THE NEXT

SHE'D HAD A LITTLE wine to get her courage up while she dressed and did her makeup. Just a glass. Okay, two glasses. But she’d promised herself she’d take it easy once she got to the bar.

She didn’t go to the Valley much. Places like this, this Starr’s, were the reason. Cracked asphalt parking lot, a couple of Harleys, for God’s sake, parked near the entrance, some pimply biker making obscene invitations as she passed. Beveled glass on the front door and wood paneling inside, a fern bar gone to seed. The music loud enough to be a physical assault. Eighties nostalgia, Pat Benatar, “Love Is a Battlefield.”

One drink, she told herself. Getting outside her comfort zone was fine in theory. She didn’t need to go deaf or get run over by a drunken biker to prove a point.

The bartender couldn’t hear her order and she had to point to the overpriced Chardonnay on the drinks menu. This was crazy. Conversation impossible, clientele unappealing, hopes circling the drain. Chalk it up as a failed experiment. Finish the wine and cut your losses.

Then, taking the stool next to her, the Sexy Stranger out of her fantasies. Tall, casually elegant, movie-star looks and the confidence that went with them, easy smile. A glance at her empty glass, an inquiring eyebrow. A gesture to the bartender, a 50-dollar bill materializing as if from thin air.

No more than a dozen words passed between them, breath warm in her ear, an invitation to somewhere they could actually talk. The wine had gone to her head—and her legs—but a strong, reassuring arm slipped around her waist when she stumbled on the rough pavement and it stayed there all the way to the dark gray Impala in the farthest corner of the lot. The Avis sticker on the trunk struck her as peculiar for no more than a second or two before she was overwhelmed by the wine, her nerves, her excitement, her amazement at her own daring.

The car door opening wide for her, her sliding in and fumbling with the seat belt. The engine throbbing to life, the warm smile again, suddenly changing, something in the eyes turning cold, predatory. Tires crying out as they spun against the asphalt, the car shooting in a backward arc, much too fast, then forward, pinning her to the seat, and the wine and the nerves and the excitement all burned away in the heat of her sheer, desperate, incredulous terror.

*

TOM CHECKED HIMSELF quickly in the hall mirror, less from vanity than fear of a strawberry seed caught in his teeth or a cowlick poking up from the edges of the ever-growing thin spot on the back of his head, a mustard stain on his tie. He sucked in his gut and grabbed his briefcase and went outside to confront his ungrateful children.

The morning was cool, bound for rotisserie temperatures. Tom didn’t mind the occasional Southern California heat wave. The rustle of the queen palms, the faint salt tang in the air, the oranges and avocados he’d picked from the back yard an hour before, all were compensation enough. They even made up for the commute he was about to endure.

Jason, who had somehow turned 15 last month, though he couldn’t have been more than four or five the year before, circled the driveway on his bike. He weaved complex patterns with his brother Brian, who had, with equal mystery, managed to turn 12 when Tom wasn’t looking. Both were in baggy T-shirts, shorts, and overpriced sneakers. Brian, who was beefier than his older brother, had added a white Italian cycling cap to his ensemble. Both were bound for theater day camp at Jason’s high school where they would be cruelly kept from video games until mid-afternoon.

“You ever think about getting married again, Dad?” Jason said.

“Seriously,” Brian said. “I didn’t think it was possible to screw up a Pop-Tart breakfast.”

“Mom used to fix us bacon and eggs and stuff.”

“A prophet,” Tom said, “is not without honor save in his own country, and among his own kin.” He supposed he’d done something right that they gave him such a hard time about Elaine and didn’t resent him for being the parent that had survived.

Tom unlocked his high-mileage, sun-faded Corolla. As Brian pedaled away in the wake of his brother, he called over his shoulder, “Try not to get fired today, okay, Dad?”

The 5 Freeway was rolling, at one point as high as 40 miles an hour. Tom had his window down, trading a taste of monoxide for the pleasure of feeling the air move across his face. Periodically he switched the radio on, punched through the stations, and switched it off again. On one of his trips past klos he caught the news and lingered long enough to hear the latest on the “Devil Doll” murder, telling himself it was professional interest rather than rubbernecking.

“A twenty-five-year-old El Monte man was charged today in the brutal slaying of a ucla medical administrator. A source at the lapd told klos that the suspect is a member of a Satanic cult, which might explain some of the more bizarre aspects of the case. Meanwhile, the drought simmers on, with temperatures today expected to reach—”

Tom turned the radio off. Some high-dollar shyster would no doubt snap up the case for the publicity, run circles around the overworked da’s office, and with the right judge and a little luck put a psychopath back on the street.

*

DEEP DOWN, beneath the jealousy and the sniping, Tom supposed he had some genuine affection for Patrick, the fast-track kid out of UPenn. He did have one of those haircuts that failed to keep the blonde hair out of his eyes, yet cost more than Tom’s best suit. He affected suspenders, a George Plimpton New England drawl, power ties and round, gold-rimmed glasses. He was funny, he was charming in his smug way, and he would make partner before he was thirty.

Tom remembered being thirty, barely. He would never make partner in this firm or any other.

“Let’s settle this like professionals,” Patrick said. He took a dart out of his desk drawer and threw it, without bothering to aim, at a dartboard on the far side of his office. He lifted his glasses, squinted, and said, “Guilty.”

Half of the pie wedges on the board were papered over with the word guilty. The others were split among MOVE TO DISMISS, PLEA BARGAIN, PROBATION, and other popular outcomes. One thin triangle said not guilty.

“You’re making racist assumptions,” Tom said, “based on the fact that the guy is black and the old lady is white. She never saw the guy who allegedly—”

“I’m making assumptions based on the fact that your client—Collins, is that his name?”

“You know it’s his name.”

“—that your man Collins is a guilty piece of shit.”

Emma, Roxanne’s executive assistant, stuck her head in the door. “Ms. Vallence wants to see you, Tom.”

“Now?” Tom said. He hated it when his voice broke.

“Now would be good.” Emma disappeared again.

“Uh oh,” Patrick said.

“Maybe it’s not that bad.”

“I’d ask for your office,” Patrick said, “but I don’t want your office.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Tom paused outside Roxanne’s door, raised his hand to knock, stopped, and wiped his hands on his pants leg. He tried again and made a noise about as loud as two acorns falling on a porch in a rainstorm.

“Come,” Roxanne said. That was Roxanne all over. Her billing rate was so high, she wouldn’t even give away an “in.”

She had her back to Tom when he opened the door. In the same hopeless kind of way that he could admire the multi-million dollar houses that looked down on Laguna Beach, he could admire ­Roxanne’s shapely and well-toned glutes, covered this Monday morning by some sort of black stretch fabric that created the powerful impression that there was nothing between it and the skin underneath. Her three-inch heels, which brought her to an even six feet, had the intended effect on her calves and narrow ankles as well.

She spun around. Her own golden, expensively cut hair moved with a slight time delay, like heavy cream. Gold at her ears, around her fingers, hanging from her neck, and in the cuffs of her short-waisted, pristine white shirt set off her full red lips and colorless eyes.

“Tom,” she said, with a tight smile, “do you know our da, ­Matthew Clarke?”

The office was big enough to easily lose a couple of people in. One of them was Winston James, the firm’s oldest partner, who was sprawled comfortably in one of Roxanne’s Scandinavian designer chairs. The other was a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, deep brown skin, clean-shaven head, glasses, immediately recognizable from the evening news. He wore a suit that was not quite nice enough to suggest he was squandering the taxpayers’ money, and he was headed for the door.

“I know of him, of course,” Tom said.

“Matthew,” Roxanne said, “this is Tom Davis.”

“Ah,” Clarke said, in a tone of voice that made it clear they’d been talking about him. That couldn’t be good. On the other hand, it wasn’t likely Roxanne had brought in witnesses to watch her fire him.

Tom shook Clarke’s hand and got the expected firm grip. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” Tom said.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” Clarke said. “Roxanne, Winston, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Take care, Matthew,” Roxanne said.

Clarke shut the door on his way out and Roxanne said, “Have a seat, Tom.”

Tom sat on the edge of a vacant chair and leaned forward nervously. “About the Collins case…”

Winston, who was from North Carolina and liked to use words like “horse sense,” said, “This isn’t about the Collins case.”

Roxanne said, “I assume you’ve heard of the so-called Devil Doll Killer?”

“On the radio this morning they said they’d arrested somebody?”

“A biker,” Winston said, “by the name of Nathan Judd. A real piece of work. List of priors as long as my daughter’s AmEx bill. Serious attitude problem.”

“The judge ordered court appointed counsel,” Roxanne said, “and I won the draw.”

And a perfectly honest and above-board draw it was, Tom was sure.

“And,” Winston said, “you’ll love his personal hygiene.”

It took a couple of seconds to sink in. “Wait. You’re giving me the Devil Doll case?”

“I’ll be out of town at the end the week at my retreat,” Roxanne said. “I won’t be available to handle it, so I’m assigning it to you.”

“This is a cakewalk, Davis,” Winston said. “You can do it with your eyes closed. You’ll probably want to hold your nose while you’re at it.”

“Well,” Tom said. “I don’t know what to say. This is great.” He saw he was in danger of babbling. “You won’t regret this. I’ll do it right.”

“Davis?” Winston said. “We’re not exactly looking for Alan Dershowitz on this one. A clean conviction with no reversible errors would pretty much sum up our expectations.”

Roxanne sat down at her desk and peered at something on the monitor. Tom felt her attention leave him like the setting of the summer sun. “Thank you, Tom,” she said. “Copy me on all your paperwork.”

“Sure thing.” He managed to get up and leave the room without tripping over his own feet. As soon as he was alone in the hallway, his knees buckled and he had to lean against the oak wainscoting to keep from going down. He closed his eyes and let the relief wash through him.

“Thank you, God,” he said.

*

THE NEWSROOM, Susan thought for at least the one-millionth time, was no place to get work done. The incessant sports talk. The inescapable smells of microwave popcorn, or burritos, or leftovers overdue for composting. The blur of someone brushing past her desk just as her concentration had started to focus.

Then there was Ed Burlington’s voice. The Foghorn, as it was unaffectionately known. Even now, as he was kowtowing to Wallace Arnette, one of the owners, his nasal tones were the aural equivalent of sandpaper on a sunburn.

“Good to see you, as always, Wallace,” Burlington said for the entire newsroom to hear. The two of them were standing in the doorway of Burlington’s glass-walled office.

“I appreciate your hearing me out,” Arnette said. He looked 35 at most and had more houses than Susan had low-heeled, newsroom-dress-code shoes.

“Hey,” Burlington said, “it’s your paper.”

Arnette laughed in the same way he would have if Burlington had actually said something funny. “Exactly!”

Arnette waved and headed for the elevators. As Burlington turned around, Susan watched the artificial smile drop from his face and give way to a sour and harried look. He scanned the newsroom and then walked over to Courtney’s desk, across the aisle from Susan’s.

“I want you to take over the Devil Doll coverage,” Burlington said.

Courtney’s expertly made-up eyes went wide. “Me?”

Susan was likewise stunned. Courtney was two years out of J-School and was on her way to a record for published corrections. Cute, though, as male staffers inevitably pointed out.

“You think you can handle it?” Burlington said.

“Well, sure! But I thought it was Jim’s story.”

“I’m putting Jim on the homicide in Hawthorne.”

Even Courtney could smell that rat. “The gang shooting?”

“Do you want the assignment or not?”

Arnette, Susan thought, must have thoroughly trampled ­Burlington’s ego.

“Well, yeah, of course I do…”

“Get some background on the suspect, talk to his family, find out who the hell this guy is, where he went wrong. People magazine type of deal. Maybe fifteen inches for Sunday.”

Susan watched Courtney’s eagerness dry up. “I can’t do anything in fifteen inches.”

“That’s the budget.”

Holy shit, Susan thought. You’re burying this.

“Um, okay,” Courtney said.

“I’ll edit this one myself,” Burlington said.

“Yes, sir,” Courtney said.

Burlington walked three desks over to where Jim sat with his feet propped up, keyboard in his lap, mouth open, having unavoidably picked up every word the Foghorn blared. “Any questions?”

Jim closed his mouth, opened it again, and said, “No.”

Burlington jerked his head in an approximation of a nod, stomped back to his office, and slammed the door. Courtney grabbed her phone and hurried out of the room. Susan went over and perched on the edge of Jim’s desk.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“You can’t possibly know any less than I do.” Jim was in his fifties, overweight from fast food, perpetually tired from the extra effort that nobody asked from him anymore, hanging on in hope that there would still be a pension fund when he retired.

“Fifteen inches for Sunday?” Susan said.

“Well, he didn’t seem happy about it, if that counts for anything.”

Jim’s desk faced the opposite direction from hers. “Did you see that Arnette was here talking to him?”

“Ah. That would explain it. Remember when owners owned things and editors did the editing?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Wallace Arnette,” Jim said. “Where did he come from, anyway?”

“I think he made it big with some kind of online legal agency.”

“A lawyer. Figures.”

“Why would Arnette want you off the story and Courtney on it?”

“The paranoid in me wonders if there was something he was afraid I would dig up.”

“So they gave it to Courtney to screw up?”

“You said it, I didn’t.”

“It’s really getting ugly around here.”

“Don’t forget the magic words. ‘At Least I Have A Job.’ You too could be experiencing life after unemployment runs out.”

The job market was indeed glutted with ex-newspaper people. On the nights she lay awake worrying about it, she tried to tell herself that if she was going to quit, she should have done it years ago. If it was too late anyway, she might as well stay with the job she loved until the ship went down.

“So,” she said, “what do you know about the case?”

“Are you sure you want to be seen talking to me about it? Might get you in trouble.”

“C’mon, Jim, this is me.”

“On the surface it seems pretty straightforward. Victim was ­Jennifer McKenna, mid-thirties, good-looking, hospital admin. Quiet, stay-at-home, well liked. The perp is a born loser, in and out of foster homes and juvenile hall as a kid, lac as an adult. adw, gta, dui, all the initials. Cops are satisfied that he did it.”

“What about the Satanism angle?”

“Probably complete horseshit. I doubt this guy can read, let alone manage Anton LaVey. People do sick shit in this town every day without needing Satan for an excuse.”

“So you’re siding with the cops?”

“I do wish you wouldn’t put it like that. But yeah, nobody gave me a reason to think differently until…”

“Until?”

“Until right now.”

“Does this mean you’re going to keep investigating this on your own?”

“While chasing my own tail on a dead-end gang killing? Not a chance. You used to do cops in Chicago. You could mentor our little Courtney, make sure she doesn’t miss anything. I’m sure Burlington would appreciate that.”

“Yeah,” Susan said, “right.”

*

TOM HATED THE SMELL of Men’s Central Jail. Vomit and bleach, the one endlessly giving rise to the other. He sat at a scarred table in an interview room, his back to the big one-way mirror.

A clanking noise made him look up. A burly corrections officer stood in the doorway, his baton in one hand, the other gripping the arm of one of the sorriest looking prisoners Tom had ever seen: short, pale, acne-scarred, tattoos everywhere, wispy beard and mustache, long greasy hair in a ponytail, narrow eyes, and a long, twice-broken nose. The shackles on his hands and feet testified to his insubordination. He was smirking and the CO was fuming, a sure sign that Judd had been winding him up.

“You Davis?” the CO said.

“That’s right.”

The CO shoved Judd toward the chair on the other side of the table. “So you’re defending this piece of shit?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Hope you never need a cop,” the CO said.

Judd tilted his chair back, put his manacled hands behind his head, and dragged his feet up onto the table, no small accomplishment given the weight of the chains. The CO swept the feet off the table with his baton, cracking Judd’s shin as he did it. The front legs of Judd’s chair slammed into the linoleum and the CO said, “Feet on the floor, asswipe.”

Judd’s smirk got bigger and his eyes narrower. Tom smelled rotten teeth all the way across the table. The CO backed off a few paces and stood with arms folded, the baton still out and ready.

Tom didn’t attempt to shake Judd’s hand. “My name is Tom Davis. The court has appointed me to represent you. You don’t know it yet, but you got lucky. One, because I’m with Brock, James and ­Vallence, one of the top criminal law firms in the city. Two, because I like my job and I’m going to get you a fair trial.”

Judd’s response was to pick his nose and examine the results before wiping them on his blue jumpsuit.

“I’ve got a list of questions here,” Tom said. “I’m going to take it from the top and work my way down. Is that okay with you?”

