One of the benefits of living in a single room - the armchair a few steps from the bed, the bed a few steps from the refrigerator - is that the search for an intruder takes less than a minute. Your blood pressure hasn't the time to rise to stroke-inducing levels when you need only look behind the sofa and in a single closet to clear all possible hiding places.

Only the bathroom remained to be searched.

That door was closed. I had left it open.

After a shower, I always leave it open because the bathroom has a single small window, hardly more than a porthole, and an exhaust fan that makes all the noise of - but stirs less air than - a drum set hammered by a heavy-metal musician. If I didn't leave the door open, the bath would be ruled by aggressive mutant molds with a taste for human flesh, and I would be forced henceforth to bathe in the kitchen sink.

Unclipping the phone from my belt, I considered calling the police to report an intruder.

If officers arrived and found no one in the bathroom, I would look foolish. And scenarios occurred to me in which I might appear worse than merely foolish.

I glanced at the gun on the floor. If it had been placed with careful calculation, with the intent that I should pick it up, why did someone want me to have possession of it?

After putting the phone on the breakfast counter, I stepped to one side of the bathroom door and listened intently. The only sounds were the periodic song of the night bird and, after a long pause, the plonk plonk of another water drop in the kitchen sink. of another water drop in the kitchen sink.

The k.n.o.b turned without resistance. The door opened inward.

Someone had left a light on.

I am diligent about conserving electricity. The cost may be only pennies, but a short-order cook who hopes to marry cannot afford to leave lights burning or music playing for the pleasure of the spiders and spirits that might visit his quarters in his absence.

With the door open wide, the small bathroom would offer nowhere for an intruder to hide except in the bathtub, behind the closed shower curtain.

I always close the curtain after taking a shower, because if I left it drawn to one side, it would not dry properly in that poorly vented s.p.a.ce. Mildew would at once set up housekeeping in the damp folds.

Since I'd left Tuesday morning, someone had pulled the curtain aside. That person or another was at this moment facedown in the bathtub.

He appeared to have fallen into the tub or to have been tumbled there as a dead weight. No living person would lie in such an awkward position, face pressed to the drain, his right arm twisted behind his body at a torturous angle that suggested a dislocated shoulder or even a torn rotator cuff.

The fingers of the exposed, pale hand were curled into a rigid claw. They did not twitch; neither did they tremble.

Along the far rim of the tub, a thin smear of blood had dried on the porcelain.

When blood is spilled in quant.i.ty, you can smell it: This is not a foul odor when fresh, but subtle and crisp and terrifying. I couldn't detect the faintest scent of it here.

A glistening spill of liquid soap on the tile counter around the sink and thick soap sc.u.m in the bowl suggested that the killer had washed his hands vigorously after the deed, perhaps to scrub away blood or traces of incriminating gunpowder.

After drying, he had tossed the hand towel into the tub. It covered the back of the victim's head.

Without conscious intent, I had backed out of the bathroom. I stood just beyond the open door.

My heart played an inappropriate rhythm for the melody of the night bird.

I glanced toward the gun on the carpet, just inside the front door. My instinctive reluctance to touch the weapon had proven to be wise, although I still didn't grasp the full meaning of what had transpired here.

My cell phone lay on the breakfast counter, and the apartment phone was on the nightstand beside my bed. I considered those whom I should should call and those I call and those I could could call. None of my options appealed to me. call. None of my options appealed to me.

To better understand the situation, I needed to see the face of the corpse.

I returned to the bathroom. I bent over the tub. Avoiding the hooked and twisted fingers, I clutched handfuls of his clothing and, with some struggle, wrestled the dead man onto his side, and then onto his back.

The towel slid off his face.

Still a washed-out gray but devoid now of their characteristic eerie amus.e.m.e.nt, Bob Robertson's eyes were more sharply focused in death than in life. His gaze fixed intently on a distant vision, as though in the final instant of existence, he had glimpsed something more startling and far more terrifying than just the face of his killer.

CHAPTER 32.

FOR A MOMENT I EXPECTED FUNGUS MAN TO BLINK, to grin, to grab me and drag me into the tub with him, to savage me with those teeth that had served him so well during his gluttony at the counter in the Pico Mundo Grille.

His unexpected death left me with no immediate monster, with my plan derailed and my purpose in doubt. I had a.s.sumed that he was the maniacal gunman who shot the murdered people in my recurring dream, not merely another victim. With Robertson dead, this labyrinth had no Minotaur for me to track down and slay.

He had been shot once in the chest at such close range that the muzzle of the gun might have been pressed against him. His shirt bore the gray-brown flare of a scorch mark.

