Nothing but the Night

1

Warm Indian-summer night.

Kind of night he’d always liked, best kind for long drives. Window rolled down. Breeze cool against the side of his face. Engine humming, tires whispering a sort of bluesy accompaniment to the golden oldies playing on the radio. Highway and night both clear, sharp in every detail, lights from passing cars and trucks like distant spokes of fire in the dark. Good feeling strong in him. Hope, determination. Wasn’t just driving from somewhere to nowhere, picking through straws in the world’s biggest haystack; he felt close to the needle, getting closer all the time. Keep hunting, keep the faith. Keep reminding himself everything ended sooner or later and what he was really doing was going home one mile at a time, one day at a time, the long way around.

Home. Annalisa.

“Earth Angel” on the radio now. Annalisa.

Tires whispering fast and sweet, like her breath in his ear. Annalisa... Annalisa... Annalisa...

He saw her face like he sometimes did, right there on the windshield glass. Skin smooth and white as the inside of a shell, eyes a cool green like deep water, hair soft and yellow like corn silk. A surge of feeling went through him, so sudden, so hot, it was like fire. He gripped the wheel tight, clenched his teeth and jaw, until it eased and he felt cool again.

God, he missed her! Times like this, love and hurt and need flaring up all at once, he wanted to take the quickest route back to Denver. Just see her again for a few minutes, touch her face and hair, hold her hand. Look into her eyes and tell her everything would be all right, he’d make it all right. More than once he’d started for home, only to shift routes again before he’d done more than a couple of hours’ driving. Other times he’d stopped at pay phones, called Mom and Pop Foster to find out how she was. Never called the hospital, they’d just say she was too sick to take calls, have visitors. Better to just write her regular like he did, call Mom and Pop now and then. Better to keep moving, keep hunting.

Hard, though. Real hard sometimes. Writing his letters, three or four a month, and knowing it might be a long time before she’d be able to read them. But he had to do it. When she got better, she’d want to know all the places he’d been, the kinds of jobs he’d worked, that he’d never given up even for a minute. So he kept writing and sending the letters to Mom and Pop for safekeeping. Each envelope marked Personal and Private, even though they’d promised they wouldn’t open them and he knew they’d keep their promise. Good people, the Fosters. How could Annalisa’s folks be anything else?

Truck stop coming up. He saw the neon sign ahead, scatter of big rigs in the floodlit lot. Getting low on gas, better fill the tank. Gnaw of hunger in his belly, too. He hadn’t eaten anything but a bag of M&Ms, his last bag, since the early dinner in Eureka.

He took the next freeway exit, came back on the frontage road. Gas first — and when he’d paid for it, he had a little over two hundred left in his wallet. About time to stop somewhere again and work for a while. Start looking tomorrow, maybe, depending on where tonight led him. By the weekend, latest.

Café was like a thousand others he’d eaten and worked in: crowded, noisy, too hot in spite of the ceiling fans, heavy with the smells of fried food and sweaty bodies. Truckers, mostly, at the counter and in the booths. Same breed as him. Long haul, short haul, big rigs and small — he’d driven them all, back in Denver and on the road since he’d left. Night riders, too, a lot of them, used to driving the dark highways, comfortable with it, even craving it. He’d get back into steady trucking when he finally went home. His old job at Miller Freight Lines. Sam Miller understood why he’d quit, would make a place for him when he came back.

He found an empty stool at the counter. Harried waitress got around to him, he ordered coffee and the breakfast special — eggs, sausage, hot-cakes — and then showed her the sketch. She glanced at it, at him again. Shook her head and moved off.

Guy sitting on his left was big and bearded, tattoos on his arms and a Giants cap pushed back off his forehead. Nick caught the guy’s eye, said, “How you doing?” and made a little road talk before he showed him the sketch. “Ever see this man?” he asked. “Anywhere, anytime?”

Giants fan squinted; plucked the square of laminated plastic from Nick’s fingers, and squinted some more. “Not too clear.”

“Clear enough. Good likeness.”

“You draw it?”

“No. Artist.” Police artist, but he never said that.

“Looks pretty old.”

“Just worn.”

“That why you had it sealed in plastic?”

“That’s why. Familiar to you?”

“Can’t say he is. Friend of yours?”

“No.”

“Relative?”

“No. Guy I’m trying to find.”

“How come? He owe you money?”

Nick shook his head, tucked the sketch into his shirt pocket.

“So how come you’re looking for him?” Giants fan asked.

Answer was on his tongue, as hot and bitter as the coffee the waitress had set in front of him. He had to tighten his lips, turn his head away to keep the words from slipping out. He’d never said them to anyone, not even Annalisa. Only one he’d ever say them to was the son of a bitch in the sketch.

2

Warm Indian-summer night.

And here sits Cameron Gallagher, he thought, master of the manor, lord of all he surveys. Object of envy on this fine end-of-October night: successful businessman, happily married to the same woman for thirteen years, two smart and pretty daughters, few debts, enough money to afford playthings like the brand-new custom Skagit cruiser, Paloma Wine Systems such a thriving concern he’d had to hire three new employees this year, for a total now of twenty-two. Sitting here in the tree-shaded privacy of his half-acre backyard behind his $400,000 luxury home, gin and tonic in hand (Bombay gin, nothing but the best), wife by his side, kids happily tossing a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee on the lawn. Oh yes, old Cam Gallagher had it all. Realized the American dream at the tender age of thirty-five.

That was the general consensus, no doubt. The ones who knew differently were the ones who mattered: Hallie, at least some of the time. And Caitlin — or maybe she bought the trappings and the image, too. And himself. The truth was why he had three gin and tonic tonics inside him, the fourth in his hand, and a fifth on his mind. Why he suffered recurring nightmares, bouts of depression, and headaches occasionally so severe they brought on short-term blackouts. Why he’d spent a quarter of a century in the offices of child psychologists, psychoanalysts, and specialists in neurasthenic and manic-depressive disorders. Why he sometimes felt — as he felt tonight — that if he wasn’t very, very careful, someday he would come apart at the seams.

The truth was Rose Adams Gallagher. Paul Gallagher, too, but the old man had been only a supporting player, not the lead actor in this long-running drama, even though he’d been the one who had turned it from cheap soap opera into high tragedy. Good old Ma. The prettiest girl in Los Alegres — somebody’d written that next to her photo in her high school yearbook. Not so pretty, though, when he’d been growing up. Not so full of sugar and spice and everything nice. And not pretty at all that last terrible night at the river house—

Don’t go there, Gallagher. Better stay the hell away from there if you want to sleep tonight.

He wondered if he were feeling sorry for himself. Self-pity wasn’t one of his flaws, usually; he disliked Cam Gallagher far more than he pitied him. No, it was his family he felt sorry for. Hallie most of all. The girls were young, resilient, and they had been protected from birth; never been told about his past, and wouldn’t be until they were adults. The one vow he’d made and been able, for the most part, to keep was that his children would not grow up in the kind of household he and Caitlin had been subjected to in their early years. Still, kids were sensitive, and they couldn’t help but intuit his problems, feel some of their effects. They deserved a better father than he could ever be.

Hallie deserved a far better husband. How she’d managed to stand in the firing line of his hang-ups and neuroses over the past thirteen years and remain supportive, upbeat, hopeful, was beyond him. Not a saint but a rock. Babied him when he needed it, kicked his sorry butt when he needed it, played all the right roles at the right time in the right way, or at least tried to — friend, lover, confidante. She was the glue holding him together. As long as he had Hallie and his kids, he felt he might be able to hang in for the long haul. Win his private Armageddon, in Dr. Beloit’s cute little phrase.

But it had taken its toll on her. She wasn’t as high-spirited or easygoing as she’d once been, or as happy as she should be. There was premature gray in her ash-blond hair that she covered with a rinse, premature age lines in her fine-boned face. And she had developed an alcohol dependency of her own that only a strong effort of will (he knew this without them ever having discussed it) prevented from getting out of hand.

He hated what he’d done to her. Had fought to keep it from happening, to control the dark side of himself, and failed as often as he succeeded. His worst brooding fear was that someday he’d drive her past the point of no return; that she’d leave him, take Leah and Shannon with her, and then he’d have nothing, then his demons really would destroy him.

He glanced at her beside him. At ease tonight, as she should always be, smiling her quirky little smile as she watched the girls at their game. Still as slim and sexy as the day they’d met at the Paloma Valley Wine Festival. Still the most attractive woman he’d ever set eyes on. The ache that built inside him as he looked at her was love and desire and compassion and guilt and sadness and something close to prayer, even though he was not a particularly religious man.

Hallie felt his gaze, turned her head to give him a quizzical look. “What?”

“Nothing. Just looking at you.”

“Wondering what you see in me?”

“On the contrary. Thinking how much I love you.”

“Well, that’s nice.” Then she said, “Ah.”

“What does ‘ah’ mean?”

“I can read your mind.” Her smile had become teasing, but her gaze was tender. She liked hearing him say he loved her; it was reassuring to her, too. “Must be the gin.”

“I haven’t had that much. Besides, you’re the one who gets horny on gin.”

“Shh, not so loud. Me and Dorothy Parker.”

“Who?”

“You remember. ‘I cannot drink martinis / Only one or two at the most. / After three I’m under the table / After four I’m under mine host.’”

He laughed. But he was serious when he said, “I do love you, Hallie. You know that.”

“Of course I know it.” She ran the tips of her fingers across the tendons in his wrist.

Leah let out a squeal from the lawn, the indignant kind that meant sibling conflict. “Mom! Shannon’s trying to hurt me!”

“Am not.” From the oldest. Twelve going on twenty.

“Are too. You threw it too hard. Look at my knee, it’s bleeding.”

“It’s not bleeding, you big baby.”

“It is. Dork! You made it bleed.”

“I’d better referee this,” Hallie said. “It’s past their bedtime anyway.”

He nodded and watched her move away across the flagstones. Watched the tight roll and sway of her hips, then finished the last third of his drink at a swallow. He lifted himself out of the patio chair, went into the house to make the fifth gin and tonic even though he didn’t really want it.

Peace had been restored when he came back outside; now the girls were united in their usual nightly complaint against bed. Hallie said, “No more arguments,” and shooed them inside. “I’m coming in in fifteen minutes. You’d better be in bed with the lights off, both of you.”

That was all it took. She seldom had any trouble reining them in, getting them to obey her. The opposite was true when he was the parent in charge. Always an ongoing hassle; they ran roughshod over him every time. Too soft, too permissive, too eager to be a good dad. Once it had been a small bone of contention between Hallie and him, though she knew as well as he did where it came from. Now she didn’t argue about it, just used her own firm hand when the situation called for it.

