Voodoo Moon

FIVE

You could see faces in the windows. Some of the windows were barred. Not that they needed to be barred. A lot of the people in the psychiatric hospital carried their own prisons with them wherever they went.

Late afternoon. A lazy feeling, the kind you got at a magnificent country club, which Mentor Psychiatric strove to emulate, long shadows beginning to stalk the golf greens, the lonely thwop of a tennis ball echoing off the piney hills, the outdoor swimming pool blue-green and empty, that melancholy time just before dinner, a loneliness and yearning different not only in degree but quality from nighttime. Not quite so frantic; more reflective. But there was at least one difference between country club and asylum. You didn't see clean-cut young men in white T-shirts and white jeans strolling country club grounds, ready, with their beepers and their muscles, for any kind of trouble.

I parked and walked up the front steps. Two female patients were playing chess.

"You look like an old boyfriend of mine," one said winsomely.

"He was a lucky guy."

She giggled. "He was flirty just like you, too." She was fortyish, overweight, and emanated a sweetness that played on her Cupid's-bow mouth and in her gentle brown eyes.

"His name was Rick, and I wish she'd shut up about him," the other one said. Then she giggled. "Especially about his buns." She made a goofy face. "He probably weighs three hundred pounds now and belongs to the KKK."

"He couldn't belong to the KKK." Her friend laughed.

"Why not?"

"He wouldn't be smart enough to spell it."

I laughed at that one, too, and then went on inside to the professional marble and shadow and starched white decorum of the place. Nurses' shoes squeaked; phones rang; faxes clattered.

The reception desk was built into a corner. The receptionist wore a smart gray suit and a smart bland smile.

"I have an appointment with Dr. Williams."

"May I have your name please?"

"Sure." I gave her my name.

"If you'll just take a seat, I'll phone Dr. Williams's secretary."

"Thank you."

I sat. The Time magazine was current and the Eames chair was more than relaxing. I thought of Claire. If she was truly mad, this was the kind of place she belonged in.

A few minutes later, she said, "Mr. Payne?"

"Yes."

"I'm afraid the doctor has gone for the day."

"We had a four-thirty appointment."

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid he had to leave early. His secretary said that she was very sorry and that you should call tomorrow and that she'd reschedule you."

No sense arguing. He obviously hadn't wanted to see me.

I said good-bye and walked out of the building. The chess players were gone. The sky was bruising to the east, yellow-mauve bruise heralding dusk and all those pinpoints of distant and indifferent stars. The night chill in the knee with the rheumatism, a family curse along with arthritis and bad sinuses.

From my car I called information and asked for Dr. Williams's home phone number. Not surprisingly, the operator told me it was unlisted. I didn't even bother to ask for the home address. I knew better.

There was a lane leading from the back parking lot. A dark blue Lincoln Town Car shot down that lane now, reaching the road. I got only a glimpse of the Einstein-mussy white hair, but it was enough to recognize the good doctor.

Most obliging of him.

I followed him for the next twenty-five minutes.

His house was a modernistic glass-and-stone environmental marvel, with three different wings, an imposing atrium, and a picture window big enough to stage a Broadway musical in. All this in the densest part of the woods. A la Frank Lloyd Wright, it was difficult to know for sure where forest ended and house began, they were so deftly entwined here in the center of a Brothers Grimm-like woods.

A narrow, unpaved road wound all the way to his double garage door beneath a wing of the house.

He put his car in the garage. The garage door went down instantly. I wondered if he knew I was behind him.

I pulled my car off the road and went a wide way to his house. A possum sat in the middle of a pile of fallen autumn beauty, watching me, its tail snake-strong as it flicked through the dry and raspy leaves.

I found a back door that opened into the kitchen. I peeked in a window and the kitchen was empty. I dug out my burglary tools and went to work. If there was a security system, he'd had to turn it off to get inside.

The possum watched me with great interest.

