Ben put a hand on my shoulder. “Alex, I don’t know what to say. I’m stunned. I haven’t seen a ruling from the bench in five years. I’m so sorry.”

I barely heard him, and I was hardly conscious of my family swarming around me. I looked up to see Christine and Anne Billingsley squeezing past to leave.

“What happened to you?” I asked, the words just coming. It was as if every muscle of control I had been exercising for the past couple of days gave out at once. “Is this what you wanted? To punish me? To punish my family? Why, Christine?”

Then Nana Mama spoke. “You’re cruel, and you’re selfish, Christine. I feel sorry for you.”

Christine turned from us and started to walk away very quickly, without saying a word. When she reached the courtroom doors, her shoulders hunched forward. Suddenly, she put a hand to her mouth. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought that she began to sob. Ms. Billingsley took her by the arm and ushered her out into the hallway.

I didn’t understand. Christine had just won, but she was weeping as if she had lost. Had she? Was that it? What had just happened inside her head?

A moment later I entered the hallway in a daze. Nana was holding one of my hands, Jannie the other. Christine was already gone, but someone else I didn’t want to see was waiting there.

James Truscott had somehow gotten inside the courthouse. And his photographer, too. What the hell was with him? Coming here. Now. What kind of story was he writing?

“Tough day in court, Dr. Cross,” he called up the corridor. “Care to comment on the ruling?”

I pushed past him with my family, but the photographer snapped off several invasive pictures, including single shots of Damon and Jannie.

“Don’t print a single picture of my family.” I turned to Truscott.

“Or what?” he asked, standing defiantly with his hands on his hips.

“Do not put my family’s pictures in your magazine. Do not.”

Then I yanked away the photographer’s camera and took it with me.

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

LATE THAT SAME DAY, the Storyteller was driving north on the 405, the San Diego Freeway, which was moving okay at about forty or so, and he was working over his “hate list” in his mind. Who did he want to do next, or if not next, before this thing wound down and he had to stop killing or be caught?

Stop! Just as suddenly as it had begun. The end. Finished. Story over.

He made a scribbly note in a small pad he always carried in the front-door pocket. It was difficult to write as he drove, and his car edged a little out of its lane.

Suddenly some moke to the right sat on his horn, and stayed on it for several seconds.