Date: 1984-10-02 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Thriller; Fiction; Mystery; Crime
Description: The killer in the night. He waited in the shadows, a dark and deadly presence. He was no novice at this terrible trade--he had struck before and he would strike again. And with each new killing he became less human...and more vicious. He stood patiently, a wire garrote in his strong hands, ready to claim yet another victim. Soon he would have one more to add to his growing list unless they could stop him. But how could they when they didn't know who he was? What he was? To a terrified city he was known only as the Wireman. Set in the 1970s, two brothers return from the Vietnam war with blood o

WIREMAN

by

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 1984, 2011

Originally published in print by Paperjacks, 1984, and reprinted by Leisure Books, 2000.

BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN has e-books available including, BANISHED, BAD TRIP SOUTH, WIDOW, GOLD RUSH DREAM, UNIDENTIFIED, LIFE NEAR THE BONE, HORROR TALES, HORROR TALES 2, FROM A HIGH WINDOW, LEGIONS OF THE DARK, RISE OF THE LEGEND, HUNTER OF THE DEAD, SCROLLS OF THE DEAD, THE SUBWAY COLLECTION, THE SUBWAY COLLECTION 2.

Boxed Set of Novels: SUSPENSE THRILLERS, DARK THRILLERS, HORROR THRILLERS

Chapter 1

Bloomington, Texas Summer 1960

TEN-YEAR-OLD Nick Ringer walked along the railroad tracks. Sunlight flashed from the worn, glittering metal and brought tears to his eyes. Everything was so bright and dry. The town looked as bleached and pale as Mama's sheets.

He used a pine branch to sweep a path for his bare feet. Little red stones rolled aside and stickers clung to the sappy needles. Finding an anthill taller than the rail it hugged, Nick stopped and listlessly annihilated the colony until there was nothing left but a small heap of tan dirt.

He might as well go home. There was a chance his brother Daley would play with him now. Being two years younger, Daley liked his comic books more than the lure of aimless wandering, but sometimes when the day cooled he could be talked into improbable adventures.

Nick kicked a tin can, sending it bumping across the dusty street. Daley was dumb. Who needed him?

Passing his neighbor's house, Nick saw Eileen sitting on the front steps.

"I've got two BB guns," he called. "Wanna go shoot the cows out back?"

"Nah. It's too hot to shoot cows," Eileen replied listlessly.

Nick sauntered across the ditch, dragging his branch, and stood before her. She wore butter-yellow shorts and a white cotton top. Her brown legs glistened as if covered by a sheen of silver. Nick squinted, trying to determine if the mirage was real. It wasn't. Blond hairs created the silvery veil that disappeared beneath the cuff of her shorts.

He straightened up, throwing back his shoulders, and smiled shyly. "Let's do something."

"Do what?"

Uh-oh, there she was talking through her nose again.

"I don't know what, yet. Let's go see," Nick said, moving toward the backyard.

Eileen followed him resentfully. She too was bored with the long summer day. Nick Ringer was not her friend, but there was a chance he might find something for them to do together: He was shabbily dressed in chocolate-brown pants that had holes in the knees and a rip in the seat. Eileen studied the rip and the dingy white material of his underwear. She repressed a giggle.

The Texas sun continued to beat down on the two children. Nick sized up the possibilities in Eileen's backyard and pointed to the metal T-bar of the clothesline. "We'll swing. You go first."

Eileen threw back her shoulders and strode past him. There wasn't a boy in the neighborhood who could outdo her. The T-bar was baby play. Already she had mastered swinging from the top poles of the Garcias' swing set next door--a heart-stopping maneuver that held her fourteen feet above the ground.

Nick bowled an empty milk carton into a pile of trash, then sat down on the thick grass and crossed his legs. Eileen jumped, caught the left side of the hot bar, and let out a loud whoosh until her hands got used to the heat. She hoisted her legs up through her arms. She dropped, swinging free. She blinked at Nick in his upside-down squat and said, "Ha-ha, this is easy."

"You do it pretty good. But you're a tomboy."

"So what? Lots of girls are tomboys. I can beat you at anything. You're just an old hobo anyway," Eileen taunted.

"Don't call me that."

"Hobo, hobo. You wear pants with holes in 'em and I can see your panties."

Nick dropped his gaze and wiped sweat from his forehead. Eileen was bad. She was meaner than a horny toad. He frowned, scooted closer, and almost grabbed her long pigtails.

"Boys don't wear panties," he said. "And I don't have any nice clothes."

"That's one sorry excuse."

"Shut up." Nick felt like growling.

"That's what my mom says about your mom. 'She's one sorry excuse for a human bean.' That's what she says."

The bushes rattled at the edge of Eileen's yard and Nick turned to see his brother struggling through.

"What y'all doing?" Daley asked, shading his eyes with one hand as he joined them.

"I'm swinging by my legs, stupid." Eileen made a face. She felt sweat bunching up behind her knees and their grip on the T-bar was beginning to slip. She reached up, caught the bar with both hands, and dropped to the ground. The world came upright, spinning.

"We could go shoot cows," Nick suggested. His voice was softer, less defensive now that his brother was present. He was considering either ganging up on Eileen or forgiving her. She was mean but pretty--a terrible combination in a girl.

"I don't shoot cows, no way. My mama says you only do that 'cause something's wrong with you. You're not supposed to hurt things. " Her clenched fists rested on her waistline and she gave Nick the benefit of her sternest face, the one usually reserved for little kids who didn't know better.

"You're lying about what your mama says," Nick challenged.

Daley backed away from the two older children and waited for the big argument. He noticed the look on Nick's face and knew it was going to be a wingding if Eileen did not shut up.

"I am not lying, Nick Ringer. My mama did say those things and she's smart. It's crazy to hurt things, that’s what it is."

"Nobody's crazy." Nick glanced at Daley for support and saw him shrug his shoulders and shake his head, retreating from the fight.

"Hurting’s crazy and you're crazy. Everyone says so," Eileen insisted.

Nick stared hard at her. The sun was so bright behind her back she was in silhouette, her face in shadow.

Indignation brought spots of color to her cheeks. She swung her braids around to the front of her blouse and pulled at them with both hands. She was a scraper--a fierce, hard ten-year-old girl. If he ever tangled with Eileen, he would have to break her arm to make her cry uncle. He began to smile at the thought.

“What’re you laughing at?” Eileen asked. She looked to Daley for confirmation that Nick was crazy and stupid and needed a whipping. “What’s he laughing at?” she asked Daley.

“Maybe I am crazy.” Nick spoke softly, quietly. “Maybe I howl at the moon and eat dead babies.” Eileen shivered. Suddenly she did not want to taunt Nick. She wanted to go indoors and get a glass of Kool-Aid with lots of ice in it.

“Well, Miss Snot, what ya got to say to that?” Nick was pleased at the uncertainty in Eileen’s face. “Don’t I howl at the moon and eat dead babies, Daley?”

Nice and Eileen’s attention focused on Daley, who glanced up from beneath thick brown lashes and made a timid motion with his hand. They could see he was not agreeing with anyone.

"Why don't you go home, Nick?" Eileen took a step toward her house and stopped. "I can't play with you. Mama said so. If she looks out the window and sees you here, she'll run you off."

"Can't nobody run me off 'lessen I want to go."

Eileen squenched her eyes and thought furiously. What would it take to make him leave the yard? "Your feet are always dirty. "

Nick laughed, throwing his head back with dramatic flair.

"Your hair needs cutting and I bet you've got lice," Eileen tried.

Nick stopped laughing and stepped closer, his look menacing.

"I bet you're retarded." Eileen knew she was losing ground, but she could not give up. She also knew she was being unduly cruel, but her mouth just kept going.

Nick moved closer. Daley coughed behind a fist and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Now y'all..." he whined.

"I bet your mom's what they say." Now Eileen was desperate.

"What do they say?" The tone of Nick’s voice was like a slap.

"That she's a...a...whore!"

Nick closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He hated Eileen. Older children had said that word to him before. But never someone his own age. Most ten-year-olds did not know what "whore” meant. Eileen knew too much and said too much.

Eileen suddenly hopped out of Nick’s range. She was scared. She had made him mad, but she really had not wanted to go that far. Yet he stood between her and the house, between her and something cool to drink. He was awful. A bully. She vowed silently never to speak to him again.

“You should run away from home, you’re so stupid,” she said. "I watched you Saturday. You didn't know. You were squeezing a frog and kept on till he was squished dead. I saw you!"

That was it. The last of her ammunition against Nick. The memory of Saturday’s kill scared her. It had taken a long time for the frog to die. When Nick had dropped it to the ground he had walked away in a daze.

Eileen had told no one what she saw. There was something horrible about Nick Ringer that she would never be able to get across to adults, something worse than even they imagined.

Nick looked up at the saffron sky and took slow, deep breaths. He heard his brother stalking toward the bordering bushes to return home. Nick slid his gaze sideways and saw Daley disappear into the leafy branches. He turned abruptly and left the yard, following Daley.

Eileen stood rooted to the spot, amazed Nick had given in. She heard their back door slam shut. Trembling and sweaty, feeling guilty about the name-calling, Eileen raced for her house and stayed inside the remainder of the day. Even her mother’s yelling could not induce her to go outdoors again.

#

That night when the moon rode high across the night sky, Nick slipped from his bed, went out the back door quietly, and crossed into Eileen’s yard.

He sat in the damp grass at the base of the T-bar and watched his neighbor’s back steps. The adults in both houses had been in bed for hours. A few minutes later the bushes rustled and Daley stepped through.

Silently, he walked to where Nick sat and hunched down, rocking back on his heels.

“What’s going on?” Daley asked.

“I thought you were asleep. I heard you snoring.”

“I woke up when you left,” the younger boy explained.

He wiped his nose though it did not need it and glanced at the blanket of stars overhead. “What are you going to do?" His eyes combed the heavens as if he did not care what the answer might be. It did not really matter to him anyway.

"I'm gonna string up her cat," Nick said calmly.

Daley slowly turned to his brother. He sucked in his breath, counted to ten, and let it out again. "What for?" he asked.

"Because she deserves it."

"You'll get whipped for that. We both might. "

"I don't care. I'm gonna do it."

Daley rocked back and forth in the grass. Dampness soaked through his jeans and made him shiver.

"How're you gonna string it up?" he asked cautiously.

"With this." Nick dipped his right hand into his pocket and withdrew a three-foot length of thin wire.

Daley looked quickly away. He licked his dry lips. "Shingles is like her baby doll. She'll cry."

“I know." Nick smiled softly.

"Maybe you shouldn't do it," Daley suggested.

"She called me names."

"You called her names too. We all do that. I don't care what they call us anymore, do you?"

There was a long silence before Nick replied. "Yeah, I care. I care a lot."

It was nearly dawn before the kitten straggled out from beneath Eileen's house, meowing as it climbed the cement steps. Eileen loved the motley tabby kitten obsessively. She carried it everywhere with her--on her shoulders, in her bicycle basket. She sometimes dressed it in doll clothes and crooned lullabies until it fell asleep in her arms. She would have slept with Shingles if her parents had permitted it. Nick knew all about Eileen and Shingles.

Daley had fallen into a light doze. When Nick moved stealthily to the begging kitten, his brother woke up and watched. Nick scooped up the gray-black ball of fur and cupped his hand over its mouth. He carried it to the clothesline.

"Come on, Nick. Don't do it, huh?" Daley pleaded as he stood up.

"Shut up," Nick hissed, his concentration ebbing.

He pulled the wire from his pocket. The noose slipped into place around the small furry neck. The kitten did not have a chance to protest. Its tiny body swung gently by the thin wire from the arm of the clothesline's T-bar. It stared into the night, not seeing, its tongue lolling like a fat worm from its pink mouth. Nick studied the corpse closely for signs of life. After a lingering look at Eileen's house, he went to his house without speaking to Daley.

The younger boy followed, a hangdog sadness bowing his youthful body into that of a stunted old man.

Eileen's parents discovered the kitten after breakfast. They called Nick's mother into their yard to see Shingles hanging by the wire noose, the stiffened body an incomprehensible warning swaying in the summer breeze.

They did not have any proof, of course, they made that perfectly clear, but everyone knew Nick was the culprit. Even his mother knew it. Eileen had accused him, turning her reddened eyes away when he was led into the yard, his head unbowed.

No one was able to coerce Nick into admitting guilt. His mother beat him for three nights with a wide leather belt, but the punishment seemed useless. Then Daley was beaten, the belt digging deep and raising half-inch welts on his legs and back, but there was no betrayal.

Nick later confided to his brother. "It didn't hurt much."

"Well, it hurt me. I can't sit down or sleep on my back," Daley complained.

"You could've told on me. I didn't care. I was gonna get a whipping for it anyway."

Daley shrugged and quick tears came to his eyes. "Oh, I didn't care. It didn't hurt that bad." He paused and considered his next statement. "I don't think you really had to kill Shingles, though, Nick. It was a pretty kitten."

"It was just a dumb stupid cat. It was supposed to die."

"Okay, Nick, it's all right. Don't get mad," Daley said quickly.

"I'm not mad. Not at you."

Nick leaned over and hugged his brother.

"Nick?" Daley said after an amiable silence.

"Yeah?"

"Don't do it anymore, okay? I don't want you to do that anymore."

Nick walked away from Daley, unable to make a promise he expected he would have to break.

Deep down inside he knew it would happen again.

And again.

The kitten's death was simply the beginning.

Chapter 2

Vietnam

Quang Ngai / Bordering Forest

1974

DALEY RINGER expected to die. He was twenty-two years old and specially trained for guerrilla warfare, but he did not believe the training was going to save him this time. Luck had run out for both him and Nick.

It was only a matter of who would get it first. Daley prayed that Nick would outlive him. To die alone would be the ultimate horror.

"Nick?" The whisper seemed to carry through the thick screen of leaves and branches like the raucous caw of a jungle bird. "Nick, are you awake?"

"Sure, I'm awake. I don't want to fall out of this motherfucker and land smack in the arms of a gook."

The two brothers sat on the limb of a tree close to the trunk.

"My trick knee keeps popping," Nick said, holding his right leg out in the air cautiously The kneecap clicked so loudly that Daley flinched. He wished Nick would stop. It was malting him edgy.

"I wish to hell I could sleep one night on the ground," Nick complained.

Daley grunted his agreement. They had been in trees every night since getting separated from their platoon.

It made for lousy sleeping arrangements. The first two nights they fastened their belts and ammunition holders together and lashed themselves to the trunk, but Nick did not like it. He thought they should not give up their freedom of movement. So they took turns, holding each other in place to keep from toppling forty feet to the ground.

Soon it would be Nick's watch, and for an uncomfortable two hours Daley could try to dream of a bed and clean sheets when reality offered only vertigo and mosquitoes. He wondered if they would ever get out of this goddamn hellhole jungle. Not alive, he decided. Daley had already accepted the death verdict. Miracles did not happen for two lone soldiers with only one working .45 sidearm between them even recon snipers, the top special force of the army, could not be expected to make it out alone.

A galaxy of stars glittered in the sky. It was a clear night and the moon was waning. The silence was broken intermittently by the wild flapping of birds' wings. Each time Nick stretched his leg and popped his knee, the birds flew into a different set of branches.

What if the gooks heard Nick's knee-popping trick as they paused beneath the tree? Daley wondered. The night would light up like the Fourth of July and two sitting pigeons would be grounded with guts full of lead.

Sweet Christ!

"You ready for a nap, Daley?" Nick sounded almost cheerful.

“I’m pretty jittery.”

Nick snorted and slapped the branch with his palm. "You're a master of understatement," he said. "Try to get some rest anyway. It's my watch."

Daley scooted near to the trunk and pressed his chest against the rough bark as if embracing a woman.

"What kind of tree is this?" he asked, tracing the sharp whorls of bark with his fingers.

“Vietnamese oak. How the fuck should I know?"

Daley smiled. He felt Nick's arm hold him steady. His brother's fingers were wintry. ”You must be cold.

I'm sweating and your hands are freezing."

"Fear, little brother. It drains all the warmth. Haven't you ever noticed?"

Daley silently agreed, but what good did it do to talk about it? It only caused the fear to become more urgent.

Nick's knee popped again. A bird jeered and flew through pitch blackness with a flutter.

Suddenly a twig snapped at the bottom of the tree. Daley's eyes snapped open. His heart pounded fiercely and he struggled for breath.

"You hear that?" he asked in a low whisper.

"Some animal," Nick reassured him. "Get some sleep while you can."

Daley's eyes closed and his heart slowed until it no lower thumped against his rib cage. Sleep, sure, sleep.

But how? He had nightmares of falling, his body riddled with bullet holes.

All the odds were against their survival. Big shot recon snipers cut off from safety. One M-14 with a broken breach. Nick had buried it. One M-14 lost in the murky depths of a creek while crossing. He would never live it down if they ever got back to the platoon. He could have told them he would fuck things up.

Where the sergeant saw potential, Daley only saw incompetence. Losing his weapon proved it.

“I’m gonna die,” he breathed, but Nick did not hear him. The frightened birds that nested all around the brothers thought the animal in their midst had only breathed a weary sigh.

#

Daley woke groggily, clawing his way out of his nightmare to stare blankly at the trunk of the tree right before his eyes.

"Smell 'em?" Nick whispered harshly.

Smell what? Daley wondered. Then his mind slipped into place and he remembered where he was.

The Cong! You could always smell them before you could see them or hear their approach. They stank of wet stagnant rice paddies and they stank of human excrement. Their own shit betrayed their presence.

Daley touched his brother to let him know that he knew the enemy was close. He strained to hear a sound, but be could not tell where they were. The aroma was still faint so he knew they were not at the base of the tree. Please Jesus save us, he prayed.

"Stay." Nick said the word so softly it might have been a puff of wind passing Daley's ear. He wanted to scream, No! Don't go down there! Don't let me die alone! But Nick already was shimmying expertly down the tree, swinging from limb to limb as he lowered himself to the ground. Daley watched his brother becoming a dark shape going down, down, descending silently to death.

Daley decided not to do as Nick had commanded. He could not sit in the branches while his brother stalked the enemy. There might be too many of them. It was probably a night patrol from a nearby tunnel.

The stink grew stronger. The enemy was closer, not more than twenty yards north of their tree. Daley could hear them, the footfalls barely disturbing the thick vegetation of the forest floor.

He looked for Nick, but his brother had vanished. Oh for godssake, Nick, this is it. This is how it ends. And I don't even have a goddamn gun.

Daley moved like a wraith down the tree trunk and concentrated on the darkness in the direction of the oncoming sounds. Where was Nick? Would he use the .45?

Daley braced himself for anything. Gunfire. Capture. Quick painful death from behind. He felt his bowels loosen and tensed his buttocks. A sweet sensation of relief was followed by the realization that he had wet himself. Shame suffused him, but couldn't overcome the fear. He kept perfectly still, not breathing.

An odd gurgling sound came from the direction of the Cong. Bushes rustled, followed by a thin, throaty rattle, then silence.

Suddenly Daley was running without knowing why or what he would do when he burst through the matted vines that separated him from what he feared on the other side. He flailed through waist-high bushes, tearing away the branches that barred his path. His foot caught beneath a body on the ground and he went down with a grunt. He rolled off the corpse, jumped to his feet, and heard Nick whisper close to his ear, "I told you to stay!"

Daley jerked his head, looking around for more Vietnamese. "Where are they?" he asked. "Jesus, Nick, I thought..."

"Shhh!" Nick put a finger to Daley's lips. They both turned in unison at the approaching footsteps.

Suddenly Nick pushed Daley behind a clump of broad slick leaves. Daley squatted, his gaze riveted momentarily on the dead man's eyes that stared sightlessly up to the treetops. Daley's attention went back to his brother, who stood flush against a tree. In the shadows it looked as if something was suspended from his right hand. A rope? A piece of string? What the hell does he have? Where was the .45? Daley wondered.

A short, skeletal Viet Cong slipped into the bare spot where the dead man lay. He stepped past the tree where Nick waited. As Daley's eyes rounded with terror, Nick moved behind the soldier, wrapped his hands around the man's throat, and tightened the eighteen-inch wire of a garrote.

The Vietnamese dropped his rifle and grabbed at his throat, the fingers clawing at the strangling wire that was cutting off his wind. Nick jerked the garrote more fiercely and the man's feet left the ground, his full weight against Nick's chest. Nick held him, pulling the wire tighter and tighter. The wire sank deeper into the tender flesh as blood began to gush from the wound. The gurgling sounded again.

Nick heaved backward with all his might, and while Daley watched in both horror and fascination, the man's head was severed from his struggling body, blood spurting after the head in a high, wide arc.

Daley turned and retched. He heard the head hit the ground and roll. Then there was a heavier crash as the body dropped to earth, blood still gouting from the neck.

"Let's go," Nick said softly. He touched Daley's shoulder with a hand that dripped warm blood. "There's one more. He took off. He'll bring the whole goddamn North Vietnamese army down on us."

Daley could not vomit. Nothing would come up. They had been eating powdered eggs and C-ration Spam for days. It sat in his rolling stomach like a malignant tumor, but it would not come up. He had killed his share of the enemy. He had seen men killed. Blood and torn flesh were typical scenes in war. But decapitation was too gruesome. It was one atrocity he had not witnessed in Vietnam.

Nick was striking off through the jungle. He seemed to know instinctively where the other Vietnamese had gone. Daley rushed to catch his brother. Someone had told him…maybe it was the battle-weary sergeant…fear was the healthiest emotion a soldier could feel. Fear caused you to fight longer, and more fiercely. But Daley had pissed himself and he had tried to vomit up his guts. What kind of a real soldier was he? And what kind was Nick?

They were going deeper into the forest. Nick slogged ahead, the garrote swinging from his hand like a yo-yo while Daley followed. He could see the entrance of a cave outlined in the darkness. He could not tell if it was a cave that nature had created or if it was mad-made--bored into the hillside by the Cong. As they neared the opening Daley smelled the scent of the enemy once again, the scent of death riding on the breeze.

Nick did not hesitate for a second. He boldly entered the tunnel. Daley hung back, swallowed, wiped a line of perspiration from his upper lip, then stepped inside.

He was momentarily blinded. He could not see his hand, his brother, or the walls on either side of him.

''Nick?" Daley whispered.

There was a sharp war cry. The dark boomed with the sounds of human battle. Vietnamese curses tore through the air.

Daley waited, shivering with fear. "Nick!" he called more loudly.

The chilling gurgle of a man being strangled bounced off the damp walls of the cave.

Daley could not wait any longer. The man being strangled could not be Nick. It could not be! If It was, then he had to save his brother, save him somehow…

Daley stumbled forward, his hands outstretched to feel for the shape of a man. Something hot splashed over him and he knew it was blood.

He screamed.

A cigarette lighter flicked on. Daley stopped in mid-stride, his mouth still open from the scream that was fading away with tinny echoes to the back of the cave. Nick stood over the corpse of the last Vietnamese, the garrote dangling from one hand. He looked mad in the tuckering flame. He was covered with blood. Rubies of it nestled in his fine blond hair. Streaks of it ran down both cheeks.

The front of his uniform was darkly soaked, and at his feet the severed neck of a black-suited Viet Cong continued to pump rivers of red over his boots. I'm right here. little brother." Nick's voice was calm. His stained lips curved into a gentle smile. He looked like a grim circus clown, chalk-white patches of skin and lipstick-smeared lips. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, Daley, I'll always take care of you."

Daley could not help himself. He collapsed against the damp cave wall and began to sob. The cigarette lighter flame hissed and threw giant, bobbing shadows behind the two soldiers. They stood that way for a long time: one brother weeping, one brother smiling and holding his light up high against the darkness.

Chapter 3

THE TROPICAL SUN was aflame. The temperature and humidity were both in the nineties, making any physical activity a laborious task. Vietnam was the armpit of the world, and the vast armies sweeping across its interior were merely parasites looking for a more comfortable host.

Daley and Nick stumbled forward through green grass that topped their boots. It had taken Daley two grueling days to bring his older brother sixteen miles through rough terrain. All morning they had waded through fields of watery land that had once been planted with rice. Far off to their right they could see a burned and demolished village. Ahead was the ragged edge of another forest Daley thought he remembered. If he was correct, the rear echelon of their platoon was on the other side. They might reach it by sundown.

At first glance the two brothers looked similar because of the American uniforms and their build, but on closer inspection no one would believe they were relatives. Leading the way to the blessed relief of the forest shade was Daley, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and ruggedly handsome.

During the last months in Vietnam he had let his raven black hair grow long and shaggy. It had a natural wave and curled on the ends in the center of his thick neck. He was the sort of man who would never be teased about the length of his hair by either the other soldiers or his immediate commanders. He had too much self-control ever to come to blows over snide remarks, but no one had the bad judgment to chance any kind of criticism of Daley Ringer.

On the other hand, Nick was blond and fair. From repeated exposure to the sun his skin was peeling layer after layer. Where his brother was swarthy, Nick favored their mother, a lily-white woman who always looked anemic. Nick also did not command as much power of presence as his brother. Only when a joking heckler happened to look into Nick's blue eyes did he lose his nerve and let his taunts trail into apology. Nick's stony, unrelenting gaze saved many men from the beating of their lives. It was evident that neither brother could be bullied or broken. Because of this tension they created, they had been a team from the beginning. It was whispered, "Get the Ringer brothers on your side of this war and you got it made. They’re a fuckin' front-line committee."

"Come on, Nick. Not far now," Daley encouraged. He was taking an awful chance camping in the shade and he knew it, but Nick was out of his head, and part of the reason was lack of proper nourishment. They had to brave the danger of an ambush to get something hot in Nick’s stomach.

As the last of the coffee boiled in the coals, Daley poured a box of chicken-and-rice soup into a cup of water. This was the last of their C-rations. If help was not on the other side of the forest, they would be reduced to eating roots or chancing night raids on any village they could find.

Nick began to spit again. First to his left, then to his right. He scrunched up his face, pursed his lips, and spit.

“Quit it, Nick," Daley said quietly.

"They won't go away if I quit."

Daley stirred the soup and set it farther back on the coals to simmer. Ever since leaving the cave he had heard about the horned and ranged demons. He was not only tired of hearing about them and their hideous games, but he was beginning to believe Nick might really see the creatures. He wondered if this meant he too was cracking.

"Coffee's done." Daley was trying to keep Nick's attention focused.

"I don't want it."

"There's some soup too."

"I shouldn't eat it," Nick said.

Daley swiveled on his heels to peer at his brother. This was a new twist. Before Nick had eaten anything he was offered. "Why not?" Daley asked.

"If I eat, they'll crawl in my stomach and I'll never get them out." Nick sounded surprised Daley had to ask such an obvious question.

Daley sighed and turned to watch the instant coffee bubble in the water. "You know that isn't so."

Nick spit again. Right, then left. His blue eyes were dull. He was filthy. He had not let Daley wash him in the river they had stumbled upon, and the Cong's blood was dried on has uniform and face. At night when his sweat evaporated, the cloth grew stiff and creaked as he moved. He stank worse than the enemy.

Nick stood up abruptly. "I have to take a leak, watch the spirits. You make them stay here so I can be alone.”

"Sure, Nick. I'll make them stay. I'll throw the bastards in the fire," Daley assured his brother.

Nick chuckled, but it sounded more like a growl. "I wouldn't try that if I were you.” Daley lifted one eyebrow as he shuffled into the forest. Before killing the Cong three nights before he had looked strong. Now he stooped and slouched, his head drooping, his whole body changing so that he no longer looked like himself. He was more like a beaten drunk, stinking of defeat and misery.

Nick lurched from the shadows, zipping up his pants. He slumped onto a rotting log, his ankles crossed, hands in his lap.

“I can draw you a picture,” he said, giving Daley a calculated glance from beneath pale blond lashes.

“Draw me a picture of what?”

“Seth.”

Daley shook his head as if to clear it. Half of what Nick said made no sense whatever. “Who’s Seth?” he asked.

Nick paused to spit to each side of him. “This fucking demon, that’s who.” He took a stick from the ground and held it like a pencil.

“Oh, Nick, please. I’m too tired for this,” Daley protested.

“What?” Nick’s head came up in surprise. “Don’t you want to know what he looks like?”

Daley poured coffee. There was no use antagonizing Nick. He would have to leave the problem to the medics. “Okay, show me,” he said.

The stick snaked across the dirt. Daley bent over the childlike drawing when Nick ended with a flourish.

The stick protruded from what appeared to be the throat of a beast.

Daley rubbed his chin in contemplation. He saw a moon face, deeply creased, with hooked teeth, and ridged horns on the head. What kind of nightmare had Nick purchased with the Vietnamese deaths?

“Even Charlie looks better than that,” Daley said, trying for some humor.

Nick kicked at the drawing and dirt flew into the air.

“Maybe they’ll get impaled on some pongee sticks, Nick. That should do away with the demons.”

“You shouldn’t make jokes, Daley. They hear every word you say.” Nick made faces at the space he thought his torturers inhabited.

“Here, eat this,” Daley urged. “We’ve got to get moving. The Cong might have already seen the smoke from our fire.”

Nick apparently had forgotten about things crawling into his stomach to get to his food. He slurped down the chicken and rice with a wolf’s appetite.

Once the small fire was thoroughly tamped down and covered with brush and the cardboard boxes carefully buried, Daley took Nick by the arm to lead him into the jungle.

As they made their way through the tangled and contorted undergrowth, Daley began to seriously consider what the army would do with Nick. There was a hospital called the Eighty-fifth and Evac in Phu Bai. That was where the dying and severely maimed were sent, but very few were evacuated from the Eighty-fifth.

They did not live long enough for evacuation. Surely that’s not where they’ll send Nick, Daley thought.

S.O.P., standard operational procedure, for someone like Nick would be a check-over at the Red Cross station at the rear and then shipment to Japan or Okinawa. If he was really out of it, they would send him to the States. Daley was sure his brother’s military career had ended back in the tunnel. He had not meant to cry about the efficient killing of the enemy, but it was the look on Nick’s face, an expression of maniacal glee and satisfaction, that had frightened him. It would have scared the most courageous of men, but it had broken Daley’s heart.

He expected Nick to recover. Other soldiers had broken. For a large percentage of them it was merely shock, a passing phase. Nick would come out of it, shuck the little clutching spirits, and be all right again.

But it could take a while. And Vietnam was not the place to get over a spell of madness. It was madness, definitely, Daley reflected. War was government-sanctioned mass murder. He suspected none of the survivors would ever be entirely normal when they got home. Even himself. He was, in some ways, as changed as Nick.

Neither of them spoke as they trudged through the emerald, dense forest. Daley focused on each step he took, his trained eyes watching for traps, his ears listening for any unusual rustle, his nostrils twitching as they smelled for Cong. Being careful and observant was not always enough, however, and a man could lose his leg or his balls despite every precaution. Charlie was clever, discreet, a deadly saboteur. C-ration boxes and cans were often used by the Cong for a mine. A grenade was placed inside, the pin pulled, and a thin trip wire or string was attached to the shallowly buried green container. High weeds hid the lines and the man walking behind suffered from the explosion. Often bullets were buried with a detonator; all it took was one footfall and a man was crippled for life. These were things Daley knew he was powerless to evade. If he or Nick came across one of these tricks, there would be nothing to do but accept slow death.

By twilight Daley once again believed in Lady Luck. They had made it through another day without mishap. They were both hungry and they were running out of fresh water, but they were both in one piece.

As the trees thinned and the setting sun’s shafts of golden light poured onto the path they were following, Daley breathed a sigh of relief and quickened his pace. On the other side of this goddamn forest should be the rear echelon. And help, food, shelter, and medical attention for Nick.

Daley was almost running as he broke through a waist-high glut of green vegetation. He stopped abruptly, his breath coming in huffs, and Nick ran into this back. “Well, there it is, Nick. We made it.” Nick came around to Daley’s side. A mile away down a rutted, dusty road was an encampment perched on a slight rise of the land, surrounded by rows of concertina wire.

The two brothers turned away from the sight to watch an army jeep coming toward them, bumping and joggling out of a dust cloud that hung on its tail like a trailing tornado.

“Well, look at this. We got ourselves a ride home.”

Just as the last word left Daley’s mouth a tremendous blast rocked the jeep onto its side. It looked like a child’s toy careening off the road, skidding through weeds, and finally tumbling to its top in a crunch of bending metal.

“Fucking land mine!” Daley shouted. He hurried off for the destroyed heap.

Nick stayed behind, hands at his side, eyes unblinking, steady on the wreck. “Seth did it,” he explained to no one. He spit in the direction of the jeep.

Daley skirted the hollow the explosion had made in the road and rushed to the overturned vehicle.

“Anybody alive in there? Hey, are you hurt?”

He fell to his knees and peered inside while the rear wheels of the jeep whirled madly. The driver was dead.

The arm facing Daley was missing and only a beautiful ivory socket bone showed its white eye. The steering wheel was smashed in two, pressing like an unyielding pillow into the man’s stomach. He was bleeding from the mouth, ears, and eyes.

Daley heard someone groaning and scrambled into the weeds toward the south.

“Hey, man, let me help you.”

A young lieutenant sprawled on his pack, an ugly gash on his forehead bleeding profusely.

“Heh, heh.” The lieutenant pretended to laugh. “The cocksuckers got us, didn’t they?” Another jeep screeched to a halt as four men jumped to the road. Ignoring Nick, they split up, two of them going to the overturned jeep and two, rifles aimed, going to where Daley sat holding the lieutenant’s head in his lap, his hand over the cut.

“It’s Tidwell. Son of a bitch!” one of the men said.

Daley gently lifted the cradled head and let the men carry the wounded soldier to the jeep.

“That one’s a goner,” he called to the men searching the wreckage.

They turned and came toward Daley, their M-14s glinting from the last rays of the sun.

“Where the fuck did you come from? And your buddy over there.” The soldier was upset, he was scared, and he was suspicious.

“We got separated from our platoon near Quang Ngai,” Daley said as he stood up.

“And you made it back?” The solider was incredulous.

“Yeah, we made it back.”

The two men looked with disbelief first at Daley and then across the road to the silent, waiting Nick.

“Him.” The man indicated Nick with his rifle. “He’s got something on him. What’d he do, fall into a shit pond?”

“It’s blood. He needs help. He’s my brother, Nick. Nick Ringer. He…” Daley’s voice faltered, but the look on his face expressed a hidden truth.

“Cracked?” the soldier asked sympathetically.

Daley nodded and started across the road.

The second jeep had made a U-turn and slowed for the two soldiers who had been talking to Daley to jump aboard.

The driver yelled, “We gotta get this man to the medics. Start walking and we’ll be back to pick you up.” Daley lifted a weary hand in acknowledgment. As he neared Nick he heard his brother mumbling. “It’s all over now, Nick,” Daley said, taking his brother by the arm. “The whole goddamn shooting match is over for you. But I want you to remember. Hey…” He shook Nick’s arm to get his attention. “Listen to me. You’re going to be all right. Do you hear me? The killing’s over. That garrote…” Daley touched Nick’s buttoned-up shirt with his fingertips.

“I want you to give it to me. We don’t have to tell them everything.”

“You can’t have it.”

“Now Nick, I’m not screwing around with you. I want you to hand that thing over. I’ll take care of it,” Daley promised.

“What about the demons? They..."

“You can’t kill them with a wire, can you?” Daley interrupted. “Well, can you?” He heard himself shouting and flinched.

Nick lowered his head. Daley looked at the blond, matted hair and remembered the droplets of blood shining in the light of the cigarette lighter. “Give it to me,” he repeated.

Nick undid two buttons and slowly reached inside his shirt. He brought out the garrote and held it before his eyes, mesmerized by its gentle rhythmic swinging.

Daley took the wire from Nick’s fingers and stuffed it into his own shirtfront. He patted Nick on the back and guided him back to the road.

“You killed them with the .45,” Daley said. “Say it.”

“I killed them with the .45.”

“That’s good, Nick. You’re going to be fine.”

“We’re both okay,” Nick said, nodding his head repeatedly.

“Right.”

“Daley?”

“Yeah?” The jeep was nearing, dust swirling in its path.

“Can you make Seth leave me alone?”

“I don’t think so, Nick, but by God, I’ll try my damnedest.”

Nick was working on a tentative smile when the jeep stopped for them. He spit once on the way into the camp. No one seemed to notice or care, except his brother.

CHAPTER 4

Tacoma, Washington

Veterans Administration Medical Center

1975

NICK SAT in the vocational therapy room, the inner workings of a small lamp spread before him on a wobbly card table. They had expected him to make something. He balked at the beginning, and said such idiotic therapy should be reserved for men with paralytic brains. It was no wonder that returning veterans were unemployable, be thought, shuffling the pieces around. What kind of work could a basket weaver, lamp maker, ashtray designer do on the outside anyway?

Shakey was talking to him. He sat to Nick’s right, gluing together Popsicle sticks into the shape of an Apache village. He claimed he was Apache, although no one knew what an Apache village was supposed to look like.

Shakey talked for hours nonstop, flitting from subject to obscure subject. Nick often tuned him out.

“Neutron stars have a density comparable to our sun’s, but their radius is only a few kilometers. Imagine one of them falling on us. Pow! Our tiny planet would be instantly vaporized." Shakey obviously was excited at the prospect.

Nick rolled the lamp socket in his hands, clicking the black button switch on and off. Neutron stars. Now it was a lesson in celestial phenomena. Shakey's knowledge had no end.

Nick studied the older man's face. Heavy jowls, pendulous full lips, hooded salamander eyes that seldom blinked. Shakey had been in Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell. When they retrieved him from the water, he was shaking like an old palsied man. The shaking never stopped. Shakey's tremors sometimes quieted, permitting him to enter the mainstream of life outside the V.A. hospital. When they returned, interfering with whatever job he was able to secure, Shakey would admit himself for a two month stay.

It scorned highly unlikely to Nick that the man would ever get the Popsicle sticks to stand teepee fashion.

Every third one slipped from tremulous fingers and clattered to the floor. There were more sticks around his feet than in the Indian village.

"Where do you learn all that stuff?" Nick asked.

"Encyclopedias," Shakey said. "Where else?"

"Do you learn everything in the encyclopedias?"

"Not everything. That's not realistic. I know quite a lot though," Shame admitted.

"Why bother? What good’s it gonna do you?"

"Well, knowing things is good for you. Take a neutron star, for instance…”

"You already told me about the neutron star," Nick interrupted.

"Oh, yes, of course. Then what about pre-Columbian art? I can tell you about the classic Maya period. There's a fresco at Bonampak, Mexico..."

“Never mind that. Tell me something else. What are my chances of getting out of here this month? My brother’s coming in from Nam.”

"Pardon me while I consult my crystal ball."

"Come on, Shakey, I mean it. What's the scuttlebutt? You’ve been coming here for years, You know all the shrinks. You can probably predict the release date for any man in this room."

Shakey looked pleased. He slowly scanned the room's occupants. It was true. He did know those things.

"Well? Any guess?" Nick pressed.

"A psycho stays put awhile around here, but I think you're fooling them with true psychopathic ease."

Shakey sounded very sure of himself.

"Cut the doctor talk. I was in combat."

"Nevertheless...you are fooling them." The older man tried to balance two halves of a teepee together.

Nick took them from Shakey's quivering hands and fitted them evenly. He began to glue the Popsicle sticks into a conical shape.

"What makes you think I'm trying to fool anyone?" Nick had dropped his voice to a whisper.

"I spend more time with you than the doctors, Nick. I've been around a long time."

"You think I'm crazy," Nick said flatly.

"Not bad crazy. You're like me. It comes and goes. Mostly it comes. You can't blame combat forever."

"You think I'll get out?" Nick asked again.

"You'll get out."

Nick had been holding the teepee so that it would dry, but suddenly he let it fall. Shakey picked lip the two sections and tried once again.

"That's what I had to know. They wouldn't tell me. I want to go home."

"Where's home?" Shakey asked as the Popsicle sticks flew apart. Discouraged, he swept them from he table,

"Houston."

"You be careful in Houston."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Nick glared, but Shakey was too busy filling a cigar box with the leftover sticks to notice.

“Your disease won’t let you go even if the hospital does. I've seen your kind before. Different problems but all of them sleeping under the same blanket.” Shakey nodded to himself sagely, pursing his lips like a strict schoolmarm.

“What disease?”

"There is an infinite variety of names and categories but it all comes down to plain old insanity. Rather out-of-date, that word, but pertinent." The old man rose from his chair, his great bulk squeezing aside the card table.

Who cares what you think?" Nick caught lamp parts as they rolled near the table's edge. "You know books. You don't know me."

Shakey gave one long blink as he stared down at Nick. An arrogant smile twisted his lips. "I know everything," he claimed, sounding more pontifical than ever. "I especially understand you, Nick. How else would I know you liked beheading those Vietnamese?"

Instantly Nick was on his feet and swinging, but the fat, trembling man was out of range. Nick's fists punched ineffectively at the air.

"How do you know those things? You don't know anything," he shouted at Shakey’s retreating back. ''I don't need you, you know that?" Nick was yelling now and couldn't stop himself. He saw the other men in the room staring and suddenly sat down. He grabbed the lamp wire and wound it around his left hand so tightly his fingertips turned blue. He sat at the card table until he was gently tapped on the shoulder and told to put away his things, therapy was over.

That evening when Nick had some time to himself, Shakey’s accusations returned to haunt him. Had he really enjoyed killing the Vietnamese that night? But he was not a soldier, he was a boy. He was just a boy and...suddenly an old memory stirred in his mind.

At the very back of she property line of the house in Bloomington, Texas, stood a weeping willow, its tentacle-like branches brushing the earth. Nick thought the willow was his secret hideaway where he could brood or daydream or, on his particular day, jerk off. Daley spread apart the branches and discovered his brother lying on his back locked in the throes of a sexual odyssey. Daley left as quickly and quietly as he could.

“Daley! Come back here!” Nick called.

When the willow curtain parted a second time, Nick was sitting up trying to adjust his jeans. “You tell and I’ll beat you to a pulp,” he warned.

Daley’s gaze wandered everywhere but to his brother. “I won’t tell,” he promised.

“I bet you do it too. Come sit with me.”

Daley shook his head, clearly embarrassed. Nick gestured impatiently until Daley sat opposite him, studying his grubby fingernails.

“Don’t lie to me, Daley Ringer. Ain’t nobody your age who ain’t done it. It’s nothing dirty, you know. It’s natural.”

Daley refused to admit he too was no stranger to the joys of masturbation.

“What do you think about when you do it? You think about girls?” Nick asked.

Daley turned his head and watched the green limbs sway in the wind. He had not admitted a thing, but Nick clearly knew anyway.

“Sometimes,” Daley finally said.

“I don’t.”

Daley looked at his older brother in surprise.

“Nah, who cares about sticking it in girls? I think about doing it to a…a goat, sometimes.” Nick’s voice began to falter as he saw from Daley’s face that what he was confessing appalled his brother. A sense of shame engulfed him, and he felt dirty, ugly. “Don’t look at me that way, Daley! I was just joking around. God! Just to see what you’d say, that’s all. Who would want to do it with an animal anyway? I read about it in one of Dad’s books. One of those stupid nasty books. People can’t really do it with goats, I was lying,”

Daley got up slowly. He looked old beyond his years.

“Hey, let’s make a deal, huh?” Nick quickly stood up and tucked in his shirt. "This will be my place and you keep other kids away from it. Okay? You find a place and I'll guard it for you. Good idea, you think?"

"Sure, Nick. That’s a good idea." Daley looked listless and vacant. The two boys ducked beneath the willow curtain and into the June sunshine.

Later that evening a depression had fallen over Nick like dense fog. His confession to his brother could not be erased. It nagged at him and his mood darkened. Self-pity plunged him into despair and he hated everyone. Daley tried to cheer him up by offering to spend his savings of fifty-two cents downtown, to play baseball, to go scouting for treasure in the town dump. Nick kicked the dusty ground with his feet and shook his head at all the suggestions. Finally Daley gave up and went indoors to read comic books.

Nick disappeared for an hour. When he returned home, the depression had lifted. He smiled at his brother sprawled on the floor and sat down beside him to look over the comics.

Daley was acting funny, jerking his head toward the kitchen. Nick tried to read the silent message. "What is it?" he asked. Daley did not have time to answer.

Their mother burst into the room, her face livid and bruised-looking from crying. Suddenly Nick understood his brother’s anxiety.

"Mrs. Gardner called. I'm going to send you off, Nicholas Ringer. Do you hear me? You keep pushing me and by God, I'll send you away from here!” she screamed.

Nick got to his feet, a sullen look creeping into his eyes. So that was it. He had been caught.

"I don’t care what you do," he said defiantly. He was fourteen and taller than his gray-haired mother. She was no threat.

Daley was standing too. “Ma, please.”

"You shut up. What help are you anyway?” Mary Ringer demanded.

"He didn't mean it, Ma."

"Always taking up for your no good brother. You're supposed to watch him. Your own father left us because of this...this...Nick! Are you listening to me?"

Nick met her stare.

"I should slap your smart-aleck face. Why do you do things like this? I can send you off to a home for juvenile delinquents, you know that, don't you?"

Nick held her stare. Daley touched his mother’s arm, trying to divert her attention.

"You get away from me," she shouted at the younger boy. "I told you to watch him. Now he goes off and gets caught strangling Mrs. Gardner’s dog! You think she's going to overlook it? Why do you do it? Are you just out of your mind?" Her face was turning purple with rage.

Nick saw she was losing control a split second before she raised her hand to him. He was quick as he caught her wrist.

"Don't ever hit me again," he said, growling from deep within his throat.

Their arms trembled for a moment, Nick pitting his new-found strength against his mother. Suddenly she broke his grip and, flinging Daley aside, rushed from the room crying.

"Oh, Nick." Daley sank to the floor. He rolled a comic in his hands, then threw it across the room.

"Don't 'Oh, Nick' me. I don't owe her nothing."

"You wanna get sent sway?”

"She can't do that. She's bluffing. Don't worry about it.” He scooped a Superman comic from the floor and flipped through the pages. Daley did not have to know how relieved he was. "She can't do anything to me. No one can."

#

"No one can," Nick mumbled into his crisp white hospital pillowcase as he squirmed on the bed, remembering that day. His fists were balled, his fingers growing numb. He flung one arm over his eyes. He had been so brave that day. But before that confrontation and during all the years of his childhood he had not been able to defend himself against injustice. There had been so many times when his mother deliberately hurt him one way or another.

He would not think about it. He would not dredge up the old, rotten, sick memories. He would not allow himself to remember that evening Mary Ringer...that evening she… And he was only five, how could she have despised him even then, how could she...?

Five years old. Daley was barely three and Daley lived in shadow. He hovered in corners and hid beneath tables, sucking his thumb, dragging behind him a worn baby blanket covered with faded orange giraffes and yellow ducks. If Daley heard his mother and her various boyfriends fighting and yelling, he disappeared into the shadows to suck his thumb. He rarely laughed and he never smiled. He demanded little care or attention. Daley was too young to demand anything from life.

Nick, however, was coming of age, and much too soon. He noticed everything, even things he could not understand. Things like his mother being nice to strange men who came to stay the night and who were gone before morning. Things like bloody sanitary napkins left open and drying on the floor in the bathroom until, with other litter, they were swept into a pile and finally discarded. Things like loneliness and hunger, for a touch, a hug, a genuine smile turned his way.

It was not a happy time for either child, but for Nick it was worse because he knew things were not as they should be. Somewhere in the back of his young mind were the images he saw on TV, images that were different from his home and family. On TV he saw clean, neat homes where the mom and dad spoke in low, soothing voices to their children. No one screamed or broke dishes or slapped in fury. Some images flickering on the screen were violent, but they were the violence of the streets, where gangs fought, policemen shot criminals, and sheriffs in white hats got outlaws. The violence was far away from the pretty houses. He came to realize, instinctively, that his own world with its dirt and clutter and utter chaos was all wrong. It was a place where grown-ups drank beer and cursed, a place where strangers followed his mother to the bedroom.

Nick did not like seeing these things. He began to pout and sulk more often. He cried when he was not being punished, and his melancholy deepened.

Mrs. Ringer’s constant criticism sank into him like insidious poison that shriveled whatever was good and golden about him. He believed every word his mother said. If he was called a cry baby, well then that was what he was. If he was shouted at and pushed aside, then he must be in the way. If he was called ugly, then surely his own mother should know what she was talking about because, after all, she knew him well.

When Nick was five years old, something happened that convinced him he was totally unloved and unwanted. This feeling stayed with him forever.

It was a Friday and his mother had just taken a perfumed bath and was dressing in her bedroom. Nick wandered to the doorway and tried to make himself unobtrusive while he watched her. Suddenly spying him, his mother began to talk.

“I’ve got one hot date tonight, sonny boy,” she said, smiling as she drew on new, silky stockings. “Met him at the checkout counter today at work.” Nick came into the room, but still kept a respectable distance away.

