"Yeah. Right. Well, I'll walk you to your car."

Leaning in her window, he said, "Thanks again. I really don't know what I'd do without you, Beth. You shouldn't put up with the crap I dump on you. That we all do."

"I don't mind. For you. At least you… Well, you know. You're nice about it. I'd better go."

"Sure. Thanks again. Bye."

He thought about Beth all the way home.

More and more, he suspected something was happening. It was flattering, tempting, and terrifying. If he formally recognized the condition at all, there would be pain and trouble no matter what course he followed. The wise thing, he supposed, would be to cool it by completely ignoring it. That would minimize the potential for pain.

Annie had fallen asleep watching Johnny Carson and rereading MacDonald's The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper. He wriggled himself a seat and gently woke her, presented the books he had picked up downtown.

"Struck out again, huh?" she mumbled.

"Yeah."

"Keep plugging, honey. It'll come."

"I'm beginning to wonder."

Cash's depression carried over into Tuesday. Lack of sleep was no help, and spending morning and afternoon being bored or angered by lawyers badgering witnesses or protesting one another's antics was a classic downer. He kept stifling an urge to stand up and scream, "But what about justice!" The concept seemed to have vanished from the American courtroom completely. All that remained was a highly ritualized barristry.

There were moments when he wished the Good Lord would send down a plague able to take no one but ambulance chasers. They were a pestilence themselves, a pustulant wound on the corpus of humanity. Directly or indirectly they controlled everything.

These dreary courtroom passages often brought on moments of paranoia when he felt as intensely about attorneys as had Hitler about Jews. He fancied very similar conspiracies.

Beth had but one bit of progress to report when he returned to the station. Railsback had contacted Miss Groloch's attorney about the possibility of the old woman undergoing a polygraph test. The man had refused. Of course.

John had completed his courtroom purgatory by noon recess. He had spent his afternoon digging. He now arrived, looking sheepish.

"Got an idea," he said. "Illegal as hell. Well, shady. You got your contacts in the outfit. I thought maybe you could get them to help."

"I don't think I'm going to like this." Cash guided Harald into his office, closed the door.

"Suppose we jump the old lady?" John asked. "Anything, just so we get her to move. We got a good idea she'll make it down to that pay phone. Maybe some of O'Lochlain's people could snatch her for a while. And some others toss her place. Like with metal detectors and stuff. We could loan them the gear."

"I knew I wouldn't like it."

"What about it?"

"In a word, illegal. John, something like that could get us crucified."

Cash was tempted. Unbearably. Otherwise he would have responded with a simple no.

"Only as a last resort, of course."

"Of course."

"You'll think about it?"

"How can I help it now that you've brought it up? But I guarantee you I won't pull anything like that unless Judge Gardner keeps turning me down. He doesn't, we can do it ourselves, legal. Subject closed."

"Okay. You don't have to bite my head off. Now, how about your little brown brother?"

"My who?"

"Major Tran. When's he coming?"

"Not sure yet. Sometime this week. Why?"

"Carrie and Nancy have had their heads together. Near as I can figure, they want to come over and do the welcoming party cooking for Annie. As a surprise."

"I don't know."

"Know what you mean. If they get going on Michael. And the kids making like Indians… Maybe we could get sitters."

"Maybe. Their hearts are in the right place, anyway. Let's worry about it when the time comes."

"Okay. I'm heading home now. Oh. We're having a barbecue Sunday, if it doesn't rain. Bring your own beer and pork steaks. And if Annie wants, she can make one of those green cakes."

"The pistachio?" Cash's stomach lusted. He loved barbecued pork. "Me, I'll have to make it with the all-beef hot dogs again. Sounds good, though. I'll see if I can't come up with a watermelon for the kids. Hey, all right if I bring Matthew? He might come down this weekend, to meet the Trans."

"You have to ask?"

As John left, Cash noticed Tony something-or-other Spanish, Beth's guy, in the outer office. What a loser, he thought.

He examined the reaction for the taint of jealousy. It wasn't there. But there was a lot of envy in it.

Desirable as Beth might be, his feelings seemed primarily paternal, protective. His reaction to that was both one of relief and one of mild self-deprecation.

Next morning the card with the four names arrived. He hadn't encountered a one of them before. He slipped the card into his desk, on impulse dug out the phone number of the man conducting the UFO investigation.

Those people had found nothing, though the man spent a quarter of an hour getting around to the admission. Cash told him of the additional disappearances. Then he rang Judge Gardner's court and left the same information. Not pressed with any other business, he then spent an hour playing bureaucratic double shuffle with the local treasury department people. The Secret Service proved to be very uninterested in fifty-four-year-old counterfeit money. The attitude was much the same as that expressed by Judge Gardner Monday. The stuff couldn't be passed anyway, so who cared?

He found Beth in his doorway when he hung up.

"John called while you were on the phone. He said he talked to that mailman. He says the old lady has gotten three or four real letters the past few months. The reason he noticed was because the sender used all real old two- and three-cent stamps. Postmarked in Rochester, New York. No return address."

"Hmm. We're getting something stirred up, then. Wish we could spook her into giving herself away."

"Norm, how come you want to get her so bad? You used to get on John. Now I think you don't care anymore. Not even how, so long as you take her down. How come?"