He had been five years old that night when, in this very chair, he tasted the blood of her breast. Frank, seven years old then, had been asleep in the room at the end of the hall, and the twins, who'd only recently reached their birthday, were asleep in a crib in the room across from mother's. Being alone with her when all the others slept how unique and treasured that made him feel, especially since she was sharing with him the rich liquid of her arteries veins, which she never offered to his siblings; it was a sacred communion, dispensed and received, that remained their secret.

He recalled being in something of a swoon that night, merely because of the heavy taste of her rich blood and unbounded love that was represented by the gift of it, but cause of the metronomic rocking of the chair and the lul rhythms of her voice. As he sucked, she smoothed the hair away from his brow and spoke to him of G.o.d's intimacies for the world. She explained, as she had done many times before, that G.o.d condoned the use of violence when it was committed in the defense of those who were good and righteous. She told him how G.o.d had created men who thrived on blood so they might be used as the earthly instruments of G.o.d's revengements on behalf of the righteous. Theirs was a righteous love, she said, and G.o.d had sent Candy to them to be their Protector.

None of this was new. But though his mother had spoken of these things many times during their secret communions, Candy never grew tired of hearing them again. Candy often relished in the retelling of a favorite story. And as. certain particularly magical tales, this story somehow did become more familiar with retelling but curiously more righteous and appealing.

That night in his sixth year, however, the story took a turn. The time had come, his mother said, for him to accept the truly amazing talents he had been given, and embark on the mission for which G.o.d had created him. He had begun to exhibit his phenomenal talents when he was three, the age at which Frank's far more meager gifts had become evident. His telekinetic abilities-primarily his talent for telekinetic transportation of his own body-particularly enchanted Roselle, and she quickly saw the potential. They would never want for money as long as he could teleport at night into places where cash and valuables were locked away: bank vaults; the jewelry-rich, walk-in safes in Beverly Hills mansions. And if he could materialize within the homes of the Pollard family's enemies, while they slept, vengeance could be taken without fear of discovery or reprisal.

"There's a man named Salfont," his mother cooed to him as he took his nourishment from her wounded breast.

"He's a lawyer, one of those jackals who prey on upstanding folks, nothing good about him at all, not that one. He handled my father's estate-that your dear grandpa, little Candy-probated the will, charged too much, way too much, he was greedy. They're all greedy, those lawyers." The quiet, gentle tone in which she spoke was at odds with the anger she was expressing, but that contradiction added to the sweet, hypnotic quality of her message.

"I've tried for years to get part of the fee returned to me, like I deserve. I've gone to other lawyers, but they all say his fee was reasonable, they all stick up for each other, they're alike, peas in a pod, rotten little peas in rotten little pods. Took him to court, but judges are nothing except lawyers in black robes, they make me sick, the greedy lot of them. I've worried at this for years, little Candy, can't get it out of my mind. That Donald Salfont, living in his big house in Montecito, overcharging people, overcharging me, he ought to have to pay for that. Don't you think so, little Candy? Don't you think he ought to pay?"

He was five years old and not yet big for his age, as he would be from the time he was nine or ten. Even if he could teleport into Salfont's bedroom, the advantage of surprise might not be sufficient to ensure success. If either Salfont or his wife happened to be awake when Candy arrived, or if the first slash of the knife failed to kill the lawyer and brought him awake in a defensive panic, Candy would not be able to overpower him. He wouldn't be in danger of getting caught or harmed, for he could teleport home in a wink; but he would risk being recognized. Police would believe a man like Salfont, even as regarded such a fantastic accusation as murder lodged against a five-year-old boy. They would visit the Pollard place, as questions, poking around, and G.o.d knew what they might or come to suspect.

"So you can't kill him, though he deserves it," Roselle pered as she rocked her favorite child. She stared down intently into his eyes as he looked up from her exposed breast.

