“A real professional job,” David Parkinson said, and Lorenzo Niesen was happy that he’d worked so hard.

“Let it burn bright!” called a man when the gasoline had soaked into the wrappings. “Let it burn so they can see!”

Another man produced a box of matches, struck one, shielded the tiny flame from the nonexistent wind.

Again David Parkinson raised his hand.

A leaf of fire grew from the bottom of the cross. Then suddenly it spread, enveloping the structure wholly, carving blackness, filling all the dark and silent night around the hill with brilliance.

Adam Cramer smiled.

He stood beneath the flaming cross and stared down at the feeble lights. At Caxton, at the houses where the people now were looking out their windows, dumb, unmoving, fearful. And the fire was hot upon his face . . .

Silent moments later, the hooded men went back to their cars and drove away.

In time, the hill was dark again.

17

17

It was a typical Southern California apartment, five years old and falling to decay. The white plaster was streaked with rust from the screens, cracked and crumbling at the foundations, ready, it seemed, to burst at any time like an eggshell. Other, identical apartments, some painted green, some pink, some yellow, lined the block like abandoned crates. There were no trees, no hedges, nowhere any growing things to block the steady, grinning sun.

Ed Driscoll and Peter Link got out of the rental Ford and made their way across the pockmarked lawn. At 11550½ they paused, and Driscoll knocked. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a light green dress.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Cramer?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Ed Driscoll. I phoned you this morning about an interview.”

The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Come in, please.”

The men stepped inside the apartment, and Ed Driscoll made a swift mental note. Ordinary. Perfectly ordinary. Two bedrooms, dime-store pictures, television. Cluttered with fake antiques. No trace of a child’s presence, or evidence there had ever been a child. No—there.

He stared for a moment at the framed photograph of a two- or three-year-old boy that sat on the mahogany secretary.

“Good-looking kid,” Link said, adjusting his camera. “Mind if I take a shot?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Cramer?”

“I’d just rather. He was my boy then, you see. The best and the nicest you could find.”

The men looked at one another briefly.

“He isn’t my boy any more,” Mrs. Cramer said. She sat down on the dark couch and began to fan herself with a Chinese ivory fan. “I suppose that sounds dreadful, but it’s the truth. I don’t even know this fellow you’re writing about. He’s a stranger.”

Driscoll took out a small writing pad and a pencil. “Go on, Mrs. Cramer,” he said; but the woman merely fanned herself slowly.