I was inside in less than two minutes.

The kitchen looked as if it had been borrowed from the set of a high-budget science fiction movie. Everything was chrome and glass and built in. Or suspended from the ceiling. It had the unused feeling of a print ad in a magazine with great social aspirations. This was the kind of kitchen that told you that you had not only arrived but that you planned to stay for a good long time.

I had my gun out. I didn't know what to expect. If he was really Paul Renard, he wouldn't be especially happy to see me.

I heard a noise upstairs. I hesitated. Listened.

Drawers being quickly opened and slammed shut.

Doors being flung open.

A frantic sense. Escape.

I walked through the house. Even given the circumstances, I had to pay it its due. An elegant black curved staircase wound from the first floor to the second, contrasting with the white and tan motifs of huge, open living area. With all the statuary, mostly running to medieval Italian it seemed, the place combined the feel of an art gallery and a home you'd never want to spoil by living in it. For sheer cold perfection, it was gorgeous.

More drawers slamming. Cursing now. The noises floating down the staircase.

I went up after him.

For all of its loveliness, the staircase didn't provide much in the way of cover. Even crouched down as I was, he could see me with no problem. I just hoped he kept busy in his rooms.

The noise stopped. Halfway up the staircase, I stopped, too. What was he up to?

He stalked out of one room. "Where the hell did I put it?" Talking to himself the way we do when we're angry.

Just as long as he didn't decide to check out the staircase for some strange reason.

I crouched even lower. I had stuffed the faxes inside the pocket of my sport coat. They rubbed against my elbow. The sound seemed very loud suddenly. I quietly moved my elbow away. Crouched still lower.

He got busy again. His footsteps were heavy, angry on the carpeted hallway of the second floor.

A door opened. More drawers jerked open, shoved shut. More curses.

I started up the staircase again.

At the top, I hesitated and started to look to the left. And that was when he took his first shot at me.

He stood right in the center of the hallway, holding the weapon cup-and-saucer style just the way they'd taught him at the shooting range, and he let go a shot that came just close enough to knot up my innards and set my left leg to trembling.

I remembered some of my own training at that point. I pitched myself to the floor and rolled across the hallway into the open door he'd exited just a few moments earlier.

He kept on firing.

All the shooting apparently flattered him into thinking he was really in control of the situation.

He started walking slowly down the corridor toward me.

I was now inside the room, with the door angled half-shut. "I can kill you anytime you want, Mr. Payne," he said.

I smiled. "That's bad movie dialogue, Dr. Williams. You couldn't get in this room if you wanted to."

He put three bullets into the edge of the door.

And scared the hell out of me.

"I know who you are, Doctor. And if I know, that means somebody else knows, too. What's the point of killing me? You're through here, anyway. You're headed to prison."

Long silence. Was he planning something?

I'd underestimated him before. He'd done pretty well putting those bullets in the edge of the door, only a few inches from where I stood. I didn't plan to underestimate him again.

"Shit," he said.

"What?" I said.

"I said shit. S-h-i-t. You're unfamiliar with the word, Mr. Payne?"

His tone confused me. More irritation-frustration-than anger now.

"How the hell did you find out about me, anyway?"

"I didn't. Kibbe did. The private detective."

"That fat bastard. As soon as my secretary told me he'd stolen that paperweight, I knew what he was up to. He wanted my fingerprints. He wanted proof of who I really was."

"You should never have come back here. It was a great joke-the escaped inmate running the asylum. But you were bound to be caught."

"What the hell are you talking about, the escaped inmate?"

"I'm talking about you, Renard. And coming back to the place you'd escaped from."

And then he was laughing. Not mad-scientist laughing. Not loon-crazed psycho laughing. No, this was an intelligent man genuinely amused, laughing.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because," he said, "you and Kibbe are such stupid pricks. I'm not Paul Renard. My name is Wayne DeVries."

