DEAN KOONTZ

The Husband

This novel is dedicated to Andy and Anne Wickstrom, and to Wesley J. Smith and Debra J. Saunders: two good husbands and their good wives, also good friends, who always brighten the corner where they are.

Courage is grace under pressure. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love…

—EMILY DICKINSON

Contents

Epigraph Part One: What Would You Do For Love? Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four Chapter Twenty Five Chapter Twenty Six Chapter Twenty Seven Chapter Twenty Eight Part Two: Would You Die For Love? Would You Kill? Chapter Twenty Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty One Chapter Thirty Two Chapter Thirty Three Chapter Thirty Four Chapter Thirty Five Chapter Thirty Six Chapter Thirty Seven Chapter Thirty Eight Chapter Thirty Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty One Chapter Forty Two Chapter Forty Three Chapter Forty Four Chapter Forty Five Part Three: Until Death Us Do Part. Chapter Forty Six Chapter Forty Seven Chapter Forty Eight Chapter Forty Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty One Chapter Fifty Two Chapter Fifty Three Chapter Fifty Four Chapter Fifty Five Chapter Fifty Six Chapter Fifty Seven Chapter Fifty Eight Chapter Fifty Nine Chapter Sixty Chapter Sixty One Chapter Sixty Two Chapter Sixty Three Chapter Sixty Four Chapter Sixty Five Chapter Sixty Six Chapter Sixty Seven Chapter Sixty Eight About the Author Praise Also By Dean Koontz Copyright About the Publisher

PART ONE

What Would You Do For Love?

1

Aman begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Death’s patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.

Eventually, Mitchell Rafferty would be able to cite the minute that he began to recognize the inevitability of his death: Monday, May 14, 11:43 in the morning—three weeks short of his twenty-eighth birthday.

Until then, he had rarely thought of dying. A born optimist, charmed by nature’s beauty and amused by humanity, he had no cause or inclination to wonder when and how his mortality would be proven.

When the call came, he was on his knees.

Thirty flats of red and purple impatiens remained to be planted. The flowers produced no fragrance, but the fertile smell of the soil pleased him.

His clients, these particular homeowners, liked saturated colors: red, purple, deep yellow, hot pink. They would not accept white blooms or pastels.

Mitch understood them. Raised poor, they had built a successful business by working hard and taking risks. To them, life was intense, and saturated colors reflected the truth of nature’s vehemence.

This apparently ordinary but in fact momentous morning, the California sun was a buttery ball. The sky had a basted sheen.

Pleasantly warm, not searing, the day nevertheless left a greasy sweat on Ignatius Barnes. His brow glistened. His chin dripped.

At work in the same bed of flowers, ten feet from Mitch, Iggy looked boiled. From May until July, his skin responded to the sun not with melanin but with a fierce blush. For one-sixth of the year, before he finally tanned, he appeared to be perpetually embarrassed.

Iggy did not possess an understanding of symmetry and harmony in landscape design, and he couldn’t be trusted to trim roses properly. He was a hard worker, however, and good if not intellectually bracing company.

“You hear what happened to Ralph Gandhi?” Iggy asked.

“Who’s Ralph Gandhi?”

“Mickey’s brother.”

“Mickey Gandhi? I don’t know him, either.”

“Sure you do,” Iggy said. “Mickey, he hangs out sometimes at Rolling Thunder.”

Rolling Thunder was a surfers’ bar.

“I haven’t been there in years,” Mitch said.

“Years? Are you serious?”

“Entirely.”

“I thought you still dropped in sometimes.”

“So I’ve really been missed, huh?”

“I’ll admit, nobody’s named a bar stool after you. What—did you find someplace better than Rolling Thunder?”

“Remember coming to my wedding three years ago?” Mitch asked.

“Sure. You had great seafood tacos, but the band was woofy.”

“They weren’t woofy.”

“Man, they had tambourines.”

“We were on a budget. At least they didn’t have an accordion.”

“Because playing an accordion exceeded their skill level.”

Mitch troweled a cavity in the loose soil. “They didn’t have finger bells, either.”

Wiping his brow with one forearm, Iggy complained: “I must have Eskimo genes. I break a sweat at fifty degrees.”

Mitch said, “I don’t do bars anymore. I do marriage.”

“Yeah, but can’t you do marriage and Rolling Thunder?”

“I’d just rather be home than anywhere else.”

“Oh, boss, that’s sad,” said Iggy.

“It’s not sad. It’s the best.”

“If you put a lion in a zoo three years, six years, he never forgets what freedom was like.”

Planting purple impatiens, Mitch said, “How would you know? You ever asked a lion?”

“I don’t have to ask one. I am a lion.”

“You’re a hopeless boardhead.”

“And proud of it. I’m glad you found Holly. She’s a great lady. But I’ve got my freedom.”

“Good for you, Iggy. And what do you do with it?”

“Do with what?”

“Your freedom. What do you do with your freedom?”

“Anything I want.”

“Like, for example?”

“Anything. Like, if I want sausage pizza for dinner, I don’t have to ask anyone what she wants.”

“Radical.”

“If I want to go to Rolling Thunder for a few beers, there’s nobody to bitch at me.”

“Holly doesn’t bitch.”

“I can get beer-slammed every night if I want, and nobody’s gonna be calling to ask when am I coming home.”

Mitch began to whistle “Born Free.”

“Some wahine comes on to me,” Iggy said, “I’m free to rock and roll.”

“They’re coming on to you all the time—are they?—those sexy wahines?”

“Women are bold these days, boss. They see what they want, they just take it.”

Mitch said, “Iggy, the last time you got laid, John Kerry thought he was going to be president.”

“That’s not so long ago.”

“So what happened to Ralph?”

“Ralph who?”

“Mickey Gandhi’s brother.”

“Oh, yeah. An iguana bit off his nose.”

“Nasty.”

“Some fully macking ten-footers were breaking, so Ralph and some guys went night-riding at the Wedge.”

The Wedge was a famous surfing spot at the end of the Balboa Peninsula, in Newport Beach.

Iggy said, “They packed coolers full of submarine sandwiches and beer, and one of them brought Ming.”

“Ming?”

“That’s the iguana.”

“So it was a pet?”

“Ming, he’d always been sweet before.”

“I’d expect iguanas to be moody.”

“No, they’re affectionate. What happened was some wanker, not even a surfer, just a wannabe tag-along, slipped Ming a quarter-dose of meth in a piece of salami.”

“Reptiles on speed,” Mitch said, “is a bad idea.”

“Meth Ming was a whole different animal from clean-and-sober Ming,” Iggy confirmed.

Putting down his trowel, sitting back on the heels of his work shoes, Mitch said, “So now Ralph Gandhi is noseless?”

“Ming didn’t eat the nose. He just bit it off and spit it out.”

“Maybe he didn’t like Indian food.”

“They had a big cooler full of ice water and beer. They put the nose in the cooler and rushed it to the hospital.”

“Did they take Ralph, too?”

“They had to take Ralph. It was his nose.”

“Well,” Mitch said, “we are talking about board-heads.”

“They said it was kinda blue when they fished it out of the ice water, but a plastic surgeon sewed it back on, and now it’s not blue anymore.”

“What happened to Ming?”

“He crashed. He was totally amped-out for a day. Now he’s his old self.”

“That’s good. It’s probably hard to find a clinic that’ll do iguana rehab.”

Mitch got to his feet and retrieved three dozen empty plastic plant pots. He carried them to his extended-bed pickup.

The truck stood at the curb, in the shade of an Indian laurel. Although the neighborhood had been built-out only five years earlier, the big tree had already lifted the sidewalk. Eventually the insistent roots would block lawn drains and invade the sewer system.

The developer’s decision to save one hundred dollars by not installing a root barrier would produce tens of thousands in repair work for plumbers, landscapers, and concrete contractors.

When Mitch planted an Indian laurel, he always used a root barrier. He didn’t need to make future work for himself. Green growing Nature would keep him busy.

The street lay silent, without traffic. Not the barest breath of a breeze stirred the trees.

From a block away, on the farther side of the street, a man and a dog approached. The dog, a retriever, spent less time walking than it did sniffing messages left by others of its kind.

The stillness pooled so deep that Mitch almost believed he could hear the panting of the distant canine.

Golden: the sun and the dog, the air and the promise of the day, the beautiful houses behind deep lawns.

Mitch Rafferty could not afford a home in this neighborhood. He was satisfied just to be able to work here.

You could love great art but have no desire to live in a museum.

He noticed a damaged sprinkler head where lawn met sidewalk. He got his tools from the truck and knelt on the grass, taking a break from the impatiens.

His cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, flipped it open. The time was displayed—11:43—but no caller’s number showed on the screen. He took the call anyway.

“Big Green,” he said, which was the name he’d given his two-man business nine years ago, though he no longer remembered why.

“Mitch, I love you,” Holly said.

“Hey, sweetie.”

“Whatever happens, I love you.”

She cried out in pain. A clatter and crash suggested a struggle.

Alarmed, Mitch rose to his feet. “Holly?”

Some guy said something, some guy who now had the phone. Mitch didn’t hear the words because he was focused on the background noise.

Holly squealed. He’d never heard such a sound from her, such fear.

“Sonofabitch,” she said, and was silenced by a sharp crack, as though she’d been slapped.

The stranger on the phone said, “You hear me, Rafferty?”

“Holly? Where’s Holly?”

Now the guy was talking away from the phone, not to Mitch: “Don’t be stupid. Stay on the floor.”

Another man spoke in the background, his words unclear.

The one with the phone said, “She gets up, punch her. You want to lose some teeth, honey?” She was with two men. One of them had hit her. Hit her.

Mitch couldn’t get his mind around the situation. Reality suddenly seemed as slippery as the narrative of a nightmare.

A meth-crazed iguana was more real than this.

Near the house, Iggy planted impatiens. Sweating, red from the sun, as solid as ever.

“That’s better, honey. That’s a good girl.”

Mitch couldn’t draw breath. A great weight pressed on his lungs. He tried to speak but couldn’t find his voice, didn’t know what to say. Here in bright sun, he felt casketed, buried alive.

“We have your wife,” said the guy on the phone.

Mitch heard himself ask, “Why?”

“Why do you think, asshole?”

Mitch didn’t know why. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to reason through to an answer because every possible answer would be a horror.

“I’m planting flowers.”

“What’s wrong with you, Rafferty?”

“That’s what I do. Plant flowers. Repair sprink lers.”

“Are you buzzed or something?”

“I’m just a gardener.”

“So we have your wife. You get her back for two million cash.”

Mitch knew it wasn’t a joke. If it were a joke, Holly would have to be in on it, but her sense of humor was not cruel.

“You’ve made a mistake.”

“You hear what I said? Two million.”

“Man, you aren’t listening. I’m a gardener.”

“We know.”

“I have like eleven thousand bucks in the bank.”

“We know.”

Brimming with fear and confusion, Mitch had no room for anger. Compelled to clarify, perhaps more for himself than for the caller, he said, “I just run a little two-man operation.”

“You’ve got until midnight Wednesday. Sixty hours. We’ll be in touch about the details.”

Mitch was sweating. “This is nuts. Where would I get two million bucks?”

“You’ll find a way.”

The stranger’s voice was hard, implacable. In a movie, Death might sound like this.

“It isn’t possible,” Mitch said.

“You want to hear her scream again?”

“No. Don’t.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Really love her?”

“She’s everything to me.”

How peculiar, that he should be sweating yet feel so cold.

“If she’s everything to you,” said the stranger, “then you’ll find a way.”

“There isn’t a way.”

“If you go to the cops, we’ll cut her fingers off one by one, and cauterize them as we go. We’ll cut her tongue out. And her eyes. Then we’ll leave her alone to die as fast or slow as she wants.”

The stranger spoke without menace, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were not making a threat but were instead merely explaining the details of his business model.

