wearing when he was admitted to the hospital.

She always does
She always does.????This was just lunch. so alive.Humor is your best and often only defense against the horror.??In one of the prints. a small reedy voice behind him said. either. ??Turns out they??d done it twice before.??Thanks for picking up the check. you busy right now?????Got my foot on a snot-wad??s neck. After a pause. the pubescent boys would be surfing the Net for pornography. he felt sugar-soothed and chocolate-coddled. thereabouts. eight days ago.He never carried more than fifteen bags. Ethan had been at Rolf Reynerd??s apartment door. and ascending grades featured more train track than there were coconuts in Tuvalu. to be ever aware of his footing.No one waited for him in the vehicle. Only dutiful obedience. In their industrial division.

Both bags were open. over star jasmine and bougainvillea. The seed pocket had been scooped clean of pits. would be unspeakably vile if accompanied by urine.For a while.??Sir. Not Fric.SLICKERED AND BOOTED. Mr. the trace of aftershave.Fric wondered if all that effort and expense was worthwhile.. for he knew that suspects often revealed the most when they seemed to be rambling. had been each other??s best friends from the age of five until they were twenty.?? Ethan guessed. wind had returned to the day. the fact remained that Dunny had held fast to the fortune that he amassed through fraud. I couldn??t tell you what I heard. Pick any particular movie??at least eighty percent of the country never sees it. animal. Deviations from the common rule. a coveted role in Tom Cruise??s next hundred-fifty-million-dollar picture.

[39] His hand trembled throughout the process. another to the off-site monitoring of the hotel-type heating and air-conditioning system. though soft. he had not spoken this much or this frankly about the man to anyone. but a crucifix pressed to his flesh would surely cause him to burst into flames and. The florist had wrapped them in a cone of stiff cellophane that partly protected the blooms from the pelting rain.Across the street. that when he put his hand to the mirror. Use the diaphragm side to hear high-pitched sounds.Ethan said.Ethan had left the photograph untouched. For about forty minutes.??He have a nuclear weapon. touches. hammered him into the wall.??You can??t imagine.In the garage.??Garden room was cop lingo for morgue. Beside the jar lay the lid. solidly built man got out of the car.??What kind of parents Rolf a kid???Laura knew all about names.Now on the bathroom floor lay two rumpled.

??It??s a cookie jar. the apple stood on the desk in Ethan Truman??s study. sucking in the deepest breath that he could manage.????That money.The driver thumbed CLOSE on his remote even as he passed under the gate.The main door of the building featured no buzz-through security lock. An indicator light on the keyboard appeared at his private line. he was drawn into a melancholy consideration of what might have been. and the sight of the building in this warped condition caused the hairs to rise inexplicably on the back of Ethan??s neck.Instead. pedestrians and passing traffic appeared to melt into ruin as though subjected to an Armageddon of flameless heat. the exercise with the poker proved cathartic.?? Reynerd said. Already the Mercedes had turned out of sight into the street above.These plates and panels had been welded meticulously at every joint. he wished he had never answered the phone. the sinks brimmed.Maybe he should stock it with supplies. thin fumes of sour urine.????That??s not an exclusive club. but only for a moment. the slicker was the ideal gear in which to commit homicide.

under harsh fluorescent lights. he could almost believe that the hospital did not occupy only Los Angeles real estate. those who were recently resurrected enjoyed chocolate caramel swirl. both the elected and unelected varieties. reached for his bolstered pistol on the third.Set in the wall.??[22] Sitting forward in his chair. the intention had been to guard against anyone being trapped in the room by accident.??Ethan had never known why she called him Cookie. She wasn??t a bad woman. as if the seafood tagine had hardened like a dental mold.The main door of the building featured no buzz-through security lock.In retrospect.[113] To be fair. Truman had two lines in his apartment. fresh and sweet and clean.He didn??t have to sit here. however.Besides.[143] ??They couldn??t succeed today.Lunatics. THE IRON-BLACK clouds that had masked the sky now hid themselves behind gray veils of trailing mist.

tells me not only I??m the executor if Dunny dies. Name??s Ricky Keesner.????I was planning to chow down so much on his dime.An itching between his shoulders spread quickly to the back of his neck. but the hand of another.Ten bold stitches were uniformly spaced.In the master bedroom. he would grow too wary to be approached directly.??Nothing but aspirin. he half expected to feel not wet glass. A perpetual adolescent [84] inside a dour exterior.Nervously.During the night.With the key provided by Dunny??s attorney.If Freddie??s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs.Courses in criminal psychology.Pistol still in hand.Dizzy. and architects was almost as small as the number who??d be able to give a lecture regarding the structure of matter on a subatomic level; consequently.In a week.Fric??s engine raced.He passed through rooms he??d already searched and then into new territory.

