PART FOUR

1

Grofield walked into the theater at four in the afternoon, and stood for a second just inside the door, looking down past the rows of seats at the stage. A white sheet was draped over the sofa. Grofield had called here last night, after getting away from Myers and Brock; the conversation had been short, neither of them wanting to say much over the phone, but Grofield had understood from things she said and didn't say that Dan Leach was dead. She had lived here for thirty-four hours now with that thing under the sheet.

Grofield hurried down the aisle and went up the steps to the stage. Mary was on none of the sets, nor in either of the wings. Grofield didn't want to call her name; he didn't know why, exactly, but he just didn't want to shout in here right now. He thought it would be bad for Mary. He found her in the female dressing room, a long narrow room under the stage with one stone wall. She was sitting at the make-up table, doing nothing, and when he walked into the room their eyes met in the mirror and he saw no expression in her face at all. He'd never seen her face so completely empty before, and he thought, That's what she'll look like in her coffin. And he ran across the room to pull her to her feet and clamp his arms tightly around her, as though she were in danger of freezing to death and he had to keep her warm.

At first she was unmoving and unalive, and then she began violently to tremble, and finally she began to cry, and then she was all right.

They were together fifteen minutes before they started to talk. Grofield had made soothing noises and said words to reassure her before that, but there had been no real talk. Now she said, "I don't want to tell you about it. Is it all right?"

"It's all right." She was sitting again, and he was on one knee in front of her, rubbing his hands up and down her arms, still as though trying to keep her warm and alive.

"I don't want to talk about it ever."

"You don't have to. I know what happened; I don't need the details."

She looked at him, and her expression was odd-intense, and somehow sardonic. She said, "You know what happened?"

He didn't understand. They'd come here, Myers and Brock. They'd killed Dan Leach. They'd forced Mary to tell them where Grofield was and what name he was using. What else?

She saw his face change when he realized what else, and she closed her eyes. Her whole face closed, it seemed; it went back to the expression he'd seen when he'd first walked in here.

He pulled her close again. "All right," he said. "All right."