The beautiful but cool receptionist typed at high speed on her computer keyboard. In the muffling acoustics of the room, the nearly silent keys made soft clicking sounds that reminded Dan of ice cubes rattling against one another.

*  *  *

The movie had started ten minutes ago, much to Laura's relief, and they were now as anonymous as all the other shadowy theatergoers slumped in the highbacked seats.

Melanie stared toward the front of the theater with the same expression that had been on her face when the screen had been blank. The backsplash of light illuminated her face. Distorted reflections of the images in the film moved across her features, bringing moments of artificial color to her, but for the most part the strange light made her look even paler than she was.

At least she's awake, Laura thought.

And then she wondered what Dan Haldane knew. More than he had told her. That was for sure.

On the other side of Melanie, Earl Benton reached a hand inside his suit jacket, quietly reassuring himself that his revolver was in his shoulder holster and that he could draw it unobstructed. Laura had seen him check the weapon twice even before the film had started; she was sure he would check it again in a few minutes. It was a nervous habit, and for a man who was not the type for nervous habits, it was a disconcerting indication of how profoundly worried he was.

Of course, if It came to them here in the theater, and if It was finally ready to take Melanie, the revolver would provide no defense, regardless of how quickly Earl could draw and fire it.

*  *  *

With an hour and a quarter to kill before he could meet Palmer Boothe in Bel Air, Dan Haldane decided to drop around to the precinct house in Westwood where, the previous night, charges had been filed against Wexlersh and Manuello. The two detectives were being held solely on Earl Benton's sworn statement, and Dan wanted to add his testimony as another weight against their cell door. He had left Ross Mondale under the impression that he would not accuse Wexlersh and Manuello of assault with intent to kill, and he had told Mondale that Earl would withdraw his accusations in a couple of days, when the McCaffreys were safe, but he had been lying. If he achieved nothing else in this case, if he failed to save Melanie and Laura, he would at least see Wexlersh and Manuello behind bars and Ross Mondale ruined.

At the precinct house, the officer in charge of the case, one Herman Dorft, was glad to see Dan. The only thing that Dorft wanted more than Dan's statement was one from Laura McCaffrey. He was not happy to learn that Dr. McCaffrey was unavailable for the foreseeable future. He took Dan to a small interrogation room with a battered desk, VDT, table, and five chairs, and he offered to provide either a stenographer or a tape recorder.

'I'm so familiar with this routine,' Dan said, 'I'd rather just compose the statement myself. I can use the computer if that's all right with you.'

Herman Dorft obligingly left Dan alone with the computer, with the harsh fluorescent light and the sound of rain on the roof, and with the stale, bitter smell of cigarette smoke that had precipitated a thin yellowish film on the walls since the last time the room had been painted.

Twenty minutes later, he had just finished typing the statement and was about to go looking for a police notary, in whose presence he would sign what he had written, when the door opened and Michael Seames, the FBI agent, took one step inside. He said, 'Hello there.' He still seemed, to Dan, to be suffering chronological confusion: His face was that of a thirty-year-old, but his slumped shoulders and stiff movements made him seem like a seasoned Social Security recipient. 'I've been looking for you, Haldane.'

'Good day for ducks, huh?' Dan said, getting to his feet.

'Where are Mrs. McCaffrey and Melanie?' Seames asked.

'Hard to believe that everyone was worried about the drought just a few years ago. Now the winters get rainier every year.'

'Two detectives charged with attempted murder, police violations of civil rights, several potential breaches of national security—the Bureau now has plenty of reasons to step into this case, Haldane.'

'Myself, I'm building an ark,' Dan said, picking up his typed statement and moving toward the door.

Seames didn't get out of his way. 'And we have moved in. We're no longer just observers here. We've exercised the right of federal jurisdiction in these homicides.'

'Good for you,' Dan said.

'You are, of course, obliged to cooperate with us.'

'Sounds like fun,' Dan said, wishing Seames would get the hell out of his way.

'Where are Mrs. McCaffrey and Melanie?'

'Probably at the movies,' Dan said.

'Damn it, Haldane—'

'On a dreary day like this, they aren't going to be at the beach or at Disneyland or having a picnic in Griffith Park, so why not the movies?'

'I'm beginning to think you're an as**ole, Haldane.'

'Well, at least it's comforting to hear that you're beginning to think.'

'Captain Mondale warned me about you.'

'Oh, don't take that seriously, Agent Seames. Ross is such a kidder.'