“I’ll show these Bloomington women,” his mother continued, hooking the top of her stockings to her garter belt. “They won’t let their men be seen with me, oh no, they’d lock ‘em out cold if they caught ‘em running around with Mary Ringer. All those good husbands and fathers won’t even take me out for a hamburger, they’re so afraid of being seen. The bastards,” she added, slipping her arms through the straps of a faded pink lace bra. “But tonight--tonight, I got a stranger in town taking me out. Gonna buy me dinner, treat me right, you wait and see.”

Nick barely paid attention to what his mother was saying. All he knew was she intended to go out and leave him and Daley alone again, and he felt terrible all over. His head ached and he had the sniffles. He often caught cold and ran fevers for days. His mother called him sickly and, when she thought of it, gave him doses of the dreadful-tasting Black Draught to wash his system out.

“Those spineless slobs,” Mary Ringer continued, getting into a half-slip. “But I’ll show ‘em tonight. You just wait and see what I show ‘em.”

Nick rubbed his burning eyes and felt his chest tighten until it felt like a pack of cards with a thick rubber band around them. He was hot, even the bottom of his feet were hot. “Mama? Mama, I’m sick.” He stared at her hard while she donned a party dress. “I’m hot, Mama, and I hurt.”

“Stop your whining and come zip up my dress.” She stooped to the floor, her back to Nick. Impatient with his clumsy, five-year-old attempts, she cursed and reached over her shoulder, grunting as she zipped the dress up.

“Look how pretty your mama is,” she said, standing up and preening for him. She had one hand on her hip and she parted her slick, red lips to show the tip of her tongue. Suddenly her expression changed as she looked down at him. She motioned him forward. “What’s that all over your face, Nick?” Cautiously he sidled closer to her, his gaze lowered.

“Don’t you know when to blow your nose? Don’t you know when to wipe your face, for crissakes? Jesus, you’re disgusting. Here, wipe yourself.” She handed him a square of torn sheet she used for polishing her one pair of high heels.

Nick wiped and stood looking at a mess on the cloth. There were streaks of dust and bits of dried mud from her shoes and he wondered how that could have come from two little holes in his nose. She was right. He was dis…dis…whatever she said, that’s what he was.

“I don’t feel good,” he said, seeing she had forgotten him. She stood before the old waterfall veneer dresser brushing her hair. “I don’t feeelll good,” he said louder, coming up behind her so that his reflection was beside hers in the mirror. “I can’t breathe good,” he said with a bit of a lisp so that it sounded like “bweathe.”

Mary Ringer was not listening to her son. Her mind was thirty-five miles away at the Longhorn Steak House and Bar where her date promised to take her for a meal. Although Nick’s pleas fell on deaf ears, his presence did not escape his mother’s attention completely. Her preoccupied gaze lowered in the glass and she almost smiled at the little towheaded boy she saw reflected there. Impulsively she reached for him, drew him to the bench, and made him sit. Looking in the mirror again, she said, “I wish you’d’ve been a girl. Now wouldn’t that’ve been nice? See your hair?” She lifted his straight, too long hair and let it fall against his neck.

Nick sniffled. He squinted at his reflection in concentration. Yes, he could see it. A girl. A girl with long blond hair, his mother’s polished nails on her shoulders, his mother’s lips smiling at her, approving of her.

“Your hair’s perfect for a girl. It would need curling, of course, and a…a…” She eagerly looked over the stacked and scrambled cosmetics on the dresser. “…a ribbon! That’s what we need. If I had a little girl, I could put a ribbon just like this one in her hair.” She lifted the front of Nick’s hair and made a bunching motion while she wrapped the length of red ribbon around and around. Deftly she tied a tow and looked in the mirror for the effect.

It was grotesque. Nick hated it. His mother hated it, he saw it in her eyes. With his hair pulled back from his naked forehead he looked puny and feverish. His pale blue eyes were too wide and staring. The red bow stood up from his rounded head, and the bunched hair was an uneven mass that sprayed out like a handful of tattered feathers.

Nick reached up and pulled at the ribbon. One of his eyes was tearing and his chest hurt. He was going to cry and he did not want to.

His mother slapped his hand and yanked the ribbon from his hair herself. The face that had been dreamy and soft only moments before was now twisted with anger.

“You’re so goddamn ugly,” she said, pushing him back onto the bench when he tried to get away. She fiddled absently with the ribbon, untying it. “It wouldn’t have mattered, boy or girl, you would’ve been ugly as a stick. I didn’t want you. I didn’t want Daley neither, but I got knocked up because I was stupid. I didn’t know no better.”

Tears ran down Nick’s cheeks. He was hot and sick and alone.

His mother had the ribbon undone and she was snapping it between her hands, tight, then loose, tight, then loose. Nick would never know if it was pure hatred, or frustration over her own lost chances, or an unfortunate impulse. But suddenly his mother whipped the thin red ribbon around his neck as he sat beside her, looking into the mirror. She jerked him around until his head hit her pelvis, then she kneed him to push his body forward again, letting the ribbon loosen around his throat. She kept talking to him, her voice rising to a shriek. “Why’d I have to have kids, can you tell me that? What’d I ever do so wrong I got saddled with two brats to support all by myself in this goddamn rinky-dink town?” The ribbon snapped tight once again.

Nick’s head hit her pelvis, her knee in his back, then the ribbon mercifully loosened.

Nick was choking, his lungs gasping at the air, his face in the mirror looking bug-eyed and horror-stricken.

He could not see his mama and the nightmare went on and on, the awful words his mama spoke, the red ribbon tightening, jerking, loosening just enough for him to take a half breath, then tightening again, jerking…

“Mama! Mama!" It was Daley clutching at his arm, then beating at Mama with flailing fists.

And it went on and on. She was strangling him because he--because he was not a girl, because he was not pretty, because she hated him.

Finally Mary Ringer dropped the ribbon to the floor and stepped away from the mirror where she saw what she had done. Nick slumped to the floor gagging and crying. His nose was running and he struggled for air.

Daley knelt beside him and dabbed at his brother’s face with his favorite blanket.

Mary Ringer turned her back on her young sons and left the house to wait outdoors for her date. She did not come back to the house all night. It was the first time Nick did not miss her. It was the first time he felt safe being all alone in the big, shadowy house with his little brother curled up next to him. He would never feel safe around a woman again because they did not like little boys. They did not like them at all.

In three days he got over the cold and fever, but he would never get over what his mother had done.

Never.

#

Nick sat up on the hospital bed in Tacoma, Washington, his eyes wide open and frightened. He felt his throat, massaging the place where the ribbon had choked him. Was Shakey right? Was he insane?

Finally his pulse slowed, and he could swallow. He lay back on the bed. What was the difference? He had done nothing wrong, nothing immoral, nothing to be punished for. Didn’t anybody understand? If he was insane, then the whole world was insane. All he needed was Daley to help him. He needed to be free. Free to be where he belonged, free to roam Houston where no one would notice him.

CHAPTER 5

Houston, Texas

Summer 1976

John Marcus Deshane, known to everyone as Jack, awoke before the alarm sounded and lay staring at the ceiling. He could hear his ten-year-old son, Willie, snoring from the other bedroom, but that was not what woke him. He had gone to bed the night before upset. He still believed he and the other policemen could have taken the butcher knife from the Chicano youth without killing him. Why did the boy have to die in a rain of bullets as if he were a mad dog foaming at the mouth?

Jack was one of four patrolmen who had arrived at the scene. There were three others from the precinct and a total of eleven men altogether fanning out around the sixteen-year-old. He had escaped from the psychiatric facilities of Ben Tabb Hospital, and he still wore a starched white hospital gown over a pair of ragged jeans. He was barefoot and dancing in small circles around the grass. His dark hair was plastered across his smooth forehead, and his eyes gleamed craftily as he looked from one man to another. They knew he was on a hallucinogen. Every few seconds he screamed a high piercing scream that made Jack’s hair stand on end. Chills crawled down his back like spiders down a bean pole. They tried to talk the boy into giving up his knife.

“Come on, kid. This isn’t going to get you anywhere. Hand over the knife and we’ll talk about it,” Jack urged.

The boy screamed again, but it was cut off sharply when Jack’s partner tried to close in from the circle. Bill Lorenza, a four-year veteran, kept speaking in soft Spanish.

Jack had not drawn his gun from the holster. He did not believe for a minute that weapons would have to be used. The kid was having a psychotic episode, and no one could predict his actions from one second to the next, but what could he do with a single butcher knife against eleven armed men?

Bill and a detective from homicide took turns talking Spanish to the boy, but Jack did not think they were getting anywhere. The boy’s reality lay elsewhere and he continued to scream.

Jack would never be able to say who was responsible for the first shot. Bill Lorenza had edged in toward the boy and stood ten feet from the brandished knife. Bill had holstered his gun to come toward the boy with both hands out in a gesture of help.

Suddenly the youth gave a shattering cry that rooted Lorenza to the spot, and as he lunged forward with the knife, the shots rang out in a thundering hail, bringing the boy to his knees. He was sent sprawling, bleeding on the dry summer grass. The knife lay at Lorenza’s feet.

It would not be the last time Jack would see things that were unjust. He knew that. It was simply the first time he had witnessed it.

Jack rolled from bed and shut off the radio an instant after it started to blare. Six A.M. Usually his best time of day, but now sullied with leftover images of vague nightmares he could not recall and a pervading feeling of defeat he could not shake.

The young man’s death triggered a refrain in Jack’s mind as he showered. It might be Willie some day, he thought.

He knew that was farfetched but enough of a threat to frighten a father. Right now Willie was a good boy, bright, obedient, and loving. But after a year as a patrolman on the Houston Police force, Jack had seen plenty of good kids influenced by their peers who got into trouble with the law. Every thinking parent in the country feared for their children’s future. Drugs were in the grade schools. Juvenile offenses were on the rise. Violence was becoming an accepted part of everyone’s life.

Jack dried himself roughly with a towel as if to rub off all memory of the day before. He glanced at the clock radio to see he had spent twenty minutes in the shower. Jesus, the kid’s death was getting to him. He knew he was going to have to forget it. Maybe if he talked to Sam about it. After work tonight, maybe Sam could tell him how to erase the guilt he felt for the eleven men who were only doing their jobs.

On Jack’s return from duty in Vietnam, Willie had asked him why he wanted to be a cop, but Jack had no pat answers. It was a combination of things, and to say one ideal or one ambition made a man want to be a policeman was too simplistic. He had not been able to answer Willie then, so he had said something silly, trying to bring a smile to his son’s face. “To keep you in line, jock, what do you think?” And Jack had to admit part of the reason he had joined the force was to set an example for Willie. They had been alone since the divorce when Willie was two. Being a single parent was not easy, and his responsibility sometimes weighed heavily on Jack.

“Hey, Dad. You gotta run that thing with the bathroom door open?” Willie stood in the hall scratching at a recent mosquito bite behind his ear. His sleepy eyes looked up at his father. Jack turned off the electric razor and grinned.

“Okay, sport, you tell me how to get my whiskers shaved without a little noise?” Willie shrugged and grumbled all the way back to his bedroom.

“Time to be up and at ‘em anyway,” Jack called as he turned the razor back on. “I’ll have to leave soon.”

Willie groaned and pulled the pillow over his head.

Jack finished shaving and stroked his cheeks. The three-inch raised scar that ran horizontally below his right cheekbone always looked inflamed after shaving. Within minutes the redness would fade, but the ridge of skin still bothered him. He often caught himself tracing the scar with a fingertip while thinking. A Viet Cong sniper grazed his cheek, the open gash hastily sewn up with a field medic who had two severely wounded men awaiting his services. It was not the worst wound Jack might have received. It was far less of a battle scar than some of his friends would carry with them the rest of their lives, but it served as a daily reminder that life was a precarious business—a reminder that served him well as a rookie patrolman.

He looked at his wristwatch: 6:45, Mrs. Lawrence, his housekeeper-babysitter, would be arriving in another few minutes. She would raise holy hell if Willie was still in bed.

“Willie!”

“Yessir, I’m getting up,” came the muffled voice.

“Five minutes or I drag you up.”

“Okay, Dad, okay,” Willie burrowed farther into the pillow and prayed for sleep to return. No kid he knew had to get up at seven o’clock in the morning during the summer.

#

Mrs. Lawrence was a punctual woman. When her employer expected her at seven in the morning, she arrived at seven on the dot.

She knocked smartly on the DeShanes’ door before entering. As she closed the door behind her, she announced in a loud voice, “Mrs. Lawrence is here and on time. Jack, ready yourself for breakfast. Willie, outta that bed, boy. It’s a brand-new day!”

Jack grinned into the bathroom mirror when he heard his housekeeper’s voice. When was she not on time?

And when had she failed to announce it?

Willie grumbled and slid from his bed. “Oh, geez,” he muttered, blinking away sleep. “Dad?”

The call brought Jack to his son’s bedroom. “What, son?”

“Never mind.”

“Yeah, I know. You don’t want to get up. You don’t want to be cheerful and polite. You think it’s unfair.”

Willie smiled. “Yessir, how’d you know?”

“The eggs are breaking and the coffee’s perking. Come on now,” Mrs. Lawrence called from the kitchen.

“Since when was life fair? Let’s go, jock.” Jack turned and headed for the kitchen.

“Yeah, since when,” Willie repeated, and drew himself up to his four-feet-one-inch height and stretched long lanky arms above his tousled head. There was no fighting the combined forces of his father and Mrs. Lawrence. She was the most determined woman he had ever known. It was seven o’clock on Monday morning, June fifteenth. At least this way he had the whole day to enjoy so maybe they were right about that early-to-bed-early-to-rise garbage. Maybe.

It was the smell of bacon frying that finally pulled him, against all good sense, to the kitchen and into the company of the two people who made up his family.

The small wooden table in the dining alcove off the country-sized kitchen was covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth. Dishes of food made a rough circle in the center of the table. When Jack entered the sunny room, he always found perfect order. Betty Lawrence presided over this order. Her dark skin gleamed like polished mahogany. The silver in her black wiry hair gave her the air of a matriarch.

“It’s getting cold and don’t blame me,” she said peevishly. “I work and slave, slave and work, and what do I get?” She never waited for an answer. “I get late-bodies, lazy bones, and grumbling children. And what will the department think of a young cop coming in to work with egg on his face because he lazed around when I told him it time to be gone?"

"Now, now, Mrs. Lawrence. I'm not going to be late."

“Well, where’s the boy?” She poured two glasses of orange juice and set them squarely above the silverware.

“I’m right here, Mrs. Lawrence.” Willie sauntered to the table and took his place without looking at the black woman.

“Did you wash your face? Did you comb your hair? I can see for myself you didn’t bother to tuck in your shirttail.” She moved to the counter to pour Jack’s coffee. “I don’t know what’s gonna come of the boy,” she said to the canister set.

“I did too wash my face.” Willie did not want to get into anything complicated. One out of three was not so bad. And what could he do about that cowlick that stuck up from the back of his head, bop it with a baseball bat?

Mrs. Lawrence ladled out heaping spoonfuls of grits into Jack’s plate. He raised a palm to stop her, but she ignored the gesture. Feeding the troops was her business.

“I seen where that Mexican boy got shot,” she commented. She began to ladle smaller portions of the grits onto Willie’s plate. “It seems a crying shame to me, but who am I? I ain’t no policeman. I’m only a working woman, and what I say don’t count.”

Jack’s appetite vanished. “I was there, Mrs. Lawrence. It couldn’t be helped, believe me.”

Willie’s head shot up in excitement. “You were there, Dad? Honest? You never been in a shooting before, huh? Did you shoot him? Did he try to hurt you?”

Jack wearily rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand. He wished he had not mentioned his part in the mess. “Willie, you’re going to have to get it out of your head that all police are trigger-happy cowboys. No, I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“Well, who did? Did you see ‘em, Dad?” Willie's interest was bright and that bothered Jack.

“Willie, listen to me,” Jack glanced at his housekeeper and she turned her back to busy herself at the sink. “I’m not playing cops and robbers. It’s not the way you see it on television. When people die, sometimes it’s a terrible thing, and in this case it couldn’t be helped. The boy was on drugs.” Jack carefully emphasized the last word. “He didn’t know what he was doing. We tried to talk to him, calm him down, but he tried to stab my partner and…and…it just happened. It couldn’t be helped, but we aren’t proud of it.

"You understand, Willie? None of us wants to hurt anyone. That young boy’s life is lost now, and the men who had to kill him have to live with that fact. It's not easy. It's hard, real hard.”

The excitement went out of Willie’s eyes and his face changed into a sad, serious expression. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“It’s okay, Willie. I just don’t want you to think a policeman is some kind of god. We make mistakes and we suffer. We try to do our best to protect society and ourselves at the same time. Sometimes it’s not just or fair, it’s dirty and sad.”

“Well, then.” Mrs. Lawrence bustled around the table and began to remove the margarine tub and empty orange juice glasses. “I’m telling you they’re going to razz cop DeShane if he don’t get himself moving. Time’s wasting and the morning’s waning. And ain’t that the truth,” she added as she went into the kitchen.

Jack and Willie finished their eggs, grits, bacon, and toast in silence. Mrs. Lawrence would never admit it, but she was battling her own demons on injustice, prejudice, teenage death, and world chaos as she scrubbed the skillets and pans until they sparkled. These people need me, she told herself. They need my schedules and my strength, yes they do. They’re nothing but babies, both of them, and the big one don’t even know it, no sir.

Jack rose from the table and adjusted his holster. He gave Willie a warm smile and pressed down the obstinate cowlick as he rubbed his son’s head. “Do what you’re told,” he said, donning the visored cap that all policemen despised.

“Don’t worry, he’ll do what’s told him,” Mrs. Lawrence called after him. Impulsively she winked at the boy.

“Bye, Dad.”

“See you later, jock.”

As the front door closed, Willie tried to make a quiet exit from the table.

“Whoa, boy. Pick up the mess first. You know the rules. You can’t fool Mrs. Lawrence.”

“Aw, geez. I feel like a girl when I gotta clean the table.”

“Didn’t your daddy tell you about what is and what ain’t fair?” She stood over him, her hands on her hips.

“Well, what ain’t fair is leaving me to the messes when you’re perfectly capable of helping. And what is fair is doing some work, picking up after your ownself.”

Willie knew there was no way out of it, so he started stacking the plates and forks.

“Now ain’t that better? That’s a whole sight better than lazing around. He’s a good boy,” she told the saltshakers.

CHAPTER 6

SAMUEL BARTHOLOMEW watched Jack DeShane’s departure for work more out of habit than anything else. His life had narrowed to such inconsequential pastimes. It was depressing, but not likely to change anytime soon.

At seven-forty while Sam stood patiently in front of a second-floor lace-curtained window, Jack DeShane opened his front door and crossed the old-fashioned porch. On the bottom step he eyed the street from one end to the other before going down the brick walk to his 1974 lemon-cream Monte Carlo.

Sam liked the way Jack walked. It was the satisfied walk of a man in tune with his world. The young cop had not yet been muddled and confused by his police work. He still saw the world broken up into two categories; good and evil. Sam saw in Jack the reflection of his own past.

Th Monte Carlo roared off down the street toward the precinct station. Sam stared after it for a long time, then went to the bed stand where a fresh pot of coffee brewed in a percolator. Coffee in his room was Maggie’s idea. She had supplied him with all the utensils and a can of Maxwell House. She had even found her late husband’s favorite mug, the one with the lifelike tits sticking out on one side, and presented it to Sam with a peculiar smile. Sam was not fond of the mug--who needed chunky pink tits on a coffee cup in the morning? But he would never hurt Maggie’s feelings. Besides, she was exciting in bed and what sixty-year-old retired, disillusioned, lonely cop could argue with that?

The coffee was strong and its smell filled the room. After pouring a cup he slid open a drawer of the bed stand and pulled out a quart of Old Kentucky bourbon. He added a splash to the cup and returned the bottle to the drawer. He sat on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts and rubbed his knotted graying chest hair as he sipped.

Maggie would kill him if she knew he had taken to drinking in the morning. But the dull ache of despair knew nothing of time. Bourbon dulled despair’s pangs for a while and brought heavy sleep. Then it crawled into the hours between lunch and dinner, chains rattling, sneering at him with contempt, and Sam drank more bourbon until despair retreated once again. But lately even the bourbon did not work. Despair woke when he woke and stretched when he stretched and pissed when he pissed.

Before Sam knew Jack DeShane despair had certain limits. It did not own Sam’s soul. But destiny moved the young cop into the house across the street and pushed him into Sam’s life. Despair began to tell tales of old age and weakening desire, sodden drunkenness, and a replay of his own gradual, forty-year decay in the guise of the rookie cop.

Of course Sam knew he could always run. There were alternatives. He had a small savings and an early retirement pension. He could move out of Maggie’s pleasant house and go home to the Georgia hills. He could go to Atlantic City and doze on park benches with other old rummies and play the slot machines with his laundry money. He could move to Key West and luxuriate in aqua waters, catch tarpon, drink in the same bars Hemingway frequented.

The truth, however, could not be circumvented; no one needed Sam Bartholomew in Georgia, in Atlantic City, in Key West. He would only be another shipwrecked piece of debris. At least in Houston where he had worked for forty years to clean up the scum from the streets he had Maggie Richler with her blue-tinted hair and voluptuous, amazingly preserved body. She needed him. It was a startling revelation. Sam did not know why exactly, but Maggie needed him. And now the rookie needed him too. If he turned his back on either of those needs, it would not matter where he ran. Despair would tag along. It was only when he was with either one of those people that despair backed off and hid in the corners.

He heard Maggie’s tread on the stairs. In three painful gulps he downed the doctored coffee before she reached his door. She always knocked before entering, which struck Sam as funny since most nights he slept in her bed, but he paid for room and board by the month and Maggie never let him forget it. Not until he was willing to join his life with hers under the law and a marriage certificate hung on the wall.

“Sam? Can I come in, honey?”

Maggie Richler claimed to be fifty-one, but Sam figured she lied. She was probably his age: sixty, the magic, tragic six-oh. It did not matter. Sam would have loved her if she were a hundred and two, but how do you convince a woman of that?

She stood in the doorway looking at him in his shabby shorts, potbelly stretching out his waistband, fly half open and revealing thick pubic hair, his bald pate showing delicate skull bones. She smiled and Sam thought someone had switched on a light in the room.

“I have to be going,” she announced.

“A court reporter’s job is never ending,” he said, patting the bed beside him for her to sit.

“What are you going to do today?” She asked the same question every day. She sat beside him and caressed his thigh. Within seconds she had a thatch of wiry curls in her palm and pulled at them gently, teasingly.

“I don’t know what I’ll do today,” Sam answered honestly. Enforced idleness was harder to manage than a full working day, and he had not yet found the trick. The old black despair covered his shoulders, and for a minute he thought of the three revolvers in his closet.

“I’ll come home and fix you lunch. How’s that?” She let go of his thigh and tickled his neck before kissing him on the earlobe.

“You bet,” he whispered, taking her right breast into one of his hands.

Maggie pretended to swoon and slapped at his clutching hand before rising from the bed.

“Drink your coffee,” she admonished, her heels already tapping across the bare floor. “There’s food in the fridge, remember.”

“You know I don’t eat breakfast.” Sam picked up his empty cup and touched the tits with his fingertip. The only thing on his mind was a shot of bourbon.

“I know you don’t take care of yourself, Sam Bartholomew. I’ll be back at noon to do it myself.” The door closed softly. Sam stood at the window and watched her leave. An ardent observer, he chronicled the departures and arrivals in his neighborhood. As he watched Maggie’s green Plymouth leave the curb, his eyes caught some movement at the DeShane place. Willie flew across the porch, as if freed from a dungeon, and sailed down the walk to the street. He peered up and down the block. It was too early for play. Other children were still asleep. Willie shrugged and swaggered off toward the corner, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Sam sighed as his hand reached for the drawer. What wouldn’t he give to be young again. To be ten years old and free and happy, the world wide open with endless opportunities.

As he poured the bourbon and mixed in the coffee, Sam knew he was lying to himself. He did not want it all over again. He wished it was almost over. He wished he were eighty instead of sixty and that there were no more races to run.

Despair settled over him with a comfortable familiarity. Sam raised the cup. By noon the bourbon would be gone.

Chapter 7

Nick had been up for two hours when Daley made his first appearance in the kitchen. He groped for the coffeepot, his eyes hardly able to focus in the early morning light streaming in the window.

"You're going to be late for class," Nick said. He took another bite of the Butterfinger candy bar he was having for breakfast. He tried to keep his voice light and casual to hide his mood, which had moved inexorably toward depression. He knew he sounded like a pushy older brother or, even worse, like a nagging mother, but he could not help it.

Daley nodded as he sat down at the table. He took a swallow of coffee, debating whether or not to spit the scalding liquid back into the cup. He grimaced and swallowed.

"If you wouldn't stay out so late…" Nick began, then suddenly shifted gears. "Where did you go last night?"

"Leave me alone, Nick." Daley said it without rancor. He just didn't want to talk this morning. He tried the coffee again, more cautiously,

"When will you get back today?"

"Nick, just lay off, will you? I have three classes, a full load today, and afterward I may go furniture browsing. I don't know when I'll be back."

“Furniture, my ass. That stuff’s nothing but old spindly junk. I don’t see why anyone buys it.”

“You don’t appreciate antiques, that’s all. It’s not my fault if your taste runs to chrome and plastic."

He pulled the toaster into the center of the counter and popped four slices of wheat bread into the slots.

"I don’t know how you can eat that stuff." Nick frowned at the loaf of wheat bread.

"Goddamnit, Nick! If you're not mothering me you're judging me, and if you're not judging me you're needling me. Why can't you leave me the hell alone?"

Nick chewed his candy, his gaze resting on the far kitchen door. He pretended not to hear the outburst.

Daley jerked open the refrigerator door and took out a tub of unsalted butter. "If you'd get off your duff and find a job, you wouldn’t have time to criticize me," he said. "We're been home almost six months and you're like a rock. You don't go out of the house. You sit around eating junk food and acting like the world has come to an end. You watch me like a goddamn eagle. When are you going to get off this?”

“I knew you didn’t want me to live with you.”

“That’s not the point, Nick.”

“You want to bring girls back here so you can fuck around and you don’t do it because of me.”

Daley slammed the buttered toast hard against the counter top. “No! No, you see how you are? You’re so self-pitying you turn everything around and put it in personal terms. I don’t care about bringing a girl here, not yet, I…”

Nick was pointing the yellow candy wrapper at his brother. “You want to, admit it.”

“I give up. I’m talking to a fucking rock, I swear to God.” Daley stared at the toast and shrugged his shoulders. “I have to get my books. I’m late.”

"That's what I told you." Nick was triumphant.

Daley gave an exasperated sigh and hurried up the stairs.

Nick crumpled the candy wrapper and dropped it to the table. He walked into the living room, slumped into a wooden rocking chair Daley had salvaged from a flea market, and stared gloomily through a leaded-glass window that faced the street. When Daley rushed down the stairs and out the door without saying good-bye the old two-story brick town house settled around Nick like a shroud floating into place.

Nick knew Daley was right. He should get out and find work. A job would do him good. It would take him away from the dark brooding house and keep him from going truly mad again.

Daley had slipped easily back into civilian life. He enrolled at the University of Houston on a part-time basis. In the small alcove upstairs he set up a woodworking bench and shelves for tools. He spent his free time refinishing antique furniture he found at auction or estate sales. He resold his handiwork for three times what he paid, and he was rapidly gaining a reputation as an expert in restoration. Though Nick disliked the uncomfortable, forbidding look of the pieces, he thought it was smart of his brother to take up such a lucrative hobby.

When Nick thought about Daley, he felt a small, hard lump form in his chest. He was both proud and envious of him. Daley knew what he wanted and could achieve it. Where Nick had only vague longings, Daley knew precisely what direction to follow. He would get an education, he said, and the degree would be a crutch to lean on if the antique business went bust. Nick, on other hand, felt no desire to add diplomas to his other non-accomplishments. He had argued with Daley, “There are ten million people going to college. How many over-educated gas jockeys you figure we need in his country?” Nick shut his eyes and rubbed his lids roughly, He could not help it. He just did not want much of anything.

He would find a job because he had to, but it would not matter what kind of job it was. He had heard a nearby burglar alarm company was hiring and he could try for an installer's job. That would be easy. He would get a van supplied to him and his time would be his own. He would not have any boss hanging over his shoulder. He would go out and get the job, then he would have something to celebrate with Daley.

Wouldn't Daley be proud of him? Wouldn't he be relieved things were back to normal?

Normal?

Nick rubbed his eyes again, blotting out the world.

He thought about the garrote upstairs in the old cedar box, its serpentine length curled around his service medals.

#

Nick got the job. His happiness carried him on a long walk to downtown Houston where he window-shopped and watched the crowds. In the afternoon he went to a bar and ordered one Cuba Libre after another. He was celebrating. It was what men did to celebrate: either get drunk or fuck and he had never been all that interested in fucking. By sundown Nick was drunk and decided he loved the world and all his fellow men. He staggered home in the dark, his surprise speech ready. I got a job, he would say. What you think about that, Daley? He practiced the words and sometimes caught himself giggling like a schoolgirl. Oh, wouldn't Daley be proud of him!

He slipped on the steps and almost fell down. His door key got stuck in the lock, and after three unsuccessful tries to loosen it, he opened his mouth to call Daley. That’s when he heard a high-pitched feminine squeal of delight float down from an upstairs window. Nick held the key tightly and listened, afraid to hear it again. Why would a woman’s voice be…?

"Ohhh, Daley, please! Don't tickle me, please don’t.”

It was true. His brother had a woman in the house and he had brought her home because...because of their morning quarrel? Because he preferred a woman's company to his brother's?

Nick’s fist hit the key in the door and it turned sharply.

He was shocked into sobriety. He stepped into the black foyer listening for any noises coming from Daley’s room. He slammed the door with such force the glass panes rattled.

"Nick? Is that you?" Daley called from the second floor.

Nick grimaced and felt a childish urge to stomp his feet. Rage boiled inside him.

"Nick...?" Daley called again.

"Who else?" Nick shouted, giving in to his anger, as he stomped to his bedroom.

The rain started immediately, beating against the windows with each new gust of wind.

#

Daley lay in bed propped up on pillows while the worst of the storm raged. It was near midnight. He watched Madra Halsworthy as she slept. The lightning streaking across the bedroom windows illuminated Madra's young, naked body. It was still astounding to find her in his bed. He had tried to approach her all semester. Three months of closing in and backing away. She was not someone to be easily captured.

Unlike the other students, she dressed eccentrically in long, ground-sweeping skirts and soft flat shoes. But it was the ankle-length black velvet cape lined in lush crimson satin that really set her apart. The cape had a stiff six-inch collar that stood up around her neck, serving to shield her profile from view. When she leaned forward, her face peeked out like a slice of pale moon from behind a night cloud.

Finally Nick had cornered her in the hallway. She had backed up against the wall, her dark eyes burning with indignation because he had made her drop her books.

“Look what you've done!”

"This was the only way I could hope to catch you," he had said.

"What do you want?" Her voice was a whisper and her eyes stared at the center of his chest. She reminded him of a helpless trapped rabbit.

"I'm sorry," he said, retrieving her books and papers from the floor. She had not moved. Her eyes were glazed and distant. "Madra?" It was obvious she did not hear him. "Madra?" She finally blinked. "Are you an alright? I only wanted to meet you. I didn't mean to scare you."

When she spoke it was poetry, but the words were so soft he could hardly understand her. Emily Dickinson, she told him later as they sat in a dark student hangout getting to know one another. Emmy was a passion of hers and she knew two dozen of her poems by heart. Eighteenth century history was another passion, as was red wine, small English sports cars, and shocking lesser mortals by living just exactly the way she wished. In two hours he knew most everything there was to know about Madra Halsworthy, and he was damned intrigued. Two hours later she moved her few clothes and possessions into the Ringer household.

They were a couple.

Thunder boomed outside the window and Daley felt a chill. He covered Madra and himself. He slipped down on the pillows, fitted his face into the fragrant place between her warm neck and shoulder.

How was he going to explain this to Nick? Daley wondered. His brother would be angry enough there was a woman in the house. But what would be do when he found out she was living there?

Chapter 8

SIX MONTHS LATER a distraught man walked in a small, forgotten, overgrown cemetery searching for a link to his youth. He longed for peace, but it was nowhere to be found. There was a woman named Madra living in his house in Houston. Her name meant hell and trouble. Her coming signaled death in the man's stony heart.

He walked the cemetery, the wind ruffling his blond hair. Beneath one of the many plain stone markers lay his mother, but he could not remember which marker sheltered her. He had not been in the cemetery in years. When she died, they had been too poor to afford an engraved granite stone. Feeling ashamed, he decided one day he would have a gravestone erected.

In the ledger for the cement markers was a list of the dead. Among them was the name Mary Stuart Ringer. Her plot was numbered and could be located with a map. Mary's son could not disturb the old gatekeeper for such useless information. Any marker would do. Any grave.

He stood before one. A daddy-long-legs spider crawled up a dried brown stalk and clung motionless at the top when a chilling breeze rattled the weeds.

"You didn't try to understand," the man whispered to the cold ground. "You left us behind. "

He waited for her reply but there was none. The blank, apathetic marker winked at him the second he turned his back and took his shadow away.

From the deserted cemetery he drove across Bloomington to the old house. He was surprised to find it still standing. The weathered, squat five-room house peered out from a tangle of creeping ivy that covered every crack. The windows were blank, lifeless. Splinters from the door hung from the wood like sharp tongues.

Home. Where was it? What did it mean?

He drove across a dead winter town that did not resemble the one he remembered and found the road leading to the ten acres Mary Ringer had bought in the early sixties. It had been paid for with blood money.

A year after her husband left she had been notified Armand Ringer was dead and his insurance policy with the oil rigger's company was still in her name. "I'll buy that piece off Doff Road and we'll build a house on it one day," she told the boys. Build a house with what? For whom? The land sat neglected, forgotten.

Until one of the boys thought of it. It was a game. Macabre and unholy, but nonetheless in the beginning it was a sort of game. Bury the killed animals on that lonely wilderness of ten acres. The animals would be missing, but there would be no evidence to prove they were dead--murdered.

The game included finding ways to dispose of the remains. They buried the first ones in the hard ground, digging until their young hands blistered and began to bleed on the pickax and the shovel. Then they buried them in the trees and called that an Indian burial ground. For a while they constructed mock ships, tiny, rough-planked contraptions with sails made from torn shirts. There was not enough water for a decent Viking burning at sea so they set them aflame in a rusty red ditch where a tiny stream of water flowed and had to turn away, holding their noses and breathing through their mouths when the stench was too bad.

Together they did it. Often it was done under the cover of night, the stars their only witnesses.

Ten scrubby, wooded acres of secrets. A place of death. He stood facing the past, trying to find the meaning of it, feeling the urge to kill again and to bring fresh blood to the earth. The wind blew up, slapping him in the face, stinging him with cold.

His eyes swept the boundaries of his land. On one side was a dilapidated wooden fence no one had bothered to repair. On the other was a wide empty ditch that rarely carried rainwater. And in the middle was a desolate parcel where no man walked save ghosts.

He turned away, shivering. He was not afraid. Whoever said he was afraid was a liar. He was determined to bring sacrifice to the land. To his home.

This time he would leave behind evidence of his great vengeance. His coming would create a storm of fear.

He smiled. Liberation, so sweet.

Half an hour later Houston's skyline emerged from a smog-shrouded distance. He took the South Loop and exited onto a feeder road. Random chance landed him in Willie DeShane's neighborhood. He cruised the streets familiarizing himself with them until twilight descended. As the sun sank behind red clouds, he parked his car and began his search for a victim.

#

Willie should not have been roaming the streets at sunset. His father forbade it, and Mrs. Lawrence strictly enforced Jack's rules. But Willie had wandered too far from home, and though he raced against approaching night, he knew when he got home he would be in serious trouble.

His friends had caused his delay. Willie tried to discourage the four boys tagging along behind him because he intended to go to a secret place. But it was not so easy to get free from boys who had selected him as a leader.

"Why can't we go with you?" Marv asked in exasperation.

"Yeah , can't we go too? Where you going so special anyway?" Jo-Jo added, skipping into place beside Willie and grabbing his arm. "I bet you're up to somethin' and you don't want us to know."

Willie frowned at how close Jo-Jo had come to the truth. But he had found the block of old houses that were being demolished to make way for a new Safeway store, and he had not finished exploring the area yet. He did not want to share his adventure. The others did not have to do everything with him. Sometimes he felt he was hobbled with five pairs of arms and legs.

For several minutes the other boys speculated on Willie's reason for shunning them. Everyone knew if your father was a policeman you had a duty to prove that you were just as normal as the son of a baker, a machinist, or a dock-worker. Otherwise you would be called names, if anyone bothered to play with you at all.

"He's gonna take to stealing Hersheys from the Totem store," one boy guessed.

"Nah, uh-uh. He'd get skinned alive if he was caught. He's probably doin' crazy stuff like peeking in old ladies' windows."

"Bet he's got a hideout he don't want us to find," ventured Randolph, the youngest of their group. "You got a hide-out, Willie?"

"What's he supposed to hide from, dummy?" asked Jo-Jo.

During the jeering Willie kept his mouth shut. He knew if he tried to defend himself it would only get worse.

"Leave off,” he muttered. "I think I'll go home."

Marv sneered. "Aw, let's leave him alone. We don't need this aggravation." That's what his mom always said. Who needs this aggravation?

"Marv's right." Jo-Jo slowed and the other three boys automatically fell out of step with Willie. They looked at one another reluctantly. Giving up on any pursuit was thought cowardly. They looked to Marv to take the blame. He had given up first.

"We can go jump on my trampoline. Willie won't get to." Jo-Jo raised his voice so that Willie would be sure to hear him. "He might not get to jump on my trampoline ever again."

Willie dug his hands deeper into his jeans' pockets and turned a corner without a backward glance. "Nerds," he whispered. "Buncha stupid nerds."

He liked the boys all right. They had played together for years and they were friends, but a person needed to explore some things by himself.

Besides, Marv would get destructive in the old houses being torn down. He would start breaking windows and then what would happen? They would get run off. And Jo-Jo would not want to go in. Randolph would no doubt get hurt. He would be the only one to fall through a rotting floor and bust his leg. He was always getting hurt. And Brucey, the silent studious follower who dogged their steps, would get that look in his eyes that said, "Hey, we're gonna get in real bad trouble for this, you know." Then they'd all feel guilty and have no fun at all.

Long shadows were moving across the brick-and-board littered yards by the time Willie got to them. The entire block was deserted, and two houses had already been destroyed. Willie thought of a movie he had seen on TV about the bombing raids on London during World War II. That's what this place looked like.

Willie ran a zigzag pattern, dodging imaginary falling bombs that whistled through the air. Ka-boom! The three-story got it right through the roof. Willie threw up his arms to protect his face. Boards, chunks of brick, and dust filled the air. The ground trembled. Helpless screams rose and drowned out the concussion.

Willie saw a soft bare spot ahead in a vacant backyard and he aimed for it, his body a hurtling bullet. He took the roll, head ducked, knees brought up to his chest. He rolled like a basketball. He slammed against a hidden retaining wall made of oddly shaped stone that used to be a garden. He scrambled to his feet, rubbing the hurt shoulder. That would be a bruise for sure. "Got it dodging bombs, " he would say, and smile without explanation.

The shadows were deepening. Willie eyed the nearest house, knowing he either had to check it out right away or else wait until the next day. And on Sundays there was church service, dinner in the dining room with his father, and very little free time left over for exploration. It was do or die. Brave the heavy, ominous shadows or lose face.

The last time he had come here he had found treasure--a galvanized metal box full of rusting hand tools. The wrench and the pliers worked wonders on his ten-speed Schwinn after they had been oiled and cleaned. True, two screwdrivers were broken-ended, but still he had his own tools now and did not have to borrow his dad's. What might he find today? Next week whatever discarded treasure he could find in the rooms might be buried under a ton of wreckage, never to be rescued. Could he take the chance even though the sun was going quickly and the light was fading?

Quickly Willie crossed the yard and mounted the rickety unpainted steps. He paused briefly on the threshold to let his eyes adjust to the murky interior. One of the walls in the room was gone, exposing studs that looked naked and raw. The floor was piled with plaster, wine and beer bottles, and a piece of tin with blackened lumps of burned wood in its center.

Willie pulled his brown corduroy jacket closer. It was much cooler inside than it had been in the yard.

It was when Willie hunkered down to open a low cabinet door that he realized he was not in the house alone. He caught his breath. He had not heard a telling sound or smelled an unusual scent. It was just there.

The idea that eyes were watching his every move. He tensed and held his breath.

He stood slowly. Taking a deep breath now, he turned from the door. He did not call himself a coward or try to shake off the dread. Willie knew there was someone lurking in the shadows and that someone did not want him to get away from the abandoned house.

Suddenly Willie was running. He was a supersonic jet, his body sharp and pointed, his head plowing through space. He cleared the doorway, and the steps barely shook from the touch of the soles of his tennis shoes. The yard and the old garden wall vanished. At the overgrown driveway he had to make a split-second decision: run down it to the street, or cross it into another yard strewn with fallen brick and shattered boards. He took the yard, his instinct telling him if he was being followed, it would be harder for a grown-up to maneuver the obstacle than it would be for him with his boy's natural agility. And he knew whoever was there was an adult. Kids had never made him feel so creeped out.

Halfway across the yard he looked back. Looking back did two things. It confirmed the thoughts he had had inside the old house. There was a man behind him, and the man did not intend to lose him. Looking back also caused Willie to catch the toe of his right sneaker on a brick hidden in the grass. He stumbled and spun around, his arms flailing in the air for balance. Even as he desperately tried to get up, Willie saw the man closing on him, his wide shoulders blocking the sky.

"No," the boy whispered. "No, no, no, no..."

He scrambled to his feet. Run, Run, Run, his mind screamed at his legs. Faster, lose him, faster, lose him!

The man's running footsteps grew closer. The air Willie gasped into his lungs was full of ashes and dust.

Tears streaked his cheeks. The tendons behind his knees throbbed with pain. In one sudden, terrible flash of knowledge, Willie knew that he was losing the race and forfeiting his fife. He could not outrun the man. He could not out-jump him or outmaneuver him.

"Dad...please Dad, help me..." he panted.

Willie was grabbed from behind and lifted off his feet in one motion. His legs, still pumping, began to kick.

His fists beat on the man who held him tightly. Willie was rolled into spongy dew-wet grass. A tremendous weight rolled him over, then covered him. He screamed but a fleshy palm broke it off. His nose was and mouth were covered. He tried to scuttle away, but the palm held him, and the weight holding him threatened to burst his chest open.

He could not see his attacker in the near dark, but he felt hairy masculine arms around him.

The man flipped onto his back, bringing Willie up into the air and onto his chest. The boy kicked frantically. His fingernails clawed at the hand on his face, finally getting his nose free, and he sucked in air that burned as it filled his chest.

The arm around Willie's chest moved swiftly to his throat. For a second the boy was free. He gasped, jerked forward, and tried to roll away. But a wire sank into his throat.

One tender, spicing cut. Closing off his breath. Stars flying, bursting crazily inside his head, plummeting into endless black space. A snap. The heart fluttering, a weak bird against the constriction of a cage.

Willie DeShane fought to the final second, and then he gave up his life, his body shuddering delicately in the arms of a killer, his green eyes filming over, reflecting the cold, merciless light of the stars as they began to twinkle in the growing darkness.

Chapter 9

IT WAS EARLY EVENING at the Ringer house and the three people living there were tense and morose.

Nick was in an especially bad mood. For months he had insisted Madra, this "handmaiden to a Paris fag," this " bride of Dracula," this "poor little peasant girl with the starry eyes," had to be disposed of--let go, run off, sent away. Daley ignored the verbal abuse when he could, but lately his own temper erupted more often, and he found himself out-shouting his brother simply to be heard.

Madra, on the other hand, was coming close to imitating an incoherent babbler. The seizures that surfaced soon after she moved in and grew steadily worse as the emotional atmosphere in the house grew more tense.

For a long time Daley did not know what was wrong. For a while he thought her merely dreamy, preoccupied, perhaps absentminded. But when the dazed looks came so frequently they frightened him, he searched the college library for medical books to pinpoint the problem. It did not take long. Madra's symptoms were more blatant than ever. Five-second trances grew to a full minute. There were times when she was absolutely unaware of her surroundings.

Epilepsy. Mild form that resulted in lost of consciousness. Petit mal.

Daley worried, but he did not tell Madra what he had discovered. She called it daydreaming, and she was close enough. If only Nick would leave her alone. Couldn't he see Madra was a woman with troubles?

Perhaps Daley would speak to his brother after dinner. This constant bickering was too hard on all of them.

Madra had cooked pasta. The spaghetti sauce had simmered all day, and the delicious smell of garlic, onion, and oregano permeated the house. It smelled wonderfully homey, unlike anything the brothers were used to. At the table, however, Nick looked up from his place and gave Daley a nasty grin. Daley knew what was coming.

"Too much tomato paste," Nick commented dryly, sampling a forkful of steaming spaghetti, the sauce dripping onto his plate. "Tastes like an acid bath."

Madra quietly stood and wrapped the cape over her shoulders. She tied it at the neck, then sat down stiffly.

Nick grinned, and at that moment Daley hated him. Why did his brother work so hard at being disagreeable?

"Too much salt too. Did you dump the Morton's box in it, Madra?" Nick asked conversationally.

"Nick. Drop it," Daley saw Madra's eyelids fluttering. She had not looked at either man.

"I ought to drop it. Right on the goddamn floor."

"Don't pay him any attention, Madra. It's delicious," Daley said as he patted her hand.

"It fucking stinks. I think you should go back to cooking, Daley. I don't like wop food anyway. Gives me heartburn."

"You don't have to eat it," Madra said softly, her eyes still staring at the table.

"What choice do I have? What am I gonna fucking eat around here, peanut butter?" Nick asked.

With a sudden flourish that took both men by surprise, Madra stood up and threw back the sides of her cape, her chair falling to the floor several feet behind her.

"Oh, what now, another dramatic crying fit? Gonna rush from the room, baby? Huh? Huh? Quick, I can't wait." Nick clapped his hands in glee.

Madra marched into the kitchen and sank to the floor in front of the sink. Daley got to his feet, afraid she had fainted or was having a convulsion. But she had the lower cabinet doors open and was searching for something inside.

Nick turned around in his chair. "What the fuck's she doing?"

"Can it, Nick. You're going too far," Daley warned.

She stood up, the folds of the cape closed in front of her. She was rigid and ghostly coming toward them without a hint of expression on her face. She walked to Nick's place at the table and halted. While Daley watched in fascination, and Nick watched in horror, Madra slowly withdrew her hand from the cape--and with it a tiny gray mouse, its head flattened and bloody from the mousetrap it had been caught in. Carefully Madra laid the mouse crossways on Nick's plate of food.

"This is probably more to your liking," she said softly, and left the room, the cape thrown back and trailing behind her.

"Jesus Fuckin' Christ!" Nick screamed as he overturned his chair trying to get away from the dead mouse in his plate. "Bitch!" He hurled his plate at the wall where the spaghetti dribbled to the floor. The dead mouse bounced back to lie at his feet. "Not in my food!" he shrieked, slamming both his fists to the table, overturning the glasses. "Not in my...not in my..."

Daley was roaring with laughter, holding onto the table for support, his stomach aching, his eyes welling with tears at the unexpectedness of the scene.

"Look what she did!" Nick continued to bellow. "I can't believe what she fucking did, Daley!"

Daley still was holding himself around the middle. He was laughing so hard it hurt to try to get his breath.

A dead mouse in his brother's plate! Even he had never done anything so outrageous as that to his brother, his big, frightening monster of a brother.

Finally Daley noticed the ominous silence and straightened up to find Nick glaring at him. The room's temperature dropped twenty degrees. The giggles suddenly dried up. Daley's hands dropped to his sides and he had to look away from Nick.

"That was pretty cute," Nick said harshly. "She's a winner, this girl of yours."

"It was a joke, Nick. You asked for it. Don't be a badass and pretend you're an injured party." Daley was determined that if this had to turn into a battle of the wills, he would be ready for it. He might not win it, but he'd be ready.

"I want her out of here," Nick said flatly.

"You don't have any say about it. I pay my half of the rent. She stays." Daley paused for emphasis. "And you lay off her."

Nick's lips moved as if he wanted to say more, but nothing came out. Daley threw the cloth napkin he still clutched in his hand against the table. At the doorway he turned and repeated, "Lay off her. "

Madra had listened to Daley's hysterical laughter and Nick's furious shouts as they drifted up the stairway to the bedroom. She had undressed, placing the black cape over the back of a wooden chair Daley was about to refinish, and donned a flannel nightgown that touched the floor when she walked. She sat cross-legged on the bed, listening, occasionally smiling at what she had done.

Nick deserved his comeuppance, she thought, fingering the massed gown in her lap. He's always trying to get me; let's see how he likes feeling like a fool for once.