"I seduced her, and it wasn't easy. For one thing, I was her father's best friend. And for another, she hated me. At first, anyway. Here was this beautiful sixteen-year-old girl who drove around in a Porsche convertible and slept with all the right boys at school and was apparently trying to set a record with abortions. She'd had three before her sixteenth birthday. I had just turned forty. I was overweight and depressed and impotent. My practice was the only thing I had going. My wife had her clubs and her charities and my two boys had their computer games and the matching BMWs we'd bought them for their seventeenth birthday. Our house was very much a motel. Always very busy but always very impersonal. We didn't even have dinner together. The boys always ate in the TV room and more and more my wife wasn't home when I got there. I suspected she was having an affair but I didn't care. One drunken night, I tried humping the maid. You don't think that's embarrassing, especially when you can't get it up? I finally had to fire the woman-I gave her a great severance my wife didn't know anything about. I just couldn't face her every day with that knowing look of hers. 'He can't get it up.' That's what the look said. And it wasn't paranoia. Employees love to have their superior little secrets about employers. And that was the most cutting secret of all.

"So now we come to Ellie. I'm not good at describing people so I won't even try. All I can say is that she was beautiful. And gentle and graceful and subtle. I'd been hired to be her psychiatrist, and as such that was the first thing I noticed, the contrast between her soft personality and her hard life. She was a great fan of Debussy and Monet and Emily Dickinson. And yet at night she'd change into this totally different person. The sleaziest bars. Drugs. Alcohol. Every kind of sex you can conceive of. That's why she'd had three abortions before she was sixteen.

"I said that I seduced her. I'm not sure about that. It could well have been the other way around. After I'd seen her three months, I felt a shift in her attitude toward me. Oh, I don't mean she suddenly saw me as this paramour, but I think she did begin to see me as a person. A person she liked. I'm sure you know about transference, how the patient frequently thinks she's falling in love with her doctor. Ellie-the good Ellie, at any rate-seemed to be going through that with me. She'd write me poems. Brings me flowers that she'd picked. She even took me out for pizza one night. I tried to pretend that I was still in charge. Family man. Respected shrink. Wise and knowing sophisticate. Of course I was in charge. That's why, when it happened that first time in my office, I saw it as my doing, not hers.

"But by then it was too late to matter. I'd never been in love before. I'd never been handsome or dashing or anything like that, so I'd always been forced to be with the 'sensible' girls. Ellie was the opposite of sensible, of course. The danger was exhilarating. She taught me so much about making love. I fancied I became good at it. I saw now that I'd never pleased my wife. No wonder she'd had an affair. Or maybe affairs plural, who knows. I became saturated with Ellie. I wouldn't brush my teeth after we made love. I wanted the taste of her to linger as long as it could. When we were apart, I'd put her photograph next to a flickering candle and masturbate. It got so bad, I couldn't not be with her. She gave up the bad Ellie. So we could be together nights. I truly believe she loved me as much as I loved her. And then she told me she was pregnant.

"I spent a whole month pleading with her to have an abortion. We had terrible arguments. She actually wanted to keep the baby.

"I'd come to my senses. I looked at myself in the mirror one day and saw what a tremendous joke I'd played on myself. I was this chunky, nearsighted, rumpled cuckold who'd fallen in love with this beautiful but clinically insane girl who'd been under my care. My God, a quietly unhappy marriage in suburbia was just where I belonged. It was my fate, as the French would say, and I should embrace it. I wanted to be part of the same old monotony again. I'd destroyed my life and humiliated my family. I had to get rid of the baby. I even thought seriously for a time of killing Ellie. I came up with several different creative methods. But I knew I couldn't do it. I wasn't a murderer. I was too weak even for that.

"I kept pestering her, of course. We'd have these terrible arguments in my office. She'd always end up weeping and screaming at me to let her have the baby. My nurse would rush in and remind me that there were patients in the reception area hearing her scream. My whole life was coming apart.

