Perry agreed.

At first, when Perry said that the girl in the photograph was not Nicole, Mr. Dientz had stammered some defensive remarks about how even a miracle worker can't make a girl who's been burned over 90 percent of her body and who's sustained ma.s.sive head trauma look like she did in life. But when he realized that Perry and Professor Polson weren't questioning his skills as a reconstructionist, but actually questioning whether or not this girl, in this photo, was Nicole, he seemed excited.

Perry could imagine Mr. Dientz perfectly, suddenly, as a reader of detective fiction-the kind of man for whom such a mystery offered an intellectual challenge, a thrilling possibility, and who wouldn't think it was necessarily out of the realm of possibility that a dead girl could be exchanged for a living girl, buried in her stead. He at least wanted to entertain the possibility for a little while.

"You know," he said, "stranger things have happened. I won't even go into it, but let me tell you-"

He didn't tell them what stranger things, but he did tell them that, just because so many stranger things had happened, in his years as a mortician he'd begun, years before, collecting the DNA of every body he'd had "dealings with."

"The military paved the way. They developed such a simple system of collecting DNA that, in my humble opinion, anyone who deals with the dead would be remiss not to take advantage of it."

He went on to explain that he made, for each body, a "bloodstain card," and kept them stored and filed in his bas.e.m.e.nt.

"The tiniest drop of blood carries the entire blueprint, you know. All the genetic information for a single being and his or her family going back to the origins of the species!"

Professor Polson nodded as if she knew exactly what he was talking about, and asked, "So, you've kept a bloodstain sample card for Nicole?"

"Of course. All I would need is about five strands of hair from her mother or a sister to positively identify whether or not the bloodstain I have on file belonged to a relative of one of those Werner females. Just get me the hairs and I'll make a call to my pals at Genetech, and for eight, nine dollars, we've got our answer."

Mr. Dientz and Professor Polson talked excitedly about how swift, how efficient, it had become to trace the dead to the living, or to each other. Mr. Dientz was clearly attracted to Professor Polson. Twice, he'd called her "my dear," and when she was looking through her briefcase, safely distracted, Perry had seen him lean over his desk and peer at the place where the b.u.t.tons of her silk blouse were undone, where a bit of cleavage could be glimpsed. It probably didn't hurt either that, all along, she'd been expressing admiration for his work, for his facility, for his skills. She'd talked to him about other funeral homes she'd visited, a convention of morticians she'd attended, morgues in other states and countries, practices long forgotten and those still in vogue, and she'd compared his favorably to all those. Either Professor Polson knew this would make Mr. Dientz putty in her hands, or she genuinely admired and understood him.

"You know," he told her, not looking over at Perry, "I feel like being honest with you. I don't keep the DNA just for identification-because, honestly, how often does this happen. I mean, as I've said, it happens, but not frequently enough to warrant the trouble of keeping the kinds of records I have. You know, it occurred to me when I first heard about the military project: ah-ha, they have a plan."

Professor Polson nodded, and he took a breath.

"DNA can replicate itself, of course, and how many years away are we, really, from learning how to build a human being, a clone, if you will, a replica from only the most microscopic sample? I thought to myself, this is how they'll raise their armies in the future, now that American boys are getting so soft. Why, even my own sons-don't get me started! There's no way those boys could save our b.u.t.ts in a war. We're not raising real men anymore in this country, and the military knows this. No. They've saved the DNA of the military elite, the fighting machines. They will raise their armies out of those as needed.

"And I thought, shouldn't my dead have the same advantages? They may not have died heroes, most of them, but a mortician feels an affection for his dead, and, I've felt that, as the last one to whom their care had been entrusted, I owed them the possibility of this raising. Certainly their families were in too much shock and pain to take care of details like this. Plus, it only takes a few seconds. The cards are small. I've only filled one file drawer so far."

Professor Polson's mouth was open, but she said nothing. She blinked, seeming astonished, speechless.

