Fruega's eyewitness testimony would strengthen their case. They agreed to come back tomorrow and try again.

He looked at his watch. "It's almost noon. You hungry?"

She shook her head. "Lost my appetite. I better get my patrol car and check in. They're going to wonder what I've been doing."

"Just tell Tingey I had you come to the hospital with me. He was the first one on the scene this morning, did I tell you that? Poor guy, I thought he was going to cry."

"Yeah. He's one guy who should be married. He needs someone to take care of him, tell him when to cut his hair, zip up his fly."

"Fix him low-fat food," Lawless added, as they got up from the table.

The trip back to the canal passed in relative silence. They didn't hold hands or make goo-goo eyes at each other, but they did make plans for dinner.

Rachel Sandovich went back into the house to change; it was too hot to take Petey for his noon walk in sweats. She made a mental note to leave the house by nine tomorrow; it looked like it was going to be a hot spring. Petey was Rachel's ten-year-old Irish Terrier, her sole companion for three years since her husband, Willard, died of a coronary.

Petey waited patiently for Rachel to change. He knew he would get his noon walk, and probably at least one more before night fell. It was as regular as food in his dish and water in his bowl. It was their routine.

Rachel came out of her room wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her legs as white as a bed sheet and covered with thick purple varicose veins, despite her daily walks and regular intake of fiber.

She clipped a retractable leash to Petey's collar and they left. They lived two blocks east of Modesto Junior College, in an older part of town where the homes were modest but well cared for. She liked the neighborhood; the houses, while not big, were unique, something that could not be said about the new homes being thrown up in subdivisions at the edge of town. She just wished they didn't live so close to the college.

MJC had enough on-campus parking for only one-third of its students, so there were cars parked in front of her house every day classes were in session. She wouldn't have minded if they were polite and courteous, but they weren't. They were rude. They threw their trash on her lawn and sometimes parked in front of her driveway, forcing her to call a tow truck so Willard could go to work. Before his coronary.

Petey could have walked himself, he knew the route that well: south on North Olive to Terminal, named for the old railroad track it paralleled, across Terminal and along Lateral No. 4, a canal that cut diagonally through the neighborhood.

The wide gravel pathway that ran next to the canal was ideal for walking dogs, or, if you were dog-impaired, for a stroll. It was a popular walk, Rachel and Petey had friends they hoped to meet along the way. On most days, Rachel had humans to chat with and Petey dogs to exchange sniffs with. It was part of the routine.

Walking briskly, they followed Lateral No. 4 to Elk Park, where Petey was allowed to roam illegally without a leash. He left little Petey-squirts at strategic spots to let his friends know he'd been there. Rachel had a paperback, a western. Most days she took the Bee, but not today; she was on one of her kicks where everything in the paper was bad news, and she refused to read anything but the comics, the food section on Wednesday, and the gardening articles on Saturday. Her boycott of the news would continue until a scandalous story peaked her interest.

Across the canal, north of Elk Park, sat a power transforming station, owned by MID. Rachel thought it was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen; all gray steel, black wires, and brown ceramic. She hated it and wondered why they had to put the thing in plain view, right in the middle of a residential area, instead of outside of town. To protest the affront to her visual senses, she sat at a picnic table with her back to the power station, snubbing the Modesto Irrigation District.

It took Petey fifteen minutes to finish his business, and Rachel polished off another chapter.

"Come on Petey, it's time to walk under the giant trees," she called to the old dog. "It will be a cool walk today, won't it Petey, under the trees?" After Elk Park, their walk took them across Lateral No. 4 on a footbridge, into an old neighborhood shaded by Modesto Ash trees so big their branches converged over the street, forming a dark tunnel spring through fall.

Petey licked Rachel's hand as she clipped the leash to his collar, but when they neared the footbridge, he became agitated, pulling on the leash. He was such a mild-mannered dog and so rarely acted this way that Rachel almost sat down on the grass.

"What's wrong with you, Petey?" she asked, pulling him toward the footbridge. "Come on now boy, you're not afraid of the water. We've walked over this bridge hundreds of times."

Then, when Petey still resisted, she took a stern tone, "Don't make me carry you."

Petey was as loyal as any dog and so he gave in, despite the danger he sensed. Rachel pulled him whimpering onto the bridge.

The canal was full, as it always was this time of year; the dark water came to within four or five inches of the top of the cement walls, seemingly threatening to overflow the banks and flood nearby streets.

