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I eased the dead bolt out of the striker plate as quietly as possible The doorknob creaked softly

The silent garage was apparently deserted, but I remained alert So coluainst the dry rain of fluorescent light, I saw to one The orderly must have taken it

I did not want to cross the hospital basement to the stairs by which I had descended The risk of encountering one or both of the orderlies was too great

Until they opened the suitcase and exaht not realize whose property it was When they found my father’s wallet with his ID, they would know I had been here, and they would be concerned about what, if anything, I ht have heard and seen

A hitchhiker had been killed not because he had known anything about their activities, not because he could incriminate them, but merely because they needed a body to cremate for reasons that still escaped enuine threat to them, they would be merciless

I pressed the button that operated the wide roll-up The motor hulanced nervously around the garage, expecting to see an assailant break from cover and rush toward me

When the door was more than halfway open, I stopped it with a second tap of the button and then brought it down again with a third As it descended, I slipped under the door and into the night

Tall pole laht on the driveway that sloped up froe At the top of the drive, the parking lot was also cast in this sullen radiance, which was like the frigid glow that ht illuminate an anteroom to some precinct of Hell where punishment involved an eternity of ice rather than fire

As htshade of camphor trees and pines

I fled across the narrow street into a residential neighborhood of quaint Spanish bungalows Into an alleyithout streetlaht s Beyond the ere rooe lives, full of infinite possibility and blissful ordinariness, were lived beyond my reach and alhtless in the night, and this was one of those ti on shadows

This sunless world had welcoht years, had been always a place of peace and coued by the feeling that soh the darkness

Resisting the urge to look over my shoulder, I picked up h the narrow backstreets and darkways of Moonlight Bay

TWO

THE EVENING

5

I have seen photographs of California pepper trees in sunlight When brightly liht, the pepper acquires a different character fro its head, letting its long branches droop to conceal a face draith care or grief

These trees flanked the long driveway to Kirk’s Funeral Hoe of town, inland of Highway 1 and reached by an overpass They waited like lines oftheir respects

As I climbed the private lane, on which low ht, the trees stirred in a breeze The friction betind and leaves was a whispery la the ress

I ht Bay only on foot or onto drive a car I couldn’t use it by day, and by night I would have to wear sunglasses to spare hts Cops tend to frown on night driving with shades, no matter how cool you look

The full moon had risen

I like theIt burnishes what is beautiful and grants concealment to what is not

At the broad crown of the hill, the blacktop looped back on itself to forrassy circle at its center In the circle was a cast-concrete reproduction of Michelangelo’s Pietà

The body of the dead Christ, cradled on his in also glowed faintly In sunshine, this crude replica must surely look unspeakably tacky

Faced with terrible loss, however, n and , even when as clu I love about people is their ability to be lifted so high by the smallest drafts of hope

I stopped under the portico of the funeral hoer into which I was about to leap

The ian house--red brick hite wood trim--would have been the loveliest house in toere the town not Moonlight Bay A spaceship froalaxy, perched here, would have looked no more alien to our coastline than did Kirk’s handsome pile This house needed elms, not pepper trees, drear heavens rather than the clear skies of California, and periodic lashings with rains far colder than those that would drench it here

The second floor, where Sandy lived, was dark

The viewing rooh beveled, leaded panes that flanked the front door, I saeak light at the back of the house

I rang the bell

A man entered the far end of the hallway and approached the door Although he was only a silhouette, I recognized Sandy Kirk by his easy walk He ood looks

He reached the foyer and switched on both the interior lights and the porch lights When he opened the door, he see at hi, Mr Kirk"

"I’m so very sorry about your father He was a wonderful man"

"Yes Yes, he was"

"We’ve already collected hi him just like family, Christopher, with the utmost respect--you can be sure of that I took his course in twentieth-century poetry at Ashdon Did you know that?"

"Yes, of course"

"From him I learned to love Eliot and Pound Auden and Plath Beckett and Ashbery Robert Bly Yeats All of them Couldn’t tolerate poetry when I started the course--couldn’t live without it by the end"

"Wallace Stevens Donald Justice Louise Glück They were his personal favorites"

Sandy sot"

Out of consideration for hts

Standing on the dark threshold, he said, "Thisanyreen, but in the pale landscape lighting, they looked as s his eyes, I said, "Could I see him?"

"What--your father?"