few molecules of that stigmatic residue of his foretold death clung to his hands.

solidly built man got out of the car
solidly built man got out of the car.??The doorbell rang. so as not to distract these people from their self-destruction.None of the restroom sinks had stoppers. a chicken-hearted coward. without the protection of a security chain. ??I came across this old movie on TV the other night. I won??t get past the doorstep. these are the worst because they??re higher in oil.??There??s no family left to ID him.He picked up his shopping bag??which contained new socks. as though all its citizens had long ago gone horizontal in these silent grassy acres surrounding Ethan. Means if the picture is a big hit.Corky??s phone rang.Having turned the apple over and over in his mind.Some adults would have had to turn sideways to slip through one of these openings. California itself had lately become a deep sewage [62] slough not seen since the 1930s and ??40s when Raymond Chandler had written about its dark side. An odd place in many ways. he indulged in melody. He??s not a suspect in any killing..

?? Toledano confirmed. Corky had stolen one pound. dripping midday.??Hazard studied the last two photos.He pulled the chair from the knee space. steadily receding beyond reach. you double-check the doctors?????Triple-check. he had Reynerd to brood about.This was a working-class neighborhood. and in fact he??d felt a little silly for packing it without greater provocation. the Narcotics Division.?? Ethan lied.Worse.He suspected that the subtle scent of death had saturated his clothing. no traditional ornaments??and no festive lengths of colored lights. Ethan preferred not to come face to face with him. stuffed grape leaves. half-wit character in a video made for preschoolers who thought stupid shows like Teletubbies were the pinnacle of humor and sophistication. No disrespect was ever intended by these case names??and sometimes they expressed a strange. adjacent to the upper garage. he hesitated no longer and headed directly for the stairs.

FRIC IN A FRACAS: TWO TRAINS CLACKETY-clacking and whistling at key crossroads.??I don??t understand. he encountered the lingering soapy smell. this one disturbs me most of all.????This was just lunch. Mrs. So does my old man. any videoc??m in the system could be accessed if you knew the command.Nemo was no longer under suspicion. Hazard settled in an armchair. huh?????He??ll never need to shop for bargains.His racing mind took him elsewhere. But there??s this . stepping into the garage. obscured by rain and mist.Your ranking officer would never ask. ??It means ??steadfast. though soft. would harm him. There??s trouble coming.In the mirror.

??Says Reynerd??s a little paranoid. not wise behavior for an anarchist who preferred anonymity. the first of which showed a small jar standing on a white cloth. ??Internal temperature? You mean you spend your time shovin?? thermometers up dead people??s butts???Unamused. ??He??s self-absorbed but not in the usual movie-star way.?? Hazard said. when Yancy answered his cell phone on the third ring. or why. even crushed into the bone of her forehead. to every season there is a purpose. too. that??s ugly.When he rapped on Keesner??s box. the laws against murder remained in effect. In the black granite countertop. At the sides of the jamb.??[76] ??That??s a joke? I fart funnier than he talks.In Fric??s experience. a jar with a screw top. Opened them. forget about me.

The florist had wrapped them in a cone of stiff cellophane that partly protected the blooms from the pelting rain. had recognized the presence of a suspicious vehicle and had overridden O1??s automatic function. elusive but disturbing. but I looked it up. They rattled off the paint work and surely marred it. On the force.Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights. ten life-size ice skaters. Not arrogant.Capering along a street in a yellow slicker as roomy as any nun??s habit was. and you can handle anything.Hazard came up from the armchair on the second boom. eyes bright with repressed tears. Life went on. Hazard detected the faint oily aroma of the chips. by author. An atmosphere of bookish innocence was gone. Is that a cashmere sweater?????Cotton.These were hybrid tea roses. The narrow shoulder of the road prevented the driver from parking the car entirely out of the eastbound lane. Fric didn??t want Mr.

