"He's threatened to before. He even started out one time."

"Not this time. I wish that's all it was."

Nancy sat down on Carrie's feet. In an instant she had become as haggard as her cousin.

"We think he's been killed." Christ, wasn't there a gentler way?

"Oh my God!" Carrie moaned. And visibly pulled herself together, becoming more sober, more alert, more intense.

"How, Dad? What happened?"

"We're not sure…"

Beth interrupted. "Norm, let me. You've torn yourself up enough. Make yourself a drink."

"There's Coke in the fridge," Carrie told him. "I think there's still some Bacardi Dark in the liquor cabinet." She had changed radically. Already she was straightening everything within reach.

How long before she breaks? Cash asked himself. As soon as she runs out of laundry, dirty dishes and dusting?

It wasn't a response that could be maintained indefinitely. He knew. He had tried it.

He mixed a weak, water glass full and downed it. Belching, he mixed another, stronger drink. The wall phone began ringing. It went on and on. Should he answer it just to get it to stop?

It did so as he sipped and stared through the kitchen window into the backyard. The swing John had bought his kids last spring creaked in the breeze, abandoned. Grass grew where little feet should have dragged the earth bare. The children just hadn't been interested. To the swing's left stood the brick barbecue pit he had helped John build two years ago. He smiled weakly, remembering how often they had screwed up.

Yes. John might as well have been his son.

"Norm!"

Beth sounded hysterical.

He ran, expecting to find Carrie dying of self-inflicted wounds.

Beth shoved a phone at him. She stared at the thing as if it had turned into a snake.

"Cash. What is it?"

He listened for fifteen seconds, then slammed the receiver down, grabbed his coat. Beth barely kept up as he ran to the car.

It was the first time he had had occasion to use the siren. He flipped the switch, expecting nothing. But the banshee voice began moaning its death song.

They had begun digging for the bodies by the time he reached the Groloch house. Marylin Railsback had gotten there somehow, and was seated on a rubble-strewn lawn one door east, holding her husband. Hank was crying. Marylin couldn't get him to stop.

The explosion had shattered windows for blocks around. The facing walls of the nearest flats bore pocks and scars. One door west, firemen and neighborhood volunteers were shoring a wall that threatened to fall.

The Groloch house had been powdered.

Cash looked for someone calm enough to explain.

"What happened, Smitty?"

"Huh? Oh. Hi. I wasn't here. Ran over from the other place. From what I can make out, they broke through a false wall in the basement and found some kind of electronic rig. Nobody could figure it out. Old Man Railsback decided to fire it up to see what it did."

"Booby-trapped?"

"Looks like. Smell the dynamite?"

"Yeah. Poor Hank. He's taking it hard."

"Poor lots of people. There were eight men down there."

Tucholski and Malone had their heads together a short way away. The agent kept his briefcase clamped between his ankles while he studied a half-dozen sheets of green paper. Tucholski had a handful of photographs.

Cash went over. "What's happening?"

Tucholski expelled a blue cloud. "One of the evidence technicians took these. Polaroid."

Cash studied photos of something from Tom Swift. Bloody fingerprints smeared most.

"He was lucky. Got out with a broken back." Murder burned in Tucholski's eyes.

"What is it?"

Tucholski shrugged. "Maybe the time machine you were looking for."

Cash turned to Malone.

"Don't look at me. I don't know either. But it's something like the thing the Germans found at Lidice."

"Just a bunch of wires and old-time tubes. Look at the size of some of those babies. But she booby-trapped it. With enough dynamite to do this." Cash's sentences were as much puzzled questions as statements.

Tucholski muttered something about the basement being walled off for ages, and what would have happened if the explosive hadn't been old?

"I've got a whole different case from last March," Norm continued. "And I just get more confused. There's got to be some sense in it somewhere. Mr. Malone?"

"Don't look at me. I'm no conjure man."

"Resource-wise you are."

"Maybe. I called my boss. He's going to research everybody connected with this."

Tucholski growled, "Bet you five he don't come up with nothing." "No bet."

Cash considered the ruin. "We won't get a thing out of that now. Whoever these people are, they sure do make a habit of burning their bridges before anyone else can cross them."

Streetlights flickered to life.

"Getting dark already," Cash observed.

"The days are getting shorter."

"I just meant that it's been a long day."

He was emotionally and physically exhausted. Nevertheless, he helped a uniformed officer hustle the overaggressive Channel Four news crew back to their own side of the barricades. He couldn't muster a smile when the reporter tried questioning him.

The pop of flashbulbs irritated his eyes and wakened his temper. Why the hell wouldn't they go home?

He spied Annie, Teri, and Tran's wife and sons, waved. Annie and Teri appeared to be getting along.

Back to the Groloch house. The workers had opened a passage into the basement.

They brought Old Man Railsback up first. His clothing had been shredded. His hair was gone. He had lost a hand. His skin was one solid bruise beneath a crust of blood.

The buzzing of the flies stopped only after they zipped the old man into the plastic bag.

Cash giggled half-hysterically at an image of the rescue workers setting him in the alley for the next trash pickup.