"Thomas." She glanced at him.

"What about Thomas?"

"Since that wordburst, I can't shake the feeling he's in danger."

"What did that have to do with him?"

"I don't know. But I'd feel better if we could find a phone and put in a call to Cielo Vista. Just to be... sure." She let their speed fall dramatically. Within three miles they exited the freeway and pulled into a service station. There was a full-service lane. While the attendant washed their windows, checked the oil, and filled the tank with premium unleaded, they went inside and used the pay phone.

It was a modern electronic version allowing everything from coin to credit calls, on the wall next to a rack of snack crackers, candy bars, and packages of beer nuts. A condom machine was there, too, right out in the open, thanks to the social chaos wrought by AIDS. Using their AT&T credit card, Bobby called Cielo Vista Care Home in Newport.

It didn't ring or give a busy signal. He heard an odd series of electronic sounds, then a recording informed him that the number he had dialed was temporarily out of service as a result of unspecified line problems. The droning voice suggested that he try later.

He dialed the operator, who tried the same number, with the same results. She said, "I'm sorry, sir. Please call your party later."

"What line problems could they be having?"

"I wouldn't know, sir, but I'm sure service'll be restored soon." He had tilted the phone away from his ear, so Julie could lean in and hear both sides of the exchange. When he hung UP, he looked at her. "Let's go back. I got this hunch Thomas needs us."

"Go back? We're little more than half an hour from Santa Barbara now.

Much further to go home."

"He may need us. It's not a strong hunch, I admit, but it's persistent and... weird."

"If he needs help urgently," she said, "then we'd never get to him in time, anyway. And if it's not so urgent, it'll be okay if we go on to Santa Barbara, call again from the motel.

If he's sick or been hurt or something, the extra driving from here to Santa Barbara and back will only add about an hour."

"Well...

"He's my brother, Bobby. I care about him as much as you do, and I say it'll be all right. I love you, but you've never shown enough talent as a psychic to make me hysterical a this." He nodded.

"You're right. I'm just... jumpy. My knees haven't settled down since all that traveling with Frank." Back on the highway, a few thing tendrils of fog were creep in from the sea. Sprinkles of rain fell again, then stopped a less than a minute. The heaviness of the air, and an indefina but undeniable quality of oppressiveness in the utterly blue night sky, portended a major storm.

When they had gone a couple of miles, Bobby said, should've called Hal at the office. While he's sitting around there waiting for Frank, he could use some of our contactsthe phone company, the cops, make sure everything's jake Cielo Vista."

"If the lines are still out when you make the call from motel," Julie said, "then you can bother Hal about it." FROM THE weak psychic residue on the drinking gla.s.s, Can received an image of Julie Dakota that was recognizablysame face that had seeped from Thomas's mind earlier inevening-except that it was not as idealized as it had been Thomas's memory. With his sixth sense he saw that she had gone home from the office, to the address he had obtained earlier from the secret's Rolodex. She hadthere a she ry bee time, then had gone somewhere in a car with another pers most likely the man named Bobby. He could see no more, a he wished that the traces she left behind had been as stro as those of Jaxx.

He put down the tumbler and decided to go to her hou Though she and Bobby were not there now, he might be a to find an object that would, like the liquor gla.s.s, lead him a other step or two along their trail.

If he found nothing, could return here and continue his search, a.s.suming the police had not arrived in response to the discovery of the dead m outside.

mw LEE SWITCHED off the computer, then cut off the CD player too-Huey Lewis and The News were in the middle of "Walking On a Thin Line"-and removed the earphones.

Happy after a long and productive session in the land of silicon and gallium a.r.s.enide, he stood, stretched, yawned, and checked his watch. A little after nine. He'd been at work for twelve hours.

He should have wanted nothing more than to flop in bed and sleep half a day. But he figured he'd zip back to his condo, which was ten minutes from the office, freshen up, and catch some nightlife. Last week he'd found a new club, Nuclear Grin, where the music was loud and hard-edgd, the drinks unwatered, the crowd's politics unconsciously libertarian, and the women hot. He wanted to dance a little, drink a little, and find someone who wanted to screw her brains out.

In this age of new diseases, s.e.x was risky; it sometimes seemed that drinking from the same gla.s.s as someone else was suicidal. But after a day in the painstakingly logical microchip universe, you had to get a little wild, take some risks, dance on the edge of chaos, to get some balance in your life.

