The Shadow hunter

"I

missed you too."

The water rose around her. He entered the tub, straddling her, his knees against her hips, as the water sloshed lazily around them and stray bubbles detached themselves from the lather to burst in small pops.

"I'm not sure the circumstances allow for much finesse," Travis said apologetically.

She giggled.

"Finesse isn't always essential."

They rocked gently in the water and steam. She let her head fall back, her mop of wet hair cushioning her. against the tiled wall. In the ceiling the exhaust fan hummed. The faucet dripped. She heard her heartbeat and Travis's breath.

"Abby," he said.

She shut her eyes.

"Abby."

He was inside her.

"Abby…"

Pumping harder. Driving deeper.

Her back arched, lifting her halfway out of the water, and her hair spilled across her face in a dark tangle, and distantly she was aware that she'd banged her head on the damn tiles, but it didn't matter.

He withdrew himself and held her, the two of them entwined amid soapsuds and lacy, dissipating tendrils of steam.

"Told you I'd fit," Travis said.

She couldn't argue.

In late afternoon Abby woke in the familiar half darkness of her bedroom. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked for Travis, but he was gone, of course. He had returned to the office. She supposed it was considerate of him to have departed without waking her.

Dimly she recalled leaving the bathtub when the water had gotten cold.

She and Travis had toweled each other dry, and the vigorous rubbing had segued into more sensual contact, and then they were on top of her bed, and somehow the covers got kicked off and things had proceeded from there. This time the circumstances had allowed for considerable finesse.

She had dozed off afterward. And he had made his exit, gathering his clothes from the living room, where no doubt they had been neatly folded and stacked. He had fit her into his schedule, at least. He had found a slot for her between lunchtime and his afternoon appointments.

She shook her head. Unfair. What had she expected him to do? Cancel everything, spend the day with her?

He was trying to salvage a damaged business-and not incidentally, keep some of the most famous people in LA alive.

Anyway, she had never asked for more from him.

She liked her space, her freedom. Maybe she liked it too much for her own good.

She got out of bed and threw on a T-shirt and cutoff shorts. Barefoot, she wandered into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna fish. Slathered between thick slabs of date bread, it made a pretty good sandwich.

Normally, when eating alone she would watch TV or read, but there was nothing on TV at this hour, and the only immediately available reading matter was Travis's report. She almost got it out of her suitcase, but stopped herself.

"All work and no play," she mused.

Travis had said that. He'd been right. She could permit herself a break from work. Even so, she found her53 self eyeing the suitcase as she ate her sandwich at the dining table.

"You're a workaholic," she chided.

"This job's gonna kill you if you don't let go of it once in a while."

Unless, of course, it killed her in a more literal fashion first.

A lot of negative energy was in the air all of a sudden.

She popped a CD into her audio deck. The disc, selected at random, was a Kid Ory jazz album from way back when. She listened as the Kid launched his trombone into "Muskrat Ramble," but she knew the song too well to fully hear it, and her thoughts drifted to other things.

College. A January thunderstorm, and in the rain she broke up with Greg Daly. He was pushing too hard, getting too close. Even then, she'd needed her space. For her, it had always been that way.

She had talked about it with her father once. In memory she could see him clearly, squinting into the Arizona sun, nets of creases edging his calm hazel eyes. She had inherited those eyes, that exact shade, and perhaps the quality of remoteness they conveyed.

Her father had been a contemplative man, given to long illnesses He ran a horse ranch in the desolate foothills south of Phoenix. One evening she sat with him in the russet tones of a desert sunset, watching massed armies of saguaro cacti raise their spiked arms against the glare, and she asked why the boys in school didn't like her. She was twelve years old.

It's not that they don't like you her father said. They're put off a bit. Intimidated, I think.

This was baffling. What's intimidating about me?

Well, I don't know. What do you suppose might be intimidating about a girl who can climb a tree better than they can, or shoe a horse, or mm and shoot a rifle like a pro?

She pointed out that most of them had never seen her do any of those things.

But they see you, Abigail. He always called her that, never Abby, and never Constance, her middle name. They see how you carry yourself.

Anyhow, you don't give them much encouragement, do you? You keep to yourself.

You want solitude and privacy.

She allowed that this was so.

We're a lot alike, Henry Sinclair said. We get to feeling crowded more easily than most. She asked him if this was a good thing. It is, he said, if you can make it work in your favor. When she asked how, he answered. You'll figure it out.

Had she? Sixteen years had passed since that conversation.

Her father was gone, and her mother too.

She was more alone than she had ever been as a child, and still she got to feeling crowded more easily than most. n the evening, after a light supper, Abby went downstairs to the small gym adjacent to the lobby. She used the Stairmaster for a half hour, then left the building and walked into Westwood Village, where she browsed in a bookstore and bought a book on criminal psychopathology and a collection of old Calvin and Hobbes comics. She had never quite forgiven Bill Watterson for discontinuing that strip.

Burnout, he'd claimed. She wondered how long he would last at her job.

Mostly her visit to the Village was an excuse to do some people-watching. This was not only her job, it was her hobby. In college she had majored in Psychology because the field suited her temperament. She wanted to observe people and make assessments without being required or even permitted to get close.

Had she continued with her training, she would have been a licensed psychologist by now. But in the summer after her second year of postgraduate studies everything had changed. She had met Travis.

He was giving a lecture in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore. His topic: warning signs of violent psychopathology.

He was not a psychologist, but as the head of a leading security firm he had the kind of hands-on experience that trumped book learning.

She had read a profile of Travis in the Arizona Republic, which was still delivered to her father's ranch, though her father was no longer there to read it. He had died that June, a week after she earned her master's degree, and had been buried beside her mother in a family plot.

Abby had returned to sell the ranch, a job that took longer than expected. Grief and the relentless summer sun had worn her down, and she looked for any excuse to get away. Travis's lecture, open to the public, was the lifeline she seized.

Even without a license, she was enough of a psychologist to know what Dr. Freud would have said about the developments that followed. She had lost her father.

She was looking for another. Travis was older, an authority figure, and he came along at the right time.

Whatever her motive, she went to the lecture. Travis was charming. It was not a quality he exhibited with great frequency, but that night he roused himself to eloquence. He told intriguing stories culled from the cases he had handled, mixing humor and suspense, while never allowing his audience to forget that the stakes in his work were life and death.

Afterward she lingered with a group of attendees chatting with Travis.

As the ballroom was clearing out, she asked her only question. You evaluate your subjects on the basis of their letters or phone calls, she said. / couldn't do therapy that way. A therapeutic diagnosis requires one-on one contact, usually over an extended series of sessions.

The more extended, the better-at least as far as the therapist's bank account is concerned, Travis said with a smile, and several people laughed.

Abby pressed ahead. So even though your methods seem statistically sound, you can't achieve the same degree of certainty in your evaluation as a working therapist, can you?

She hadn't meant to sound combative, but Travis took the question as a challenge and proceeded to defend his approach. He spoke for a long time. When he was done, the group broke up, and Abby headed for the lobby, feeling she had failed somehow or missed an opportunity.

She was unlocking her car in the parking area near one of the city's canals when Travis caught up with her. He came out of the darkness, striding fast, and she thought he was a mugger until the glow of a streetlamp highlighted his face.

That was a good question, he said in a quieter tone than the one he'd used in a public setting. Truth is, I didn't have a good answer. She told him he had covered himself well. He laughed, then asked if they could have a cup of coffee together.

They lingered at a coffee bar on Camelback Road until after midnight, and when he said he was staying in town a few more days, she invited him to visit her at the ranch. It's the real Arizona, she said. The Arizona we're losing now.

I wonder why things always seem most real to us when we lose them, he said softly. He could not have known about her father. Still, it was the uncannily perfect thing to say.

His visit to the ranch the next day lengthened into an overnight stay.

She had not had many lovers. There had been Greg Daly and one other young man-no one else, until Travis. And no one like him, ever. He was no college student. At forty he was a man of the world. And yes, he had several of her father's qualities.

He could be remote and aloof, even sullen. He could be hard. But where her father had always allowed at least a glimpse of his inner life, Travis kept his deepest self hidden. He was a brisk, uncomplicated man, or so he seemed. But the truth was that she could never be sure just what he was. He puzzled her. Most likely she posed the same mystery to him. Neither of them was good at opening up and revealing too much.

When he returned to LA, they stayed in touch. He flew to Phoenix several times to see her as she concluded the business of selling the ranch. Then it was September, time to pursue her doctoral degree; but strangely, her studies bored her. She had spoken with Travis at length about the advantages of direct, personal contact with the stalkers his agency observed from afar.

She had thought of a way to do it. On a trip to LA, over dinner at a seafood restaurant, she broached the subject.

It would be dangerous, Abby, Travis said.

I know.

You'd have to be trained. There's a whole gamut of skills you'd need to acquire.

I have certain skills. Not to mention a master's degree in psychology, a higher than average percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and a winning personality.

Travis smiled, unconvinced. Why would you do this?

You're already qualified as a counselor. Earn your doctorate and your license, then open a private practice and rake in the bucks.

That's not what I want anymore.

But why?

It lacks excitement.

There are things to be said in favor of a nice, quiet life.

You don't live that way.

When did I ever become your role model?

She didn't answer.

After a long time Travis said. If you want me to help you, I will.

But I won't say I have no misgivings. I don't want to see you hurt.

This was the gentlest thing he ever said to her, before or since.

Her training took two years. She lived in a small apartment in an unfashionable part of LA. The sale of the ranch Had given her enough money to support herself, and she took nothing from Travis. Nor did either of them ever suggest that she move in with him. She still wanted her space. She couldn't say what Travis wanted.

He sent her to a self-defense institute specializing in the Israeli street-fighting technique of krav maga.

Most martial arts programs were glorified exercise routines blended with elements of dance; their usefulness in actual hand-to-hand struggle was limited.

Krav maga was different. There was no beauty in it. It was a brutal skill that aimed at one objective-the immediate, unconditional defeat of one's adversary by any means available. Abby had never used violence against anyone, and the first time she had to deliver kicks and punches to her instructor's padded torso, she did it with trembling reluctance, her vision blurred by tears. After a while she learned not to cry.

Inflicting pain was a necessary evil. She could deal with it.

She could be tough. Like Travis. Like her father. She took acting lessons in Hollywood. She rode in a private detective's surveillance van, monitoring radio frequencies.

She accepted a variety of odd jobs-waitress, cashier, clerical worker, hamburger flipper-partly for extra cash but mainly for a range of experiences to draw on when she went undercover.

Two years ago, at twenty-six, she was ready. Her first assignment had been for Travis Protective Services.

More jobs followed. She divided her duties between TPS and other security firms. Keeping her distance, as usual. She prided herself on being an independent contractor. Independent-that was the key word.

Nobody owned her. Nobody controlled her. At least, she liked to think so.

When she had paid for the items in the bookstore, she stopped in a bar down the street and ordered a pina co lada her one weakness. Normally she didn't drink alone, but her new assignment with TPS was worth a private celebration.

Midway through the drink, a young man with a fuzzy mustache that barely concealed a rash of acne sat down next to her. He ordered tequila, presenting his driver's license to get it, then glanced at her shopping bag.

"Been buying books?"

She didn't answer.

"I'm really into Marcel Proust. You know him?"

Abby ignored the question. She showed him the gun in her purse.

"LAPD," she whispered gravely.

He blinked at the gun, unsure whether to be scared or turned on.

"You running some kind of plainclothes operation?"

She nodded.

"We've heard rumors this bar is selling drinks to UCLA students with fake IDS."

Most of the color left his face. He mumbled something and moved away, leaving his tequila behind.

Abby smiled, pleased with herself, and then a voice behind her said, "I could have you arrested."

She turned on her barstool. A man stood a yard away, watching her. He was in his early thirties, wideshouldered and sandy haired, dressed casually in a dark sweater and cotton pants.

"For what?" she asked.

"Impersonating a police officer."

She swiveled away from him and picked up her pina co lada "Go easy on me. It's my first offense."

"I'm not sure I believe that." He took a seat next to her, resting his hands on the bar. He had blocky fingers and thick, muscular wrists.

She sipped her drink.

"Are you saying I'm a criminal?"

"I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions. It might have been an innocent mistake. But I don't think so."

"Why's that?"

"You don't look innocent. But don't be offended. Innocence is boring."

"Well, at least I'm not boring. I would hate to think I was wasting your time."

"You never do, Abby. You never do."

He ordered a draft beer. For a minute they were quiet as he worked on the beer and she finished her drink.

"So," she said, "how's it going. Vie?"

"Could be worse. You?"

"Can't complain. Streets getting any safer?"

"So we're told. Couldn't prove it by me."

Abby had known Vie Wyatt for roughly a year, ever since the Jonathan Bronshard case. Bronshard was a stockbroker who had put up a website with pictures of his family and a description of their happy home, only to become the target of threatening phone calls. He went to Paul Travis. Ordinarily Travis limited his services to celebrity clients, but he made an exception for Bronshard, whose office was down the hall from the TPS suite.

The calls were traced to a pay phone in Hollywood, which TPS officers staked out until the next call was made. They followed the caller home and identified him as Emanuel Barth, a man who'd spent some time in prison for vandalism, breaking and entering, and related offenses.

Abby interviewed the patrol sergeant who had supervised the arrest that put Barth away.

The sergeant was Vie Wyatt of Hollywood Division.

Mr. Barth, she learned, had a hang-up about upper middle-class families. Friendless, unmarried, chronically unemployed, he took out his frustrations by blaming those who had more than he did. In 1998 he'd broken into an upscale house in Toluca Lake and trashed the place.

His fingerprints, on file after a previous arrest, had led police to his shack in Hollywood.

A guilty plea had reduced his jail time, and he was now out of prison.

Wyatt had explained all this to Abby, who'd let him think she was merely a researcher under contract to TPS. The information had proven helpful as she went about the business of installing herself in Emanuel Barth's life. Eventually she had found a way to get Barth off the street again, this time for the next three to five years. Wyatt hadn't handled the second arrest; he knew Barth had gone back to prison on a new conviction, but he had never learned of the role Abby played in putting him there. At least she hoped he hadn't.

She had relied on Wyatt several times since. There was a higher concentration of wackos in Hollywood than in most other districts of LA, and as a veteran cop he knew most of them. He might even know Hickle.

She considered raising the subject but decided against it. Not tonight.

"You're quiet this evening," Wyatt said.

"Just zoning out. What brings you here, anyway?"

"Some nights I pass the time in Westwood. Nicer ambience than Scum City." His term for Hollywood.

"How about you?"

"I live down the street. The Wilshire Royal."

"Fancy digs. Those security firms must pay pretty good for research."

"I survive." "So far," Wyatt said gravely.

She looked away. She had never told him what she actually did for a living, but he wasn't dumb. He had patrolled the streets for years, and he knew people. He must have guessed some of the truth about her.

She knew that if he ever learned the full truth, he might really have to arrest her-no joke.

She steered the conversation in a less dangerous direction.

"I'll bet I know what you're here for."

"Do you?"

"You were hoping to pick up a UCLA girl. Some of them might go for a cop."

"I'm past thirty. Too old for them. Anyway, I don't want a girl."

"Your secret's safe with me. Don't ask, don't tell, that's my policy."

"What I meant was, it's a woman I want. A grown woman.".

"There are three million of them in the greater LA area."

"Women, yeah. Grown women? I'm not so sure.

That's the thing about LA." Wyatt sipped his beer.

"People don't have to be adults here. They can be kids forever. Like, I was talking to this grocery checker the other day, and she tells me how her house plants can read her mind. When she's unhappy, they don't bloom. So to keep them healthy, she only thinks happy thoughts. She beams happy thoughts to her azaleas."

"Future rocket scientist," Abby commented.

"Future nothing. She's thirty-five years old. This is it for her.

This is as grown up as she's gonna get."

"She may have other redeeming qualities."

"I don't want somebody with redeeming qualities. I don't want redeeming qualities to be an issue in the first place."

"You have high standards."

"Well, yeah."

"Maybe nobody can meet them."

He looked at her.

"Oh, I think somebody can."

This conversational path had turned out to be not so safe after all.

"I'd better get going," Abby said.

"Nice to run into you."

She slid off the bar stool and picked up her purse.

"I may need to get in touch about something."

"Business related? Don't answer that. It's always business related.

Well, you know where to find me-but I was hoping you'd quit that line of work."

She slung the purse over her shoulder.

"You mean research?"

"No, not research."

"What, then?"

"That's something I've been trying to figure out. It keeps me up nights."

"Don't lose sleep over me. I'm not worth it."

"I doubt that."

"Night, Vie."

"See you, Abby."

She left the bar and emerged into the whirl of Westwood Village. Two come-ons in a half hour, a new record. Of course, the kid with fake ID had been only-well, only a kid. As for Wyatt, she didn't know quite what to make of him. He was lonely, she guessed.

Maybe she was lonely too. Lonely despite Travis. Or because of Travis.

Because of the peculiar nature of their relationship, its built-in distance and wariness.

She put the issue out of her mind. It didn't matter.

Whatever she was feeling, she could handle it. She could handle anything. She was tough.

Jet lag had never been a problem for her. She dropped off to sleep at midnight and woke refreshed at seven. For breakfast she fried vegetable-protein sausages and an egg-white omelet. She avoided coffee; in her profession it didn't pay to be jumpy. Instead she brewed herbal tea.

Before showering, Abby ran through a workout routine drawn from the YMCA Fitness Manual-no-nonsense exercises like sit-ups, bent-knee pushups, hamstring stretches, and chest rotations. The full program, from warm-up to cool-down, took thirty minutes.

On some days she substituted tai chi or shadowboxing. There were many ways to stay fit.

Only after she was dressed in fresh clothes, with her hair toweled dry and brushed straight, did she allow herself to look at the case file.

Paper-clipped to the back page was an eight-by-ten color glossy. The shot had been taken with a telephoto lens, squashing its subject against an unfocused background smear. It had probably been snapped from a moving car-a driveby, in the strange parlance of the security business.

The subject was Hickle, of course. He had been caught on film as he emerged from a doorway, perhaps the entrance to his apartment building or the donut shop where he worked. She couldn't tell' and it didn't matter. What mattered was the man himself. He had a thin, suspicious face and small eyes. He was scrawny and looked tall. His black hair was a sloppy, disarranged pile.

She tried to draw a few preliminary conclusions from the photo. Hickle seemed indifferent to personal grooming, often a sign of depression or social alienation. His skin was pale, almost pasty, suggesting he spent most of his time indoors. He wore a shapeless brown sweatshirt and faded jeans, clothes that would not attract attention; he didn't want to stand out. His body language-head lowered, eyes narrowed, lips pursed-conveyed a cagey wariness that reminded her of a mongrel dog that had learned to fend for itself on the street.

