Treasure Box

18. The Dragon

Sally Sannazzaro was on the phone the minute she got her car out onto the road. "Chief Todd, this is Sally Sannazzaro. I'm down in Mixinack, and I have reason to believe that an armed man is going to attempt to kill one of my residents."

"This the same guy from the other night?"

"Yes."

"The police chief from Mixinack?"

"He's made an attempt before."

"It's pretty ugly when one police department arrests the chief of another one."

"We can sort it out later."

"How do you know he intends violence?"

"While we're talking about this, he could be shooting her. The resident in question is in room 368, that's third floor, the end of the south wing on the left, her name is Anna Tyler, she's an old woman, bedridden, completely helpless."

"Why would he have it in for a—"

"Don't just send a couple of patrolmen as if it were a domestic disturbance call or something, I have reason to believe Chief Bolt is having a psychotic episode. He's going to be extremely hard to stop."

"I sure hope you aren't just crying wolf, Ms. Sannazzaro."

"I sure hope I am."

She disconnected the phone. It was out of her hands. All she could do was drive north and hope she was wrong, hope that Quentin was as crazy as his story and Chief Bolt was just out in Mixinack somewhere running a speed trap or something.

But Quentin Fears didn't seem crazy. He seemed like the soul of rationality. A nice guy. How many millionaires stop to help a rest home make salad on a stormy night?

Got to stop thinking about the salad. Got to stop thinking about Quentin Fears. Drive, that's all I can do right now, drive north. Taping the old lady's hair over his heart. But that's what she asked for. And Chief Bolt did try to smother her. Can three people share a psychosis? Am I bringing the total to four?

Mike Bolt opened the glass door and walked right past the reception desk. There was no reason to skulk or hide. She didn't see him. None of them would see him. He was invisible. Two attendants walked past him as he stood before the elevator. His gun was in his hand—nothing subtle about what he was doing. But they didn't notice he existed.

Deep inside him, some lost part of himself was crying out, "I've got a gun, you fools! Somebody stop me!"

Outside, sirens wailed. Cars crunched through ice-crusted snow. Car doors slammed. The elevator door opened. Mike stepped on and punched the 3 button. He watched four policemen charge into the rest home, hands on their guns. Mike was in plain sight, framed in the closing elevator door, but they didn't see him. One of them inquired at the reception desk as two others took off at a run along the corridor, one left, one right. The fourth ran straight for the elevator, but instead of trying to get on as the elevator door slowly closed, he punched the up button. The door reopened, but the policeman didn't get on. He just stood there, tapping his foot impatiently, waiting. Finally the door closed completely without the policeman ever having seen the man he was there to find.

That lost inner part of Mike Bolt fell silent in despair.

Quentin pulled into the drive at the Laurent house, a place far too familiar to him now. He remembered how nervous he had been the first time, in the back of the limo, worried about meeting Madeleine's family. Would they like him? What a joke. But still he wished that he could go back. That Madeleine could be real, that the life he thought he had could be the real life.

A Lincoln Town Car with Virginia plates sat in front of the house, its engine idling. The doors were closed and it seemed unoccupied. As Quentin walked past the car on the way into the house, he glanced inside and saw that the driver's seat had been leaned back as far as it would go, and Ray Duncan was lying there, eyes closed. He must have driven all night to get here. The witches were leaving him outside to sleep. Apparently he wasn't going to be useful in today's little drama.

But he wasn't asleep. Or perhaps the crunch of Quentin's feet in the snow had wakened him. He gave a little wave and sat up. Quentin walked around the car to the driver's side as Ray rolled down the window. "Ro and Roz are already inside," he said. "I'm taking a nap."

Thanks for introducing me to the wonderful world of the obvious. "Must have been a tough drive."

"I like it," said Ray. "Makes me feel useful." He grinned.

I wonder if I looked as pathetic as this when I was Madeleine's lapdog. "Well, don't let me keep you awake."

"I just hope you like the house. Beautiful place but too big for us to keep up. I don't know what the rush is for, but I'll tell you, I'll be glad to get it off our hands. Rowena always gets so upset when you talk about it—either moving in or selling it. But last night after you came over to talk about buying it, well, she changed her mind. I shouldn't tell you this, but let's just say that we're pretty motivated sellers."

