“Hey, Bill,” Tom says. “Something under the chair.”

Hodges bends to look, although doing so turns up the heat in his gut. What he sees is a black disc, maybe three inches across. He picks it up by the edges. Embossed on it in gold is a single word: STEINER.

“Is it from a camera?” Tom asks.

“From a pair of binoculars. Police departments with fat budgets use Steiner binocs.”

With a good pair of Steiners—and as far as Hodges knows, there’s no such thing as a bad pair—the watcher could have put himself right into the Ellerton-Stover living room, assuming the blinds were up . . . and they had been when he and Holly were in that room this morning. Hell, if the women had been watching CNN, the watcher could have read the news crawl at the bottom of the screen.

Hodges doesn’t have an evidence Baggie, but there’s a travel-sized pack of Kleenex in his coat pocket. He takes out two, carefully wraps the lens cap, and slips it into the inside pocket of his coat. He rises from the chair (provoking another twinge; the pain is bad this afternoon), then spies something else. Someone has carved a single letter into the wood upright between the two overhead doors, perhaps using a pocketknife.

It’s the letter Z.

12

They are almost back to the driveway when Hodges is visited by something new: a searing bolt of agony behind his left knee. It feels as if he’s been stabbed. He cries out as much in surprise as from the pain and bends over, kneading at the throbbing knot, trying to make it let go. To loosen up a little, at least.

Tom bends down next to him, and thus neither of them sees the elderly Chevrolet cruising slowly along Hilltop Court. Its fading blue paint is dappled with spots of red primer. The old gent behind the wheel slows down even more, so he can stare at the two men. Then the Chevrolet speeds up, sending a puff of blue exhaust from its tailpipe, and passes the Ellerton-Stover house, headed for the buttonhook turnaround at the end of the street.

“What is it?” Tom asks. “What happened?”

“Cramp,” Hodges says through gritted teeth.

“Rub it.”

Hodges gives him a look of pained humor through his tumbled hair. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Let me.”

Tom Saubers, a physical therapy veteran thanks to his attendance at a certain job fair six years ago, pushes Hodges’s hand aside. He removes one of his gloves and digs in with his fingers. Hard.

“Ow! Jesus! That fucking hurts!”

“I know,” Tom says. “Can’t be helped. Move as much of your weight to your good leg as you can.”

Hodges does so. The Malibu with its patches of dull red primer paint cruises slowly by once more, this time headed back down the hill. The driver helps himself to another long look, then speeds up again.

“It’s letting go,” Hodges says. “Thank God for small favors.” It is, but his stomach is on fire and his lower back feels like he wrenched it.