Their voices are different, too. A little excited, not so much as before. Tired, a little. Sad, a little. Something else . . . What? Something. What? What?

He sniffs around their feet, one at a time, sniffs sniffs sniffs sniffs, even the stinky man, and suddenly he knows what's wrong with them, and he can't believe it, can't. He is amazed. Amazed. He backs away, looks at them, amazed.

All of them have the special smell that says do-I-chase-it-or-does-it-chase-me?-do-I-run-or-do-Ifight?-am-I-hun-gry-enough-to-dig-something-out-of-its-hole-and-eat-it-or-should-I-wait-and-seeif-people-will-give-me-something-good? It is the smell of not knowing what to do, which is sometimes a different kind of fear smell. Like now. They are afraid of the thing-that-will-kill-you, but they are also afraid because they don't know what to do next.

He is amazed because he he knows what to do next, and he is not even a people. But sometimes they can be so slow, people. knows what to do next, and he is not even a people. But sometimes they can be so slow, people.

All right. He will show them what to do next.

He barks, and of course they all look at him because he's not a dog that barks much. He barks again, then runs past them, downhill, runs, runs, and then stops and looks back and barks again.

They stare at him. He is amazed.

He runs back to them, barks, turns, runs downhill again, runs, runs, stops, looks back, barks again.

They're talking. Looking at him and talking. Like maybe they get it.

So he runs a little farther, turns, looks back, barks.

They're excited. They get it. Amazing.

2.

They did not know how far the dog was going to lead them, and they were agreed that the five of them would be too conspicuous on foot, as a group, at almost two o'clock in the morning. They decided to see if Woofer would be as eager to run ahead and lead the van as he was to lead them on foot, because in the vehicle they would be considerably less of a spectacle. Janet helped Detective Gulliver and Detective Lyon quickly take the Christmas-tree lights off the van. They were attached with metal clips in some places and with pieces of masking tape in others.

It seemed doubtful that the dog was going to lead them directly to the person they were calling Ticktock. Just in case, however, it made a lot of sense not to draw attention to themselves with strings of red and green lights.

While they worked, Sammy Shamroe followed them around the Ford, telling them, not for the first time, that he had been a fool and a fallen man, but that he was going to turn over a new leaf after this. It seemed important to him that they believe he was sincere in making a commitment to a new life-as if he needed other people to believe it before he would be convinced himself.

"I never really thought I had anything the world really needed," Sammy said, "thought I was pretty much worthless, just a hype artist, smooth talker, empty inside, but now here I am saving the world from an alien. Okay, not an alien, actually, and not saving the world all by myself, but helping helping to save it d.a.m.n sure enough." to save it d.a.m.n sure enough."

Janet was still astonished by what Woofer had done. No one was quite sure how he knew that the five of them were living under the same bizarre threat or that it would be useful for them to be brought together. Everyone knew that animals' senses were in some respects weaker than those of human beings but in many respects stronger, and that beyond the usual five senses they might have others that were difficult to understand. But after this, this, she would never look at another dog-or any animal, for that matter-in quite the same way that she had regarded them before. Taking the dog into their lives and feeding him when she could least afford it had turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing she had ever done. she would never look at another dog-or any animal, for that matter-in quite the same way that she had regarded them before. Taking the dog into their lives and feeding him when she could least afford it had turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing she had ever done.

She and the two detectives finished removing the lights, rolled them up, and put them in the back of the van.

"I've quit drinking for good," Sammy said, following them to the rear door. "Can you believe it?

But it's true. No more. Not one drop. Nada."

Woofer was sitting on the sidewalk with Danny, in the fall of light under a streetlamp, watching them, waiting patiently.

Initially, when she learned that Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon were police detectives, Janet had almost grabbed Danny and run. After all, she had left a dead husband, killed by her own hand, moldering on desert sands in Arizona, and she had no way of knowing if the hateful man was still where she had left him. If Vince's body had been found, she might be wanted for questioning; there might even be a warrant for her arrest.

More to the point, no authority figure in her life had been a friend to her, with the possible exception of Mr. Ishigura at Pacific View Care Home. She thought of them as a different breed, people with whom she had nothing in common.

But Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon seemed reliable and kind and well-meaning. She did not think they were the type of people who would let Danny be taken away from her, though she had no intention of telling them she'd killed Vince. And Janet certainly did have things in common with them-not least of all, the will to live and the desire to get Ticktock before he got them. She had decided to trust the detectives largely because she had no choice; they were all in this together. But she also decided to trust them because the dog trusted them.

