"n.o.body came through here," Yancy said.

Harry knew they weren't lying to him, weren't part of some immense conspiracy. Nevertheless, he wanted to walk past them and inspect all of the rooms along the corridor. He restrained himself only because they were already staring at him curiously. He suspected he was something of a sight-disheveled, pale, wild-eyed.

He could not tolerate the idea that he was making a spectacle of himself. He'd built a life on the principles of moderation, orderliness, and self-control.

Reluctantly he returned to his office. He took a cork coaster from his top desk drawer, put it on the blotter, and set the dripping cup of coffee on it.

He kept a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of Windex in the bottom drawer of one of the filing cabinets. He used a couple of the towels to blot his coffee-damp hands, then wiped off the wet cup. He was pleased to see that his hands were not shaky.

Whatever the h.e.l.l was happening, he would eventually figure it out and deal with it. He could deal with anything. Always had. Always would. Self-control. That was the key. He took several slow, deep breaths. With both hands he smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

Heavy as a slab of slate, the lowering sky had pressed twilight into an earlier appearance. It was only a few minutes after five o'clock, an hour until sunset, but the day had surrendered to a protracted dusk. Harry turned on the overhead fluorescent lights.

For a minute or two he stood at the partially fogged window, watching tons of rain crash straight down on the parking lot. The thunder and lightning were long past, and the air was too heavy to permit wind, so the deluge had a tropical intensity, a grueling relentlessness that led the mind to ancient myths involving divine punishment, arks, and lost continents vanished beneath swollen seas.

Calmed somewhat, he returned to his desk chair and swung around to the computer. He was about to call up the case-narrative doc.u.ment that he had saved before going down the hall for coffee, when he realized that the screen was not blank, as it should have been. Another doc.u.ment had been created in his absence. It consisted of a single word centered on the screen: TICKTOCK.

5.

It was nearly six o'clock when Connie Gulliver returned to the office from the crime scene, having caught a ride in a Laguna Beach Police Department black-and-white. She was grousing about the media, one television reporter in particular who had dubbed her and Harry "Bat-woman and Batman," for G.o.d-alone-knew what reason, maybe because their desperate pursuit of James Ordegard involved so much derring-do, or maybe just because there had been a flock of bats in the attic where they had nailed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Electronic journalists did not always have discernibly logical reasons or credible justifications for doing and saying some of the things they did and said. Reporting the news was neither a sacred trust nor a public service to them, it was show business, where you needed flash and splash more than facts and figures. Connie had been around long enough to know all of that and to be resigned to it, but she was hot about it anyway, haranguing Harry from the moment she walked through the door.

He was just finishing the paperwork when she arrived, having dawdled during the past half an hour, waiting for her. He'd decided to tell her about the tramp with the blood-red eyes, in part because she was his partner and he was loath to conceal anything significant from a partner. He and Ricky Estefan had always shared everything, which was one reason he had gone to see Ricky before returning to Special Projects, the other reason being that he valued Ricky's insights and advice. Whether the threatening hobo was real or a symptom of mental collapse, Connie had a right to know about him.

If that filthy, spectral figure was was imaginary, perhaps just talking about him with someone would puncture the balloon of delusion. The hobo might never appear again. imaginary, perhaps just talking about him with someone would puncture the balloon of delusion. The hobo might never appear again.

Harry also wanted to tell her because telling her gave him a reason to spend some off-duty time with her. At least a little socializing between partners was advisable, helped strengthen that special bond between cops who had to put their lives on the line for each other. They needed to talk about what they had been through that afternoon, relive it together, and thereby transform it from a traumatic experience into a polished anecdote with which to annoy rookies for years to come. And in truth, he wanted to spend some time with Connie because he had begun to be interested in her not only as a partner but as a woman. Which surprised him. They were such opposites. He had spent so much time telling himself that she drove him nuts. Now he couldn't stop thinking about her eyes, the l.u.s.ter of her hair, the fullness of her mouth. Though he had not wanted to admit it, this change in his att.i.tude had been building up speed for some time, and today gears had finally shifted in his head.

No mystery about that. He'd nearly been killed. More than once. A brush with death was a great clarifier of thoughts and feelings. He'd not only had a brush with death; he'd been embraced by it, hugged tight.

He had seldom harbored so many intense emotions all at once: loneliness, fear, aching selfdoubt, joy at just being alive, desire so acute that it weighed upon his heart and made breathing just a little more difficult than usual.

"Where do I sign?" Connie asked, when he told her he had completed the paperwork. He spread out all the requisite forms on his desk, including Connie's own official statement. He had written it for her, as he always did, which was against department policy and one of the few rules he had ever broken. But they split ch.o.r.es according to their skills and preferences, and he just happened to be better at this part than she was. Her own case narratives tended to be angry in tone instead of solemnly neutral, as if every crime was the most grievous personal affront to her, and sometimes she used words like "a.s.shole" or "s.h.i.thead" instead of "suspect" or "arrestee," which was guaranteed to send the defendant's attorney into rapturous spasms of self-righteousness in the courtroom.

