And he hadn't moved a fraction.

Natalie stepped past Gary onto the front walk. She gazed at the man, transfixed as an icy feeling settled in her stomach, radiating shuddery cold. Suddenly she felt as if she could stand under a white-hot desert sun for hours and still not feel warm.

Slowly she walked toward the car. From what seemed a great distance she heard Gary yapping about replacement pins and tumbler cylinders. Natalie ignored him. If he'd started shouting at her she still wouldn't have turned around. Something waited for her in that car. Something as irresistible as it was awful.

Natalie halted at the car and stared in the window. No movement. The unnatural angle of the head. The white shirt with a blood-soaked collar.

Unable to stop herself, she clasped the door handle. Pausing, she drew a deep breath, then opened the door.

The body of Jeff Lindstrom tumbled from the car, landing at her feet, his glassy brown eyes staring up at the beautiful blue sky.

"Good God Almighty! What the hell! Is he drunk?" Gary blustered from the doorway. Harvey Coombs' wife Mary had materialized in the street. She took one look at the gaping neck wound, gagged, and ran for home. Natalie kneeled and lifted a wrist searching for a pulse. The arm was beginning to stiffen. Given the temperature, she would say Jeff had died about three or four hours ago. She glanced in the car at the congealing blood covering the cloth upholstery seat. So much blood. His throat had been slashed in the car where he'd been left to bleed to death.

All of this ran through Natalie's mind as she pressed lightly on his lids, closing his eyes. She knew she shouldn't touch the body, but she could not leave those sightless eyes open, vulnerable like Tam's had been.

She looked up. Gary still stood gaping at the front door. "Call the police," she yelled. He didn't move. " Gary, call the police! Ask for Sheriff Meredith or Ted Hysell. Tell them to get here immediately." Gary was frozen. " Gary, now!"

Gary jerked as if jolted by electricity. The young couple from the nearby house appeared on their front walk, dressed in identical red-white-and-blue running suits. Both were tall and blond and looked like brother and sister. The young man walked toward Natalie. "What's going on?" He circled around the front of the car, looked down at the bloody body and quailed, all color draining from his ruddy face. "Did you do this?"

The absurdity of the question snapped Natalie out of her numbness. "Do you think I'd cut this guy's throat, then leave him outside my house so I could stand over him, gazing at my handiwork?" she asked coldly.

The young man backed off, obviously considering more strongly the possibility that this loony woman had indeed killed the man. "I was only trying to help."

"I didn't hear any offer to help." Tears suddenly filled Natalie's eyes and she began to tremble. "Do you have a blanket we can throw over him?"

He turned and ran back to his wife. After a murmured exchange she exclaimed, "I'm not ruining one of my good blankets!" In measured strides they retreated to their house and firmly closed the door. In less than a minute their faces appeared at the front window.

"Love thy neighbor," Natalie muttered as she sank down beside Jeff's body, suddenly dizzy. Three times in one week she had stood guard over the victims of savage violence. It was absurd. It was horrible. She felt as if she'd fallen off the edge of the world.

Mary Coombs dashed out of her house bearing a blanket that she tossed over the crumpled form of Jeff Lindstrom. Then she sat down on the pavement beside Natalie and poured a cup of coffee from a Thermos. "Drink this, honey. You're shaking like it's thirty degrees out here."

The coffee was thick with cream and sugar. Natalie liked her coffee black, but she drank obediently. Mary put her arm around Natalie's shoulders, and slowly the shaking began to subside. "Did you know him?" Mary asked.

"Slightly. He wasn't a friend." She shuddered. "He was left here for me to find."

"Now, Natalie, you're just scared."

"I know what I'm talking about." She looked at the pleasantly weather-worn face of the woman who'd offered love and sympathy ever since Kira deserted her so long ago. "Mary, did you see his throat?"

"Yes, horrible. This is nasty business, Natalie, but it doesn't have anything to do with you. Not a thing in the world."

But it did. Natalie knew with sickening certainly that it had everything to do with her.

She wasn't sure how long she and Mary sat silently beside the white car before the first police car arrived. Nick Meredith emerged, his expression grim, his eyes surrounded by bluish circles. Natalie doubted if he'd gotten a full night's sleep since the murder of Tamara. He looked at the blanket, then at Natalie. "Know who it is?"

"Jeff Lindstrom."

He drew in a quick breath. "Okay, besides Natalie, how many people have trampled on the crime scene?" he demanded.

"Only me," Mary returned indignantly, "and I didn't trample."

"The guy who lives in the gray house was here," Natalie told him. "He didn't come within six feet of the body, though, and I didn't see him touch anything."

Nick looked around. "Pretty boy standing at his window clutching a woman?"

"Yes. Gary didn't come over."

"Who's Gary?"

"The locksmith gawking at you from the doorway of my house. He made the call after I found the body."

Nick turned to a deputy hovering nearby. "Get the tech team."

"Runnin' them ragged lately," the deputy muttered as he headed for the patrol car.

"And keep everyone else away from the area," Nick added. He pulled on a clear, latex glove and lifted the blanket. After gazing at the neck wound for a moment, he withdrew a wallet from Jeff's pants pocket. He flipped it open and read from the driver's license. "Jefferson R. Lindstrom. 2020 Madison Street, Cincinnati, Ohio."

Mary looked at him sternly. "Certainly you don't need Natalie to stay here and watch whatever you do with a body. She needs to go inside."

"She does indeed." Nick reached down and took Natalie's arm. "Let's go in and you tell me what happened."

Mary insisted on following, casting suspicious looks at Nick. He told Gary to go about his business, but Gary wasn't breaking any records. He worked slowly and quietly as he eavesdropped on Natalie's account of the morning up until she'd opened the door of Jeff Lindstrom's car.

As soon as she finished, someone began pounding on the front door and shouting, "What the hell is going on? Are those home invaders back?"

"Oh, Lord, it's Harvey," Mary groaned. "He was fine when he went out to fish, but it sounds like he got into the liquor before he came over."

"Would you mind taking him home, ma'am?" Nick asked politely. "We have all the confusion around here we need."

"Yes, I'll take him home," Mary said with suppressed fury. "If we hadn't been married since we were nineteen, I'd divorce him, the old fool."

She marched off and, after a brief but loud altercation on the front porch, Natalie heard her leading away a protesting Harvey. "Poor guy," she said. "He used to be brilliant and so charming."

"Last week he spent the night in jail," Nick told her. "I thought Hysell was going to cry when I arrested him, but I can't have him sitting out in his boat yelling to a crowd of tourists that he hid a bomb on shore."

Natalie smiled faintly. "I appreciate the effort, but you don't have to keep prattling about Harvey. It's not going to take my mind off Jeff."

"I know, but you're so pale I thought I'd give you a minute to recuperate." Nick sat down and to her surprise took her cold hand in his. "Where's your father?"

"At the hospital. He's always spent more time there than at home."