like a vacuum had been created. Maybe just ten percent of the country.

??I??ve already got a cliff
??I??ve already got a cliff. where he washed his hands vigorously at one of the sinks.Neither the paleness nor the tremors troubled Ethan half as much as what he saw beneath the fingernails of his right hand. when he had been truly happy for the last time in his life. Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive [4] compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air. Legs pumping. not with his former relish. he signed a form authorizing them to draw his blood. Trains of every vintage raced through forests.????You got your work cut out for you.He didn??t climb the stairs; he assaulted them.. Ethan enjoyed many benefits. than the son of the biggest movie star in the world.?? Hazard said.Your ranking officer would never ask. Reaching under the third shelf in the right-hand section.The flogged air of human voices flailed through the restaurant.No one rented here on a welfare check. stirred in the cloistered branches when he passed near enough to worry them. quicker than Ethan??s hand. I wouldn??t need conversation. She??d just gotten mixed up with bad men. remained a suspect in the Carter Cook murder.

Abruptly he halted and turned to peer along the dark rain-swept lane. he had fallen into a coma. Several businesses in the mall and the lives of their employees might be disrupted.When Ethan got off at the seventh floor. One TV could display as many as four views simultaneously in quarter-screen format. he cranked on the water as fast as it would flow. but Ethan could not quite identify it.Don??t panic. Ethan couldn??t have seen into that cubicle from any distance. Oh .Camera 02 followed him as he stepped beyond the panning arc of Camera 01. as if from a dissolving night sky.But then this man. Fewer than thirty million tickets have to be sold to generate two hundred million bucks.Now.As the Honda pulled off the shoulder and onto the eastbound lane once more.Ethan??s palms were damp.Most people had never heard of the nation of Tuvalu.Hot air exploding out. stood a sculptured landscape of green hills. Sad for the luckless dogs.?? He dunked the string cheese in lebne and continued with lunch. ??Some nun had herself a heart attack over it. Fewer than one in a thousand fans might be sufficiently deranged to send poisoned brownies.

The scene with the elephants! The airplane-to-airplane midair jump with no [126] parachute! The sinking ship! The alien snake king! The funny monkeys! Nurses would gush over him. Ethan had written the address on a slip of paper.??My husband??s worn out enough uniforms to retire in March. under the eye.The groundskeeper had a line of his own.Some believed the house had been named after a famous Italian statesman or philosopher. And a trace of spicy aftershave. No one in Los Angeles or anywhere on Planet Earth was still under suspicion. The back of the eye proved to be flat. raking thorny nails against the stucco wall of a house. Oh. however. There??s heavy security on the estate.FRIC IN THE SUFFACATORIUM. as if trying to discern his nature from the far side of the silvered glass. others quietly chewing like termites at the fabric of civility and reason. this weightlessness about him. colorful crime-scene signatures. ??When does your father return from Florida?????If you know so much. a Mercedes ML500 SUV had been in the lower garage.Were they going to call Babies R Us and order lobster-flavored teething rings? Maybe they would phone their mommies and say.??Man. Corky was simply giving the people what they wanted.In his best five years put together.

he half expected to see through his body. by pretending that Nemo remained a suspect. accepting the impossible here as he might easily accept it in a dream. ravines. either.Years as a homicide detective had hardened him in some respects. I??d just shove a rag in his mouth. He inherited her estate. the enviable life of his employer. The sound of every inhalation and exhalation rushed and reverberated along the metal walls. a reporter from Entertainment Weekly.Now he was desperate. with a button loop. he would advance chaos by that tiny increment while he awaited opportunities to do greater damage. ??They would be too powerful for modern film. The same experiences had made Dunny yearn for buckets of money and for power sufficient to ensure that no one would ever again dare to tell him what to do or ever again make him live by rules other than his own. He??d been concerned that eventually she would change her will and stiff him forever. his mother had been an ice-cream junkie. as if someone fresh from a bath had passed this way. climbed mountains in rain and sleet and snow and fog and dark of night. the food caterer. and carried himself with a humility that had never before characterized him. had revealed nothing.Corky had begun to think that in the case of his mother??s unique metabolism.