"And then she got in that car wreck.

"By this time, her parents were very suspicious of me. She refused to talk about me to them. So when she died in the car crash-her car suddenly swerved into the path of a semi, whether intentionally or not we'll never know because the highway was very dark and icy-and when they did the autopsy and found out Ellie had been pregnant, all their suspicions were confirmed.

"I tried to lie my way out of it, but the medical tests proved my paternity. My wife immediately went back to Connecticut where her people are. Very wealthy people, too. They found a house for her and the boys. I speak to the boys at Christmastime now. On the phone. Very antiseptic and formal.

"My life was over. At least until I read this magazine article in Esquire about how, if you have the money, you can re-create yourself. A little bit of plastic surgery, a lot of forged documents, three or four forged recommendations, and you are a new person.

"I applied for three or four positions. One institution was about to hire me, but somebody on the hospital staff got suspicious and decided to check out one of my reference letters. I immediately withdrew my application.

"The third time, I got lucky. Here in Brenner. I was now Dr. Williams. Head of my own psychiatric hospital, an honor I'd never had before. And now, thanks to you, Mr. Payne, an honor I will have no longer."

"Quite a story."

"And all of it true."

"Sadly."

"Very sadly."

"The coffee's good, anyway."

We sat in his kitchen nook. The Mr. Coffee had done a decent job.

"I was going to run away."

"I know."

"I have a friend in Mexico. He's on the run, too. Sort of the same thing except it involved money instead of sex."

"Money?"

"He got this elderly woman patient of his to sign over several very valuable pieces of property to him. Which he promptly sold. He's got several federal agencies looking for him."

"You two just might give psychiatry a bad name."

He smiled. "If only you knew what really went on, Mr. Payne."

I said, "I'd consider going to the hospital and telling them the truth and seeing what happens."

"You mean they might keep me on?"

I shrugged. "Beats running and hiding the rest of your life." He sipped some coffee. "I imagine you're disappointed."

"About you not being Renard?"

"Yes."

I shrugged. "Things happen that way sometimes."

"He's alive."

I had been stirring sugar into my coffee. I looked up. "You really believe that?"

"Absolutely. He's been taunting me for over a year."

"Taunting you how?"

"Phone messages. He tells me to go back through his records and look for little details he discussed with his shrink. We inherited whatever records survived the asylum fire, since some of the staff doctors are now employed with us. Whoever he is knows things only Renard could know. Names and dates."

"Why didn't you go to the police?"

"Put yourself in my place, Mr. Payne. You don't go to the police unless it's absolutely necessary. Absolutely. And since Renard-or whoever he was-wasn't hurting anybody that I knew of, I decided to overlook it. I didn't want to give the police any excuse to start nosing around in my life."

"I guess that makes sense." I gulped the last of my coffee. "I'll think about what you said."

"I won't let the hospital know what I found out for twenty-four hours. Give you time to think it over."

"I appreciate that."

I still didn't like him. But at least I didn't hate him anymore.

The suit was Armani, the woman was bulletproof Professional.

"Hello," she said, offering a slender but strong hand, "I'm Courtney. Tandy has told me so much about you."

"She's inside."

"Ummm. Being interviewed. NBC."

"And, Courtney, you're with?"

"Pyramid. Pyramid Media."

"Ah."

"We produce Tandy's show."

"Ah."

"Since Laura is dead, the company told me to hustle my buns out here and cover for her."

Given her nice, humorless face, her sensational and probably real breasts, and her excellent perfect legs, I had no doubt her buns were also gapeworthy. I guess it was her eyes that spoiled the effect of the other body parts. Nobody had any right to look this happy in the face of Laura's death. But then, without Laura's demise, we wouldn't have NBC in Tandy's room, would we?

I'd gone up to my room. All her stuff was gone. The gentleman at the front desk told me that she'd been assigned a new room. Which was where I stood now. Facing the guard Pyramid had dispatched.

