AFTER YEARS OF AGGRAVATION and frustration, Hardy had finally broken down and rented some enclosed parking space in his neighborhood. The full double garage was still a long block and a half from his home and it cost him nearly four thousand dollars a year, but its door opened when you pushed a button on your car's visor, it was closer than most of the parking spots he would wind up finding on the streets anyway, it did double duty as a storage unit, and, perhaps best of all, it removed both the family cars from the immediate threat of theft or vandalism, both of which his family had been the victim of three times in the eighteen months before Hardy had plunked down his first rent check.

The walk home tonight wasn't bad, though. He'd stopped after the two beers with Glitsky; his caseload was light at the moment and so he was unencumbered by his usual forty-pound litigator's briefcase; the night was brisk and clear. His two-story "railroad" Victorian on Thirty-fourth Avenue up by Clement was the only stand-alone house on a blockful of apartment buildings. It sported a white picket fence and a neatly maintained, albeit tiny, lawn. A flower-bordered brick walkway hugged one side of the lawn; four steps led up to the small porch, a light on by the door. More flowers grew in window boxes.

Hardy let himself in and flipped on the hall light. The house was called a railroad Victorian because the ground floor was laid out like a railroad car. All of the rooms-living, sitting, dining-opened off the long hallway on Hardy's right as he walked through the house to the back rooms.

Turning on more lights in the kitchen and family room behind it-the house was dead still-he automatically checked in on his tropical fish, sprinkled some food on the water's surface, and stood in much the same attitude of passive repose he'd adopted after his last round of darts earlier that night. After a minute of that, he took a few more steps and found himself in the corner that held the doors to both Rebecca's and Vincent's rooms.