"It's five minutes till two," Detective Lyon said, checking his wrist.w.a.tch. "Let's get moving, for G.o.d's sake."

Janet called Danny to her, and he got into the back of the van with her and Sammy Shamroe, who pulled the rear door shut after them.

Detective Lyon climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine, and switched on the headlights. The rear of the van was open to the front compartment. Janet, Danny, and Sammy crowded forward to look over the front seat and through the windshield.

Serpentine tendrils of thin fog were beginning to slither across the coast highway from the ocean. The headlights of an oncoming car, the only other traffic in sight, caught the lazily drifting mist at just the right angle and created a horizontal ribbon of rainbowlike colors that began at the right-hand curb and ended at the left-hand curb. The car drove through the colors, carrying them off into the night.

Detective Gulliver was still standing out on the sidewalk with Woofer.

Detective Lyon released the handbrake and put the van in gear. Raising his voice slightly, he said, "Okay, we're ready."

On the sidewalk, Detective Gulliver could hear him because the van's side window was open. She talked to the dog, made a shooing motion with her hands, and the dog studied her quizzically. Realizing that they were asking him to lead them where he had wanted to lead them just a couple of minutes ago, Woofer took off downhill, north along the sidewalk. He ran about one-third of a block, stopped, and looked back to see if Detective Gulliver was following. He seemed pleased to discover that she was staying with him. He wagged his tail.

Detective Lyon took his foot off the brake and let the van drift downhill, close behind Detective Gulliver, keeping pace with her, so the dog would get the idea that the vehicle was also following him.

Though the van was not moving fast, Janet gripped the seat behind Detective Lyon's head to steady herself, and Sammy clutched the headrest behind the empty pa.s.senger seat. With one hand, Danny held fast to Janet's belt, and stood on his tiptoes to try to see what was happening outside. When Detective Gulliver had almost caught up with Woofer, the dog took off again, sprinted to the end of the block and stopped at the intersection to look back. He watched the woman approaching him, then studied the van for a moment, then the woman, then the van. He was a smart dog; he would get it.

"Wish he'd just talk to us and tell us what we need to know," Detective Lyon said.

"Who?" Sammy asked.

"The dog."

After Detective Gulliver followed Woofer across the intersection and halfway along the next block, she stopped and let Detective Lyon catch up to her. She waited until Woofer was looking at her, then opened the pa.s.senger door and got into the van.

The dog sat down and stared at them.

Detective Lyon let the van drift forward a little.

The dog p.r.i.c.ked up his ears lopsidedly.

The van drifted.

The dog got up and trotted farther north. He stopped, looked back to be sure the van was still coming, then trotted farther.

"Good dog," Detective Gulliver said.

"Very good dog," Detective Lyon said.

Danny said proudly, "He's the best dog there is."

"I'll second that," said Sammy Shamroe, and rubbed one hand on the boy's head. Turning his face into Janet's side, Danny said, "Mama, the man really stinks."

"Danny!" Janet said, appalled.

"It's okay," Sammy said. He was inspired to launch into another of his earnest but rambling a.s.surances of repentance. "It's true. I stink. I'm a mess. Been a mess for a long time, but that's over now. You know one reason I was a mess? Because I thought I knew everything, thought I understood exactly what life was about, that it was meaningless, that there was no mystery to it, just biology. But after this, after tonight, I have a different view on things. I don't know everything, after all. It's true. h.e.l.l, I don't know diddly-squat! There's plenty plenty of mystery in life, something more than biology for sure. And if there's something more, who needs wine or cocaine or anything? Nope. Nothing. Not a drop. Nada." of mystery in life, something more than biology for sure. And if there's something more, who needs wine or cocaine or anything? Nope. Nothing. Not a drop. Nada."

One block later, the dog turned right, heading east along a steeply rising street. Detective Lyon turned the corner after Woofer, then glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. "Two o'clock. d.a.m.n, time's just going too fast."

Outside, Woofer rarely turned his head to glance at them any more. He was confident that they would stay with him.

The sidewalk along which he padded was littered with bristly red blooms from the large bottlebrush trees that lined the entire block. Woofer sniffed at them as he proceeded east, and they made him sneeze a couple of times.

Suddenly Janet thought she knew where the dog was taking them. "Mr. Ishigura's nursing home," she said.