Bringing the photo up close, she looked intently at Hickle's face.

There was something in his eyes, in the set of his mouth… Anger.

Hickle was an angry man. Life had not given him what he thought it owed him, and he was looking for someone to blame.

"Wrong," she said aloud.

"He's not looking. He's already found her."

She spent the morning with the file, reading it carefully.

When she was done, she returned to the first page, which listed Hickle's address. He lived in an apartment in Hollywood, on Gainford Avenue, south of Santa Monica Boulevard. Unit 420. Fourth floor.

Must be a good-sized complex. In that neighborhood the turnover rate among tenants would be high.

The LA Times was delivered to her door every morning when she was in town. She studied the classified ads. When she found what she was seeking, she said, "Bingo," just like in the movies.

There were vacancies at the Gainford Avenue address.

No apartment numbers were listed, but with any luck, one of the available units would be on the fourth floor. And the units were furnished; she could move in immediately.

By the end of the day, if all went well, she would be Raymond Hickle's new neighbor.

The dough was soft and supple like a woman, and George Zachareas's big, callused, age-spotted hands worked it with a lover's touch, pushing and pulling, folding and turning. Gradually he fell into a rhythm, arms and shoulders and upper body thrusting together in a slow, practiced dance.

Zachareas-Zack to all who knew him, owner and proprietor of Zack's Donut Shack-found himself smiling, relishing the sheer sensual pleasure of the task.

"I appreciate you staying past your shift," he told the tall young man who stood beside him in a matching red apron and cap, working the same mound of dough.

"No problem," Raymond Hickle said.

Zack was alone with Hickle in the kitchen, having left Susie Parker, a worthless, barely literate high school dropout, on duty at the counter.

He figured it was safe to let Susie fly solo at this time of day.

Midafternoon was slow; the shop did most of its business in the morning and the late-night hours. Ordinarily Zack didn't come in during the day at all, but Hickle had called him a half hour Ago with word that the two hundred pounds of dough made by the baker on the night shift had been used up, and Zack had opted to stop by personally and make an extra fifty- pound batch. It was possible to knead the stuff mechanically, by inserting a dough hook in one of the electric mixers, but Zack preferred to do the job by hand. Hickle had volunteered to help.

"You're a trouper. Ray," Zack said in a voice that approached the decibel level of a divine command. He had been going deaf for years and refused to admit it.

"To hang around when you don't have to. After eight hours on the job, you must want out of here pretty bad."

"Not really"

"Any special plans for the evening?"

"No."

"How about the weekend? It's coming up. You got something in mind?"

"I'm working on Saturday, filling in for Emilio."

"Again?"

"I don't mind. It's extra money."

"There's more to life than work. Ray, especially when you work in a place like this."

"I had the day off yesterday."

"Yeah, so you did. Do something fun?"

"Went to the beach."

"Glad to hear it. Look, don't get me wrong. You do a great job, you're the best, but plying dough at a donut store is no life for you.

Where's your future?"

"I'm doing all right."

Zack shook his head. At sixty-four he was a tall and vigorous man, but Hickle, three decades younger, was taller still, six foot one, with the potential to develop a boxer's physique if he applied himself. He had a sallow, intense face and thoughtful eyes, and a mop of black hair that was thick and unruly at the top but cropped close at the nape. He could have been handsome, Zack supposed, but he'd missed his chance somehow.

His complexion was too pale, his eyes too small and too deeply sunken under his heavy brows, his features slightly out of proportion in a way that was hard to define.

"You could do better," Zack told him.

"Hell, you're a smart guy." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial shout.

"Plenty smarter than those clowns I got working the other shifts. Maybe in a couple months we can talk about making you a supervisor-"

"No, thanks."

Zack paused in his labor.

"You don't want a promotion?"

"I'm happy doing what I do."

After a moment Zack resumed attacking the dough.

He had no way to figure out Raymond Hickle. The guy said he was happy, but how could he be? He had no ambition, no personal life, nothing but eight hours a day spent on menial chores for indifferent customers.

Some of his time was passed behind the counter, making coffee and micro waving muffins and toasting bagels, and some of it was spent in the kitchen amid the stainless steel sinks and the large-capacity appliances and the vat in which sizeable blocks of lard were melted to form a thick soup of grease for deep frying dough. Hickle had learned to use the donut filler, a conical, hand-operated apparatus that injected jelly into fried donut shells, and he often was called on to clean the blades of the mixers that blended milk and confectioner's sugar into a glaze.

As jobs went, it was hardly anybody's dream. Yet Hickle never groused or slacked off, never got sloppy or looked bored.

It wasn't natural.

Zack liked Ray Hickle, he really did, and he wanted the younger man to feel good about life.

"You know, Ray," he said on impulse, "you're my employee of the month."

Hickle didn't even look up.

"I wasn't aware you had an employee of the month."

"Well, I don't, but let's say I do, okay?" He gave Hickle a manly clap on the shoulder, raising a billow of white flour dust.

"There's an extra fifty bucks in it for you."

"That's not necessary."

"With all the unpaid overtime you put in. Ray, you deserve it ten times over. I'm adding it to your paycheck on Friday. Don't give me any arguments."

"Okay. Thanks, Zack." There was no enthusiasm in his voice, only empty acceptance.

"So what do you think you'll spend it on?" Zack asked gamely, hoping to spur a more positive response.

Shrug.

"Can't say."

"Got a special someone you can buy a present for?"

"Yes, I do."

Zack hadn't realized how much he expected Hickle to say no until he heard the opposite reply. He concealed his surprise behind a smile.

"That's good. Ray.

Been seeing her long?"

"A few months." Hickle worked the dough with his long-fingered hands.

"She's a beautiful woman. We have a spiritual union. It's destiny."

The odd thing about this was that he said it so casually, as if such confessions were made every day.

"Well, that's good," Zack said with less certainty.

"What's her name?"

"Kris."

"How'd you meet her?"

"It wasn't a meeting, exactly. More of an encounter. I was in Beverly Hills one day, just walking around, and I saw her come out of a store.

She didn't see me.

Walked right past me, in fact. But I never took my eyes off her.

Because in that moment I knew-somehow I just knew-she was the only one for me. I knew we were meant to be together."

"So you went after her?"

"Yes. I went after her. And now I see her all the time."

"Good for you. It shows some moxie, chasing down a girl you like. Hey, next time Kris is in the neighborhood, have her come by for coffee and crullers on the house."

"I'll do that."

There was silence between them as they finished kneading. When the dough was no longer sticky or crumbly, Zack said, "I can take it from here. Why don't you get home to your Kris? She's waiting, I'll bet."

"Oh, yes. She visits me every night. Every weeknight, anyway." Hickle washed the flour dust from his hands in a sink, drying himself with a hand towel. He was pushing open the kitchen door when Zack called to him.

"Hey, Ray, don't tell Kris about the bonus. Buy her another little something and surprise her with it. The ladies love surprises."

"Funny you should say that. As a matter of fact, I've been planning a surprise for Kris." Hickle nodded to himself.

"A major surprise."

He disappeared into the front room. Zack stared after him. A strange one, Raymond Hickle. But if he'd found a woman who loved him, then he was luckier than most.

Hickle left the donut shop at 2:45. As always, he scanned the parking lot at the side of the shop for suspicious vehicles. It was possible he was being watched. Kris had security officers in her employ, and they might be monitoring his activities.

He saw nothing. Even so, he raised his middle finger defiantly in the air, turning in a full circle to exhibit his contempt for any hidden observers.

Then he got into his Volkswagen and pulled onto Pico, heading east.

After five blocks he changed lanes, then quickly changed lanes again, watching his rearview mirror to see if any vehicle behind him performed the same maneuver. None did. He was pretty sure he wasn't being followed.

At a gas station on Pico he stopped and used the pay phone, calling one of several numbers he had memorized.

A message machine answered, as usual. He wouldn't have minded the machine so much if Kris's voice had been recorded on the tape, but it was the voice of a man, presumably her husband.

After the beep Hickle said, "Hi, Kris, it's me. I know you're at work.

Just wanted you to know I'm thinking of you. And that yellow blouse you wore yesterday on the air-no offense, but frankly I didn't care for it.

Blue is your color. I enjoyed your repartee with Phil, the sports guy, especially that part about the Dodgers. I didn't realize you were a baseball fan. I hope you don't try eating one of those Dodger dogs.

Those things'll kill you. Your health is important to me. Bye."

He got back in the car. Two blocks later he stopped at a convenience store and used another pay phone.

He felt it was important to call from a variety of locations.

To stay on the line too long at any one place might have been dangerous.

He wasn't sure why. He just knew he had to stay on the move.

This time he called her work number, reaching her voice mail service.

"Hello, Kris. I guess you're busy getting ready for the six o'clock show. I wanted to ask if you got the flowers I sent last week. I hope you liked them. I picked the same arrangement you had on your desk in the LA Magazine photo shoot. It was hard to match the bouquet exactly.

You should cut off the tips of the stems every few days to keep the flowers fresh.

Oh, this is Raymond, in case you couldn't tell. Break a leg."

He drove for another mile, parked at a mini-mall, and used a pay phone outside a submarine sandwich shop. He called the KPTI switchboard.

"Kris Barwood, please." The operator said Ms. Barwood was unavailable.

This might have been true, but it was more likely that the woman simply recognized Hickle's voice. He did call the switchboard nearly every day, after all.

"May I take a message?" she asked.

"Yes, please tell her Raymond Hickle called. I have some urgent information for her, but I can't convey it through an intermediary.

It's important that I speak with Kris directly."

"I'll pass that on," the operator said, sounding bored. He noticed she did not ask him for a number where he could be reached.

He hung up, drove three more blocks, parked at a fast-food restaurant, and used the pay phone, calling Kris's home number again and shifting his weight restlessly until the answering machine beeped.

"Kris, hi, it's Raymond. Look, I wanted to tell you this directly, but it looks as if we keep playing telephone tag, so I'll have to leave a message. The thing is, I had a dream about you, and it might have been a prophetic dream. I saw you doing the news, and you were reporting on a murder, one of those drive-by shootings, and then a car came careening right through the wall and into the TV studio, and shots were fired, and you were hit, Kris. You were hit, and there was blood all over. You were a bloody mess. I don't think they caught who did it, either. I thought it was something you should know. Sometimes dreams foretell the future, or so people say. Gotta go now, bye."

He drove a half block, parked at the curb, and risked returning to the same pay phone for a quick followup that had just occurred to him.

"One more thing," he said when he got through to her home number.

"You know that flower arrangement I sent you? It would look good at a funeral, don't you think? Talk to you soon."

He thought he was done, but three blocks later he pulled into a supermarket parking lot and used his last thirty-five cents to call the KPTI switchboard again.

The same operator answered.

"Kris Barwood, please," Hickle said.

She let out a sigh.

"I'm sorry, but Ms. Barwood-"

"Is unavailable. That's what you were going to say, right?"

"Yes, sir. I can take a message-"

"Would you, please? Uh, tell her Raymond called.

Just Raymond, no last name. She knows me."

"Fine, sir, I'll do that."

"And one more thing? Hello?"

"I'm still here. What is it?"

"Tell her I hope a fucking rat crawls between her legs and chews out her fucking cunt."

He hung up. He had raised his voice at the end. A woman with a small child was staring at him from across the parking lot. He spat at her as he walked back to his car. She hurried away, and her little boy began to cry.

Hickle arrived home shortly after five o'clock. He parked in his assigned space under a carport and went inside.

The Gainford Arms, one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood, was a relic of the era before garden apartments became fashionable-a rectangular brick pile, five stories high, with rows of small windows looking out on the dismal street in front and the parking lot in the rear. Iron fire escapes climbed the back of the building. Hickle sometimes sat on the fire escape outside his bedroom window and watched the sunset fade over the towers of more expensive real estate to the west.

In the lobby he checked his mail. There was a bunch of junk, a gas bill, and a reply from a TV station in Cincinnati. The station regretted to inform him that it had no photos of its former weekend anchorwoman available for public dissemination. It thanked Hickle for his interest.

He threw away the junk mail and the station's reply.

A couple of months ago he had written to every TV station where Kris had worked, requesting her photo from the archives. So far the responses had all been negative. He supposed it didn't matter anymore.

He rode the rattletrap elevator to the fourth floor.

The elevator was slow. He passed the time reading graffiti on the walls.

His apartment, number 420, was halfway down the hall. He was fumbling for his keys when he noticed that the door to the apartment next door was open. A large, battered suitcase stood at the threshold. As he watched, a slender, dark-haired woman in a T-shirt and jeans stepped out of the doorway and picked up the suitcase.

She glanced at him and smiled.

"Howdy, neighbor."

Hickle nodded.

She carried the suitcase into her apartment and shut the door. Must be moving in. He wondered who she was.

Once inside his apartment, he forgot her. This was his private place, his refuge from the world. Appraised objectively, it was a narrow, depressing hole. Cracks veined the plaster walls. There were no curtains anywhere; the windows were covered by sagging blinds, raised and lowered by pull-cords with paper clips at the ends. The carpet was a nauseous shade of gray green, like mold, and its short-nap fibers had been stamped flat in the heavy-traffic areas.

Heat was supplied by an upright gas furnace against one wall, with a vent feeding into the bedroom.

Nearly all furnishings were provided by the management. In the living room there was a battered sofa, the cushions flattened and misshapen; an armchair with a vinyl seat; chipped and mismatched end tables; undersized lamps with spotted shades. The landlord had also supplied the thirteen-inch TV with rabbit ears-no cable here-but Hickle had purchased the VCR that rested underneath. Lacking shelves, he had customized a few tables out of apple crates to fill up empty corners and undecorated walls. He had wanted to buy a computer but couldn't justify the expense, so he used the public terminals at the Goldwyn Hollywood Library on Ivar Avenue a mile away.

The kitchen area was a tiny alcove, equipped with a gas oven that had not been cleaned since he moved in, and a refrigerator that leaked on the linoleum floor.

Two stained potholders hung forlornly from hooks under the cupboard.

Empty soda cans and glass jars were assembled on the counter; he redeemed them for nickels at the local Safeway.

Sharing a wall with the kitchen was the windowless bathroom, smaller than a closet. A ribbon of rust ran down the wall from the medicine cabinet to the sink.

More rust fringed the frame of the shower door, competing with a patina of mildew.

Finally there was the bedroom. The bed sagged.

Some of the mattress springs were broken. One spring had punctured the mattress itself, its jagged end poking up like a weapon. When Hickle had informed the landlord of "this problem, he had been told to flip the mattress. Isn't it time to get a new bed? he'd asked quietly.

The landlord had answered. Maybe it's time for you to get a new apartment. What do you think this is, the Ritz fucking Carlton?

He had no air-conditioning; when the hot Santa Ana winds blew in from the desert, he sweltered like a beast in a cage. At night he was kept awake by the radios from cars moving in and out of the parking lot, where drug deals had been known to go down. A few months ago a dealer had been fatally shot by a rival.

The Gainford Arms was a crummy place, yet it offered him privacy. With the blinds pulled and the door locked and chained, he was as free as he could be from watchful eyes. He was free-There was a knock on his door.

Hickle looked up, his head canted at an odd angle, his breath held.

Momentarily he was baffled by the prospect of company. Nobody ever visited him. He had no friends, and the apartment building's outside doors were locked to keep out trespassers.

Could it be the people who were watching him? The people Kris had hired? Would they be so brazen as to approach him directly?

He crossed the living room, moving warily. Before opening his door, he peered through the fish-eye peephole.

It was the dark-haired woman, the one who'd said howdy.

He removed the security chain and drew back the deadbolt. This was an adventure-talking to an unfamiliar woman-and he felt his heart beating harder than it should.

The door swung ajar under his hand, and he was facing her.

"Hi again," she said brightly.

He nodded, then realized a response was called for.

"Hello."

"Sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where the phone outlet is?"

"Phone outlet?"

"Not the one in the living room. I found that. But there must be one in the bedroom somewhere. I've been crawling around on my hands and knees like a moron, but I can't find it."

"There isn't one."

"There's gotta be."

"Only one. All these apartments have the same layout. The only phone outlet is in the living room. If you need a phone in the bedroom, you'll have to get an extra-long phone cord."

She sighed.

"Any other surprises the landlord didn't want to spoil for me?"

"Probably quite a few. There's not enough hot water in the mornings, so take your shower early. Don't hook up too many appliances on any circuit, or you'll blow a fuse."

"This gets better and better."

Hickle risked humor.

"Not exactly a garden spot, is it?"

She rewarded him with a laugh.

"That might be an understatement."

"So are you an actress?" Damn. He hadn't meant to say that. It had come out of nowhere and sounded strange.

She didn't seem put off by the question, though.

"No. What makes you think I might be?"

Because you're so pretty-but what he said was "We've got a fair number of aspiring show-biz types in this building."

The explanation was lame, but she appeared to buy it.

"Well, I'm not an actress. Actually, I'm not much. of anything right now. I just came here from Riverside-you know, everybody's favorite desert hellhole. Spent last night in a Motel Six."

"No job?"

"I'll find something. I can type. I use all ten fingers."

She held up both hands, as if to demonstrate that she really did have the full complement of digits.

"How about you? What do you do?"

"I work at a restaurant." He wasn't sure why he had lied. Not lied, exactly. Exaggerated the truth.

"Really? A restaurant around here?"

"Beverly Hills." Another untruth.

She was impressed.

"Wow."

"It's just a job." He looked for a way to change the subject.

"So what's your name?"

"Abby Gallagher."

"I'm Raymond. Raymond Hickle."

"Glad to meet you, Raymond Hickle." She smiled.

"It's good to have a nice neighbor."

This was too much for him. He had no idea how to handle anyone's kindness, and certainly not the kindness of an attractive young woman.

"Likewise," he said weakly.

"Good luck getting moved in."

"Thanks. Bye."

He watched her walk away. When she was inside her apartment, he slowly shut his door.

She ought to be an actress, he decided. She was pretty enough. She had hazel eyes and smooth skin and dark brown hair in a cute pageboy cut, and she was fit and slim. Nice, she had called him. How often had a woman said that about him? Said it right to his face? And she had smiled.

Then he wondered if it wasn't a little odd that Abby Gallagher had come to him for help when the landlord was still on duty. She had found one phone outlet. She could have called the office to ask about an outlet in the bedroom. Instead, after making eye contact in the hall, she had knocked on his door.

Could she be… interested in him? Interested, the way women sometimes were interested in men?

New to the city. Friendless. Lonely.

"Impossible," he whispered.