“You’re wasting your time,” the CO said.

Tom nodded cordially and turned back to Judd. “Let’s start with the night of the murder. Can you take me through where you went and what you did, starting around, oh, six or seven at night?”

Judd scratched his crotch, his gaze drifting idly past Tom to the mirror.

“He’s not going to cooperate,” the CO said. “With you or anybody else. He thinks he’s a tough guy. He’s got some surprises ahead of him.”

“Is that right, Nathan? Are you really not going to talk to me?”

Judd sucked his teeth and let his eyes go out of focus.

Tom gathered up his papers and put them in his briefcase. He sat back and said, “I hear you ride, Nathan. My oldest boy wants a ­Harley more than anything in the world. He can’t decide if he wants the Fatboy or the Heritage.”

Judd settled deeper into his chair and closed his eyes as if he were going to sleep. In a second the CO was on him, slamming his baton into the back of the chair so hard that Judd was knocked forward and had to catch himself on the edge of the table. “Wake up, asshole. Show some manners to the shyster.”

“Listen,” Tom said, “do you think you could give us a moment in private?”

The CO said, “I don’t think you want to be alone with this guy.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Your funeral.” The CO walked out and slammed the door.

Tom wondered if he’d just done something terminally stupid. “Talk to me, Nathan. I can’t help you if you—”

Judd didn’t change anything more than the expression on his face, yet Tom suddenly saw a crude intelligence and self-awareness in his eyes. “Shut the fuck up,” Judd said.

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to help me, okay? I’m already dead. The fix is in.”

“What are you talking about?” Tom leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “What fix?”

The other Judd vanished, as if some alien creature had taken possession of his body for ten seconds and departed. Judd now stared mutely into space.

“Nathan?” Tom said. “Nathan?”

*

EVENTUALLY SUSAN REACHED a point in her day where coffee stopped working. She was grateful to see that that point had not quite arrived yet. She sat on a stool with her laptop open on the kitchen island, reading page 8 of the Google results for “Devil Doll Killer.”

“Until that moment,” Tom said, his back to her, chopping a leek, “I was thinking, ‘This is one I’m not going to mind losing.’ Now I don’t know.”

“Jim said he had priors out the wazoo.”

Tom had taken six eggs out of the refrigerator earlier, and now he cracked them, one-handed, into a bowl. The effect was somewhat undercut by his stopping to pick out bits of shell. “Well, that’s the thing,” Tom said. “They’re just biker stuff. The assault charges came out of a punch-up with another club. He stole a car, he gets drunk a lot, he got the indecent exposure beef for taking a leak in an alley. He’s not a boy scout by any means, but no rape, no other violence against women, nothing that makes him look good for a murder like this one.”

“Weird,” Susan said. “The tv stations are trying to make him sound like the second coming of Charlie Manson.”

“He’s not even Manson Lite. And I don’t like the fact that the District Attorney of LA County was in the office having a group hug with Roxanne and Winston when I came in.”

“You’re off and running again, aren’t you?”

“You wouldn’t, by any chance, be implying that I’m getting emotionally involved with a case I can’t possibly win?” Susan watched him pour olive oil into the omelet pan and swirl it around.

“It’s endearing, in a wonky kind of a way.”

“I think I may have a chance on this one. And this could be big. Will you still love me when I’m on the cover of Time?”

“I guess we’ll find out when it happens.” Tom’s optimism had been one of the things that first attracted her. She’d met him when she was covering a rally for hotel workers where he was fighting, on his own time, for their right to organize. He’d been quiet, self-effacing, determined, and inspiring.

“Do I detect some jealousy?” he asked. “Do you wish Burlington had given it to you?”

“First of all, there’d be a conflict of interest because of you. Secondly, no. I’ve interviewed enough guys like Nathan Judd to last me a lifetime. Still, I hate to see it go to somebody like Courtney.” She considered whether she wanted to ruin her lovely caffeine buzz with a glass of wine.

“You really think they’re trying to hide something?” He went after a red bell pepper with the big chopping knife.

“Things have gone downhill pretty fast since the new owners took over. And today one of the cronies they brought with them got caught stealing her movie reviews from an indie weekly in Cleveland. How could she imagine she’d get away with it?”

“I thought I was invulnerable when I was in my twenties.”

“You weren’t plagiarizing.”

“No, just smoking a little dope and driving a little too fast.”

“This is not laddish acting out. And she was so arrogant about it. Everybody does it, she said. She’d ‘made it her own’ by putting her ‘stamp’ on it.”

“There have always been a few screwups who—”

“It’s worse now. It’s like lying is the new national pastime. And it’s not just journalists, it’s politicians who’ve proved that if you keep telling the same lie over and over, louder and louder, people will believe it. Then there’s big business, if there’s a difference anymore. Sociopaths are the perfect free market capitalists. No conscience to interfere with making a profit.”

“Now who’s off and running?”

“I know, I know,” she said. She closed up her computer and went for the wine bottle after all. “I’m going to quit brooding before I ruin my appetite.”

*

TOM DIDN'T SPEND a lot of time in El Monte. It lay east of East LA, its major attraction a 30-foot fiberglass replica of the Statue of Liberty. It was a town of strip centers and Laundromats and liquor stores with barred windows. And it was home to the Alameda ­Trailer Park, where Tom had a noon appointment with a biker named ­Sleazebag Steve.

Tom had dressed for the occasion in the jeans he wore for yard work, a black T-shirt, and an old flannel shirt hanging open in front. He was embarrassed at how well his Corolla fit into the ­neighborhood.

Steve was in full regalia—black leather vest with nothing under it, ripped jeans, boots, bandana tied pirate style to hold his long hair. He had his Harley under an awning attached to an antique ­Airstream knockoff, the engine covers lying on sheets of newspaper. “You’re punctual,” Steve said as Tom walked up. “I like that.”

They shook hands, movement style, and Tom asked questions about the Harley, walking the fine line between sounding genuinely interested and revealing the depth of his ignorance. He let Steve work his way around to mentioning the case. “So what’d you think of Nathan?” he finally asked.

“Well,” Tom said. “I don’t think he picked up Jennifer McKenna in a bar.”

“You got that right. I don’t think Nathan’s ever had any pussy that at least three or four guys haven’t just had first.”

“I don’t make him for a Satanist either.”

“Yeah, that’s complete bullshit. There might be a hundred honest-to-Christ Satanists in LA, and Nathan ain’t one of them.”

“So why would somebody say he was?”

“People don’t like to think. Give ’em a stereotype, like Satanist Biker? They’ll go for it every time.”

*

JUDD HAD WORKED at Chuy’s Garage off and on for the last three years, the sincerity of his remorse repeatedly winning out over the drunkenness that got him fired.

The owner and namesake was about 40, well fed, sporting a neatly trimmed mustache and a silk shirt that was more expensive than his business seemed to justify. Tom suspected other business going in and out the back door, which was not relevant at the moment.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Chuy said. He sat behind his desk in an office whose cheap wood paneling held various framed certificates for advanced courses in auto mechanics. “Nathan is not what you would call a pillar of the community or anything. But he’s no devil worshipper either. You’ve met him, right? He doesn’t give a cacahuate. Not about God, not about the devil, and not about you or me.”

*

FOR THE LAST 18 months, Jennifer McKenna had worked at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, where she was a Certified Medical Administrative Assistant in the Birthplace, their fancy maternity hospital. Her best friend at work was a woman named Cherie Baxter, an admin assistant in Surgery. She was pushing 50, compact and energetic, with short blonde hair brushed back like she was facing into a strong wind. They got Cokes from a machine and went outside.

Cherie’s story matched the one from the case file: Jennifer was “nice,” quiet, kept to herself. Cherie seemed withdrawn, ­uptight, like Tom could have bounced a basketball off of her and she wouldn’t have felt it.

“I need something here,” Tom said. “I don’t think this guy Judd had anything to do with killing Jennifer. If they convict him, the real killer walks away free and clear. They won’t even be looking anymore.”

“I know,” Cherie said. Her voice was so constricted that Tom barely heard her.

“What?” Tom asked gently. “What do you know?”

“If I tell you something, can it be off the record?”

Tom put down his legal pad and nodded.

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“I promise.”

“They said in the papers that…that she let this biker guy pick her up at Starr’s. On a Sunday night. When I saw that, I knew it was a lie.”

“Why?”

“Because Sunday night at Starr’s…it’s ladies only. You know what I’m saying?”

“What, some kind of Chippendales thing? Male strippers?”

“The opposite. It’s a pickup scene.” She blushed. “You know. Girl on girl. No men allowed.”

“Ah.” He gave himself a moment to work through the implications. “Were you there that night?”

“Not…that night.”

“You’d been there with her before?”

“Not with her. It was her first time. She said she didn’t want me to come, that she would be even worse self-conscious. It was like an experiment for her. She was just starting to find herself as…you know.” Tears came up in Cherie’s eyes. “I told her about Starr’s and now she’s dead. One of those dykes killed her and it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tom said. “There’s no way you could have known.” He didn’t know whether to put his arm around her to comfort her. Probably not. “Who else have to you told this to?”

“Nobody. And you have to keep this secret. If it comes out that I…that I, you know, go there. It could cost me my job.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Things are better than when I was a kid, but…we’re not there yet. You know what I’m saying?”

Tom nodded. “All right.”

“I must be crazy, telling secrets to a lawyer. It’s just…”

“What?”

“You don’t seem like a real lawyer. You’re not slick enough.”

“Thanks,” Tom said. “I think.”

*

THE DECAYING SUBURBS of Reseda were among Tom’s least favorite parts of LA. By the time he got to the lapd’s West Valley Station it was 2:30, and the flat grid of two story strip malls made him feel like a crisp drop of batter on a waffle iron.

Worse yet, he had to talk to the police, and he never walked into a cop shop without the irrational fear of ending up in a holding cell.

Detective Beacham was in his forties, in shirtsleeves and khaki Dockers, tie loose and top shirt button undone. He was tall, muscular, had purplish-black skin, short, graying hair, and a trace of a Caribbean lilt when he yelled, “Hey, Oliver, get your ass in here.” Mostly he looked tired.

Tom shook hands with Beacham while an even bigger guy, with the top-heavy look of a bodybuilder, filled up the doorway. Tom took a seat and they passed around a few half-hearted pleasantries about the heat wave. Finally Tom got down to work. “It says in your report that you arrested Judd on the basis of an anonymous phone tip?”

Beacham folded his arms. “We brought him in for questioning on that basis. Then we arrested him.”

Oliver said, “We got forensics, we got eyeball witnesses putting him at the scene—”

“Forensics?” Tom said. “There was nothing in the report about forensics.”

“One of the victim’s hairs on his clothes,” Oliver said. “We got the results this morning.”

“He supposedly murdered her and drained her blood, and all you found was a single hair? He could have picked that up walking past her in the parking lot.”

“Only he didn’t,” Beacham said. The pretense of politeness evaporated as Beacham leaned forward, openly menacing.

“And your witnesses,” Tom said. “They’re both members of the Comancheros. A rival motorcycle club.”

“That’s right,” Beacham said.

“And they both saw him, inside Starr’s, on Sunday night?”

“That’s right,” Beacham said. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Smartass Lawyer. Twenty-three years I been in this business.” His accent got stronger as his voice grew more menacing. “You learn to tell a wrong guy when you see one. Judd’s a wrong guy.”

This was going nowhere. Tom stood up and said, “The problem is, he may be the wrong guy.” It would have been a great exit line if Oliver was not still blocking the door. “Do you mind?” Tom said.

Oliver, grinning, stepped aside in slow motion. Tom had to brush against his cheap suit to get into the hall.

“Fuckin’ lawyers,” Beacham said. He was using his outdoor voice. “If you get this guy off on some bullshit technicality, I hope you remember it when he kills the next girl. It’ll be the exact same as if you killed her yourself.”

*

HE STOOD OUTSIDE Roxanne’s office door at 3:45. The door opened before he could knock and Roxanne, carrying a handful of papers, nearly ran into him.

“Tom?” She didn’t sound thrilled to see him.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“I’m trying to get out of here Thursday morning. I’ve got a million details to take care of.”

“It’s important. Nathan Judd was framed, and I can prove it.”

Tom didn’t get the reaction he’d been hoping for. Roxanne looked at her watch and said, “I’ve got dinner free. My date cancelled, but I’ve still got to eat. Spago at eight-thirty, take it or leave it.”

He hoped she was planning to pick up the check. “Uh, yeah, okay. Do I—”

“Just meet me there, Tom, okay?” She fingered his flannel shirt. “Jacket and tie would be nice.”

Under five hours to make it to Orange County, shower and change, and get back to Beverly Hills. It was possible, barely.

Roxanne pushed past him and Tom sprinted for his car.

*

THE GODS OF TRAFFIC blessed him, and Tom was tying his tie by 6:00. Jason stuck his head in the bedroom and said, “Hot date?”

“Your old man is eating at Spago tonight.”

“If you can afford to take Susan to Spago, you can afford something better than that Little Caesar’s junk you fed us.”

“I’m meeting Roxanne there. This is for work.”

Jason leaned in and sniffed. “You’re wearing aftershave to work now? Does Susan know?”

“Give me a break.” Tom tightened up the tie, put the small end through the label, checked his teeth.

“Hey, Bry,” Jason shouted down the hall. “Looks like we’re going to the Gallaghers again tonight.”

Brian’s voice came from the vicinity of the kitchen. “Outstanding!”

Tom sat on the bed. “Jay, c’mere.” Jason perched awkwardly at the farthest corner from Tom. “I’m working on a pretty important case. One that could make a difference to us. Make things a little easier on us.”

Jason was not at an age where sentimentality was to be tolerated. “Roxanne’s hot, Dad. I’d do her too if I had the chance.”

“I’m serious. It’s not like I enjoy driving a thrashed car and wearing second-hand suits. I mean, I didn’t get into this business for the money, but I didn’t get into it to be poor, either.”

“Why did you get into this business?”

Even if Jason had been serious—and Tom knew he was just putting the boot in wherever he saw an opening—Tom wasn’t sure he knew the answer anymore.

*

ROXANNE POINTED to something near the top of the wine list and said, “Let’s have a bottle of that.”

“Fantastic choice,” the waiter said. “I’ll get that right out.” He headed for the bar with a grace that looked choreographed.

Tom was in way over his head. It was all he could do not to stare at the woman two tables over who’d gotten multiple Emmy nominations for her show on amc. Or at Roxanne herself, who had emphasized the “little” in the little black dress she wore. He forced himself to move slowly and be conscious of his extremities so that he didn’t knock anything over.

The walls and furnishings were some kind of dark red wood, cherry or mahogany. Even with his reading glasses, the candle in the middle of the table, and what was left of the summer daylight, he could barely read the menu. He hoped he’d correctly made out the word “salmon” among the many entrees.

Roxanne, of course, was completely at home, and once Tom put his menu down, she gave him a smile unlike any he’d ever seen on her before, as if she’d mistaken him for her absent date.

“I’ve lived in LA my entire life,” he said, “and this is my first time here.”

“You should get out more, Tom.”

“I’ve got two kids who think they’re going to college someday, and just the one paycheck. We eat most of our meals at home.”

“How long has it been now? Since…”

“Since Elaine died? Three years and change.”

“You must miss her terribly.”

“The truth is we weren’t doing that well before the cancer was diagnosed, and it was a long couple of years afterward.” I can’t believe, he thought, I’m saying this to Roxanne.

“You stayed, though.”

“I didn’t want my kids to resent her for being sick, or me for running away. That would have screwed up their childhood a lot worse than her dying did.”

“You’re a good man, Tom. A lot of us count on that.”

The compliment was so unexpected that it slipped past his guard and nearly made him tear up, right there in front of Roxanne and the actress and the ridiculously young and good-looking waiter, who had materialized with the wine.

By the time they’d gone through the ritual of the uncorking and the tasting of the wine, Tom had himself under control. Roxanne ordered the Prime New York Steak, “painfully rare,” to which the waiter said, “I remember, Ms. Vallence.” He then went on to extravagantly praise Tom’s choice of the salmon before hurrying away again.

“So,” Roxanne said. “Are you seeing anyone?” A faint smile flickered around her perfect mouth, as if she knew how flirtatious it sounded and didn’t care.

Once again, Tom found himself blurting out the truth without thinking first. “I met her a couple of months ago. She’s a reporter.”