Quentin smiled. "We'll see."

A pair of driving gloves lay on the seat beside Ray. Quentin remembered what Mrs. Tyler's note said. Don't let it touch his skin. Maybe he shouldn't open the treasure box with bare hands.

"You going to need those gloves for the next little while?" asked Quentin.

Ray looked down as if noticing them for the first time. "No, you need them? Go right ahead." He handed the gloves through the window. "Got climate control in here, but I bet the house is an iceberg."

The house is whatever your daughter decides it is. "Thanks, Ray."

He heard the window rolling up behind him as he walked around the car and up the stairs.

Roz and Rowena were waiting for him on chairs in the entry hall. Rowena sat like a lady; Roz had her feet up over the arm of the chair. "Took you long enough," said Roz. "You flew and we got here first."

"Didn't know it was a race," said Quentin. To Rowena he said, "Hope you didn't have any trouble getting in. But of course you have a key."

"No, we don't," said Rowena. "The door was open."

"Chief Bolt locked it when we left here the other day."

Roz sighed. "Why are we discussing locks and keys?"

"Because, as your mother will tell you, the thing inside that box is stronger than you think," said Quentin. "Don't open it, Roz."

"I'm not going to. You are." Roz grinned saucily.

"Haven't you explained it to her, Rowena?" said Quentin. "That thing is supposedly trapped inside the box, but still it has power enough seeping out to lock and unlock doors. It's not like you. It has the power to make changes in the physical world. It's so far out of your league that it's insane of you to think you can control it."

Roz got up and started skipping around the room. "Grown-up talk. It's a good thing for you I need you to be free. When my parents lecture like this, I shut them up. I feel sorry for other kids who have to listen."

"Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe the beast is deceiving you as surely as you deceived me? 'Come on, it's not so strong, you can control it, you can ride this horse,' just a bunch of lies to fool you into doing what it can't do for itself—break your grandmother's seal and get out?"

"No, Quentin. Stupid impossible ideas don't occur to me." She looked down at his hands. "You won't need those gloves."

"It's cold in here."

"How stupid do you think I am? I said, you won't need those gloves!" Her face grew nasty and dangerous-looking, filled with rage.

"I think I do," said Quentin.

She transformed before his eyes into a monstrous travesty of a woman, long nails reaching for him, sharp teeth brandished in his face. "Take off the gloves," hissed the monster's voice. "Nothing will happen until you do. Lizzy won't be free until you do."

It was no good. She could find even the most pathetic sort of plan in his mind. Quentin pulled off the gloves.

"Nice to see you for a moment without the cute façade," he said. Immediately Roz returned to her little-girl self.

"Ha ha, break my heart," she retorted. "And don't think I'm not perfectly aware of Grandmother's pathetic attempt to thwart me. I've taken care of her already."

Quentin felt sick at heart. He'd been right about not having a plan, because whatever fragments of a plan had occurred to him or to Mrs. Tyler had been foreseen and forestalled. Poor Mrs. Tyler. Did Roz mean the old lady had been pinned down to her bed again? Or worse? Could Roz really make her mother's poor thrall commit murder?

"I could make him bite his own feet off," said Roz. "The only reason I don't do it with you is because the dragon won't ride in you if you aren't free."

"Let's do it," said Quentin.

As if in answer to him, the door to the parlor flew open, slamming against the wall. For a moment Roz looked startled, nervous. Then she turned back to him and grinned at him. "The steed may buck, but in his heart he still wants to be ridden."

"That may be the stupidest thing ever said by anybody," said Quentin.

"Say what you want, Quentin. I won't have to hear it much longer."

"Where's Lizzy?" asked Quentin.

"Out in the car. As soon as we finish, I'll set her free."

"What if you're wrong? What if you lose your gamble in there?"

"Then it won't matter much what happens to Lizzy, will it?"

"I'm not doing it if I'm not sure she's getting out."

Roz turned into Madeleine, looking sweet and shy. "If you don't do it, Tin, I'm afraid she won't have any chance of getting free. We'll just have to bet on my success, won't we?"