She heard Daley coming up the stairs. Madra lifted her gaze, expecting him to appear in the doorway.

When he did not, she slipped from the bed and crept to the hall.

The bathroom door stood open. Walking on tiptoe, thinking she would surprise him and make him laugh even more, Madra made her way down the dim hallway. She stuck her head around the corner and opened her mouth to repeat a snatch of poetry from one of Emily's poems only to be surprised herself. Daley was not in the bathroom.

She turned her head and surveyed the far door, the door to his workshop. It was closed. He had been spending an inordinate amount of time in the workshop lately. Several nights recently he had gone there before joining her in bed. She had thought he was working on a project, perhaps stripping a chair or an old steamer trunk he had bought at an estate sale, but she never heard any sounds from the room, and when she asked what he had been doing, he only said he had been thinking.

She put her ear to the door. Not a sound. Was he sitting and brooding on what she had done to his brother?

Was he angry with her?

Then it happened again. The warm, pleasant sensation of floating right out the top of he head. She did not go anywhere. Not really. She could not tell anyone what happened during these daydreams. It was all too fuzzy, too overlaid with gossamer threads. While it was happening, she was not the least bit frightened. There was no anxiety. The real world was shuttered away. If someone was talking to her when it occurred she did not hear what they said. If she was in the middle of doing something-- preparing dinner, smoking a cigarette, reading an assignment for a class--it all waited until she returned. Sometimes the ashes on the cigarette she held were nearly two inches long. But after it happened she always discovered she was trembling, sweaty, her throat dry. Where had she gone and for what reason? When other people noticed, what would they think of her? That she was an idiot. That's all they could think.

Madra stared without blinking at a scrap of torn wallpaper. Her blood pressure dropped. Her pulse rate slowed. Her heart thumped once, sighed, thumped again, sighed...

She blinked and she was in the world, returned to herself.

The fear that followed her seizures came instantly. Her heart beat erratically. Pressing a hand to her breast she could feel her heart thumping against the bones in her chest. Blood drummed in her ears.

Oh my God, she screamed in her mind, clenching her teeth against the urge to scream aloud. I'm losing my mind! What if I never come back when this happens? What if I get trapped in that nothingness and can never get back?

Her hands went to her temples and massaged them as she closed her eyes. She turned away from the door and went down the hall to the bedroom. She climbed onto the mattress and pulled the long gown tautly around her drawn-up knees. Within minutes she was asleep.

In the workroom Daley was sitting in a green vinyl swivel chair. The cedar wood box containing war medals and the garrote was before him, the lid open.

Nick knew he had the garrote. Well, it should not have surprised him so. How could he keep anything important from his brother?

Daley took the weapon in his hands and sat back in the chair. He held the garrote's handles in each hand and every few seconds tightened the wire until it vibrated. It produced a slight hum and seemed to electrify the air. His vision began to swim and he let his eyes go out of focus so that he could watch the wire dance between his taut hands as if behind an aquarium of green water. He thought he could hear the vibrations singing in his ears.

I want to go home, it seemed to chant. I've been here too long.

Once before the wire had sung the same lyrics. Daley felt his skin prickle and a terrible loneliness came over him.

He shook his head sadly and looked at his watch. It was barely seven-thirty and already the house was quiet as a tomb. Madra was probably asleep and there was no telling what Nick was doing. Tending his wounded pride probably. Daley had never seen him so volatile. Their home was a war zone just as dangerous as Nam had ever been. There were invisible land mines and concertina wire strung throughout the rooms. There was the smell of disaster dancing on the wind. Something dreadful had happened, though Nick had not mentioned it when he had come home earlier. But Daley saw it in the blue of his brother's shadowed eyes.

He had seen it in the little debate played out at the dinner table.

Daley sighed and closed the lid of the cedar box to block the garrote from view. He did not need to be reminded of death and madness. He had to protect Madra from attack, he had to steer his brother back onto the edge, and keep him from tumbling into the clutches of his demons. It was a burden, but without him they might both be lost. Lost to the real world forever...

Chapter 10

JACK AND SAM sat on the porch steps of the DeShane home watching the last of the light dissolve in the night sky. Already Jack had voiced concern over his son's unusual lateness in returning home, but not until the sun disappeared did he truly begin to worry about Willie's safety.

"He's only done this once before," Jack said, unable to keep still.

"Done what? You mean Willie?" Sam was confused. He had almost forgotten about the boy during their conversation about the police department.

"Yes. He should be home. He's been told not to be out on the streets after dark."

"Hold on, Jack. It's still early. You know how it is with kids. They forget they're supposed to be home at a certain time when they get to playing. I wouldn't worry. He'll come straggling up any minute."

Sam's words did not lessen Jack's anxiety, and his mood was contagious. After fifteen minutes of aimless conversation interrupted by long pauses, Sam too began to fidget. Streams of car lights shone on the nearby freeway. Across the street Maggie had turned on the lamps in the lower-floor sitting room, and the three windows threw yellow light across the lawn.

Suddenly Jack stood up. "I think I'll call some of his friends."

Sam followed him inside the dark house. When Jack switched on the lights Sam blinked and his eyes watered. His old eyes were giving him a lot of trouble lately. Could it be the booze? he wondered.

At the kitchen table Sam kept watch through the hallway to the front door while Jack dialed numbers from a tattered address book. Sam expected the boy to walk in any second. He knew Willie almost as well as he did Jack, and the kid was obedient. Oh sure, he liked to try his hand at stretching parental reins now and then, like any kid. But most of the time he came home on time and did as he was told.

"You haven't seen him since when?" Jack's voice went up a few decibels, and Sam turned to look at his friend.

When Jack hung up, he quickly began flipping pages in the address book, looking for another number.

"Marvin said they left Willie around five-thirty. Said Willie was on his way home."

Sam automatically checked his watch. It was seven-thirty, and outside the windows twilight was being engulfed by night.

"I don't like it, Sam. He wasn't this late getting home the last time it happened. And I gave him hell about it. It isn't like Willie to worry me."

The four boys Willie played with were called and questioned. They told Jack the story. Willie was with them until five-thirty. Then he wanted to go home. Two of the boys thought Willie had no intentions of going home. One thought he had a secret hideout. Another thought be was getting too big for his britches and just did not want to play with his friends.

Jack slumped into a kitchen chair beside Sam. "Where could he be?" he asked, rubbing the scar on his cheek. Sam almost reached out to still Jack’s fingers but stopped himself in time. He knew Jack only did that when he was terribly upset.

"What do you say we ride around the neighborhood and see if we can pick him up?" Sam asked gently. "He might be a couple of blocks from home."

Jack was instantly on his feet, relieved at a course of action. "That’s a good idea." He stared out the window over the kitchen sink. Dark, dark. Where the hell was he? Where was Willie?

"Let’s get moving."

Jack had the Monte Carlo’s engine running and the passenger door open for Sam by the time he came down the walk..

They drove slowly toward the freeway and the feeder lane. The sidewalks were empty. More and more lights came on inside the houses. Sam saw that Jack was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

"I don’t see him," Jack said twice within a minute.

"Let’s go around the block," Sam suggested.

Jack turned before they reached the freeway and drove down a street shrouded in darkness. Jack drove even slower until they were barely creeping along to the corner. Still no one was to be seen on the street.

After circling the block where they lived, Jack drove in ever-widening circles. "Maybe we missed him and he’s already home,” he suggested hopefully.

"Should we go check?" Sam knew that was exactly what they should do.

Jack deliberated for a minute, then swung the wheel into a U-turn. "Yeah, we’ll go back. He’s probably sitting there waiting for me. "

But Willie was not.

"Dammit, Sam. What could have happened?" Jack hurried as the they returned to the car to begin the search again.

"Take it easy, Jack. The boy’s smart. He knows he might get his tail whipped for this and he’s probably skedaddling as fast as he can to get here. He might really have some ‘hideout’ and didn’t notice how late it was. Maybe it’s a ways from the house. You know kids."

Sam meant to be reassuring, but his words sounded lame even to his own ears.

"I never believed Willie could pull a stunt like this. What time is it?" Jack asked.

Sam consulted his watch as they pulled from the curb. "Eight-ten."

Jack rubbed the back of his hand across the scar. He was perched on his seat like a stiff bird, his eyes searching both sides of the street. "We’ll go around the neighborhood once more then we’ll branch further out." Jack coughed and cleared his throat. "I guess you think I’m acting silly, but you know yourself Willie doesn’t stay out. Not at night this way."

Sam held his tongue. He did not blame Jack for the state he was in. If it was his kid, he would be worried too. Something was wrong and they both knew it. Neither of the men really believed Willie had forgotten the time or had not noticed it was dark. Something had delayed him. Something was keeping him from home.

The sirens came like an announcement of doom. Jack slammed the brakes and the two men were pitched forward in their seats. For a moment they were motionless, their ears attuned to the familiar sound. The two sirens grew louder. A third and a fourth siren joined in.

Jack’s eyes narrowed and he felt a shiver creeping up his spine. Willie. Sirens, trouble, Willie.

Sam broke the spell. He leaned toward the center of the dashboard and switched on the police scanner.

"I have a possible homicide corner of Hadley and Pearce. All available units respond," came the dispatcher’s nasal twang.

Sam turned the radio off with a savage flick of his wrist. He looked over at his young friend. He did not have to second-guess Jack’s thoughts. Could it be Willie? Even if there was the remotest possibility, it was enough to turn a man’s blood to ice.

Sam put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. "We have to go to it," he said.

One of the sirens neared and headlights rushed toward the Monte Carlo from the rear. A horn blared, but was drowned in the ear-shattering siren. The patrol car swerved around what it took to be a stalled vehicle in their lane and sped past. Sam was shaking Jack roughly.

“Come on, Jack. We have to roll on it!"

Jack pressed the accelerator and they pursued the dwindling red taillights of the patrol car. They ran through stop signs and shot across empty intersections. Sam held onto the door rest and the edge of the seat.

Jack’s lips moved in silent prayer. He had lost his nerve when he had heard the sirens, but he was being ridiculous. Wasn’t he? This had nothing to do with Willie being late. How many sirens had he heard in his lifetime? Yet no matter how he argued with himself, the shiver remained, chilling him all the way through.

The police car stopped. As Jack pulled up behind it, two doors swung open and the driver unsnapped his holster to place his hand on his gun.

Jack killed the headlights and turned off the ignition. . Sam was already out of the car and standing by the fender, looking toward the men and flashlights clustered on a demolition site.

Jack slowly got out of the car. He felt drained. Never in his life had he felt so frightened, so utterly vulnerable.

Men rushed everywhere, a swirl of endless activity. Squawk boxes sounded off and blue bubble lights whirled. Voices were raised and orders given and carried out.

Sam turned and took Jack by the shoulders. "Let me see about this. Stay here and let me go."

"What if it’s…?"

Sam shook the young father by the arms before he knew he was doing it. "No! Just stay put and I’l1 find out what’s going on."

"Not Willie..." Jack’s voice trailed away.

Sam clenched his teeth. "Of course not." His gruff tone was as severe as he could make it. He left Jack and entered the bright circle of light a few yards away.

"I’m sorry, sir, but if you’ll just move back. This is a police matter..." The patrolman’s voice trailed at the look of authority on Sam’s face.

"I’m Bartholomew, detective sergeant, retired." The name registered immediately, and the patrolman stepped backward at once. He stuttered apologetically, but Sam ignored him.

A plainclothes detective came toward Sam with an outstretched hand. "Sam! What the hell are you doing here?" Lieutenant "Garbo" Kranz asked with a bit of awe in his voice.

Sam ignored the question. "What have you got?" he asked.

Garbo had to catch up with Sam to answer. "It’s a kid," he said, walking beside the older man. "Messy thing. We got an anonymous call. Body in a lot. Well, we found the body all right, but..."

"Boy or girl?" Sam interrupted, his heart almost stopping at the mention of a child.

Garbo showed his displeasure at the interruption by a down-turning of his mouth. “Boy. I’d say about ten or so."

"Let me see him."

"But Sam..."

"I said take me to him, you son of a bitch!"

Garbo was astonished. He had never worked with Sam Bartholomew, but he knew the man’s reputation as a tough old buzzard. And here he was calling an officer in charge a son of a bitch and demanding to be led to the crime scene. Incredible gall.

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Sergeant?”

“I thought I was talking to a responsible commander in charge of homicide, but if you’re any indication of the competence of this force lately, then the whole city’s in a peck of trouble."

Sam knew he was lashing out at the officer unfairly, but the body must be only a few feet away from where they stood, and he had to get to it.

Garbo stared hard at Sam for a moment, then he sighed and led Sam to the body.

The first thing Sam’s trained, observant eyes took in was the seemingly mindless activity of two blue suits on their knees in the tall, parched winter grass. They looked comical with their asses arched high in the air, heads lowered almost to the ground. They were knocking aimlessly at loose boards and clumps of weeds. "What in God’s name have you got your men doing?"

Garbo gave a strangely soft reply. "They’re looking for something."

“The murder weapon?"

"No. They’re looking for the boy’s head."

The blunt words stopped Sam dead in his tracks. His heart jumped so suddenly that Sam felt a moment of searing pain.

Garbo felt, rather than saw, Sam’s reaction. He waited near one of his men, who scrabbled through debris at his feet. "Well, you wanted to see the body, didn’t you? Isn’t that what you got so hot about, Bartholomew? It’s over here and it’s decapitated. Maybe with your renowned expertise we can get this cleared up before the night’s over. Our problem happens to be two-pronged, however. We can’t seem to find the kid’s head, and without the head we can’t make an ID. Bit of a sticky wicket even for you, don’t you agree?"

Sam looked so stricken that Garbo came over to him and took his arm. "Look, that was a cheap trick. I admit we’ve got a bag of snakes here. I for one have never been called in on something like this before. It makes me sick to my stomach." As soon as he said it Garbo knew he was understating the facts. He was not only sickened, he was as shocked as old man Bartholomew. Who would do such a thing? And the press and TV--would they have a heyday! If the police did not find the boy’s missing head, there was sure to be a wave of fear sweeping through the city.

"My neighbor’s son is missing. He was supposed to be home by sundown." Sam’s voice faltered, died away on the word sundown.

"Oh, shit." Garbo shifted uneasily.

"Yeah, that’s about it."

Garbo squinted against the lights, trying to see the young man Sam had come with, but the glare hurt his eyes and all he could make out were shadowy figures.

"It’s DeShane," Sam said almost in a whisper. "You know him?"

Garbo was struck speechless. He nodded. He said, "Oh no."

"Show me. I’ve got to know," Sam said.

They crossed a pile of broken bricks and Garbo fumbled in his pocket for his flashlight. Where was the damned photographer? Where was the forensic team, the ambulance? Where was...?

Scrunching his eyes as if to keep out what he did not want to see, Sam moved forward to a lump of brown lying in the high grass. The brown was a corduroy jacket. The brown was a pair of Sears’ Tuff jeans. And that was all it was. Torso, arms, legs, feet. The ghastly sight stirred something primeval in Sam’s insides.

First he felt revulsion. Then a pure, icy rage at the indecency the killer had inflicted on a small, helpless little boy. Then Sam felt the futility of all his many years as a cop. He had put some of the maniacs away, but he could not get them all, and his time had passed. It was violence beyond the normal cop’s understanding.

It was violence beyond all understanding.

Garbo tugged at Sam’s sleeve. "Here comes the forensic guys and the ambulance team. We have to move back, Sam." Garbo’s voice was dulled and professional. He had one more question to ask. "Is it DeShane’s boy? Can you tell?"

Sam nodded and one solitary tear ran down his cheek.

Garbo swore beneath his breath. "Okay. Then get back there to him, and for chrissake keep him away from here. We need you now, Sam."

Sam tried to nod again, but his head was too heavy. He had never felt such terrible despair. Behind the lights Jack waited for Sam’s news. He had to tell him. But how could he ever? Ever?

As Sam trudged away, he saw the scramblings of two men on their knees in the night--searching for the rest of little Willie DeShane. For some inexplicable reason Sam knew it would never be found.

He stumbled between two squad cars and, momentarily blinded, felt his way along a car where he was stopped by two hands pressing against his chest.

"Sam?" It was Jack, his voice tremulous. "Sam, they told me it’s a kid. A boy, Sam. A boy!"

Sam turned away, unable to meet the young father’s eyes.

"Sam, tell me. You have to tell me I’m wrong. It’s can’t be, it’s not…"

When Sam could not find the strength to form the words, Jack rushed to fill the growing silence.

"Hey, some kid. I know that’s bad, that’s... But we gotta get moving. We need to get out of here and back to the house. Wi1lie’s probably home and hungry for his supper.”

Sam began to shake his head. His bald pate glistened with sweat.

Jack ignored him. "We’ve been here too long and we can’t help, you know that’s the truth. The door’s locked at home. Willie carries his own key, but the house is dark, and he won’t know what to think. Sam?"

Jack’s voice was pleading, desperate, on the edge of a hysteria he could barely control.

Sam knew he had to say it, say the truth right away before Jack went any further. "It’s Willie."

The inhuman howl from Jack DeShane’s soul was unlike anything Sam had ever heard. Every hand stopped in midair, every foot was rooted to the ground. Sentences went unfinished.

Jack DeShane’s despair made every man within the sound of his cry recoil with a sudden, nameless sense of loss.

Chapter 11

JACK HAD TO BE SEDATED while he still crouched, grief-stricken, on his knees, his forehead pressed to gravelly earth. Although he was a trained peace officer, psychologically sound and emotionally strong, it was no surprise to anyone at the scene of the murder that DeShane broke. Who loses a child and goes blithely about his business? What man was so strong he would not give into the blinding, bludgeoning grief?

Sam drove him home and helped his friend into the house. He put Jack to bed, removed his shoes and his belt, opened the neck of his shirt, and pulled a chair near to watch over his friend until he was no longer needed. At two in the morning Sam himself fell into an exhausted sleep.

Jack woke, the sedative worn off and the death of his son dragging him up from unconsciousness into the full reality of his loss. Tears tried to form in his eyes, and a sob tried to come from his throat. He ached so badly. Desperately he tried not to think about Willie.

He saw Sam slumped in the chair beside him. The older man’s face was slack and his lips parted. Jack studied every age line on Sam' s face as if they might impart some secret wisdom to help him survive.

Finally he looked at the ceiling overhead and the circle of light reflected from the bedside lamp. He had to get out of the house. He hardly remembered being led inside and placed on the bed. His mind had been a jumble of contradictions. Dimly he remembered babbling on and on about Willie while Sam shushed him and loosened his clothes and held him fast to keep him from going to Willie’s room. What had he wanted in Willie’s room? Oh, yes. A baseball glove. A polo T-shirt. A postcard Willie had bought in New Orleans of the courtyard of the Seven Sisters Restaurant.

Without further thought, Jack slipped his feet over the side of the bed and bent to lace up his shoes. A sickening wave of dizziness hit him, and he had to let it pass before standing up. A thin golfer’s jacket lay over the dresser. Jack put it on and felt in the pockets for some cigarettes. Finding them, he zipped up the jacket and left the room. The early morning air was bracing and smelled faintly of the sea. Jack inhaled great drafts of it and wondered at how far the Gulf breezes could carry inland. It was not at all cold to him, though he knew the temperature must be in the low forties.

He got in his car and drove downtown near Hermann Square. Unlike Hermann Park, which housed the zoo and acres of wooded lawn, the square was small and overlooked by glass and steel office buildings. Mostly it was inhabited by the unemployed, the winos, men who were the flotsam of society. In the square they were safe for a while. The police were instructed not to bother them. It was said the land developer George Hermann had marked the square for his hired men, who, after a weekend of revelry in town could sleep it off and be close to the wagons that would take them back to the job of cutting timber each Monday morning. Something in the will Hermann left behind told the city of Houston they could not harass anyone desiring to lounge in Hermann Square. And so no one did.

Jack walked and wrestled with his despair. He had come to the right place to do it. Despair slept on park benches covered with newspaper, and it leaned against tree trunks swigging from paper bags. No one accosted the newcomer or questioned his right to be there. The square was for anyone who needed to face pain, anyone who had no place else to go.

Jack circled the park a dozen times, smoking cigarettes, trying to get even a tiny grip on his life.

Grinding his last cigarette beneath his shoe, Jack got back in the Monte Carlo. He had come to the conclusion that neither Sam nor the isolation of the square was a sufficient buffer against the war that raged out of control inside him. But there was someone who might rake away the pain that was killing his soul.

Yet as he drove to the luxury condominium where she lived, he heard a tiny voice rejecting his plea for sympathy. You’ll have to do it alone, it taunted. You must accept what’s been done. Willie’s gone. Willie’s never coming back home from playing in the dark…

#

Eileen McKenna, the most exclusive call girl in Houston, luxuriated in an enormous black marble bathtub playing with heaps of bubbles. She was tired, but not overly so. The bath was to prepare her for sleep. The most strenuous part of her workday was over, and the councilman snored softly just beyond the bathroom door. She had been instructed to wake him after her bath was completed. He could not be seen slipping out of the building in the morning wearing the same suit he had worn the day before. His wife did not give a tinker’s damn, but his reputation demanded he not be caught in even vaguely compromising circumstances.

While Eileen soaked, Tobias, her Angora cat, sat atop the black marble vanity licking the fur beneath a hind leg. As Eileen raised the drain lever and started to lift herself from the tub, the doorbell rang. Once, twice, three times. Tobias spat and ruffled his hair. Eileen grabbed a terry cloth robe and shrugged into it. As she passed the bed, she saw the councilman sitting up in surprise, his lips working idiotically.

"It’s all right," she soothed, her voice honeyed and calm. "I’ll close the door."

Shooing the cat before her, she pulled the door to firmly and crossed the living area. The doorbell was much too loud. She needed to do something about that.

She opened the door with the safety chain still in place. In the hall stood a wild-eyed Jack DeShane.

"My god, Jack, what’s happened?" Eileen closed the door before he could answer and unfastened the chain.

She opened the door wide.

Jack walked into her arms and smothered his face in her hair. "Eileen, I need help."

Eileen was stunned. "Come and sit down." She closed the door and led him to the sofa. Only then did she remember the councilman in her bedroom.

"Jack, I have someone here." Her voice trailed away.

Jack turned his head and covered his eyes with one hand in a gesture of great weariness.

Never before had he come to her unannounced and in such a state. It had to be important. Had he been dismissed from the force?

"Wait. I’ll get him out and we can talk."

When Eileen entered the bedroom, the councilman was already dressed and patting his pockets to be sure he had everything. "I’m sorry," she said. "This is an unusual occurrence. I hope you don’t mind."

"Scared the hell out of me, that’s all. Who is he? Anyone I know?"

"No, and I doubt he knows you either,” she lied.

"Then I’m going." Moved by a gentle impulse, he touched her cheek in passing, and his eyes said she was forgiven. He walked past the sofa without looking over and let himself out.

Eileen sighed and locked the door after him. "Jack, you look awful. What can I do?"

She sank onto the sofa beside him and took his hand. For an interminable time they sat that way without speaking. Eileen watched him as he fought with whatever it was he had to say. Finally, after he attempted to speak twice, Eileen wrapped her arms around his trembling body. She kissed each eyelid in turn, his cheeks, his forehead, his lips and chin and neck. She felt his pain and wished she could take it from him. Jake was not a customer. Jack was someone who made her heart sing, though she wasn't sure he knew it.

She tasted his tears and pressed him close to her breasts, hoping somehow to impart all the love she felt for him, hoping to ease his suffering.

Finally Jack spoke. "Willie was murdered last night," he said. "My son has been killed."

#

"Willie was killed," Sam said.

Maggie Richler brushed back a thatch of hair from her face. She was not fully awake and the pleasant dream she had been having still lingered in her mind. Sam’s words had not sunk in.

"Sam, have you been drinking over there with Jack?"

"For once I’m sober, Maggie. Jack and I waited all evening for Willie to come home, and when he didn’t we went cruising the neighborhood tying to find him. There were sirens and we followed them to Pearce Street. It was Willie.”

Maggie’s eyes grew wide as she listened to Sam. He was speaking distinctly and he did not sway on his feet. "Oh, Sam, no. Not Willie."

Sam sat down beside her on the bed. "It gets worse."

"It couldn’t be any worse. That poor man. Willie’s all he had. They were devoted to one another.”

“I can’t tell you how bad it is, Maggie, because the investigation was still continuing when I brought Jack back to the house. And besides, I don’t want to worry you. But when I’m out of the house from now on, I want you to keep the doors and windows locked. I also want you to keep this on your night table."

Sam reached into the waist of his pants and withdrew a .38 caliber pistol. “I loaded it so be careful.”

"A gun, Sam?" Maggie gave a short laugh. "What’s gotten into you? I don’t want any of your guns around me."

He placed it on her table, and when he looked into her eyes, Maggie felt suddenly chilled. She crossed her bare arms and stroked them.

"You’re serious, aren’t you? Do you think the killer is around here somewhere? Is he another crazy or what?"

"He’s definitely a crazy. You’ll know that when you hear the news. The son of a bitch is out of his mind."

"Well, anyone who would kill a child... Poor Jack, this is terrible. Willie was such a cute little boy."

The image of Willie’s headless corpse filled Sam’s mind. "I have to go find Jack," he said. "I didn’t want to leave you without some form of protection. Nobody can guess how a killer like this works. He might be on a rampage. He might do all his killing in one night. I wanted you to be warned."

Maggie glanced over at the ugly weapon lying on her night table and a small shudder ran through her.

"Have you been with Jack all night? Where is he now?"

"An ambulance attendant had to sedate him at the scene. I brought him home and put him to bed, but when I dozed off myself, he left the house."

"Do you know where he went?" Maggie's concern made her frown fiercely.

"I have a good idea. I just want to make sure for my own peace of mind. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

Maggie unfolded her arms and hugged Sam close. He smelled of the fresh night air, but he also smelled of bourbon.

He stood and went to the bedroom door. "I’ll lock the front on my way out. You should get up and check the windows, Maggie."

"I will, honey. You go find Jack. He shouldn’t be alone and grieving after this." And under her breath she added, "The poor man."

Sam took Maggie’s car keys from his pocket and strode to her Plymouth. He turned in the direction of downtown and headed for the on ramp of I-10. He had sounded confident of Jack’s whereabouts to Maggie, but he was not at all sure that he would find him. Sam knew all about Eileen McKenna. You could not be a cop in Houston without knowing her name. Eileen went unmolested for several reasons. She was not on the street peddling, handing out diseases to her customers. She was cautious, closemouthed, and classy. She did not gossip and brag about her clientele, she did not work under a madam, and she kept her business strictly to herself. If she had been less beautiful she might have had more trouble. But even lawmen kneeled before beauty.

Of course, it had been another thing to find out Jack DeShane was in love with her. It was always a bad situation when a cop got involved with a hooker, but then Eileen McKenna was not your regular prostitute and Jack was not exactly a by-the-book police officer. That’s what made him good. Still, if it got out a rookie was involved with Eileen, it could mean trouble from his superiors, maybe even get him kicked off the force.

Sam had tried to explain that to the young man when Jack had confided he was seeing Eileen. But there was no changing Jack’s mind--or his heart. But that was something Jack and Sam had in common. Hell, if he had fallen hard for a woman, be it the governor’s wife or the scroungiest piece of ass this side of the Pecos, there would be no talking him out of it. So what if life was full of complications? All you could do was handle them the best you could.

At the Main Street exit, Sam got off the freeway. He wondered how long after he had fallen asleep Jack had left the house. If he had gone to Eileen, that was fine. But if he was not there, then Sam was worried. He could not have Jack wandering around on the streets grieving or down at the station floundering in hysteria.

Jack would have to go to the morgue and make a positive ID. He had to be ready for that. After having seen Willie’s body, Sam cringed at the thought of any father being forced to go through such an ordeal.

Identifying victims of violent crime had been the least pleasurable part--hell, it was the most horrible part--of police work for Sam. Cops learned all about heartbreak in the morgue. It turned some of them sour.

Sam parked on the street outside Eileen’s high-rise condo. He did not plan on a lengthy visit. He simply needed to know if Jack was all right.

The wind blew gum wrappers and shreds of newspapers along the street as Sam stepped from the Plymouth. From lifetime habit Sam scrutinized the street and sidewalks before leaving the car. A dog sniffed at a water drain opening. A clatter of high heels brought Sam’s attention to a couple coming in late from a night of celebration. The woman wore a silver fox cape over a black dress. The tops of her breasts were exposed. Her hair was windblown and she walked unsteadily, leaning against her date. The man was nondescript, fortyish, tired. They passed Sam without a glance and entered the condo’s lobby. Sam shook his head. They had not even been suspicious of him. He might have been a mugger. People could be too indifferent for their own good.

He followed them inside and took the elevator to Eileen’s floor where he rang her doorbell. He could hear it echoing in the rooms beyond. Be here, Jack, he silently pleaded.

It was Jack himself who came to the door. He held the door wide and stood quietly staring at the old detective.

“I thought you’d come here,” Sam said. "I don’t want to interrupt. I just had to find but if you were okay."

Jack dropped his gaze and Sam could see the scar on his cheek standing out like a thin scarlet ribbon.

Eileen pulled Jack aside and held him around the waist. "Sergeant Bartholomew!" she exclaimed, genuinely pleased to see him. "Jack didn’t tell me he knew you."

"No reason why he should. We’re neighbors now." He spoke to the still-silent Jack. "Do you want me to pick you up around ten?" He had to say this delicately, and there were damn few ways to do that. "They’ll want you downtown for..." Jesus, he could not say it.

Jack raised his eyes and they were filled with compassion. “I know, Sam, you don’t have to say it. I have to identify Willie. Make it official. I’d like it if you could pick me up and go with me."

"I’ll be here." Sam almost added son and chided himself for the near slip. As far as he knew he had never fathered a child. But he could not go around trying to make up for it by adopting Jack DeShane. Yet still the feeling was there. He was as linked to the younger man as he would have been to his own offspring. He felt Jack’s hurt as powerfully as one man could feel for another.

“Thanks, Sam," Jack said, then added, "thanks for coming to see about me."

"You’re in good hands." Sam smiled at Eileen.

"Try to get some sleep, Sergeant. Jack will be fine," Eileen called after him.

"Call me Sam," he replied, hitting the elevator button.

In the privacy of the elevator, Sam let the relief flood over him. He sagged a little against the upholstered wall, but his mind buzzed with questions. Jack did not know yet how mutilated his boy was. No one knew what the killer had used. The forensic pathologist or the coroner could help them on that. But Jack needed to be prepared for the shock of having to identify Willie’s remains. The grotesqueness of it made the veteran detective queasy. How do you ask a man, a father, to look on the mutilation of his child?

There were other questions too. What was the motive? They needed a psychological work-up on the killer.

And the weapon. It was no simple feat to behead someone, even a child. Where was the killer? Would he strike again or was this a one-shot? And if he did kill again, what kind of task force would it take to track him down?

Damnit, he was too old for this. He was retired. He must remember that. He should not be asking himself questions that might take months of diligent investigation to answer.

And yet Sam Bartholomew knew, from the uneasy stirring inside him, that he could not let it go. He was a bulldog with a rag in its teeth. He would worry it until it fell apart.

Chapter 12

BETTY LAWRENCE was wrestling with panty hose that refused to slip over her wide hips when she heard the news about Willie.

For three-quarters of an hour the sermon coming from the old brown Zenith radio was an inspiration to her soul. Reverend Phillip Wilco was a fiery preacher and his Sunday sermons set up Mrs. Lawrence for the service she later sat through at the nearby Assembly of God church.

But when the last "amen" had sounded from the radio and the choir finished "Amazing Grace," the news broadcast brought an abrupt end to Mrs. Lawrence’s religious fervor. The insane words coming from the Zenith turned her whole world upside down.

"And this just in--the ten-year-old son of Officer John DeShane of the Houston Police has been brutally murdered. Reports say the child was found in an empty lot on the south side of town last night. There has been no statement from the Chief’s office at this time. Officer DeShane is a patrolman who joined the force last year. An update on this and the rest of today’s news later in the hour. This is KTRH…” Mrs. Lawrence heard ringing in her ears that drowned out the radio. She looked down at herself and saw that she still had her hands caught in the waistband of her panty hose. She drew them up the rest of the way and dropped her skirt.

Willie!

She forced her feet into a pair of flat brown shoes before sitting down heavily on the bed. She wiped her hand across her eyes as if to deny what she had just heard.

Not Willie!

Taking a deep breath, she reached for her large pocket book, turned off the radio, and left her house.

She glanced up and down the street. The buses were not running this early on Sundays. She would have to walk most of the way.

Willie was Jack’s hope. His hope of heaven, that’s what the Reverend Wilcox would say.

Mrs. Lawrence walked a mile before she heard a city bus coming up behind her. She hurried to a bus stop and waited, coins poised in her sweaty palm. She had forgotten her coat, but no matter. She felt hot and damp all over.

She had her key out before she got to the door of the DeShane house. The car was not out front. Without knocking she unlocked the door and walked inside. The empty, tomb-like atmosphere focused all her emotion.

My little boy, she thought, in the awful stillness. Who would kill my little boy? Tears crowded her eyes and turned the world into a watery hell.

She spied a red and white football helmet lying on the sofa cushions. Willie wanted to be a running back. The coach thought he would make a good one.

Mrs. Lawrence moved to the helmet and picked it up by the chin strap. She caressed the smooth plastic dome. She began to cry, and the helmet fell from her hands to roll across the floor.

Put it away, she told herself. Willie will never be a football player. Or a policeman like his dad. Or an adult.

She wiped at the tears with a fierceness that surprised her.

Mrs. Lawrence began to search the house for all of Willie’s belongings. When she had her hands full, she took them to Willie’s bedroom and threw them in the closet until it bulged with jackets, socks that needed washing, and notebooks from school. She made a careful tour through every room in the house to make sure there was nothing left to remind Jack of the boy. She couldn't purge the boy from his father's heart, but she had to put Willie's things aside for a little while until the father could even stand to see them.

She did not think it through or consider whether her employer would want her to do it or not. She only knew it was for the best.

After making sure all of Willie’s things were in his room, she went to the kitchen and made a strong pot of tea. To keep busy she took out a skillet, margarine, and bread, and fried three pieces of toast. Willie hated toast from the toaster. It was too crusty and dry and hard. He liked the southern style toast fried to a slight crisp, smeared with plenty of margarine. Fried toast had become his favorite snack.

When it was finished, she sat at the table with the teapot, an old chipped cup and saucer she had brought from her home, and the toast. She sipped at the sweetened tea and stared forlornly at the toast. She was not hungry. What had she been thinking, frying the bread? Who was there to eat it? Who in this household would ever eat fried toast again? In all her fifty-six years she had only given way to her emotions once--when her elderly father had died sitting in the porch swing while she shelled peas, unaware he had died.

But as she looked at the fried toast all the hurt, grief, and anger poured out once again. She ran upstairs to the young boy’s room.

Kneeling at Willie’s bed, burying her head in his covers, Betty Lawrence wept as if she would never stop.

#

Clouds from the Gulf obscured what warmth the one o’clock sun promised.

Jack felt cold, so cold his teeth chattered as Sam led him to the porch. The six double Scotches had not warmed him. He carried another bottle in his arms, cradling it carefully because he knew he was not walking straight and it would make a mess if he dropped it.

Mrs. Lawrence heard them entering the front hall, but stayed at the table listening. She had dried her tears on Willie’s pillow and had no more to give. From the muttered sounds and the shuffling of feet through the house, she could tell Jack was drunk. It was no less than she expected. She heard Sam’s voice gently placating and prodding the young father toward his bedroom. Betty closed her eyes and waited. There must be something she was needed for.

Coming into the kitchen for a glass, Sam was startled to see her. "Mrs. Lawrence. How did you find out?" he asked.

She opened her eyes. "It was on the radio news."

"I’m sorry you had to hear it that way. I know you were fond of the boy."

"I loved him. He was a good boy." It was the first time she had used the past tense. She felt a catch in her throat and swallowed hard.

Sam waved the clean glass he took from the cupboard at her. "Jack had to make the identification. We’ve been at Danny’s Bar. He wants to drink himself to death right now, but he’ll make it. Someway."

"Yes," she echoed softly. "He’ll make it. I have a good mind to drink with him, but I’m fighting it since this is the Lord’s day." She snorted and looked down at her hands in her lap. "The Lord’s day," she repeated as if it were a joke.

Sam stayed behind the closed door of Jack’s room for an hour. Then he went to the breakfast alcove. He took Mrs. Lawrence’s hands and sat across from her.

"Tell me everything you know," she demanded. "I’ve been waiting.” Sam told her the whole story in a halting voice that kept veering off into sudden silences. He spared her none of the details because he knew her strength. If she was to console Jack, she had to know everything.

When he finished, Mrs. Lawrence withdrew her hands and pressed down her skirt into neat folds along her thighs. She had rushed the images of the boy’s killing from her mind as quickly as she could. No sense dwelling on it, she thought, because it will kill me. "I’ll make you a sandwich," she said, rising stiffly. "You must be hungry."

"I’m not hungry. I’ve got Scotch in my veins."

"Scotch is for the young cop!" she said with such vehemence that Sam jerked his head up at the sound of her voice. "The boy’s father can swig all he wants ’cause that’s his privilege, he needs it now. But you’re an old man. I hear you’re the smartest policeman this rotten dirty city's ever had."

When Sam started shaking his head in denial, she hurried on. "Don’t think I’m just a dumb nigger woman, Mr. Bartholomew. I've done my checking up on you. You got a reputation and some folks say you’re washed up. But I don’t believe that trashy talk. I lived in this town when you were the one in all the papers over that bunch of murders happened to those poor boys down in Pasadena. They only called in the best, and when they looked to Houston, they looked to you."

"That was a long time ago, Mrs. Lawrence," Sam said sorrowfully. "I’m retired now. I’m old. You said so yourself."

"Old’s nothing! Don’t mean nothing. You sat there and told me you think Willie’s killer is a...a..."

"Psychopath," Sam said.

"Right. You know all about that kind of crazy man. I don’t know why you ain’t already looking for him. You that’s got all the experience and know-how. And you tell me you don’t want to eat. No, you want to swill whiskey and throw up your hands!"

Sam stared at the black woman in surprise. He had never heard her speak more than a half-dozen words in his presence. She had been reticent bordering on subservient. Suddenly he smiled at her. It seemed to him he had not smiled for a year. "I like ham and cheese, hold the mayo," he said. "You might be able to talk me into a cup of that witch’s brew in your teapot if you’re nice about it."

Mrs. Lawrence adjusted the twin poodle pin on her bodice. The old geezer had some sense left, after all, she thought. Nobody could bring Willie back to them, but if anybody was going to pay for it, they all needed Sam Bartholomew out there trying to find a killer. "Cream and sugar or lemon?" she asked.

"Lemon."

"Coming up, Mr. Bartholomew. Just let me catch my wits. I swear they’ve run away from me." Placing a copper kettle on the stove, she stared at the flames. "I think I like him just fine," she said to herself.

Chapter 13

SUNDAY NIGHT was a dead night in Houston. After evening church services children were bathed and bedded. Husbands napped during the ten o’clock news and wives put away dinner dishes. Sunday nights brought an end to the listless weekend blues.

In the DeShane residence Betty Lawrence kept vigil. Jack had vomited twice, his knees on each side of the toilet bowl, his hands holding tightly to the white rim. He kept drinking. Oblivion was preferable to the ghostly images inside his head.

In Maggie Richler’s house Sam had a bad few minutes when it was obvious he could not perform in bed.

Maggie had thought sexual release would ease his tension. When she could not arouse her lover, she snuggled into the crook of his arm and fell asleep. Sam stared into the bedroom darkness and saw a madman’s face--a face that would not let him sleep.

Eileen McKenna canceled her evening appointment and went to bed by herself with Tobias, the cat, in her arms. She wished she held Jack instead.

And on the southwest side of Houston a man moved restlessly.

He knew it was too soon after the first kill, but he could not help himself. Not that he had not tried to control himself. After the Saturday night drive to Bloomington, he was exhausted and had slept late on Sunday. He was still exhausted, his body sluggish and his thoughts distorted. He felt as bloated and lazy as a dog tick. It was too soon.

So why was he in the unfamiliar section of the city with a keening in his ears and the garrote down his shirtfront? There was no answer.

He wore black. In the moonlight and the reflection of neon lights, he knew the bloodstains could not be detected. Blood in the night was black, its true color. He remembered the child’s blood running over his hands like streams of thick oil. He smiled.

#

"I’m going to scare the wits out of you tonight after the movie," Joe Northumberland said to his wife, Sherry. He gave a low guttural growl and leaned close.

"Oh Joe, stop it now. I won’t go if you start that."

Marjorie Sider smiled over her glass of wine at her friends. It almost made her wish she were married.

"Know what she did after seeing Halloween?" Joe asked.

“You’re poking fun, Joe," his wife said.

"She slept with the sheet over her head and clutched my arm all night. This is a grown woman?"

"I did no such thing." Sherry tried to look indignant.

"She did too. She’s a little ‘fraidy cat."

"Marge, he laughs at me, but it’s his fault I get so scared. On the way home from that movie he started telling me about haunted houses in South Carolina when he was a kid. He knows gobs of ghost stories."

"What about you?" Joe asked Marjorie. "Are you frightened of the bogeyman too?"

"I never thought about it much," she admitted. "I haven't been to a horror show in years. I saw some Vincent Price movies when I was a kid, and that cured me."

"I've seen some of those rerun on TV," Joe said. "Pretty spooky flicks. That pendulum swinging...that wax museum made of real people..." He finger-walked up his wife’s arm.

Sherry ignored him. "Wait until you see the movie tonight." She began to clear the dinner table. "It’s about a woman living on a lake alone and this creature comes out of the woods..."

"Don’t tell the whole story, Sherry," her husband warned.

Marjorie offered to help with the dishes, but Sherry waved her away.

"Take your glass to the living room. I’ll be finished here quick as a flash. We have to make that nine o’clock showing."

The Cinema II Theater was three blocks from the Northumberland’s apartment and five blocks from Marjorie’s place. The three friends walked the short distance enjoying the mild winter night.

The movie was one of Hollywood’s B-rated attempts at horror fantasy. It was so badly made that every time the creature was shown, it was obviously only a heavyset, hairy man with a large paunch crawling over props on a sound stage. The heroine was half-crazy, as usual, and the entire movie was her fearful childhood memories returning to haunt her.

Marjorie yawned through most of the film. Sherry munched popcorn throughout the splatter scenes. Joe was the one who paid careful attention to the story. He was silent during the entire hour and a half and repeatedly refused the popcorn and candy his wife kept offering him.

When the last scene faded from the screen. Marjorie was more than ready to leave the theater for the fresh night air.

"What did you think, huh?" Sherry asked on the way up the aisle as the lights were raised. "Wasn’t that scary?"

"I guess so. Although I think John Wayne’s old westerns have this kind of thing beat all out."

"John Wayne!" Joe pretended he was wounded, clutching his chest. "God, John Wayne movies suck humpbacked turtles.This stuff is camp, Marge. You get to use your imagination."

"It was graphic enough without imaging anything."

Joe had fallen behind the two women without their noticing. Suddenly he ran to his wife from behind with a grrrr sound. They turned to see him on his toes, his arms spread to grab them. "I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna eat ’em up, eat ’em up," he said.

Sherry skipped away and giggled. She pointed an accusing finger at her husband. "I’ll sleep under the bed tonight if you don’t quit."

Joe came down into a flat-footed lope, his brow in knitted thought. "Hey, you know what? I just thought of something really horrible."

"What?" Sherry took his arm and smiled over at Marjorie.

"We’ve got a real live creature of our own somewhere in this city. That’s freakier than any movie."

"You mean the headhunter?" Sherry asked. Her smile turned into a grimace.

"The what?" Marjorie was thoroughly confused.

"Didn’t you hear it on the news today?" Joe asked.

"No, I didn’t. What do you mean ‘headhunter’?"

"You mean you haven’t heard about that little boy near the South Loop who was found with his head missing?" Sherry asked.

"Missing?" Marjorie’s voice turned cold. She did not like the turn the conversation had taken. .

"Yeah, missing," Sherry said. "'They couldn’t find it."

Marjorie shivered. Movies were one thing, real atrocities were another. `

"There never was anything like it here before," Sherry continued, mistaking her friend’s silence for interest.

“Can you imagine how nutty the guy must be? Hell, I’m scaring myself again."

"Sherry calls him the headhunter," Joe explained. He glanced at Marjorie and smiled. "We shouldn’t be talking about this tonight. "

"I agree wholeheartedly," Marjorie said. "You’ll have me hiding under the bed."

After the good nights and thank yous were said, Marjorie Sider locked her apartment door with a relieved sigh. She slipped off her shoes and padded across the carpet, across the cool kitchen tile, and opened the refrigerator door. Looking at the milk carton, she thought about cholesterol, and chose the quart bottle of orange juice instead. She needed a lift, not clogged arteries.

After draining the glass, she rinsed it out, turned it upside down in the sink dish drainer, and started for the bedroom. The next day was a workday and Sherry was picking her up early. They were both fighting their way up from the secretarial pool, and at Brown and Root Engineering you had to be bright and eager to succeed.

In the bedroom, Marjorie avoided her image in the mirror as she undressed and put on a long pink nylon gown. With a quick motion she set the alarm and moved it closer to her pillow. It was only eleven, not too late to interfere with her upward mobility plans on the job.

Once in bed, with the lights out, Marjorie heard a tick. It was the silly clock on the kitchen stove. Because of some odd mechanical quirk, the tick came at irregular intervals, and it was so loud it carried through the apartment. Tick. Marjorie listened, letting the ticks lull her to sleep. Tick. Five seconds passed. Tick. How many ticks in a minute? She could not count them for that long. But the sound was a presence of sorts. Off center and unpredictable, but a presence nevertheless. It was not unbearable. Tick...tick...

Marjorie drifted off and dreamed of a June wedding.

#

The figure on the street was alone. He walked hunched forward, his hands in pockets, his jaw thrust forward. He might have been coming from a friend’s house or from an errand at an al1night store, but something about the way he carried himself showed he was not coming. He was going. He walked without glancing to either side. Every block or so he glared up at the night sky.

It was midnight. In a few strokes of the clock, Sunday, dead Sunday, would recede to the past. The only people awake were misfits, police, and insomniacs.

The man had watched from a long alley when the young couple dropped Marjorie Sider off at her apartment. He did not go in immediately. He saw her shut the door and then, agitated, he left the alley and began walking, arguing with himself. Too soon. It’s too soon.

By midnight he was back at her apartment. He moved softly. He entered the courtyard and started up the stairs to the second-floor balcony door. A deathly stillness crept over his mind. He heard a television droning somewhere. It was not nearby. A breeze ruffled his hair. He caught his breath and held it.

He reached her door. He thought he could hear a clock ticking inside. Cautiously he turned the doorknob and felt it catch. A grin spread across his face. Stepping back, he knocked firmly on the door the way someone in authority might knock in an emergency. Then it came to him what to say. He had not known until that very moment.

He waited. He knocked louder, more insistently. A sleepy voice called from behind the closed door, "What is it?"

"Gotta get out! There’s a fire!" he said loudly enough for her to understand the urgency, but not loud enough to wake her neighbors.

"What?" Marjorie opened the door in alarm. It caught on the safety chain and bounced shut, startling her.

She pressed her face close to the opening, sniffing for smoke.

He began his act. He jiggled up and down on his toes as if about to run. His eyes were wild, panicky. "Get out! Fire!" Then he pointed down the landing and vanished.

But he did not go far. Four feet away from her door he stopped and pressed up against the wall. He inched back.

She took the chain off the door, then one step outside. He grabbed her.

Inside he closed and locked the door with one hand , while holding Marjorie Sider’s mouth with the other.

She kicked and jerked, but he had her fast. A light spilled across the carpet from the bedroom. Again he decided on the spur of the moment what he wanted to do. He dragged her across the room to the stereo. He leaned over and grabbed the wire dangling from the wall plug. With one great lunge he tore the stereo wire free from the socket and the wood cabinet. The plug end whipped behind him and struck Marjorie’s thigh.

Murmuring softly to her, he lifted her and carried her to the bedroom. As he spun her onto the bed, he cuffed her once on the chin. It was enough. She fell onto the mattress unconscious.

It took less than three minutes to bind her with the wire and to stuff the end of a sheet into her mouth.

Marjorie came to as he was pulling her gown from her shoulders and slipping it down over her tied ankles.

She struggled. She looked at his face and her eyes grew large. She flung her head back and forth, trying to dislodge the gag. Her tongue was flattened to her teeth, and as she fought she felt the flesh tearing and blood oozing into the cloth. Sensing she was wasting precious energy in a useless struggle, she stopped.