Anyway, he had higher priorities. He had the shotgun and what he meant to do with it.

He had Kris.

Most nights Hickle dined on beans and rice, a cheap and nourishing repast. At 5:57, right on time, he ladled the pot's steaming contents onto a plastic plate and carried the plate to a card table, setting it down beside a can of diet soda, a spoon, and a paper napkin. He sat on the couch behind the card table and used his remote control to turn on the TV. It was always set to Channel Eight; he never watched anything else. His VCR was loaded with an eight-hour tape and set to record automatically at 6 and 10 p.m. every weekday.

"That does it for us," the male half of the 5 p.m. anchor team was saying.

"Let's check in with Kris and Matt to see what's coming up at six."

Hickle leaned forward. It was always interesting to see what she was wearing. Today she had on a bluegreen blouse, open at the collar to reveal the taut skin over her collarbone. She said something about a fire in Ventura, an arrest in a murder case, a good outlook for weekend weather. The words didn't matter. He studied her face. Was she thinking of him right now? Could he see fear in her eyes?

"All of that," her partner concluded, "is straight ahead on Real News at six."

Theme music. The faces of the anchors and reporters against a montage of news images. The Channel Eight logo. An announcer saying, "KPTI Real News, number one at six, with Kris Barwood and Matt Dale…"

Hickle sat and watched. When the camera was not on Kris, he lifted spoonfuls of beans and rice into his mouth, washing them down with soda.

When she was on the screen, he did not move or even blink. There were so many details to watch for. Even after all this time, he had not yet decided on the exact color of her eyes. Were they blue or gray or some mysterious blend? She wore earrings today but not the ones he'd sent her. The shade of lipstick she was using seemed different than usual. A lighter, more natural shade, a good decision; it brought out the glow of her skin. She laughed during the weather segment. He saw the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth, the explosive flash of her smile.

He missed nothing. He wished the newscast had been all Kris, no one but Kris-she need not even speak, just sit before the camera, turning her head at different angles, posing like a model. In art classes female models posed nude while the students sketched.

Imagine a class in which Kris was the model, naked on a pedestal, and he was the only student, free to stare.

Staring, however, would not be enough. For it to be perfect, she would have to descend from her pedestal and embrace him, and he would kiss her neck, her breasts-He rose. With a sweep of his arm he flung the soda can against the wall, dousing the plaster with a spray of foam.

Then he stood with his hands on his knees, his head down, his breathing shallow and rapid. He didn't move for a long time.

His fantasy of lovemaking had brought him comfort once. But now he had accepted the truth. Maybe it was seeing her with her husband-maybe that was what had made things clear to him at last.

Whatever the reason, he knew that his fantasy was only a fantasy, and that he could not have her, ever.

Therefore no one would have her.

It was that simple and that absolute. Howard Barwood would not have her, and her audience would not have her, and this city would not have her, and the world would not have her.

Hickle raised his head. The newscast was continuing.

It had reached the intro to the sports segment. Kris and her co-anchor were joshing with Phil, the sports guy. Making jokes about the Lakers' easy victory last night. Laughing.

"Laugh, Kris," he breathed.

"Have fun. Enjoy life."

But not for long.

Because he was gaining proficiency with the shotgun.

Soon he would be ready to lie in wait, a shadow among shadows. Ready to spring up and with a single trigger-pull erase her from existence, and where she had been, there would be nothing-no face, no voice, no eyes, no Kris.

He aimed an imaginary shotgun at the TV set, and when she appeared in a smiling close-up, he worked the pump action.

Blammo. Blammo. Blammo.

Back in her apartment, Abby removed a microcassette recorder from her purse and dictated her initial observations.

"Wednesday, March twenty-third. Made contact with Hickle. He's socially awkward but possesses basic interpersonal skills. Shy around women. He asked if I was an actress. The question seemed inappropriate.

He claimed to work in a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Maybe he wanted to impress me. He's not a skilled liar, has a tendency to blurt things out. His defenses should be easy to penetrate.

"After talking with him, I visited his next-door neighbor on the other side. Hickle's apartment is a mirror image of mine; we share the bedroom wall. His other neighbor, in number four-two-two, shares the living room wall with him. She's an elderly lady named Alice Finley, and she was happy to give me the cup of flour I asked for. Mrs. Finley likes to gossip. She informed me that Hickle never has friends over to visit and almost never goes out at night. He's usually quiet, but at times she hears him shouting, and once or twice she's heard loud banging on the shared wall, like he was pounding with his fist. Her conclusion was that, quote unquote, he's not quite right in the head.

"Bottom line: Hickle is socially isolated, probably paranoid, and deeply angry. He suppresses his most antisocial responses when dealing with others but can be violently enraged when alone. He's a borderline personality, possibly schizo typal but sufficiently well organized to hold down a job and pay the rent."

These notes were only partly for her benefit. In the event of her death, she wanted to leave a record that would allow the police to reconstruct what had happened.

She was not entirely sure she could count on Travis to tell them what they needed to know. In her line of work, it was invariably necessary to break the law now and then, as Travis well knew. Faced with a police investigation, he would have to protect himself, quite possibly by denying all knowledge of her activities.

A grim thought, but not unrealistic.

She switched off the recorder, then used her cell phone to call Hollywood Station, asking for Sergeant Wyatt.

"Vie's not on duty tonight," she was told.

"You can reach him at home."

She knew his home number. He answered on the third ring.

"Wyatt."

"Hey, Vie. Guess who."

He made a sound like a chuckle.

"Took you nearly twenty-four hours to call. I was starting to think you didn't need me after all."

"I need you. I'm a very needy person. There's a guy in Hollywood we have to talk about, but not over the phone."

"You had dinner?"

"Not yet."

"There's a place on Melrose that's not bad." He gave her the address.

"Half hour?"

"I'll be there. Thanks, Vie."

"Don't thank me yet. I may not be able to help you this time."

"You're always able to help."

"But I may not want to. It only encourages you, and I'm not sure I should do that." He hung up without a goodbye.

Most people Vie Wyatt could figure out. A decade spent riding patrol in Hollywood Division had taught him everything he needed to know about human nature, and although his promotion to sergeant confined him to a desk more often than he liked, he still saw a greater variety of people, night after night, than the average working professional would encounter in a lifetime.

He was sufficiently jaded to think he had seen it all. At least, he used to be-until he met Abby.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting," she said as she slipped into the Leatherette bench opposite him.

He checked his watch.

"You're right on time."

"Am I? That's a first."

She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a vinyl zippered jacket bearing the LA Dodgers logo. It was not an outfit that ought to have flattered her, but Wyatt found himself taking note of the smooth fall of her hair, the shapely stem of her neck. She was twenty-eight, four years younger than he was, a fact he had learned by the simple expedient of looking up her DMV records shortly after they'd met.

He knew she never noticed him in that way. To Abby he was nothing but a resource. He had no chance with her at all.

"What looks good here?" she asked, reaching for a menu.

"I'm opting for the Matterhorn. Half-pound burger with Swiss cheese and pickles."

Her nose wrinkled.

"You're clogging your arteries just by talking about it."

"You might prefer the Garden of Veggie Delights."

She surveyed the menu.

"Sounds like the least damaging of the possible choices."

"It's funny, you being so concerned about health hazards." He leaned forward, studying her.

"Something gives me the feeling you aren't so cautious when it comes to other hazards in your life."

"Me? I'm the original shrinking violet. I always play it safe." She was smiling.

He found that smile infuriating. He didn't know why he had agreed to meet her. Their meetings were always the same. She pumped him for info, then went off and broke the law in some obscure way he couldn't quite figure out-surveillance or undercover work or… something. She used him. At the same time she mocked him with her sweet smile and her evasions.

She was polite about it, good company, very charming, but he couldn't trust her to level with him, ever.

After the waitress took their orders, Wyatt folded his hands and asked!

"Who's the guy you want to ask me about this time?"

"His name is Raymond Hickle. He lives on Gainford. I'll give you his address. I don't think he has a record, but maybe you could ask around, see if any patrol guys have had run-ins with him or…" She trailed off, seeing his face.

"You know something about him already, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"So give."

He didn't respond right away, and when he did, it was with a question.

"How did you get mixed up with Hickle?"

"It's a case. I can't go into details."

"This is dangerous, Abby."

"I'm just doing some background research-"

"Shut up. Quit telling me that bullshit. It's getting on my nerves."

She was silent, chastened for the first time in their relationship.

"I've met Hickle," Wyatt said after a moment.

"Back when I was riding patrol, I went to his apartment twice, some low-rent place on La Brea."

"The La Brea Palms," Abby said.

"South of Hollywood Boulevard. He lived there from 1989 to 1993."

"Sounds like you've done some checking on him already."

"Not me. The firm I'm consulting to. Employment history, residential addresses, things like that. But they didn't find anything about a criminal case."

"There was no case. Hickle was never charged. He doesn't have a rap sheet. It never got that far."

"How far did it get?" "Like I said, I went to his apartment twice. Me and my partner, together. We were sent over there for a little intimidation session with Hickle. First time it didn't take, so we went back for an instant replay a couple weeks later. It still didn't take, but it did get Hickle evicted. The landlord didn't like having a tenant who was in trouble with the police."

"Why was it necessary to confront him at all?"

"Because he was harassing a woman who lived in the building. He was stalking her."

"What woman?"

"Her name was Jill Dahlbeck. She was in her early twenties, and she'd moved to LA from Wisconsin, planning, naturally, to be a movie star."

"An actress," Abby said.

Wyatt thought he heard a special emphasis in her voice but couldn't decipher its meaning.

"She got a few small roles in TV shows, infomercials, and she did a lot of Equity-waiver theater work. Typical story. She was a nice kid.

That was her problem. She was too nice."

"How so?"

"She made the mistake of smiling at Hickle, treating him like a human being. He misinterpreted it, or over-interpreted. Whatever. He decided she was meant for him. She had zero interest in the guy. I mean, they say men are from Mars, women are from Venus? Well, Hickle's from Pluto, and I don't mean the Disney version."

Abby nodded, unsmiling. In the darkness outside the coffee shop a kid sauntered by, rocking on his heels, shouldering a boom box that cranked out an obscene rap number. Abby waited until the noise had receded before asking, "What form did the harassment take?"

"Following her, sending letters, waiting outside her apartment. Finally she moved to a different address.

He tracked, her down. He was persistent. He kept saying she had to give him a chance."

"So she complained to the police…"

"And a couple of us-Todd Belvedere and me-were dispatched to have a talk with Hickle. Put a scare in him, make him back down."

He saw Abby shake her head slowly in disapproval.

"Not the way to handle it?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not."

"Yeah. Well, we found that out. You have to understand, we were treading on new territory here. The LAPD had established the Threat Management Unit only the previous year, and it was still limited to highprofile celebrity cases. And Jill, regardless of her movie-star ambitions, was definitely no celebrity, so we were pretty much on our own."

"I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying that a direct confrontation generally makes things worse. What Hickle wanted was some response from Jill. Your showing up qualified as a response-not the kind he was hoping for, but at least it showed he'd gotten through to her; he was on her mind. It cemented the connection between them."

Wyatt nodded.

"And it made him mad. Subsequently he became a lot more aggressive in his pursuit.

It was like his manhood was on the line."

"It was. Hickle was a loser with no career prospects and no social life, living in a run-down neighborhood.

His self-esteem was precarious at best. When you came along, trying to intimidate him, it threatened what was left of his dignity. His manhood, as you said."

"Now you tell me. Where were you when I needed you? Anyway, we went back a second time for a more serious conversation, but it was like pouring gasoline on a fire."

"What happened to Jill Dahlbeck?"

"We finally had to admit to her that there wasn't a lot we could do. We couldn't protect her twenty-four hours a day, and we couldn't charge Hickle with anything serious. He stayed just inside the law. All Jill could do was get away. She moved back to Wisconsin."

The waitress returned, bearing a tray laden with a cheeseburger and a beer for Wyatt, a large salad and bottled water for Abby.

"Was Jill attractive?" Abby asked, lifting her fork.

"Very"

"Blond? Blue eyes? Nordic?"

"What hat did you pull that rabbit out of?"

"It was an educated guess. So if this all happened when Hickle moved out of the La Brea complex, it must have been 1993. He was twenty-seven."

"That sounds right."

"I'm surprised you remember the case in that much detail after all this time."

"Well… there was one thing that happened. Jill was attacked."

Abby looked at him. It occurred to him that she had beautiful eyes.

They were calm and clear and the same shade of golden brown he had seen once on a trip to Nebraska, when the westering sun caught the wheat fields in a burnished haze.

"Attacked how?" Abby asked slowly.

"She was taking a class at some little hole-in the-wall actors' studio near Hollywood and Vine. The place has closed down since then. Anyway, one night when she was walking to her car, somebody jumped out from behind a hedge and splashed her with battery acid."

"In the face?"

"That might have been the idea, but she spun away in time, and the stuff only got her coat. Her skin wasn't burned at all. The assailant fled.

She never got a look at him. The street was dark, and it all happened in a second."

"But she thought it was Hickle."

"Obviously. And we did too. We went over to his new address and rousted him. Thing is, he had something close to an alibi. He was a stockboy in a supermarket, and he'd worked pretty late that night.

Plenty of people saw him. He left only a few minutes before the attack took place. He might have had time to get there and lie in wait for Jill, but the time frame was right."

"Search his apartment?"

"Yeah, he gave permission, but there was no acid, nothing that would tie him to the crime."

"Still, it had to be him."

"I don't know, Abby. This is Hollywood, remember.

Lots of random craziness. Hickle's not the only nutcase.

Anyway, Jill was rattled. That's why she left LA.

She was gone the next day." "Wise move," Abby said.

"And she's still okay?"

"Far as I know."

"And Hickle was never charged."

Wyatt shrugged.

"No way the DA could file with what we had. Nobody could prove a thing.

Even so, whether Hickle did it or not, he could have done it.

You know what I'm saying? He's capable of it. He's sick enough."

She was silent.

"Abby." He leaned forward, elbows on the table.

"If you're mixed up in any way with this son of a bitch, you're taking a hell of a risk."

"What makes you think I'm mixed up with him? I'm doing-"

"Research. I know. Just be careful, whatever you're up to."

"I always am. Vie. Don't worry about me."

Wyatt picked up the check. Abby wanted to split the tab, but for reasons of masculine pride he insisted on paying. Outside, he offered to walk her to her car, but she said it wasn't necessary.

"You sure?" he asked.

"Lots of bad guys out there."

"I can take care of myself."

"I got that impression. But you know, there's a reason why patrol cops work in pairs. Sometimes you need a person to cover your back."

"I haven't needed one so far."

"Maybe you've been lucky."

"Well, let's hope my luck holds.

"Night, Vie. Thanks for everything."

He watched her walk away. His car, an ancient Camaro with a rebuilt engine, was waiting for him around the corner, but he didn't go it to yet. He lingered in the shadow of the coffee shop's awning, screened from the glare of the neon sign. Abby's footsteps faded with distance, and then there was the faint pop of a car door opening and a louder thump as it closed. A motor revved.

She'd made it safely to her vehicle. It looked as if she really could take care of herself, not that he'd had any doubts.

Something made him wait a minute longer in the dark. He heard her car pull away from the curb. Headlights flared into view, and a white subcompact shot past. He glimpsed Abby at the wheel, illuminated by the dashboard glow. She was driving a Dodge Colt, square and boxy, far from new. It had a dent in one side panel. The motor sounded peppy enough, but the Colt had seen some serious use. It must have racked up a hundred thousand miles.

His Camaro wasn't any newer, but it had been kept in perfect condition.

It was a classic. There was nothing classic about Abby's rattletrap set of wheels.

Strange. Last night she'd told him she lived in the Wilshire Royal.

Luxury building, where the parking garage was lined with Porsches. If Abby could afford that lifestyle, why was she driving a junkyard clunker?

He shook his head slowly, walking away. Something didn't fit, or if it did, he couldn't see it.

Or maybe he didn't want to see.

Abby parked in her assigned space under a carport at the Gainford Arms.

When she killed the ignition, the little hatchback shuddered all over like a big wet dog.

The car, a Dodge Colt that she had bought from a used car dealer for two thousand dollars, was used strictly for undercover work. At home she kept her real car, a snazzy little Miata that let her negotiate the twists and curves of Mulholland Drive with the wind in her hair.

Whenever she took that drive, she imagined herself back in the foothills south of Phoenix, riding one of her father's Appaloosas on the high, steep trails.

But she couldn't drive the Miata in this neighborhood without calling attention to herself, so the Dodge was her vehicle of choice at the moment. She locked it up and crossed the parking lot.

Music and laughter drew her attention. She followed the noise to the far corner of the lot, where she found a small concrete platform enclosed by an iron fence. The platform was the setting for an outdoor Jacuzzi, bubbling busily. A few young people were hanging out in the tub, drinking beer out of long necked bottles, while a portable radio played a Shania Twain song.

The landlord had mentioned the spa area, the apartment building's only luxury feature. She hadn't quite believed him, though in retrospect there was no reason for doubt; this was LA, after all, where swimming pools and hot tubs were not unknown in even the least desirable neighborhoods.

The water looked inviting, but she had no desire to join the crowd. She was turning to go when one of the partygoers noticed her.

"Hey, you got a bathing suit?" he called out.

She smiled.

"I'm not in the mood, thanks."

"We can put you in the mood," another guy yelled.

He was drunk.

"Somehow I doubt that. Have fun. And try not to pass out in there, okay?"

She walked away. Behind her, the two men pled their case and, when that tactic failed, switched to wolf whistles and sexually suggestive grunts.

Subtlety evidently was not their preferred method of romantic conquest.

She rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Outside Hickle's door she paused to listen, pressing her ear against the wood. She heard the TV in his living room.

The time was nine o'clock, too early for the news.

Maybe he kept the TV on just for the illusion of companionship it provided.

She unlocked her apartment and entered, deflating a little when she breathed in the musty smell and saw the cheap, worn furniture and the dingy walls. She had spent a great deal of time in places like this over the past few years.

Lying on the couch, she dictated what she had learned from Wyatt into her micro recorder Then she fixed herself a cup of herbal tea and drank it slowly, sitting on the fire escape and watching the night sky.

Once, she saw a shooting star that traced a pale arc above the distant rooftops. It might be an omen-good or bad, she couldn't say.

Loud voices echoed through the parking lot below.

The party crowd was leaving the spa area. She heard inebriated laughter, fading out.

The hot tub must be empty now. She decided to try it. She could use some R 'n' R. Among the items of clothing she had packed, there was a one-piece swimsuit. She changed into the suit and took a large bath towel with her as she went downstairs to the lobby. She crossed the parking lot to the spa area. The gate was closed, but she discovered that the lock was broken, and she didn't need to use her apartment key.