“Is it serious?”

“I hope so. I’m too old to be fooling around.”

He was not imagining it. Another coy smile came and went, as if she were saying, “Oh, really?”

Tom felt seasick. Before he completely lost sight of land, he said, “About the Judd case…”

Roxanne let out a “must we?” sort of sigh.

“I talked to some of his associates today. They say the Satanism angle is bunk.”

“Tom, Tom. He’s not necessarily going to tell his friends something like that. I mean,” and she paused for another quick flash of smile, “I’m sure there are all sorts of things you don’t know about me.”

Tom forced himself to look at the tablecloth. “I also talked to the victim’s friends, and one of them told me Jennifer was—”

“Tom!”

It wasn’t loud, but it cracked like a pistol shot. Tom closed his mouth.

“As a matter of fact,” Roxanne said, “I talked with Judd on the phone this afternoon. He admitted the whole thing.”

“You talked to my client? Why?”

“He’d called the office repeatedly since yesterday. He didn’t believe you were really with the firm. He wouldn’t take Emma’s word for it, insisted on talking to me directly.”

The story didn’t sound credible, though Tom, still struggling for mental equilibrium, couldn’t say why.

“Apparently,” Roxanne said, “even a low-life like Judd can have a conscience. He seemed to be feeling pretty guilty, in fact.”

“He told me he was framed.”

She shook her head. “He’s a pathological liar. You can’t believe a word he says.”

He remembered talking about liars with Susan and it gave him a moment of clarity. “Including his confession?”

“He knew she was wearing Hello Kitty underpants. He knew about a lumpectomy scar on her left breast.”

“I thought they never found her underwear.”

“I think they were in her purse or something. Trust me, Tom, the confession was real. I wouldn’t be surprised if he copped a plea.”

Tom watched his objectivity slip away again. He did trust ­Roxanne. He smiled sadly and said, “This was going to be my defining moment.”

Roxanne laughed. It sounded like crystal wineglasses clinking together. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of other chances.”

*

BY THE TIME Tom stepped into the hot Beverly Hills night, Roxanne’s hand lightly on his arm, he felt like he had an idiot grin permanently stuck to his face.

“Are you okay to drive?” Roxanne asked. They were standing face to face, close enough that he smelled the perfume on her neck. She seemed to lean in toward him. “I could drop you somewhere.”

“I’m fine,” Tom said. In fact he’d reached the point where he no longer trusted himself, and not just about driving.

She looked disappointed. “Okay, if you’re sure. I wouldn’t want to have to bail out one of my own guys.” She waved to a valet parking attendant and handed him her keys, wrapped with a ten-dollar bill. “It’s the white z4.”

“We remember, Ms. Vallence.”

“I’m around the corner,” Tom said. He paused, not knowing what he was waiting for. “I guess I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”

“You probably won’t see me. I’ve got a long day finishing things up.”

Whatever flirtatious demon had possessed her had fled. Things would return to their normal chill, he realized, the next time he saw her. Unwilling to let go quite yet, he said, “Oh, yeah, that conference thing. Where is that?”

“Far, far away from the rest of the world.”

“Is Winston going too?”

“I’m the only one from this office. This is a very big deal, Tom. They only invite the top attorneys from all over the country, and I mean attorneys in the broadest possible sense. The best of the best.”

“Yeah, well,” Tom said. Having overstayed, he was now unable to find his exit line. “I hope it goes well. Whatever it is.”

“Me too.” She glanced around impatiently for her car.

“Well, good night, then. And thanks again for the amazing dinner.”

She had already dismissed him in her mind. Tom got 20 feet away before he realized he was walking in the wrong direction. He turned in time to see Roxanne step into the street.

Clearly she thought she was alone. An mta bus had stopped at the curb and she stood directly behind it. Her eyes closed and she breathed deeply, as if she were inhaling a pine-scented alpine breeze, when the bus exhaust was so foul that Tom could smell it from where he stood.

He was sure there was a rational explanation. The sight made him deeply uncomfortable and a little afraid, and he turned away ­before she caught him watching her. He decided to take the long way around the block to his car.

*

ALTHOUGH THE WESTERN end of Ventura Boulevard was a step up from El Monte and Reseda, it was not a big one. The strip centers were in somewhat better repair, and the cars in their parking lots were a few years newer. The ambience was the same. It was the knowledge that you were no longer on the verge of anything. What you saw was what you got.

Tom was on the phone with Susan as he drove. “I can’t shake the feeling that she was coming on to me. I know how ridiculous that sounds, here in the daylight…”

“Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“You’re sweet. And last night, as long as I was with her, I almost believed it myself. That con man thing, you know, the pheromones or whatever it is. Once I was alone in my car, the whole thing turned to fairy dust. I’m supposed to believe she was chit-chatting with my client when she was too busy to talk to me in the hall? That Judd would break down and confess out of nowhere? To her? And how in the hell did she know what kind of underwear Jennifer was wearing? Unless…”

“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“It’s crazy to think that. It’s…unthinkable.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

“It’s easy enough to disprove. Then I can go back to thinking thinkable things.” He saw the sign for Starr’s and turned in. “I’m here. I’ll call you tonight.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

Tom had never been a drinker, never seen the appeal of places like this one. Here in the middle of the afternoon it was empty and quiet, a few dust motes floating in planes of sunlight from the nearly-closed blinds. It could have been anywhere. The bartender, a short 30-year-old with exaggerated curves named Dina, was ­filling a cooler with longneck bottles of Bud Lite. She wore a Starr’s T-shirt that was a size or two too small, the logo stretched out of shape across her overstuffed breasts. She noticed Tom and said, “It’s Lawyer Man! How you doing, Lawyer Man? How’s the Devil Doll Killer?” She flipped the blonde hair out of her eyes with a habitual half-circle of the head.

“I expect he’s still a completely obnoxious piece of human garbage, like the last time I saw him.”

“I’ll drink to that. What can I get you?”

“Club soda?”

Like Roxanne, Dina—a product of artifice from dyed crown to painted toenails—was not the sort of woman he was attracted to. He liked the strands of gray in Susan’s auburn hair, the hard-earned lines around her eyes, the soft curve of her stomach. But other men wanted Dina, and they wanted Roxanne, and so by some transitive property of attraction it mattered to Tom that, if they didn’t outright desire him, at least they didn’t write him off.

Dina brought him his glass of soda and a saucer of lemon and lime wedges. She waved away his attempt to reach for his wallet. “We don’t charge for this stuff.”

Tom cleared his throat. “I feel like you haven’t been completely honest with me, Dina.”

“Now what would make you say a thing like that?”

“How about the fact that this place is a lesbian pick-up joint on Sunday nights?”

“Is it?”

“Come on, Dina. Give the old man some credit. I don’t like Judd any better than you do, but if he didn’t do the murder, he doesn’t deserve to get sent up for it.”

Dina straightened up and put her hands on her hips. “Every night when I get off work, I have to have the bouncer walk me to my car. Why? Because of creeps like Nathan Judd.”

“He wasn’t even in the club that night. No men allowed.”

“He was in the parking lot, sitting on his hog. He harassed this Jenifer woman on her way in. I had to call the cops to run him off. Guy like that, I figure he comes back, lurks in the shadows, waits for her to come out again, gets some payback for brushing him off.”

“She brushed him off,” Tom said, “among many other reasons, because she was looking for a different kind of action. She was looking for a woman.”

Dina returned to her Bud Light. “Maybe.”

“And she found one, didn’t she?”

Dina didn’t answer. Tom, his hands sweating, pulled a recent issue of Los Angeles magazine, folded lengthwise, out of his back pocket and put it on the bar. He took a deep breath and unfolded it. “Is this who she found?”

Dina walked over, read the cover copy that said, “Hot Defender: Roxanne Vallence,” and then studied the photo for a few seconds. She shrugged. “She’s hot looking, all right. But we get hot-looking women like her in here all the time. I couldn’t say yes or no.” She looked up at Tom. “Her name was on your business card. She’s your boss. What’s up with that?”

Tom ignored the question. “Jennifer did leave here with a woman the night she was killed. Yes?”

Reluctantly, Dina said, “Yeah.”

“Who looked at least a little like her.” He pointed to Roxanne’s photo.

“Yeah.”

Tom put the magazine in his pocket, took a five out of his wallet, and slapped it on the bar.

“Thanks for your help.”

Dina’s gaze frosted over as she turned away. “Don’t mention it.”

Tom was halfway to the door when his phone sounded. It was Susan’s work number. “Hey, babe,” he said.

“Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“One of our informants at Central Jail called. Judd’s dead.”

“What? How?”

“Suicide, they’re saying.”

“Son of a bitch. I’ll call you back.”

He turned halfway around. “Hey, Dina.” She looked up. “You don’t have to worry about Judd anymore. He’s dead.”

She raised her fist in silent celebration and Tom walked out into the heat.

*

TOM GOT A CO to escort him to Judd’s cell. The entire block was on lockdown and three crime scene techs collected samples in the area of the bunk beds. A couple of EMTs wheeled a gurney toward the open cell door.

As if the cell wasn’t already crowded enough, Detective Beacham was watching the techs, and the CO from the day before was now watching Tom.

“How’d he do it?” Tom asked the room, and the room did not answer. “So, what, nobody is going to talk to me?”

The CO from the day before said, “You wouldn’t want to hear what I got to say to you. Your pal here got what he was begging for. So you can go find another ambulance to chase.”

The EMTs tried to get past Tom, and he took the opportunity to lift a corner of the sheet.

He would be seeing that face in his nightmares, he knew. The skin was not merely pale but grayish-white, and the eyes were wide open in an expression of hopelessness, pain, and fear.

The nearest EMT said, “He cut his wrists and bled out.”

Tom looked around the dry, dusty cell. A cobweb grew in one corner of the floor. “Where’s the blood?”

It was none of the EMT's business. He nudged Tom aside with the gurney and wheeled the body away.

“Can I get some answers from somebody?” Tom said, knowing he should take the frustration down a couple of notches, unsure whether he was able to. “That guy is drained. That’s a gallon and some of blood. It should be all over this cell!”

A voice behind him said, “Some of it went down the sink.” Tom turned to see the DA, Matthew Clarke, his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. “He used the rest to write a full ­confession.”

Tom found himself unable to summon his previous awe of ­Matthew Clarke. “That’s, uh, kind of hard to believe. Sir.”

“Nevertheless…”

“I mean, you’ve got two people completely drained of blood within two weeks of each other.”

“The Satanic cult—” Clarke started.

“He wasn’t in a Satanic cult,” Tom said. “Sir. I think you know that as well as I do.”

“What was your name again?” Clarke’s own frustrations were showing.

“Davis, sir. Tom Davis. Can I see this confession?”

“It’s being transcribed.”

“When can I see it?”

“You don’t need to see the confession!” Clarke snapped. “Not now, not ever. Your former client is dead, the case is closed, and your involvement with it is over. Do I need to make myself any more clear than that, Mr. Davis?”

“No, sir.” Whatever the “fix” was that Judd had been talking about, Clarke was part of it. Tom was not only endangering his career, he was risking his own gurney like Judd’s. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Clarke dismissed him with an abrupt nod. Tom backed up two steps and walked out of the cell.

*

THE BOYS WERE in the den, playing some kind of first-person shooter game. Eileen had bought them their first Xbox over Tom’s objections and now it was years too late to take it away. When he tried to talk to them about the violence—people screaming as they were burned to death by flame-throwers, or driven through plate glass windows by machine gun fire that made them erupt in blood—they laughed at him and told him they weren’t stupid, that they knew the difference between animation and reality.

“Can you guys turn that off a minute?” Tom asked. “I need to ask you something.”

Jason said, “Is it important?”

“Compared to throwing hand grenades at Nazi werewolves? I’d say it was right up there.”

Jason paused the game. “What’s on your mind, Pops?”

“What do you guys know about…” Now that he’d come this far, he discovered he was too embarrassed to ask.

“This is not another sex talk, is it?” Brian asked.

“No,” Tom said. “It’s about… vampires.”

It had been so long since he’d had their full and engaged attention that it felt like a miracle. “Is this about the Devil Doll murder?” Jason asked.

Tom had never told them he was working on the case. “What?”

“Her body was, like, totally drained of blood,” Brian said. “It’s so obvious.”

“So how do you know if somebody is a vampire?” Tom asked.

“It was easier in the old days,” Jason said. “The teeth, the cape. Nowadays it’s harder. They can’t stand direct sunlight. You may not be able to see them in a mirror.”

“It’s painful for them to see a cross,” Brian said.

“Unless they’re Jewish,” Jason said.

Brian said, “ ‘Oy, lady, have you got the wrong vampire!’ ” That sent both boys into convulsions of laughter.

“Go on,” Tom said. “What else?”

“Garlic,” Brian said.

“Yeah, garlic for sure,” Jason said. “They can’t cross running water. They can’t come into your house unless you invite them.”

“How do you…” Tom said. “You know.”

“Kill them?” Jason said. “Stake through the heart. Then cut the head off and stuff it with garlic.”

“Jesus. Where do you guys get this stuff?”

“I read Dracula for school,” Jason said. “You’re the one always talking about how great books are. I thought it pretty much sucked. Too slow. Anyway, there’s also fire.”

“Yeah, fire,” Brian said.

“They burn really good,” Jason said. “Like, whoooom!”

“Yeah, okay,” Tom said. “Thanks, guys.”

“Silver bullets,” Brian said.

“That’s werewolves,” Jason said. “You imbecile.”

“Okay, fine,” Tom said. “That’s all I need to know.”

“Maybe not the bullet part,” Brian said, “but vampires are allergic to silver, too.”

“That’s a myth,” Jason said.

“No it’s not,” Brian said hotly. “They’re corrupt, see? And they can’t stand pure things. Pure silver. Pure sunlight. Pure running water.”

Tom saw that he’d been forgotten. The boys loved to argue about things that had no bearing on reality and no solution. Who would win in a fight between the Thing and the Hulk? Who was better, the 1972 Oakland As or the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers? Camaro or Mustang? Coke or Dr. Pepper?

As Tom walked away, he heard Jason say, “So what you’re telling me is, a vampire can cross running water if it’s got industrial sludge in it?”

In his bedroom, Tom got out the silver cross pendant his grandmother had left him and rummaged around the dresser until he found a jewelry box for it. A couple of bites of pesto from the fridge and a quick call to the Gallaghers next door to make sure they were around in case the kids had an emergency.

He kept moving so he wouldn’t change his mind. The idea of vampires was ridiculous, impossible. So he would eliminate it from the discussion and move on.

*

ROXANNE STOOD at her desk, holding some kind of brochure. Tom reached in to knock on the open door. She looked up, her expression neutral. “It’s open.”

“Oh hey,” Tom said. “You said you’d be working late and I…”

He hated the sound of his own voice, hated the patient look on Roxanne’s face, as if she were counting down the seconds until she asked him to leave.

This whole charade depended on his playing it casual, and he seemed unable to. He waved a hand in the direction of the brochure. “Is that your, uh, thing?”

“Retreat,” she said. She folded it, and Tom got a glimpse of the cover, showing an aerial view of a dome surrounded by trees. She put it into her into the top drawer of her desk and pushed the drawer closed. “What is it, Tom?”

Maybe, he thought, this was not such a great idea. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Never mind.”

“Tell me, Tom.”

Something in her voice made him feel like he could talk to her. He took the jewelry box out of his pocket and tried the words he’d rehearsed in the car. “I’ve always admired your taste, and I was ­wondering…”

He was squeezing the box so tightly that it popped open and the necklace spilled out onto the carpet. Tom knelt clumsily and gathered up the chain. When he looked up, Roxanne was standing over him. She was in some kind of high-end yoga wear, off-white, that hugged her body.

He got unsteadily to his feet and took a step backward. “I got this for my girlfriend. I can still return it if you think it’s…”

She took back the step that Tom had moved away. She was well inside his personal space, beyond flirtation, all the way to dare. She took the cross out of his hand, not looking away from his eyes.

“…uh, tacky,” Tom finished.

She took the chain in both hands and lowered the cross into the profound cleavage that her yoga top revealed. “I think it’s lovely, Tom. Don’t you?”

He imagined that his eyes were bulging like those of a cartoon mouse. A drop of sweat ran down his nose.

“And Tom?”

“Yes?” They were both whispering.

“The next time you have a lot of garlic in your spaghetti, you might try a Tic Tac or two. I’m sure your…girlfriend…would find you more kissable.”