Suddenly she saw what he meant to do to her. It was not what she expected. She thought she was to be a victim of rape. But when she saw the man take the garrote from his shirt, she knew it was a weapon, his weapon. She also knew her empty, paltry life was going to end. This was not a movie and not a nightmare. This was life slamming her in the face with the fact of her impending death. She spit at the gag and choked. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to say--but the wire was going around her throat--she wanted to beg him please, please, not this way, not this way, not...

Marjorie Sider’s last thoughts were of the boy who had died before her.

#

Things had to be correctly placed. The body, the pillow, the covers. The head was secure in a green plastic trash bag.

One last look at the woman. She was perfect. Her skin was still pinkish white. The blood seeping from beneath the pillow was the color of roses, blood-red roses. The bed looked like a whole bushel of them.

He let himself out the door after checking the landing and stairs and parking lot. He was as quiet as death come calling.

#

Sherry Northumberland was running late because once home from the movie, she had trouble sleeping. She had to pick up Marjorie and that would make them both late.

Finding no empty parking space in front of Marjorie’s building, Sherry left her car running and raced up the stairs. When Marjorie did not answer the door, Sherry went inside, wondering why it was unlocked when Marge never left it unlocked. Unperturbed at not finding her friend up, Sherry went to the bedroom with a good scolding ready on the tip of her tongue. How were they going to get out of the secretarial pool if they started running late?

At the doorway of the bedroom she paused. She smelled something strange. The shades were drawn and the room dark. Something was not quite right. Not at all.

“Marge? Why aren’t you up?" she called hesitantly.

Sherry saw the dried blood first. Creeping closer, she caught her breath. The smell grew stronger.

Sherry had mental flashes from old horror movies. They were pale in comparison to what she was seeing. Life was so much more intense than film, life was a sledgehammer where a movie was no more than a tiny ringing bell in the distance.

An intuitive voice warned her against touching the pillow. It was placed just so, resting partially on Marjorie’s chest and covering her head. It was spotted with blood stains.

But Sherry’s hand reached out for the pillow anyway.

Marjorie Sider was headless. The sheet around her neck was soaked with black splashes of blood. The room suddenly tilted. Screams boomeranged off the walls.

Sherry Northumberland fled the apartment in a mindless stagger and crumpled to a heap in warm morning sunshine outside, still screaming--still mindlessly clutching the bloody pillow from her friend’s bed.

Chapter 14

INSIDE THE OLD two-story red-brick town house, Nick dreamed. He lay on the newly upholstered Victorian sofa, his head on a pillow, his stockinged feet dangling over the wooden scroll armrest.

Outside a storm was brewing in the Gulf, and occasional drops of rain chinked against the windowpanes.

In Nick’s dream eyes were everywhere. Black Asian eyes staring into the night. Nick’s pulse quickened with alarm. He shuddered. The eyes were all around. He felt them on him, on his brother, and the other soldiers.

The moon was hidden behind thick smoky clouds, and the Vietnamese jungle was still as midnight. The Americans were trapped. They could not call out or signal. The Cong waited, hoping for a stupid move from the GIs. Nick and his platoon went right, slogging, tearing, their palms swelling with red welts. They doubled back cautiously, but not far. Finally they gave up and moved stealthily, padding across the forest floor with animal furtiveness into the limbo of the lost, the separated, the alone...

Nick sat up straight on the sofa, his eyes wide, unseeing. "I hate this fucking place!" he shouted, meaning the war, meaning Vietnam.

Daley had been reading an assignment for his literature course, and he nearly jumped from his chair. "Nick, what is it?" he asked.

Nick woke up. I’m not in Nam, he thought. I’m okay, I’m not gonna die.

"Nothing," he said, noticing he had frightened his brother. "Just a stupid dream."

Daley looked at Nick in concern. "They seem more frequent lately. Maybe you need more than Valium for your nerves."

Nick touched his forehead and found he was sweating. He rubbed his shirtsleeve across his face. "If I need something else, I’ll get it," he said defensively. "Like a lobotomy maybe."

"You and that smart mouth of yours. I don’t know why I bother."` Daley went back to his reading.

"All right, I’ll tell you,” Nick said, beginning to pace the living room. "I was dreaming we were back in Nam that night we were ambushed and lost our way."

Daley lowered the book and watched his big brother carefully. The memory of that horrible experience bloomed in Daley’s mind. No wonder Nick had awakened screaming that he hated the place. It had been the depths of hell, and it did not seem they were out of it yet, not completely.

"I could smell Charlie and I got that sinking in the pit of my belly like when I knew he was behind us," Nick continued. "The dream was a rerun of that night. Everything was the same, and I thought I was back there, trapped, lost. I wish to hell I could forget it. Just when I think I can forget it all, it comes back in my sleep."

"Did you tell the doctor about it when he prescribed the tranquilizers?" Daley asked.

"What the fuck’s a doctor know about Vietnam?" Nick erupted. "Doctors know shit about nothing but pills and padded cells."

"If you’d trust one enough to tell him what you’re dealing with, Nick--"

"What could he do about it?" Nick circled faster and faster, his arms moving erratically in front of him. "Is he going to wipe it out? Is he? Can he get inside my brain and tell me what to dream about? I can see it now. Crawling through my ear on his hands and knees, stirring up the gray matter, taking a mop to the shit inside."

Daley knew a good therapist might know how to deal with his brother’s problems. Surely someone could do something. Besides Nick’s being irritable and unreasonable, his nightmares were getting worse. It had become unusual to pass one night without being awakened by a scream from downstairs. Daley was not sure if they were living with a lunatic or if he was blowing everything out of proportion because he knew things about Nick that would frighten anyone.

Nick stopped walking and turned to Daley, a puzzled look on his face. "Something else has been bothering me," he said. "Did you see in the paper about a couple of murders that happened last weekend?"

"Everyone on campus is talking about it," Daley said cautiously. He did not like the dark light that had suddenly appeared in his brother’s eyes.

"They’re saying that some kind of wire was used." Nick was standing very still.

"I know." Daley sounded perfectly calm, but his thoughts were racing.

"Like maybe they were garroted," Nick suggested.

Before Daley could say anything, Madra appeared at the doorway of the living room carrying two suitcases. She was fully dressed although it was after ten in the evening and Daley had thought she had gone to bed earlier. She wore a long blue patterned skirt, high-topped boots, and the cape around her shoulders. For several seconds both men stared at her in amazement.

Nick recovered first. "Sorry to see you go, but if you’re bound and determined...” He put out his hands in a mocking gesture of helplessness.

"Daley, may I please speak to you alone?" Madra asked. Daley put down the book and stood slowly.

"What’s going on, Madra? What are you doing?" He walked to her, his hands out.

"I didn’t want it to end this way, Daley, but I didn’t have the courage to talk to you about it. I’m moving out. An old girl friend offered me her place in Montrose.”

Daley touched her arms and stared into her eyes, her strange faraway eyes. She was not seeing him. He shook her gently, his heart heavy. He knew she had been unhappy ever since the first day, but he had never thought she would leave without discussing it with him.

Her eyes rolled back into her head a bit and she swayed, still holding the suitcases.

Daley grabbed her and tried to mentally will her out of the seizure. "Madra, don’t leave me," he begged.

"Well, I think I’ll spare myself this little domestic scene," Nick said, going into the kitchen.

Madra came out of the trance and at once bit her lower lip. Tears welled in her eyes, and she stared at the center button on Daley’s shirt. "I’m sorry, Daley, really I am. I’ve tried hard with you. Harder than with anyone else in my life, but it’s not working. We’ve drifted apart…" She paused, and glanced away guiltily.

They both heard Nick making noises in the kitchen. "I can’t go on here. I’m between you and Nick all the time. You’re constantly defending me. I only make trouble for you.” She was trying to free herself from his arms, but not in any serious way. Daley was impotent to refute her reasoning, and something sagged within him. "Madra, listen to me. We can work this out. I know my brother’s a problem but..."

She shook her head sharply and pulled from his grasp. "Don’t, Daley. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I have to leave. I have to go tonight."

She hefted the suitcases and turned to the front door. She looked back, her eyes pleading with him to not prolong the misery. "Can you get the door for me, please?" she asked timidly. "You can always call me. I’ll be at Dina’s. You know her from Gilvert’s lit. class."

Daley straightened his shoulders in resignation and walked to her. He took the doorknob in his hand, then turned and drew her to him. His kiss was long and tender, and he felt her lips tremble. Then he released her and opened the door. "I don’t want you to go," he said softly, desperately. "I need you, Madra. You don’t know how I much I need you."

Madra smiled sadly and walked into the night without looking back.

Nick’s voice surprised Daley. "What’s up with our little Russian looking fashion model? Running out on you, is she?"

"I don’t want to talk about it." Daley shut the door sadly and locked it. He slowly walked to the living room and slumped into his chair.

"Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. She’s ‘Twilight Zone’ material, take my word for it. You’re better off without her." Nick's chatter was light and he appeared to be in high spirit.

"I said I didn’t want to discuss it, Nick."

"It’s just you and me, Daley," Nick persisted, standing over his brother. "Like always. We don’t need women like her. We don’t need woman at all. Except for special purposes, of course. But with her out of the way we can be ourselves, don’t you see that? She knew she didn’t fit in here. We can talk like we used to. We can--"

"Shut up, Nick! Just shut up!" The explosion hung in the room like a dark aftermath of a nuclear explosion.

Nick sat down on the sofa, and his face hardened. The jaw muscles tensed and in his eyes there was a banked fire. When he spoke again, his voice was frighteningly intense yet quiet. "I am not ready to shut up. You wasted months on the bitch and now you want sympathy. Don’t ask for it from me, Daley. I told you all along what a mistake it was. For you. For us. We didn't need her and you know it. You’ve always known we didn’t need them."

Daley wanted to argue, he really did. But there was truth in what his brother said. They had been together all their lives. They had shared a war. They had overcome the threat of death and madness. How could any woman expect to fully understand the things he and his brother had shared? He had been drawn to Madra because of her uniqueness and vulnerability, but he realized now those were the same qualities that bound him to Nick. He had wanted to love and protect them both, to take them under his wings like pitiful, backward children and guide them through life. Was that a good enough reason to love a woman? Had Madra understood on some level that his love for her was more brotherly than romantic? Would he always fail with women because he lacked that dominating, aggressive drive and that devotion they expected from a man?

"I’m so tired," Daley muttered, rubbing his eyes.

"You should go to bed,” Nick said in a soothing voice. "You’ll feel better about this tomorrow. You’ll get a grip on yourself.”

Daley nodded. He looked at his brother compassionately. If everyone else deserted him, Nick would always be there. Nick was his blood, his right arm, his shelter. He did not have to prove himself to Nick or swear allegiance or utter devotion or the promise of steady comfort. Nick was his brother. His family. If he lost everything else and his world collapsed into blackness, he would still have Nick. They would never have to fear loneliness as long as they were both alive.

Daley smiled at his brother. "I’m all right," he said. "I think I’ll go to bed. You’re right. Tomorrow things will look better." He paused. "But I will miss her." He stood and went to the stairs. "I’ll miss her more than I can tell you."

Nick stared at his brother’s back with an odd expression of peacefulness and contentment on his face. At last, he thought.

Chapter 15

IT HAD BEEN two weeks since Marjorie Sider’s murder. February was a mimic, a soft pretender to spring. Houston’s temperature rose to the high seventies and stayed there. Nights were still cool and the winds often gusty, but the days sparkled. Marjorie was buried on one of those fake spring days, her father shuffling his feet in embarrassment at the graveside. He stared at the ground and wished he was home in San Antonio, away from the curious, pitying stares of the strangers attending his daughter’s funeral.

Though he was introduced to Marjorie’s friends, they were not his friends, and during the service he suffered, knowing the strangers knew of his daughter’s mutilation. They knew she had to be buried headless. It was such a total embarrassment that he left before the end of the service, jumped into his rickety ’69 Chevrolet, and headed back to his apartment, where he could feed the mongrel dogs he collected and pretend he had never been a father.

Five days after Marjorie’s burial the killer left his home at seven in the morning. His destination was uncertain, as was his victim. He only knew that he would kill another woman and that she must be very old.

If he could kill an old woman, he would be purged. He might even be able to stop his killing. He would be cleansed in the blood. The child and the other woman were not enough. People were calling him a serial murderer. He was not sure what that meant, but he liked the sound of it.

After it was determined the heads of his victims had been cut from their bodies with a length of wire, one newspaper dubbed him "Wireman." It was a catchy phrase, and he hoped they would use it again. He almost called the reporter who first used it and told him he appreciated his insight, but then decided that would be too much like bragging. They might misinterpret what he was doing and think he was doing it for media attention, and what could be farther from the truth? Besides, he had no desire to communicate with the authorities anyway. Let them guess. Let them organize task forces. Let them turn all their wonderful deductive and scientific powers of investigation in his direction. He had no urge to help them.

He drove toward Galveston, continuing to think his erratic but pleasant thoughts. Before he was far outside the city limits of Houston, he changed his mind, exited Highway 45, made a U-turn, and headed for southeast Houston. He drove around Hobby Airport and parked once along Telephone Road to watch the jets take off and land. At nine-thirty he walked into the Ramada Inn restaurant across from the airport complex and had a cup of coffee. He stared at a barren tree, a real tree dug up from the soil and set into cement in a copper canister, looped in small white Christmas lights. The holiday season was long past. He could not make sense of the peculiar piece of decoration. The room was too festive for warm February, too bright and cozy for his mood.

He paid for his coffee and left. He drove through various subdivisions in southeast Houston looking for a house. It was no good trying to kill someone on the streets in broad daylight. As he cruised down one street of older homes, he spied an old woman in a badly ironed cotton dress emerge from her home and start toward the street. He parked beneath a pecan tree and watched the elderly woman in his rear-view mirror as she walked to the corner. He could just make out the bus-stop sign.

She was the one--his intended victim. If she was taking a bus, her home would be empty for hours. He could break in and wait for her. Simple. Easy. The elderly were not any problem. They had witnessed the face of death many times throughout the years.

He stroked his thighs, kneading the knotted muscles of his knees. He saw her board the city bus. He backed up the street and turned into the gravel driveway that wound behind her house. He was careful, so careful.

His eyes watched the neighboring houses for fluttering curtains in the windows. No dogs barked.

He jimmied the wood-frame backdoor with a knife blade. It creaked and gave easily. Inside he paused, adjusting to the dim light. The house smelled as old as the woman. Old house. Old woman. He crinkled his nose at it.

He spent an hour leisurely searching the rooms. There were hairy dust balls beneath her rusty metal bed, layers of dust on the ancient and scarred furniture. When the mailman came up the front steps to deliver the old woman’s mail, the intruder ducked behind a heavy chair and waited until he heard the envelopes fall into the slot. Not a dog barked. Curious, no dogs. That was a puzzle, no dogs. Yet it was all part and parcel of a master plan. Things were going his way.

Around noon he searched the refrigerator for something to eat, but could find nothing except an open can of sardines floating in congealed tomato sauce, one stiffened square of American cheese, and a few wilted green onions. There were no covered leftovers and the cabinets were nearly bare. What did she eat? Did she survive on water and air? She should be glad to die and get it over with. Why linger on in misery? She should be grateful she was the chosen. He would wait until afterward to eat.

He amused himself by looking through drawers. He read old shriveled letters dated thirty years earlier. He found a shoebox of yellowed receipts. He found stacks of magazines with tattered edges. Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, and Saturday Evening Post were piled on each other. He put everything back carefully where it belonged. The thin rubber gloves he wore insured anonymity. They were smart, but he was smarter. It was somewhat frightening to learn they knew he used a wire. But they would know nothing more. Not if he could help it.

Toward evening he began pacing. The house was becoming oppressive with its poverty and dust and smell of age. What if the old lady had gone off to spend the night elsewhere? He would give her until twilight, no longer. With the setting of the sun he would leave her house and she would be spared. On the streets, in the dark, he would eventually find another old woman.

He paced like a panther in a cage.

#

Jennie Sargosie celebrated her seventy-seventh birthday with a slice of hot apple pie and a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s. It was an event to travel to downtown Houston. It entailed walking four blocks from her white clapboard home to the suburban bus stop. It also meant switching to a cross town bus after braving the freeway and finally being pushed and shoved on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s.

Jennie did not like riding the bus with all the smart-mouthed little brats and the hostile foreign women. Mostly Mexican women, the ones who shouldn't even be here.

When she had to share a seat with one of them, she shrank closer to the window, turning her head away in anger. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of perspiration, lifted her pale blue eyes at the cheap, bright clothes. Houston was not becoming an international city the way they claimed it was on TV. Long ago Jennie had decided Houston was turning into a cesspool. One day it would die from the diseased humanity that clogged its streets.

Jennie had papers and photographs proving her ancestors had come to Houston in wagons all the way from West Virginia. That this same family had emigrated from a tiny, poverty-ridden village in Ireland did not change her attitude toward "foreigners." Houston belonged to her and her kind, and it was being given away to people who could hardly speak English. And it was a crime.

All of her family was dead--all but herself and one badly bred grandson who had hitch-hiked to California during the hippie era. She had not heard from the boy again and she did not care to. His mother had been her own flesh and blood, but the child’s father was Mexican-American so the boy was lost from the start.

Jennie viewed the changing world as an increasingly alien place. Her small house was paid for, but she had to live frugally on a Social Security check. Sometimes in the dark of night when she was loneliest and most susceptible to self-pity, she wished she might come down with pneumonia or a heart attack and let it all end. It was terrible to be seventy-seven, arthritic, frail, unloved, and bored.

At the counter in Woolworth’s Jennie marveled over the flavor of the apple pie. She lifted a forkful to her mouth and chewed it slowly. Her gums hurt where her ill-fitting dentures rubbed, but the pie was worth the pain. The coffee too was a prize. It always tasted better downtown at Woolworth’s. She sipped it with relish.

Jennie fingered the black cloth bag beside her saucer. She had six dollars and forty-two cents she could splurge without throwing her monthly budget totally off. After the delightful pie and coffee she thought she would look around for something to get as a birthday present to herself.

It did not strike Jennie as pathetic to have to buy her own presents. She had long since forgotten how once she had been surrounded by a husband and family, forgotten how she once had money for luxuries. Every birthday for the past ten years she had put aside money for the bills she owed, money for food, and took whatever was left over for the trip downtown. Each year the birthday allowance dwindled because of rising expenses, but even if it were only a dollar, it would suffice.

A woman dressed in a tailored, white linen suit sat next to Jennie. Occasionally the woman glanced over and frowned to show her disgust for the old woman. Jennie noticed. She deliberately held the fork in front of her before theatrically licking the last crumbs from the tines. She slanted her eyes at the lady, wondering if she were Mexican because she sure was dark.

"I ain’t bothering you," Jennie said loudly. "Go on and move if you don’t like it."

The woman blanched and moved down two stools.

The waitress had heard Jennie’s remark. She brought the coffeepot to the counter. "More?" she asked. Her eyes traveled over the old woman’s plain dark cotton dress and raveled white sweater.

"Had my fill, thank you very much. I’ll be paying my check now. Don’t think I’m welcome around here no ways."

Jennie paid the outrageous sum of a dollar-ten for the pie and coffee and walked off into the store grumbling.

Woolworth’s was nearly deserted. Salespeople stood around looking bored or walked the aisles fingering the merchandise. Jennie took her time wandering from one department to another. The number of things money might buy in just this one department store was an amazing show of shoddy merchandise, she thought. Most of it made by foreigners. "No one cares about quality these days," she mumbled.

She approached a shelf of knickknacks and picked up a tiny figurine. She turned it upside down to read where it had been made. “Figures!” she said loudly when she saw Taiwan stamped on the bottom.

The figurine was nice. It was of a girl in a long blue dress. In the girl’s hand was a rainbow-striped umbrella, as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. It would look pretty on a windowsill. The girl in blue could watch over the weather and predict the warm spring rains that were sure to follow Houston’s cold winter.

From the corner of her eye Jennie saw a saleslady approaching and put the blue girl down. She had not yet decided to spend four dollars and ninety-five cents on a piece of Oriental junk. She sidled away quickly.

It was great fun pretending she might buy anything her heart desired. She stood over the embroidery section a long time contemplating the pretty work that could be done on pillowcases, scarves, and aprons.

But her hands were too stiff with arthritis to hold a needle for any length of time.

In the pet department she watched tropical fish cavort through plaster castles and treasure chests that opened with a hundred bubbles every few seconds. She was so enthralled she missed the approach of a small black girl who wore a name pin in a prominent position on her blouse.

"Want some fish, ma’am?"

Jennie jumped. Her eyes filled with contempt as they settled on the black salesgirl.

"No, I don’t ’spect I’l1 be needing no fish. Think I’m out to steal ’em, do you?"

The girl did not blink. She looked Jennie up and down evenly.

“Why you staring like that, girl? You got nothing better to do?" Jennie was more than a little flustered. "Get outta my way. Tend to your old fish."

The girl refused to move, so Jennie did her best to swish the full cotton skirt as she went around her. It was ten minutes before she could calm down enough to consider birthday presents again. She glanced at her feet, which were sending sharp jabs of pain up her legs. The tan patent leather of her shoes was cracked where the tops of her feet always swelled, and the cracks were pinching the flesh badly. It was a long trip back home, and by the time she got to the rocker and hassock in her living room she would hardly be able to walk.

Although she had not seen everything in the store, it was necessary to make her choice. She bought the figurine. The rest of her anger melted away as she looked at the rainbow colors of the umbrella.

"Wrap it for me," she commanded the woman who took her money.

As the figurine was being covered with white tissue paper she decided the present deserved a box too. For four ninety-five a person should at least get a box. "Put it in a box," she ordered.

"It don’t come with a box." The sales lady’s voice was close to a snarl. She put the blue girl in the bottom of a thin paper bag.

“I don’t care if it comes in a doggie bag, I want a box for it," Jennie said firmly.

She got her way. She usually did. She knew she was often crotchety and rude, but she did not care. What had the people in this city ever done to deserve courtesy? Had good manners made life more comfortable for her? They had not.

Only the ornery got what they asked for these days. The nastier and more demanding you were the more respect you received.

The bus ride home was as bad as Jennie had thought it would be. The downtown bus was packed with city workers returning home. At first she could not find a seat and thought she would be forced to stand. There were not any gentlemen around anymore to give a lady a seat. The bus lurched two blocks before Jennie, in a state of near panic, spied an empty place in the back. It was between two Hispanic women with parcels heaped in their laps.

"Can I sit down here?" Jennie asked. She intended to sit anyway, but the lady by the window had an imposing look about her. "I gotta sit down," Jennie added, pressing past the aisle woman’s knees.

Finally squeezed into place between them, she hawked her elbows close to her sides to keep contact with them minimal. Tacos, hot sauce, refried beans. Sweat, greasy hair, unwashed clothes. Jennie gagged at the revulsion that crept up her throat.

When Jennie finally unlocked her front door, she was beyond exhaustion. Before unwrapping the birthday present, she went to the big rocker in the corner and put her stockinged feet on the blue vinyl hassock.

Closing her eyes, she relived the day and found it partially rewarding. The pie and coffee were good. The umbrella girl was a stroke of good luck. But the rides back and forth!

She woke with a start and realized she must have fallen asleep. She still had the box in her hands. Glancing at her feet she saw the brief rest had helped the swelling. As she began to unwrap the figurine something stopped her fingering through the tissue paper. A premonition. A chill that rolled down her spine.

She held still for several seconds, pondering the feelings. Sloughing it off as a bad case of birthday nerves, she finished pulling tissue from the umbrella girl. Getting slowly to her feet, Jennie took the figurine to the front window and set her on the sill looking out at the ending of the day.

Then the premonition returned. Someone was in the house! She knew it without turning around or searching the rooms. She knew it in her old aching bones. Fear took over, but she fought for control. She watched her hands begin to shake as if they no longer belonged to her, but she would not succumb to irrational fear. How dare someone come into her home! How dare they lurk in the shadows and deliberately frighten an old, defenseless woman!

She whirled and saw a split-second imagine of a man’s head as it pulled back around the door facing in the hall. A surge of indignation carried Jennie across the room. She had her hand on the doorjamb exactly where she had seen the face seconds before. Peering into the darkness beyond the hall, she could see nothing that might be a man. To reach the light switch she would have to step into the darkened room. She hesitated, then called out, "What do you want?"

The silence that followed made her falter. Why had she not run out the door rather than toward this fearful confrontation? Someone was hiding and what was it he might do to her? "Answer me! Answer me this minute! You come out of there. I don’t have nothing worth stealing." Her voice was strong and steady, but that wasn't how she felt.

She supported herself against the wall. Tension held her erect, but there was a fuzzy line creeping up her vision. She could feel the blood in her head thumping wildly. Quick bites of pain slicing through her chest.

She thought she would rather die than endure this horrible, waiting, creeping silence.

"You have something worth stealing. You have your life," a voice said from the darkness.

He came to the door, the game at an end; the serious time of killing had arrived. He found her on the floor in a faint. He checked the pulse in her bony wrist. At least he had not been cheated.

He lifted her light body and carried her outside. He had to get out of the house, have her on his own, in his own way, not surrounded by the putrid smell of rotten oranges and dust. He put her in the car and left the neighborhood. They were on a little used highway in an industrial area bordering southeast Houston before she awoke whimpering.

“Shut up, old woman," he snapped.

She sat up in the back, looking around her in confusion. Gray hair spread untidily around her gaunt face and a tic began in her left eye. He could hear her breathing hard, and her fear thrilled him.

"You let me out of here," she said, but it was a whimper, not a strong command. "What do you want with me? Where are you taking me?"

He smiled at her, and she was stayed quiet.

Ahead was a barren spot. He pulled onto the shoulder of road where a beaten grass path led to a wide drainage ditch.

"Where are we going?" Jennie cried as he hauled her out onto gravel. She spoke into his face, his strange, expressionless face. "I don’t believe this." She searched through her mind for a code, a bit of advice, some reasonable argument that might stop the man from harming her. She giggled and sobbed at the same time.

He had her hidden behind tall grass. He let go of her arm and fiddled with his shirtfront.

Jennie backed away from him on her hands and knees, scurrying backward like a startled crayfish. There was a clay-like mud in the ditch that stuck to her hands. Horrified at the filth she was in, she looked up at the monster in the last light from the setting sun. There was something swinging back and forth, back and forth from his right hand. It hypnotized her and she stopped, staring.

He was speaking to her. She strained to hear. "This is merciful and clean," he whispered. "Tell them I sent you home."

She struggled for breath. None of his words made any sense to her, no sense whatsoever.

The killer stepped behind her and wrapped the wire around her shivering throat. She fought very little, surprisingly little, but it might have only seemed that way to the killer, whose strength had met no real match. Bones cracked and blood flowed, leaped to meet the ground, flowed once more.

The killer stood quietly for several minutes. Sated. He imagined himself within the old woman’s blood as it seeped into the ground, dripped, streamed, seeped. Finally he walked three feet to his left and picked up her head by the spiky gray hair. Then carefully, fondly, he positioned the head on her flat chest. She had fallen back gracefully and looked as peaceful as any corpse in a silken casket.

He hiked a shoulder, squatted beside the body, and peered at her eyes. "I don’t want you on my land," he told her quietly. "I’ll leave you here for them to find. All of you. Only you."

He chuckled and tapped two fingers lightly on her hair. His hands scooted down the length of her still body, straightening the cotton dress. The head suddenly unbalanced and rolled from her chest. He reached for it beside her arm and pressed it down into the sunken rib cage until it was lodged in place. He noticed one brown support hose sagged around her calf and pulled the stretchy material up tight. Finished. When they found her, no one could complain he had left her in a mess. She was as neat as death by garroting could leave her. Except for the odd placement of her spiky gray-haired head, she might only be asleep and dreaming of apple pie and strong good coffee.

#

Jennie Sargosie had been dead two weeks before her body was discovered. Two surveyors stumbled across her lying stiff and decaying in the drainage ditch. One of the surveyors turned his back and retched miserably before scrabbling up the slight hill to the highway. The other surveyor stooped and curiously poked at the severed head, which still miraculously sat on the chest cavity. He could tell it was an old woman because of the dress, but without it he would not have been sure. There had been too many warm days in February, and maggots and ants had eaten away part of her face to expose the right cheekbone. But none of the desecration was as terrible to contemplate as the open empty neck. The surveyor would not pursue his morbid instinct to look at it closely.

Yet during the hour and a half before the police arrived the curious surveyor satisfied his thirst for gory detail by looking over the rest of the corpse from every conceivable angle. He even got on his hands and knees and turned his head upside down to stare up into the shriveled hole of her nose to see if he could catch sight of the brain. He lifted her skirt with a stick to see what she wore underneath. Her slip stuck to her thigh, however, and he let the skirt drop back into place.

That night he told his wife everything he had done. He was surprised and hurt when she went to their bedroom and locked the door on him. He never mentioned the old woman again. But he dreamed of her often. She reminded him of his grandmother. It was a pity the murderer had cut off her head. The surveyor knew it was an act of depravity, but most of all it seemed to him such a damn pity.

Chapter 16

SAM BARTHOLOMEW sat on a bar stool in Danny’s Bar drinking Seven and Seven with Jack DeShane, who was putting him under the table with Scotch on the rocks.

"Number three," Jack said. His tongue was not working too well, but Sam understood every word he said and some he did not say.

"Yes, but a change in the pattern of the killing," Sam pointed out.

"What do you goddamn make of it--putting her head on her chest that way?” Sam knew that as the night and the drinking progressed, Jack’s use of the word "goddamn" would increase to the point of idiocy.

"Could be any number of reasons. Maybe he’s running scared, ready to retire his act. Could be something else though--pity, grief at what he’d done--"

"Goddamned monster got no pity," Jack interrupted. "Had no pity for Willie. For that woman in her bed, her goddamn bed with the pillow."

Sam rapped loudly on the bar for refills. He did not want to think too much about the specifics of the murders when he was in public. He might lose control and do something. Smash the frosted mirrors behind the bar. Wreck the tables and chairs.

"In a dirty ditch," Jack mumbled into his Scotch. "Grabbed her in her own home and drove her there. Goddamned shame I’ve not found him yet, the lowdown evil bastard."

"I know." Sam studied his young friend. He desperately wanted to pat Jack’s shoulder, but he couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Things like that between men didn’t do much good. You just suffered stoically. Goddamned shame.

Jack continued to stare into his Scotch. "When I came out of the service, I shoulda gone to Merkel, Texas, and stayed on my dad’s place. He wanted me to. He goddamned begged me. But I had to join the force, be on a big goddamn city police force." He turned to Sam and gazed at him forlornly. "Why’d I do that, Sam?

We’d be all right now if I’d got outta here.”

"Yeah, maybe." But Sam knew Willie might have died wherever the DeShanes had lived. Or would he?

But that was past. The boy was dead, buried. So were the two women. The Wireman had to be stopped before he killed someone else. But how?

There had been a bit of skin beneath Willie’s fingernails but no blood. He had scratched his killer, fought him, struggled to the last to survive. Oh God. There was not enough evidence. No eye-witnesses. The victims appeared to be picked randomly, the motive could be anything from a vast feeling of inferiority to mother-hate. All they had was the weapon. A wire. Probably a garrote. Could be home-made. And tremendous strength. The Wireman had fearsome power. A wrestler? Boxer? Karate? Athlete? Probably young to go with his strength. Height, six foot or more. And that is all the police had. A wire, muscles, youth. Goddamn.

"I wish they’d let me work," Jack said, motioning for another round. It was last call, almost two in the morning. Mrs. Lawrence would be waiting for him. Maggie waited too, her dreams light, her arms ready to wrap Sam close and warm. "They won’t let me goddamn work!"

"It’s best, Jack," Sam explained yet again. "For a while. "They’re afraid...

"I know what they’re goddamn afraid of. Me turning vigilante. Well, by God, they’re right. I’m patrolling every day on my own. I’m asking ’round. If I catch the bastard, he’s goddamn dead. Dead, Sam!”

Sam sighed and took his drink. He knew he would do the same if it were his child who had been mutilated and murdered. And he was not sure he could trust himself to handcuff the killer if he caught him either.

Without witnesses it would be so easy to rid the world… But the law was law. However ineffective it was becoming, however unbalanced the scales of justice, it was the law.

"That’s why you’re on leave of absence, Jack. They’re doing all they can. The trail’s cold. It’s been cold for weeks. We’re going to have to luck into this one."

Jack sobered a little. "And he’s changing his pattern, which means...?"

“We’re nearer. He knows it. He’s weakening. He may want to quit."

"Lets get the goddamn outta here." Jack stumbled from the stool and caught Sam’s arm for balance. "Mrs. Lawrence said next time I did this she’d move back in her own house. Then I'd be alone."

“She won’t leave," Sam assured his friend as he helped him to the door. On the street he saw nothing but a drunk puking into a sewer. He aimed Jack at the passenger side of the Monte Carlo.

"I can drive, doan worry. Lemme do it," Jack protested.

"I’ll drive. You ride. Go to sleep, Jack. Try to go to sleep."

It was only three blocks to the house, but by the time they arrived Jack was snoring. Sam lifted him to his feet and managed to get him up the walk. Mrs. Lawrence opened the door, clucking her tongue and swishing her faded blue house robe behind her. Sam settled the younger man on the bed, took his shoes off, and covered him with a light blanket before letting himself out.

Maggie was waiting for him. To enfold him. To keep his face from staring into the dark for the rest of the night.

Sam woke near daybreak and left Maggie’s side. He sluffed around the bedroom in his loose boxer shorts until he found his old suit pants. After dressing haphazardly, zipper half undone, shirt hanging out, one of his socks inside out, he went to the kitchen and found two Danish that were none too fresh. In his own bedroom on the second floor he brewed coffee to drink with the rolls. He left the bed-table drawer closed, the bourbon bottle lying on its side. No more drinking during the day. If he had been in a state of deterioration, all that was past.

"All I needed was a case to work," he said to himself.

He realized that he had been a fool to retire early. He should have bucked it out, found a way to ride the changing waves. The beat cop with rank was a thing of the past. He should have tried to change. It would have been hard to take orders from a shave-tail brass with book learning and to overlook the growing number of cases thrown out of court. Maybe he could not have changed many things, but he hadn't stayed to try either, and that was was his own stubborn fault.

He wiped one hand over his bald head and frowned into his coffee. Had he been on the force, could he have prevented Willie’s murder? Very doubtful. But if he were still on the force, he might be head of the investigation rather than being reduced to bullying his way into the middle of this case. He wouldn’t have to be using a cop like Garbo to feed him information.

"Dammit! " Sam knew he had to find the killer, the most mentally warped killer Houston had ever seen.

Somehow he had to find the man.

Standing at the window, Sam drew back the curtain and let his mind wander over what the department had so far. Strength, muscles, youth, a garrote. His thoughts rolling along the same groove, he thought of men who would be muscular: wrestler, boxer, athlete, karate expert…

Part of his mind clicked suddenly. Karate expert. Wire. Karate?

Sam could hardly wait for nine o’clock so that he could telephone karate schools. He finished off the whole pot of coffee, his stomach beginning to burn with the acid.

Maggie came to his room before leaving for work. "You don’t eat right," she said. "You consume anything that’s lying around and think that’s all right. I’ll cook you a steak for dinner tonight. Count on it."

Sam’s thoughts were far away from dinner. He tucked in his shirt, noticed the half-undone zipper, tightened his black leather belt a notch, and sucked in his gut.

He made a list of the victims and tried to find a common denominator. Child, young woman, old woman.

Nothing, Male, two females. Nothing. Hair color, height, weight, nothing matched. Killed near old empty houses, inside an apartment, in a ditch. Nothing in common. He looked at his watch again. Forty minutes until any karate schools would he open. Forty minutes to see if his hunch meant a damned thing.

#

"The garrote had its origins in the Spanish Inquisition," explained a young-sounding man at the first school Sam called. "It was a method of strangling with an iron collar tightened by a screw."

"How does one not only strangle but decapitate with a garrote?"

There was a slight intake of breath, a hesitation on the other end of the telephone. "Does this have to do with the recent murders in Houston? "

"Yes." Sam waited.

"I read where they were calling him the Wireman."

"Yes, but how is he doing more than strangling the victims?"

The voice became thoughtful. "He’s strong, extremely strong. A garrote can snap a two-by-four in half with sufficient force. That must be what he’s doing--giving the handles one hell of a yank. If the wire can cut through thick wood, it can slice through--"

"I got the idea," Sam interrupted.

"Sorry." The young man seemed to hesitate.

"What is it? Have you thought of something else?" Sam asked.

"Uh, yeah, sort of . This might have nothing to do with your man."

Tell me and I’ll decide that."

"Vietnam. Sometimes garrotes were used in Nam. The Viet Cong used them. Quick, silent death. Used in guerrilla warfare--which as you know they were masters at."

"The Cong used them? "

"Maybe some of our guys. Maybe some of them took them off the Cong. I guess it's possible."

Another clink fell into place in Sam’s mind. "Thank you. You’ve been very helpful, but tell me something else."

"Anything I can," the instructor said quickly.

"Do any of your students or any of the black belts use a garrote?"

"Oh no, the garrote isn’t something we teach, karate doesn't have anything to do with it. I don’t know anyone who’s ever mentioned having one."

"Okay, thanks."

"Will any of this help nail the guy?” the young man asked.

"If he’s a Vietnam veteran, it will. It surely will."

Sam put down the phone thoughtfully. He knew his hunch was paying off. It sounded right. It made sense.

As much sense as any clue did on this type of case. At least they could check it out.

He dialed the precinct and waited patiently while being put through to Garbo Kranz, official head of the investigation on the case. "I’ve got something," Sam said.

"I hope to hell you do. This place is crazy. We’re chasing our asses." Kranz sounded beyond frustrated. He sounded like a man gritting his teeth.

"Start checking out the returned Vietnam veterans in Houston.”

There was a long silence. "You gotta be kidding. You’re talking thousands of names. That’s many man hours, Sam.”

"Listen Garbo, the Cong used garrotes. The killer might have taken one. It’s not a weapon you can purchase very easily at a pawn shop, you know. Start with the branches of service that had special training of some kind--Green Berets, Navy Seals, the Special Reconnaissance. Look up local servicemen with mental records or guys given Section Eights. It’s the only lead you have, Garbo."

"Jesus, the paperwork involved--”

“Do you want to stop him?” Sam snapped.

"What kind of question is that, Sam?" Garbo was offended and put that into his question.

"If you want him, you’ll start checking the records. Today.”

"Yeah, I know you’re right and it is the only lead, but this whole damn city’s overflowing with veterans." The younger cop was tired just thinking about all the paperwork involved.

"Then you best get started. Unless you want murder number four in your lap and the mayor down your throat.” Sam was getting impatient with Garbo.

“God…”

"Ask for His help too. You may need it. Keep me posted, and if you need an extra man for legwork I’m free.”

Sam hung up and sat looking at the telephone. Garbo knew it was a long shot. A garrote could be made with piano or guitar wire and two wooden handles. A kid could make one, an idiot could make one. It did not have to come from Nam. It was only a long shot. But that is what they were usually reduced to following, because that is all they had.

To the mental list of a muscular, young, strong, careful killer, Sam added Vietnam. It was not enough, but it was better than nothing.

Chapter 17

JACK DESHANE sat in a gold brocade chair across from Eileen. He was dressed in dark blue slacks and a sweater, but Eileen only wore a thin lacy lilac gown that came to her ankles. Jack squirmed a little in the chair and fought the impulse to move to the sofa near her. He sloshed the Scotch around in his glass and watched the ice cubes swirl. He was almost sober. Hung over and beginning another bender, but so far he was not mindlessly drunk.

"I’m going to stop drinking," he announced, and realized he was speaking louder than he had meant to. He licked his lips and looked away from Eileen.

"I thought you would, Jack. Just as soon as you..." She let the sentence trail off to keep from reminding him of Willie. But it did not matter. He had never stopped thinking of Willie.

"I mean it, though. I’m stopping. Yesterday I almost had a wreck because I drove under the influence. What a joke that is, a cop who almost got busted for D.W.I. I can’t keep doing things like that."

"Come sit beside me Jack." Eileen patted the cushion beside her hopefully.

He shook his head. "Not yet. In a little while, Eileen. I just want to talk.”

She settled back comfortably and crossed her legs, her eyes staying on Jack’s face. When he put the unfinished drink down on the table beside him, she relaxed even more. "Do you like this apartment?" she asked.

Jack stared through the wall of windows into the sparkling city night beyond. “It’s too rich for me,” he said softly. "I’m used to worn carpets and big kitchens where too many owners have painted the cabinets too many times."

"This is too modern? Too high up?"

"Too rich," he repeated, but no hint of reproof was in the observation.

"You wouldn’t like to stay here with me for a while, shut out all that down there?" She gestured with one hand to the city sprawled below them.

"Are you making an offer?"

“I think we could call it that. " Eileen smiled.

“What about your clientele? Wouldn’t they miss you?"

"They know other women to go to. I don’t live by a schedule. I live the way it pleases me most." She saw his attention had strayed once again to the city nightlights.

"Jack? I want you to stay. I want to help.”

He turned to gaze at her. "Thanks for the offer, but..." His voice faltered.

"It’s too rich, right?”

“You know what I want, Eileen. I want you, living with you, marrying you if you’d let me, but my dreams could never include this lavish apartment or a bird’s nest view of Houston. It’s a little more down to earth. A little more common. I’ve never seen myself as a kept man.” His sad smile revealed more than his words. "What would the department say?"

"You’re incredibly old-fashioned, Jack, an incurable romantic. I used to be a romantic too," Eileen said softly.

"What changed you?"

Eileen looked down at the cushion beside her. "I won’t lie and say it was the school of hard knocks. It wasn’t. In high school I became one of Jean Barret’s top models for two years. I had a respectable portfolio. If I’d gone to the Ford Agency in New York or tried for L.A., I might have been another Cheryl Tiegs." She laughed suddenly at her immodesty and crossed her legs.

"Why didn’t you?" Jack realized that Eileen had always shied away from talking about her past. He wished he were a bit more sober.

"My roots here were too deep, I guess. I’ve asked myself why I didn’t try for it. All it would have taken was a plane ticket to either coast, my credits and pictures tucked under my arm. Maybe there’s something too stubbornly Texas about me. I couldn’t leave home. Then I realized that if I didn’t leave, modeling was a dead-end career for me. Once you turn down too many offers, they stop calling, and you can’t stagnate. You either move onward and upward or you quit."

"What about…?" Jack wished he could take back the words as soon as he said them.

"Prostitution? How did I get into it? It was a natural. I could still trade off what nature had given to me, my looks. It was convenient. Can you understand that, Jack? I wouldn’t have to leave Houston and make my way in the fierce competitive atmosphere of the modeling worlds of New York or Los Angeles. Maybe part of it was fear that I’d fail, that I wouldn’t be the best, the most desired. Staying here, doing what I do now, I knew I’d be in demand. Oh there’s competition, but not as much as you might think. Most of the really beautiful, talented women take those offers and wind up as models or handing out their expensive favors in Washington or Paris. My competition in Houston is...negligible."

Without thinking, Jack picked up the glass of Scotch and sipped it. Then he realized what he was doing and put it down again.

"When I was twenty," Eileen continued carefully, "an older man came to me. He had a lot of money and a reputation to uphold. He was kind and generous. He paid for things and he didn’t ask for much in return. I didn’t love him, but I cared for him, I really did. When he...he died, he sent someone else to take his place. And from there..." She shrugged.

"This is hard for you to tell me isn’t it?"

"Telling you makes it sound like a gutless thing to do and that’s not the way it was. In most ways it was what I wanted. Security, privacy, a peaceful existence...even respect."

"You’ve never been in love with anyone? You’ve never wanted a family, children?" On the word children Jack winced, and Eileen saw the scar on his cheek twitch and begin to redden.

"I haven’t thought much about a family," she replied honestly. "And you’re right, I’ve never been in love. I don’t know if now--after all this time--I would know what love is."

Jack moved from the chair to her side on the sofa. He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her near.

Love. Children. Family. Did anyone know what it all meant until it was lost? Maybe Eileen was right not to take chances on being hurt.

Jack felt a vast, limitless space opening up deep inside. He felt himself falling into it, floundering through the black, cold space, and he clasped Eileen tightly, desperately.

She stroked the hair at his temples and kissed him.

He lifted her from the sofa, and carried her into the bedroom. He set her on the soft mattress and slipped the shimmering lilac gown from her flawless shoulders. His hands slid down her arms pulling the slip straps, then he cupped her breasts. His kisses followed her pulsing throat down to the center of her breasts, then he took both hardened nipples into his mouth in turn, alternately kissing them, drawing them out against his tongue.

Eileen moaned, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Jack nudged the gown over her hips and she lifted herself to let it slide free. She lay back on the lavender satin comforter, her long auburn hair spread around her small porcelain face.

She lay still, her breath shallow as he undressed. He stared down at her loveliness, the shadow at the hollow of her throat, the rising mounds of her breasts, the clean sculptured line of her body that dipped and rolled over her abdomen, the dark tangle of hair between her thighs.

He gently lowered himself to the bed and pressed her legs apart. He moved against her, felt her thighs giving, opening for him, felt her hands circling to his hips, gripping him closer, deeper. She cried out as he lunged and he knew only a driving wildness that was drowning out all his grief. Nothing existed beyond her warmth, her acceptance, her flesh arching against his flesh in tempestuous rhythm. He took her hips in his hands, braced himself against the bed, drew her up to him. Her legs entwined around his back, and together they erased memory and sorrow, release over-riding everything else.

Finally they lay spent. Jack opened his eyes and licked her delicate ear. He heard the tiny whispers of her breathing rushing past, telling him without words that it was all right now, he was not alone in the world.

He looked down at her. The hair around her face was damp, and she gazed back with misty green eyes. He rested his head on her shoulder and felt her fingers stroking his face.

"I can’t stay here. God, I wish I could," Jack said sadly.

"You’ll come back. You’ll stay tonight and you’ll come back."

"One day you’ll go with me. You’ll want to stay with me."

Eileen smiled at the thought. "And develop a fondness for big kitchens with painted cabinets?"

"Maybe." Jack sounded hopeful.

"Maybe you’re right. I never argue with old-fashioned men." Eileen squeezed Jack tightly. They rolled toward each other and kissed.

"You can have a dishwasher. That’s as modern as I’ll go,” he declared, smiling at her.

"I’ll feel deprived."

"You’ll get used to it, and I’ll make up for it in other ways."

She laughed and tickled him in the ribs. "That’s a tempting offer, kind sir. I’ll think about it." Eileen kissed him softly on the lips. "I surely will give it some thought."

Chapter 18

SIDNEY RUBENS reached for the unlit stub of a cheap cigar lying in the ashtray. If the cigar was cheap, the ashtray was cheaper. It was a golden tin he had swiped from McDonald’s. It was so small it hardly held all the ashes from one cigar. Which was all right with Rubens because when the tray overflowed it gave him something to do: he had to cross the room to dump the tray. That was all the exercise the overweight Rubens usually got.

Blue smoke unfurled from the cigar. Rubens rolled the smoke around the inside of his mouth and contemplated reaching for the bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of his desk.

"Vulgar habits," he remarked aloud, eying the cigar and the desk drawer.

He knew people talked behind his back. His cigars were vulgar, his taste questionable, his drinking sometimes made his social position shaky, but bless God, he was a good psychiatrist when he wanted to be and the V.A. hospital needed him desperately. They needed all the shrinks they could get since Vietnam.

Rubens opened a manila folder that lay in front of him on the scarred desk. Nick Ringer, the tab read.

Saklow, resident medical doctor, would not prescribe any more tranquilizers for Ringer unless he was willing to see a shrink. Sid squinted, adjusted his gold-framed glasses, and read the note from Saklow.

"Nervous disorder unrelated to physical problem. Insomnia. Faulty memory. Tacoma diagnosed patient as sociopathic; released to brother’s care after seven months rest and chemotherapy."

The cigar smoke hung over the desk. Rubens adjusted his glasses and glanced over the medical report.

Healthy specimen. One hundred ninety-five pounds, six foot one, no previous illnesses or operations.

Lucky kid, Rubens thought. At least he didn’t come back in a body bag.

Rubens sighed and closed the folder. Ringer was due in five minutes. Plenty of time for a drink, but since this was Ringer’s first visit, he would abstain.

At exactly eleven o’clock the door opened, and Miss Boyd, his young black secretary, ushered Nick Ringer into the office. The girl fluttered her long feathery lashes, helpfully pulled out the vinyl chair for Nick, waved her polished nails at Sid, and left without a word.

"She’s not bad," Nick commented, lounging back in the chair with an air of confidence and control.

Sidney Rubens nodded around the stub of his smoldering cigar and squirted one eye against the stinging smoke. It was his habit to speak as little as possible. He sized up the man opposite him. No nervousness there, he concluded. Nick was calm and unruffled. Sleeplessness? Where were the fatigued eyes, the tired slumping shoulders?

Nick Ringer looked young to him, but then lately anyone under forty looked young. The young man projected largeness, or was it strength? A pall of stale smoke hung over Nick, but to his credit, he did not cough or make a face at the cigar’s stink. Perhaps, Rubens thought, it did not bother him. On the other hand, perhaps he was very good at camouflaging his emotions. An interesting puzzle.