She glanced at his full glass as she sat down beside him. Didn’t say anything, but he could tell from her expression that she wished he wouldn’t drink anymore tonight. Irritation moved through him; he had to struggle to keep his mouth shut, not to become confrontational for no reason. Verbal abuse was as wounding as physical abuse — he knew that well enough. He’d never lifted a hand against Hallie, but too often he’d lifted his goddamn tongue.

God, he thought, I don’t want to hurt her anymore. Then why can’t I stop doing it? Why do I keep finding new ways, new excuses?

Hallie said, “What’re you thinking?”

“Thinking? Why?”

“Big frown there. Something bothering you?”

“No.”

“Sure? You’ve been on the quiet side tonight.”

“Minor problem at PWS that keeps nagging at me.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not tonight. It’s not important.”

Liar. The problem wasn’t minor, and if he let it, it could become damned important. But Hallie couldn’t help him with this one. She was the last person he could talk to about this one.

He sipped his drink. The gin was suddenly sour in his mouth. He set the glass down, pushed it away.

“Why don’t we go to bed?” he said.

“It’s only nine o’clock.”

“Bed,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Aha, I knew it. Bed.” She rumpled her thick hair with both hands, lifting the strands slowly and letting them fall — a gesture he’d always found sensual, that she knew he found sensual. “Well, gee, I don’t know—”

“Not enough gin, Dorothy?”

“More than enough, mine host. Okay, let’s go and tuck the girls in, and then you can have your way with me.”

He let her go first, again watching the play of her hips beneath the white shorts. He wanted her as much as ever; the stirring in his loins proved it. Wanted her, loved her, needed her. Nothing had changed. Thirteen faithful years, a couple of close calls but the specter of Rose had been better than a dozen cold showers, and now all of a sudden, this very minute—

Images of Jenna Bailey in his mind.

Lust for Jenna Bailey in his heart.

And a part of him — the dark, perverse part — yearning to be on his way to make love to Jenna Bailey instead of his wife.

3

Back in the car and driving again.

Only place where he felt safe and secure, completely in control. Been that way for him since Pa had first let him drive the old Ford pickup off the farm when he was, what, fourteen? Twenty years of wheels good and bad since then. ’Fifty-six Chevy Impala with a dumped front end and mag rims and a shimmy so bad above sixty he’d never dared open her up. ’Eighty-two Ford Taurus, real piece of crap, but that’d been his last year in the army and he’d been short on money. ’Sixty-five Pontiac GTO, candy-apple red, four-banger engine, sweet-and-mean driving machine. Half a dozen more recent models, all Detroit products except the ’94 Mazda wrapped around him now like a metal-and-leather cocoon. He didn’t like the Mazda much, but when the Plymouth died on him a while back — four months? six? — the Mazda was all he’d been able to afford. Not a bad choice, really. Good gas mileage, upward of thirty mpg on the highway, and he’d never had any trouble with it, knock wood.

He’d been a night rider from the first, too. That was what they called people like him, people who functioned better in darkness than daylight, in and out of their cars. People who preferred their own company, the tight confines of their cars or trucks, to open rooms, open spaces. He’d read an article about it once. Guy he knew called him a night rider, he’d never heard the term, so he’d gone to the library and looked it up. Some psychologist quoted in the article said night riders used their vehicles the way others used books or movies or hobbies, as ways of escape from the tensions and pressures of everyday living. Said that by insulating themselves in their cars they created an illusion of invulnerability that for short periods allowed them to hold their personal problems at bay, exercise the same control over their lives and destinies as they had over their modes of transportation. Psychologist’s exact words. Nick remembered them even after all these years.

Made sense to him, gist of it anyhow. Night riding made him feel he was capable of doing things that seemed out of reach in the daylight. And it’d saved him from cracking up after what happened to Annalisa, kept him going since.

One thing that hadn’t been in the article was the sheer pleasure you got from night riding. Even made him hot sometimes, on warm, sweet-smelling nights, like that first time he’d made love with Annalisa. Major highways, two-laners, backcountry roads, unpaved mountain tracks — didn’t matter which kind, only that he was part of a missile like a huge lighted cock splitting the night, holding it apart as if it were two black thighs, penetrating it, taking it for his own.

First date he’d had with Annalisa, he’d tried to explain some of that to her. Not the cock part, the way night riding made him feel. Two months free of Fort Huachuca’s motor pool, back in Denver with a brand-new job at Miller Freight Lines, met her when he stopped in at Pop Foster’s grocery store and finally talked her into going out with him, two of them in his car heading up to Boulder to this club he knew about — and she put her head back and laughed when he told her about night riding. Hadn’t bothered him. God, no. Hearing her laugh like that, with her head back and her throat so long and white, that was when he knew for sure he was in love with her. That very second.

So he’d said all right, I’ll prove it to you. And he had. Started that night, and before long she wasn’t only convinced, she was a night rider herself. Some of the rides they’d taken together... man! Before and after they were married. Just one of the things he loved about her. Not only her becoming a night rider like him, her being willing to try new things, accept him for what he was and join right in, no complaints or hassles or attempts to change him.

Annalisa, Annalisa... tires murmuring her name again in the light-spattered dark. Tears in his eyes all of a sudden. All the memories, and wanting to be with her so much he could hardly stand the loneliness.

Someday it’ll be the way it used to be, he thought, and said the one word, “Someday,” out loud. New nights, thousands of new nights, Nick and Annalisa rushing through the darkness together, safe and secure in the one place where nobody nobody nobody could ever hurt them again.

4

In the darkness of their bedroom, Hallie’s arms and legs wrapped tightly around him, her breath hot and moist in his ear, she whispered, “Cam, oh... jockey... jockey...”

He felt the muscles in his back stiffen. It was the only thing, with slight variations, that she ever said to him while they were making love. She uttered sounds, little moans and purrs, and he could always tell when she had an orgasm by the long, low, sighing hum that came from her throat. But she was not a bed talker. No urgings, no endearments, no love or sex words of any kind. She never even said his name except as part of that damn jockey reference.

An old blues refrain, she’d told him once, long ago. A product of her college days at Long Beach State, like the Dorothy Parker verse she’d quoted earlier, except that this one hadn’t been learned in either a classroom or polite company. It sounded African American to him, its roots in Storyville or Chicago’s South Side jazz clubs, but she’d said no, she’d never had a black lover. It didn’t matter to him, one way or the other, any more than it mattered that she hadn’t been a virgin the first time they slept together. How many women of twenty-one were inexperienced in the mid-eighties, after all? The first time she sang the little blues refrain to him, at some now-forgotten point between their first sexual encounter and their marriage a few months later, he’d found it funny. So she’d sung it again, off and on when they were in bed, and somehow, somewhere during the past thirteen years, it had evolved into a shorthand signal whenever he was too excited or too distracted or too tired to pay proper attention to her needs and his pacing. Slow down, Cam, don’t be in such a hurry. Make it last, make it good for both of us. But she’d never say those words, just come right out and tell him to slow down, make it last. She’d never say, Don’t go so fast, honey. She’d never say, Quit humping like Brer Rabbit. All she’d ever say was—

“Jockey... jockey, Cam...”

Tonight the words were like a worm wriggling through his pleasure, spoiling it by degrees. They made him feel as though he wasn’t a husband or a lover but somebody who was providing an impersonal service, like a TV repairman or a carpet cleaner or a plumber hired to flush out the pipes. The Cameron Gallagher Stud Service. Good enough down the middle, but the poor dolt still had to be coaxed into easin’ round the side.

Well, the hell with that tonight. He increased rather than slowed his rhythm, climaxed almost immediately, and heard, instead of the long, low, sighing hum, a disappointed little whimper of protest. Bad Cam. Bad jockey that couldn’t learn how to ride.

Usually he remained joined with her for a while afterward, to rest and cuddle, but not this time; he lifted away from her, flopped over on his back. She didn’t try to hold him. Didn’t have anything to say, either. Waiting for him to apologize for his bad ride. How many jockeys at Bay Meadows or Tanforan issued apologies? How many plumbers said they were sorry for one of their bad screws?

He lay staring into the darkness. And as his breathing gentled, so did his thoughts — and he began to feel ashamed of himself. Selfish and petty. It wasn’t Hallie’s fault. Stupid, cruel to blame her. The jockey thing, all the rest of what he’d been thinking, just an excuse to go ahead and do what the nasty, perverse part of him wanted to do — have an affair with Jenna Bailey.

He moved close to her again, touched her hand, and whispered, “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight.”

“It’s all right,” she said, but her tone said she was hurt. She had a right to be hurt. Another wound, another empty apology. “Let’s not talk, okay? Let’s just go to sleep.”

She put on her nightgown, rolled away to the far side of the bed. And he lay there, wide awake, trying to shut down the furious swirl of his thoughts. It was as if there was a cancer growing inside him, a genetic cancer of the soul. Rose’s Blight. Old Ma Melanoma. He’d been trying to deny it for twenty-five years, one of his last pathetic conceits, and all the while it had been metastasizing until now he could see it for exactly what it was. You can’t deny what you can look straight in its pestilent eye.

Cameron Gallagher was his mother’s son. Or would be if he went to bed with Jenna Bailey.

Terminally.

5

Highway sign ahead:

Names were vaguely familiar. Been here before? Probably. Wasn’t much of California he hadn’t covered, except for the northern and eastern mountain areas where not too many people lived. He’d get to them, too, sooner or later.

Late now. Or early. Four A.M, give or take a few minutes. He knew that because of the way the darkness looked. Gotten so he could judge the subtle differences in the night sky — positions of moon and stars on clear nights, but he could read cloudy nights just as well. Never been off by more than half an hour. Another good thing about being a night rider.

Santa Rosa, Los Alegres — towns somewhere north of San Francisco. Not too far, fifty or sixty miles. Keep on going into the city, it’d be first light by the time he found a place to sleep, Golden Gate Park or out along the beach. He remembered Frisco, all right. Not a good place for daylight sleeping in your car. Cops were liable to hassle you. Or kids, homeless people, junkies, street punks. Besides, he’d given the city a pretty thorough canvass the last time. Job he’d had just before he went there, driving for a supply outfit near Sacramento, paid well, and he’d had enough cash to rent a room for a week in a South of Market fleabag. Hadn’t bought him a thing. Half the people he showed the sketch to wouldn’t even look at it. Big cities were all like that, even Denver. Seemed like nobody wanted to help, nobody cared — they all had too many troubles of their own.

