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During those months, Jonas could have petitioned a court to have the boy removed from the intravenous feed But Jeremy would have perished from starvation or dehydration, and soht suffer pain fro on the depth of his stupor Jonas was not prepared to be the cause of that pain More insidiously, on a level so deep that even he did not realize it until otistic notion that he stillthe boy ever woke--an explanation of sociopathic behavior that had eluded all other seekers in the history of ht owing to his unique experience with the madness of his father and his son, orphaned and wounded by the first, ed by the second In any event he paid the nursing-home bills And every Sunday afternoon, he sat at his son’s bedside, staring at the pale, placid face in which he could see so ained consciousness Brain dae had left him aphasic, without the power to speak or read He had not known his naotten to be where he was He reacted to his face in the nize his father When the police cauilt nor comprehension He had awakened as a dullard, his intellectual capacity severely reduced from what it had been, his attention span short, easily confused

With gestures, he coht light An ophthalical exaeneration of the irises The contractile membrane seemed to have been partially eaten away The sphincter pupillae--thethe pupil and adht to the eye--had all but atrophied Also, the dilator pupillae had shrunk, pulling the iris wide open And the connection between the dilatorthe eye virtually no ability to reduce the aht The condition ithout precedent and degenerative in nature, ical correction impossible The boy was provided with heavily tinted, wraparound sunglasses Even then he preferred to pass daylight hours only in rooms where metal blinds or heavy drapes could close off the s

Incredibly, Jeremy became a favorite of the staff at the rehabilitation hospital to which he was transferred a few days after awakening at the nursing home They were inclined to feel sorry for hiood-looking boy who had fallen so low In addition, he now had the sweet temperament of a shy child, a result of his IQ loss, and there was no sign whatsoever of his for hostility

For over four months he walked the halls, helped the nurses with siled with a speech therapist to little effect, stared out the s at the night for hours at a tih to put flesh on his bones, and exercised in the gyhts off His wasted body was rebuilt, and his straw-dry hair regained its luster

Al to wonder where Jereer able to benefit from physical or occupational therapy, the boy had disappeared Although he had shown no previous inclination to roarounds of the rehabilitation hospital, he walked out unnoticed one night, and never came back

Jonas had assumed the police would be quick to track the boy But they had been interested in hi person, not as a suspected ained all of his faculties, they would have considered hiitive from justice, but his continued--and apparently permanent--mental disabilities were a kind of ier the same person that he had been when the crimes were committed; with his diuilingly si-person investigation was no investigation at all Police ainst ih the cops believed that the boy had probably wandered away, fallen into the hands of the wrong people, and already been exploited and killed, Jonas knew his son was alive And in his heart he knew that as loose in the world was not a sly sick young man

They had all been deceived

He could not prove that Jeremy’s retardation was an act, but in his heart he knew that he had allowed himself to be fooled He had accepted the new Jereht down to it, he could not bear the anguish of having to confront the Jere proof of his own complicity in Jeremy’s fraud was the fact that he had not requested a CAT scan to detere At the ti that y, an incredible reaction for any physician but not so incredible for a father as unwilling to come face-to-face with the monster inside his son

And now the monster was set free He had no proof, but he knew Jeremy was out there soh a series of three detective agencies, he had sought his son, because he shared in the al, responsibility for any criotten nowhere, eventually concluding that their inability to pick up a trail meant no trail existed The boy, they reported, was most likely dead

The third, Morton Redloas a one-encies, Redlow possessed a bulldog deterress would be made And last week, Redlow had hinted that he was onto so, that he would have concrete news by the weekend

The detective had not been heard froes left on his phoneaway from his computer and the conference paper he was unable to work on, Jonas picked up the telephone and tried the detective again He got the recording But he could no longer leave his na tape on Redlow’s es It cut hi about the detective

He put down the phone, got up from the desk, and went to theHis spirits were so low, he doubted they could be lifted any nificent view, but he illing to try Each new day was filled with so much more dread than the day before it, he needed all the help he could get just to be able to sleep at night and rise in thesun rippled in silver filareat piece of rippling blue-gray fabric with interwoven metallic threads

He told himself that Redloas only a few days late with his report, less than a week, nothing to be worried about The failure to return answering-ht only mean the detective was ill or preoccupied with a personal crisis

But he knew Redlow had found Jere from Jonas, had underesti its way south along the coast Large white birds kited in the sky behind the ship, diving into the sea and out again, no doubt snaring fish with each plunge Graceful and free, the birds were a beautiful sight, though not to the fish, of course Not to the fish

Lindsey went to her studio between the ina’s Sheboard, opened her sketch pad, and started to plan her next painting

She felt that it was i of art could soothe the soul as surely as the appreciation of it, but because sticking to everyday routine was the only way she could try to push back the forces of irrationality that see like black floodwaters into their lives Nothing could really go too far wrong--could it?--if she just kept painting, drinking her usual black coffee, eating threeher teeth at night, showering and rolling on her deodorant in theHow could some homicidal creature frohosts, goblins and roomed, deodorized, fluoridated, dressed, fed, employed, and motivated

That hat she wanted to believe But when she tried to sketch, she couldn’t quiet the tremors in her hands

Honell was dead

Cooper was dead

She kept looking at the , expecting to see that the spider had returned But there was no scurrying black forlass Treetops and blue sky beyond

After a while Hatch stopped in He hugged her from behind, and kissed her cheek

But he was in a soles with him He put the pistol on the top of her supply cabinet "Keep this with you if you leave the roo the day I know that I feel it Like he’s a va, for God’s sake But it still doesn’t hurt to be careful, especially when you’re here alone"

She was dubious, but she said, "All right"