"Instead what you have to do is take something from him as revenge for the money he took from me, something precious to them. There's a new baby in the Salfont house. I read about it in the paper a few months ago, a little girl baby they called Reb Elizabeth. What kind of name is that for a girl, I ask you. Sounds highfalutin' to me, the kind of name a fancy lawyer and his wife would give a baby 'cause they think them and theirs are better than other people. Elizabeth is a queen's name, and you just look up what Rebekah is in the Bible, see if you don't think they think way too much of themselves and their little Rebekah... she's almost six months now, they've had her long enough to miss her when she's gone, miss her bad. I'll drive you past their house tomorrow, my precious little Candy let you see where it is, and tomorrow night you'll go there visit the Lord's vengeance on them, my vengeance. They'll think a rat got into the room, or something of the sort, and they'll blame themselves until the day they're dead too."

The throat of Rebekah Salfont had been tender, her blood salty. Candy enjoyed the adventure of it, the thrill of being in the house of strangers without their permission or knowledge Killing the girl while grownups slept in the adjoining room unaware, filled him with a sense of power. He was just a kid, yet he slipped past their defenses and struck a blow for mother, which in a way made him the man of the Pollard house.

That heady feeling added an element of glory to the excitement of the kill.

His mother's requests for vengeance were thereafter irrevocable.

For the first few years of his mission, infants and very young children were his only prey. Sometimes, in order not to create a pattern to the police, he did not bite them but disposed of them in other ways, and occasionally he took hold of them teleported out of the house with them, so no body was found.

An so, if Roselle's enemies had all been from in and around Santa Barbara, the pattern could not have been hidden. But often she required vengeance against people in far places, about whom she read in newspapers and magazines.

He remembered, in particular, a family in New York State, who won millions of dollars in the lottery. His mother had felt that their good fortune had been at the expense of the Pollard family, and that they were too greedy to be permitted to live. Candy had been fourteen at the time, and he had not understood his mother's reasoning-but he had not questioned it, either. She was the only source of truth to him, and the thought of disobedience had never crossed his mind. He had killed all five members of that family in New York, then burned their house to the ground with their bodies in it.

His mother's thirst for vengeance followed a predictable cycle.

Immediately after Candy killed someone for her, she was happy, filled with plans for the future; she would bake special treats for him and sing melodically while she worked in the kitchen, and she would begin a new quilt or an elaborate needlepoint project. But over the next four weeks her happiness would dim like a light bulb on a rheostat, and almost one month to the day after the killing, having lost interest in baking and crafts, she would begin to talk about other people who had wronged her and, by extension, the Pollard family. Within two to four more weeks, she would have settled on a target, and Candy would be dispatched to fulfill his mission. Consequently, he killed on only six or seven occasions each year.

That frequency satisfied Roselle, but the older Candy got, the less it satisfied him. He had not merely acquired a thirst for blood but a craving that occasionally overwhelmed him. The thrill of the hunt also intoxicated him, and he longed for it was an alcoholic longed for the bottle. Not least of all, the mindless hostility of the world toward his blessed mother motivated him to kill more often. Sometimes it seemed that virtually everyone was against her, scheming to harm her physically or to take money that was rightfully hers. She had no dearth of enemies. He remembered days when fear oppressed her; then at her direction all the blinds and drapes were drawn, the doors locked and sometimes even barricaded with chairs and other furniture, against the onslaught of adversaries who never came but who might have. On those bad days she became despondent and told him that so many people were out to hurt her that even he could not protect her forever. When he begged her to turn him loose, she refused and only said, "It's useless." Then, as now, he tried to supplement the approved murders with his forays into the canyons in search of small animals But those blood feasts, rich as they sometimes were, never quenched his thirst as thoroughly as when the vessel was human.

Saddened by too many memories, Candy rose from the rocking chair and nervously paced the room. The blinds were drawn as he glanced with increasing interest at the night beyond the window.

