As an alternative to the stairs, the elevator would be too noisy. Alerted, Simon Makepeace would be waiting when I arrived below.

I could not retreat. I was compelled to go down-and quickly- into the back rooms of the lower floor.

Before I quite realized what I was doing, I pushed the elevator-call b.u.t.ton. I s.n.a.t.c.hed my finger back as though I'd p.r.i.c.ked it on a needle.

The doors did not at once slide open. The elevator was on the lower floor.

As the motor hummed to life, as the hydraulic mechanism sighed, as the cab rose through the shaft with a faint swish, I realized that I had a plan. Good for me.

In truth, the word plan plan was too grandiose. What I had was more of a trick, a diversion. was too grandiose. What I had was more of a trick, a diversion.

The elevator arrived with a bink bink so loud in the silent house that I twitched, though I had expected that sound. When the doors slid open, I tensed, but no one lunged out at me. so loud in the silent house that I twitched, though I had expected that sound. When the doors slid open, I tensed, but no one lunged out at me.

I leaned into the cab and pushed the b.u.t.ton to send it back to the ground floor.

Even as the doors rolled shut, I hurried to the staircase and rushed blindly down. The value of the diversion would diminish to zero when the cab arrived below, for then Simon would discover that I wasn't, after all, on board.

The claustrophobia-inducing stairs led into a mud room off the kitchen. Although a stone-floored mud room might have been essential in Philadelphia, with that city's dependably rainy springs and its snowy winters, a residence in the sun-seared Mojave needed it no more than it needed a snowshoe rack.

At least it wasn't a storeroom full of gelignite.

From the mud room, one door led to the garage, another to the backyard. A third served the kitchen.

The house had not originally been designed to have an elevator. The remodel contractor had been forced to situate it, not ideally, in a corner of the large kitchen.

No sooner had I arrived in the mud room, dizzy from negotiating the tight curve of the spiral staircase, than a bink bink announced the arrival of the cab on the ground floor. announced the arrival of the cab on the ground floor.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a broom, as though I might be able to sweep a murderous psychopath off his feet. At best, surprising him by jamming the bristles into his face might damage his eyes and startle him off balance.

The broom wasn't as comforting as a flamethrower would have been, but it was better than a mop and certainly more threatening than a feather duster.

Positioning myself by the door to the kitchen, I prepared to take Simon off his feet when he burst into the mud room in search of me. He didn't burst.

After what seemed to be enough time to paint the gray walls a more cheerful color, but what was in reality maybe fifteen seconds, I glanced at the door to the garage. Then at the door to the backyard. I wondered if Simon Makepeace had already forced Danny out of the house. They might be in the garage, Simon behind the wheel of Dr. Jessup's car, Danny bound and helpless in the backseat.

Or maybe they were headed across the yard, toward the gate in the fence. Simon might have a vehicle of his own in the alleyway behind the property.

I felt inclined, instead, to push through the swinging door and step into the kitchen.

Only the under-the-cabinet lights were on, illuminating the countertops around the perimeter of the room. Nevertheless, I could see that I was alone.

Regardless of what I could see, I sensed a presence. Someone could have been crouched, hiding on the farther side of the large center work island.

Fierce with broom, gripping it like a cudgel, I cautiously circled the room. The gleaming mahogany floor pealed soft squeaks off my rubber-soled shoes.

When I had rounded three-quarters of the island, I heard the elevator doors roll open behind me.

I spun around to discover not Simon, but a stranger. He'd been waiting for the elevator, and when I hadn't been in it, as he had expected, he'd realized that it was a ruse. He'd been quick-witted, hiding in the cab immediately before I entered from the mud room.

He was sinuous and full of coiled power. His green gaze shone bright with terrible knowledge; these were the eyes of one who knew the many ways out of the Garden. His scaly lips formed the curve of a perfect lie: a smile in which malice tried to pa.s.s as friendly intent, in which amus.e.m.e.nt was in fact dripping venom.

