“The fact is,” he said, “they hated everything about this place. The noise, the lack of privacy, even the sterility. You worked in Laminar Flow, right?”

“Three years.”

“Then you know the kind of food the kids in there get — processed and overcooked and dead.”

It was true. To a patient without normal immunity a fresh fruit or vegetable is a potential medium for lethal microbes, a glass of milk a breeding pond for lactobacillus. Consequently, everything the kids in the plastic rooms ate was processed to begin with, then heated and sterilized, sometimes to the point where no nutrients remained.

“We understand the concept,” he said, “but lots of parents have difficulty grasping why this horribly sick kid can have his fill of cola and potato chips and all kinds of junk while carrots are out. It goes against the grain.”

“I know,” I said, “but most people accept it pretty quickly because their child’s life is at stake. Why not the Swopes?”

“They’re country folk. They come from a place where the air is clean and people grow their own food. They see the city as a poisonous place. The father used to rail on about how bad the air was. ‘You’re breathing sewage’ he’d tell me every time I saw him. He had a thing for clean air and natural foods. For how healthy it was back home.”

“Not healthy enough,” I said.

“No, not healthy enough. How’s that for a frontal assault on a belief system?” He gave a mournful look. “Isn’t there a term in psych for when it all comes tumbling down like that?”

“Cognitive dissonance.”

“Whatever. Tell me,” he leaned forward, “what do people do when they’re in that state?”

“Sometimes change their beliefs, sometimes distort reality to fit those beliefs.”

He leaned back, ran his hands through his hair and smiled. “Need I say more?”

I shook my head and tried the coffee again. It had gotten colder, but no better.

“I keep hearing about the father,” I said. “The mother sounds like his shadow.”

“Far from it. If anything, she was the tougher of the two. It’s just that she was quiet. She let him run off at the mouth while she stayed with Woody, doing what needed to be done.”

“Could she have been behind their leaving?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All I’m saying is she was a strong woman, not some cardboard cutout.”

“What about the sister? Beverly said there was no love lost between her and her parents.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. She wasn’t around much, kept to herself when she was.”

He wiped his nose and stood.

“I don’t like to gossip,” he said. “I’ve indulged in too much of it already.”

He snatched up his white coat, flung it over his shoulder, turned his back and left me sitting there. I watched him walk away, lips moving, as if in silent prayer.

It was after eight by the time I reached Beverly Glen. My house sits atop an old bridle path forgotten by the city. There are no streetlights and the road is serpentine, but I know every twist by heart and drove home by sense of touch. In the mailbox was a love letter from Robin. I got high on it for a while but after the fourth reading, a hazy sense of sadness set in.

It was too late to feed the koi so I took a hot bath, toweled off, put on my ratty yellow robe, and carried a brandy into the small library off the bedroom. I finished writing a couple of overdue forensic reports then settled in an old chair and went through the stack of books I’d promised myself to read.

The first volume I grabbed was a collection of Diane Arbus photographs but the unforgiving portraits of dwarfs, derelicts, and other walking wounded made me more depressed. The next couple of choices were no better so I went out on the deck with my guitar, sat looking at the stars, and forced myself to play in a major key.

10

The next morning I went out on the terrace to get the paper and saw it lying there, sluglike and bloated.

It was a dead rat. A crude noose of hemp had been tied around its neck. Its lifeless eyes were open and clouded, its fur matted and greasy. A pair of disturbingly humanoid forepaws were frozen in supplication. The half-open mouth revealed frontal incisors the color of canned corn.

Underneath the corpse was a piece of paper. I used the Times to push the rodent away — it resisted, sticking, then slid like a puck to the edge of the terrace.

It was straight out of an old gangster movie: letters had been cut out of a magazine and pasted up to read:

I’d probably have figured it out anyway, but that made it a cinch.

Sacrificing the classified section to the task, I wrapped up the rat and carried it down to the garbage. Then I went inside and got on the phone.

Mal Worthy’s secretary had a secretary and I had to be assertive with both of them to get through to him.

Before I could speak he said, “I know, I got one, too. What color was yours?”

“Brownish gray, with a noose around its scrawny little neck.”