"So what do I have to do to get the nerve pills?" Nick asked, sitting perfectly poised.

"Saklow doesn’t think you need them," Sid Rubens said casually.

"Saklow is an asshole."

Rubens permitted himself a smile and was surprised when the patient did not return it. A waiting game, was it? Rubens deliberately tapped ash onto his unpressed brown sports jacket and let it roll to the floor. The ashtray was full and Nick was watching. Neither man blinked an eyelash.

"Your brother. He brought you home from the V.A. in Tacoma?"

"Yes, Daley brought me home," Nick answered in a well-modulated voice. "I’m okay now if that’s what you’re asking. Just have trouble getting to sleep, no big deal. I have a shit job and life’s not roses. So what else is new?"

"You work for a local alarm insta1ler?"

"Yes."

"Your brother?"

"What about my brother?" Nick still held Ruben’s gaze.

Still no anxiety. A strange bird, Rubens thought. But aren’t they all?

"What about my brother?" Nick repeated.

"Where does he work?"

"Hey, why don’t you call him in and ask him? Then you could give him Valium and he could give them to me and everything would be dandy."

Rubens waited, sucking his cigar, squinting one brown eye. Nick relented under the stare.

"So what do you want? He goes to the university. He fixes up old junk furniture and turns a buck on it. Satisfied?"

Rubens closed the eye and opened the other. He thought casually, I’m satisfied I’m scratching your glossy surface.

"You’ve always been together? Childhood, Nam, and here?" he asked.

"Yeah, always together. Even in Nam.”

"But Daley--is that his name?--Daley didn’t crack, did he?"

For the first time the patient’s veneer seemed to split.

"How do you feel about that." Rubens prodded.

"Cracking up? I don’t think it was a picnic. I thought I could handle the fight over there in that glory hole and I couldn’t. It was a surprise." Nick seemed fascinated by something on the floor.

"Special recon--that’s tough business," Rubens ventured, tapping more ashes onto himself.

"We were a good unit. We just got busted up there at the last and it was a bitch." Nick eyed the psychiatrist suspiciously. "You know about the Cong I killed?"

Rubens nodded and looked wise although he did not know anything about it. Not all the records from the V.A. hospital in Tacoma had arrived.

"Fucking gooks." Nick was getting angry.

"It was a lousy war." Best to offer him something, Rubens thought. He must tread carefu1ly. They were getting somewhere close to what kept the man awake nights.

"It’s a lousy life," Nick said softly. "I don’t know why I used that garrote."

"Sure, you know why." Go cautiously. Garrote? Where would he get hold of...

"They had it--the garrote. It could have been me or Daley instead of the fucking gooks."

"You killed them. That’s war."

"The medics didn’t see it that way. They go for strangling and gut shots and napalm--napalm, man!--but not..." Nick stopped.

“But not what?" Rubens said softly, sympathetically.

Nick suddenly laughed. "Beheading."

Sidney Rubens froze.

"They didn’t go for the fact I took off their fucking heads." Nick continued to laugh.

Rubens let the smoke trail out in a slow stream that rolled across the desktop.

"You don’t much like the thought of it either, do you?" Nick asked, alert once again, hunching forward, his hands on his knees. He was very calm, inscrutable. "You think I like what I did? You think I don’t have nightmares? You think I don’t need a few pills?"

Rubens adjusted his glasses warily. He sat forward and crushed the cigar into the tin ashtray. The squeaking sound from the chair seemed very loud. He pulled open the middle drawer and removed a prescription pad.

As he wrote he said, "Be back here next week, same time."

"You’ll only give me enough for one week?" Nick sounded like a disappointed ten-year-old.

Rubens looked up. "That’s right. Enough for a week. You want them, I’m willing to prescribe for you, but the deal includes your visit every week on Monday at eleven."

"I have to work," Nick protested weakly.

"Make it your lunch break."

Nick took the white slip of paper. “Okay,” he said reluctantly.

Rubens saw hunger in the blue eyes, hunger for peace. He stood up and offered Nick his hand. "Good-bye, Nick. I hope you sleep tonight without nightmares."

"Eat shit," Nick said amiably as he walked away, ignoring the psychiatrist’s hand.

Miss Boyd closed the door with another little wave of her hand.

Rubens brushed down his jacket, then opened his bottom desk drawer, took out the bottle of bourbon, and settled into his chair with a sigh. He uncapped the bottle and took four rapid gulps.

An hour later the psychiatrist weighed himself on an old-fashioned penny scale in the entrance way just inside the doors of Woolworth’s in downtown Houston. Two pounds. The spaghetti dinner he had just consumed at the counter had already made him gain two pounds. For a moment he was depressed. But maybe his scale at home would not register the weight gain in the evening. Somewhat cheered by that thought, he walked out into the crowded sidewalks. Rubens unwrapped his after-lunch cigar, chewed off the end, and spit it onto the sidewalk. He spied a newspaper vending machine and made for it. Inserting a quarter, he withdrew one of the papers and opened it with a snap of his wrists. A black headline, front and center, caught his attention. Wireman, was it? What was a wireman? Dreadful abuse of the language. The child’s rhyme came to mind and he changed it around a little. Richman, poorman, beggerman, thief. Wireman, lawyer, merchant, and chief.

Rubens leaned against the side of a store and began to read the article.

At first he was intrigued by the unfolding of the gruesome story. As a psychiatrist he was interested in the speculations being made about the Wireman’s identity and personality. Rubens read on, his cigar chewed to a juicy pulp, his appointments forgotten.

Then the gong began to sound. Far off at first, almost unnoticed, deep in the recesses of his mind. It was the word "garrote" that struck the first quivering note. Rubens’s gaze locked on the word until it blurred. He began making the connection. A man sitting in his office, looking so young.

"I don’t know why I used that garrote," Nick Ringer had said.

Then had come the sudden laughter and the word "beheading." What else was it he had said? Oh yes, They didn’t go for the fact I took off their fucking heads.

Was it truly connected? It might he just a big coincidence. Sidney Rubens had never wanted to be wrong so badly.

If his suspicions were true, if Nick Ringer and the Wireman were the same… The thought refused to finish itself. He needed a drink--badly. Right now.

The distraught psychiatrist quickly returned to his office, poured three fingers of bourbon into a glass, and read the story over again. There was a policeman, a detective, the story said, well known but now retired, who was semi-officially involved in the case. He was quoted as saying the department had a lead on the killer, but as yet they had no suspect, and they needed all the help they could get.

Yeah, Rubens thought, you need a regular Noah’s ark of help, friend. But he was sealed by an oath of confidentiality. What would he do if Nick Ringer made further revelations that connected him even more to the murders? How could Rubens finger the suspect for the cops?

Rubens knew there were guidelines for professionals who found themselves in his predicament. Situations where their professional ethics of confidentiality conflicted with the safety of society at large. Possibly conflicted. It was just a word connection. Garrote.

The problem was that the guidelines themselves conflicted with each other. Federal agencies said one thing, state agencies said another. What one national organization advocated as a correct course of action was exactly what another national organization said should not be done.

Rubens emptied the glass and sloshed more bourbon into it. Whatever he decided to do, someone would say he was wrong. He gulped the whiskey. God, he hated making such decisions. Why was he getting all shook up? The whole thing was probably a big mistake. Nothing to worry about. Not really. Just a word connection.

But as he poured more bourbon into the glass, he knew better. Deep down inside Dr. Sidney Rubens agreed with Nick Ringer. It was a lousy life.

Chapter 19

THE MORNING BELONGED TO Daley Ringer. He felt as if he were sole proprietor of the world. The streets of the Montrose area of Houston were empty. The residents had gone to work for the day or to classes on the city’s campuses. Store windows reflected golden sunlight and the sidewalks gleamed with the fresh morning dew. If there was squalor on the side streets or black mud standing in the yards, Daley did not see it. His attention was on what was beautiful. He was going to see Madra, to surprise her and to convince her she had been wrong to leave.

Glancing up, Daley saw a man approaching along the sidewalk from the opposite direction. Daley smiled happily and nodded to him. The man was dressed in sloppy green fatigue pants and a black turtleneck sweater. The effeminate swing in the man’s walk suddenly registered on Daley. He had a brief mental image of Nick sprawled on his back beneath the willow tree so long ago. He could not tell why he had this particular impression, but he suddenly realized the approaching stranger was homosexual and cruising for companionship.

“Do you have a light?"

Daley was stopped by a small white hand on his arm. The man was much younger than Daley had originally thought. He was hardly out of his teens.

"No, I don’t," Daley replied, and tried to move on.

The cigarette wavered in the other man’s fingers. He stared sadly into Daley’s eyes, searching for kinship.

"Would you like to breakfast with me?" the young man asked. "My treat?"

Disgust filled Daley. He loathed the pale bony hand that clutched his arm. He hated the lonesome, lost look in the man’s stare. Most of all he hated that his morning was ruined, utterly destroyed. The sun had lost its splendor. The freshness of the day was gone. Now it was sordid and ugly and crawling with disgusting things that lay just below the pallor of the sunlight.

"Let me go," Daley growled, unconsciously showing his teeth in a grimace.

The man’s stare held, not picking up the clues. "Why don’t you spend the day with me? We’re both alone. I don’t live far from here. And I’m cheap, which is to say, I’m free of charge."

Daley wrenched his arm free and struck the stranger across the face, spinning him around into the gutter.

"How dare you assume!" Daley shouted.

The man cowered back, his hand protecting the cheek that took the blow. He looked betrayed.

"Don’t you dare!" Daley repeated, advancing on the now-frightened young man.

The man fled and Daley watched him go, feeling like a dullard. The day was tarnished. He realized the truth. He was on a doomed mission and this was a sign. Madra would not wish to see him. She would say unkind things. He was a fool who chased after rainbows. No woman had ever truly wanted him.

At Madra’s door he paused to listen but could hear nothing from inside. He knew she was home. He had made countless reconnaissance sorties and every Monday she was home alone. He knocked, softly at first, then with more force. When Madra did not answer, he tried the door and found it unlocked. He stepped into the house and stood listening for some sound. In a few seconds he heard the musical splash and fall of water. Madra was in the shower.

Daley smiled, part of his earlier good humor returning. He would play a trick on her.

Cautiously he toured the house. In the roommate’s bedroom he found disarray; in Madra’s room, tidiness.

In the tiny kitchen he sampled a slice of stale German chocolate cake that sat uncovered on the counter. He licked his fingers as he plundered the drawers and cabinets. Had Madra discovered him then, he would not have been able to tell her what he was doing. He even was on the verge of forgetting why he had come to see her in the first place.

He left the kitchen and went to the partially opened door of the bathroom. On the lowered lid of the toilet was a folded towel. On the green carpet a pair of white slippers waited. He had seen Madra’s routine before. She showered, dried, and went to the bedroom to dress wearing only her slippers. He leaned against the sink edge to watch the shadow of her slight body behind the shower curtain. She was reciting a poem, her head beneath the streaming water of the shower. Daley cocked his head to listen. It had something to do with death. Madra was preoccupied with death. It was her favorite subject and ranked right up there with eighteenth-century history.

The shadow turned, the elbows at right angles. She performed a ballet with the water, lines of poetry trailing all around her. The shadow abruptly bent from the waist and twisted the faucets. The poem and her shower both ended. She drew back the curtain and faced Daley.

The startled, high-pitched scream wrenched Daley loose from his casual position against the sink. He saw her falling, crumpling as if in slow motion. He reached out for her and his hands slipped over wet rubbery skin. He heard her head thunk against the side of the tub and saw her eyes roll back into their sockets.

"Madra!"

In a panic Daley hauled her from the chilly tub and tried to stand her on her feet. Her head fell back limply.

He lifted her into his arms, her wetness soaking through his shirt. In her bedroom he put her on the bed and quickly felt for a pulse.

"Madra, I’m sorry. Oh God."

She was coming to, groaning, her hands doing little dances. As Daley watched apprehensively, she began to arch her back, and tremors ran down the full length of her body. At first the convulsions were strangely erotic. Damp breasts jiggled and slender pale legs stiffened with muscular tension. Daley leaned over her and called her name several times, his voice changing from a whisper to a shout. Finally he slapped her face, but then he felt bad about it. Violence couldn't be the right way to bring her out of a seizure.

"Madra" he shouted again. ·

The convulsive waves strengthened until finally her head was thrown back and buried in the pillow. All the muscles of her body stood out like taut wires and her toes turned under. She began to gasp and strangle on her own saliva and the thick coil of her tongue.

Daley wrenched open her mouth. It took all his strength to pry her tongue forward. Madra gulped air, her chest heaving. Her jaws locked around his fingers and her teeth bit down into his flesh.

Daley let out a yelp of pain. Frantically he looked around for something that he could put into her mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue.

"Oh God, oh hell, oh goddamn sonovabitch! Madra!"

He was losing the battle. One of her teeth had already pierced the joint of his forefinger. Her jaw was closing down on his fingers with unbelievable power. Daley howled with pain now as he felt a tendon being sliced in two. He involuntarily jerked and his hand came free of the gnashing teeth. Madra gurgled and it reminded him--reminded him of...

He ran for the kitchen. He tore the silverware drawer from the lower cabinets and it fell against the stove, the contents showering the floor. He found a tablespoon and raced back into Madra’s bedroom. The sight of her naked and blue-faced on the bed made him scream.

He dropped the spoon on the bed and with both hands took a firm grip on her lower jaw and upper face. He grunted and pulled with all his strength. Finally he opened her mouth and saw the swollen red tongue clogging her air passage. Ignoring the renewed clamp on his fingers, he slid two fingers and his thumb around her tongue.

"Breathe, goddammit!" he prayed and ordered.

He got the spoon and forced its bowed metal into her mouth. Madra gagged and her body bumped toward the ceiling. The spoon slid to the side in her mouth; it looked as if her teeth would bite the spoon in two.

Daley was on his knees, his head slumped over her chest, breathing hard. Suddenly her iron body fell heavily to the bed and her chest stilled. Daley sat up, his hands already going for her face. Her head turned softly into the valley of the pillow and stayed there. The spoon fell to the floor with a clatter. Vomit spilled from her mouth and formed a pool on the bed.

Daley shook her by the shoulders.

"Madra!"

He grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. He sat her up and thumped her on the back. He wiped the fluid from her face and crooned into her deaf ear. He lay her out on the floor and did chest compressions for what seemed like forever.

For the next hour he sat in the gray nubby chair across the room watching her. When she paid no attention, he stood finally and caressed her naked, cold body. When he finally emerged from the house it was noon and clouds covered the sun. He told himself he was a man chasing rainbows. No woman had every truly wanted him.

#

Nick swallowed two Valium with a Miller High Life chaser and within minutes felt wonderfully wired. If anyone had tossed a coin at his feet, he would have gladly tipped his invisible hat and danced a jig. He was up for it. Tonight was the night. He was tired of his job, tired of Houston, tired of the endless lonely evenings with his brother. He was going down to Main to pick out a whore. Despite the six-pack of Miller and the twenty milligrams of Valium, he was up for action.

On the way out the door he met Daley on the steps.

"Hold on, Nick. I’ve got to talk to you."

“Hey, the party’s on the road. I’ve got to go." Nick grinned widely.

"No, don’t leave me. I want to tell you something. It's important."

At Daley’s words Nick felt his balloon being punctured. He switched into depression instantly. "What is it?" he asked, following his brother into the house.

"The police might come around asking some questions." Daley was upset, really upset.

"Why would they do that?"

"I was with Madra this morning..." Daley’s voice trailed away.

"That’s a police matter?" Nick dropped into a chair.

"Will you listen to me?" Daley hovered over Nick, who licked his lips nervously. "I was with her and she had a seizure. A bad one. She...she choked to death. I did everything I could to save her, everything!"

Nick suddenly felt very dizzy and had to cover his eyes with a hand. He did not like Madra, but choking to death was a gruesome way to go. "Why didn’t you get help for her?" he asked, trying to sober up.

"I was the help. There was no time to call anyone. I tried, I tried for so long, but..." Daley shook his head.

"Why will the police come?" Nick moved his hand and looked at his brother suspiciously. They did not need the cops, that was for sure.

"Hell, they can see someone was with her. I spilled silverware all over the kitchen floor. I had a spoon in her mouth. And look at this." He held out his hand for Nick’s inspection. It looked as if it had been caught in the gears of a machine.

"She bit you?" Nick could not imagine such a thing.

"Aren’t you listening, dammit? She had a grand mal seizure. She was an epileptic. I never told you that, even when you were being cruel to her. She was sick and you never even noticed."

"Epileptic? Why didn’t you, well, why didn’t you call someone then while she lived here?" Nick was having trouble keeping his thoughts in order. One second he was thinking about epileptics, the next he was remembering football practice in high school. His mind was all mixed up. It was all the chemicals flooding his brain.

Daley answered him, but Nick missed the point and wagged his head in some sort of agreement. Next he was on his feet following his brother out the door and down the steps.

"Where we going?" His words were slurred but recognizable. The Valium was taking a huge effect now and the booze was backing it up like a caboose on a freight train.

"I want to take a drive to Bloomington."

"B--o--o--m--ington, yeah..." Nick cheered.

"How many of those pills did you take, Nick?"

"Couple." He sounded petulant. "Five ’er six, whassa matter?"

"Have you eaten anything?" Daley got into the car.

"Eat a pussy if I had it!" Nick started laughing and could not stop. He was at the point where he knew he was stoned out of his skull and knew soon he wouldn't even know that.

Once they were rolling down the freeway Nick pressed himself into a corner, complaining, "Doan wanna go to… hey, yeah, I doan wanna go to Boom . . . Blooming-ton."

Daley’s reply was entirely lost to him. Nick thought he should make it clear he was totally against the trip.

"Fuck it, I tole you, I doan like it, I doan wanna go."

It seemed the next instant they were stopped and getting out of the car. Nick stumbled and lost his balance.

He felt Daley’s arms right him and lead him forward into the dark of a wooded area.

"Wha we doin’ here, Daley? I doan like it, tole ya and ya doan lissen."

"Take it easy, Nick," Daley said softly. "Sit down over there for a minute. Breathe the night air and get straight."

"Gonna get fuckin' straight, man, I tell you what."

Daley wandered away, and Nick tried to find a place to sit, but could not. It was all pine seedlings and rock and humps of dirt to him. He was not about to sit down in the dirt with his party clothes on. He was headed for Main and a night with a whore. What on earth was this delay about? Why in the fuck were they in Bloomington anyway, and where in Bloomington were they? Nick stumbled around trying to put his brain into some kind of order.

Daley walked around the ghostly land with his hands in his pockets. By odd chance Nick found him, and together they stared into the dark.

"What you see?" Nick asked in a whisper, squinting around him.

"Graves."

"Oh Jesus, doan say that, Daley. I need a drink."

"You’ve been coming here, haven’t you, Nick?"

The question seemed to hang in the air a long time before it finally trickled into Nick’s numbed brain.

"Coming here?" He laughed hoarsely. "Only way you got me here tonight was catching me bombed outta my gourd. I doan come here."

"You been doing it?" Daley asked, not looking at his brother.

A shaft of comprehension struck Nick’s drugged mind, and he commanded his tongue to work properly so there would be no mistake.

"I fuckin’ didn’t do nothing, Daley, nothing, you understand?"

Daley kicked a clod of dirt and it rolled into the ditch. "I think you did, Nick. I think you know you did. But I’ll never tell. I want you to know that. If the police come with questions about this, I’ll protect you."

Nick was thoroughly confused, and he wanted to go to sleep very badly. "I didn’t hurt her," he stammered, suddenly fearful. "Not Madra."

"I know you didn’t, but you hurt the others. They’re out here, aren’t they?" Daley asked.

"Who? Lissen, Daley, I’m fucked up, okay? And you are not making sense to me."

“Come on, we’ll go home.” Daley put an arm around his brother’s shoulder and took him back to the car.

Nick trembled under the force of his brother’s affection. He knew, because he had been told, that he would be protected, though from what or from whom he did not know. It was enough to know he was loved.

"Let’s get some beer," he said, suddenly cheerful again. "'Then let’s go down to Main and find us a girl."

Again he missed Daley’s answer, and wondered if his hearing was failing or the whole conversation they had been having was nothing but a hallucination. But when they stopped at an all-night grocery in Bloomington and got a six-pack of Miller Nick figured things were all right. All the way to Houston he anticipated the cruise down South Main where he would find a pair of silky legs attached to a twenty-dollar piece of heaven.

Chapter 20

HELEN MCCOMBIE rolled from the bed, heaving a weary sigh.

Standing next to the bed she said, "Wel1, let’s get to it!" She glared down at the double roll of fat around her plump waist. "One, two, three, four!"

She lasted through ten toe-touches and ten deep knee bends before falling back on the bed, exhausted and huffing.

"Now the shower," she told herself, forcing her bulk upright once more.

Her brow was slightly damp with sweat and already the backs of her legs cramped. After the long shower, she applied revitalizing cream to her face and throat, carefully smoothing it on her round, full features.

"You beautiful thing, you’ll be thin and svelte before you know it," she said to the wall of mirrors behind the sink.

In the adjoining dressing room she slipped on a pale green caftan of pure silk. Along the bordered hem were long-necked pink flamingos that exactly matched the color of Helen’s lipstick.

Fighting and losing the battle of the bulge occupied most of Helen McCombie’s life. If she was not involved in exercise, diets, or positive thinking, she was tinkering with her roses in the heart-shaped garden or trying to make her husband of twenty years confess his disgust with overweight women, something Dr. Mark McCombie would never do. Though Helen did not realize it, she was the most fortunate of women.

Her husband was faithful, considerate, and on his way to taking his place in the Houston medical fraternity beside the famed surgical team, Cooley and DeBakey. Besides the solid marriage that had never depended on her figure for resiliency, Helen was a wealthy woman in her own right. She had a sumptuous River Oaks’ home, a loving husband, good friends, an intelligent daughter at the University of Texas, and every advantage money could buy. But she did not have a Playboy centerfold body, and throughout life it was what she had wanted most.

On the way down the marble stairway Helen did side bends from the waist. Her double chins did a hula when she halted and rolled her head around and around on her shoulders. All the way through the house to the oversized, red-tiled kitchen, she practiced facial exercises that made her look as if she were auditioning for a horror movie.

The house was empty and her footsteps clicked loudly across the polished tile. She touched a control on the wall near the light switch, and from recessed speakers the voice of Aretha Franklin bellowed. Helen smiled and danced with abandon across the width of the kitchen to the refrigerator door. While Aretha belted out "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," Helen chose one carrot stick, a celery stalk, two Tiny Tom tomatoes, and a ripe peach from the crisper. She ate the breakfast while dancing around the kitchen pretending to be a fairy princess. A very thin, beautiful fairy princess.

When she got to the peach, she was dreaming of peach pie, peach cobbler, peach tarts fried in butter, and the biggest tub of whipped cream ever manufactured.

Outside, the first day of March shone brilliantly. Helen touched the wall control, killing the music, and went to the pantry for her gardening gloves. The nursery had told her if she did not get the five new rosebushes into the ground right away, there would be no hope of them blooming this summer.

She opened the French doors leading onto the back terrace and filled her lungs with fresh air. The rosebushes waited on the bricks at her feet. She stooped and fondled the waxy stem of a rose called Midnight. It was supposed to produce a bloom so red that it was nearly black, and though Helen did not believe it, she felt a flutter of excitement at the thought of raising a rosebush with such a peculiar shade of flower. Then there was Heaven Sent. She caressed a trio of midget green leaves. This one was already trying to grow. It would give bouquets of lavender roses the size of a child’s fist. At least that’s what the nursery guaranteed.

"Lovely, little ones," Helen purred to the potted roses.

She worked diligently in her garden while the quiet morning passed serenely. She was dirtying the silk dress and did not care. She had an entire closetful of caftans, and when she succeeded in ruining them all, she expected to be sixty pounds lighter. Then she would go on an all-day shopping trip to the Galleria for a new wardrobe.

Midnight and Heaven Sent were lovingly planted. Scattered around Helen were her tools: shovel, hoe, a box of rose food, the water hose, a hand trowel, rake, and the three remaining potted bushes. She had almost finished tamping down the earth around Sunset when she had the unpleasant sensation of being watched. Jerking her head up and wiping the perspiration from her face, she looked to the two places where someone might be: the open French doors of the house and the wooden gate leading into the yard. Her gaze stopped at the gate. Her heart pounded fiercely. What was he doing standing there, only his face showing above the gate, watching her work in the garden?

#

The killer recalled a childhood fantasy as he drove around Houston. He and his brother were not the products of a broken home where an inattentive and sexually active mother thought of them as nuisances.

They were children of a powerful, rich family, mother and father both doting, giving their two sons real love and anything else they desired. He had a room of his own with a bed in the shape of a racing car and a big chest of toys. He had a tutor and did not have to go to school. He had friends who never mocked or taunted him, friends who gave lavish birthday swimming-pool parties with things like radios and football gear as door prizes. Every summer his make-believe family went to Europe and every winter they vacationed on the ski slopes of Colorado. He wanted for nothing and in return for this paradise, he was a good boy. A good boy...

Suddenly he knew where he should go. To River Oaks, the Beverly Hills of Houston. He was taking more risks than ever, daring the world to stop him. Murder was not committed in River Oaks. The elite were protected by stone walls, heavy security, sophisticated alarm systems, guard dogs, and their own exalted sense of being untouchable.

The killer drove through white pillars with the legend RIVER OAKS down the front. Not far from the entrance he parked in an empty driveway and waited outside the car for someone to discover him. When no one came out to inquire about him, he started walking down the street, inspecting the mansions. When he saw a security patrol car coming his way, he ducked through a hedged walkway and circled behind a white two-story Italian structure. He had only meant to stay out of sight, but to his surprise he found exactly what he was looking for, waiting innocently behind a high weathered gate.

He stood silently, watching the woman work in the ground. If she had no gardener on duty, did she have a maid inside? It did not matter. He would kill the maid too, no problem.

From his pocket he took a yellow-handled knife and went in search of the phone lines into the house.

His face appeared above the gate, his hand on the latch.

"What is it that you want?" Helen asked, leaning on the shovel and shading her eyes against the sun’s glare. "We don’t allow solicitors here."

"I’m not selling anything," he replied, casually unlatching the gate and wandering onto the brick terrace.

His look took in the chaise lounges, the wrought-iron table and chairs. He listened for someone moving around in the house and readied himself for a shadow emerging from the French doors.

Helen was approaching, shovel in hand.

"I’m looking for the Garsons," he said, the name coming into his head from nowhere. "Do you know where they live?" He smiled automatically.

Helen searched his eyes and knew something was phony. His smile did not reach his eyes. There were not any people in her neighborhood by that name. "I don’t know any Garsons," she said, wishing he would leave. She had work to do, and it was uncouth of this man to invade her property without invitation. Why had security not stopped him?

They were so lax these days.

She had a strange sensation that the stranger was sizing her up. She noticed he was blocking her way to the French doors and the interior of the house. She did not like that and pursed her lips in disapproval. "I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave. I can’t help you," she said, giving him a scathing look. She didn't like being discourteous, but this man was in her way.

She made a move toward the house as if to dismiss him, but stopped when he stood his ground. Suddenly he took a step toward her, and instinctively Helen took a step back. She hefted the shovel into her plump, bejeweled hands and thought of her husband. Mark had wanted to install a wrought-iron gate with an inside lock because she worked in the garden so often. She wished she had not argued against it so strongly.

Could this young man be a robber? The suspicion made her shiver. Ridiculous. He was simply lost and, Lord knows, River Oaks was a maze to the uninitiated.

"You might ask security, they would know about the family you want," she said.

"Your neighbors aren’t home, are they?" he asked softly.

With the question her hopes began to die. Helen breathed shallowly and measured the distance between them.

"Have you come to rob me?" she asked, wondering how she had the guts to come right out with it. She studied his expression. It had not changed. She had not surprised or insulted him. Something was terribly wrong. "I don’t have much here," she continued when he remained silent. "I have these rings," She proffered a hand to show him a ruby and diamond dinner ring. She stuck out the other hand where a swirl of sapphires sparkled. When he failed to show any interest, her apprehension increased.

"You’re alone and you’re scared," he said without emotion.

Helen found herself leaning forward in order to hear him. She licked her lips and shook the shovel in front of her. "Just tell mè what you want! I don’t understand."

Suddenly he moved swiftly and grabbed her thick upper arms. He stared down into her startled face. For a second his stare faltered as if he were losing concentration and Helen took a chance. She jerked away, stumbling backward. The white stone walls around her were too high to climb. Her neighbors were not at home, and there was no one to hear her scream. Taking a deep breath, she decided to get it over with. She thought she knew what he wanted.

"If it’s sex you want, you don’t want me. You’ve made a mistake. I’m fat! Can’t you see how unappealing I am? Look." She held the shovel to the side and with a free hand gripped the rolled fat around her middle.

"See this? Even my husband finds me unattractive," she lied. Seeing he was unaffected by her dramatics, she lifted the corner of her caftan high above a fleshy, dimpled knee. She glanced down and frowned at the thick, pasty, cratered skin of her bare thighs. "Who would want this?" she asked pitifully, believing it to be true and wanting him to believe it. "You don’t want to rape a woman like me. It's ridiculous."

The self-disparaging remarks brought tears to her eyes. She checked his face to see if she was impressing him. His stare was unreadable. What did he want if not to rob or rape her?

"That’s not what you want?" she asked, suddenly even more fearful.

He shook his head, and Helen felt her heart sink.

“What?" she whispered because she had to know, had to understand what was required of her. Worse than being burglarized was being raped, but beyond rape her imagination refused to function.

With infinite care the man unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and Helen relaxed slightly. He wanted sex after all. His hand went into the space between his shirt and chest. She wondered if he was playing with his own nipple and if that was what rapists did to arouse themselves. But his hand was reappearing, and in it was a--Helen squinted--a wire? A circle of wire? With brown wooden handles. For what purpose, handles?

Helen started backing away from him, seconds before she saw his hands take the handles and stretch the wire until it vibrated like the string of a yo-yo. She recognized the murder in his eyes, watched his broad shoulders tense, his muscles strain against the material of his shirt. He was coming for her.

"Scream," he said. "I want you to scream."

Helen bolted. After a few steps, she turned and threw the shovel as hard as she could. She pivoted and ran for the roses. There she snatched the water hose in one hand and the three-pound box of rose food in the other. She flung the box at her attacker and winced when it hit him in the face. He stopped and shook his head. She squeezed the handle of the hose and sprayed him directly in the eyes while groping for the garden trowel.

He continued to come for her, impervious to the water. There was a furious dark glow in his eyes. Blood dripped from his hairline and caught in the socket of one eye.

"Don’t fight," he commanded. "Just scream for me."

"Damn you! Damn you! Get away from me!"

She dropped the hose and ran through the rose garden. Thorns tore at her hands and arms and snagged in her caftan. She came out from the center of the heart-shaped garden and ran along the flagstone walkway under the oaks. She looked over her shoulder and saw him not far behind. His head was down and he was meticulously extracting a thorn from his wrist. She pressed her back to one of the oak’s far sides and clutched the garden trowel to her heaving bosom. All she could hear was her own breath.

When he passed by the tree, she swung at him with the forked garden instrument. He grabbed her quivering wrist, the trowel inches from his face. She was breathing into his shirt, smelling him, her eyes out of focus.

She was mad with fear, insane with the prospect of her death. Her mouth opened, her head lurched into the cold, wet material, and pure instinct made her bite his chest with a fury she never knew she had.

He screamed in agony. He released her wrist and the trowel fell to the ground. His hands, the wire hooked into his fingers, covered her buried head and forced her away. With a horrible sucking sound Helen’s teeth were torn from his chest and she pushed at him, upsetting his balance so that he hit the tree.

Again she ran. Through the roses, unmindful of tears and scrapes, through the open beautiful lawn. From the corner of her eye she saw him gaining, running to her left, going for the gate, to block her escape. She went through the open doorway of the house. There was no time to bar the doors. She flew through the kitchen, down the two steps to the den, and had the telephone receiver off the hook while still in flight.

Frantically she put it against her ear and heard--nothing.

"You!" she screamed at him as he came down the steps to her. "Get away! Get away from me!"

She tried to reach the front door, but he was too close. She opened the door into the library, trying to keep her mind calm enough to remember what rooms had openings out of them so that she would not be trapped.

Blood dripped from her thorn wounds onto the pearly white carpet, spotting her trail. She grabbed an onyx horse head and flung it at him as he came into the library. She heard it miss, hitting the wall as she collided with the shut door of a bathroom. Quickly she fumbled with the brass knob, slipped inside, and slammed it behind her. She pushed the lock button, smiling as his fist banged on the other side. She slipped out the other door of the bathroom into the hall, rushing for the living room and freedom.

Behind her a crystal lamp fell. Helen’s head swiveled to see her attacker crossing the room. One side of his face was bloodied. He was clawing his way toward her, spilling the Chinese vase of flowers, the garrote swinging wildly from one hand.

The stairs, the upstairs! Lock him out!

She was on the seventh step when his hand snaked through the spokes of the banister and caught her ankle.

She went down to her knees painfully, hearing a snap, feeling the surge of pain travel up her calf to her thigh. She twisted away from him, kicked with her other foot, and got free. She crawled up one step, got to her feet, steeling herself against the pain from her cracked kneecap, and half hopped, half crawled to the second floor.

Four bedrooms, two baths, dressing rooms, closets, a balcony. She had no time to devise a plan. She fell into a hall closet and managed to shut the door just as he was about to clear the stairway. She held her breath, hands tight over her mouth, eyes wide open in the dark. She was surrounded by their tennis rackets, jogging shoes, and scuba-diving gear.

She heard his footsteps pound past her hiding place. She waited, feeling faint from the pain in her knee.

Blood from her hands trickled down her arms. Her heart beat so rapidly she could not catch her breath. The fear of dying thumped through her thoughts like a monster rampaging through a small village. Her fear was Frankenstein and the town was her brain. Footfalls echoed inside the dark confinement of the musty closet until Helen thought he would burst through the plaster and wood. She whimpered inside like a small child waiting to be punished. Let me out! Let me out of here! Oh God, I can’t stand to be locked in here waiting for him!

When the claustrophobia was too much, Helen ripped open the closet door.

She blinked. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, and she saw nothing, no one. She let out her breath and heard something crash downstairs.

Limping and crying silently from the pain and fear, she started for her bedroom. In some small kernel of her soul she knew she would not give up, would never give up without using all her resources to outwit him.

At her bedroom door she saw the whole room. It looked empty, but was it? Had the crash downstairs come from his plundering the rooms for her or had it been mere accident--- book, a vase, a statue tumbling on its own?

She moved as quietly as possible across the room, all the while watching the closet door, the bathroom full of shadows, the rose-patterned drapes on each side of the French doors leading to the balcony. At any moment she anticipated the pounce of her attacker. She stared ahead of her bravely, holding her body erect even though her knee throbbed relentlessly. She was past the bed, past the extravagant dresser with its tremendous array of cosmetics. She had the doorknobs of the double French doors in her hands.

Outside was sunlight, her garden, the unplanted roses. Freedom waited at the bottom of the drop to the terrace floor. She had to do it. She had to make the effort. She would not give her life willingly to a madman. She knew who he was. She had known it in the garden when she saw the wire and understood how the wire was used. He was in all the newspapers and on the television newscasts. He had killed a little boy and two women. He had taken two of the heads and now he wanted hers, but she would not make it easy for him!

At the white balcony railing she leaned out into the air and felt a soft breeze caress her wet cheeks. She glanced behind her then peered over the drop. He was nowhere in sight. Quickly now, she told herself, hoisting her good leg over the railing to stand on the narrow ledge. Quickly and be done with it before he comes.

Her weight dragged her earthward. She hung from the rail by her hands. She chanced a last look at the terrace that seemed to be so far down. You’re going to break your legs on the bricks, she thought. You’re going to have to crawl out the gate.

Panic began to invade her mind, making her not want to let go. Because...was it worth it? Would it save her? She did not want to find herself shattered and helpless on the cold, unyielding bricks below.

She looked up above her, and for an instant she thought the man’s hands clutching her hands belonged to her husband, who had come to save her at last. Then she realized the truth.

"No!" she screamed, falling, twisting.

The pain on impact was too much. She could see nothing but a black, starry void. She instinctively began to grope her way across the smooth squares of brick to where she thought the gate must be. Her vision slowly returned, and with it came the reality of her situation. For the first time she felt as if she was not going to make it. Both her legs were bent at ludicrous angles, and she could see her left anklebone protruding through the skin like a piece of splintered wood. Blood was splattered all over her pale green skirt. She turned her head and looked to the balcony. He was not there. She looked through the French doors into the kitchen. He was not there either.

Helen crawled, breathing laboriously, grunting at each half foot she took.

Finally, after an eternity, she was at the gate, close enough to touch the gray planks. She was sobbing and weakly calling for someone to help her, to rescue her. The gate would not move. She gazed without comprehension at the latch. She reached out one scraped and bleeding arm, but there was so far to go, so much she had to do, and no one to help her. She couldn't reach the latch, oh God, she couldn't get to it.

"Please," she cried, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper. "Please, someone..."

She felt his presence behind her. Frantically she clawed at the gate until her fingernails tore away from the skin. His knees were pressing against her back, and she could feel the warmth from his body burning into her. His hands were oddly gentle on her shoulders as if to calm her. Still she clawed and pushed and heaved against the locked gate, desperate to be away from his touch.

The wire descended. Helen saw it, the entire length of it held rigidly before her eyes, the handles squeezed tightly in his hands. She reached for it to stay her death sentence, murmuring, "Wait...wait...please."

Helen McCombie’s death was not swift or neat. She used her body as a weapon. Her hips bucked, her feet slid up, and she kicked out at him with one broken ankle, her hands beat at him. Finally, her valiant fight ended with her life’s blood spurting against the traitorous closed garden gate.

Chapter 21

AT FIVE-THIRTY on the afternoon of Helen McCombie’s death, Sam received a call from Garbo.

"I just wrapped up the on-the-scene investigation of the fourth one, Sam. I knew you’d want to know."

Sam pressed the phone close to his ear and turned away from the window. "Tell me about it."

"Middle-aged woman, wife of a doctor, resident of River Oaks..." Sam let out a gasp. Garbo swallowed and continued the rundown on the fourth victim.

"She was found in a rose bed, but it’s pretty obvious she died on the back patio near a gate and was transported--and laid out carefully--in the roses. Sam, this one’s different. She wasn’t taken by total surprise. She fought for her life. As far as we can make out, the struggle started in the backyard and moved into the house. She was alone, the telephone lines were cut, and there was a trail of blood. She fled from room to room and finally upstairs."

“How did she get past him down to the patio?" Sam asked.

"She dropped from a balcony."

"Christ." Sam shuddered at what the woman had gone through.

"It broke both her legs and her right ankle. From there she dragged herself to the gate, but she never got it open."

"Any evidence left behind?"

"A footprint in the garden," Garbo continued. "Blood samples are being tested now to see if he left any behind, and I think from the physical evidence of the battle that took place he didn’t get away from this woman without some scars. We’ve got hair samples too. Have to check it against the husband and the victim. The autopsy’s underway so I’ll know more later."

"Fingerprints?" Sam asked hopefully.

"It doesn’t look good. We’re still working on it. I doubt we’ll get that kind of break."

"Witnesses? Neighbors?"

"We’re canvassing. Dr. McCombie found her and called us at four. River Oaks’ security didn’t see a thing although they went past the house twice during the estimated time of the murder."

Sam closed his eyes and asked the question he was almost afraid to ask. "Did he take her head?"

"Yeah."

Sam slumped to the bed. He ran one hand over his bald pate, then knuckled the stubble of his cheek.

Garbo cleared his throat and said, "Any luck with your list of Vietnam vets?"

"No. What about the others?"

"Couple of possibles. One’s a mental, in and out of Austin State. The other went into gory detail about a girl in a village over there like he was offering us a fairytale. The rest seem to be okay so far."

"Maybe you’ll get a witness," Sam said. "We’ve got to get something.”

"I know we do, Sam, it’s my ass in a sling here. He’s just so goddamn slippery. He’s not giving us any constants. No special time of day or month or interval between killings. No special victim. We can’t connect anything. By this time next month we may be locking up my own mother and I’ll be relieved--you know that? I’d settle for almost anything about now."

"I want to go over there and check it out. Can you clear it for me?”

"Sure, Sam, you can have the run of the goddamned place. The doc moved in with a sister across town. When do you want to go?”

Sam stared through the window to the gathering twilight outside. "Tomorrow, sometime tomorrow."

"Right. And Sam?"

"What?"

"I want you to know that I don’t care about getting the honor on this one," Garbo said. "If you crack it, if you come up with something, you get the credit. I don’t want any more stripes anyway. I’d just like to keep what I’ve got."

"There won’t be any honor." Sam felt his old friend despair settle over his shoulders. "He’s slipped four over on us. He’s been playing us all the way down the line. I don’t want glory, Garbo. I only want satisfaction."

After cradling the receiver, Sam stood and crossed to the window. Satisfaction, he repeated to himself.

Was that it? He knew it was not as sweet as revenge. Revenge was done with passion, and Sam was too methodical and painstaking to waste his time on mindless passion. Satisfaction meant meeting the blind lady of justice and righting the scales.

Let Jack DeShane wish for revenge and Garbo Kranz collect the kudos for apprehending the killer. All Sam Bartholomew wanted was one last victory over the jungle.

Sam watched Maggie park her car in front of the house. She looked to his window, waved, came up the walk with a smile on her face. Sam dropped the curtain into place and opened the drawer of his bedside table. Before Maggie opened his bedroom door, he swigged three fierce gulps of Old Kentucky. He did not bother to hide the bottle. He saw her smile turn to a frown of disappointment.

"What’s wrong?" she asked immediately, shrugging out of her tan gabardine coat and coming to him.

He put the bottle to his lips and downed another swallow. He held out the quart and, looking at it, shook his head sadly.

"I’ve got to make a trip to the liquor store. I’m about out."

"Is it the killer?" Maggie reached for the bottle but failed to be quick enough for Sam.

"Number four," he admitted bitterly. "A woman in River Oaks."

Maggie whistled softly. She moved closer and leaned her head on his chest. "Sam, drinking won’t help."

"I never noticed sobriety doing a hell of a lot for me." He put his arm around her shoulders. "Don’t worry about me, Maggie. Let me do this."

She melted. Hard lines vanished from her face. She could not manage a smile, but the judgment left her eyes as she sat down on Sam’s bed to watch him grab a jacket and put on shoes. "Then I’ll get drunk with you," she said. "I’ll accompany you into misery."

"Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to get drunk."

He had the jacket zipped, his shoes tied, and was feeling in his back pocket for his wallet.

"Yes, you are," Maggie said softly.

"All right, so I am. That doesn’t mean you have to. It’s not a good habit to get into, and it doesn’t solve a damn thing, you’re right about that. But I want it tonight, and I’m going to get it." He started for the door. "And I’m going to get pissant drunk--all on my own. "

"No, you’re not."

Sam hesitated at the door, looking at her, amazed at the determination in her voice.

"You’ll get sick," he warned.

"I don’t care.”

"You’ll miss work tomorrow," Sam pointed out.

"It doesn’t matter." Maggie looked deep into his eyes.

"You’ll turn into a bum like me."

She smiled and lay back on the bed.

"I’ll be back in fifteen minutes," he said. "Get two jelly glasses and take off your shoes. It’s going to be one helluva long night.”

Maggie rested until she heard the front door click shut, then she rose from Sam’s bed and went to the kitchen for the glasses.

Sam walked the five blocks to the National Liquor Store. The day had been unusually warm, and the evening was fresh with a hint of rain on the way. Sam unzipped his jacket and sucked in the air as deeply as he could.

Inside the liquor store he carried four quarts of Old Kentucky bourbon to the counter.

"Gonna throw a party, Sam?" the owner asked. He and Sam were on friendly terms since Sam’s official retirement. Once a week Sam bought a quart from the store owner. Four quarts was a break in the routine.

"In a manner of speaking," Sam replied, taking the money from his wallet.

On the way home Sam contemplated telling Jack DeShane about the fourth victim. It did not take him long to decide against it. Jack would find out about it soon enough. Besides, he was losing weight and looking haggard from his nightly forays into the streets. So far he had questioned half of the street population in the impoverished Heights area and every prostitute he could catch along Main Street and Telephone Road. It took outstanding stamina and more than a little courage to venture into those places alone and without the security of a squad car. Sam did not try to dissuade his young friend. He recognized Jack’s obsession as an attempt to deal with his terrible loss. Besides, he might get lucky--find someone who knew or suspected something and was willing to talk. The department did not have the manpower to cover what Jack had taken upon himself.

In the upstairs’ bedroom Sam found Maggie waiting for him. She stood over a TV tray arranging two glasses, a bucket of ice, and two plates of cheese, summer sausage, and bacon crackers. She wore a filmy pink negligee that left nothing to the imagination and soft pink nylon slippers that Sam had given her for Christmas. She looked like bubble-gum ice cream, cool and tasty.

"It took you longer than fifteen minutes," she said, raising one eyebrow in a way that Sam found incredibly seductive. "You like?" She swirled around so that the gossamer material billowed away from her body.

Sam did not move, entranced by a montage of breasts, voluptuous hips, and firm, long legs.

"You’re the best-looking woman in Houston, Maggie, I swear to God."

A triumphant sparkle lit up Maggie’s eyes. Despite her age and the unnatural blue wash on her hair, there was still one man in the world she could bewitch totally. "Well, don’t just stand there with your tongue hanging out, Sam Bartholomew! Break open a bottle and let’s get on with the misery."

Sam set the liquor on the floor, removed his jacket, untied his shoes, and turned to Maggie with a devilish grin. "I don’t think we’re going to need the booze for a while," he said, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her near.

Maggie nibbled at his ear and stroked the back of his neck. She gave him a lingering kiss. "Honey, we may never need it."

Chapter 22

"HE JUST DON'T NEVER GIVE UP," Betty Lawrence mumbled at a sofa pillow as she plumped it between firm hands. "He’s just trying to kill hisself. Lotta good that’ll do, but will he listen to reason, will he listen to me? ’Course not, he don’t listen to nobody and he just don’t never give up."

"Who’re you fussing at, Mrs. Lawrence?"

Jack DeShane crossed the living room on his way to the hall coat closet. He was tired and it showed. He moved slowly and his eyes were gray shadows.

"I’m talking to nobody ’cause nobody don’t listen to me no way." She gave another pillow a furious swat, then pressed it into a corner of the sofa with a cluck of her tongue.

"Are you mad at me or what?" Jack asked, coming back to where she towered over the sofa, scowling.

"Mad? Why would I be mad? I can’t tell you what to do. When I try, you don’t listen to me. If you want to kill yourself, how am I gonna stop you?" She glared at him with smoldering brown eyes that dared him to argue with her.

"Look, I’m too tired tonight for this." He tentatively touched his scar with a forefinger. "You know I’ve got to go out nights and try to find out something. You know if I don’t do it no one will."

"What’s the police for then? They’s the ones supposed to be investigating this awful thing. You keep staying up all night, down in those bad places where they knife people for looking at a crack in the sidewalk, and something’s gonna happen, mark my words. You’re making yourself sick, but there you go." She raised her voice when he turned his back toward the hallway. "Out the door and it already ten o’clock at night!"

“I have to," he said quietly. "You know I have to."

Jack closed the door without looking at Mrs. Lawrence again. On the porch he paused and felt his pocket for his cigarettes. Dammit, why could she not understand? She was right. He was running himself into the ground. Sure, he knew it. But Willie’s murderer was out there. Maybe walking the streets, his collar turned up, the garrote in his pants, a plan in his mind. And he could not be invisible. He had a family or a wife or a girl. He had neighbors or drinking partners or a landlord. He took taxicabs and he ate in diners and he bought newspapers. He did not live in a vacuum. He was a part of the city, and someone, somewhere, knew him, maybe even suspected him. It was the thinnest of threads, but the night people, the people living on the edge of society, were the ones most likely to know something. They had to be asked.

Jack headed straight for the downtown Greyhound bus station area. The bus stations in all large metropolitan areas are way stations and waiting rooms for those who have nowhere else to go. Houston was no exception. Besides the homeless and aimless, the real customers who were there to catch buses, and the bored taxi drivers hoping to give a lift to some old couple just arriving from Arizona, there were always the drifters, the riffraff, the winos, the pickpockets, pimps and addicts and droopy-eyed kids looking for easy adventure.

