For a time, everything remained silent and motionless. Then Graves noticed a subtle movement at the water's edge.

She was standing by the ca.n.a.l, staring down at the gently flowing water, tall, slim, her white hair loose, falling over her shoulders, a figure he at once recognized as Allison Davies. She was dressed in a long nightgown, its hem sweeping over the ground as she drifted slowly along the edge of the channel. For a moment she stopped and lifted her head abruptly, as if something had occurred to her. Then she lowered it again, turned, and made her way toward the boathouse. She'd almost reached it, when a man suddenly came out from behind it, his hair as white as Miss Davies', his body wrapped in a checkered housecoat.

It was Saunders. Graves continued to watch as he walked directly to his employer and stopped in front of her, as if to block her way. They seemed to speak a few words, then Miss Davies nodded and headed back up the walkway to the house while Saunders remained near the boathouse, watching her until she reached the door, paused briefly, then went inside her home.

Saunders lingered a moment longer by the water, still staring toward the great house, his back both to Graves and to the dark grounds that separated them. Then, as if his duty had been done, he returned to the boathouse and disappeared inside.

After that the grounds remained motionless and deserted. But Graves lingered on the porch, peering out over the lake, oddly disturbed by the scene he'd just witnessed, peaceful though it was, quiet, tender, and yet, as the grim engine of his brain forever insisted, perhaps not entirely innocent.

Saunders arrived promptly at nine-thirty the next morning. Graves was already packed and waiting.

"Did you sleep well, sir?"

"I suppose," Graves answered.

On the way back to Britanny Falls, Saunders talked of nothing but the coming summer. "It's really nice here in the summer. Riverwood has everything anybody could want." He glanced toward Graves. "I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay."

"I haven't decided if I'm coming back for the summer," Graves told him.

Saunders nodded, but said nothing.

"Miss Davies went for a late walk last night," Graves added as casually as he could.

Saunders' eyes lifted toward the rear view mirror. "Miss Davies has trouble sleeping sometimes. Takes walks to relax." A beat pa.s.sed before he added, "To tell you the truth, Mr. Graves, I keep a lookout for her. It's easy for me to do it from my own place. From the boathouse, I mean."

"You live in the boathouse?"

"In what used to be the boathouse. It was converted into a regular house quite a few years ago. Anyway, from my bedroom window I can keep an eye on the house and grounds." Saunders appeared to consider his next words. "That's where she's taken to walking lately. Along the edge of the ca.n.a.l. I mean, since she started thinking about what happened to Faye Harrison."

"Did you see Faye the day she disappeared?" Graves asked.

"Yes, I did. She came around the side of the house, then headed across the lawn toward the woods. That was the last anybody saw of her. Except for that kid."

"What kid?"

"A local kid," Saunders answered. "He saw Faye walking in the woods near Indian Rock. It's all in the old newspaper clippings Miss Davies has back at the main house. The ones you'll be reading through if you decide to come back."

They'd reached the main street of Britanny Falls. Saunders guided the Volvo over to the curb, but did not get out. Instead, he turned to face Graves in the backseat. "Well, good-bye, Mr. Graves," he said with his quick smile. "Hope you come back for the summer."

Perhaps because of his natural suspiciousness, the veil of malicious motive and secret conclave that colored everything, Graves was not at all certain that Saunders hoped for any such return.

CHAPTER 5.

When the bus reached New York two hours later, Graves walked to the nearest station and took the subway to his apartment. An envelope waited for him just as Miss Davies had said it would.

"Something for you, Mr. Graves." The doorman drew it from a stack of others on his desk.

Graves took the envelope from him and went upstairs. But instead of opening it, he walked directly to his desk and sat down at his typewriter, feeling oddly guilty that he'd left Slovak on the rooftop ledge for so long, now eager to get him off it somehow.

He read through the last scene he'd written before leaving for Riverwood. At the end of it, Slovak stood at the far corner of the building, the vast city stretching out behind him, its spires and smokestacks charred black against a "bloodred dawn."

