"I don"t know."

"And so you"re not only abandoning the work, you have no suggestion as to how I might continue to pursue it?"

"No, I don"t," Graves replied. "All the material you gave me is still in the office." He took Mrs. Harrison"s letter to her from his pocket. "Except for this," he said as he held it out to her.

But she did not take it from him. "Keep it." Her voice was scalding. "As a souvenir. Of your failure."

Graves pocketed the letter.

"And what should I say to Mrs. Harrison?" Miss Davies demanded.

Graves faced her squarely. "That she has to accept that she"ll never know what happened to her daughter."

Miss Davies" eyes took on a terrible ire. "Let it go, you mean?" she demanded shrilly. "Just leave Faye"s death unanswered? Is that what you"ve done, Mr. Graves?" Her contemptuous accusation fell upon him like a heavy weight. "Have you accepted that you"ll never know what happened to your sister?"

Graves still felt the bite of Miss Davies" departing words as he packed his clothes in the usual methodical style. He arranged each item in his suitcase, obeying the rigid sense of order he imposed on everything. He knew that this compulsion sprang from the hideous chaos that had once engulfed him, his sister"s agony carried out by sheer whimsy, tortures conceived then immediately implemented, trivial objects transformed by the moral vacuum that ruled the moment, matches and pliers turned toys in Kessler"s fearful game of "things to do."

A dreadful taunt sliced the air, You won"t tell n.o.body. You won"t tell n.o.body.

Graves glanced toward the living room and saw Gwen standing beneath its broad beam, her dress hanging upon her like a b.l.o.o.d.y rag, arms dangling limply at her sides. Kessler stood behind her, his hand beneath her chin, lifting her battered face. Pretty, pretty, once so pretty. Pretty, pretty, once so pretty.

Graves" eyes shot to the window, the black sweep of the pond, the dark wood that surrounded it. He was there too. Standing in the darkness, a gray rope dangling loosely in his hands.

Graves fixed his gaze on the open suitcase. He stood, breathing slowly, rhythmically, waiting for it to pa.s.s. When it had, he glanced toward the window. The pond now lay motionless beyond it. The trees had resumed their earthly shapes. The grounds rested silent, vacant, with nothing to disturb them but Graves" memory of a vanished man.

"Right on time," Eleanor said as she opened the door.

Graves walked into the living room, noticed the desk in the far corner, his most recent novel open on a chair beside it.

"I skipped ahead in the series," Eleanor explained as she closed the door. "To the last one." She looked as if she expected some mild protest on his part. "I was eager to see how you"d developed as a writer."

Graves said nothing. His books seemed strangely distant to him now. He could feel himself retreating from them, leaving them behind as he was leaving Eleanor behind. He thought of the rope. The metal bar. The chair he could stand upon. In his mind they shone like lights, beckoning him home.

Eleanor strode into her bedroom and emerged with a bright red shawl. "I saw you head up to the main house after I left you. Did you tell Miss Davies that you couldn"t find a story?"

"Yes."

"How did she react?"

"She was surprised. She said that I"d forgotten what I"d been asked to do in the first place."

Eleanor drew the bright shawl over her shoulders. "What did she mean by that?"

"That I was supposed to imagine what happened to Faye the way Slovak does. She said that I"d I"d let the facts get in the way of my imagination. let the facts get in the way of my imagination.

"But facts are facts," Eleanor said.

"Yes, they are," Graves said. "So I told her it was probably a stranger who killed Faye." He felt Kessler step in out of the night, grasp his bare shoulder. "Someone who came out of the dark."

Eleanor looked at him oddly. "Except that Faye died in daylight."

She watched him for a moment, silently, as she had several times before, her gaze intent, concentrated, a searchlight aimed at his secret history, burning it away layer by layer, seeking its undiscovered core. "Well, shall we?" she said a little too brightly, motioning him toward the door.

The restaurant was small and nearly empty. Their table was set off in a corner, a white tablecloth thrown over it, everything neatly arranged, a single red candle burning softly at the center.

Eleanor ordered a scotch. When it came she lifted her gla.s.s. "I know you don"t drink, but we can make a toast anyway. To the rest of the summer."

Graves tapped his water gla.s.s to her drink. "To your play."

"And your books." She took a sip, then said, "Will there be any more books, Paul?"