"But!" Mr. Dientz said, "in the meantime, I have what we need to solve this mystery!" There was more color in Mr. Dientz's face then than there had been even when he was discussing the marvels of reconstruction and his pa.s.sion for the work.

Now he'd disappeared into his bas.e.m.e.nt to find Nicole's card.

Perry took the keys from Professor Polson.

"Go see your parents," she suggested. "But if you feel like you can stand it, could you visit the Werners? Pay your respects, as it were. And-just see. We might need them, you know. Their cooperation, eventually. I'll take care of things here while you're gone, and then we'll see what's next."

"Okay," he said, although he didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave the funeral home, to face his own or Nicole's parents, to drive off into Bad Axe, which, in this new context, seemed like an entirely alien place. But he nodded, and said, again, "Okay."

"And if you do visit the Werners, Perry," Professor Polson said, "it couldn't hurt to bring something back. Everyone has a hairbrush, or a comb, or a few strands of hair lying around a bathroom sink. With all those sisters? All that hair? Mr. Dientz said he needed five hairs, but I've heard of this being accomplished with one. I don't want you to do anything you feel uncomfortable doing, but it would save us having to tell them, right now, about any of this, if, until-"

"Yes." Perry nodded.

It was early evening but already pitch-black outside. Snow had been falling all day, and now it looked like shattered gla.s.s all over the lawns and the sidewalks and the streets of Bad Axe. No one was out. The only signs of human life Perry glimpsed were behind curtains: shadows in front of flickering television screens, a lamp burning over a shadow's desk. Some people had their Christmas lights up already. Blinking, blinking.

Every house, Perry realized as he pa.s.sed them, had a story-and because it was a small town, Perry knew the stories. It wasn't always death, but, over there, somebody's grandmother had fought off her meth-addict grandson with a shovel when he came to try to steal her wedding ring. Across the street from that, Melanie Shenk's house was dark. Her mother, Perry knew, had been put in jail for bank fraud. One of the houses on the corner belonged to the father of another girl Perry had gone to school with, a girl a few years older than he was. Sophie Marks. Everyone had pitied her because her parents were divorced and her father had custody and she dressed poorly, and often joked, herself, about not having had an actual home-cooked meal in her entire life. ("How is that different, 'home-cooked,' from, say hot dogs?"), but now she was a flight attendant, married to a pilot, and Perry's mom had told him that Sophie flew her father, a retired postman, all over the world for free these days. "Last I heard he was headed to Singapore."

Before Perry realized he'd done it, he'd driven past his own house without stopping, only glancing at it as if it were any other house on the block-lit up warmly from within, someone's mother carrying a plate of something to a table. Someone's father at the table. They would not be expecting a knock on their door. It would surprise them, concern them, to find their son, who was at college, at that door.

He was, instead, on his way to the Werners'. Left on Brookside. Right on Robbins.

He'd done this drive a hundred times, picking up Nicole for a student council carwash or debate team meeting. He'd had access to a car, and she didn't. It was a small town. No one needed directions to anyone's house. All you had to do was say, "Oh, he's three houses down from the Werners," or "Catty-corner to the Edwardses, and then across the street."

The Werners' house was lit up warmly, too. They already had their Christmas lights up. Blues and reds and whites and greens shone in little points along the eaves. The curtains in the front window of their nice little ranch house were closed.

Perry had been in that house many times. There were only a few bedrooms, he knew, and so many girls. The sleeping arrangements must have changed with the years, as one girl went to college and another girl got a room of her own. The house was small, but it had always seemed warm and clean. Perry had always had the feeling, as he waited in the living room for Nicole, that you could crawl around all day on your hands and knees in that house looking for a speck of dust and never find one. Of course, their restaurant was the same way. You could imagine it being run through a car wash every few hours. Blasted into perfection. Every surface shining.

But the Christmas lights seemed strange.

Had Perry expected black drapery over the windows?

Well, no. But he hadn't expected early Christmas lights. And he was even more surprised to see, beyond the Christmas lights and the gauzy curtains, several female shadows gathered around the broad shoulders of a masculine shadow. They were gathered, Perry realized, after stopping the car in the middle of the street and staring long enough, around the Hammond organ in the Werners' living room.

