It was after two that afternoon when I took the winding drive up Laurel Canyon to the A-frame I keep just off Woodrow Wilson Drive in the mountains above Hollywood. It's a long drive up Laurel, but I've found that as you climb through the trees and cut rock to the top of the mountain and leave the city behind, you're often able to leave the clutter and stress of modern life with it. Often, but not always. Less often still when you're thinking about three kids with a missing father who turns out to be a drug addict.

I parked in the carport, turned off the alarm, and let myself in through the kitchen. The home was cool and still and smelled of Lucy's presence, but I probably just imagined it. Wishful thinking. I said, 'Anybody home?'

No answer.

I share the house with a large black cat who has shredded ears and a fine flat head that he carries cocked to the side from when he was shot with a twenty-two. I think it soured him. He is not the world's friendliest cat, and he'd hissed twice when Lucy arrived, then scrambled through his cat door and disappeared. He had watched us drive away that morning, so I thought he'd be inside waiting for me by now, but there you go. He sulks.

I took an Evian from the fridge, had some, then put Clark Haines's phone bills on my kitchen counter and looked at them. Tre Michaels had said that Clark was going on a trip, and the phone bills showed calls both to Tucson and Seattle, but the dope changed things. People died from drug overdoses, and people were often murdered when they were trying to buy drugs, so there was a very real possibility that the only trip Clark Haines had taken was to the morgue. I spent the next thirty-two minutes on the phone with hospital emergency rooms and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office asking if anyone named Clark Haines or fitting his description had been admitted, living or dead, but no one had. Whew. Dodged that bullet.

I went through the bills, noting the two calls to Tucson and the five to Seattle. Over four months, there were also eighty-six local-area toll calls. The Tucson calls were to two different numbers. The five calls to Seattle were to two numbers, also, one number once, the other four times. I called the Tucson numbers first, getting a woman who answered, 'Desert Moving and Storage,' and asked her if Clark Haines was there, or if she knew how I could reach him. She told me that she knew no one by that name. Clark had probably used them to move to LA from Tucson, and she didn't remember the name. A woman named Rosemary Teal answered the next call. I asked her if Clark was there, and she told me that he'd moved, though she wasn't sure where. I asked her how she knew that he'd moved, and she told me that she was his neighbor. I asked if she'd heard from him since they moved, and she said only once. She said he'd called to ask her to please check and be sure he'd turned off the gas. When she insisted that I identify myself, I hung up. Turn off the gas. The junkie as concerned neighbor. I called the Seattle numbers next. When I called the first number, a young woman's voice answered, 'New World Printing.' I again asked for Clark Haines, and she told me that no one by that name worked there. I dialed the second number, and on the third ring a hoarse male voice said, 'Hello?'

'Hi, is Clark there?' Bright, and kind of cheery.

The voice said, 'Who is this?' Suspicious.

Tre Michaels. Clark said he was coming up and gave me your number.'

'I think you got the wrong number.' Clark Haines had spoken to someone at this number for over an hour on two separate occasions.

'I'm sure I copied the number right. We're talking Clark Haines, okay? Clark said he'd be at this number or that you'd know how to reach him.'

'I don't know anyone by that name.' He hung up, and he didn't sound anywhere close to credible.

I called my friend at the phone company, gave her the area code and number, and asked for an ID. Forty seconds later she said, 'That service is billed to a Mr. Wilson Brownell. You want his address?'

'Sure.'

I copied the address, then hung up and thought about the two hundred dollars I had taken from Teresa Haines. Wilson Brownell clearly knew Clark and, under normal circumstances, would be the next step in the investigation. A ticket to Seattle and a hotel would normally be a billable expense, but having a fifteen-year-old kid for a client wasn't normal. Teresa and Charles and Winona were minor children living alone because their father, unemployed and now established as a drug user with a spotty employment record, had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned them. There was every real possibility that Clark Haines might never return, or even be found alive, and the smart thing to do would be to call the police and let them handle it. If I went to Seattle, I couldn't reasonably expect to recover the cost.

Only I had promised Teresa Haines that I would try to find her father, and it bothered me to leave the lead to Wilson Brownell untested and unresolved. I thought about the two hundred dollars again, and then I picked up the phone and dialed another number.

First ring, and a man's voice said, 'Pike.' Joe Pike owns the agency with me.

'I'm looking for a guy named Clark Haines, and I believe he's gone to Seattle. He has three kids and I need you to keep an eye on them while I'm up there.'

Pike didn't respond.

'Joe?'

We might as well have been disconnected.

'They're doing okay, but I don't like the idea of them not having an adult around if they need help.'

Pike said, 'Three children.'

'I just want to make sure they don't burn down the house.'

More silence.

I was still waiting for him to say something when the cat came in through his cat door and growled so loud that Joe Pike said, 'Is that your cat?'

The cat trotted into the living room and growled again. Angry. He went from the living room into the kitchen and then back out to the front entry. He would trot hard, then stop and sniff, then growl some more. I said, 'I'll call you back in a few minutes.'

I hung up and watched the cat. 'You okay, buddy?'

His eyes narrowed but he didn't come near.

I sat on the kitchen floor, held out my hand, and after a while he finally came over. His fur was warm and coarse, and he needed a bath. I stroked his back, then felt his ribs and hips and legs. I was thinking that someone had shot him again or that a coyote had gotten him, but nothing seemed broken or tender or cut. I said, 'What's wrong?'

He jumped away from me and disappeared through his door and that's when I saw the blood.

Three drops of red were on the kitchen floor by the door jamb, two overlapping small drops, with a third larger drop nearby. I had stepped over them when I had let myself in. I said, 'Sonofagun.'

I touched the large drop and it was tacky.

I thought that maybe he'd brought in a ground squirrel or a field mouse, but there was no dirt or debris or fur. Sometimes he'll bring a kill up to my loft, so I went upstairs to check. Nothing. I went back down and looked through the living room and the dining room and the pantry, but there were no remains there either, and my scalp began tingling. I checked the doors and the windows, then went upstairs again and once more worked my way through the house. The handguns I keep locked in my nightstand were still there, as was the ammunition. The shotgun and rifle were still secure in the closet. My watches, jewelry, cash, and credit cards were all in their places, and their places looked unchanged, yet maybe not. I was pretty sure that the clothes hanging in my closet had been pushed to the right, but now they were spread evenly across the bar, and someone or something had smudged the dust on the two top shelves of my bookcase. Yet maybe not. Nothing was missing, but I felt an acute sense of difference in the shape and way of things, and a growing suspicion that someone had been in my house, and that they hadn't been here to steal. I went down the slope to check the alarm box on the side of my house. Fresh scratches gleamed in the metal around the screw heads. It looked like someone had beat the alarm, then let himself in through the kitchen. The cat had probably nailed him or her going out because he'd already completed his search. I said, 'Man, this really sucks.'