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  Just as yesterday, I had to park around the corner on Turk Street. And just as yesterday, I got no response when I rang the bells under the cards labeled Voorhees and M. Norman/ C. Tagliozzi. This day was starting the way the last one had ended.

  Now what?

  I sat in the car and thought about it. The more I thought, the more stymied I felt. And the more stymied I felt, the more restless I became. The whole day stretched out emptily ahead of me. What was I going to do to fill it?

  Drive down to San Lucas, I thought. Talk to Grady, see if you can pry some answers out of her.

  I tried to talk myself out of the idea. Another three hundred miles of driving, round trip, and it would likely turn out to be a waste of time. She wouldn't talk to her own father; how was a stranger going to get her to open up? No sense in going all that distance, at the expense of the work piled up in the office—Eberhardt's as well as mine, and never mind that it was just routine. Stay home, put the day to some productive use.

  It was a good argument, sound, well-reasoned, but I didn't listen to it. I was going; I'd been going from the first. Obsessive-compulsive, that was me. I'd always had a tendency that way, and in the past year it had been heightened. Give me a certain kind of job, one with a client like Arlo Haas and pieces that did not slot easily into established patterns, and I was off like a hound after a fox—run, keep on running, and damn everything else until I caught what I was chasing. Not a healthy way to do business, but there it was. You are what you are; circumstances only sharpen the edges.

  The old hound fired up his Detroit legs and went racing south out of the city.

  * * * * *

  Hotter in the Salinas Valley today than it had been on Monday. No more populated, though; the illusion of a sleepy, dusty chunk of Steinbeckian landscape half-forgotten by time remained unchanged. But I felt no kinship with the valley this morning, no pleasurable sense of nostalgia. It was just a long, long stretch of parched hills and green fields and black asphalt—miles of emptiness to get through on the way to someplace else.

  * * * * *

  I bypassed San Lucas and went to see Arlo Haas first. I needed Constanza Vargas's address, for one thing; and for another I wanted to look through Grady's car, something I should have done on Monday even though Haas hadn't found anything when he'd searched it.

  When I drove into the farmyard he was sitting on the porch, in the shade of the second-story gallery, with Gus the black Lab on one side of him and his twelve-gauge shotgun on the other. The strain was telling on him; I could see that as soon as I got up close. He seemed shrunken, older, his eyes pouched with weariness, the stroke-stiffened side of his face even more lopsided. Candidate for another stroke, maybe a fatal one this time. The thought made me sadder, angrier, even more determined.

  If he was surprised to see me, he didn't show it or express it. When I told him why I was there he nodded and said, "Thought it might be a good idea myself, you talking to Grady, but I didn't want to be telling you your business. You know what you're doing."

  Sure I do, I thought. About half the time, on good days. Just like everybody else.

  He gave me the Vargases' address, told me how to get there. He'd call Constanza and tell her I was coming, he said, while I had my look at Grady's car.

  "Ask her not to say anything to Grady," I said. "I might have better luck if there's no advance warning."

  "Might at that."

  It was hot in the barn, dark-shadowed, the air heavy with old smells—hay, manure, dried leather, dust. Two cars were parked in there, a new light blue Geo Storm and an older Ford outfitted with a hand-throttle and a green Handicapped Driver placard on the dash. The Geo was unlocked; I poked around inside, taking my time. Nothing in the glove compartment except the registration, an owner's manual, and a couple of small packets of Kleenex. Nothing on the seats or under the seats except for a lost penny; nothing on or under the floor mats. I pulled the trunk release. Nothing in the trunk that didn't belong there.

  I returned to the house. Gus was barking his head off again, but it didn't mean anything; like a lot of people these days, he just liked to hear the sound of his own voice. Haas came out on his crutches, leaving the dog inside, and asked if I'd found anything. I shook my head.

  "You figure on coming back here after you talk to Grady?" he asked.

  "Not unless there's something we need to discuss. But I'll call you, let you know how it went."

