"The main guy is probably a film producer named Curtis App." I described the way he'd looked twenty-one years ago.

"That doesn't sound familiar," she said, "so maybe he was the one with his back to me… but who was the one with the mustache?"

"There are at least two possibilities. Trafficant or another writer named Denton Mellors. Big light-skinned black man. He had a mustache, though it was skimpy, like Trafficant's, and blond. He was one of those murdered, possibly because he knew what had happened to Karen."

"No," she said. "The man I saw was definitely white. And the mustache was thick and dark."

"Your dream may be accurate in some respects but not in others."

She turned and opened her car door.

I held her wrist. "I met with App yesterday, gave him a phony story about doing a biography of Lowell. He may find out I was lying and get nervous. He or his henchmen could be up there right now."

"No, they're not. No one's gone in or out of the place all day. I've been watching the entry from before daybreak."

"You've been staking the place out?"

"Not intentionally. I was sitting there, building up my courage. I came down here to get some coffee and use the ladies' room. I was just about to head back."

"How can you be sure no one spotted you?"

"No one did, believe me. No one even came close. I was the one doing the watching."

"You sat from daybreak till now?"

"I know you think I'm being stupid, but I need to stand up to him and get him out of my life once and for all."

"I understand that, but this just isn't the time."

"It has to be. I'm sorry. You're a wonderful man. I trust you more than anyone- you and Milo. But this is something that's been building up my whole life. I can't put it off any longer."

"Just a little while longer, Lucy."

"Till when? You've got no evidence on Karen's death. The police will never have a case."

"Till we know it's safe."

"It's safe now. There's no one up there. Besides, my going up there won't look funny to anyone. He wanted to meet with me. What's the big deal about a daughter meeting her father?"

"Lucy, please."

She patted my shoulder. "The patient doing things for herself. That's therapeutic progress, right?"

"My only therapeutic goal, right now, is to keep you safe."

"I'll be fine. The prodigal daughter returned. Maybe I can't solve any crimes, but I can try for personal justice."

"What kind of justice?" My voice was sharp.

She stared at me and laughed. "No, no, I'm not going to play Dirty Harriet- search me for weapons if you like. I just need to see him. To show myself I don't need him."

She got into the Colt. "Maybe I'm making a mistake, but at least it'll be mine."

The car started. "I have to do it now," she said. "I may never have the guts again."

She pulled out of the lot.

I waited until she was out of sight. Then I followed her.

42

She drove slowly, and I had to hang back. When I reached the honeysuckle at the mouth of Sanctum's entry road, she was nowhere in sight. I began the upward crawl. A speed-walker could have beaten me to the double gates. Lucy had left them open. The second pair of gates was unlatched, too.

A few more bumps up the shaded path, then the trees parted and I saw the big lodge house, brown as the trunks of the bristlecone pines that nestled it. The Colt was parked nose out, as far as possible from Lowell's Jeep and Mercedes.

No other vehicles in sight.

The front door to the house was shut, and I figured she'd already gone in. But then she appeared from around the back of her car- taking something out of the trunk?

No, nothing in her hands. No pocket bulges.

Her mouth opened as I pulled up.

I said, "Think of it as an extended house call."

Expecting anger, but she stared past me.

Blank and focused at the same time.

Hypnotic.

When she put a hand to her mouth, I thought she'd lost her nerve and I felt relieved, yet sad.

Then she walked quickly to the house, stomping up the wide porch stairs.

I was next to her as she knocked hard on the front door.

No one answered. She tapped her foot and knocked harder. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

I looked through the dusty windows. The big front room was unlit and uninhabited.

Lucy began pounding the door with both hands. When there was still no response, she dashed off the porch and stood in front of the house, taking in its bulk.

Walking toward the right side of the building, her steps were fast and deliberate, scuffing the dust. Another brief pause; then she continued. Toward the back. Toward the high thicket that rose behind the house like some great green tide.

I found her staring at the overgrowth.

"Back there," she whispered.

A voice above us said, "What's going on?"

Nova, framed by a second-story window, her face grayed by a screen.

"Hi," I said, taking Lucy's icy hand. "We knocked but no one answered."

A finger poked the screen. The expression above it was hard to gauge. "So you decided to come."

Lucy's fingers dug into my hand. "Sure," she said. "We were in the neighborhood and decided to pop in. Is there a problem with that?"

Nova tented the screen with her fingertips. "No. Not unless Daddy's got one." She gave a strange laugh. "Come around the front."

She was waiting for us, holding a glass of lemonade. The copper in her hair shone like electric wire.

"He wasn't in any great mood when he went to bed, but I'll tell him you're here."

"I'll tell him myself," said Lucy, walking past her into the front room. Taking in the stuffed heads, the shabby furniture, the emptiness.

Staring at the log walls.

Nova seemed amused. Nothing nurturant about her. Why had she chosen to care for a feeble, cruel man?

Kindred souls, just like Trafficant and Mellors?

What was her particular brand of cruelty?

Lucy made her way toward the staircase, moving slowly and cautiously, like a trapper on ice, passing under the steps, then continuing toward the back room.

Nova put her hands on her hips and watched, rubbing one foot against the other.

She wet her lips with her tongue and glanced at me.

Her eyes returned to Lucy and satisfaction filled them.

Lucy's discomfiture turned her on.

Lucy looked up at the ceiling, then the floor.

Then back to the walls.

Stopping short. Arms straight at her sides, her face frozen.

She stared at the left-hand door.

Nova said, "That's right, Daddy's back there, dear."

Despite her smile, tension in her voice.

Competition- mock sibling rivalry?

Wanting Lucy to come here, certain it would destroy her?

I took Lucy's elbow. She shook her head and moved her arm out of my grasp.

Twenty feet from the room.

I covered the distance with her.

The door was pine, once heavily varnished, the finish cracked, flaking like dandruff.

She sucked in breath and opened it. As we stepped into a big, dark, book-lined room, a sulfurous smell hit us, not unlike the stench of the ER at Woodbridge. A hospital bed was in the center, cranked to a semi-upright position. Lowell's wheelchair was folded in a corner.

Lowell reclined under the covers, his hair greasy and limp, his long arms resting on the blanket, white and blue-veined below frayed gray undershirt sleeves. His chin was coated with white stubble, his eyes unfocused. It was 2 P.M. but he hadn't awakened fully. He turned toward us with obvious effort, then turned away and closed his eyes.

Lucy's hand found its way back into mine, so sweaty it slithered in my grasp. Her shoulders twitched, then began shaking.

I followed her eyes as they reconnoitered, landing on the pine bookshelves that sheathed three of the walls.