'This is Sheriff Bannerman, Mr. Trenton. I'm afraid I have some rather upsetting information for you. I'm sor -'

'Are they dead?' Vic asked. Suddenly he felt totally unreal and two-dimensional, no more real than the face of an extra glimpsed in the background of an old movie such as the one he and Roger had been watching. The question came out in a perfectly conversational tone of voice. From the corner of his eye he saw Roger's shadow move as he stood up quickly. It didn't matter.

Nothing else did, either. In the space of the few seconds that had passed since he had answered the phone, he had had a chance to get a good look behind his life and had seen it was all stage scenery and false fronts.

'Mr. Trenton, Officer Fisher was dispatched -'

'Dispense with the official bullshit and answer my question. Are they dead?' He turned to Roger. Roger's face was gray and wondering. Behind him, on the TV, a phony windmill turned against a phony sky. 'Rog, got a cigarette?.' Roger handed him one.

'Mr. Trenton, are you still there?' 'Yes. Are they dead?'

'We have no idea where your wife and son are as of right now,'

Bannerman said, and Vic suddenly felt all of his guts drop back into place. The world took on a little of its former color. He began to tremble. The unlit cigarette jittered between his lips.

'What's going on? What do you know? You're Bannerman, you said?'

'Castle County Sheriff, that's right. And I'll try to put you in the picture, if you'll give me a minute.'

'Yes, okay.' Now he was afraid; everything seemed to be going too fast.

'Officer Fisher was dispatched to your home at Eightythree Larch Street as per your request at twelve thirty-four this morning. He ascertained that there was no car in the driveway or in the garage.

He rang the front doorbell repeatedly, and when there was no answer, he let himself in using the key over the porch eave. He found that the house had been severely vandalized. Furnishings were overturned, liquor bottles broken, soap powder had been poured over the floor and the built-ins of the kitchen -'

'Jesus, Kemp,' Vic whispered. His whirling mind fixed on the note: DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? He remembered thinking that note, regardless of anything else, was a disquieting index into the man's psychology. A vicious act of revenge for being dumped.

What had Kemp done now? What had he done besides go through their house like a harpy on the warpath?

'Mr. Trenton?'

'I'm here.'

Bannerman cleared his throat as if he were having some difficulty with the next. 'Officer Fisher proceeded upstairs. The upstairs had not been vandalized, but he found traces of - uh, some whitish fluid, most probably semen, on the bedspread of the master bedroom.' And in an unwitting comic ellipsis, he added, 'The bed did not appear to have been slept in.'

'Where's my wife?' Vic shouted into the phone. 'Where's my boy?

Don't you have any idea?'

'Take it easy,' Roger said, and put a hand on Vic's shoulder. Roger could afford to say take it easy. His wife was home in bed. So were his twin girls. Vic shook the hand off.

'Mr. Trenton, all I can tell you right now is that a team of State Police detectives are on the scene, and my own men are assisting.

Neither the master bedroom nor your son's room appear to have been disturbed.'

'Except for the come on our bed, you mean,' Vic said savagely, and Roger flinched as if struck. His mouth dropped open in a gape.

'Yes, well, that.' Bannerman sounded embarrassed. 'But what I mean is that there are no signs of - uh, violence against person or persons. It looks like straight vandalism.'

'Then where are Donna and Tad?' The harshness was now breaking up into bewilderment, and he felt the sting of helpless little-boy tears at the corners of his eyes.

'At this time we have no idea.'

Kemp... my God, what if Kemp has them?

For just a moment a confusing flash of the dream he had the previous night recurred: Donna and Tad hiding in their cave, menaced by some terrible beast. Then it was gone.

'If you have any idea of who might be behind this, Mr. Trenton -'

'I'm going out to the airport and rent a car,' Vic said. 'I can be there by five o'clock.'

Patiently, Bannerman said: 'Yes, Mr. Trenton. But if your wife and son's disappearance is somehow connected with this vandalism, time could be a very precious commodity. If you have even the slightest idea of who might bear a grudge against you and your wife, either real or imagined ~'

'Kemp,' Vic said in a small, strangled voice. He couldn't hold the tears back now. The tears were going to come. He could feel them running down his face.' Kemp did it, I'm sure it was Kemp. Oh my Christ, what if he's got them?'

'Who is this Kemp?' Bannerman asked. His voice was not embarrassed now; it was sharp and demanding.

He held the phone in his right hand. He put his left hand over his eyes, shutting out Roger, shutting out the hotel room, the sound of the TV, everything. Now he was in blackness, alone with the unsteady sound of his voice and the hot, shifting texture of his tears.

'Steve Kemp,' he said. 'Steven Kemp. He ran a place called the Village Stripper there in town. He's gone now. At least, my wife said he was gone. He and my wife ... Donna ... they ... they had ...

well, they had an affair. Banging each other. It didn't last long. She told him it was over. I found out because he wrote me a note. It was ... it was a pretty ugly note. He was getting his own back, I guess. I guess he didn't like to get brushed off much. This ... it sounds like a grander version of that note.'

He rubbed his hand viciously across his eyes, making a galaxy of red shooting stars.

'Maybe he didn't like it that the marriage didn't just blow apart. Or maybe he's just ... just fucked up. Donna said he got fucked up when he lost a tennis match. Wouldn't shake hands over the net.

It's a question . . .' Suddenly his voice was gone and he had to dear his throat before it would come back. There was a band around his chest, tightening and loosening, then tightening again. 'I think it's a question of how far he might go. He could have taken them, Bannerman. He's capable of it, from what I know of him.'

There was a silence at the other end; no, not quite silence. The scratching of a pencil on paper. Roger put his hand on Vic's shoulder again, and this time he let it stay, grateful for the warmth.

He felt very cold.

'Mr. Trenton, do you have the note Kemp sent you?'

'No. I tore it up. I'm sorry, but under the circumstances

'Was it by any chance printed in block letters?'

'Yes. Yes, it was.'

'Officer Fisher found a note written in block letters on the message board in the kitchen. It said, "I left something upstairs for you, baby."'

Vic grunted a little. The last faint hope that it might have been someone else - a thief, or maybe just kids - blew away. Come on upstairs and see what I left on the bed. It was Kemp. The line on the noteminder at home would have fit into Kemp's little note.

'The note seems to indicate that your wife wasn't there when he did it,' Bannerman said, but even in his shocked state, Vic heard a false note in the sheriffs voice.

'She could have walked in while he was still there and you know it,' Vic said dully. 'Back from shopping, back from getting the carb adjusted on her car. Anything.'