He couldn’t remember anything about Santa Rosa or Los Alegres, so maybe he’d missed them. So many towns... you just couldn’t cover them all or keep track of them all. Easier in the beginning, when it’d just been the Denver area and then the rest of Colorado. But the farther he traveled, the more he went back to recanvass territory he’d gone over before, the harder it got. Hard to remember, even, all the towns he’d covered the last time through Colorado. Sometimes it seemed he’d been in most of the cities and towns and wide spots west of the Rockies, but he knew that couldn’t be right. Half, maybe, and maybe a lot less than half. So many had the same name or ones that sounded the same — how could anybody keep them all straight in his head?

Getting tired. Better put an end to this ride pretty soon. Motels along the highway here — Motel 8 up there on the right — but he couldn’t afford to waste any of the cash he had left on a motel. Homeless shelter or rescue mission or a few hours in the car, and he’d pretty much given up on shelters and missions for overnight stays. Took time to find one, usually the beds were all full, and anyway he didn’t like the atmosphere. Despair and hopelessness hung and crawled in every one. He wasn’t homeless, that was the thing. Not the way the others in those places were. Didn’t have a steady job or the apartment in Aurora anymore, but he did have Mom and Pop Foster’s house to stay in when he went home. And Annalisa to go home to. Options and a future — hardly anybody in the shelters and missions had either one.

Exit coming up. Find a park or country road or shopping center with a spread-out parking lot, some quiet place where he could hole up for a few hours without being hassled. Then he’d see what tomorrow, a new day, had in store for him.

He flipped on his turn signal, swung into the far lane and then the exit lane. Not thinking anymore by then. Just driving and looking for a place to sleep.

6

Cam’s first incoming call at the office Thursday morning was from Jenna.

Strictly business, he warned himself when he heard her voice. Keep it that way even if she doesn’t. He said, “Good morning, Jenna. How’re things at Fenwood Creek?”

“Just fine. You sound a little flat this morning, Cam. Anything wrong?”

“Not a thing,” he lied. “I’m still trying to jump-start the day.”

“You mean the drive over from Los Alegres doesn’t do it for you?”

“Most days. What can I do for you?”

“Any number of things,” she said. The dual meaning was plain enough and no doubt intentional; she had never made any secret of her attraction to him or her availability. No pretense, no b.s. — that was Jenna. He let the comment pass, waiting, and at length she said, “Right now I’ll settle for an update on our BATF federal label approvals.”

“We should have them by now. I’ll check with Maureen.”

“I can hold, or do you want to call back?”

“Better let me call you back.”

“I’ll be here. Don’t take too long.”

He cradled the receiver, went out and down the hall to Maureen Stannard’s office. Maureen, fifty, quiet and efficient, was both a friend and his good right hand. She’d been the first person he hired when he started Paloma Wine Systems eight years ago. Now she supervised most of the company’s compliance services, domestic and foreign, for three dozen of the Paloma, Napa, and Alexander Valleys’ wineries — business licensing, label registration, price posting, sales solicitor permits, federal label approvals, vintage and price changes. Her supervision allowed him to concentrate on the marketing and distributing end.

The BATF approval for Fenwood Creek’s new labels was just in; Maureen said a copy would go out to Jenna later today. Then, “Why didn’t she call me about it? Or did you and the lady have something else to discuss?”

“That was all she wanted.”

“No other kind of approval?”

“I don’t... what does that mean?”

“Do I really have to explain it to you?”

“No, but you can explain why you don’t like Jenna.”

“The same reason I don’t like mountain lions.”

“Is that what you think she is? Predatory?”

“Give her half a chance,” Maureen said, “she’ll eat you alive and purr like hell afterward.”

“Come on, she’s not like that.”

“Isn’t she?”

“No. Anyway, I don’t intend to let her get close enough to find out.”

Maureen gave him a slantwise look over the top of her glasses. “I hope not,” she said.

He went to the men’s room to take a couple of Advil, then returned to his desk and sat staring out through the window at the vineyards stretching away behind the office and warehouse buildings. Is it that obvious? he thought. Horns sprouting already? Three drop-in visits from Jenna this month, the lunch last week, half a dozen phone calls — it had the look and feel of a budding affair, all right, especially to someone as perceptive as Maureen. But Maureen knew him well enough to know that he loved his wife, didn’t have a roving eye, and didn’t play around — that he hadn’t succumbed yet. Reacting to vibes from Jenna, misinterpreting them as predatory, and warning him off.

Still, he wondered if Maureen knew something about Fenwood Creek’s product manager that he didn’t know. Rumor, gossip... she lived in the Paloma Valley, was hooked in to the upper echelons of local society. But for that matter, so was he, by the nature of the business. Wine was the valley’s lifeblood, and he was privy to just about everything that went on in or was connected with the industry, whether he wanted to be or not. He’d heard nothing particularly negative about Jenna in the three years she’d been here. Sure, she liked men and was reputed to have had several affairs, including one with Toby Charbonneau, heir apparent to the Charbonneau Cellars combine and “a hard-on lugging a man around with it,” as a Charbonneau sales rep had once characterized him. Cam played golf with Toby once a month; if there had been anything predatory about her, Toby would’ve related it. He was anything but reticent about the good and bad points of his conquests.

The hell with it, Cam thought. The problem here isn’t Maureen’s, or even Jenna’s. It’s mine.

He wondered if he ought to make an appointment to see Beloit again. Dr. Randolph Beloit, M.D., Paloma County’s preeminent psychoanalyst. It had been seven months since his last session, and before that his visits had been sporadic for nearly a year. Too many demands on his time — that was the official excuse. But the fact was, the good doctor rubbed him the wrong way. Aloof, supercilious, secure in his own importance. Beloit had helped him for a while, but there was only so much insight and direction a shrink could provide. Point of diminishing returns. Now, though, he might be a worthwhile option again. Who else but Beloit could he talk to about Jenna?

What he really wanted to do was to get away. From work, from temptation, from everybody and everything except Hallie. Just the two of them on a two- or three-week cruise on the Hallie Too. The twenty-seven-foot Skagit Orca XLC he’d bought new in April was specifically designed for the rugged waters of the Pacific; the shakedown cruise he and Hallie and the girls had taken to San Diego in June had been one of the best times he’d ever had. He’d always enjoyed boating; it had been Uncle Frank’s favorite pastime, so he’d grown up around small boats, owned two himself before the Hallie Too. But they’d been runabouts, and he’d never gone farther in them than San Francisco Bay. Ocean cruising was a whole new exciting world. There was something about being out at sea, alone except for the people he loved, no pressures or outside influences, that opened him up and cleaned him out and filled him back up with peace and well-being. Nightmare and memory hadn’t bothered him out there. Rose and his other demons were landlocked.

But a cruise now was out of the question. Wrong time of year for ocean travel in a small boat, especially with the weather an iffy proposition these days; and one of the busiest times for PWS, with the fall harvest just over and announcements and promotion for new releases, increased sales and distribution for the upcoming holiday season. Hallie was committed to her volunteer work at the senior center, too. And they could neither take Leah and Shannon out of school nor turn them over to somebody else for a lengthy supervision; Aunt Ida was too old and crotchety and unreliable, and asking the Edmondses or any of their other friends was too much of an imposition. He’d have to be content, as long as the weather cooperated, with weekend day trips down to the Bay and out through the Gate. Any extended cruising would have to wait until next spring at the earliest, and probably until well into the summer if El Niño produced another long, wet winter as was being predicted.

Winter. He’d always hated it, even before the night of January 4, 1974. Dark, wet, cold. Bleak days and long nights. His mood swings and bouts of depression were always worse during the winter months.

Abruptly he swiveled away from the window. Winter was still on his mind when he picked up the phone and called Fenwood Creek.

Jenna’s voice purred in his ear. He relayed word of the BATF approval. Then he said, “Anything else I can do for you, Jenna?” He didn’t realize the suggestiveness of the phrasing until after the words were out. Or maybe the perverse part of him had done it deliberately.

“As a matter of fact, there is. Buy me a drink.”

“I can’t today. I have a lunch.”

“I wasn’t thinking of lunch. After work”.

“I don’t know, Jenna—”

“Say five-fifteen. Meet me in the square, by the duck pond, and we’ll go to Santucci’s or the Hotel Paloma.”

He hesitated. Thinking: You don’t want to do this. Just say no.

“All right,” he said. “Five-fifteen in the square.”

7

Early in the morning Nick drove into Santa Rosa. First place he hunted up was a cheap Laundromat. All his clothes were dirty, he was starting to smell himself; time to get cleaned up, whether he went job hunting today or not. People shied away from you on the street when you looked and smelled like a bum. And nobody’d give you a job.

He washed and dried everything he owned, one load. A woman who came in told him there was a rescue mission on Fourth Street and how to get there. He didn’t like standing around, waiting in line with a bunch of poor buggers who stank worse than he did, all that hopelessness and despair, but he needed a place to shower and shave. Missions were good for that. Decent meal, too.

He got inside finally. Sat through the usual religious stuff, not even listening to it. Once he’d believed in God, but not anymore. If there was a God and He was somebody who’d let Annalisa be hurt the way she’d been, suffer so much, Nick didn’t want anything to do with Him.

Shower, shave, breakfast, and he was out of there before eleven. Section nearby of antique shops and restaurants, so he tried that first. Then he went downtown, different part of Fourth Street. Then out to a big junior college campus. Then across town until he came to a mall called the Montgomery Village Shopping Center. Stores, eating places, bus stops, service stations; pedestrians, salesclerks, newspaper vendors, drivers waiting at stoplights. Holding the plastic-encased sketch up at eye level, saying, “You know this man? You ever see him anywhere?”

Same thing he always got. Head shakes, blank stares, dozen different versions of no. Now and then a sneer or muttered curse. People walking away from him, some of them in a hurry, a few with a quick glance back as if they were afraid he might start chasing them. Like he was some kind of crazy person. Made him feel frustrated and alone, like always. As alone as if he were standing on top of the Continental Divide instead of on a crowded street or mall.

He knew what it was made them act that way. Fear. Fear of him, what he might do or know. Fear of the unknown face in the sketch. Sometimes it gave him a funny sense of power, like he really did know something they didn’t — kind of feeling those religious nuts who went around handing out leaflets and yelling about the end of the world must have. Like Nick Hendryx was different from everybody else, stronger, smarter, somebody who could do things they couldn’t.

Mostly, though, the way they acted left him with the urge to shout, “Hey, don’t run away from me. I don’t want anything from you except a little help, a little understanding.” But he never said anything like that. He’d never begged in his life, and he never would. Not even to find the man in the sketch.

