“I never spoke to him after that.”

“And the things he gave us. Those toys. You know Mama and Daddy still have them stashed in a drawer? And the things he said. I always wondered about that. It was like a curse or an omen or something.”

“Insanity,” Tim said.

“You sound so sure of that.”

“I talked to people,” he said.

“People in that place—the Novus Ordo?”

“Important people.”

“You just waltzed in and had a chat?”

“I established who I was.”

“We’re talking about what, a military project of some kind?”

“Research,” Tim said.

“And they let you walk out again?”

“They understood,” Tim said, “that they couldn’t stop me.”

“And you believed what they told you?”

“There’s no reason not to.”

Laura shook her head. “If this is true,” she said, “then they want something. They must. Just like the Gray Man wants something.”

“I talked to a man called Neumann,” Tim said. “A real flesh-and-blood human being—not a monster. Nothing supernatural. He’s operating what they call the Plenum Project. Sure, of course they want something from us. They need our help. So in a way I’m carrying that message. But, Christ, Laura, there’s more to it than that. It’s home. You understand? It’s a place to belong.” He looked at her intently. “Don’t you miss that? Haven’t you ever wanted that?”

“If it’s home,” Karen said—thinking now of what Willis had told her—“why did our parents leave?”

“They were running from Walker, not the Project.”

“But you said they trusted him. That’s how he killed them.”

“They were afraid of him. But he was still family. They loved him.” He scuffed a rock down this grassy incline toward the bay. “Hey, it happens, you know. People love people who want to hurt them. It’s possible.”

Chapter Seventeen

1

They dropped Tim off at a BART depot and drove back to the hotel. Time enough to talk again tomorrow. In the meantime there was plenty to think over.

Laura ordered up room service and Michael occupied the big chair by the window, ignoring a club sandwich, picking out barely audible chords on the Gibson guitar he’d carried across the country and farther. It was pretty obvious to Michael—listening to his aunt and his mother trying to sort all this out—that the appearance of Tim had thrown them for a loop. It wasn’t what they’d expected.

Laura said, “He’s not telling the truth. Or all of the truth.”

“It’s been a long time,” Karen said. “It’s hard to judge.”

“Hard for you, maybe. I always could tell when Timmy was fibbing.”

“He’s not a child anymore.” “But he’s still Tim.”

The talk went on like this. Michael finished his sandwich and went down the hall for a Coke. When he came back his mom was saying, “It depends what he wants from us, doesn’t it?”

“He wants us to go back there with him,” Laura said, “to that place—the Novus Ordo.”

“He hasn’t said that.”

“He will.”

And Michael said, “Maybe we should listen to him.”

The two women turned their heads as if they had forgotten he was here. Michael took another sip of the Coke and said, “The way you describe him, he sounds all right. I mean, he didn’t get along at home—but under the circumstances who would? And he didn’t give up. He had the talent and he followed it where it took him. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

Laura shook her head. “You don’t know him, Michael. You didn’t live with him. He hated Daddy—and maybe even the rest of us—in a way that wasn’t healthy. I don’t think that kind of hate can just evaporate.”

“At least he wasn’t afraid.”

“Not the way we were afraid,” Laura said. “Not the same way.”

He wasn’t afraid of his talent, Michael thought privately, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. He wasn’t beaten into submission and he wasn’t off living in some backwater beach town all these years. Surely that counted for something?

But he kept the thought to himself.

2

Timothy Fauve rode a bus back to his hotel, a good hotel close to the waterfront. He opened the room door with his key and Walker was inside, his big frame stretched out on one of the beds. One arm was crooked back of his head and the gray slouch hat was on his chest. He looked up at the sound of the door. “Hello, Tim,” he said.

Tim eased the door shut behind him. “I didn’t know you had a key.”

“I don’t need one.”

Tim smiled shakily. “I guess not.”

He switched on the lights and dropped into a chair. Walker wanted something. Or else Walker was checking up on him. He regarded Walker in the dimness of the room with a mixture of gratitude and uneasiness. He loved Walker, but Walker was very demanding.

The Gray Man said, “You talked to them.” “Yes.”

“Did they listen?”

“I think so. I think they have some doubts. That was pretty obvious. But they’ll come around.”

“And Michael?”

“I think he’s interested.”

“That’s what matters,” Walker said.

“But it won’t be easy,” Tim ventured. “They’re afraid of you. They know a few things.”

Walker sat up. “What things?”

“How you killed Julia and William.”

“We told you about that,” Walker reminded him.

“Of course. But the way Karen described it… it seemed worse.”

Walker was standing now. He was a big presence in the room. His back was to the window and he was a shadow, looming over Tim.

“You understand,” Walker said, “it wasn’t what I wanted to do. They had weapons … I reacted the only way I could.”

“Karen didn’t say anything about weapons.”

“Karen wasn’t there.” Walker looked concerned. “We talked about this. I acknowledged that it was a mistake. If I could have avoided it, I would have. But we were less experienced then.”

“There was something else,” Tim said, wondering whether he was wise to carry on with this, but wanting an answer. “They mentioned a little girl—a beach in some California town—”

Walker’s frown deepened. “What are you saying —that they have doubts, or that you do?”

“I’m just reporting. I thought you should know.”

“But it troubles you?”

“Maybe a little. Say it raises a question.”

“Were you on that beach?”

“No,” Tim said hastily.

“I won’t claim I’ve never done anything I regret. But it was a cusp, that moment on that beach. I was concentrating on Michael. And he was close … it might have been finished then, I might have brought him home. What I did was a reflex. It was instinctive.”

“Still,” Tim said. “A child…”

“I wonder what you would have done in the same situation.”

Tim lowered his head.

“I know what I am,” Walker said. “I acknowledge it. I live with it.”

He put his big hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“If I commit a sin,” Walker said, “I atone for it. You remember how it was when I found you?”

But it was impossible to forget. He had been in a fleabag hotel in the Mission District—the same one his sisters had visited today—and he had weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. He did day labor when he needed money and he drank Tokay and peach brandy and ate Kraft Dinners alone in his room, when he remembered to eat at all. Payday meant booze or cheap sex or maybe, very, very occasionally, a spoon of heavily cut heroin—Tim had been chipping on and off since ’74, when an unemployed Detroit shift worker showed him how. Just recently, though, he had been doing up more often than he liked, the beginning of a habit he could not afford, and he was sick more often than not; he skimped on the Kraft Dinners. His weight was very bad for somebody his size. Soon it would interfere with the labor he was able to pick up, and without that trickle of money he would be in the street —he would be sleeping on the sidewalk. And that was bad, because Tim had learned that this was, ironically, the best of all possible worlds; he had opened many doors in his time but never to a place he wanted to live. Cold, cloistered, ugly worlds mainly. To fail here was therefore to fail utterly.