Quentin closed his eyes, refusing to see Madeleine.

"Harder to get rid of the illusion when I'm inside it, isn't it, Tin?"

He turned his head away.

The voice was Roz's when it came again. "Let's stop playing games. The door is open. It's time."

He opened his eyes. It was Roz again. She gestured for him to lead the way into the parlor.

This room wasn't as ratty-looking as the other rooms in the house. No windows had been broken. The dust was thick but no spiders had made webs, no rats had gnawed at it. The place was still. Only Quentin's own footprints led into the room. The treasure box, sitting on its pedestal, seemed to glow just a little. To throb with inner light.

Mike Bolt came out of the elevator and walked down the corridor. One of the two cops who had run for the stairways when they first arrived was already coming out of Mrs. Tyler's room, as the other jogged up to join him. "He hasn't been here yet."

"If he's coming at all."

"Well, we're supposed to keep watch on the door."

"Wild-goose chase, just like the other night. I don't know why they let psycho nurses run a place like this."

As they complained, Mike walked right between them. They didn't see him.

He went through the open door of Mrs. Tyler's room. She lay on the bed, her eyes open. She was struggling to rise from the bed, but each time she arched her back, she fell right back onto the sheet. She stopped struggling and turned her head to look at him. "I guess she's got us both, hasn't she, Mike?" she said.

He raised his pistol, aimed it at her head, and fired once, twice. Each time, the force of the bullet threw her farther toward the edge of the bed. Thrice. The fourth bullet knocked her off the bed. A bloody smear across the pillow marked the passage of the old woman's head.

Mike turned around and suddenly the presence that had engulfed and controlled him was gone. He looked down at the gun. What was he doing with this gun? Why was he in this empty hospital room? He stepped through the door and looked down the hall.

Two policemen were standing there. Mike called to them. "Where's Mrs. Tyler? Isn't she supposed to be in this room?"

"Who the hell are you? Where did you come from? Get out of there!"

Mike stepped back into the room as he heard them rushing toward him. He saw the blood on the pillow. He walked to the foot of the bed, looked behind it. There she lay on the floor, obviously dead, her head almost completely blown away. He looked down at the gun in his hand. He remembered firing it.

"Mrs. Tyler," he whispered. "Oh, sweet Lord, no."

"Drop it! Drop it right now."

The men in the doorway were pointing their guns at him.

"Did I do this?" he asked them.

"Drop it and get your hands on your head."

Mike leaned down as if to lay down the gun. But when he was fully bowed, his arms in shadow, he brought up the gun to his mouth and blew out the back of his head before the policemen could respond. He flopped back against the wall, arms flailing. The policemen fired then, by reflex, filling him with bullets. But he never felt them. He was already gone.

Quentin stood before the box. "Why are you standing so far from me, Roz?" he asked. "Afraid?"

"Prudent," she said with a smile.

"You mind my asking you what's actually in this box?"

"From what I've read," said Roz, "it could be either the baby's heart or its head. I'm betting it's the heart. I don't think even my late grandmother would have the stomach to cut the head off her own baby."

"She's not dead!" cried Rowena.

Quentin turned to see the woman standing in the farthest corner of the room, in the shadow. She was cringing as if in pain. Or as if she was hoping to avoid pain.

"Is too, Mother," said Roz. "I used your power over that boyfriend of yours. Hope you don't mind. He was a crack shot. I wanted the job done right."

"It's a lie," whispered Rowena. "Murdering your own grandmother."

"Isn't that what you always taught me, Mother? How evil Grandmother was? The baby-killer. Now I've evened the score. If you don't believe me, ask Quentin. He has a relic of hers. He can call her now." Roz turned to him. "Go ahead, Quentin. Call her by name."

"Mrs. Tyler," he murmured.

"By her name" said Roz.

"Anna Laurent," he said. "Anna."

Mrs. Tyler stood across the box from him, just as she had when he was here before.

"Is it true?" he asked. "Are you dead?"

"Yes," she said. "Poor Mike. He's so worried about his family."

"Listen to her," said Roz. "Pretending to care about the man who killed her. She doesn't care about him. She doesn't care about anything. Except that she lost!. She never even knew it was me she was fighting."