Graves stared at the word "bloodred" for a moment, decided it was lurid, and considered changing the color of the sunrise first to wine, then to burgundy. But these words seemed too soft. Too romantic. And so he decided to eliminate color altogether, so that with the rapid addition of a row of x's Slovak now stood with his back to a jagged cityscape, the buildings in a black silhouette against a background whose exact shading the reader could provide.

With that decision, Graves began to type again: "At last," Kessler said. He was grinning maliciously, his teeth broken and crazily slanted, a mouthful of desecrated tombstones. "At last I am bored enough to kill you."

Slovak wondered if he might yet deny Kessler that final victory. Glancing over the side of the building, he calculated the speed of his fall, the force of the impact. He imagined the sound of his bones as they struck the street below, sensed the sweetness of oblivion.

"Good-bye," Kessler told him.

Slovak said nothing, but merely stared silently into his eyes.

Kessler squared himself, took the pistol in both hands, and steadied his aim. "Yours was a heart I truly loved to break," he murmured as he drew back the c.o.c.k and slowly began to squeeze the trigger.

Now what?

Graves stared at the page, his fingers still on the typewriter keys as he struggled to find some way for his hero to get out of his predicament. This was the part he hated-the working out of the physical details, when it was the hearts and minds he really cared about. Still, it couldn't be avoided. Slovak must escape if the series was to continue. The only question was by what means.

Graves considered the possibilities. The first to occur to him was that Slovak could go over the side of the building just as Kessler pulled the trigger. Then he could grab the railing of the fire escape and swing to safety on the landing below.

He evaluated this idea for a moment, trying to recall if he'd ever used it. Various scenes of physical peril raced through his mind, tight spots he'd put Slovak in, then saved him from at the last minute. In The Prey of Chance The Prey of Chance, Slovak had hurled himself onto a pa.s.sing coal barge. In The Secrets of the Chamber The Secrets of the Chamber, he'd leaped in the path of an oncoming train, then scrambled out of harm's way, leaving Kessler standing on the deserted rails, a thin, bemused smile playing on his lips.

But Slovak had been younger then, vastly more agile, emboldened by a sense of his own invulnerability. In those earlier, less disillusioned days, he'd wanted to live, had expected his wife to live, had envisioned their growing old together, enjoying the comfort of their final days. His life had seemed to have a determined and authentic course then, a perceivable direction. He'd felt worthwhile, his work a mission, Kessler's recent escapes not yet a prelude to a life of failure.

But Slovak was middle-aged now, Graves thought, childless and alone, his body heavy, earthbound, a sack of flesh and blood, his mind continually racked by hideous images and chilling screams. Watching him as he faced Kessler, Graves wondered how all this might now affect his judgment, in what grim direction it might tend his increasingly tortured mind. Had he grown so tired of life that it would prevent him from seeing an opportunity for escape even if one presented itself? Graves imagined a rag man's wagon as it pa.s.sed along the street just below, saw Slovak realize that its high mound of clothing would surely break his fall, and yet, for all that, not jump.

Graves shook his head. That Slovak might make no attempt to save himself was a possibility he could not allow. Slovak must be saved. But only within the parameters of his character. His escape had to be natural, something utterly in line with his inner life and personality, a way out that Slovak would recognize, seize, successfully accomplish. It was Graves' task to find it. And so he remained at his desk, staring at the same page, trying to find the one solution that would perfectly fit Slovak's deeply imperfect life.

But as the minutes pa.s.sed, no escape route emerged. He got to his feet, stretched, and walked out onto the terrace. The bright afternoon sun warmed him, turning his mind away from the narrow ledge upon which he'd once again abandoned Slovak and toward the place from which he'd just returned, the mansion with its s.p.a.cious lawn, and where he now imagined two teenage girls making their way toward the woods, one dissolving as they neared the trees, the other vanishing into the forest's strangely watery depths.

He looked back into the cluttered living room of his apartment. The envelope Allison Davies had sent him lay on the small gla.s.s coffee table where he'd tossed it. Walking back inside the apartment, he picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside, he found seven photographs. Each was dated and identified.

