Everyone loved theArdullos, they were here so long, working hard even when it wasn 't sure that would help because crop prices were so low. But working hard because that's what they believed in, they were salt of the earth people, they just loved to work.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN HERE-IN TREADWAY!?

IN AMERICA!!!!???

But that's what happens when the mind goes I guess.

I wish I had the answers but I'm only a journalist not an oracle.

I wish God worked in ways that we could understand- why should babies and children suffer like that? What makes a guy just go crazy like that?

Questions, questions, question.

When I get some answers, I'II keep you posted.

S.N.C.

She never did.

Last edition of the Intelligencer.

Chapter 23

Returning to the main reference room, I pulled up San Francisco, Bakersfield, and Fresno microfiche on the Ardullo slayings. Nothing that hadn't been covered down in L.A.

In the Modesto Bee I found an obituary for Terri Mclntyre Ardullo. Her death was described as "untimely," no mention of homicide. The bio was brief: Girl Scout, volunteer for the Red Cross, honor student at Modesto High, member of the Spanish Club and the Shakespeare Society, B.A. from UC Davis.

She'd been survived by her parents, Wayne and Felice Mclntyre, and sisters Barbara Mclntyre and Lynn Blount. A Wayne Mclntyre was listed in Modesto. Feeling like a creep, I dialed and told the elderly woman who answered that I was conducting a search for relatives of the Argent family of Pennsylvania, in anticipation of the first Argent reunion, to be held in Scranton.

"Argent?" she said. "Then why us?"

"Your name came up on our computer list."

"Did it? Well, I'm afraid your computer got it wrong. We're not related to any Argents. Sorry."

No anger, no defensiveness.

No idea what had interested Claire about Peake.

I pictured him in his room, grimacing, twitching, rocking autistically. Nerve endings firing randomly as Lord knew what impulses coalesced and scrambled among the folds of beclouded frontal lobes.

The door opens, a woman enters, smiling, eager to help. A new doctor. The first person to show any interest in him in sixteen years.

She kneels down beside him, talks soothingly. Wanting to help him ... help he doesn't want. Help that makes him angry.

Put her in a box. Bad eyes.

I went searching in Miami newspapers for items about the Crimminses. Obituaries were the daily special: the Herald informed me that Carson and Sybil Crimmins had died together twelve years ago, in a yacht explosion off the coast of south Florida. An unnamed crew member had perished as well. Carson was listed as a "real estate developer," Sybil as a "former entertainer." No pictures.