Detective Gulliver turned in the front seat to look at her. "You know where he's going?"

"We were there for dinner. In the kitchen." And then: "My G.o.d, the poor blind woman with no eyes!"

Pacific View Care Home was in the next block. The dog climbed the steps and sat at the front door.

3.

After visiting hours, no receptionist was on duty. Harry could look through the gla.s.s in the top of the door and see the dimly lit and totally deserted public lounge.

When he rang the bell, a woman's voice responded through the intercom. He identified himself as a police officer on urgent business, and she sounded concerned and eager to cooperate. He checked his wrist.w.a.tch three times before she appeared in the lounge. She didn't take an extraordinarily long time; he was just remembering Ricky Estefan and the girl who had lost an arm at the rave, and each second blinked off by the red indicator light on his watch was part of the countdown to his own execution.

The nurse, who identified herself as the night supervisor, was a no-nonsense Filipino lady, pet.i.te but not in the least fragile, and when she saw him through the portal in the door, she was less sanguine than she had been over the intercom. She would not open up to him. First of all, she didn't believe he was a police officer. He couldn't blame her for being suspicious, considering that after all he had been through during the past twelve or fourteen hours, he looked as if he lived in a packing crate. Well, actually, Sammy Shamroe lived in a packing crate, and Harry didn't look quite that that bad, but he certainly looked like a flophouse dweller with a longterm moral debt to the Salvation Army. She would only open the door the width of the industrial-quality security chain, so heavy it was surely the model used to restrict access to nuclear-missile silos. At her demand, he pa.s.sed through his police ID wallet. Although it included a photograph that was sufficiently unflattering to resemble him in his current battered and filthy condition, she was unconvinced that he was an officer of the law. bad, but he certainly looked like a flophouse dweller with a longterm moral debt to the Salvation Army. She would only open the door the width of the industrial-quality security chain, so heavy it was surely the model used to restrict access to nuclear-missile silos. At her demand, he pa.s.sed through his police ID wallet. Although it included a photograph that was sufficiently unflattering to resemble him in his current battered and filthy condition, she was unconvinced that he was an officer of the law.

Wrinkling her cute nose, the night supervisor said, "What else have you got?" He was sorely tempted to draw his revolver, shove it through the gap, c.o.c.k the hammer, and threaten to blow her teeth out through the back of her head. But she was in her middle to late thirties, and it was possible that she had grown up under-and been toughened by-the Marcos regime before emigrating to the US, so she might just laugh in his face, stick her finger in the barrel, and tell him to go to h.e.l.l.

Instead, he produced Connie Gulliver, who was for once a more presentable police officer than he was. She grinned through the door gla.s.s at the pint-sized Gestapo Florence Nightingale, made nice talk, and pa.s.sed her own credentials through the gap on demand. You would have thought they were trying to get into the main vault at Fort Knox instead of a pricey private nursing home. He checked his watch. It was 2:03 A.M.

Based on the limited experience they'd had with Tick-lock, Harry guessed that their psychotic Houdini required as little as an hour but more commonly an hour and a half of rest between performances, recharging his supernatural batteries in about the same amount of time that a stage magician needed to stuff all the silk scarves and doves and rabbits back up his sleeves to get ready for the late show. If that was the case, then they were safe at least until two-thirty and probably until three o'clock.

Less than an hour at the outside.

Harry was so intently focused on the blinking red light of his watch that he lost track of what Connie said to the nurse. Either she charmed the lady or came up with an incredibly effective threat, because the security chain was removed, the door was opened, their ID wallets were returned to them with smiles, and they were welcomed into Pacific View.

When the night supervisor saw Janet and Danny, who had been out of sight on the lower front steps, she had second thoughts. When she saw the dog, she had third thoughts, even though he was wagging his tail and grinning and, quite clearly, being intentionally cute. When she saw-and smelled-Sammy, she almost became intractable again.

For policemen, as well as for house-to-house salesmen, the supreme difficulty was always getting through the door. Once inside, Harry and Connie were no easier to dislodge than the average vacuum-cleaner salesman intent on scattering all manner of sample filth on the carpet to demonstrate the superior suction of his product.

When it became clear to the Filipino nurse that resistance to them was going to disturb the home's patients more than would cooperation, she spoke a few musical words in Tagalog, which Harry a.s.sumed was a curse on their ancestors and progeny, and led them through the facility to the room of the patient they sought.