Jack parked in the lot across the street from the neon- lighted building and adjusted his shoulder holster beneath his jacket before getting out of the car. He knew his hair was too short and his eyes were too clear for him to pass for a member of the street people, but he had been careful about his dress and his attitude. He wore the oldest pair of jeans he owned, a threadbare, faded pair that clung to his hips and delineated the bulge of his crotch. He also wore a flannel long-sleeved shirt with one button missing and a torn pocket. Covering his shoulder holster was a bulky black padded jacket that he had worn for ten years. As for attitude, that meant an adjustment of his state of mind. It called for looseness, a certain slurring of his speech, a slouch in his walk, a way of looking at people that said, Don’t fuck with me. I don’t want your shit and I don’t want you messing with mine either. The right attitude usually made up for the short haircut. So far he had been accepted on the street.

"Hey man, how’s it goin’, you taking a ride?"

Jack let the spiffily dressed black man slap him on the arm once then stepped to the side and watched the plate-glass window as if looking for someone he was meeting. He felt the black’s measuring gaze on him.

"Fuck no, you kiddin’me? I don’t hump hounds, man. Buses stink, you know?" Jack replied, easing into his street role.

The black laughed and did a soft shoe over to the window. He squinted against the glare and bared huge white teeth that reminded Jack of a prehistoric carnivore. "You come lookin’ for sumpthing then," he announced. "You can tell me, man." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked ready to go into a routine. "They call me the wizard if that be what it is you lookin’ for.” Jack shook his head a little and glanced up and down the sidewalk. Just his luck he had to run into a wizard so early in the evening. They were not easy to shake unless you made it plain you did not want a fuck of any persuasion.

"I’m looking, but I ain’t looking for pussy right this moment." A fleeting expression of disappointment crossed the black’s face and his hungry smile faded. "Tell you what, though, I’ll keep you in mind, man, when I get around to that later.”

"All right! Peaches is my specialty, ask around. I get the freshest. " The glowing smile returned as he danced nearer Jack. "I get a new shipment every week, so to speak."

He nodded his head toward the interior of the bus station and left Jack to catch up with another lone man crossing the street without baggage.

Jack opened the door of the station and immediately was hit by the sickeningly sweet aroma of unwashed flesh, cigarette smoke, and fried foods. It was a busy night and the rows of plastic seats were filled with weary travelers waiting for their buses to leave Houston.

To Jack the bus station was a surreal place where zombies walked in dazes waiting for their lives to resume. Unlike the airport passengers, bus travelers rarely dressed to be seen and admired. They wore comfortable, loose clothing in anticipation of the long hours on the nation’s highways. They carried hampers or paper bags stuffed with fried chicken and pieces of chocolate cake from home. If they had children with them, they did not try to control their behavior. It was hard to sit still on the bus for hours, so stopovers and departure time were a welcomed break for energetic youngsters. Jack wondered if the travelers and the people who served them really felt as despondent and exhausted as they looked.

A sloe-eyed girl wearing a preteen bra that clearly showed through beneath a yellow nylon blouse sidled past Jack. She carried a movie magazine and a stuffed donkey. Behind her came the soft-shoe wizard with a wink and a leer that turned Jack’s stomach. Jack’s instinct took over and made him move before he thought about it. He was beside the girl at the luncheon counter before the black man could reach her side.

"Hey, what’chu doin'?" There was a steel edge in the black man’s voice.

"Later, man. This is my sister from Corpus Christi, all right?"

The wizard thumbed his nose and did a military turn.

The girl stared wistfully up into Jack’s eyes. "Am I your sister?" she asked in a piping voice. "I don’t remember having a brother looked as good as you."

"Are you in here alone?" Jack asked more severely than he had meant to. When were kids going to learn?

The girl turned her head away and sulked, one hand fondling the stuffed donkey in her lap.

"You just get into Houston?" Jack tried again in a softer tone.

"What business is it of yours?"

“Listen, kid, runaways get put into homes."

The girl’s spine straightened. She drew a glass of Coke closer and spoke around the straw in her mouth.

"You’re a cop," she said with confidence. "You can’t bust me. I ain’t done nothin’."

"I repeat runaways..." Jack was not sure what to say.

“I ain’t no fucking runaway, okay? I live down on Gray and I like to hang out here. Is that against the law?"

Jack shook his head and swirled around on his stool to make sure the wizard was gone. He stood up. He was seconds away from losing control. "You’re too young to be selling, kid. Goddammit, go home."

The girl pushed the Coke away and, grabbing her donkey and magazine, made a beeline for the door.

Jack sat back down and ordered coffee. He caught himself rubbing the scar on his cheek and slapped his hand onto the counter. What in the hell was he doing anyway? Maybe Mrs. Lawrence was right. He was wasting his time and destroying his health and his nerves.

"Hey man, you look kinda wiped out. You could use something to ease you outta pain, huh?"

Jack turned and saw a thin, pimply young man in dirty chinos and black T-shirt with a red Led Zepplin logo printed across the front. "You talking to me?" Jack asked. I have to play the game, he thought, no matter how bad I feel or how low I get.

"What the fuck, man, I know how you feel. This place is sick, you know? This whole fucking scene is sick. I seen how you helped that girl. The wizard, man, he’s nigger-bitching mean to his girls. You done right, I could see that. You got balls. I think I could do you a favor."

"What kind of favor could you do me?" Jack turned all the way around to face the boy. At least this one was talking.

"Like relieve your worries, man. How ’bout if we step into someplace private, like the john?"

Jack followed the boy into the men’s rest room and took up a position near the door with his back to the wall. "What you got?" he asked.

"I’m a little low, you know, but I still got some ’ludes and some grass, man, that’s laced sweeter than goose shit," the young man offered.

"I don’t want any freaking angel dust. How much for the ’ludes?"

"Oh man!"

Jack looked up, fearful of the deriding tone of the boy’s voice. He had made a mistake; it was not angel dust on the grass. The mistake could blow his getting any closer to the kid. The grass must be laced with strychnine. "Hey, you wanna sell to me or don’t you? I can take a hike right now if you’re not interested."

Jack snatched the door handle and smiled slightly when the boy’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Okay, okay, wire yourself down. It don’t matter about the fucking grass. So you don’t want sweet Jesus anointing your head, that’s your business, jack."

Jack flinched at the use of his name until he realized the kid was using the word to mean "buddy."

"How much?" Jack kept a firm grip on his wallet and saw the kid’s eyes glaze over while he calculated.

"Will this do you?" He whipped out a twenty and the boy quickly reached into his underwear and handed over a tiny clear plastic bag of pills.

"There, that’ll take care of all your nigger bitching,” the boy said. "I forgot, but I got some crank too if you ain’t into anything too heavy, you know. It’s cheap, but it’ll pump you when you’re too far down."

"Not tonight, thanks." Not ever, he thought.

"You come down here often? I can get you most anything if you lay in an order, you know."

"Not often enough for that. What about you? Can I find you here every night?"

They moved through a clutch of Mexicans to the counter again and sat down. Jack wanted to keep the kid talking.

"I’l1 be around. Just ask for Stevie and I can pop up out of the blue for a good bill."

They both ordered Cokes and donuts. "On me," Jack said.

During the next hour, except for two interruptions from buyers who took Stevie off to the men’s room, Jack found out more information on the boy’s lifestyle and habits than he had bargained for. He was small time and his dope dealing went to supplement his meager daytime income as an alarm installer. He was hoping for more extensive drug territory and a greater stock for a burgeoning market, but so far his suppliers had kept him small and he was not making enough to quit work altogether. He lived in an alley apartment in the Heights with "a girl named Judy Lee who has hair down to her ass and legs all the way up to her shoulders."

"You must know a lot of people," Jack ventured, hoping the boy liked ego tripping.

"I know my share.”

"You hear about those killings we’ve been having here?" Jack asked casually.

“You mean that fucking madman, the one running off with fucking heads?" The boy shivered involuntarily.

"Yeah, that’s the one. I bet the street’s alive with speculation on that joker."

"Maybe. Maybe not. How come you askin’, man?" The boy licked his lips and looked around the crowded lobby.

"I’ll tell you something, Stevie."

"Yeah, you tell me, man. I got a feeling you don’t even do ’ludes and maybe all of a sudden I’m real busy and better move on, huh?"

"Wait a minute. Calm down. I ain’t the heat, what the fuck’s wrong with you?" Jack thought fast. "I’ll tell you what I am, though. You know that woman that got killed? That one in the apartment?"

"Down on Richmond?"

"That’s the one. Well, that woman, she was a friend of mine. A real good friend of mine, okay? And you know the fucking cops. They don’t know shinola." He managed to sound both angry and disgusted.

"They don’t know from nigger bitching."

"That’s right, and I figure, I tell myself, there’s somebody out here might know this motherfucker. Somebody might know the crazy sonovabitch."

"Me?" Stevie fidgeted on the stool. "I don’t know goose shit. I sell a little smoke, man; I don’t know the fucker."

Jack lit a cigarette and took his time drawing in the smoke and letting it trail out in a thin, languid stream.

Dead end, Goddamn dead end everywhere he went, everywhere.

"A guy I know at work now..." Stevie said. He thought of the mean Nick Ringer.

Jack turned to him to show his interest.

“This guy, he’s really sick, you know? He’s been talking. Every fuckin’ time I have to ride with him to do a job he’s talking shit."

"Like what?" Jack felt his skin prickle.

"Well, like how it don’t bother him none this fucker’s going around stealing heads, maybe they deserved stealing. You know--shit like that. Sick, this guy’s real sick, know what I mean?" Stevie pointed to his head and made a circle with his finger.

"What else does he say?"

"Oh man, just sick stuff like what he did in Nam, how he killed three gooks single-handed, like he’s some big hero. Then he gets into what he thinks the guy’s doing with the heads. Real sicko." Stevie looked around the lobby for potential customers.

Jack patiently smoked his cigarette and stared at the boy, silently urging him to talk.

"You know what he said last week?" Stevie asked suddenly.

Jack shook his head.

"He said maybe the killer’s shrinking the heads like with voodoo or something. I mean, shee-it, this guy I work with makes my balls crawl up my be1ly."

"Maybe I could talk to him. What’s his name? Where do you work?"

"You tell that motherfucker I sent you to him and he’ll skin me alive, man." Stevie drew away from Jack and looked ready to flee.

"I ain’t telling nobody nothing. I’m doing this for Marjorie, you understand? You won’t be involved," Jack said, quickly reassuring the young man.

"He’s a bad dude, man, I’m warning ya."

“Name?”

"Nick. Nick Ringer. Apex Alarm. But if you let on you know me..."

The boy hushed as Jack took out his wallet. He handed Stevie another twenty and slid off the stool. "See ya, kid. Thanks. You hear anything else you tell me when I come back by."

Outside the bus station a drunk walked by, talking to God. The wizard shot Jack an angry look and turned his back. A hack driver yawned and looked at his watch.

Jack flipped the butt of his cigarette into the gutter and strode across the street to his car.

It’s nothing, he told himself.

It’s all you’ve got in weeks, he argued back to himself.

This Nick is nothing but a degenerate, a waste of time.

But it’s all you’ve got.

One thing that Stevie had said stayed with Jack as he drove home. "Maybe they deserved stealing..."

Who said shit like that? Nick Ringer. Apex Alarm. And he had been in Vietnam. Please God, Jack prayed, let this be the break I need.

Chapter 23

EILEEN MCKENNA pulled her blue fox jacket closer around her shivering body. Ever since she had heard about the River Oaks’ murder on the six o’clock news she had felt chilled. A general malaise settled over her as she prepared for her appointment later that evening with a client in the River Oaks’ district. It was her first job since she and Jack had made love after Willie’s death, and she realized her hesitancy to keep the appointment involved more than a reluctance to be near the scene of a brutal murder. She did not want to go to another man’s bed out of an unreasonable feeling that it would be a betrayal of Jack.

Could this be the beginning of a new morality, she wondered? Anyone who knew her would have laughed.

Since when did Eileen McKenna believe in sexual devotion to one man, in monogamy? There was no precedent for this sudden urge of fidelity on the part of Houston’s most sought-after call girl. It was utter foolishness.

The doorman of her apartment house watched enviously as a chauffeur opened the rear door of a beautifully kept 1975 Silver Cloud Rolls Royce for her. Hal Winifred’s style extended even to his paid companions, Eileen thought uncharitably as she got in. When you were a middle-aged bachelor who owned a large interest in Astro-world and the Houston Oilers football team, you could afford to send one of your Rolls to pick up a gorgeous redhead in a blue fox coat. That you also were expected to pay highly for the services of this woman did not matter.

I’m being mean and petty, Eileen thought, but could not manage to throw off her uneasiness. She felt like sulking, and when she was in such a mood her professional manner took over. There was an unwritten law that prostitutes kept their private lives private.

The chauffeur, an old man with pure white hair, did not spare his passenger a single glance, much less the benefit of a friendly word. This made Eileen even more irritable. The unspoken message was painfully clear. They were both employees of Hal Winifred. They need not waste one another’s time engaging in the social amenities. He drove the car and she rented out her body. She might as well be a basket of flowers or a sack of groceries.

"Turn around," she commanded abruptly.

The chauffeur flinched and the back of his neck reddened. "Madame?"

"I said turn this car around and take me back to the St. John."

"But Mr. Winifred is expecting you." To the chauffeur this clearly settled the matter.

"Mr. Winifred will have to be disappointed. I don’t feel well and I wish to be taken home immediately.” For the first time since picking her up, the chauffeur twisted his head around to look at her. "But Mr. Winifred sent me--"

"You will simply have to convey my apology to your employer," Eileen interrupted. "I’m sure you’re well-trained in that regard.”

The utter contempt in her voice was not lost on the chauffeur. “Yes, madam. Whatever you say.” Eileen relaxed against the soft leather seat and formulated a plan in her mind. All she had been able to think about for the past weeks was Jack DeShane. It was time to be honest with herself. She loved him and she no longer liked her life as a woman surviving on her looks and sexual skills. She knew her recent sleeplessness and irritability were caused by a refusal to admit she was in love. She had been needed before by various men for various reasons, but never had she been needed as a total woman, accepted as a total person, unconditionally. Jack needed her and loved her. She had tried to deny that she needed and loved him the same way.

It would mean taking a chance on another person, opening herself to hurt, relinquishing the lifestyle she had so studiously created. The safety of the cold, empty place she had put herself in would be gone. Love meant risking the emotional stability that came from non-commitment. After all these years, could she respond warmly and honestly to true love--and return it?

Not that she had a choice. Look at what she had just done. Look at how she had put off all the appointments with men after the last night with Jack.

The Rolls slid smoothly to a halt before the entrance of the St. John. Without a word to the chauffeur, Eileen let herself out and walked into the lobby like a queen. She called for a taxi and within minutes was on her way to Jack DeShane’s house. All the way she prayed that he was home. They had not seen each other for over a week because of his searching the streets. Could she ever erase his agony over Willie?

Would his son’s death destroy him so that their love might never have a chance?

"Here you are, lady," the cab driver said, clicking over the meter.

Eileen looked out the window to the porch awash in yellow light. This was a home, not a hotel. It reminded her of Bloomington. "Thanks, keep the change."

Her lovely smile melted the driver’s heart so thoroughly that it was not until he had driven away that he realized she had given him a twenty-dollar bill for a ride that cost three.

Betty Lawrence stood before the open door, a look of astonishment on her face.

"Is Jack at home?” Eileen asked.

Mrs. Lawrence quickly assessed the woman before her: fur jacket, small silver-beaded purse clutched to her chest, thick, luxurious red hair piled atop her head, and the sweetest face God must have ever made. What on the earth could she want with Jack DeShane?

"No, I’m sorry, but he’s out," Mrs. Lawrence said when her appraising eyes were halted by the steady sea-green gaze.

"I’m a close friend of Jack’s," Eileen explained. "Do you think it would be too much trouble if I waited for him?"

Mrs. Lawrence saw the cab pull away and stepped aside to allow the woman to come in. "He might not be back for some time," the older woman warned. “He’s had a misfortune, and he spends every night out this way. If you’re close like you say, then maybe you know what he’s up to.”

"Yes, I know about Willie. And I know about Jack trying to find out something on the streets."

Mrs. Lawrence heaved a sigh. Perhaps here was an understanding soul. But what this wealthy lady had to do with a poor cop was still a mystery. “I’m Mrs. Lawrence, Mr. DeShane’s housekeeper. I moved in to stay awhile after what happened to Willie."

"Eileen McKenna." Eileen held out a hand. "Jack’s told me about you. He really appreciates all you’ve done for him, Mrs. Lawrence, and so do I. I don’t know if he would have made it without you here to stay with him."

The housekeeper took Eileen’s fur coat and hung it up. When she turned back to the woman, she was struck again by the unearthly beauty of Eileen McKenna. "Lord, but you’re pretty," she said, and quickly closed her mouth in embarrassment.

But Eileen’s smile was innocent and kind, quickly putting Mrs. Lawrence at ease. "Thank you," Eileen said. She glanced down the hall to the kitchen and into the darkened living room.

"Well, well. Look at me forgetting my manners this way," Mrs. Lawrence said sheepishly. She took Eileen by the arm to lead her to the kitchen. "I’ll make tea if you like, and we’l1 have a little talk while we wait. I had just made myself some fried toast for a snack. I don’t sleep till Mr. DeShane gets home safe nights. Would you like a slice of toast, Miz McKenna? Or I could fix you something else.”

A long lost memory of a plate of fried toast from when she had been a girl in Bloomington surfaced and made Eileen’s stomach rumble. Home.

"I’d love fried toast!" she said. "That would be a wonderful treat."

Mrs. Lawrence listened eagerly while melting butter into a heavy black skillet. The beautiful lady came from a small Texas town and a poor family. She was no stranger to fried toast and grits and collard greens and cornbread. The more she talked about herself and her childhood, the more the housekeeper liked her.

Not a snooty bone in her body, she thought happily. What a catch she would be for Jack. The house might come alive again with love and happiness with this lady around. God willing, and with a careful nudge from interested parties, Jack DeShane could be in line for a miracle. Stranger things had happened.

Both women’s attention turned to the sound of a key scratching in the front door. It was eleven-thirty, an early hour for Jack’s return from the streets. For a few seconds Eileen remembered the killer who stalked the city. Without her knowing it, Mrs. Lawrence too felt sudden fear at the sound from the front of the house. When they heard Jack’s familiar greeting, "Mrs. Lawrence, I’m home," the women gave twin sighs of relief and only then realized how frightened they had both been.

Mrs. Lawrence smiled to Eileen shakily and said, "That’s my cue to go to bed. I’m sure Mr. DeShane will be happy to see you. If either one of you need anything later tonight, don’t hesitate to call me."

"It was good to meet you, Mrs. Lawrence. Jack’s lucky to have you for his friend."

"What he’s lucky about is having you."

Mrs. Lawrence met Jack in the hall and told him he had company waiting in the kitchen. Then she excused herself and went to bed.

Jack stood at the threshold in the large, homey kitchen, obviously surprised. "Eileen, what are you doing here?"

Eileen felt horrible at the way he looked. His eyes had bags beneath them, and his scar, usually unnoticeable, was puffy and red. He was dressed like a poor bum and the jeans accentuated the weight loss he had experienced over the last few weeks.

"Oh, Jack, Mrs. Lawrence was right." She slowly walked to him. It took all of her willpower not to enfold him in her arms and soothe him like a child. "You’re trying to kill yourself. This has to stop."

Jack dismissed the topic with a gesture of his hand. He had been hearing the same thing every night from his housekeeper, and he did not want Eileen to worry. "I’ll be all right," he said, kissing her lightly and leading her to the table. "That’s not what brought you here, is it? If Mrs. Lawrence called you..."

"Jack, you know better than that. Mrs. Lawrence didn’t even know me before I came here tonight. Though she would have had a perfect right to call for help. You look like a scarecrow."

Wearily Jack ran a hand over his gaunt face and slid down in the dining-room chair until his head rested on its back. "No one seems to understand that I can’t sit at home waiting for the department to come up with something.” He sat up abruptly and his face was full of barely controlled fury. "This leave of absence is driving me crazy, don’t you know that? They won’t let me work on the case; they keep me in the dark when they get snippets of evidence. And they don’t have the manpower it takes to patrol the streets looking for a lead, any lead. This is the only thing I can do to help find the bastard who killed Willie. It may not be worth a damn, but at least I'll know I made an effort."

Eileen put à hand on Jack’s arm and squeezed it, offering support. "Jack, I didn’t mean to quarrel with you over what you’re trying to do. I’m just concerned about your health. Late hours, not eating, and even Mrs. Lawrence told me you’re going to parts of town where it’s dangerous to be at night. It scares me, Jack."

Her eyes filled with tears and she wanted to curse herself. The self-control she valued so highly seemed to have deserted her.

"Don’t cry, Eileen, please. It just seems so many people are against me and I get defensive. Sometimes I feel raw all over, as if my skin’s been peeled away. I catch myself blowing up at Mrs. Lawrence over nothing, and now I’ve made you cry. I’m so miserable that I make everyone around me miserable."

Eileen wiped her eyes with her hands, but still the tears welled and rushed over her lids. "Dammit, Jack, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be tonight. I came here to...I wanted to tell you..."

Jack could feel Eileen’s struggle. It was wretched of him to lash out at her, to accuse her of misunderstanding. Looking at her, her shoulders shaking, he felt a tightness in his chest. "What did you want to tell me? "

Jack brought her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He closed his eyes, breathing in the soap and perfume smell of her. With Eileen in his arms he could forget the horror his life had become. She represented all that was good and worthwhile. With her near, the streets vanished for a little bit, the pimps and crooks and con artists did not exist. The child he had loved so much and missed so desperately released the dead weight from Jack’s heart and he could even hope that he could love again.

His lips found Eileen’s, and he tasted the salty wetness of her tears. A lump formed in his throat so large that he could hardly speak. "Eileen, marry me, tell me that’s why you’ve come. No, don’t say anything yet." He kissed her again to silence what he was afraid to hear. "I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you. I don’t care what you are or what I am. The past shouldn’t matter. I love you more than my own life, and that’s what matters. I’ve lost Willie--dear God, it’s so hard for me to admit I’ve lost him…"

He swallowed hard only to find the pain still deep within. "This is the first time I’ve been able to say it aloud and know that it’s true. I’ve lost a part of my life, but I’m willing to face that and go on. I can’t lose you, Eileen, don’t tell me you’ve come here tonight to tell me that."

He kissed her again, and it seemed as if his very life was draining into her, and in return, her life was surging into him. They did not have to make love and join their bodies to become one.

"Jack, Jack, listen to me," Eileen whispered. Her doubts were gone, regret was a thing of the past. She felt as if she were leaping into a dream and there was no way back. "I came here tonight to tell you I want to be your wife."

Jack burrowed his face into the velvety fragrance of her neck and sighed like a man who had just been given his life back.

"I’ve never loved anyone before," Eileen went on. "I’ve made mistakes and wasted years of my life doing such meaningless things."

"Sshh," Jack whispered. "Don’t say any more." He swept her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom and softly closed the door.

Betty Lawrence eased the crack of her own door shut and smiled to herself in the dark. She had been right.

The pretty girl was heaven sent.

"Stranger things have happened," she said as she tossed her robe across the foot of her bed. For the first time in many years she fell asleep thinking about her own youth.

#

Jack kissed Eileen tenderly and rolled away from her to feel for his cigarettes on the night table. Their lovemaking had filled him with wonder. She was sensitive to his every move, every touch. Now that he knew she would be his, she would soon be Mrs. Jack DeShane, their coupling was even more unrestrained than before. She stroked his thigh while he smoked, the tip of his cigarette glowing gently in the dark.

"I was at the bus station tonight," he said.

"Are you finding out anything, Jack?"

"Blind alleys and brick walls. I checked out a hustler last week with a reputation for turning lethal when he’s crossed, but he had an alibi for the times of the last two murders."

Jack balanced a plaid bean-bag ashtray on his stomach and tapped ashes into it. "I talked to a kid tonight who works with some kind of perverted freak I want to talk to."

"What’s he done?" Eileen asked.

"I don’t know if he’s done anything, but it’s what he says about the killings that’s pretty sick. Jesus, what was his name?" Jack held his cigarette stiffly above the ashtray trying to remember. "I knew I should have written it down. He works at Apex Burglar Alarm and his name is…Singer? No. Winger? Christ! "

"Eileen sat up and propped a pillow behind her back. "Take it easy, Jack. The name will come to you."

Jack swung his legs over the side of the bed and set the ashtray on the night table. He was about to rise and pace the floor when the correct name came to him. "Ringer! Nick Ringer, that’s it!" He sighed in relief. “The son of a bitch was in Vietnam too, and Sam told me he’s been working on a list of vets in Houston who were in Special Forces and had guerrilla training. Maybe they haven’t checked out this guy yet, and I’ll save them some time."

Eileen sat rigidly against the headboard, a look of startlement on her pale face.

"Jack..." she said very softly.

"The kid said Ringer talked about the murders all the time. He said they probably deserved what happened to them. Can you believe anyone--"

"Jack, please listen to me."

Something in Eileen’s tone made Jack turn to her. "What is it, Eileen? What’s the matter?"

"I know him," she said simply.

"You know who?"

"Nick Ringer. I know him. Or, at least I did when I was a kid."

"Are you serious?" Jack could not believe what he was hearing.

"Yes, I knew him and his brother, Daley. They lived next door to me in Bloomington. I was ten and I had a kitten..." She covered her face with her hands and shivered.

Jack took her wrists and kissed them gently. In the dark he could not see if she was crying, but he thought she was. "What happened?" he asked, knowing that the memory was painful.

"He wasn’t as pretty as Toby," Eileen said as if she was talking to herself. "His name was Shingles, a little marmalade cat with bands of yellow fur. I carried that kitten everywhere with me. I played house with it. I dressed it in doll clothes and sneaked my mom’s cans of sardines from the pantry to give it something special. It was the first pet I ever owned, and I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me have it when I found it crying in a thicket behind our house." She paused and looked at Jack. "Can I have one of your cigarettes?"

Jack automatically picked up his pack before realizing he had never seen her smoke. "Are you smoking now?"

"I am tonight."

He lit one of his Marlboros for her and handed it over. She took a shallow drag and coughed behind her hand before continuing the painful story.

"One day I made Nick angry. I called his mother a name." She laughed ironically. "The name I called her is a joke on me now. It was summer, hot, terribly hot, and Nick came over to play, but he was always bullying me, and even then I was an independent little girl. When I got mad I always talked back, something most little girls never dared to do, especially to Nick." She drew on the Marlboro and this time did not cough. She stared straight ahead as if seeing the summer day long ago being played out on the white stucco wall of Jack’s bedroom.

"Nick and I had experienced run-ins before, but this time Nick kept taunting me. He planted himself between me and the house and wouldn’t let me past. I was afraid my mom might look out the kitchen window and see us in the backyard fighting. She didn’t like me to play with the Ringer boys. None of the kids in the neighborhood were allowed to play with them. They had bad reputations--or rather, Nick had a bad reputation. Daley was like his shadow. He always followed Nick around, skulking around corners, hiding in bushes, creeping up on Nick to catch him doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Because that’s what Nick did--things kids aren’t supposed to do. Horrible things. Sadistic, dreadful things. I may have been the only kid in town who really knew what was going on. I lived next door and I was curious because the Ringers were taboo. I’m not proud of the fact now, but I was almost as bad about keeping watch on Nick as Daley was.

"He did awful..." She motioned for the ashtray, and when Jack set it on the sheets, she ground out the cigarette.

“He killed your kitten, didn’t he?" Jack said quietly.

"Yes, the morning after we had our fight I found Shingles hanging from the clothesline by a wire noose."

It took a few seconds for the word "wire" to fully sink in for Jack. When it did he nearly shouted. He wanted to grab the telephone book and look up the Ringer address. He wanted to find the man and shake him by the collar until he confessed to the murder of Willie. The only thing that stopped Jack was the insanity of it all. He had no proof. He had a twenty-year-old horror story of animal mutilation and murder plus the untrustworthy gossip of a drug-dealing kid. He had coincidences. Vietnam, wire, sadism. He had nothing, goddamn nothing, but coincidence.

"Tell me all you know about him," Jack said, shaking another cigarette from his pack. "I want to know everything you can remember about the family."

"We were all poor in that neighborhood, but the Ringers were worse than poor, they were considered white trash. His mother was a now-and-again whore, and that’s what I called her when I was mad at Nick." Eileen gave an ironic laugh. "I know that probably sounds funny coming from me, but in 1960 it was the worst slur you could make about a kid’s mom. Whoring just wasn’t a socially acceptable hobby in a little southeast Texas town. If you whored, everyone knew it, and you became an outcast."

Jack tried to picture the small town of Eileen’s childhood. He had always lived in cities, and although there were people around with small-town mentalities, it was not the same as growing up in provincial 1960 Bloomington, Texas. He felt an ache for the little girl Eileen had been. He wished he had known her with her long pigtails and quick temper.

"Nick and Daley’s father wasn’t around much. He worked at the switch yard for the railroad when he was in town, and when he was gone Nick’s mother turned tricks. Finally he left them altogether. I realize now Nick's mom had to do something to keep body and soul together, but kids can’t rationalize and they take on the prejudice of their elders. Besides, Mrs. Ringer was sluttish in other ways. She let the boys run wild and put a lot of responsibility on Daley’s shoulders even though he was two years younger than Nick. That was because Nick was a…troublemaker.

"He was into trouble all the time, most of it of his own making. And he was a strange boy--aggressive, cruel, always looking for revenge for what he felt were unfair judgments against his family. In a way I couldn’t blame him. He was pitiful and life was hard for him then, but no one made him cruel. No one made him kill Shingles."

"You’re sure he did it?" Jack asked when Eileen shuddered.

"Positive. I’d seen him kill other small animals. Frogs, snakes, birds. Then after Shingles was killed, I started watching him closer. I wanted to catch him doing something I could report to my father, something he could be punished for. By that time I hated him. He scared me, and he had taken away the first pet I’d ever loved. I wanted my own revenge.”

Eileen took another cigarette and got out of bed. As memories returned, she began to walk around the room. "So I watched. I’d run straight home from school and watch his house through the bushes from my bedroom window. I imagined I was Nancy Drew and that Nick would go to jail for all his wrongdoing. I knew--I just knew he’d do it again, kill something, and strangle it. That’s what he did, strangled small innocent things that couldn’t fight back. I guess it made him feel powerful." She shook her head slowly.

"Then one day it happened. It was a weekend, a Saturday. School had just started so it must have been September. God, it was hot. The black pavement in the streets was spotted with bubbles where the tar rose. The sun was so bright it hurt your eyes.

"I was bored and feeling hateful. I’d been watching Nick’s house from my bedroom window since early morning, and it was almost two in the afternoon. My mother thought I was sulking because I didn’t like the new school clothes she’d bought me, so she left me alone. I was sleepy and about to give up when I saw Nick through the bushes. He and Daley had been arguing all day. Daley wanted Nick to play with him or go somewhere and Nick wouldn’t do anything. Finally Daley went inside to get out of the sun and Nick came from the thicket behind our houses and passed by the bushes where I saw him.

"Well, that was it. Finally I had some sleuthing to do." Eileen smiled at the memory. "I got out of the house without being seen and followed Nick across the street and through a weedy lot. It was kind of fun. I was still mad at him and he still scared me, but you have to remember it had been a long summer and school was so boring. So tracking Nick without getting caught was an adventure. At least I was doing something.

"Nick cut through yards and alleys. He crawled between stopped railroad tanker cars at the tracks. I stayed with him at a safe enough distance so I wouldn’t be seen. What I didn’t want to happen was for Nick to discover I was following him. Being around him when Daley was present was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine getting caught alone with him."

Eileen paused and stared out the window. The moon was down and nothing stirred in the house.

Jack knew he was seeing a side of Eileen she had never before revealed. The more she talked about when she was a child, the more southern inflections entered her speech.

A portrait of Nick Ringer was evolving in Jack’s mind too. He did not want to, but the more he learned about the Ringers, the more convinced the boy Eileen was describing could have grown up to commit the murders. The police academy spent very little time on the psychological aspect of an officer’s education, but it was easy to see a pattern in the disturbed boy that might have erupted in the grown man.

"There were birds singing everywhere in the woods," Eileen continued. "We were on a country road back of the railroad tracks. Nick walked down the center of the road through the hot gravel. To keep from being seen, I went into the trees that lined the road. I ran from tree to tree like a little rabbit. It was a game, a stupid kid’s game. I was Sherlock Holmes, and nothing could touch me because I was so smart. Never in a million years would I be discovered." Eileen began to tremble and Jack went to her, enfolding her in his arms.

"But I was wrong. I was fooled by a kid much smarter and craftier than me. I was a minor-league sleuth pitted against a master. You see, Nick was practiced at this. I’d forgotten he had a brother who tailed him everywhere. After a while Nick had developed a sixth sense that told him when someone was behind him or when eyes were on his every move. He’d actually known from the very beginning--from the second I leaped off my porch to trail him--that I was there. I really was the rabbit. And the fox walked ahead of me kicking gravel in the late afternoon sun.

"The woods thinned, I was scampering further and further between tree trunks trying not to be seen. There was more brush in my way and cockleburrs latched onto my socks and my clothes and tangled in my pigtails. The game was rapidly losing its thrill. I was soaking wet with sweat and my throat was dry. I was out of breath and my legs ached."

Jack heard Eileen’s breath shorten and come in quick gasps as she spoke. Her eyes closed and her fingers tightened around his hand.

"We’d come to the burial ground,” she said calmly. "It wasn’t a city graveyard or a family plot. It was a deserted piece of land where Nick came to bury the animals he killed. It was his own private reserve, a secret place full of death.

"I didn’t know that at first, of course. I was disappointed that I’d come all that way chasing after Nick to wind up on an ugly patch of scrub land in the middle of nowhere. There were a few short-needle pines that looked as if they were dying. There was a broken-down fence and a dry red ditch. When I crept closer I could see where sticks had been piled up and set on fire in the ditch. Suddenly I realized that this place meant something special to Nick. He walked on it as if it were sacred ground. I’ve seen people in cemeteries since who moved that way--slow, with their heads down as if they are communicating with those who have passed on." Eileen paused for a moment before continuing.

"Nick still hadn’t let on he knew I was there. He ambled around with his hands stuck in his pockets and stooped every now and then to pat little mounds of dirt. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. The mounds looked a lot like red ant hills, but no one would go around patting anthills. I tried to figure out what they might be and what they meant to him, but it didn’t make sense.

"Then...” Eileen drew in her breath sharply and Jack tensed. "Then all of a sudden Nick turned right around, facing where I was hidden behind a pine and stared my way. I froze. My knees locked and I couldn’t even blink. I knew he had seen me, and I wanted to run out of the woods and onto the road away from him, but I was hypnotized. Before I had time to run he crossed the space between us, ran the last few yards, and caught hold of my arm, squeezing it tightly until I cried.

“'What do you want?’ he said. 'What do you want to know about me, Eileen?'

"I couldn’t speak. I was too shocked that he’d caught me. At that moment I could see that he hated me--really hated me.

"I tried to jerk away from him, but he held on, his fingers pinching me to the bone. I stopped struggling and tried to get mad. I knew if I could get mad enough I'd stop being scared, but it was the look on his face that made me most afraid. No one had ever looked at me that way before, and I was paralyzed.

"'I want to show you something, Eileen,’ he said, dragging me behind him into the open. ‘You followed me to learn my secrets, so I’ll show you a secret. You came here to see something so I’ll show you something worth the trip.’”

Eileen broke into a sob and buried her head in Jack’s shoulder. “Oh God, Jack, it was horrible! He dragged me to the fence line at the back of the property. It was a weedy place, but a path had been trampled through it to where the fence turned at a right angle to cross the back of the land. The weeds were brown and dead and some of them were as high as my head. I didn’t know where he was taking me or what it was he wanted to show me.

"When we got through the path and to the fence corner, Nick pushed me forward. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I stumbled across something. When I saw what it was, I started to gag."

Eileen turned her face from Jack, but not before he saw the revulsion etched on her delicate features. "It was a cat. A dead cat with a rope around its neck. I didn’t recognize it from our neighborhood so it must have been a stray he’d killed. It was stiff and dried looking. Nick pushed me down onto my knees and wrapped both of his hands in my pigtails to force me to look at it. I clenched my eyes shut, but he shook my head until my scalp hurt and I looked. That’s when I saw a small hatchet resting near the cat’s head.

“’Know what I’m gonna do now?’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I’m going to chop it into pieces. I’m going to cut off its legs and its head and then I’m going to bury it here,’ he said, pointing out to the clear space where we’d come from.

"I started screaming at him. I don’t remember what all I said, but I did tell him I was going to tell his mother. I was going to tell everyone what he was doing. Do you know what he said then? He said go ahead, tell on him, who cared? He said it was his word against mine and who cared what kids did? He asked me if I hadn’t ever wanted to see what a cat looked like all cut up into bits. Then he said that if he got into trouble and was found out, he’d make it look like I was involved too. People would believe anything bad about kids and he’d make them believe that I was just the same as he was. He’d tell them we did it together and that it was my idea, kind of an experiment, a nasty little experiment." Eileen shuddered and Jack held her close stroking her long hair.

"I never did tell," she concluded weakly. "I was afraid to tell. What he was doing was obscene and cruel, but who would believe me? It was too insane to believe. My mother would have laughed at my vivid imagination. Nick’s mom couldn’t handle him and didn’t have the power to stop him. Then there was Nick’s threat to think about. I felt guilty. Although Nick was the one doing these awful things, because I knew about it and had seen the corpse of the cat, in some crazy way I felt responsible for what he did. By following him that day I’d entangled myself in his nightmare world."

"You don’t have to feel gui1ty," Jack soothed softly. "He was a warped little kid, and it wasn’t your fault."

"I realize that now, but when I was ten I believed Nick Ringer had the power to show me up as his accomplice. I took the blame for his secrets upon myself. It terrifies me that he’s in Houston, a grown man now."

"It’s all right, Eileen, try not to think about him. I’ll never let anything happen to you." Jack slowly rocked her back and forth.

“Do you think he might be…?" Eileen’s voice trailed away.

Jack’s mind shrieked, Yes, yes, he’s the most likely suspect I know about. But he answered, "We can’t know yet. They have a psychological profile worked up on the killer downtown, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t know what kind of a man would kill..." His voice broke.

"With a wire," Eileen finished.

"Yes," Jack echoed, "with a wire."

Chapter 24

NICK LOUNGED in a chair in Sidney Rubens’s office thinking about the Italian sausage sandwich he had gulped on his way to see the psychiatrist.

"How have you been sleeping?" Rubens asked.

"So, so. The Valium helps."

Rubens re-lit the cigar lying in his McDonald’s ashtray and leaned back in his chair.

"What do we have to go through to get me a refill?" Nick asked.

"Not much, Nick. A little chat, that’s all. You’re not exactly under treatment. We’re just trying to get to the root cause of your insomnia and attacks of nerves.”

"So shoot your best shot," Nick said, very composed. "You tell me why I can’t sleep."

Rubens smiled slightly before putting on his cigar. "I thought you might tell me."

Nick shrugged his shoulders and slipped down in the chair until his legs reached to the psychiatrist’s desk.

"It’s your time we’re wasting," he said sullenly. "I personally don’t think there’s any problem here.” Rubens tapped a folder next to his ashtray. "They say in Tacoma you had a problem."

"Fuck Tacoma." Nick said it very calmly.

Rubens tried another tack. “You said the killing you did in the war bothered your conscience."

Nick snorted and laced his fingers together. He twiddled his thumbs idly and refused to meet the gaze of the man behind the desk.

"Didn’t you say that, Nick?"

"I don’t want to talk about it. That was nearly three years ago. The past is dead far as I’m concerned. You shouldn’t take everything I say too literally, and for that matter, you shouldn’t take what Tacoma said without a grain of salt either. They were all a bunch of jerk-offs."

"Do you still have nightmares?" Rubens asked.

"I told you I did, but everybody has a nightmare now and then. It’s no big deal." Nick began getting more anxious as the psychiatrist continued talking about nightmares.

“Can you tell me what your nightmares are about?"

"The usual things--falling, drowning, being chased by something I can’t see, that sort of stuff." He shifted uneasily in his chair.

Rubens tapped his ashes, biding for time. Now they were getting somewhere. Nick believed it was commonplace to dream so often of being in peril.

"There’s another dream too," Nick added. He frowned in concentration and unlocked his fingers to stare at the knuckles of his right hand. "I have this one pretty often." He glanced up suspiciously. "Not that it means anything. It’s just a nightmare."

Rubens circled the stub of his cigar at Nick to gesture him to continue. Speaking at the wrong time was the mistake most listeners made.

"I’m lying on a hospital bed, all tucked in. I open my eyes and find that I can’t move. Not a muscle. I can’t even lift a finger or wiggle a toe. The only part of me that moves is my eyelids. I lift them and I see two figures beside my bed. I try to turn my head and I can’t. I try to talk and I can’t. I’m paralyzed and I panic. The figures next to me are talking. It’s Daley, my brother, and a doctor."

Rubens squinted his eyes against the smoke of his cigar. He nodded and waited to hear the rest. So far it was a classic nightmare of impotency, sexual or otherwise. Many sociopaths felt a sense of helplessness.

Nick did not realize he was repeating a dream that in ways coincided with casebook patterns of the disturbed personality.

"In the dream Daley asks the doctor isn’t there something they can do for me. The doctor says there’s nothing to be done and the best thing Daley can do is to forget me, leave me alone, and live the rest of his life without regrets for his brother.

"Meantime, I’m frozen there in that bed trying like hell to talk to Daley, to beg him not to leave me, to rescue me. My tongue’s heavy as a concrete block and it won’t lift off the bottom of my mouth. I blink my eyes, but they aren’t looking at my eyes. They’re both staring at my paralyzed body, the doctor shaking his head. Daley starts to cry and say he can’t leave me this way, like a vegetable."

Nick stood up and began pacing around his chair. "Fuck, it’s stupid. Really dumb. But I wake up from that dream in a sweat, scared stiff that I won’t be able to move."

"You were dreaming of a catatonic state," Rubens said.

"Where you can’t move or talk?"

“Yes.”

"That doesn’t mean anything. Dreams are all bullshit. I don’t know why I told you about it." He sat down again and waved his hand as if dismissing the dream.

"Are there any other recurring dreams that you remember?" the psychiatrist asked.

"No, that’s the only one I have again and again. And it’s always the same. I’m lying there screaming inside my head for Daley to help me and he finally turns away to leave so that I’m left alone, imprisoned. Abandoned."

Rubens decided to change the subject slightly. "How are you getting along with your brother lately?"

Nick grew restive again and sat up in the chair. He gripped the chair arms and stared at his shoes. “Okay, I guess."

"Arguments?" Rubens probed.

"A few, nothing serious. We used to fight over his girl friend who moved in with us, but she’s gone now…" His voice trailed away abruptly.

"Where did she go?"

"Fuck if I know!" The belligerent tone surprised Sidney Rubens and Nick noticed. "I mean," he backtracked, "she moved out. Down to Montrose somewhere is all I know. And good riddance. She was weird." For some reason he did not want to tell Rubens that Madra died. But then if he told him that, how would he explain her death?

"You’re glad she moved out?" the doctor asked.

"Hell, yes, I’m glad. She was a bitch and Daley didn’t need her." Nick clamped his mouth shut and looked away from the gaze that seemed to make him say things he did not want to. "It’s just better that’s she’s gone," he finished lamely.

"And now you and your brother get along much better.”

Nick shrugged again. "Listen,"` he said. "my lunch hour’s about up."

Without consulting his watch, Rubens said, "We have another twenty minutes, then I’ll write your prescription."

Nick groaned loudly and Rubens noted that when Nick was thwarted he adopted a childish attitude to try and get his way. He must be very good at manipulating people, Rubens thought. How good is he at manipulating his brother?

"You’re not getting along with Daley," Rubens stated. One of his most effective tools was declarations that brought an emotional response from a patient.

"I didn’t say that!" Nick exploded.

Rubens sucked on his stogie and blew out smoke across the desk. He waited patiently, his eyes never leaving the agitated man.

"I didn’t say we don’t get along," Nick repeated defensively. “Daley...well, he’s got a strange bag of ideas these days, but nothing I can’t handle on my own.”

"You don’t agree with his ideas?" Rubens asked conversationally.

"Not all of them," Nick hedged. “He’s…accused me…of some things."

"Nick, what do you think of those murders we’ve been having in Houston?" Rubens knew he was taking a big chance, but sometimes an earthquake worked better than a tremor.

Nick’s face blanched. “I…I…” he stuttered, unable to gather his thoughts into perspective.

"Everyone’s talking about them," Rubens pursued. When a raw nerve lay exposed, the best thing was to yank it. "Did you read in the paper how the killer is suspected of using a wire--probably a garrote of some sort?" Press the advantage, he thought, this is the opening you were looking for. "Last time you mentioned you took a garrote off the enemy in Vietnam and you beheaded--"

"Stop it!" Nick jumped out of the chair and reached across the desk for Rubens’s lapels. He jerked the doctor from his seat. Sweat beaded his forehead. "You stop it right now," he said ominously. "I won’t take the rap for that. I won’t, do you hear me? Daley said it and now you’re saying it, and it’s a goddamn lie!"

"Easy, Nick…"

“Fuck easy! I’ll bust your goddamn face. You want to set me up for this--that’s what you want to do. You’re all against me. It’s because of Nam, that’s what you’re doing it for. You think I was a crazy killer over there and you want to pin this shit on me. Why don’t you pin it on Daley?"

He dropped Rubens back into his chair and stalked away from the desk.

“That’s right," he shouted, going for the door. "Call up my goddamn brother and ask him where he’s got the garrote. Accuse him, why don’t you?"

"Nick, wait." For the first time Rubens was worried that he had gone too far.

"Fuck off, shrink. I don’t need your pills, you prick." Nick slammed the door behind him so hard the psychiatrist jumped.

He had gone too far. In Nick’s parlance, he’d fucked up, but good. Nick would not be back.

Ask him where he’s got the garrote. Nick had said.

Daley had the garrote from Vietnam, the one his brother used to behead three Vietnamese. Why had he kept it? What did it mean to him? Why was one brother accusing another of murder? Or had he?

Rubens reached into his bottom drawer and pulled out the bottle of bourbon. After several gulps his breathing slowed a bit. He poured some into a glass, then lifted the receiver of his phone and asked for a private line. Information gave him the home phone number of Detective Sergeant Sam Bartholomew, retired.

"Hello, Mr. Bartholomew? This is Dr. Sidney Rubens, V.A. hospital. Do you think I could meet you somewhere to talk about the murder case you’re involved in? Yes, I know you’re not the officer in charge of the investigation, but I’d like to have a word with you. Seven o’clock? Danny’s Bar on Holcombe? Fine, I’ll be there. You can’t miss me. I smoke cheap cigars."

#

Sam left a note propped against the saltshaker telling Maggie he was at Danny’s and would see her later. At a quarter to six he stepped into the warm, spilled-beer smell of the neighborhood bar and greeted the bartender.

"Bring my bourbon to a booth," he said, motioning to the rear of the room. Few people were in the bar.

One man perched on a bar stool staring into the depths of his draft beer. A couple hiding in the corner were into the second phase of heavy passion. Two pool hustlers played each other on the table in the back, waiting for the action to come in. Sam sipped his bourbon and watched the door for a government employee type with a cigar in his mouth.

At six-thirty Sam ordered a hamburger and fries from the kitchen. Danny’s wife came down from their upstairs apartment to cook the food orders. Sam suspected she was not fond of the job; the hamburgers were always half raw and cold in the middle. The French fried potatoes were overcooked and almost inedible.

As he ate around the edges of the hamburger, Sam saw a man smoking a cigar enter the bar. He wore a rumpled brown suit with dark stains on the lapels and pockets. He looked like an encyclopedia salesman who had wandered into the wrong place.

Sam raised his hand and caught the man’s eye. As he approached, Sam wondered what kind of doctor he was at the V.A. His bedside manner was no doubt on the skids.

"Detective Bartholomew?" Rubens extended a grubby hand. "I’m Rubens. Glad to meet you. I appreciate your taking the time to see me."

Sam put down the hamburger, wiped his hands on the napkin, and shook hands. "What’s this all about?" he asked, offering the basket of hard fries to Rubens.

The doctor stuck two of the fries into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "I’m a psychiatrist," he began. "I’ve been working with returned Vietnam veterans. First of all you’ll have to understand that what I say to you will be in broad, ah ... perhaps vague terms. I’m bound by an oath of confidentiality and the reason I’ve come to you at all is because of my conscience. You might guess, and correctly, that I suffer from a moral stance in a world too progressive and violent for my tastes."

Sam grunted and mistakenly bit the hamburger in the center. Raw meat made him sick. It was a real chore to swallow. He pushed the brown plastic plate aside and quickly downed the remainder of his bourbon.

"You want a drink?" he asked the psychiatrist.

Rubens looked relieved at the offer. "Sure, why not? I’ll I take a double bourbon. "

Sam got Danny’s attention. “Two double bourbons," he called across the room. He turned back to Rubens.

"Don’t order a hamburger here unless you want ptomaine," he said. "They leave the horse meat on the hoof.”

