"I don't remember," he answered too quickly. His voice had hardened and he had closed the door till only a five-inch crack remained. The half-face I saw was grim. "Cliff Crimmins is also gone. Motorcycle accident in Vegas-it made the papers. He was into that motocross stuff, stunt driving, parachuting, surfing, anything with speed and danger. Both of them were like that. Spoiled kids, always had to be the center of attention. Carson bought them all the toys they wanted."

The door closed.

I'd raised someone else's stress level. Some psychologist.

No end to justify the means, either.

Had he reacted with special vehemence when the topic was the second Mrs. Crimmins, or had I already primed his emotional pump so that anything I said raised his blood pressure?

Walking back to the car, I decided upon the former: how likely would he be to forget the name of one of the richest women in town? So something about Mrs. Crimmins bothered him ... but big deal. Maybe he'd hated her. Or loved her. Or lusted for her without satisfaction.

No reason to think it related to anything I was after.

I didn't even know what I was after.

Dry hole.

It was still before noon, and I felt useless. Haas claimed no Treadway residents were around, and maybe he was telling the truth. But I felt unsettled-something about his demeanor-why had he agreed to see me, started off amiable, then turned?

Probably just horror flashbacks.

Still, as long as I was up here ... I'd already exhausted the major news sources on the Ardullo murders, but small towns had local papers, and Treadway's might've covered the carnage in detail. The records had all been shipped to Bakers-field. Not much of it, Haas claimed. But city libraries appreciated the value of old news.

As I reached the Seville, a baby blue security sedan nosed through the trailer park. Different guard at the wheel, also young and mustachioed. Maybe that was the Bunker Protection image.

He cruised alongside me, stopped the way the first man had.

Staring. No surprise. He'd been told about me.

I said, "Have a nice day."

"You too, sir."

On my way out, I tripled the speed limit.

Back at the Grapevine gas station, I made a few calls and learned that the main reference library for Kern County was Beale Memorial, in Bakersfield.

Another forty-five minutes of driving. I found Beale easily enough, a ten-year-old, modernistic, sand-colored structure in a nice part of town, backed by a two-hundred-vehicle parking lot. Inside was a fresh-smelling atrium and the feel of efficiency. I told the smiling librarian at the reference desk what I was after and she directed me to the Jack Maguire Local History Room, where another pleasant woman checked a computer database and said, "We've got twenty years of something called the Treadway Intelligencer. Hard copy, not microfiche."

"Could I see it, please?"

"All of it?"

"Unless that's a problem."

"Let me check."