"Any idea how long you think she'll be?"

"I'm not sure, Robert. If I may call you that. But I'll be sure to have her call you if she gets the chance."

If.

Given that Tandy's fate was clearly in Courtney's hands, I doubted I'd be seeing her tonight.

"Tell her I need to talk about the drawing."

"The drawing," she repeated. "Got it. Now I'd better get back inside."

Oh, yeah, she would be sending Tandy right out.

I drove over to Wendy's and got a salad in the drive-through. I stopped at a convenience store for a quart of Hamms. I drove slowly back to the motel. It was kind of a make-out night. All the hot small-town cars up, their radios illegally loud. I saw a college-age girl in an old battered Plymouth. She had a University of Iowa parking sticker on her windshield. She wasn't really what you'd call a babe-actually, I've always been attracted to the quiet, pretty, bookish types instead of the babes-but I made up a little history of her. Good-looking, bright girl from poor family has to work so hard she never has time for a social life. And then she meets the famed Right Guy, not unlike me, who eloquently and persuasively convinces her with his silver tongue, not unlike mine, that she is truly a beauty and needs only self-esteem to realize all the good and great things waiting for her. She looked over at me for a moment and I was tempted to roll down my window and tell her all the things in my head. But I figured with my luck, I'd get arrested and she'd run off with the bail bond guy or something.

There was a good Robert Mitchum picture, Track of the Cat, on TNT. I watched the whole thing. It was ten o'clock. Two hours since being deflected by the unctuous Courtney.

I decided it was time to try the Gileses. See if they were asleep yet.

I dug out the phone book and called.

Mr. Giles answered on the first ring.

I hung up.

I tried Tandy's room. Busy. Tried the operator. She got a busy, too. Should she report it? No, thanks. Courtney had no doubt taken the phone off the hook.

Restless. Paced. Tried Tandy again. Busy.

Then somehow it miraculously became ten-thirty. Tried the Gileses' again. Mr. Giles barked "Who is it?" after the first ring.

I sat down and finished off the beer. And fell asleep. Tension was gone; exhaustion overcame me. I hadn't slept well in a couple of nights. Now I was drained.

The Exercise-in-a-Spray infomercial was on. That's right. No dieting. No exercising. Just spray this on your body and you magically begin to lose weight and tone up. Gee, and to think there were probably cynics who thought that the stuff didn't work.

I went to the bathroom and came out and tried Tandy. She surprised me by answering. "Wow. What a night, Robert. NBC."

"How's the drawing going?"

"Oh, that. I really haven't had time to get back to it yet."

"Oh."

Pause. "I'll try, though. I'm too wired to sleep, anyway. And I do keep getting these flashes. Just like the old days, Robert. Laura always said it would come back to me." Hesitation. "Every time I think of her, I feel like shit. I turned out to be just like her. I like all this celebrity stuff. And I was always making fun of her for it." Teary-voiced. "I loved her so much, Robert. Our relationship got so complicated by the end, I know. But the bottom line is that I loved her so much." Another hesitation. "I really will work on the drawing, Robert. Maybe something'll come to me in the middle of the night. You know, the way it used to."

"If you get anything-"

"I'll call you right away. Thanks for being such a sweetie."

We hung up.

I went in the bathroom and changed into dark clothes.

Moonlight cast long, gothic shadows over the Giles house. Every window was black with night. Inky clouds partially obscured the moon. Soon enough, it would be raining.

I'd parked half a block away and walked up the alley. When I reached the back of the house, I charted my course.

Back porch roof to a small, black, ornamental wrought-iron balcony built just under the attic window. Apparently, the builder had hoped to reenact Romeo and Juliet here someday. And then I'd get inside the attic. If Claire didn't scream, I'd be all right.