Before I could think of a serpent metaphor to describe his nose, the snaky b.a.s.t.a.r.d struck. He squeezed the trigger of a Taser, firing two darts that, trailing thin wires, pierced my T-shirt and delivered a disabling shock.

I fell like a high-flying witch suddenly deprived of her magic: hard, and with a useless broom.

FOUR.

WHEN YOU TAKE MAYBE FIFTY THOUSAND VOLTS FROM a Taser, some time has to pa.s.s before you feel like dancing.

On the floor, doing a broken-c.o.c.kroach imitation, twitching violently, robbed of basic motor control, I tried to scream but wheezed instead.

A flash of pain and then a persistent hot pulse traced every nerve pathway in my body with such authority that I could see them in my mind's eye as clearly as highways on a road map.

I cursed my attacker, but the invective issued as a whimper. I sounded like an anxious gerbil.

He loomed over me, and I expected to be stomped. He was a guy who would enjoy stomping. If he wasn't wearing hobnail boots, that was only because they were at the cobbler's shop for the addition of toe spikes.

My arms flopped, my hands spasmed. I couldn't cover my face.

He spoke, but his words meant nothing, sounded like the sputter and crackle of short-circuiting wires.

When he picked up the broom, I knew from the way he held it that he intended to drive the blunt metal handle into my face repeatedly, until the Elephant Man, compared to me, would look like a GQ model.

He raised that witchy weapon high. Before he slammed it into my face, however, he turned abruptly away, looking toward the front of the house.

Evidently he heard something that changed his priorities, for he threw the broom aside. He split through the mud room and no doubt left the house by the back door.

A persistent buzzing in my ears prevented me from hearing what my a.s.sailant had heard, but I a.s.sumed that Chief Porter had arrived with deputies. I had told him that Dr. Jessup lay dead in the master bedroom on the second floor; but he would order a by-the-book search of the entire house.

I was anxious not to be found there.

In the Pico Mundo Police Department, only the chief knows about my gifts. If I am ever again the first on the scene of a crime, a lot of deputies will wonder about me more than they do already.

The likelihood was small to nonexistent that any of them would leap to the conclusion that sometimes the dead come to me for justice. Still, I didn't want to take any chances.

My life is already muy muy strange and so complex that I keep a grip on sanity only by maintaining a minimalist lifestyle. I don't travel. I walk almost everywhere. I don't party. I don't follow the news or fashion. I have no interest in politics. I don't plan for the future. My only job has been as a short-order cook, since I left home at sixteen. Recently I took a leave of absence from that position because even the challenge of making sufficiently fluffy pancakes and BLTs with the proper crunch seemed too taxing on top of all my other problems. strange and so complex that I keep a grip on sanity only by maintaining a minimalist lifestyle. I don't travel. I walk almost everywhere. I don't party. I don't follow the news or fashion. I have no interest in politics. I don't plan for the future. My only job has been as a short-order cook, since I left home at sixteen. Recently I took a leave of absence from that position because even the challenge of making sufficiently fluffy pancakes and BLTs with the proper crunch seemed too taxing on top of all my other problems.

If the world knew what I am, what I can see and do, thousands would be at my door tomorrow. The grieving. The remorseful. The suspicious. The hopeful. The faithful. The skeptics.

They would want me to be a medium between them and their lost loved ones, would insist that I play detective in every unsolved murder case. Some would wish to venerate me, and others would seek to prove that I was a fraud.

I don't know how I could turn away the bereft, the hopeful. In the event that I learned to do so, I'm not sure I'd like the person I would have become.

Yet if I could turn no one away, they would wear me down with their love and their hate. They would grind me on their wheels of need until I had been reduced to dust.

Now, afraid of being found in Dr. Jessup's house, I flopped, twitched, and scrabbled across the floor. No longer in severe pain, I was not yet fully in control of myself, either.