He realized that he had no answer for her. He had often thought of his own death. Planned it. Gathered the necessary materials. He had even come to Riverwood in hope of determining if the hour had finally come. But it had never occurred to him that while he lived he would cease to write.

"I mean, books in the series," Eleanor explained. "After having read the last one, it seems to me that Slovak has gotten awfully tired of his life."

"It"s the only life he has."

"Then it"s a miserable one," Eleanor told him. "So miserable, it"s hard for me to imagine him ... continuing. I mean, he"s going down very fast. And there doesn"t appear to be anything that can stop it."

"Maybe there isn"t."

"So what are you going to do with him? You"re the writer. You give the orders. What are you planning for Slovak?"

He saw his old companion poised at the brink of the ledge, Kessler staring at him coldly. So far he had kept Kessler silent. Now he gave him a single word, a command hissed to Slovak in the same sharp, commanding tone he used with Sykes, Jump! Jump!

"I mean, Slovak has to have a way out of this ... darkness," Eleanor said. "Doesn"t he?" She waited for Graves to answer, but when he didn"t she added, "And Sykes too. There"s a problem with him. In the last book he"s become so deranged by all the things he"s helped Kessler do, he"s almost totally paranoid. Slovak sees that clearly. Remember what he says about him, "Sykes is the terror terror makes.""

Graves felt the impulse sweep over him in a wave of heat so fiery it seemed satanic, so h.e.l.lish he all but trembled at the part of him from which it had boiled up. "Sometimes I want to kill them all," he said before he could stop himself. "Kessler. Sykes. Even Slovak. Everyone. Everything. The whole world."

Her response stunned him with its desperate truth. "It"s loneliness, Paul. Only loneliness can make you feel like that."

She had said it quietly, as if she"d had a long familiarity with the terrible impulse he described. Watching her as she brought the gla.s.s to her lips, her eyes gazing at him questioningly from above its crystal rim, he wondered just how often she"d stood upon her balcony, stared out over the city, and suddenly seen it explode before her, become a ball of flame, the air a stink of smoldering flesh. Had she seen and smelled the final apocalypse in a visionary instant, the end of life, the end of man, and heard her mind p.r.o.nounce its tragic judgment, Good. Good.

They finished dinner with no more talk either of Graves" books, the fate he foresaw for the characters who populated them, or of Riverwood. They did not review what they"d learned about Faye Harrison"s death or revisit any aspect of the case. And yet, both Graves" novels and Riverwood hung in the air around them, trivializing all other subjects, reducing them to the status of evasions.

Nonetheless, the conspiracy held. It was a tacit agreement to keep things at a distance, so that they discussed research methods rather than the deeper objects of their research, the use of language rather than the ideas it conveyed, dramatic tension rather than the one Graves felt physically, the electric charge each time she looked at him or spoke to him, and which he felt as little more than a suggestion of the lightning bolt that would undoubtedly accompany her actual touch.

It was just after nine when they left the restaurant and made their way back to Riverwood. Eleanor was behind the wheel, as usual. Graves sat on the pa.s.senger side, trying to hold his eyes on the road, almost wishing that he could simply disappear, not face the dismal moment when he would have to leave her, and in doing so return to that very loneliness she had already identified in him, and which now, for the first time in his life, seemed unbearable.

She slowed as she neared his cottage, then sped forward again, pa.s.sing it as well as her own, taking the long curve around the pond so that she finally brought the car to a halt in the driveway of the mansion. "It"s a pretty night," she said. "I thought we might take a final stroll around the grounds."

They stood together in the darkness, facing the pond, Graves" mind now suddenly returning to the day of Faye Harrison"s disappearance. Once again he tried to imagine what the workmen at the second cottage had seen that morning, a slim young girl making her way across the lawn. He knew that although Faye had lifted her hand to shield her eyes, it had not been against the sun. For the sun had been behind her. Instead, it now seemed to Graves that Faye had to have been shielding herself, hiding her face from those who might otherwise have seen it. For a brief time he"d considered the possibility that it might have been Mona Flagg behind the uplifted hand, Mona, Edward"s p.a.w.n, concealing her ident.i.ty. But now he knew that it had never been Mona. It had been Faye and only Faye who"d crossed the lawn that morning, not Mona Flagg in Faye"s clothes. Still, she had undoubtedly lifted her hand against a morning light that hadn"t been there. Why had she done that? Why had she not wanted anyone to see her face?

