For years, Sigrid had owned two sets of clothes: the serviceable, severely cut and neutrally colored suits she invariably chose for herself and the brighter, more feminine things Anne chose for her to wear whenever they made duty visits south. Sigrid had never enjoyed clothes, but it was easier to wear Anne's selections than listen to Grandmother Lattimore's complaints that 'Sigrid simply isn't trying.'

'Gilding the turnip' had always been Sigrid's private feelings on the subject and Anne usually bowed to the inevitable, but Oscar Nauman's appearance that morning seemed to have impelled her to pick from the Carolina side of her daughter's closet.

Why he should have been at her apartment that early in the morning, Sigrid had no idea. Nothing about the man was safely predictable anyhow, except that if a panel of randomly selected art critics or scholars were asked to list America's top five artists, one could be sure that Oscar Nauman's name would appear on every list. His paintings were so eagerly snapped up that he could have long since resigned his position as chairman of Vanderlyn College 's art department and lived on the proceeds; but money slipped through his fingers and he loved teaching too much to give it up even though he grumbled considerably about the time it took from his painting.

And time was passing, Sigrid would occasionally remember. The thought gave her inexplicable regret. Oscar Nauman must be nearing sixty, yet he retained the vigor and virility of a much younger man. Indeed his freewheeling spirit frequently made Sigrid feel ages older than he.

They had met last spring during a homicide investigation at the college when there was a possibility that Nauman had been the intended victim. The end of the case had been the beginning of their prickly relationship. She did nothing to encourage him, nothing of which she was conscious, yet he kept turning up at odd times, keeping her emotionally off-balance, poking and prodding until she felt like a science fair project while he endeavored to change her dress, her palate, and her taste in art. No matter how rudely she resisted, he refused to bed riven away and kept walking in and out of her life as if it were simply an extension of his own.

She wasn't quite sure why she permitted it.

Slowly, she dressed herself in the rust and gold suit, repacked the drab bloodstained things, and was waiting under the hospital canopy when Oscar Nauman splashed up in his yellow, much-abused MG.

The morning was still gray with rain so he had the top up. The inside of the car smelled of damp leather and the clean blend of turpentine, cologne and pipe tobacco that she had come to associate with him.

"Sorry about this damn top," he apologized.

"I like it. You don't drive like Richard Petty when it's up."

She hated his competitive driving, especially since Manhattan 's streets belonged mostly to kamikaze cabbies, cumbersome buses and lane-hogging delivery vans. How Nauman hung onto a driver's license was something she'd quit wondering about. She had personally been present at four separate issuances of careless-and-reckless citations. Either the computer hadn't yet tagged him as a scofflaw or someone in DMV kept cleaning up his record for him. Probably the latter, since Nauman's circle of acquaintances was even wider than her peripatetic mother's.

Nauman seemed to have forgotten his earlier anger. On good behavior now, he drove at a moderate speed, obeying all the laws. At the first stop light, he twisted in his seat to study her.

"How bad is it really?" he asked, turning her bandaged left hand gently in his.

"Not bad," she answered, reclaiming her hand. "There's no nerve damage. The knife cut into some arm muscle, but they've stitched it all up and if I keep it in a sling, it's supposed to stop hurting in four or five days."

The light changed and Nauman allowed a cab to cut in front of him unchallenged.

"Your mother exaggerates a bit, doesn't she?" He smiled. "I expected black eyes, bruises, and slash marks all over."

"Mother enjoys dramatics."

"And you didn't actually wrestle with that guy?"

"No."

"But you did shoot him." Nauman had been truly shocked the first time he realized that she always carried a gun. "Yes."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"It's the first time I've ever shot someone," Sigrid said slowly. "I always wondered how I'd feel if I ever had to.

Now that it's happened, I don't know."

The windshield wiper on her sides wished back and forth erratically, smearing raindrops, and she stared blankly through the obscured glass.

"I guess I'm glad I didn't kill him."

"But you would have?"

"Yes."

They'd had this discussion before,

"He may have been poor and he may not have a father, but that boy wasn't looking for food or love or even money to feed a drug habit last night, Nauman.

It was violence pure and simple. Hew as there to rape that girl and he was ready to knife anyone who got in his way."

She leaned back against the headrest wearily. "Do me a favor, will you? Swing past Metro Medical?"

"What's wrong?" The little car swerved as Nauman's attention swiftly shifted to her pale face. "Are you bleeding? Your stitches come loose?"

"No, it's-Look out!" she cried and braced herself as the left fender kissed the side of a passing van. The driver gave them an obscene gesture and roared ahead while Nauman sheepishly wheeled back to the center of his own lane.

"Sorry about that, but why Metro Medical?"

"My partner's there. Tillie. He was nearly killed in that explosion at the Maintenon last night."

"That's why I tried to find you this morning."

Sigrid was puzzled. "Because of Tillie?"

"No, John Sutton. He was killed in that blast. He teaches-taught at Vanderlyn. He and Val-his wife-met in a seminar I gave one summer at McClellan. I've known them for years."

"I'm sorry, Nauman."

"Just the damn waste," he said, showing his anger and grief. "John was one of the best. Genuine idealist. Intelligent. And Val-I went as soon as I heard. Falling apart. Told her you'd, but your mother said slashed and anyhow so crazy."

When upset or distracted, Oscar Nauman's speech became almost telegraphic as his mind raced ahead, forcing his tongue to omit words in order to catch up.

"SDS, of course, but that was years. He's teacher. Real teacher. So why?"

By now, Sigrid could follow his words with a fair degree of comprehension. "Maybe he wasn't the intended target," she suggested. "Don't forget that a man named Wolferman, a banker, was killed, too. And others are in critical condition."

"Somebody killed him without caring?"

That would be the sticking point, Sigrid knew. Nauman was an old-style liberal with a touching belief that, given adequate housing, full bellies, and meaningful work, mankind would automatically live the Golden Rule. The resistence of pure amoral evil was not something the liberal mind liked to admit.

"The police care," she reminded him quietly.