Then he remembered how Frank and Bobby had vanished in front of his eyes. He wondered if maybe he hadn't already had enough wildness for one day.

He picked up the latest printouts. It was more stuff that he had gleaned from police records, regarding the decidedly weird behavior of Mr Blue, who would never need to get a little wild for balance, since he was already chaos walking around in shoes. Lee opened the door, switcfied off the lights, went down the hall and through another door into the lounge, intending to leave the printouts on Julie's desk and say goodnight to Hal before splitting.

When he walked into Bobby and Julie's office, it looked like the National Wrestling Federation had sanctioned a match there between tag teams of three-hundred-pound hulks. Furniture was overturned, and Scotch gla.s.ses, some of them broken, were scattered over the floor.

Julie's desk was aslant and askew: tilting on one shattered leg; the top no longer was properly aligned with the base, as if someone had gone at it with prybars and hammers.

"Hal?" No answer.

He gingerly pushed open the door to the adjoining bat "Hal?" The bathroom was deserted.

He went to the broken window. A few small shards of gi still clung to the frame. Caught the light. Jagged.

With one hand against the wall, Lee Chen carefully lea out. He looked down. In a much different tone of voice, he"Hal?" CANDY MATERIALIZED in the foyer of the Dakotas' house which was dark and silent. He stood quietly for a mom head c.o.c.ked, until he was confident that he was alone.

His throat was healed. He was whole again, and excited the prospects of the night.

He began the search from there, putting his hand on doork.n.o.b in hope of finding some of the residue that,lacking physical substance, nevertheless provided the nourishment for his visions. He felt nothing, no doubt partly because the Dakotas had touched it only briefly upon entering and parting the house.

Of course, a person could handle a hundred items, leaving psychic images of himself on only one of them, then touch same hundred an hour later and contaminate every onehis aura. The reason for that was as mysterious, to Candy, was so many people's interest in s.e.x. He remained as grate to his mother for this talent as he was for all the others, tracking his prey with psychometry was not always an or infallible process.

The Dakotas, living room and dining room were unfurnished, which gave him little to work with, although for so reason the emptiness made him feel comfortable and at home That response puzzled him. The rooms in his mother's house were all furnished-as much with mold and fungus and!"

these days as with chairs, sofas, tables, and lamps; but hedenly realized that, like the Dakotas, he lived in such a small Percentage of the house that most of its chambers might as well have been bare, carpetless, and sealed off.

The Dakotas' kitchen and family room were furnished a obviously lived in. Though it was unlikely that they had us the family room during their brief stop between the office and wherever they had gone from here, he hoped they might have lingered in the kitchen for a bite of food or a drink. But the handles of the cabinets, microwave, oven, and refrigerator provided him with no images whatsoever.

On his way to the second floor, Candy climbed the steps slowly, letting his left hand slide searchingly along the oak bal.u.s.trade. At several points along the way, he was rewarded by psychic images that, while brief and not clear, encouraged him, and led him to believe that he would find what he needed in their bedroom or bath.

INSTEAD OF immediately dialing 911 to reportmurder of Hal Yamataka, Lee ran first to the reception and, as he had been trained, removed a small brown notebo from the back of the bottom drawer on the right side. For benefit of employees, like Lee, who did not often get into field and seldom interfaced directly with the county's many lice agencies but might one day need to deal with them in emergency, Bobby had composed a list of some of the office detectives, and administrators who were most profession reasonable, and reliable in every majorjurisdiction. The bro notebook contained a second list of cops to avoid: thosehad an instinctive dislike for anyone in the private investigation and security business; those who were just pains in a.s.s in general; and those who were always on the lookout a little green grease to lubricate the wheels of justice. It a testament to the high quality of the county's law enforcem that the first list was much longer than the second.

According to Bobby and Julie, it was preferable to try manage the introduction of the police into a situation that quired them, even going so far as to try to select one of detectives who would show up at the scene-if it was a scene that needed detectives. Relying on the luck of the draw dispatcher's whim was considered unwise.

Lee wondered if he should even call the cops. He had doubt who had killed Hal. Mr. Blue. Candy. But also he knew that Bobby would not want to reveal more about Frank a the case than was truly necessary; the agency-client privile was not as legally airtight as that of lawyer-client or doct patient, but it was important too. Since Julie and Bobby on the road and temporarily unreachable, Lee could get guidance on what and how much to say to the police.