He was mesmerized by the movement of her full, sensuous lips. Her eyelids lowered halfway. She was waiting for him to kiss her. Tom felt himself lean toward her, against his will.

The elevator chimed in the lobby.

He stood up straight and blinked in surprise. He was suddenly aware of the open office door. “Is somebody else here?”

“Just security, making their rounds.” Her tongue flicked quickly at her upper lip. “They never come in here…if the door’s locked.”

She took a small step toward the door, as if to lock it, giving Tom the chance to catch his breath. He had a sudden image of Nathan Judd on the gurney, and he saw that he’d made a terrible mistake.

“I have to go,” he said.

Roxanne’s mood shifted, as it had outside the restaurant. As if, having been turned down, she’d lost interest. “Suit yourself. I’m going too. I’ll walk you out.”

The lobby was in near darkness. Tom heard the guards trying the doors down the hall. Everything felt disjointed, dreamlike. He pushed the call button for the elevator and the doors opened immediately. He turned to Roxanne, who stood in the middle of the lobby, arms folded. “You go ahead,” she said. “I have to make a phone call.”

Tom got numbly on the elevator, turned, pressed the button for the ground floor. “Good night,” he said.

She was still staring at him with her pale eyes as the elevator doors closed.

*

HE WASN'T SURE at first if he could drive. He sat in his car for a while, slowly coming out of his trance. As his intellect returned he began to sweat with fear and shame. What the hell had he been thinking? He’d not only made a fool of himself, he had as much as told Roxanne that he thought she was a vampire. The best-case scenario was that she would fire him for being an idiot. The worst case…

The worst-case scenario was that Roxanne really had killed ­Jennifer McKenna, and had either killed Judd as well, or ordered it done. Whether she was a supernatural being or not, she would now have to kill Tom.

Panic scrambled his brain. He took deep breaths, tried to think logically. He pictured himself going to Detective Beacham with wild accusations about Roxanne and no evidence. What had the co said? “Hope you never need a cop.”

The first thing he had to do was get the kids out of harm’s way. He wasn’t willing to risk their lives on the hope that Roxanne would leave them out of it.

That got him to crank the car and head for the 5 freeway.

He was southbound at a steady 65, still going over options in his head, when he glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a black SUV coming up on him fast. Much, much too fast. He waited half a second for some indication that it was going to pass, and then at the last possible moment he wrenched the wheel and got over into the right lane. The SUV nearly brushed him as it passed, doing well over 100 miles an hour.

“Jesus!” Tom yelled, and was about to lay on his horn, then decided that annoying a homicidal maniac might not be the best idea.

Up ahead, the SUV slammed on its brakes.

Tom braked too, unwilling to let the SUV behind him again, and the car following him honked and swung across two lanes to avoid them both. A stream of cars was coming up on them and Tom heard their tires scream as they braked. He braced himself for the impact, then went lightheaded with relief when it didn’t come. The SUV had fallen back beside him. Tom looked over, unable to see in through the heavily tinted windows.

Suddenly the SUV swerved toward him. Tom swung the wheel again and skidded onto the shoulder and lurched to a stop. He got out his cell phone and punched up 911. When he looked up, the SUV was also in the breakdown lane, stopped. The license plate was covered in mud, illegible.

The SUV’s reverse lights went on and it accelerated toward him. Tom watched the rearview, saw a narrow gap in the traffic, and floored it. He swung into the right lane barely in time to miss the SUV. An 18-wheeler blasted his air horn as he passed Tom on the left, and Tom, fighting the wheel, lost his grip on the cell phone. It landed on the mat in front of the passenger seat.

He kept the gas pedal floored and reached for the cell phone with one hand. No chance. He straightened up and checked his mirrors, and there was the SUV, its gas-swilling v8 gaining on him as if Tom were in a soapbox racer.

Time slowed as all of Tom’s senses went hyper. He signaled right, faked the lane change, then went for the left lane instead and hit the brakes. The SUV fell for it and shifted right, caroming off a pickup and spinning it sideways, where a Mustang plowed straight into it. In a cacophony of squealing tires and tortured metal and thudding impacts, all three lanes filled with wreckage as the SUV shot past him once more.

A few cars pulled into the breakdown lane to call for help and the rest of the survivors sped on into the night. Tom was alone on the highway. He slowed to 45, pulled into the right lane, and fished up his cell phone. It had disconnected. He dialed 911 and crested a low rise.

The SUV was stopped dead in the right lane.

Tom swerved and the Corolla began to fishtail, narrowly missing the concrete barrier between the north and southbound lanes. He eased the slack out of the wheel and gentled the car down, weaving across all three lanes. He was in the left lane, back in control, when he saw the SUV come up on him again.

He hit the brakes, cut across the width of the freeway, and exited into downtown.

He took one random turn after another, alternating lefts and rights, and finally darted into an alley. The Corolla’s lights stayed on as long as the engine was running, so he killed it and sat in the darkness, soaked in sweat and shaking, watching the mouth of the alley in his rearview mirror.

He called 911 again. After a minute he got a live human voice, female and reassuringly middle-aged. “I’m on a cell phone somewhere near the convention center,” Tom said. “Some maniac in an SUV is trying to kill me. Can you track my signal?”

“I can try. Works sometimes, other times not so much. Your name, please?”

“Tom Davis.”

“Are you in immediate danger, Mr. Davis?”

“I don’t know. I—”

In the mirror he saw the SUV—one window spider-webbed, gouge marks all down one side. It trolled past the mouth of the alley and then Tom heard it screech to a stop.

“Oh shit,” he said. “It’s back. Send help.”

He put the phone, still connected, on the passenger seat. He started the car and bolted for the other end of the alley. It opened onto a broad one-way street, virtually empty of cars. Tom turned onto it and made three blocks before he hit a red light. He saw the SUV in the distance behind him and ran the light. He leaned on his horn, hoping to attract a cop, or to get anyone to notice and call for help.

The SUV went through the red light without slowing down.

Tom had no idea where he was. It was the anonymous gray heart of downtown, all office towers and parking garages, empty and shuttered for the night. He made a sudden turn and another, looked back to see the SUV still gaining on him, looked up to see a man in a hooded sweatshirt start across the street in front of him.

Tom kept working his horn and swerved to narrowly miss the man. In his mirror, he saw the man stop in the crosswalk and shake his fist at Tom.

The SUV hit him full on at 60 miles an hour. The man’s body did a back flip over the roof of the SUV, flew ten feet, and landed in a wet pile on the sidewalk. The SUV’s windshield washers came on and the wipers flicked a film of red into the halogen-lit night.

Tom had never watched anyone die before. He didn’t feel anything beyond a certain primal understanding that it could have been him. And wasn’t. Yet.

In the distance before him he saw a T intersection and overhead signs for right and left turns only. Beyond the intersection, concrete embankments dropped to the trickle of the LA River.

Tom had burned through his manic phase and only exhaustion was left. The SUV was three blocks behind him. Tom skidded up to the intersection, shifted to Park, and stepped into the street, hands up, the car door still open.

The SUV stopped a block away.

For a long moment, Tom stared into the high beams of the SUV. There were no other cars in sight. Then, slowly, the SUV began to rev its engine. Heat waves made it shimmer under the streetlights.

Then it was racing at him.

For an instant Tom was unable to move, thinking he’d cut it too close. Then he was in the car, ramming the gearshift into Drive, flooring it and spinning the wheel to the right.

The SUV clipped the rear end of the Corolla at 50 miles an hour and then went up on two wheels, trying too late to make the turn. Tom stopped and turned in his seat for a better look. The SUV rolled over the guardrail and disappeared.

Tom jumped out of the car and ran to the edge of the embankment. The SUV took a last bounce off the concrete slope, turned over again in mid-air, and flattened as it smashed roof-first into the dry grassland of the riverbed. Tom grabbed an intact section of the guardrail as the relief shot through him with a force that nearly made him pass out.

He closed his eyes and sucked in one breath after another, unable to believe he was still alive, exhilarated in his primate brain that he had defeated his enemy, wanting to piss on the driver’s corpse and scream with joy.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the front driver’s side window move. He tried to tell himself it was an illusion. Then the web of shattered glass bulged outward.

Something was alive in there.

The glass exploded in a shower of crystalline fragments and an arm emerged. The arm bled from a dozen cuts, and it was intermittently covered by the tattered remains of a suit coat. The hand clawed at the ground and slowly began to pull the remains of a body through the shattered window.

One eye dangled from the deformed skull. One arm was mashed flat. Broken bones protruded through the shredded clothes and one leg was bent sideways at an impossible angle.

Tom told himself to run and found that he couldn’t move.

By the time the body had dragged itself completely out of the wreckage, it had literally begun to pull itself together, like a time-lapse video of decomposition in reverse. The thing got to its knees and then its feet, stumbled, and then began to shamble forward.

It was coming for Tom.

Within five halting steps it was recognizable as a handsome young man in the ruins of an expensive suit. It stopped and smiled and pointed at Tom.

At that moment the hood of the SUV dropped open and piece of smoking shrapnel landed in the dry grass behind where the creature stood. The thing paid no attention and took another step. The grass smoldered and melted into flame. The creature felt something then, and it turned to look as a tongue of fire touched its pants leg.

In an instant the thing was blazing, as if it had been doused in gasoline. The flames roared and the thing burned to a cloud of ash in seconds.

Finally Tom was able to move, and he ran for his car as sirens began to wail in the distance.

 

•

 

Tom pulled the car into the garage and closed the overhead door. He went to the den where the boys were gaming and switched off the tv. “Oh, man,” Jason said, and then he got a look at Tom and closed his mouth.

Tom imagined he looked like a crazy man from central casting. “We are in deep shit,” he said. “This case I’m working on has gotten dangerous. There are some seriously bad people involved and I’m afraid they might try to come after you.”

“This is the case that was going so well?” Jason said. Making Tom flinch was a skill he’d inherited from his mother.

“Is it the mob?” Brian said. “Are we going into witness protection?”

“It’s like that. I need you to go pack what you need to spend a few days at your grandmother’s.”

“We’re got a dress rehearsal tomorrow,” Brian said.

“The understudy will have to take over,” Tom said. “Now hop to it, you guys have a bus to catch.”

“I think,” Jason said, “in the interests of my own safety, you should let me carry some heat. A nine millimeter would be nice.”

“Another time. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Get a move on.”

He’d looked up a dozen different destination cities on his phone as he drove home, in case they were monitoring him. He was too late for any of the flights to Phoenix, but with luck he could still make the midnight bus out of the downtown Greyhound station, only a few blocks away from where the SUV had driven off the embankment.

He packed his own bag and wrote a note to Elaine’s mother, who loved the boys and was already planning to take them for a couple of weeks in August. He kept the details vague in hopes that she, too, would assume mob trouble. He carried the note and his suitcase out to the darkened garage. By the time he had the back seats folded down, the boys were ready. He stowed them on their backs, legs extended into the trunk, a blue nylon tarp over their bodies. His fear had infected them and they didn’t argue.

He cruised around the neighborhood a few times to make sure nobody was following him, and once he was northbound on the 5 he got off twice, circled the block, and got on again.

As he drove he rehearsed them. They were to keep posting to ­Facebook, pretending they were in North Carolina at the beach with their cousins. They were not to leave their grandmother’s house under any conditions. If there was a life or death emergency, they were to call Susan’s cell. They were not to answer their own phones or their grandmother’s phone.

He got to the bus station and walked the boys onto the bus himself. It was all he could do not to cling to them. The odds were that he would be dead before this was over, that this was the last time he would ever see them. He did his best to act like it was no big deal. After he watched the bus pull out, he drove to the Valley and paid for a motel room with cash and there, with the door shut and double-locked, he finally let himself break down.

*

SUSAN WAS SO DEEPLY asleep that she didn’t understand what the ringing noise was, and once she had the phone in her hand and switched on, she forgot what it was you were supposed to say. She looked at the clock. One thirteen in the morning.

“Susan?”

“Tom?” She was awake now. “Where are you? What’s happened?”

“I’m in trouble. I’ll have to tell you the details later. I tried telling them to myself before I called you and I sounded like a lunatic.”

If he didn’t sound crazy, he did sound exhausted, and in despair. “Are you hurt?”

“So far, no. Look, I need you to do some things. Can you get your hands on some cash, maybe five hundred dollars? More if you can? I’ll write you a check to cover it. I can’t risk using my credit cards.”

“Yes.”

“And I want to borrow your good camera, the one with the telephoto lens, and a couple of extra memory cards. And I want to borrow your camping stuff.”

“Where do I bring them to you?”

“Meet me at noon at the place I kissed you for the first time. Don’t say it over the phone.”

“Can’t you tell me anything? I’m scared for you.”

“You remember that conversation we had about sociopaths? It’s worse than that.”

“What’s worse?”

“You don’t want to refuse to accept what’s right in front of you, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

“How crazy what sounds?”

“It’s not just Roxanne, either. There’s…there’s a conspiracy of them.”

In the few months she’d known him, she’d never heard him like this. When he’d been up and down with his job, it was always with a sense of humor, and he was always grounded in his love for his boys. “Conspiracy of what?”

She heard him gather himself on the other end of the phone. “Vampires,” he said.

“Wow.”

“I warned you. I saw something tonight that I can’t explain.” And he proceeded to tell her about being pursued and nearly killed by some kind of anthropomorphic, indestructible monster.

“Were you not going to tell me about this?”

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“And now you do?”

“I need you to believe me.”

“I never said I didn’t.”

“Roxanne is headed to some kind of convocation of these…things. Big dog vampires from all over the country. From what she said, we’re talking about names everybody would know. If I can find where this place is, I’m going to hide out, get photos of everybody who goes in and out.”

“Um…should we be talking about this on the phone?”

Tom sighed. “Probably not. I don’t know. I’m not cut out for this. If they’re tapping your phone, then it’s probably all over anyway.”

“If they catch you…”

“Going public with this is my only chance. If I try to run, they’ll find me sooner or later.”

“What about the boys?”

“They’re safe. As safe as I can make them.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m an investigative reporter. I have exactly the skills for this. And you need somebody with some common sense to watch your back.”

When Tom finally spoke again, his voice was tight with emotion. “Thank you.”

“You sound like you need some sleep.”

“I’m going to try. Probably not a lot of hope for it.”

“I miss you,” Susan said.

“I miss you too. I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The phone went dead and she slowly put it in the cradle.

She didn’t have much hope for sleep either. She moved to the couch and got onto the Factiva database with her laptop. She had an itch in the back of her brain, and it turned out that searching for news stories that contained “vampire” and “los angeles” was what it took to scratch it.

*

AT TEN BEFORE SIX in the morning, Tom rang the buzzer for Patrick’s apartment. On the third try, Patrick’s voice came over the speaker. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“It’s Tom. I need a favor.”

“This is a hell of a time to ask.”

“It’ll only take a minute. Can I come up?”

Patrick let a long silence convey his annoyance, then the door buzzed open.

Tom had been to a party in Patrick’s apartment a year or so before, where he’d felt like a gatecrasher. Aside from the members of the firm, the other guests were all young, rich, and beautiful, and their gazes passed over Tom as if he’d been wearing a starched white uniform and carrying a tray. The apartment was enormous, with linen wallpaper and white Persian carpets over oak floors, Art Deco sculptures on pedestals, furniture carved from birds-eye maple. When Tom had bluntly asked how he paid for it, Patrick had said, “I have some money of my own.”

Patrick answered the door in a silk robe, his hair stylishly disarrayed. He stood aside to let Tom in, but didn’t offer him a chair. It occurred to Tom that this might be another in a long line of poor decisions. He’d assumed there was some genuine affection behind their banter. He wasn’t seeing affection now.

“Roxanne laid me off,” Tom said. “She called security to escort me out and didn’t let me pack up my office.”

“Did it have anything to do with the fact that your last client slashed his wrists? I don’t think the LexRex software even lists that as an outcome.”

“They deactivated my keycard. I’ve got a prescription in my desk for one of my kids, and I can’t get to it.” Tom was reasonably certain his keycard would still work, at least long enough to alert security. Or more likely deliver him to another homicidal maniac like the one in the SUV.

“Did you explain that to Roxanne?”

“By the time I remembered it, she was on her way to her retreat. Winston’s not answering his phone. I need to get in the office for five minutes.”

“Using my keycard, I assume?”