After failing to catch Frank and the stranger who had telaported into the backyard with him, after the confrontation with Violet had taken that unexpected turn and left him filled with undissipated rage, he was smoldering, hot to kill, but in need of a target. With no enemy of the family in sight, he would have to slaughter either innocent people or the small creature that lived in the canyons. The problem was-he dreaded evoking his sainted mother's disappointment, up there in heaven yet he had no appet.i.te for the blood of timid beasts.

His frustration and need built by the minute. He knew he was going to do something he would later regret, something that would make Roselle turn her face from him for a time Then, just when he felt he might explode, he was saved by the intrusion of a genuine enemy.

A hand touched the back of his head.

He whirled around, feeling the hand withdraw as he turned. It had been a phantom hand. No one was there.

But he knew it was the same presence that he had sensed in the canyon last night. Someone out there, not of the Pollard family, had psychic ability of his own, and the very fact that Roselle was not his mother made him an enemy to be found and eliminated. The same person had visited Candy several times earlier in the afternoon, reaching out tentatively, probing at him but not making full contact.

Candy returned to the rocking chair. If a real enemy is going to put in an appearance, it would be worth waiting for him.

A few minutes later, he felt the touch again. Light, hesitant, quickly withdrawn.

He smiled. He started rocking. He even hummed softly- one of his mother's favorite songs.

Banking the coals of rage eventually made them burn brighter. By the time the shy visitor grew bolder, the fire would be white hot, and the flames would consume him.

AT TEN minutes to seven, the doorbell rang. Felina Karaghiosis did not hear it, of course. But each room of the house had a small red signal lamp in one corner or another, and she could not miss the flashing light that was activated by the bell.

She went into the foyer and looked through the sidelight next to the front door. When she saw Alice Kasper, a neighbor from three doors down the street, she switched off the dead bolt, removed the security chain from its slot, and let her in.

"Hi, kid. How ya doing'?"

I like your hair, Felina signed.

"Do ya really? Just got it cut, and the girl said that I was the same old same old, or did I want to catch up with the time and I thought what the h.e.l.l. I'm not too old to be s.e.xy, ya think?"

Alice was only thirty-three, five years older than Felina. She had exchanged her trademark blond curls for a more mode cut that would require a new source of income just to pay for all the makeup she was going to use, but she looked great.

Come in. Want a drink?

"I'd love a drink, kid, and right now I could use six of ''em but I gotta say no. My in-laws came over, and we're about thinking about either playing cards with ''em or shooting ''em. It depends on their att.i.tude." Of all the people Felina knew in her day-to-day life, Alice was the only one, other than Clint, who understood sign language. Given the fact that most people harbored a prejudice against the deaf, to which they could not admit but on what they acted, Alice was her only girlfriend. But Felina was happy and would have given up their friendship if Mark Kasper-Alicson, for whom she had learned sign language-had not been born deaf "Why I came over, we got a call from Clint, asking me to tell ya he's not on his way home yet, but he expects to get here soon."

"So late?"

"maybe by eight. "Since when does he work so late?"

"They've got a big case. That always means some overtime.

"ya it's "He's going to take ya out to dinner, and says it's been an incredible day. I guess that's about the case, huh? Must be fascinating, married to a detective. And he's sweet, too. You're lucky, kid."

"Yes. But so is he.

Alice laughed.

"Right on! And if he comes home this late another night, don't settle for dinner. Make him buy ya diamonds."

Felina thought of the red gem he had brought home yesterday, and she wished she could tell Alice about it. But Dakota & Dakota business, especially concerning an ongoing case in which the client was in jeopardy, was as sacred in their house as the privacies of the marriage bed.

"Sat.u.r.day, our place, six-thirty? Jack'll cook up a mess of his chili, and we'll play pinochle and eat chili and drink beer and fart till we pa.s.s out. Okay?"

"Yes."

"And tell Clint, it's okay-we won't expect him to talk."

Felina laughed, then signed: He's getting better.

"That's 'cause you're civilizing him, kid."

They hugged again, and Alice left.

