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In low Orson wasn’t here, either

I went directly to the nearest nightstand From the top drawer I withdrew an envelope in which I kept a supply of knocking-around hty dollars, but this was better than nothing Though I didn’t knohy I ht need the cash, I intended to be prepared, so I transferred the entire suhtstand drawer, I noticed a dark object on the bedspread When I picked it up, I was surprised that it was actually what it had appeared to be in the shadows: a pistol

I had never seen this weapon before

My father had never owned a gun

Acting on instinct, I put down the pistol and used a corner of the bedspread to wipeset up to take a fall for soh any television emits ultraviolet radiation, I’ve seen a lot of h froreat stories of innocent men--from Cary Grant and James Stewart to Harrison Ford--relentlessly hounded for crimes they never co quickly into the adjacent bathroom, I switched on the loatt bulb No dead blonde in the bathtub

No Orson, either

In the bedroom once more, I stood very still and listened to the house If other people were present, they were only ghosts drifting in ectoplasmic silence

I returned to the bed, hesitated, picked up the pistol, and fuazine It was fully loaded I sla inexperienced with handguns, I found the piece heavier than I had expected: It weighed at least a pound and a half

Next to where I’d found the gun, a white envelope lay on the cream-colored bedspread I hadn’t noticed it until now

I withdrew a penlight froht beam on the envelope It was blank except for a professionally printed return address in the upper left corner: Thor’s Gun Shop here in Moonlight Bay The unsealed envelope, which bore neither a stahtly crumpled and stippled with curious indentations

When I picked up the envelope, it was faintly damp in spots The folded papers inside were dry

I exanizedon the carbon copy of the standard application, on which he had attested to the local police that he had no crirounds to deny hiht to own this firearinal invoice for the weapon, indicating that it was a 9-millimeter Glock 17 and that my father had purchased it with a check

The date on the invoice gave ht the Glock just three days after hway 1 As though he thought he needed protection

In the study across the hallway fro I unplugged it and clipped it to my belt, at my hip

Orson was not in the study

Earlier, Sasha had stopped by the house to feed hione If Orson had been as somber as he’d been when I’d left for the hospital--and especially if he had settled into an even blacker ht not have been able to leave the poor beast here alone, because as h her veins

Even if Orson had gone with Sasha, who had transferred the 9-millimeter Glock from my father’s rooun existed, and she wouldn’t have prowled through s

The desk phone was connected to an answering ht, the counter ed two calls

According to the machine’s automatic time-and-date voice, the first call had coo It lasted nearly two h the caller spoke not a word

Initially, he dre deep breaths and let theical power to inhale the myriad scents of my rooms even across a telephone line, and thereby discover if I was hoh he had forgotten that he was being recorded and wasto hi a tune that see and low, eerie and repetitive, like the song a els of destruction, in choirs, are singing to hier I believed that I would have been able to recognize the voice of a friend even fro I was also sure that he had not reached a wrong nu my father’s death

By the tihtened s I exhaled a hot dry gust, inhaled a cool sweet draft, but could not yet unclench my hands

The second call, which had coela Ferryman, the nurse who had been at nized her thin yet e, it quickened like an increasingly restless bird hopping fro a fence

"Chris, I’d like to talk to you Have to talk As soon as it’s convenient Tonight If you can, tonight I’m in the car, on my way home now You knohere I live Come seethis call But I’ve got to see you Coet this, come anyway I won’t be asleep Can’t sleep"

I put a new inal cassette under the cru paper at the bottom of the wastebasket beside s wouldn’t convince a cop or a judge of anything Nevertheless, they were the only scraps of evidence I possessed to indicate that so even more extraordinary than my birth into this tiny sunless caste More extraordinary than surviving twenty-eight years unscathed by xerodermentosum

I had been ho too long

As I searched for Orson, I lass breaking on the lower floor and then footsteps on the stairs The house remained quiet, but this was a tre wasn’tin Dad’s bedroom or bathroorew more worried about the mutt Whoever had put the 9-ht also have taken or harlasses in a bureau drawer They were in a soft case with a Velcro seal, and I clipped the case in lanced at ht-e diodes

Quickly, I returned the invoice and the police questionnaire to the envelope from Thor’s Gun Shop Whether it was more evidence or s of nificant Suddenly everything seenificant

I kept the pistol Maybe this was a setup, just like in the movies, but I felt safer with a weapon I wished that I kne to use it

The pockets ofin the right pocket not like a weight of dead steel but like a thing alive, like a torpid but not entirely dormant snake When Itangle of thick coils

As I was about to go downstairs to search for Orson, I recalled a July night when I had watched him from my bedroomas he sat in the backyard, his head tilted to lift his snout to the breeze, transfixed by so , and in any event the summer sky had been moonless; the sound he ular and disturbing character