Midafternoon. A young fat guy out at Montgomery Village looked at the sketch, and something changed in his eyes. “You know him?” Nick said, but the fat guy shook his head and started away. Nick went after him, grabbed his arm. “You know him,” he said, not a question this time, and the fat guy said, “No, I thought for a second I did, but I don’t.” Nick said, “Please don’t lie to me, it’s real important,” and the guy said, “I’m not lying, I don’t know him, leave me alone,” and pulled his arm away and got into a car and drove off fast. Nick would’ve chased him, but the Mazda was parked too far away. All he could do was watch the direction the fat guy took — and wonder.

Soon as he got to the Mazda, he left Montgomery Village and went in the same direction. Big intersection, no sign of the fat guy’s car. Which way? Then he saw a sign with a name on it, Paloma, and an arrow pointing south. He turned that way because the light was green and he had to go somewhere.

Road took him down a long, narrow valley bordered by wooded hills, packed with vineyards and wineries and fancy homes. He didn’t pay much attention to it beyond that. He’d liked places like this, green, quiet places, when he was with Annalisa, but they had nothing to do with the life he was living now. He kept thinking about the fat guy, wondering if he’d recognized the face in the sketch.

Paloma turned out to be an old California mission town clogged with tourists, even on a weekday afternoon. In the middle of town was a big tree-shaded square, surrounded by a mission and a fort and a bunch of expensive-looking shops. Nick found a parking spot for the Mazda, went out walking and showing the sketch.

Same blank here. No signs of recognition or of the fat guy. Even so, he had a good feeling about this town. Nothing to get excited about, not yet, but a feeling with hope in it. Spend the night somewhere close by, come back in the morning, and if the feeling was still good, start job hunting. Too late in the day for that now.

After a while he got tired of walking around and around the square and went into it and sat down on a bench opposite a pond with floating ducks and a stone bridge across it. A steady stream of pedestrians came along the connecting paths, and whenever somebody passed his bench, he got up and flashed the sketch.

Sun went down, and it got a little chilly. Time to start moving again. Find someplace to eat and then someplace to sleep out in the country. He was thinking that when the woman came along one of the paths. Tall brunette about thirty, nice looking. She stopped at the near end of the bridge and stood there as if she was waiting for somebody — kept glancing at her watch. Nick pushed off the bench again, taking his time because his legs were stiff and his back muscles tight. Somebody else to show the sketch to.

Then he saw the man. Cutting across from one of the other paths to join the brunette. Guy wasn’t there, then he was, and then Nick was seeing his face — clear and straight on, from a distance of five or six feet.

It was like being kicked in the groin. He pulled up short, felt his eyes pop with a sudden bulging pressure. Thought he’d made a sound, grunt or gasp, but neither of them looked his way. He backed off a couple of steps, stood staring as the brunette linked her arm through the guy’s and the two of them moved off across the bridge.

Nick couldn’t get his breath. Blood-pound in his ears was like the ocean during a storm, a wild roaring that was hate and excitement and thankfulness and a dozen other feelings all wrapped up together.

Him. Man in the sketch, the face he lived with every day, that haunted his sleep, that he’d been hunting for so long. No doubt of it, no mistake. Bastard who’d hurt Annalisa — right here, not fifteen feet away.

It was him!

8

“Cam, do you know that man standing at the bar?”

It took a few seconds for the question to register. Jenna had leaned close across the little table, close enough so he could smell the spiciness of her perfume and the gin on her breath; had laid her hand over his, long fingers gently squeezing. Her touch, her scent, were sensory stimuli that acted as a verbal delay. When the meaning of her question got through, Cam stiffened and looked up and away from her, shifting his body and guiltily withdrawing his hand.

“What man?”

“The thin one in the corduroy jacket. He keeps looking over here. Staring is more like it.”

The bar at the Hotel Paloma was softly lit and crowded; Cam had to squint and eye-roam to pick out the man Jenna had indicated. Not looking their way now, just standing at the far end of the bar. Alone, apart, a mug of draft beer in one hand. Then the head moved, the eyes shifted, and he was staring right at them. Cam felt a small twinge of anxiety. Unwarranted, because he’d never seen the man before and there was nothing threatening about him, despite the intensity of his stare. Wiry rather than thin. Thirty-something, dark-haired, clean-shaven, wearing faded trousers and a workman’s shirt with an old cord jacket. Just a guy having an after-work beer.

“No,” he said, “I don’t know him.”

“Neither do I. He doesn’t belong in here.”

“Why not? You mean the way he’s dressed?”

“He looks like a day laborer.”

“Come on.”

“Or a refugee from a homeless shelter.”

Her attitude nettled him. “Don’t be an elitist, Jenna. So what if he’s blue-collar? He has a right to drink where he pleases, same as we do.”

“Why here? Draft beer is three dollars a glass.”

“Jenna, what difference does it make?”

“I don’t like to be stared at.”

“Why should it bother you? You’re a woman men stare at.”

“Not that way. Besides, it’s mostly you he’s interested in.”

“Me?”

“Watch him when he looks again. Follow his eyes.”

She was right. The eyes were fixed on him next time — he was sure of it. It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. Someone who knew him, knew he was married and that Jenna wasn’t his wife?

“You see?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

“Why don’t you go ask him what he wants.”

“You’re not serious?”

“I’ll do it, if you’d rather.”

“And make a scene? What’s the sense in—”

“He knows we’re talking about him,” Jenna said.

“What?”

“Look at his body language.”

The man had turned aside, was standing stiff-backed with the mug at chest level. Cam had the impression of a person poised on the edge of either flight or decision. Jerkily, the stranger lifted his mug, took a quick sip, moved to the bar and set it down — it was still half full — and pushed his way through the crowd. He didn’t glance their way again before he disappeared through the lobby entrance.

Jenna said, “Well, that’s a relief. As long as we don’t find him hanging around outside when we leave.”

Cam said nothing. He drank the last of his martini, letting the gin bite on the back of his tongue before he swallowed.

“Weirdos,” she said moodily. “Everywhere you go these days. Half of them ought to be in prison. The other half ought to be exterminated.”

The casual malice in the words shocked him. “You can’t mean that.”

“Can’t I? We’d all be better off.”

“Christ, Jenna. Just do away with masses of people who don’t conform to some arbitrary norm?”

“Of course not. I mean the real weirdos, the dangerous misfits.”

“Criminals? Mental cases?”

“Anyone who commits a violent act — murder, rape, assault — no matter what the reason. Zero tolerance. It’d eliminate stalking and spousal abuse, among other problems.”

She was smiling, making light of it now, but there was nothing amusing in the concept. Besides, she was serious enough; the passion was there beneath the smile and the bantering tone.

He said, “It’s a crazy idea. Look what happened the last time something like that was done.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Last time?”

“Germany, Austria, Poland. Six million Jews died because Hitler considered them dangerous misfits.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t. What the Nazis did had a racial and religious basis. I’m not advocating genocide, for heaven’s sake.”

“What would you call destroying masses of people simply because they’re different?”

“Not different, destructive. Menaces to society. Sick, evil, worthless individuals. I call getting rid of them a benefit to the common good. The only sensible way to preserve life and liberty for the rest of us.”

“The ‘normal’ ones.”

“The productive, nonviolent ones.”

“Where do you draw the line, Jenna?”

“Between them and us? I just told you—”

“I meant the line between sick and healthy, evil and good, productive and nonproductive.”

“I’ll tell you where I draw it. Anyone who tries to hurt me, anyone for any damn reason, doesn’t deserve to go on living. Give me the chance, and I’d make sure he didn’t.”

“That sounds pretty bloodthirsty.”

“Does it? I’m not kidding, Cam.”

“You’d take someone’s life for a small offense?”

“If it was intentional, if he hurt me — yes.”

“No extenuating circumstances?”

“None. Zero tolerance.”

He shook his head. He’d had no idea she harbored such hard-core fascist ideas. “I just don’t agree.”

“Well, maybe that’s because you’ve never been hurt. You know the definition of a liberal, Cam, somebody who’s never been mugged.”

“I’ve been hurt,” he said.

“Attacked, physically assaulted by a weirdo?”

“No, but—”

“No buts is right, my handsome friend. Until it’s happened to you, you’ll never understand what it’s like and your point of view doesn’t carry much weight.”

“Meaning it has happened to you?”

“That’s right. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.” She put her hand on his again; her touch seemed cooler now, almost cold. “Let’s get off this subject, shall we? Have another round and discuss more pleasant topics. What were we talking about before? Fenwood’s new cabernet franc, wasn’t it? Or had I gotten around to inviting you to dinner?”

“Dinner?”

“I guess I hadn’t. Saturday night at my place.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. Who else is coming?”

She laughed. Her nails, long and plum colored, stroked the backs of his fingers. “Don’t be naive. Just the two of us, naturally.”

He didn’t say anything. Out in the open now, like something bright and alluring laid on the table between them. All he had to do was pick it up.

But he didn’t. If the invitation had come before the little episode with the staring stranger, before the conversation about dangerous misfits and the new and less than appealing side of Jenna it had revealed, the temptation would have been hard to resist. Now... no. There was nothing like a dose of harsh reality to keep your libido in check.

He said, “I think I’d better pass.”

Her violet eyes showed disappointment. In him, he thought, as well as in his answer. “Can’t get away?”

“Other plans,” he lied.

“Sunday, then? Next weekend?”

“I... don’t think so, Jenna.”

“No? I’m very good, you know.”

“Good?”

“In the kitchen, among other places.”

Euphemisms. Game playing. It had the reverse effect of what she’d intended; it turned him off completely. “I’m sure you are,” he said.

“But you’re not interested in a demonstration.”

He smiled and shrugged. The smile felt stiff on his mouth.

“So be it,” she said, but her words had an edge now. “Shall we have that second drink?”

“Not for me. It’s after six, and I should be on my way. But I’ll buy you another if you want to stay—”

“No point in that. I don’t like to drink alone, and I’m not in the mood to be picked up tonight.” She gathered her coat and purse. “Walk me to my car?”

“Sure.”

Outside, Jenna paused to glance both ways along the sidewalk, across the street at the shadowed square. He found himself doing the same. Both of them looking for the man in the corduroy jacket, as if he’d actually be lurking somewhere waiting to pounce on them. Silly on his part, but perhaps not so silly on hers. He wondered again what it was in her past that had made her so wary of strangers, built such a virulent hatred of “dangerous misfits.”