The first showed two girls as they sat together at the top of a wide flight of wooden stairs. Allison Davies wore a white blouse and black shorts. She was quite slender, with bony knees, her dark hair cut bluntly in a Dutch-boy style. Faye Harrison wore denim shorts and a polo shirt. She had very light hair, probably blond, and it fell in thick waves to her shoulders.

But as Graves observed, these physical differences were only minor compared to the far more profound ones he saw in the teenagers. For while Allison appeared to slink away from the camera, Faye faced it squarely, as if daring it to do her harm. There was a keenness in her eyes, a forthrightness and candor that made Allison seem shy and secretive by comparison. It was a difference that suggested the nature of the friendship, Graves thought. The girls had come together through the peculiar attraction two contradictory natures often have for each other, each possessing exactly, and in perfect proportion, what the other lacked.

In the second photograph, Faye and Allison stand together on a wooden pier, both in swimsuits, Faye bareheaded, Allison with a rubber bathing cap. A circular pond stretches out behind them and Graves instantly imagined them turning from the camera and diving into the water's welcoming coolness. He studied the photograph, his mind taking in the small boathouse at the other side of the pond, the mansion that loomed majestically beyond it, the empty tennis court, a world whose physical characteristics seemed hardly to have changed since June 1946, when the picture had been taken.

In the third photograph, the girls stand amid a throng of people. A large striped tent rises over a neatly pruned lawn. There are tables covered with white tablecloths, crowded with plates of food and dotted with small American flags. Faye and Allison are posed before the gazebo, its wooden trellises hung in roses, the rear of the mansion like a great wall behind it. Faye's left arm rests firmly across Allison's shoulder, drawing her in a posture that struck Graves as curiously protective.

Four other photographs followed. In the first of them Faye and Allison sit in the tennis court, both in obligatory white shorts and blouses, though only Faye holds a racket. In another, Faye pushes a swing forward with what appears great force, her long blond hair flying wildly behind her. Although the face of the girl in the swing is blurred, Allison's distinctive Dutch-boy haircut is visible nonetheless.

In the next, the girls are once again on the pond, Allison slender, almost delicate, Faye's body noticeably fuller and more mature, her features caught in a beauty that struck Graves as utterly frank and open. Allison faces the camera from the far end of a small rowboat, her hand lifted in a wave. Faye sits at the near end, her body turned to the right, so that only her profile is visible. She seems to stare toward the pond's eastern bank, the great house that looms beyond it, her eyes fixed on its grand facade in a gaze of such naturalness and sense of trust that had Graves not known better, he would have thought Faye its heiress, Allison but the daughter of an employee.

There is a striking difference between this picture and the ones before it. For the first time, the two girls are not alone. A man sits near the center of the boat, smiling cheerfully as he grips the oars. He is young and clearly tall and extremely handsome, his hair cut short and parted in the middle. Dressed in the traditional summer attire of pleated linen trousers and white knit shirt, he looks very much at one with the splendor of his surroundings.

Graves guessed that the young man was probably Edward Davies and immediately began to spin a tale. In the story, Edward returns from Harvard to spend the summer on his family's estate. During the following weeks, he often finds himself in the company of Faye Harrison. Over the years Edward has watched Faye emerge from girlhood, grow unexpectedly desirable. Eventually she succ.u.mbs to his charms. She agrees to meet him from time to time in Manitou Cave. It is there they make love, an act Faye takes as a prelude to marriage. Edward, of course, has no such intention. For him, Faye is only a brief dalliance, a summer delight to be fondly recalled in the winter of his old age, told in his men's club over brandy and cigars. But Faye does not intend to be so easily dismissed. She threatens to go to Edward's parents, to force him to marry her. She and Edward agree to meet at Manitou Cave. At their meeting, Edward begs her to be reasonable, offers money. Insulted, Faye slaps him and turns to run away. He grabs her, now desperate to rid himself of a girl who has become a serious threat to his future. The result is murder.

Graves frowned and shook his head. This was not only the stuff of countless potboilers, it was a misreading of the small bits of character he'd gleaned from the photographs. Even in such a situation as he'd just imagined, Faye would have been unlikely to make a stir. She might have borne the baby and raised it, he thought. Or she might have submitted to an abortion. But in no case could he imagine this young woman disturbing the vast peace of Riverwood. The one thing that seemed clear from the pictures was the love Faye felt for this place, how deeply at home she was within its midst.