Suddenly Graves heard a voice in his mind. It was not one he"d ever actually heard, but he recognized it instantly. The voice his imagination had given Faye Harrison, small, trusting, betrayed, Remember me. Remember me.

An aching in the air swept toward Graves. He saw her step out of the deep summer night, glimmer eerily in her pale blue dress, then withdraw into the shadows once again, leaving nothing but her whisper in the air, Remember me. Remember me.

"Faye," he said.

"What is it?" Eleanor asked softly.

Graves recalled the photograph Portman had studied so intently on that last day of his life. He could feel his imagination heating up, driving him beyond the plodding, investigative methods he"d previously relied upon, returning him to Slovak"s pa.s.sionate and uncertain ways.

"What are you thinking, Paul?" Eleanor demanded.

He glanced toward the woods, and she was there again. At the edge of the trail, the nightbound forest like a black wall behind her. She was staring at him imploringly, translucent and slowly undulating, as if mirrored by dark water. Graves could see the desolation in her face, hear her voice, scarcely audible above the whisper of the leaves, Oh, please, please, please ... Oh, please, please, please ...

"Faye," Graves said again. In the distance he saw her swiftly turn and head up the trail, her body dissolving into the green filament of the forest wall. "She was in such pain," he said.

Eleanor took his arm and urged him forward protectively, leading him away from a precipice she could not entirely see. "What about her pain?" she asked.

As they walked toward the gazebo, Graves could feel all the things he"d learned in the past few days whirl wildly in his mind, a maelstrom of memories and images, real and imagined. He knew that they were gathering together as they did in Slovak"s mind, twisting and turning, a pattern emerging from the roiling ma.s.s. The white frame of the gazebo glowed softly in the hazy light, red roses drooping heavily in the summer air.

"She was crying," he said. "That"s why she hid her face when she crossed the lawn that morning."

Eleanor said nothing, but only continued to guide him forward, her arm still delicately encircling his. They reached the gazebo.

"She knew what Warren Davies had done to her," Graves said. He could feel his mind gathering bits of information, desperately working to arrange the images even as they flooded in. "She knew, but she hadn"t told anyone." He stopped, now locked in a furious concentration, his mind like a steaming chamber, hot mists spewing everywhere. "So no one knew why." As if it were a small animal trained by another, his hand entered his pocket, drew out the letter Mrs. Harrison had written to Allison Davies. "Why, Faye?" he asked as he handed it to Eleanor.

She read it slowly, by the faded light that swept out from the gazebo, meticulously going over each word. When she"d finished it, she looked up and said, "Mrs. Harrison was an English teacher, you said. From the old school. A stickler for grammar, punctuation." She pressed the letter toward Graves, her finger indicating the question Graves had just repeated: Why, Faye? Why, Faye? "It"s the comma that doesn"t fit. A comma signals direct address. Airs. Harrison isn"t asking "Why Faye?" That is, why, of all the girls on earth, it had to be Faye who was murdered. Her question isn"t directed to G.o.d or fate or anything like that. It"s directed to Faye herself. She isn"t asking who killed Faye. She"s not looking for a murderer." Her eyes widened. "She"s looking for a ... reason. A "It"s the comma that doesn"t fit. A comma signals direct address. Airs. Harrison isn"t asking "Why Faye?" That is, why, of all the girls on earth, it had to be Faye who was murdered. Her question isn"t directed to G.o.d or fate or anything like that. It"s directed to Faye herself. She isn"t asking who killed Faye. She"s not looking for a murderer." Her eyes widened. "She"s looking for a ... reason. A reason reason why Faye went into the woods." why Faye went into the woods."

"Yes." Graves sensed Slovak at his side, urging him onward invisibly, probing the thing that didn"t fit-slight as a comma-demanding that he let his imagination take the reins. He drew the letter from Eleanor"s hand, read it again, this time studying it as Slovak would study a murder room, not the b.l.o.o.d.y tapestry, but some small element within it, the odd crease on the murder bed. "The mystery of my daughter"s death." "The mystery of my daughter"s death." Another piece slid into place. "Someone from Riverwood," he said. "Portman knew it was someone from Riverwood who killed Faye." Another piece slid into place. "Someone from Riverwood," he said. "Portman knew it was someone from Riverwood who killed Faye."

Eleanor shook her head. "But we"ve gone over all that. No one from Riverwood could have done it."

Portman"s words emerged from the maelstrom.

