“The grille's not held in place by screws,” he told Tal, “It's a spring-clip model, so it could conceivably have been snapped into place from inside the duct, once Wargle went through, so long as he wriggled in feet-first.”

He pulled the grille off the wall.

Tal handed him a flashlight.

Bryce directed the hewn into the dark heating duct and frowned. The narrow, metal passageway ran only a short distance before taking a ninety-degree upward turn.

Switching off the flashlight and passing it down to Tal Bryce said, “Impossible. To get through there, Wargle would have to've been no bigger than Sammy Davis, Jr., and as flexible as the rubber man in a carnival sideshow.”

Frank Autry approached Bryce Hammond at the operations desk in the middle of the lobby, where the sheriff was seated, reading over the messages that had come in during the night.

“Sir, there's something you ought to know about Wargle.”

Bryce looked up. “What's that?”

“Well… I don't like to have to speak ill of the dead.”

“None of us cared much for him,” Bryce said flatly, “Any attempt to honor his memory would be hypocritical. So if you know something that'll help me, spill it, Frank.”

Frank smiled. “You'd have done real well for yourself in the army.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “Last night, when Wargle and I were dismantling the radio over at the substation, he made several disgusting remarks about Dr. Paige and Lisa.”

“Sex stuff?”

“Yeah.”

Frank recounted the conversation that he'd had with Wargle.

“Christ,” Bryce said, shaking his head.

Frank said, “The thing about the girl was what bothered me most. Wargle was half serious when he talked about maybe making a move on her if the opportunity arose. I don't think he'd have gone as far as rape, but he was capable of making a very heavy pass and using his authority, his badge, to coerce her. I don't think that kid could be coerced; she's too spunky. But I think Wargle might've tried it.”

The sheriff tapped a pencil on the desk, staring thoughtfully into the air.

“But Lisa couldn't have known,” Frank said.

“She couldn't have overheard any of your conversation?”

“Not a word.”

“She might have suspected what kind of man Wargle was from the way he looked at her.”

“But she couldn't have known,” Frank said, “Do you see what I'm driving at?”

“Yes.”

“Most kids,” Frank said, “if they were going to make up a tall tale, they would be satisfied just to say they'd been chased by a dead man. They wouldn't ordinarily embellish it by saying the dead man wanted to molest them.”

Bryce tended to agree. “Kids' minds aren't that baroque. Their lies are usually simple, not elaborate.”

“Exactly,” Frank said, “The fact that she said Wargle was na*ed and wanted to molest her… well… to me, that seems to add credibility to her story. Now, we'd all like to believe that someone sneaked into the utility room and stole Wargle's body. And we'd like to believe they put the body in the ladies' room, that Lisa saw it, that she panicked, and that she imagined all the rest. And we'd like to believe that after she fainted, someone got the corpse out of there by some incredibly clever means. But that explanation is full of holes. What happened was a lot stranger than that.”

Bryce dropped his pencil and leaned back in his chair. “Shit. You believe in ghosts, Frank? The living dead?”

“No. There's a real explanation for this,” Frank said, “Not a bunch of superstitious mumbo-jumbo. A real explanation.”

“I agree,” Bryce said, “But Wargle's face was…”

“I know. I saw it.”

“How could his face have been put back together?”

“I don't know.”

“And Lisa said his eyes.”

“Yeah. I heard what she said.”

Bryce sighed. “You ever worked Rubik's Cube?”

Frank blinked. “No. I never did.”

“Well, I did,” the sheriff said, “The damned thing almost drove me crazy, but I stuck with it, and eventually I solved it. Everybody thinks that's a hard puzzle, but compared to this case, Rubik's Cube is a kindergarten game.”

“There's another difference,” Frank said.

“What's that?”

“If you fail to solve Rubik's Cube, the punishment isn't death.”

In Santa Mira, in his cell in the county jail, Fletcher Kale, slayer of wife and son, woke before dawn. He lay motionless on the thin foam mattress and stared at the window, which presented a rectangular slab of the predawn sky for his inspection.

He would not spend his life in prison. Would not.

