move to fame. I helped him. It was exciting.”

All day, in my thoughts of her, I had tried to see her as she was, not the way I wanted her to be. Not to see her as the victim she had been in my mind for so many years, but as the killer’s helper. “How could she lend her aid to him?” I had asked myself again and again, thinking of Parrish’s victims, their grieving families and friends — not just her own mother, but her younger brother among them. That she had been abused might explain her anger toward Julia and a great deal more, but with that one phrase, “it was exciting,” she once again became alien to me. Whatever pity I felt for the child she had been, the young woman was someone I could not begin to truly understand.

I stepped back from her.

“How did you help him?” I asked.

“I told him where she was going that afternoon.”

“And you were there when he killed her?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t let me watch that one. But he showed me photos, later, after he saw that I was worthy.”

“Worthy?” She didn’t seem to hear or care about my revulsion.

“He’s never had another disciple,” she said proudly. “I’m the first. I told him I would make sure the world would know about him.”

“With my unwitting help,” I said bitterly.

“He made the plans, of course, but who would have known about him without me? I was the one who kept everyone afraid, who made them want to go to the mountains.”

“So that we could see the trophies of his kills.”

“You never would have known about him if we hadn’t planned for you to write about my mother’s death, would you?”

“Maybe not,” I said, suddenly tired.

“That’s why he buried her in her own place. I’ve seen it.”

“What on earth would attract you to someone like him? Knowing what he was capable of doing—”

“Exactly! I knew what he was capable of. I could see his power. Even now — can’t you see? He will get stronger. He’ll be back. That’s what he’s trying to tell me. That I’m his moth, that the flame still burns.”

“You’re a moth? I guess you are. Moths are blinded by their fascinations, right? They fly too close to the flame, right? You’re burning now and you can’t even smell the smoke on your wings.”

“You’ll regret saying that someday,” she said.

“He’s not going to get better, Gillian. That was a lie. He’s going to spend the rest of his life like this.”

“No! You’re lying now!”

“I think you know I’m not. Look at him. He’s empty,” I said. “Just like you are.”

She stared at him in horror.

“You can’t empathize with anyone, can you? Of all the things your mother destroyed in you—”

“Who cares?” she said. “I take care of myself.”

“All that time, I thought you were being stoic — you aren’t stoic, you’re heartless.”

“Whatever.” She lowered her head on to her hands. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“You can’t pity anyone, can you? Not even him.”

She bent over, and I thought perhaps she really wasn’t feeling well. But then she calmly reached beneath her skirt in a most unladylike fashion and removed a revolver. She stood as she pointed it straight at me. If she heard the commotion outside the room, where one gun after another was suddenly being trained on her, she gave no sign of it.

“Am I the one who misled you?” I asked. “Or did the all-powerful Nicky?”

“Mmmaah!”

She spun toward Parrish. I tackled her from behind. We went sprawling onto the floor, crashing into chairs. The gun went off, a deafening sound that kept me from hearing anything for a moment.

We were in a dog pile within seconds — and someone in a uniform had wrestled the gun away from her.

The air was full of the smell of gunpowder, and I felt a strong pair of hands helping me to my feet.

“Are you all right?” Frank asked.

“Yes.”

I heard someone reading her rights to her. I turned to look. As they marched her off to the elevator, she looked back at me. She gave me that same pleading stare that had haunted me for four years.

The one that had fooled me for four years.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” Ben said, walking up to us.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t blame yourself.”

I didn’t answer — a woman officer came into the room just then to take the wire off me. She started telling me what a great job I had done; Frank, watching my face, told her — in his polite way — to hurry up and take the equipment and leave me alone.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked when she left.

I nodded.

“How about you, Ben?” he asked.

“Not so great at the moment,” he said.

“One of us is lying,” I said. “I think it’s me.”

Parrish gurgled.

I walked over and looked down into his face. His eyes were bright with something like laughter.

“Don’t take too much joy in that, Nicky. I’ll get over whatever is bothering me.”

His face twitched.

“Ten years from now, when you’re still staring at the ceiling, wishing you were dead — or maybe just wishing someone would come in and scratch your nose for you — I want you to remember what I did on behalf of your victims. I saved your life.”

