And he found her. She was sitting on his porch steps, a gym bag between her feet.

"How long have you been here?" he asked from the car, as she strolled out to the driveway. "How'd you get here?"

"About twenty minutes-I came on the bus. I would have broken in, but the woman next door keeps watching me out her window," Cassie said, grinning. She tipped her head toward a lighted window in the next house. An elderly woman peeked out a lighted window in a side door, and Lucas waved at her. She waved back and disappeared.

"She keeps an eye out," Lucas said. "Besides, you'd need a sledge to get through the doors… Let me get the car inside."

Cassie waited behind the car as he put it in the garage next to his battered Ford four-by-four.

"Sweatsuit and shoes," she said, holding up the gym bag as he dropped the garage door. "I thought we could run along the river."

"In the rain?"

"You could see it going over on the TV radar," she said.

"Okay," he said. He took her elbow in his hand and kissed her on the mouth. "Did you hear?"

"Hear what?" she asked, puzzled by his somber tone.

"We had another killing. Out in Maplewood."

"Oh, no," she said, pressing her fingertips to her lips. "Is it a theater person?"

Lucas shook his head. "Not as far as we know. It's a woman who worked at the mall. They're checking, but she doesn't seem like she'd be a playgoing type. Certainly didn't look like an actress."

"Jesus… Like he just picked her out at random?"

"Eenie meenie minie moe," Lucas said. "And I've got something to ask you… later."

"What's the mystery?"

"I can't tell you. I want your brain to be fresh. Let's run."

Cassie set the pace along the river until Lucas, puffing, slowed her down. "Take it easy," he said. "Remember, I'm old."

"Six years older than me," she said. "At your age, you ought to be able to run a marathon under four, just to be in fair shape."

"Bullshit," he grunted. "If you can run a marathon under six, you're in great shape, for a normal human being, anyway."

"See, you're not hurtin'," she said. "You can still talk." But she slowed the pace and they stopped at a scenic overlook, walked in circles for a minute, then took off again, this time running away from the river.

"I have to stop at a video store," Lucas said. "I want to pick up a movie."

"A movie?"

"A kid at the mall saw the killer. Said he looked like Darkman, in the movie. You see it?"

"No. Heard about it. Supposed to be pretty bad."

"So we watch it for a few minutes."

When they got back to the house, Lucas leaned against the garage door, gasping for breath, dangling the plastic bag with the videocassette in one hand.

"I gotta do this more often," he said. "How far do you think we ran?"

"Three miles, maybe. Enough to crack a sweat."

"I hate to tell you, but I cracked a sweat about two hundred yards out," he said.

"Better take a shower," she said in a low voice. She was standing next to him, and she slipped a hand under his sweatshirt and lightly drew her nails from his nipples to his navel. Lucas shivered and moved against her.

"We've got serious business here," he said, patting her on the butt with the plastic bag.

"Hey-what difference does it make if we look at it now or an hour from now?"

He seemed to think about it, stroking his chin. "Hmm. An argument with a certain persuasive force…"

"So let's take the shower…"

Lucas, still damp from a second shower, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, popped the cassette into his VCR and turned on the television.

"What are we looking for?" she asked.

"I want to see if this Darkman character brings anybody to mind. Don't study him-just let it percolate."

The movie unwound, Cassie sitting on the floor in front of the TV. "I see why the kid called it a comic-book movie," she said a few minutes into it, when Darkman was blown through his laboratory window by an enormous explosion. "It's all bullshit."

"Doesn't bring anybody to mind?"

"Not yet." She stood up. "Is that peach ice cream still in the freezer?"

"Sure."

She sat with the ice cream, sucking on the spoon, watching intently. During a scene in which Darkman did a macabre dance, an oil funnel on his head, she frowned and shook her head.

"What?" Lucas asked.

"Run that again."

He stopped the movie and reran the dance scene.

"Don't tell me yet," he said.

"Okay. Keep going."

He watched her as the movie continued and she got more and more into it. At the end, she said, "Junk, but some parts were strong."

"So what'd you see?"

She studied him for a moment and then said, "You know, I'm your basic 'Off the Pigs' sort of person."

"Yeah, yeah…"

"Me and the people I hang out with."

"Uh-huh."

"And I really hate the idea of police creeping around and monitoring people and all that…"

"Come on, come on…"

She looked at the blank TV screen, wrinkled her forehead and said, "Darkman reminds me of a guy at the theater. I mean, he's completely different. He's built different, he looks different, but he sort of has… the aura of Darkman. He moves like Darkman, sometimes."

"Okay. Don't move."

He hurried back to the spare bedroom, looked around and spotted the Xerox of Redon's Cyclops still lying on the bed.

"Close your eyes," he told her, when he got back. "I'm going to hold a paper in front of your face. I want you to look at it for a second, no more, then close your eyes again. You're trying for a momentary impression… Open your eyes when I say 'Open.' "

"Okay…"

He held the Xerox in front of her face and said, "Open."

Her eyes opened but didn't close again, and after a little more than a second, he whipped the paper behind his back.

"Jesus," she whispered. "I feel like a fuckin' Judas."

"Who is it?"

"It could be Carlo Druze. You saw him the first day you were at the theater. He was the guy practicing onstage."

"I knew it," Lucas said. The thrill of it ran down his spine, and he shuddered. "He's the goddamned juggler, right? The guy you never see without makeup. I knew I'd seen him."

"I feel like…"

"Fuck that," he barked. "You saw your friend Elizabeth. You want to look at this woman up in Maplewood? We think he used a screwdriver on her…"

"No, no…"

"Are there any good photos of him at the theater? Publicity stuff, anything?"

Cassie nodded, but tentatively. "He's a very scarred man. He doesn't like photo sessions. Sometimes he uses cosmetics to cover up… but he's most comfortable in stage makeup. That's how you usually see him in the publicity shots. Full makeup. I don't know if there'd be any raw photos…"

"Can we get in?"

She hesitated. "I could get us inside the building, but the office is locked. And letting you go through the files… I don't know."

"C'mon, Cassie," Lucas said, a little less harshly. He reached out and touched her. "You can keep the plans for the fuckin' revolution. I just need a photo of the guy…"

"All right," she said. Then, following him back to the bedroom, she added, "I feel like a shit for saying this, but I keep thinking of more things… Carlo didn't like Elizabeth and she didn't like him."

Lucas, pulling on a shirt, said, "Was she planning to fire him?"

Cassie shrugged. "Who knows? The feeling was, she didn't like him because of his looks. As an actor, he's not bad."

Lucas stopped and looked at her: "Could Druze do this? Is he capable of it? Killing people?"

She shivered. "Of all the people I know… yeah, I'd say he's the most likely. But not with passion. I don't understand the eyes. If he wanted to kill somebody, he'd just do it, and walk away."

"Huh. Interesting," said Lucas. He put on a sport jacket, then dug through the bottom drawer of his bureau, found a leather wallet and stuck it in his jacket pocket. "Let's go look." • • • On the way across town, Lucas said, "When I saw him that time at the theater, I asked you where he was when Armistead was killed. You told me he'd been around all afternoon."