Graves turned to the final photograph. Faye stood alone before a ma.s.sive stone. The woods gather thickly around her, a web of deep green. Her young face is locked in an att.i.tude of deep thoughtfulness. The joy and playfulness so apparent in the earlier pictures has unexpectedly drained away.

For a moment Graves stared at the picture, but this time his mind did not make up a story to go with it. Instead, he studied the face that looked back at him with steady but unmistakably troubled eyes. Is the boulder she posed before Indian Rock, the "secret place" Allison had mentioned? And if so, what secrets yet lay guarded by its eternal silence?

He retrieved the overnight bag he'd taken with him to Riverwood, opened it, and took out Mrs. Harrison's letter, reading it as he knew Slovak would, trying to find some direction in the old woman's words. Nothing came, however, so after a time he lay the letter down among the photographs, his mind now focused on another question: Even if he chose to try it, could he actually do what Slovak did-find within the chaos of the darkest crime the one detail that brought the truth to light?

CHAPTER 6.

The same question was still on Graves' mind the next morning as he sat at his usual booth in a nearby diner. Across the street, two men stood beneath a tattered awning. Both wore dark green coveralls with the words "Progressive Plumbing" st.i.tched in white across the front. In most cases, their outfits alone would be enough to get them inside an apartment, the current occupant opening the door to them with little concern that they'd come to do anything more than find the leak that was, the men claimed, dripping into the apartment directly below.

Graves took a sip of coffee, now studying the men in the way Slovak would, searching for the odd gesture or article of clothing, the piece that didn't fit, and thus signaled a vast deception. One of the men carried a bulky metal toolbox, he noticed now. It was the sort that had accordion shelves inside, slots for drill bits, screwdrivers, hacksaws with then small metal teeth, trays for lead pipes and electrical cord, a vast supply of items that could be used for their work. Or put to other use.

Even as he continued to focus on the men, Graves could feel other sights returning to him, images from his lost boyhood. Gaslight New York had once protected him from them by drawing him into the distant past. Modern New York had served the same purpose by immersing him in its endless river of noise and movement. But recently both walls had begun to weaken: Graves now felt more vulnerable than he had at any time since fleeing the South.

One of the men had sunk his hands deep into the pockets of his coveralls. He was swaying gently, his lips moving to a song inside his head. Watching him, Graves suddenly recalled how Gwen had sometimes swung her hips right and left as she stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink, her voice occasionally stopped in a weepy break, imitating Connie Francis. Abruptly, he heard another voice, hard, cruel, brutally demanding. Sing, b.i.t.c.h! Sing, b.i.t.c.h!

Graves flinched. He turned from the men. Desperately trying to block the backward drift of his mind, he fixed his gaze on a tall man at the far end of the diner. But it did no good. Instantly, he was a thirteen-year-old child again, strapped to a chair in the sweltering farmhouse. Gwen peered at him beseechingly, her arms streaked with blood as she lifted herself from the wooden table, repeating his name as she staggered toward him, her voice barely able to carry beyond her swollen purple lips, Paul, Paul, Paul. Paul, Paul, Paul. He saw Sheriff Sloane staring at him, heard his own child's voice answer the older man's insistent questions, He saw Sheriff Sloane staring at him, heard his own child's voice answer the older man's insistent questions, I didn't see anything, Sheriff. I went to sleep in the field. I stayed there all night. Then, the next morning I didn't see anything, Sheriff. I went to sleep in the field. I stayed there all night. Then, the next morning ... It was the story he'd repeated over and over until the words themselves had finally stopped coming from him altogether, along with all other words, his year of silence abruptly begun. ... It was the story he'd repeated over and over until the words themselves had finally stopped coming from him altogether, along with all other words, his year of silence abruptly begun.

