Mr. X

    I took a folder crammed with photographs out of the manila envelope and silently apologized to Laurie and my aunts before I even realized that I had suspected them of walking off with Hatch's pictures.

    'Three cheers for the home team,' Robert said.

    The two men in the double portrait on top of the pile could only have been Omar and Sylvan Dunstan. Both my heart and my stomach seemed to drop six or seven inches within me, and I went to the desk and dumped out the rest of the photographs. Attired in wing collar, dark, linear suit, and high-buttoned waistcoat, the twenty- or twenty-one-year-old Howard Dunstan stared up at me. As his daughters endlessly reiterated, Howard had been a handsome man. He looked intelligent, charming, reckless, willful, and, I thought, half mad: cruelty and despair had already begun to tug at the features of a face uncomfortably similar to Robert's and mine.

    Stewart had stolen our folder, not his, from Coventry's files.

    A car, then another, pulled into the driveway. Two doors slammed. I looked at Robert. He shrugged.

    'You asshole,' I said.

    'Everybody makes mistakes.'

    I scooped up the photographs and shoved the folder back into the envelope. Through the window behind Robert, I saw Stewart Hatch entering the garage with Grenville Milton towering beside him. They moved out of the frame of the window, and their footsteps sounded on the cement floor.

    'What do we do now?' I heard them enter the kitchen.

    Signaling for quiet, Robert eased the door shut. 'After the old guy leaves, Hatch will go upstairs.'

    Grennie Milton's voice thundered from the kitchen.

    “If they come here, I'll take care of it,' Robert said.

    The refrigerator door opened. Ice clinked into glasses.

    I put my hands on the window's sash and saw the screen blocking my way. 'Wait,' Robert whispered.

    Like a blip traveling across a radar screen, Milton's aggrieved voice marked their progress through the dining room and into the main part of the house, where his words became audible. 'These people havesomething, Stewart. They want financial records back to 1983. Does that sound like a coincidence to you?'

    'Give me a break,' Hatch said.

    The footsteps advanced to the front of the big room. The two men dropped into chairs.

    'My Louisville attorney wants me to separate our cases.'

    'These people don't know anything. They can't. It's as simple as that.'

    “I am not interested in going to jail. Jail is not in the program. Are you listening to me, Stewart?'

    'Am I ever,' Hatch said. “I've been listening to your hysterics all afternoon.'

    'Then hear this. If you go down, you go down by yourself.'

    'That's nice. Grennie, nobody is going down. It's all smoke. If you separate our cases, you make both of us look guilty. That's not exactly the perception we want to put out there.'

    'They're preparing indictments, how does that make us look?'

    'You want to know why they're preparing indictments? Ashton went around taking statements from everyone under the sun. In the process, she rented cars, she flew in airplanes, she stayed in nice hotels and paid for expensive meals. Where does she come from? Kentucky. These people had noidea of the expenses she was running up. So she goes back home empty-handed.'

    'But—'

    'Ashton gets back to bluegrass country and says, Sorry guys, no dice. Iknow that. Her boss says, Ashton, this is my job on the line here, we can't afford to give up now. So what do they do? They make up the indictments, Grennie, that's what they do, because the indictments justify her expenses. If nothing new turns up, hey, maybe they can cut a deal. It's about saving face, that's all.'

    'You can't argue away the break-in,' Milton said.

    'My system failed. A guy got into the building and trashed the computers. But, Grennie, our records, they were never touched. I guarantee it.'

    “I hope you're right,' Milton said. “I'm too old for prison.'

    'So am I. Not to mention getting screwed eight ways to Sunday on the home front. I should never have put Laurie on the damn committee. Yet another example that trying to be good to people is generally a terrible idea. What about Rachel?'

    'Rachel put a death lock on my wallet about a month before I gave her the best cosmetic surgery money can buy,' Milton said. “I can't see her turning vindictive. Well, okay. We're just going around and around. I have to get home and change before I meet Ming-Hwa.'

    'You want something to worry about, pick her,' Hatch said. 'But what do I know?'

    'You wish it was you instead of me,' said Milton. They drifted to the front door and repeated half of what they had already said before Milton's size 13 wingtips clumped down the driveway.

    Hatch closed the front door, walked to the staircase, and went up a few steps. He hesitated and began coming back down. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he turned toward the office. Robert winked at me and disappeared, leaving behind a vacant Robert-sized space.

    The knob revolved, and the door began to swing open. I did the only thing I could, short of assault—at the moment Stewart Hatch walked into the room, I bit into time.

 •When my eyes cleared, I was standing in an open field, experiencing the pains of my previous journeys, but to a lesser degree. Empty grassland rolled over the hills, and birds soared on outstretched wings through the flawless sky. I walked in what I hoped was the direction of the future Bayberry Lane, trying to remember the distance to the corner. When I thought I was getting close to the car, I did my trick and returned to the tiled border of a backyard swimming pool. Another foot to the right, and I would have been underwater.

    My head felt fine, and my gut reported no more than a mild twinge. However, the woman wearing the bottom half of a bikini who was tilted back in the chaise ten feet in front of me seemed about to go into shock. She propelled herself forward and snatched up a towel. 'Where didyou come from?'

    'Miss, I'm as embarrassed as you are,' I said. “I was hoping to findsomeone who could give me directions. I'm supposed to deliver this envelope to an address on Bayberry Lane, but I can't seem to find it. I hope you'll forgive me.'

    She tucked the ends of the towel under her arms and smiled. 'Whose house are you looking for?'

    'Mr. Hatch's,' I said.

    'Stewart?' She pointed without raising her arm. 'That's his place.' Fifty yards away, the gray deck jutted out over a smooth, vibrantly green lawn. I had come nowhere near the car. 'Go down Elderberry, turn right on Loganberry and right again at the next corner.'

    When I turned the corner into Loganberry Street, Robert was leaning against the Taurus, grinning at me. 'To hell with you,' I said.

    “I knew you didn't really need my help,' Robert said. 'But I hope you're going to tell me how you got away.'

    'Magic carpet,' I said.

    'Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. What do we do now?'

    “I'm going to Laurie's, and you're not. Come to the Brazen Head tonight.'

    'You won't give me a ride back to town?'

    'Robert,' I said, “I don't think you'll have any trouble getting back to town by yourself.'

    He touched his forehead in a mocking salute and was gone. I went to the door of my car and heard someone say, 'Mister?'

    A woman in shorts and a halter top was staring at me from across the street. “I have to ask. How did youdo that?'

    'My brother's been pulling that stunt ever since we were kids,' I said. “It used to drive our mother crazy.'

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