“That was my hope.”

“You’re a decent guy, Tom. You’re just not a very good lawyer. And you could be poison for anyone who tried to help you.”

Tom reached for the fancy gold lever-type handle on the front door. “I don’t need insults, Patrick.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Patrick said. His eyes lost their focus as he thought it over. “I suppose you should be able to get your stuff.”

“The prescription. That’s all I care about. I’ll have the key back to you in under an hour.”

“Wait here.” Patrick shuffled down the hall to his bedroom and came out a moment later with the plain white plastic card. “Leave it in the mailbox. On the off chance that I do manage to get back to sleep.”

“I really appreciate this.”

“And don’t forget to bring it back,” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t want to end up like you.”

“Not much chance of that,” Tom said.

*

TOM PARKED in the deserted garage and opened his trunk. Though the sun was well up, lack of sleep had left him weak, and he shivered in the cool morning air. He saw that his back seats were still folded down, and he missed his sons with an intensity that threatened to undo him.

He forced himself to concentrate. He went through his toolbox and got out his biggest screwdriver. He stuck it in his back pocket and pulled his sweatshirt down to cover it. He was about to close the trunk when he saw the zip bag for his jumper cables and remembered the emergency flares that he kept inside. He put one of them in the pocket with the screwdriver for luck.

He swiped Patrick’s keycard over the metal plate outside the rear entrance to the building, half-expecting alarms to go off. Instead the led flashed green and the lock released with an audible click. He stepped into the rear of the lobby and pushed the button for the elevator. It chimed immediately and the doors flew open, unnaturally loud in that empty space of marble and glass, making Tom jump. He looked both ways, got in, and pressed 19.

By the time the doors opened in the Brock, James and Vallence lobby, Tom was sweating. He got off the elevator and saw, to his immense relief, that the ever-punctual cleaning crew was at work. He’d been here at six on enough mornings, either staying late or coming in early, to know their routines. First they opened all the offices that were locked, as Roxanne’s surely had been, what with her being out of town. They dusted and emptied the trash, then they vacuumed and locked everything up again at six-thirty. A short, middle-aged Latina was coming out of Roxanne’s office as Tom looked in. “Buen día,” he said.

The woman, unimpressed, gave him a curt nod and pushed her metal cart into Winston’s office, at the end of the corridor. Tom slipped into Roxanne’s office and closed the door.

The blinds were open and the overhead fluorescents blazed. Tom tried the center drawer of Roxanne’s desk. Locked, as he expected. He went to work with the screwdriver. It was clear in seconds that he was not going to get in without destroying the lock. What the hell, he thought. Nothing left to lose. He pried the drawer open, bending the cheap metal beyond repair, sweat dripping off his forehead.

The brochure was where she’d left it the night before. “The Pleasure Dome,” the cover said. “A luxury retreat in the Northern California wilderness.” He turned it over and verified that there was a map. He folded it lengthwise and put it in his back pocket with the screwdriver.

He was halfway to the elevator when the bell sounded and the down arrow flashed red. Before Tom could sprint for his own office, the elevator doors opened. Frank, one of the building security guards, stepped out and nodded to Tom.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Davis. I saw somebody on the security camera, and I couldn’t make out who it was.”

“Morning, Frank. I was just on my way out.” Frank’s level gaze made Tom nervous. “I left a, uh, prescription in my desk. For one of my boys.”

“You find it okay?”

“Actually it wasn’t there after all. Must be in my car or something.”

Frank nodded. “Uh huh.”

They got on the elevator together and Frank touched the 1 button. He seemed nervous too. Tom, desperate for conversation, said, “You were going to go for your Realtor’s license, weren’t you?”

“That was a year ago,” Frank said.

“How’d that work out?”

Frank didn’t answer. So many noises, Tom thought, that you could hear in the early morning that were drowned out during the day. The groan of the cables as they moved through the pulleys on the elevator car. The hiss of the air conditioning. Frank’s rapid, shallow breathing.

The elevator bell rang again and the doors opened on the lobby. Patrick and a second security guard were waiting.

“Okay,” Patrick said, “thank you gentlemen. I can take it from here.”

Frank looked at the other guard. “Are you sure? Because the book says we should call the cops in this type of a situation.”

“I don’t think Tom did any real harm up there. I’ll give him a talking to and then let him…disappear.”

Tom panicked. “On second thought,” he said to Frank, “maybe you should call the cops.”

“Shut up, Tom,” Patrick said. It was like it had been with ­Roxanne. Tom felt a desire to make Patrick happy, so he didn’t say anything.

Frank looked at Patrick and Patrick nodded slightly. Frank laughed without conviction. “We’ll, if you say so.” He and the second guard started toward the security office. Patrick grabbed Tom by the upper arm and propelled him through the door to the garage.

The first thing Tom saw was a can of black spray paint lying near the door. He looked up at the security camera and saw that it had been sprayed over. This was it, then. Patrick planned to kill him on the spot. Tom felt oddly indifferent to the idea.

“Keycard?” Patrick said.

Tom handed it over.

“Now,” Patrick said. “Show me what you really went up there for.”

Tom was no longer in control of his own body. He reached for his back pocket and his hand found the flare.

“That’s right,” Patrick said. “Show me what you’ve got there.”

Tom watched himself pull out the flare and show it to Patrick. Patrick stared at it in disbelief. “What the…”

Show him what it is, Tom told himself. Show him how it works. He pulled off the plastic cap and scratched it across the igniter. Flames shot out of the end.

Patrick instinctively threw up his arms. “No! Don’t—”

Tom felt Patrick’s mental hold on him release. He threw the flare at Patrick’s raised arms, and Patrick lit up like a pile of wadded newspaper. The blast of heat sent Tom staggering back, covering his face. He watched for a second or two, fists clenched, and then he ran for his car. He backed out without looking and then burned rubber out of the garage, taking out the wooden barricade at the exit and rocketing onto Sunset Boulevard.

*

SUSAN MADE IT to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk by 9:30 am. She was running on four hours of sleep and three cups of coffee, and she’d already been by the bank to withdraw a thousand dollars in small bills. “Pretty cheap for a ransom,” the teller joked. “The kidnappers still in middle school?” Susan’s smile, she saw from the teller’s face, was not convincing. From there she’d called Vicki Chiang in Norwalk, who’d worked with her on a story about a sex-abuse case there a few years ago.

Dr. Chiang had called ahead and Susan found a pass waiting for her. She showed her driver’s license and signed a register and a burly orderly took her into the ward. The hospital was clean and modern as such places went, though nothing could hide the mood of institutionalized despair or the lingering aroma of uncontrolled bodily discharge.

Jonas Fielder was in the common room, staring out the window, a novel from the hospital library open on his lap. The skull and crossbones sticker on the spine indicated that it was a mystery, and Susan knew she was overreacting in letting the image disturb her. Fielder looked to be in his late thirties, his dark hair only slightly longer than his five o’clock shadow. Like the others in the room, he wore a short-sleeved khaki uniform. The other patients quietly amused themselves, one with a jigsaw puzzle, another with an electronic keyboard and headphones, another nodding off next to a potted fern.

“Dr. Fielder?” the orderly said gently. “You have a visitor.”

Fielder roused himself and got to his feet. Susan shook his hand and said, “My name is Susan Altman. I’m with the paper.”

“I know the name,” Fielder said. “I’m pleased to meet you. Care to sit down?”

Susan pulled up a gray plastic chair and the orderly moved discreetly out of earshot. Susan didn’t anticipate any problems. Despite her first impression of a certain intensity held in pharmaceutical check, Fielder was alert and pleasant enough.

“I assume you’re working on a story,” Fielder said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I remembered reading about you a few months ago. You claimed there were vampires living in LA.”

“Not just in LA,” Fielder said. His tone was quiet and reasonable. “Though they are particularly common here. And the term ‘vampire’ is rather sensationalistic and distracting. May I ask what your interest is?”

“This is in the way of background research so far. Do you mind if I take some notes, and possibly quote you in a future story?”

“Be my guest. I’ve read some of your pieces. They seemed well researched. It would be interesting to be quoted accurately for a change.”

Susan got out one of the steno pads that she bought by the case. She had her own shorthand that she’d developed over the years, and she used it to make a few notes. “I’ll do my best. You said, ‘the term “vampire” is rather sensationalistic and distracting.’ Can you elaborate? Is there another term you prefer?”

“First let’s back up a little. How much do you know about ­evolution?”

“The usual, I suppose. That was your field, wasn’t it? Evolutionary biology?”

“Indeed. Evolution is like anything else. It tends to work in fits and starts. If you have some kind of major environmental stress, you’ll see more mutations crop up. If the mutation provides an advantage, and it breeds true, you can have a new species in comparatively short order.”

“Our environment is pretty stressed right now,” Susan said. “Especially in LA.”

“Precisely. And I had DNA evidence that a new species has split off from Homo sapiens, which I call Homo praedatorias.”

“As in predatory?”

“I’m afraid so. They’re the wolves and we’re the sheep.”

“And they live on human blood?”

“Not exactly. I’ll get to that in a minute. You’re of course familiar with the term ‘sociopath’.”

Nerves and surprise made her let out a short laugh. “My boyfriend and I were talking about the subject the other night.”

“The technical term is Antisocial Personality Disorder. Symptoms include failure to form emotional attachments, lack of guilt, inability to take responsibility for one’s actions. They’re typically liars, con men—”

“Heads of major corporations?”

“Frankly, yes. Our economic and political climate increasingly favors ruthlessness, opportunism, lack of personal investment.”

“How do you get from that to a separate species?”

“It’s not only the socio-economic environment that these creatures are adapted for. They can metabolize carbon monoxide and dioxide. They can inhale toxic exhaust and their exhalations will be richer in oxygen than what they breathed in. It’s like nature evolved them to help clean up the environment.”

“You said you have genetic evidence?”

“Had, past tense. I was doing a study on sociopathology at ucla. I discovered that a small but significant number of my subjects had only 42 chromosomes. Normal humans have 46. And all of my subjects with 42 chromosomes were sterile—male and female alike.”

“I don’t get it,” Susan said.

“Neither did I. How was this mutation being passed on? Then, in the middle of the study, there was a murder on campus. The victim was some sort of sports person, so there was a lot of publicity.”

“Oh my god,” Susan said, remembering the furor in the newsroom. “Tyrone Johnson, the quarterback.”

“That’s right. He was—”

Susan finished his sentence. “—drained of blood.”

“You remember the case. Six weeks later, one of my 42-chromosome women turned up pregnant. Her conception date was consistent with the night of the murder. I did a DNA test on the amniotic fluid and identified the father. It turned out that he was also in the study. Sterile, of course.

“So I set a trap. I left a unit of whole blood in the lab refrigerator and made sure he knew about it. The next day the blood was gone and he had live sperm cells.”

“So they have to drink human blood—”

“Or semen,” Fielder interrupted, “which is not that different, biologically.”

“—to reproduce?”

“That’s about the size of it. They crave both blood and semen, which makes them potential sexual predators, at least on male humans, as well.”

Roxanne’s flirtation with Tom suddenly made more sense. “So one or both of your vampires killed Tyrone Johnson. Did you call the cops?”

“That’s how I ended up here.”

“What about your evidence?”

“It seems my students had not been known to the…let’s call it the network of other members of their species. Once I outed them, their more experienced relatives moved in. A virus was introduced into my computer and wiped out all of my backups. Both subjects agreed to DNA tests and got help faking the results.”

“Couldn’t your lawyer do anything?”

“My lawyer,” Fielder said sadly, “was one of them, as it turned out. I didn’t figure it out until afterward, when I had a colleague test one of her hairs.”

“Do you mind telling me…who your lawyer was?”

“No, not at all. Roxanne Vallence, of Brock, James and Vallence. I see you’ve heard of them.”

“My boyfriend works for them.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t worry, he’s not one of them. He’s quite human. And from what you say, they can’t change a normal human into one of them.”

“No. We’re stuck with the genes we have. These things are born, not made.”

She had trouble focusing on her notes. Everything Fielder said confirmed everything Tom had told her. Yet part of her still resisted belief, balking at the sheer horror of it. “Go on,” she said. “About Roxanne.”

“She offered to take my case for free, and who was I to turn down a firm with that reputation? I suppose I was lucky they let me live.”

“I was wondering about that.” She tried to soften the words with a laugh, which came out brittle and unconvincing.

“The way I figure it, I’m worth more to them alive. I sound so crazy that I discredit my own story. Roxanne said as much, when she and my soon-to-be-ex-wife had me committed here.”

“You don’t sound that crazy to me,” Susan said, and Fielder shrugged, showing the sad smile again. “Tell me,” she went on, “how we fight them.”

“Don’t even think about it. They’re no stronger than humans, and they generally avoid physical confrontation. But they can be incredibly persuasive. And they’re nearly invulnerable. They can recover from just about any kind of injury, short of decapitation or something lodged in the heart, in a matter of minutes. On top of which, they’re cunning, and they have no scruples at all. They’ve taken us right out of the top of the food chain.”

“Don’t they have any weaknesses?”

“There is one thing. They produce ethyl alcohol as a by-product of their metabolism. It’s in their sweat, and it helps disseminate the pheromones that make people trust them. It makes them highly flammable. Another reason they don’t like oxygen-rich environments.”

Susan checked her watch. She didn’t want to be late to her meeting with Tom. “Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Fielder. You’ve been a huge help. Can I come talk to you another time?”

“I would enjoy the company. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Susan shook his hand and Fielder held on, gently, insistently. “Listen,” he said. “Do you have a way to get hold of President Gore?”

A chill shot down to the ends of her fingers. “President Gore?”

Fielder’s tone was exactly the same as before, calm, reasonable. “Yes, yes, the real president. He’s got powerful friends, friends who could get me out of here. They’re in his headquarters, north of the Arctic Circle.”

In her peripheral vision, she saw the orderly moving in. “Dr. Fielder,” she said, “are you feeling all right?”

“If you can’t help,” he said, “you can’t. It’s just that I don’t know how to reach him. The headquarters is near the entrance to the hollow Earth. There are saucers coming in and out of there all day long…”

The orderly put one large hand on Fielder’s shoulder and with the other he stroked the stubble on Fielder’s head, as if soothing an agitated child. “The lady has to go now, Dr. Fielder.”

“Okay,” Fielder said.

“You go on, now, ma’am,” the orderly said. “We’ll be fine here.”

“ ’Bye now,” Fielder said.

Susan backed away. Fielder continued to smile sadly as the light slowly died in his eyes.

*

TOM LEFT THE COROLLA in Corral Canyon State Park, knowing it would be towed eventually. If he lived long enough, he would deal with the consequences. He felt a certain manic satisfaction in letting go of his responsibilities.

He hiked to the Malibu Seafood Restaurant. It was after 11 in the morning and people were already lined up. He paid cash for fish and chips and ate them at a bright red painted table with an umbrella. He had a good view of the beach. Everything was intense—the salt and vinegar, the primal funk of the ocean, the swooping gulls, the heat of the sun, the tug of the wind.

When he finished, he cleared off his trash and moved to the other side of the restaurant, facing the Pacific Coast Highway. He tried to let the distant sound of the waves take the place of everything else in his head. When he saw Susan’s silver Honda hatchback pull into the parking lot, a flood of pure joy lifted him to his feet.

*

SUSAN DROVE NORTH ON PCH as far as Oxnard to make sure they weren’t being followed, then cut over to the 101. While she drove, she reconstructed her conversation with Fielder, glancing at her notes a few times to get the wording exactly right.

Tom mostly listened in silence. He seemed to vacillate between denial, despair, and grim determination. In a world full of arrested adolescents with their macho posturing and self-regard, Tom was boyish in a different way. Despite twenty years in the legal business, he had maintained a kind of innocence, a readiness to trust, an ability to get hurt. She loved him in the way she loved a beautiful spring morning, a way that she didn’t worry that she’d regret later.

If she’d cut him loose when this trouble started, she could have saved herself, at the expense of everything she believed in. It hadn’t seemed like a choice then, and now that they were driving into the heart of the madness, if a part of her wanted to run away and hide, she supposed that was to be expected.

“And then,” she said, “at the end, he completely loses it and starts talking about flying saucers and the hollow Earth—”

“Which is why nobody has ever believed the other stuff.”

“The vampire stuff.”

“The stuff that’s actually true.”

“Listen to us,” Susan said.

“We sound like Brian and Jason arguing about comics,” Tom said.