"She went into the woods," Graves said as the dying Portman had. "Alone."

Eleanor peered at him quizzically. "Well, she did did go into the woods, Paul. Faye, I mean. And she went alone." go into the woods, Paul. Faye, I mean. And she went alone."

Graves considered Portman"s words again. And suddenly an answer came to him. A shift in perspective. It was like something bestowed upon him. Unexpected. Undeserved.

"In all the names Portman gathered, all the people whose alibis he checked and rechecked, only one person from Riverwood was missing. But we never noticed it. It was hidden by not being hidden." He saw a figure move up Mohonk Trail, following its narrow path around Indian Rock, then downward, toward the river, plunging through the dense summer growth, breathing in sharp, painful gasps. "She went into the woods," he said again. He felt the ache in her legs, the emptiness in her stomach. But more than anything, he felt dread like a snarling dog at her heels, driving her forward with a terrible relentlessness until she"d finally broken through the jungle thickness, glimpsed a hint of light blue shifting silently behind a curtain of verdant green. "Mrs. Harrison," he said. "That"s who Portman meant. That Mrs. Harrison went into the woods. That Mrs. Harrison went into the woods. Alone. Not Faye. But her mother." Alone. Not Faye. But her mother."

He recalled the gray room in which he"d found Mrs. Harrison days before, its walls blank except for the images of Mary and her murdered son, her voice echoing through the shadowy s.p.a.ce that had divided them, Some souls will never be at peace. Some souls will never be at peace. He saw her hair like a silver aurora around her face, the blue eyes glistening as she stared at him. He saw her hair like a silver aurora around her face, the blue eyes glistening as she stared at him. Because they"ve done something terrible. Because they"ve done something terrible. Her lips trembled as she mouthed the final word: Her lips trembled as she mouthed the final word: Murder. Murder.

Graves pulled his mind back to the present, the white trellis of the gazebo, the almost sickening aroma of the roses. For a moment he peered at the bas.e.m.e.nt door, half expecting to see Faye emerge from it, to make her way toward the woods. But the door remained closed. And so, he felt his eyes rise toward the second floor, moving from one window to the next, finding nothing but darkness.

Then Faye"s voice sounded in his mind again. Remember me. Remember me. He saw her lift her head toward the second floor, her eyes shifting from one window to the next, then to the s.p.a.ces in between them, the crest of Riverwood, oval of vines carved into the wood, crests that now seemed to hang from the side of the house, looped and coiled. He saw her lift her head toward the second floor, her eyes shifting from one window to the next, then to the s.p.a.ces in between them, the crest of Riverwood, oval of vines carved into the wood, crests that now seemed to hang from the side of the house, looped and coiled.

"The missing rope," Graves said.

He felt not his own eyes staring at the design, but Faye"s, fixed upon it, her mind sunk in its own dark and airless chamber, tormented and betrayed, all she had once trusted gone to rot. How painfully Andre Grossman"s words must have pierced her, If you live you will live to tell it. If you die, your body will tell it for you. If you live you will live to tell it. If you die, your body will tell it for you.

To live would mean that it would all be revealed, Graves realized suddenly. To live would mean the ruin of Riverwood, of the Davieses, whom she admired, of Allison, whom she loved.

"The rope came from the bas.e.m.e.nt," Graves said. "When Edward and Mona came back to the boathouse that afternoon, the rope that was used to moor the boat was missing. It was there when they left, but it was gone when they returned. Someone took it." He saw Faye at the entrance to the corridor, waiting silently as the boat drifted out of the boathouse, Edward standing at the helm, Mona beneath the white umbrella. "Faye went into the boathouse after Edward and Mona left. She took the rope that had been used to moor their boat. She put it in the pocket of her dress and took it with her into the woods. The same rope Mrs. Harrison later found coiled around her daughter"s neck, and which she either hid somewhere or threw in the river."

"Why would Mrs. Harrison hide the rope?" Eleanor asked.

Other words spun out of the whirlwind, Everybody loved Faye. Everybody loved Faye. "Because she loved her daughter," Graves replied. "And because of that love, she wanted to conceal what had really happened to her." He saw the walls of Mrs. Harrison"s spartan room, Mary in her anguish, cradling her dead child. "She was a devout Catholic. She wanted Faye to be buried in sacred ground. And so she had to hide the truth about the way she really died." "Because she loved her daughter," Graves replied. "And because of that love, she wanted to conceal what had really happened to her." He saw the walls of Mrs. Harrison"s spartan room, Mary in her anguish, cradling her dead child. "She was a devout Catholic. She wanted Faye to be buried in sacred ground. And so she had to hide the truth about the way she really died."