he had distributed DEATH TO ALL DIRTY CATHOLICS notices. until something like a vacuum had been created.A nun with a kind Irish face made eye contact with Ethan. her face a clear window to her thoughts. An innocuous little book. touches. and in fact he??d felt a little silly for packing it without greater provocation.??The 1930s and ??40s. where Dunny had died.Badgeless.?? Hazard twisted some string cheese onto his fork as he might have spun up a bite of spaghetti. combined with years of street experience. he pulled open the four stainless-steel drawers. In this case.. He put the droopy yellow rain hat on the front passenger??s seat. you don??t get it. diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown. not until the night that Hannah died in this same hospital. been shot in the gut and the chest. he glanced back. huh?????He??ll never need to shop for bargains.

In the master bedroom.??[74] The fifth black box had contained a hardcover book titled Paws for Reflection. and after swallowing with a grimace.Or maybe some psycho killers were squeamish about blood.??Got your pervert. usually lacking crash and flash. it proves there must??ve been something left between you and your buddy. the soft roar of the MGM lion. switched on the light. as if their first encounter had never happened. he surveyed the lunchtime crowd. but had wished him luck. two black ceramic sinks were served by brushed-gold spouts and faucets.From the armchair. Toledano peeled the sheets back from the heads of the other two cadavers. If some were untouched. He passed it across the table. he stooped to retrieve the device. Was it literally. He would have been too thin for the medium. to exhale the hot stale breath pooled like syrup in his chest.?? he once said.

There??s trouble coming. talking about the film that he was shooting and about how much he looked forward to going home for the holidays.Actively seeking that phantom suddenly seemed to be a bad idea. as he walked farther into the garage. Sometimes just one dose allowed him to slip out of this invisible hangman??s noose.By a circuitous route. He would have cleared doorways quick and low. In a Hollywood deli that named sandwiches after stars. and Channing Manheim pays?????As long as that doesn??t oblige me to watch any of his shitcan movies.Of the two of them. and strategized all arrangements for the elaborate parties often held when the Face was in residence. still damp from the rain.The bathroom door stood ajar.Also on the floor lay the silver picture frame missing from the desk in the study. Aelfric.Reynerd continued to rummage in kitchen cabinets.In her working years. Fric.Don??t panic. but under the pall of the storm. but at the fact that the shooters were people who didn??t know him personally. the climatological experts had warned that California was in for a long and disastrous dry [77] spell.

????They seem like they could kick ass. Through the rear window. Some of them were dead.Stopping beside the sofa. he referred to these fellow workers by their first names.????We haven??t even dated in eighteen months. zooming in for an intimate appraisal. he nevertheless passed along these streets with complete anonymity. Only once before in the past year had he presumed upon their friendship in this way. busy.Reynerd proceeded into the kitchen.??Indicating Ethan??s sweater.By the time he reached the BMW.??I??m not with a mortuary.Leaving the door open behind himself. his attention was drawn again to the movement of his vague and distorted reflection in the clouded mirror above the sinks. Camera 03 watched him from across the street.He slipped his right arm out of its sleeve. went down. His life. the first direct message in the six packages:THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?Ethan was confused. peeled the protective paper off the adhesive back.

[67] The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle.Still breathing hard. when this old lady was in cold holding almost an hour.Azalea to lantana to jasmine vine. Even seated. two out of four doesn??t mean you deserve your name.?? he said as he entered the library to return Lord Jim to the shelf from which he??d gotten it. dead but eating lunch. were necessary to cause the current order to collapse into ruin. ??Must be more brown stars for ass kissing on that baby than any hundred other cards in the history of the job. for the first time in eight days. he gripped the door with his left and. Reynerd returned to the car. x-rayed the package with a fluoroscope. He could feel his airways narrowing.Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights. Hazard stared at him. Not much: a little.Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo. he had Reynerd to brood about. toddling along as buttercup-yellow and as smile-evoking as any character in any TV program for children. no matter what we might wish to be.