It was fairly easy work and I did it almost soundlessly. My palms got scraped up on the rope I lassoed the balcony with, but other than that there was no real difficulty. When I reached the balcony, I pulled myself up and stepped inside the wrought-iron enclosure. And felt the balcony start to collapse all around me. It hadn't been built to hold a 162-pound man. I moved carefully and quickly.

I pulled the rope up from below. A dangling rope was a sure giveaway.

I crouched and peered into the window. Saw nothing. Too dark. As I was waiting for my eyes to adjust to this particular darkness, the thunder started.

It was summer thunder, deep and vast, racing all the way down the sky to set objects and souls trembling. There was enough caveman DNA in me to recognize the thunder's booming warning of cosmic malice. This was when you went to the back of the cave and clutched your family to you and pretended that you were not afraid at all. But your wife knew and you knew she knew. You just hoped that the little ones didn't know. It was important that the chief hunter of the family be, in their eyes, anyway, fearless.

The rain came not long after.

I hunched beneath the overhang of roof as well as I could. But it wasn't much help. I still couldn't see much.

The layout started to take shape. Large, partially finished attic that was mostly a bedroom. I guess I'd been expecting one of those hellholes you hear about where children are held captive. The smells and the blood and the weapons of torture.

No such evidence here.

I could see a bed, bureau, small TV, toilet, sink, older-model refrigerator.

Not just a bedroom, after all. A tiny apartment.

Then I saw, in the center of the floor, the metal chain bolted to the floor. I followed the length of chain until it disappeared somewhere in the covers of the bed.

I thought of the chain-dragging noise I'd heard from the other side of the door.

I tried the windows. Locked tight. There would doubtless be a hook on the other side. And I doubtless wouldn't be able to lift it.

The rain increased. Hard. Cold.

And the ornamental balcony began to shift beneath my feet.

I started to knock-hoping I could rouse Claire from her bed and her no doubt drugged sleep-when the spotlight caught me.

I turned and saw, through the silver rain slanting cold in the yellow beam of the spotlight, the unmistakable shape and colors of a police car.

"You going to tell me what you were doing up there?"

"I'd rather tell Chief Charles."

"Well, I'd rather be home in bed with my wife. But that doesn't mean jack shit, does it, Mr. Payne?"

Fuller was in fine form. Ever since meeting in the interrogation room, he'd let it be known, none too subtly, that he didn't care for me, Tandy, or out-of-towners in general.

He was finally getting a chance to express himself.

"You going to attack her?"

"Who?"

"Claire. The woman who lives in the attic."

"Yeah. That's just what I was going to do. Rape her."

"It happens."

"Well, it doesn't happen when I'm around. I just wanted to talk to her."

"You couldn't go in the front door?"

"I tried that. Her folks wouldn't let me see her."

"Then that should've been that. You got your answer and the answer was no."

"Would you please call Chief Charles?"

"You know what time it is?"

"I'll take the blame. Just please call her."

"I'm afraid not. I'm going to take you to the shop."

"The shop?"

"That's what we call the station."

"Then I'll call the chief."

"Who saw me, anyway?"

"A good citizen whose headlights caught you about halfway up the back wall when you were climbing."

"I thought you worked days."

"I do. But Sullivan has the flu."

"Then at least call Tandy for me. Tell her where I am."

He smiled nastily at me. "You'd think a psychic could figure that out for herself."

He went through the whole thing. Booking. Fingerprinting. Even a nice new photograph.

He was having himself a damned good time.

"Not often a lowlife local lawman like myself gets the chance to book an FBI man like yourself."

"I quit the bureau years ago."

He looked up at me from the form he'd been filling out. "Maybe you left the bureau, but the bureau didn't leave you, Payne. You've still got the attitude."

"The bureau do something to you, did they, Fuller?"

"Yeah, me and every other hardworking pissant local lawman. They come in here and take over and push us around and never tell us what's going on. And if there's any credit, they take it all for themselves."

"How come Chief Charles doesn't seem to feel that way?"