Connie signed all of the forms that he put in front of her, including the cleanly typed statement attributed to her, without reading any of them. Harry liked that. She trusted him. As he watched her scribble her signature, he decided they should go somewhere special, even with him rumpled and damp, a cozy bar with plushly padded booths and low lighting and candles on the tables, a pianist making c.o.c.ktail music-but not one of those slick guys who did polyester lounge versions of good tunes and sang "Feelings" once every half hour, the anthem of sentimental inebriates and mush-heads in all fifty states.

Connie couldn't stop fuming about being labeled Bat-woman and other abuses suffered at the hands of the media, so Harry had difficulty finding a moment to insert an invitation to drinks and dinner, which gave him too much time to look at her. Not that she looked any less appealing the longer he watched her. Just the opposite: when he took the time to study her face feature by feature, she proved to be more attractive than he had ever realized. The problem was, he also began to see just how tired she was: red-eyed, pale, large dark smudges of weariness beneath her eyes, shoulders slumped under the weight of the day. He began to doubt that she would want to have a drink and rehash the events of the lunch hour. And the more aware he became of her exhaustion, the more profoundly weary he felt himself.

Her bitterness over the electronic news media's tendency to turn tragedy into entertainment reminded Harry that she had begun begun the day angry, as well, troubled by something she had refused to discuss. the day angry, as well, troubled by something she had refused to discuss.

As his ardor cooled, he wondered whether it was really such a good idea to have a romantic interest in a partner in the first place. Department policy was to split up teams who developed more than a friendly relationship when off-duty, whether gay or straight. Long-enforced policies were usually based on a wealth of hard experience.

Connie finished signing the papers and gave him a once-over. "This is the first time you've ever looked as if you might consider shopping at the Gap instead of exclusively at Brooks Brothers." Then she actually hugged him, which might have stirred his pa.s.sion again except that it was a buddy hug. "How's your gut feel?"

Just a dull ache, that's all, thank you, nothing that would inhibit me from making pa.s.sionate, hot, sweaty love to you. hot, sweaty love to you.

He said, "I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"G.o.d, I'm tired."

"Me, too."

"I think I'll sleep a hundred hours."

"At least ten."

She smiled and, to his surprise, affectionately pinched his cheek. "See you in the morning, Harry."

He watched her as she walked out of the office. She was still wearing badly scuffed Reeboks, blue jeans, a red-and-brown-checkered blouse, and a brown corduroy jacket-and the outfit was worse for the wear of the past ten hours. Yet he could not have found her more alluring if she had been shoehorned into a clinging, sequined gown with canyonesque decolletage. The room was dreary without her. The fluorescent light painted hard, cold edges on the furniture, on every leaf of every plant.

Beyond the steamed window, the premature twilight was giving way to night, but the stormy day had been so somber that the phase of demarcation was excruciatingly subtle. Rain hammered on the anvil of darkness.

Harry had come full circle from physical and mental exhaustion to thoughts of pa.s.sion to exhaustion once more. It was almost like being an adolescent boy again.

He shut down the computer, switched off the lights, closed the office door, and filed copies of the reports in the front office.

Driving home in the depressingly leaden fall of rain, he hoped to G.o.d that he could could sleep, and that his sleep would be without dreams. When he woke refreshed in the morning, perhaps the answer to the mystery of the crimson-eyed hobo would be apparent. sleep, and that his sleep would be without dreams. When he woke refreshed in the morning, perhaps the answer to the mystery of the crimson-eyed hobo would be apparent.

Halfway home he almost switched on the radio, wanting music. Just before he touched the controls, he stayed his hand. He was afraid that, instead of some top-forty number, he would hear the voice of the vagrant chanting: ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. . . . ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. . . .

6.

Jennifer must have dozed off. It was ordinary sleep, however, not the delirium of the fantasy worlds that so frequently offered her escape. When she woke, she did not have to shake off clinging visions of emerald-diamond-sapphire temples or cheering audiences enthralled with her vocal virtuosity in a Carnegie Hall of the mind. She was sticky because of the humidity, with a sour taste in her mouth-stale orange juice and heavy sleep.

Rain was still falling. It drummed complicated rhythms on the roof of the hospital. Private sanitarium, actually. But not rhythms alone: chuckling-gurgling-burbling atonal melodies as well. Sightless, Jennifer had no easy way to know with certainty the hour of the day or the season. However, blind for twenty years, she had developed a refined awareness of her circadian rhythms and was able to guess the time of year and day with surprising accuracy. She knew that spring was drawing near. Perhaps it was March, the end of the rainy season in southern California. She knew not the day of the week, but she suspected it was early evening, between six and eight o'clock.

