The cameraman was talking louder now, and Milo used the sound for cover, charging out into the clearing, raising his rifle.

The cameraman's right thigh nudged the line. Made it bob. He realized it. Laughed. Did it again, watched the pull on Peake's hand.

Peake was able to pull the trigger, but even tardive movement hadn't caused him to do so.

Resisting?

Again, his head dropped.

The cameraman said, " Where's good help when you need it?" Taking hold of Peake's ear, he shoved Peake's head upward, filmed the resultant gaping stare. Caressing the line with his own index finger as the camera panned the length of Peake's body, moving slowly from furrowed skull to oversized feet.

Disproportionate feet. Puppet.

I understood. Insight was worthless.

I readied my gun, but stayed in place. Milo had inched closer to the cameraman, fifteen or so feet to his rear. With exquisite care, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder, trained it once again on the cameraman's neck. Sniper's target: the medulla oblongata, lower brain tissue that controlled basic body process. One clean shot and respiration would cease.

The cameraman said, "All right, Ardis, I've got enough background. One way or the other, let's do the cunt."

The auburn-haired woman opened her good eye. Saw Milo. Moved her mouth around the red ball, as if trying to spit it out. I knew who she was. Sheriff Haas's wife-Marvelle Haas.

Mail on the table, one day, maybe two. One car gone, the wife left alone.

She began shivering violently.

The young girl remained glazed.

The cameraman turned toward Marvelle, gave us a full view of his profile. Deep lines scored the sides of a lipless mouth. Grainy, tanned skin, several shades darker than the white, hairless head. The head accustomed to wigs. Small but aggressive chin. Beak nose sharp enough to draw blood. No facial fat, but loose jowls, stringy neck. Forearms wormed by veins. Big hands. Dirty nails. Derrick Crimmins was turning steadily into his father. His father had been a sour, grasping man, but nothing said he'd been anything other than a flawed human being.

Here in front of me was monstrosity.

Yet open him up and there'd be unremarkable viscera. Bouncing around the vault of his skull would be a lump of gray jelly, outwardly indistinguishable from the brain of a saint.

A man-it always came down to just a man.

Marvelle Haas closed her eyes again. Whimpers struggled to escape from behind the red ball. All that emerged were pitiful squeaks. Milo crouched, ready to shoot, but Crimmins was still too close to the line.

"Open your eyes, Mrs. Haas," said Crimmins. "Give me your eyes, honey, come on. I want to catch your expression the moment it happens."

He checked the tape around Peake's hand. Adjusted the gun barrel so that it centered on Marvelle Haas's left temple.

She squeaked.

He said, "Come on, let's be professional about this." Moved toward her. Away from the fishing line.

"Used to fish," he said, arranging her hair, parting her housedress. Slipping a hand under the fabric and rubbing, pinching. "Look what I caught here."

Still within arm's reach of the line.

"Back when I fished," he said, "a tug on the line meant you'd caught something. This time it means throwing something away."

She turned away from him. He moved to the left, focusing, filming.

Away from the line. Far enough away.

"Don't move! Drop your hands! Drop 'em drop 'em now!"

Derrick Crimmins froze. Turned around. The look on his owlish face was odd: surprised-betrayed.

Then the flush of rage. "This is a private shoot. Where's your pass?"

"Drop your hand, Crimmins. Do it now!"

"Oh," said Crimmins. "You talk so I'm supposed to listen, asshole?"

"Drop it, Crimmins, this is the last time- "

Crimmins said, "Okay, you win."

He shrugged. The lipless mouth curved upward "Oh well," he said.

He lunged for the fishing line. Milo shot him in the smile.

Chapter 41

The explorer showed up on a Hollywood Division want list. Stolen from a strip mall at Western and Sunset two months before. In the rear storage area were five sets of license plates, three phony registrations, two videocams, a dozen cassettes, candy wrappers, soda cans. Wedged in the spare-tire case, barbiturates, Thorazine, methamphetamine.

Hedy Haupt was traced to a family in Yuma, Arizona. Father's whereabouts unknown, Welfare Department clerk mother, one brother who worked for the Phoenix fire department. Hedy had earned a B average during her first three years at Yuma High, played a starring role on the track and basketball teams. After she "fell in with a bad crowd" during her senior year, her grades had plummeted and she'd dropped out, earned a GED, gotten a job at Burger King, run away. During the ensuing eight years, her mother had seen her twice, once for Christmas five years ago, then a one-week visit last year, during which she'd been accompanied by a boyfriend named Griff.

"Had a bad feeling about him," Mrs. Haupt told Milo. "Carried a camera around and did nothing but take our picture. Wore nothing but black, like someone died."

Milo and Mike Whitworth found the tapes while excavating the mounds of stolen goods in the garage at Orange Drive. Sixteen cassettes in black plastic cases, buried under thousands of dollars' worth of motion picture gear that Derrick Crimmins had lacked the will, or the ability, to master.

Sixteen death scenes.

The first recognizable victim was the fourth we viewed.

Richard Dada, young, handsome, talking animatedly about his career plans, unaware of what lay ahead. Cut to the next scene: Richard's head yanked back by the hair, exposed for the throat slash. The body bisected with a band saw. The dark-sleeved arms of the murderer visible, but no face. The camera was stationary, making it possible for one person to murder and film. Other tapes featured a roving lens that necessitated two killers. The log on the tape said Dada had been killed at one A.M.

Ellroy Bearty's tape featured two segments, an initial shot of the homeless man sucking a bottle near the train tracks, then, four months later, Beatty prone and unconscious on those same train tracks, followed by a long shot of an approaching express. Poor technique; the camera jumped around and the moment of impact was just a blur. Next came brother Leroy, also in two installments. Smiling drunkenly as he talked about wanting to be a blues singer. Four months later, a similar smile, cut short as a black hole snapped onto his forehead like a decal and he collapsed.

Both brothers killed the same night. Ellroy first, his death mandated by the train schedule. Leroy's turn two hours later. Midway through the stack was Claire Argent's final day on earth: like the others, she'd been unprepared. Crimmins had filmed her in front of a bare white wall. Whether it was her own living room couldn't be determined. She talked about psychology, about wanting to learn more about madness, made allusions to the project she and the cameraman would be starting soon, then said, "Oh, sorry, I'm supposed to forget you're there, right?" No answer from the cameraman.

Claire talked more about the origins of madness. About not jumping to conclusions, because even psychotics had something to tell us. Then she smoothed an eyebrow-primping for the camera-and smiled some more. Five seconds of shy smile before she was smothered by a pillow. Long shot of her motionless body. Close-up on the straight razor… Twelve other home movies, unlabeled. Seven females: five teenage girls with the haunted look of street kids, two attractive blond women in their thirties. Five males: a painfully thin goateed boy around sixteen or seventeen and four men, one Asian, one black, two Hispanic.