"Murphey's still up there in his office," Mossman said. "Dr. Thurlow's here now and Murphey says he'll give himself up in seven minutes. We're going to wait him out. Over."

"Okay, car nine. Jack's on his way with four more men. Sheriff's still out at the house with the coroner. Sheriff says don't take any chances. Use gas if you have to. Time is two forty-six; over."

"Car nine is seven-oh-five," Mossman said. "Over and out." He hung the microphone in its rack, turned back to Thurlow. "What a sweet mess!" He pushed his cream sombrero back from his forehead.

"There's no doubt he killed Adele?" Thurlow asked.

"No doubt."

"Where?"

"At their house."

"How?"

"Knife -- that big souvenir thing he was always waving around at barbecues."

Thurlow took a deep breath. It fitted the pattern, of course. A knife was the sickly logical weapon. He forced himself to professional calmness, asked: "When?"

"About midnight near as we can figure. Somebody called an ambulance but they didn't think to notify us for almost half an hour. By the time we got on it Joe was gone."

"So you came down here looking for him?"

"Something like that."

Thurlow shook his head. As he moved, one of the spotlights shifted and he thought he saw an object hanging in the air outside Murphey's window. He jerked his attention upward and the object appeared to flow backward up into the dark sky. Thurlow removed his gla.s.ses, rubbed his eyes. Strange thing -- it had looked like a long tube. An aftereffect from the injury to his eyes, he thought. He replaced the gla.s.ses, returned his attention to Mossman.

"What's Joe doing in there?" Thurlow asked. "Any idea?"

"Calling people on the telephone, bragging about what he's done. His secretary, Nella Hartnick, had to be taken to the hospital in hysterics."

"Has he called . . . Ruth?"

"Dunno."

Thurlow thought about Ruth then, really focused on her for the first time since she'd sent back his ring with the polite little note (so unlike her, that note) telling of her marriage to Nev Hudson. Thurlow had been in Denver on the fellowship grant that had come to him through the National Science Foundation.

What a fool I was, he thought. That grant wasn't worth losing Ruth.

He wondered if he should call her, try to break this news to her as gently as possible. But he knew there was no gentle way to break this news. It had to be done swiftly, cruel and sharp. A clean wound that would heal with as small a scar as possible . . . under the circ.u.mstances.

Moreno being the small town it was, he knew Ruth had kept her job after her marriage -- night shift psychiatric nurse at the County Hospital. She'd be at the hospital now. A telephone call would be too impersonal, he knew. It'd have to be done in person.

And I'd be irrevocably a.s.sociated with the tragedy, he thought. I don't want that.

Thurlow realized then that he was daydreaming, trying to hold onto something of what he and Ruth had known together. He sighed. Let someone else break the news to her. She was someone else's responsibility now.

An officer on Thurlow's right said: "Think he's drunk?"

"Is he ever sober?" Mossman asked.

The first officer asked: "You see the body?"

"No," Mossman said, "but Jack described it when he called me."

"Just gi'me one good shot at the sonofab.i.t.c.h," the first officer muttered.

And now it starts, Thurlow thought.

He turned as a car pulled to a screeching stop across the street. Out of it jumped a short fat man, his pants pulled over pajamas. The man carried a camera with strobe light.

Thurlow whirled away from the light as the man crouched and aimed the camera. The strobe light flared in the canyon of the street . . . and again.

Expecting the glare, Thurlow had looked up at the sky to avoid the reflected light and its pain on his injured eyes. As the strobe flashed, he saw the strange object once more. It was hanging in the air about ten feet out from Murphey's window. Even after the flare of light, the thing remained visible as a dim shape, almost cloudlike.

Thurlow stared, entranced. This couldn't be an illusion or aftereffect of the eye injury. The shape was quite definite, real. It appeared to be a cylinder about twenty feet long and four or five feet in diameter. A semicircular shelf like a Ubangi lip projected from the end nearest the building. Two figures crouched on the lip. They appeared to be aiming a small stand-mounted tube at Murphey's window. The figures were indistinct in the fog-like outline, but they appeared human -- two arms, two legs -- although small: perhaps only three feet tall.

Thurlow felt an odd sense of detached excitement at the vision. He knew he was seeing something real whose strangeness defied explanation. As he stared, one of the figures turned, looked full at him. Thurlow saw the glow of eyes through the cloud-blurring. The figure nudged its companion. Now, both of them peered down at Thurlow -- two pairs of glowing eyes.

Is it some form of mirage? he wondered.

Thurlow tried to swallow in a dry throat. A mirage could be seen by anyone. Mossman, standing beside him, was staring up at Murphey's window. The deputy couldn't help but see that odd cylinder hovering there -- or the vision of it -- but he gave no sign.

The photographer came panting up to them. Thurlow knew the man: Tom Lee from the Sentinel.

"Is Murphey still in there?" Lee asked.

"That's right," Mossman said.

"Hi, Dr. Thurlow," Lee said. "What you staring at? Is that the window where Murphey's holed up?"

Thurlow grabbed Lee's shoulder. The two creatures on the cylinder had returned to their tube and were aiming it down toward the crowd of officers. Thurlow pointed toward them, aware of a strong musky smell of cologne from the photographer.

"Tom, what the devil is that up there?" Thurlow asked. "Get a picture of it."

Lee turned with his camera, looked up. "What? Picture of what?"

"That thing outside Murphey's window."

"What thing?"

"Don't you see something hovering just out from that window?"

"A bunch of gnats, maybe. Lots of 'em this year. They always collect like that where there's light."

"What light?" Thurlow asked.

"Huh? Well . . ."