“Then maybe you could help me,” Hook said. “I want to know more about Mrs. Rubin and Elizabeth Madera. And Jack Douglas.”

Icarus laughed. “Wow, man, you keep going higher and higher.”

“I’ve heard he’s Miss Madera’s boy friend.”

“Her latest would be more like it. But then he’s never been much of a homebody either, I guess. How come you ask about him, though. He wasn’t there, was he? At the scene?”

Hook slipped in behind the wheel. “Who knows?”

The youth let his breath out in a long low whistle. “Jesus,” was all he said.

Through the window Hook gave him a card from the motel. “I’m staying here,” he told him. “And I’ll be waiting to hear from you.” Then he thanked him for the photograph again and drove off, not looking at it once during the two-mile downhill drive back to the beach.

By nine the next morning Hook was in the lobby of the sheriff’s office, waiting to find out if Sergeant Rider would see him. And this time, unlike the week before, he was not alone on his side of the high wooden counter. In the row of chairs behind him three young male hippies sprawled contentedly, wallowing in the disdain of a grizzled Mexican laborer and a mink-stoled old lady, both of whom preferred to stand rather than sit next to them. Behind the counter, the desk deputy had gotten Rider on the phone and now told him that a Mr. Hook was there and wanted to see him if possible. Then the deputy listened, nodding.

“Right, Sarge. Right.” He hung up. “I’m afraid he can’t see you now, Mr. Hook. He’s going out on a call, says for you to leave your number and he’ll get in touch.”

The deputy shoved a pad at him and Hook wrote his name on it and the motel number, hurrying, because he was not about to give up on Rider yet. Thanking the deputy, he walked quickly out of the building and across the bright green lawn to the driveway that led up from the basement garage to the street. If Rider had told the truth about having to leave on a call, then this was the way he would come, and Hook figured the man would certainly be able to spare the few seconds it would take to give him Chris’s letter—now, not tomorrow or the next day. For time was everything. Hook knew at least that much about crime, that the longer a case went unsolved the greater were the chances it never would be solved.

So he waited. He stood next to the driveway like a patient sentinel, and in the next few minutes a half-dozen cars passed him, some going into the building and others leaving it. He lit a cigarette and smoked it almost down to the filter before he saw Rider coming out finally, sitting next to the driver in a plain black Ford. As they came abreast of him, the car stopped and Rider gave him a rueful look.