Eleanor was watching him intently. "Paul, do you know how Faye really died?"

"Yes," Graves said. "She-" He stopped. The dread rose in him like a stinking water, bringing it all back. Everything he knew about Faye"s death. The precise nature of it. Each detail. Along with how he knew it. He saw Gwen standing in the middle of the room, Kessler slowly circling her, stroking his chin, before he stopped suddenly and barked his command, Get a rope! Get a rope!

He saw the rope move through the air as if it were alive, a serpent slithering weightlessly through s.p.a.ce, toward Kessler"s outstretched hands. He could see Gwen standing limply beside him, desolate beyond imagining, watching vacantly as Kessler shaped the rope into a noose and slung it over the wooden beam, snapping his commands even as he worked: Bring me that chair! Get her on it! Bring me that chair! Get her on it!

"Faye wasn"t strangled," Graves told Eleanor. "Not manually. Not lying on the ground. With someone on top of her. Tightening the rope."

"But the autopsy ..."

Graves lifted his hand to silence her. The whole story had suddenly formed in his mind, the design growing out of the detail, as it always did for Slovak. "The photograph. The one Portman was looking at when he died. The one that showed her hands."

He saw Kessler dangle the noose before Gwen"s battered face, his eyes flashing as he taunted her, Ever seen a hanging, b.i.t.c.h? Ever seen a hanging, b.i.t.c.h?

"Faye"s hands were red and raw," Graves said. "Her nails were broken. Because she"d struggled to pull the rope from around her neck."

Gwen was dangling now, a battered doll bung from a thick cord, her hands pulling desperately at its tightening coil.

In a voice that seemed far away, Graves heard himself say, "Faye was hanged."

Eleanor drew in a quick breath, but Graves did not look at her. Instead, he stared toward the woods, imagining the trail that led through them, pa.s.sed Indian Rock and down Mohonk Trail to where the cave gaped open. He saw a tree a few feet beyond it, a stump beneath a low-slung limb, feet poised briefly on the stump, then thrust forward, jolting the limb violently, the feet now struggling to regain the stump, sawing wildly as the rope tightened, kicking chips of rotten wood onto the surrounding ground.

He felt his mind hurl backward to the steaming farmhouse on Powder Road, the moment when Kessler"s foot had stopped suddenly as he was about to kick the chair, another idea coming to him, a better way to hang a girl, one much more torturous and agonizing.

"Hanged slowly," Graves said.

He saw Kessler lift Gwen from the chair, place her once again on the floor, the noose still around her neck, the other end tossed over the beam.

"Faye had time to look around," Graves went on. "Time to see the river and the cave."

Gwen"s eyes were bruised and swollen, but still open enough to see Kessler as he seized the unattached end of the rope and began to move away from her.

"Time to think about what was happening. Time to know that she was going to die."

He saw Kessler grab Sykes" arm, press the rope into his trembling hand. Heard his order split the air, Haul her up! Haul her up!

"Faye"s neck wasn"t broken. She didn"t lose consciousness." Graves saw the rope grow taut, saw Gwen"s feet begin to rise slowly off the floor. "She fought to get a footing." First to the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, held there for a time at Kessler"s command, then lifted farther, to the tips of her toes. "Fought to get her breath." Held again, then hauled up a final time, though just off the ground, to dangle there while she gasped for life. "Fought to live."

He saw Gwen"s fingers claw at the rope, jerking, pulling, yanking until her hands were torn, her fingernails b.l.o.o.d.y, broken.

"That"s the way Faye died," Graves said.

Eleanor"s eyes bore into him like two searing lights. "Paul, how can you be so sure of that?"

He had no choice but to answer. "Because that"s the way my sister died." He saw Gwen"s bare feet pointed violently downward, her toes stretched out, searching desperately for the floor as he knew Faye"s had sought the crumbling stump, tried frantically to regain it, but feeling it shatter each time she touched it, too rotted and insubstantial to bear her weight. "She kept tearing at the rope, pulling herself up, gasping, then dropping again. By the time it was over, her hands and fingers looked just like Faye"s did in that picture Portman held when he died."