“Except…”

“Yeah. This is really happening.”

Susan listened to the silence for a while, then she couldn’t take it any longer. “There’s one more thing. Fielder said it’s not just blood they crave, but…a certain other male bodily fluid.”

“Ah, of course. So that’s what Roxanne was up to. It wasn’t my ineluctable masculine charm.”

It should have been enough, yet it wasn’t, quite. “He said they’re very persuasive.”

“When I was alone with her in her office, it was like I was hypnotized. Then she got distracted, and that was the end of it. I don’t think she was that intent on me in the first place.”

“So nothing happened.”

“No. If I’d let her do that to me…I don’t think I’d be alive now.”

Her affection for him blossomed inside her, filling her up. Without taking her eyes off the road, she caught her fingers in the hair at the back of his head. “I know, sweetie, I believe you.”

“About Roxanne, or about the vampire business?”

“Both,” Susan said. “All of it.”

“Why? I mean, how can you?”

“I couldn’t do my job without a good bullshit detector. You’re not lying, and neither was Fielder.”

“What about the flying saucers?”

“His voice was the same, but his eyes were different. He didn’t see me anymore.”

“Well,” Tom said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

She heard a rustling noise, and looked over to see him with a slick 8 1/2 by 11 brochure.

“I stole this out of Roxanne’s desk this morning,” he said. “From the photos, it looks like pretty dense forest all around. It should be possible to spy on them without being seen…” His voice changed and the brochure rattled to the floorboards. “I can’t read this now, it makes me carsick.”

He did look sick. “Tom? Are you okay? Do you want me to pull over?”

“I killed a man this morning.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He told her about using Patrick’s keycard, and about setting him on fire in the parking garage.

“That wasn’t a human being,” Susan said. “That was some kind of…thing. A monster.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Tom.

“I used to make fun of his haircut,” Tom said. “I hated it that he got all the high-profile cases. But when I lit him up, it was like this total caveman feeling of joy. Of triumph. I can still feel it, and it makes me a little sick. I don’t want to be like that.”

Susan slowed and pulled onto the shoulder. She shrugged out of her seatbelt and gathered Tom up in her arms. “We like a little caveman once in a while,” she said. “As long as you don’t make a habit of it.”

“I wanted to be like him. I wanted the big cases, the money, the bmws.”

“That’s not you.”

“No. No, I don’t really have what it takes.”

“What it takes to be a sociopath? To be Homo praedatorias? Do you think I would want a man like that?”

“We have to find a way to get clear of this. I can’t live the rest of my life like this.”

“We can turn the car around,” Susan said. “We can be in Mexico by sundown.”

“And then how long until they find us? Or find my kids?” He eased away from her, kissed her on the forehead. “No. We have to find something, some kind of leverage to use against them. A little more caveman will be required.”

*

THEY SPENT THE NIGHT north of San Francisco, in Santa Rosa. The first motel they tried wouldn’t let them rent without a credit card, which struck Susan first as absurd, and then as frightening. One more way in which the world was being remade on the predators’ terms, requiring their prey to leave an electronic trail wherever they went.

By the time they checked into the second motel, they were too exhausted to do anything other than fall into bed and sleep. But in the early morning hours she woke to Tom’s hands on her, and his urgency triggered her own desire. Afterward, as they held each other, she thought about the way that sex told you, in the strongest possible terms, that you were still alive.

They got on the road early and were in Eureka by mid-morning. They ran a few errands, ate lunch, and then headed north and east into the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Tom drove and Susan navigated, using the topographical map that Tom had liberated from the Eureka Public Library. The scenery was spectacular—blue mountains in the distance, dusted with white at the very peaks; black oaks in the foothills that gradually gave way to 200-foot-tall redwoods and white firs like giant, conical Christmas trees; running water everywhere. The road rose now more than it fell, as they made their way deeper into the wilderness. With the windows down, the car filled with clean, cool air and verdant smells.

When she wasn’t actively navigating, she studied the pages Tom had found on the web for the Pleasure Dome, hearing Coleridge in her head, Xanadu and Kubla Khan.

“What’s with the interior layout?” she asked. “You’re not thinking about trying to get inside?”

“Christ, no. I printed everything I could find. I didn’t stop to ask how useful it was. I mean, you never know, right?”

“It says here they’ve got hotel facilities for 200 on premises, plus support staff, plus banquet facilities, all in a hermetically sealed ­environment.”

“They’ll like that. They can pump in their own monoxide.”

“Isn’t that going to make them tough to photograph, if they’re not coming and going?”

“There’s a deck that opens off the dining room. For cocktails and breakfast and all that. Worst case, we can shoot them as they leave on Sunday.”

She shuffled through more paper. “Menu from a Microsoft retreat they had last year?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t discriminating.”

“And what’s this, some kind of structural drawing?”

Tom glanced over. “Yeah, this is pretty amazing. The whole place is suspended over the gorge on steel cables.”

“So we could cut the cables…”

“The cables are three feet in diameter and there are ten of them. Don’t even kid about it. We take some pictures, hopefully catch some big fish hobnobbing with other big fish they are not supposed to be hobnobbing with, and then we get out.”

“And then? We haven’t really talked about what happens next.”

“You use your contacts to spread the story. We have to assume Fielder was right about the chromosome stuff. After what I’ve seen, I have no doubt that they’re not human. So there has to be a simple genetic test to show that, to count chromosomes. We get somebody big, like the New York Times or Washington Post to ask questions, the kind of questions that’ll put pressure on these predators to get tested. Once this gets going, there’ll be a lot of unsolved murders that suddenly link up, a lot of cover ups that get uncovered.”

“It’s not going to be easy, you know.”

“You have friends at both those papers.”

“They’ll want sources. Sources that I’m not sleeping with and that are not in a mental institution.”

“They can get a DNA sample, from Roxanne, or from Patrick’s apartment. All we have to do is get the ball rolling.”

“I’m not disagreeing. And we need the photos. But I should be the one to do it. I’m more likely to recognize political figures than you are. I’m a better photographer. And they don’t know me. I can pass for a hiker if I get caught.”

“Your logic is flawless. But there’s no way in hell I’m letting you do this alone.”

She leaned over and touched his lips with two fingers. “Okay, caveman.”

“Okay, then.”

They passed an old man walking by the roadside with a fishing rod and a backpack. He watched them with a closed expression as they drove by. This close to the Pleasure Dome, Susan thought, he was probably used to seeing stretch limos and town cars, not a ten-year-old Honda Civic.

Less than a mile later they passed the entrance to the Pleasure Dome, a wrought iron gate in a ten-foot wall built from native stone. The wall continued for a hundred yards, then turned into a hurricane fence topped with coils of razor wire.

Tom had seen the razor wire too, and they looked at each other for a second, neither of them asking the obvious question of how they were going to get to the other side of it. The fence went on and on, then finally made a sharp angle away from the road.

Susan went back to the map. “It looks like there should be a turnoff coming up on the right. An old logging road or something.”

A moment later Tom said, “There it is.”

They followed the dirt road into a mixed forest of fir and redwood. For a while it ran directly perpendicular to the main road, then it began to curve to the left. “Anywhere along here,” she said.

Tom pulled between two trees. As soon as he turned off the engine, Susan heard running water. Birds squabbled in the distance and the air was full of the spicy scent of the firs. They looked at each other then, as if giving each other one last chance to back down. Then Tom got out and walked around to open the hatchback.

They loaded her tent and sleeping bag and the rest of the supplies into two backpacks and helped each other into them. Susan slung her camera bag over one shoulder and looked at her compass. “That way,” she said.

*

WHEN THEY CAME OUT of the forest, they were on the lip of the gorge. Susan saw the razor wire fence off to her right. They left their backpacks under the trees and crept up to the edge of the cliff on hands and knees.

The view made her forget to breathe. It was a sixty-foot drop to the Trinity River, which was running high and fast, surrounded by steep basalt walls. The rocks had been sheared off in a succession of intersecting planes and then weathered to a matte finish. Clumps of tenacious greenery hung on to cracks in the slope.

The river curved as it flowed, blocking any view of the Dome. Susan’s impatience overcame her awe and she backed away and went for a look at the fence. It ran up to the very lip of the gorge, a final metal post set in concrete only a couple of inches from a sheer drop.

“Is it electrified?” Tom said.

She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. “No,” she said. “No insulators.” She brushed the pole with a fingertip, then grabbed it with her whole hand. She leaned her weight into it, shook it, and felt no give at all. She stripped off her camera bag and binoculars and set them at Tom’s feet.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Trying an experiment.”

She faced away from the drop, planted one foot next to the pole, then swung herself around it and onto the other side.

“Nothing to it,” she said, her heart beating hard in delayed reaction. “Hand me the stuff, will you?”

He passed the binoculars and camera bag around the edge of the fence. “Okay,” he said. “Here I come.”

Susan hovered as he set himself up for it, and he said, “No offence, can you give me a little room? I don’t like heights and other people make it worse.”

“Okay,” she said.

Once he was across he nodded stiffly, breathing hard. “If it had been on level ground it wouldn’t have been anything at all. But knowing the drop was there…”

They moved under the cover of the trees and worked their way downstream. Susan estimated that they traveled a mile or more to make their way around the curve of the gorge. When they stepped into the open again, Susan saw the Dome.

It seemed to float above the river, the suspension cables invisible at this distance. It was shaped like two shallow bowls glued lip to lip, making Susan think of Fielder’s flying saucers. The off-white reflective glass that covered it had no visible seams, adding to the otherworldly effect. A wooden walkway led from Susan’s side of the gorge to the Dome, and on the opposite side a wooden deck stretched nearly to the far canyon wall. A couple of dozen widely scattered tables with umbrellas gave her an ­appreciation of how large the deck, and by extension the dome, really was.

“Almost funny, isn’t it?” she said. “That they would have their retreat in all this clean air and natural beauty. It’s everything they’re trying to destroy.”

“I don’t think a sense of irony is one of their strong points.”

She froze. “Do you hear something?”

Tom started to shake his head, then listened intently. “Helicopter.”

They ran for the cover of the trees. A few seconds later a helicopter glided overhead, circled the dome, and then landed on a concrete pad on solid ground on the near side of the ravine. Susan watched through binoculars as a squad of security guards in paramilitary getup—black caps and shirts and trousers, Kevlar vests, automatic weapons—ran across the footbridge to the landing pad. Meanwhile men in white pants and T-shirts began unloading refrigerated containers from the helicopter.

“Bringing in some kind of supplies,” Susan said, and passed the binoculars to Tom.

“This is good,” Tom said. “We can see everything from here. Whether they leave by chopper or by car.”

“I don’t like the AR-15s and the full military gear,” Susan said. “It’s too much for a quiet corporate retreat.”

Tom shrugged. “They’re not just guarding a bunch of computer geeks this time.”

“I guess.” Tom handed her the binoculars and she unpacked the camera. “I’m going to get some shots of the people on the deck,” she said. “Why don’t you go on back, get the tent set up, get some shuteye? I’ll meet you there in a couple of hours, well before dark.”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re worn out. And you’ll need to be awake later so you can take a shift, in case there’s something happening out there tonight.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“And remember what we agreed to.”

“Never give you a live animal as a present?”

“I’m serious, Tom. If something happens and they only get one of us…”

“Yeah, yeah. No heroics, go for help.”

The moment was thick with unspoken emotion. She kissed him quickly and said, “Go.”

Once the sound of his footsteps faded, she regretted sending him away. She tried to concentrate on the camera, picking out the faces that were turned toward her, bringing each one into tight focus, getting the shot, moving on. Hard as she fought against it, a hopeless gloom began to settle on her. What if she and Tom did get away? Once she tried to make the story public, the predators would be looking for her too. From the early days of a promising relationship, she and Tom had gone, in a matter of hours, to losing everything. Their jobs, their homes, their life savings. The turquoise necklace her mother had given her on her 12th birthday, her high school yearbooks, her great-aunt’s china that had been in the family for 150 years. She was on the brink of tears, as much from the injustice of it as from the loss itself.

She shook it off and raised the camera again. Giving up was literal suicide. The only way to fight back was to keep on with what she was doing, to get the photos out into the world.

She scanned the crowd again through the telephoto lens, stopped on a hatchet-faced man in his 40s, and recognized the junior senator who had been a serious contender in the last Republican ­Presidential primary. She steadied her hands and clicked the shutter. A moment later he was joined by a flamboyant Hollywood agent who had been on the cover of last week’s People magazine, and ­Susan clicked the shutter again.

*

TOM HAD PICKED a spot inside the tree line where the tent wouldn’t be visible from the air. It was igloo-shaped, no poles inside, flexible rods outside that the thing was supposed to hang from. Staking out the bottom was easy enough. Getting it to stand up required a Zen vision that Tom had yet to master.

He was threading one of the rods through the loops for the seventh time, completely focused on the job, when he heard a twig snap behind him. The rod sprang off into the leafy undergrowth and Tom spun around to find five automatic rifles pointing at him. They were in the hands of security guards wearing the same gear as the ones at the helicopter pad, spread in a semicircle around him.

The one closest to Tom turned his head and said, “Secure the perimeter, see if there’s anybody else here.”

Tom slowly raised his hands. He saw, too late, that he had been naïve again, maybe for the last time. He was less afraid of being shot, he realized, than of being tortured and humiliating himself. He was afraid that Susan would suddenly show up and be captured too. He was afraid for his kids.

They searched him and then made him lie on his face in the rough grass while they searched the tent and the backpacks. “Hey, Sarge,” one of them said. “There’s some panties and bras and stuff in this one.”

The sergeant had already been through Tom’s wallet. “Davis, your name is? Okay, Davis, start talking.”

“It’s my girlfriend’s stuff. She’s coming up to meet me tomorrow.”

“Bullshit. She’d bring her own stuff with her. Either you’re a cross-dresser or she’s around here somewhere. Royce, Suresh, check the other side of the fence.”

“Look,” Tom said. “This is all a misunderstanding. I didn’t see any no trespassing signs. I just wanted a quiet weekend in the woods.”

“Sure you did,” the sergeant said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get the truth out of you.”

*

EVENTUALLY THE SERGEANT got tired of waiting and took him along the fence line to the road, where two Jeeps sat parked on the shoulder. They’d bound his hands in front of him with a zip tie and they’d left two men at the canyon to keep looking for Susan. The sergeant had called somebody at the Dome on his phone and gotten instructions that Tom couldn’t hear. He was physically sick with fear—nausea, blurred vision, dizziness, his heartbeat skittering around. The sergeant sat in the back seat with Tom, and one of the other guards hot-rodded the jeep to a parking lot next to the heliport.

The sergeant ordered Tom to get out of the jeep and lie prone on the asphalt, bound hands resting on top of his head. “Hold him until I get back,” the sergeant said to the other two. “If he tries anything, do whatever you have to do.”

Tom had his head toward the canyon and he saw the sergeant go into a covered walkway that led to the Dome, a utilitarian service entrance, not the fancy wooden one that the guests used. As soon as he was gone, the younger of the guards fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. He had short, curly hair and a mustache with ends that trailed down the sides of his mouth. “I can’t breathe in that fucking place,” he said.

The older one said, “Like you can breathe with that shit in your lungs? The irony is compelling.” He shook his head. “The clients turned the oh-two down inside, that’s all.”

“The what?”

“The oh-two. The oxygen, you moron. They got it down around eighteen percent instead of twenty-one, where it ought to be. One of their tech people told me.”

“What the hell they do that for? That’s fucking weird.”

Because the more oxygen there is, Tom thought, the more easily things catch fire.

The older man shrugged. “Clients do what they want.”

“They don’t seem that weird. They seem nice.”

“Yeah, they’re okay for a bunch of lawyers. They want low oh-two they can have low oh-two.”

“Did you see some of who’s in there? This morning I swear I saw—”

“Hey,” the older one said, nodding at Tom. “Shut the fuck up, okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

The sergeant reappeared and the younger guard hastily threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. The sergeant pointed at him and said, “You, Wasserman, you’re with me.” He pointed to the other one. “Stay with the jeep, keep tabs on the guys in the field.” Finally he looked at Tom. “On your feet, asshole.”

The miniscule sway in the covered walkway was enough to trigger Tom’s acrophobia. To make it worse, windows lined both sides of the passage, and a pair of red-tailed hawks swooped and glided a few yards away. Tom could see the cliffs on the far side of the ravine and the river, wide and deep, directly underneath him. He thought he might lose it if he didn’t get his hands free soon.