A sign warned that the Jacuzzi was to be used only by residents of the Gainford Arms and only between the hours of 8 am. and 10 p.m. She checked her watch. The time was 10:15. Well, there was nobody around to complain that she was breaking the rules.

The kids who'd partied here had left the place a mess. Empty beer bottles ringed the tub. Potato chips and pretzels were scattered around, and near one of the cheap lounge chairs lay the uneaten remnant of a Twinkie.

"Slobs," Abby murmured. She set down her purse and the towel on the lounge chair, then took off her wristwatch and her sneakers. Finally she eased herself into the tub. The water was still frothing and gurgling; the kids had neglected to turn off the jets when they left.

Eyes shut, she rested her head against the concrete rim of the tub and let the hot bubbling water massage the small of her back.

She had not rested, really rested, in much too long.

The New Jersey case had been tricky, and then Travis had called her back to LA as soon as it had ended.

There had been almost no downtime.

She wondered if she had been wrong to accept the TPS case. True, she desperately wanted to prove herself to Travis, make amends for the Devin Corbal disaster, if she possibly could-but she might be driving herself too hard. Fatigue was the real enemy in a profession like hers. Fatigue could be fatal.

After this one, she promised, she would take a vacation.

Maybe head over to Phoenix and look up some old friends. Hike in the Superstition Mountains, ride a horse on a dusty trail, be a kid again.

Yes, she would do all those things… when this job was over… She felt herself drifting into the alpha state on the threshold of sleep.

Her thoughts fuzzed out and grew distant. All tension left her, and there was only a humming meditative sense of calm.

Then a sudden lurch forward, water over her head, the hot jets stinging her neck-She was submerged in the tub, the surface only inches away but out of reach, because she couldn't rise.

Someone was holding her down with a strong hand clutching the top of her head, gripping her hair in tangled bunches.

She tried to grab the hand that-held her, knowing she could inflict instant pain by bending back one of his fingers or squeezing the tender ball of flesh below his thumb, but with his free hand he deflected her attack.

If she could only see him-But she couldn't, she was underwater, blinded by the lights ringing the interior of the tub, and above her was only darkness and she couldn't see anything, and there was no air.

She struggled to duck lower, pull free, but he had her by the hair and wouldn't yield. She braced both feet against the bottom of the tub and pushed hard, fighting to overcome the downward pressure that kept her submerged, but he had the advantage of leverage.

A cry of frustration burst out of her in an explosion of bubbles, blending with the jets of churning water.

The cry cost nearly the last of her oxygen. She would black out at any moment, and then he would simply have to hold her down until her lungs flooded with water in a final instinctive breath.

But she couldn't die this way, facedown in a Jacuzzi, surrounded by empty beer bottles and trash-Beer bottles.

A weapon.

With her last strength she raised her arm out of the water and groped behind her, along the rim of the spa.

Her hand closed over the neck of a bottle.

She tilted it, smashed it against the concrete, then jabbed upward with the broken, jagged end.

Instantly the hand holding her down withdrew.

She stabbed again, blindly, not sure if she had made contact the first time-then surfaced with a hoarse, spluttering gasp.

Sucking air into her lungs, she spun in the tub, looking everywhere for her assailant, but all she saw was the gate clanging shut.

In the parking lot-running footsteps, fading out.

She leaned against the side of the tub, fighting to control her breathing, then noticed that she still held the beer bottle in her hand.

She examined the jagged end for blood, found none.

She saw no red droplets on the concrete surface of the spa area.

The bottle had merely scared him. She hadn't inflicted a wound. Too bad. Blood could be tested and matched to an eventual suspect.

Besides, she would have liked to hurt the bastard after what he put her through.

She set down the bottle and climbed out of the spa, shivering in the cool air. With a towel wrapped around her, she considered the big question.

Who the hell was he?

She was quite certain her attacker had been male.

Those hands had been decidedly masculine in their size and strength.

But whose hands had they been?

Hickle's? Was he on to her somehow, or had he simply equated her in his mind with Jill Dahlbeck, his earlier obsession?

He had asked if she was an actress, as Jill had been.

Maybe there was something about her that had triggered the same feelings that might have led him to splash Jill with battery acid on a dark side street, in Hollywood years ago.

Or maybe the assault had no connection with Hickle or this case. She remembered Wyatt saying, This is Hollywood, remember. Lots of random craziness. Hickle's not the only nutcase.

Then an absurd thought occurred to her. How well did she really know Vie Wyatt?

"Oh, come on," she said under her breath, "that's paranoid."

Of course it was paranoid. She was in a paranoid business. She was trained to be hyper vigilant But the fact was, somebody had just tried to kill her, less than two hours after her meeting with Wyatt-and she didn't know Wyatt all that well.

He had bumped into her last night at the bar in Westwood. Suppose it wasn't a coincidence. Suppose he had been following her. Stalking her She knew all about that kind of behavior, didn't she?

And suppose that tonight, after dinner, he had followed her to this building, and when he saw her enter the tub… "Tried to kill me?" she asked herself aloud.

"Why would he?"

She couldn't say, but she had to admit it was at least possible. The lock on the gate was broken; anyone could have entered the spa area.

She still didn't believe it. Wyatt had never struck her as the slightest bit unstable or hostile or obsessive.

Anyhow, there might be a way to eliminate him from suspicion.

She took the cell phone out of her purse and called Wyatt's home number.

He lived in the mid-city district near La Brea and Washington.

If he'd fled this location just minutes earlier, he wouldn't have had time to get home yet.

She waited through three rings, a small knot of worry forming in her stomach. She didn't want to suspect Wyatt. She didn't want the assailant to be anyone she knew and liked.

Four rings-And the phone was answered.

"Wyatt."

"Oh." She caught her breath.

"Hi, Vie, it's me. Hope I'm not calling too late."

"No problem. I'm kind of a night owl, with the schedule I'm working lately. What's up?"

She couldn't very well tell him that she was calling to remove him from suspicion of attempted murder.

But she hadn't had time to think of a cover story. She improvised.

"I realized I forgot to ask if there were any other women Hickle went after. You know, in addition to Jill Dahlbeck. Anything in his past, any other reports, before or since."

"Not that I'm aware of. But I have a feeling you might know about somebody."

"Me?"

"Why else would a security firm be taking a fresh look at him?"

"Well… no comment." "That's what I figured. And if I asked who his new object of affection might be?"

"No comment."

"You sound like a broken record. Anything else you forgot to ask?"

She almost said no, then changed her mind.

"There is one thing. Any reports of drownings in the Hollywood district?"

"Drownings? You mean, like, little kids who fall in a swimming pool?"

"No, I mean adults… Any unsolved cases like that?

An adult who drowned in a pool or a hot tub, that kind of thing?"

"What would that have to do with Raymond Hickle?"

"Probably nothing. Just a loose end I'm trying to tie up."

"Well, to answer your question-no, there haven't been any mysterious, unsolved Hollywood drownings. If there had been, I think the local news would have picked up on it, don't you?"

"Sure. Of course they would. Sorry I asked."

"No problem. I'm here to help. To protect and serve, that's my motto."

"I'll see you. Vie."

"Take care, Abby."

She ended the call. There was no chance he could have made it home that fast, and besides, she had detected no hesitation or fear when she asked about local drownings. He was in the clear.

That left one other suspect, one who was considerably more obvious than Vie Wyatt.

Abby went inside the building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor.

Once inside her apartment, she slipped onto the fire escape, then crept close to Hickle's bedroom window.

The window was open. From his living room she heard the babble of his TV. Kris Barwood's voice. She checked her watch-10:40. The late local news on Channel Eight was still in progress.

She leaned over the railing of the fire escape and peered into the living room window two yards away.

The Venetian blind was open, and she could see Hickle clearly, seated on the couch, bare-chested, wearing a pair of ragged shorts, watching the TV in rapt concentration.

He looked as if he had not moved in nearly an hour. Quite possibly he hadn't. When the news came on, it became the only thing in his world.

Abby retreated inside her apartment and considered the situation.

Wyatt was cleared. And she didn't think the assailant had been Hickle either.

Then who was it?

Random craziness, she decided, once again replaying Wyatt's comments on the subject. This was Hollywood.

Plenty of nuts out there.

She had gotten careless and one of them had tried to take advantage.

Maybe meant to kill her and steal her purse. When she fought back, he got scared and ran off. End of story.

The explanation didn't entirely satisfy her. She wasn't a big believer in coincidences. But Wyatt and Hickle were off the hook, and there was no one else to suspect.

Was there?

It was past midnight when Howard Barwood climbed the stairs to the bedroom. He'd been out later than expected. Kris was already home. He found her stretched on the bed in her nightgown and slippers.

Her hair had fanned over the pillows, framing her face in a fringe of gold.

"Well, well," she whispered, her voice flat, "you're finally back. Out for another drive?"

He nodded, not looking at her.

"Still breaking in the new Lexus. I took it all the way up to Santa Barbara and back."

"Quite a trip."

"Uh-huh." He didn't want to talk about this. He crossed to the window and peered out at the moonlit surf pounding the beach.

"Look at those breakers."

"I'm too tired to look." Kris sighed.

"You, on the other hand, don't seem tired at all."

"Why should I be?"

"All that driving would wear anyone out."

"It gets me energized." He wished he could change the subject.

She made a noncommittal sound.

"You do seem a little… agitated."

"Agitated?" He wanted to sound casual, but the word came out raw and tense.

"Yes, I'd say so. Restless, jumpy, on edge. You didn't get in an accident, did you?"

"Of course not. Why would you even ask a question like that?"

"You strike me as kind of worked up, that's all."

"I'm fine. I like driving the new car. It's a kick.

Maybe it takes me a little while to come down off the adrenaline high."

He wondered if she could hear the lie in his voice.

Kris was silent for a moment. Then she whispered, "I guess anything is better than spending time here at the house-or with me."

He turned away from the window.

"What are you talking about?"

"Lately you've been keeping your distance."

"That's ridiculous. I went with you to work yesterday, if you recall.

I was at the studio. I was there all night."

"You were there. But you spent most of your time with Amanda." Amanda Gilbert was the executive producer of the six o'clock edition of Real News.

"You two were inseparable, at least until she went home at seven-thirty."

In the stretch of stillness that followed, the roar of the surf was plainly audible even through the double pane windows.

There were many things for Howard to say, but none seemed quite right.

He settled on irony.

"Paranoia's not a good look for you, Kris,."

"It's not paranoia. I saw how you acted around her.

And earlier that afternoon…"

"Yes?"

She averted her gaze.

"Never mind."

He took a step toward the bed, then stopped. Distantly it occurred to him how absurd it was for a man to hesitate about approaching his own wife in their bedroom.

"Come on," he said quietly.

"Let's hear it.

What mortal sin did I commit yesterday afternoon?"

"That woman Travis hired-she's about Amanda's age." The smile that flickered on Kris's face was one she never used in public. A sad, bitter smile.

"Why is it always the young ones you can't take your eyes off?

What's so special about youth anyway? Does a woman fall apart at forty the way a car does when it hits a hundred thousand miles? Or is it just that you always need this year's model even when the one you've got is still running fine?"

"I couldn't care less about Abby Sinclair."

"No? You were so vocal in your concern for her safety." Her voice slipped into a lower register.

"Are you sure you won't get hurt? Aren't you taking an awful risk, you poor, brave thing?"

"I think her safety is a legitimate concern. Of course, I realize that in the larger picture it's only your safety that counts. The slightest threat to you is a national emergency-"

"The slightest threat?" She sat up straight, her hair falling around her shoulders.

"Is that what you think Raymond Hickle represents, a slight threat?"

He wouldn't back down.

"Under the circumstances…"

"You mean the circumstances of being stalked and harassed and terrorized night and day?"

"I mean the circumstances of being surrounded by armed bodyguards night and day."

"Devin Corbal was surrounded by armed bodyguards when his stalker shot him."

Howard spread his hands.

"Well, if you don't trust Travis to protect you-"

"This isn't about Travis."

"So what the hell is it about?"

Abruptly she let her head fall back on the pillow.

"What do you think?"

Finally he took the three steps that brought him to her bedside. He stood looking down at her.

"What am I supposed to do, Kris?" he asked softly.

"What do you want me to do?"

"What I want…" She rolled her head in his direction, swept a tangle of hair from her face.

"What I want is for you to look at me the way you look at those other women. Younger women."

"I do, all the time." The words sounded false even as he pronounced them.

"Do you? When was the last time we…?" Weariness overtook her.

"Oh, never mind."

He knew that if he took no action now, she would hate him in the morning. She had asked him as plainly as she could', as openly as pride would allow.

"It's been too long," he murmured. It was the closest he could come to an apology.

She looked at him, wariness and hope mingled in her expression.

"Yes." Her tone was neutral, giving him nothing.

Now was the moment for him to kiss her. Now was his opportunity to heal the breach between them.

He couldn't.

"It's this craziness with Hickle," he said dully.

"Once that's past and things are back to normal, we'll be the way we were. We have to wait it out, that's all."

"Is that what we have to do?" Kris whispered.

"Just until this is all settled and we can breathe again."

She didn't answer.

"I think I'll fix something to eat," Howard said, though he wasn't hungry.

"Can I bring you anything?"

She shook her head slowly.

"I'm going to sleep."

"That's the best thing. Rest. Put everything out of your mind." He reached out and clumsily stroked her hair, his nearest imitation of affection.

"It'll all be behind us soon."

She was silent.

Howard left Kris in the bedroom and went downstairs, wishing it was still possible for him to love his wife.

Hickle couldn't sleep.

He rolled over and stared at the glowing dial of his bedside alarm clock. The time was 2:19. He had to get up in three hours. His shift started at 6 a.m." and he was always punctual.

The smart thing to do was just close his eyes and relax. Sleep would come, if he let it. He was sure it would.

Instead, hating himself, he slipped out of bed and picked a pair of pants and a shirt out of his laundry basket, pulling them on. Then he removed the screen from his bedroom window and crept onto the landing of the fire' escape His new neighbor's bedroom shared a wall with his own.

The landing afforded access to her window. He approached, bending low.

Her bedroom was dark, the window shut, the Venetian blind closed. But the blind was old and warped, and through gaps in the horizontal slats he could dimly make out Abby Gallagher, asleep in her bed, limned by moonlight.

He knelt, pressing his face close to the window, watching her sleep.

She was pretty, all right. She reminded him of Jill.

Of course, they looked nothing alike. Jill had been taller and blond and almost severe in her beauty. She had looked a little like Kris, now that he thought about it. Funny how that had never occurred to him before.

Abby, smaller, dark-haired, was not at all like Jill or Kris in physical appearance. Still, she was not unattractive.

Her eyes, he remembered, were hazel, and her skin was smooth. There were faint freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her mouth was a perfect shape-what people called a kissable mouth, he supposed.

No, she did not resemble Jill. Why, then, did she remind him of her?

Maybe because, like Jill, she had been nice to him. She had smiled and made small talk.

She had been friendly. Just as Jill had been-in the early stages of their relationship, at least.

Later, when he had tried to get serious with her, to express his feelings, Jill had rebuffed him. She had tried to give him the brushoff.

He wondered if Abby would do the same, if he tried to get to know her better. He hoped not. He wouldn't want things to get ugly with her, the way they had with Jill.

Toward the end, he had gotten a little bit crazy about Jill Dahlbeck.

He had enough distance, enough maturity, to recognize that fact now.

The business with the acid, for instance. That had really been uncalled for.

It was ordinary battery acid, which he had collected in a jar. He remembered waiting for Jill to leave her acting class, following her with his gaze as she separated from the other students and walked down the dark side street where her car was parked. Then when she was a few yards from the car, her keys jangling in her hand-He'd leaped up out of hiding. Splashed the acid at her. He could still see the long fluid arc launching into space.

Her face had been the target. He had wanted her scarred, blinded.

He had wanted to do something to her that was so terrible and so ineradicable that she could never forget.

But he'd failed. She had seen the flash of movement and instinctively pivoted away, and the acid had spattered her coat, ruining it but doing no further damage.

He had run, cursing his bad luck. For years afterward he had relived that moment, wishing he could have another shot at her. For a time he had considered tracking her down-he suspected she had returned to Wisconsin-and doing something to her. Kidnapping her, maybe, and taking her into the woods.

Now, however, he was past all that. He no longer had any feelings toward Jill. He had scarcely thought of her in the past year. Not since he had encountered Kris. She was the one for him, the only one.

Jill could not compare. Neither could Abby, not by a long shot.

Still, Abby had smiled at him so sweetly… He studied her, fascinated.

She lay on her side, facing him. In the moonlight her skin had a porcelain quality. A wisp of hair draped her forehead, fluttering faintly in the breeze stirred by her breath.

In some ways she was even prettier than Jill. Of course, she wouldn't be so pretty with a cupful of acid searing the skin of her face.

He didn't expect it to come to that. He really didn't.

Still, you never could tell.

The first night in a new place was always the hardest.

Abby woke at 6 a.m. stiff from the unfamiliar mattress.

Some noise from the parking lot had awakened her, she guessed. She lay still for a moment, adjusting to the reality of her surroundings. The sun was rising, and its glow through the slats of the Venetian blind painted the bedroom in orange stripes. She saw cracks in the ceiling plaster, a furry patina of dust on the dresser, a cigarette burn in the short-nap carpet.

"Why aren't there any rich stalkers?" she wondered aloud.

"This job would be more fun if I had to infiltrate a fashionable cul-de-sac in Bel-Air."

She rose from bed and looked out the window.

Hickle's Volkswagen, which was normally parked under one of the carports on the opposite side of the parking lot from her Dodge, was gone. He must have left for the donut shop sometime earlier.

Lying on the floor, she performed a stretching routine, working her hamstrings and the muscles of her back, then limbered up her neck and shoulders with yoga exercises, and concluded the session with ten minutes of deep breathing. Then she considered the problem of how to search Hickle's apartment.

The job would be tricky. At first she contemplated breaking in through his bedroom window via the fire escape. But surely he had locked the window before leaving for work, and she doubted she could defeat the window latch without leaving evidence of intrusion.

Better go in through the door.

After a breakfast of oatmeal, cinnamon toast, and a banana, she ran the shower, rinsing her hair in the thin, tepid stream. As Hickle had warned, hot water was scarce. She dressed in old jeans and a faded blouse.

She passed the time rereading the case file until after nine o'clock, when those tenants who had jobs were likely to have left for work, and the others had settled in for a day of soap operas and talk shows. Tool kit in hand, she stepped into the hall and looked around.

