David looked at the apartment buildings rimming the empty lot-crumbling brick, rain-beaten wood, the occasional shattered window. So many places for Clyde to hide, to spy. From the house, David heard the wavering, uneven voices of some of the residents singing "Happy Birthday."

Blake rolled over uneasily when David got out of the car and slammed the door. David walked boldly to the front of the Pearson Home. He spoke down into his mike with minimal movement of his lips. "I'm going to the porch."

He knew that somewhere, hidden within the surrounding few blocks, Yale was growing enraged-he had specifically told David to stay off the Pearson Home grounds, in line with Rhonda Decker's directive. But David's walk hadn't yielded anything, and he wanted to take a position that Clyde, if he was in fact watching, would find more provocative and galling. Sitting on the porch of Clyde's sacred, coveted childhood sanctuary, in a position of power and smug presumption, was the most taunting action David had at his current disposal. It was like throwing darts at Clyde's most vulnerable spot.

A rickety wooden chair with a coarsely woven straw seat stood crooked by the front door. David pulled it across the porch and sat, his white coat hanging to his sides like the hem of a skirt. His Mercedes, toplit like a showcase car in the otherwise empty Healton's lot, was visible for blocks. David's new post was also clearly discernible.

Aware that somewhere the cops were complaining and scrambling and reassessing, David leaned back, rested his feet on the railing, and waited for Clyde to appear.

Chapter 74

THE fluorescent lights illuminating the new procedure suite were giving Peter a headache, so he turned them off and worked by the light of a desk lamp. It cast a glow on the desktop and around his hands, a small ball of light in the darkness, which he liked, for it made him feel like a medieval craftsman. The blinds remained closed on the window behind him. The desk itself faced the two procedure tables, and beyond them, the door; Peter sometimes had to sit between lengthy procedures to take the weight off his legs. A firmly anchored metal knob, about the size of a fist, protruded from the desktop to aid Peter in sitting and rising. The stun gun lay next to it, where Peter had tossed it after David had left the room yesterday.

Peter lined the cystoscopes side by side, a series of thin stainless steel snakes trailing across the desk and dangling from the edge. They were expensive tools, running about $18,000 apiece with lenses, and he cared for them as though they were museum artifacts. Each one of the scopes had been used countless times to peer into countless bladders; gazing down at them, Peter was filled with a vague sense of wonder at all they had accomplished in their brief material lives. He jotted a note to his technician that they were to be sterilized again.

His left brace had been digging into his ankle all day, and he paused to pull up his pant leg, remove his shoe, and rub the reddish indentation the metal had left in his skin. A rustle at the door caught his attention, and he squinted up into the darkness.

"Yes, can I help you? Hello? Can I help you?"

The form shifted, breathing heavily. The sound of a large person advancing.

Panic stirred and began to sharpen its claws inside Peter. Given his braces, it would take him nearly a minute to rise and shuffle to the light switch on the wall.

Clyde's sallow face pulled into the small ring of light, seeming to float as his body remained lost in shadows. He drew closer, resolving from the darkness. Held limply at his side was a pistol.

Peter's mouth went dry.

The arm holding the gun raised stiffly and mechanically, like a railroad crossing gate, and Peter was looking directly down the length of the Beretta. "We're gonna have some fun, you and me," Clyde said.

Moths clustered around the porch light, making a soft, leathery sound. David scanned the street, his eyes picking over the windows in the apartments facing him.

He expected Clyde to charge the porch.

He expected Yale to pull up and call off the stakeout.

He expected Rhonda Decker to appear on the porch and reprimand him.

The only thing he did not expect was Clyde's voice to cut in over the hum of the unit in his right ear.

He stood, forgetting to favor his wounded side, and leapt over the porch stairs, wincing when his feet struck ground. "He's got Peter Alexander!" David yelled down into his mike. "They're at Peter's procedure suite. Corner of Westwood and Le Conte."

Blake rolled over onto his feet, looking ineffective and Falstaffian in his bundle of grimy clothes. David passed him in a sprint, straining to make out what was being transmitted in his right ear. Jenkins spilled out of an alley behind him, shouting something David could not make out.

David reached his car, slid behind the wheel, and peeled out.

Peter struggled to keep his voice even. "I'm going to-"