Mrs. Tyler turned her head and gazed levelly at Roz. If she felt any surprise, Quentin couldn't see it. But then, could you surprise the dead?

Roz was still gloating. "Always thought it was her own stupid weak daughter fighting her. Look at your daughter, Grandmother!"

Now Mrs. Tyler looked at Rowena, and her eyes softened. Love? Pity, at least.

"There she is, your softhearted daughter, the one who couldn't bear the idea of hurting anybody. Well, I'm your true child, Grandmother. I have the kind of strength you had—only more of it! What I did to you was nothing but justice! Can you deny it?"

"I don't deny anything," said Mrs. Tyler quietly. "Oh, Rowena, if only you had believed me."

Rowena was looking out the window, tears streaming down her face.

"How sad for the old ladies," said Roz. "All caught up in their little drama. Well guess what, ladies. This isn't about you. You were either tools or obstacles, that's all. Mother was a tool, and I used her. Grandmother was an obstacle, and I pushed her out of the way. Because what I'm doing really matters in the world. I was always too large to live in your little soap opera. I was born bigger than your minds could even comprehend. So stick around and see what power is for."

Mrs. Tyler looked at Quentin over the treasure box and gave him a tight little smile.

"Do it, Quentin!" cried Roz. "Open my treasure box."

Mrs. Tyler nodded slightly.

Roz laughed. "Oh, Grandmother, do you really think you're still a player in this game?"

Quentin reached out and gripped the sides of the box. He had been in this pose before, but then he had had no notion of what was inside it. Now he felt the nakedness of his skin as he touched the warm, soft wood.

"Lift the lid," said Roz.

This time there was no Uncle Paul to stop him. He lifted the lid a little. For a moment nothing happened. He looked up at Mrs. Tyler. As he did, a long slender red artery snaked out from under the lid and attached itself to one of the veins on the back of Quentin's right hand.

He cried out in fear, not pain. He reached with the other hand to pry it away, but the artery was now a part of his own body, and when he pulled on it, his hand moved with it. Two more arteries snaked out and attached to his left hand.

"Should've kept the gloves," Roz jeered.

Quentin tried to resist, but his hands weren't obeying him very well. He wanted to leap away from the box, but his hands reached for the lid in spite of his strongest effort. His hands flipped the lid open.

It was like opening the inside of a human chest. A lacy network of veins and arteries was attached to the lid and the walls of the box, and more and more of them reached out to attach to Quentin's hands and bare forearms.

Roz started walking toward him, smiling but also terrified. "Good," she said. "Possess him. Possess him."

"Stop it, Roz," whispered Rowena.

"Too late, Mother," said Roz. "Once it starts, it can't be stopped."

With terrified eyes, Quentin looked at Mrs. Tyler. She appeared solemn but not afraid. Watching him.

A huge heart rose up out of the box, drawn up by the arteries now attached to Quentin at a dozen points. It was beating, but not rhythmically.

"Hurry," whispered Roz, coming closer. "Take him."

"The heart only has a couple of minutes," said Mrs. Tyler, her voice as mild as if she were giving an explanation to a class. "Inside the box it couldn't die, but outside it has to have a host. Don't fight it Quentin. Take the heart to your chest."

In an agony of fear Quentin looked at her. It was all he could do to keep his hands from seizing the heart—and now she was telling him to surrender? To let the heart have him?

"Only a couple of minutes, and then it will have to stay where it is," said Mrs. Tyler. "Put it on your chest."

Quentin stopped fighting the impulse. At once his hands flew to the heart, seized it, ripped it from the network of arteries in the box. At once the unused veins withered and shriveled until they looked like last year's kudzu vines. The box no longer throbbed.

Quentin's hands hesitated only a moment. Then they snatched the heart to his own chest, where it clung to the cloth of his shirt, beating, beating.

"Done," said Roz.

"Done," said Mrs. Tyler.

"Roz, don't!" cried Rowena.

"And now to make you mine," said Roz. She came closer. "Bend down, Quentin, so I can kiss you." Suddenly she was transformed into Madeleine. "Kiss me, Tin. Kiss me one last time."