Every door on the fourth floor was closed. A neighbor peering through a peephole might catch her in the act of a break-in, but she was willing to chance it.

Before Hickle's door she set down the tool kit and took out an electric pick gun and a feather-touch, coil spring tension bar. The door was secured with a Kwikset pin-tumbler deadbolt lock. To turn the plug, it was necessary to free the pins, lifting them into the pin wells. She inserted the tension bar into the lower half of the keyway and the pick gun's blade into the upper half, then switched on the pick. It whirred like a dentist's drill until the row of pins popped free. The plug rotated under the pressure of the tension bar, and the deadbolt retracted with a metallic snick.

She stepped inside, shut the-door, and looked through the peephole, watching for any activity in the hall. There was none. Evidently the pick gun's motor'noise had aroused no concern.

Turning, she surveyed Hickle's apartment. The furniture was different from hers but of no better quality.

Although Hickle had lived in the building for years, he had not enlivened the decor with mementos or artworks or small, homey touches.

There were no paintings on the walls, no framed photos resting on end tables. The place was as nondescript as a motel room.

She crossed the living room and closed the Venetian blind, then turned on a light. The first thing she noticed was the VCR under the TV.

Hickle must have bought the VCR himself; unlike the TV, it had not been bolted down by the landlord. She found the all-purpose remote and turned on both devices, then reviewed the on-screen programming menu.

Hickle had set the VCR to tape Channel Eight every weekday from 6 to 6:30 p.m. and again from ten o'clock to eleven.

Kris Barwood's two daily newscasts.

She turned off the machines, then inspected the kitchen. The fridge was stocked with several large plastic containers of rice and beans, Hickle's dietary staple. She found no snacks, no dessert foods, not even any sugar. At least he couldn't use the Twinkie defense.

Before proceeding with the search, she took care of one more item of business in the living room. She installed a surveillance camera.

The camera was an inch wide by an inch deep, with a 3.6mm pinhole lens that resembled a pen's ball point.

The lens covered a ninety-degree field of view, and its light rating was .03 lux, permitting photography even in semidarkness. Soldered to the camera was an inch long UHF crystal-controlled color video transmitter that broadcast 420 lines of video resolution without shakiness or drift.

The transmitter had a range of three hundred feet and would send its signal through walls and any other obstruction except steel.

For extended use the unit had to be run off an external power supply.

Fortunately there was a smoke detector mounted above Hickle's sofa, hard-wired into the main current. She took the smoke detector apart and found room inside for the camera-transmitter package, which she wired to the AC. Before replacing the smoke detector on the wall, she aligned the camera lens with one of the pre punched holes in the cover.

The camera was not equipped with a microphone.

She considered installing an infinity transmitter in the base of Hickle's telephone-the device would pick up room noise along with both ends of his telephone conversations-but decided against it. Hickle, like many paranoids, might periodically inspect his phone for bugs.

Besides, it was unnecessary to monitor his phone calls. The only calls that mattered were the ones he made to Kris Barwood, and TPS was already recording and tracing those.

Still, she wanted some audio surveillance. Mrs. Finley had reported that Hickle sometimes shouted when alone. No doubt he also talked to himself at times.

Most people did.

"Even me," Abby said, proving her point.

A simple hidden microphone would do the trick. She planted one inside the stove's ventilation hood. The microphone and its transmitter used less energy than the video camera and did not need to be hooked up to the main current. A single nine-volt battery would allow continuous transmission for more than a week.

The bedroom was next. Here was where Hickle truly lived, where he felt free to be himself. He had made the room a shrine to Kris Barwood. Her image was everywhere. The walls were papered with KPTI advertisements, photos of Kris from feature articles, and eight-by-ten glossies of Kris at various stages in her career.

"He really is her number one fan," Abby whispered.

She snapped a series of still photos with a pocket camera.

She was disappointed that there was no computer in the room. Hickle had told Kris Barwood that he'd searched the Internet to obtain her home address. Presumably he had used a publicly available terminal. It seemed odd. Even on his income, he could surely afford a garage-sale computer. Maybe he was a technophobe or something.

The first thing she did was plant a second audio bug.

This one she taped to the underside of his nightstand drawer. If he talked in his sleep, she would know.

Then she began her search. In a cabinet she found rows of videotapes, each eight hours long and carefully labeled with five dates in chronological order.

Weekdays only. Kris's newscasts. The half-hour 6 p.m. show and the hour-long 10 p.m. edition added up to ninety minutes per day. Hickle recorded a week's worth of shows-seven and a half hours-on each tape. Thirty-six tapes in all. He'd been taping for roughly eight months, and by Abby's calculation he now had two hundred seventy hours of Kris Barwood.

And he was still taping her, still adding new shows to his collection.

Two rows of books took up the cabinet's lower shelf.

Some bore the labels of used book shops, while others were stamped "LIBRARY." The front row consisted of true-crime titles, many with photo sections. The photo pages were noticeably dog-eared. Hickle had spent time poring over black-and-white shots of stalkers escorted under guard after their arrest. Did he picture himself in the same circumstances, and if so, did the prospect bring him worry or satisfaction?

The second row leaned toward more practical subject matter, dealing mostly with the intricacies of finding confidential information in government archives or on the Internet. Blurbs on the dust jackets promised. You can track down anybody! Other books focused on tactics and strategy in guerrilla warfare. Passages concerned with the art of the ambush were copiously underlined.

The last few books, nestled in a corner, were of a different type. She brought them into the light and felt a chill run over the muscles of her back. They were Kris Barwood's high school yearbooks.

Abby looked at the most recent one, dated 1978. The senior class photos were in the front, in alphabetical order. Kris's picture was one of the first.

Kris at eighteen, a graduating senior. Her activities had included the school newspaper and the debate club. Her quotation was from Blaise Pascal: The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.

Hickle surely must have agreed with that.

She examined the other yearbooks, which collectively provided a detailed record of Kris's teenage years. How had Hickle obtained them?

Back copies might be offered for sale by the school itself, or perhaps he had gone all the way to Twin Falls and stolen them out of the school library.

After replacing everything in the cabinet, she focused on the bedroom closet, the last place left to explore and the one most likely to yield secrets. The closet had bifold doors, the knobs encircled by a short length of padlocked chain. Hickle wasn't taking any chances.

The padlock had four cams, each numbered with ten digits. That meant ten thousand possible combinations, from 0000 to 9999. There had to be some way to narrow it down. What would a person use for a combination?

His birthday. The information was in the TPS report, but she'd left it next door, and she wouldn't go into the hall merely to retrieve it; the risk of being spotted by another tenant was too high.

Instead she used her cell phone, speed-dialing Travis's office, and pulled him out of a meeting.

"Yes?" he snapped.

"What's Hickle's birthday?"

"What?"

"I need to know."

"For God's sake… All right, hold on." She waited until he came back on the line.

"October seventh, 1965."

"Don't hang up. I need to try something."

She put down the phone and set the combination to 1007-October 7. No result. 1065? 0765? Nothing. Her gaze drifted to the walls covered with Kris Barwood's face, and the solution was so obvious she wanted to slap herself.

When she picked up the phone, Travis was practically shouting her name.

"Abby, damn it, what's going on?"

"I'm back. Tell me Kris Barwood's birthday."

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"Yeah, right. April fool, a week early. Just do it."

Another interval of silence, and then grumpily he announced, "August eighteenth, 1959."

She set the combination to 0818, and of course it opened.

"Thanks, Paul. You've been a big help."

"What the hell are you-"

"Gotta go." She switched off the phone.

When she parted the closet doors, she saw a Heckler amp; Koch Model HK770 rifle, complete with telescopic sight, standing in a corner.

"Armed and dangerous," she breathed. She examined the gun. A light-emitting diode was installed in the trigger guard, wired to a pressure switch in the walnut stock. A laser sighting system. That kind of modification didn't come cheap. Neither did the gun itself.

The whole package must have cost Hickle nearly a thousand dollars. Now she knew why he didn't own a computer. He had plowed all his savings into firearms.

A brown duffel bag lay on the closet floor. She unzipped the flap and found a Marlin Model 120 twelve gauge shotgun and six boxes of ammunition. Two of the boxes were empty. The sportsman's plug had been removed from the shotgun, allowing it to hold four of the three-inch Federal Super Magnum shells Hickle favored.

She turned the bag upside down. The bottom was encrusted with dark earth. He must have lugged it into some wooded area with the Marlin inside and used up two boxes of shells in shooting practice.

Most likely he'd purchased the rifle first, but he'd had trouble with his marksmanship. The scope and the laser sighting system had been an attempt to solve this problem. Later he'd realized that in the heat of battle he couldn't depend on steady aim. He needed a gun that could simply be pointed in the direction of its target, a gun that would spray a wide scatter of shot shell pellets to cut down anything in its path.

The Marlin had replaced the HK.

He had given the killing some thought. He had assessed his limitations, his inexperience, and had selected the weapon best suited to his needs.

"} don't know about anybody else in the room," Abby said, "but I'm getting nervous."

She wondered if she ought to disable the guns, remove the firing pins or something. No, too risky.

Hickle practiced with the shotgun and perhaps with the rifle as well.

If either gun was tampered with, he would know it.

Standing on tiptoe, she scanned the shelf built into the top of the closet, where she found a large cardboard box. She took it down.

Inside was paper, a lot of paper. Newspaper and magazine articles, bundled together, many dating back years. Some were clippings; others were printouts of material Hickle must have tracked down on the Internet or on microfilm. All the stories related to Kris Barwood.

She flipped through the articles, then paused on a copy of the birth certificate for Kristina Ingrid Andersen.

Hickle had gotten hold of that too.

At the bottom of the pile she came across a photocopy of a zoning map that showed the layout of Malibu Reserve. One house on the beach was circled in red. He must have obtained the map from the county assessor's files, open to the public.

There was one other item in the box, a plastic carrying case with a Polaroid camera inside. Resting beside it was a stack of color photos bound with a rubber band.

They were Polaroids of Kris running on the beach.

"Not good," Abby whispered.

"Not good at all."

At two o'clock Kris arranged her hair, smoothed her clothes, and asked Steve Drury to bring out the Town Car for the trip to KPTI.

"We're leaving early today."

She found Howard in the game room, lining up a shot on the electronic putting green.

"Good run?" her husband asked without looking up.

"I didn't go for a jog."

"No?"

"Wasn't in the mood. You know what that's like, don't you? Not being in the mood?"

This was the closest she had come to broaching the subject of their unconsummated liaison in the bedroom last night. She meant to wound him, but if she drew blood, he didn't show it. He merely tightened his frown of concentration as he tapped the ball into the hole with an expert touch. Tinny, synthesized applause issued from a hidden speaker.

The playing surface automatically recontoured itself to simulate a different hole-an uphill putt this time.

Howard Barwood loved games. The game room had been his inspiration, and nearly all of its contents were his purchases-pinball machine, jukebox, virtual reality gaming system, foosball table, casino-style craps table, billiards table, and a fleet of radio-operated cars.

He'd spent more than fifty thousand dollars on these and similar items, not to mention the sixty-five thousand he'd just paid for the new Lexus IS 400 sedan that he had taken on so many long, nighttime drives.

Expensive toys for a man who'd never fully grown up. His boyishness was something she had loved about him during their courtship. She was less charmed by it now.

"I'm on fire today," he said, lining up the next putt.

"Those chumps over at the country club had better watch out."

Kris tried to find a smile but couldn't summon one.

"Maybe you should join the seniors' tour."

"I just might."

"I'll have Courtney clear a space on the mantel for your trophy." She headed for the stairs, then turned back, remembering why she'd tracked him down in the first place.

"I'm off to work."

He glanced up, neglecting his game for the first time.

"So soon?"

"I have an errand to run before I go to the studio."

"Running errands is Courtney's job."

"This is personal." Under other circumstances she might have shared it with him, but not after last night.

She had reached out to him, and he had rebuffed her.

Well, he did grow tired of his toys when their novelty wore off. Even his costliest acquisitions lost their shine after a while.

The Town Car was idling in the driveway when she walked down the garden path. Steve let her into the backseat, then got behind the wheel and shifted into drive.

"I'd like to take the surface streets today," she told him as they approached the front gates of the Reserve.

"Ventura Freeway's faster."

"No, let's go south, through the city. We have time."

He nodded, asking no questions.

Kris was silent until the Town Car reached Hollywood.

Then she requested a detour.

"Take me past Hickle's apartment building."

She watched Steve's eyes in the rearview mirror.

They narrowed slightly.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Kris."

"I'm sure it isn't. Do it anyway."

"It's against procedure. I could get in trouble-"

"You won't."

"Travis would have my ass."

"I'll handle Travis if he ever finds out, which he won't because neither of us is going to tell him. Just do it."

"Okay… but why?"

"I honestly can't say."

Steve took Santa Monica Boulevard to Gainford, Hickle's street, and turned south.

"That's his address," he said as the Town Car prowled slowly down the street. Kris looked at the Gainford Arms, a faded 1930s complex with glass lobby doors scratched by vandals, tiers of small windows that looked dirty, and unadorned brick walls.

The street was lined with Indian laurel trees that had matured nicely.

Otherwise it was bare of charm or beauty. She saw a tramp rolling a pushcart laden with old newspapers and other trash. He did not look out of place.

This was Hickle's world. She thought of Abby Sinclair living here for the next few days or weeks. Could she have gotten to know him yet? It seemed too soon.

Probably it would take her a week simply to establish contact. How long before she learned anything of value? The scheme seemed hopeless, and Kris had agreed to it only out of desperation. Howard had worried about Abby's safety, but Kris was past the point of concerning herself with other people. What motivated her was survival, purely selfish. To save herself, she would underwrite any risk.

"Seen enough?" Steve asked as Hickle's building retreated.

"Plenty. Let's get on the freeway."

She took a last look at the block as Steve turned the corner. The neighborhood reminded her of places she had lived in the earliest years of her career. Hickle's neighbors would be loud and close, his plumbing would often fail, bugs would scuttle through his pantry. In the hot season of September and October, his apartment would broil, and he would lie awake in the sweltering darkness. Every day he would head off to his minimum-wage job knowing he had nothing to come home to.

She was sure he wasn't happy, and she felt glad about that.

"You don't have an appointment. Miss. Sinclair."

Travis's assistant. Rose, smiled up at Abby from behind her desk, relishing her temporary exercise of power.

Abby restrained herself from sidestepping the desk and simply barging into the office.

"No, I don't. What I do have, however, is an important piece of information your boss needs to hear."

"Perhaps I could pass it along."

"Perhaps you could buzz him on the intercom and get his ass out here now."

Rose yielded.

"I'll see if he's available," she said tonelessly, adding as a final jab, "We really do insist on making appointments in advance."

Abby shrugged.

"Looks like I'm breaking all the rules."

She waited impatiently for Travis to come out. Distantly she was conscious of being tired, but she wouldn't permit herself to acknowledge the feeling.

There was too much left to do.

After leaving Hickle's apartment, she had set up the monitoring gear that received the audio and video signals from the bugs she'd planted.

A late lunch, eaten while standing up in her kitchen, had revived her somewhat. At three-thirty she had left the apartment building and headed to Century City. She needed to be back before five. She had plans for the evening.

Finally Travis emerged from his office, wearing his trademark navy jacket, open-collar shirt, and tan slacks.

"What's up? Need more dates of birth?"

"Not this time."

"What was that all about, anyway?"

"I had to open a combination lock."

"Oh. You could have explained that."

"I enjoyed leaving you in the dark. Am I interrupting anything?"

"Just my daily session with our chief financial officer.

He's quantifying exactly how much red ink TPS is bleeding on a week-by-week basis. It's a meeting I can do without."

"Is there someplace we can talk? "She wanted to deprive Rose of the chance to eavesdrop.

Travis led her down the hall to a conference room.

Paintings of seascapes and meadows ornamented the mahogany walls-safe, nonthreatening subjects, intended to soothe clients unnerved by whatever crisis had driven them here. She wondered how many times the glamorous and powerful had gathered in this room, seeking comfort from the man in the blue blazer and tan slacks, their protector.

Travis shut the door, and Abby sat on the edge of the long table, swinging one leg. The lacquered tabletop caught her reflection.

Irrelevantly she wished she were wearing better clothes. Her faded blouse and jeans felt shabby in this room.

"Okay," she began, "here's the thing. The lock I opened was in Hickle's apartment. I was in there to establish audiovisual surveillance and to do a little snooping around. I found a bunch of Polaroids. Pictures of Kris jogging on the beach. Her outfit varied.

He watched her a minimum of three times. I assume Kris jogs right outside her house?"

Travis didn't answer for a moment. He seemed to have trouble absorbing the news.

"Yes, every day.

She's accompanied by a bodyguard, but he usually hangs back a little."

"There was no bodyguard in these shots. He must have been out of frame.

Doesn't matter anyway. A bodyguard wouldn't have done much good if Hickle had opened fire."

"Does he have a gun?"

"At least two. Twelve-gauge shotgun and semiautomatic hunting rifle.

The rifle's equipped with a scope and a laser sighting system, but the shotgun seems to be his weapon of choice."

"A laser sight…" Travis moved to the wide windows and stood gazing out, shoulders sagging, head downcast. He looked more exhausted than she'd ever seen him.

"So how serious do you think he is?" he asked quietly.

"I'm proceeding on the assumption that he's entirely serious. In fact, he may have already acted out his rage against another woman he was stalking."

"What?"

She told him about Jill Dahlbeck.

"But we don't know Hickle was behind that attack," she added.

"Even if he was, it doesn't seem to have been attempted murder, and he carried it out so badly that the only physical damage was to Jill's coat. Of course, the emotional damage is a different story." "Yes,"

Travis said distractedly. She knew he tuned her out whenever the subject of emotions came up.

"The important point is that if he did attack this other woman, it shows he's capable of going beyond fantasy, of actually taking action."

"He was younger then, maybe more reckless. He may be more cautious now.

We don't know."

"But we do know he's at least gotten within striking distance of Kris."

Travis expelled a breath.

"How could he get that close? The Reserve has tight security.

Perimeter fencing, a gatehouse manned by two guards, and two more guards in constant patrol."

"Have you checked the fence for signs of egress?"

"Sure. That was one of the first things we did. The fence is heavy-gauge steel wire topped with razor wire coils."

"Wire can be cut."

"We didn't find any gaps."

"Have your people checked recently?"

"Daily." He moved away from the window, circling the room.

Her gaze followed the sweep of his reflection on the long table's glossy surface.

"You'd better have them look again, more closely," she said.

"Is there any other way into the compound?"

"The gate, but it's always guarded."

"How carefully do they screen delivery trucks, visitors, repairmen?"

