At the core, mystery novels were about good and evil, about the triumph of the former over the latter, and about the reliability of the justice system in a modern democracy. They were popular because they reassured the reader that the system worked far more often than not, even if the evidence of daily life sometimes pointed toward a more troubling conclusion. Marty had been able to work in the genre with conviction and tremendous pleasure because he liked to believe that law-enforcement agencies and the courts delivered justice most of the time and thwarted it only inadvertently. But now, the first time in his life that he'd turned to the system for help, it was in the process of failing him. Its failure not only jeopardized his life as well as the lives of his wife and children-but seemed to call into doubt the value of everything that he had written and the worthiness of the purpose to which he had committed so many years of hard work and struggle.

Lieutenant Lowbock returned through the living room, looking and moving as if in the middle of an Esquire magazine fashion photography session.

He was carrying a clear plastic evidence bag, which contained a black zippered case about half the size of a shaving kit. He put the bag on the dining-room table as he sat down.

"Mr. Stillwater, was the house securely locked when you left it this morning?"

"Locked?" Marty asked, wondering where they were headed now, trying not to let his anger show. "Yes, locked up tight. I'm careful about that sort of thing."

"Have you given any thought as to how this intruder might have gained entry?"

"Broke a window, I guess. Or forced a lock."

"Do you know what's in this?" he asked, tapping the black leather case through the plastic bag.

"I'm afraid I don't have X-ray vision," Marty said.

"I thought you might recognize it."

"No."

"We found it in your master bedroom."

"I've never seen it before."

"On the dresser."

Paige said, "Get it over with, Lieutenant."

Lowbock's faint shadow of a smile passed across his face again, like a visiting spirit shimmering briefly in the air above a seance table.

"It's a complete set of lock picks."

"That's how he got in?" Marty asked.

Lowbock shrugged. "I suppose that's what I'm expected to deduce from it."

"This is tiresome, Lieutenant. We have children we're worried about.

I agree with my wife-just get it over with."

Leaning over the table and regarding him once more with his patented intense gaze, the detective said, "I've been a cop for twenty-seven years, Mr. Stillwater, and this is the first time I've ever encountered professional lock picks."

"So?"

"They break glass or force a lock, like you said. Sometimes they pry a sliding door or window out of its track. The average burglar has a hundred ways of getting in-all of which are a lot faster than picking a lock."

"This wasn't an average burglar."

"Oh, I can see that," Lowbock said. He leaned away from the table, settled back in his chair. "This guy is a lot more theatrical than the average perp. He contrives to look exactly like you, spouts a lot of strange stuff about wanting his life back, comes armed with an assassin's gun threaded for a silencer, uses burglary tools like a Hollywoodized professional heist artist in a caper movie, takes two bullets man but walks away. He's downright flamboyant, this guy, but he's also muy misterioso, the kind of character Andy Garcia could play in a movie or, a lot better yet, that Ray Liotta who was in Goodfellas."

Marty suddenly saw where the detective was headed and understood why he was going there. The inevitable terminus of the interrogation should tumbled to it because it was too obvious. As a writer, he had been seeking some more exotic, complex reason for Lowbock's barely concealed disbelief and hostility, when all the while Cyrus Lowbock had been going for the cliche.

Still, the detective had one more unpleasant surprise to reveal.

He leaned forward again and made eye contact in what had ceased to be an effective confrontational manner and had become instead a personal tic as annoying and transparent as Peter Falk's disarmingly humble posture and relentless self-deprecation when he played Columbo, Nero Wolfe's thoughtful puckering of the mouth in moments of inspiration, James Bond's knowing smirk, or any of the slew of colorful traits by which Sherlock Holmes was characterized. "Do your daughters have pets, Mr.

Stillwater?"

"Charlotte does. Several."

"An odd collection of pets."

Paige said cooly, "Charlotte doesn't think they're odd."

"Do you?"

"No. What does it matter if they're odd or not?"

"Has she had them long?" Lowbock inquired.

