“Where is it, Mr. Peltier?” says a detached male voice beside his ear. He cannot see the face, nor can he see the second person who stands farther back, although their shadows shift on the tiles before him.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he replies, scared now.

“Yes, you do, Mr. Peltier. I know you do.”

“Please,” he says, just before his head is plunged into the water. He has no time to take a breath and the water enters his mouth and nostrils instantly. He struggles, but his shoulder is convulsed with pain and he can only beat futilely at the water with his left hand. They pull his head up and he gasps and splutters, coughing bathwater onto the floor.

“I'll ask you one more time, Mr. Peltier. Where is it?”

And the old man finds that he is crying now, crying with fear and pain and regret for his lost daughter, for she cannot protect him just as he could not protect her. He feels a force at his shoulder, fingers digging into the injured joint, and he loses consciousness again. When he awakens, he is in the bath, naked, and a redheaded man is hovering over him. There is a sharp pain in his arms, gradually growing dimmer and dimmer. He feels sleepy and struggles to keep his eyes open.

He looks down. There are long slashes from his wrists to his elbows and the bathwater has turned to blood. The shadows watch over him as slowly, slowly the light dies, as his life seeps away and he feels his daughter embrace him at last, carrying him away with her into the darkness.

10

IN EVERY CASE, according to Plato, the principle is to know what the investigation is about. Jack Mercier had hired me to find out the truth about Grace Peltier's death. While out at his house, I had seen Yossi Epstein, who appeared to be involved in moves against the Fellowship that were sponsored by Mercier. Yossi Epstein was now dead, and his offices had been burned to the ground. Grace Peltier had been studying the history of the Aroostook Baptists, who had since emerged from beneath a cloak of mud by the shores of St. Froid Lake. She had, for some reason, found it necessary to try to contact Carter Paragon in the course of her research, once again raising the specter of the Fellowship. Lutz, the detective who was investigating the Peltier case, was close enough to the Fellowship to haul his ass out to Waterville and warn me against irritating Paragon. If I were to connect these occurrences together and add in the figure of Mr. Pudd, the investigation now appeared to be about the Fellowship.

Rachel left early on Saturday morning to attend the continuation of her college meeting. She brought with her a small plastic bag containing Mr. Pudd's business card, which someone had promised to examine before lunch. I showered, made a pot of coffee, and then, wearing only a towel, began to work the phone. I called Walter Cole, my former partner in Homicide while I was with the NYPD, and he made some calls. From him I got the name of one of the detectives involved with the Major Case Squad investigating Epstein's death and the arson attack on his office. The detective's name was Lubitsch.

“Like the movie director,” he explained when he at last came to the phone. “Ernst, you know?”

“Any relation?”

“No, but I directed traffic a couple of times.”

“I don't think it counts.”

“You used to be a bull?”

“That's right.”

“How does the PI world pay?”

“Depends how fussy you are. There's plenty of work out there if you're prepared to follow errant husbands and wives. Most of it doesn't pay too well, so you have to do a lot of it to make ends meet. Why, don't you like being a cop?”

“Sure, I like it okay, but it pays shit. I'd make more money emptying garbage cans.”

“Different version of the same job.”

“You said it. You asking about Epstein?”

“Anything you can give.”

“I ask why?”

“Trade?”

“Sure.”

“I'm investigating the suicide of a girl who may or may not have had some contact with Epstein in the past.”

“Name?”

“Grace Peltier. CID III up in Machias, Maine, have it.”

“When did she die?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“What links her to Epstein?”

I didn't see any harm in turning up the heat under the Fellowship, if I could. Anyway, Lutz's interview with Paragon was contained in the case records.

“The Fellowship. It was one of the organizations Epstein was making moves against. Grace Peltier may have met with its figurehead, Carter Paragon, shortly before she died.”

“That it?”

“There may be more. I just got started on it. Listen, if I can help at all, I will.”

There was a pause for at least thirty seconds. I thought the phone had gone dead.

“I'll trust you, but just once.”

“Once is all I need.”

“Officially, it's homicide. We've ruled out robbery as a motive, and a possible connection to the firebombing of the Jewish League for Tolerance is currently under investigation.”

“Neat. What are you leaving out?”

Lubitsch lowered his voice. “Postmortem found a puncture wound in Epstein's armpit. They're still trying to get confirmation of what was injected into him, but the latest guess is some kind of venom.” There came the sound of papers shuffling. “I'm reading here, okay, but it's neurotoxic, which means that it blocks transmission of nerve impulses to the muscles, overstimulating the transmitters”-he stumbled on the next words-“acetylcholine and noradrenaline, causing paralysis of both the”-more stumbles-“sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, resulting in sudden and severe stress on the body.”

Lubitsch took a deep breath.

“In layman's terms, the venom caused acceleration of heartbeat, increase in blood pressure, breathing difficulties, and muscle paralysis. Epstein suffered a massive heart attack within two minutes. He was dead within three. Symptoms-and this is strictly on the QT, you understand?-are systemic, usually associated with spiders. Basically, unless someone comes up with a better theory, the perp took Yossi Epstein down, squatted on his chest, then injected him with a huge dose of spider venom. They're guessing black widow, but the tests aren't complete. Plus, the perp took a patch of skin from his lower back, a couple of inches of it. Now is that weird shit, or is that weird shit?”

I put down my pen and looked at the garbled notes I had written-on Rachel's telephone message pad. “Anyone else interested in this?” I asked.

“What is that sound?” replied Lubitsch. “Why, it's the sound of somebody stretching the bounds of professional courtesy.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I take it that's a yes.”

Lubitsch sighed. “Minneapolis PD. Possible connection to the death of a doctor named Alison Beck one week ago. She was found with black widow spiders sealed up inside her mouth.”

“My God.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lubitsch seemed to enjoy my response, because he continued: “ME reckons the spiders were subdued with carbon dioxide, then inserted into her mouth as they were starting to revive. Only one widow survived: the rest bit each other, and bit her. The increase in her blood pressure triggered a stroke, and that killed her.”

“They have any leads?”

“She performed abortions, so they're rounding up the local crazies-while trying to keep most of the details from the press. Seems like they had a bitch of a job getting her out of the car.”

“Why?”

“Whoever killed her filled it with recluses.”

Pudd.

I thanked him, promised him a return call, and hung up. I logged on to the Internet and in less than two minutes a picture of Alison Beck was on the screen in front of me. She looked younger than she had in the photograph in Jack Mercier's study; younger and happier. The reporters had done a pretty good job of nailing deep background sources, even to the extent of speculating that Alison Beck's death might have been caused by a spider bite. It's hard to keep details like that quiet.