  "I'll be here," he said, not without irony. Then he said, "Tell you something. Last night, lying in bed upstairs, I prayed. Asked God to send that man here so I could put an end to this business myself. You understand? Good Christian and good Catholic all my life and I asked God to let me kill a man."

  "I understand. I expect He does too."

  "I hope so," Haas said. "Because I ain't sorry. That son of a bitch comes around here, I'll serve him up hot to God or the devil, whichever wants him, and take my own chances when the time comes."

  * * * * *

  There was not much to the venerable little village of San Lucas. Population: 160. Half a dozen square blocks spread out beyond the no longer used storage silos; red-trimmed country church, post office, red false-fronted grocery store, scattering of stucco-walled houses, a much smaller union school than the one in San Bernado. The place had an aged, south-of-the-border look and feel, as if the whole shebang had been lifted out of a Sonoran backwater and transplanted here. Even the few people I saw as I drove through might have been natives of Old Mexico.

  The Vargas house was on San Benito Street, one of half a dozen side streets that ran at right-angles to the main drag. It was in keeping with the rest of the town: stucco walls, tile roof, sagging wooden fence enclosing a yard dominated by a couple of leafy old shade trees and tangles of prickly pear cactus. Parked on the unpaved street in front was a rust-infested pickup truck and a dusty Chrysler Imperial that had been manufactured during Eisenhower's term of office. I put my car between the two, where it was not at all out of place, and passed through a gate in the tired fence.

  Before I got to the front door it opened and disgorged a big, fiftyish woman in a green-and-yellow dress. Constanza Vargas. She had been watching for me, she said in lowered tones. Her eyes were dark and sad, but there was also a kind of hard maternal wariness in them that did not soften until she'd had a good long look at me. She seemed to approve of what she saw. That made two of us.

  "Grady is in the backyard," she said, still speaking softly. "She has been there since I brought her this morning."

  "Have you tried to talk to her?"

  "Yes. She says nothing. She only sits."

  "Will you show me where she is?"

  She nodded, took my arm and led me around the far side of the house. The rear yard was a larger replica of the front one: three shade trees instead of two, a small vegetable garden to go with more tangles of prickly pear. Under one of the trees was some weathered outdoor furniture, and on one of the chairs was Grady Haas. Not doing anything, just sitting there motionless, hands loose on her lap, jeans-clad legs crossed at the knees. She looked over at us as we approached but without reaction or interest; looked away again before we reached her.

  Seeing her up close, in the flesh, was like receiving a low-voltage shock. Except for the fact that she was very pale and wore no makeup of any kind, she looked as she had in the two-year-old photograph in her father's house—same long, lustrous, blue-black hair, same small mouth and high cheekbones and long, slender body; same remote, solemn expression. Yet there was a subtle, alarming difference: something was missing. At first I couldn't quite define what it was. Then, abruptly, I knew.

  She wasn't there. Her body sat in the chair, yes; it would get up eventually and walk around and eat and perform its natural functions. But she wasn't inside it. Clone, pod creature, victim of a botched lobotomy . . . no. An empty shell, like a snail's after the snail is gone. Grady Haas didn't live there anymore.

  Constanza Vargas said, "Grady, querida, this man would like to talk
to you."

  "All right," she said. The words had the same nonhuman quality as a computer's simulated speech.

  Mrs. Vargas glanced at me; her eyes asked if I wanted to be alone with Grady. I nodded, and she turned immediately and moved away. But not far. Just into the shade of another tree, to wait and watch.

  I said, "Grady, I'm—" but she didn't let me finish.

  "I know who you are," she said. "The detective my father hired."

  "That's right."

  "I wish he hadn't."

  "He only wants to help you. So do I."

  "I don't need any help."

  "Everybody needs help sometimes."

  "I just want to be left alone."

  "Why?"

  "It's better that way."

  "Better for you, maybe. What about your father?"