Felina closed the door, looked at her wrist.w.a.tch, and saw that it was seven o'clock. She had only an hour to get ready for dinner, and she wanted to look especially good for Clint, not because this was a special occasion, but because she always wanted to look good for him. She headed for the bedroom, then realized that only the automatic lock was engaged on the front door. She returned to the foyer, twisted the thumb screw that slid the dead bolt home, and slipped the security chain in place.

Clint worried about her too much. If he came home and found that she hadn't remembered the dead bolt, he'd age a year in a minute, right before her eyes.

so AFTER BEING off duty all day, Hal Yamataka responded to a call from Clint and came to the offices at 6: Tuesday night, to stand a watch in case Frank returned after the rest of them had left. Clint met him in the reception lounge and briefed him there over a cup of coffee. He had to be brought up to date on what had happened during his absence and after he heard what had gone down, he again wistfully considered a career in gardening.

Nearly everyone in his family either had a gardening business or owned a little nursery, and all of them did well, most of them better than what Hal made working for Dakota & Dakota, some of them a great deal better.

His folks, his three brothers, and various well-meaning uncles tried repeatedly to persuade him that he should work for them or come into business with them, but he resisted. It was not that he had anything against running a nursery, selling gardening supplies, land scape planning, tree pruning, or even gardening itself But southern California was not the place.

the term "j.a.panese gardener" was a cliche not a career, and he couldn't abide the thought of being a kind of stereotype.

He had been a heavy reader of adventure and suspense novels all his life, and he yearned to be a character like one of those he read about, especially a character worthy of being a lead in a John D. MacDonald novel, because John D's lead characters were as rich in insight as they were in courage, even as sensitive as they were tough. In his heart Hal knew that work at Dakota & Dakota was usually as mundane as the day grind of a gardener, and that the opportunities for heroism in the security industry were far fewer than they appeared to to outsiders. But selling a bag of mulch or a can of Specticide or a flat of marigolds, you couldn't kid yourself that you were a romantic figure or had any chance of being one. And, after all, self-image was often the better part of reality.

"If Frank shows up here," Hal said, "what do I do with him?"

"Pack him in a car and take him to Bobby and Julie."

"You mean their house?"

"No. Santa Barbara. They're driving up there tonight, staying at the Red Lion Inn, so tomorrow they can start digging into the Pollard family's background."

Frowning, Hal leaned forward on the reception-lounge sofa.

"Thought you said they don't figure ever to see Frank again."

"Bobby says he thinks Frank is coming apart, won't last through this latest series of travels. That's just his feeling."

"So then who's their client?"

"Until he fires them, Frank is."

"Sounds iffy to me. Be straight with me, Clint. What's really got them so committed to this one, especially considering how crazy-dangerous it seems to get, hour by hour?"

"They like Frank. I like Frank."

"I said be straight." Clint sighed.

"d.a.m.ned if I know. Bobby came back here spooked out of his mind. But he won't let go of it. You'd think they'd pull in their homes, at least until Frank shows up again if he does. This brother of his, this Candy, he sounds like the devil himself, too much for anyone to handle. Bobby and Julie are stubborn sometimes, but they're not stupid, and I'd expect them to let go of this, now that they've seen it's a job big enough for G.o.d, not a private detective. But here we are."

BOBBY AND JULIE huddled with Lee Chen at the desk, while he shared with them the information he had thus far obtained.

"The money might be stolen, but it's spendable," Lee said.

"I can't find those serial numbers on any currency hot sheets federal, state, or local."

Bobby had already thought of several sources from which Frank might have obtained the six hundred thousand now in the office safe.

"Find a business with a high cash flow, where they don't always get to a bank with the receipts at the end of the day, and you've got a potential target. Say it's a super market, stays open till midnight, and it's not a good idea for a manager to tote a lot of cash to a bank for automatic deposit. so there's a safe in the market. After the place closes, you trans port inside, if you're Frank, and use whatever other power you have to open that safe, put the day's receipts in a grocery bag, and vanish. You're not going to find big chunks of cash, a couple hundred thousand at a time, but you hit three or for markets in an hour, and you've got your haul."