and you don??t realize what he??s doing. a hunk. Ethan figured that Toledano saw his job going down the drain as surely as blood was drawn by gravity down the gutters of an inclined autopsy table.Freddie Nielander. Of course. He could have memorized Mysterious Caller??s phone number for future use. and the Mercedes had to stop for it. he reached behind the cascade. Fric didn??t [132] have the words to describe it. in a controlled environment. and dread.Reynerd??s weapon was a 9-mm pistol. Convex curves.[91] He could break heads when he needed to break them. poured down. Reynerd had inserted his right hand into the open bag.[95] Like who built the first elevator. half full of used paper towels. He couldn??t breathe at all on his back.????He??s in a bar. most shots fired at him missed. Everybody knew Clark Gable??s movies.Maybe he should stock it with supplies.Reynerd proceeded into the kitchen.

Hunching his shoulders. three. struggled gamely against the sluicing water. painting a steely sheen on the needles of rain that stitched the gauzy gray sky ever closer to the earth. no mangers. pouring over the top of the glass door and around Ethan.Hazard had not forgotten Ethan??s enigmatic but intense warning about snack-food containers.[118] He clutched at the medicinal inhaler clipped to his belt. His face was hidden in the shadow of a hood.Ethan didn??t believe that dead men could walk. Thereafter. spilling into the heating system and traveling through walls. and you can handle anything. cabinets. like a lid on a cook pot.Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo. and then suggested. but the doctors hadn??t been able to stir him from his coma. The bag featured drawstrings. some bombs could be constructed with no metal parts. Rolf had been unable to resist the temptation to deliver the sixth box in person. brought them together otherwise. their agents would sow this stuff in their enemy??s farms. a bedroom.

management of the house didn??t require those three lines. Reynerd threw the white bag toward the top of that bronze barrier.Telephones were located at both the exterior and the interior control stations. He might as well try to perform brain surgery by intuition. Let them find it later. until after ten minutes or fifteen. Reynerd was watching the back of Ethan??s head right now. shook his head adamantly.??Jim Briscoe? Really? I??m sure this was his place. he could have driven into the closet. the car pulled off the pavement and parked a hundred yards short of the entrance gate. Instead of passing by as the infrequent other traffic had done throughout the night. a golden-red variety named Broadway. including once at Christmas. screw-top jar. trying to buy a little time. or to Tobey Maguire.After chewing mechanically. and they seemed to be as alike as ears of corn picked in the same field. but he wouldn??t let it in. Still the shape.??Ten foreskins from grown men. 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. memorial columns and obelisks tilted by ground subsidence: None of that traditional architecture identified this as a cemetery.

Now. to find a Starbucks and have a large cup of coffee.For a while. more voraciously even than the iconic Pac-Man had once gobbled cookies off a million arcade screens in an era now quaint if not unknown to the current crowd.[67] The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle.Outside.He suspected that the subtle scent of death had saturated his clothing. Sole heirs usually had airtight alibis. The private school that Fric attended for a while had not proved to be a suitable environment for him. he heard a crash in a far room of the apartment. Nevertheless. isn??t it?????Listen. this was a bad one. in truth.[110] The car shot forward while the barrier continued to rise. I don??t know. emitted scraps of bombastic music. With one fingertip. He didn??t hate anyone. conquering two. The animals would die far faster than the plants.Corky had begun to think that in the case of his mother??s unique metabolism.In recent years. Moonves could get firearm registrations for you.

At the seventh-floor nurses?? station. he seemed to have been typecast even in failure. to naming a house Toad Hall.Watching weather clarified his thinking.??Why aren??t you in class??? Ethan wondered. Opened the fire door.Dripping. diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown. no friction-ridge patterns of white resin had been visible. Corky Laputa felt stifled by a frustration as heavy and suffocating as a fur coat.Exterior security cameras throughout the estate numbered eighty-six.????The evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. So where does this Reynerd live???Earlier. and he grew short of breath. anything like that.?? Ethan said even as the door was still opening. tape his lips shut. He inserted one of the letter-size white envelopes that he carried by the score in another slicker pocket. For one thing.?? Reynerd agreed. if you couldn??t really know who they were and what went on inside their heads. Pap smears.The stainless-steel hooks in the ceiling were another issue.When Ethan rang the bell at 2B.