  "I'm sorry he's so upset, but there's nothing he can do for me or I can do for him. There's nothing anybody can do."

  "What happened last Thursday night, Grady? What made you leave San Francisco so suddenly?"

  Blank stare—not at me, not at anything in the yard.

  "Why did you come home if you didn't want to upset your father? Why not just go somewhere by yourself?"

  "That's what I should have done. But I wasn't thinking . . . I got in the car and started driving and this is where I came."

  "Why weren't you thinking?"

  Headshake.

  "Tell me about the man you met on April Fools' Day."

  She didn't move, didn't speak.

  "Grady?"

  "It doesn't matter," she said.

  "It matters to me. And to Todd Bellin. He beat up Todd pretty badly, almost broke his neck."

  ". . . I'm sorry."

  "Is that all you have to say?"

  "What do you want me to say?"

  "He beat up Todd because he thought Todd might know where to find you. That tells me he wants to hurt you too."

  "I don't care," she said.

  "Why don't you care?"

  "He can't hurt me any more than he already has."

  "How did he hurt you?"

  Headshake.

  "What did he do to you, Grady?"

  Headshake.

  "Who is he? Tell me his name."

  A ghastly fleeting smile warped her mouth; a laughing sound came out of her that made my skin crawl. "I don't know his name," she said. "It doesn't matter anyway."

  "You don't know it? You mean he gave you a false name?"

  No answer.

  "Was it David Jones?"

  Headshake.

  "Then tell me what it was."

  No answer.

  "All right," I said. "Think about this: Suppose he finds you before I find him? Suppose he harms Mrs. Vargas or her husband? Suppose he harms your father?"

  "Why would he do that? It's me he wants."

  "They'd try to stop him from getting to you, don't you realize that?"

  Silence.

  "You want that on your conscience, Grady? Somebody else hurt on account of you?"

  ". . . No."

  "Then keep it from happening. Tell me who the man is, why he's after you, where I can find him."

  "He . . . I don't know where he is. Not now."

  "Where was he when you were seeing him? Where did he live?"

  Headshake.

  "In San Francisco? Where?"

  "I don't want to talk about him," she said.

  "Ostrich," I said, and I had to work to keep the rising anger out of my voice. "Bury your head in the sand and somebody else will get hurt. Count on it."

  "No. He won't come here."

  "How do you know he won't?"

  "He doesn't know I come from San Bernado."

  "He'll find out. He found Todd Bellin, didn't he?"

  "He won't find out. No one in the city knows, not even Todd. There's no way for him to find out."

  "So here you sit," I said, "all alone."

  "I've always been alone."

  "You don't have to be."

  The blank stare.

  "For how long, Grady? Days, weeks, just sitting or walking in the hills, feeling sorry for yourself? What about your job, your apartment? You can't go back to them as long as this man is on the loose."

  "Maybe I should," she said. "Go back to the city."

  "And let him find you?"

  "I don't care."

  "You care. You haven't gone back, so you care."

  "I don't. Why can't you just leave me alone?"

  "Listen to me. He hurt you somehow—all right. You fell in love with the wrong man and he hurt you bad. That's part of it, isn't it?"

  No answer.

  "You're not the first person it's happened to," I said, "and you won't be the last. Your life's not over."

  "Isn't it?"

  "It doesn't have to be. You're young, attractive, intelligent. You can get through this if you—"

  "Please," she said, "please leave me alone."

  "Grady—"

  "No," she said, "I don't want to talk about it anymore. It doesn't matter what happens to me. Why won't you understand that? It doesn't matter."

  It doesn't matter. I don't care. Leave me alone. The lyrics of self-pity, repeated over and over until she believed them without question. The Great Tragedy of Grady Haas—like a one-woman Elizabethan melodrama. I had no patience with it. I understood that she'd been emotionally battered, I had not lost my empathy for her, but coming here, seeing her, listening to her, had changed the shape of my attitude toward Little Miss Lonesome. She had people who cared about her, were putting themselves out to keep her safe—even a stranger like me. And here she sat, torn up inside, yes, but with her pain pulled so tightly around her it was like the tissue of a barren womb. Curled in there waiting for release, not that of rebirth but that of death; wanting to die but lacking the courage and with too much self-involvement to do the job herself. A willing victim, and in this lousy world it was the unwilling victims who had all my compassion and all my tears. No, by God, I had no patience with it at all.