She took his arm as they quartered across to the square, followed one of the lighted paths through its center. At her Lexus, waiting while she unlocked the door, he felt pretty good about the way he’d handled her overture, at not weakening to it. Now if he could just—

Jenna turned without warning, leaned her body close to his, slid her arms around his neck, and kissed him. A hard, passionate kiss, letting her tongue flick between his lips. It surprised, dismayed, excited him, as she must have intended it to, and shattered his self-congratulation the way heat shatters glass.

“The invitation is still open,” she said. “Call me after you’ve thought it over. Or I’ll call you.”

9

Guy who’d hurt Annalisa lived in Los Alegres, in the next long narrow valley west of Paloma. Thirteen miles of two-lane road winding through low foothills, flat farmland. Following him was easy as waiting in the dark Mazda for him and the brunette to leave the hotel bar. Guy’s car was a silver BMW with a personalized license plate: WINEMAN. And there was plenty of traffic on the road and in Los Alegres.

Town was bigger than Paloma but not as big as Santa Rosa. Had a river slicing through it, an old-fashioned downtown, a west-side residential district that stretched up into another set of low hills. That was where Wineman lived, on one of the hillside lots. Crooked street, sprawly house with a gated driveway, shade trees in front. Couple of acres of prime real estate. Rich bugger. Seeing that made Nick hate him all the more.

He drove up to where the street — Ridgeway Terrace — dead-ended, turned around, and rolled by the property again. BMW was in his garage now. Front door of the house was open, and a blond woman and a little girl were standing on the lighted porch, waiting for Wineman.

Yeah, that figured. Wife and daughter. Nick had had a feeling the brunette Wineman’d been drinking with wasn’t his wife. Something about the way the two of them were sitting in the bar, their — what was it, body language? Something about the woman herself. Classy, but with an edge like shined-up steel. Big shot like Wineman could afford the best of everything, including a piece on the side. Get away with everything he did, son of a bitch like that.

Until now.

Nick let the Mazda drift to the curb a short way downhill, at the edge of Wineman’s property where there weren’t any streetlamps. No cars on the street, nobody on the sidewalk when he got out and walked back uphill, taking his time, just a guy out for an evening stroll. One of the gate pillars had a number on it: 74. No nameplate. Wineman. Bastard’s name or what he did for a living?

He walked on past the driveway. Wineman was on the porch now, one arm around the blond’s waist, the other around the kid, three of them turning in to the house. Door shut behind them as Nick reached the second pillar.

No nameplate on that one, either, but just inside, at the edge of the drive, a mailbox on an iron pole with what looked to be printing on the side of the box. He couldn’t make out the words from the sidewalk.

Front windows of the house were all curtained or draped, nobody peering out. Street was still empty. He moved in fast, bent to squint at the printing on the box. Came back out and kept walking, uphill a short distance, then back on the other side to the Mazda.

The Gallaghers.

Okay. Guy’s name was Gallagher. Wineman must be what he was, what he did for a living. Drove a new silver BMW, lived at 74 Ridgeway Terrace in Los Alegres with a wife and at least one kid, had some sort of big-salary job in the wine business over in Paloma, had a classy brunette girlfriend who drove a white Lexus. Enough for tonight. He’d know more, maybe a lot more, by this time tomorrow.

10

The attic. Hiding in the attic.

Cold, damp, dark. Smells of mold and mildew, rain and dust and mouse turds. Sound of the rain outside, beating on the roof, wind-flung against the dormer windows. He hears it dripping, a leak somewhere inside one of the walls. Drip. Drip. Drip. He doesn’t dare shut his eyes because then it won’t be rain he’ll see and hear dripping, it’ll be something else wet, glistening. Something bright red.

Blood.

Downstairs, on the bed. Blood.

Downstairs, on the bedroom floor. Blood.

He lies curled on the old bare mattress, his knees drawn tight against his chest, his eyes wide open and full of the dark. Shivers rack his body. He has never been so cold. Or so scared. Or so alone.

Drip. Drip.

Dad. Daddy.

Help me.

He can’t move. He wants desperately to be somewhere else, somewhere warm and safe and far away from here. But he can’t make himself get up. Afraid, so cold, and all he can do is lie there shaking with his eyes wide open, listening to the rain blood rain drip drip drip inside the wall, on the bed downstairs, on the bedroom floor downstairs.

The rain slackens and then stops. Not the dripping, just the rain and the boom of the wind. He hears something else outside, another car turning in off the road. Light splashes over the window, making it into a dead, staring eye. He trembles, and a sound comes out like the one his puppy made when it got run over on his fifth birthday and he rushed out and found it all broken and covered with wet, glistening red in the street. “Happy birthday, Cameron, your damn mutt just got squashed out front.” Ma’s voice echoing inside his head.

Drip.

Door slamming downstairs.

Oh God, is it Fatso? Is he back?

Footsteps.

A voice, calling something he can’t understand. Fatso’s voice?

Scared, so scared, and I have to go real bad and I can’t get up, I can’t move. Please God don’t let me wet myself. “Pissed your bed again, you little shit.” Please God don’t let me wet myself!

The voice yelling again, and this time he hears it clearly.

“Cameron! Where are you, son?”

Not Fatso. Stranger’s voice.

Somebody worse than Fatso?

More footsteps, somebody else yelling. Another stranger. Two strangers in the house now.

Go away. No, help me. No, go away.

Daddy, don’t be dead. Mama—

Drip.

Dust and mouse turds and red rain.

Footsteps louder, closer. On the attic stairs.

Have to go so bad I can’t hold it much longer.

Thump. Drip. Thump.

Creak of the door opening.

Beam of light stabbing through the dark. Poking at him like a sharp thing.

“Boy? You in here, Cameron?”

Warm wet flowing under him. No! But he can’t help it, he couldn’t hold it anymore, it isn’t his fault! All he can do is lie there peeing on himself while the sharp light stabs closer and the red rain drips and the stranger’s voice calls his name. And when the light slices into his eyes his mouth opens and the scream comes out—

Cam Jerked awake with the scream in his ears, a shrill tremolo that was a hammering pressure against the drums. As always, the first thing he did was to feel the crotch of his pajamas, the sheet under him. Dry. He hadn’t actually lost control of his bladder during one of the nightmares since the first year or so. But the fear was still part of him, mixed together with the other fears of boy and man.

“Oh, Cam,” Hallie said, “it’s been so long I was beginning to hope—” She broke off as he lay back down, limp against the wadded pillows. Moved closer and slid an arm across his chest, held him until his breathing slowed. Then she asked, “Which one was it?”

“One in the attic.”

“It must’ve been... intense.”

“No worse than any of the others.”

“You were making noises.”

He winced. “What kind of noises?”

“Moans. Hurt sounds.”

His mouth was hot and dry; he sipped water from the bedside glass. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Honey, I don’t care about that. I care about you.”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you? Really?”

No, he thought. At length he said, “Maybe I ought to start seeing Beloit again.”

“If you think it’s a good idea.”

“I don’t know. It might be.”

“With winter coming. Yes.

“Winter,” he said.

“It might be a good idea to talk to Caitlin again, too.”

“Waste of time. She’s not going to change her mind, you know that as well as I do.”

“She needs money, doesn’t she?”

“She always needs money. It hasn’t made any difference in the past.”

“Well, what about some sort of cash incentive? In addition to her share of the sale, I mean. Payable immediately. We can afford it.”

“I tried that once, remember?”

“Years ago. Maybe now that the house is vacant again and there’s no rent money coming in—”

“She won’t take a dime from me, Hallie. And she won’t agree to sell the damn house, not even if she and Teddy are starving. Besides, even if by some miracle I could talk her into it, I’m not convinced it’d make much difference, any difference, in her life or mine.”

“But it might. Didn’t Dr. Beloit indicate it might?”

“He’s not God,” Cam said.

“I’m not God, either, but I believe it will. Get the river house out of your life, and the nightmares and the rest of it will stop. If you could only make Caitlin understand—”

“Caitlin doesn’t care about my problems. She has enough of her own, and hers happen to be bound up in not getting rid of the river house.”

“Cam—”

He said bitterly, “A couple of head cases, Cat and me. Rose must be laughing up a storm in her little corner of hell.”

“Your mother didn’t hate you and your sister.”

“The hell she didn’t.”

“Aunt Ida—”

“Aunt Ida doesn’t know everything. Rose resented Cat and me, treated us like dirt when nobody else was around, flaunted her affairs in front of us, and if that’s not hatred it amounts to the same thing.”

“And you can’t stop hating her in return. Until you do, you won’t have any peace. How many times have we had this discussion? How many times have you had it with Dr. Beloit and the others?”

“All right,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you—”

“It’s all right.”

“Will you please try to talk to Caitlin?”

“If it’s what you want.”

“What I want is what’s best for you. I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

Her words touched him, pushed aside the bitterness. He turned to her, nuzzled the warmth and softness of her breast. “You’re not going to lose me. We’re not going to lose each other.”

“We could if you can’t find some way to resolve what happened twenty-five years ago. I’ll lose you, because sooner or later you’ll end up losing yourself.”

She was right — of course she was right. He folded her into his arms, held her tightly. Loving her, hating himself, he said, “I’ll call Beloit’s office first thing in the morning. And talk to Caitlin as soon as she’ll let me.”

11

Paloma Wine Systems. That was the place Gallagher worked. Led Nick straight to it from Los Alegres on Friday morning.

Good-size outfit on Blackwell Road, semirural section on the eastern edge of Paloma. One Quonset-type building, like a small airplane hangar, that looked like it’d been there a long time; one newer L-shaped building made of cinder block, part warehouse and part office wing. Property enclosed by a tall Cyclone fence, night-lights on poles that were more for show than real security. Trucking outfit on one side, some kind of animal shelter on the other. Mixed-bag area, mostly industrial. In all maybe a dozen businesses stretching for about a mile along one side of the road, open farmland on the other.

So what did Gallagher do there? Honcho of some kind — BMW, fancy home, suit and tie he wore said that. But what kind?

Nick drove next door to the shelter. Animal Lifeline, seemed to be a sort of halfway house for strays waiting for adoption. Type of place Annalisa’d like. That big old orange tom of her folks’, curled up and died with his head in his food dish — Annalisa’d cried for days over that poor cat. She had a soft heart. He wished he’d let her have a kitten like she’d wanted after they were married. Allergic to cat fur, sneezed his head off when he was around one too long, but still he should’ve let her have a kitten. Sneezing and a snotty nose were a small price to pay to make someone you loved happy. He’d get her a cat when she was well, first thing. Orange tom like the one that’d died... Rufus, that was his name. Hell of a name for a cat, Rufus. But if she wanted to call it Rufus II or Rufus Junior, that was all right with him.