Mitchell Rafferty had no experience of such men. He might as well have been talking to a visitor from the far end of the galaxy.

He could not speak because suddenly it seemed that he might so easily, unwittingly say the wrong thing and ensure Holly’s death sooner rather than later.

The kidnapper said, “Just so you’ll know we’re serious…”

After a silence, Mitch asked, “What?”

“See that guy across the street?”

Mitch turned and saw a single pedestrian, the man walking the slow dog. They had progressed half a block.

The sunny day had a porcelain glaze. Rifle fire shattered the stillness, and the dogwalker went down, shot in the head.

“Midnight Wednesday,” said the man on the phone. “We’re damn serious.”

2

The dog stood as if on point: one forepaw raised, tail extended but motionless, nose lifted to seek a scent.

In truth, the golden retriever had not spotted the shooter. It halted in midstep, startled by its master’s collapse, frozen by confusion.

Directly across the street from the dog, Mitch likewise stood paralyzed. The kidnapper terminated the call, but Mitch still held the cell phone to his ear.

Superstition promised that as long as the street remained still, as long as neither he nor the dog moved, the violence might be undone and time rewound, the bullet recalled to the barrel.

Reason trumped magical thinking. He crossed the street, first haltingly, then at a run. If the fallen man was wounded, something might be done to save him. As Mitch approached, the dog favored him with a single wag of its tail.

A glance at the victim dispelled any hope that first aid might sustain him until paramedics arrived. A significant portion of his skull was gone.

Having no familiarity with real violence, only with the edited-analyzed-excused-and-defanged variety provided by TV news, and with the cartoon violence in movies, Mitch was rendered impotent by this horror. More than fear, shock immobilized him.

More than shock, a sudden awareness of previously unsensed dimensions transfixed him. He was akin to a rat in a sealed maze, for the first time looking up from the familiar passageways and seeing a world beyond the glass lid, forms and figures, mysterious movement.

Lying on the sidewalk near its master, the golden retriever trembled, whimpered.

Mitch sensed that he was in the company of someone other than the dog, and felt watched, but more than watched. Studied. Attended. Pursued.

His heart was a thundering herd, hooves on stone.

He surveyed the day but saw no gunman. The rifle could have been fired from any house, from any rooftop or window, or from behind a parked car.

Anyway, the presence he sensed was not that of the shooter. He did not feel watched from a distance, but from an intimate vantage point. He felt as if someone loomed over him.

Hardly more than half a minute had passed since the dogwalker had been killed.

The crack of the rifle had not brought anyone out of any of the beautiful houses. In this neighborhood, a gunshot would be perceived as a slammed door, dismissed even as it echoed.

Across the street, at the client’s house, Iggy Barnes had risen from his knees to his feet. He didn’t appear to be alarmed, merely puzzled, as if he, too, had heard a door and didn’t understand the meaning of the fallen man, the grieving dog.

Midnight Wednesday. Sixty hours. Time on fire, minutes burning. Mitch couldn’t afford to let hours turn to ashes while he was tied up with a police investigation.

On the sidewalk, a column of marching ants changed course, crawling toward the feast within the cratered skull.

In a mostly clear sky, a rare cloud drifted across the sun. The day paled. Shadows faded.

Chilled, Mitch turned from the corpse, stepped off the curb, halted.

He and Iggy couldn’t just load the unplanted impatiens into the truck and drive away. They might not be able to do so before someone came along and saw the dead man. Their indifference to the victim and their flight would suggest guilt even to the most unworldly passerby, and certainly to the police.

The cell phone, folded shut, remained in Mitch’s hand. He looked upon it with dread.

If you go to the cops, we’ll cut her fingers off one by one…

The kidnappers would expect him to summon the authorities or to wait for someone else to do so. Forbidden, however, was any mention of Holly or of kidnapping, or of the fact that the dogwalker had been murdered as an example to Mitch.

Indeed, his unknown adversaries might have put him in this predicament specifically to test his ability to keep his mouth shut at the moment when he was in the most severe state of shock and most likely to lose his self-control.

He opened the phone. The screen brightened with an image of colorful fish in dark water.

After keying in 9 and 1, Mitch hesitated, but then entered the final digit.

Iggy dropped his trowel, moved toward the street.

Only when the police operator answered on the second ring did Mitch realize that from the moment he’d seen the dead man’s shattered head, his breathing had been desperate, ragged, raw. For a moment, words wouldn’t come, and then they blew out of him in a rough voice he barely recognized.

“A man’s been shot. I’m dead. I mean, he’s dead. He’s been shot, and he’s dead.”

3

Police had cordoned off both ends of the block. Squad cars, CSI vans, and a morgue wagon were scattered along the street with the insouciance of those to whom parking regulations do not apply.

Under the unblinking gaze of the sun, windshields blazed and brightwork gleamed. No cloud remained to be a pirate’s patch, and the light was merciless.

The cops wore sunglasses. Behind the dark lenses, perhaps they glanced suspiciously at Mitchell Rafferty, or perhaps they were indifferent to him.

In front of his client’s house, Mitch sat on the lawn, his back against the bole of a phoenix palm.

From time to time, he heard rats scrabbling in the top of the tree. They liked to make a high nest in a phoenix palm, between the crown and the skirt.

The feathery shadows of the fronds provided him with no sense of diminished visibility. He felt as if he were on a stage.

Twice in two hours, he had been questioned. Two plainclothes detectives had interviewed him the first time, only one on the second occasion.

He thought he had acquitted himself well. Yet they had not told him that he could go.

Thus far, Iggy had been interviewed only once. He had no wife in jeopardy, nothing to hide. Besides, Iggy had less talent for deception than did the average six-year-old, which would be evident to experienced interrogators.

Maybe the cops’ greater interest in Mitch was a bad sign. Or maybe it meant nothing.

More than an hour ago, Iggy had returned to the flower bed. He had nearly completed the installation of the impatiens.

Mitch would have preferred to stay busy with the planting. This inactivity made him keenly aware of the passage of time: Two of his sixty hours were gone.

The detectives had firmly suggested that Iggy and Mitch should remain separated because, in all innocence, if they talked together about the crime, they might unintentionally conform their memories, resulting in the loss of an important detail in one or the other’s testimony.

That might be either the truth or malarkey. The reason for keeping them apart might be more sinister, to isolate Mitch and ensure that he remained off balance. Neither of the detectives had worn sunglasses, but Mitch had not been able to read their eyes.

Sitting under the palm tree, he had made three phone calls, the first to his home number. An answering machine had picked up.

After the usual beep, he said, “Holly, are you there?”

Her abductors would not risk holding her in her own home.

Nevertheless, Mitch said, “If you’re there, please pick up.”

He was in denial because the situation made no sense. Kidnappers don’t target the wives of men who have to worry about the price of gasoline and groceries.

Man, you aren’t listening. I’m a gardener.

We know.

I have like eleven thousand bucks in the bank.

We know.

They must be insane. Delusional. Their scheme was based on some mad fantasy that no rational person could understand.

Or they had a plan that they had not yet revealed to him. Maybe they wanted him to rob a bank for them.

He remembered a news story, a couple years back, about an innocent man who robbed a bank while wearing a collar of explosives. The criminals who necklaced him had tried to use him like a remote-control robot. When police cornered the poor bastard, his controllers detonated the bomb from a distance, decapitating him so he could never testify against them.

One problem. No bank had two million dollars in cash on hand, in tellers’ drawers, and probably not even in the vault.

After getting no answer when he phoned home, he had tried Holly’s cell phone but hadn’t been able to reach her at that number.

He also had called the Realtor’s office where she worked as a secretary while she studied for her real-estate license.

Another secretary, Nancy Farasand, had said, “She called in sick, Mitch. Didn’t you know?”

“When I left home this morning, she was a little queasy,” he lied, “but she thought it would pass.”

“It didn’t pass. She said it’s like a summer flu. She was so disappointed.”

“I better call her at home,” he said, but of course he had already tried reaching her there.

He had spoken to Nancy more than ninety minutes ago, between conversations with detectives.

Passing minutes unwind a watch spring; but they had wound Mitch tight. He felt as though something inside his head was going to pop.

A fat bumblebee returned to him from time to time, hovering, buzzing close, perhaps attracted by his yellow T-shirt.

Across the street, toward the end of the block, two women and a man were standing on a front lawn, watching the police: neighbors gathered for the drama. They had been there since the sirens had drawn them outside.

Not long ago, one of them had gone into a house and had returned with a tray on which stood glasses of what might have been iced tea. The glasses sparkled in the sunlight.

Earlier, the detectives had walked up the street to question that trio. They had interviewed them only once.

Now the three stood sipping tea, chatting, as if unconcerned that a sniper had cut down someone who had been walking in their community. They appeared to be enjoying this interlude, as though it presented a welcome break from their usual routine, even if it came at the cost of a life.

To Mitch, the neighbors seemed to spend more time staring toward him than at any of the police or CSI technicians. He wondered what, if anything, the detectives had asked them about him.

None of the three used the services of Big Green. From time to time, they would have seen him in the neighborhood, however, because he took care of four properties on this street.

He disliked these tea drinkers. He had never met them, did not know their names, but he viewed them with an almost bitter aversion.

Mitch disliked them not because they seemed perversely to be enjoying themselves, and not because of what they might have said about him to the police. He disliked the three—could have worked up a loathing for them—because their lives were still in order, because they did not live under the threat of imminent violence against someone they loved.

Although irrational, his animosity had a certain value. It distracted him from his fear for Holly, as did his continuous fretful analysis of the detectives’ actions.

If he dared to give himself entirely to worry about his wife, he would go to pieces. This was no exaggeration. He was surprised at how fragile he felt, as he never had felt previously.

Each time her face rose in his mind, he had to banish it because his eyes grew hot, his vision blurred. His heart fell into an ominous heavy rhythm.

An emotional display, so out of proportion even to the shock of seeing a man shot, would require an explanation. He dared not reveal the truth, and he didn’t trust himself to invent an explanation that would convince the cops.

One of the homicide detectives—Mortonson—wore dress shoes, black slacks, and a pale-blue shirt. He was tall, solid, and all business.

The other—Lieutenant Taggart—wore white sneakers, chinos, and a red-and-tan Hawaiian shirt. He was less physically intimidating than Mortonson, less formal in his style.

Mitch’s wariness of Taggart exceeded his concern about the more imposing Mortonson. The lieutenant’s precisely trimmed hair, his glass- smooth shave, his perfect veneered teeth, his spotless white sneakers suggested that he adopted casual dress and a relaxed demeanor to mislead and to put at ease the suspects unfortunate enough to come under his scrutiny.

The detectives first interviewed Mitch in tandem. Later, Taggart had returned alone, supposedly to have Mitch “refine” something he had said earlier. In fact, the lieutenant repeated every question he and Mortonson had asked before, perhaps anticipating contradictions between Mitch’s answers and those that he had given previously.

Ostensibly, Mitch was a witness. To a cop, however, when no killer had been identified, every witness also counted as a suspect.

He had no reason to kill a stranger walking a dog. Even if they were crazy enough to think he might have done so, they would have to believe that Iggy was his accomplice; clearly Iggy did not interest them.

More likely, though they knew he’d had no role in the shooting, their instinct told them that he was concealing something.

Now here came Taggart yet again, his sneakers so white that they appeared to be radiant.

As the lieutenant approached, Mitch rose to his feet, wary and sick with worry, but trying to appear merely weary and impatient.

4

Detective Taggart sported an island tan to match his Hawaiian shirt. By contrast with his bronze face, his teeth were as white as an arctic landscape.

“I’m sorry for all this inconvenience, Mr. Rafferty. But I have just a couple more questions, and then you’re free to go.”

Mitch could have replied with a shrug, a nod. But he thought that silence might seem peculiar, that a man with nothing to hide would be forthcoming.

Following an unfortunate hesitation long enough to suggest calculation, he said, “I’m not complaining, Lieutenant. It could just as easily have been me who was shot. I’m thankful to be alive.”