Because the heart had stopped functioning in an instant, little blood had escaped the body.

Again I retreated from the bathroom.

I almost pulled the door shut. Then I had the strange notion that behind the closed door, in spite of his torn heart, Robertson would rise quietly from the tub and stand in wait, taking me by surprise when I returned.

He was stone dead, and I knew knew that he was dead, and yet such irrational worries tied knots in my nerves. that he was dead, and yet such irrational worries tied knots in my nerves.

Leaving the bathroom door open, I stepped to the kitchen sink and washed my hands. After drying them on paper towels, I almost washed them again.

Although I had touched only Robertson's clothes, I imagined that my hands smelled of death.

Lifting the receiver from the wall phone, I unintentionally rattled it against the cradle, almost dropped it. My hands were shaking.

I listened to the dial tone.

I knew Chief Porter's number. I didn't need to look it up.

Finally I racked the phone again without entering a single digit on the keypad.

Circ.u.mstances had altered my cozy relationship with the chief. A dead man awaited discovery in my apartment. The gun that had killed him was here, as well.

Earlier I had reported an unsettling encounter with the victim at St. Bartholomew's. And the chief knew that I had illegally entered Robertson's house on Tuesday afternoon and had thereby given the man reason to confront me.

If this pistol was registered to Robertson, the most obvious a.s.sumption on the part of the police would be that he had come here to demand to know what I'd been doing in his house and perhaps to threaten me. They would a.s.sume that we had argued, that the argument had led to a struggle, and that I had shot him with his own gun in self-defense.

They wouldn't charge me with murder or with manslaughter. They probably wouldn't even take me into custody for questioning.

If the pistol wasn't wasn't registered to Robertson, however, I'd be as stuck as a rat on a glue-board trap. registered to Robertson, however, I'd be as stuck as a rat on a glue-board trap.

Wyatt Porter knew me too well to believe that I could kill a man in cold blood, when my life was not at risk. As the chief, he set the policies for the department and made important procedural decisions, but he wasn't the only cop on the force. Others would not be so quick to declare me innocent under questionable circ.u.mstances, and if for no reason but appearances, the chief might have to park me in a cell for a day, until he could find a way to resolve matters in my favor.

In jail, I would be safe from whatever b.l.o.o.d.y catastrophe might be descending on Pico Mundo, but I would be in no position to use my gift to prevent the tragedy. I couldn't escort Viola Peabody and her daughters from their house to the safer refuge of her sister's home. I couldn't find a way to induce the Takuda family to change their Wednesday plans.

I had hoped to follow the bodachs to the site of the impending crime as Wednesday morning gave way to afternoon, when this event seemed destined to occur. Those malevolent spirits would gather in advance of the bloodshed, perhaps giving me enough time to change the fates of all all those who were unwittingly approaching their deaths at that as yet unknown place. those who were unwittingly approaching their deaths at that as yet unknown place.

Odysseus in chains, however, cannot lead the way back to Ithaca.

I include this literary allusion solely because I know Little Ozzie will be amused that I would have the audacity to compare myself to that great hero of the Trojan War.

"Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think that you can bear to give it," he instructed before I began to write, "because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope."

My promise to obey this instruction has become more difficult to fulfill as my story progresses relentlessly toward the hour of the gun. The light recedes from me, and the darkness gathers. To please my ma.s.sive, six-fingered muse, I must resort to tricks like the Odysseus bit.

Having determined that I couldn't turn to Chief Porter for help in these circ.u.mstances, I switched off all the lights except the one in the bathroom. I couldn't bear to be entirely in the dark with the corpse, for I sensed that, even though dead, he still had surprises in store for me.

In the gloom, I quickly found my way through the cluttered room with as much confidence as if I had been born sightless and raised here since birth. At one of the front windows, I twisted the control rod to open the Levolor.

To the right, I could see the moonlit stairs framed in slices by the slats of the blind. No one was ascending toward my door.

Directly ahead lay the street, but because of the intervening oaks, I didn't have an un.o.bstructed view. Nevertheless, between the branches I could see enough of Marigold Lane to be certain that no suspicious vehicles had parked at the curb since my arrival.

Judging by the evidence, I wasn't under observation, but I felt certain that whoever had whacked Bob Robertson would be back. When they knew that I had come home and discovered the cadaver, they would either pop me, too, and make the double murder look like murder-suicide, or more likely place an anonymous call to the police and land me in the cell that I was determined to avoid.

I knew a set-up when I saw one.

CHAPTER 33.