'You're obstructing—'

'No, it's you who's obstructing,' Dan said. 'You're in my way.' And as he spoke, he shouldered past Seames, through the door.

The FBI agent followed him down the hall to the busy uniformed-operations room, where Dan located a notary. 'Haldane, you can't protect them all by yourself. If you insist on handling it this way, they're going to get snatched or killed, and you're going to be to blame.'

Signing his statement in front of the notary, Dan said, 'Maybe. Maybe they'll get killed. But if I turn them over to you, they'll positively be killed.'

Seames gaped at him. 'Are you implying that I ... that the FBI ... that the government would murder that little girl? Because maybe she's a Russian or Chinese research project? Or maybe because she's one of our projects and she knows too much and now we want to shut her up before this mess becomes too public? Is that what you think?'

'Crossed my mind.'

Spluttering and fuming, filled with either genuine outrage or a good imitation of it, Seames followed Dan from the notary to another desk where Herman Dorft was drinking black coffee and looking through a file of mug shots.

'Are you crazy, Haldane, or what?' Seames demanded.

'Or what.'

'We're the government, for Christ's sake. The United States government.'

'I'm happy for you.'

'This isn't China, where the government knocks on a couple of hundred doors every night and a couple of hundred people disappear.'

'How many disappear here? Ten a night? Makes me feel so much better.'

'This isn't Iran or Nicaragua or Libya. We aren't killers. We're here to protect the public.'

'Does this stirring speech come with background music? It ought to, but I don't hear any.'

'We don't murder people,' Seames said flatly.

Handing his notarized statement to Dorft, Dan said to Seames, 'All right, so the government itself, the institution of government in this country, doesn't make a policy of killing people—except maybe with taxes and paperwork. But the government is composed of people, individuals, and your agency is composed of individuals, and don't tell me that some of those individuals aren't capable of murdering the McCaffreys in return for money or for political concerns, misguided idealism, or any of a thousand other reasons. Don't try to tell me that everyone in your agency is so saintly and so God-fearing that a homicidal thought has never entered any of their minds, because I remember Waco, Texas, and the Weaver family in Idaho and more than a few other Bureau abuses of power, Agent Seames.'

Dorft stared up at them, startled, as Seames shook his head violently and said, 'FBI agents are—'

'Dedicated, professional, and generally damned good at what they do,' Dan finished for him. 'But even the best of us have the capacity for murder, Mr. Seames. Even those of us who appear to be the most dependable—or the most innocent, the gentlest. Believe me, I know. I know all about murder, about the murderers among us, the murderers within us. More than I want to know. Mothers murder their own children. Husbands get drunk and murder their wives, and sometimes they don't have to be drunk, just suffering from indigestion, and sometimes it doesn't even take indigestion. Ordinary secretaries murder their two-timing boyfriends. Last summer, right here in L.A., on the hottest day in July, an ordinary salesman murdered his next-door neighbor over an argument about a borrowed lawn mower. We're a twisted species, Seames. We mean well, and we want to do good for each other, and we try, God knows we try, but there's this darkness in us, this taint, and we've got to struggle against it every minute, struggle against letting the taint spread and overwhelm us, and we do struggle, but sometimes we lose. We murder for jealousy, greed, envy, pride ... revenge. Political idealists go on murderous rampages and make life hell on earth for the very people whose lives they profess to want to make better. Even the best government, if it's big enough, is riddled with idealists who'd open up extermination camps and feel righteous about it, if they were just given a chance. Religious zealots kill each other in the name of God. Housewives, ministers, businessmen, plumbers, pacifists, poets, doctors, lawyers, grandmothers, and teenagers—all have the capacity to murder, given the right moment and mood and motivation. And the ones you've got to mistrust the most are the ones who tell you they're men and women of peace, the ones who tell you they're absolutely nonviolent and safe, because they're either lying and waiting for an advantage over you—or they're dangerously naive and know nothing important about themselves. Now, you see, two people I care about—the two people I care about most in the world, it seems—are in danger of their lives, and I won't entrust their care to anyone but me. Sorry. No way. Forget it. And anybody who tries to get in my way, tries to stop me from protecting the McCaffreys, is at least going to get his ass kicked up between his shoulder blades. Oh, at least. And anyone who tries to harm them, tries to lay a finger on them ... well, hell, I'll waste the son of a bitch, sure as hell. I have no doubts about that, Seames, because I have absolutely no illusions about my own capacity for murder.'

