THAT NIGHT in Santa Barbara, I was just a little more afraid of the dark than I had ever been before. I sat in my hotel room and read a touching novel called Waiting by Ha Jin. I was waiting as well. I called home twice that night. I wasn't sure if I was lonely, or still feeling guilty about missing Damon's concert.

Or maybe Peter Westin had frightened me with his vampire stories and books, and the haunted look in his dark eyes. At any rate, I was taking vampires more seriously now that I had met him. Westin was a strange, eerie, unforgettable man. I had the feeling that I would meet, or at least talk to him, again.

My fears didn't go away that night, and not even with the first light of morning shining brightly over the Santa Ynez Mountains. Something quite awful was happening. It involved twisted individuals or maybe an underground cult.

It probably had something to do with the vampire subculture. But maybe it didn't, and that was even more disturbing to think about. It would mean we were in a totally gray area with the investigation.

By seven-thirty in the morning, my rented sedan was easing into soupy fog and then the morning traffic. I was singing a little Muddy Waters blues, which nicely matched my mood.

I left Santa Barbara and headed toward Fresno. I had another "expert" to meet.

I drove for a couple of hours. I got on 166 at Santa Maria and continued east through the Sierra Madres until I reached Route 99. I took it north. I was seeing California for the first time and liking most of what I saw. The topography was different than back east, and so were the colors.

I fell into a comfortable driving rhythm. I listened to a Jill Scott CD. For long stretches of the road trip I thought about the way my life had been going over the past couple of years. I knew that some of my friends were starting to worry about me, even my best friend, John Sampson, and I wouldn't exactly classify him as a worrier. Sampson had told me more than once that I was putting myself in harm's way. Sampson even suggested that maybe it was time for a career change. I knew I could go with the FBI, but that didn't seem like much of a change. I could also go back into psychiatry full-time — either see patients or possibly teach, maybe at Johns Hopkins, where I'd gotten my degree and still had pretty good connections.

Then there was Nana Mama's favorite tune: I needed to find someone and settle down again; I needed somebody to love.

It wasn't as if I hadn't tried. My wife, Maria, had been killed in a drive-by shooting in D.C. that had never been solved. That happened when Damon and Jannie were little, and I guess I never really got over it. Maybe I never would. Even now, if I let myself, I could get torn up thinking about Maria and what happened to her, to us, and how goddamn senseless it had been. What a terrible waste of a human life. It had left Damon and Jannie without their mother.

I had tried hard to find someone, but maybe I just wasn't meant to be lucky twice in my lifetime. There had been Jezzie Flanagan, but that couldn't have turned out worse. And then Christine Johnson, little Alex's mother. She was a teacher and now lived out here on the West Coast. She was doing well, loved Seattle, and had "found someone." I still had terribly mixed feelings about Christine. She'd been hurt because of me. My fault, not hers. She had made it clear she couldn't live with a homicide detective. And then, not too long ago, I had started to become involved with an FBI agent named Betsey Cavalierre. Now Betsey was dead. Her murder remained unsolved. I was afraid to even have drinks with Jamilla Hughes. The past was starting to haunt me.

"Some detective," I muttered, as I spotted the overhead sign: Fresno. I had come here to see a man about some teeth.

Fangs, actually.

THE TATTOO, FANG, AND CLAWS PARLOR was located on the fringe of a lower-middle-class commercial district in downtown Fresno. It was a ramshackle storefront with an old dentist's chair prominently displayed in the window. In the chair was a girl who couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen. She sat with her skinny, pimpled neck bowed toward her lap, wincing with each needle puncture.

On a tall stool beside her sat a young guy with a bright blue-and-yellow bandanna wrapped tightly around his head. He was applying the tattoo. He reached for a bottle of ink. The array of tattoo inks beside him reminded me of the spin-art booth at a school fair.

I watched the tattoo process from the street for the next few minutes. I couldn't help thinking about the role of physical pain in getting tattoos, but also in the murders so far.

I knew the basic tattoo process and watched as the resident artist adjusted a gooseneck lamp toward the nape of the girl's neck. The artist used two foot-operated tattoo machines: one for outlining, the other for shading and coloring. The round shader between the machines held fourteen different needles. The more needles, the more colorful the flash.

A middle-aged man with a crew cut was passing by on the street, and he paused just long enough to mutter, "That's nuts, and so are you for watching."

Everybody's a critic these days. I finally went inside and saw the tattoo master's art, a small Celtic symbol, green and gold. I asked him where I could get fangs and claws. He moved his head, his chin, actually, to indicate a hallway to his left. Never said a word.

I walked past display cases: tongue and navel studs, including glow-in-the-dark studs, massive knuckle rings, sunglasses, pipes, beaded thingees, a poster for two popular claws — Ogre and Faust.

You're getting warmer, I thought as I entered the hallway, and then I met the fang master face-to-face.

He was expecting me, and he just started talking as soon as I entered his small shop.

"You've finally arrived, pilgrim. You know, when you go to the most interesting, and most dangerous, vampire clubs, the ones in L.A., New York, New Orleans, Houston, you see fangs everywhere. It's the scene, and what a scene, my man. Goth, Edwardian, Victorian, bondage apparel, anything goes. I was one of the first to custom-make fangs out here. Started in Laguna Beach, worked my way north. And now here I am, the Fresno Kid."

As he spoke, I became aware of his teeth, his elongated incisors. Those teeth looked as if they could inflict severe damage.

His name was John Barreiro, and he was short, painfully thin, and dressed mostly in black, much like Peter Westin. He was probably the most sinister-looking person I had ever met.

"You know why I'm here — the Golden Gate Park murders," I said to the fang maker.

He nodded and grinned wickedly. "I know why you're here, pilgrim. Peter Westin sent you. Peter's very persuasive, isn't he? Follow me." He took me into a small overcrowded room in the rear of the store. The walls were dark blue, the lighting crimson.

Barreiro had a lot of nervous energy, and he moved around constantly as he spoke. "There is a fabulous Fang Club in Los Angeles. They like to say it's the only place where you can meet vampires and live to tell about it. On weekend nights you might see four, five hundred people there. Maybe fifty of the fuckers are real vampires. Almost everyone wears fangs, even the vampire wanna-bes."

"Are your teeth real?" I asked him.

"Let me give you a little nip and we'll see," the fang maker said, and laughed. "The answer to your question is yes. I had my incisors capped, then filed to a sharp edge. I bite. I drink blood. I am the real-deal bad dude, Detective."

I nodded, didn't doubt it for a second. He looked and acted the part.

"If I might take a simple cast of your canines, I could make a pair of fangs just for you. That will really separate you from your detective peers. Make you peerless."