When they reached the center of the bridge, Rachel caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Still tugging on Petey's leash, she looked into the canal, thinking something was probably floating by; an old tire perhaps, or a plastic soda bottle thrown in the water by one of those litterbug college students. The surface of the canal rippled as if something was moving beneath. A shape formed under the water and she frowned, now thinking maybe a large animal had fallen in and was drowning.

She bent over the railing, looking for a hoof or a paw.

What she saw instead was a large black head, rising up from the canal. It's mouth opened, impossibly wide, and long silver teeth glinted in the bright sun. In less than a second it clamped down over the top of her body, the silver teeth slicing through ribs and muscle as if they were tissue paper, and took her head and chest to the heart, then slid back into the canal.

Rachel's torso, looking almost comical with its arms and breasts intact but its head and chest missing, slumped forward onto the railing. Her legs twitched spasmodically for a few seconds, then became still. Blood dripped from the huge wound into the water.

Petey attempted to run off the bridge, but his leash caught on the rail. He pulled until the mechanism released and the leash extended its full length, just long enough for him to make it to solid ground.

He stood at the end of the footbridge, straining against the leash, barking his soft bark.

Twenty minutes later, Paul Langley came by with his German Shepherd, Max. Paul heard Petey's soft bark fifty feet away and saw what he thought must be the dog's owner, leaning over the bridge railing.

He stopped at the footbridge, bent down to give Petey a pat on the head, but didn't look up at the owner, thinking perhaps, from her posture, she might be sick and would appreciate the privacy. "Are you okay, ma'am?" he asked Rachel's corpse. "Anything I can do for you?"

When she failed to respond, he looked and immediately knew something was wrong, that something was missing. Moving to his left, he saw that the woman he was talking to had something terribly wrong with her.

"Help!" he screamed, stumbling away from the bridge, fumbling for the cell phone clipped to his belt.

"Help! Help!"

Max began barking. Petey went silent.

Chapter 7.

Lawless picked up a roast beef sandwich and a Dr. Pepper on the way to the office, to eat at his desk while he looked at digital images of the Sanchez, and, hopefully, Weston killings.

He got to his office at a quarter to eleven and found the CDs and prints waiting for him in his mailbox. He threw the prints aside, inserted the Sanchez disc into his computer, and unwrapped his sandwich. The file viewing program started and soon he was looking at thumbnails of all the images on the disc. He clicked the magnify icon and the program displayed six, which, on his nineteen-inch LCD monitor, was about the same size as standard prints; good for flipping through until he saw one he wanted to examine in full-screen mode. The lab had processed the images so they were clear and sharp.

He stared at a close-up of Sanchez's wound, munching, and tried to imagine what it felt like to have such a large piece of your body bitten off. Even though the creature's teeth must be razor sharp, it still had to hurt. The attack must have been quick, seconds at the most, but the floundering around in the canal with one arm while he died from a combination of blood loss, shock, and drowning, couldn't have been fun. The phone rang.

"Lawless," he said, still looking at the monitor, lost in thought.

"It's Gabriel Brackston," a voice boomed into his ear. He moved the phone away.

It took several seconds for the name to register, and when it did his heart began pounding. Insanely, he wondered if the man was calling to ask why he'd left all those nasty snakes in his office yesterday.

"Yes, Mr. Brackston?"

"It's the damnedest thing. I've never seen anything like it."

"What is?"

"I don't know how all these grilles got these damn holes in them. Just about every one we checked had a hole in it."

Lawless stopped looking at the monitor and set his sandwich down. "Did you see the holes yourself?"

"Damn right I did. I had a crew out first thing this morning."

The grilles were under water, so Lawless wondered how Brackston could have seen them. "How did you see them? Your guys have a video feed?"

"What are you talking about?" Brackston boomed.

"All the holes we found were below the surface. I was just wondering how you saw them."

"We pull the grilles up with the truck, son," Brackston said, in the same condescending tone he'd used in his office. "They're secured at the top by three bolts. We unscrew those and lift up the grille with the winch."

"I see. How many have you looked at?"

"Five. We looked at that one you told me about, on Lateral Number Three, the one by where that feller got killed. Then we checked a couple on Lateral Number Seven, and a couple in town."

In town? Lawless's blood turned to ice. All three killings had taken place in rural country. He hadn't even thought about the creature coming into town.

"Where in town?"

"Two on Lateral Number Four."

"And those grilles had holes, too?"