All the girls played, he was pretty sure, as well as Mr. Werner. Nicole had told him about the all-night caroling that went on sometimes on Christmas Eve.

He turned off the engine of Professor Blackhawk's car after parking it in front of the house, and the whole rattle-trap-chrome, engine, upholstery-shuddered loudly before dying. It was more noise than Perry had expected to make or he'd have parked farther away, and someone in the house, apparently, had heard it, too. He watched as one of the feminine shadows (Mrs. Werner?) turned from the gathering and moved toward the window. Her hand parted the curtains, just at their edge, and he saw a face, silhouetted with the light from behind, peer out quickly before dropping the curtain. She seemed to have said something that made the others turn away from the organ and look at her.

Perry was glad, he supposed, that they knew someone was on the way, glad that there'd been a bit of warning.

He'd hated the idea of surprising them.

Even with their other daughters at home, even gathered around an organ, Perry imagined that the grief of the place would have its own texture-those shadows-and a smell, maybe the smell of the Dumpster in the parking lot behind Dumplings. When Perry was first learning to ride a bike, his father would sometimes take him to that parking lot on a Sat.u.r.day morning before the restaurant opened, when there was no one there. It had a hill that sloped down into nothing but high gra.s.s, so it was a good place to practice turning, braking-better than the street in front of his house, where a car might be coming. Perry used to smell the Dumpster those mornings, and it wasn't a bad smell. Just yeasty, tired, soft disintegration. Wet bread, he thought. And the sc.r.a.ped-off remnants of cabbage some child had refused to eat. Maybe half a piece of black cherry torte some woman on a diet hadn't finished. Gravy in a garbage bag, bones.

Perry got out of the car and slammed the door loudly behind him (more warning), and then he took a slow step toward the door, which Mrs. Werner had opened before he'd even had a chance to knock-and although she looked happy and flushed (just as he remembered her from years before, bustling around her restaurant, bringing special treats of dark bread and homemade jam over to the tables where "my daughters' chums!" sat), she did not look pleased to see him.

Perry glanced beyond her to the place where the family had been gathered, but there was no one in the living room now. Still, he could see a bright red electrical dot glowing over the keys of the Hammond organ.

The Hammond organ was on.

Perry thought he could hear it humming when Mrs. Werner, reluctantly, it seemed, stepped aside to let him in.

"Nice to see you, Perry. How are your folks?"

"They're fine, Mrs. Werner. I-"

"What can I do for you?"

"I just came by to say h.e.l.lo. I-"

"I was just getting ready to go out, but if you'd like to sit down for a second-"

Mrs. Werner pointed to a white couch. There was a sheet of plastic over it, and Perry remembered the long-haired black cat, Grouch, who'd hissed at him once when he'd knelt down to pet it, and how Nicole had laughed like crazy. ("G.o.d, he likes everybody. He's never done that to anyone! That's why we call him Grouch.") Perry had never bothered to ask her if she was just kidding-if, in truth, that cat hissed at everyone and she was being ironic, or if it was true, that the cat really was friendly, and the name Grouch was ironic. Now he wished he knew.

"Do you still have Grouch?" he asked Mrs. Werner-stupidly, he thought, as soon as the words had left his mouth. (After all that had happened, he was asking about their cat?) "Why do you ask?" Mrs. Werner said, sitting down in a matching white armchair, also covered in plastic, across a gla.s.s-topped coffee table from him. Perhaps it had been a stupid question, Perry thought, but he was still surprised by her response, and all he could think of to say was, "I remember him."

"Well, yes, we still have Grouch. He's old. But a cat can live for over twenty years."

"Oh, that's great," Perry said.

"How are your parents?" Mrs. Werner asked again.