She was close to him. In front of him. He could see Mrs. Tyler behind her. With her hands she mimed prying something free of her chest. He understood at once. But did he have the strength to do it?

Alone he didn't. If the beast hadn't wanted to go to her, he never could have done it. But it did want to go. And because of Grandmother's hair between Paul's disfigured heart and his own flesh, the last remnants of her power had been there to help keep the beast from taking full possession of him. Quentin reached up his hands, took hold of the heart, and ripped it away from his body. With Madeleine right in front of him, the same motion pushed it into her chest.

In that instant she changed back into Roz, only where Madeleine's chest had been, there was the naked skin of Roz's face. The heart was already attaching to her in a dozen, in scores of places. And the veins were dropping away from Quentin's hands. He backed away, free of the thing, but unable to stop watching what was happening to Roz.

The heart slid down her face, under her jaw, to her neck, and down inside her shirt. Roz was terrified. "Mother!" she cried. "Help me! Mother!"

"Now you know," Mrs. Tyler said to Rowena. Her voice was thick with bitterness. "Now you know why I did what I did."

"Can't you stop it?" Rowena whispered.

"I already did, once, when it possessed my little boy," said Mrs. Tyler. "But at present, inconveniently, I'm dead."

"Mother!" Roz's voice was more frantic. "Mother!" she screamed. And then the voice became a gurgle.

Roz stumbled, fell to one knee. Her shape began changing. Her arms shriveled and drew up inside her sleeves and disappeared. Wings broke the fabric of her blouse, tearing it open across the back; they spread wide, a ten-foot, then twenty-foot span, lithe as black silk, thin as paper. Quentin could see the light of the window through a wing. Her head rocked back, her jaws opened. A huge serpentine tongue flicked out once, twice, and then her face collapsed into a new shape. The head of a dragon. It opened its jaws to reveal a vast array of teeth, and roared.

Into the roar there came another sound. A popping sound. One. Two. Three.

The dragon shape collapsed. It was Roz again, only there was a bloom of blood on the side of her head, and another on her belly. She looked over her shoulder at her mother with terrified eyes. "Mommy," she whispered.

Rowena fired again, knocking Roz down to the floor. Only the girl's torn clothes showed how the dragon had transformed her a moment ago. The heart hung limply throbbing at her throat. It was feverishly trying to get away, but it was weak now. Rowena fired into the heart.

"Don't waste bullets on that thing," said Mrs. Tyler. "It already had possession of Roz's body. That's the body that has to die."

Sobbing, Rowena sent her last two bullets into her daughter's head.

Eyes open, Roz rocked onto her back and died.

"You had to do it," said Mrs. Tyler. "You had no choice. You can live with this, Rowena. I know you can, because I did."

Rowena, her eyes dead, turned to Quentin. "Get out of the house. Get out or die."

Only now did Quentin realize that the beast had not gone. It didn't have a living body now, but it still had some power to move things in the physical world, as it had when it was in the box. The floorboards under Roz's body buckled as if some immense gopher were burrowing there. The rippling moved like a wave under the pedestal; the box fell and crumpled. The wave passed under Quentin and threw him off his feet. Now the walls were rippling, as paintings leapt out and fell to the floor, as plaster split away in chunks and slid down the wall.

"Get out," said Mrs. Tyler. "Both of you."

Quentin got up, tried to take Rowena's hand to help her. She shoved him away. "I just killed my baby," she whispered. "I'm not leaving her."

With the room bucking like a horse, Quentin staggered for the door and hurled himself into the entry hall.

If anything, it was worse out here. The foot of the stairway had come loose and was now pawing at the ground like a cat's foot, daring him to try to get past without being caught and crushed. There was no way he could reach the front door.

He ran for the library. Books were flying from the walls, smacking him like a flock of suicidal birds. There was no passage there. The dining room. The stairway snatched at him as he passed, but he made it inside. But as he stood there, panting, the dustcover on the table came to life and fluttered toward him as if to engulf him in a net of fine embroidery. It blocked all doors leading from the room. So Quentin ran for the tall window and threw himself through it like a high jumper, back first, shattering glass around him into shards like icicles.