The sergeant typed a code on a keypad at the entry to the main body of the Dome. On the other side of the door was a walkway that curved gently in both directions around the circumference. The outside wall was glass from floor to 12-foot ceiling, making Tom’s calves ache with muscle contractions. He edged toward the inside wall.

“Don’t like heights, eh?” the sergeant said. “Good to know.”

They came to a door labeled security and the sergeant used what looked like the same code to unlock it. A burst of laughter came out of the main dining hall a few yards further along.

The sergeant held the door open and the other man, Wasserman, gave him a shove to propel him inside. The space was no bigger than Tom’s former office at Brock, James and Vallence, and they’d managed to squeeze two desks into it, each with a keyboard and flat screen monitor. A guard in a black T-shirt sat behind one of them, watching the screen with no particular interest and repeatedly pressing the Enter key. The other was occupied by LA County District Attorney Matthew Clarke.

Before he could stop himself, Tom said, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m in charge of security for this event,” Clarke said, with mild amusement. “I think the more interesting question is, what are you doing here?”

The sergeant looked from Clarke to Tom and back. “You know this guy?”

“We’ve crossed paths,” Clarke said.

“So,” Tom said. “You’re one of them.”

Clarke blinked. “Thanks,” he said to the sergeant. “I’ll take it from here.” He looked at the guard at the other desk. “I’ll have to ask you to leave as well.”

The guard said, “Who’s going to watch the cameras?”

“Use the business office,” Clarke said.

Tom held out his zip-tied hands to the sergeant. “Can you take this off before you go? My hands are going numb.”

The sergeant looked to Clarke, who said, “Go ahead. He’s ­harmless.”

The sergeant cut the tie with a folding knife from his utility belt. “If he gives you any trouble…”

Tom massaged his wrists, gently, avoiding the places where the skin was rubbed raw.

“Don’t worry,” Clarke said, opening his jacket to show a shoulder holster. He took out a revolver and laid it on his desk. “I’m not expecting trouble.”

The sergeant laughed and motioned Wasserman and the other guard in front of him. Once they were gone, Clarke said, “Have a seat, Davis. I have some questions for you.”

“Do you really drink human blood?” Tom said.

“Well, that answers most of them right there. Not that there was a lot of doubt, but you are definitely a dead man now.”

“I left the complete story with somebody before I left LA. About the forty-two chromosomes and everything. If anything happens to me…”

“Oh, please,” Clarke said. “I assume you’re talking about Susan Altman. She’s not in LA, she’s wandering around somewhere near your campsite. Once we find her, we’ll kill her too.”

Somebody knocked crisply at the door. Clarke pressed a buzzer on his desk and the door flew open. Roxanne walked in, already talking. “What’s the holdup, Matthew? It’s time for the ceremony and…oh.”

“Roxanne,” Tom said, with a nod.

“He set off one of the perimeter alarms,” Clarke said. “The security guys found him trying to set up a tent in the forest, about a mile upstream from a great view of the Dome.”

“Alone?”

“We think the Altman woman is here too, we just haven’t found her yet.”

“Tom, Tom, Tom,” Roxanne said.

“He knows,” Clarke said.

“The truth? Not some Bela Lugosi fantasy?”

“Sounds like he talked to Fielder.”

Roxanne sighed. “That’s what I get for leaving him alive. Can you actually manage to kill Davis this time? And maybe make it look like an accident?”

Clarke looked like Roxanne had hurt his feelings. “Do you want his blood?”

“Given the Judd business, it might be one too many drained corpses following us around. A fall into the river should do it. It could account for a crushed skull, for instance.”

“I was there the day you joined the firm,” Tom said. “I showed you how to use the copier.”

She flashed him an empty smile. “I’m in a bit of a hurry just now, Tom.” As she opened the door, Tom saw past her to a crowd of predators milling around, dressed in their corporate finery. Roxanne turned to Clarke. “Wait half an hour before you take him. I don’t want people to see him in the hallway and be alarmed. It might spoil the big event.” She closed the door firmly as she left.

“Big event?” Tom asked. “What are you doing, giving out awards?”

“Something like that. Make yourself comfortable. Once everybody’s settled in, I’ll take you out and kill you.”

“Do you really not feel anything?”

“I feel lots of things. I just don’t feel upset at the thought of killing you. All these empathic emotions of yours, there’s nothing real about them. They’re a trick your genes played on you. Like ­religion.”

“Empathy is like religion?”

“It’s a fluke of the genes whether you’re a believer or not. I mean, some old white guy with a beard who gives babies AIDS and lets his priests screw their altar boys? How could you worship that without some kind of weird genetic disposition for it?”

“So what do you feel?”

“At the moment I feel great. I like winning. Ever see a cheetah bring down a gazelle?”

*

SUSAN'S SENSES WERE ALREADY in overdrive when she heard the clank of military gear in the distance. She rolled onto her feet and was moving silently for the trees before she consciously registered what she’d heard.

As she watched from behind a pile of fallen brush, two of the black-clad security guards from the Dome walked past her. They kept close to the edge of the ravine, where the going was easiest. They had their weapons out and were making no more than a token effort at stealth or at looking into the woods.

As soon as they were out of sight, she headed for the campsite. She tried to balance her fear for Tom with caution. Let him not be dead, she thought, over and over, drowning the other voices in her head.

She crept up to the fence in time to see three soldiers marching Tom in the direction of the highway. He was alive, then, at least. She swung around the fence and headed for her car at a lope, her feet silent on the dry, hard packed trail. She got in and started the engine and drove back to the highway as fast as the rutted road allowed. Then she floored it, away from the Dome and toward the nearest town, Clearwater, five miles away.

According to her phone, the sheriff’s office was located in a strip mall on Highway 96. She pulled up to the front door with her tires screaming.

The front half of the office consisted of a worn linoleum floor, a few plastic chairs, and a Coke machine. An older man sat at a high desk, partially surrounded by glass. He had a massive radio-telephone set at one elbow and a flat screen computer monitor at the other. Behind him, visible through the glass partition, a younger man and woman sat at their own, smaller desks.

“Is the sheriff in?” Susan said, losing the battle to keep her voice calm. “It’s an emergency!”

“He’s in court. Deputy Kinkaid is available.” He made a vague gesture toward the woman behind him. “Now get you a couple of deep breaths and tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s my boyfriend. We were camping in the woods and these armed men came and took him away.”

“Like cops, or military, or what?”

“I think they were security guards from the Pleasure Dome.”

The younger man, without looking up, made a noise that could have been indigestion, but sounded more like a snort of derision.

“Hang on,” the older man said. “Why’d they take him and not you?”

“I was taking a walk, and when I came back I saw them holding guns on him, and I…I hid.”

“Did you ask at the Dome?”

“You can’t just drive in there. There’s a guardhouse, and…I was afraid.”

The younger man made a throat-clearing noise. The older man turned in his chair and adjusted his glasses and squinted at the monitor. He moved the mouse around and clicked it a couple of times and said, “Name of the missing person?”

“He’s not a missing person! He’s in that dome, and they’re holding him illegally, and I want somebody to go up there with me and get him out!”

“We have to fill out a report before—”

“You can fill out the report later. This is an emergency!”

She and the old man stared at each other, then, finally, a chair scraped against the linoleum and the woman got up from her desk. She was six feet tall, with dark hair pulled straight back from her face and tied in a short ponytail. She was broad in the shoulders and her khaki uniform was crisply pressed. “I’ll handle this,” she said to the old man, and he let her take his place at the desk. “I’m Deputy Kinkaid. What were you two doing in the woods?”

“Camping, I told you—”

“This was at the State Park?”

“No, up by the Dome.”

“On the Dome’s private property?”

The younger man made another noise. Kinkaid turned on him. “You got something to say, Litton?”

“Got a frog in my throat.”

“Maybe you need to step outside.”

Susan interrupted. “There weren’t any signs. We didn’t cross any fences.” Not setting up the tent, anyway, she thought.

“They’re incorporated as their own city up there,” Kinkaid said. “Got their own police force. Got to. They get heads of state.”

Susan teetered between rage and panic. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“You got to take it up with the folks at the Dome. We got no jurisdiction.” Susan felt an abyss of paranoia open in front of her. This woman, she had to remind herself, poorly educated, poorly paid, was not part of some predator conspiracy, tempting as it was to believe it. She was simply an offensive jerk of a bureaucrat, passing along her personal bitterness.

Susan started for the door, and Kinkaid called after her, “They got themselves a business office over to Eureka, be open tomorrow morning—”

By the time she was out the door, Susan was running. She jumped in the car and roared out of the parking lot. She drove up and down the streets of Clearwater, leaning forward, pounding her fist on the wheel in frustration, searching the signs on the buildings she passed for a courthouse or a police station or highway patrol office or anyone who could possibly help. She didn’t notice the squad car behind her until she heard the whoop of the siren and saw the strobing lights. She considered trying to run for it, letting them chase her to the Dome. The fantasy ended badly, with bullets in her tires and herself in jail while Tom was tortured and killed.

She pulled over and watched in the rearview as the cruiser sat motionless for a long minute, then Litton, the younger deputy, got out, billed cap over his dark hair, mirrorshades in place. He strode up to her window and tapped on the glass. Susan reluctantly rolled it down.

“Ma’am, that dome is in Humboldt County. That’s jurisdiction enough for me.”

Susan let out a long, noisy breath.

Litton smiled and said, “There’s a friendly judge around the corner that I’ve already talked to on the phone. If you’ll step into my vehicle, we’ll pick up a warrant and go find your boyfriend.”

*

TOM QUICKLY RAN OUT of things to say to Clarke. Clarke, for his part, was apparently monitoring the banquet hall on his computer. At one point he chuckled and said, “If you knew who all was in that room, you’d go out of your mind.”

“Tell me,” Tom said.

Clarke laughed again. “Why?”

Tom sat as the last minutes of his life slipped away. He knew that Clarke’s pheromones were working to subvert his natural emotions. Still he couldn’t manage to break through the haze, even when ­Wasserman came in, AR-15 at the ready. “They’re all inside,” he said.

“Finally,” Clarke said. He put the pistol in his shoulder holster. “Let’s go, Davis.”

Tom got unsteadily to his feet.

Clarke said, “We’ll take him through Maintenance and out to the south landing.”

“The landing?” Wasserman said. “What happens there?”

“Don’t worry about it. Help me get him there and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Clarke led the way out of the office and Wasserman fell in a step or two behind Tom. They passed the closed doors of the banquet hall, where an amplified voice said, “—and our deepest gratitude to all of the volunteers who gave of themselves so selflessly to make this evening possible—” Harsh laughter buried the end of the sentence.

Past the entrance to the kitchen, they stopped at another door with a keypad and Clarke, relaxed and sure of himself, didn’t bother to screen his hand as he typed in the numbers. Tom picked up the first three of the four, for whatever good they might do him.

Behind the door was a huge space full of humming fans, compressors, elevator cables, water heaters, generators. The curved top of the dome was 30 feet over their heads and the metal grid they stood on was another 12 feet above a solid floor. The space was crisscrossed with catwalks, bundled electrical and fiber optic wires, hvac ducts, and pvc pipe. To Tom’s right was a four-foot-high metal gate with a sign that said CLIMATE CONTROL / AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL only. He vaguely remembered seeing it in the schematics he’d found at the Eureka library that morning.

They walked across the width of the structure, not seeing another person. Everything was automated and computerized, monitored from somewhere else. The outer wall they approached, like the rest of the Dome, was covered in one-way glass, and Tom could see out to the canyon and the river and the trees.

Clarke stopped at a door with another keypad and a sign that said OUTSIDE ACCESS / CAUTION. Tom focused his attention and this time got all four numbers. He looked up to see that Wasserman had noticed.

“What difference does it make?” Tom said. “Five minutes from now, I’ll be floating dead in the river.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Wasserman said.

“What’s the matter?” Tom said. “Don’t have the stomach for this job?”

Clarke said, “Shut up, Davis. I’ll shoot you right here if I have to, and find somebody to clean up the mess afterward.”

Clarke opened the door and pushed Tom out onto another gridded platform, this one in the open air on the side of the dome, following its curvature in both directions. A set of handholds led up and down so that workers had access to the skin of the structure. The wind was strong and the temperature was dropping as the sun neared the horizon. Tom gripped the railing to steady himself, trying not to look at the eddying water 60 feet below.

“Give me your baton,” Clarke said to Wasserman, holding out one hand. Wasserman hesitated and Clarke wiggled his fingers. “I can’t be sure the fall alone will kill him.”

Wasserman put one hand on the baton without taking it out of his belt. “Look, I’m not sure about this. You’re talking about cold-blooded murder here.”

“Fine. Go inside. Just hand over the baton first.”

Wasserman slowly took out the baton and put it in Clarke’s hand. Tom realized that Wasserman, too, was at the mercy of Clarke’s pheromones. Wasserman was reaching for the door handle when his shoulder radio squawked.

“Wasserman?” Tom recognized the sergeant’s voice. “You got DA Clarke there?”

“Yeah, what’s up?” Clarke said.

“We got a situation at the front gate.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Clarke said.

“All due respect, sir,” the sergeant said, “we need you immediately. I’ll explain when you get here.”

Clarke took a few long strides along the platform, far enough that the front entrance would be visible. Whatever he saw there make him say, “Oh, shit.”

He returned to the door and gave Wasserman the baton. “Keep him here until I get back,” he said irritably. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir, I—”

“I can’t risk getting his blood on me right now. If he tries to escape, shoot him. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir, I—”

“Good.”

Clarke went in the service door. Wasserman took a step back and pointed the AR-15 at Tom’s stomach.

*

LITTON HAD GOTTEN them as far as the main entrance of the Dome, and Susan didn’t know if they were going to get any further. A squad leader from the security team and two of his thugs blocked the door. Susan was sure they were the same men who had taken Tom away.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Litton said. “It’s a legal search warrant. It means I get to go in there and look around.”

The squad leader achieved the appearance of politeness without any genuine deference. “I don’t make the rules, sir. My orders say there are issues of national security here and nobody goes inside without approval from our head of operations.”

“If you don’t let me in there…” Litton said.

The squad leader seemed to smell the bluff. “Yes?”

Before Litton could answer, the door opened and Matthew Clarke stepped out.

“DA Clarke,” Susan said. “This is a surprise.” Except that it wasn’t, now that she thought about it. She’d interviewed him more than once and always found him arrogant and deceptive—but only afterward, when listening to her tapes or reviewing her notes.

“Ms. Altman,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for a friend. A lawyer named Tom Davis.”

“I’m acquainted with Mr. Davis. I feel certain he’s not on our guest list.”

She saw that Clarke knew everything. Where Tom was, how much Susan knew, how hopeless her quest was going to prove. He was making conversation purely for the sake of the witnesses.

“Your hired goons,” she said, “kidnapped him from our camp site less than an hour ago.”

“That statement is so riddled with false assumptions that I hardly know how to answer it.”

Litton took half a step forward, forcing the squad leader to back up. “Are you holding Tom Davis on these premises?”

“No,” Clarke said.

“Are you willing to let us search the place to verify that?”

“No,” Clarke said.

“We have a warrant—”

“This is a matter of national security, Deputy—” He squinted at the tag on Litton’s shirt. “—Litton. This is bigger than Humboldt County and you are in way, way over your head. Now turn around and go back to Jerkwater, or wherever the hell you came from.”

“Clearwater. They named it that because the water there used to be clear, before a bunch of rich lawyers let the highest bidders come in and pollute it. You just pissed me off, mister. Now either you let me in for a nice, quiet look around, or I call up the State Police and the State Militia and we’ll come in there by force and take this place apart.”

She watched Clarke weigh his options. In the long run, Clarke had the connections to make Litton disappear. In the short run, it was possible that Litton could stir up more trouble than Clarke was willing to deal with.

Clarke stepped aside.

Litton gestured for Susan to go first and Clarke, with not much conviction, said, “Not her. No reporters.”

“Sorry,” Litton said. “I need her to identify Davis. After you, ma’am.”

*

“WASSERMAN,” TOM SAID. “That’s your name, right?” His head had started to clear the second Clarke went inside.

“I’m not talking to you. I’m not listening. I’m just waiting for Mr. Clarke to get back.”

“We could go inside. You could call the sheriff or the State Police, and you could walk away from this.”

“What do you mean, walk away?”