"They're fine, Mrs. Werner. They're great. I mean, I haven't seen them yet, but Thanksgiving's just around-"

"You came up to Bad Axe to visit us?" Mrs. Werner asked, opening her eyes wide, her expression alarmed. Perry thought she looked as beautiful as any of her daughters ever had. Her face seemed nearly unlined, bright with good health. Her hair was gray, but it wasn't the dry gray he remembered from the funeral, the last time he'd seen her. Now it looked soft. It fell in silver waves around her shoulders.

"Well, no," Perry said. "But since I was here, I wanted to say h.e.l.lo."

"Thank you," Mrs. Werner said, and clapped her hands on her knees, as if that sealed the deal. End of discussion. "That's very kind of you, Perry. We always thought a great deal of you, and also your parents. We'll miss them."

"You'll miss them?"

Mrs. Werner looked at Perry curiously.

"Oh," she said. "I a.s.sumed you knew, that it was the reason for your lovely visit. We've sold the restaurant. We're moving to Arizona. In two weeks."

"In two weeks?"

"Yes. I know some people think it seems sudden, but we've been considering retirement for a long time. Mr. Werner and I are not spring chickens, and, well-"

"Of course." Perry was being polite. What he felt was confusion, and a strange disbelief. Who was he to question the plans and the motives of these people? But all these generations in Bad Axe? His first school had been Werner Elementary. Now they were moving to Arizona? In two weeks?

Mrs. Werner stood up. She said, "I certainly appreciate this chance to say good-bye, Perry. It was delightful to see you, and if you ever get to Arizona-"

"Where in Arizona?"

Mrs. Werner cleared her throat and said, "That's yet to be determined, Perry. Probably Phoenix. Of course, I'll send word to all the good folks up here when we have a permanent address."

The smile on her face was anxious, but not entirely false. She was happy to see Perry, he could tell by the warmth of her embrace, and she was sorry about something, too, but when he asked if he could use her bathroom before he left, the smile evaporated.

She stood looking at him for several seconds, as if she expected him to take the request back. When he didn't, she said, "Well, dear, let me just take a peek in there first to make sure there aren't any towels on the floor. You know, we've gotten sloppy, getting ready for the move, and I wouldn't-"

Before Perry could object, say he really didn't care about the state of their bathroom, she disappeared through a door in the hallway attached to the living room, and when she returned, she said, "It's fine. Go ahead," and Perry stepped past her, closed the door behind him.

There was light blue tile. Seash.e.l.ls on the wallpaper, just like the wallpaper his mother had hung one Sat.u.r.day afternoon a few summers back (probably bought it at the same store: a sale, a promotion, at the same time). As quickly as he could, Perry got on his hands and knees on the white carpeting and began to search for anything other than black cat hairs (Grouch: they were everywhere). He couldn't find anything. But when he stood back up, he saw it: a hairbrush on the shelf above the toilet tank. A brush with a tortoisesh.e.l.l handle and white bristles. It was small, the kind of thing he could slip into his jacket pocket. He looked at it and saw that it was a treasure trove: There were long blond strands of hair floating ethereally out of it, and shorter gray hairs mixed in with those. A feminine nest, something made out of silk and breath. He took a Kleenex out of a box on the sink, wrapped it around the head of the brush, and put it into his pocket just before flushing the toilet, clearing his throat, opening the bathroom door, and stepping back into the living room.

"Okay?" Mrs. Werner asked. She held the front door open for him, despite the cold wind blowing through it, and there was no mistaking her fervent desire that, now, he leave.

Perry reached out and extended a hand to Mrs. Werner, who took it in hers and squeezed with genuine warmth, until he looked down, and she must have noticed him noticing the amber ring on her finger (it had not, he felt sure, been there when she'd taken his hand when he first arrived), and then she was pulling her hand back and closing the door without saying good-bye.

He went back to the car, walking as slowly as he could. He wanted to turn back, wanted to think up some good reason that he would. Was there any conceivable thing he'd "forgotten" to say to the parents of the girl at whose funeral he'd been a pallbearer only nine months before? Maybe We're thinking Nicole is still alive? Or We think your daughter may have risen from the dead?

No.

