Spencer circled the air with the hand that held the Saturday-night special. 'Don't you see? She's still here. Her death bought you this house you'll never be rid of her. You think you're not in prison? Look! Look around you!'

There was only the light from the TV, but as Spencer's gaze moved around the room, it fell on the end table near the sofa. Next to the table lamp and the phone lay a semiautomatic pistol. Spencer thought it was fortunate the TV had been on loud and Nathan hadn't heard him come in; otherwise, now he would be being buried in Nathan's flower gardens.

Spencer lowered his gun and said, 'How do the dead philosophers justify that to have nothing you took a life of someone who loved you? You gave up love for death. You would rather have nothing than have love. Have love from Kristina. Don't you think her love was worth something? The little matchbooks that she saved from Edinburgh they were worth something. The little smiley faces on napkins with the names of pubs engraved on them they were worth something. They were worth more than this place you live in, looking out on the shores where you used to fly a kite when you were children.'

Nathan's eyes glistened, and he stood up, fast, fluid, facing off against Spencer. 'You know, it just occurred to me,' said Nathan. 'You're trespassing. And I've decided I don't want you here anymore. Get out or I'll call the police.'

'No need,' said Spencer. 'I'm here.'

Nathan took a step toward the phone and the gun.

Hair rose on the back of Spencer's neck. 'Don't move.'

'Or what? I'm tired of your games.' Nathan took another step.

'Nathan, I'm warning you. Don't move.' Spencer put both hands on his gun, cocked it, and assumed his firing stance. Nathan was now a few short paces away from his own gun. If he lunged for it, he'd have it in his hands.

'Spencer Patrick O'Malley, what are you going to do?' Nathan said with such rude malevolence that Spencer started to shake. 'Am I worth losing your job over?'

'Nathan, I've told you, you're not worth losing a night's sleep over.'

At the next instant, Nathan dove for his pistol, hand outstretched. Spencer pointed the Saturday-night special at Nathan's thigh and fired. Nathan fell, swiping his own gun with his hand onto the floor, and then tried madly to find it on the carpet. But in the darkness, he couldn't see where it had fallen. Nathan's gaze lowered on his leg, and then his frantic hands went around his wound.

Shooting in the dark was Spencer's specialty.

'What have you done?' Nathan gasped. 'What have you done?'

Even in the dark, Spencer saw blood flowing from the thigh through Nathan's gripping hands, onto the carpet. Spencer had shot out the femoral artery.

Nathan Sinclair had about four minutes before he bled to death. In the blue flashing moment, Spencer wondered if Kristina had had four minutes.

'What have you done?' Nathan whispered, his voice empty of anger. He was lying on the floor, holding his leg. The blood was as slick and thick as in a slaughterhouse. But it wasn't in red. The den wasn't in color. The harsh lights of the TV made the room appear black-and-white. Nathan's blood was black.

Spencer lowered his gun. He knew he'd no longer need it. Coming up close to Nathan and squatting down a few feet away from his head, Spencer said, 'I didn't come to arrest you, and I didn't come to get a confession out of you. Underneath these clothes I wore my safety vest. I knew you would try to kill me, and I was right.'

Nathan's eyes were glazed.

'Can you still hear me, Nathan? You know you're going to die. Kristina Sinclair was the only person in the world who would've mourned you dead. But she is gone, and now you'll die too, and not a single soul on earth will grieve for you, not a single soul on earth will claim your body when it's found here months and months from now by a disgruntled UPS man, or by the gardener. You will lie here in your own blood, dead, with no one asking for you, no one calling your name, no one wondering where you are. You will not have a little boy sitting by your side till morning, waiting for you to get up, like your father did.'

Spencer nearly cried.

'And when you're found,' he continued in a broken voice, 'and the coroner takes your body away, you will lie in the state hospital until the state buries you in a pauper's grave, or cremates your body and leaves your ashes in the furnace. No one will shed a tear for you, because you've brought nothing but grief and death into this world. You're leaving it a worse place. You did exactly what you wanted, and that was the only absolute truth you knew. You're going to die in about two minutes, and you will never see Kristina again.'

Nathan didn't speak, and then he whispered, 'Well, that's not true, detective. You're you are shedding a tear for me.'

Spencer almost fell back. 'Not for you, you bastard. Not for you.'

The seconds ticked by. Leaning down to him, whispering, Spencer asked, 'How did you do it? How did you get her, naked, cold, frightened, to come to you in the dead of night?'

Nathan's hold on his leg slipped, and he answered, 'I don't know what you're talking ' And then, much softer, 'She was afraid of the night, but she wasn't afraid of me. She would've come to me anywhere.'

Spencer couldn't speak. He smelled blood, other odors, he was feeling nauseated. 'Nathan,' he finally said. 'What are you hiding now? I'm not taping this, and you're, well, you're what are you afraid of?'

And Nathan answered, 'Death.'

Spencer said, 'Kristina, you think she was afraid of death?'

'Yes,' he replied. 'She was.' And very quietly, 'She didn't want to die.'

Spencer helplessly groaned aloud.

'You're dying for her, and for her mother, and for her grandmother, and for her father, and for Elizabeth Barrett, and for Constance Tobias. And for me, too. God gave you free will, and look at what you've done with it. You left her alone in the snow ... she didn't even have a priest bless her '

And here Nathan interrupted him. 'Bless me,' whispered Nathan hoarsely.