The detective strove for a casual demeanor, but he had eyes like those of a predatory bird, hawk-sharp and eagle-bold. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, if it was a random shooting…”

“We don’t know that it was,” said Taggart. “In fact, the evidence points to cold calculation. One shot, perfectly placed.”

“Can’t a crazy with a gun be a skilled shooter?”

“Absolutely. But crazies usually want to rack up as big a score as possible. A psychopath with a rifle would have popped you, too. This guy knew exactly who he wanted to shoot.”

Irrationally, Mitch felt some responsibility for the death. This murder had been committed to ensure that he would take the kidnapper seriously and would not seek police assistance.

Perhaps the detective had caught the scent of this unearned but persistent guilt.

Glancing toward the cadaver across the street, around which the CSI team still worked, Mitch said, “Who’s the victim?”

“We don’t know yet. No ID on him. No wallet. Don’t you think that’s peculiar?”

“Going out just to walk the dog, you don’t need a wallet.”

“It’s a habit with the average guy,” Taggart said. “Even if he’s washing the car in the driveway, he has his wallet.”

“How will you identify him?”

“There’s no license on the dog’s collar. But that’s almost a show-quality golden, so she might have a microchip ID implant. As soon as we get a scanner, we’ll check.”

Having been moved to this side of the street, tied to a mailbox post, the golden retriever rested in shade, graciously receiving the attention of a steady procession of admirers.

Taggart smiled. “Goldens are the best. Had one as a kid. Loved that dog.”

His attention returned to Mitch. His smile remained in place, but the quality of it changed. “Those questions I mentioned. Were you in the military, Mr. Rafferty?”

“Military? No. I was a mower jockey for another company, took some horticulture classes, and set up my own business a year out of high school.”

“I figured you might be ex-military, the way gunfire didn’t faze you.”

“Oh, it fazed me,” Mitch assured him.

Taggart’s direct gaze was intended to intimidate.

As if Mitch’s eyes were clear lenses through which his thoughts were revealed like microbes under a microscope, he felt compelled to avoid the detective’s stare, but sensed that he dared not.

“You hear a rifle,” Taggart said, “see a man shot, yet you hurry across the street, into the line of fire.”

“I didn’t know he was dead. Might’ve been something I could do for him.”

“That’s commendable. Most people would scramble for cover.”

“Hey, I’m no hero. My instincts just shoved aside my common sense.”

“Maybe that’s what a hero is—someone who instinctively does the right thing.”

Mitch dared to look away from Taggart, hoping that his evasion, in this context, would be interpreted as humility. “I was stupid, Lieutenant, not brave. I didn’t stop to think I might be in danger.”

“What—you thought he’d been shot accidentally?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t think anything. I didn’t think, I just reacted.”

“But you really didn’t feel like you were in danger?”

“No.”

“You didn’t realize it even when you saw his head wound?”

“Maybe a little. Mostly I was sickened.”

The questions came too fast. Mitch felt off balance. He might unwittingly reveal that he knew why the dogwalker had been killed.

With a buzz of busy wings, the bumblebee returned. It had no interest in Taggart, but hovered near Mitch’s face, as if bearing witness to his testimony.

“You saw the head wound,” Taggart continued, “but you still didn’t scramble for cover.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I figured if somebody hadn’t shot me by then, they weren’t going to shoot me.”

“So you still didn’t feel in danger.”

“No.”

Flipping open his small spiral-bound notebook, Taggart said, “You told the 911 operator that you were dead.”

Surprised, Mitch met the detective’s eyes again. “That I was dead?”

Taggart quoted from the notebook: “‘A man’s been shot. I’m dead. I mean, he’s dead. He’s been shot, and he’s dead.’”

“Is that what I said?”

“I’ve heard the recording. You were breathless. You sounded flat-out terrified.”

Mitch had forgotten that 911 calls were recorded. “I guess I was more scared than I remember.”

“Evidently, you did recognize a danger to yourself, but still you didn’t take cover.”

Whether or not Taggart could read anything of Mitch’s thoughts, the pages of the detective’s own mind were closed, his eyes a warm but enigmatic blue.

“‘I’m dead,’” the detective quoted again.

“A slip of the tongue. In the confusion, the panic.”

Taggart looked at the dog again, and again he smiled. In a voice softer than it had been previously, he said, “Is there anything more I should have asked you? Anything you would like to say?”

In memory, Mitch heard Holly’s cry of pain.

Kidnappers always threaten to kill their hostage if the cops are brought in. To win, you don’t have to play the game by their rules.

The police would contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI had extensive experience in kidnapping cases.

Because Mitch had no way to raise two million, the police would at first doubt his story. When the kidnapper called again, however, they would be convinced.

What if the second call didn’t come? What if, knowing that Mitch had gone to the police, the kidnapper fulfilled his threat, mutilated Holly, killed her, and never called again?

Then they might think that Mitch had concocted the kidnapping to cover the fact that Holly was already dead, that he himself had killed her. The husband is always the primary suspect.

If he lost her, nothing else would matter. Nothing ever. No power could heal the wound that she would leave in his life.

But to be suspected of harming her—that would be hot shrapnel in the wound, ever burning, forever lacerating.

Closing the notebook and returning it to a hip pocket, shifting his attention from the dog to Mitch, Taggart asked again, “Anything, Mr. Rafferty?”

At some point during the questioning, the bumblebee had flown away. Only now, Mitch realized that the buzzing had stopped.

If he kept the secret of Holly’s abduction, he would stand alone against her kidnappers.

He was no good alone. He had been raised with three sisters and a brother, all born within a seven-year period. They had been one another’s confidants, confessors, counsels, and defenders.

A year after high school, he moved out of his parents’ house, into a shared apartment. Later, he had gotten his own place, where he felt isolated. He had worked sixty hours a week, and longer, just to avoid being alone in his rooms.

He had felt complete once more, fulfilled, connected, only when Holly had come into his world. I was a cold word; we had a warmer sound. Us rang sweeter on the ear than me.

Lieutenant Taggart’s eyes seemed less forbidding than they had been heretofore.

Mitch said, “Well…”

The detective licked his lips.

The air was warm, humidity low. Mitch’s lips felt dry, too.

Nevertheless, the quick pink passage of Taggart’s tongue seemed reptilian, and suggested that he was mentally savoring the taste of pending prey.

Only paranoia allowed the twisted thought that a homicide detective might be allied with Holly’s abductors. This private moment between witness and investigator in fact might be the ultimate test of Mitch’s willingness to follow the kidnapper’s instructions.

All the flags of fear, both rational and irrational, were raised high in his mind. This parade of rampant dreads and dark suspicions did not facilitate clear thinking.

He was half convinced that if he told Taggart the truth, the detective would grimace and say We’ll have to kill her now, Mr. Rafferty. We can’t trust you anymore. But we’ll let you choose what we cut off first—her fingers or her ears.

As earlier, when he’d been standing over the dead man, Mitch felt watched, not just by Taggart and the tea-drinking neighbors, but by some presence unseen. Watched, analyzed.

“No, Lieutenant,” he said. “There’s nothing more.”

The detective retrieved a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

In the mirrored lenses, Mitch almost didn’t recognize the twin reflections of his face. The distorting curve made him look old.

“I gave you my card,” Taggart reminded him.

“Yes, sir. I have it.”

“Call me if you remember anything that seems important.”

The smooth, characterless sheen of the sunglasses was like the gaze of an insect: emotionless, eager, voracious.

Taggart said, “You seem nervous, Mr. Rafferty.”

Raising his hands to reveal how they trembled, Mitch said, “Not nervous, Lieutenant. Shaken. Badly shaken.”

Taggart licked his lips once more.

Mitch said, “I’ve never seen a man murdered before.”

“You don’t get used to it,” the detective said.

Lowering his hands, Mitch said, “I guess not.”

“It’s worse when it’s a woman.”

Mitch did not know what to make of that statement. Perhaps it was a simple truth of a homicide detective’s experience—or a threat.

“A woman or a child,” Taggart said.

“I wouldn’t want your job.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” Turning away, the detective said, “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Rafferty.”

“Seeing me?”

Glancing back, Taggart said, “You and I—we’ll both be witnesses in a courtroom someday.”

“Seems like a tough case to solve.”

“‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground,’ Mr. Rafferty,” said the detective, apparently quoting someone. “‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”

Mitch watched Taggart walk away.

Then he looked at the grass under his feet.

The progress of the sun had put the palm-frond shadows behind him. He stood in light, but was not warmed by it.

5

The dashboard clock was digital, as was Mitch’s wristwatch, but he could hear time ticking nonetheless, as rapid as the click-click-click of the pointer snapping against the marker pegs on a spinning wheel of fortune.

He wanted to race directly home from the crime scene. Logic argued that Holly would have been snatched at the house. They would not have grabbed her on the way to work, not on a public street.

They might unintentionally have left something behind that would suggest their identity. More likely, they would have left a message for him, further instructions.

As usual, Mitch had begun the day by picking up Iggy at his apartment in Santa Ana. Now he had to return him.

Driving north from the fabled and wealthy Orange County coastal neighborhoods where they worked, toward their humbler communities, Mitch switched from the crowded freeway to surface streets, but encountered traffic there, as well.

Iggy wanted to talk about the murder and the police. Mitch had to pretend to be as naively excited by the novelty of the experience as Iggy was, when in fact his mind remained occupied with thoughts of Holly and with worry about what might come next.

Fortunately, as usual, Iggy’s conversation soon began to loop and turn and tangle like a ball of yarn unraveled by a kitten.

Appearing to be engaged in this rambling discourse required less of Mitch than when the subject had been the dead dogwalker.

“My cousin Louis had a friend named Booger,” Iggy said. “The same thing happened to him, shot while walking a dog, except it wasn’t a rifle and it wasn’t a dog.”

“Booger?” Mitch wondered.

“Booker,” Iggy corrected. “B-o-o-k-e-r. He had a cat he called Hairball. He was walking Hairball, and he got shot.”

“People walk cats?”

“The way it was—Hairball is cozy in a travel cage, and Booker is carrying him to a vet’s office.”

Mitch repeatedly checked the rearview and side mirrors. A black Cadillac SUV had departed the freeway in their wake. Block after block, it remained behind them.

“So Booker wasn’t actually walking the cat,” Mitch said.

“He was walking with the cat, and this like twelve-year-old brat, this faucet-nosed little dismo, shot Booker with a paint-ball gun.”

“So he wasn’t killed.”

“He wasn’t quashed, no, and it was a cat instead of a dog, but Booker was totally blue.”

“Blue?”

“Blue hair, blue face. He was fully pissed.”

The Cadillac SUV reliably remained two or three vehicles behind them. Perhaps the driver hoped Mitch wouldn’t notice him.

“So Booker’s all blue. What happened to the kid?” Mitch asked.

“Booker was gonna break the little dismo’s hand off, but the kid shot him in the crotch and ran. Hey, Mitch, did you know there’s a town in Pennsylvania named Blue Balls?”

“I didn’t know.”

“It’s in Amish country. There’s another town nearby called Intercourse.”

“How about that.”

“Maybe those Amish aren’t as square as Cheez-Its, after all.”

Mitch accelerated to cross an intersection before the traffic light phased to red. Behind him, the black SUV changed lanes, sped up, and made it through on the yellow.

“Did you ever eat an Amish shoofly pie?” Iggy asked.

“No. Never did.”

“It’s full-on rich, sweeter than six Gidget movies. Like eating molasses. Treacherous, dude.”

The Cadillac dropped back, returned to Mitch’s lane. Three vehicles separated them once more.

Iggy said, “Earl Potter lost a leg eating shoofly pie.”

“Earl Potter?”

“Tim Potter’s dad. He was diabetic, but he didn’t know it, and he totally destroyed like a bucket of sweets every day. Did you ever eat a Quakertown pie?”