Animal Lifeline was two buildings, tin-roofed shelter in back and a cottagelike one nearest the road that had a sign on it saying Thrift Shop. Elderly woman was opening up the shop as Nick pulled in and parked. She’d gone inside and was behind the counter when he walked in.

He smiled at her. “Morning, ma’am. Nice morning, isn’t it.”

Got him a smile and a “Yes, it is” in return. You could almost always put people on your side, get what you needed out of them, with a polite and sunny approach. He’d learned that long ago, even before he met Annalisa. Not that he had to fake it much. He was naturally friendly, liked most people, enjoyed their company. Or had before Gallagher came along and tore up his life along with Annalisa’s.

He browsed through the shop for a few minutes — patience was something else he’d learned how to use. Picked out a couple of paperback books, took them to the old woman at the counter, paid her fifty cents. While she was ringing up the sale he said, “That big place next door, Paloma Wine Systems. What kind of business is that?”

“Oh, PWS represents several wineries in the area. Sales, distribution, compliance services.”

“What’s that, compliance services?”

“Oh, you know, business licensing and that sort of thing.”

“Looks like a pretty successful operation.”

“Largest in the valley,” she said. “Mr. Gallagher is a good businessman.”

“He the owner? Mr. Gallagher?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Been at it a long time?”

“Seven or eight years.”

“Lot of people working for him?”

“More than twenty, yes.”

“I bet he’s one of those workaholics.”

“Oh, not so much as you might think.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Everyone calls him Cam.”

“Cam. Short for camera?”

She laughed. “No, Cameron. You seem very curious about him, I must say.”

“Well, I thought I’d talk to him about a job. If he’s hiring. You happen to know?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. You’re looking for work, then?”

“I sure am. Had some bad luck lately and I... well, I’m trying to get back on my feet.”

Woman said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” as if she meant it. “What sort of work do you do?”

“Any kind, long as it’s honest. Wouldn’t happen to need somebody here at the shelter, by any chance?”

“No. We’re mostly volunteers here.”

“Know of any place around town that’s hiring? In case Mr. Gallagher isn’t?”

Sad shake of her head. Nice old lady, somebody’s mother, probably somebody’s grandmother. Reminded him of Mom Foster, except Mom wasn’t this old. Never knew his own mom. Died when he was two. Freak accident, slipped on some grease and hit her head on the kitchen stove, old man came in from plowing and found her dead. Poor Pa. Must’ve felt the same way, finding her like that, that Nick’d felt when they came and told him about Annalisa.

“Well, I’ll find a job somewhere,” he said. “All you have to do is keep looking and something’ll turn up.”

Woman said, “That’s the spirit. It’s too bad more folks don’t have your attitude, young man. There’d be far less homelessness and welfare cheating. Far less crime, too.”

“You’re right about that, ma’am.”

“Well, good luck and God bless. I’m sure things will work out for you, as you hope they will.”

“I’m sure of it, too,” Nick said. “Just as sure as I can be.”

12

Dr. Beloit couldn’t see him for nearly a week. “If it’s an emergency, Mr. Gallagher,” the receptionist said, “perhaps the doctor could find a few minutes...” No, it wasn’t an emergency. He’d felt like saying, I can keep my pants zipped until Thursday, I’m not that far gone. But of course he didn’t.

None of this was funny. Not the slightest bit funny.

He wished he had more faith in Beloit, in the whole psychiatric process. He’d been able to open up to Beloit and the others before him, but only to a point — revealing some of the more painfully intimate details about himself, his childhood, his mother, yet withholding others. The night he’d walked in on Rose and Fatso, both of them naked, her legs wrapped around him and her heels beating on his hairy jiggling ass — and the wet dream he’d had about it later. Some of the things he’d seen and heard on Rose and Paul’s last night on earth. And other, later incidents, such as the time a few years ago when he’d been away on business and suffered a blackout migraine and woke up in his motel room with blood on his shirt and hands. Just a nosebleed, but God, he’d been frightened. Blood always disturbed him; seeing it, even talking about it, made him physically ill. He’d never confided any of these things to anyone, even Hallie, and they wouldn’t dislodge for professional scrutiny no matter how hard he tried.

Beloit’s manner didn’t particularly inspire confidence, either. He was too smug, too glib. He used words to fill up time the way pharmacists used pills and powders to fill up containers. It wasn’t so much that he liked the sound of his own voice (though he probably did), or even that he considered his comments to be profound. (Though he surely seemed to when he said things like “Nightmares, according to ancient Indian superstition, are the result of the soul leaving the body, visiting the nether regions, and returning with visual imprints of the terrible acts it witnessed there. A modern interpretation of that superstition may be helpful in understanding the insidious nature of your nightmares, Mr. Gallagher.”) It was as if his main concern, aside from dispensing aid and comfort to the troubled, was in making sure each session was crammed to the brim to avoid complaint. He charged $100 an hour, but the sessions were only forty-five minutes long; you paid for the extra fifteen minutes as a kind of surcharge, so Beloit could clean his professional palette before the next poor bastard hobbled in, like a gourmet priming his taste buds between courses. He didn’t want you to realize it and feel cheated.

Could Beloit help him with the Jenna problem? He didn’t need to know what to do about his compulsion; he’d had enough psychoanalysis to figure that out for himself. Negate the power of it by using common sense to maintain self-control. Force his conscious mind to lock into other channels — work, hobbies, domestic activities. Keep reminding himself of how much he loved Hallie and didn’t want to hurt her anymore, how it would be if he lost her and the girls. Things he was already doing. What he needed from Beloit was insight into why he was so strongly tempted. Understand that, and he could make the obsession go away. Or at least he’d have an easier time controlling it. Knowledge was strength. One of Beloit’s dictums. So maybe the good doctor could help. It was worth at least one session to find out.

Next Thursday. Six days. He’d have to take pains to avoid Jenna until he saw Beloit. Then, when he saw her again and she forced the issue, as he was sure she would, his defenses would be stronger. The way they were now, he was afraid they wouldn’t hold up under a direct assault.

13

Finding a job wasn’t much of a problem. Man could always work if he wanted to. Some of the guys he’d run into in the shelters and missions kept pissing and moaning about being out of work. He had no sympathy for anybody like that. Being homeless, sure, that was something else. But you could be homeless and still earn a living, even if it was a lousy living. People he respected were willing to take any job they could get, get along on minimum wage if it was the best they could manage. Bottom line was to work, don’t be choosy.

Best jobs for him were night driving jobs. Short-haul trucking for gypsy freighters and small supply outfits that didn’t care much about references or union cards — they were the cream. But they didn’t come along very often. Kind he’d held most often was pizza deliveryman. Every town, no matter how small, had a pizzeria, and they were always looking for drivers.

When he couldn’t get a driving job, there was other night work: busboy, dishwasher, janitor for one of the services that specialized in cleaning offices and stores after they closed. Plenty of day jobs, too, driving and nondriving. Deliveryman, handyman’s helper, trash hauler, pickup driver for Goodwill and the Sally Ann; farmhand, day laborer, fast-food worker, supermarket stockboy. He’d done all of those and others he couldn’t even remember. Honest work for honest pay, every job he’d held in his life.

First thing he did when he left Animal Lifeline was buy a Paloma paper. Two possibilities in the help-wanted listings, but one turned out to be already filled and he didn’t get the other. He walked around town looking for window signs in eating places and shops, checking a bulletin board in a supermarket. Nothing. So then he drove back over to Los Alegres, figuring bigger town, more opportunities.

Three large thrift stores on the main drag. Second one he tried, a Goodwill, had a Help Wanted sign in the front window. Two jobs open, stockboy and pickup driver. All he had to do to get the driving job was tell the store manager he’d done that kind of work before, show his commercial driver’s license, fill out a form. Five days a week, eight to four. Little better than minimum wage, but that was all right for now. Manager told him he could start Monday morning, they didn’t do pickups on Saturday.

After he left the Goodwill he drove around for a while, until he spotted a run-down auto court on the south end of town near the freeway. Part hotsheet motel, part long-term transient housing, from the look of it. Twelve units, little white stucco boxes in a three-quarter square around a courtyard, nothing growing in the courtyard except cars. Units rented by day, week, or month, and they had a vacancy. He took it, handing over a hundred and a quarter for one week.

His unit was one of those in back, one room and bath. Beat-up furniture, board-hard bed, waterstained wallpaper, cheap portable TV, no phone. Bed wasn’t too bad, the TV worked all right, and the bath had a chipped tub in it.

He took the two framed photographs out of his suitcase, always the first thing he did when he took a room someplace. Head-and-shoulders color portrait of Annalisa, smiling, her corn-silk hair brushed out long over her shoulders. And their wedding photo, two of them all slicked up, smiling and happy, getting ready to cut the pink-and-white cake. He set the photos on the nightstand, the one of Annalisa alone closest to the bed and turned so he could look right at it when he was lying down.

He hadn’t had a bath in so long he couldn’t remember the last time. Showers but not a real soak. He ran hot water into the tub, as much as he could get from the tap, shucked out of his clothes, and lowered himself into the steamy water. Man! Washed all over, twice, then lay back with the water up to his chin and his eyes shut, thinking about Annalisa and Gallagher. He didn’t even care when he couldn’t coax any more hot out of the pipes and the bathwater turned cold.

He felt good. Hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time.

14

Saturday morning, a little before nine, Cam drove to Sebastopol to see Caitlin. Reluctantly. He’d called first, to make sure she’d be home, and the conversation had been brief and unenthusiastic on her part. At least she hadn’t told him not to come. The way things were between Cat and him, a lukewarm reception was the best he could hope for.

It was fourteen miles from Los Alegres to Sebastopol, a mile or so more than his one-way, five-days-a-week commute to Paloma, but he seldom made the trip. He’d been there three times in the past year, twice on business — one of the local apple processors had branched out into winemaking — and once on a Sunday outing with Hallie and the girls; he hadn’t stopped to see Caitlin on any of those occasions, hadn’t been to her home in... what? Three years? At least that. Nor had she come down to Los Alegres to see him in at least that long, despite repeated invitations — not since Gus walked out on her. The only times he’d seen Cat in recent memory had been on neutral restaurant territory, a couple of quick lunches and one family dinner in Occidental that’d been a chore for all of them, Teddy acting out, Caitlin drinking too much of the cheap wine she preferred, Leah and Shannon cranky and uncomfortable because neither of them cared for their aunt. Shannon had said later, “Aunt Cat looks like a witch,” and even though he’d scolded her for the comment, he’d thought privately that she was right. Caitlin, his once sweet-faced little sister — a broomstick refugee from Oz.