about to take a death plunge. Past the jamb and through the gap.Here.[104] Ethan became aware of a background sizzle. The paramedics had pumped the water out of his lungs. Deeply.??With me it??s ice cream.?? said Pomp.BEYOND THE BEVELED GLASS. until after ten minutes or fifteen. He seldom received calls.These plates and panels had been welded meticulously at every joint. he had a welcome-to-the-Bates-Motel edge to him that any fan of Anthony Perkins would have recognized. he??d thought it meant that his parents were loco. accessorizing the hills of Bel Air. personal assistant to Ghost Dad. Uncle Joe hadn??t made enough to equal the cost of this stained-glass dome. The meat was mostly white. except he??s sincere. drop leaves.Dunny desperately wanted Hannah.Brain-damaged man dresses himself. each a classic specimen.Given time and distance from the event.

and saw Rolf Reynerd at the head of the stairs. When the elevator doors opened. he would have enthusiastically passed that disease to everyone he met by way of sneezes.PALOMAR LABORATORIES IN NORTH Hollywood occupied a sprawling single-story concrete-slab building with such small and widely spaced windows and with such a low and slightly pitched sheet-metal roof that it resembled a bunker in the storm. he had [137] been a psychotic personal trainer who killed himself and his wife near the end of the first act.This wasn??t merely rapid respiration.????If he??s threatening to blind Manheim. when he armed himself as a matter of routine.Mr. did not surprise him. a time to kill and a time to heal. which forwarded weekly batches of this correspondence to the publicity firm that responded to it in the star??s name. They would have to discuss that in their next chat. spirally coiled. driving the darkness of the universe into the universally coveted Bel Air real estate. it sounded as though it was packed full of mail. but had supplemented them with ice cream. as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition.He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core. either. Dunny had been clever enough to avoid arrest. and certainly the Strategic Weapons and Tactics teams were better bets than cleaning up after murderers. hundreds. That was the prescribed dosage.

Maybe I??m not hip anymore. combined with years of street experience. he found an eye. and valuable. to see is it dropping like it should if what you??ve got is really a deader.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. either. eased it open. WEARING THE SAME jeans and wool sweater as before. He was a careful. in an instant.Deliveries 4 and 5 had been trusted to an old friend in the print lab of the Scientific Investigation Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.Four years ago. He used a key to let himself through the inner security door. as had the emotional and the physical pain of living under the thumb of alcoholic fathers with fiery tempers. passed under the extinguished lights of Christmas. Aelfric (pronounced elf-rick) was an Old English word meaning ??elf-ruled?? or ??ruled by elves. a hero. leaving the pistol in the holster.?? ????People just pissing money on him. in the glass. this hall was graced by softly colored contemporary Persian carpets. He didn??t succeed. right here.

Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order. inadequate. and more plainclothes cops and film-industry types together in one place than you would find anywhere outside of the courtroom devoted to the trial of the latest spouse-murdering celebrity. he entered the foyer. I don??t know.The boy preferred to be called Fric. Reynerd threw the white bag toward the top of that bronze barrier. Two or three six-packs of Pepsi. which amounted to more square footage than in the average home.Although Dunny had his good qualities. Maybe just ten percent of the country. methodically attentive to detail.He stared at this material for a long time. I just collect. descending grades. McBee??s lines.Mr.????Wait. they were safe from the yellow ghost passing among them.ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LABORATORIES to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals. anything moved that shouldn??t be there. On nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean.Consequently. Height six-one.

Ghost Dad??s interior designer had taken Fric shopping. he??d been in Room 742. For one thing. the most successful stars have all been flat personalities.??With silvery insistence. with remembrances as bright as the weather. or black mamba. led to the ornamental bronze gate in the estate wall. and drove toward the exit. toward the driveway gate a hundred yards away. don??t go easy. having someone to hate was as necessary as having bread.Four standard stainless-steel morgue drawers might have held bodies. serial killers.At a battered desk sat a fortyish. Apparently.????That??s not an exclusive club. black-and-white art prints. seeming less to walk than to drift like spirits. Freddie Nielander. he engaged the speakerphone feature. frequented the hottest nightclubs with young actresses who had a taste for Dom Perignon. Tubelike structures. Thereafter.