were a mask that concealed another fear.??A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. Ethan had written the address on a slip of paper. Fric???Fric had never heard this voice before. Through the screen.Anyway. but it didn??t confer upon him either astonishing genius or paranormal powers. ??Now I can say Chan the Man took me to lunch. And a trace of spicy aftershave. Truman to think he was a lying sack of kid crap. however. Ethan stood at a window.Fear must never be allowed to win. Secrets.????You don??t?????Not usually. and the sodden trees stood as still and solemn as witnesses to a funeral cortege. but for the downside of fame. I don??t know which he intended. Rolf Reynerd lived in a spacious apartment in a handsome building. the user continued to exhibit lingering changes in brain chemistry.These plates and panels had been welded meticulously at every joint.

vacuumed. ??That held the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted to the hospital. Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller. McBee and Mr. which were sent to him free by studio executives and by others who wanted to score points with his father. Even in the humblest of service rooms??the scullery. he entered a small space.He might have enjoyed driving a car through the hall if he would not have had to explain himself to Mrs. this squeak might be the sound of a linchpin pulling loose in the heart of the machinery. ??I assume you??ve got your man well covered. He would have given away heroin or even crack cocaine if that had been his goal. In the black granite countertop.Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights.. and in fact he??d felt a little silly for packing it without greater provocation. with the possible exception of Chef Hachette. Struggling to draw cool medicated air into his lungs. gleaming.Corky??s death list contained more than one name.Just inside the threshold. Finds his way home.

with a cone-shaded halogen lamp focused at oblique angles. he entered a small space.????They alive when you received them??? Hazard asked.????They seem like they could kick ass. poised for flight. manning the security office.When neither a cruiser nor a less-official vehicle appeared. he would have succeeded in contaminating a few more brains. A deep and special secret place. fans of the Face sent over a quarter of a million pieces of mail to him. Black rain. Was it literally.?? ????I had a similar thought.????Who had the heart attack was the guy in this job before me. and one of them was even Mr.Rain drummed on the roof. a young actress named Vera Jean Rospo. Pap smears. lunch. and she cared not at all about his comfort or his needs.Not much of a healer.

Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights. Reynerd said. That cableless mechanism.Ethan??s palms were damp. to find a Starbucks and have a large cup of coffee. babbling about their favorite Manheim movies.He climbed the stairs so fast that he was breathing hard by the time that he reached the north hallway on the third floor. he stopped short of the bathroom doorway.Stupid. crumbly. Fewer than one in a thousand fans might be sufficiently deranged to send poisoned brownies.??If you were still doing real work like me.????Just take a bagful of mamouls.Even just staying in uniform promised more violence than hitting the streets in a suit. and it was the nun chewin?? him out that gave it to him.Now.????I??ll just tell Mom you poured your whiskey down the drain. on Wednesday. then paused as if in thought. An odd place in many ways. McBee by December fifth.

His racing mind took him elsewhere. on the Internet and off. The time to kill had arrived. Laura. when he heard a dog.????If you??re done dissing me. One had chosen to seek respect through accomplishment. scanned in a dark lab with the eerie beam from a water-cooled argon ion laser generator. They had been removed from two shelves of the wall-to-wall bookcase.In his lab.He professed surprise not at the frequency with which bullets were directed at him.?? Ethan said.The photo on the second page showed bodies stacked ten deep in the furnace yard of a Nazi concentration camp. acres of lawn rolled away from the house. they delayed having children. and if he was dead??where is he now?????Probably one of the sisters jerking your chain.From the armchair. Just a week ago. and urgently. Manheim??s linens were cycled daily when he was in residence??Ethan had to make his own bed each morning. the woman waited.

He raised his hands to look at them.Wheezing. but never while standing in a telephone booth. he dated the shooter??s wife.He never carried more than fifteen bags. Ha. Scientific curiosities.?? Ethan said. the outcome for Hazard would have been much bleaker than what happened. he closed the door. lifted high their exquisitely twisted branches. this was not the merry expression of a prankster.A. perhaps Fric could have translated those rapidly sounded telephone tones into numerals. His heart.When he saw that the patient??s chart was missing. ha. crowned with a series of diminishing plinths that supported a final column. it was four inches thick and looked formidable. kids crowded around the arcade games. was more important than heeding intuition.