Dealing with her had become too painful. Rose’s other legacy: They didn’t even have each other for comfort. He loved Caitlin, he thought that down deep she still loved him, but there was no connection left between them. They couldn’t agree on anything, much less the causes and events of the night of January 4, 1974. Familiar strangers was what they’d become. No, worse than that. Tolerant enemies.

Her house was beginning to fit the witch image, too. Once it had been an attractive five-room bungalow, but years of neglect had turned it into an eyesore with broken shutters, peeling paint, a yard choked with weeds and unmowed grass. The rest of the neighborhood, one of the small town’s older residential sections, was the domain of determinedly civic-minded, lower-middle-class families: All the other houses and yards along the block were well maintained. Caitlin couldn’t be popular with her neighbors — not that it would bother her. A woman who didn’t give a damn about herself would hardly care about others’ opinions of her.

Cam went up onto the creaky porch. The morning was warmish, tag end of the spell of Indian summer weather. (Perfect day for cruising. If it was like this tomorrow he’d take the Hallie Too down to San Pablo Bay, maybe San Francisco Bay.) The door stood open — welcome mat for flies, since there was no screen door. From somewhere at the rear he could hear the blaring percussion and obscene lyrics of bad gangsta rap. Little Teddy, all grown up too fast.

He tried ringing the bell, but if it made any sound inside, he couldn’t hear it above the noise of the music. Probably broken, like so many other things here. Like Caitlin herself. He walked in, calling her name.

Pretty soon she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. He was in the middle of the living room by then, looking around at a clutter of newspapers and dirty wine and beer glasses and unemptied ashtrays and strewn articles of clothing. And taking note that more than half the butts in the trays were unfiltered, a grease-stained uniform shirt was draped over the arm of a recliner, and a pair of equally greasy work shoes had been tossed on the floor nearby. The name Hal was stitched over the shirt pocket.

Caitlin stopped a few feet away, making no move to embrace him. As a little girl she’d been a toucher, a hugger, but not anymore. Not with him, anyway. Whenever he put his arms around her after that night she’d gone rigid, and finally he’d given up on contact of any kind. She didn’t like to be touched, she’d told him, but it was obvious from one ex-husband and a long parade of lovers that she didn’t mind or at least tolerated being touched by other men. She had an almost pathological fear of being alone, yet the turnover rate in her relationships indicated dissatisfaction on her lovers’ part as well as on hers. She didn’t seem to take pleasure in anything, to be able to express her feelings or to let anyone else’s feelings reach her.

As damaged as he was, he’d still managed to build a decent life for himself, to form a lasting relationship with one person, and to make most of the right choices, while Caitlin, who hadn’t seen the horror he had, who should have had fewer scars and an easier time adjusting, had made all the wrong choices and completely screwed up her life. The irony in that was as bitter as gall.

“Finished, bro?”

“...What?”

“Examining me and how I live.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Sure you were. Both look like hell, right?”

He managed to restrain a wince as he looked at her. Right. Slat-thin except for the potbelly she was growing. Brown hair unwashed and uncombed, skin sallow and splotchy without makeup. Faded Levi’s raggedly cut off to expose bony knees, Grateful Dead T-shirt showing the sag of unbound breasts. Thirty-three years old. His little sister.

Her eyes snapped at him. Saying plainly, I don’t need your goddamn pity.

He cleared his throat. “New man in your life?” he asked, gesturing toward the greasy shirt.

“Hal Ullman. He’s a mechanic.”

“Serious?”

“He thinks it could be.”

“How long have you been living together?”

“Two months. He’s — Damn that music!”

They’d been talking in loud voices, to compete with the thud-and-pound of the gangsta rap, and now Teddy had raised the volume even higher. Caitlin stalked out of the room, and after a few seconds Cam could hear her screaming at her son. There was a defiant answering shout, then another shriek from Caitlin: “Turn that fucking thing off or I’ll break it with a hammer, I swear to God!” The music sheered off abruptly. The sudden silence seemed to tremble with afterechoes.

Caitlin came back and flopped onto the raggedy sofa. “He drives me crazy sometimes with that rap crap.” She lit a Marlboro, waved it vaguely at the other furniture. “Sit down, Cameron. You look uncomfortable standing there.”

He started to sit in the recliner, changed his mind because of Hal’s shirt, and put himself in a chair that matched the sofa in upholstery, stains, and frays. He watched her make sucking noises on her cigarette and said automatically, “You smoke too much.”

“My lungs. You come here to lecture me or what?”

“No. Just to talk.”

“Uh-huh. About the river house, I suppose.”

“It’s empty again, Cat.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

“It’s liable to stay that way all winter. Longer, if the river floods again this year.”

“I know that too. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“How are you going to—”

He shut off the rest of the question because his nephew came stomping into the room, a boom box the size of a microwave under one skinny arm. Pimples and a ten-hair mustache. Baggy basketball shorts, tank top, Nike basketball shoes. Spiked hair with purple streaks, an earring in each ear and another hanging from a nostril. Gangsta look, complete with gangsta scowl, to go with the assault music he favored.

“Hello, Teddy.”

“Theodore, man. Theodore.”

“All right. How are you, Theodore?”

“Shitty.” He glared at his mother and kept on stomping out through the front door.

“No respect,” Caitlin said.

“He’s at that age.

“He’s a little shit. Hal says he needs a good boot in the ass. I’m beginning to think he’s right.”

“Child psychology must be one of Hal’s long suits.”

“Don’t start with me,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“We are not going to sell the river house, if that’s why you’re here. I’ll never agree to sell it. I don’t know why you can’t get that through your head.”

“I’m only thinking of your best interests.”

“Sure. My best interests.”

“I mean it. Are you still working at the card shop?”

She finished her cigarette, immediately lit another. “So?”

“I know what your take-home pay is, and it—”

“They gave me a raise.”

“It’s still not much. With no more rent money coming in—”

“Rent money doesn’t matter right now. Hal makes good wages, pays his share. We’re doing okay.”

“Hal isn’t going to be a permanent fixture.”

“How do you know he isn’t?”

“You as much as said it isn’t serious.”

“It’s serious enough for now. Besides, somebody’ll rent the river house eventually. Somebody always does.”

“You’ve been lucky, Cat. Keeping tenants for any length of time is getting harder, you know that as well as I do. The place is falling apart—”

“Oh, bullshit. When was the last time you took a good look at it? Or even drove by?”

He couldn’t remember the last time. Years — before the last big flood.

“Yeah,” Caitlin said, “I thought so.”

“I talked to John Lacey when that hippie bunch moved out last month. And before that, when the complaints began piling up. He said it took a bad beating in the last flood. It might withstand another without major foundation work, but he wouldn’t want to bet on it. He has no reason to exaggerate.”

“So we’ll shore up the foundation.”

“We will?”

She just looked at him.

“All right. I’m willing to pay for it, if it means putting the house on the market.”

“But not to keep it in the family.”

“It should’ve been sold years ago, when river property was at its peak. As things are now, we’d be lucky to realize a hundred thousand for it. You can have all the money, Cat. Every penny.”

“I don’t want money, I want to keep the property.”

“It’s a drain on both of us, can’t you see that? And I don’t just mean a financial drain.”

“No, I don’t see that.”

“I won’t put any more of my capital into the house. Let it collapse, let the next flood carry the bloody place out to sea for all I care.”

“That won’t happen, no matter what the Realtor says. That house has been standing for sixty years, and it’ll stand another twenty or thirty, what do you want to bet?”

Exasperation was making him edgy, restless. And the smoke from her cigarettes, the residue of tens of thousands of others that permeated the room and its furnishings, had aggravated his sinuses, giving him a dull headache. He leaned forward, the palms of his hands making dry, raspy sounds as he rubbed them over his knees.

“Cat, listen to me. That house... I don’t want it in my life anymore. I don’t want to have to think about it. I simply want it gone.”

“Why?”

“For God’s sake, you know why.”

“Guilt wouldn’t have something to do with it?”

“Guilt?” The accusation shocked him. “What would I have to feel guilty about?”

“You’re the only one who can answer that. You were the survivor that night.”

“What does that have to — Jesus! You don’t think there was anything I could’ve done to prevent what happened?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I’d been there instead of you.”

“You couldn’t have done anything, either. What’s the matter with you? You were eight, I was ten... kids, little kids.”

Nothing from Caitlin.

“I was in bed when Pa came and the yelling started. I didn’t know he’d brought a gun with him. How could I know he’d bring one of his guns?”

“You told him about Ma and Fatso the time before. What’d you think he’d do if it happened again?”

“Not what he did.”

“Then why’d you tell on her?”

“I couldn’t stand what she was doing to him. I didn’t want her to hurt him or us anymore.”

“But you didn’t care if he hurt her.”

“That’s not true. You can’t put the blame on me. Or on Pa, for that matter.”

“The hell I can’t. He killed her, didn’t he? The dirty son of a bitch killed my mother, and you, all you did was run away and hide.” She was yelling now, red-faced, her eyes sparking. Quick to tantrum, as always. Keep going down this same worn-out, potholed road with her and she’d have hysterics.

“I did not run away and hide,” he said.

“What else do you call it? They found you in the attic, didn’t they? For all I know you were hiding up there the whole time he was killing her and himself.”

“Dammit, that’s not so. I went to the attic after I found them dead. I hardly remember it, I was so sick and scared — you’d have been sick and scared too if you’d seen what I saw.”

“I wouldn’t have hidden in the attic.”

“How do you know what you’d have done? You can’t know from an adult perspective.”

She drew a couple of ragged breaths, coughed, then filled her lungs with more carcinogens and coughed again. The break in their heated exchange seemed to calm her somewhat. “Okay,” she said, “there wasn’t anything you could’ve done, and you don’t feel any guilt. Then why’re you so afraid of the river house after all these years?”

“Afraid of it?”

“You haven’t been inside since that night. You wouldn’t go back in there if your life depended on it.”

“Oh, come on—”

“It’s true. You won’t go near the property, you keep nagging me to sell it, you want it out of your life, you don’t want to think about it. Isn’t that right?”

He could no longer sit still. He stood and paced the room, the smoke and dust burning in his nostrils and making his head pound.

“I won’t sell,” Caitlin said. “Not now, not ever. If the house collapses, gets swept away, fine, there’s nothing I can do about that. But the property is going to stay in my hands as long as I’m above ground. I mean that, Cameron.”

“Why? Why does it mean so much to you?”

“It’s all I have left of Ma. Every time I look at a picture of her, it’s like looking at a stranger.”

