Yet that was what the man was, nothing more or less than your good old average American male, one of that race of decent likeable fellows who tended to get carried away at places like Sand Creek and My Lai. But even as Hook’s mind served up the analogy, he already saw it for a fake. In the cold clear center of his mind he knew Jack Douglas would not kill another person, not in hot blood or cold, not anywhere, anytime. And as for the conspiracy afterwards, the convenient silence, Hook wondered if he himself would have done any differently if it had been his own family’s happiness at stake, his own skin in jeopardy. The thought was like a knife edge at his throat. He stepped back from it.

He dressed hurriedly and walked down the street to the nearby family restaurant, where he tried to restore his body’s water balance with copious quantities of orange juice and coffee, and then looked to scrambled eggs and a double serving of bacon to restore some of the thiamine the long night’s drinking had leached out of him. He was not worried about his health so much as anxious to get rid of his hangover as soon as possible, for he knew it was going to be a long and difficult day of waiting, not only for the rendezvous with this new “witness” at six but also to wait out Douglas and Liz, see if they would take advantage of this last full day he had given them and go to the police, tell the truth, gain for themselves at least the advantage of voluntary confession.

During his breakfast Hook thought about Icarus’s call and the new “witness.” He could not help wondering whether the youth would turn out to be real or counterfeit, whether he would actually have information about Chris’s death or simply be out after an easy hundred dollars, part of a con game that might even have been initiated by Icarus. It was a cynical thought, Hook knew. Yet it was one he could not discount. There were things about Icarus he liked, especially how the youth had reacted to Chris and what he had said about the boy that first night. And Hook appreciated the help the young photographer had given him, agreeing to tell Sergeant Rider what he knew and then putting Hook in touch with the reporter Oliver. But the fact remained that Icarus was not the kind of man who inspired trust. In his very weakness and bizarre inversion there was the promise of treachery, the treachery of the fox trying to survive in a world of hounds and guns. So Hook accepted it that the meeting might turn out to be a con game, with himself the victim. But he hoped it would be academic by then, that Liz or Douglas would come forward during the day and render the meeting a mere formality to be gone through, possible icing on the cake of his day.