She stopped and realized how long ago that had been and how fresh it still seemed in her mind. Some things become part of who you are whether you invite them in or not. "I ended up at a health clinic off campus."

"And Childs worked there?"

"He volunteered there."

"Doing abortions?" Walt asked matter-of-factly.

"No, of course not," Teri said. "This before Roe versus Wade. Abortion was still illegal back then."

"That didn't prevent them from happening."

"It wasn't that kind of clinic."

"Were you pregnant?"

She cast her eyes downward at her coffee cup and shook her head. "No. We had Gabe four years later, after both of us were out of school and Michael was working for Henry & Patterson."

"You left the Bay Area and moved up here?"

"There was a group of us, a bunch of friends who always hung around together. After college we decided to stick together if we could. Back then, communal living was a pretty common thing. So we all kind of migrated up here."

"And you lived together?"

"For awhile," she said. She finished the rest of her coffee, and got up to return the cup to the kitchen sink. "Then some of us got married and moved into our own places, and others got jobs that took them out of the area, and some just lost interest and drifted away like lonely clouds in the sky."

"How did you hook up with Childs again?"

"When I got pregnant with Gabe we started asking around about a good general practitioner. It was all part of that getting back to nature thing we were trying so hard to do at the time. I was planning on using a midwife for the birth, and after that I wanted to take my baby to a good family doctor, a Marcus Welby type, like they had back in the Fifties, someone who might actually make a house call once in awhile." Teri finished washing out her coffee cup and placed it in the rack next to the sink. For a moment, she gazed out the kitchen window at the apartment across the way, letting the color of her thoughts melt into the creamy caramel color of the building. "Someone mentioned to me that Childs had set up a practice in the area. So three weeks after Gabe was born, I took him in to see him."

"What was Childs doing up this way? Did he ever say?"

"I don't remember exactly. Something about wanting to get away from the city."

"Like everyone else, huh?"

"Yeah." Teri broke away from the window and came back and sat down at the table. Her thoughts drifted through the last time she had spoken to Childs and what he had told her about Gabe's aging. Then magically, they drifted to the night when she had put Gabe on the phone to talk to his father. It was the only time she could remember Gabe lighting up with a smile.

"I've gotta call Michael and tell him what's happened," she said suddenly.

Walt dropped the pencil and stretched. "Maybe he already knows."

"No, we talked to him the other night on the phone. He didn't know anything. I had to convince him it was really Gabe."

"You called him?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Gabe wanted to talk to him." And then something suddenly occurred to her, something she had nearly forgotten. She slumped back in her chair, and felt all the energy drain out of her as if it were one final breath before dying. "Oh, my God."

"What? What is it?"

"I just remembered. That thing Childs mentioned, that Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. Gabe's aging process-it's speeding up."

[72].

For a time after that, nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be said. The implication was like a dark secret suddenly exposed to the light of day. Out in the open, it was perhaps more manageable, but that didn't make it any less monumental. Time had become of the essence now.

A sense of despondence quietly settled over Teri like a dark thunder cloud, and she nearly let herself sink back into the abyss of the last couple of days. That would have been easy for her. So easy. All she would have had to do was close her eyes, and let the sleep come. But instead she got up and stood at the living room window. She gazed out over the city lights, watching the traffic patterns glow, and thinking how huge the town had grown the past fifteen years.

Gabe was out there somewhere.

And he needed her.

When she came back to the table, Walt took out his pencil and they made a list of things they needed to get done, people they needed to talk to. The list went on for nearly three pages, one item, one line. And they agreed to get started on it the next morning.

It was a little after midnight when Teri finally went off to bed.

Tomorrow was going to be the day she started looking.

And she was going to keep looking until Gabe came home again.

[73].

Mitch watched the lights go off in the upstairs apartment. He opened his notebook, checked his watch, and made this entry: 12:27 A.M. TRAVIS APARTMENT. LIGHTS OFF.

