trembled and bubbled throughout his body like dry ice furious in a bucket of water. In his mind's eye the leaves scorched and blackened overhead, small animals dropped down dead with his passing, the road cringed from his boots—and Vaun Adams woke screaming from her hospital bed to feel the approach of his terrible hate.
None of these things happened, of course. The muted beep of Vaun's monitor kept its hypnotic rhythm, small night animals rustled leaves, a dog barked once, the breeze from the ocean stirred the fragrant needles.
By dawn he had crossed the mud slide's remnants, avoided the guards posted at the upper end of Tyler's Road, and entered the adjoining state park. At eight a neatly dressed man with a mustache, carrying a thick briefcase, caught a ride with a computer programmer who worked over the hill. The driver's daughter was with him in the front seat, going to spend the day with her grandmother. The child was six years old and had shiny brown hair and one loose front tooth, which she delighted in wiggling precariously with her tongue. The man who had been Andy Lewis smiled at her with his charming smile, chatted easily with her about kindergarten and with her father about computers and the problems of remote automobile breakdowns, and thanked them both when they got to San Jose. By noon he was in Berkeley, completely invisible.
Long before that—shortly after he left the park, in fact— Angie Dodson woke to find that her husband was gone.
21
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Angie's pounding echoed through the house and roused the sleepers, Trujillo among them. He wrapped himself in a borrowed bathrobe and walked yawning down to the kitchen. Angie's face was tight with worry despite her deliberately casual words, and Trujillo was far from sleepy as he unobtrusively left the room and sprinted for the upstairs telephone.
Hawkin cursed viciously, Kate cursed with less imagination and opened her back again, and two hours later they burst into Tyler's kitchen.
'Where's Angie?'
The huddled group all busied themselves with their cups or studied their hangnails. Blond-braided Anna told them that she was upstairs with Trujillo. Hawkin took the stairs two at a time, Kate on his heels, and when they got to Tyler's door he threw the door back without knocking.
Angie Dodson looked up from where she sat crouched in front of the fire. She had passed through tears and now looked old and beaten and utterly without hope. Hawkin walked over to her and put his arms around her, and she clung to him and began to moan in a breathless, high-pitched animal noise. Trujillo turned to look out the window. Tyler smiled sickly at Kate and lurched through the door, muttering something about coffee. Kate studied the watercolors and gradually she realized that Angie's moans had resolved themselves into a monotonously repeating phrase.
'She was my friend. She was my friend. She was my friend.'
'You mean Vaun,' said Hawkin in a gentler voice than Kate would have thought possible.
'Yes. She was my friend. She was—'
'Where's Amy?'
That got to her. She took a deep and shaky breath and sat up. Hawkin's arms fell away, but he sat close to her and bent his head to her.
'She's with the Newborns. I told Rob to watch her every minute, and not let her go off anywhere, not even with—Oh God…' She collapsed again. 'She was my friend, and they say he killed her. Is it true? You must tell me.'
'She isn't dead, Angie.'
'She might as well be. Did he do it?'
'Does the man you know as Tony have a tattoo on his arm?'
His non sequitur caught her full attention.
'What?'
'A tattoo,' he repeated. 'Does Tony have a tattoo?'
'How did you know?' She straightened and blew her nose. 'He never let anyone see it; he was embarrassed by it. He'd had it put on when he was real young. Not even Amy knew he had it. He always wore a T-shirt, even when he went swimming.'
'What was it?'
'A dragon.'
'A dragon? Not a snake?'
'No, it was one of those long, skinny dragons. I suppose it looked a bit like a snake, but it had little legs. It was on his left arm, up high. I only saw it clearly two or three times myself. He'd usually only take his shirt off in the dark. What does his tattoo have to do with it?'
So he told her. Tyler came in with a tray of coffee, and Hawkin broke off until he had gone; then he resumed and told her all, or nearly all.
'So you see, Angie, at this point the only positive identification we have is that tattoo.'
'He always was funny about having his picture taken, I know. Even at our wedding.' She giggled softly and sighed, dazed with the impossibility of what her life had become in a few short hours.
'Angie, I have to ask you some questions now.'
'I won't testify against him,' she threw out at him. 'I'll talk to you, but I won't testify against him.'
(Andy… he was a real charmer… she wouldn't press charges…)
'Just talk to me, then. Tell me how you met.'
They had met at one of the Road's yearly Medieval Faires, three years ago come June. He had come as a visitor, not in costume, and though he had bought his ticket from her early in the morning, it was not until afternoon that he had reappeared and made her teach him the steps to a pavane, and they'd danced and drunk and laughed on into the evening, and on the Sunday he'd been back first thing and spent the whole day with her and with Amy, and that night he'd gone up the Road with them and slept on her couch. Two weeks later he moved his few belongings into the small house, and in November they married. Not a church ceremony, but one they wrote, and Tyler conducted. It wasn't a legal marriage, because Angie's husband had neither divorced her nor been in touch since he deserted her, but it had not mattered.
'What is he like, Tony? With you and Amy?'
'Very good with Amy. I don't think he'd ever been around kids much, before he moved in with us, but he was a good father to her. Quiet, polite. Private, but not like he was hiding anything. A gentleman, I guess.'
'Always?'
'With Amy, yes. And almost always with me. He… he has a temper. Had. He never hit me, I don't mean that, but once he got really mad at me—for something small, too, I was just teasing him about a stupid mistake he'd made when he was building the addition onto the cabin. He didn't like it.'
'What did he do, Angie?'
'He chopped up my loom.' Her face remembered frightened bewilderment as she studied her clasped hands. 'He got really quiet, and his eyes… He went out to the woodshed and got the big ax and came back with it and chopped my loom up into little pieces, and then he hauled it off and burned it. Afterwards he was sorry, he kissed me, and the next day we went to Berkeley and he bought me another one, a better one, too, an eight harness I'd been wanting for a long time. We never talked about it again, but, well, I never teased him again.'
'And with the other people on the Road? How did he get along with them?'
'Really well, with most of them. As far as I know he never lost his temper with anyone else, not that I heard of. He's never been tremendous buddies with anyone, he likes to keep to himself, but when he's in the mood he can be a lot of fun. Anyway, he was approved for residency in the October meeting, so obviously everyone thought they could get along with him.' Her tone was defensive, as if wondering why her friends had not protected her against her choice. 'They all like him. He seems to get along best with Tommy Chesler,' she added.
'What about Vaun? How did he act toward her? Did she vote for him?'
'I don't remember anyone not voting for him—wait a minute, she wasn't here, I think. It was the Harvest Meeting, and she wasn't here, she had to go to New York, I think it was. How did he act toward her?' she repeated. She chewed on her lip and fixed her shiny eyes on a part of the carpet, and sobbed a small laugh.
'I thought he was jealous of her. She was my friend, before he came here. My old man took off about six