He had a magnificent destiny. That was the thing no one understood. They saw the Fletcher Kale who existed now, without being able to see what he would become. He was destined to have it all: money beyond counting, power beyond imagining, fame, respect.

Kale knew he was different from the rest of mankind, and it was this knowledge that kept him going in the face of all adversity. The seeds of greatness within him were already sprouting. In time, he would make them all see how wrong they had been about him.

Perception, he thought as he stared up at the barred window, perception is my greatest gift. I'm extraordinarily perceptive.

He saw that, without exception, human beings were driven by self-interest. Nothing wrong with that. It was the nature of the species. That was how humankind was meant to be. But most people could not bear to face the truth. The up so-called inspiring concepts like love, friendship, honor, truthfulness, faith, trust, and individual dignity. They claimed to believe in all those things and more; however, at heart, they knew it was all bullshit. They just couldn't admit it. And so, they stupidly hobbled themselves with a smarmy, self-congratulatory code of conduct, with noble but hollow sentiments, thus frustrating their true desires, dooming themselves to failure and unhappiness.

Fools. God, he despised them.

From his unique perspective, Kale saw that mankind was, in reality, the most ruthless, dangerous, unforgiving species on earth. And he reveled in that knowledge. He was proud to be a member of such a race.

I'm ahead of my own time, Kale thought as he sat up on the edge of his bunk and put his bare feet on the cold floor of his cell. I am the next step of evolution. I've evolved beyond the need to believe in morality. That's why they look at me with such loathing. Not because I killed Joanna and Danny. They hate me because I'm better than they are, more completely in touch with my true human nature.

He'd had no choice but to kill Joanna. She had refused to give him the money, after all. She had been prepared to humiliate him professionally, ruin him financially, and wreck his entire future.

He'd had to kill her. She was in his way.

It was too bad about Danny. Kale sort of regretted that part. Not always. Just now and then. Too bad. Necessary, but too bad.

Anyway, Danny had always been a regular mama's boy. In fact, he was actually downright distant toward his father. That was Joanna's handiwork. She had probably been brainwashing the kid, turning him against his old man. In the end, Danny really hadn't been Kale's son at all. He'd become a stranger.

Kale got down on the floor of, his cell and began to do pushups.

One-two, one-two, one-two.

He intended to keep himself in shape for that moment when an opportunity for escape presented itself. He knew exactly where he would go when he escaped. Not west, not out of the country, not over toward Sacramento. That's what they would expect him to do.

One-two, one-two.

He knew of a perfect hideout. It was right here in the county. They wouldn't be looking for him under their noses. When they couldn't find him in a day or so, they'd decide he had already split, and they'd stop actively looking in this neighborhood. When several more weeks passed, when they weren't thinking about him any longer, then he would leave the hideout, double back through town, and head west.

One-two.

But first, he would go up into the mountains. That's where the hideout was. The mountains offered him the best chance of eluding the cops once he'd escaped. He had a hunch about it. The mountains. Yeah. He felt drawn to the mountains.

Dawn came to the mountains, spreading like a bright stain across the sky, soaking into the darkness and discoloring it.

The forest above Snowfield was quiet. Very quiet.

In the underbrush, the leaves were beaded with morning dew. The pleasant odor of rich humus rose up from the spongy forest floor.

The air was chilly, as if the last exhalation of the night still lay upon the land.

The fox stood motionless on a limestone formation that thrust up from an open slope, just below the treeline. The wind gently ruffled his gray fur.

His breath made a small phosphoric plume in the crisp air.

The fox was not a night hunter, yet he had been on the prowl since an hour before dawn. He had not eaten in almost two days.

He had been unable to find game. The woods had been unnaturally silent and devoid of the scent of prey.

In all his seasons as a hunter, the fox had never encountered such barren quietude as this. The most bitter days of midwinter were filled with more promise than this. Even in the wind-whipped snows of January, there was always the blood scent, the game scent.

Not now.

Now there was nothing.

Death seemed to have claimed all the creatures in this part of the forest-except for one small, hungry fox. Yet there was not even the scent of death, not even the ripe stench of a carcass moldering in the underbrush.

