I headed home against the rush hour traffic, making fairly good time, but still arriving too late to see Rita and the kids. So I consoled myself with a shower, a change of clothes, and then a cup of coffee and some toast before heading back across town to work.

It was no longer full rush hour, but as always there was still plenty of traffic, and in the stop-and-go on the turnpike I had time to think, and I didn't like what I came up with. Weiss was still at large, and I was reasonably sure that nothing had happened to make him change his mind about me and move on to somebody else. He was still after me, and he would find some other way, soon, either to kill me or make me wish he had. And as far as I could tell, there was nothing I could do about it except wait —wait either for him to do something, or for some wonderful idea to fall out of the sky and hit me on the head.

Traffic wound to a stop. I waited. A car roared past on the shoulder of the road, blasting its horn, and several other cars blasted back, but no ideas fell on me. I was just stuck in traffic, trying to get to work, and waiting for something awful to happen. I suppose that is a terrific description of the human condition, but I had always thought I was immune, since I am not technically human.

Traffic lurched forward. I crawled slowly past a flatbed truck that was pulled off onto the grass beside the road. The hood of the truck was up. Seven or eight men in dingy clothes sat on the bed of the truck. They were waiting, too, but they seemed a little happier about it than I was. Maybe they weren't being pursued by an insane homicidal artist.

Eventually I made it into work, and if I had been hoping for a warm welcome and a cheery hello from my co-workers I would have been bitterly disappointed. Vince Masuoka was in the lab and glanced up at me as I came in. “Where have you been?” he said, in a tone of voice that sounded like he was accusing me of something terrible.

“Fine, thanks” I said. “Very glad to see you, too.”

“It's been crazy around here” Vince said, apparently without hearing me at all. “The migrant worker thing, and on top of that yesterday some douche bag killed his wife and her boyfriend.”

“I'm sorry to hear it” I said.

“He used a hammer, and if you think that was fun ...” he said.

“Doesn't sound like it” I said, mentally adding, except for him.

“Could have used your help” he said.

“It's nice to be wanted” I said, and he looked at me with disgust for a moment before turning away.