"Some longer than others," Marty said, baffled by this new twist in the questioning even as he remained convinced that he understood the theory Lowbock was laboring to prove.

"She loves them, her pets?"

"Yes. Very much. Like any kid. Odd as you might think they are, she loves them."

Nodding, leaning away from the table again, drumming his pen against his notebook, Lowbock said, "It's another flamboyant touch, but also convincing. I mean, if you were a detective and disposed to doubt the whole scenario, you'd have to think twice if the intruder killed all of the daughter's pets."

Marty's heart began sinking in him like a dropped stone seeking the bottom of a pond.

"Oh, no," Paige said miserably. "Not poor little Whiskers, Loretta, Fred* not all of them?"

"The gerbil was crushed to death," Lowbock said, his gaze fixed on Marty. "The mouse had its neck broken, the turtle was smashed underfoot, and so was the beetle. I didn't examine the others that carefully."

Marty's anger flared into barely contained fury, and he curled his hands into tight fists under the table, because he knew Lowbock was accusing him of having killed the pets merely to lend credibility to an elaborate lie. No one would believe a loving father would stomp his daughter's pet turtle and break the neck of her cute little mouse for the shabby purpose that Lowbock thought motivated Marty, therefore, perversely, the detective assumed that Marty had done it, after all, because it was so outrageous as to exonerate him, the perfect finishing touch.

"Charlotte's going to be heartbroken," Paige said.

Marty knew that he was flushed with rage. He could feel the heat in his face, as if he'd spent the past hour under a sunlamp, and his ears felt almost as if they were on fire. He also knew the cop would interpret his anger as a blush of shame that was a testament of guilt.

When Lowbock revealed that fleeting smile again, Marty wanted to punch him in the mouth.

"Mr. Stillwater, please correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't you recently had a book on the paperback bestseller list, the reprint of a hardcover that was first released last year?"

Marty didn't answer him.

Lowbock didn't require an answer. He was rolling now. "And a new book coming out in a month or so, which some people think might be your first hardcover bestseller? And you're probably working on yet another book even now. There's a portion of a manuscript on the desk in your office, anyway. And I guess, once you get a couple of good career breaks, you've got to keep your foot on the gas, so to speak, take full advantage of the momentum."

Frowning, her whole body tense again, Paige seemed on the verge of precisely grasping the detective's ludicrous interpretation of Marty's crime report, the source of his antagonism. She had the temper in the family, and since Marty was barely able to keep from striking the cop, he wondered what Paige's reaction would be when Lowbock made his idiotic suspicions explicit.

"It must help a career to be profiled in People magazine," the detective continued. "And I guess when Mr. Murder himself becomes the target of a muy misterioso killer, then you'll get a lot more free publicity in the press, and just at a crucial turning point in your career."

Paige jerked in her chair as if she'd been slapped.

Her reaction drew Lowbock's attention. "Yes, Mrs. Stillwater?"

"You can't actually believe*"

"Believe what, Mrs. Stillwater?"

"Marty isn't a liar."

"Have I said he is?"

"He loathes publicity."

"Then they must have been quite persistent at People."

"Look at his neck, for Christ's sake! The redness, swelling, it'll be covered with bruises in a few hours. You can't believe he did that to himself."

Maintaining a maddening pretense of objectivity, Lowbock said, "Is that what you believe, Mrs. Stillwater?"

She spoke between clenched teeth, saying what Marty felt he couldn't allow himself to say, "You stupid ass."

Raising his eyebrows and looking stricken, as if he couldn't imagine what he'd done to earn such enmity, Lowbock said, "Surely, Mrs.

Stillwater, you realize there are people out there, a world of cynics, who might say that attempted strangulation is the safest form of assault to fake. I mean, stabbing yourself in the arm or leg would be a convincing touch, but there's always the danger of a slight miscalculation, a nicked artery, then suddenly you find yourself bleeding a lot more seriously than you'd intended. And as for selfinflicted gunshot wounds-well, the risk is even higher, what with the possibility that a bullet might ricochet off a bone and into deeper flesh, and there's always the danger of shock."

