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He reh the car , the oozing sores in the scarred and filthy face, the crescent of broken yellow teethand abruptly he was able to identify the unnerving quality in the hobo’s grin which had halted hi lunacy was not what rin of ashark, stalking panther, wolf prowling byfar rant

All the way back to Special Projects in Laguna Niguel, the scenery and the streets were faotherworldly about the play of headlights in the nickelbright rain or the ainst the skin of the sedan, nothing eerie about the silhouettes of pal of the uncanny, and he struggled to avoid the conclusion that he had brushed up against so

supernatural

Ticktock, ticktock

He thought about the rest of what the hobo had said after appearing out of the ind: You’ll be dead by dawn

He glanced at his watch The crystal was still filmed with rainwater, the face distorted, but he could read the tiht minutes past three

When was sunrise? Six o’clock? Sixthirty? Thereabouts, somewhere between At most, fifteen hours away

The an to sound like the ominous cadence of funeral drums

This was ridiculous The derelict couldn’t have followed hiuna Beachwhich ined, and therefore posed no threat

He was not relieved If the hobo was i by dawn But as far as he could see, that left a single alternative explanation, and not one that was reassuring: hea nervous breakdown

Harry’s side of the office was co The blotter and pen set -were perfectly squared with each other and precisely aligned with the edges of the desk The brass clock showed the same time as did his atch The leaves of the potted pallossy The blue screen of the co, as well, and all the Special Projects forms were installed as macros, so he could complete them and print the inevitably resulted when one attempted to fill in the blanks on fory He was an excellent typist, and he could compose case narrative in his head al in blank spaces orKs in boxes, but not everyone was skilled at the part of the job he liked to call the "essay test" His case narratives ritten in language both more vivid and succinct than that of any other detective he had ever known

As his fingers flew across the keyboard, crisp sentences formed on the screen, and Harry Lyon was more at peace with the world than he had been at any ti, eating Englishthe view of the ard’s killing spree was suhted verbs and adjectives, the episode didn’t seem half as bizarre as when Harry actually had been a part of it He hammered out the words, and the words soothed

He was even feeling sufficiently relaxed to allow hiet more casual in the office than was his habit He unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and slightly loosened the knot of his tie

He took a break froet a cup of coffee His clothes were still damp in spots and hopelessly wrinkled, but the frost in his marrow had melted

On his way back to the office with the coffee, he saw the hobo

The hulking vagrant was at the far end of the hall, crossing the intersection, passing left to right in another corridor Facing forward, never looking toward Harry, the guyon other business Ih a few long strides he was through the intersection and out of sight

As Harry hurried along the hall to see where thenot to spill the coffee, he told himself that it hadn’t been the saue reseination and frayed nerves had done the rest

His denials ithout conviction The figure at the end of the corridor had been the saht as his nemesis, with those bearish shoulders, that barrel chest, the sa black raincoat had spread around him like a robe, and he’d had that leonine selfpossession, as if he were some mad prophet mystically transported from the days of the Old Testament and dropped into modern ti into the intersection, wincing as hot coffee slopped out of the cup and stung his hand He looked right, where the vagrant had been headed The only people in that corridor were Bob Wong and Louis Yang, loan outs froe County Sheriff’s Depart over a o?"

They blinked at hi said, "Who?"

"The hairball in the black raincoat, the hobo"

The twosaid, "Hobo?"

"Well, if you didn’t see hi asked "Yeah Two seconds g)1

"Nobody ca said

Harry knew they weren’t lying to him, weren’t part of some immense conspiracy Nevertheless, he wanted to walk past the the corridor

He restrained hi at hihtdisheveled, pale, wildeyed

He could not tolerate the idea that he wasa spectacle of himself He’d built a life on the principles of moderation, orderliness, and seflcontrol

Reluctantly he returned to his office He took a cork coaster from his top desk drawer, put it on the blotter, and set the dripping cup of coffee on it

He kept a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of Windex in the botto cabinets He used a couple of the towels to blot his coffeedamp hands, then wiped off the wet cup

He was pleased to see that his hands were not shaky Whatever the hell was happening, he would eventually figure it out and deal with it He could deal with anything Always had

Alould Selfcontrol That was the key

He took several slow, deep breaths With both hands he smoothed his hair back fro sky had pressed twilight into an earlier appearance It was only a few minutes after five o’clock, an hour until sunset, but the day had surrendered to a protracted dusk

Harry turned on the overhead fluorescent lights