  "Okay," I said, "sure, it doesn't matter and we'll all just leave you alone. That way you can pretend none of us exists either. Just poor ravaged Grady Haas, all alone. No crippled father sick with worry. No Constanza, no Mary Ellen, no friends and no loved ones. You're a solipsist, Grady . . . you know what that is? Somebody who thinks he's the only reality, the only being in the universe—everything else is just a figment of his imagination. Nothing matters but you, nothing exists but you. You want me to leave you alone so damn badly, why don't you just will me out of existence?"

  I flung the words at her, as hard as if they were stones, letting all the anger come out with them. I wanted her to react. Deny the accusations, defend herself, tell me to shut up or kiss her ass or go to hell, break down and cry—show some sign of life and humanity. But she didn't react. The words bounced off her as if they were made of rubber, not stone, leaving no impression of any kind.

  She just sat there.

  I stared at her while I put a leash on my temper. She didn't move, didn't look at me. Wasn't there—simply was not there.

  There was no reason for me to stay any longer; you can't communicate with a shell. I put my back to her and walked past Constanza Vargas, who watched me with her sad eyes. When I reached the side of the house I stopped briefly to look behind me, even though I knew what I would see.

  Grady Haas, the willing victim, just sitting there.

  * * * * *

  Long drive home, made even longer by replaying images of the time in San Lucas. Wasted day, just as I'd expected. Once I thought: She doesn't care what happens to her, why should I? Why go on losing sleep and busting my hump to save the life of a woman who has convinced herself she's already dead? But it was nothing more than a random thought; I didn't give it any serious consideration.

  I was not working for Grady Haas—I was working for her father. And he cared, whether she did or not. And dammit, so did I.

  Chapter 10

  One of her po
tted plants was dying.

  That was the first thing I noticed when I entered Grady's apartment for the second time, a few minutes before nine on Thursday morning. I still had no leads except possibly her neighbors, people named Voorhees and M. Norman/ C. Tagliozzi, and for the third straight day none of them was around to talk to me. Phantom tenants, for Christ's sake. So I decided I might as well have another look through Grady's belongings. Could be I'd overlooked something on my first visit.

  The dying plant prodded me straight to the kitchen. There was a plastic watering can on the windowsill; I filled it, watered the wilted plant and all the others in the apartment. Symbolic act, maybe: If her plants lived, flourished again, it was possible that she would, too, in spite of the state she was in now. Or maybe it was just that I'm not the kind of man who can let anything die when it might still be saved.

  The place had a different feel to me today than on Tuesday. All the flower patterns and stuffed toys and wicker baskets and pastel colors . . . the aggregate effect seemed frivolous, self-indulgent, not quite real or healthy. It made me uncomfortable. I'd seen Grady through different eyes yesterday; now, as a result, I was seeing her home the same way. And I had no more patience with it and its trappings than I'd had with her.

  I started this time with her desk, making myself scan each bill, each credit-card receipt. There was nothing illuminating in any of it—she bought conventional items, from conventional outlets. The only thing of even minor interest was a "Men's Accessories" purchase on her most recent Macy's bill, dated twelve days ago.

  I scoured the rest of the living room, then did the same with the dining area, kitchen, bathroom. I learned that Grady had four sets of flowered place mats and two lace tablecloths, and that she liked Grape-Nuts cereal and albacore tuna packed in water and Coffee-mate nondairy creamer, and that she brushed her teeth with Pepsodent and preferred Tylenol to regular aspirin and used Summer's Eve feminine hygiene spray. That was all I learned.