“What about Earl’s leg?” Mitch asked.

“Unreal, bro. One day his foot’s numb, he can’t walk right. Turns out he’s got almost no circulation down there ’cause of radical diabetes. They sawed his left leg off above the knee.”

“While he was eating shoofly pie.”

“No. He realized he had to give up sweets.”

“Good for him.”

“So the day before surgery, he had his last dessert, and he chose a whole shoofly pie with like a cow’s worth of whipped cream. Did you ever see that stylin’ Amish movie with Harrison Ford and the girl with the great knockers?”

By way of Hairball, Blue Balls, Intercourse, shoofly pie, and Harrison Ford, they arrived at Iggy’s apartment building.

Mitch stopped at the curb, and the black SUV went past without slowing. The side windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see the driver or any passengers.

Opening his door, before getting out of the truck, Iggy said, “You okay, boss?”

“I’m okay.”

“You look stomped.”

“I saw a guy shot to death,” Mitch reminded him.

“Yeah. Wasn’t that radical? I guess I know who’s gonna rule the bar at Rolling Thunder tonight. Maybe you should stop in.”

“Don’t save a stool for me.”

The Cadillac SUV dwindled westward. The afternoon sun wrapped the suspicious vehicle in glister and glare. It shimmered and seemed to vanish into the solar maw.

Iggy got out of the truck, looked back in at Mitch, and pulled a sad face. “Ball and chain.”

“Wind beneath my wings.”

“Whoa. That’s goob talk.”

“Go waste yourself.”

“I do intend to get mildly polluted,” Iggy assured him. “Dr. Ig prescribes at least a six-pack of cerveza for you. Tell Mrs. Mitch I think she’s an uber wahine.”

Iggy slammed the door and walked away, big and loyal and sweet and clueless.

With hands that were suddenly shaky on the wheel, Mitch piloted the truck into the street once more.

Coming north, he had been impatient to be rid of Iggy and to get home. Now his stomach turned when he considered what might wait for him there.

What he most feared was finding blood.

6

Mitch drove with the truck windows open, wanting the sounds of the streets, proof of life.

The Cadillac SUV did not reappear. No other vehicle took up the pursuit. Evidently, he had imagined the tail.

His sense of being under surveillance passed. From time to time, his eyes were drawn to the rearview mirror, but no longer with the expectation of seeing anything suspicious.

He felt alone, and worse than alone. Isolated. He almost wished that the black SUV would reappear.

Their house was in an older neighborhood of Orange, one of the oldest cities in the county. When he turned onto their street, except for the vintage of the cars and trucks, a curtain in time might have parted, welcoming him to 1945.

The bungalow—pale-yellow clapboard, white trim, a cedar-shingle roof—stood behind a picket fence on which roses twined. Some larger and some nicer houses occupied the block, but none boasted better landscaping.

He parked in the driveway beside the house, under a massive old California pepper tree, and stepped out into a breathless afternoon.

Sidewalks and yards were deserted. In this neighborhood, most families relied on two incomes; everyone was at work. At 3:04, no latchkey kids were yet home from school.

No maids, no window washers, no gardening services busy with leaf blowers. These homeowners swept their own carpets, mowed their own yards.

The pepper tree braided the sunshine in its cascading tresses, and littered the shadowed pavement with elliptical slivers of light.

Mitch opened a side gate in the picket fence. He crossed the lawn to the front steps.

The porch was deep and cool. White wicker chairs with green cushions stood beside small wicker tables with glass tops.

On Sunday afternoons, he and Holly often sat here, talking, reading the newspaper, watching hummingbirds flit from one crimson bloom to another on the trumpet vines that flourished on the porch posts.

Sometimes they unfolded a card table between the wicker chairs. She crushed him at Scrabble. He dominated the trivia games.

They didn’t spend much on entertainment. No skiing vacations, no weekends in Baja. They seldom went out to a movie. Being together on the front porch offered as much pleasure as being together in Paris.

They were saving money for things that mattered. To allow her to risk a career change from secretary to real-estate agent. To enable him to do some advertising, buy a second truck, and expand the business.

Kids, too. They were going to have kids. Two or three. On certain holidays, when they were most sentimental, even four did not seem like too many.

They didn’t want the world, and didn’t want to change it. They wanted their little corner of the world, and the chance to fill it with family and laughter.

He tried the front door. Unlocked. He pushed it inward and hesitated on the threshold.

He glanced back at the street, half expecting to see the black SUV. It wasn’t there.

After he stepped inside, he stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. The living room was illuminated only by what tree-filtered sunlight pierced the windows.

Everything appeared to be in order. He could not detect any signs of struggle.

Mitch closed the door behind him. For a moment he needed to lean against it.

If Holly had been at home, there would have been music. She liked big-band stuff. Miller, Goodman, Ellington, Shaw. She said the music of the ’40s was suitable to the house. It suited her, too. Classic.

An archway connected the living room to the small dining room. Nothing in this second room was out of place.

On the table lay a large dead moth. It was a night-flyer, gray with black details along its scalloped wings.

The moth must have gotten in the previous evening. They had spent some time on the porch, and the door had been open.

Maybe it was alive, sleeping. If he cupped it in his hands and took it outside, it might fly into a corner of the porch ceiling and wait there for moonrise.

He hesitated, reluctant to touch the moth, for fear that no flutter was left in it. At his touch, it might dissolve into a greasy kind of dust, which moths sometimes did.

Mitch left the night-flyer untouched because he wanted to believe that it was alive.

The connecting door between the dining room and the kitchen stood ajar. Light glowed beyond.

The smell of burnt toast lingered on the air. It grew stronger when he pushed through the door into the kitchen.

Here he found signs of a struggle. One of the dinette chairs had been overturned. Broken dishes littered the floor.

Two slices of blackened bread stood in the toaster. Someone had pulled the plug. The butter had been left out on the counter, and had softened as the day grew warmer.

The intruders must have come in from the front of the house, surprising her as she was making toast.

The cabinets were painted glossy white. Blood spattered a door and two drawer fronts.

For a moment, Mitch closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw the moth flutter and fly up from the table. Something fluttered in his chest, too, and he wanted to believe that it was hope.

On the white refrigerator, a woman’s bloody hand print cried havoc as loud as any voice could have shouted. Another full hand print and a smeared partial darkened two upper cabinets.

Blood spotted the terra-cotta tiles on the floor. It seemed to be a lot of blood. It seemed to be an ocean.

The scene so terrified Mitch that he wanted to shut his eyes again. But he had the crazy idea that if he closed his eyes twice to this grim reality, he would go blind forever.

The phone rang.

7

He did not have to tread in blood to reach the telephone. He picked up the handset on the third ring, and heard his haunted voice say, “Yeah?”

“It’s me, baby. They’re listening.”

“Holly. What’ve they done to you?”

“I’m all right,” she said, and she sounded strong, but she did not sound all right.

“I’m in the kitchen,” he said.

“I know.”

“The blood—”

“I know. Don’t think about that now. Mitch, they said we have one minute to talk, just one minute.”

He grasped her implication: One minute, and maybe never again.

His legs would not support him. Turning a chair away from the dinette table, collapsing into it, he said, “I’m so damn sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Don’t beat yourself up.”

“Who are these freaks, are they deranged, what?”

“They’re vicious creeps, but they’re not crazy. They seem… professional. I don’t know. But I want you to make me a promise—”

“I’m dyin’ here.”

“Listen, baby. I want your promise. If anything happens to me—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“If anything happens to me,” she insisted, “promise you’ll keep it together.”

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“You keep it together, damn it. You keep it together and have a life.”

“You’re my life.”

“You keep it together, mower jockey, or I’m going to be way pissed.”

“I’ll do what they want. I’ll get you back.”

“If you don’t keep it together, I’ll haunt your ass, Rafferty. It’ll be like that Poltergeist movie cubed.”

“God, I love you,” he said.

“I know. I love you. I want to hold you.”

“I love you so much.”

She didn’t reply.

“Holly?”

The silence electrified him, brought him up from the chair.

“Holly? You hear me?”

“I hear you, mower jockey,” said the kidnapper to whom he had spoken previously.

“You sonofabitch.”

“I understand your anger—”

“You piece of garbage.”

“—but I don’t have much patience for it.”

“If you hurt her—”

“I already have hurt her. And if you don’t pull this off, I’ll butcher the bitch like a side of beef.”

An acute awareness of his helplessness brought Mitch crashing down from anger to humility.

“Please. Don’t hurt her again. Don’t.”

“Chill, Rafferty. You just chill while I explain a few things.”

“Okay. All right. I need things explained. I’m lost here.”

Again his legs felt weak. Instead of sitting in the chair, he brushed a broken dish aside with one foot and knelt on the floor. For some reason, he felt more comfortable on his knees than in the chair.

“About the blood,” the kidnapper said. “I slapped her down when she tried to fight back, but I didn’t cut her.”

“All the blood…”

“That’s what I’m telling you. We put a tourniquet on her arm until a vein popped up, stuck a needle in it, and drew four vials just like your doctor does when you get a physical.”

Mitch leaned his forehead against the oven door. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.

“We smeared blood on her hands and made those prints. Spattered some on the counters, cabinets. Dripped it on the floor. It’s stage setting, Rafferty. So it looks like she was murdered there.”

Mitch was the turtle, just leaving the START line, and this guy on the phone was the rabbit, already halfway through the marathon. Mitch couldn’t get up to speed. “Staged? Why?”

“If you lose your nerve and go to the cops, they’ll never buy the kidnapping story. They’ll see that kitchen and think you croaked her.”

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

“I know.”

“What you did to the dogwalker—I knew you had nothing to lose. I knew I couldn’t mess with you.”

“This is just a little extra insurance,” the kidnapper said. “We like insurance. There’s a butcher knife missing from the rack there in your kitchen.”

Mitch didn’t bother to confirm the claim.

“We wrapped it with one of your T-shirts and a pair of your blue jeans. The clothes are stained with Holly’s blood.”

They were professional, all right, just like she had said.

“That package is hidden on your property,” the kidnapper continued. “You couldn’t easily find it, but police dogs will.”

“I get the picture.”

“I knew you would. You aren’t stupid. That’s why we’ve bought ourselves so much insurance.”

“What now? Make sense of this whole thing for me.”

“Not yet. Right now you’re very emotional, Mitch. That’s not good. When you’re not in control of your emotions, you’re likely to make a mistake.”

“I’m solid,” Mitch assured him, although his heart still stormed and his blood thundered in his ears.

“You don’t have any room for a mistake, Mitch. Not one. So I want you to chill, like I said. When you’ve got your head straight, then we’ll discuss the situation. I’ll call you at six o’clock.”

Though remaining on his knees, Mitch opened his eyes, checked his watch. “That’s over two and a half hours.”

“You’re still in your work clothes. You’re dirty. Take a nice hot shower. You’ll feel better.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Anyway, you’ll need to be more presentable. Shower, change, and then leave the house, go somewhere, anywhere. Just be sure your cell phone is fully charged.”

“I’d rather wait here.”

“That’s no good, Mitch. The house is filled with memories of Holly, everywhere you look. Your nerves will be rubbed raw. I need you to be less emotional.”

“Yeah. All right.”

“One more thing. I want you to listen to this….”

Mitch thought they were going to twist a scream of pain from Holly again, to emphasize how powerless he was to protect her. He said, “Don’t.”

Instead of Holly, he heard two taped voices, clear against a faint background hiss. The first voice was his own:

“I’ve never seen a man murdered before.”

“You don’t get used to it.”

“I guess not.”

“It’s worse when it’s a woman… a woman or a child.”

The second voice belonged to Detective Taggart.

The kidnapper said, “If you had spilled your guts to him, Mitch, Holly would be dead now.”

In the dark smoky glass of the oven door, he saw the reflection of a face that seemed to be looking out at him from a window in Hell.

“Taggart’s one of you.”