“Mmmaah! Mmmaaaahh!”

“So long, Nicky. I hope you live to be a hundred.”

62

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, MIDNIGHT

The Roof of the Wrigley Building

Three weeks later, I was up on the roof of the Express at midnight, looking out at the city. I was still working part-time, odd hours. I had canceled several of my appointments with Jo Robinson and told John not to hassle Wrigley about changing my hours.

I liked the slow shifts, I told him. They weren’t really slow; I had a lot to catch up on.

That was true — but I never seemed to get around to catching up.

There was a restlessness in me. I found myself looking at the travel section instead of reading my mail. I started looking at real estate ads, too. I wondered if I could talk Frank into moving somewhere else, doing something else for a living.

Frank would listen to my suggestions, say, “That’s a possibility, but maybe this isn’t a good time to make that kind of decision.”

I don’t like to think of what might have happened to me in those weeks if I hadn’t been married to Frank Harriman. He didn’t push or nag; he spoiled me rotten. I guess I needed a little spoiling. With him, I felt as if there were no secrets that couldn’t be told, no fears that couldn’t be voiced. There were evenings of confiding in him; they kept me from losing whatever balance I had.

The days consisted of routines of avoidance. I knew I couldn’t continue treading on the surface of life, knew that I needed to dive back in. Easy to say.

Up on the roof that night, the autumn breezes were warm. “Mild Santa Ana conditions,” the weather forecasters called it. That meant that the smog was blown away by desert winds, the days were a little too hot, but most people wouldn’t feel as crazy as a true red wind would make them. It meant the view was better than usual. I could see Catalina, the distant lights of Avalon.

I should go back down to my desk and work, I thought, taking another long pull from my water bottle. But that would mean being indoors. Didn’t want to be indoors, not just yet.

I heard the access door open and tensed. Probably just Jerry or Livy, maybe Leonard. Jerry and Leonard always greeted me with the same joke — each would say that he was just making sure I hadn’t jumped. Livy never said that, but I think she was more certain that I wouldn’t end up on the pavement in front of the building. Not my style. I refuse to do anything that will force anyone else to use a hose to clean up my departure.

Tonight’s visitor to my aerie rounded the corner — I was surprised to see Ben Sheridan.

“Up late, Professor?” I said when he came nearer.

“Up high. Mind if we move a little farther away from the edge?”

“Not at all. Come have a seat at Café Kelly. We no longer feature helicopter floor shows, but the water is fine.”

“Sounds good to me.”

We sat down and propped our feet up, both original and replacement models.

“You owe me something,” he said, taking a drink of water.

“I haven’t forgotten. If you really want to hear it, I’ll tell it.”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

So I told him what had happened in the mountains that morning, when Parrish had threatened Bingle and shoved my face into the mud, and chased me through the woods.

“My God,” he said when I had finished. “Jesus, I wish I could have helped you. I feel terrible about it. If you hadn’t been worrying about keeping him away from me, you wouldn’t have even been near him. And I know you were worn out because of—”

“Stop it! If you want the truth, that’s the reason I never told you about what Parrish did that morning. I knew you’d feel this ridiculous sense of guilt, as if you could have done anything about it, as if it were your fault that it happened, instead of Parrish’s.”

“Oh?” he said. “You mean, I’d feel the way you do about my having to undergo an amputation?”

I was dumbfounded. “I don’t feel that way,” I said at last.

“Bullshit. You hide it better than you did at first, but you still blame yourself.”

I started to deny it, then changed my mind and rushed headlong into the fray. “As a matter of fact, I do! Talk about shielding! You know it’s my fault.”

“What? I know no such thing. I know Parrish shot me. I painted that bull’s-eye on myself, as I recall — in fact, I distinctly remember that you called out to me, tried to prevent me from running into that meadow.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “But who took forever to find you out there? Who didn’t know how to properly care for the wound? Who didn’t give you enough Keflex?”

He stared at me incredulously and said, “Keflex?”