Rubens smiled and munched fries until their drinks were served.

"Now what does all this have to do with the Wireman case?" Sam asked. "Make it as general as you want."

"It may have absolutely nothing to do with your case..."

Sam held up his hand. "Not my case," he corrected. "I’m a consultant. My retirement was official eight months ago.”

"Whatever," Rubens said, clearly not interested in such technicalities. "What I have to say might be worthless to you, but morally speaking, I feel obligated to the city, and not incidentally, to the bereaved families of the victims of this killer." He took a big gulp from his drink.

"I have a patient…" He hesitated and started over again. "I had a patient until today, who is mentally disturbed. Disturbed enough to have committed these crimes you’re investigating. I haven’t any confession--I want to impress that fact strongly. No confession. Although if I did have one, I couldn’t tell you of it anyway."

"Can you tell me his name?"

Rubens shook his head and drew the basket of fries closer to him. "Unfortunately I can’t do that. My hands are tied by the office of my profession. I shouldn’t be here now either, discussing the patient at all."

Rubens ate more of the fries and chased them down with the rest of his bourbon. Sam noticed the cigar still smoldered in the ashtray and had not been put out. A frugal psychiatrist, and a freeloader to boot. If that did not beat all. Despite the seediness of the man, Sam rather liked him. He could see the struggle going on inside Rubens and appreciated his position. That he had come forward at all was surprising.

"What can you tell me then?" Sam asked.

"Very little, I’m afraid. In fact, it was probably foolish of me to ask for your time. I haven’t the right to give you specifics so I’ve made a blunder by bringing it out into the open.” Sam realized the psychiatrist’s oath of silence was making the man nervous about his decision. The interview would have to be conducted by sniffing around the edges, like a hound trying to find a trail.

"Let’s just take it slow and easy," Sam advised. "You had a patient, a Vietnam veteran, I presume…"

Rubens nodded.

“Until today. Something he told you makes you think he might be connected to or have committed the Wireman murders. "

"Correct." Rubens sat back and relaxed. It was easier to let the detective do the work.

"Okay. I’ll throw out some statements and you can either nod or shake your head, and if you can’t answer, don’t. What about it?"

Rubens nodded agreeably. He stuck the cigar in his mouth, and signaled for another round of drinks.

"This man killed in Vietnam."

Rubens nodded a shade too emphatically. Sam pondered the reaction before forming his next statement.

“It wasn’t the normal, run-of-the-mill kind of killing.”

A shake of the head.

"He killed above and beyond the call of duty."

Rubens shrugged.

Perplexed, Sam searched for alternative statements that might link a vet with the killer. What was so unusual about this series of murders? The method of murder. Decapitation. He glanced up to the psychiatrist’s face once more.

"He decapitated someone over there."

Rubens avoided Sam’s stare and seemed to be having a hard time wrestling with himself. Finally he nodded.

Sam felt a chill go up his spine. "Is there more?" he asked, his excitement rising.

Rubens nodded unhappily and almost grabbed the bourbon when Danny brought their drinks.

"Can’t you tell me? Christ, this is important!"

"I’m afraid I’ve told you too much already, Detective. I have to leave now."

Rubens finished his drink and stood to go. It was clear he was upset with himself. Already he had violated his professional ethics.

Sam grabbed his arm. “Hold on one goddamned minute. How is this supposed to help me? If he’s no longer your patient…if you can’t tell me his name or where he lives…?"

"I’m sorry, I really am. I see now I can’t help and this meeting was a mistake."

Sam stood and faced Rubens. He stared into the psychiatrist’s eyes and saw the pain. It was the pain that kept him from losing his temper on the spot. "Just tell me one more thing," Sam pleaded.

Rubens sighed.

"What kind of weapon did your patient use in the decapitations?"

Rubens shook his head sadly and turned to leave again.

"Was it a wire?" Sam shouted at his back. "Was it a garrote?" People in the bar turned at the raised voice and the mention of a garrote.

Sam thought he saw a small nod of Sidney Rubens’s head as he went out the door into the early night. He was not one hundred percent sure, he could not swear on it, but he thought he saw the bedraggled psychiatrist nod his head.

#

Jack DeShane was waiting for Sam when he returned home from Danny’s Bar.

"Sam, I want you to go with me. I couldn’t catch him at work. They say he hasn’t been in for two days."

“Hold on, boy. Where’s Maggie?" Sam asked.

"She said to tell you she wouldn’t be back until late. She went to see her sister in Galveston."

“Okay, now tell me where you’re wanting me to go with you?”

Sam sat down in a living room chair and bent over to unlace his shoes. His fallen arches were playing hell.

“No! Don’t take your shoes off. I want to go now," Jack insisted.

Sam looked up, frowning. "What’s got into you? What’s so all-fired important it can’t wait until tomorrow, Jack?"

“The guy I told you about. I know it's crazy, but Eileen knew this same guy as a kid. I have to talk to him tonight. I can’t sleep, Sam. Don’t you see what this is doing to me? For Christ’s sake, go with me," Jack begged.

"You realize you’re jumping to conclusions? If this man has a medical record with the service, he’ll be questioned. You should let Garbo handle it." Sam wanted to go to bed.

"I can’t!" Jack crossed the room, picked up a magazine from the sofa, put it down again. When he spoke, he suddenly was deadly calm. "I’ll do it alone," he said, his back to Sam. "I know you think I’m nuts. I know what everyone thinks. I can’t help it. I have to find him." He smacked a fist against the sofa’s back.

"I’ve got to stop him."

Sam sighed and retied his shoes. He stood and touched Jack’s shoulder. "Let’s move it," he said. "The night’s still young."

The address the manager of Apex Burglar Alarm had supplied to Jack proved to be in an area of Houston that could be described as a genteel slum district. There were two- and three-story homes that dated back to the early l900s, most of which needed renovation. The notorious South Main strip was to the east, and to the west huddled shacks and unpainted tenements. It was a district where people were afraid to walk their dogs at twilight, and the shades were drawn tight twenty-four hours of the day. At eight-thirty the sidewalks were empty.

"This place is getting sleazy," Sam commented. "I can remember when it still had a little class. But the class moved out to the suburbs."

"It’s exactly where I expected to find him living," Jack said, baring his teeth in an unconscious gesture of disgust.

"Jack, I want you to let me do the talking. You’re in no mood for it." Sam was beginning to worry about their trip.

“I don’t give a shit who talks, just so we verify where the bastard was at the time of the murders," Jack said as he pulled the car over to the curb and looked at a red-brick house set back from the sidewalk. "This is it," he said.

"If he’s home."

"He better be home," Jack spoke with the low snarl of a big mad cat.

Sam led the way to the front door. The doorbell button was dangling from a broken wire so he rapped soundly on the beveled glass. A hall light came on and a man about Jack’s age peered through the glass before unlocking the door.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I’m Detective Bartholomew," Sam said, pretending to reach inside his coat for a nonexistent badge. "And this is Officer DeShane. I’d like to ask Nick Ringer a few questions, please."

"I’m Nick, but you’re wasting your time. The cops have already been here about the girl. That’s all cleared up."

Sam turned to Jack reflexively. He kept the surprise from showing on his face. He removed his hat as if expecting to be asked inside. "I’m sorry, but this isn’t about the girl. Do you mind if we come in?" What girl? he wondered.

Another man appeared in the doorway and gently moved Nick aside. "Did I hear you say Detective?" the second man asked.

"That’s right, and we’d like to..."

"Didn’t my brother tell you that’s all been cleared up?" the man interrupted. "I tried to save her life. I know I was wrong in not reporting it, but… " He shook his head sorrowfully.

"May we come inside, Mr. Ringer? It’s not about the girl," Sam explained again.

"Sure," the second man said, stepping aside to allow them inside. "Come on in. This way."

Sam narrowed his eyes to peer into the gloom. He thought he might sneeze. Dust filled the air and from somewhere the stench of garbage wafted into the room. When a lamp was turned on, Sam was not surprised to find he was in the front sitting room of the old house and that it was far from tidy. College textbooks littered the floor along with beer cans and candy wrappers. A sweater turned wrong side out was draped over a chair back. Unopened mail spilled over a coffee table. Evidently the Ringer brothers lived without the benefit of a woman’s touch. Sam deduced they were bachelors and the state of their home the least of their worries.

"Sit down," Daley said cordially. He guided them to the sofa, circled the coffee table, and sat in a chair across from them.

"What did you tell the police about the girl?" Sam launched into questioning. "I hope you don’t mind repeating it for us."

Daley smiled uneasily and shifted in the chair. He shot Nick a glance and motioned for him to take a chair.

"I just told them Madra was my girlfriend once. She used to live here. But we didn’t get along very well--you know how it is--and she moved to Montrose with another girl. The day she died…"

Jack’s attention, which had been on Nick, moved to Daley. "Died?" he asked abruptly.

Daley lowered his gaze and went on. "She had epilepsy. When she lived here, she only had small seizures, like she was daydreaming in the middle of a sentence, things like that. I didn’t know she could have a grand mal. I went to her house that day to talk to her and she...she had a seizure. She was in the shower. I was in the bathroom talking to her and suddenly she clenched up and fell. She hit her head and was choking. I carried her to the bedroom and tried to force open her mouth. I got a spoon from the kitchen and tried that, but it was too late. The other officers who were here said the coroner’s report said she strangled on her own tongue during the time I was getting the spoon."

Again Daley shifted uneasily and glanced at Nick, who sat nearby.

"Yeah, he told all this to those other fellows," Nick said. "I don’t see why…” Sam waved his hand at Nick. "I’m afraid, Mr. Ringer, the girl’s death isn’t really why we’re here. I wonder if you’d mind telling me of your whereabouts on the morning of March first."

Daley looked from the detective to his brother and back again at Sam. "He was here--with me," he blurted.

"We were both home."

"What day was that?" Sam asked. He could feel Jack seething beside him, and he hoped Jack would keep his mouth shut.

"Well, it was...it was March first, like you said," Nick answered.

"If you don’t know what day of the week it was, how can you be sure you were home together that morning?"

Daley and Nick looked at each other.

"It was Monday," Jack said between clenched teeth. "Today is Wednesday, March the third. Where were you on Monday? You weren’t at work. We've checked that."

Sam wanted to throttle Jack. Instead, he rested his hand on Jack’s arm as if to restrain him.

"Monday?" Nick asked, sounding like a man who has been duped. "Like we said, I was home. I didn’t go to work. I was sick and Daley took care of me. Right?" He looked quickly to Daley for confirmation.

Sam smelled collusion and he did not like it. The brothers could ask them to go at any moment and they would have to leave. They were covering up for one another and Denmark had never smelled anything as rotten as the lies coming from the two Ringer brothers. "Do you have anyone else who could verify you were home that morning?" Sam asked carefully.

"What do you fucking want, a written statement from God Almighty?" Nick shouted.

From the corner of his eye, Sam could see Jack bare his teeth again. He prayed the man would control himself.

"What if I said you were in River Oaks Monday morning?" Jack asked harshly. "What if I said you got your goddamn jollies slicing the throat of a nice lady who spent her time tending to roses? What if I said she’s not the only one?"

"Jack, watch it," Sam ordered.

"Yeah, Jack, why don’t you fucking watch your lousy lying mouth?" Nick said. He stood up, towering over them, his face very white and angry.

Daley stood too. "I think you’d better go," he said, as he nervously picked at his brother’s sleeve.

“Come on, Jack." Sam drew the patrolman along with him to the hall and the front door. "This isn’t getting us anywhere."

"Sam, we have to--" Jack began pulling away from the older man.

"No, we don’t have to. Let’s go. Now." Sam’s voice was firm.

The brothers remained standing in the living room while the door was opened, then closed quietly again.

They stood still for a long time, neither man speaking.

On the ride across town Sam reamed out Jack up one side and down the other. When he was finished, Sam added they were not going to continue alone. They needed Lieutenant Garbo and manpower. They needed twenty-four hour surveillance units put on the Ringer house. They needed evidence--if Jack had not already screwed it up too much and warned off the only suspect they had managed to find.

"You don’t go back there, do you hear me, Jack?" Sam hated talking so rough to the younger man, but he had to stop something terrible from happening.

"If you can get Garbo to watch the house, I won’t go back."

"Is that a promise?” Sam prodded.

"My word’s good."

"Fine, Jack. That’s what I had to hear. You’re too close to this, and if we’re going to end it, you’l1 have to back off."

The rest of the trip home was made in silence. The excitement Sam had experienced in Danny’s was a hundred times greater. All the pieces were beginning to fall into place, one by one. If Nick was the Wireman, they would get him. "I swear to God," he said aloud.

"Me too," Jack said. "I just hope God’s listening."

Chapter 25

BY TEN 0’CLOCK the next morning Sam had received two phone calls from Jack asking if he had talked to Lieutenant Garbo yet. Sam assured Jack the Ringer house would be watched. He was not going to call Garbo about it. He was going downtown to the department, corner the lieutenant in his office, and get a promise from him personally. But first he wanted coffee and breakfast, and his advice to Jack was to sit on his hands and stay out of it. Sam doubted the advice would be taken seriously. He expected Jack at the door any minute.

Sam dunked a fourth of his second honey bun into his coffee and bit into it. Maggie’s house was silent, warm, homey. She had a lace tablecloth over the red Formica kitchen table, and a dime-store vase of red silk roses nodded at him every time he jiggled the cloth. A cardboard print of an American Indian in full headdress stared down solemnly from the wall.

Before Sam was finished with the second bun, the telephone in the hall rang shrilly for the third time that morning.

"Dammit, Jack!" Sam said, getting up.

He carried the breakfast roll with him to the phone, carried the phone back with him to the kitchen table, and did not lift the receiver until he took another swallow of black coffee. "I’m leaving in five minutes!" he shouted into the phone.

After a moment’s hesitation a man’s amused voice said, "Well, I’m sorry to interrupt your leave-taking, but I wanted to tell you something, Detective."

Startled, Sam tried to place the voice and failed. "Who’s speaking, please?"

"Dr. Rubens, V.A. hospital." The psychiatrist chuckled.

"Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor. I thought you were someone else."

"No harm done," Rubens assured Sam.

"What is it you wanted to tell me?"

"The patient we were discussing last evening, he called early this morning and he’s decided to come in for an eleven o’clock session. I have something he wants, and the only way he can get it is to see me, so I suppose he’s reconsidered. At least for this one last meeting."

Sam hunched over the table and fingered the fake roses. "What are you telling me?" he asked.

"I can’t tell you his name, can I?" Rubens explained. "I was awake most of the night worrying about this man, pondering his innocence or guilt in the matter. I’ve never been in this position before and I’m not sure what to do. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out we had talked.

"But, dammit, I have to live with my conscience--whatever other people say."

Sam already knew what the psychiatrist wanted him to do. It was the long way around and it bordered on the unethical in Dr. Rubens’s point of view. But with a little work Sam could discover the identity of Dr. Rubens’s patient. All he had to do was be at the V.A. hospital before eleven, watch the patients entering, and narrow it down to the eleven o’clock appointment going into the doctor’s office. If he didn’t recognize the person, he could run a DMV check on the man’s car, find a name that way.

"That was a clever move, Doctor, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. I’ll handle the rest."

"That’s good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Now I know that I’ve done all that I can do without compromising my office beyond certain limits. I wish you luck."

"Thanks for the help, Dr. Rubens."

"We will never mention it," Rubens said firmly, hanging up.

Fifteen minutes later when the hall phone rang again, Sam was gone.

#

Sam was at the V.A. hospital twenty minutes early. In the noisy corridor outside Rubens’s office he took a seat and watched the people. A young amputee shuffled past talking to himself. Behind him came a nurse who appeared to be all flat chest and big hair. She called, "You’re going the wrong way! Turn around, you’re not heading for the lab that way!"

During the next ten minutes, tiring of the wandering patients and staff, Sam counted fifty-seven squares of shining white tile down the center of the hall, beginning with the one beneath his feet. Beyond fifty-seven his vision blurred and the lines between tiles vanished. No one seemed to care what he was doing there and Sam decided they were all too busy or self-involved to question his presence.

He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes till eleven. What if Dr. Rubens’s patient did not show?

A beautiful black girl came from Rubens’s office and rushed down the corridor to the ladies’ room. She rushed back before three minutes were up. Sam thought her pit stop must be one of the fastest in history.

She nodded in his direction and disappeared into the office.

Sam turned his head to scan the corridor. At the far end double glass doors opened and a familiar figure stepped inside, paused, and proceeded toward Sidney Rubens’s office.

Sam jumped to his feet, turned away from the man, and made for the mens’ room as fast as he could. Even behind the protection of the restroom door, the shock of the patient’s identity caused Sam’s heart to race.

Have I got a surprise for you, Garbo, he thought. Jack’s instincts are right. Nick Ringer needs surveillance.

After what Sam thought was a reasonable amount of time, he left the men’s room, passed Rubens’s office without a glance, and left the building. He was on his way downtown. Finally he had something that would hold up under scrutiny.

Chapter 26

"I NEED SOMETHING stronger than Valium," Nick said, avoiding the penetrating stare of Sidney Rubens.

"All right, Nick. I can do that for you."

"You can?" Nick looked at the psychiatrist in surprise.

"Sure, it’s no problem. I’m glad you came back to see me. Yesterday was a misunderstanding. I think we can talk about it, can’t we?"

“I don’t know. I just flew off the handle and I didn’t mean what I said--about my brother and all." The young man seemed genuinely sorry.

"I understand."

"You don’t understand!" Nick shouted.

Rubens held up his hand for peace, but he saw the sullen look creeping over Nick’s face. In his estimation it would take months, maybe years of therapy to reach Nick Ringer--and even then they might not be successful. They did not have time for that. The most he could hope for was reconciliation with the patient.

He must not alienate him again.

Rubens took a prescription pad from his desk drawer. "I won’t keep you from your work. I’ll give you something for your nerves and you try to see me again tomorrow. Is that fair enough?"

"Yeah, that’s okay." Nick was obviously relieved the questions could wait for another time.

Rubens watched him leave the office and knew he was going straight to the hospital’s pharmacy to have the prescription filled. He wondered if Detective Bartholomew had made it on time and found out Nick’s name in some way, The psychiatrist wondered too if he had done the right thing or if he had violated his patient’s privacy. The only thing he did know with any certainty was that his conscience was clear. Now it was up to the authorities to do the rest. God knows he couldn’t do much more.

#

Moments later Nick bent over the water fountain downing two Librium capsules. As he drove through the Houston noon traffic toward home, he felt the relief flood through him. He cursed himself for not taking Stevie Hagstrom up on his offer of a little dope. If he had, he would not be reduced to crawling back to a two-bit shrink at the V.A. hospital. But God, he hated that little twerp, Stevie. What kind of name was that for a grown man-- Stevie? He could at least call himself Steve, the little asshole.

Nick thought about Daley’s name and laughed aloud. So maybe he was wrong. Daley sure did not look like a Dale. Then people might have called him "Chip" and they would be tagged like a couple of beavers from comic books.

Nick tried to think, but found his mind totally out of control. He could not remember if Chip and Dale were beavers or chipmunks. God bless the comics. He and his brother’s only entertainment all through childhood. That and TV. And the secret things they did on Ma’s ten acres. But not to think of that, not today, not now when he was on the way to face more of Daley’s music. Christ, but he was crazy since that old cop and his buddy showed up at the house!

Thinking I fucked up because I told ’em to get lost. Thinking I’m up to something all the time, following me around…

Nick quickly looked in the rear view mirror to check the cars behind him.

Following me around to see what I'm doing, giving me hell because I didn’t go to work this week.

Nick saw a black car go into a slow-motion skid in front of him and pulled into the right lane to avoid crashing into the rear-end.

How can I go into work anymore? That’s what I fucking want to know. I’m too tired to work, always too tired, and I don’t care, can’t he see that? What am I gonna be, district manager or what? Fuck no. I’ll never be anybody, but a gofer. And where’s he have room to talk? Missing exams, skipping classes, hanging round the house grieving over Madra moving out and how the cops think maybe he’s not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but...

The streetlight changed to yellow and was red before Nick sped through it, narrowly missing a collision with a truck turning left.

"Asshole," he shouted, looking in the rearview mirror for a patrol car.

And the cops coming to the house, damn. What were they up to anyway? What fucking trap were they trying to set? It was all a trick, asking about Monday, March the first. They wanted to pin something on me, always me, it never matters what happens, Ma and Daley and the V.A. and the cops--everyone’s always convinced it’s me!

He pulled the car to the curb and parked. He could feel the drugs taking effect, but his anxiety was not lessening. Unlocking the front door, he yelled, "Daley, you home?"

"In here," came a muted reply.

Nick closed the door and stumbled on the hall rug as he went toward the darkened living room. "Shit!"

"More pills?" Daley asked sarcastically from the gloom. He looked like a lumpish old man with rounded shoulders hiding in the shadows.

"Fucking A." Nick plopped into a chair across from Daley and with one hand rolled the vial of pills in his coat pocket.

"You make me sick," Daley said.

"Go fuck yourself."

"You’re a goddamned junkie."

"And you’re Mama’s little bright boy and never do anything wrong," Spittle came from Nick’s lips, he was so vehement.

"They’re going to come back," Daley said solemnly. "And you’re not going to be ready for it."

"But you’ll be ready, won’t you, Daley? You’ve got it all worked out, right?"

"You don’t know what’s happening...” Daley began to plead.

Nick stood up unsteadily. "Why do you have the damn shades pulled down in here? It’s too dark."

"It’s going to stay dark."

Nick turned before he reached the window. "Where’s the garrote, Daley, will you tell me that?"

Daley smiled without humor.

"Wipe that fucking smile off your face and answer me."

“You know where it is, Nick. You’ve been using it," Daley said softly.

"Me! Me! You want me to believe that, don’t you?" Nick’s face turned red.

"It’s impossible to save you anymore, Nick.”

Nick’s complexion suddenly paled, and his jaw tightened. He crossed the room, and stared Daley in the face. "You never fucking saved me." Nick was so intense there seemed to be a vibration thrumming through the room. "In Nam I saved you. I saved you."

Time stood still in the silent darkened room. Suddenly the antique clock on the wall struck the noon hour and both men flinched, but their eyes never flickered from one another’s faces.

"I have always been the one who saved you," Daley said, his hand moving to his brother’s shoulder.

Nick jerked away and the scream that came from his throat was one of agony and betrayal. He kicked the coffee table across the floor into the brick fireplace, its glass top shattering.

"I want the garrote," Nick screamed, tearing around the room, upsetting lamps, knocking ashtrays and books and dirty glasses to the floor.

“Stop it, Nick!" Daley commanded sternly.

Nick climbed the stairs, banging the wall with his fist in outrage.

"I’m going to find it!" he howled.

"Nick..."

In Daley’s bedroom Nick tore the covers and sheets from the bed, upset the mattress, lifted the box spring and let it fall with a crash. Daley tried to grab his arms but was flung back against the wall.

"I’m going to get rid of it!" Nick shouted.

"Nick, I want you to calm down .... "

All the drawers in the chest and dresser were yanked out and turned upside down on the floor, clothes and socks spilling around the two brothers.

"Where is it? I want to know where it is!"

"Nick, you’re deluding yourself. You have the garrote." Daley stood apart from his brother.

The dresser was pulled away from the wall and tumbled forward, the mirror cracking on the foot-board of the bed. Nick threw open the closet door and furiously jerked clothes off hangers.

Nick rushed down the hallway to the workroom.

"Where are you going?" Daley asked, trying to stop his brother.

"You’ve got it hidden in here," Nick said, pounding on the locked door.

Nick looked at Daley, then without hesitation stepped back and ran into the door with his shoulder. The door burst open and smacked the wall behind it.

“Don’t break up this room, Nick. You’ve lost your mind.”

"It’s here somewhere. I know it."

Daley stepped back into the doorway, and watched sorrowfully as Nick methodically demolished the antique pieces that would have been worth thousands when refinished. Before Nick was through, Daley turned away and went down the stairs, his shoulders drooping. There were no solutions, no help.

In Nick’s bedroom Daley got the wooden box from beneath the bed and opened the lid. The garrote lay coiled on the velvet inside.

The destruction upstairs finally ceased. The house filled with silence. Daley sat waiting, holding the box.

Nick appeared at the bedroom door. His face glazed over when he saw what his brother held in his lap. It was as if a film of clear, tough plastic suddenly coated Nick from head to foot. He was frozen in the doorway for long moments while the two brothers stared at each other in silence.

Finally Nick spoke. "You put it there," he whispered in total disbelief.

Daley shook his head slowly. Nick was totally mad. His mind was shattered.

"You did," Nick insisted. "You put it in my room."

Again, Daley shook his head. Still without expression, Nick crossed the space between them, reached out both hands, and took Daley’s throat in his hands.

Daley looked up into his brother’s eyes with a silent plea.

The box fell to the floor and the garrote dropped from Nick’s hands into a spiraled loop, one of the handles resting on Nick’s shoe.

Outside thunderheads covered the sun and a shivering cold rain deluged the city.

Chapter 27

SAM BARTHOLOMEW sat in an unmarked car across the street from the Ringer residence. Next to him in the driver’s seat was Officer Trumbine, who after three days had confessed his nickname on the force was "Patty" and it was all right if Bartholomew called him that. Patty barely made the five-ten height requirement for the department, and weighed, soaking wet and with his clothes on, a slight hundred and thirty pounds.

In the backseat, against Garbo’s direct orders, Jack DeShane reclined smoking a cigarette. He slept in the car during the eleven-to-seven shift and after a brief run home to shave, shower, and eat, he climbed back into a police car to take up vigil. The officers assigned to watching the Ringer residence understood Jack’s involvement and were charitable about his constant presence, though it would have been easier if he were not around. He made them all feel as fidgety as hot grease popping in a skillet.

Sam always took the evening shift. Out of the four murders, two were committed at night, two during the day, so he wasn’t working percentages. He was responding to gut-level instinct. He felt convinced the next attempted murder would occur during the evening.

All three men were weary and disgruntled. Since the evening Sam talked Garbo into a seven-day, twenty-four-hour surveillance on the Ringers, there had not been a single movement from the house. There were plenty of boring hours used up on suppositions, none of them very logical. The fact was no one understood why neither Ringer brother had come out of the house.

The 1970 navy Chrysler Imperial registered in Daley’s name had a tracking device clamped beneath the back bumper. But they had not been tracking the car anywhere. The door of the house stayed closed, the shades drawn, and there was nothing to do on the eight-hour rotating shifts but sit and watch the street.

Garbo did not like it. Earlier in the morning he complained to Sam, "I’m using thirty men, and I’m shifting everyone in the precinct for this. If they don’t move soon, I’m afraid I’ll have to call it off. We can’t afford it. Around here they’re referring to these three days of do-nothing as the ‘Dead Ringer Runaround.’ I can’t justify the cost and time if something doesn’t happen soon."

"Something’s brewing, Garbo. Trust my instincts. They can’t stay locked up in there forever," Sam pleaded.

"Screw forever. If they don’t come out within the next twenty-four hours, I’ll have to call my men off, and let you bring this Nick to the station for questioning.”

"If you do that, Garbo, you’ll be making a mistake. We only have circumstantial. You’re not going to close down this case on what we have."

"I also have some tired men who’d rather be at home with their wives to say nothing of a commissioner who’s going ape-shit every three seconds."

"He’ll come out," Sam promised. "And when he does he’ll go after number five."

"Sam, if it was anyone else but you telling me this I’d have him hauled off to a fantasy island. I hope to Christ you know what you’re doing. I know it all sounds right, but thirty men!" Garbo shook his head.

Sam peered through the closed window at the dark house and refused to believe he was wrong. They had Nick Ringer’s record from the reconnaissance division he was in during his time in Vietnam. They had the information from the Tacoma, Washington, V.A. It all fit. Not perfectly, not so close the edges dovetailed, but it fit. Nick was a mental case. He had used a garrote in the war. Not only used it, but beheaded his enemies with it. He had a job where he was free to do as he pleased while in the company van. He had the background, the time available, the expertise, the intelligence, and the training to be a killer.

Whether other people knew it or not, Sam realized the veterans of Vietnam were different from the veterans like himself who had lived through World War II and Korea. He expected in the decades to come these differences would make themselves known more and more, and some of these men would need a lot of therapy.

"Maybe they’re playing Parcheesi in there," Patty remarked, slurping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

"We’ve already gone over the possibilities of what they might be doing" Weariness had taken Jack's voice hostage.

A light pattering of rain fell onto the car. Sam stared into the dismal night. He could no longer referee for his two companions. Let them argue, he thought. It passed the time.

"You want to play another hand of solitaire with me?" Patty asked of Sam.

Sam turned swollen eyes on him and blinked slowly. Had he ever been as young as Patty and Jack? He sincerely doubted it. "No, thanks, Patty. I’ll pass this time."

"What about you, Jack? Try your luck?" Patty asked.

"What the hell. Climb back here and let me beat you."

Patty crawled over the front seat, head first.

"Why don’t you get out and go around sometimes?" Sam asked testily. “Why you always crawling over the damn seat?”

"Aw, fuck, Sam, lay off, will ya? It’s raining out there."

Sam slid across the seat to sit behind the steering wheel just in case Nick came out of the house.

"I’ll deal ’em," Jack said, more amicable than he had been for the previous four hours. "After this hand, let’s play blackjack.”

Sam settled into the warm vinyl depression where Patty had been sitting. The windows kept steaming over from their breathing and had to be wiped with a towel. It had been raining for three days, and Sam wondered if it would ever end. Drizzles, showers, drip, drip, drip. Wet nights that made his bones ache.

Maybe it was the rain that kept the Wireman from fulfilling his mission. As Sam thought about it, he could not recall any of the murders happening during wet weather. Just his luck. Thirty sodden men playing blackjack and a waiting game with the Houston weather.

#

Sunday, March seventh, dawned clear and fresh. When Sam rolled from bed, Maggie was already up brewing coffee in the kitchen. Sam brushed his teeth, scratched the hair growing over his belly, and wandered through the house in his shorts. Maggie embraced him and poured coffee for him into the awful pink-breasted mug.

"I’m growing to like this cup," he said, giving Maggie a lopsided grin. He meant it too.

"Marty always liked it," she said defensively. "He bought it in a Mexican market in San Antonio.”

"You still miss him, don’t you?"

"Marty was one of a kind," she said evasively.

"And me? Am I one of a kind, Maggie?"

"If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be sharing my bed, Sam Bartholomew.” She swatted at him with mock fierceness.

"Has anyone ever told you you’re pretty special yourself?"

Sam hugged her around the waist from behind. She swayed her hips against him and leaned her head to the side so that he could nuzzle her neck. "No one, but you, Sam. Only you."

"When this thing’s over..." His sentence went unfinished.

Maggie moved the frying pan of eggs onto a cold burner and turned in his arms to kiss him. "What are you planning?”

"I’m not good at planning, but I was thinking maybe we could take a trip. Do you have some vacation time coming?"

"I can take the time. Where do you want to go?"

Sam kissed her once then released her to drink his coffee at the table. Maggie returned the eggs to the heat and flipped them.

"Oh, I don’t know. Georgia, the Florida Keys, Atlantic City--someplace east of here where there aren’t any cowboys."

"I’ve never been to the Keys," she said dreamily, sliding the fried eggs onto Sam’s plate.

Sam spoke between bites while Maggie prepared her own eggs and bacon.

"Okay, the Keys. That’s where a lot of old fogies retire, along the Gold Coast."

Maggie turned from her cooking to stare at him. "You retired once, Sam. You can see it didn’t work out too well."

"You know why I’m on this case." He sounded defensive.

"And what will the excuse be on the next case?" Maggie asked, bringing her plate to the table and sitting across from him.

"No next case, Maggie. They have my papers. I’m not going back on the force."

"Bull." Maggie vigorously cut up her eggs until the yokes ran and soaked into her toast.

"What does that mean, ‘bull’?"

"You never retired, Sam, don’t you know that? You might’ve fooled yourself, but you haven’t fooled me."

"It’s just because of Willie and Jack…"

Maggie put down her fork and stared incredulously at him. "If it hadn’t been Jack, it would have been someone else, even a stranger. I watched you unravel for six months, Sam. You tried crawling into the bottle, but you didn’t quite manage it. You’ve never had enough practice giving up. You don’t know how to give up. You might have thought you did when you asked for early retirement, but you’re a lousy liar."

"I’m sixty years old, Maggie. The system beat me. Not once, but a dozen times. I’m too old to fight anymore." But Sam did not sound quite sure about what he said.

"One more word like that and I’ll dump these eggs right on your head, Sam Bartholomew! Do you hear what you’re saying? Do you hear how asinine you sound? Since when did sixty years signal the end of a life? All it means is that you have forty years of experience as a cop. I’m sixty, and I don’t damn well think of myself as..." Suddenly Maggie realized what she had admitted, and lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

Then she laughed. "Okay, so I’m sixty too. You knew that anyway, didn’t you?"

Sam reached across the lace tablecloth and took her hand. "What do I care how old you are?"

"I look pretty good for my age," she said defensively.

"You feel pretty good too, considering.”

Maggie squeezed his hand for the compliment and blushed. "But we were talking about you." She stood up and went to Sam, making him scoot his chair back so that she could sit in his lap. "You’re not the old-fogie type," she said, running a hand over his face. "I can’t see you retiring to Florida to play shuffleboard and bridge. There’s too much going on up here." She lightly tapped his head. "Maybe you don’t have to rejoin the police department. There are other alternatives for a man with your experience and talents."

"For instance."

"For instance, a private detective agency. Houston needs a good one."

The idea was so foreign to Sam that he was speechless.

“I’ve been talking to some people I know," she continued. "Don’t forget I’ve been involved with the law for almost as long as you have, and I have a few connections in this town too. You don’t spend your life as a court reporter without knowing some of the best people on a first name basis."

"What have you done, Maggie? Fixed me up with a job?"

"Not a job, Sam. A profession. Not everyone has forgotten the Bartholomew legend."

Sam grunted, his brows knitting.

"I know you don’t like that designation, but it’s something that’s happened whether you wanted it to or not. Why do you think they wanted you as consultant on this Wireman thing? If you were washed up, they would have told you so. You have a reputation, Sam, and you should use it. There are people who would love to invest in your future, and you’re sitting around talking retirement. You want to pretend sixty years makes a handicap. But you’re wrong, and you’re proving it by working with Garbo."

Sam knew Maggie was right. What did he want--a rotten end to his life with a bottle of Old Kentucky in his paw or no reason to get up in the morning? "You realize it’s unforgivable to interfere without talking to me about it first, don’t you?" he asked.

Maggie ignored the criticism. "If I could get the backing you need to open an office, would you do it? I’d even throw in my services as your secretary, accountant, file clerk--anything you want me to be. I’ve been in court one too many days as it is, and I’m ready for a change. Can’t you see the sign on the door? Bartholomew Investigations."

"Maggie, you’re not only the sexiest woman around, but you’re the craziest too. "

"Why don’t you think it over? " Maggie drew her plate of cooling eggs across the table and began to eat.

Sam caressed the swell of her hip and wondered if he had time to take her to bed before she left for the courthouse.

"Well?" she persisted. "Will you think about it?"

"Bartholomew Investigations, huh?"

"Yep, gotta trade on your name, Sam. It’ll bring in business, " Maggie said.

"Okay, I’ll think about it. No promises..." He held up a finger in warning when he saw her eyes light up.

"But I’ll give it a little thought."

"Finish your breakfast, and if we hurry, you might give a little thought to something else."

Sam grinned at the woman on his lap. She was an absolute mind reader. For the first time in months he did not feel his age. Sixty was not the end of life after all.

Chapter 28

NICK ANSWERED the phone on the second ring.

"Are you coming in today?" Apex Alarm’s manager asked. "We really need the help, Nick."

"I quit."

"What?" the manager asked, not sure he had heard correctly.

"I said I quit," Nick repeated. "I won’t be coming in anymore."

"But Nick, what’s wrong?"

Nick hung up the phone and moved from the hall table beneath the stairs. He was incredibly hungry. His stomach rumbled from being empty too long.

In the kitchen he rummaged through the refrigerator. He found a foil-wrapped Hostess Twinkie, but the milk was gone. In the cabinet he searched for an envelope of instant hot-chocolate mix and found one crushed behind cans of green beans and corn. He ran the water from the sink faucet until it was hot, and made cocoa.

There was no place at the dining table where he could sit. The four chairs were broken and lying in heaps on the floor. The tabletop was littered with crusty dishes, empty cereal boxes, and two spatulas yellow with dried egg.

He sat on the floor amid the ruins and ate the cream-filled cake and drank the tepid cocoa. His stomach still growled.

He returned to the kitchen and opened a can of stewed tomatoes and ate them standing at the counter. He drank the leftover juice and felt his stomach relax a little.

Everything was the same. The same as when he had lost his temper with Daley on Thursday and wrecked the house. The living room was a shambles. He stepped carefully over a broken lamp and sat down on the sofa. He switched on the TV. It was the only untouched object in the room.

A church choir wavered hazily on the small screen. With the sound turned off, Nick could almost bear to watch. After a few minutes, he restlessly changed the channel. Sunday morning ministries. All the same.

All of them after his soul.

He changed the channel again. A black preacher standing behind a pulpit jabbed his fist into the air.

Another channel. A white-haired minister was dressed in a black robe with a scarlet band down the front.

Nick turned up the sound and listened to the civilized voice.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

Nick immediately turned off the sound. He cocked his head and studied the robed man. Perhaps there was a message there. He turned the sound up again.

"Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil." Savagely Nick switched off the TV and stared at the dot fading in the center of the screen as if daring it to leap into life again.

He left the living room and went to his bedroom. On the floor lay the box and the silently entreating garrote. He bent down and picked up the wire with two fingers. It swung easily, the wooden handles clacking.

"The heart is deceitful..."

He was in the heart of the foul Viet Cong cave, and it was deceitful. The man, his enemy, lurked in the subterranean dark, waiting with held breath and pumping fear.

I will get you, Nick thought.

"and desperately wicked..."

There is no one more wicked than you, no one more deadly.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he wanted to push his brother away, push him into the night.

I have come for you, Nick thought. The dark won’t hide you and there’s no escape.

"…to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

Nick was near enough to the Cong to feel the enemy’s heat, his scent. Those seconds, just like the moments before sexual orgasm, could not be prolonged; it was no longer in his control.

I am here, next to your flesh, able to take you into my arms. There is nowhere to run and nothing, nothing to fear.

"Be not a terror unto me…"

He looped the wire around the neck and there was panting, then cursing, and finally pleading for mercy.

Footsteps neared, faltered, and stopped. The cave ceased being a part of the world. The wire tightened.

Muscles corded along the insides of his arms, his knees locked, his legs strained, and his toes curled under in his boots. He felt hot.

Don’t fight me now that I’ve won. You can ruin everything if you struggle.

"…my hope in the day of evil."

The enemy fell, body and head, the air rich and bitter with the metallic scent of fresh blood. His arms went slack. His mighty erection thumped with sudden, exquisite release. A flame illuminated a haloed brother.

"I’m right here,” Nick said calmly. "You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Daley. I’ll always take care of you."

The flame hissed against the shadows.

Daley wept in Nick’s arms.

Nick felt a demon at his side and welcomed the punishment. There was no need to cry.

Chapter 29

AT TEN-THIRTY in the evening, a half-hour before the shift was over, Sam Bartholomew’s gaze was riveted to the front of the Ringer house.

"The shade," he croaked, hardly believing what he had just seen. "He raised the shade."

Patty and Jack, playing cards in the backseat, turned in unison to look at the house.

"No lights," Jack said.

Patty scooped up the cards and slipped them into a cardboard case. "What’s it mean?" he asked, fumbling with the pack of cards.

"I think he knows we’re here," Sam said. He crouched in the seat and pulled his hat low over his eyes. "Get down."

A light came on somewhere inside the house. For four days there had been no light showing behind the drawn shades. A shadow moved past the door and windows.

"What’s he doing?" Patty asked nervously. "You think he’s gonna come out?"

"Shut up, Patty. Jack, get up here with me," Sam commanded.

Jack obeyed. He rolled down the window and watched the house. The wait seemed interminable. Patty squirmed in the backseat until Sam stilled him with a glance. Jack unconsciously brushed his fingers over the scar on his cheek. Sam squinted past Jack’s profile. He had his right foot resting lightly on the accelerator and his hand itched to turn the ignition key.

Steady, steady, he told himself. Don’t panic and fuck up now.

The front door of the house opened, and Nick was silhouetted in the light from within. He wore a light-colored sweater over an open-necked shirt and beige sport slacks. He carried a bowling bag.

"What the hell!" Jack turned to Sam in bewilderment. "He’s going bowling?"

"Jesus Christ. We’ve staked out a guy for four days and he goes bowling," Patty said.

“Both of you shut up and stay down." Sam knew he sounded like a snapping dog, but he couldn’t help it.

Nick walked to the Chrysler and unlocked the door on the driver’s side. He tossed the bowling bag on the seat, then abruptly turned and looked straight across the street to the men hiding in the unmarked car.

"He made us," Jack said. His knees were up against the dashboard and he was leaning toward the middle of the seat.

They heard the engine of the Chrysler sputter and catch. It roared into life and the tires squealed as the car left the curb.

All three policemen straightened and Sam started the Plymouth Fury. He jerked the wheel to the right and crossed the street, cut through the median turnaround, and followed the dwindling taillights of Nick’s car.

Jack had the tracking device on, the bird-dog beeper on the Chrysler sending strong signals.

"He’s trying to lose us," Sam said, watching the side streets ahead for oncoming cars.

"Don’t let the bastard do it," Jack shouted. "I know he’s the one! I know that motherfucker!"

It had been awhile since Sam Bartholomew had participated in a high-speed chase. Before he had driven a mile he knew that they would have been better off with Patty or Jack behind the wheel. Their first mistake had been changing places. Their second had been staying so close to the house during surveillance. He should have known that Nick, a trained reconnaissance man, could pick up a stakeout within ten miles of him.

The taillights far ahead of them blinked out.

"He turned left," Patty yelled.

“He turned right, goddammit!" Jack argued.

Sam grabbed the mike and called for help. Their beeper was emitting a very reduced signal. They would have to call in a helicopter search to pick up the bird-dog signals. With a hundred-mile range, the helicopter crew would not lose Nick altogether, but it might take a long time to narrow down the signal on the city map and know exactly where he was. They had been outmaneuvered.

"Well, I’ll be a horse’s ass," Patty said from the backseat.

Jack was on the edge of the seat, gripping the dashboard to stay in place as the Fury sped along the street.

“He’s going to kill someone." He turned to look at Sam to confirm it. "Isn’t he, Sam? He’s going to kill tonight."

"If he’s the Wireman, he is."

"I fucking knew it, knew it, knew it!" Jack beat on the dashboard before throwing himself back in the seat.

"And the motherfucker got away slick as goose shit," Patty said.

"Not yet," Sam answered, slowing the car, looking down each side street he passed. "He hasn’t gotten away yet."

#

At 10:45 Cal Duncan and Lori Giroux both looked up at the sky over Hermann Park.

"That sucker’s flying low," Cal remarked.

The helicopter swung over the trees and circled back like a toy on a string in a giant’s hand.

"What are they looking for?" Lori asked, craning her neck to follow the copter’s route.

"Who knows what the Spy in the Sky is after? Maybe you, my little sugar dumpling," he teased, grabbing his date and tickling her.

"Oh, Cal, please don’t grab me like that!" She giggled hysterically, broke free. and ran through the trees across soft, wet lawn.

The helicopter zoomed away, its sound finally fading entirely. The two teenagers forgot about it.

Cal, encumbered by the heavy blanket draped over one arm, could not catch up with Lori. He halted, searched the areas around the trees for her shadow.

"Lori, come on out now. I’m going to spread the blanket for us."

He waited impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. There was no one in the park at this time of night, and if the truth be known, Cal thought the place was a little eerie. The streetlights from nearby streets cast long, skeletal shadows from the trees. Black barbecue pits erupted from the ground in the oddest places, looking like dwarf soldiers in the night. Cement picnic tables shone in the pools of streetlight like marble altars for primitive sacrificial rites.

Cal shivered and adjusted the blanket on his arm where it was putting his wrist to sleep. "Lori? Come on, baby. I don’t wanna play hide-and-seek, okay? I’d rather play something more fun. Wouldn’t you?"

Cal smiled, thinking that would bring her from hiding. After what seemed like hours, the anxious Cal started walking and looking for his girl. The night air was rain-washed clean, and he could smell crushed grass. He heard the distant monotonous drone of the helicopter once again. Cars swished past not far away.

Cal began to worry. Something was not right. "Lori? Lori, honey, this isn’t funny anymore. I’ve got to get you home by midnight and you haven’t even given me a kiss. Lori?"

He walked on, slowing at each tree to peek behind it. She was nowhere. How could she have disappeared?

"All right, that’s enough! If you don’t come out right this minute, I’m going back to the car and leave you here. See how you like that, huh? All alone in this big, empty, scary park?" Cal said sternly.

He thought he heard a movement behind him and turned quickly, relieved Lori had tired of her game. But no one was there. He sighed and turned a full circle, trying to spot a human shadow among all the shadows around him. He had the craziest sensation that some of the shadows were creeping toward him, snaking across the damp grass toward his feet.

"I’m getting outta here, Lori. You better listen to me! I’m going to start counting and when I get to ten, I’m heading for the car. One--two--three..."

He turned and began walking in the direction of the parking lot.

"Four--five--six...Lori!"

He looked behind him, expecting to see her following. No one was in sight.

"Seven--eight--nine..."

Someone stepped from behind a tree ahead, and Cal quickened his pace. At first he thought his eyes were fooling him, that he had been looking for her too hard, and the figure ahead was not as tall or as masculine as it was. "Lori, I’m pissed at you!" he said to the shadow. "Why did you do that--"

Cal stopped. It was not Lori.

"Who are you? Have you seen my girl around here?"

He was several yards away from the man and he could not make out his features in the shadow. A streetlight behind him blocked Cal’s vision.

When the stranger did not answer, Cal turned and called loudly, his voice alarmed. "Lori!"

"She’s over here," the stranger said suddenly. An arm pointed to the tree from where he came. "She’s waiting for you. Lori’s been playing hide-and-seek."

Cal stumbled away from the figure and approached the tree from the other side. "Lori?" He jerked his head to look at the man. "What have you done? You didn’t hurt her, did you?"

He ran the last few feet and clutched the tree with one arm. He looked down.

Lori Giroux lay crumpled on the grass at the base of the tree. Her cheek rested on an exposed root and her cotton blouse was hiked up so that her ribs gleamed in the light.

Cal dropped the blanket and knelt beside her. He lifted Lori into his arms and put a hand to her pale throat.

It was such a shock to find her alive and breathing when he had been convinced she was dead that he began to cry. He looked up at the shadowy man.

"What did you do to her? What do you want?"

"You," Nick Ringer answered. "I want you."

At a disadvantage from the very beginning, Cal Duncan did not have the agility or the cunning to stop his death. Despite his youth and lean, athletic body, there was nothing he could do against the bite of the wire stretched around his throat.

He was wrenched backward and hauled along the grass, kicking and jerking. His fingers dug at the wire imbedded in his neck and with horrible inaccuracy clutched and tore bits of own flesh in his desperation to grab the garrote.

Like an animated puppet he was jerked from the blood-glazed ground once, twice. On the third powerful lurch Cal Duncan surrendered his head to his attacker.

Nick stood, gasping for air, his legs trembling. The two parts of the boy lay at his feet. Blood dripped like black, sticky raindrops from his hands. It had been so hard to kill him, so hard.

The whine of the helicopter neared the park, a shining bird of prey. It swept over the acres of trees and lifted higher toward the west to clear Houston’s skyscrapers.

From out of the shadows a form emerged. It moved silently, wraith-like, to stand before Nick. As if acting on an unspoken command, Nick obediently stretched out his arm and let the garrote be taken from him.

Daley wrapped his lingers around the garrote’s handles and turned from his brother. With precision and ease, Daley decapitated Lori Giroux as she lay on the grass.

Chapter 30

FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR Sam Bartholomew had been in communication with the department’s helicopter. Lieutenant Garbo Kranz joined in the search and called for all available backup units.

At eleven-thirty the police were no closer to pinpointing the bird-dog beeper on the Ringers’ Chrysler, but a call came in over the radio that chilled every officer on the streets.

"Double homicide, Hermann Park. All units respond. Repeat..."

Sam was headed down Fondren in the direction of the park. Amid the curses of his companions, and despite the frenzied commands coming from Garbo on the squawk box, Sam was calm.

"He hasn’t gotten away yet," he repeated for the fourth time in five minutes.

"He killed two of them this time!" Jack was exploding like a house full of dynamite. He kept tensing muscles in his jaws as he stared through the windshield. Sam feared what action he might have to take to restrain Jack if they ever caught up with the killer. He knew the younger man was reliving the night they had found Willie in the deserted lot, and he was dangerously close to having a nervous breakdown.