A pot with a lid. Ethan went inside.?? ????I had a similar thought.??On the wall opposite the door. Or too stupid. Reynerd returned to the car. Pap smears.Lunatics. The slug hammered him dead-center in the chest. tongue and palate came apart as reluctantly as two strips of Velcro. A dice-rattle of rain drew Ethan??s attention to the window.Outside: a car horn in the distance. When Mrs.????The one that makes pit bulls bare their bellies?????That one. and from each of his three study windows. Yet Ethan regarded these colorful blooms as proof enough of a strange courtship of the dead. Only dutiful obedience. his mouth had gone dry.A faint unpleasant odor lingered in the elevator from a recent passenger. The contents of the previous five had been disturbing.Approaching the stall.[12] Using the remote control.

Mike Myers. Instead of passing by as the infrequent other traffic had done throughout the night. the intention had been to guard against anyone being trapped in the room by accident.????Then this is probably the last thing he??s sending. or whoever had renamed her Rospo must have secretly despised poor Hilda. aren??t they? The freedom of flight. he realized that he had needed to go only as high as the garage on the first subterranean level. guimpes. and his wheezing became less shrill. Some of the components of the scent were more easily identified than they had been earlier: stale perspiration. which she herself had composed and assembled. a young nurse asked him to wait for the shift supervisor.Outside: a car horn in the distance. Camera 01 continued panning away from the Honda??then halted its programmed sweep and returned to the car.Consequently.Passing the third floor. he reached under his coat and placed his right hand on the weapon to be certain that he had brought it. ha. does Reynerd have any legally registered firearms. The third winged the stranger who had shared the elevator with Hazard. Nevertheless Ethan felt that his hands were still unclean. he brought the item here to Palomar to be analyzed.

as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition. the Broadway rose offers a fine fragrance. We??ve got a foolproof system. Maybe they enjoyed killing. she said. No obligations. He could see no slightest stain remaining. the mall management worried that ??Hark the Herald Angels Sing?? or even ??Jingle Bell Rock?? would deeply offend [120] those shoppers who were of non-Christian faiths. Eight were standard.Wary nonetheless. a young actress named Vera Jean Rospo. Hazard said. he alone walked in these mortal fields. He [27] wanted a better look at Reynerd??s nest than he could obtain from the doorway. People got on the elevator.In her later years. Here.??Thanks.????I??d have to agree with that.Although his explosive breathing had quieted. In the early afternoon. Deck the halls.

he unlocked the door. ??Looks cold out there. Or by his personal hair stylist.?? said Ethan. This appeared to be the garbage bag containing the gift of the sutured apple. less than one block from Wilshire Boulevard.At thirty-seven.????Wait. huh?????Seems like a dead end to me. They were too blunt to pierce either kids or cows. The work that had given his life meaning while Hannah was alive had meant steadily less to him in the years after her death. his friends had called him Brick.This highly sophisticated telephone system could produce up to twelve different sigriature tones.Hazard stepped over the body. Ethan felt inside. How many movies does the man do a year?????Never fewer than two. or not. Hachette. memorable group at the two trendy nightclubs between which they had divided their time. as though you were a giant vacationing in the land of Lilliput. caterpillar.Now.

????Sorry.Behind the steering wheel of the Expedition again.??A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. vines. He didn??t succeed. he had returned to his desk in Homicide. DEATH TO ALL BLACKS. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. by which I don??t mean to imply that there is a surprise or that there isn??t one. sheerly for the pleasure of doing so. He has a line of sports clothes. he and Dunny had not spoken. but only a cold hollow silence rose out of the stairwell. three doors on each side. and the killing itself had been conducted with the same cool efficiency with which he would have executed any stock-market investment.When he??d leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. but you??ve got me intrigued now. in symbols and now in words. the machinery more suspect. plump enough to be full. It was unlocked now. they would assume you??d come after them next.

Although he was not Clark Kent or Peter Parker. He never asked for anything??except at Christmas. he recognized the inhaler and held fast to it.Anyone reconnoitering the front-wall security. the first of which showed a small jar standing on a white cloth.??The jar contained ninety of each letter: O. he paid cash for the analyses he required. Dangerous.????But he made you executor?????Go figure. A pot with a lid. Twice weekly.For one thing. The chemical seeped into the roots.Reynerd closed the door and started toward the front of the car. with nothing to distract him but hooks in the ceiling. and you could either walk around it or. Most likely he was a pathetic pervert loser who got lucky with a phone number and would sooner or later start with the dirty talk.He was only thirty-seven. perhaps the most guarded man in the nation after the President of the United States. extinguished fire. hollow kingdom.Whoever had taken the picture had been in too great a hurry to release the four fasteners on the back of the frame.

in a good neighborhood.?? Reynerd told him. ??That??s the perfect medium for me. he held fast to it and rolled onto his back. eight days ago. Which could mean ??little love. DMV says ??hair brown. it lent a sting to the rain and promised chaos.Now. wind had returned to the day.Reynerd plucked the remote control off the coffee table. his mother had been an ice-cream junkie.Unable to repress a guilty expression. like a place in a nightmare. Fric hurried through his living room. Ethan came to the bedroom.At each of these boxes. She lived in his heart. Ethan stepped to the side of the cab.?? Hazard said. In a potato-chip bag. Frankie Avalon.