He landed in leafless bushes, prickly and thorny, but it was kinder than the glass would have been. Scratched and bleeding, he pulled himself free and ran around to the front of the house. Ray Duncan was standing in the open door of the Lincoln, staring horrified at the house, which was trembling and, here and there, bulging with the passage of the invisible beast.

"What's happening? What's happening?" he demanded when he saw Quentin.

"Get in the car and drive!" cried Quentin.

"Rowena's in there! Roz! My little girl!"

"Roz is dead and Rowena won't come out. Come on, man! Save yourself!"

"Roz!" cried Duncan. "Rowena!" He ran up the stairs to the porch.

The moment he reached the front door, the front wall suddenly burst as the stamping foot of the stairway lunged out, knocking him down, then smashing him, again, again, his lifeless body flopping under the stairs like a mouse under a cat's paw.

Quentin left the Lincoln and ran to his own car, got in, started it, backed it all the way out to the highway. Then he stopped. "Lizzy," he said. Roz had said they brought Lizzy's prison with them.

He tried to drive back into the property, but the wheels spun and his car slid sideways. He stopped, got out of the car and ran, slipping and sliding on ice and snow, toward the house. As he ran, he plunged his right hand—still bloody from the veins that had been attached to it—into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cellular phone. He punched in 911, pushed send. "Tell the Mixinack police to get down to the old Laurent house! I don't know the address, they'll know where it is! The Laurent house. Send fire trucks. Ambulances! No, I can't stay on the line."

He jammed the phone back into his pocket as he reached the Lincoln. The house was shuddering on its foundations. The top story collapsed into the third floor. Glass burst and flew out in all directions. He reached in through the driver's door and fumbled to remove the key from the ignition. Got it. He ran back to the trunk and opened it. Then he flung the key toward the porch, where Ray Duncan might have dropped it as he ran for the house.

There was only one suitcase in the trunk of the car. He yanked it out, flung it open on the snow, and pawed through it. Only a few articles of clothing, a few kit items. A champagne bottle. Had Roz really been that certain of having a celebration afterward?

He opened every zipper compartment. He found only a couple of boxes, one holding stationery, the other some gold chains and pearls. There was nothing else that could hold a relic of Lizzy's. Roz lied. She didn't have Lizzy's prison with them.

Then he looked again at the champagne bottle. Picked it up. Could some part of Lizzy possibly fit inside?

Suddenly Mrs. Tyler was standing before him.

"Get away while you still can."

"I have to set Lizzy free."

"Get away."

She was gone.

Quentin got up from his knees, still holding the champagne bottle, and ran down the lane toward his car. Behind him, the roof of the house fell through the last three stories until they were all pancaked on the foundation. The first of the police cars wailed toward him. He waved them into the lane, but they hadn't even emerged from the trees before the house burst into sudden explosive flames. Fire leapt out and engulfed the Lincoln, the suitcase lying open in the snow. The roof collapsed one last time, falling into the foundation. Flames, sparks, and debris flew into the air and settled back down in burning pieces all over what had once been the lawns and the drive. The police drove in, followed by firetrucks. They set to work subduing the blaze, but clearly there was nothing left, no possibility of survivors.

Quentin broke the champagne bottle with a stone. In the broken glass he saw it: The shriveled, skeletal hand of a teenage girl. "Lizzy," he whispered.

She sat in the snow in front of him, leaning against the car. Tears streamed down her face. "Thank you, Tin," she said.

"Lizzy, she had you—"

"Good work, Tin. I'm free and the beast is gone."

"Are you sure? It had control of the house, it was—"

"Only as long as there was still life in her body. Now that she's dead, the beast lost its connection to the world. Mrs. Tyler found me and told me everything. She knows so much, Quentin."

"Yes, but she's dead. And Roz's parents are dead, and what good did it do? The beast will just come back somewhere else."

"Not till someone invites it," said Liz. "Maybe not for a long time. You've done all you could. You stopped it here, before it could get a foothold. That's all that anyone can ever do."

"Lizzy, what if I hadn't found you?"

"But you did. Mrs. Tyler led you. As soon as she found me, she made you realize." Lizzy glanced around. "They're coming to question you. Don't let them see you talking to me—they'll think you're crazy. And don't leave my hand here, Quentin. I don't want to be tied to this place."