“Maybe he is. Maybe not. You should just assume that everybody is one of us, Mitch. That’ll be safer for you, and a lot safer for Holly. Everybody is one of us.”

They had built a box around him. Now they were putting on the lid.

“Mitch, I don’t want to leave you on such a dark note. I want to put you at ease about something. I want you to know that we won’t touch her.”

“You hit her.”

“I’ll hit her again if she doesn’t do what she’s told. But we won’t touch her. We aren’t rapists, Mitch.”

“Why would I believe you?”

“Obviously, I’m handling you, Mitch. Manipulating, finessing. And obviously there is a lot of stuff I won’t tell you—”

“You’re killers, but not rapists?”

“The point is that everything I have told you has been true. You think back over our relationship, and you’ll see I’ve been truthful and I’ve kept my word.”

Mitch wanted to kill him. Never before had he felt an urge to do serious violence to another human being, but he wanted to destroy this man.

He was clutching the phone so fiercely that his hand ached. He was not able to relax his grip.

“I’ve had a lot of experience working through surrogates, Mitch. You’re an instrument to me, a valuable tool, a sensitive machine.”

“Machine.”

“Hang with me a minute, okay? It makes no sense to abuse a valuable and sensitive machine. I wouldn’t buy a Ferrari and then never change the oil, never lubricate it.”

“At least I’m a Ferrari.”

“When I’m your handler, Mitch, you won’t be pressed beyond your limits. I would expect very high performance from a Ferrari, but I wouldn’t expect to be able to drive it through a brick wall.”

“I feel like I’ve already been through a brick wall.”

“You’re tougher than you think. But in the interest of getting the best performance out of you, I want you to know we’ll treat Holly with respect. If you do everything we want, then she’ll come back to you alive… and untouched.”

Holly was not weak. She would not easily be mentally broken by physical abuse. But rape was more than a violation of the body. Rape rended the mind, the heart, the spirit.

Her captor might have raised the issue with the sincere intent of putting some of Mitch’s fears to rest. But the sonofabitch had also raised it as a warning.

Mitch said, “I still don’t think you’ve answered the question. Why should I believe you?”

“Because you have to.”

That was an inescapable truth.

“You have to, Mitch. Otherwise, you might as well consider her dead right now.”

The kidnapper terminated the call.

For a while, Mitch’s sense of powerlessness kept him on his knees.

Eventually a recording, a woman with the vaguely patronizing tone of a nursery-school teacher not fully comfortable with children, requested that he hang up the phone. He put the handset on the floor instead, and a continuous beeping urged him to comply with the operator’s suggestion.

Remaining on his knees, he rested his forehead against the oven door once more, and closed his eyes.

His mind was in tumult. Images of Holly, tornadoes of memories, tormented him, fragmented and spinning, good memories, sweet, but they tormented because they might be all that he would ever have of her. Fear and anger. Regret and sorrow. He had never known loss. His life had not prepared him for loss.

He strove to clear his mind because he sensed that there was something he could do for Holly right here, now, if only he could quiet his fear and be calm, and think. He didn’t have to wait for orders from her kidnappers. He could do something important for her now. He could take action on her behalf. He could do something for Holly.

Humbled against the hard terra-cotta tiles, his knees began to ache. This physical discomfort gradually cleared his mind. Thoughts no longer blew through him like shatters of debris, but drifted as fallen leaves drift on a placid river.

He could do something meaningful for Holly, and the awareness of the thing that he could do was right below the surface, floating just beneath his questing reflection. The hard floor was unforgiving, and he began to feel as if he were kneeling on broken glass. He could do something for Holly. The answer eluded him. Something. His knees ached. He tried to ignore the pain, but then he got to his feet. The pending insight receded. He returned the telephone handset to its cradle. He would have to wait for the next call. He had never before felt so useless.

8

Although still hours away, the approaching night pulled every shadow toward the east, away from the westbound sun. Queen-palm shadows yearned across the deep yard.

To Mitch, standing on the back porch, this place, which had previously been an island of peace, now seemed as fraught with tension as the webwork of cables supporting a suspension bridge.

At the end of the yard, beyond a board fence, lay an alleyway. On the farther side of the alley were other yards and other houses. Perhaps a sentinel at one of those second-floor windows observed him now with high-powered binoculars.

On the phone, he had told Holly that he was in the kitchen, and she had said I know. She could have known only because her captors had known.

The black Cadillac SUV had not proved to be in any dark power’s employ, imbued with menace only by his imagination. No other vehicle had followed him.

They had expected him to go home, so instead of tailing him, they had staked out his house. They were watching now.

One of the houses on the farther side of the alley might offer a good vantage point if the observer was equipped with high-tech optical gear that provided an intimate view from a distance.

His suspicion settled instead on the detached garage at the rear of this property. That structure could be accessed either from the alley or from the front street via the driveway that ran alongside the house.

The garage, which provided parking for Mitch’s truck and Holly’s Honda, featured windows on the ground floor and in the storage loft. Some were dark, and some were gilded with reflected sunlight.

No window revealed a ghostly face or a telltale movement. If someone was watching from the garage, he would not be careless. He would be glimpsed only if he wished to be seen for the purpose of intimidation.

From the roses, from the ranunculus, from the corabells, from the impatiens, slanting sunlight struck luminous color like flaring shards in stained-glass windows.

The butcher knife, wrapped in bloody clothes, had probably been buried in a flower bed.

By finding that bundle, retrieving it, and cleaning up the blood in the kitchen, he would regain some control. He’d be able to react with greater flexibility to whatever challenges were thrust upon him in the hours ahead.

If he was being watched, however, the kidnappers would not view his actions with equanimity. They had staged his wife’s murder to box him in, and they wouldn’t want the box to be deconstructed.

To punish him, they would hurt Holly.

The man on the phone had promised that she would not be touched, meaning raped. But he had no compunctions about hitting her.

Given reason, he would hit her again. Punch her. Torture her. Regarding those issues, he had made no promises.

To dress the set of the staged homicide, they had drawn her blood painlessly, with a hypodermic syringe. They had not, however, sworn to spare her forever from a knife.

As instruction in the reality of his helplessness, they might cut her. Any laceration she endured would sever the very tendons of his will to resist.

They dared not kill her. To continue controlling Mitch, they had to let him speak to her from time to time.

But they could cut to disfigure, then instruct her to describe the disfigurement to him on the phone.

Mitch was surprised by his ability to anticipate such hideous developments. Until a few hours ago, he’d had no personal experience of unalloyed evil.

The vividness of his imagination in this area suggested that on a subconscious level, or on a level deeper than the subconscious, he had known that real evil walked the world, abominations that could not be faded to gray by psychological or social analysis. Holly’s abduction had raised this willfully repressed awareness out of a hallowed darkness, into view.

The shadows of the queen palms, stretched toward the backyard fence, seemed taut to the snapping point, and the sun-brightened flowers looked as brittle as glass. Yet the tension in the scene increased.

Neither the elongated shadows nor the flowers would snap. Whatever strained toward the breaking point, it would break within Mitch. And though anxiety soured his stomach and clenched his teeth, he sensed that this coming change would not be a bad thing.

At the garage, the dark windows and the sun-fired windows mocked him. The porch furniture and the patio furniture, arranged with the expectation of the enjoyment of lazy summer evenings, mocked him.

The lush and sculpted landscaping, on which he had spent so many hours, mocked him as well. All the beauty born from his work seemed now to be superficial, and its superficiality made it ugly.

He returned to the house and closed the back door. He did not bother locking it.

The worst that could have invaded his home had already been here and had gone. What violations followed would be only embellishments on the original horror.

He crossed the kitchen and entered a short hall that served two rooms, the first of which was a den. It contained a sofa, two chairs, and a large-screen television.

These days, they rarely watched any programs. So-called reality TV dominated the airwaves, and legal dramas and police dramas, but all of it bored because none of it resembled reality as he had known it; and now he knew it even better.

At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom. He withdrew clean underwear and socks from a bureau drawer.

For now, as impossible as every mundane task seemed in these circumstances, he could do nothing other than what he had been told to do.

The day had been warm; but a night in the middle of May was likely to be cool. At the closet, he slipped a fresh pair of jeans and a flannel shirt from hangers. He put them on the bed.

He found himself standing at Holly’s small vanity, where she daily sat on a tufted stool to brush her hair, apply her makeup, put on her lipstick.

Unconsciously, he had picked up her hand mirror. He looked into it, as if hoping, by some grace that would foretell the future, to see her fine and smiling face. His own countenance did not bear contemplation.

He shaved, showered, and dressed for the ordeal ahead.

He had no idea what they expected of him, how he could possibly raise two million dollars to ransom his wife, but he made no attempt to imagine any possible scenarios. A man on a high ledge is well advised not to spend much time studying the long drop.

As he sat on the edge of the bed, just as he finished tying his shoes, the doorbell rang.

The kidnapper had said he would call at six, not come calling. Besides, the bedside clock read 4:15.

Leaving the door unanswered was not an option. He needed to be responsive regardless of how Holly’s captors chose to contact him.

If the visitor had nothing to do with her abduction, Mitch was nevertheless obliged to answer the door in order to maintain an air of normalcy.

His truck in the driveway proved that he was home. A neighbor, getting no response to the bell, might circle to the back of the house to knock at the kitchen door.

The six-pane window in that door would provide a clear view of the kitchen floor strewn with broken dishes, the bloody hand prints on the cabinets and the refrigerator.

He should have drawn shut the blinds.

He left the bedroom, followed the hall, and crossed the living room before the visitor had time to ring the bell twice.

The front door had no windows. He opened it and found Detective Taggart on the porch.

9

The praying-mantis stare of mirrored lenses skewered Mitch and pinned his voice in his throat.

“I love these old neighborhoods,” Taggart said, surveying the front porch. “This was how southern California looked in its great years, before they cut down all the orange groves and built a wasteland of stucco tract houses.”

Mitch found a voice that sounded almost like his own, though thinner: “You live around here, Lieutenant?”

“No. I live in one of the wastelands. It’s more convenient. But I happened to be in your neighborhood.”

Taggart was not a man who just happened to be anywhere. If he ever went sleepwalking, even then he would have a purpose, a plan, and a destination.

“Something’s come up, Mr. Rafferty. And since I was nearby, it seemed as easy to stop in as to call. Can you spare a few minutes?”

If Taggart was not one of the kidnappers, if his conversation with Mitch had been taped without his knowledge, allowing him across the threshold would be reckless. In this small house, the living room, a picture of tranquillity, and the kitchen, smeared with incriminating evidence, were only a few steps apart.

“Sure,” Mitch said. “But my wife came home with a migraine. She’s lying down.”

If the detective was one of them, if he knew that Holly was being held elsewhere, he did not betray his knowledge by any change in his expression.

“Why don’t we sit here on the porch,” Mitch said.

“You’ve got it fixed up real nice.”

Mitch pulled the door shut behind him, and they settled into the white wicker chairs.

Taggart had brought a nine-by-twelve white envelope. He put it on his lap, unopened.

“We had a porch like this when I was a kid,” he said. “We used to watch traffic go by, just watch traffic.”

He removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt pocket. His gaze was as direct as a power drill.

“Does Mrs. Rafferty use ergotamine?”

“Use what?”

“Ergotamine. For the migraines.”

Mitch had no idea whether ergotamine was an actual medication or a word the detective had invented on the spot. “No. She toughs it out with aspirin.”

“How often does she get one?”

“Two or three times a year,” Mitch lied. Holly had never had a migraine. She rarely suffered headaches of any kind.

A gray-and-black moth was settled on the porch post to the right of the front steps, a night-flyer sleeping in the shade until sunset.

“I have ocular migraines,” Taggart said. “They’re entirely visual. I get the glimmering light and the temporary blind spot for like twenty minutes, but there’s no pain.”

“If you’ve got to have a migraine, that sounds like the kind to have.”

