His hands were working furiously. Time to give him some breathing room. I said, "When Treadway closed down, what happened to all the town records?"

"Boxed and shipped up to Bakersfield. But forget about finding anything there. We're talking maps, plot plans, and not much of it, at that. Sounds to me like you're digging a dry hole, Doctor. Why don't you go back to L.A. and tell your bosses to forget all this psychological stuff. Peake's locked up, that's the main thing."

He looked at his wrist. No watch. He got up and found it on one of the bookshelves, put it on, checked the dial.

I said, "I appreciate your spending the time. Just a few more things. The article I read said you found Peake sleeping."

"Like a-" His mouth trembled. "I was going to say like a baby. Christ-yeah, he was asleep. Lying on his back, hands folded over his chest, snoring, face all smeared with blood. At first I thought he'd been killed too, but when I looked closer I could see it was just stains, and that made me jam the cuffs on him."

He wiped sweat from his cheeks. "That place. I'd seen it from the outside but never been inside before. A sty- smelled worse than a dog run. What little stuff Peake owned was all jumbled and thrown around. Spoiled food, armies of bugs, empty bottles of booze, cans of spray paint, glue tubes, porno magazines he must've gotten somewhere else, 'cause that garbage wasn't sold in Treadway. No one recalls Peake traveling, but he must've. For the dope, too. He had all kinds of pills-speed, downers, phenobarbitol. The prescription pharmacist was over in Tehachapi, and they had no record of any prescriptions. So it must have been street stuff. Scum like Peake can get any sort of thing."

"Was he stoned that night?"

"Had to be. Even after I cuffed him and screamed in his face, stuck my gun right under his nose, I could barely rouse him. He kept fading in and out, got this real dumb smile on his face, and then he'd close his eyes and be in Never-Never Land again. It was all I could do not to shoot him right there. Because of what he did-what I found in his shack." He turned away. "On his hot plate. He'd taken the knife with him, the one he used on the little girl, grabbed that baby boy out of the crib, and-"

He sprang up again. "Hell, no, I won't go there. Took me too damn long to erase those pictures from my head. Goodbye, Doctor-don't say another word, just good-bye."

He hurried to the door, held it open. I thanked him for his time again.

"Yeah, sure."

"Just one more thing," I said. "Who inherited Scott and Terri's estate?"

"Bunch of relatives all over the state. Her folks were from Modesto, and Scott still had family up in San Francisco, on his mother's side. The lawyer in charge said there were two dozen or so heirs, but no one was fighting. None of them gave a damn about inheriting, they were all broken up about how the money came to them."

"Do you remember the lawyer's name?"

"No. Why the hell would it matter?"

"I'm sure it doesn't," I said. "And Scott's mother was already deceased."

"Years before. Heart condition. Why?"

"Just being thorough."

"Well, you're sure being that." He started to close the door.

I said, "Mr. Haas, is there anyone else around here who might be willing to talk to me?"

"What?" he said, furiously. "This wasn't enough?"

"As long as I'm up here, I might as well cover all bases- you were a lawman, you know what it's like."

"No, I don't. And I don't want to. Forget it. There's no one from the old days. Fairway's for old city folk looking for peace and quiet. I'm the only Treadway hick in the place. Which is why they stuck me out with the trailers." His laugh was cold.

I said, "Any idea where Derrick Crimmins-"

"The Crimminses are as gone as anyone else. After Carson Senior and his wife got their money out of the land, they moved to Florida. I heard they bought a boat, did all this sailing, but that's all I know. If they're alive, they'd be old. At least he would."

"His wife was younger?"

"She was a second wife."

"What was her name?"

"I don't remember," he answered too quickly. His voice had hardened and he had closed the door till only a five-inch crack remained. The half-face I saw was grim. "Cliff Crimmins is also gone. Motorcycle accident in Vegas-it made the papers. He was into that motocross stuff, stunt driving, parachuting, surfing, anything with speed and danger. Both of them were like that. Spoiled kids, always had to be the center of attention. Carson bought them all the toys they wanted."

The door closed.

I'd raised someone else's stress level. Some psychologist.

No end to justify the means, either.

Had he reacted with special vehemence when the topic was the second Mrs. Crimmins, or had I already primed his emotional pump so that anything I said raised his blood pressure?

Walking back to the car, I decided upon the former: how likely would he be to forget the name of one of the richest women in town? So something about Mrs. Crimmins bothered him… but big deal. Maybe he'd hated her. Or loved her. Or lusted for her without satisfaction.

No reason to think it related to anything I was after.

I didn't even know what I was after.

Dry hole.

It was still before noon, and I felt useless. Haas claimed no Treadway residents were around, and maybe he was telling the truth. But I felt unsettled-something about his demeanor-why had he agreed to see me, started off amiable, then turned?

Probably just horror flashbacks.

Still, as long as I was up here… I'd already exhausted the major news sources on the Ardullo murders, but small towns had local papers, and Treadway's might've covered the carnage in detail. The records had all been shipped to Bakers-field. Not much of it, Haas claimed. But city libraries appreciated the value of old news.

As I reached the Seville, a baby blue security sedan nosed through the trailer park. Different guard at the wheel, also young and mustachioed. Maybe that was the Bunker Protection image.

He cruised alongside me, stopped the way the first man had.

Staring. No surprise. He'd been told about me.

I said, "Have a nice day."

"You too, sir."

On my way out, I tripled the speed limit.

Back at the Grapevine gas station, I made a few calls and learned that the main reference library for Kern County was Beale Memorial, in Bakersfield.

Another forty-five minutes of driving. I found Beale easily enough, a ten-year-old, modernistic, sand-colored structure in a nice part of town, backed by a two-hundred-vehicle parking lot. Inside was a fresh-smelling atrium and the feel of efficiency. I told the smiling librarian at the reference desk what I was after and she directed me to the Jack Maguire Local History Room, where another pleasant woman checked a computer database and said, "We've got twenty years of something called the Treadway Intelligencer. Hard copy, not microfiche."

"Could I see it, please?"

"All of it?"

"Unless that's a problem."

"Let me check."

She disappeared behind a door and emerged five minutes later pushing a dolly bearing two medium-sized cardboard boxes.

"You're in luck," she said. "It was a weekly, and a small one, so this is twenty years. You can't take it out of the room, but we're open till six. Happy reading."

No raised eyebrows, no intrusive questions. God bless librarians. I wheeled the dolly to a table.

A small one, indeed. The Intelligencer was a seven-page green sheet and the second carton was half empty. Copies, beginning with January 1962, were bound by the dozen and bagged in plastic. The publisher and editor-in-chief was someone named Orton Hatzler, the managing editor Wanda Hatzler. I copied down both names and started to read.

Wide-spaced text and a few photos with surprisingly good clarity. Weather reports on the front page, because even in California weather mattered to farmers. High school dances, bumper crops, science projects, 4-H Club, scouting expeditions, gleeful descriptions of the Kern County Fair ("Once again, Lars Carlson has shown himself to be the peach-pie-eating champion of all time!"). Page two was much the same, and three was reserved for wire-service snips abstracting the international events of the day and for editorials. Orton Hatzler had been a strong hawk on Vietnam.