Graves was still sitting in the diner ten minutes later, a third cup of coffee growing cold before him as he gazed out the window, surveying the pa.s.sing crowd, a river of anonymous faces. He knew that it was his desire for this same anonymity that had drawn him to Manhattan. He'd wanted to lose himself in the great mult.i.tude, dissolve into its faceless ma.s.s. Before that, during the four years he'd continued to live in North Carolina following Gwen's death, he'd been perhaps the most conspicuous person in the county, a boy who'd been dreadfully unfortunate, losing first his mother and father, then his only sister, but weirdly lucky as well, since, as people noted, he'd not been in the car in which his parents had burned to death nor in the house when his sister had gone through the long ordeal of her murder. "You're a dark angel, Paul," Mrs. Flexner had once told him. "Cursed the same as blessed."

It was Mrs. Flexner who'd taken him in. She'd persuaded her husband, Clifford, that with their own boy now grown-up and moved away, it was only right to give his vacant room to a little boy who'd lost his whole family. Mr. Flexner had been reluctant, as Graves later learned. Flexner had not had a particularly close relationship with his own son, and therefore doubted that he'd do any better with a thirteen-year-old boy he scarcely knew. Yet, over time, Graves had grown fond of Mr. Flexner. At least enough to enjoy fishing with him in the creek or walking the broad fields together as night fell, the two of them silently watching as vast numbers of starlings made their homeward way across the evening sky. There was a solitary quality about Clifford Flexner, a sense of something sad and never spoken, and even as a young boy Graves had been able to detect a silence at his core, like the closed room of an ancient tragedy.

It was Mrs. Flexner who'd actually told him what that tragedy was, relating the story idly as she hung clothes on the line. Clifford was a twin, she said, his brother Milford "a spitting image." They'd been very close, the way twins often were, and one August afternoon, when they were only four, the two boys had gone out into a field to play. Clifford had s.n.a.t.c.hed a box of matches from a drawer in the kitchen, and as he was showing his brother how to strike them, he dropped a lighted flame into the parched gra.s.s. The flames shot up instantly, and Clifford began to run away, back toward the house. He was halfway there when he stopped and saw Milford still standing in place, either confused or mesmerized by the swelling tongues of flame. At that moment a gust of wind swept over the field, spreading the fire across Milford's bare feet, Clifford watching helplessly some twenty yards away. "It started with the cuffs of his britches," Mrs. Flexner said. "Then the fire just shot up his pants and leaped onto his shirttail and then flew up to his hair." By that time Milford had begun to flail about, spinning wildly, as she described it, "like one of them little dust devils you see in the fields during summer, only it was a boy on fire." She'd pinned the last of the clothes to the line by the time she uttered her last line: "That's what Clifford thinks about when you see him mooning around. That little brother of his that burned up way back then."

Later that same night, as he'd lain in his bed in the room he'd been given in Mrs. Flexner's house, Graves had seen it all like a movie in his head: a small blond boy standing in a pale yellow field, the line of fire slithering toward him, twisting as it came, like a flaming snake. "Milford," he'd whispered. It was the first word he'd uttered in a year.

Still, for all the horror of the story she'd told him, it was also Mrs. Flexner who'd undoubtedly done the most to help Graves get back to normal after his sister's murder. She'd never insisted that he turn off the light in his bedroom, and she'd been willing to sit up with him during the long black nights when he could not sleep, playing Parcheesi with him at the kitchen table. She'd taken him to the local swimming hole, and said nothing when he'd refused to go into the water. She'd taken him to the county fair as well, and watched with him as other kids trustfully clambered into metal rocket ships or lined up for the Haunted House, taking risks Graves would not take, seemingly eager to know fear because they'd never known terror.

But more than anything, Mrs. Flexner had never once during his long year of silence pressured Graves to speak. She'd always seemed quite confident that one day he'd talk again, that given time and patience, his shattered heart would mend.

It was this simple faith in his ultimate recovery, Graves supposed, that had made Mrs. Flexner finally insist that Sheriff Sloane stop making periodic visits to question him.

Graves had been sitting in the old wooden swing when the sheriff came that last time, close enough to hear what he said to Mrs. Flexner as the two of them stood together in the front yard: Martha, the fact is, what was done to Gwen Graves was the most terrible thing I've ever seen.

I don't doubt that, Sheriff.

