Show of Evil

'There's something else,' Jane Venable said. 'Does the name Vulpes ring anybody's bell?'

They all looked at one another and shook their heads.

'Vulpes is Latin - it's the genus for a fox.'

'The craftiest of all creatures,' Stenner intoned.

'Another goddamn message,' St Claire growled.

'Janie,' said Vail, 'I saw those red eyes you talked about - for just the flash of a second, I saw pure hate. I saw murder. I saw the damn four horsemen for an instant.'

'Well, I've got a tidbit of information that should give us all a chuckle at Mr Vulpes's expense,' said Naomi. 'It's in the report submitted to the judge who signed the order for Vulpes's furlough.'

'How did you get that?' Vail asked.

'I went to a seminar once with the court clerk up there, she faxed it to me,' Naomi said, and winked. She flipped through the pages. 'Here it is, listed under the heading 'Miscellaneous'.' She looked up. 'Mr Stampler, it seems is phobic.'

'Phobic? What kind of phobia?' Vail asked.

'He's afraid of the dark,' she said, and snickered.

'Afraid of the dark?' Parver said with disbelief. Flaherty broke into a hearty laugh as thoughts of the madman, cowering in the dark, flashed through his mind.

'Afraid of the dark,' Naomi repeated. 'He's had special permission to sleep with the lights on ever since he was admitted to Daisyland.'

'Is he still sleeping with the lights on?' asked Vail.

She nodded. 'According to Doctors Woodward, Ciaffo, and Bascott, who petitioned for his furlough, it's called a nonaggressive phobic reaction. They attribute it to childhood traumas.'

'According to Woodward, Raymond never went through re-experiencing; Aaron did,' said Parver. 'He says on the tape that Raymond doesn't suffer any of either Aaron's or Roy's psychological problems.'

'So how come he picked up Stampler's phobia?' St Claire asked.

'Because it's the one thing Stampler can't hide,' Vail said.

'How could Woodward have missed it?' Naomi asked.

'Because he wanted to miss it,' said Vail. 'Woodward's already got a spot on his wall for the Nobel Prize in medicine.'

'Or because he wasn't looking for it,' suggested Venable, taking a more practical approach to the question. 'Stampler had been sleeping with the lights on for years and Raymond just kept doing it. That miscellaneous note in the report was probably part of an earlier evaluation.'

'Afraid of the dark,' said Stenner. 'Makes perfect sense - the thing Stampler feared most in life was the coal mines.'

'And nothin' could be darker than the hole,' said St Claire.

'Except maybe Aaron Stampler's soul,' said Jane Venable.

'I think I can answer one big question: I know how he tracked down Lincoln and Balfour,' Bobby Hartford said quietly. 'I'm going into my office and make a phone call. You guys can listen to it on Marty's speakerphone.'

'Who are you calling?' asked Flaherty.

'Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles.'

Hartford went to his office and dialled the number. A high-pitched, somewhat comical, voice answered.

'DMV. Sergeant Colter speaking.'

'Hey, Sergeant, this is Detective John Standish down in Chicago. How you doing?'

'Good, neighbour, what can I do you for?'

'We're looking for a witness in an old homicide case, dropped out of sight a couple of years ago. We just got a tip somebody saw him up in your neck of the woods. Can you run him through the computer for me?'

'Got a name?'

'Alexander Sanders Lincoln. White, male, twenty-six.'

'Hang on a minute.'

They could hear the keys of a computer board clicking in the