"Most of the Reserve's security officers are retired cops. They're pretty sharp. And they've got Hickle's photo posted inside the guardhouse. I don't think he could get by them."

"What about the beach? It can't be completely sealed off. Below the high tide mark it's public property like all California beaches."

"True. There's a fence at the boundary, but it doesn't go far into the water, and anybody could step around it. But we've covered that angle too. We installed a hidden camera that feeds a live image of the beach access point to the Barwoods' guest cottage. The agents stationed there monitor the video at all times."

"Unless they screwed up, got careless."

"Once, maybe. Not three times."

"Well, however he did it, Hickle found a way in, and he can do it again.

Next time he may bring a gun instead of a camera, and then Travis looked away.

"Devin Corbal, part two."

Abby winced.

"That's not how I would put it."

"Sorry. You know what I mean."

"Yes. I know."

The air-conditioning system hummed, and somewhere far below, a siren fluttered past. Abby wondered if she ought to mention the other significant development of the past twenty-four hours-the attack that had nearly taken her life last night.

She decided not to. She had no idea how to make sense of that incident, no idea if it even tied into the Barwood case. And she didn't want Travis second guessing his decision to bring her in. She didn't want him to think she was in over her head… so to speak.

"It won't end up like the Corbal case," she said quietly.

"I won't let it."

"I wasn't trying to imply…" His words trailed off.

She finished for him.

"That I was responsible for what happened to Corbal?"

"You weren't Abby."

"Maybe not. But the fact remains that he's dead, and you're meeting every day with your CFO to figure out how to keep this company running with a skeleton crew, and sometimes it sure as hell feels like it was my fault."

"I told you before, you're too hard on yourself.

Look, forget I ever mentioned Corbal, all right?"

"Sure. Forgotten." But she knew it wasn't and couldn't be.

"Anything more to tell me?"

"Lots, but it'll have to wait." She hopped off the table and slung her handbag over her shoulder.

"You'd better resume number crunching, and I have to get back to Hollywood. I have a big night planned."

"Do you?"

Abby nodded.

"Hickle doesn't know it yet, but he's taking me out on a date."

Wyatt knew he ought to stop thinking about her. It was stupid, the way he couldn't get her out of his head. He wasn't the type to lose control over a woman. It wasn't like he was desperate or anything.

He'd never had trouble with the opposite sex. In high school and college he'd played football, and he could vouch that everything ever whispered or imagined about the private lives of cheerleaders was true.

He hadn't done too shabbily as a cop either. That cliche about how women preferred a guy in uniform-he had verified it. Repeatedly.

All in all, there was absolutely no reason for him to be tooling down Wilshire Boulevard at four-thirty in the afternoon on his way to Abby's condo.

Probably she wouldn't be home. Most people were at their place of employment during the day. They didn't get stuck on the night watch, working from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.-his current schedule from Thursday through Monday. Still, he had a feeling Abby didn't keep regular hours, and he wasn't sure she had a place of employment to go to.

He parked his Camaro on a side street and walked past dainty one-story houses cowering in the shadow of the Wilshire Royal, then took a shortcut across the oval of manicured grass that bordered the Royal's driveway.

The sky was blue and cloudless, reflected in fourteen floors of windowpanes, and a breeze from the ocean a few miles away flapped the flags in the forecourt.

As he approached the lobby, he found himself selfconsciously brushing his hair with his fingers. He wondered if he looked okay in his civilian clothes. Then he wondered why it mattered. Come on, this was no big deal, right? He was just dropping by. He'd been in the neighborhood, and since he had some free time before work he would see if Abby wanted to grab a cup of coffee.

That was his story, and he meant to stick to it.

The doorman nodded at him in a way that seemed disapproving. Wyatt ignored the guy. He focused on the two guards at the desk. One was young and had a shaved head. His partner was older and rumpled.

"I'm here to see Miss. Sinclair," Wyatt said. For some reason he added!

"I don't think she's expecting me."

The guards exchanged a glance. The older one answered, "Miss. Sinclair isn't here."

"Oh." So he'd missed her. He should have figured.

"Well, maybe I can leave a message."

"Don't know when she'll be back. She's out of town."

"She is?"

Shrug.

"She travels a lot. Hardly ever see her."

The younger guy spoke up.

"You're not in software, are you?"

Wyatt was baffled by the question.

"Software?"

"Her gig. Thought maybe you were in the same line."

"I run a web commerce distribution center," Wyatt said smoothly, stringing words together with no particular regard to their meaning.

"Abby's working with us on a project. Upgrading our server capabilities, developing some multitasking options."

"That's cool." The young man nodded as if he understood.

Maybe he did. Maybe everything Wyatt had said actually made sense.

"Hey, I'm always looking for freebies.

You got any beta testing you want done, I'm there."

"Not right now, sorry. You, uh get any freebies from Abby?" "Nah. She said it was against company policy, which is weird, because she calls herself a consultant.

What's the good of being a consultant if you gotta play by somebody else's rules?"

"I'm pretty sure Miss. Sinclair plays by her own rules," Wyatt said quietly.

"She been out of town long?"

"Left yesterday-" His partner cut him off.

"We can't give out that information."

You already did, Wyatt thought.

"No problem," he said cheerfully.

"I was just wondering. Thanks for your time." He headed for the door.

"Didn't you want to leave her a message?" the older guard asked in a mildly suspicious tone.

"I'll send her an e-mail. That's the best way to reach her. She spends most of her life online."

He escaped into the sunlight before the guard could ask a follow-up.

Walking back to his car, Wyatt considered what he had learned. Abby wasn't home. She had been gone since yesterday. The building staff thought she was an independent consultant in the software field. They seemed to have the impression that she was on a business trip. Such trips evidently were frequent.

Except she wasn't on any trip. Wyatt had eaten dinner with her last night. She was in town, but not here, not at her home.

He thought about the old Dodge clunker she'd been driving. It couldn't be her regular car; it didn't fit into this neighborhood. Still, there were parts of town where the Dodge wouldn't look out of place. East LA, Venice, Hollywood… Hickle lived in Hollywood.

Wyatt stopped. He stood very still, putting it together.

"No," he said aloud.

"She wouldn't. She'd have to be nuts."

Across the street a woman tending her rosebushes cast an apprehensive gaze in his direction.

He drove into Hollywood, calling the dispatch center on his cell phone to obtain Raymond Hickle's address.

Hickle's apartment building was the Gainford Arms. Wyatt knew the place. An old brick pile four stories high, ugly and dilapidated, the walls webbed with taggers' marks. He had answered many calls at that building when he was riding patrol. The lifestyle of the rich and famous was not lived there.

Wyatt reached the Gainford Arms by five o'clock.

He pulled into the parking lot and scanned the rows of cars, looking for a white Dodge. There wasn't one.

Maybe he'd been wrong, after all. Maybe Abby wasn't mixed up in anything as reckless and crazy as he'd feared. He hoped so.

He was circling the far end of the lot when he glimpsed a flash of motion in his rearview mirror. Another vehicle had entered the parking area-a white subcompact.

Wyatt parked in the nearest available space, safely hidden in a carport's shadow. Low in his seat, he watched the car cruise past. It was a Dodge Colt, and it had a dent in its side panel, and the woman at the wheel was Abby, of course.

She guided the Colt into a carport in a corner of the lot, then walked briskly to the rear door of the Gainford Arms, checking her wristwatch.

In a hurry, it seemed.

The rear door was locked. Abby had a key. She must be a resident. No surprise.

The door swung shut behind her, and Wyatt slowly sat up in his seat. A slow anger was growing inside him. He was tempted to barge into the landlord's office, show his badge, find out which apartment she was in.

Bang on her door until she opened up, then demand to know what kind of game she was playing… He told himself to cool off. He wasn't going to do that. Abby was obviously involved in something clandestine and dangerous. If he blew her cover, he would put her at risk.

After a few moments he composed himself. Calm again, he headed over to Hollywood Station, though he was off duty for another forty-five minutes. At an empty desk he called the phone company. It didn't take him long to determine that only one apartment at the Gainford Arms had established phone service within the past week. Number 418, rented to Abby Gallagher.

Hickle lived in apartment 420. Abby was his nextdoor neighbor.

Wyatt was suddenly worn out. He sank back in his chair, rubbing his face. One of the day-watch patrol guys, a training officer named Mendoza, sauntered past.

"Rough day. Sergeant?" Mendoza asked.

"You could say that," Wyatt said.

"I bet it's a woman."

Wyatt had to smile.

"How'd you know?"

"Only a woman can make a man feel that goddamn bad."

At five-fifteen Abby found Hickle in the laundry room of the Gainford Arms, unloading his clothes from the dryer.

"Hi, neighbor," she said.

"Fancy meeting you here."

Hickle flushed.

"It's a small world," he managed.

She rewarded his effort at humor with a smile. Actually their meeting was no coincidence. After returning from TPS, she had rewound her surveillance videotape of Hickle's apartment and scanned it in fast motion.

The tape was time-stamped, allowing her to determine that at exactly 4:27 he had left the apartment carrying a basket of laundry. Hastily she had stuffed some of her clothes into a plastic bag and headed down to the basement. She thought it would seem more natural to run into him there than to arrange another chance encounter in the hallway.

"How much do these machines cost?" she asked as she dumped the contents of her sack into one of the big washers.

"Seventy-five cents each."

"I'd better stock up on quarters. My wardrobe's pretty limited, and I have to keep washing the same items if I want anything clean to wear."

He didn't answer. He was collecting the rest of his clothes from the dryer, in an obvious hurry to depart.

She knew he was nervous around her-around women in general. Still, she wasn't going to let him get away that easily. They had a date to go on, whether he knew it or not.

"I didn't spend a lot of time packing," she continued, as if his silence was the most natural thing in the world.

"Lit out of town in a rush. Left most of my things behind."

This ought to tweak his curiosity, and it did. He looked up from the dryer.

"Sounds like the move was kind of sudden."

"Extremely sudden. I threw some bare necessities into four suitcases, tossed'em in the back of my car, and amscrayed."

"You're not on the run from the law, are you?"

He said it quite seriously, but she was sure he meant it as a joke, so she merely laughed.

"On the run from my problems, I guess."

"You have… problems?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"Sometimes I think I'm the only one."

"You're not. It only feels that way. Not a good feeling, is it?"

He looked away and mumbled, "No, it's not." He seemed embarrassed, as if he had revealed too much.

He picked up the laundry basket and took a step toward the door.

"Well… see you."

"Hey, you happen to know anyplace where a person can get a decent meal around here?"

Nonplussed by the change of topic, Hickle only blinked.

"I survived last night on crackers and cheese. Since you work in a restaurant, you must know the local dining scene. What I'm looking for is a tasty low-fat meal, something that won't drive up my cholesterol count to the stratosphere."

She waited, hoping he wouldn't panic so badly that his mind would go blank. She needed him to make a dining suggestion. Finally he came up with something.

"How about The Sand Which Is There?" he said.

Abby asked him to repeat the name. He obeyed, speaking slowly to emphasize the pun.

"It's in Venice, on the boardwalk."

"Great. Maybe we could go together, say, around quarter to six. I mean, who wants to eat alone?"

This possibility took him so completely by surprise that for several seconds he couldn't answer at all. She knew he was trying to find an escape hatch, a socially acceptable way to turn her down, because the prospect of spending the evening with a woman, any woman, would be terrifying to him.

Yet he did want someone to talk to. She could sense it. He had opened up a little already. She was giving him the chance to go further, if only he would take it.

She waited.

"Well," he said at last, "okay. I mean, why not?"

She relaxed.

"Great. I'll knock on your door around ten to six."

"Sure. Ten to six. No problem…"

He was already retreating, the laundry basket in his arms. He escaped out the door, and she heard his footsteps on the stairs to the lobby.

So far, so good. Abby smiled.

Having started the wash cycle, she might as well finish the job. She hadn't lied when she told Hickle she had only a few clothes with her.

She had brought a total of four suitcases, and the two largest ones had been crammed with electronic gear and other tools of her trade.

The washing machine rattled and hummed, sloshing its contents against the porthole in the door. She watched her clothes as they were tossed around in a bath of suds. The shifting patterns reminded her of the colored glass fragments in a kaleidoscope. She'd had a kaleidoscope when she was a little girl; her father had given it to her. She remembered playing with it for hours, fascinated by the ever-changing patterns. Now she was an adult, but she still studied patterns-patterns of behavior, of body language, of verbal expression.

Some patterns were obvious, like the selection of books in Hickle's bedroom, and some were more subtle, like the way he had asked if she was an actress when they met. Jill Dahlbeck had been an actress… Wait.

She froze, suddenly aware of another presence in her environment.

Turning, she scanned the rows of washers and dryers, the windowless brick walls, the bare ceiling bulbs suspended from the low ceiling. She saw nobody.

Even so, she was almost sure she was not alone.

She unclasped her purse and reached inside for her snub-nosed Smith, but hesitated. It wouldn't be a good idea to let one of the other residents spot her with a concealed firearm.

She left the gun in her open purse, within close reach of her right hand.

"Hello?" she called out.

Her voice rose over the rumble of the washer. No one answered.

Slowly she stood, then turned in a circle, studying every corner of the room. The place was empty.

If someone had been watching her, he had retreated from the laundry room. Perhaps he had gone upstairs-or perhaps he was hiding in the boiler room next door.

But who? Was it Hickle? Or her assailant from last night? Or merely the product of an over sensitized imagination?

She decided to find out.

Cautiously she approached the doorway. On the threshold she placed her hand inside her purse, wrapping her index finger around the Smith's trigger.

The stairway to the lobby was on her right. The boiler room lay to her left. The door was open, the overhead light off. Three large water heaters hissed inside.

She groped for a light switch inside the doorway.

Couldn't find one. She entered in darkness. There was a flashlight'in her purse but she couldn't take it out without releasing her grip on the gun, and right now the gun was more important to her.

The boiler room was large and musty. Concrete floor, brick walls, cobwebs in the corners. A man could crouch in one of those corners and not be seen.

"Hello?" she said again.

"Anyone here?"

Nothing.

She advanced into the middle of the room. The water heaters were straight ahead. Big industrial heaters, gas-fired, probably holding eighty gallons each. She groped in front of her and touched the smooth surface of the nearest water tank.

She had thought that someone might hide behind the heaters, but as her eyesight adjusted to the gloom she saw that they were nearly flush with the rear wall, actually bolted to the concrete to prevent the gas supply lines from being ruptured in an earthquake.

There were hiding places on either side of the heaters, though. She took another step forward and something brushed her hair, and for a moment she was in the spa again, a stranger's hand pushing her down-No.

Not a hand, not an attack. Only the length of chain hanging from the ceiling. The pull cord for the overhead light. That was why she hadn't found a wall switch.

She tugged the chain, and the bare bulb directly above her snapped on, brightening the room.

She glanced around her, half expecting an assault, but nothing happened.

There was no one in the boiler room. There never had been.

"God, Abby," she muttered, "get a grip."

She must have imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was some kind of posttraumatic reaction to her near death experience in the hot tub last night. Or maybe she was just going crazy.

Abby left the boiler room. The washing machine had completed its cycle.

Her clothes were soaking wet, but she decided she could dry them in the sink or bathtub of her apartment. She'd spent enough time in the basement.

Besides, she had to get ready for her big night on the town.

Hickle hated to miss the six o'clock news.

In the past year he had seen every one of Kris Barwood's broadcasts.

Sitting in front of the TV each weeknight at six and ten was part of the daily rhythm of his life. When she'd taken a vacation last September, he had been seriously distressed. Yet tonight he was missing the show.

He reminded himself that he was taping it and could view the tape later, and he was sure to be home in time for the ten o'clock newscast.

"Traffic's not too bad."

He glanced at Abby, seated on the passenger side of his VW.

"Yeah, it's pretty light this evening," he answered, "considering it's rush hour."

"It's always rush hour in this city."

He could think of no worthwhile reply.

"Yeah."

His face was hot, his palms were damp, and he wished he were safe in his apartment watching Kris on the news-the show would have just started-watching her and enjoying her presence in his home, even if it was only a magical illusion.

Instead here he was on Santa Monica Boulevard driving into the twilight with Abby Gallagher. She had changed into cotton slacks, a button-down blouse, and a nylon windbreaker. A nice outfit, better than the jeans and sweatshirt he'd thrown on.

He risked conversation.

"I guess it's a lot different here from Riverside."

She raised her voice over the drone of the motor and the rattle of the dashboard. "la's so big. I can't even find my way around. I'm lost."

"You'll get used to it." He forced himself not to retreat into silence.

"I did."

"You're not from LA originally?"

"} moved down from the central part of the state a long time ago." He was no good at small talk. He decided to dare a more direct approach.

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead." "You said you were running from your problems…"

He was sure she would tell him it was none of his business.

"Boyfriend problems," Abby answered, as unperturbed as if she'd asked his opinion of the weather.

"Well, more than boyfriend. Fiance. We were supposed to be married in May. Then I found him cheating on me. When I say found, I mean literally found. I walked in on him when he was banging her. In our bed. At one o'clock in the afternoon."

Hickle didn't know what to say, but for once he felt no awkwardness because surely no one would know what to say in this situation.

"So I screamed and threw things, the usual mature reaction of the woman wronged. Next day I drove out of town. Had to get away." A shrug.

"That's my sad story."

The word sad cued him to the appropriate response.

"I'm sorry."

"That's life."

"But it's awful, what he did to you."

"I guess you can't expect long-term commitment anymore. Even so, I really thought we were meant to be together. You know how that is?"

Hickle kept his voice steady.

"I know."

"To find somebody who's everything you want, everything you're looking for-and then they go and do something like that…" Abby let her statement slide away unfinished.

"I know," Hickle said again, more firmly.

"I know exactly what that's like."

"So it's happened to you?"

Because the car was stopped at a red light at Beverly Drive, Hickle could turn in his seat and look directly into Abby's eyes.

"It's happened to me," he said.

"Just recently, in fact-just within the past year-I found the perfect woman. Perfect. And she…" Abby watched him, no judgment in her expression.

"She tore my heart out. She killed my soul. She murdered the best part of me." There. It was said. Probably he should have stayed silent. The words had come out in a rush, desperate and angry. He was afraid Abby would think he was some kind of nut.

"I'm sorry, Raymond," she whispered.

Raymond. She had called him by name.

A horn blatted behind him. The stoplight had cycled to green. He was holding up traffic.

He motored through the intersection, continuing west, afraid to speak again and risk damaging whatever fragile intimacy he'd established.

Raymond. His first name. Spoken with such gentle understanding.

Raymond.