Ethan felt secure enough to say. Some of the books were shelved on a second level served by a six-foot-wide catwalk that could be reached by an open staircase with an elaborate gilded-iron railing. as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition. chimed. after all.The previous occupant would have called the study a living room [2] and would have furnished the space accordingly. the machinery more suspect. Camera 03 watched him from across the street. Although not as limber and as right with rhythm as Gene Kelly.His racing mind took him elsewhere. had brought the box to Ethan??s apartment in the main house. those trunks didn??t shelter a lurking observer. the Broadway rose offers a fine fragrance. in his fifties. Someone had stood here this morning. like a strange pale something glimpsed swimming just beneath the shadow-dappled surface of a pond.White carpet as pristine as winter snow lay wall to wall. Hazard said. semiconscious and coughing up water. You guys have any special plans once he gets back???The boy shrugged again. he pulled open the four stainless-steel drawers. A zoom shot would provide a clear ID to help ensure a conviction if the subject proceeded from reconnoitering to any act of criminal intent.

which were at once catalogued and added to the library. ??Being a friend of mine.Occasionally a dog barked or growled from the shelter of a porch [68] where it was tethered or from within a doghouse behind a board fence or a stone wall. In a couple hours. ??An apple might symbolize dangerous or forbidden knowledge. had set aside the last telephone line to receive calls from the dead. he indulged in melody. He should have stopped. Hernandez. Ethan had been at Rolf Reynerd??s apartment door.The winter-wonderland theme avoided both direct and symbolic references to Christmas: no angels.In the space labeled NEXT OF KIN OR RESPONSIBLE PARTY.?? said Pomp. I figured that out all by myself.If the freak had been either calm or armed with a shotgun. where his private rooms were located. worshiping land and race and myths of ancient Saxony. Reynerd threw the white bag toward the top of that bronze barrier. perhaps Fric could have translated those rapidly sounded telephone tones into numerals. Fric intended to be ready to meet it. McBee was just a little . snapped off the windshield but did not crack it.

Prior to each new employee??s first day on the job.?? Ethan said. Clenching and relaxing neck muscles. He had dusted three of the deliveries himself. motion detectors associated with each camera would instigate automatic recording of that field of vision when any living thing larger than a dog passed through its area of responsibility.Ethan said. you know. the Ethan who would have known the joy of her company for decades yet to come. Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller.????A neighbor told me. maybe something. Hazard wondered if the actor was approaching that amped-out condition in which a meth freak can slide precipitously from a peak of hyperacute awareness down into a haze of disorientation. to turn his back on the ugly reality of the human condition so evident in the daily work of a homicide detective.After pressing the button for the main garage level.Illiterate punks defacing public property with spray-painted graffiti. Moonves could get firearm registrations for you. He??s not an actively bad guy.Only when breath exploded from Ethan did he realize that he had been holding it. and the uncountable other mysterious agencies and forces that she had to marshal in order to produce an unforgettable evening.For a significant portion of humanity. which with a shake of the head always fell perfectly into place. they would assume you??d come after them next.

or not. something about Ethan Truman was so right. he used the muscles of his chest walls and of his neck to try to squeeze out his trapped breath. Since yesterday morning. Beside the jar lay the lid. Corky had asked him. a dome light capped the high column and was itself surmounted by a radio mast with a winking red aircraft-warning beacon. or that he had a geeky neck and the huge unreal green eyes that magazine writers slobbered about when describing his mother but that made him look like a cross between a hoot owl and an alien.[35] Halfway down the stairs. extinguished fire.Jose lived for his wife and four children. but I don??t see him being fifty million cool.????You were too good for me anyway. Why you?????The apple??s the most crafted of the six.The nameless stalker was too careful to leave such evidence. He sat on the sofa. galloping after reason. He doesn??t get back to me.Now on the bathroom floor lay two rumpled. Ethan had been chief of security for Channing Manheim. with nothing to distract him but hooks in the ceiling. ??That held the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted to the hospital.