Evidently Julie had been pondering the same question, she said, "Casinos. They all have accounting rooms you!" find on the blueprints, the ones the IRS gets into with a little effort. But they've got hidden rooms, too, where the skim goes Like big walk-in safes. Fort Knox would envy them. You use whatever minor psychic abilities you have to figure the location of one of those hidden rooms, teleport in when it's deserted and just take what you want."

"Frank lived in Vegas for a while,"

Bobby said. "Remember I told you about the vacant lot he took me to, where he'd had u a house."

"He wouldn't be limited to Vegas," Julie said.

"Reno, Tahoe, Atlantic City, the Caribbean, Macao, France, England, Monte Carlo-anywhere there's big-time gambling." This talk of easy access to unlimited amounts of cash excited Bobby, though he was not sure why. After all, it was Frank who could teleport, not him, and he was ninety-five-percent sure they were never going to see Frank again.

Spreading a sheaf of printouts across the desktop, Lee Chen said, "The money's the least interesting thing. You remember you wanted me to find out if the cops are on to Mr. Blue "Candy," Bobby said.

"We have a name for him now." Lee scowled.

"I liked Mr. Blue better. It had more style."

Entering the room, Hal Yamataka said, "I don't think you can trust the style judgment of a guy who wears red sneakers and yellow socks."

Lee shook his head. "We Chinese spend thousands of years working up an intimidating image for all Asians, so we can keep these hapless Westerners off balance, and you people in j.a.pan blow it all by making those G.o.dzilla movies. You can't be inscrutable and make G.o.dzilla movies."

"Yeah? You show me anybody who understands a G.o.dzilla movie after the first one."

They made an interesting pair, these two: one slender, modish, with delicate features, an enthusiastic child of the silicon age; the other squat, broad, with a face as blunt as a hammer, a guy who was about as high-tech as a rock.

But to Bobby the most interesting thing was that, until this moment, he had never thought about the fact that a disproportionately large percentage of Dakota & Dakota's small staff was Asian-American. There were two more-Nguyen Tuan Phu and Jamie Quang, both Vietnamese. Four out of eleven people. Though he and Hal once in a while made East-West jokes, Bobby never thought of Lee and Hal and Nguyen and Jamie as composing any subset of employees; they were just themselves, as different from one another as apples are different from pears and oranges and peaches. But Bobby realized that this predilection for Asian-American co-workers revealed something about himself, something more than just an obvious and admirable racial blindness, but he could not figure out what it was.

Hal said, "And nothing gets more inscrutable than the whole concept of Mother. By the way, Bobby, Clint's gone home to comfort Felina. We should all be so lucky."

"Lee was telling us about Mr. Blue," Julie said.

"Candy,"

Bobby said.

Indicating the data he had extracted from various police records nationwide, Lee said, "Most police agencies began to be computerized and interlinked only about nine years ago-in any sophisticated way, that is. So that's all the further back a lot of electronically accessible files go. But during that time, there have been seventy-eight brutal murders, in nine states, that have enough similarities to raise the possibility of a single perp- Just the possibility, mind you. But FBI got interested enough last year to put a three-man team on it, one in the office and two in the field, to coordinate local and stat& investigations."

"Three men?" Hal said.

"Doesn't sound like high priority."

"The Bureau's always been overextended," Julie said.

"And over the last thirty years, since it's been unfashionable for judges to hand out long criminal sentences, the bad guys outnumber them worse than ever. Three men, full time-that's a serious commitment at this stage." Extracting a printout from the pile on the desk, Lee summarized the essential data on it.

"All of the killings have the points in common. First-the victims were all bitten, most the throat, but virtually no part of the body is sacred to the guy. Second-many of them were beaten, suffered head injuries.

But loss of blood, from the bites-usually the jugular vein and carotid artery in the throat-was a substantial contributing factor to the death in virtually every instance, regardless of other injuries."