Overnight, he’d pretty much given up his dream of owning an art theater. It was an old dream anyway, concocted in L.A. during his college days, when such places were the hip spots for hip students to hang out. Times had changed, though, and cable TV and the multiplexes had pretty well killed off the independently owned art house. Today’s viewers were simply not as willing to make the effort to leave their homes and take a chance on quirky, unknown films when they knew they could catch the movies on cable in six months.

Hell, more people saw art films on video today than had ever seen them in a theater.

But it was still depressing.

He pulled up in front of the building and got out of the car to take a last look around. Now that he was out of the project, divorced from the hopes and wishes connected with it, he could see that the idea had been a shaky one. The neighborhood surrounding the theater was not commercial but industrial, having shifted some twenty years ago when downtown retail businesses moved to a newer area of the city. Not the greatest part of town even in the daytime, at night it would be downright spooky to anyone living above the poverty line.

He stared up at the broken marquee and peeling, weathered facade. They’d purchased the building but had not yet started on any of the renovations. Not that there were going to be that many. Art theater patrons liked a dingy, slightly seedy low-tech ambience. It differentiated them from other moviegoers, imparted a feeling of exclusivity to the viewing experience, made them think they were intellectual because they were willing to endure hardship for their love of art.

Still, the building was not up to code and its deteriorated condition was a little too run-down even for the art crowd.

Stormy walked up to the front doors, unlocked and opened them. He was supposed to drop his keys off at the real-estate office, but he wanted to see his baby one final time before putting it up for adoption.

He walked into the lobby and immediately the hair on the back of his neck prickled. It was a physical sensation, a biologic response, not something originating in his mind. Some instinctive animal part of his nature sensed danger here, and though he would ordinarily put such a reaction down to stress or psychological factors and immediately dismiss it, this time he was not quite so ready to ignore his response.

He thought of what Ken had said about Tom Utchaca and his father, about what was happening on the reservation. Once again, the idea of a living doll jogged his memory, but he couldn’t quite recollect what in his past would provide a correlation.

Maybe there was a doll somewhere in the theater.