"Because she's got the paper."

"The paper?"

"The degree."

"I see."

"Took all the courses. Kissed all the city council asses. What she wants to be someday is mayor. And so she has to play the game. FBI comes into a town like ours, all the people get all hot and fluttery. Like a teenager in heat. Oh, the FBI is so wonderful. Oh, the FBI is so professional. Like we're dog shit or something. Well, let's see the fucking FBI pull their fucking car out of a ditch in the middle of a blizzard sometime."

An angry man.

We were in Susan Charles's office. He sat at her desk. This was where he obviously hoped to be permanently someday.

He started to say something. A young man in a 1958 crew cut was pushing a wide broom down the corridor. He paused in the doorway.

"You want me to skip the chief's office tonight? This is when I usually do it."

"Just come back when we're done talking."

"Fine. I'll just take my break now."

When the young man was gone, Fuller said, "His break. Sonofabitch takes ten breaks a night."

"You could always fire him."

"The mayor's kid? You kidding? He flunked out of Iowa last term when we were looking for a night janitor. Mayor figured this would teach his kid a little humility. Cleaning toilets and shit like that."

I was tired of small talk.

"You call Tandy?"

"Yeah. She wasn't there."

"What the hell you talking about, she wasn't there?"

"Just what I said, asshole. She wasn't there."

"You call the desk?"

He sighed. "I figured you'd piss and moan about it, so I tried it direct one time and got no answer, and then I tried the front desk and they tried and didn't get no answer. That good enough for you, Payne?"

"Where the hell would she be?"

I got a terrible feeling about her not being there. This time of night. A slashing rain. Her exhausted from her day. Why would she be gone now?

He stood up. "Couple things I need to do. I'll be back. You want coffee?"

"I'd appreciate it."

"You got thirty-five cents?"

"This isn't on the house, huh?"

"You pay for your coffee same as I do. That's what happens when you're a real lawman, Payne. You pay your own way."

"You ever hear of Prozac?"

"You ever hear of gettin' a nightstick shoved up your ass?"

He went away.

I sat and listened to the rain and looked around the office again. He hadn't been kidding about Susan's public success. She had all the right awards and citations you need to prosper in a small town. Kiwanis. Rotary. The hospital. With her brains, style, and poise, seemed she could be mayor anytime she wanted.

I got up and walked over for a closer look.

I studied the family photos on top of the small bookcase. Young Susan Charles at various ages. The very youngest photo was so pretty, she could have been a face on baby food or baby soap. Curly dark hair, stunning green eyes, and already a kind of wry smile, as if she knew that her beauty would someday be defaced. The wryness being her way of dealing with it.

The cheerleading photo, despite the out-of-date hairdo, was still sexy. Definitely a trophy girl. The campus stars would have all vied for her. And she no doubt would have let them.

A high school graduation photo; a New York City vacation photo; a swimsuit photo in which she wore a goofy hat and looked like she was giggling.

And then no more.

No photos of her with her scar.

"Those were the good days," she said from behind me.

Yellow rain slicker, red blouse, jeans, wading boots, sprightly yellow rain slicker hat. Cute cutecute.

"BS," she said.

"BS?"

"Before Scar."

I smiled. "Sounds about right."

She sat down behind her desk. "You're in trouble, Robert."

"I know."

"Fuller is enjoying himself. It's sort of like giving a Pit Bull a side of beef."

I sat down, too.

"That's an apt description, Chief."

She leaned forward. "Why the hell were you trying to get into that attic?"

So I told her what Emily Cunningham had told me. I told her about all the false leads with Renard, though I didn't mention Dr. Williams. I told her that somehow all this connected up with a baby picture. Sandy used to clean up Claire's attic room and saw the photo and also saw it somewhere else. Told her about Tandy and her drawings.

"Why didn't you work with me?"

"I should have. I wanted to help Tandy, I guess. Keep her in the center of the spotlight."