He should have rested.Dunny had existed in a limbo of sorts. Ethan recognized Dunny??s midnight-blue Mercedes sedan. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile. playing with himself. to rose gardens. McBee had to plan and execute a party for four or five hundred Hollywood nitwits. gears. groping for the inhaler. dropped to his knees. There??s not much time. Considering that he presented nearly two linebackers?? worth of surface area to the rain. I mean Manheim??s. At the landing. Hannah was here remembered with the same drab bronze that memorialized the thousands of others who slept eternal in these fields.Ethan turned slowly in a full circle.If the freak had been either calm or armed with a shotgun. from drugs. places like that.Hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket.The order of sisters that operated Our Lady of Angels rejected the modern garb of many nuns.Although his shirt wasn??t buttoned to the top. Hazard could cover his ass. he didn??t bother engaging the security chain.

seeming both to defy the storm and to celebrate it. rides in theirs. and woo again. Then he might have been reminded instead of a crocodile or a hyena. but few keep it or keep the freedom to spend it. Definitely a stranger. the doors had slid aside. Ethan gazed into the false twilight of the storm.????You want I should look for polyps in his lower colon?????I already know he doesn??t have any criminal priors??????So I??m not the first one you??re calling in a favor from. After regular use. Maybe they enjoyed killing. an actress. On nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean. which opened a door. under the inadequate protection of black umbrellas.In this instance. Handling the bag with care. chests. They were placed in a glass tank and subjected to a cloud of cyanoacrylate fumes. Corky walked a charming residential neighborhood in Studio City. Was it literally. He might as well have been eating paste. he locked the doors.Each of the first four floors held four large apartments.

and sipped it at one of their tables on the promenade.Meanwhile. he pressed a concealed button. and bright. during which they had rarely spoken. Gable and Colbert remained frozen in flirtatious argument. ??Not going to hold on much longer. had recognized the presence of a suspicious vehicle and had overridden O1??s automatic function. He rocked back in the chair and gaped at the gush of blood. the driver of the Honda didn??t kill his headlights when he parked. in truth. [116] Although not solid steel. You get . He was a man of many talents and weapons.??Hazard shook his head. Anarchy could be a demanding faith.At a lab table.On the walls were several framed photographs: large sixteen-by-twenty-inch. no matter what we might wish to be. however. they would be able to track an intruder as he moved from one field of view into another. He imagined an evil genius forcing his terrified prey into the suffacatorium at gunpoint. which was clattering down again when Ethan reached it. that??s bad enough.

????You were too good for me anyway. Fruitless in this season. he glanced back. and she cared not at all about his comfort or his needs.Fric hated the sound. he conferred on himself no silly or clumsy name to delight the tabloid press when eventually they became aware of his game. When the elevator doors opened. motion detectors related to Camera 01. however. and the musty smell of stale pot smoke.Anyway.In his lab.Emergency-yellow. eyes bright with repressed tears. in a corner.????I like a man with a big appetite. his shoes squishing in the saturated turf.. but he didn??t hear the second. First she had been one of the guys. no bleat of horn penetrated from its maze of streets. He??d begun to wheeze.??It??s me.Dwindling into the night.

??Ever since the old lady woke up fifteen years ago.Neighbors in a fourth-floor apartment had heard him struggling furiously for his life. Calls for Charming??or Chan or Channi. the most powerful force in the universe.????Nevertheless. The mysteries of alchemy. Ethan ordered Moroccan salmon with couscous. Or by the masseur who always traveled with him. For reasons known only to the secret master of the universe. Hazard said.The languid storm gave him excuse enough to leave the apple waiting and to step to the nearest window. The air seemed to have grown thin. The time to kill had arrived. I had to submit my list to Mrs.?? Reynerd said. entirely too glamorous. and thought about them.Instead. ??Ten thousand dollars. Convex curves.????This guy thinks I??m Batman. perhaps not even to Hannah if she were alive. except for whatever models were currently in use. for order.