'The devil, is he ever blessed by God?' said Spencer. 'No, my sainted mother of eleven said. The devil chose his fate, and with his own hell he must pay. I looked and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.'

Nathan tried to shake his head, but couldn't. 'Something else,' he moaned, breathing convulsively.

'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,' said Spencer quoting Hezekiah.

He heard Nathan's hoarse voice, 'Eyes. Her eyes. I can't erase them from my memory. I can't close my own eyes without seeing hers. Will they be staring at me for eternity in hell? Lord have mercy on me. I don't want to see her eyes ever again, those black pools of comprehension and pain ...'

With his weakened knees nearly giving out, Spencer finally whispered, 'Believe in the Lord, and you shall be saved.'

Nathan let go his leg and sank to the floor, his body slowly emptying of life. Spencer crossed himself and waited.

Almost inaudibly, Nathan Sinclair said, 'For her, I deserve it.'

Five minutes later, Spencer left the house, carefully locking the kitchen door behind him. He walked on the side of Sound Beach Road toward the intersection and then he made a left and walked another mile and a half to the train station, where he took off the top layer of his clothes outside his car. He took the Saturday-night special and put it into a black plastic bag. With his knife, he ripped apart the clothes he had worn to Nathan's house, the gloves, and the boots. He put everything into the black travel bag and drove toward Long Island. On the way, he stopped in the Bronx in Co-Op City a minimetropolis of anonymous thirty-story buildings and vast parking lots. He threw the plastic bag with the gun in one of the overflowing public trash receptacles near the multiplex theater. He burned the black travel bag in another trash can in an empty lot. Then he went home and did something he hadn't done in the three and a half years since Kristina Sinclair had died. Spencer slept through the night.

EPILOGUE.

The children were sitting on the bench up at the castle afterward. They didn't usually stay in the enclave covered by yellow forsythia. This afternoon also, they came out and sat on the bench overlooking the peaceful water. After a few minutes, the girl's hands steadied. She primped her hair and touched the creases on her jeans, as if for comfort. There was comfort in neatness, in orderly things. It made her feel in control. Control was important to her.

'How come you don't like to swim?' she asked the boy.

He shrugged. 'Never learned how.'

'So why don't you learn now?'

'Not interested.'

'Why not? Swimming is such fun.'

'I don't like it.'

'Are you scared of the water?' she said teasingly. But he didn't smile, and the smile fell from her face. 'I'm sorry,' she said quickly. She didn't like the look in his eyes. It was cold, almost hateful.

'So why do you walk that stupid wall? There's water on one side of it you could fall in.'

He laughed. 'I'm not going to fall in.'

'How do you know?'

'I'm steady on my feet,' he said, 'and I'm quick.'

'You could fall in.'

'I'm not going to fall in. You, now you might fall in.'

'I hate walking that thing,' she admitted.

'Scaredy cat!' he teased.

'Not scaredy! Just ... careful.'

'So? Be careful not to fall in,' he said, and she flinched; she didn't like his playing with her words like that.

'If I fall, who'll save me?' she said petulantly.

'I would.'

'You would? But '

'I'd run with all my might and call for help.'

'I'd be dead and drowned by the time you got somebody.'

'I'd run fast. I'm very fast. Very quick.'

'You can't swim,' she repeated. 'You should learn how.'

'What are you so afraid of? If I fell in, who'd save me?'

'I would,' she said without hesitation. 'I'd jump in and save you.'

He laughed. 'We'd both die.'

'We wouldn't,' she said, offended. 'Princesses can rescue their princes, too.'

He shook his head. 'Yeah, and we'd live happily ever after.'

'Yes, we would,' she said earnestly.

He looked at her, equally earnestly. 'Promise?'

She crossed herself. 'Swear.'

'Don't do that,' he said quickly. 'Just say "swear," that's enough. You don't have to cross yourself.' The girl saw him shudder. She fell silent. Sometimes she didn't understand him, not one bit.

'Can I ask you a question?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Did you ever know your real mom and dad?'

The boy paused. 'No, never did. Don't remember them at all.'

'That's too bad,' said the girl, looking out onto the sound. 'That's kind of sad, isn't it?'

'No, not really. I mean, how can you miss what you've never had?'

T guess,' she said uncertainly, thinking. 'You have it now, though, don't you?'

'Yes,' he said.

'You know, with you around,' said Kristina, 'I'm not lonely anymore.'

'I know,' he said.

'Before you I was so lonely,' she continued. 'Now I feel like I have a brother for life.'

'You do,' he said. 'For as long as you live, I'll be your brother.'

'Thank you,' she said in a heartfelt voice. 'I know Momma and Daddy love you to death, too. They've always wanted a little boy, you know.'

'I don't believe it.'

She kicked a stone hard against a low stone wall. 'It's true. They only wanted a son. They love me and everything, but I overheard them talking one night, just before you came to live with us. Daddy was saying that if they were meant by God to have only one child, why couldn't my real twin brother have been saved instead?'

'And what did your momma say?'

'She said she was happy with whatever God had given them, but she just wished she could have another little baby to love.'

'She's really nice, your momma.'

Kristina smiled. 'Well, she's your momma now.'

He smiled, too. 'I suppose she is,' he said, sounding unconvinced. T suppose she is.'