“A doctor probably wouldn’t prescribe ergotamine until she was having a migraine a month.”

“It’s just twice a year. Three times,” Mitch said.

He wished that he had resorted to a different lie. Taggart having personal knowledge of migraines was rotten luck.

This small talk unnerved Mitch. To his own ear, he sounded wary, tense.

Of course, Taggart had no doubt long ago grown accustomed to people being wary and tense with him, even innocent people, even his mother.

Mitch had been avoiding the detective’s stare. With an effort, he made eye contact again.

“We did find an AVID on the dog,” Taggart said.

“A what?”

“An American Veterinary Identification Device. That microchip ID I mentioned earlier.”

“Oh. Right.”

Before Mitch realized that his sense of guilt had sabotaged him again, his gaze had drifted away from Taggart to follow a passing car in the street.

“They inject it into the muscle between the dog’s shoulders,” said Taggart. “It’s very tiny. The animal doesn’t feel it. We scanned the retriever, got her AVID number. She’s from a house one block east, two blocks north of the shooting. Owner’s name is Okadan.”

“Bobby Okadan? I do his gardening.”

“Yes, I know.”

“The guy who was killed—that wasn’t Mr. Okadan.”

“No.”

“Who was he? A family member, a friend?”

Avoiding the question, Taggart said, “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize the dog.”

“One golden looks like another.”

“Not really. They’re distinct individuals.”

“Mishiki,” Mitch remembered.

“That’s the dog’s name,” Taggart confirmed.

“We do that property on Tuesdays, and the housekeeper makes sure Mishiki stays inside while we’re there, out of our way. Mostly I’ve seen the dog through a patio door.”

“Evidently, Mishiki was stolen from the Okadans’ backyard this morning, probably around eleven-thirty. The leash and collar on her don’t belong to the Okadans.”

“You mean… the dog was stolen by the guy who was shot?”

“So it appears.”

This revelation reversed Mitch’s problem with eye contact. Now he couldn’t look away from the detective.

Taggart hadn’t come here just to share a puzzling bit of case news. Apparently this development triggered, in the detective’s mind, a question about something Mitch had said earlier—or had failed to say.

From inside the house came the muffled ringing of the telephone.

The kidnappers weren’t supposed to call until six o’clock. But if they called earlier and couldn’t reach him, they might be angry.

As Mitch started to rise from his chair, Taggart said, “I’d rather you didn’t answer that. It’s probably Mr. Barnes.”

“Iggy?”

“He and I spoke half an hour ago. I asked him not to call here until I had a chance to speak with you. He’s probably been wrestling with his conscience ever since, and finally his conscience won. Or lost, depending on your point of view.”

Remaining in his chair, Mitch said, “What’s this about?”

Ignoring the question, returning to his subject, Taggart said, “How often do you think dogs are stolen, Mr. Rafferty?”

“I never thought about them being stolen at all.”

“It happens. They aren’t taken as frequently as cars.” His smile was not infectious. “You can’t break a dog down for parts like you can a Porsche. But they do get snatched now and then.”

“If you say so.”

“Purebred dogs can be worth thousands. As often as not, the thief doesn’t intend to sell the animal. He just wants a fancy dog for himself, without paying for it.”

Though Taggart paused, Mitch didn’t say anything. He wanted to speed up the conversation. He was anxious to know the point. All this dog talk had a bite in it somewhere.

“Certain breeds are stolen more than others because they’re known to be friendly, unlikely to resist the thief. Golden retrievers are one of the most sociable, least aggressive of all the popular breeds.”

The detective lowered his head, lowered his eyes, sat pensively for a moment, as if considering what he wished to say next.

Mitch didn’t believe that Taggart needed to gather his thoughts. This man’s thoughts were as precisely ordered as the clothes in an obsessive-compulsive’s closet.

“Dogs are mostly stolen out of parked cars,” Taggart continued. “People leave the dog alone, the doors unlocked. When they come back, Fido’s gone, and someone’s renamed him Duke.”

Realizing that he was gripping the arms of the wicker chair as if strapped in the hot seat and waiting for the executioner to throw the big switch, Mitch made an effort to appear relaxed.

“Or the owner ties the dog to a parking meter outside a shop. The thief slips the knot and walks off with a new best friend.”

Another pause. Mitch endured it.

With his head still bowed, Lieutenant Taggart said, “It’s rare, Mr. Rafferty, for a dog to be stolen out of its owner’s backyard on a bright spring morning. Anything rare, anything unusual makes me curious. Any outright weirdness really gets under my skin.”

Mitch raised one hand to the back of his neck and massaged the muscles because that seemed like something a relaxed man, a relaxed and unconcerned man, might do.

“It’s strange for a thief to enter a neighborhood like that on foot and walk away with a stolen pet. It’s strange that he carries no ID. It’s more than strange, it’s remarkable, that he gets shot to death three blocks later. And it’s weird, Mr. Rafferty, that you, the primary witness, knew him.”

“But I didn’t know him.”

“At one time,” Taggart insisted, “you knew him quite well.”

10

White ceiling, white railings, white floorboards, white wicker chairs, punctuated by the gray-and-black moth: Everything about the porch was familiar, open and airy, yet it seemed dark now to Mitch, and strange.

His gaze still downcast, Taggart said, “One of the jakes on the scene eventually got a closer look at the victim and recognized him.”

“Jakes?”

“One of the uniformed officers. Said he arrested the guy on a drug-possession charge after stopping him for a traffic violation about two years ago. The guy never served any time, but his prints were in our system, so we were able to make a quick match. Mr. Barnes says you and he went to high school with the vic.”

Mitch wished that the cop would meet his eyes. As intuitive and perceptive as he was, Taggart would recognize genuine surprise when he saw it.

“His name was Jason Osteen.”

“I didn’t just go to school with him,” Mitch said. “Jason and I were roommates for a year.”

At last reestablishing eye contact, Taggart said, “I know.”

“Iggy would have told you.”

“Yes.”

Eager to be forthcoming, Mitch said, “After high school, I lived with my folks for a year, while I took some classes—”

“Horticulture.”

“That’s right. Then I got a job with a landscaping company, and I moved out. Wanted an apartment of my own. Couldn’t fully afford one, so Jason and I split rent for a year.”

The detective bowed his head again, in that contemplative pose, as if part of his strategy was to force eye contact when it made Mitch uncomfortable and to deny eye contact when Mitch wanted it.

“That wasn’t Jason dead on the sidewalk,” Mitch said.

Opening the white envelope that had been on his lap, Taggart said, “In addition to the identification by an officer and the print match, I have Mr. Barnes’s positive ID based on this.”

He withdrew an eight-by-ten color photo from the envelope and handed it to Mitch.

A police photographer had repositioned the cadaver to get better than a three-quarter image of the face. The head was turned to the left only far enough to conceal the worst of the wound.

The features had been subtly deformed by the temple entrance, transit, and post-temple exit of the high-velocity shot. The left eye was shut, the right open wide in a startled cyclopean stare.

“It could be Jason,” Mitch said.

“It is.”

“At the scene, I only saw one side of his face. The right profile, the worst side, with the exit wound.”

“And you probably didn’t look too close.”

“No. I didn’t. Once I saw he had to be dead, I didn’t want to look too close.”

“And there was blood on the face,” Taggart said. “We swabbed it off before this photo was taken.”

“The blood, the brains, that’s why I didn’t look too close.”

Mitch couldn’t take his eyes from the photo. He sensed that it was prophetic. One day there would be a photograph like this of his face. They would show it to his parents: Is this your son, Mr. and Mrs. Rafferty?

“This is Jason. I haven’t seen him in eight years, maybe nine.”

“You roomed with him when you were—what?—eighteen?”

“Eighteen, nineteen. Just for a year.”

“About ten years ago.”

“Not quite ten.”

Jason had always affected a cool demeanor, so mellow he seemed to have surfwaxed his brain, but at the same time he seemed to know the secrets of the universe. Other boardheads called him Breezer, and admired him, even envied him. Nothing had rattled Jason or surprised him.

He appeared to be surprised now. One eye wide, mouth open. He appeared to be shocked.

“You went to school together, you roomed together. Why didn’t you stay in touch?”

While Mitch had been riveted by the photo, Taggart had been watching him intently. The detective’s stare had the sharp promise of a nail gun.

“We had … different ideas about things,” Mitch said.

“It wasn’t a marriage. You were just roommates. You didn’t have to want the same things.”

“We wanted some of the same things, but we had different ideas about how to get them.”

“Jason wanted to get everything the easy way,” Taggart guessed.

“I thought he was headed for big trouble, and I didn’t want any part of it.”

“You’re a straight shooter, you walk the line,” Taggart said.

“I’m no better than anyone else, worse than some, but I don’t steal.”

“We haven’t learned much about him yet, but we know he rented a house in Huntington Harbor for seven thousand a month.”

“A month?”

“Nice house, on the water. And so far it looks like he didn’t have a job.”

“Jason thought work was strictly for inlanders, smog monsters.” Mitch saw that an explanation was required. “Surfer lingo for those who don’t live for the beach.”

“Was there a time when you lived for the beach, Mitch?”

“Toward the end of high school, for a while after. But it wasn’t enough.”

“What was it lacking?”

“The satisfaction of work. Stability. Family.”

“You’ve got all that now. Life is perfect, huh?”

“It’s good. Very good. So good it makes me nervous sometimes.”

“But not perfect? What’s it lacking now, Mitch?”

Mitch didn’t know. He’d thought about that from time to time, but he had no answer. So he said, “Nothing. We’d like to have kids. Maybe that’s all.”

“I have two daughters,” the detective said. “One’s nine and one’s twelve. Kids change your life.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Mitch realized that he was responding to Taggart less guardedly than he had previously. He reminded himself that he was no match for this guy.

“Aside from the drug-possession charge,” Taggart said, “Jason stayed clean all these years.”

“He always was lucky.”

Indicating the photo, Taggart said, “Not always.”

Mitch didn’t want to look at it anymore. He returned the photo to the detective.

“Your hands are shaking,” Taggart said.

“I guess they are. Jason was a friend once. We had a lot of laughs. All that comes back to me now.”

“So you haven’t seen or spoken to him in ten years.”

“Almost ten.”

Returning the photo to the envelope, Taggart said, “But you do recognize him now.”

“Without the blood, seeing more of the face.”

“When you saw him walking the dog, before he was killed, you didn’t think—Hey, don’t I know that guy?”

“He was across the street. I only glanced at him, then the shot.”

“And you were on the phone, distracted. Mr. Barnes says you were on the phone when the shot was fired.”

“That’s right. I wasn’t focused on the guy with the dog. I just glanced at him.”

“Mr. Barnes strikes me as being incapable of guile. If he lied, I expect his nose might light up.”

Mitch wasn’t sure if he was meant to infer, by contrast to Iggy, that he himself was enigmatic and unreliable. He smiled and said, “Iggy’s a good man.”

Looking down at the envelope as he fixed the flap shut with the clasp, Taggart said, “Who were you on the phone with?”

“Holly. My wife.”

“Calling to let you know she had a migraine?”

“Yeah. To let me know she was going home early with a migraine.”

Glancing at the house behind them, Taggart said, “I hope she’s feeling better.”

“Sometimes they can last all day.”

“So the guy who’s shot turns out to be your old roommate. You see why it’s weird to me?”

“It is weird,” Mitch agreed. “It freaks me out a little.”

“You hadn’t seen him in nine years. Hadn’t spoken on the phone or anything.”

“He was hanging with new friends, a different crowd. I didn’t care for any of them, and I didn’t run into him anymore at any of the old places.”

“Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences.” Taggart rose from his chair and moved toward the porch steps.

Relieved, blotting his palms on his jeans, Mitch got up from his chair, too.

Pausing beside the steps, head lowered, Taggart said, “There’s not yet been a thorough search of Jason’s house. We’ve only begun. But we found one odd thing already.”