Perhaps she'd eaten dinner, though she did not remember it. Sometimes she was barely conscious enough to swallow when they spoon-fed her, but not sufficiently aware to enjoy what she ate. On other occasions, when in a deeper catatonic state, she received nutrients intravenously. Although the room was cast in silence, she was aware of another presence, either because of some indefinable peculiarity of the air pressure or an odor only subconsciously perceived. She remained motionless, trying to breathe as if sound asleep, waiting for the unknown person to move or cough or sigh and, thereby, provide her with a clue to ident.i.ty.

Her companion did not oblige her. Gradually, Jennifer came to suspect that she was alone with him. him.

She knew that a pretense of sleep was safest.

She struggled to stay perfectly still.

Finally she could no longer tolerate continued ignorance. She said, "Margaret?" No one responded.

She knew the silence was false. She strove to recall the name of the swing-shift nurse.

"Angelina?"

No reply. Only the rain.

He was torturing her. It was psychological torture, but that was by far the most effective weapon that could be used against her. She had known so much physical and emotional pain that she had developed defenses against those forms of abuse.

"Who's there?" she demanded.

"It's me," he said.

Bryan. Her Bryan.

His voice was soft and gentle, even musical, in no way threatening, yet it caused ice to form in her blood.

She said, "Where's the nurse?"

"I asked her to leave us alone."

"What do you want?"

"Just to be with you."

"Why?"

"Because I love you."

He sounded sincere, but she knew that he was not. He was congenitally incapable of sincerity.

"Go away," she pleaded.

"Why do you hurt me?"

"I know what you are."

"What am I?"

She did not respond.

He said, "How can you know what I am?"

"Who better to know?" she said harshly, consumed by bitterness, self-loathing, loathing, and despair.

Judging by the sound of his voice, he was standing near the window, closer to the plink and paradiddle of the rain than to the faint noises in the corridor. She was terrified that he would come to the bed, take her hand, touch her cheek or brow.

She said, "I want Angelina."

"Not yet."

"Please."

"No."

"Then go away."

"Why do you hurt me?" he asked again. His voice remained as gentle as ever, melodic as that of a choirboy, untouched by anger or frustration, only sorrow. "I come twice a week. I sit with you. Without you, what would I be? Nothing. I'm aware of that."

Jennifer bit her lip and did not reply.

Suddenly she sensed that he was moving. She could hear no footsteps, no rustle of garments. He could be quieter than a cat when he wished to be.

She knew knew he was approaching the bed. he was approaching the bed.

Desperately she sought the oblivion of her delusions, either the bright fantasies or dark terrors within her damaged mind, she cared not which, anything other than the horror of reality in that too, too private sanitarium room. But she could not retreat at will at will into those interior realms; periodic involuntary consciousness was, perhaps, the greatest curse of her pathetic, debilitated condition. She waited, trembling. into those interior realms; periodic involuntary consciousness was, perhaps, the greatest curse of her pathetic, debilitated condition. She waited, trembling.

She listened.

He was ghost-silent.

The thunderous pummeling of rain on the roof was cut off from one second to the next, but she understood that the rain had not actually ceased to fall. Abruptly the world was clutched in the grip of an uncanny silence, stillness.

Jennifer brimmed with fear, even into the paralyzed extremities of her left side. He took hold of her right hand.

She gasped and tried to pull away.

"No," he said, and tightened his grip. He was strong.

She called for the nurse, knowing it was useless to do so.

He held her with one hand and caressed her fingers with the other. He tenderly ma.s.saged her wrist. He stroked the withered flesh of her forearm.

Blindly, she waited, trying not to speculate upon what cruelties would ensue. He pinched her arm, and a wordless plea for mercy escaped her. He pinched harder, then again, but probably not hard enough to leave a bruise.

Enduring, Jennifer wondered what his face was like, whether ugly or plain or handsome. She intuited that it would not be a blessing to recover her sight if she were required, just once, to gaze into his hateful eyes.

He pushed one finger into her ear, and his nail seemed as long and pointed as a needle. He twisted it and sc.r.a.ped, pressed harder still, until the pressure-pain was unbearable. She screamed, but no one responded.

He touched her pancake b.r.e.a.s.t.s, deflated from long years of supine existence and intravenous nourishment. Even in her s.e.xless condition, her nipples were a source of pain, and he knew how to deliver agony.

However, it was not so much anything he did to her that mattered . . . but what he might think to do next. He was endlessly inventive. True terror lay in the antic.i.p.ation of the unknown. She screamed for someone, anyone, help, surcease. She begged G.o.d for death. Her shrieks and cries for help fell into a void.

Finally she was silent and endured.

He released her, but she was acutely aware that he was still at her bedside.

"Love me," Bryan said.