As if I were Jack in the giant's kitchen, the k.n.o.b on the pantry door appeared to be twenty feet above me. With rubbery legs and arms still spastic, I don't know how I reached it, but I did.

I've a long list of things I don't know how I've done, but I've done them. In the end, it's always about perseverance.

Once in the pantry, I pulled the door shut behind me. This close dark s.p.a.ce reeked of pungent chemical scents the likes of which I had never before smelled.

The taste of scorched aluminum made me half nauseous. I'd never previously tasted scorched aluminum; so I don't know how I recognized it, but I felt sure that's what it was.

Inside my skull, a Frankenstein laboratory of arcing electrical currents snapped and sizzled. Overloaded resistors hummed.

Most likely my senses of smell and taste weren't reliable. The Taser had temporarily scrambled them.

Detecting a wetness on my chin, I a.s.sumed blood. After further consideration, I realized I was drooling.

During a thorough search of the house, the pantry would not be overlooked. I'd only gained a minute or two in which to warn Chief Porter.

Never before had the function of a simple pants pocket proved too complicated for me to understand. You put things in, you take things out.

Now for the longest time, I couldn't get my hand into my jeans pocket; someone seemed to have sewn it shut. Once I finally got my hand in, I couldn't get it back out. At last I extracted my hand from the clutching pocket, but discovered that I'd failed to bring my cell phone with it.

Just when the bizarre chemical odors began to resolve into the familiar scents of potatoes and onions, I regained possession of the phone and flipped it open. Still drooling but with pride, I pressed and held 3, speed-dialing the chief's mobile number.

If he was personally engaged in the search of the house, he most likely wouldn't stop to answer his cell phone.

'I a.s.sume that's you,' Wyatt Porter said.

'Sir, yes, right here.'

'You sound funny.'

'Don't feel funny. Feel Tasered.'

'Say what?'

'Say Tasered. Bad guy buzzed me.'

'Where are you?'

'Hiding in the pantry.'

'Not good.'

'It's better than explaining myself.'

The chief is protective of me. He's as concerned as I am that I avoid the misery of public exposure.

'This is a terrible scene here,' he said.

'Yes, sir.'

'Terrible. Dr. Jessup was a good man. You just wait there.'

'Sir, Simon might be moving Danny out of town right now.'

'I've got both highways blocked.'

There were only two ways out of Pico Mundo-three, if you counted death.

'Sir, what if someone opens the pantry door?'

'Try to look like canned goods.'

He hung up, and I switched off my phone.

I sat there in the dark awhile, trying not to think, but that never works. Danny came into my mind. He might not be dead yet, but wherever he was, he was not anywhere good.

As had been true of his mother, he lived with an affliction that gravely endangered him. Danny had brittle bones; his mother had been pretty.

Simon Makepeace most likely wouldn't have been obsessed with Carol if she had been ugly or even plain. He wouldn't have killed a man over her, for sure. Counting Dr. Jessup, two men.

I had been alone in the pantry up to this point. Although the door didn't open, I suddenly had company.

A hand clasped my shoulder, but that didn't startle me. I knew my visitor had to be Dr. Jessup, dead and restless.

FIVE.

DR. JESSUP HAD BEEN NO DANGER TO ME WHEN HE WAS alive, nor was he a threat now.

Occasionally, a poltergeist-which is a ghost who can energize his anger-is able to do damage, but they're usually just frustrated, not genuinely malicious. They feel they have unfinished business in this world, and they are people for whom death has not diminished the stubbornness that characterized them in life.

The spirits of thoroughly evil people do not hang around for extended periods of time, wreaking havoc and murdering the living. That's pure Hollywood.

The spirits of evil people usually leave quickly, as though they have an appointment, upon death, with someone whom they dare not keep waiting.

Dr. Jessup had probably pa.s.sed through the pantry door as easily as rain through smoke. Even walls were no barrier to him anymore.