As Earth rolled away from the slowly sinking sun, afternoon light penetrated a gap in the branches of the pepper tree. A dappled orange glare found Mitch and made him squint.

Beyond the sudden light, in shadow, Taggart said, “In his kitchen there was a catchall drawer where he kept loose change, receipts, an assortment of pens, spare keys…. We found only one business card in the drawer. It was yours.”

“Mine?”

“‘Big Green,’” Taggart quoted. “‘Landscape design, installation, and maintenance. Mitchell Rafferty.’”

This was what had brought the detective north from the coast. He had gone to Iggy, guileless Iggy, from whom he’d learned that indeed a connection existed between Mitch and Jason.

“You didn’t give him the card?” Taggart asked.

“No, not that I remember. What color was the card stock?”

“White.”

“I’ve only used white for the past four years. Before that, the stock was pale green.”

“And you haven’t seen him in like nine years.”

“Maybe nine years.”

“So although you lost track of Jason, it seems like Jason kept track of you. Any idea why?”

“No. None.”

After a silence, Taggart said, “You’ve got trouble here.”

“There must be a thousand ways he could’ve gotten my business card, Lieutenant. It doesn’t mean he was keeping track of me.”

Eyes still downcast, the detective pointed to the porch railing. “I’m talking about this.”

On the white handrail, in the warm stillness, a pair of winged insects squirmed together, as if trysting.

“Termites,” Taggart said.

“They might just be winged ants.”

“Isn’t this the time of year when termites swarm? You better have the place inspected. A house can appear to be fine, solid and safe, even while it’s being hollowed out right under your feet.”

At last the detective looked up and met Mitch’s eyes.

“They’re winged ants,” Mitch said.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me, Mitch?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Take a moment. Be sure.”

Had Taggart been allied with the kidnappers, he would have played this differently. He wouldn’t have been so persistent or so thorough. There would have been a sense that it was a game to him, a charade.

If you had spilled your guts to him, Mitch, Holly would be dead now.

Their previous conversation could have been recorded from a distance. These days, high-tech directional microphones, what they called shotgun microphones, could pick up voices clearly from hundreds of feet away. He’d seen it in a movie. Little of what he saw in movies was based on any truth, but he thought shotgun microphones were. Taggart might have been as oblivious of the taping as Mitch had been.

Of course, what had been done once could be done twice. A van that Mitch had never seen before stood at the curb across the street. A surveillance specialist might be stationed in the back of it.

Taggart surveyed the street, evidently seeking the object of Mitch’s interest.

The houses were suspect, too. Mitch didn’t know all of the neighbors. One of the houses was empty and listed for sale.

“I’m not your enemy, Mitch.”

“I never thought you were,” he lied.

“Everyone thinks I am.”

“I’d like to think I don’t have any enemies.”

“Everyone has enemies. Even a saint has enemies.”

“Why would a saint have enemies?”

“The wicked hate the good just because they are good.”

“The word wicked sounds so…”

“Quaint,” Taggart suggested.

“I guess in your work, everything looks black-and-white.”

“Under all the shades of gray, everything is black-and-white, Mitch.”

“I wasn’t raised to think that way.”

“Oh, even though I see proof every day, I have some trouble staying focused on the truth. Shades of gray, less contrast, less certainty—that’s so much more comfortable.”

Taggart took his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. From the same pocket, he withdrew one of his business cards.

“You already gave me a card,” Mitch said. “It’s in my wallet.”

“That one just has the homicide-division number. I’ve written my cell phone on the back of this one. I seldom give it out. You can reach me twenty-four/seven.”

Accepting the card, Mitch said, “I’ve told you everything I know, Lieutenant. Jason being caught up in this just … mystifies me.”

Taggart stared at him from behind twin mirrors that portrayed his face in shades of gray.

Mitch read the cell number. He put the card in his shirt pocket.

Apparently quoting again, the detective said, “‘Memory is a net. One finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.’”

Taggart descended the porch steps. He followed the front walkway toward the street.

Mitch knew that everything he had told Taggart was caught in the detective’s net, every word and every inflection, every emphasis and hesitation, every facial expression and twitch of body language, not just what the words said but also what they implied. In that haul of fish, which the cop would read with the vision of a true Gypsy poring over tea leaves, he would find an omen or an indicant that would bring him back with warnings and new questions.

Taggart stepped through the front gate and closed it behind him.

The sun lost its view through the gap in the boughs of the pepper tree, and Mitch was left in shade, but he did not feel a chill because the light had not warmed him in the first place.

11

In the den, the big TV was a blind eye. Even if Mitch used the remote to fill the screen with bright idiot visions, this eye could not see him; yet he felt watched by a presence that regarded him with cold amusement.

The answering machine stood on a corner desk. The only message was from Iggy:

“Sorry, bro. I should’ve called as soon as he left here. But Taggart … he’s like fully macking triple overhead corduroy to the horizon. He scares you off the board and makes you want to sit quiet on the beach and just watch the monsters break.”

Mitch sat at the desk and opened the drawer in which Holly kept their checkbook and bank statements.

In his conversation with the kidnapper, he had overestimated their checking-account balance, which was $10,346.54.

The most recent monthly statement showed an additional savings-account balance of $27,311.40.

They had bills due. Those were in a different drawer of the same desk. He didn’t look at them. He was counting only assets.

Their monthly mortgage payment was automatically deducted from their checking account. The bank statement listed the remaining loan balance as $286,770.

Recently, Holly had estimated that the house was worth $425,000. That was a crazy amount for a small bungalow in an old neighborhood, but it was accurate. Though old, the neighborhood was desirable, and the greater part of the value lay in the large lot.

Added to their cash on hand, the equity in the house made a total of approximately $175,000. That was far short of two million; and the kidnapper had not sounded like a guy whose intention was to negotiate in good faith.

Anyway, the equity in the house couldn’t be converted to cash unless they took a new loan or sold the place. Because the house was jointly owned, he needed Holly’s signature in either scenario.

They wouldn’t have had the house if Holly hadn’t inherited it from her grandmother, Dorothy, who had raised her. The mortgage had been smaller upon Dorothy’s death, but to pay inheritance taxes and save the house, they’d had to work out a bigger loan.

So the amount available for ransom was approximately thirty-seven thousand dollars.

Until now, Mitch had not thought of himself as a failure. His self-image had been that of a young man responsibly building a life.

He was twenty-seven. No one could be a failure at twenty-seven.

Yet this fact was indisputable: Although Holly was the center of his life, and priceless, when forced to put a price on her, he could pay only thirty-seven thousand.

A bitterness overcame him for which he had no target except himself. This was not good. Bitterness could turn to self-pity, and if he surrendered to self-pity, he would make a failure of himself. And Holly would die.

Even if the house had been without a mortgage, even if they had half a million in cash and were wildly successful for people their age, he would not have had the funds to ransom her.

That truth brought him to the realization that money would not be what saved Holly. He would be what saved her if she could be saved: his perseverance, his wits, his courage, his love.

As he returned the bank statement to the drawer, he saw an envelope bearing his name in Holly’s handwriting. It contained a birthday card that she had bought weeks before the day.

On the front of the card was the photograph of an ancient man festooned with wrinkles and wattles. The caption declared When you’re old, I’ll still need you, dear.

Mitch opened the card and read By then, the only thing I’ll have left to enjoy is gardening, and you’ll make excellent compost.

He laughed. He could imagine Holly’s laugh in the store when she had opened the card and read that punch line.

Then his laugh became something different from a laugh. In the past five terrible hours, he had more than once come close to tears but had repressed them. The card ruined him.

Below the printed text, she had written Happy birthday! Love, Holly. Her writing was graceful but not flamboyant, neat.

In his mind’s eye, he saw her hand as she held the pen. Her hands looked delicate, but they were surprisingly strong.

Eventually he recovered his composure by remembering the strength of her fine hands.

He went to the kitchen and found Holly’s car keys on the pegboard by the back door. She drove a four-year-old Honda.

After retrieving his cell phone from the charger beside the toaster oven, he went outside and moved his truck to the garage at the back of the property.

The white Honda stood in the second bay, sparkling because Holly had washed it Sunday afternoon. He parked beside the car.

He got out of the truck and shut the driver’s door, and stood between the vehicles, sweeping the room with his gaze. If anyone had been here, they would have heard and seen the truck approaching, would have had ample warning and would have fled.

The garage smelled vaguely of motor oil and grease, and strongly of the grass clippings that were bundled in burlap tarps and mounded in the bed of the pickup.

He stared at the low ceiling, which was the floor of the loft that overhung two-thirds of the garage. Windows in the higher space faced the house, providing an excellent vantage point.

Someone had known when Mitch had come home earlier, had known precisely when he had entered the kitchen. The phone had rung, with Holly on the line, moments after he had found the broken dishes and the blood.

Although an observer might have been in the garage, might still be here, Holly would not be with him. He might know where she was being held, but he might not know.

If the observer, whose existence remained theoretical, knew where Holly could be found, it would nevertheless be reckless for Mitch to go after him. These people clearly had much experience of violence, and they were ruthless. A gardener would not be a match for any of them.

A board creaked overhead. In a building of this vintage, the creak might have been an ordinary settling noise, old joints paying obeisance to gravity.

Mitch walked around to the driver’s door of the Honda, opened it. He hesitated, but got in behind the steering wheel, leaving the door open.

For the purpose of distraction, he started the engine. The garage door stood open, eliminating any danger of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

He got out of the car and slammed the door. Anyone listening would assume he had pulled it shut from inside.

Why he was not at once backing out of the garage might puzzle the listener. One assumption might be that he was making a phone call.

On a side wall were racked the many gardening tools that he used when working on his own property. The various clippers and pruning shears all seemed too unwieldy.

He quickly selected a well-made garden trowel formed from a single piece of machined steel. The handle featured a rubber grip.

The blade was wide and scooped and not as sharp as the blade of a knife. It was sharp enough.

Brief consideration convinced him that, although he might be able to stab a man, he should select a weapon more likely to disable than to kill.

On the wall opposite from the gardening implements, other racks held other tools. He chose a combination lug wrench and pry bar.

12

Mitch was aware that a kind of madness, bred of desperation, had come over him. He could bear no more inaction.

With the long-handled lug wrench clutched in his right hand, he moved to the back of the garage where steep open stairs in the north corner led in a single straight flight to the loft.

By continuing to react instead of acting, by waiting docilely for the six-o’clock call—one hour and seven minutes away—he would be performing as the machine that the kidnappers wished him to be. But even Ferraris sometimes ended in junkyards.

Why Jason Osteen had stolen the dog and why he, of all people, had been shot dead as an example to Mitch were mysteries to which no solutions were at hand.

Intuition told him, however, that the kidnappers had known Jason would be linked with him and that this link would make the police suspicious of him. They were weaving a web of circumstantial evidence that, were they to kill Holly, would force Mitch to trial for her murder and would elicit the death penalty from any jury.

Perhaps they were doing this only to make it impossible for him to turn to the authorities for help. Thus isolated, he would be more easily controlled.

Or, once he acquired the two million dollars by whatever scheme they presented to him, perhaps they had no intention of releasing his wife in return for the ransom. If they could use him to knock over a bank or some other institution by proxy, if they killed Holly after they got the money, and if they were clever enough to leave no traces of themselves, Mitch—and perhaps another fall guy that he had not yet met—might take the rap for every crime.

Alone, grieving, despised, imprisoned, he would never know who his enemies had been. He would be left to wonder why they had chosen him rather than another gardener or a mechanic, or a mason.

Although the desperation that drove him up the loft stairs had stripped away inhibiting fear, it had not robbed him of his reason. He didn’t race to the top, but climbed warily, the steel bar held by the pry end, the socket end ready as a club.

The wooden treads must have creaked or even groaned underfoot, but the chug of the Honda’s idling engine, echoing off the walls, masked the sounds of his ascent.