“Don’t try to lie to me! At the hospital, they said that was the drug they were giving you to try to stop the infection. Only it was too late. And the whole time, I had Earl’s pills, and if I had given you more—”

“Wait! Do you mean — do you think — don’t tell me that you’ve spent all these months believing that!”

“It’s true,” I said.

“Irene, the bullet damaged the artery. That’s why they amputated. Not because of infection.”

“But they gave you—”

“Yes, they gave me something to fight the infection, but do me a favor and ask Dr. Riley to tell you what sort of intravenous megadose of that drug they were talking about. That infection was beyond anything that could be stopped by tablet form doses. Earl’s entire prescription couldn’t have stopped it.”

“Then why did you bother taking any of it?”

He looked pointedly at his left leg and said, “You do what you can with what you have.”

I couldn’t speak.

“As for getting to me in time, we both know you did the safe, smart thing and waited until Parrish was gone.”

“But maybe I could have—”

“Irene! You damned idiot! Listen to yourself.”

I shut up.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you reveal to me now that you have a medical degree, that you had surgical tools in your backpack, and that we were actually very close to a sterile operating room up there in the mountains, I will start heaping blame upon you for not saving my leg. Otherwise, stop feeling bad about your role in all of this. You’re the person who allowed me to keep my life, not the person who caused me to lose part of my leg.”

I felt tears rolling down my face. “God damn,” I said, wiping them away. “I never used to do this. I really hate it.”

“Are you saying that so I’ll know you’re more macho than I am?”

“What?”

“You’ve seen me cry.”

“You went through a lot.”

He laughed. “Just me, and all by myself, right?”

“No, but—”

He made a T of his hands — the “time out” sign.

“Yes?”

“We, the jury, find the defendant, Irene Kelly, not guilty. Not guilty for trusting that Gillian Sayre was telling her the truth. Not guilty in the matter of the deaths of her friends and companions. Not guilty in the loss of Ben Sheridan’s leg. Not guilty for any other thing that went wrong because she was human, or didn’t know everything that could possibly be known about the universe and its inhabitants.”

I blew my nose.

“Thank you, your honor,” he said. “Court is adjourned. You are now free to forgive yourself.”

I went back to Jo Robinson, and I told her that I knew what was wrong with me. I stopped fighting the process of taking a look at my way of thinking about things, and before long, I was back at work and not seeing her anymore. Just as I was starting to enjoy it.

Gillian Sayre is still awaiting trial. Phil Newly, cleared of all suspicion, once toyed with the idea of defending her, but decided to stick with his retirement plan. Lately he has sent e-mail to me about once a week, telling me about his new life. He says he might do a little pro bono work now and then, but is enjoying the slower pace.

Jason Sayre sends e-mail, too. He’s living with his grandmother. He likes to write to me, he says, because Jack and I are the only ones who will talk to him about what happened. Jack, who has all but asked if he can adopt him, visits him fairly often; they still talk on the tin telephone.

Giles Sayre sold his business and moved with his new wife to a town not far from the one where Jason lives, but seldom visits his son.

Jim Houghton came back to Las Piernas. He had been spending time with a retired airplane mechanic who had taught Nicholas Parrish how to fly and repair small planes. Using information the older man gave him about Nick Parrish’s favorite places to fly, Houghton discovered where Nicholas Parrish had buried his sister. It was not far from a desert airstrip. The body was not alone. The recovery and identification of the other remains is slowed by concerns for worker safety. There has been a renewed interest in missing persons cases in towns where Parrish once lived.

After giving police information on the location of the graves, Houghton came by to apologize to me. I told him that it wasn’t necessary, that I had stood trial in the same courtroom he had himself in, and that all charges had been dropped against both of us. We talked for a long time, and I gave him Jo Robinson’s card. I don’t know if he ever called her.

Nicholas Parrish remains at St. Anne’s, although the district attorney, who looked over the original deal and decided a guilty plea and life imprisonment might be fine after all, is looking into the possibility of having a judge rule on the matter, and moving Parrish to a state prison hospital. If not, and if there is a trial, I know some people who will testify against the defendant.

Frank and I bought Ben’s Jeep when he decided David’s pickup was better suited to his needs. The Jeep is big enough to hold the two of us and the dogs and camping gear.