Paige bolted to her feet so abruptly that she knocked over her chair.

"Get out."

Lowbock blinked at her, feigning innocence long past the point of diminishing returns. "Excuse me?"

"Get out of my house," she demanded. "Now."

Although Marty realized they were throwing away their last slim hope of winning over the detective and gaining police protection, he also got up from his chair, so angry that he was trembling. "My wife is right.

I think you and your men better leave, Lieutenant."

Remaining seated because to do so was a challenge to them, Cyrus Lowbock said, "You mean, leave before we finish our investigation?"

"Yes," Marty said. "Finished or not."

"Mr. Stillwater* Mrs. Stillwater* you do realize that it's against the law to file a false crime report?"

"We haven't filed a false report," Marty said.

Paige said, "The only fake in this room is you, Lieutenant. You do realize that it's against the law to impersonate a police officer?"

It would have been satisfying to see Lowbock's face color with anger, to see his eyes narrow and his lips tighten at the insult, but his equanimity remained infuriatingly unshaken.

As he got slowly to his feet, the detective said, "If the blood samples taken from the upstairs carpet are, say, only pig's blood or cow's blood or anything like that, the lab will be able to determine the exact species, of course."

"I'm aware of the analytic powers of forensic science," Marty assured him.

"Oh, yes, that's right, you're a mystery writer. According to People magazine, you do a great deal of research for your novels."

Lowbock closed his notebook, clipped his pen to it.

Marty waited.

"In your various researches, Mr. Stillwater, have you learned how much blood is in the human body, say in a body approximately the size of your own?"

"Five liters."

"Ah. That's correct." Lowbock put the notebook on top of the plastic bag containing the leather case of lock picks. "At a guess, but an educated guess, I'd say there's somewhere between one and two liters of blood soaked into the upstairs carpet. Between twenty and forty percent of this look-alike's entire supply, and closer to forty unless I miss my guess. You know what I'd expect to find along with that much blood, Mr.

Stillwater? I'd expect to find the body it came from, because it really does stretch the imagination to picture such a grievously wounded man being able to flee the scene."

"I've already told you, I don't understand it either."

"Muy misterioso," Paige said, investing those two words with a measure of scorn equal to the mockery with which the detective had spoken them earlier.

Marty decided there was at least one good thing about this mess, the way Paige had not doubted him for an instant, even though reason and logic virtually demanded doubt, the way she stood beside him now, fierce and resolute. In all the years they had been together, he had never loved her more than at that moment.

Picking up the notebook and the evidence bag, Lowbock said, "If the blood upstairs proves to be human blood, that raises all sorts of other questions that would require us to finish the investigation whether or not you'd prefer to be rid of us. Actually, whatever the lab results, you'll be hearing from me again."

"We'd simply adore seeing you again," Paige said, the edge gone from her voice, as if suddenly she ceased to see Lowbock as a threat and could not help but view him as a comic figure.

Marty found her attitude infecting him, and he realized that with him, as with her, this sudden dark hilarity was a reaction to the unbearable tension of the past hour. He said, "By all means, drop by again."

"We'll make a nice pot of tea," Paige said.

"And scones."

"Crumpets."

"Tea cakes."

"And by all means, bring the wife," Paige said. "We're quite broad-minded. We'd love to meet her even if she is of another species."

Marty was aware that Paige was perilously close to laughing out loud, because he was close to it himself, and he knew their behavior was childish, but he required all of his self-control not to continue making fun of Lowbock all the way out the front door, driving him backward with jokes the way that Professor Von Helsing might force Count Dracula to retreat by brandishing a crucifix at him.

Strangely, the detective was disconcerted by their frivolity as he had never been by their anger or by their earnest insistence that the intruder had been real. Visible self-doubt took hold of him, and he looked as if he might suggest they sit down and start over again.

But self-doubt was a weakness unfamiliar to him, and he could not sustain it for long.