"You're a good friend."

"She's a nice woman."

"Very neurotic."

"We're all very neurotic," I said.

She smiled. "Is that the lawman speaking or just the man?"

"Both."

She sat back in her chair. "I'll talk to Fuller and see what I can do. Explain things. Maybe he'll back off a little. But if he wants to go ahead with charges, there's nothing I can do."

If she blocked his charges, the Kiwanis and the Rotary would be most unhappy. I didn't blame her. I wouldn't have blocked the charges, either. Whatever my motive, I really had been trespassing at the very least. True, and thankfully, I hadn't gotten inside, where several other charges could have been brought against me.

She picked up the form Fuller had been working on and said, "Let me go talk to him. See if he'll agree to sort this out in the morning." She looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Despite the fact that you were carrying burglary tools."

"And let me go back to my room tonight?"

She nodded. "But we're talking fifty-fifty at best."

"That's what I figured."

Form in hand, she left the office. I went back to the photos on top of the bookcase. I felt a compulsion I couldn't explain. "All right if I get in here now?"

The mayor's kid with his cleaning cart. He looked like a decent kid in a shaggy, slow-witted kind of way.

"Sure."

He grinned. "Fuller'll probably kick my ass out of here, he comes back."

"I'll talk to him."

He looked stunned. "Mister, you been booked. Why would he listen to you?"

"Let's just see what happens."

He saw the small framed photo I held in my hand. Cheerleader.

"She was a babe."

"She sure was."

"Don't know how she ever got to be a cop."

"The times're changing, I hear."

"Yeah, I s'pose. But still and all, you sure don't expect your chief to look like that. I mean, boobs like that and everything." He lifted his dusty dry mop, as if presenting it to me. "Guess I'd better get to work."

He started in on the office. I stayed in my corner next to the bookcase. He worked around me. He missed all kinds of spots but I didn't want to be the one who pointed it out.

I looked through the photos and silently weighed my chances with Fuller. Zero to none, it seemed to me.

"That's the one Sandy always looked at."

"Sandy?" I said.

"Yeah, the girl that got killed by Rick Hennessy."

"Really?" I said, setting the baby photo down. "How do you know that?"

"This was where she was working when she died. She had my job. Saving for college. She broke me in. You know, showed me around my first week. Right after that, she got killed."

I hadn't known about her job here.

And then I thought of her other job. The one with Claire Giles.

"She ever say anything about the baby picture of the chief?"

"Don't think so. She'd just pick it up and look at it a lot. It's kind of a cute picture, for a little kid, I mean. She'd just keep staring at it."

"What the hell you doing?" Fuller said, bursting back into the office.

"Where's Chief Charles?" I said.

"For somebody who's gonna spend the night with us, you sure ask a hell of a lot of questions, you know that?" Wide face sweaty, angry, frustrated. Then, "Get the hell out of here, Ronnie. Payne and I need to talk."

"Where's Susan?" I said.

I was pushing him to the edge. I didn't have any choice.

"Some personal business came up, if that's all right with you. She told me to take over and do as I saw fit. Is that good enough for you?"

"She told me she'd ask you to let me go back to my motel tonight."

"She didn't say anything to me."

The way he said it, I knew he wasn't lying.

But why wouldn't Susan have kept her word and asked him to let me go, at least for tonight?

But I already had a good idea.

And now I had no choice but to run.

I was quick enough to surprise him. He cursed, jumped in my direction, slamming his knee hard against the edge of the desk.

Then he got entangled with Ronnie and his dry mop. Ronnie moved in sync with Fuller, and Fuller couldn't get past. Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny executing a routine.

I was several feet down the hall by the time Fuller burst out with "Stop him! Stop him!"

And then he was running down the hall after me.

And then the whole jail was waking up from its rainy slumber.

More shouts. Slapping footsteps.

My chances of escaping weren't much better than those of Fuller letting me go back to my motel room.