"That's what I said. You figured out who's doing this yet?"

"No," Lawless lied. "Is MID going to repair the holes?"

"Probably not. It'd cost too much to find and fix them all."

"What about debris blocking the canals? Aren't you worried about that?"

"Most of the stuff that can block up a canal floats. These holes are at the bottom, so we're not too worried about debris."

Lawless thought for a moment. There was something else he wanted to ask Brackston, an idea that'd been simmering in the back of his mind all morning.

"It's the damnedest thing, though," Brackston was saying, "how those holes looked. If I didn't know better, I'd say someone cut through the bars. They weren't punched through, they would be bent some but they're not. You can see grooves in the steel, from the blade or whatever was used. I just can't figure out how anyone could do that, especially under water."

Grooves, like in the dead men's bones.

He remembered what he wanted to ask. "Let me ask you something. What would it take to drain the canals?"

"Drain the canals? What for?"

"Hypothetically speaking. No particular reason."

Brackston muttered, "Is that all you got to do, sit around thinking up stupid questions? Go catch a thief or give someone a ticket why don't you?"

"Humor me. What would it take?"

"It's the middle of irrigation season and the farmers would yell bloody murder. It'd take an act of Congress to drain the canals now."

Brackston hung up. It was ten after eleven.

Lawless set the phone down and leaned back in his chair, thinking. His mind was full of more ifs. If the creature could cut through steel, as he now thought it most certainly could, trapping it in some kind of cage was out of the question. That'd been his and Jensen's main plan for stopping it. If they couldn't trap it, they would have to think of some way to find and kill it. If they couldn't figure out a way to find it - he recalled there were more than two hundred and fifty miles of canals - they would have to drain the canals to expose it. If what Brackston said was true, about it taking an "act of Congress" to drain the canals, he would need to convince some people in high places it had to be done.

And that led him back to the evidence, or lack thereof.

His cell phone chirped.

"Lawless," he said, after digging it out of a jacket pocket.

"Yeah, Detective, this is Jimmy Busmur. We're done looking through the canal and we've looked at both grilles. Both have holes. Anything else you want us to do?" Busmur sounded tired.

Lawless couldn't think of anything, so said, "No. Thanks for your work."

Lawless clicked off, then remembered Busmur didn't say if they found any of the victim. He thought about calling him back, but didn't, supposing he already knew the answer.

He went back to studying the pictures of Sanchez, while he tried to think of a way to locate the creature. An hour later, after coming up with some ideas, he started in on Hank Weston's gruesome images.

Then he fell off his chair onto the floor.

Everything came to a stop, and everything changed; the air caught in his lungs, an elephant sat on his chest. His office began to turn, the walls spinning faster with each second, the ceiling a dark, churning vortex. He felt himself being pulled off the floor into the black whirling space that had, a few seconds ago, been fluorescent tubes and stained acoustic ceiling tiles.

His office disappeared, replaced by darkness, then wetness. Something light and filmy brushed against his face. His body moved back and forth, undulating, pushing forward, streaming through wet darkness. He was hungry, an impossible hunger, a need unlike any he'd ever known. He opened his mouth and tore at the darkness with powerful jaws.

He pushed faster, sensing nourishment ahead, something he couldn't see but knew was there.

Faster now, gliding at tremendous speed, his hunger threatening to destroy him. Closer...

He pushed up out of the wet darkness into...

... bright, blinding light and searing heat, as if he had dived into the center of the sun. He saw the thing he had sensed, bending over a thin gray rail, presenting itself to him. He spread his powerful jaws and lunged with lightening speed, his hunger shrieking to be fed. He bit down with tremendous power, feeling little resistance to his razor-sharp teeth.

He fell back into the dark, cool wetness. Powerful muscles pushed the flesh deep, where strong acids waited to break it down into fuel. He moved through the darkness, his hunger allayed, but not quenched.

Somewhere, in the darkness but not, he heard ringing. Soft and far away, growing louder, more persistent. He turned his head, thinking he might pick up the direction of the ringing; above, in front, somewhere ahead.

He opened his eyes and searing light blinded him. The ringing continued, louder. Adjusting to the light: ceiling tiles, light fixtures.

Why am I laying on the floor?

Telephone. He sat up, woozy.

The ringing, he reached and fumbled around for the phone, grabbed it, jammed it to his ear.

"Hello?" he croaked.

"Detective Lawless?"

He thought so, but wasn't sure. "Who is this?"