“I’m a lawyer too, you know. If you let Clarke go through with this, you’re an accessory to murder. You could get life. At the very least, your career is over.”

“That’s enough,” Wasserman said. “No more talking.”

“Whatever you say. I’m only trying to help.”

“You can help me by shutting up.”

“You’re not going to shoot me for talking, are you?”

“I’m warning you…”

“Because now we’re getting into Murder One.”

“I don’t have to kill you to shut you up,” Wasserman said. He slung the AR-15 over his shoulder and reached for his baton. “One more word…”

Now or never, Tom thought. I’m dead anyway.

He slipped between the bars of the guardrail and swung down into the metal structure below the deck.

Wasserman went berserk, trying to smash Tom’s hands with the baton, screaming, “You fucker! You fucker! I’ll kill you!” The metal platform rang with the blows. Tom was completely under the deck now, terror and rage pumping him up with manic energy. He grabbed a strut with both hands and let his legs swing free, not looking down, staring instead at his distorted reflection as he swung back and then slammed both boots into the glass.

The impact nearly tore his hands loose. The glass was reinforced, strong enough to resist a hundred kicks, far more than Tom had in him.

He looked up. Wasserman had unslung his AR-15 and was on his knees, poking the barrel through the bars of the guardrail, trying to bend himself double so he could aim. When he couldn’t manage it, he held the rifle upside down and fired blind. As Tom saw the glass wall of the Dome crack, he felt something like an electric shock along the right side of his ribcage. His right arm lost its grip on the metal supports and he lunged to get it back, inflaming the wound in his side. He looked down, saw a rip in his shirt and blood oozing from the exposed skin.

“Fuck!” Wasserman yelled. “Shit!” He stuck the rifle under again and Tom, in desperation, swung himself around and kicked out with both legs. He caught the rifle barrel a solid blow and something crunched in Wasserman’s hand. Wasserman yelled in pain and the rifle came loose, bouncing off the metal supports and falling toward the river.

Tom turned himself around again. His arm muscles burned as hotly as the graze in his side and he knew he only had seconds left before he lost his grip. Wasserman’s bullets had turned the glass into a mosaic. Tom pumped once and hurled himself, with the last of his strength, into the shattered window.

*

SUSAN WAS AWARE, dimly, of the spectacular view, the clean lines of the metalwork, the subtle earth tones of the carpet, the extravagant amounts of money that the Dome put on display for its customers. Yet the further they went into the building, the more numb and demoralized she felt. She remembered the finality with which Clarke had told them that Tom was not there.

“Is that running water I hear?” Litton said. He was looking around as if he’d just arrived at the State Fair.

“It’s a recording,” the squad leader said disdainfully. “The dome is completely soundproof. But the clients want to hear water.”

Litton stopped in front of a set of double doors with windows, where another security guard stood in at-ease position. “What’s in here?”

“Banquet hall,” Clarke said. “Where I’m supposed to be right now. You can bring the Mongol Hordes, but you are not going in there.”

“Take a look,” Litton said to Susan.

“No,” Clarke said.

Litton finally succumbed to the same inertia that had taken hold of Susan. “Well,” he said at last. “I can’t see why you’d be holding Mr. Davis in the middle of a banquet hall, anyway.”

“That is correct,” Clarke said. He looked at Susan then. It was a look of pure contempt. The look said, it doesn’t matter what you see in here because you’re dead anyway. It left Susan drained and ­unsteady.

“Have you seen enough?” Clarke said.

Susan looked at Litton. “This is hopeless. I don’t think we’re going to find him. They could have him hidden anywhere, in one of the guest rooms, in some utility closet. They could move him around while we’re searching.”

“You’re the boss,” Litton said. “Tell me what you want to do.”

Clarke had sapped her will and the last of her hope. “Let’s go,” she said.

*

THE WINDOW EXPLODED into nuggets of glass as Tom hurtled through it. He fell and rolled, his skin tingling from a dozen tiny cuts.

He had only seconds before Wasserman came after him. In the fading light of the floor-to-ceiling windows, Tom saw a closet-sized space that said FIRE PANEL, the door standing open. He locked himself inside as he heard Wasserman slam open the access door and run across the gridded floor. “Davis!” he yelled. “Show yourself, you fuck, or you’re a dead man!”

The logic, Tom thought, was not impressive. He was a dead man in any case.

He heard Wasserman on his shoulder radio. “This is Wasserman. Davis is loose. Somewhere in the maintenance area. And I need another rifle.”

“Wasserman,” said a crackly voice on the other end, “you jackass, how did you manage to so completely fuck this up? You might consider offing yourself before Clarke does it for you.”

“Shut the fuck up and get me a weapon and some backup, will you?”

“Backup is not available at the moment. We’ve got visitors. Hold your position.”

“Shit!” Wasserman said, and his footsteps pounded away.

Tom eased the door open. No sign of Wasserman. He found a set of steps that took him to the second level, and he made his way as quietly as he could to the climate control station. He clambered over the locked gate and sat in front of darkened monitor. He moved the mouse and a screen saver appeared, showing an animated ten-key pad.

Tom blinked the sweat out of his eyes and tried the combination Clarke had used for the door. After an agonizing moment, the screen refreshed, revealing a complex dashboard. He took a couple of deep breaths and blinked again, trying to get his eyes to focus and his panicked brain to function.

The number 72 in big orange letters in the upper right had to be the temperature. Link to vent locations. Heat or cool, air pressure in the main vent, humidity, pollen count, toxins.

Air composition.

He clicked the link popup. A window showed two stacked bar graphs, the one on the left labeled CURRENT and the one on the right TARGET, with plus and minus signs next to each element. He began to click the plus sign next to OXYGEN. Once he passed 25 percent, a warning message popped up.

“This mixture is highly combustible. Continue?”

Tom clicked Y and ran the oxygen level up to 50 percent before another warning message appeared.

“Extreme combustion risk. Enter override code to continue.”

Tom tried the same passcode, this time with no luck. Fifty percent would have to do. He stood up and fought off a moment of dizziness. The first graph showed the actual oxygen content had already climbed from 18 to 20 percent.

Go, Tom thought. Go, you bastard, go.

He climbed over the gate again, this time feeling it in his injured side, and hurried for the door that Clarke had originally brought him in by. He was thirty yards away when the door suddenly slid open to reveal Wasserman, silhouetted by the lights in the corridor, carrying a replacement AR-15. As Tom skidded to a stop, Wasserman swung the rifle around and brought the stock to his shoulder.

Tom saw a doorway marked KITCHEN. He flung himself headlong through it, landing on hands and knees.

He took in the scene in an instant. He was on the tile floor of a huge, ultramodern kitchen, with solid elements on the stove so there were no flames or glowing coils. A massive walk-in refrigerator stood next to a long row of stainless steel sinks. Waiters filled short-stemmed wine glasses with red fluid from an iced keg and carried them out on trays. The air reeked like a butcher’s shop. Tom felt his stomach lurch.

He saw the hunger in the waiters’ eyes as they handled the glasses, saw the hostility as they looked down at him, and understood that they were all apprentice predators, Roxannes and Clarkes in the making. He scrambled to his feet and ran past them for the only available exit, straight across the kitchen and through the double doors into the dining room.

He froze as the room slowly went silent and eyes began to turn toward him. He felt like half a mackerel, oozing blood, that had been dropped into a shark tank.

The room was wedge-shaped, two stories high, the narrow end filled by a stage, the rear wall made up of windows and sliding glass doors that opened onto the deck. Tables dotted the tiered floor space, each on its own level, each holding a dozen predators. They were all between 30 and 50, all fit and expensively dressed, and Tom realized with a jolt that they were seated in perfect alternation, male and female, at all of the tables. Tom saw Roxanne, high up near the windows, and at a table nearby, Wallace Vandermeer, the owner of Susan’s paper. Waiters had been placing glasses at every setting, and now they too had stopped and were turning to stare at Tom.

He edged along a side wall, making for the glass patio doors. Some of the predators were getting to their feet, unsure exactly what they should do, when a sudden, shrill alarm went off. At the same instant, Wasserman kicked open the kitchen doors and ran out with his rifle extended.

Tom dodged between two of the tables so that Wasserman couldn’t get an unobstructed shot. The predators were confused, some with their hands over their ears, others covering their goblets protectively. A low hiss of conversation began to build under the shriek of the alarm.

DA Clarke pushed his way in through the main doors, saw Tom, and shot him a look of unadulterated hatred. He pulled out his phone, said something into it, and the alarm shut off.

In the sudden silence, Tom heard Roxanne say, quietly and clearly, “Unbelievable.”

“I apologize for this incident,” Clarke said. “If all of you will please take your seats, we’ll have things under control in a moment.”

More armed guards came in the main door behind Clarke, and he waved at them to spread out around the room. “Set your weapons for single shot. Wait until you have him in the clear. There will be no accidents, is that understood?”

“No more accidents, you mean?” Roxanne said. She had ignored his order to sit.

Tom tasted the difference in the air, the sweetness of the oxygen. Things were looking up. If he could only avoid getting shot by half a dozen heavily armed men and get out of the dome past 200 indestructible predators, he might have a faint chance of living through the night.

He grabbed one of the goblets from the nearest table and sniffed. Yes, definitely blood.

“Put that back,” said the man he’d taken it from.

Tom grabbed another goblet and held them both up, in hopes it might discourage them from tackling him. His right arm wouldn’t go as high as his left.

He looked at Roxanne. “So this is the best of the best? All gathered together for your bloodthirsty little orgy. To make new little monsters.”

“The human race is washed up, Tom,” she said. “We’re what’s next.”

“Roxanne, please,” Clarke said. “Sit down. Let me handle this.”

Tom moved slowly toward the glass doors again, weaving between tables to use the predators for cover, holding up the goblets as feeble hostages.

“Shut up, Matthew,” Roxanne said. She looked at Tom again. “You’re washed up because you got greedy.”

“You’re calling me greedy?”

“You made the world that we’ve adapted to. You plundered the environment. You made money the measure of everything. Now you get to see who’s really bad.”

“Okay, Roxanne,” Tom said. “Let’s see.”

He threw both goblets high in the air. While all the predators stared at them, he jerked the curtain from the glass doors and fumbled with the latch. A noise came from behind him, like a stifled mechanical sneeze, and a starred hole appeared in the window an inch from his head.

He ducked, tugged, and the door slid open as another shot hummed past his ear.

*

SUSAN, HALFWAY ACROSS the parking lot, said, “What was that?”

“Sounded like a gunshot,” Litton said. He was half-turned, hesitant, listening.

Two more shots followed, then a third.

She and Litton stared at each other and then turned and ran toward the Dome.

*

TOM DOVE THROUGH the door and rolled as more shots pinged through the metal and glass. He ran to the edge of the deck and looked over the railing in the near darkness. The river was the only thing below him and he had nowhere left to run.

He looked toward the dome in time to see sparks fly as a bullet ricocheted off a metal girder. A pair of them landed on one of the curtains, turning into brown dots. And then, in the oxygen-rich atmosphere, the dots grew into flames. The curtain flicked out in the breeze from the open door and Tom saw the flames leap from the curtain to the lace shawl around one of the predator’s necks. She erupted in fire and it spread instantly to the predators on either side of her.

Tom, his body moving in thoughtless reflex, wrenched one of the giant umbrellas loose from its table and climbed over the railing as the entire Dome exploded.

*

AS SUSAK BEGAK to run, the Dome vanished in a gigantic ball of fire.

A wall of boiling air lifted her off her feet and hurled her onto the asphalt, tearing the back of her sweatshirt and leaving her stunned. For a few heartbeats she couldn’t remember where she was, and then she struggled onto her hands and knees, looking for Tom.

No. Tom wasn’t there. Tom was in the Dome.

*

FOR AK INSTANT, the umbrella checked Tom’s fall, and then the fabric inverted and the struts tore themselves to pieces. He hit the water feet first and kept going, deeper and deeper, until he bounced off the moss-covered rocks at the bottom and the current swept him away.

*

THE FIRE ROARED ON, black smoke pouring into the sky, so hot that she had to retreat. A hand grabbed her arm and she turned to see Litton, his face blackened by smoke.

“Come on,” he said.

“Tom…” she said.

“There’s nobody left alive in there. Come away.”

“Where…?”

“Somebody blew that place up. If it was your boyfriend, and he got out, he’s going to wash up downstream.”

Susan looked back at the ruins of the Dome. One of the steel cables that tied it to the rim of the canyon was anchored a hundred feet away. As she watched, it darkened and reddened and began to stretch and melt. The blazing, smoking infrastructure of the Dome tilted, rocked, and tore free, plummeting into the river below.

*

TOM CAME TO with his head underwater and his lungs empty of air. He managed to roll his head sidewise and spit and take a huge, shuddering breath.

He saw that he’d hung up on a boulder at the edge of the river. Steaming debris rushed past him on the current, the remains of the wooden deck, followed by charred sheets and pillows and scraps of carpet. Tom reached out and snagged an orange as it floated by. It was warm to the touch. He tore it apart and stuffed the pieces in his mouth. After believing himself dead for so long, he was suddenly all appetite.

He crawled onto the riverbank on hands and knees. He hurt in so many places that he didn’t dare take inventory. His clothes were in shreds and he’d lost his shoes somewhere along the line.

In the last rays of the sunset, a haze of smoke still lingered at the top of the hill where the Dome had been. In front of him was a narrow bridge that he remembered crossing early that afternoon. An old man stood with his fishing rod leaning against the concrete railing as he stared up at the fire.

Holding the wound in his side, which was seeping blood, limping on both legs, Tom managed to climb the embankment. “Hey!” he shouted to the old man.

The old man glanced at him, then looked away.

“Hey!” Tom shouted. “You need to go for help. There’s a fire up at the Dome!”

The old man looked down at the debris in the river and shook his head.

*

LITTON HAD THE SIREN on as they raced downhill. The sun was almost down, the forest submerged in twilight. Susan’s thoughts were chaotic—shock from the explosion, joy that the predators were dead, fear that sooner or later the ones who hadn’t been in the Dome would come after her. And above all, the edge of a pain too bitter to bear, the thought that Tom too had died in the fire. She would not give in to that one until Litton had played out his far-fetched hope that Tom had washed up downstream.

“Those people up there,” Litton said. “There was something not right about them. Other than, you know, them being lawyers.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“Are you going to tell me?”

First she shook her head, then she changed her mind. “I’ll tell you one thing. There won’t be anything left of their bodies, but if they can find any traces—toothbrushes, sheets they slept in, plates they ate off of—you need to test the DNA. Tell them to count the chromosomes.”

“Count the chromosomes?”

“That’s it,” Susan said.

They came around a sharp turn and Litton slowed. An old man was packing up his fishing tackle on a bridge. Litton said, “This is where I—”

Susan saw something move in the trees on the other side of the river. “Stop the car!”

She didn’t dare hope. The cruiser lurched to a stop and Susan jumped out. “Tom?” she called. She ran across the bridge toward the shadow moving out of the underbrush. “Tom?”

He stepped into the headlights of the cruiser. He was battered and bleeding but walking under his own power. Susan ran to him and threw her arms around him. They stood that way until the love and relief and gratitude had finished battering her and she thought she might be able to speak.

“How bad is it?” she whispered.

“You could maybe…squeeze a little more gently.”

Laughing and crying, Susan let him go. She put one of his arms around her neck and Litton ran up to take the other one.

“You must be Tom,” Litton said.

“I guess I must be,” Tom said.

“We’ll get you to the hospital in Eureka.”

“No,” Susan said. “Got any doctors who owe you a favor? We’re going to have to make ourselves very scarce for a while.”

Litton nodded. “I expect that can be arranged.”

They were crossing the bridge when Tom lurched to a stop. The old man, head down, carrying his rod and tackle box, was about to pass them on the other side of the road.

“Hey, mister,” Tom said. “How come you wouldn’t go for help?”

The old man stopped, looked Tom up and down. “Wasn’t nobody up there but a bunch of bloodsuckers.”

“What?” Susan said.

“Lawyers!” the old man said. “Nothing but bloodsuckers. Let ’em burn.”

Tom began to laugh. His voice had an edge of hysteria. Susan touched his cheek and helped him into the cruiser. She got in beside him and cradled his head against her shoulder.

As the cruiser began to move, a fire truck screamed by, headed toward the top of the mountain, where the last tendrils of smoke dissolved into the coming night.