“The Today show was beginning its second hour when he left, so that was just after eight. He got back during the second half-hour, so that was about eight forty-five.”

Pike tried to fine-tune the window.

“Was the car there when you got back?”

“Yep. For sure.”

“See it leave?”

“Nope. Saw it when I got back with the moo, but I couldn’t say when it left.”

“How many cars do they have?”

“Just the one.”

Lily nodded.

“They have one car.”

“The silver Tercel.”

“Yeah.”

The silver Tercel was something Jared saw every day. Something a person sees every day becomes invisible, but something out of the ordinary stands out. He had asked these same questions or questions like them a thousand times when he was a cop.

“Forget the Tercel. When you were coming back with the moo, did you see anyone you didn’t recognize? Maybe a car that wasn’t familiar?”

Jared shook his head.

“Nobody like you mean. A couple of ladies with dogs walked by. Some gardeners were working next door.”

Pike hesitated.

“At Wilson’s?”

“Yeah. A couple of Latin dudes.”

Almost every house along the canals would employ professional gardeners, and most would be Latin.

“You know they were gardeners because you’ve seen them before, or do you assume they were gardeners because they were Latin?”

Jared turned dark red, as if he had been accused of racial profiling.

“Dude! Hey, here are these dudes, they have the work clothes, not exactly dressed for success, I see’m going in through the gate, who else would they be?”

Lily Palmer said, “Did they have blowers, honey? A mower?”

“It’s not like I studied them. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Pike touched the side of his neck.

“Ink?”

Jared pressed his lips together as he tracked through his memory, then he suddenly brightened.

“Yeah, I think, but the one dude, I remember this, he had a cast on his arm.”

Pike felt very still, and heard only the soft whisper of his breath and the heavy, slow-motion thump of his heart.

“Which arm?”

Jared touched his right forearm.

“This one. He had one of those wrist casts, goes from the thumb up to about right here.”

Mendoza was wearing exactly that cast when he was released from the Airport Courthouse.

“And the car was still there when you saw them?”

“Yeah. It was there.”

“And later it was gone.”

“Yeah. Gone.”

Pike turned toward Smith’s house. His slow-beating heart grew louder until each beat boomed like thunder on the horizon. He had seen the outside of the house, but very little of the inside. A nightmare worse than goat heads could be waiting inside.

Lily Palmer touched his arm.

“Are they the people you were talking about?”

Pike nodded, still staring at the house.

“Should we call the police?”

Pike shook his head.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Then he gave Lily something to help ease her concerns.