Fear itself

particular, or a mother in general, or how it felt to be anybody else at all other than Simon Childs. All he’d ever asked her about, he told himself, all he’d ever wanted to know was what she was afraid of, so they could get on with the game.

The irony of the situation was that when she finally got around to telling him, it only made things worse. Simon had known, of course, that there were other Down children in the world, tens of thousands of them, and if he’d bothered to think about it, he’d have understood that their parents had some of the same problems that he’d had, loco-parenting Missy-and probably with a lot fewer resources. But it wasn’t until Ida turned from the mantelpiece holding a photograph of Stanley in a filigreed silver frame, and told him how every night for the three years between Walt’s death and Stanley’s, she had lain awake in terror at the thought of dying first, of leaving Stanley behind, helpless, alone, afraid, that she really started getting under his skin.

Because every time she said “Stanley,” he heard Missy, and the nameless, unfamiliar, disquieting sensation worsened; when she told him how sometimes she even thought about using the revolver in her dresser drawer on both of them if her health started to fail, Simon could scarcely bear it. He fled La Farge at midnight, needing a game more desperately than he had when he’d arrived; by the time he finally pulled off the interstate somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, to look for a motel before he drove the Volvo off the road while swerving to avoid something that wasn’t there, the need had turned to a craving.

Yes, and people in hell crave ice water, as Grandfather Childs was fond of saying. Simon should have remembered that when he saw the sign for Graham Graham’s Reptilarium, Route 15, Allenwood at the bottom of the off-ramp and was immediately reminded of the ophidiophobe who called herself (or himself, though the majority of ophidiophobes were female) Skairdykat, the last fruit of the PWSPD tree. According to Zap Strum’s information, Skairdy lived in Georgetown, which was not far from Pender’s home in Maryland. He should also have remembered what Grandfather sometimes used to add: if those folks in hell ever get their ice water, they usually find the devil has salted it first.

Graham Graham’s Reptilarium! Simon, whose interest in snakes went back to his boyhood pet Skinny and whose subsequent hobby had involved him with ophidiophobes more than once (it was one of the most common specific phobias), had often seen Graham on television and had wanted to visit the place for years, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that fate had brought him anywhere near Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

The reptilarium looked fairly crummy from the outside-it shared a strip mall with a hoagie shop-but once inside, Simon was not disappointed. Mambas, cobras, pythons, vipers, a twelve-foot gator, giant tortoises, exotic frogs and lizards-Simon even saw Graham Graham himself, in safari khakis, leading a group of schoolchildren on a tour. In other circumstances, he told himself, he’d have liked to shake the man’s hand, buy him a drink, talk reptiles. But it would have been indiscreet-after all, Simon was planning to rip the place off right after closing.

3

“Who was it said, beware of any venture that requires new clothes?” Pender wanted to know. Dorie had half-dragged him to Khaki’s, an upscale men’s clothier in Carmel’s Barnyard shopping center.

“It wasn’t a woman, I’ll tell you that,” she replied. The only clothes he had were the ones he’d packed in his carry-on for what was supposed to have been a two-day trip. If she saw that yellow Ban Lon shirt one more time, she’d announced Tuesday morning, she was going to upchuck.

Her choice of emporiums backfired on her, though. Khaki’s advertised itself as a classy, post-preppy kind of store, but Pender had made a beeline for a rack of Hawaiian shirts and picked out a couple of doozies; he was trying on Panama hats when his cell phone began chirping.

Weird, thought Dorie, watching Pender as he wandered over to the doorway of the shop for better reception. She’d never fallen for a homely man before-it took some getting used to. Not in bed, oddly enough-she was surprised to learn how little looks seemed to matter when you were making love-but in broad daylight those eyes, under that scarred expanse of scalp, seemed much too small, and that putty nose and those LBJ ears much too big; only the full-lipped mouth was just about right, but somehow when it broke into that easy grin, it made the rest of the face seem just about right, too.

Still, she couldn’t help comparing him to Rafael, her Big Sur carpenter. Walk into a joint on Rafe’s arm, and you could sense every other woman in the place curling up with jealousy like the wicked witch’s toes after the ruby slippers were removed. And when Rafe was working, with his muscles rippling beneath his sweat-stained T-shirt like Brando’s in Streetcar and the heavy suede carpenter’s toolbelt slung diagonally athwart his narrow hips-

“Hey, Dorie!” Pender waved her over, his hand covering the mouthpiece of the phone. “Have you ever heard of a shrink named Luka-Janos Luka?”

“Janos Luka? Sure, who hasn’t?”

“Me and Abruzzi, for two.”

“He’s a famous gestalt therapist-he worked with Perls and Maslow, all those guys. He must be about a million years old by now-he still runs the Lethe Institute, down in Big Sur. Why?”

“Apparently he was Simon Childs’s psychiatrist at one time.” Then, into the phone again: “Linda? Yes, Dorie knows him.”

“Hey! I didn’t say I-”

Pender put a forefinger to his lips, gave Dorie a wink. “Yeah, he’s an old friend of hers. She says he’s pretty reclusive, though-maybe you ought to let us make the first contact…. Right, right, somebody from the resident agency should definitely do the interview itself…. Of course I will.…Okay, talk to you later.”

“What was that all about?” asked Dorie.

“Just a little Bureau-cratic gamesmanship. How long a drive is it?”

“How long a drive is what?”

“From here to Big Sur,” said Pender-and here came that grin again, lighting up his whole face, chasing away all the ugly.

4

Linda Abruzzi was no fool-she understood that Pender’s promise to have somebody from the FBI’s resident agency in Monterey conduct the formal interview with Dr. Luka was probably bogus. But if the priority here was catching Childs, then having a Bureau legend like E. L. Pender doing your background interviews was like having Derek Jeter for a pinch hitter: you’d be a fool if you didn’t bring him off the bench. And as a law school graduate, Linda was quite familiar with the concept of plausible deniability-as was Deputy Director Steven P. McDougal, she was reasonably certain.

Besides, Linda had other fish to fry. In the same carton as the medical records-actually just the bills-she had found both Simon’s and Melissa’s birth certificates, so as soon as she got off the phone with Pender, she called Thom Davies and asked him to perform a little of his database wizardry.

A few minutes later, as she was lifting the latest forensic report from Berkeley off the fax tray-middle-aged female with a titanium screw in the left femur, a type of screw that had only been in use since 1992, the medical examiner had assured Linda-Davies called back to report that Simon Childs’s long lost mother was lost no longer.

“Good work,” Linda told him.

“Piece of piss,” said the expat Brit. “According to social security records, she’s been living at the same address in Atlantic City for over fifteen years. If you consider four hundred and fifty dollars a month living, that is.”

“Kimberly Rosen would,” said Linda grimly, glancing up to the two photographs from the Chicago PD she’d posted on her victims’ bulletin board. The first was a perky three-quarter head shot of Kim from the New Trier