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Turning his face into Janet’s side, Danny said, "Mama, the man really stinks"

"Danny!" Janet said, appalled

"It’s okay," Sammy said He was inspired to launch into another of his earnest but ra assurances of repentance "It’s true I stir I’ time, but that’s over now You know one reason I was a ht I understood exactly what life was about, that it was y But after this, after tonight, I have a different view on things I don’t know everything, after all It’s true Hell, I don’t know diddlysquat! There’s plenry of y for sure And if there’s so?

Nope Nothing Not a drop Nada"

One block later, the dog turned right, heading east along a steeply rising street

Detective Lyon turned the corner after Woofer, then glanced at his atch "Two o’clock Da too fast"

Outside, Woofer rarely turned his head to glance at them any more He was confident that they would stay with hi which he padded was littered with bristly red blooe bottlebrush trees that lined the entire block

Woofer sniffed at them as he proceeded east, and they ht she knehere the dog was taking the home," she said

Detective Gulliver turned in the front seat to look at her "You knohere he’s going?"

"We were there for dinner In the kitchen" And then: "My God, the poor blind woman with no eyes!"

Pacific View Care Ho cli hours, no receptionist was on duty Harry could look through the glass in the top of the door and see the di the bell, a woh the intercoent business, and she sounded concerned and eager to cooperate

He checked his atch three tie She didn’t take an extraordinarily long tiirl who had lost an arm at the rave, and each second blinked off by the red indicator light on his watch was part of the countdown to his own execution

The nurse, who identified herself as the night supervisor, was a nononsense Filipino lady, petite but not in the least fragile, and when she saw hiuine than she had been over the intercom She would not open up to him

First of all, she didn’t believe he was a police officer He couldn’t bla that after all he had been through during the past twelve or fourteen hours, he looked as if he lived in a packing crate Well, actually, Sa crate, and Harry didn’t look quite that bad, but he certainly C looked like a flophouse dweller with a longterm moral debt to the Salvation Army

She would only open the door the width of the industrialquality security chain, so heavy it was surely the model used to restrict access to nuclearh his police ID wallet Although it included a photograph that was sufficiently unflattering to resemble him in his current battered and filthy condition, she was unconvinced that he was an officer of the law

Wrinkling her cute nose, the night supervisor said, "What else have you got?"

He was sorely teap, ck the hah the back of her head But she was in her rown up underand been toughened bythe Marcos regih in his face, stick her finger in the barrel, and tell hio to hell

Instead, he produced Connie Gulliver, as for once a rinned through the door glass at the pintsized Gestapo Florence Nightingale, ap on deet into thehome

He checked his watch It was 2:03 AM Based on the liuessed that their psychotic Houdini required as little as an hour but more coming his supernatural batteries in about the saician needed to stuff all the silk scarves and doves and rabbits back up his sleeves to get ready for the late show If that was the case, then they were safe at least until twothirty and probably until three o’clock

Less than an hour at the outside

Harry was so intently focused on the blinking red light of his watch that he lost track of what Connie said to the nurse Either she charmed the lady or came up with an incredibly effective threat, because the security chain was removed, the door was opened, their ID wallets were returned to them with smiles, and they elcoht supervisor saw Janet and Danny, who had been out of sight on the lower front steps, she had second thoughts When she saw the dog; she had third thoughts, even though he agging his tail and grinning and, quite clearly, being intentionally cute

When she sawand sain

For policemen, as well as for housetohouse salesh the door Once inside, Harry and Connie were no easier to dislodge than the average vacuu all manner of sample filth on the carpet to demonstrate the superior suction of his product

When it becaoing to disturb the home’s patients more than would cooperation, she spoke a few , which Harry assueny, and led theht

Not surprisingly, in all of Pacific View’s accommodations, there was only one eyeless woman with lids sewn shut over empty sockets

Her name was Jennifer Drab

Mrs Drackman’s handsome but "distant" sonthey were told in whispered confidence while in transitpaid for three shifts of the finest private nurses, seven days a week, to care for his "mentally disoriented" mother She was the only patient in Pacific View provided with such "suffocating" ant" care that the facility offered in its e With those and a nuht supervisor made it clear, ever so politely that she didn’t care for the son, felt the private nurses were unnecessary and an insult to the staff, and thought the patient was creepy

"?

The private nurse on the graveyard shift was an exotically beautiful black woman named Tanya Delaney She was not sure of the propriety and wisdoodly hour, even if some of them were police officers, and briefly she threatened to be even ht supervisor had been

The gaunt, ht, but Harry could not look away from her She compelled attention because within the horror of her current condition there was a tragically faint but undeniable ghost of the beauty that had once been, a specter that haunted the ravaged face and body and, by refusing to relinquish entire possession of her, allowed a chilling comparison bethat she most likely had been in her youth and what she had beco" Tanya Delaney spoke in a whisper, as they all did She stood between the seriously "She doesn’t sleep peacefully very often, so I wouldn’t like to wake her"

Beyond the piled pillows and the patient’s face, on a nightstand that also held a corkbottom tray with a chrome carafe of icewater, stood a sioodlooking young man of about twenty An aquiline nose

Thick dark hair His pale eyes were gray in the blackand white photo and were surely gray in reality, the precise shade of slightly tarnished silver It was the boy in blue jeans and a Tecate Tshirt, the boy licking his lips with a pink tongue at the sight of Jaard’s bloodsoaked victilare in the boy’s eyes after he’d been forced back behind the yellow crimescene tape and humiliated in front of the crowd

"It’s hily

Tanya Delaney followed his gaze "Bryan Mrs Drack to meet Connie’s eyes, Harry said, "It’s him"

"Doesn’t look like the ratman," Sammy said He had moved to the corner of the roo that the blind supposedly co and a sharper sense of s mewled once, briefly, quietly

Janet Marco pulled her sleepy boy tighter against her side and stared worriedly at the photograph "Looks a little like