Shaking, he walked away, heading toward the door that opened on the parking lot beside the precinct house. As he went, he became aware that the room had fallen silent and that everyone was looking at him. He realized that he had been speaking not only angrily and passionately but at the top of his voice as well. He felt fevered. Sweat sheathed his face. People moved out of his way.

He had reached the door and put his hand on it by the time Michael Seames had recovered from that emotional outburst and had come after him. 'Wait, Haldane, for Christ's sake, it just can't work that way. We can't let you play the Lone Ranger. Think, man! There are eight people dead in two days, which makes this case just too damned big to—'

Dan stopped before opening the door, turned sharply to Seames, and interrupted him. 'Eight? Is that what you said? Eight dead?'

Dylan McCaffrey, Willy Hoffritz, Cooper, Rink, and Scaldone. That made five. Not eight. Just five.

'What's happened since last night?' Dan demanded. 'Who else has been hit since Joseph Scaldone?'

'You don't know?'

'Who else?' Dan demanded.

'Edwin Koliknikov.'

'But he got out. He ran, went to Las Vegas.'

Seames was furious. 'You knew about Koliknikov? You knew he was an associate of Hoffritz's, in on this gray room business?'

'Yes.'

'We didn't know until he was dead, for God's sake! You're withholding information from a police investigation, Haldane, and it doesn't matter a rat's ass that you're a cop!'

'What happened to Koliknikov?'

Seames told him about the gaudy public execution in the Vegas casino. 'It was like a poltergeist,' the agent repeated. 'Something unseen. An unknown, unimaginable power that reached into that casino and beat Koliknikov to death in front of hundreds of witnesses! Now there's no longer any doubt that Hoffritz and Dylan McCaffrey were working on something with serious defense applications, and we're goddamned determined to know what it was.'

'You've got his papers, the logbooks and files from the house in Studio City—'

'We had them,' Seames said. 'But whatever reached into that casino and wasted Koliknikov also reached into the evidence files in this case and set fire to all of McCaffrey's papers—'

Astonished, Dan said, 'What? When was this?'

'Last night. Spontaneous fu**ing combustion,' Seames said.

Obviously Seames was teetering on the edge of blind rage, for a federal agent simply did not shout the F-word at the top of his voice in a public place. Such behavior wasn't good for the image, and to the feds, their image was as important as their work.

'You said eight,' Dan reminded him. 'Eight dead. Who else besides Koliknikov?'

'Howard Renseveer was found dead in his ski chalet this morning, up in Mammoth. I guess you know about Renseveer too.'

'No,' Dan lied, afraid that the truth would so enrage Seames that he would put Dan under arrest. 'Harold Renseveer?'

'Howard,' Seames corrected in a sarcastic tone that indicated he was still half convinced that Dan knew the name well. 'Another associate of Willy Hoffritz and Dylan McCaffrey. Evidently he was hiding up there. People in another chalet, farther down the mountain, heard screaming during the night, called the sheriff. They found a mess when they got there. And there was another man with Renseveer. Sheldon Tolbeck.'

'Tolbeck? Who's he?' Dan asked, playing dumb in the name of self-preservation.

'Another research psychologist who was involved with Hoffritz and McCaffrey. Indications are that Tolbeck was in the cabin when this thing ... this power, whatever it is, showed up and started to bash Renseveer's brains in. Tolbeck ran into the woods. He hasn't been found yet. He probably never will be, and if he is ... well, the odds are pretty damned high that the best we can hope for is that he froze to death.'

This was bad. Terrible. The worst.

Dan had known that time was running out, but he hadn't known that it was pouring away like floodwater through the broken breast of a damn. He had thought that at least five of the conspirators from the gray room remained to be disposed of before It would turn its attention to Melanie. He had figured those executions would require another day or two and, long before the last of the conspirators had been destroyed, he would have confirmed his suspicions about the case and would have found a way to bring the slaughter to an end in time to save Melanie. He'd thought he might even be in time to save one or more of those manipulative and amoral men, although they didn't deserve to be saved. But suddenly his chances of saving anyone were diminished: Three more were gone. As far as he knew, two conspirators remained: Albert Uhlander, the author; and Palmer Boothe. As soon as they were terminated, It would turn to Melanie with a special rage. It would tear her apart. It would hammer her head to bits, hammer the last glimmer of life out of her brain before finally releasing her. Only Boothe and Uhlander stood between the girl and death. And even now, either the publisher or the author—or both—might be in the merciless grip of their invisible but powerful adversary.