She disappeared. He reached down and picked up her desiccated hand and put it in his jacket pocket.

A policeman sauntered over to him. "You the one called this in?"

"I was here to see the house," said Quentin. "They drove up from Washington to show me the house."

"Somebody was in that place?"

"I just got here. I was out at their car, talking to Mr. Duncan, when the roof started collapsing. He yelled about Rowena and Roz being inside and he ran for the house and it caught him. I called for help but it was too late for any of them. Should I have gone in, Officer? I was so scared, I drove out here and my car got stuck but then I ran back and I thought I should try to help them but the house was collapsing and—"

"No, no, you did the right thing. If you'd gone in there you'd just be dead, too."

"It crushed him right there on the front porch." It took no effort at all for Quentin to let the emotion pour out, to dissolve in tears—of relief, of exhaustion, of grief for the good people who had died. All of them—even Roz. She was just a child. She never understood what she was doing until it was too late. Ray Duncan never understood anything at all.

"Here, man, come on, sit down, get in your car and sit down for a minute." The policeman opened the door and helped him in. "Wait here, will you? We've got questions, but there's no rush, you can get ahold of yourself first, OK?"

Quentin sat there, getting control of himself, as a fireman approached the cop who had been talking to him. "I can't believe a house could collapse like that. Must've had termites out the wazoo."

The cop shook his head. "Just before this call came in, we got word. The old lady used to live here, she still owns the place. She got her head blown off in a rest home upriver. Our own chief. Used to work here as a gardener. He went crazy and killed her and then blew off his own head." The cop looked away for a moment, as if to contain his own emotions. "Family man, decent guy, good boss, good cop. You never know."

"The owner of this house just got killed?"

"It's like the old lady's revenge, the house collapsing like that. It can't just be a coincidence, she gets murdered and then her house caves in."

Quentin spoke up from the car. "I think they were her family."

The cop and the fireman came closer. "What?"

"The Duncans. They said their mother owned the house, they were selling it for her. She was in a rest home up the river, they said."

"You mean the people inside the house were her kids?"

"And her granddaughter. All the family she had in the world."

"Dear God in heaven," murmured the cop. "The whole family in a single hour, a hundred miles apart."

"Nobody's ever going to believe a story like that," said the fireman. "Straight out of The X-Files."

They went on talking. Quentin closed his eyes. It was over. The ending was lousy, but it could have been worse. For him. For everybody.

Except Mike Bolt's family. It was hard to think how it could possibly be worse for them.

Sally Sannazzaro pulled up to the barricades in front of the rest home. The policeman recognized her, waved her in. They were bringing two bodies out of the building, both with sheets draped over their heads. News cameras flashed. TV crews shone floodlights that made it brighter than day on the bodies.

Chief Todd was standing by the ambulance. He waved her over, then thought better of it and walked to meet her as she got out of her car. "Nobody can figure out how he did it. My boys got here first, they verified that she was OK and then they stood watch at the door and they swear nobody could have got by them. But he did. Not one of them heard the shots, they just saw him standing in the doorway with a gun and she was already dead."

"And Bolt?"

"They couldn't even disarm him before he blew his own head off. That didn't stop them from pumping about eight more rounds into his body. Ms. Sannazzaro, we screwed up. I don't know how, because these aren't my worst guys. I don't know whether to fire them or drown them like puppies, I'm so mad. I'm so sorry."

She patted his shoulder and turned away. Tears ran down her cheeks. "I don't think it could have been stopped, Chief Todd," she said. "I think it was going to happen no matter what."

"I know you got a thousand things to take care of inside, the whole place is in an uproar, your staff will sure be glad to see you. I'll come by tomorrow and ask you some questions, all right?"

"Fine," she said.

She started for the entrance of the rest home. The newspeople noticed her and started firing off questions. She passed the ambulance as they loaded the second body onto it. She didn't pause to see which one it was. It didn't matter now.

All she knew was that there was only one person on God's green earth who could explain this all to her, and he was a crazy man wearing the dead woman's hair in a plastic bag taped to his chest.