Not surprisingly, in all of Pacific View's accommodations, there was only one eyeless woman with lids sewn shut over empty sockets. Her name was Jennifer Drackman.

Mrs. Drackman's handsome but "distant" son-they were told in whispered confidence while in transit-paid for three shifts of the finest private nurses, seven days a week, to care for his "mentally disoriented" mother. She was the only patient in Pacific View provided with such "suffocating" ministrations on top of the already "extravagant" care that the facility offered in its minimum package. With those and a number of other loaded words, the night supervisor made it clear, ever so politely, that she didn't care for the son, felt the private nurses were unnecessary and an insult to the staff, and thought the patient was creepy.

The private nurse on the graveyard shift was an exotically beautiful black woman named Tanya Delaney. She was not sure of the propriety and wisdom of letting them disturb her patient at such an unG.o.dly hour, even if some of them were police officers, and briefly she threatened to be even more of a barrier to their survival than the night supervisor had been.

The gaunt, mealy, bony woman in the bed was a ghastly sight, but Harry could not look away from her. She compelled attention because within the horror of her current condition there was a tragically faint but undeniable ghost of the beauty that had once been, a specter that haunted the ravaged face and body and, by refusing to relinquish entire possession of her, allowed a chilling comparison between what she most likely had been in her youth and what she had become.

"She's been sleeping." Tanya Delaney spoke in a whisper, as they all did. She stood between them and the bed, making it clear that she took nursing seriously. "She doesn't sleep peacefully very often, so I wouldn't like to wake her."

Beyond the piled pillows and the patient's face, on a nightstand that also held a cork-bottom tray with a chrome carafe of ice-water, stood a simple black-lacquered picture frame with a photograph of a good-looking young man of about twenty. An aquiline nose. Thick dark hair. His pale eyes were gray in the black-and-white photo and were surely gray in reality, the precise shade of slightly tarnished silver. It was the boy in blue jeans and a Tecate T-shirt, the boy licking his lips with a pink tongue at the sight of James Ordegard's blood-soaked victims. Harry remembered the hateful glare in the boy's eyes after he'd been forced back behind the yellow crime-scene tape and humiliated in front of the crowd.

"It's him," Harry said softly, wonderingly.

Tanya Delaney followed his gaze. "Bryan. Mrs. Drackman's son." Turning to meet Connie's eyes, Harry said, "It's him."

"Doesn't look like the ratman," Sammy said. He had moved to the corner of the room farthest from the patient, perhaps remembering that the blind supposedly compensated for their loss of sight by developing better hearing and a sharper sense of smell.

The dog mewled once, briefly, quietly.

Janet Marco pulled her sleepy boy tighter against her side and stared worriedly at the photograph. 'Looks a little like Vince . . . the hair . . . the eyes. No wonder I thought Vince was coming back."

Harry wondered who Vince was, decided it wasn't a priority, and said to Connie, "If her son really does pay all of her bills-"

"Oh, yes, it's the son," said Nurse Delaney. "He takes such good care of his mother."

"-then the business office here will have an address for him," Connie finished. Harry shook his head. "That night supervisor won't let us look at the records, no way. She'll guard them with her life until we come back with a warrant."

Nurse Delaney said, "I really think you should go before you wake her."

"I'm not asleep," said the white scarecrow in the bed. Her permanently shut eyelids didn't even twitch, lay slack, as if the muscles in them had atrophied over the years. "And I don't want his photo here. He forces me to keep it."

Harry said, "Mrs. Drackman-"

"Miss. They call me Mrs. but I'm not. Never was." Her voice was thin but not frail. Brittle. Cold.

"What do you want with him?"

"Miss Drackman," Harry continued, "we're police officers. We need to ask you some questions about your son."

If they had the opportunity to learn more than Tick-tock's address, Harry believed they should seize it. The mother might tell them something that would reveal some vulnerability in her exceptional offspring, even if she had no idea of his true nature.

She was silent a moment, chewing on her lip. Her mouth was pinched, her lips so bloodless they were almost gray.

Harry looked at his watch.

2:08.

The wasted woman raised one arm and hooked her hand, as lean and fierce-looking as a talon, around the bed rail. 'Tanya, would you leave us alone?"

When the nurse began to voice a mild objection, the patient repeated the request more sharply, as a command.

As soon as the nurse had gone, closing the door behind her, Jennifer Drackman said, "How many of you are there?"