“A monument, for Christ’s sake?”

“You shut up with that kind of talk.”

“The house means so much to you, why don’t you go live there?” He stopped pacing to stare down at her. “Why stay here? Sell this place instead.”

Bleak and painful things moved beneath the surfaces of her face. She sucked hard on her cigarette, jabbed it out in the nearest tray, pinched another out of the pack.

“You’ve never lived there, not one single day,” he said. “You couldn’t stand it any more than I could. Why don’t you admit it to yourself, if not to me?”

“Get out, Cameron,” she said without looking at him. “Go home to your wife and family. Leave me the fuck alone.”

There was no anger left in her voice. Nor any left in him, he realized. Nothing filled the hole where it had been, a hole like an open wound. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what? Coming here and screwing up my Saturday?”

“For trying to hurt you. Why do we always end up hurting each other?”

“Yeah, why?”

“We used to be close. Now—”

“Now we’d both be better off if we never saw each other again.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, I do.” She stood ponderously, still not looking at him, the fresh cigarette dangling from one corner of her mouth. “Just don’t ever say another word to me about selling Ma’s house,” she said, and went out of the room, left him standing there by himself in the rubble of her life.

15

Caitlin Koski. 547 Applewood Lane, Sebastopol. Son, Theodore, fourteen or fifteen. Divorced, living with a mechanic who worked for North Analy Auto Body.

Inside the Mazda again, Nick wrote the information in the little notebook he’d bought. Neighbor watering his lawn up the block didn’t know the mechanic’s name and didn’t know Gallagher. Wasn’t familiar with the silver BMW, either.

Gallagher was still in the house across the street. Alone with the Koski woman, far as he knew, now that the punked-up kid was gone. Mechanic worked half a day Saturdays, neighbor’d said. Morning matinee with another bimbo? No surprise, if that was what it was. Just because she lived with somebody didn’t mean she wasn’t playing around on the side. And just because Gallagher had a wife in Los Alegres and a classy bitch in Paloma didn’t mean he wasn’t banging some downscale babe in Sebastopol.

That kind of crap made him sick. When you had somebody you loved, why would you want anyone else? He’d never cheated on Annalisa, would never hurt her like that. Same went for her. Soul mates. Phrase you heard tossed around, usually brought a snicker or a smart-ass remark, but he believed in it, knew it for a fact. He and Annalisa were soul mates. Put on this earth to be together, be there for each other no matter what.

Bugger over there, what was he put on the earth for? Rich, pampered types like that went around trampling on other people’s lives, good people like Annalisa, they didn’t give a pig’s ass what happened to anybody but themselves. Men like that... disease carriers, like rats and roaches. Men like that—

Gallagher was coming out of the house. Alone, walking fast. Pretty short matinee, but some guys were like that. Rabbits. Gallagher figured to be a guy that operated on a time budget, too. Fifteen minutes for this meeting, twenty minutes for that one, five minutes to take a dump, half an hour for lunch, twenty-three minutes for a Saturday-morning screw. Looking at his watch as he came down the steps. Right. Time for him to move on to whatever was next up on his schedule.

Nick waited until the BMW pulled away from the curb. Then he fired up the Mazda and eased out a block behind.

16

Cam was on Highway 116, halfway to Forestville, before he realized — or admitted to himself — where he was heading. He almost veered off and turned around. Almost. Something kept him from doing it. Perversity, Caitlin’s accusations, a kind of morbid curiosity — he wasn’t sure just what was motivating him.

In Forestville he took the cutoff that wound through thick pine and redwood forest to Guerneville. The river, he saw as he crossed the new flood bridge, seemed even lower than usual for this time of year — a slender, silt-brown, twisting thing whose main segment was more than a hundred miles long, stretching from its headwaters near Potter Valley to its ocean mouth at Jenner, fifteen miles to the west. The Native American name for it was Shabakai. “Long snake.” Sleeping snake in the summer and fall, lying placid under the early-November sun; it didn’t look dangerous at all. But it could be as deadly as any rattler when it grew bloated enough with winter rains to exceed its thirty-two-foot flood stage. The last time that had happened, three years ago, the river had crested at forty-six feet and three people had died, the entire populations of Guerneville and its smaller neighbors, Rio Nido and Monte Rio, had had to be evacuated, and scores of low-lying summer homes and year-round residences had been swamped with water or mud or both.

Most of the people kept coming back. Repairing, rebuilding, replacing lost possessions. River dwellers, those who lived along the Russian River year-round, were a special breed. Modern-day pioneer stock. The harder they were battered, the greater their losses, the more determined they became.

His grandfather, Cameron Gallagher the First, had been like that. He’d built the river house in the thirties, as a summer place, and when he’d retired from his law practice after World War II, it had become his permanent residence for the last dozen years of his life. Grandpa Cameron had been the first to die there, of natural causes. His only male offspring, Paul, had inherited the house but none of Grandpa’s hardiness or spirit. A weak man, Paul Gallagher. And a lousy attorney because he’d had no passion for the law, had taken it for a profession because it was what Grandpa Cameron wanted; his burning ambition had been to own an antiquarian bookshop. Pa, the bookish wimp. A quiet introvert driven to booze by a hot-pants wife he couldn’t handle and to violence when he’d had Rose’s infidelities shoved in his face once too often. He’d deserved better than he got. Not that what he’d done to her and himself and by extension to his son and daughter was forgivable, but he wasn’t the monster Caitlin tried to make him out to be.

Cam could feel depression moving in on him as he drove west out of Guerneville. First Caitlin and now this unwise decision to revisit the dark center of his past — another wallow in the same old mental sewer. His headache had worsened, too. Please, Jesus, not a migraine, he needed to be able to drive home. But it didn’t feel that bad. No thrusts of pain down through his sinus cavities and into his eyes, no nausea or dizziness or gathering weakness in his limbs. Tension, nothing more.

Better turn around anyway, head home. But he didn’t do it. The compulsion to see the river house again was still on him. Beloit had suggested he do it at one of their sessions, he remembered. “Often, Mr. Gallagher, the wisest course is to confront the creatures that inhabit one’s nightmares. They are seldom so terrifying when faced directly in the light.” Psychobabble with a core of truth. He’d told Beloit he’d do it, but he hadn’t. It had been too easy to find excuses not to follow through.

Well, he was following through now. Up to a point, anyway.

Monte Rio. Moscow Road. And finally Crackerbox Road near Duncans Mills. A little enclave strung out along its mile-and-a-half, dead-end length, mostly on high grassy banks crowded with pine and rock maple and wild grape. A jumble of architectural styles and sizes, from country cottage to rough-log cabin to rustic homes on large lots. And a third of the way west of the Duncans Mills bridge, across the road from a steep and heavily wooded slope—

The river house.

Cameron Gallagher I’s pride. Paul Gallagher’s folly. Cameron Gallagher II’s bane.

He swung off the narrow road onto the grassy verge in front. God, yes, the place was run-down, much worse than Caitlin’s property in Sebastopol. Tall grass and shrubs and tangles of blackberry vines choked the once neat front yard. One of the tall old pines on the riverbank had come down in a past storm; most of it had been chopped up for firewood, evidently, but its heavy, root-webbed base had been left to rot in and out of the hole where it had stood. Near it were scattered bits of branches and sprays of chain-saw dust and chips that made him think of the carcass leavings of predators. The open-fronted garage on the other side of the house looked as though it might not survive another winter, even if the house did; in any case it wouldn’t be long before it collapsed into a jumble of rotting boards like the gardening shed beyond it. A handyman hired by Riverbank Realty in Guerneville came in once a month, but even if he was competent, there was only so much one man could do in seven or eight hours every thirty days. And the last tenants, an unreconstructed hippie and his brood, obviously hadn’t cared enough about their surroundings to bother with even minimal upkeep.

Cam rubbed at the ache above the bridge of his nose and behind his eyes, drew a deep breath before he left the car, and walked over to what was left of the front fence. Slats missing, picket tips broken off, inward sags here and there, the gate hanging from one hinge... Christ. From there he stood looking at the house itself.

Scabrous. That was the first word that crossed his mind. A once handsome two-story modified Victorian that had been allowed to deteriorate into something resembling an Addams Family summer home. Or a haunted house out of an Edwardian ghost story. Off-white paint faded, peeling, worn off in spots and splotched with mildew and water stains in others; shingles gone from the roof, pieces of trim dangling loose or gone completely, a section of the porch railing ripped away. Grandpa Cameron would’ve been appalled. But then, Grandpa Cameron would have been appalled at most of what had gone on in this place over the past three decades.

The window in the near attic dormer drew his eyes; he could not quite make himself turn away without looking at it. The glass was streaked and dirty and had a jagged crack in it. The streaks made him think of tear stains, the dirt of dried blood, and in spite of the day’s warmth he felt a faint chill. A corner of his memory lifted and let him see the interior of the attic the way it had been that night twenty-five years ago, the shapes massed and crouching in the gloom, the huddled figure on the mattress. Violently he shook his head, yanked the memory flap closed again.

I shouldn’t have come here, he thought. Why the hell did I come here?

He got back into the car. Thinking then that what he ought to do was hire somebody to torch the place, give the insurance money to Caitlin, and be done with it that way. Or do the job himself, some dark night when he could screw up enough nerve. Just jerking himself around: He wouldn’t do either one. Not made that way. Cam Gallagher, law-abiding citizen. Cam Gallagher, gutless wonder, like his old man.

He swung into a quick U-turn, headed back toward the intersection with Moscow Road. He hadn’t gone far when he passed a dark blue Mazda drawn off onto one of the narrow turnouts. A man sat hunched behind the wheel, his face averted as Cam drove past.

When he glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the Mazda pulling out behind him, he didn’t think anything of it. But the blue car was still there when he crossed the bridge and turned onto Highway 116 east, still there through Monte Rio and Guerneville, still there — maintaining the same speed and distance behind — all the way to Santa Rosa. He was feeling vague stirrings of apprehension by then, and they grew sharper when the car trailed him onto Highway 101 south and matched his speed there, too, changing lanes whenever he did.

Coincidence. He kept telling himself that. But his stomach was knotted and his palms were moist when the Mazda followed him onto the Los Alegres turnout, then into town. What if it followed him home? If that happened—

But it didn’t happen. He turned right on D Street, and the blue car kept going straight down Los Alegres Boulevard.

The relief he felt was out of proportion to the incident. Better watch out, Gallagher. You’re getting paranoid on top of everything else. No one’s following you. Of course not.

Why would anyone want to stalk Cameron Gallagher?

17