But he couldn't let a dead body lie in front of the building, hoping n.o.body would notice! Especially not when the victim was a man he had known and liked.

Call the cops, then. But play dumb.

Consulting the notebook, Lee dialed the Newport Beach Police and asked for Detective Harry Ladshroke, but Ladshroke was off duty. So was Detective Janet Heisinger. Detective Kyle Ostov was available, however, and when he came on the line he sounded rea.s.suringly big and competent; his voice was a mellow baritone, and he spoke crisply.

Lee identified himself, aware that his own voice was higher than usual, almost squeaky, and that he was speaking too fast.

"There's been a... well, a murder." Before hee could go on, Ostov said, "Jesus, you mean Bobby and Julie know already? I just found out myself.

It was pushed on to me to tell them, and I was just sitting here, trying to figure how best to break the news. I had my hand on the phone, going to call them, when you rang through. How're they taking it?" Confused, Lee said, "I don't think they know. I mean, it must have happened just a few minutes ago."

"A little longer than that," Ostov said.

"When did you guys find out? I just looked, and there weren't any patrol cars, nothing." Finally the shakes. .h.i.t him.

"G.o.d, I was talking to him not that long ago, took him some pizza, and now he's splattered all over the concrete six floors down." Ostov was silent. Then: "What murder you talking about, ?"

"Hal Yamataka. There must've been a fight here, and then-" He stopped, blinked, and said,.'What murder are you talking about?"

"Thomas," Ostov said.

Heed felt sick. He had only met Thomas once, but he knew that Julie and Bobby were devoted to him.

Ostov said, "Thomas and his roommate. And maybe more in the fire if they didn't get them all out of the building in time." The computer that Lee had been born with was not functioning as smoothly as the ones made by IBM in his office, and he needed a moment to grasp the implications of the information that he and Ostov had exchanged. "They've got to be conected, don't they?",Ild bet on it. You know of anybody who has a gru against Julie and Bobby?" Lee looked around the reception lounge, thought about other deserted rooms at Dakota & Dakota, the lonely offing on the rest of the sixth floor, and the unpeopled levels bel the sixth.

He thought of Candy, too, all those people bitten torn, the giant Bobby had seen on Punaluu Beach, the way guy could zap himself from place to place. He began to very much alone.

"Detective Ostov, could you get some peo here really fast?"

"I've entered the call on the computer while I've been ting to you,"

Ostov said.

"A couple of units are on the now." WITH HIS fingertips, Candy traced lazy circles on the su of the dresser, then explored the contours of each bra.s.s hang on the drawers. He touched the light switch on the wall the switches on both bedside lamps. He let his hands glidedoorframes on the off-chance that one of his intended p might have paused and leaned there while in conversation, amined the handles on the mirrored closet doors, and cares each number and switchpad on the remote-control device the TV, hoping that they had clicked on the set even dur the short time they had been home.

Nothing.

Because he needed to be calm and methodical in his sea if he were to succeed, Candy had to repress his rage and frustration. But his anger grew even as he struggled to contain and in him the thirst of anger was always a thirst for blo that wine of vengeance. Only blood would slake his thi quench his fury, and allow him an interlude of relative peace By the time he moved from the Dakotas' bedroom into adjoining bath, Candy was possessed of a need for blood alm as undeniable and critical as his need for air. Looking at mirror, he did not see himself for a moment, as if he cast reflection; he saw only red blood, as if the mirror were a p hole on one of the lower decks of a ship in h.e.l.l, on a cr through a sea of gore. When that illusion faded and he saw his own face, he quickly looked away.

He clenched his jaws, struggled even harder to control himself, and touched the hot-water faucet, searching, seeking....

THE MOTEL Room in Santa Barbara was s.p.a.cious, quiet, clean, and furnished without the jarring clash of colors and patterns that seemed de rigueur in most American motels-but it was not a place in which Julie would have chosen to receive the terrible news that came to her there.

The blow seemed greater, the ache in the heart more piercing, for having to be home in a strange and impersonal place.

She really had thought that Bobby was letting his imagination run away with him again, that Thomas was perfectly fine. Because the phone was on the nightstand, he sat on the, edge of the bed to make the call, and Julie watched him and listened from a chair only a few feet away. When he got that recording again, explaining that the Cielo Vista number was temporarily out of service due to line problems, she was vaguely uneasy but still sure that all was well with her brother.

