"Did you try to call anyone when all this started happening?"

"Well of course!” Mr. Ricardi said. He came to the door between the inner office and the area behind the reception desk, with its pigeonholes, security monitors, and its bank of computers. There he looked at Clay indignantly. "The fire alarms went off—I got them stopped, Doris said it was a wastebasket fire on the third floor—and I called the Fire Department to tell them not to bother. The line was busy! Busy, can you imagine!"

"You must have been very upset," Tom said.

Mr. Ricardi looked mollified for the first time. "I called the police when things outside started . . . you know . . .to go downhill."

"Yes," Clay said. To go downhill was one way of putting it, all right. "Did you get an answer?"

"A man told me I'd have to clear the line and then hung up on me," Mr. Ricardi said. The indignation was creeping back into his voice. "When I called again—this was after the crazy man came out of the elevator and killed Franklin—a woman answered. She said . . ." Mr. Ricardi's voice had begun to quiver and Clay saw the first tears running down the narrow defiles that marked the sides of the man's nose. ". . . said . . ."

"What?" Tom asked, in that same tone of mild sympathy. "What did she say, Mr. Ricardi?"

"She said if Franklin was dead and the man who killed him had run away, then I didn't have a problem. It was she who advised me to lock myself in. She also told me to call the hotel's elevators to lobby level and shut them off, which I did."

Clay and Tom exchanged a look that carried a wordless thought: Good idea. Clay got a sudden vivid image of bugs trapped between a closed window and a screen, buzzing furiously but unable to get out. This picture had something to do with the thumps they'd heard coming from above them. He wondered briefly how long before the thumper or thumpers up there would find the stairs.

"Then she hung up on me. After that, I called my wife in Milton."

"You got through to her," Clay said, wanting to be clear on this.

"She was very frightened. She asked me to come home. I told her I had been advised to stay inside with the doors locked. Advised by the police. I told her to do the same thing. Lock up and keep a, you know, low profile. She begged me to come home. She said there had been gunshots on the street, and an explosion a street over. She said she had seen a naked man running through the Benzycks' yard. The Benzycks live next door to us."

"Yes," Tom said mildly. Soothingly, even. Clay said nothing. He was a bit ashamed at how angry he'd been at Mr. Ricardi, but Tom had been angry, too.

"She said she believed the naked man might—might, she only said might —have been carrying the body of a . . .mmm . . . nude child. But possibly it was a doll. She begged me again to leave the hotel and come home."

Clay had what he needed. The landlines were safe. Mr. Ricardi was in shock but not crazy. Clay put his hand on the telephone. Mr. Ricardi laid his hand over Clay's before Clay could pick up the receiver. Mr. Ricardi's fingers were long and pale and very cold. Mr. Ricardi wasn't done. Mr. Ricardi was on a roll.

"She called me a son of a bitch and hung up. I know she was angry with me, and of course I understand why. But the police told me to lock up and stay put. The police told me to keep off the streets. The police. The authorities."

Clay nodded. "The authorities, sure."

"Did you come by the T?" Mr. Ricardi asked. "I always use the T. It's just two blocks down the street. It's very convenient."

"It wouldn't be convenient this afternoon," Tom said. "After what we just saw, you couldn't get me down there on a bet."

Mr. Ricardi looked at Clay with mournful eagerness. "You see?"

Clay nodded again. "You're better off in here," he said. Knowing that he meant to get home and see to his boy. Sharon too, of course, but mostly his boy. Knowing he would let nothing stop him unless something absolutely did. It was like a weight in his mind that cast an actual shadow on his vision. "Much better off." Then he picked up the phone and punched 9 for an outside line. He wasn't sure he'd get one, but he did. He dialed 1, then 207, the area code for all of Maine, and then 692, which was the prefix for Kent Pond and the surrounding towns. He got three of the last four numbers—almost to the house he still thought of as home—before the distinctive three-tone interrupt. A recorded female voice followed. "We're sorry. All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later."

On the heels of this came a dial tone as some automated circuit disconnected him from Maine . . .if that was where the robot voice had been coming from. Clay let the handset drop to the level of his shoulder, as if it had grown very heavy. Then he put it back in the cradle.

Tom told him he was crazy to want to leave.

For one thing, he pointed out, they were relatively safe here in the Atlantic Avenue Inn, especially with the elevators locked down and lobby access from the stairwell blocked off. This they had done by piling boxes and suitcases from the luggage room in front of the door at the end of the short corridor beyond the elevator banks. Even if someone of extraordinary strength were to push against that door from the other side, he'd only be able to shift the pile against the facing wall, creating a gap of maybe six inches. Not enough to get through.

For another, the tumult in the city beyond their little safe haven actually seemed to be increasing. There was a constant racket of conflicting alarms, shouts and screams and racing engines, and sometimes the panic-tang of smoke, although the day's brisk breeze seemed to be carrying the worst of that away from them. So far, Clay thought, but did not say aloud, at least not yet—he didn't want to frighten the girl any more than she already was. There were explosions that never seemed to come singly but rather in spasms. One of those was so close that they all ducked, sure the front window would blow in. It didn't, but after that they moved to Mr. Ricardi's inner sanctum.

The third reason Tom gave for thinking Clay was crazy to even think about leaving the marginal safety of the Inn was that it was now quarter past five. The day would be ending soon. He argued that trying to leave Boston in the dark would be madness.

"Just take a gander out there," he said, gesturing to Mr. Ricardi's little window, which looked out on Essex Street. Essex was crowded with abandoned cars. There was also at least one body, that of a young woman in jeans and a Red Sox sweatshirt. She lay facedown on the sidewalk, both arms outstretched, as if she had died trying to swim, varitek, her sweatshirt proclaimed. "Do you think you're going to drive your car? If you do, you better think again."

"He's right," Mr. Ricardi said. He was sitting behind his desk with his arms once more folded across his narrow chest, a study in gloom. "You're in the Tamworth Street Parking Garage. I doubt if you'd even succeed in securing your keys."

Clay, who had already given his car up as a lost cause, opened his mouth to say he wasn't planning to drive (at least to start with), when another thump came from overhead, this one heavy enough to make the ceiling shiver. It was accompanied by the faint but distinctive shiver-jingle of breaking glass. Alice Maxwell, who was sitting in the chair across the desk from Mr. Ricardi, looked up nervously and then seemed to shrink further into herself.

"What's up there?" Tom asked.

"It's the Iroquois Room directly overhead," Mr. Ricardi replied. "The largest of our three meeting rooms, and where we keep all of our supplies—chairs, tables, audiovisual equipment." He paused. "And, although we have no restaurant, we arrange for buffets or cocktail parties, if clients request such service. That last thump . . ."