"I'm not dead, Mother," Marcus pointed out.

He didn't ask why she hadn't come to the hospital to see him, because he didn't want to hear how she hated to drive, especially at night-on account of her undiagnosed night blindness. Never mind that she had hounded him to buy her a car years ago so that she wouldn't have to feel dependent upon him. She rarely took the thing out of the carriage shed they used as a garage. And he didn't want to hear how she was afraid to leave Victor, and how she disliked hospitals and believed them to be the breeding grounds for all fatal disease. The last would set Victor off into his germ litany.

His brother stood to one side of the door, his face turned away, but his eyes glancing back at Marcus, wary. Victor had a way of holding himself that was stiff and slightly cockeyed, as if gravity affected him differently from normal people.

"It's me, Victor," Marcus said, knowing it was hopeless to attempt to put Victor at ease.

Victor had been in his teens before he figured out that putting on a hat didn't turn one person into another being. Voices coming from a telephone had baffled him into his twenties, and sometimes still did. For years he would never do anything more than breathe into the receiver because he couldn't see the person speaking to him, and, therefore, that person did not exist. Only crazy people responded to the voices of people who did not exist, and Victor was not crazy; therefore, he would not speak to faceless voices.

"Mask, no mask," he mumbled. "The mockingbird. Mimus polyglottos. Nine to eleven inches tall. No mask. Sound and sound alike. More common than similar shrikes. The common raven. Corvus corax. Very clever. Very shrewd. Like the crow, but not a crow. A mask, but no mask."

"Victor, stop it!" Doll said, her voice scratching up toward shrillness. She sent Marcus a long-suffering look. "He's been on his rantings all day long. I'd like to have lost my mind worrying about you, and here was Victor droning on and on and on. It was enough to make me see red."

"Red, red, very red," Victor said, shaking his head as if a bug had crawled into his ear.

"That lawyer of yours had better make the sheriff's department pay for the suffering they've caused this family," Doll harped, following Marcus into the house. "Those people are rotten to the core, every last one of them."

"Annie Broussard saved my life," Marcus pointed out. "Twice."

Doll made a sour face. "Annie Broussard. I'm sure she's no better than any of the rest. I saw her on the television. She didn't have a thing to say about you. You blow everything out of proportion, Marcus. You always have."

"I was there, Mother. I know what she did."

"You just think she's pretty, that's all. I know how your mind works, Marcus. You are your father's son."

It was meant to be an insult. Marcus didn't remember his father. Claude Renard had left them when Marcus was hardly more than a toddler. He had never come back, had severed all ties. There were times when Marcus envied him.

He closed his eyes now and let a wave of Percodan wash the memory from his battered brain. The miracles of modern chemistry.

He had gone straight to his bedroom and shut out his mother's incessant whining with a pill and two hours of unconsciousness. When he came to, the house was quiet. Everyone had settled back into their routines. His mother retreated to her room every night at nine to watch television preachers and work her word puzzles. She would be in bed by ten and would complain all the next morning that she had barely slept. According to Doll, she hadn't slept through a night in her life.

Victor went to bed at eight and rose at midnight to study his nature books or work on elaborate mathematical calculations. He would go to bed again at four A.M. and rise for the day precisely at eight. Routine was sacred to him. He equated routine with normalcy. The least deviation could set him off into a spell of upset, causing him to rock himself and mumble, or worse. Routine made him happy.

If only my own life were so simple. Marcus didn't like being the center of anyone's attention. He preferred to be left alone to do his work and to work at his hobbies.

His workroom was located just off his bedroom and had probably been a study or a nursery at one time in the house's history. He had claimed the small suite as his own the first time he had walked through the house with Pam. She had been his real estate agent when he had come to Bayou Breaux to interview with Bowen amp; Briggs-another strand in the thread of continuity.

The suite was on the first floor at the back of the house and you had to walk through one room to get to the other. A worktable held his latest project, a Queen Anne dollhouse with elaborate gingerbread and heart-shaped shingles on the roof. Houses he had designed and built over the years were displayed on deep custom-built shelves along one long wall. He entered them in competitions at fairs and sold all but the most special to him.

But it wasn't the dollhouse that claimed his attention tonight. Tonight he had risen from bed to sit at his drawing table. He worked to bring a mental image from his mind to the page.

Pam had been a lovely woman-small, feminine, her dark hair cut in a sleek, shoulder-length bob, her smile bright, her brown eyes sparkling with life. She had her nails done every Friday. She shopped at the most exclusive stores in Lafayette, and always looked as if she had just stepped from the pages of Southern Living or Town and Country.

Annie was pretty in her own way. She was taller than Pam, but by no more than an inch; sturdier than Pam, but still small. He pictured her, not in the slate blue sheriff's department uniform, but in the long, flowered skirt she had worn last night. He rid her of the sloppy denim jacket and put her instead in a white cotton camisole. Delicate, almost sheer, teasing him with the shadows of her small breasts.

In his mind's eye, he combed her hair back neatly and secured it at the nape of her slender neck with a white bow. She had a retrousse nose; a hint of a cleft gave her chin a certain stubborn quality. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown, like Pam's, but with a tantalizing tilt at the corners. He was fascinated with the shape of them-slightly exotic, slightly almond-shaped, like a cat's. Her mouth was nearly as intriguing. A very French mouth-the lower lip full, the upper lip a delicate cupid's bow. He had never seen her smile. Until he had, he would superimpose Pam's smile onto her face.

He set his pencil aside and assessed his work.

He had missed Pam these past three months, but he could feel the ache of that loneliness beginning to subside. In his drug-induced haze, he visualized having been parched all that time. Now a fresh source of wine was ebbing closer, tantalizing him. He tried to imagine the taste on his tongue. Desire stirred lazily in his blood, and he smiled.

Annie. His angel.