These days. Hazard managed to grin while he chewed. 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. Ethan didn??t believe it.??Mrs.????It was filled with Scrabble tiles.????Basically it??s my job to keep people like you away from him. Ethan??s vague reflection in the misted glass had been dark because his clothes were dark. he made a point of ridding himself of them quickly. their responses to the same stresses had been diverging since their early teens.He still wanted to kill Reynerd. FALLING rain as clear as a baby??s conscience met the city pavement and flooded the gutters with filthy churning currents. casting up a plume of dirty water from the puddled pavement. creating such a froth and dancing spray that the street appeared to be aboil.Two waitresses were required to bring all the food to the table.How Reynerd would have known about Dunny or where Dunny lived. Laura.Ten bold stitches were uniformly spaced. Corky Laputa felt stifled by a frustration as heavy and suffocating as a fur coat. so he sees it first thing he gets back.?? Fric deceitfully insisted.Evidently. behind every concrete column. or pretend to be.

Instead.Fifteen minutes was the average time required to recover from an asthma attack. Gray eyes.Corky didn??t hate his mother. however. the walls. a parcel also owned by Channing Manheim. late-morning light brewed into a thick gloom more suitable to a winter dusk. but I??m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. but the hand of another.??Sir. He??s not an actively bad guy.Behind the shelves lay a six-by-six space and a stainless-steel door.. he journeyed through the rain-swept day. virtually any of the twenty-five staff members might be a scheming homicidal nutjob cunningly concealed behind a smiley mask. ??They would be too powerful for modern film. and now like the torment of legions under some cruel oppression. During the events at Reynerd??s apartment house. but cold greasy fear still crawled [43] restlessly through every turning of his guts.Never in his life had Ethan Truman experienced a dream of such clarity.A sough of wind insisted at the French panes. after being gut shot. McBee hears you using words like that?????She??s somewhere else.

leaving no stain.??Sorry to have bothered you. but detectives were less likely to die on the job than were night clerks in convenience stores. Definitely a stranger.Then the meat hauler with the pompadour said. by author. driving the darkness of the universe into the universally coveted Bel Air real estate. He could get on with his day and mentally draw up blueprints for the murder while he attended to other business. when he heard a dog.Having turned the apple over and over in his mind. Each knot had been tied with a surgeon??s precision. where he??d parked the Expedition. which left a passageway of about two and a half feet to either side. When all films were black-and-white. No obligations.[95] Like who built the first elevator. This time they got caught. ??Those nuns are jokers.Shared deprivation had bonded them. Not much: a little. One out of three.Studying the photo of the jar full of foreskins.In retrospect.He went all the way up to the seventh floor.

Dangerous. luminous in the gloom. as well. He inherited her estate. because the bags. In the singular depths of those eyes. Manheim??s security chief. terribly. Civilians didn??t realize that detectives often dreamed about the dead for whom they sought justice. plotting Reynerd??s demise.??In the second photo. he made a point of ridding himself of them quickly. of the need to stay sufficiently well balanced to assume. Considering that these messages had been delivered in the form of objects and images.A product of weight training and protein powders. which they had managed long before Ghost Dad had owned it. luminous in the gloom. Ethan went inside.Fric wondered if all that effort and expense was worthwhile. search his interior pockets. ??Six dozen?????I like cookies. he also might be able more fully to explain the actor to himself.Given time and distance from the event.Hazard came up from the armchair on the second boom.

ANXIOUS AND wheezing. Or even tired.Nevertheless concerned about safety. anything. had a melodramatic flair. groping for the inhaler. similar to those featured on casement windows throughout the house.As the chief of security overseeing both the Face??s personal protection and the safeguarding of the estate. and one of them was even Mr. it lent a sting to the rain and promised chaos.Instead. Mrs. He might as well have been eating paste. The three had been inseparable. If sometimes all he could do was flush a cherry bomb down a public toilet.He triggered puff two.He closed his eyes. The system included twelve VCRs capable of simultaneously recording forty-eight feeds in quarter-screen format. then Camera 02.. empty. Early in the investigation. until something like a vacuum had been created. Maybe just ten percent of the country.