When Dirgrove walked through the door how far did he take the charade? Was din-din with the family part of the routine? Or did he lock himself, straight off, in his study?

Did he pay token attention to Brandon and Sonja? Jeremy’s glimpse of the family at dinner said the bastard couldn’t care less.

Were he and Patty still sleeping together?

Poor woman, that determined face, the athletic carriage. All the trappings of a fine life, and it would be crashing down sooner or later.

Jeremy was going to do his best to make it sooner.

On the third day, Doug Vilardi was sent to the O.R. for a splenectomy. Jeremy comforted the family but knew the young man wouldn’t need him for at least twenty-four hours. None of his other patients were in crisis. Several had been discharged, and he was only called to one acute procedure, a fifteen-year-old burn patient, a girl who’d lost the skin on one thigh and was undergoing painful whirlpool baths to slosh loose dead dermis.

Jeremy found out she liked playing tennis and had her imagine herself playing the French Open.

The girl got through it. Her father, a tough-guy type, some sort of executive, said, “That was amazing.”

“Jennifer’s amazing.”

The guy shook his head. “Man- you’re good.”

Now, it was 6 P.M., and he was free. He desperately wanted to keep his head clear. To save mental space for Dirgrove, his psychopathology, his tools. The woman who was certain to be his next target.

Dirgrove worked later than usual, not showing up at his car until shortly after 8 P.M. When he left the doctors’ lot, he turned south.

Away from his home base on Hale. A first.

Here we go.

A great night for watching. The mercury had dropped even farther, but the air had dried. Gotten thinner, too, as if some deity were sucking out all the unnecessary gases. Jeremy breathed heavily, headily, felt lighthearted. Sound seemed to be traveling faster, and his car windows couldn’t shut out the city din. Lights were brighter, people walked faster, every nocturnal detail stood out in relief.

No shortage of cars, tonight. Urban motorists were out in force, enjoying skid-free roads and clarity. Driving too fast, euphorically.

Everyone functioning at peak levels.

Dirgrove headed toward the Asa Brander Bridge- the same route that had led Jeremy to Arthur’s rooming house in Ash View. But instead of exiting on the industrial road and connecting to the turnpike, the Buick kept going.

Toward the airport.

Six more blocks, then he turned right on a busy, commercial street. Another two blocks and they were on Airport Boulevard, and Dirgrove had pulled in front of a motel.

Red neon spaghetti spelled out THE HIDEAWAY over a neon cutout of two overlapping hearts. The motel advertised massage beds, total privacy (right out there on the busy boulevard) and adult films on cable. On one side of the building was a filling station, the other hosted an unclaimed-luggage resale store called TravelAid. Farther down the block was an adult book and video store, two liquor emporia, a drive-through hamburger joint.

Mattress dance hall.

The rooms faced a motor court. The entrance was double-wide. Jeremy parked across Airport and crossed the boulevard on foot. He stood at the front of the motel, on the sidewalk, at an angle where he could peer into the court and see the window marked OFFICE. At his back, traffic sped by. Overhead, planes took off and landed. No one walked the sidewalks. The air stank of jet fuel.

The motel office windows weren’t draped, and the room was brightly lit. Jeremy’s position afforded him a clear view of Ted Dirgrove checking in. The surgeon appeared as relaxed as someone on a wholesome vacation.

Jeremy noticed that he didn’t sign in. A regular? Dirgrove got his key, made his way to a room on the east side of the motor court.

Natty in a black coat and gray slacks. Whistling.

Room 16.

Jeremy returned to his car and continued to watch The Hideaway from across the street. He’d dropped from sight just in time. Five minutes later, Gwynn Hauser’s Lexus swung into a space three over from the Buick.

She got out, didn’t bother to look around, walked jauntily toward the motor court, swinging her purse.

She’d capped her blond bob with a long black wig, wore that full, white fur coat Jeremy had seen during her last tryst with Dirgrove. The motel entrance was better lit than the industrial stretch, and, even at this distance, Jeremy could see that the coat was a cheap fake, spiky as magnetized iron filings.

Cheap wig, too, not even close to human hair.

Slumming.

He waited until she’d been gone for ten minutes, made his way over to the office, and purchased a room at the half-day rate of forty-four dollars. The clerk was a reserved young man with oily black hair who barely looked up as he took Jeremy’s cash. Nor did he react when Jeremy stated his room preference.

Number 15. Directly across from 16.

He made his way there, sticking close to the building and staying out of the light that washed across the court. Closing the door, he breathed in old sweat and shampoo and raspberry-scented disinfectant. He kept the lights off in the room but switched them on in the pathetic little bathroom- just a fiberglass prefab, really, with a toilet screwed shakily into the floor and a molded shower barely large enough for a child.

The indirect illumination amplified his surroundings: double bed with a mushy mattress and two pillows, a coin-fed vibrator gizmo on the nightstand, a twelve-inch TV bolted to the wall and topped by a Pay-Per-View box. The room’s single window was covered by an oilcloth shade. By rolling it up an inch and pulling a chair to the front, Jeremy had a fine view of Number 16.

Lights on, there. For two full hours. Then, off they went.

No one exited the room. Time passed. Nine-thirty, ten, eleven. At midnight Jeremy was nearly out of his mind with boredom and wondering if Dirgrove and Hauser were in for the long haul.

He had his TV switched on. Most of the channels were fuzzy, and he had no desire to call the front office and order a dirty movie. Settling for a televangelist broadcasting from a massive blond cathedral in Nebraska, he sat listening to tales of sin and redemption and knew he was wasting his time. Dirgrove would do no mischief tonight; his girlfriend was keeping him busy.

Unless their relationship had changed and… no, no way, too careless. Not with Gwynn’s car and his parked right out on the boulevard.

Ted was a man of varied tastes.

They’d fallen asleep, he was sure of it. It was 3:15 A.M. and Jeremy’d had his fill of faith healing and exhortations to qualify as Lambs of God by sending in cookie-jar stashes, spare change, social security checks, whatever led one to a state of grace.

“You will know,” promised the graveyard-shift preacher, a skinny, handsome type who looked like a frat boy. “You will feel it.”

At 3:37, Gwynn Hauser, still bewigged and looking shaky, left the room, drawing her fake fur around her.

Five minutes later, Dirgrove exited, stared at the moon, yawned, trudged slowly to his car.

Jeremy followed him. Back home to Patty and the brood.

What would he tell her? An emergency? Saving lives? Or had he gotten past the point where he had to tell her anything?

Would she hear him, smell him as he got between the sheets- would the scent of another woman waft her way in the temperature-controlled atmosphere of their sure-to-be-stylish master suite?

Poor woman.

Jeremy made it to his own house just before four. His block was dead and when he entered his empty bedroom, it felt like the cell of a stranger.