The tone of her voice brought Crawford around his desk.

She held the receiver as though it had died in her hand. "He asked for Will and said he might call back tomorrow afternoon. I tried to hold him."

"Who?"

"He said, 'Just tell Graham it's the Pilgrim.' That's what Dr. Lecter called-"

"The Tooth Fairy," Crawford said.

Graham went to the grocery store while Molly and Willy unpacked. He found canary melons at the market and a ripe cranshaw. He parked across the street from the house and sat for a few minutes, still gripping the wheel. He was ashamed that because of him Molly was rooted out of the house she loved and put among strangers.

Crawford had done his best. This was no faceless federal safe house with chair arms bleached by palm sweat. It was a pleasant cottage, freshly whitewashed, with impatiens blooming around the steps. It was the product of careful hands and a sense of order. The rear yard sloped down to the Chesapeake Bay and there was a swim- ming raft.

Blue-green television light pulsed behind the curtains. Molly and Willy were watching baseball, Graham knew.

Willy's father had been a baseball player, and a good one. He and Molly met on the school bus, married in college.

They trooped around the Florida State League while he was in the Cardinals' farm system. They took Willy with them and had a terrific time. Spam and spirit. He got a tryout with the Cardinals and hit safely in his first two games. Then he began to have difficulty swallowing. The surgeon tried to get it all, but it metastasized and ate him up. He died five months later, when Willy was six.

Willy still watched baseball whenever he could. Molly watched baseball when she was upset.

Graham had no key. He knocked.

"I'll get it." Willy's voice.

"Wait." Molly's face between the curtains. "All right."

Willy opened the door. In his fist, held close to his leg, was a fish billy.

Graham's eyes stung at the sight. The boy must have brought it in his suitcase.

Molly took the bag from him. "Want some coffee? There's gin, but not the kind you like."

When she was in the kitchen, Willy asked Graham to come outside.

From the back porch they could see the riding lights of boats anchored in the bay.

"Will, is there any stuff I need to know to see about Mom?"

"You're both safe here, Willy. Remember the car that followed us from the airport making sure nobody saw where we went? Nobody can find out where you and your mother are."

"This crazy guy wants to kill you, does he?"

"We don't know that. I just didn't feel easy with him knowing where the house is."

"You gonna kill him?"

Graham closed his eyes for a moment. "No. It's just my job to find him. They'll put him in a mental hospital so they can treat him and keep him from hurting anybody."

"Tommy's mother had this little newspaper, Will. It said you killed a guy in Minnesota and you were in a mental hospital. I never knew that. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"I started to ask Mom, but I figured I'd ask you."

"I appreciate your asking me straight out. It wasn't just a mental hospital; they treat everything." The distinction seemed important. "I was in the psychiatric wing. It bothers you, finding out I was in there. Because I'm married to your mom.

"I told my dad I'd take care of her. I'll do it, too."

Graham felt he had to tell Willy enough. He didn't want to tell him too much.

The lights went out in the kitchen. He could see Molly's dim outline inside the screen door and he felt the weight of her judgment. Dealing with Willy he was handling her heart.

Willy clearly did not know what to ask next. Graham did it for him.

"The hospital part was after the business with Hobbs."

"You shot him?"

"Yes."

"How'd it happen?"

"To begin with, Garrett Hobbs was insane. He was attacking college girls and he -… killed them."

"How?"

"With a knife; anyway I found a little curly piece of metal in the clothes one of the girls had on. It was the kind of shred a pipe threader makes – remember when we fixed the shower outside?

"I was taking a look at a lot of steamfitters, plumbers and people. lt took a long time. Hobbs had left this resignation letter at a construction job I was checking. I saw it and it was… peculiar. He wasn't working anywhere, and I had to find him at home.

"I was going up the stairs in Hobbs 's apartment house. A uniformed officer was with me. Hobbs must have seen us coming. I was halfway up to his landing when he shoved his wife out the door and she came falling down the stairs dead."

"He had killed her?"

"Yeah. So I asked the officer I was with to call for SWAT, to get some help. But then I could hear kids in there and some screaming. I wanted to wait, but I couldn't."

"You went in the apartment?"

"I did. Hobbs had caught this girl from behind and he had a knife. He was cutting her with it. And I shot him."

"Did the girl die?"

"No."

"She got all right?"

"After a while, yes. She's all right now.

Willy digested this silently. Faint music came from an anchored sailboat.

Graham could leave things out for Willy, but he couldn't help seeing them again himself.

He left out Mrs. Hobbs on the landing clutching at him, stabbed so many times. Seeing she was gone, hearing the screaming from the apartment, prying the slick red fingers off and cracking his shoulder before the door gave in. Hobbs holding his own daughter busy cutting her neck when he could get to it, her struggling with her chin tucked down, the.38 knocking chunks out of him and he still cutting and he wouldn't go down. Hobbs sitting on the floor crying and the girl rasping. Holding her down and seeing Hobbs had gotten through the windpipe, but not the arteries. The daughter looked at him with wide glazed eyes and at her father sitting on the floor crying "See? See?" until he fell over dead.

That was where Graham lost his faith in.38's.

"Willy, the business with Hobbs, it bothered me a lot. You know, I kept it on my mind and I saw it over and over. I got so I couldn't think about much else. I kept thinking there must be some way I could have handled it better. And then I quit feeling anything. I couldn't eat and I stopped talking to anybody. I got really depressed. So a doctor asked me to go into the hospital, and I did. After a while I got some distance on it. The girl that got hurt in Hobbs 's apartment came to see me. She was okay and we talked a lot. Finally I put it aside and went back to work."

"Killing somebody, even if you have to do it, it feels that bad?"

"Willy, it's one of the ugliest things in the world."

"Say, I'm going in the kitchen for a minute. You want something, a Coke?" Willy liked to bring Graham things, but he always made it a casual adjunct to something he was going to do anyway. No special trip or anything.

"Sure, a Coke."

"Mom ought to come out and look at the lights."

Late in the night Graham and Molly sat in the back-porch swing. Light rain fell and the boat lights cast grainy halos on the mist. The breeze off the bay raised goose bumps on their arms.

"This could take a while, couldn't it?" Molly said.

"I hope it won't, but it might."

"Will, Evelyn said she could keep the shop for this week and four days next week. But I've got to go back to Marathon, at least for a day or two when my buyers come. I could stay with Evelyn and Sam. I should go to market in Atlanta myself. I need to be ready for September."

"Does Evelyn know where you are?"

"I just told her Washington."

"Good."