Drunk as he must be-he'd finished LaChaise's bottle of Johnnie Walker and a half-dozen more beers-his hand seemed absolutely steady. ''You're gonna call the cops on us, aren't you?''

''No, honest to God…'' She looked back at the bedroom; the black-and-white target loomed on the wall outside the door, next to the fire escape window.

''Are you gonna fuck him?''

Now, she thought, they were getting to the important issues. She crossed her arms: ''Not if I can help it,'' she said, looking at the hole in the end of the pistol. ''If Dick does it to me, I'd have to be unconscious or dead.''

The hole at the end of the pistol seemed as large as a basketball hoop, and held between her eyes. He kept it there, kept it, and she closed her eyes…

''All right,'' he said. She opened her eyes and the pistol was pointing at the ceiling. He grinned at her, a wet, sleepy, evil grin, she thought. ''Hope nobody down in the laundry heard me and Dick wrestling around.''

My God, she thought, he's lying here thinking about it: Martin's turned on. Out loud she said, ''They'd have beenhere, if anybody called the cops.'' Her eyes drifted toward the telephone: pick it up, 911, leave it off the hook, wait one minute…

Impossible. She could handle LaChaise, she thought, but Martin.. . Martin seemed to see everything.

The gun flashed back up and leveled at her forehead again, and Martin said,

''Bang.'' Then, ''Go on back to bed.''

LUCAS TRIED TO SLEEP, SNUGGLED AGAINST WEATHER. Though he felt as if he'd been awake for days, his internal clock still said it was too early. And the bed was wrong, not his, and the pillow was no good: it crooked his neck at a bad angle.

But most of all, he couldn't stop his mind. He wasn't putting the puzzle together, he was simply reliving the whole long episode, without profit.

A few minutes after midnight, Weather finally spoke in the dark: ''You're vibrating,'' she said.

''Sorry.''

''You need the sleep.''

''I know,'' Lucas said. ''My brain's all clogged up.''

She half-rolled. Her voice was clear, and he realized she'd been lying awake:

''How much longer, before you get them?''

''Probably tomorrow, unless they just hide out. If they move, we'll get them.

Tomorrow or the next day, I'd say.''

''What if they're running?''

''Their pictures have been on every TV in the country; they couldn't stop to get gas. They really can't go out in the open.''

After another moment of silence, Weather said, ''You think they'll be taken alive?''

''No.''

''You guys'll just shoot them?''

''It's not that-if they called up and said they wanted tocome in, and they told us where they were, and they came out with their hands over their heads…

We'd take them. But it's not shaping up that way. The first guy, Butters, might as well have committed suicide. They figure they're dead. They've already written themselves off. And that's scarier'n hell.''

''Gotta be their parents… you know, who made them like that.''

''Always is,'' Lucas said. ''I've watched some kids grow up from little psychos into big psychos: it was always the parents that made them that way.''

''If you could intervene early enough…''

Lucas shook his head: ''Never work. Nobody spends as much time with the kids as their parents, even if their parents don't want them. And usually, nobody knows anything is wrong until the kid's already bent. Maybe you could set up an army of fascist social workers who'd go around to every house once a month and cross-examine every kid, but that'd probably be worse than what we've got. Look what happened with all these mass child-abuse things. They're all bullshit, and it's the social workers who've done it.''

Another silence.

Then Weather said, ''I don't believe that more violence is the way to solve the problem. I don't think shooting these people will do it.''

Lucas said, ''That's 'cause you're a doctor.''

''Hmm?''

''Doctors think in terms of illness and cures. The problem is, when one of these guys gets sick, somebody else gets hurt. So we've got two problems, not one.

First we've got to protect innocent people. Then we've got to do whatever we can with these guys-cure them or whatever. But first we've got to stop them.''

''That doesn't seem to be what you're doing…'' Thenshe added, hastily,

''Sometimes it doesn't, anyway.''

''Yeah, I know. Sometimes we play it a little too much like a game. That's just a way to deal with it… but that's not the way it really is. It ain't football, even if TV thinks so.''

They talked a bit longer, then Weather said, ''I've got to get some sleep. I'm working in the morning.''

Lucas kissed her good-night again, and lay on his back, watching the outside light trace feather patterns across the ceiling, and some time later, finally fell asleep.

SANDY MOVED THE WINDOW AN INCH AT A TIME, AND the cold air flooded in. That was a problem. Once she committed herself, she could hardly go back. The room would be cold, and if Martin or LaChaise came in, they'd know…

But she pushed the window up anyway. Then leaned out, brushed snow off the ledge with her hand. The ledge didn't seem too slippery, but she wouldn't be able to walk it with boots. She dropped to the bed, took off her boots and socks, put the socks in the boots and the boots in her parka pockets, the heels sticking out. Couldn't drop those…

She looked down. I'm going to kill myself . She took a breath and stepped out on the ledge: and the shock of the cold on her feet almost pitched her off. She held to the inside of the window frame, then edged to her right. The ledge was plenty wide, almost as though it had been designed to get her to the fire escape. Probably had been, she thought.

She slid another step, and then another, refusing to look down again. She let go of the edge of the window frame, and now was balanced on nothing but her painfully chilled feet, the outside wall pushing against her back. She looked straight out, feeling more balanced that way. Two more steps. Two more.

Reaching out with her right hand, she groped for the steel of the fire escape.

Another step. Christ, she was afraid to look to her right, another step, groping

… and she felt it. Now she turned her head, saw it, grabbed the railing and stepped over to it.

She stopped to check the window above the fire escape. The shade was down, but there was a crack at the bottom between the shade and window frame, and she could see down the hall. In the semidark, Martin looked like an enormous cocoon, rolled up on the floor at the end of the hall.

She stepped over the railing onto the fire escape, breathing hard: she was excited and frightened to death. She took two steps down, onto the drop platform, and bounced gently, to see if that was enough to make it drop. It didn't move. She tried again, harder. Nothing. Hard, this time. There was a metallic clank to the left, but the platform stayed up.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to work, but in the dark, she couldn't see why the platform wasn't dropping. Something was stuck somewhere. ..

She thought about hanging from the bottom, and dropping. But even with a two-step platform drop, and the six feet she'd get by hanging, it'd be a twelve- or thirteen-foot drop onto an uncertain alley surface…

She'd break a leg.

But she thought about it, the cold in her feet growing to pain.