Sometimes we go camping alone; sometimes with Pete and Rachel, or Tom Cassidy and other old friends. Quite often J.C., Andy, Jack, Stinger, and Travis join us up in the mountains. Ben comes along, too, with Anna, his new girlfriend, a woman he met on the SAR team. We all liked her from the start; she doesn’t have any difficulty fitting into our chaotic camping style. She has two dogs of her own. Camping with Stinger Dalton and six big, rowdy dogs is always chaotic.

Bingle still leads the pack.

He still barks.

I still insist on sleeping with the tent flap open.

But we all sleep through the night.

Notes and Acknowledgments

While the southern Sierra Nevada mountains include many meadows, ridges, and other features that may resemble those in this book, the landscape in Bones is fictional, as are the ranger station and other settings.

Readers who are interested in the tale of Parzival will find it beautifully retold in Katherine Paterson’s Parzival: The Quest of the Grail Knight, or may prefer to read Professor A. T. Hatto’s scholarly introduction and translation of the full work by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival.

Several forensic anthropologists took time from their hectic schedules to answer my questions and to comment on the manuscript. I’m especially grateful to Paul Sledzik, Curator of the Anatomical Collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; Marilyn London, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and Forensic Anthropology Consultant to the Rhode Island Office of Medical Examiners; Diane France, Director, Human Identification Laboratory, Colorado State University; and William Haglund, former Chief Medical Investigator, King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Seattle, Washington, Senior Forensic Consultant for the United Nations Criminal Tribunals, and Director of the Forensic Program for Physicians for Human Rights.

Bingle and Boolean were inspired by several real cadaver dogs, whose trainers and handlers were extremely generous with their time and help. Many thanks to Dr. Ed David, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maine and the trainer and handler of Wraith and Shadow, Maine’s two cadaver/crime scene dogs; Beth Barkley, SAR/cadaver dog trainer and handler of Sirius, Czar, and Jadzia; the handlers and dogs of Search Services America — Mike and Kelly, Eileen and Reilly, Ross and Maverick, George and Smoky, Blair and Thor; Deputy Al Nelson, bloodhound handler and trainer, Jefferson County (Colorado) Sheriff’s Department and member of NecroSearch. Additional dog information came from Linda McDermott, Chair of the K-9 Unit of the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club, and Orbin Pratt, DVM.

My thanks to Vaughn Askue, who has more than thirty years of experience as a pilot and Technical Support Manager for Sikorsky Helicopters; Deputy David Kitchings, Pilot, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Aero Bureau; Dave Nalle, Assistant Captain, Kernville Helitack; Ranger Judy Schutza, Kernville Station, U.S. Forest Service; Nick Agosta, TNG Helicopter Company; and Noelani Mars, Professional Helicopter Pilots Association. I’m grateful to Hal Higdon, senior writer, Runner’s World and Benji Durden, Olympic marathoner, for their helpful suggestions regarding the effects of altitude, terrain, and other factors during Irene’s run through the mountains. Thanks also to Dr. Ed Dohring and Dr. Michael Strauss, orthopedic surgeons; Dr. Marvin Zamost; Joan Dilley; Wayne Reynardson, list owner of AMP-L, and the members of that list; Todd Cignetti; Flex-Foot, Inc., especially Jeff Gerber; David Barnhart, C.P.O.; Michael Pavelski, C.P.O; Mary Kay Razo, school psychologist; Dale Carter, Latin Blood Books, Professor Emeritus of Spanish at California State University, Los Angeles; Steve Burr; Debbie Arrington; Sharon Weissman; Tonya Pearsley; Sandra Cvar; and Dr. Christine Padesky and Dr. Kathleen Mooney of the Padesky Center for Cognitive Therapy — friends who responded quickly and enthusiastically when I told them Irene needed therapy.

My family and friends have been supportive as always, and I again thank my agent and my publisher’s hardworking sales reps.

I am deeply indebted to my editors, Laurie Bernstein and Marysue Rucci, for their perceptive comments and many hours of work on the manuscript.

Carolyn Reidy, thank you for your kind words of encouragement.

As for my husband, Tim Burke — I’m having holy cards printed.