However, when he called the office in Newport to talk with Hal, got Lee Chen instead, and spent the first minute or so listening in shocked silence, responding with a cryptic word or two, she knew this was to be a night that cleaved her life, and that the years to come inevitably would be darker than the years she had lived on the other side of that cleft. As he began to ask questions of Lee, Bobby avoided looking at Julie, which confirmed her intuition and made her heart pound faster.

When at last he glanced at her, she had to look away from the sadness in his eyes. His questions to Lee were clipped, and she couldn't ascertain much from them. Maybe she didn't want to.

Finally the call seemed to be drawing to an end.

"No, you've done well, Lee. Keep handling it just the way you have been. What? Thank you, Lee. No, we'll be all right. We'll be okay, Lee. One way or another, we'll be okay." When Bobby hung up, he sat for a moment, staring at his hands, which he clasped between his knees.

Julie did not ask him what had happened, as if what Lee had told him was not yet fact, as if her question was a dar magic and as if the unrevealed tragedy would not become re until she asked about it.

Bobby got off the bed and knelt on the floor in front of her chair. He took both of her hands in his and gently kissed the She knew then that the news was as bad as it could get.

Softly he said, "Thomas is dead." She had steeled herself for that news, but the words cut deep "I'm sorry, Julie. G.o.d, I'm so sorry. And it doesn't end there." He told her about Hal.

"And just a couple minutes before he talked to me, Lee received a call about Clint and Felina Both dead." The horror was too much to a.s.similate. Julie had liked an respected Hal, Clint, and Felina enormously, and her admiration for the deaf woman's courage and self-sufficiency washounded. It was unfair that she could not mourn each of the individually; they deserved that much. She also felt that she was somehow betraying them because her sorrow at their deaths was only a pale reflection of the grief she felt at the lose of Thomas, though that was, of course, the only way it could be.

Her breath caught in her throat, and when it flew free, i was not just an exhalation but a sob. That was no good. Sh could not allow herself to break down. At no point in her life had she needed to be as strong as she needed to be now; the murders committed in Orange County tonight were the fir in a domino-fall of death that would take down her and Bobby too, if misery dulled their edge.

While Bobby continued to kneel before her and reveal moor details-Derek was dead, too, and perhaps others at Ciel Vista-she gripped his hands tightly, inexpressibly gratefulhave him for an anchor in this turbulence. Her vision was blurry, but she held back the tears with a sheer effort of will though she dared not make eye contact with Bobby just seeing that would be the end of her self-control.

When he finished, she said, "It was Frank's brother,course,"

and was dismayed by the way her voice quavered.

"Almost certainly," Bobby said.

"But how did he find out Frank was our client?"

"I don't know. He saw me on the beach at Punaluu-"

"Yeah, but didn't follow you. He has no way of knowin who you were. And for G.o.d's sake, how did he find out about Thomas?"

"There's some crucial bit of information missing, so we can't understand the pattern."

"What's the b.a.s.t.a.r.d after?" she said. Now her voice was marked by nearly as much anger as grief, and that was good.

"He's hunting Frank," Bobby said.

"For seven years Frank was a loner, and that made him harder to find.

Now Frank has friends, and that gives Candy more ways to search for him."

"I as good as killed Thomas when I took the case," she said.

"You didn't want to take it. I had to talk you into it."

"I talked you into it, you wanted to back out."

"If there's guilt, we share it, but there isn't any. We took on a new client, that's all, and everything... just happened." Julie nodded and finally met his eyes. Although his voice had remained steady, tears slid down his cheeks. Preoccupied with her own grief, she had forgotten that the friends lost were his as well as hers, and that he had come to love Thomas nearly as much as she did. She had to look away from him again.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"For now, I have to be. Later, I want to talk about Thomas, how brave he was about being different, how he never complained, how sweet he was.

I want to talk about all of it, you and me, and I don't want us to forget. n.o.body's ever going to build a monument to Thomas, he wasn't famous, he was, just a little guy who never did anything great except be the best person he knew how, and the only monument he's ever going to have is our memories. So we'll keep him alive,-won't we?"

"Yes."

"We'll keep him alive... until we're gone. But that's for later, when there's time. Now we have to keep ourselves alive, because that son of a b.i.t.c.h will be coming for us, won't he?"

"I think he will," Bobby said.

He rose from his knees and pulled her up from the chair.