It was getting cold out. The sky was clear and according to the weatherman the temperature was supposed to slip below forty tonight. He closed his notebook, stuffed it into the inside pocket of his coat, and leaned against the corner of the building, deciding to wait awhile longer. A couple more minutes of enduring the cold and he could assure himself they had truly retired for the night. Always better to be on the safe side.

Mitch blew some heat into his cupped hands, then folded his arms across his chest, and watched a brown tabby emerge from the row of shrubs across the walkway. The cat let out a hungry meow and weaved back and forth between Mitch's legs before he picked her up.

"What are you doing out in the cold, huh? Somebody lock you out?" He scratched behind her ear, absently enjoying the deep resonance of her purr, while he watched the apartment.

Two of a kind, we are, huh? Out late like this.

Except cats were known for their independence and now that Mitch thought about it, however briefly, he realized he had never been what you might call independent. Divorced. No children. Nothing had worked in his life until he had enlisted in the military in his early twenties. From that day until this, he had thrived on being told what to do next. As long as there was someone willing to hand down the orders, Mitch had his place in the world.

Maybe they weren't two of a kind after all.

"Still, it's too cold for man or beast," he said, absently.

He went to return the cat to the ground and the sudden movement sent the tabby into a surprising frenzy. She let out a wail, scratched him across the back of the hand, and struggled to free herself from his grasp. Mitch let out a wail of his own, and wrapped his hand around the cat's neck.

"Jesus, you little bastard! Jesus Christ Almighty! Why'd you go and do that!"

In one swift motion, he flung her across the walkway. She struck a six-by-six support beam, let out another screech, and fell to the ground, dazed. Mitch checked his hand. The scratch had drawn blood.

"Jesus."

The tabby climbed drunkenly to her feet, shook her head, then wandered back into the maze of shrubbery.

"Jesus Christ, you little bastard!"

He sucked blood from the wound and spit it out, hating the coppery taste it left in his mouth. Enough. That was enough for one night. He took another drink of blood, spit it out, and started around the corner on slightly shaky legs.

The car was parked on the other side of the street, half a block down. As Mitch made his way along the sidewalk, images from the accident the other day floated back to him like lost, soulless ghosts. Though he had lost one of his men (something he had experienced only twice before, both occasions under hostile circumstances), it wasn't the accident that had troubled him. It was knowing that it could have been prevented if he had done his job right in the first place. The first night the night he had gone to the Knight house after the boy that should have been the end of it. Right there, right then. There never should have been an accident. There never should have been a death.

He arrived at the car, climbed in, and sat there a moment.

The street was deserted. There had been a brief shower earlier in the day, and the sheen of standing water was a mirror to the street lights all the way down the block. A Mercedes passed by, its tires wading noisily through the puddles.

Night... the time of dark secrets and faceless people, Mitch thought remotely.

They had come upon Walter Travis as much by accident as anything, which-if a man were to be honest with himself-was the way most things happened in life. The world was not nearly as organized or purposeful as we liked to fool ourselves into believing. Chance, Mitch had long ago come to realize, played a bigger role than any of us cared to admit.

In this instance, someone apparently knew someone, who knew someone else, who knew someone in the local police department. And that someone was familiar with the Knight woman and her background. He was also apparently familiar with Walter Travis, an ex-cop. Mitch didn't have the full story-as usual, the less he knew the better off he was-but apparently there had been some sort of past relationship between the two of them.

So someone had gambled on a tap, and the tap had paid off.

It had been as simple as that.

Mitch started up the car, looked over his shoulder, saw there was no traffic, and pulled out into the lane. It was nearly one in the morning now. He'd have to be back here again around seven or so, in case one of them happened to be an early riser. How long this was going to go on, he didn't know, but he hoped it wouldn't be much longer. This was not the kind of assignment that made him eager to get up in the morning.

He passed a thin man in his late fifties, uneven beard stubble, gray hair, ragged clothes that were a couple of sizes too large. The man walked as if he had no bones. His arms dangled lazily, his knees seemed to buckle with each and every step. Without looking up, he raised his right arm into the air and flipped Mitch the finger.

Night... the time of dark secrets and faceless people.