He had to resign himself to getting back into Professor Blackhawk's car, and starting it up, and driving it off.

But Perry had driven only a few blocks (past the Hollidays'-one of whose sons, the last Perry had heard, was a homeless violinist in Santa Monica-and around the corner on which Mrs. Samm lived with the children of her youngest daughter, who'd been killed in motorcycle accident) when he pulled to the curb again and turned off the engine: A whole group of girls had been gathered around that organ, which Mr. Werner had been playing, and when they'd realized someone was stopping by, they'd fled.

It was a small house. Three bedrooms? Was the bas.e.m.e.nt even finished? The kitchen was small enough, as he recalled it, to have been called a kitchenette. They had to have gone to the farthest bedroom. They had to have been holding their breaths. Had they sat at the edges of the bed, holding their fingers to their lips to remind themselves to stay silent?

Why?

It would have been crazy.

If they'd wanted to avoid him, all they'd have had to do was have Mrs. Werner say at the door, "We're busy at the moment, Perry, or I'd invite you in-"

No.

They didn't want him to know they were there.

Or was he the one who was crazy?

Perry got out of the car then and started to walk back to the Werners'.

90.

Ted Dientz reminded Mira of a gym teacher she'd had, one of the few junior high teachers who'd seemed to really love his job, feel serious pa.s.sion for his subject. Sometimes, even now, Mira thought of him while teaching one of her own cla.s.ses, remembering the way he'd stood in front of a slide projection of an ill.u.s.tration of the muscles of the human body.

Rippling, himself, with muscles, Mr. Baker would point out the best ones, the ones that could be developed with "so little work you won't even know you're doing it." The benefits of this, the beauty of weightlifting, sometimes seemed to overwhelm him as he tried to describe it. ("You won't believe it. One day you won't even be able to lift something, and in a short time, you won't even feel like you're lifting it.") And although Mira had never become interested in weightlifting, she'd learned something about enthusiasm from Mr. Baker, and how a teacher can convey a sense of it to his students. It was Mr. Baker she'd thought of in her own freshman Latin cla.s.s upon learning that the word enthusiasmus meant "inspired by a G.o.d."

In the case of Ted Dientz, there was no doubt that it was the G.o.d of the Underworld who possessed him, but Mira understood as well as anyone what that was like. When he brought up the envelope with the bloodstain card from the bas.e.m.e.nt, he said, "You know there's very little that a few blood cells or a strand of hair can't tell us any longer. You could be a master of disguise, but if I could compare a single one of your cells to a strand of your mother's hair, I would instantly know who you are."

He let Mira take the envelope from his hands, and said, "Go ahead. It's in sealant. You can't hurt it."

Mira opened the envelope and slid out the card. It was a little bigger than a business card. The top half of it was white, and it had Nicole's name and birth and death dates written on it in black capital letters, in a felt-tip pen. The bottom half was purple with a dime-size circle in the center, and in the center of that lay a dark and ragged little stain.

Ted Dientz tapped it and said, "That's our girl."

Mira looked at the little stain. Nicole, if it was Nicole.

"Everything there we need to know. Everything we'd need to bring her back to life, really, if we had just a bit more know-how. Well, someday!" He chuckled, and then he took the card from her, tucked it back into the envelope, and held it on his lap. It stayed there between them like a third person-not a ghost, exactly, just a presence-as they talked about Mira's research, her book, her travels, and his travels.

Ted Dientz had, himself, as she had, visited Bran Castle in the Carpathian Mountains.

"Of course, my wife and I didn't tell the folks around here that we were visiting Dracula's castle. It would have looked bad for business."

"So what did you tell them?" Mira asked, before realizing it might embarra.s.s him, his lie.

"Well, we said we were on a mission trip. Orphanages and such." (And indeed he blushed from his necktie to his forehead as he told her.) "But you can imagine my interest! As I can tell you understand, as so few people do, it's not a morbid fascination; it's a scientific one. I'm not interested in vampires, but I am interested in legends surrounding death. I have, myself, witnessed some extraordinary things."