The parking lots that served the Venice promenade were filled to capacity this evening. Hickle navigated the maze of narrow side streets and alleys until he found an open slot at a curb two blocks from the beach. By the time he maneuvered the Rabbit into the space, the last of the twilight glow was gone, and darkness lay thick and smooth on all sides.

After his blurted confession in Beverly Hills, he had said little, and Abby hadn't prodded him. Although the present excursion was perhaps not technically a date, it came close enough to raise his anxiety level dangerously high. Once they were in the restaurant, he would loosen up, and she would learn what she had to know.

On every case Abby started out with a mental checklist, questions about the person whose threat potential she was assessing. The questions were simple and specific, and the more of them she answered, the nearer she came to a final evaluation. Already she had checked off several of the most serious questions about Hickle, each time with an answer in the affirmative.

Did he feel a deep personal connection to Kris Barwood? Yes. His unguarded comments in the car had confirmed it.

Did his obsession go beyond writing letters and making phone calls?

Yes. After searching his apartment, she knew he had devoted enormous energy to researching Kris's life, tracking down her address, and photographing her from a distance.

Did his obsession show signs of escalating into violence?

Yes. The books on stalkers and combat tactics were proof.

Had he obtained a weapon or weapons? Yes. Guns.

Two items on the checklist remained unresolved.

Did he believe he could successfully carry out an attack?

Without that belief, he might fantasize and rehearse and plan but never act.

Would he be deterred by fear? Often fear functioned as a conscience of last resort.

Hickle struck her as a timid man. Possibly it was fear that had stayed his hand so far. Possibly the same fear would serve as a permanent brake on his most violent ambitions.

Hickle shut off the Volkswagen's motor and headlights, then fumbled the key free of the ignition slot.

"We're here," he announced.

"Well, not at the restaurant-we'll have to walk there-it's not far."

He was stammering like a high school kid. She would have felt sorry for him had she not seen the rifle and shotgun, the secret photos of Kris.

"It's a nice night for a walk," she said cheerily.

"The ocean air feels good."

They got out of the car, and Hickle locked it.

"Yeah, it's one thing I've always appreciated about LA.

Where I grew up, we were fifty miles inland. Not much chance for an ocean breeze."

"Desert country?"

"No, hills and farmland. My folks ran a grocery store. It was-what's the word? Bucolic."

"But boring."

"Yeah. Not exactly bright lights and big city." They started walking.

"I guess you didn't see much of the ocean out in Riverside," Hickle said"

"Only in the form of a mirage, usually induced by imminent heatstroke.

It gets to be a hundred-ten in the shade, and there is no shade.

Sometimes I'd drive to the coast to get away from the desert heat. Never came to this part of town, though."

"It's… colorful."

"Why do they call it Venice?" She knew the reason but let him tell her as they approached the noise of a crowd.

"There are canals here," he said.

"Only a few are left, but there used to be a whole network of them, like in Venice, Italy. The place was designed as a tourist attraction back around 1900 by a guy named Kinney. He was a visionary, they say."

She looked at the barred windows, the trash in the street, the gang markings everywhere.

"Looks like his vision came up against a brick wall called reality."

"I'm afraid so. Santa Monica is nicer, but this is a good place to come when you want to hang out, see the people. It's like a street fair or a carnival."

"All the time?"

"Pretty much." He tried for levity.

"LA, you know, is the city that never sleeps."

That's New York, Abby wanted to say but didn't.

Hickle escorted her to the beachfront promenade, crowded with every variety of human exotica-jugglers, peddlers, tramps, street musicians, tattooed body builders Loitering under a streetlight were a trio of bony, strung-out young women, probably hookers. On the nearby bike path kids on skateboards and Rollerblades yelled at the night. Down the walkway a band of Hare Krishnas banged tambourines. Hallucinatory murals covered the high brick walls of century-old buildings, serving as a backdrop to it all.

"See what I mean?" Hickle asked, checking nervously for her reaction.

"A carnival."

Abby smiled.

"As they used to say in the sixties, it's a scene."

They strolled along the concrete concourse that locals called a boardwalk. Stores passed by, made out of converted garage stalls, displaying racks of T-shirts and sunglasses and absurd curios. Above the general din a woman's voice became audible. She was yelling angrily in Spanish.

"You speak the language?" Hickle asked.

"A little. She's talking to her boyfriend, calling him a bastard, liar, cheat. Never wants to see him again.

Wants him to get lost. She says: Go to hell." Abby shrugged.

"Guess that's the end of one romance."

She was fairly certain Hickle would disagree. He didn't surprise her.

"No," he said, "she's leading him on."

"Funny way to do it."

"It's a game women play. They say no when they mean yes. They tell you to go away when they want you to get closer. They yell and scream, and it's all part of the courtship dance."

"That ain't my style."

"Well, no, I didn't mean you. I was talking in generalities.

For most women it's their nature to make the guy sweat. Deny him everything, let him beg. They get a kick out of it. Women are-" He cut himself off in mid-sentence.

"Are what?" Abby prompted.

"I don't know. Never mind. Nothing."

But she knew what he'd been ready to say: Women are bitches are cock teasers… are whores.

The Sand Which Is There was a large, crowded, obviously trendy establishment, not at all what Abby had expected. There was a great deal of bamboo and wicker. Illuminated glass globes hung from the rafters, casting pools of lemon-colored light on lacquered table tops Ceiling fans spun torpidly, wooden blades beating the air in slow-motion whirls. A long teakwood bar lay on one side of the room, offering as much bottled water as alcohol. Facing the bar were the glass doors to a patio on the boardwalk.

The restaurant, evidently, was a hangout for aspiring stars-actors, actresses, musicians, models. Few had succeeded but all possessed the bare requisites of stardom: the telegenic face, the photogenic body.

The room was a sea of lithe limbs and wild, untrammeled hair. Abby wondered how Hickle had ever come here.

A waitress escorted them to a corner table. Abby knew it would take Hickle a while to settle down.

Their early interludes of conversation, while they ordered drinks and meals, were unproductive and shortlived.

When the food came, Hickle consumed it ravenously, eating fast, saying little.

He didn't start to relax until he was working on his second beer. Abby could tell he was unaccustomed to alcohol. His speech acquired a slight slur, his breathing became more labored, and his eyes grew heavy-lidded and vague. He was a large, clumsy man, uncomfortable in his own body, and the double dose of Heineken only made him clumsier.

Twice he overturned the saltshaker, and once he dropped his knife on the floor.

"How's your salad?" he asked finally, with his first authentic effort at initiating a dialogue.

"It rocks. Kale and portabella mushrooms-what's not to like? So do you come here often?"

"Hardly ever. Actually"-an embarrassed smile-"I've been here only once. It's not my kind of atmosphere."

"No?"

"Well, I mean, look at them." He propped his elbow on the table and pointed an accusing finger at the room.

"The way they move. Their faces. They're so confident. They own the world."

Abby followed his gaze, studying the other patrons.

It was true. They were beautiful, women and men alike. The very distinction between male and female was all but lost in their unisex hairstyling and wardrobe. The men conveyed a sense of delicacy, of frail and sensitive soulfulness; the women looked hard. Hard-bodied after hours in the gym, and hard- featured, their faces untouched by makeup, eyes narrowed and stern.

"They own the world," Hickle said again, then wrinkled his brow.

"Not that you need to envy them," he added in what was intended as a compliment but sounded like a reproach.

"I don't envy anybody." Abby twirled her salad fork, letting-the tines catch the candlelight.

"Green's not my color."

Hickle picked up his club sandwich and tore off a chunk with his teeth.

"You don't envy them because you don't have to. You fit right in. You belong here."

"And you don't?" Though of course he didn't.

He waved his arm vaguely at the crowd in a loose, graceless motion that nearly upset his beer mug.

"I'm not in their league."

"They're not that special."

"Oh, yes, they are. Can't you feel it?" He lowered his voice, leaning forward, shoulders hunched defensively.

"There was a movie once with a strange title, The Killer Elite.

Whenever I come to a place like this, those are the words I think of.

The killer elite."

She noted the word killer and the fact that he projected it onto those around him, when it applied far more realistically to himself.

"They're just kids out for a burger and a beer," she said mildly.

"Kids, yes, but not just kids. They have the look."

"The what?" "The look," he said again, with peculiar earnestness.

"You know how they say the world is divided into the haves and the have-nots? Well, it's true, but not the way most people think." He tipped the beer mug to his mouth and swallowed a third of its contents with a canine slurp.

"It's not about money. Money is nothing; anybody can get money. Show up for work on time, display a modicum of intelligence, and in three months your boss will be offering you a promotion whether you want it or not." "Why wouldn't you want it?" Abby asked, but Hickle didn't hear.

"What matters," he said, his voice too loud, his eyes too bright, "is the look. That's what the haves have and what the have-nots haven't got. You should know because you've got it. Every woman in this room has it. Every guy, too…" His hand closed into a fist, though he was unconscious of the gesture.

"Except me."

His anger was growing dangerously large. She tried to contain it.

"You're being way too hard on yourself."

"Just honest. See, in the end, brains don't matter.

You can be the brainiest guy in the class, straight A's, but if you don't have the look, you can't get a date to the prom. Without the look you're nothing. You're either class clown or class… freak." He took a last, listless bite of his sandwich and set down the remnant wearily.

"Hell, you're not going to understand. I'll bet you didn't have any trouble getting dates."

He was studying her with a lopsided smile that was meant to look friendly but conveyed, instead, a cold and cramped malice.

Abby kept her tone light.

"I was a tomboy, really.

Not very popular. Certainly not a prom queen."

This surprised him. His expression softened a little.

"Is that so?" he asked quietly.

"I was kind of a washout in most my classes. My mind had this tendency to wander. I was basically a loner. When I wasn't in school I spent most of my time hiking in the desert or grooming horses at a ranch. I was always dirty, hair mussed, no makeup. Mosquito bites on my arms, and a million freckles all over my face." Every word of this was true.

"My dad called me a late bloomer."

Hickle considered her, and she felt his resentment cool.

"Well," he said at last, "you've flowered nicely."

She smiled.

"I'm a whole different person now. So I guess there. really is life after high school."

"Wrong." Hickle stamped the flat of his hand on the table, rattling the plates, then bit his lip in embarrassment.

"Sorry, I don't mean to be overemphatic. But people are always saying stuff like that. I heard it the whole time I was growing up. Get out in the adult world, and everything changes for you. That's what they say."

"But it doesn't?"

"Not at all. High school's real life. It's real life without any pretense."

He took another gulp of beer, but it wasn't alcohol that was allowing him to talk so freely now. It was her questions, each as gently probing as a scalpel, and her calm, meditative gaze, and the silences she gave him in which he could say whatever he liked without judgment or reproach.

"Let me tell you about high school." He picked up a carrot stick from a side dish and toyed with it distractedly.

"There was this guy in our class, Robert Chase.

He wasn't particularly smart. Not an idiot, you understand, but no genius either, and not a good student. He cut class, got C's and D's, smoked dope in the bathroom, screwed around. But he had one advantage."

"Let me take a wild stab. Was it… the look?"

"That's right. Good old Bob Chase." Hickle's mouth twisted into an ugly shape.

"The girls called him Bobby with that sigh in their voice, you know? He was tall, had thick curly hair and washboard abs, was a star on the basketball team. They all loved him."

She heard the stale envy in his voice. She said nothing.

"So a couple of months ago I'm reading the LA Times, and what do I see?

Robert Chase from my hometown is chief of staff for a member of Congress in Washington, DC. He's an up-and-comer. They say he might run for office himself. He could end up as the goddamned-sorry-end up as President. Why? I'm smarter than he is. I got better grades. I didn't slam kids into lockers and sucker-punch them for laughs."

Hickle snapped the carrot stick, tossed the pieces aside, and picked up another.

"But I don't have the look. Be honest. Could I ever be President?"

In her mind Abby saw a convention hall, balloons, cheers, and in the spotlight the baffled, rumpled, shaggy figure of Raymond Hickle, black hair sloppily askew, neck red with acne, face drawn and fleshy at the same time-hollow around the eyes, meaty and thick at the jaw. She imagined him trying to make a speech, command respect, summon all his authority, and what she heard was a crowd's laughter.

"Not everybody has to be President," Abby said gently.

Hickle waved off this reply as if irritated by it.

"The President was just an example. People like Bob Chase are the winners in life. They can do whatever they want. They can have whoever they want. Anyone, anything." He turned his head, averting his gaze from the truths he was telling.

"If they want money, it flows to them. Or fame… look at them on every magazine cover. Or, well"-he blushed-"sex, you know-if that's what they want, they get it."

Abby nodded, thinking hard. Years ago Hickle had fastened on Jill Dahlbeck, an aspiring actress not unlike many of the women in this room.

Now his obsession was Kris Barwood, a more accomplished celebrity. Most likely there had been others, all famous or striving for fame. He was drawn to beautiful women, but beauty was not enough for him. There had to be stardom or the promise of it. Stars were golden people, and he desperately wanted to be one of them. He had not outgrown his adolescent longings for approval and admiration. For him, all of life was prom night, and he was the only one going stag.

"How about happiness?" Abby asked softly.

"Do they get that too?"

"Of course. We just drove through Beverly Hills.

Did you see the houses? Or go up to Malibu…"

Where Kris lived. Abby lifted an eyebrow.

"Yes?"

"It's beautiful there. Have you seen it?"

"No."

"It's magical."

"You mean the beach? The seashore?"

"All of it. Malibu's a perfect place. How could anybody live there and not be happy? It's paradise."

Abby had in fact visited Malibu many times. For her, the town fell short of its reputation. The hills were sere and parched for half the year, afflicted by mudslides in the rainy season and chaparral fires in the hot, dry months. Beautiful homes could be glimpsed behind gated walls, but the main thoroughfare was lined with ramshackle surf shops and bike rental outlets. She would not have called it paradise. But to Hickle it was the Elysian Fields. It was where the prom queen and her consort would retire to act out their dreamlike lives.

She wanted to keep him talking about Malibu, but there was no way to do it without being recklessly obvious.

Instead she said blandly, "People have problems everywhere, even in nice neighborhoods."

"Ordinary people. You know that writer who said the rich are different?

He was right, except it's not just the rich. It's the killer elite.

They have it all, and the rest of us…"

The second carrot stick snapped in Hickle's hands.

"Yes?" Abby asked.

"We get the table scraps. If we're lucky."

Abby tried to defuse his anger with a shrug.

"I'll bet hardly any of these people here are rich or famous."

"Not yet. They're young. Give them time. Where will they be ten years from now?" His voice sank to a hush.

"And where will I be?"

"I don't know, Raymond," she answered, her voice as low as his.

"Where do you think?"

"I think…" Eyes downcast, he studied the table for a long moment.

Then he looked up, meeting her gaze.

"Actually, I expect to be quite famous."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. Everybody's going to know my name."

"You writing the great American novel or something?"

"Not exactly."

"So how's it going to happen?"

"It's… a secret."

"What good is a secret if you won't tell anybody?

Give me a hint."

"I can't. Really."

"Pretend I'm not just Abby, I'm Dear Abby. People tell her everything.

They tell her way more than she probably wants to know." Hickle smiled but shook his head. She wanted to press further, but instinctively she knew he wouldn't be moved.

"Well, okay," she said.

"Whatever it is, I hope it works out for you."

"Oh, it will. I'm very sure of that."

So there it was. She had the answer to one of her two remaining questions.

Did he believe he could successfully carry out an attack?

Yes. He believed.

It was a crisis, as usual.

Every day at KPTI-TV's news division was an exercise in controlled hysteria. News people were adrenaline addicts; chaos was their normal operating environment; pandemonium was simply their way of getting things done.

This evening's red alert was occasioned by the rare birth of twin African elephants at the Los Angeles Zoo.

News of the elephant calves' arrival came over the wire at 5:15 p.m. A news conference at the zoo was scheduled for six o'clock.

The sensible thing would have been to hold the elephant story until the middle of the newscast, but there was no chance of that. The elephant twins had to lead the show. They bumped a high-speed police pursuit in Pomona to second place, bumped the hospitalization of a soap opera actress to third, and bumped Channel Eight's exclusive interview with the mayor to fourth.

Political stories were never a high priority in LA.

The live remote truck arrived at the zoo only minutes before the start of the 6 p.m. newscast. There was trouble establishing a microwave link. But when the show's opening theme music faded out and Kris Barwood announced the blessed event, the live feed from the news conference streamed in, and the transition to Ed O'Hern live at the scene miraculously went with157 out a hitch. The crew even got video of the newborns taking a few wobbly steps, while "Baby Elephant Walk" played coyly in the background.

"What a mess," Amanda Gilbert said when she left the newscast's postmortem at seven-thirty.

"Why couldn't little Dumbo and Dumber get born at a more convenient time?"

Her voice was loud enough for Kris to hear on the other side of the newsroom. She caught up with Amanda as the younger woman was heading for the exit, a briefcase in one hand and a thick sheaf of papers in the other.

"I believe their names are Willy and Wally," Kris said.

"Whatever. They're cute, and they've got big ears and a certain Disneyesque appeal. Don't pester me with details."

"Anyway, you did a nice job pulling it all together."

Amanda shrugged.

"It was touch and go for a few minutes, but hey, we got what we wanted.

Smiling zoo officials, couple good bites, nice wrap-up from Ed.

Only things missing was a bunch of freckle-faced school kids toting Babar books."

Amanda Gilbert, executive producer of the six o'clock edition of KPTI's Real News, was thirty years old and talked very fast. She was high-strung and achingly thin and probably slept less than four hours a night.

Assessing her with the maximum objectivity possible, Kris could not see what attraction this scrawny, bony, peppy young thing could possibly-hold for her fifty one-year-old husband. But of course there was no real mystery about it. Howard liked them young.

It wasn't Amanda's fault. Howard behaved the same way around secretaries, flight attendants, and the women stationed at cosmetics counters in department stores. Kris had found her husband's roving eye ruefully amusing at first. Not anymore.

"Kris? You still among the living?"

"What?"

"You drifted away for a seconu."

"Sorry. Just thinking."

"Yeah, I remember when I used to have the luxury for reflective moments.

Now I hop on the ulcer express in the morning and don't get off till dark. Speaking of which, it's time for me to punch out. And time for you to review the rundown with Consuelo." Consuelo Martinez produced the ten o'clock newscast and the public affairs program that followed.

"I already did." Kris held up a loose collection of yellow script pages.

"Got my lines right here."

"Until they're changed at the last minute. Which they inevitably will be.

"Night, Kris."

She started to walk away. Kris stopped her.

"Amanda. I want to apologize for Howard. The way he was acting the other night."

"Howard? He's a sweetheart. He was fine."

"It seemed to me he was… sticking too close.