[74].

In what he thought was mid-morning-there was no clock in the room-Gabe busied himself with a hand-held video game. It was a poker game and it was one of a dozen or so games that had been brought in the day before. They had also brought in a color television set. It was somehow rigged to the Cartoon Network. There were only so many hours of cartoons a kid could watch.

The poker game beeped and a new hand was dealt: two fives, a king, a queen, and a seven. No chance for a flush or a straight. Gabe balanced the game on one leg while he pressed the necessary buttons to keep the two fives.

He was gradually growing used to the cast on his arm. There were three things, though, that the cast had made difficult. The first was eating, which was fine as long as he didn't have to cut meat or open a milk carton. Last night, Miss Tilley-she was the woman who brought him his meals and had brought him the games-had to return with a second milk after he spilled the first one all over the bed. It hadn't been much fun trying to use the bathroom, either. Mostly it was a matter of working out the logistics, though there had been some trial and error and a little embarrassment as well. And finally, it was like wearing a lifejacket to bed. The cast was always in the way, always taking up space. It was impossible to find a comfortable position.

Gabe hadn't slept well last night. Not well at all.

Another beep from the game and three new cards were dealt: a five, an ace, and a ten. That left him with three fives, a decent enough hand. He pressed a gray-colored button, cleared the screen, and was about to draw a new hand when a knock came at the door.

He looked up.

The door swung open, and Miss Tilley stepped through, balancing a stainless steel meal tray in one hand. "Lunch time."

"Already?"

"It's been four hours since breakfast."

"What time is it?"

"A little after twelve," she said. She placed the tray on a bedside table, removed the cover from the plate, and a cloud of steam rose into the air. Lunch today was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and corn. There was a wheat roll off to one side, and a carton of milk that she immediately opened for him. "Hungry?"

"Not really."

"Well, you need to keep your strength up, Gabriel."

"Why?"

Miss Tilley was not Miss Churchill. She was an older woman, heavyset, with bright blue eyes that were always averting his gaze. As uneasy with him, he believed, as he was with her. The truth was... he just didn't like her very much. She had given no reason to like her. And there was something cold and disturbing about her.

"You sound like you think we're fattening you up for the kill," she said.

"Are you?"

"Don't be silly."

Gabe stared down at his lunch a moment, and used his fork to toy with the mashed potatoes. "When do I get to go home?"

"Not for awhile I'm afraid."

"Yeah, but when?"

"It's not up to me when you go home or when you eat your meals or when anything around here happens. I don't make the decisions."

"Yeah, but when do I get to go home," Gabe whispered under his breath. He tried the meat loaf, which wasn't as dry as the chicken had been last night. A little ketchup wouldn't hurt. Neither would some salt.

He took another stab at the mashed potatoes and watched Tilley use her keys to unlock the top drawer of the medical cabinet just left of the door. She brought out a short rubber hose and a syringe, which she placed on a stainless steel tray. She carried the tray and its contents around the foot of the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"I need to take some blood."

"From me?"

"Yes. From you." She placed the tray on a bedside table, and went about unlocking a nearby drawer and pulling out some cotton swabs and Band-Aids.

"I'd rather not, thank you." Gabe could only recall a couple of occasions when someone had drawn blood from him. His earliest memory was of an incident in the third grade, when he had been drinking too much water according to his mother, and she had grown worried about something she called diabetes. His grandmother had apparently had it and his mother thought maybe he did, too. It turned out that he didn't, which made it hard for him to understand why he'd had to go through all the trouble of having that huge needle stuck in his arm. More recently, Dr. Childs had drawn his blood. Gabe wasn't going to go through that again. And he especially wasn't going to go through it for Tilley.

"Don't be obstinate, Gabriel."

He pushed his lunch tray aside. "I don't have diabetes."

"This isn't about diabetes."

"Then what's it about?"

She picked up the rubber hose, stretched it, and seemed to take delight at the sound of it snapping back to size again. "Give me your arm, Gabriel."

He shook his head, then pressed his elbow against his side and locked it in place.