AFTER CLOSING THE LEVOLOR AT THE WINDOW, leaving the lights off, I went to the bureau, which was near the bed. In this one room, everything could be found near the bed, including the sofa and the microwave.

In the bottom drawer of the bureau I kept my only spare set of bed linens. Under the pillowcases, I found the neatly pressed and folded top sheet.

Although without a doubt the situation warranted the sacrifice of good bedclothes, I regretted having to give up that sheet. Well-made cotton bedding is not cheap, and I am mildly allergic to many of the synthetic fabrics commonly used for such items.

In the bathroom, I opened the sheet on the floor.

Being dead and therefore indifferent to my problems, Robertson could not be expected to make my job easier; however, I was surprised when he resisted being hauled out of the tub. This wasn't the active counterforce of conscious opposition, but the pa.s.sive resistance of rigor mortis.

He proved to be as stiff and difficult to manage as a pile of boards nailed together at odd angles.

Reluctantly, I put a hand to his face. He felt colder than I'd expected that he would.

Perhaps adjustments needed to be made in my understanding of the events of the previous evening. Unthinkingly, I had made certain a.s.sumptions that Robertson's condition didn't support.

To learn the truth, I had to examine him further. Because he had been lying facedown in the tub when I'd found him, before I'd turned him over, I now unb.u.t.toned his shirt.

This task filled me with loathing and repugnance, which I had antic.i.p.ated, but I wasn't prepared for the abhorrent sense of intimacy that sp.a.w.ned a slithering nausea.

My fingers were damp with sweat. The pearlized b.u.t.tons proved slippery.

I glanced at Robertson's face, certain that his gaze would have refocused from some otherworldly sight to my fumbling hands. Of course his expression of shock and terror had not changed, and he continued staring at something beyond the veil that separates this world and the next.

His lips were slightly parted, as though with his last breath he had greeted Death or had spoken an unanswered plea.

Looking at his face had only made my heebie-jeebies worse. When I lowered my head, I imagined that his eyes tracked the shifting of my attention to the stubborn b.u.t.tons. If I had felt a fetid breath exhaled against my brow, I might have screamed, but I wouldn't have been surprised.

No corpse had ever creeped me out as badly as this one. For the most part, the deceased with whom I interact are apparitions, and I am spared too much familiarity with the messy biological aspect of death.

In this instance, I was troubled less by the scents and sights of early-stage corruption than by the physical peculiarities of the dead man, mostly that spongy fungoid quality that had marked him in life, but also by his extraordinary fascination - as revealed in his files - for torture, brutal murder, dismemberment, decapitation, and cannibalism.

I undid the final b.u.t.ton. I folded back his shirt.

Because he wore no undershirt, I saw the advanced lividity at once. After death, blood settles through the tissues to the lowest points of the body, giving those areas a badly bruised appearance. Robertson's flabby chest and sagging belly were mottled, dark, and repulsive.

The coolness of his skin, the rigor mortis, and the advanced lividity suggested that he had not died within the past hour or two but much earlier. The warmth of my apartment would have accelerated the deterioration of the corpse, but not to this extent.

Very likely, in St. Bart's cemetery, when Robertson had given me the finger as I'd looked down on him from the bell tower, he had not been a living man but an apparition.

I tried to recall if Stormy had seen him. She had been stooping to retrieve the cheese and crackers from the picnic hamper. I had accidentally knocked them from her hands, spilling them across the catwalk No. She hadn't seen Robertson. By the time she got up and leaned against the parapet to look down at the graveyard, he had gone.

Moments later, when I opened the front door of the church and encountered Robertson ascending the steps, Stormy had been behind me. I had let the door fall shut and had hustled her out of the narthex, into the nave, toward the front of the church.

Before going to St. Bart's, I'd seen Robertson twice at Little Ozzie's place in Jack Flats. The first time, he had been standing on the public sidewalk in front of the house, later in the backyard.

In neither instance had Ozzie been in a position to confirm that this visitor was a real, live person.

From his perch on the windowsill, Terrible Chester had seen the man at the front fence and had strongly reacted to him. But this did not mean that Robertson had been there in the flesh.

On many occasions, I have witnessed dogs and cats responding to the presence of spirits - though they don't see bodachs. Usually animals do not react in any dramatic fashion, only subtly; they seem to be totally cool with ghosts.

Terrible Chester's hostility was probably a reaction not to the fact that Robertson was an apparition but to the man's abiding aura of evil, which characterized him both in life and death.

The evidence suggested that the last time I'd seen Robertson alive had been when he'd left his house in Camp's End, just before I had loided the lock, gone inside, and found the black room.

He had haunted me since, and angrily. As though he blamed me for his death.