"We understand," said Bly.

Seliah lifted her face and looked at them, and Hood saw not hours but weeks of torment in her red-rimmed blue eyes. Her pupils were screwed down tight against the light. She was twenty-eight years old. She'd aged since he saw her last. That was what-two months ago, when Sean had stolen a few precious days with her at home and they had elected to share some hours with his Blowdown brethren? She slid the sunglasses back on and tugged the straw hat back into place. Even in the shade her platinum hair shone.

"I don't love the sun anymore," she said. "And I can't stand the smell of chlorine. I've lived on sunshine and chlorine for twenty years and now… something's changed in me. More important, though, something changed in Sean, too."

"We want to know what it is," said Hood. "We want to help him. He's my friend, Seliah, and so are you."

She stood, strong-legged and broad-shouldered. "Come to my house this evening at six. I'll have some things to show you. Maybe you can make some sense out of them. I've tried and failed and now you're telling me my husband is a murderer."

5

At six ten Hood and Bly sat in the Ozburns' San Clemente living room. The home was up in the hills on the east side of the interstate. Hood looked down through the picture window at the terracotta rooftops of the city below, and the jut of pier, and the black Pacific stretching to the horizon, touched far out near its rim by the first orange sparkles of sunset.

Seliah brought in a laptop computer, moved a dog-eared paperback Dracula from the coffee table and set down the machine in its place. Then she went to the picture window and pulled the sunscreen down. The view vanished and a cool light radiated through the honeycombed cells of the blind.