A Grave Talent

her voice.

Lewis preened. 'It wasn't that difficult. I had a friend pretend to be a newsman willing to pay a lot, even for rumors. He found an orderly who said Vaun was being released to a therapist who specialized in artists. I figured it would be either here or in Berkeley, and since the police here were in on the case, I started here. I went into the kinds of bars and coffeehouses that artists go to, in the Haight and Polk and south of Market to begin with, and everywhere I went I talked about crazy artists and that woman down on Tyler's Road.' Here he paused and reached out to run the tip of his left forefinger along Vaun's ear. She did not react. 'Took me about eighty gallons of coffee and a hundred and fifty beers, but I finally got lucky—a tight-ass little jerk in a silk shirt practically drooling to tell me all about how he knew the policewoman who'd been on the TV down on Tyler's Road, oh yeah, knew her personally, well, no, not well, you know, but he'd once seen her, with a lady shrink who'd come to the hospital to see an artist friend of his who was dying a year or so back, lady shrink name of Cooper. That was noon on Wednesday. Took me until midnight to track down one of Dr. Cooper's regulars, and when I found out when his next scheduled appointment was, I just arranged that he'd be too, uh, tied up to keep it. And here I am.'

'Can I ask you something that puzzled us? Inspector Hawkin and me, that is?' Kate continued, not giving him a chance to find his own topic of conversation. He looked irritated, then nodded magnanimously.

'The names. You are Andrew Lewis?' She made it a question, hinting uncertainty. 'Without the beard… Where did you get the name Dodson?' She held her breath, playing for time, skirting the revelation of how much they knew about Lewis and Dodson, hoping he might relax into scorn at their ignorance but not wanting to give him the impression of incompetence—that could only arouse his suspicions. Keep him talking, keep him relaxed. However, she was startled at his response.

'You know my middle name?'

'Uh, no. There was an initial…'

'It's Carroll.'

'Carol?'

'Two r's, two l's, like in Lewis Carroll. You know his real name?'

'I don't think—'

'Dodgson. The Reverend Charles L. Dodgson. With a g. So when I came across someone who looked like me, with a name so close, well, I just had to be him, didn't I?' He was grinning, daring Kate to ask what had happened to the real Dodson, but that was not the direction she wanted to go in, not yet. She desperately cast around for another topic.

'Where did you go during that two years you took off from high school? Inspector Hawkin thought it was Mexico, but I—'

'All right, enough crap. I don't have all night.'

'What do you want, Andy?' Vaun's even voice distracted Lewis, almost, but not quite—enough for Kate to tense up in preparation, for what she did not know. He stood looking down at Vaun speculatively. She met his eyes, waiting.

'What do I want?' he said to himself. 'What did I ever want? I loved you, and you treated me like shit.'

'You never loved me,' she chided him gently.

'No? Maybe you're right. I did nearly kill you, you know, when you told me you'd rather paint than be with me.'

'Yes, I know that. But what you did was worse, wasn't it?'

She gave him her knowledge and the pain of those years in her voice and face, and he went very still. After a moment he looked at Kate, but she had ready a slightly puzzled expression to hide her fear and fury. Damn the woman, what was she playing at? Surely she could see that the very worst thing for all of them would be to push Lewis into a corner, to let him know how trapped he was. He looked back at Vaun, warily, reassessing her.

'What I did.'

'What are you going to do now, Andy?' she asked him, and Kate felt like screaming at her not to push him into any action, stretch it out, give Hawkin a chance, but Vaun would not look at her, and Lee sat frozen.

'I'll tell you what I thought of doing,' he said absently, and Kate knew then that all was lost. 'I thought of knocking off these two and making it look like you did it. You'd never get out in just nine years after that. I could still do it.'

'No, Andy. They know everything.'

' 'Everything'? Oh, right.'

'They do. Tommy's Time magazine. Drugs in your apartment in San Jose. That garage. Your fingerprints and some hairs from one of the children in the postal van. They'd never think I had anything to do with killing anyone.'

Madness, thought Kate, this is madness speaking, she probably thinks he'll shoot her first and give us a chance, but it's impossible, I've got to stop her. But Kate couldn't think of a way that wouldn't set him off, so she prayed for Hawkin and readied herself for an unavoidable, futile lunge from the depths of the sofa.

The cruel smile crept back onto his lips, and Lee made a faint sound of protest as his left hand went down onto Vaun's head, gently playing with her curls, caressing the back of her head and cupping the nape of her neck, dipping his forefinger under the collar of her shirt. And then he froze.

Slowly his hand came back up, the cord between his first two fingers, and Vaun's alarm button emerged from the front of her shirt. He looked at it, and at Vaun, who sat through his touch and his discovery with unmoving aloofness, looking up at him. He twisted his hand around the cord and brought it up, and up, until the black line was biting into Vaun's pale throat. She watched him as her hands came up and plucked without passion at the cord. For the first time the gun moved away from Kate, but abruptly the clasp broke. Vaun jerked back into her seat, and Lewis took a sharp recovery step back and stood with the thing dangling from his hand.

And this is the Andy Lewis that that preacher's daughter saw just before being beaten to a pulp, thought Kate. His skin was dark with fury, his hand trembling with this evidence that he, Andy Lewis, might have been tricked, trapped, thwarted, outsmarted. He brought his eyes up to Kate, looked at her shirt, dismissed her, turned to Lee.

'You. Let me see.'

She looked to Kate for direction, but Kate could only nod. Slowly, slowly Lee's hands went up to the back of her neck, and slowly she pulled her own black cord over her blonde curls, and then she held the button out to him.

He stared at the small device swinging from Lee's fingers, his eyes narrowing in disbelief.

'You pushed it, didn't you? When we were coming down the hallway, you were all bent over. You had your hands on it, didn't you? Oh, Christ, you stupid bitch, you're going to be very sorry you did that.'

'Mr. Lewis,' Kate began in the calm and reasonable voice demanded both by training and by good sense, 'I'm afraid you'll find there are police all around the house. However, I should point out that as of this moment we have nothing on you, in spite of what Vaun just said. With a good lawyer—'

'Shut up!' he snarled, and jammed his gun into Lee's hair. Kate froze.

'I don't care what evidence you have,' he said. 'I've got hostages. I'll get away, you won't risk losing 'Eva Vaughn,' now will you? I'll get away. But I don't need you. Three hostages is too many, and a cop doesn't count anyway.'

'Andy,' Vaun said quietly, 'don't hurt her. Tie her up if you like, but let her go. If you do, I'll go with you. If you kill either of them, you'll have to kill me too.'

His head turned to her, his face screwed up as if he were about to spit, or to cry, and indeed the answer he spat out climbed rapidly into a shriek.

'You? You think I care what I do to you? I should have killed you years ago. All of this happened because of you, you goddamned bitch. I should have wrung your neck that night. I should have poked your cold little eyes out.'

His rage poured out onto Vaun, and still Kate sat, knowing he was about to explode, knowing he would see her move, knowing that in a matter of seconds time would have run out and she would have to make her hopeless bid for their lives. Lee might reach him—she was out of his sight— but Lee sat, still clutching the button, stunned by his sheer animal fury.

Vaun, though. Vaun the passive, Vaun the mirror, Vaun the observer and chronicler of the world's torments, Vaun was meeting him, shaking herself free almost visibly from the restraints of a lifetime, caught up in a rising