She was hung, ma'am. Hung from a beam and cut open. Like an animal. Yes, I know.

And it's been almost a year, and right now I don't know one bit more than I did when I started. There's just one thing I know for sure. Whoever it was, he's still out there somewhere. Free as a bird. Looking for some other young girl.

I know, Sheriff.

That's what's so frustrating. The fact that I don't have a thing to go on. Just car tracks in the driveway, that's all. The boy, there, he's the only thing I got that's even close to a witness.

But if Paul wasn't at the house, what good can he do you?

Not much, I reckon.

Well, back when he was talking, he said he hadn't seen a thing. Said he never came to the house that night. Said he slept in the field a mile away.

Yes, I know he said that.

Then what's the good of keeping after him?

Graves had always remembered how Sheriff Sloane's eyes had slid over to him when he gave his answer: Well, if he didn't go home that night, then what about the hoe?

The hoe?

Why wasn't it with him when we found him in the field?

Where was it?

Inside the house. Near where his sister hung.

A shadow suddenly spread across the diner's speckled Formica table top, startling Graves, jerking him back into the present.

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

Graves glanced up. The waitress had long, straight hair, and for an instant she seemed to hang above him, swinging slowly, suspended by a cord but still alive, her hands clawing at the rope, red and raw, blood flowing down her arms in gleaming rivulets.

"How about a warm-up?"

Graves shook his head. "No, nothing else." His voice was a whisper.

She nodded and moved away, leaving him in the booth, the thick white coffee cup squeezed tight in his fingers. He could see the two men in green coveralls as they began to saunter toward the far corner of the street. He was still watching when they reached the end of the block. Then a truck swept by, blocking his view. Once it pa.s.sed, the pair was gone.

He finished the last of his coffee, rose, and headed out of the diner.

Normally, he would have gone back to his apartment after having breakfast. But the thought of returning to his typewriter, to a scene in which Slovak stood on a narrow ledge, staring hopelessly into Kessler's triumphant eyes, did not appeal to him. Instead, he decided to take a stroll, observe the great spectacle of the city on a bright summer morning.

He'd arrived in New York in the fall, only a month after his eighteenth birthday. He'd had nothing but the meager money he'd gotten from the sale of the family farm, but it had been enough to buy a bus ticket, rent an apartment, and keep him fed and clothed until he'd found a job. He'd never been in doubt as to why he'd come to New York. He'd seen it portrayed countless times in movies and magazines, a dense cityscape that was the exact opposite of the wide fields and empty woods and remote farmhouses of rural North Carolina, all of which filled him with a panicky sense of dread. The sheer density of the place, its teeming crowds, answered his need to surround himself with high walls, to walk streets that were never deserted. Once in the city, he'd moved into the most crowded neighborhood he could find, into the largest building on its most congested street, and in that building had chosen the apartment that had the thinnest walls. He would never again live in a place where screams could not be heard.

It was a tiny studio that looked out over the southwest corner of First Avenue and Twenty-third Street, and at night Graves took comfort in the proximity of his neighbors, the sounds they made as they came and went from their apartments. Morning and evening were best, but regardless of the hour he overheard a steady stream of life, people padding up and down the narrow corridor, chatting or bickering as they went. It never mattered what they said, only that they were so close. He needed only to feel their nearness, their vigilance, their eyes upon him, their ears listening. For he knew that the greatest evils required isolation. They were carried out in distant woods, deep bas.e.m.e.nts, lonely farmhouses. Places out of sight. Out of reach. Where nothing stirred but the will to harm. Never to be entirely alone, that was the only safety. He had concluded that such nearness was the only protection against what others might do to you. Or what you might do to others.

It was nearly noon by the time Graves returned to his apartment. He made a ham sandwich and ate it at the wrought-iron table on the terrace. It had little taste, as all things did to him. He felt textures, the gristle in the meat, the slosh of what washed it down. All else was mere gruel.

After eating, Graves returned to his typewriter and once again sought a way out for Slovak. But once again, nothing came. And so after an hour of futile striving, he lay down in his bedroom, hoping a short nap might refresh him, or that a solution might suddenly present itself in a dream.