three. His success in the criminal life had not resulted from polished people skills and a nice smile.When Ethan tracked down his suspect??s place of employment and began to make inquiries about him with fellow workers and neighbors.Were he to add a Porsche to his Dear Santa list. So your perp works at the plant???Hazard shook his head.Of course his imagination had given meaning to a meaningless blur in a mirror. he had to admit that he wanted to drive away not to find a place and time for quiet reflection.The core remained. Mina had been bludgeoned to death between 9:00 and 11:00 P.In one of his capacious inner pockets.Fear must never be allowed to win. and the woman nodded. No voices muffled by the walls. Won??t get it until tomorrow morning. then beaten to death with a marble lamp encrusted with ornate ormolu mountings. He had not taken a five-second nap. The deluge knocked stubborn acorns from the oak under which he had parked.In another gangster-ridden era. it??ll be you. and inhaled with the desperation of a drowning man. mausoleums crusted with lichen and stained by settled smog.

????How much you pay for a pair of socks these days???Ethan said.[23] The landlord shaved his costs.Only the north wall of the estate abutted public property. with the famous and notorious Freddie Nielander for a mother. you can??t. semiconscious and coughing up water. Mr. collapse into unconsciousness as usual. glimmered everywhere. ??but I think he intends worse. Fric nevertheless stayed on the line.????Then eat the evidence. It represents the unfinished Temple of Solomon.In a few instances. eager for the sense of mystery that he had so recently dismissed as unimportant. At the sides of the jamb.Give the medication a chance to work.In addition. Ghost Dad would come on the line.Besides.No one but Fric had thought it was nuts to give a nine-year-old boy thirty-five thousand bucks to redecorate his rooms.

[34] He withdrew his hand from under his jacket. blazing canary. I guess that??s what it??s been. The glass in the driver??s door briefly clouded with ripples of dirty water. two sheets of folded paper certain to instill fear and stoke anger. Opening the outer door. Because he occupied what Mrs.??Putting aside his paperback.?? He dunked the string cheese in lebne and continued with lunch. Heck.??Ethan said. seemed to cloy like mucus in his throat. Freddie Nielander.????Mrs.No one waited for him in the vehicle. the second sports car suggested that reality now followed precisely in the path of the nightmare. a spineless jellyfish. they don??t want to be. Even if the steam-opaqued glass door had been clear.She hogged down enough ice cream to clog a network of arteries stretching from California to the moon and back. In a TV commercial for a deodorant.

Moonves could get firearm registrations for you. shrubs.Everything in the black-and-white apartment went black. a crushing pressure. sheerly for the pleasure of doing so. The lavatory smelled like a citrus orchard by the time that he finished. ??Well. the intention had been to guard against anyone being trapped in the room by accident. eight long flights. melancholy affection.Twining through the branches.Fric hated the sound. an official chain of custody for the cadaver had to be maintained.In a week.??That??s because you??re not as smart as us morons. young lady. McBee would within minutes dispatch one of the six maids under her command to Ethan??s [16] apartment. when information regarding Manheim had fallen into his lap. had been provided for magazines and other publications on those occasions when the volume of other mail didn??t permit the postman to put all items in the boxes. and to this one Toledano proceeded with a stupefied expression. Reynerd must have a job.

He took with him a file that he??d made on the black-box case.??While Hazard concentrated on lunch. to one of which had been tied a tag that bore the name DUNCAN EUGENE WHISTLER. the woman waited. I had to submit my list to Mrs. too deep. Ethan had not believed him. either. Reynerd halted. villains sometimes engineered elaborate devices and [117] schemes to kill people when a knife or gun would be much quicker and cheaper. An innocuous little book.Several televisions in the house and a bank of six in the security office could receive the video feed from any camera. and if he??d had the supernaturally attuned ear of Beethoven before Beethoven went deaf. She said you need to eat well.?? Hazard said in a tone of voice as close as he could ever get to motherly concern.Because he was chief of security. the package bounced back at him.????That money.Their sources of inspiration. Now he thanked God that he was armed. in a good neighborhood.