"We can’t jump to conclusions," Sam advised. "The park homicides might be something else."

Sam pulled up next to two patrol cars already on the scene, their bubble lights whirling. One of the uniformed officers had the door of an old Renault open and was looking for the registration papers. Sam did not really expect to see the navy-blue Chrysler, but he was disappointed all the same not to spot it.

“What have you got?" Jack asked the nearest patrolman.

"It was the Wireman," came the answer. "Two kids, teenagers, by the looks of it. Boy and girl, both missing their heads."

Jack swore and turned back to the car.

"Where are you going?" Sam inquired.

"We gotta move. He’s long gone by now. I’m going to check with the chopper."

Sam stayed behind to question the officers. A park security guard had found the bodies on a routine drive-by. He did not see a suspect or any car except the victims’ Renault in the parking lot.

Sam went to the girl’s covered body and lifted her wrist. Her flesh was still warm. The smell of her blood permeated the air.

"He took the heads?" Sam asked the patrolman standing next to him. "You didn’t find them?"

"No, they’re gone. Think we’re going to catch him, Sam?"

"There’s no doubt in my mind." Sam moved away from the girl’s poor dead body.

"Sam, they’ve picked up the beeper!" Jack called.

Sam hurried to the car, motioned for Jack to take the wheel, and took the passenger seat. "Where is he?"

"On the freeway heading out of Houston. He’s about twenty miles ahead of us," Jack replied, starting the car.

"Then we’d better hurry." Sam sighed, relieved at the second chance they had been given.

"He’s going to get away again," Patty Trumbine grumbled from the backseat. "He’s leaving town."

Jack set the blinking bubble light on the dashboard and drove the Fury ninety miles an hour down the center lane of I-10. A couple of times he had to make swift lane changes in order to get around slower vehicles, but the miles ticked off, and soon they were the closest police car to the fleeing Chrysler.

The helicopter kept pace overhead, frequently interrupting on the receiver to assure them they had the bird dog tracked in the right direction. All the Fury had to do was point its nose straight ahead. They were gaining.

The tracking device in the car began to show the signal weakly, but it was an adrenaline shot to Jack DeShane. He forced the Fury to a hundred, and the speedometer needle hovered there. They overtook and passed dozens of cars. Headlights dimmed behind them like winking fireflies.

Patty buckled his seat belt. Sam merely clasped his hands together in his lap. Jack held the steering wheel loosely and concentrated on the road that was taking them ever closer to Nick Ringer.

Screaming sirens followed Jack until the freeway seemed full of patrol ears. Garbo led the pack, issuing orders to his units and the helicopter in pursuit. Every one of the policeman involved realized the seriousness of the situation. It was imperative that they find the killer. If he shook them again, he would have time to rid himself of the severed heads.

As they reached the city limits of Houston, the helicopter pilot reported his fuel was low, and Garbo ordered him back.

"We have him on the tracker," Garbo said. "We won’t lose him this time."

The killer could not drive forever.

Chapter 31

DALEY DROVE FAST, too fast. The world spun past the windows.

For a while Nick battled demons: light, airy, horned beings that clutched him and sucked the breath from his mouth. But they went away, and he felt empty. He was no longer tormented by the people of either world. He was in a corner by himself where winged creatures, hoping to get to him, beat out their lives against the invisible barrier.

Nick reached up to touch the safety glass of the windshield and dreamed his fingers sliced through into the night. He could grasp the stars if he wanted and bring them down to earth to warm him. He could hang the moon on the Milky Way and walk in its silvery light. He could create universes and, with a puff of his breath, set them whirling forever. If he wanted to leave the earth and enter another galaxy, he had the power.

His fingers came away from the glass, retreated to the silent space where his temporal body lounged.

Daley drove too fast. He was taking them both into the past where escape would be impossible. Surely he realized his mistake? He had battered down the walls holding everything in its place, and what lay ahead were years torn from a calendar they should never witness again.

Too fast, slipping backward, snatching for telephone poles, for clouds, for the starry sky to halt the awful, sickening plunge into the hideous past.

His blond hair fell over his forehead like a veil. The blood on his hands was dried and flaky. He breathed specks into his nose.

Daley was not listening. Daley was alone. Daley had forgotten his only brother.

Nick felt a split starting at his groin and zigzagging up his abdomen, between his nipples. A line going straight up his neck, over his face, into his falling hair, and down again, like a snake swallowing its tail, back to where it began. Everything was going to fall out from inside him and lie in a wriggling heap between his legs.

He should have pocketed the stars when he had a chance. He should have chinned himself into heaven on the hook of the platinum moon. He should have taken God’s place and toppled the planets with a sigh.

Was it too late?

Tentatively, Nick reached out with one hand to the glass that held him in place, earthbound. His fingers met resistance. He could not discover the secret passage into the heavens again.

It was too late.

He turned to stare out the window into midnight. The seam inside him widened, and an eagle swooped within the confines of the car and carried away chunks of his soul while Nick watched--helpless.

#

A man crouched over a shallow grave patting red damp clay into place. Another man held the shovel and hung his head.

Birds, wakened by the coming of the men, flew in startled bands through the pine boughs, looking for quiet. The sky withdrew its starlight and the moon scuttled into a gray cloud. There was rain on the air, the promise of sudden showers.

The man holding the shovel loosened his fingers and let the mud-encrusted handle fall to the ground where it bounced on the new grave. The man with his hand on the dirt darted backward, sat down in a puddle, and struggled to his feet.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Nothing," the other man answered simply.

"It’s all my fault."

"It was never your fault." The voice was oddly comforting.

"I didn’t do it all, everything, did I?" he sounded anxious, confused.

"No. We always shared the blame."

"I want to die. I’ve wanted to…die...for a long time."

"I know."

"Do you love me? Has anyone ever loved me?"

Silence engulfed the makeshift cemetery and even the birds nodded in their roosts.

There was a timeless interval where nothing moved. The wind slackened, the pine needles were stilled, the rain was held in abeyance by an invisible hand.

And then the rain poured down, trampling the red, raw earth. The side ditch filled and drained into depressions left on the land by old graves long since forgotten.

Chapter 32

IT IS APPROXIMATELY a hundred miles from Houston to Bloomington.

As the chase continued, Jack was obliged to vary his speed to keep from having a wreck. After the first fifty miles, Garbo let the other patrol cars return to Houston. He alerted thee state highway patrol and the Victoria, Texas, Police Department that it looked as if the car they were pursuing was headed in that direction. When he saw Jack bypass the larger city and loop to the south for Bloomington, he realized the help from the highway patrol and Victoria would be nil. They would be looking for a blue Chrysler in the wrong place.

He notified Victoria of the change and asked them to bring up the rear. If the Chrysler ran smack into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, the two cars following the bird-dog tracker would have to go it alone.

On the outskirts of the little town of Bloomington, population under two thousand, Jack slowed the Fury to forty miles an hour. They still had a strong signal coming from the bird-dog and it was not likely they would lose him along the streets of the quiet, sleeping town.

"Why did he come here?" Jack voiced the question that was on everyone’s mind. Then all of a sudden his brain ignited and he remembered.

"Bloomington! That’s where Eileen and Nick Ringer grew up. She told me. This is where he was killing small animals when he was a kid."

Sam remembered the story of Eileen’s cat strung up on a clothesline. And he remembered something else as well.

"Didn’t she say she followed him to a piece of land they owned and that’s where he buried cats and dogs?"

"That’s right! That’s where he’s going. Do you think he’s been burying…?" Jack could not finish the question. Willie’s boyish face flashed through his mind and tears came to his eyes. "Oh, God, Sam, I don’t know if I can take this."

"We’re going to get him, Jack." Sam put his hand on the younger man’s arm. "It’s all going to be over soon."

"What are you two talking about?" Patty asked, perplexed.

"Never mind, Patty," Sam said quickly. "All you have to know is we’ve arrived at our destination. He’s been heading for Bloomington all the time."

There was not a car moving in the town. A few lights burned inside store windows and street lamps shone on empty sidewalks. A sprinkle of rain started, gently coating the windshield.

"Rain," Jack said softly.

"Where do we go?" Patty asked. "This place is dead."

"We go over the railroad tracks. I remember that much," Jack said.

He turned left on the only street crossing the tracks and the tracking device went crazy.

"I wish Garbo was with us," Patty whined. "Where is he anyway?"

"He’s coming. He’s a few miles back. Sam, will you let him know exactly where we are?" Jack asked.

While Sam relayed the message, Jack slowed the car even more. They were on a gravel road where the pavement had petered out. The rain began falling more heavily, and the windshield wipers clacked as they swiped at the water. "Goddamn rain," Jack muttered, trying to see where they were going.

"There!" Patty yelled, hanging over the front seat and pointing. "That’s the Chrysler!"

Jack instantly killed the headlights and pulled to the side of the road. Sam replaced the mike and felt in his old black, policeman’s jacket for his service .38.

"Christ, I don’t want to go up to that fucking car in this rain," Patty said, fidgeting in the back seat.

"Then stay here!" Jack had no more patience left. He opened his door.

“What the hell, Garbo will be here in a few minutes. The fucker’s not going anywhere." Patty sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

Sam scowled at the young officer and got out of the car to follow Jack. Still scared, Patty Trumbine felt for his holster and joined them.

When a streak of lightning lit up the dark sky, the rain looked like a million silver coins. Water ran down Sam’s collar and soaked his shirt within two minutes. His shoes sloshed through puddles, and a biting cold worked its way next to his skin. At the Chrysler, they squatted and moved to the passenger side. Jack looked in first. "Not in here," he whispered to Sam. Patty pushed against Sam’s back and shivered uncontrollably.

They crept along the side of the roadway and were thankful the noise of the rain kept their approach from being heard on the gravel. A stand of pine thinned and Jack led the way across a full drainage ditch that gurgled and streamed like a small river. On the other side of the ditch, the men halted, Patty running into Sam’s back again.

"I see someone back toward those trees," Sam whispered close to Jack’s ear.

"Let’s spread out and come from behind. If he sees us coming, he could get lost forever in the woods."

Jack nodded and struck off in a crouch to the right side of the land. Sam turned to give Patty his orders, then moved into a thick growth of winter-dried weeds and bushes that would take him close to the shadow ahead of him.

The .38 in Sam’s hand felt heavy but familiar. He hoped he would not be forced to use it. It had been many years since he shot at a man, and even more years since he was responsible for someone’s death. Despite what Nick might have done--and it was unforgivable--Sam did not want to kill him. If he could just get to Nick before Jack did. Jack was a good policeman, but his only son was dead, and part of Willie might be buried here. Even without positive proof of Ringer’s guilt, it was probable that Jack might use his gun and ask questions later. Who the hell would blame him?

Rain beat down on Sam’s slick leather jacket, and rivulets streamed down his hair, his forehead, his cheeks.

The figure he had seen had not moved and that was the most disconcerting fact of all. What was he doing standing quietly in the rain, his back to the road? Was his mind completely gone?

Tangled dead vines whipped across Sam’s knees as he trudged through the dense growth. Nothing, he suddenly understood, was as it seemed. It was not a normal rainfall. It was a deluge. It was not a normal man standing in the night with water cascading down his shoulders and back. It was a shell of a man, a hulk. He had led them to this place. They were on his land, in the midst of his territory. It was a fitting night and a fitting place. The murderer awaited them. He had chosen the time and the place. He alone had decided how it would end.

Sam crept to within three feet of the motionless figure. He squinted past the water running into his eyes to see Jack or Patty. Where were they?

With his heart hammering and his tongue thick with the black bitter taste of fear, Sam barked, "Turn around with your hands up. I don’t want to have to kill you."

What happened next was all muddled in Sam’s brain. He saw the image of a man turning, fast, almost with a ballet dancer’s perfect pirouette. The distance between them might never have existed, it was crossed so swiftly. Sam had the sight of a face reflecting horrors burned onto his eyes and into his brain. His finger squeezed the trigger of the .38 and a shot rang out, missing its target and thunking instead into a tree trunk.

They scuffled, the rain and the dark night obscuring their gestures. Hands fumbled, fingers slipped, bodies collided.

Sam saw the wire coming for him. He saw the fist swing out around his face, the thick fingers gripping a handle. Garrote, his brain screamed, God no...

Sam jerked his right hand up to his own head and the wet barrel of his gun was instantly slapped against his cheek by the force of the wire clanging into place. He screamed in pain. The wire was caught, stretched around the gun barrel and his neck. A horrible grunting sound of effort roared in Sam’s ear as the madman twisted and tightened the garrote’s wire. The wire began to cut through the left side of his neck.

Jack!

Sam tried to scream for help, but nothing came from his open mouth. Suddenly he was kneed in the small of his back and felt something give.

The detective sagged to the ground, and his attacker followed, struggling to tighten the wire.

Painfully Sam turned the barrel of his gun along the side of his face. He lifted his elbow and the gun moved slightly. When his elbow was straight and the .38 was pointed behind him, Sam fired.

The garrote dropped away, and Sam fell to his hands, his head down. The side of his face was burned black with gunpowder, and the skin was seared. The hammer and viewfinder of the .38 had ripped holes in his cheek. A scorched line on his scalp trickled blood and he was deaf in his right ear.

"Oh my God. Sam, Sam, are you all right?"

Jack tried to lift his friend, but they both slipped in the mud. Sam felt the younger man’s arms around his shoulders, trying to hold him.

"Let me...let me see," Sam managed to say after spitting more blood. His head continued to ring.

He turned to look at what he had done. The body lay sprawled on its back, half the head and brains blown away. The rain continued to beat down in torrents. Water ran in tiny streams down the corpse.

"Shit," Sam said, trying to get to his feet. He put one hand over the torn side of his face. "I didn’t want to have to kill the bastard."

Patty Trumbine emerged from the woods, wet, bedraggled, and shaking with fear. He stumbled up to where Sam and Jack stood over the dead man.

"That’s one dead motherfucker," he commented shakily.

A siren and lights blared from the gravel road. Jack supported Sam across the open land.

Garbo and three other men got out of the car and waited.

"What the hell happened?" Garbo asked Jack.

"Sam killed him, but got his face torn up in the process. He needs a doctor."

Sam leaned on the Fury’s fender, bleeding into his hands.

"Think I broke my jaw too," he said thickly.

Jack brought out a handkerchief to try to stop the flow of blood.

Patty Trumbine wandered to the driver’s door of the blue Chrysler and opened it. He saw the bowling bag in the center of the seat and grabbed it.

"Hey, this is heavy," he called over the droning of the downpour.

"What the fuck are you doing, Trumbine?" Garbo asked.

Patty set the bag on the trunk of the Chrysler and unzipped it. He peeled open the vinyl top and let out a short, startled scream.

Sam and Jack both looked up at the same time. They followed Garbo to the Chrysler where Party was trembling and rubbing his hands together in the rain as if to wash them clean.

"What’s in there?" Garbo asked.

Patty pointed, turned away, and vomited.

Garbo reached inside to what looked like a wet, fuzzy stuffed rabbit. He entwined his fingers in the blond hair and pulled out Nick Ringer’s head.

"Who…?" Garbo held the head over the bag, his fingers twitching with the urge to get rid of the head. He wanted to drop it and couldn't.

"Nick!" Jack exclaimed.

"Nick?" Sam asked, turning to stare into the rain-gutted woods. "Then who was out there? Who tried to kill me?"

The three men trekked across the muddy ground toward the woods and the body. Patty Trumbine followed, wiping his mouth. Sam stared down at the corpse and with the help of flashlights was able to identify the dark-haired brother, the one he had met in the house, Daley Ringer.

Lieutenant Garbo shook his head in bewilderment. "This man tried to kill you?" he asked Sam. "But I thought we wanted the one called Nick? What the hell’s going on here? Were there two of them in the car we chased?”

"They were both doing it," Jack said tightly, backing away through the rain and mud. "There wasn’t one killer--there were two.”

Sam remembered the looks exchanged between the brothers when he had questioned them. He remembered the air of authority Daley had over his brother, the way he seemed to control everything that was said in the conversation. They were like two parts of one person. Could they have entered into a murder pact together?

Or did Nick even realize Daley was playing his alter ego? And in the end the stronger of the two murdered the weaker one. That's exactly what happened and he knew it, knew it in his gut.

"We’ll never know which one was responsible for which murder," Sam said.

"One of them did us a favor," Jack said. "Jesus, how could they have done these things? Maybe Nick never did any of it. It might have been Daley all along."

"No, the hair sample from the McCombie murder proved the killer was blond. Nick did that one. Blood tests and the footprint will make it conclusive," Sam said. Despite himself, the older detective began to groan from the pain in the side of his head. When he talked, it was like being inside a metal cylinder.

Everything reverberated.

"They’ll dig up this place," Jack said, sweeping his arm around the land. "They’ll find the missing…they’ll find…”

"Let’s go home, Jack. I need to get my cheek sewn up," Sam urged.

Jack helped his friend into the Fury and stood a moment looking over the roof to the glittering lights in the woods. His hair was plastered to his forehead. No one could distinguish the droplets of rain on his face from the tears he was unable to repress. Willie’s death was revenged, but nothing would ever bring his son back. He thought he would feel better, feel vindication, and all he felt was a blank place in his heart.

Old and tired, Sam thought, fingering his aching jawbone. I’m just old and tired and I’ll never understand the crazy landscape inside a killer’s head.

He looked through the windshield and the rain. The green vinyl bowling bag still sat on the rear fender of the Chrysler. Sam imagined it filling with water, washing clean the bloodstained face of a dead man whose eyes had seen a tragic world--a man who had faced a tragic death at the hands of his own brother.

The Ringer brothers had come home to where death had always waited in Bloomington, Texas, home to where it all began one hot, summer day years before, when hate sprouted and secret fantasies took possession of a child. They had come full circle.

The wire that bound them together glistened dully in the rainy night where it lay on a bed of pine needles. It would never again vibrate with death. It was silenced forever, a harmless coil just beyond the fingertips of a man lying cold and rigid in the Texas mud.

Houston was now safe from the Wireman. But after forty years with the city, Sam knew one day another terror would strike. It could be tomorrow, next week, next year, but one day evil would come back into the world. And Sam would be there, he had to be, just as Maggie predicted. He would help hunt down the evildoers. While wiremen and gunmen, poisoners and stranglers and knife-wielding murderers stalked the innocent, Sam, and Jack, too, would be there to try to stem the tide.

THE END

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review on the Kindle site. Other titles by Mosiman are at her Kindle store. Mosiman's Kindle Titles Read on for the first chapters of BANISHED, a new novel by Billie Sue Mosiman available for the Kindle as an e-book.

BANISHED

By

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright 2011 by Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved.

Cover art by Neil Jackson, Copyright 2011

"The Magician rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic rearranges himself to find the center."

CHAPTER 1

THE LITTLE DEATH

She could barely breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything beyond.

She closed her eyes to blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she would never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her mother’s cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s loving embrace. She had not lived long, a handful of years, so there was not much to miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death. She must not willingly let it take her.

A blanket of coolness slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her mother had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to discover the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot! The coolness that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She wished they would carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

Dark grew darker. Grew to pitch black. Grew to encompass a vast void. She struggled to take a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She thought, Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and holds me so tightly I cannot breathe.

Faintly she heard her mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her to come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say goodbye.

Take me to the sea, she begged of Death. Take me from this heat and pain and let me float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved the sea.

The heat grew like a malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last forever and nothing for her would ever change.

I’m not ready, the child complained. I’m too young.

And then she was swept off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or heat or life.

She was done with this world.

CHAPTER 2

A NEW TRUE BEGINNING

“Life. A wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion, endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

The girl lay dying. Her week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother kept bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals. Though fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and beautiful as a river stone in the flickering firelight.

In the little one-room shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not one stray breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were so thick they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly from the comatose child.

The mother, frantic about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night heavens. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the witch doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

In her native tongue she told the witch doctor about the dying child and begged for him to save her.

It seemed to take him forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side, pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

Bursting into the hut where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

The child’s arm lay limp off to one side, her head was turned toward them, her eyes open, glazed, and forever stilled.

The mother turned to the witch doctor and in her grief made the ultimate request. She knew of the rumors.

“They say you have raised the dead. Raise her up!”

“I have only raised a few animals,” he said. “Never a human being.”

“Raise her!”

It was true he was renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A dead dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could. But a human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that the gods would allow him that kind of power.

“I will give you anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled her eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to madness.

The witch doctor’s countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps. Three. He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was undeniably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was lighter than most islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft white flame. Her nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection, and the face was shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth, shiny with whale oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from her scalp. He reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek. It was cold, so cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to Mujai that the gods were intentionally cruel when children died.

Suddenly, and without knowing how it happened, the witch doctor fell in love with the dead child. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he was under a spell not of his own making. His face softened, his lips parted, and he let out a little sigh. He swiveled on his haunches to face the mother at the hut’s door opening.

She was silhouetted in the firelight, a gaunt figure with clenched hands held before her breasts. He could feel her grief as if it were an extra person in the hut. It loomed over her, a dark, heavy figure bearing down on her thin shoulders.

“You will give anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

A look of dawning understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child in the cold ground or see her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to someone else. Belonging to…

“Yes,” she said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you, yes. Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she is alive again.”

The witch doctor stood and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her, she will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her from here and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough to wed, she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”

Since the mother made no protest beyond the horror of what she was doing to her only child reflecting from her eyes, the pact was sealed.

“If you break your promise, I will kill you,” he said. “I will come in the night like a shadow and kill you.”

She turned aside, unable to look him in the face.

He left through the low door and stood a moment staring up at the starry sky from whence he derived part of his power. The sky, the earth, the sea, they all gave him just a particle of their powers, but it was enough. Enough to raise a human being he did not know yet, but enough to hope to raise one.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep away the family, let no one see her, allow no ceremony for her spirit. Tell no one, ever, of what happens here, good or bad, you understand? And while I'm gone keep the flies away too,” he added. “She must be kept clean and free of vermin.”

He hurried off into the night, loping like a gazelle. His talismans were left behind, discarded on the floor near the dead girl. For this he would not need them, and in fact, they would play no part. He required special plants that grew deep in the interior of the jungle, and water from the sea, and earth from the foot of the great sacred rock where all former witch doctors had been buried. Three times he had raised the dead with the secret potion, but if he was successful this fourth time it would be such a great accomplishment he might think himself a king rather than a witch doctor.

And the little girl would be his queen.

#

The island the witch doctor searched in the dark for his magic ingredients had no name for the people. Later in history it would be called Hispaniola. It was home to a few hundred aborigines who did not remember how any of them had come to be on the island and none of whom had ever tried to leave it. The land was merely home, the place where they lived out their lives. Centuries later the island would be conquered and ruled by the Spanish, who changed the name to Santo Domingo. In 1697 a formal division of the island occurred changing the name again into Santo Domingo and Saint-Domingue. Finally, it was changed to Haiti, what an ancient people used to call it. From that period the island was ruled over by despots and dictators.

But in this time before time was kept, it was nothing more than a jungle-encrusted plot of land in the Atlantic, neglected and ignored, its people savage and superstitious and alone, so very alone.

There were other witch doctors, and other small tribes, on various parts of the island, but Mujai knew he was the greatest of all. He had learned well everything his father and his grandfather had taught him about the witch arts, until he surpassed them and discovered, really by chance, the potion that brought the dead back to life again.

His reputation had spread and, after it was known he raised up a panther, some even feared him so much they let themselves die of fevers and infections rather than call for him. Others, however, knowing his value, came to his door and kept him rich with food and weapons for his prized wisdom. Perhaps, he thought, they were afraid, too, so they left him bribes. They gave him feathers of the rare ni-ni bird that had tail feathers of royal purple and emerald green. They brought beautiful shells taken by skilled divers from the sea floor, shells radiant with rainbow colors. And every fruit and every fish and every varmint that walked the island had at one time or another been deposited before his door as a gift.

He had never really wanted for anything or worked to feed himself. Yet there was one gift he had never been granted. Mujai had never had a woman. He was too feared. He was not good marriage material, never even considered as a mate for a father’s daughters. A man who could raise the dead was a fearful being indeed. He expected to live a solitary existence and die old and alone. Until tonight, with the little sleeping-dead girl who he knew, some way, some how, he would be able to raise up. She held a promise of the one thing he wanted and missed the most.

It was true the chicken did not cluck after it was raised. And the dog did not bark. But the panther, yes, it had been almost as before, roaring, leaping, hunting prey. But it had seemed to Mujai, following the dead-before-now-alive panther’s trail for several weeks out of curiosity, it had seemed the big cat had turned into quite a voracious beast. Keeping well-hidden and down wind, Mujai watched it many times take it’s prey apart nearly on the very moment of impact, at the instant of its death from the panther’s vicious long teeth. Flesh went flying skyward, to the right and to the left, and still the beast attacked, ripping and tearing in such a frenzy that its entire face and chest was slathered with blood from its victim. It did not feed so much as battle and destroy.

Mujai loped harder and tapped on his chest for protection, thinking of the beast he had raised and how dark the night still was, dawn some hours yet in the distance. Where was that hungry beast now? And was it on the prowl anywhere nearby for the fearful master who had raised it from the dead?

And what of the child, he wondered, suddenly, his lope faltering. Mujai was not a stupid man, and could follow a line of logic as neatly as anyone. What if when raised the little girl was changed? Was vicious? Was rapacious? What if she became a beast who could not be satisfied?

Again Majai tapped his chest for protection, for good luck, for help from the gods, for the heavens to favor him, as they had done all his life. He possessed but this one chance and he would take it, no matter what the outcome.

He took up his running lope again, for he had to hurry. Many of the plants he needed for the potion were scattered far and wide. He had much work to do, much territory to cover. And already the child was cold, so cold.

The breeze from the ocean wafted across his face, filling his nostrils until he could taste the brine on his tongue. He could smell the fecund earth and his nostrils flooded with the scent of various night-blooming flowers whose perfume was so strong it could dull a weaker man. He concentrated so the spirit gods would lead him to the plants he needed. Once calm, it came again on the wind, the scent of the deep, mysterious sea. He breathed in deeply and smiled. This is my island, he boasted to himself. I am king here. I am a god here. No one can do what I have done and what I am about to do. I am afraid of nothing, nothing. If I fail, no one will know. If I succeed…

He went into a trot and then into a true all-out run. He had to hurry, hurry, hurry.

He had a child bride to save. He had a beautiful, innocent, perfectly proportioned queen to raise up from the dead and to make his very own. She could not remain dead too long or even the potion would not work.

Yet if it worked! He would be alone no more. He swore it. Like his grandfather and father before him, he had found a woman he could take and make his own. That she was so young did not matter. He could teach her everything and be patient until she was a few years older. He would spend those years tutoring her how to work for him, bathe him, fetch and cook and climb the trees for his honey. He would teach her how to behave. How to love him as her king, as her Giver of Life. She would, after all, owe him everything, forever. She would be his Child-Lover-Mother-Companion-Inspiration, his alone, forever.

CHAPTER 3

COMING ALIVE

The instant the potion was massaged down her throat so that it slid into her belly, the magic began to work.

The potion mixed with the contents of her stomach, permeated the cells of the stomach wall, drifted into the silent blood stream. Like a horde of marauding ants, the potion properties invaded the cells. Those cells twinkled to life and began to move, invading the cells next to them. Within an hour all the cells of the child’s body had been changed, replaced, even down into the marrow of her bones. Human cells still, yes, but the DNA had been tweaked into something beyond human and life now was not like any life existing on the planet earth.

After waiting the proper amount of time, Mujai said a wild prayer beneath his breath and began to pound on the child’s chest. He must get the heart moving again. This is what he had done with the animals. With each mild thump he whispered wilder and more desperate prayers to the gods, asking for this miracle, this one if no other ever again.

He had pushed the mother from the hut and forbade her from speaking of this death and this ritual to anyone. He promised to take her life if she did. This was one raising he did not want to broadcast. In fact, if this raising worked, he had promised himself he would never do it again. Somewhere in the center of him where his man spirit resided, he felt what he was doing was against all nature. Already he had broken the very rules of the world by raising animals, but to raise a human being was…well, it was a bad business. He knew that, sensed it, even though he could not stop from trying to do it.

With each thump on the girl’s dead chest, he prayed harder. Do this for me, he prayed. I want her. I need her. She is mine. Sweat dripped from his face. Outside the moon had slid around the edge of the world and soon the sun would peak from over the lip of the blue sea. He could not be found here in the day, performing this ritual on the child. If others discovered he could raise a human being, they would bring every death on the island to him. Corpses outside his hut would rise higher than the thatched roof and drown the sky.

If they knew of it and he failed, they would dismiss him as a charlatan. He’d be thought of as someone who had cruelly made a grieving mother believe in the impossible. Rather than a king, he would become a pariah. His people knew no forgiveness. When you did a horribly wrong thing, you were cast out.

He pounded. He prayed. He feared defeat. And then life happened like a spark taking hold on massed palm tree shavings.

Her eyes opened.

Mujai sank back onto his heels in true astonishment, his hands frozen over her still body. He had not really, in the heart of him, believed that this could happen. He wanted success and now that he had it, he was mortified.

“Speak to me,” he whispered in sudden fear. “If you can hear me, speak.” Would she be mute like the chicken, the dog?

“My master,” she said. “I have come back for you.”

Mujai nearly passed out. He could not move even an eyelid. His mouth gaped.

She slowly sat up, woodenly, like a doll made of sticks. The black irises of her eyes were so enlarged they nearly covered the original mud brown color of her eyes.

“I saw Death,” she said. “I was lost in the dark.”

“Yes.” He gasped the word, the air in his lungs so short he was on the verge of fainting. “You were dead. I brought you back. You…you will live with me now.”

The girl pulled her legs beneath her woven palm skirt and she leaned forward on her hands so that her perfect little face was mere inches from his.

“Of course I will,” she said in a breathy voice that sounded nothing like a child’s voice. “I will come live with you.”

It felt like a threat to Mujai. At the very moment he knew he should feel exultant and powerful, he was overwhelmed with the greatest fear he had ever experienced.

What could he do? He had brought the dead to life and now he owned her. He had bargained for her life and she belonged to him, whether he feared her or not.

He rose shakily to his feet and held out his hand. “Come with me, then,” he said. “We will go.”

Her hand was shockingly cold. He forced himself not to cringe from her touch. He wondered if she would ever feel warm, feel human again.

Outside the hut the girl’s mother fell to her knees, mewling like a newborn. Tears ran down her face. “My baby, my baby, my baby lives,” she cried.

“Goodbye, Mother,” the girl said formally and without emotion. Then she moved forward, pulling the witch doctor behind her.

It seemed she knew the way home.

#

In the first days of her second life, the girl gave herself a new name. “Call me Angelique,” she instructed the witch doctor. “I do not like my old name. Tell me now how you raised me up.”

The question caused him to pause in the whittling he was doing on a bow. He looked up at her. “I cannot tell you,” he said.

“You mean you won’t.”

He shrugged and went back to his whittling, shaving long slivers of green bark from the limber wood.

“Tell me how you raised me up,” she insisted.

Something told him the girl wanted to know his secrets for reasons other than just to know how she came to be alive again. She wanted to steal his power. With his special knowledge, she could replace him as the village witch doctor. She could perform miracles and demand the respect that was reserved for him.

He looked up again. He frowned at her, hoping to instill fear. “I will never tell you. I will never do it again so you will never see how I do it, even if you were to shadow me the rest of my life. The magic that made you come back is now forgotten.” He tapped the side of his head and shook it a little as if throwing out the recipe for the potion.

She smiled. He hadn’t expected that response and he frowned harder. “I swear you will never know how I did it! Get the idea out of your head, you hear me? I will never tell and you will never know.”

She stood. She moved now with more grace, almost the way any child might. She said, “Mujai, my master, you are a silly, suspicious man.”

Smiling, she left him sitting with his unfinished bow, wondering at how she could insult him when he was the adult, he was her master, her king, her life-giver. How dare a little child speak to him with such disrespect. "Ungrateful little witch,” he muttered, and went back to his work.

She never spoke of it again, but then she had almost stopped speaking to him at all.

Out of fear or revulsion, Mujai did not know which, he kept his distance and went about his normal routines without dealing with the girl very often. She was sullen and withdrawn. She might get over it, she might change and be nice to him if he left her alone enough.

He set food before her, but after the first time watching her eat, he made sure to go into the jungle after serving her. No human being ate the way she did. It was like the panther, only worse because it was a child devouring food like a beast who has lost its mind. She shredded the meat he made in the fire without even dusting off the soot first. She broke the bones and sucked the marrow, licking her fingers of the grease. She put her whole face into a mango, until her nose disappeared as she feasted. If he did not bring her food at least three times a day, she would rummage in his gift pile the people brought for him, and ate whatever she found there in its raw state. A bird, feathers and all. A muskrat, tail and head and all. An entire melon, skin, seeds, and all. Nothing she ate seemed to bother her stomach or make her sick.

If it had just been the insane way she ate, her sulky silence, her utter lack of respect for him, Mujai thought he could come to accept it. But there were other things and these he could not countenance.

She rarely slept. It was as if death had given her all the sleep she would ever require. She sat up during the dark hours, watching over him in the hut. He turned his back to her, trying to cleanse his mind of those black eyes staring at him, but often he failed and lay awake himself, praying for the gods to make her right. Make her right, he prayed. Make her as she was before.

She took no direction whatsoever. If he asked her to do something for him, she pretended not to understand. “No entiendo,” she’d reply. I do not know what you mean, she said. What do you mean?

After patiently explaining the most rudimentary elements of gathering firewood or climbing a tree to gather honey, her reply was always the same. “No entiendo.”

He suspected she was being deliberately obtuse, the claims of not understanding his orders more examples of a lack of respect. He thought she knew exactly what he wanted, but she wasn’t going to do it. She had from the first refused his rule over her. This was her way of letting him know he did not own her.

He once thought of beating her. He lost his temper early on and after a week of feeding the girl, bringing clean drinking water, and doing all the chores, he asked for her to bring over his spear that stood against the giant umbrella tree near his camp.

“No entiendo.”

He asked her again.

“No entiendo.”

He asked her six times, raising his voice higher in anger each time, and six times she pretended not to understand.

He stood and raised his hand to slap her into submission, but when she lifted her face to him and looked him in the eyes, his hand was stayed as if paralyzed.

I will kill you if you lay a hand on me, her look said. You will die if you ever touch me, her look said, mocking his impotency.

From that time forward when she wouldn’t do as he said, he let it go. Finally he stopped asking anything of her and realized instead of gaining a queen, he had inherited a master. He was the child’s slave.

She was useless to him. She was truly a burden. He knew when she was old enough to mate she would never let him come near her. At wit’s end, he went to the girl’s mother and questioned her.

“Before she died, was your daughter obedient? Did she help you out with the chores?”

“Certainly. Very obedient. She is a good girl.”

“And respect? She showed you respect?”

“Yes!”

“Before she died, did she ever…did she ever scare you in any way? In how she acted or how she looked at you?”

“Never! My baby was full of love, a gentle, loving child. What do all these questions mean?’

“She is not right,” he said simply, and left it at that. He thought of sending the girl back to her mother, but had a feeling Angelique would not go. She cared no more for her mother than she did for him. That was evident in the way she’d left her and how, when the mother visited, she backed away without letting her mother touch her. When called by her name she said, “Call me Angelique!” Then screaming like a wild thing, “I am Angelique!”

As his absolute last resort, and after much inner turmoil and argument with himself about the morality of it, Mujai decided he would have to kill her. He would never be free if he didn’t. He’d tell the villagers she had died of the fever. So many did and no one questioned it. When she asked, as he knew she would, he would tell the girl’s mother he would not raise her again. And then all this would be over. What he had done was so against the law of nature that it had created a creature he did not want around him. He had to fix his mistake. He certainly would never make it again. He was forever through with the raising of the dead.

The day he meant to murder the child, he broke a large shale rock from a sea cliff wall and slipped it beneath his woven sleeping mat in the hut. The rock had a sharp cutting edge and fit his hand perfectly. It would slice into her face like parting water. He would cleave her ruined brain in two.

Though she did not sleep and kept watch over him, she would never expect him to rise up with the rock in his hand to bludgeon her. He had never, after the first time when he raised his hand to her, indicated that he was dangerous or violent. The opposite, in fact, seemed to be his beaten demeanor around the girl—even subservient.

All day he was excited about his plan. He sneaked looks at her as he worked around the camp site, thinking of her dead and buried and out of his life. Then it came to him. He would not bury her! She might in some way be a magical creature after her tryst with Death. She might know how to rise up on her own and had been asking after his secret potion as a ruse. In order to be safe he would throw her into the sea and let the fish nibble her pale little body down to the bones.

If he had to watch her tear into a slab of meat one more time he thought he would go mad. Living with her was like living with the undead monster panther. As far as he could tell there was little difference between them.

That night he went to bed not long after darkfall, as was his custom. He had said few words to the girl all day and had looked into her eyes not once. He feared she might know of his murderous plan if she could see what lay behind his eyes.

After a few minutes she slipped inside the hut with him and sat cross-legged at his back. He could feel her there, her dark eyes staring. But this night he was not unnerved and sleepless.

He bided his time. He wanted to make his move when he had his wrath worked up to killing pitch. He wanted nothing to go wrong. If he missed on the first strike, she might skitter away into the jungle. He would never get a second chance, he understood that implicitly. This was an intelligent, conniving child. A manipulative child. An evil child.

After an hour he had his mind ready. What he was about to do was not a sin. Besides, she was supposed to be dead. He was going to do her a favor and send her back into the dark where she belonged.

He grasped the rock, feeling the rough hardness of it, the cold heaviness of its weight. He must move fast and not falter. He must strike like a snake, without remorse, without a moment’s hesitation. He could not dare look into her eyes.

He flexed the muscle of his right arm that held the rock. He drew in one breath and then he made his move. He sat up and swiveled around in the same motion, raising the rock high above his head. Though he didn’t know it, he was screaming one long, sustained furious scream.

He felt a sudden horrible pain strike him in his midsection, but nothing was going to stop the downward motion of the killing blow.

He swung. But where she sat, she no longer existed. The rock struck the ground so hard he broke two of his fingers and cut his palm. He dropped the rock, looking around in the near darkness for where she had moved. Panic caused him to lose his breath. He had missed! He had failed! But she had been right there a second ago, right there below his raised arm.

A shadow fell over him from the doorway, blocking the moon. He turned and saw her, so beautiful, so small, so perfect. The island child beauty with the long dark hair, the perfect features. The little dead ten-year-old.

“You will die a slow death, my master. Look to your belly for your future.” As were all her words, these were said without emotion or inflection.

He glanced to his lap and saw the long spear sticking from his stomach. Blood poured from the wound, soaking his naked legs.

“What have you done?” he asked plaintively. The unfairness of this situation was so great, greater even than the pain that was now like fire burning him inside out, that tears sprang into his eyes.

“Only what you would have done to me.”

“Death invaded you. You have a soul from a god of the deep down under.” He took hold of the spear, but he could not dislodge it without fainting outright. He knew he was doomed, but his mind railed against the injustice. Hadn’t he given her life? Hadn’t he raised her up?

“Demon,” he hissed. “Monster.”

“I am what you made. You snatched me from the dark and now you ask why the dark has come to fetch you. Goodbye, Master.”

She turned then and walked out of the clearing, leaving him alone. He had no talismans to save himself. He had no potion to bring him to life. He was going to die in her stead. He had cheated death of her presence and replaced it with his own.

He lay his head back and stared at the palmed ceiling that rustled in a breeze from the sea. At the very least he would be rid of her. Let the living be party to her baneful corruption.

He, the greatest witchdoctor who had ever lived, was now through with it all.

His body sagged to the side. His last fleeting thought was that he hoped no one ever chanced on his secret potion ever again. A world populated by the living dead would be no world for the living.

What had he done? What had he done?

CHAPTER 4

RULING THE TRIBE

First she had to find the panther. She hadn’t gotten Mujai to tell her how his magic brought her back from the dark but he had spoken—bragged really--of the three animal experiments before her.

It was the panther she felt closest to, more than to any human. She knew she was not the person she had been when alive. She was all new. And all different. If she managed to escape accident (and enemies who meant to murder her) by using her new-found powers, she thought she might live forever.

It was a pity she had to take Mujai’s life, but he had tried to destroy her. She had known he would come to that. He feared her as he would fear the green venomous viper that trailed in the island’s tree limbs.

She knew she could outwit and out live him. He was just a man. A normal unchanged man. He could not move from one place to another in an instant. He could not tell what a person was thinking by looking into his eyes. He could not hear the whisper of padded feet in the forest a mile distant. And, of course, he could not see and hear and interact with the People from the Dark, who gave her all sorts of secret knowledge useful against living men. He had none of the gifts she’d been graced with after her awakening.

She moved stealthily through the jungle, unafraid, but alert, her mind on a quest. If she could get to the panther and make it her friend, she could demand great power over the people on the island. They might not, at first, fear her, but they would immediately fear a panther, especially one that walked at her side as if her guardian. And most of them knew the rumor of a panther brought back to life by the witch doctor, a panther that was now supernatural and so fierce it was like a new beast walking the earth.

It took some time, and much concentrated thought, but finally Angelique came down a narrow ravine, following the thin ribbon of water washed silver in the moonlight and there she saw the panther.

He stood majestic, a large cat with rippling muscles and a great smooth head with widely spaced yellow eyes. He was sipping at the water when she approached. He raised his imperious head and his lips rolled back from long, sharp teeth. Water and saliva dripped down his massive chest. He growled deep in his throat.

“Don’t fear me,” she said calmly, moving ever closer to him. “I am like you. Come. Smell me and you will know. Let us be friends.”

She walked toward him, down the narrow bank path, her bare feet making no noise in the soft undergrowth. The cat did not move, but watched carefully. She could hear his breathing mingle with the gentle trickling of the waters sliding over rocks.

She got within two feet of him, holding him still and calm with her magnetic gaze. “Do you understand? I am like you. I am your brethren.”

The cat’s lips lowered over his teeth. He moved forward until he was breathing hotly on her bare skin. He lay his head against her arm where she lifted a hand and stroked him softly.

“There will be no love for us from anyone or anything else. We will be a team and help one another.” She wasn’t sure that he understood the individual words of her language, but he appeared to understand she was no threat to him, nor was she food.

The thought of food made her stomach churn. “Let’s go hunting,” she said, jolly now that she had made the panther her friend and cohort. “Come! You catch the prey and we will feast on it together.”

The panther, now completely under her power, turned with her, wheeling toward the upward bank and together they climbed back into the chaos of the jungle to look for their midnight supper.

CHAPTER 5

A GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE

Angelique strode confidently into the village proper, the panther she had named Sokuru, at her side. People came from their huts and dropped whatever they were doing to stare. No one moved a muscle, fearing the panther might leap. Even the children were silent and kept still.

“I am Angelique and this is my friend, Sokuru. If you obey me, I will not have him kill you. If you run or you hide or you disobey, you will die. Do you understand?”

The village elder, the tribe’s leader, stepped forward, trying to appear unafraid. He held his spear at his side, its tip in the dirt. “Are you not the daughter of Lenosa? The girl she gave to the witch doctor? Is your name not Kera?”

“I am the daughter of Lenosa, but I am emancipated. I no longer belong to my mother or the witch doctor. He is dead because he tried to do me harm. My new name is Angelique and that is what you will call me when you speak to your queen.”

The elder turned his head to the side. “Queen?”

“You dispute me?” She took her hand from Sokuru’s back and gestured for him to move forward. He went into a crouch, the way a big cat will do when it is ready to take down prey.

The elder stepped back and immediately dropped his spear, in essence giving up his title as leader. He brought his hands together before him and bowed his head. “My queen,” he said.

Angelique walked forward and again put her hand on the panther’s back. He stopped, straightening, awaiting command.

“I want a runner to go to all the tribes, island wide, and invite them to this place. There will no more be separate villages and groups. We will all be as one. And I am the queen of all. Obey me.” She glanced around at all who had gathered before her. “All of you.”

The elder motioned to their fastest runner and gestured for him to go. He immediately set off into the woods to disappear into the thick jungle to summon the tribes.

Angelique smiled now. Had she not tamed the panther and made him her vassal, this would have been vastly more difficult. She patted the head of the big cat.

“Now call for my mother and tell her I will need a maid servant and she will be that maid servant. I also require a hut.”

After dispatching another runner to collect the child’s mother, the elder went to his own hut, which was the largest in the village, and swept open the grass door. “This is yours,” he said. “Please. I can build another.”

She liked the elder and when she passed him by on the way into his hut, she tapped his arm. “I make you my chief food gatherer and advisor. Sokuru and I require large quantities of fresh food, preferably meat and seafood. Be sure to keep us well supplied and your fate is secure.”

She entered the darkened hut, the panther strolling behind her. She closed the grass door and sat down on a cushioned bed of palm fronds. It had been a long night and she needed sleep, but not yet.

Sokuru paced before the door, back and forth, until she told him to lie down and rest. “Only if I am in danger,” she instructed the cat, “do you attack.”

The cat came to her and purred as he rubbed his fat cheek against her much smaller cheek. Then he moved like the majestic beast he was toward the back of the dwelling and circled twice before he lay down for a much-needed nap.

There was a small tapping outside the door and Sokuru raised his head.

“Come,” Angelique said. She motioned with her hand for Sokuru to relax.

Angelique’s mother, Lenosa, entered. She rushed to her daughter without noticing there was a beastly presence in the room. When she went to embrace the girl, Angelique pushed her away. “Don’t ever touch me.”

Shocked and hurt, Lenosa said, “But Kera…”

“Never call me that again, I told you! Kera is dead. I am Angelique and you will address me as you would your queen, for I am your master now and not your child any longer.”

“No entiendo.” Tears stood in Lenosa’s eyes.

“Listen to me, you dumb pig woman. Your Kera died. You had her raised up, which was a selfish thing for you to do, and a thing for which you will later be punished. And then you gave me, not Kera, me, to the witless soul who did this thing. Kera drifted into the dark and did not return, do you understand that? I am Angelique and I am not like your Kera, nor am I like you or anyone on this forsaken island. I will live forever, but because that witless Mujai brought back a child, I will remain a child forever, too. I am doomed to this little body because of you and I ought to have your head on a spike, but if you prove yourself useful, I’ll let you live.”

Lenosa listened to this blasphemy with wide eyes. It was evident she would not say “no entiendo” again, no matter how confused she might be.

“I will serve you,” she said, bowing her head with grave misgiving and a sharp pain in her heart where she had carried her daughter, Kera, for ten years.

“Yes, that’s right. Trust me when I say Kera is dead and gone. I see you understand. You and Mujai carried out an unholy act. He paid for it this past night when I took his life. I would not hesitate a minute to take yours.”

“Could you…could you tell me where you came from?”

Angelique cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. She smiled and it chilled Lenosa’s heart. “I like a curious spirit. But if I told you you would not believe me. Suffice it to say I am not ten years old, but ten thousand times ten thousand. It has been a thousand years since anyone was able to raise the dead so that I could return to this world. I find it…” She glanced around the bare hut and the palm leaf walls. “I find it nearly unbearable. You are a barbaric people. Nevertheless here I am. And here this is. And that is that. Now fetch clean water and come wash me, I am dirty.”

As Lenosa bowed her way backward out the hut door, Angelique sank back onto the palm mattress. She didn’t know why she had told the woman so much. She had the very human need to confide in someone and Lenosa was as good as another. She probably didn’t understand a word of it anyway. There was nothing in Lenosa’s life experience that could parse such a tale and make reason out of it.

From the moment Angelique opened her eyes and saw Mujai in the firelight of the dirty little hut, she knew she must get away from this place. Discovering it to be an island plunged her into deep despair. These people didn’t even fashion boats, but fished with their hands and bark rope nets tied to long poles, fishing from shore. They were so primitive they still had witch doctors and hadn’t even the skill to weave cloth to cover their nakedness. When she had walked the Earth alive before, a thousand years in the past, Angelique hadn’t even known this little island existed.

But Angelique had been in dire straits before. Many times. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t work with it.

She lifted one hand and held it before her eyes in the shadowy light. She turned it from palm to top, from top to palm, examining it. Her hand was so small, so frail. She would never be a woman, never know a man, never birth children of her own. Just because she had been given life it didn’t mean she would grow. In fact, she would remain as she was the rest of her days. Fully half of life’s joys were denied her. Her physical strength was minimal. This was the cruelest curse of all, to be trapped in a child’s body, and it had never happened before.

On the other hand, she could sense the nubs of thick matter in her back, at the top of her shoulder blades and knew eventually she could make them grow, splitting human skin as easily as air parting leaves in a tree. The nubs were the buds of her wings. Her wings! She had not come into this body completely without resource.

And at least the vessel was female. Not just female, but superbly beautiful. She had some advantages, she admitted. Some advantage is all she would ever need.

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Table of Contents

- Copyright
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- CHAPTER 4
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Excerpt from 'BANISHED'