I glanced back. He was clutching his shoulder, just beginning to move in my direction, coming slowly again. He didn't seem worried that I'd get away, so I had to guess that he had jammed the door to the stairwell as he came through. Either that or he knew that the shit he'd popped me with would soon knock me out. I was losing contact with my extremities and I could scarcely sense my own grip on the board. A chill was seeping from my skin toward my core as if I were being put through a quick-freeze process for shipping to God knows where. I was working as hard as I could, but the darkness had become gelatinous and I felt slow. Time was grinding down too as my body labored against the drug. My mind was working, but I felt myself distracted by the odd sensations I experienced.

Oh, the bothersome details that finally fall into place like a little right-brain joke. It did come to me, in a flash, like a bubble through my veins, that Fraker was the one supplying Kitty with drugs, probably in exchange for information about Bobby's search for the gun. The stash in her bed-table drawer was a plant. He'd been there that night. Maybe he thought it was time to take her out, lest she in her guilt admit to her own duplicity where Bobby was concerned.

The distance to the corner of the hallway had been extended. I'd been running forever. The simple commands I was managing to send to my body were taking too long and I was losing the feedback system that records a response. Was I, in fact, running? Was I going anywhere? Sound was being stretched out, the echo of my own footsteps coming belatedly. I felt as if I were bounding down a corridor with a floor like a trampoline. Flash number two. Fraker had rigged the autopsy report. No seizure. He'd cut the brake lines. Too bad I hadn't figured it out before now. God, what a dummy I was.

I reached the corner slowing, and I could feel my body folding down on itself. As I rounded the corner, I had to pause. I propped myself against the wall, working to

breathe. I had to clear my head. Stay upright. I had to lift my arms if I could. Time had begun to stretch out like taffy, long strands, sticky, hard to manage.

He was singing again, treating me to some oldies but goodies in his own private hit parade. He'd moved on now to "Accentuate the positive... eliminate the negative"... vowels dragged out like a phonograph record slowing when the power shuts off.

Even the voice in my own brain got hollow and remote.

Crouch, Kinsey, it said.