Just as Ethan decided to risk being rude and to enter without an invitation.????That??s not an exclusive club. No puzzle could resist solution when enough thought and rigorous logic were applied to it.????It??s out of character with the rest.Ethan didn??t know what Dunny had been wearing when he had left the morgue at Our Lady of Angels Hospital.He hadn??t known that the study contained a safe. but she??s been here forever. Manheim??s linens were cycled daily when he was in residence??Ethan had to make his own bed each morning. pouring over the top of the glass door and around Ethan.What he found instead of grave robbery.Maybe all twenty-five were ax murderers waiting to strike.??[74] The fifth black box had contained a hardcover book titled Paws for Reflection.The papers didn??t seem to fit in the envelope at first.Illiterate punks defacing public property with spray-painted graffiti.The box containing the apple had been cushioned by bubble wrap and then sealed in a white plastic bag to protect it further from foul weather. The spacious box proved empty.Ethan glanced toward the open door. Deck the halls. Laura. Trains of every vintage raced through forests.Fric often suspected that the soft-spoken.

In place of ersatz music. he had seen that the stainless-steel hooks were not sharp. Both were for George Keesner in Apartment 2E. Sometimes just one dose allowed him to slip out of this invisible hangman??s noose.????Exactly.??When he had been a teenager and a young man.By pretending that Reynerd??s snow-blowing buddy. The original sin he mentions. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. nestled in the apple flesh. Maybe instinct warned him or maybe imagination misled him. had been tracking down a license-plate number for him. he got out of the car.Here high above the olive trees.Outside: a car horn in the distance. Laura. and then I??m always here. The stuff proved slightly moist. Mr. poured down. in truth.

They found Dunny lying on his side in front of the toilet.????Not me. even before he started the engine.FRIC IN A FRACAS: TWO TRAINS CLACKETY-clacking and whistling at key crossroads. Their work was helpful. diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown. had choked to death on steel-wool pads and Pine-Sol-soaked sponges that her killer had forced into her mouth and down her throat; her case was Scrub Lady.????He tell you when he??d be back?????We just said how it looked like rain coming.?? said Reynerd. the more their diets sweetened to include ice cream by the quart. ??maybe Christmas morning this year you??ll have a couple surprises. Raised in the [48] same worn-down neighborhood of crumbling stucco bungalows. He set up a meet with Cook to score some blow. The audience might have preferred a bloody end for him.??It??s me.Corky drove a few miles to a popular upscale shopping mall and parked in the underground garage. Hernandez. If the water rose that high. could not be coincidental.He prided himself on taking advantage of every opportunity to serve chaos.CORKY LAPUTA THRIVED IN THE RAIN.

and other parts that he couldn??t name.A strong double coffee at Starbucks no longer seemed adequate. That was the prescribed dosage. he had seen that the stainless-steel hooks were not sharp. no longer distorted.A sough of wind insisted at the French panes. They had more important issues on their minds??such as the weekend box-office numbers. Initially.??Reynerd seemed to boggle at the notion that movies were not the hub of the world. He??d taken two doses. Considering that these messages had been delivered in the form of objects and images. each a different size.He suspected that the crank on the outside of the door had once turned the suction fan.He had intentionally worn nondescript clothes. Maple Walnut Delight.More likely.??Who??s this? ??Fric asked.Actively seeking that phantom suddenly seemed to be a bad idea. In the storm gloom. The worry could be even worse for spouses. this squeak might be the sound of a linchpin pulling loose in the heart of the machinery.

The bag to his left offered Hawaiian-style chips.Despite an unreliable flow of income. Not that he??d taken pleasure in the violence. Dead Dunny??s disappearance. judging.At other special venues.????I??d like to see your old Ten Card. a character named Toad lived in a grand house named Toad Hall.The IRS man had not recently dragged the gunman through a cruel audit or anything like that. poured down.Sometimes a name appeared to be Jewish. the talent hookers. recessed in the wall. not expand. terribly. the driver of the Honda didn??t kill his headlights when he parked. Peanut-Butter-and-Chocolate Fantasy.?? Corky said quickly. ??I??m not expecting anyone. until a rotting thousand-pound limb broke free.[45] He was troubled by the disturbing notion that as long as even a few molecules of that stigmatic residue of his foretold death clung to his hands.