But at last, as he had scampered across the low limestone formation, being careful not to set foot in one of the crevices or flute holes that dropped down into the caves beneath, the fox had seen something move on the slope ahead of him, something that had not merely been stirred by the wind. He had frozen on the low rocks, staring uphill at the shadowy perimeter of this new arm of the forest.

A squirrel. Two squirrels. No, there were even more of them than that-five, ten, twenty. They were lined up side by side in the dimness along the treeline.

At first there had been no game whatsoever. Now there was an equally strange abundance of it.

The fox sniffed.

Although the squirrels were only five or six yards away, he could not get their scent.

The squirrels were looking directly at him, but they didn't seem frightened.

The fox cocked his head, suspicion tempering his hunger.

The squirrels moved to their left, all at once, in a tight little group, and then came out of the shadows of the trees, away from the protection of the forest, onto open ground, straight toward the fox. They roiled over and under and around one another, a frantic confusion of brown pelts, a blur of motion in the brown grass. When they came to an abrupt halt, all at the same instant, they were only three or four yards from the fox. And they were no longer squirrels.

The fox twitched and made a hissing sound.

The twenty small squirrels were now four large raccoons.

The fox growled softly.

Ignoring him, one of the raccoons stood on its hind feet and began washing its paws.

The fur along the fox's back bristled.

He sniffed the air.

No scent.

He put his head low and watched the raccoons closely. His sleek muscles grew even more tense than they had been, not because he intended to spring, but because he intended to flee.

Something was very wrong.

All four raccoons were sitting up now, forepaws tucked against their chests, tender bellies exposed.

They were watching the fox.

The raccoon was not usually prey for the fox. It was too aggressive, too sharp of tooth, too quick with its claws. But though it was safe from foxes, the raccoon never enjoyed confrontation; it never flaunted itself as these four were doing.

The fox licked the cold air with his tongue.

He sniffed again and finally did pick up a scent.

His ears snapped back flat against his skull, and he snarled.

It wasn't the scent of raccoons. It wasn't the scent of any denizen of the forest that he had ever encountered before. It was an unfamiliar, sharp, unpleasant odor. Faint. But repellent.

This vile odor wasn't coming from any of the four raccoons that posed in front of the fox. He wasn't quite able to make out where it was coming from.

Sensing grave danger, the fox whipped around on the limestone, turning away from the raccoons, although he was reluctant to put his back to them.

His paws scraped and his claws clicked on the hard surface as he launched himself down the slope, across the flat weatherworn rock, his tail streaming out behind him. He leaped over a foot-wide crevice in the stone-

–and in midleap he was snatched from the air by something dark and cold and pulsing.

The thing burst up out of the crevice with brutal, shocking force and speed.

The agonized squeal of the fox was sharp and brief.

As quickly as the fox was seized, it was drawn down into the crevice. Five feet below, at the bottom of the miniature chasm, there was a small hole that led into the caves beneath the limestone outcropping. The hole was too small to admit the fox, but the struggling creature was dragged through anyway, its bones snapping as it went.

Gone.

All in the blink of an eye. Half a blink.

Indeed, the fox had been sucked into the earth before the echo of its dying cry had even pealed back from a distant hillside.

The raccoons were gone.

Now, a flood of field mice poured onto the smooth slabs of limestone. Scores of them. At least a hundred.

They went to the edge of the crevice. They stared down into it.

One by one, the mice slipped over the edge, dropped to the bottom, and then went through the small natural opening into the cavern below.

Soon, all the mice were gone, too.

Once again, the forest above Snowfield was quiet.

Part Two: Phantoms

Evil is not an abstract concept. It lives.

It has a form. It stalks. It is too real.

–Dr. Tom Dooley

Phantoms! Whenever I think I fully

understand mankind's purpose on

earth, just when I foolishly imagine

that I have seized upon the meaning of

life… suddenly I see phantoms

dancing in the shadows, mysterious

phantoms performing a gavotte that

says, as pointedly as words, “What

you know is nothing, little man; what

you have to learn, is immense.”

–Charles Dickens

Chapter 21 – The Big Story

Santa Mira.

Monday-1:02 A.M.

“Hello?”

“Is this the Santa Mira Daily News?”