Walled on three sides, the loft lay open at the back. A railing extended left from the top of the stairs and across the width of the garage.

In the three walls of the loft, windows admitted afternoon light into that higher space. Visible beyond the balusters—and looming above them—were stacks of cardboard boxes and other items for which the bungalow provided no storage.

The stored goods were arranged in rows, as low as four feet in some places, as high as seven in others. The aisles between were shadowy, and every end offered a blind turn.

At the top of the stairs, Mitch stood at the head of the first aisle. A pair of windows in the north wall directly admitted adequate light to assure him that no one crouched in any shallow niche among the boxes.

The second aisle proved darker than the first, although the intersecting passage at the end was brightened by unseen windows in the west wall, which faced the house. The light at the end would have silhouetted anyone standing boldly in the intervening space.

Because the boxes were not all the same size and were not in every instance stacked neatly, and because gaps existed here and there in the rows, nooks along each aisle offered places large enough for a man to hide.

Mitch had quietly ascended the stairs. The Honda below probably had not been running long enough to raise significant suspicion. Therefore, any sentinel stationed in the loft would be alert and listening, but most likely would not yet have realized the immediate need to be elusive.

The third aisle was brighter for having a window directly at the end of it. He checked out the fourth aisle, then the fifth and final, which lay along the south wall in the light of two dusty windows. He found no one.

The intersecting passage that paralleled the west wall, into which all the east-west aisles terminated, was the only length of the loft that he had not seen in its entirety. Every row of boxes hid a portion of that space.

Raising the lug wrench higher, he eased along the southernmost aisle, toward the front of the loft. He found that the entire length of the last passage was as deserted as the portions he had seen from the farther end of the building.

On the floor, however, against the end of a row of boxes, stood some equipment that should not be here.

More than half the stuff in the loft had belonged to Dorothy, Holly’s grandmother. She had collected ornaments and other decorative items for every major holiday.

At Christmas, she’d unpacked fifty or sixty ceramic snowmen of various kinds and sizes. She’d had more than a hundred ceramic Santa Clauses. Ceramic reindeer, Christmas trees, wreaths, ceramic bells and sleighs, groups of ceramic carolers, miniature ceramic houses that could be arranged to form a village.

The bungalow couldn’t accommodate Dorothy’s full collection for any holiday. She’d unpacked and set out as much as would fit.

Holly hadn’t wanted to sell any of the ceramics. She continued the tradition. Someday, she said, they would have a bigger house, and the full glory of each collection could be revealed.

Sleeping in hundreds of cardboard boxes were Valentine’s Day lovers, Easter bunnies and lambs and religious figures, July Fourth patriots, Halloween ghosts and black cats, Thanksgiving Pilgrims, and the legions of Christmas.

The gear on the floor in the final aisle was neither ceramic nor ornamental, nor festive. The electronic equipment included a receiver and a recorder, but he couldn’t identify the other three items.

They were plugged into a board of expansion receptacles, which was itself plugged into a nearby wall outlet. Indicator lights and LED readouts revealed the equipment to be engaged.

They had been maintaining surveillance of the house. Its rooms and phones were probably bugged.

Confident in his stealth, having seen no one in the loft, Mitch assumed, upon sight of the equipment, that it was not at the moment being monitored, that it must be set to automatic operation. Perhaps they could even access it and download it from a distance.

Simultaneously with that thought, the array of indicator lights changed patterns, and at least one of the LED displays began to keep a running count.

He heard a hissing distinct from the idling Honda in the garage below, and then the voice of Detective Taggart.

“I love these old neighborhoods. This was how southern California looked in its great years…”

Not just the rooms of the house but the front porch, too, had been bugged.

He knew that he had been outmaneuvered only an instant before he felt the muzzle of the handgun against the back of his neck.

13

Although he flinched, Mitch did not attempt to turn toward the gunman or to swing the lug wrench. He would not be able to move fast enough to succeed.

During the past five hours, he had become acutely aware of his limitations, which counted as an achievement, considering that he had been raised to believe he had no limitations.

He might be the architect of his life, but he could no longer believe that he was the master of his fate.

“… before they cut down all the orange groves and built a wasteland of stucco tract houses.”

Behind him, the gunman said, “Drop the lug wrench. Don’t stoop to put it down. Just drop it.”

The voice was not that of the man on the phone. This one sounded younger than the other, not as cold, but with a disturbing deadpan delivery that flattened every word and gave them all the same weight.

Mitch dropped the club.

“… more convenient. But I happened to be in your neighborhood.”

Apparently using a remote control, the gunman switched off the recorder.

He said to Mitch, “You must want her cut to pieces and left to die, the way he promised.”

“No.”

“Maybe we made a mistake, choosing you. Maybe you’d be happy to be rid of her.”

“Don’t say that.”

Every word matter-of-fact, all with the same emotional value, which was no value at all: “A large life-insurance policy. Another woman. You could have reasons.”

“There’s nothing like that.”

“Perhaps you’d do a better job for us if, as compensation, we promised to kill her for you.”

“No. I love her. I do.”

“You pull another stunt like this one, she’s dead.”

“I understand.”

“Let’s go back the way you came.”

Mitch turned, and the gunman also turned, staying behind him.

As he began to retrace his steps along the final aisle, past the first of the southern windows, Mitch heard the lug wrench scrape against the boards as the gunman scooped it off the floor.

He could have pivoted, kicked, and hoped to catch the man as he rose from a quick stoop. He feared the maneuver would be anticipated.

Thus far, he had thought of these nameless men as professional criminals. They probably were that, but they were something else, too. He did not know what else they might be, but something worse.

Criminals, kidnappers, murderers. He could not imagine what might be worse than what he already knew them to be.

Following him along the aisle, the gunman said, “Get in the Honda. Go for a ride.”

“All right.”

“Wait for the call at six o’clock.”

“All right. I will.”

As they neared the end of the aisle, at the back of the loft, where they needed to turn left and cross the width of the garage to the steps in the northeast corner, something like luck intervened by way of a cord, a knot in the cord, a loop in the knot.

At the moment it happened, Mitch didn’t perceive the cause, only the effect. A tower of cardboard boxes collapsed. Some tumbled into the aisle, and one or two fell on the gunman.

According to stenciled legends on the cartons, they contained Halloween ceramics. Packed with more bubble wrap and shredded tissue paper than with decorative objects, the boxes were not heavy, but an avalanche of them almost knocked the gunman off his feet and sent him stumbling.

Mitch dodged one box and raised an arm to deflect another.

The falling first stack destabilized a second.

Mitch almost reached toward the gunman to steady him. But then he realized that any offer of support might be misinterpreted as an attack. To avoid being misunderstood—and shot—he stepped out of his enemy’s way.

The old dry wood of the railing at the back of the loft could safely accommodate anyone who leaned casually on it, but it proved too weak to endure the impact of the stumbling gunman. Balusters cracked, nails shrieked loose of their holes, and two butted lengths of the handrail separated at the joint.

The gunman cursed at the storm of boxes. He cried out in alarm as the railing sagged away from him.

He fell to the floor of the garage. The distance was not great, approximately eight feet, yet he landed with a terrible sound, and in a clatter of broken railing, and the gun went off.

14

From the toppling of the first box to the concluding punctuation of the gunshot, only a few seconds had passed. Mitch stood in stunned disbelief longer than the event itself had taken to unfold.

Silence shocked him from paralysis. The silence below.

He hurried to the stairs, and under his feet the boards released a great thunder, as though they had stored it up from the storms that long ago had lashed the trees from which they had been milled.

As Mitch crossed the garage on the ground level, past the front of the truck, past the idling Honda, elation contested with despair for control of him. He did not know what he would find and therefore did not know what to feel.

The gunman lay facedown, head and shoulders under an overturned wheelbarrow. He must have slammed into one edge of the wheelbarrow, flipping it over and on top of himself.

An eight-foot fall should not have left him in such a profound stillness.

Breathing hard but not from physical exertion, Mitch righted the wheelbarrow, shoved it aside. Each breath brought him the scent of motor oil, of fresh grass clippings, and as he crouched beside the gunman, he detected the bitter pungency of gunfire, too, and then the sweetness of blood.

He turned the body over and saw the face clearly for the first time. The stranger was in his middle twenties, but he had the clear complexion of a preadolescent boy, jade-green eyes, thick lashes. He did not look like a man who could talk deadpan about mutilating and murdering a woman.

He had landed with his throat across the rolled metal edge of the wheelbarrow tray. The impact appeared to have crushed his larynx and collapsed his trachea.

His right forearm had broken, and his right hand, trapped under him, had reflexively fired the pistol. The index finger remained hooked through the trigger guard.

The bullet had penetrated just below the sternum, angled up and to the left. Minimal bleeding suggested a heart wound, instant death.

If the shot hadn’t killed him instantly, the collapsed airway would have killed him quickly.

This was too much luck to be just luck.

Whatever it was—luck or something better, luck or something worse—Mitch didn’t at first know whether it was a helpful or an unwelcome development.

The number of his enemies had been reduced by one. A tattered glee, frayed by the rough edge of vengeance, fluttered in him and might have teased out a torn and threadbare laugh if he had not also been at once aware that this death complicated his situation.

When this man did not report back to his associates, they would call him. When they could not raise him on the phone, they might come looking for him. If they found him dead, they would assume that Mitch had killed him, and soon thereafter Holly’s fingers would be taken off one by one, each stump flame-cauterized without benefit of an anesthetic.

Mitch hurried to the Honda and switched off the engine. He used the remote control to shut the garage door.

As shadows closed in, he switched on the lights.

The single shot might not have been heard. If it had been heard, he felt sure that it had not been recognized for what it was.

At this hour, neighbors would not be home from work. Some kids might have returned from school, but they would be listening to CDs or would be deep in an Xbox world, and the muffled shot would be perceived as another bit of music or game percussion.

Mitch returned to the body and stood looking down at it.

For a moment, he was not able to proceed. He knew what needed to be done, but he could not act.

He had lived for almost twenty-eight years without witnessing a death. Now he’d seen two men shot in the same day.

Thoughts of his own death pecked at him, and when he tried to repress them, they could not be caged. The susurration in his ears was only the sound of his rushing blood, driven by the oars of a sculling heart, but his imagination provided dark wings beating at the periphery of his mind’s eye.

Although he was squeamish about searching the corpse, necessity brought him to his knees beside it.

From a hand so warm that it seemed death might be a pretense, he removed the pistol. He put it in the nearby wheelbarrow.

If the right leg of the dead man’s khakis had not been pulled up in the fall, Mitch wouldn’t have seen the second weapon. The gunman carried the snub-nosed revolver in an ankle holster.

After putting the revolver with the pistol, Mitch considered the holster. He undid the Velcro closures, put the holster with the guns.

He dug through the pockets of the sports coat, turned out the pockets of the pants.

He discovered a set of keys—one for a car, three others—which he considered but then returned to the pocket where he’d found them. After a brief hesitation, he retrieved them and added them to the wheelbarrow.

He found nothing more of interest other than a wallet and a cell phone. The former would contain identification, and the latter might be programmed to speed-dial, among other numbers, each of the dead man’s collaborators.

If the phone rang, Mitch didn’t dare answer it. Even if he spoke in monosyllables and the man at the other end briefly mistook his voice for that of the dead man, he would give himself away by one slip or another.

He switched off the phone. They would be suspicious when they got voice mail, but they would not act precipitously on mere suspicion.

Restraining his curiosity, Mitch set the wallet and phone aside in the wheelbarrow. Other, more urgent tasks awaited him.

15

From the back of the truck, Mitch fetched a canvas tarp that was used for bundling rosebush clippings. The thorns could not easily penetrate it, as they did burlap.

In case one of the other kidnappers came looking for the dead man, Mitch couldn’t leave the body here.

The thought of driving around with the corpse in the trunk of his car turned his stomach sour. He would have to buy some antacids.

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