Smothering you."

"He gets a kick out of the technical stuff, that's all.

He's a big kid, asking me to explain how every button works. Okay, it can be a pain in the ass, but it's cute." "I used to feel that way,"

Kris said.

"But I think, in your case, he's interested in more than pushing buttons."

Amanda stepped closer.

"What's that mean?"

Kris wondered how much she should say. She and Amanda were not exactly friends-their personalities were too contrary for true amity-but they had worked together for two years, and two years in TV news was a time period measured on a geologic scale.

"The thing is," Kris said slowly after looking around to be sure no one was listening, "Howard's kind of unreliable."

Amanda frowned.

"How am I supposed to interpret that?"

"The obvious way."

"You're saying he goes out dancing behind your back?"

"That's what I suspect."

"It sure doesn't seem like him. He strikes me as the old-fashioned sort."

"Appearances can be deceptive. He has a wandering eye, but I don't know if it's gone beyond that. It could have."

Amanda pursed her lips, not shocked, merely intrigued.

"You mean he might be… you know… right now?"

"I can't say. It's just a suspicion."

"Based on?"

"Too many unexplained absences. Too much driving around aimlessly. He says he's breaking in his new car.

It's possible. He does love his toys. But I don't know.

And once I walked in on him while he was sending email, and he shut down the program fast, as if it was something he didn't want me to see."

"E-mail love notes?" Amanda looked dubious.

"Haven't you heard of cybersex?" Kris shrugged.

"It's a new millennium. People don't send sonnets anymore, or even regular love letters, I suppose." Except for Hickle, a voice at the back of her mind added.

Amanda shook her head.

"Have you discussed this with him? Does he know you're on to him?"

"He doesn't know anything. Courtney, our housekeeper, is my informer.

She confided in me after… after Howard came on to her."

"Right in your own house? Divorce the bastard."

"We can work it out."

"Not if you two don't start talking."

"We will when this stalker thing is over. When it's taken care of."

Amanda sighed.

"I thought you two were a happy couple. You know, the kind who get a perfect score on the Cosmo compatibility test."

"I used to think we were. Now I don't… I…" She couldn't talk about this anymore.

"Look, I just wanted to say I'm sorry if he was getting in your way last night."

"Forget about it." Amanda glanced at her watch.

"I've gotta run, but tomorrow if we have time, let's talk, okay? Heart to heart?"

Kris smiled.

"I never took you for the sob sister type."

"It's an unfamiliar role for me, but I can handle it."

She gave Kris's arm a comforting squeeze.

"Hang in there, kid."

Kris watched her walk away. She knew there would be no heart-to-heart conversation tomorrow, because there would be no time. In TV news there was never time for anything. That was all right. She wasn't sure she wanted to further unburden herself to a woman who, after all, was one of Howard's fantasy conquests.

She looked past the computers and gray metal desks to the row of wall clocks set to different time zones.

California time was seven-forty-five. Better get moving.

She needed to grab a late dinner and read the script and touch up her cosmetics and hair. Of these three items her personal appearance was the main concern.

It seemed she spent a lot more time in the makeup room since turning forty.

"Funny how that works," she murmured. She must have a streak of masochism to have chosen a profession in which success was so utterly dependent on youth and beauty, then to have compounded her error by choosing a husband whose priorities ran along the same lines.

Hickle knew there must be something he could say to bring his date with Abby to the proper conclusion.

In the movies people were always saying clever things. Why was it so much harder in real life?

He mulled over the problem as the elevator carried him and Abby to the fourth floor. Even when he escorted her down the hall to her door, he had not found a solution.

"Well," Abby said, "here we are."

This was his moment. He had to go for it. Be spontaneous.

"It was fun," he managed.

Damn, that was no good. Any jerk could have come up with that. But Abby surprised him by smiling in reply.

"A blast," she said.

"Your taste in restaurants is excellent."

"Oh, well… I work in a restaurant, remember?" He wasn't sure why he repeated his earlier lie.

"I remember. Maybe I'll drop by sometime for a free meal."

Caught, he had to think fast.

"The owner frowns on that," he answered, hoping he sounded casual.

"But you never know. We'll see." He decided to quit while he still could.

"Good night, Abby."

"Night."

He wondered if he was supposed to kiss her. He had never kissed a girl, except for Priscilla Gammon in the third grade, whom he had smooched on a dare.

Priscilla had screamed and called him gross and wiped her mouth elaborately with her sleeve, and for the next two weeks whenever she had seen him she'd made retching noises. He doubted Abby would do anything like that. Still, he'd better not risk it.

"Good night," he said again, pointlessly.

Abby smiled, unlocking her door.

"Don't let the bedbugs bite-which in this place is more than just an expression."

He nodded, not knowing what to say. He went on nodding until she disappeared inside her apartment.

Then he found his keys and entered his living room. It occurred to him that he ought to check the VCR to be sure it had taped the 6 p.m. news, but somehow this didn't seem important, and he decided it could wait.

He wandered into the bathroom, not knowing why, and left without doing anything. He opened his windows, letting the night breeze filter through the swinging blinds. The cool air felt fine. In the kitchen he poured himself some water and drank it fast, belching pleasurably.

He looked around at his apartment, and although it had always looked like a dump to him, tonight it seemed better, almost livable. He thought his life was pretty good, better than he had realized, and he wondered why he should be feeling that way.

Well, it was Abby, of course. They'd had a great time together. When the check had come, impulsively he'd insisted on paying it, though she had offered to pay half. He had wanted to treat her to the meal because that was the kind of thing a man would do, and it wasn't often he got to feel like a man.

Certainly Jill Dahlbeck had never let him feel that way. He remembered summoning the courage to ask her out, and the strained, false politeness in her voice as she turned him down, giving some weak excuse. He had hated her in that moment and for years afterward.

She had emasculated him, humiliated him, as women always did, because all women were bitches at heart, bitches and lying whores-He calmed himself. Not all women, he reminded himself. Not Abby. She was different. She had to be.

The phone rang.

He looked at it, astonished. Nobody ever called him.

It had to be a wrong number.

Unless it was Abby. Had she gotten his number?

Was she calling to talk? He picked up the phone, his hand trembling a little.

"Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.

Silence for a moment, and then a female voice said, "You have mail."

Not Abby's voice. He wasn't sure it was even human. It sounded false, electronic. Baffled, he pressed the receiver closer to his ear.

"Who is this?

Hello?" The voice said again, "You have mail."

Click. A dial tone hummed.

Slowly he set down the phone. He understood now.

The voice had been a recording, the kind that greeted users of an Internet service provider when they logged on.

It meant the user had email.

In her bedroom with the lights out, Abby sat curled on the floor watching closed-circuit, real-time coverage of Raymond Hickle's living room. The video image was crisp and stable on the seven-inch picture tube of a portable TV tuned to an amateur frequency.

The TV-which Abby had brought from home, not trusting the antiquated set provided by the landlord-sat atop a VCR capable of recording forty hours of time-lapse video on a standard VHS cassette.

Audio from the two surveillance microphones was received on a stereo deck and recorded on a longplaying tape reel. Both audio transmitters operated at one of the standard frequencies for cordless telephones.

Anyone who happened to intercept the signal and heard Hickle's mutterings would assume it was a stray, indecipherable telephone call.

Abby had set up the gear in her bedroom closet so that it could be easily hidden behind the closet door whenever she left. Not expecting her efforts to yield significant results right away, she'd been paying only desultory attention to tonight's broadcast until Hickle's telephone rang.

She saw him answer the phone, and via the surveillance microphone she heard him say hello and ask who was there. But she didn't know what, if anything, was said on the other end of the line. She found herself wishing she'd taken the risk of installing an infinity transmitter in the phone.

Hickle hung up and stood unmoving for a moment, then stepped into his bedroom, out of camera range. A minute passed before he emerged, carrying his duffel bag. The look on his face was grim. He left his apartment, moving fast.

"What the hell?" Abby was already on her feet, grabbing her purse. She ran to her door but hesitated.

Hickle might still be in the hall. She peered out. At the far end of the corridor the elevator doors were closing.

She pounded down three flights of stairs. When she reached the parking lot, Hickle's car was already gone.

She tossed her purse into her Dodge and pulled onto Gainford. The street was dark in both directions. She went north to Santa Monica.

There was no stoplight at the intersection; a left turn into the constant stream of traffic was impossible. If Hickle had come this way, he had headed east.

She shot into a gap in the traffic and accelerated, shifting from lane to lane as she scanned the boulevard for a white VW Rabbit. She didn't see one anywhere.

"Where are you, Raymond?" she whispered.

"Where are you going in such a rush? And what do you want the gun for?"

She had no idea what was happening, but her intuition, which seldom failed, insisted that it was big and somehow dangerous. Dangerous to Kris? she wondered.

Or to me?

She didn't know.

Two blocks from Gainford, Hickle veered off Santa Monica, cutting south on Wilcox, then negotiated a maze of side streets and arterial boulevards until he reached Western, where he turned north. He checked his rearview mirror repeatedly.

There was a chance that Jack was following him, that the phone call had been a ruse to lure him out of his apartment after dark. It seemed unlikely, but Hickle had no way to fathom Jack's motives or the extent of his knowledge. To Hickle he was only a name on an e-mail account, untraceable, mysterious.

He remembered the letter that had arrived a month ago, bearing a downtown LA postmark and no return address. The letter had consisted of three lines of computer printout, unsigned. It had said that a Zoom Mail account had been opened for Hickle under the name Jackbquick, with the Volkswagen's license plate number as the password.

The note had advised him to check his mail regularly. It had concluded simply. Destroy this letter.

Hickle had obeyed the instructions, first burning letter and envelope, then visiting the library and using a public terminal to find Zoom Mail home page, where he logged on as Jackbquick. There had been two messages in his Inbox. One was a note from Zoom Mail congratulating him on selecting their free service. The other, according to the return address, had been sent by a Zoom Mail client who called himself Jackbnimble.

It was right out of the nursery rhyme:

Jack, be nimble Jack, be quick Jack, jump over the candlestick Whoever had made contact with him was someone who enjoyed playing games.

The e-mail message, though brief, had been dense with detailed information on the security measures that protected Kris. Hickle had read it slowly, pausing often to draw a breath. He'd learned that Kris employed a security firm called Travis Protective Services, that a bodyguard accompanied her at all times, that the bodyguard carried a 9mm-Beretta and served as her chauffeur, that additional agents were posted in the guest cottage on the property. There had been more, a wealth of facts.

If they were facts. They might have been lies designed to ensnare him in some subtle way. He couldn't be sure. He could trust no one, not even his anonymous benefactor.

But if the message was what it appeared to be, then Jack was someone with inside knowledge of the TPS operation. A TPS employee, perhaps, or a member of the Barwood household. This person knew a great deal about Hickle-his address, his Volkswagen's plate number-and wanted Hickle to know a great deal about Kris.

The last lines of the message had been the most intriguing:

The Malibu Reserve compound is securely gated and fenced, but a drainage pipe affords access to the property on the northwest side, sixty feet from Pacific Coast Highway.

Access to the property. Jackbnimble@zoommail.com had wanted him to know this.

Hickle had replied to the message, typing one word:

Why?

He'd reread Jack's note until it was committed to memory, then deleted it from his mailbox as the sender had instructed.

Hickle hadn't slept well that night. For the next few days he'd checked his e-mail account every afternoon.

A week had passed before he received the next message.

More security details, capped by a provocative closing observation:

Kris is most vulnerable when she returns from work in her Lincoln Town Car shortly after midnight. An assailant could lie in wait in the darkness and not be seen.

Think about it.

There had been no answer to Hickle's question.

Jack's motive, it appeared, was not for him to know.

Hickle had spent his next Sunday afternoon in the brush near the Malibu Reserve, tracking down the drainage pipe. It was narrow, but he could wriggle through. Once inside, he was within sight of the Barwoods' house. Several times he had returned, snapping Polaroids of Kris as she jogged on the beach in the company of her bodyguard. He had watched the guest cottage long enough to see men enter and leave.

Agents were indeed stationed there. Everything Jack had told him had checked out.

There had been two more recent messages, different from the earlier ones. Jack was growing impatient. He goaded Hickle. The last message had been a childish taunt:

Kris laughs about you. She thinks you're a joke. She's told the TPS agents that you're no threat because you don't have the guts to take action.

Crude manipulation. Hickle hadn't fallen for it. He had come to distrust Jack. Something was going on here, something complicated and mysterious. Maybe TPS was sending the messages to grod him into committing some foolhardy arrest able offense. After the last e-mail from Jack, he had sent a one-sentence reply:

You can't make me your bitch.

He had not checked his Internet mailbox this week.

He had expected never to hear from Jack again. Instead, for the first time Jack had made contact by telephone.

The call worried him, because he didn't know what had prompted it or what it might mean.

At this hour the library would be closed. To check his e-mail, he would have to use an all-night copy store on Western Avenue. The store was a block ahead.

Could Jack have anticipated that he would go to this store? Might he be waiting there, ready to spring some deadly trap?

"Seems doubtful," Hickle murmured, but as he eased into the right lane, he reached across to the duffel bag on the passenger seat and unzipped it, affording instant access to the shotgun.

If anybody opened fire, he would be ready. He would not go down without a fight.

Nobody shot at him. He guided the Volkswagen into a shadowy corner of the parking lot, where he could observe the store without being seen from inside.

A neon sign blazed above a glass storefront framing rows of self-service photocopy machines and computers. A few people were running off copies or tapping at keyboards. The clerk behind the-counter looked pale and drawn under the fluorescent glow.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Hickle stuffed the duffel bag on the floor of the passenger side, out of sight, then headed into the store to see what Jackbnimble had to say.

Abby had lost him. After driving for twenty minutes on Santa Monica and adjacent streets she had caught no glimpse of Hickle's car. She pulled into a gas station and parked near the air hose to collect her thoughts.

The phone call was the key. She had to know its point of origin. There was a way. Pacific Bell offered call return service. Entering a three-button code on the phone's keypad provided the customer with the number of the most recent caller. A charge of seventy-five cents for the service would appear on Hickle's next phone bill, possibly tipping him off, but she couldn't worry about that now.

To use his phone she had to get inside his apartment.

Picking the lock on his door was no good; the electric pick gun was too noisy to use in the evening when other tenants were around, and doing the job by hand would take too long. The only other means of entry was his bedroom window. She had seen him open both windows. He hadn't closed them when he left. He'd been in a hurry.

Abby pulled out of the gas station and headed back to the Gainford Arms, driving fast.

The copy store rented computer use by the hour.

Hickle paid in advance and seated himself at the machine farthest from the counter, where he was least likely to be observed.

There was little activity in the shop. The tile floor and white countertops glowed under fluorescent lights. Folk music played on overhead speakers, drowned out when the big photocopy machines started to whir and drone.

Hickle focused on the desktop computer in front of him, which brought up a browser frame when he connected to the Internet. He found Zoom Mail home page and typed Jackbquick and his password. There was one message in his Inbox. The sender was Jackbnimble. The title was one word in capitals: URGENT.

Hickle felt a prickle of dread at the back of his neck.

He opened the message. The first two lines appeared in the message window.

Your enemies are closer than you know. TPS is playing hardball.

They've hired a spy.

The hard, rhythmic chugging in Hickle's ears was the beat of his heart.

"A spy," he whispered.

One of the clerks at the counter glanced at him.

Hickle realized he'd spoken aloud. Nervously he cleared his throat.

There was more to the message, but he would have to scroll down to see it. For a moment he did nothing, merely stared at the screen, unwilling to read further.

A kind of superstitious fear held him paralyzed. If he learned nothing more, then maybe the news would not be real. Maybe he could pretend he'd never come here. Maybe he could go back to his apartment, carry on with his daily routine, have dinner with Abby again-And then of course he knew.

His new neighbor, so friendly, always bumping into him, first in the hall, then in the laundry room.

The bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach, and he felt a wave of some indescribable feeling that was almost physical pain.

Numbly he read the rest of the message.

She moved in next door to you yesterday. Her job is to get close to men like yourself, learn their secrets, and report what she finds. She works alone, without backup.

She is a threat to you and indirectly to me also. I hope you understand the gravity of what I am telling you.

The words ran together. Hickle couldn't concentrate.

He was thinking that the story about her unfaithful fiance had been a lie to win his empathy. He was thinking that she had never regarded him as a nice guy or somebody to have dinner with.

He shut his eyes, shoulders slumping. The computer hummed. Behind the counter one of the copy machines shut off, and the background music became audible again, Joan Baez singing about the night they drove old Dixie down.

His date tonight… the questions she'd asked… the things he'd told her. What had he said, exactly?

Malibu-he'd mentioned how he liked it there. And he'd said he was going to be famous. How much could she determine from those clues?

Enough to guess his intentions? Was she reporting to TPS now, telling Kris everything she'd learned?

He looked at the clock. Quarter past nine. Abby couldn't be meeting with Kris. Kris was still at KPTI preparing for the ten o'clock newscast. She would leave Burbank at eleven-thirty, arrive home soon after midnight.

He could get to Malibu well before then. The shotgun was already in his car. All he had to do was crawl through the drainage pipe, conceal himself near the beach house, and when Kris's car pulled into the driveway-A pump of the shotgun, a spatter of brains and skull fragments.

The copy machine drummed again, churning out paper, and Joan Baez was lost in its noise.

He could do it. Do it tonight. Kill Kris-but first, detour back to the Gainford Arms and take care of Abby.

Jack had said she worked without backup. There would be no one to save her when he caught her by surprise and snapped her neck.

It would be easy. Almost too easy… "Too easy," he whispered slowly.

No one heard him. The clatter of the copy machine swallowed every other sound.

He read the message twice more. He could be certain of this much-Jack knew that a woman had moved into apartment 418. Perhaps he even knew that Hickle had gone out with her tonight. He might have watched the building and seen them leave together.

For weeks he had been goading Hickle to strike.

Had he decided to try a more subtle approach, convince Hickle that his new neighbor was part of a conspiracy against him, launch him into a homicidal rage?

Or was the information genuine? Was she really a spy?

He didn't know. His head hurt. He clutched his scalp and blinked at the light, which was suddenly too bright.

There was no one he could trust. Jack claimed to be a friend, but his identity and motives were unknown.

Abby presented herself as a young woman fleeing a bad breakup, but how much did he know about her?

She might be a TPS spy probing his secrets. Or maybe it was Jack who was the real TPS agent, playing mind games to push him over the edge and get him arrested.

Or were they both in it together?

He read the message again. The words made no sense anymore. They spilled together and fell apart.

Abby a spy? Ridiculous.

On impulse he clicked the Reply link, then typed a furious declaration: