He found his housekey, started to put it in the lock, and then pulled it out again. His hand went to the doorknob instead, and as his fingers closed over it, he felt a clear certainty that it would rotate easily. Shooter had been here ... had been, or was still. And he wouldn't have needed to force entry, either. Nope. Not this sucker. Mort kept a spare key to the Tashmore Lake house in an old soap-dish on a high shelf in the toolshed, which was where Shooter had gone to get a screwdriver in a hurry when the time had come to nail poor old Bump to the garbage cabinet. He was in the house now, looking around ... or maybe hiding. He was

The knob refused to move; Mort's fingers simply slid around it. The door was still locked.

'Okay,' Mort said. 'Okay, no big deal.' He even laughed a little as he socked the key home and turned it. Just because the door was locked didn't mean Shooter wasn't in the house. In fact, it made it more likely that he was in the house, when you really stopped to think about it. He could have used the spare key, put it back, then locked the door from the inside to lull his enemy's suspicions. All you had to do to lock it, after all, was to press the button set into the knob. He's trying to psych me out, Mort thought as he stepped in.

The house was full of dusty late-afternoon sunlight and silence. But it did not feel like unoccupied silence.

'You're trying to psych me out, aren't you?' he called. He expected to sound crazy to himself. a lonely, paranoid man addressing the intruder who only exists, after all, in his own imagination. But he didn't sound crazy to himself. He sounded, instead, like a man who has tumbled to at least half the trick. Only getting half a scam wasn't so great, maybe, but half was better than nothing.

He walked into the living room with its cathedral ceiling, its window-wall facing the lake, and, of course, The World-Famous Mort Rainey Sofa, also known as The Couch of the Comatose Writer. An economical little smile tugged at his cheeks. His balls felt high and tight against the fork of his groin.

'Half a scam's better than none, right, Mr Shooter?' he called.

The words died into dusty silence. He could smell old tobacco smoke in that dust. His eye happened on the battered package of cigarettes he had excavated from the drawer of his desk. It occurred to him that the house had a smell - almost a stink - that was horribly negative: it was an unwoman smell. Then he thought: No. That's a mistake. That's not it. What you smell is Shooter. You smell the man, and you smell his cigarettes. Not yours, his.

He turned slowly around, his head cocked back. A second-floor bedroom looked down on the living room halfway up the cream-colored wall; the opening was lined with dark-brown wooden slats. The slats were supposed to keep the unwary from failing out and splattering themselves all over the living-room floor, but they were also supposed to be decorative. Right then they didn't look particularly decorative to Mort; they looked like the bars of a jail cell. All he could see of what he and Amy had called the guest bedroom was the ceiling and one of the bed's four posts.

'You up there, Mr Shooter?' he yelled.

There was no answer.

'I know you're trying to psych me out!' Now he was beginning to feel just the tiniest bit ridiculous. 'It won't work, though!'

About six years before, they had plugged the big fieldstone fireplace in the living room with a Blackstone jersey stove. A rack of fire-tools stood beside

it. Mort grasped the handle of the ash-shovel, considered it for a moment, then let go of it and took the poker instead. He faced the barred guest-room overlook and held the poker up like a knight saluting his queen. Then he walked slowly to the stairs and began to climb them. He could feel tension worming its way into his muscles now, but he understood it wasn't Shooter he was afraid of; what he was afraid of was finding nothing.

'I know you're here, and I know you're trying to psych me out! The only thing I don't know is what it's all about, Alfie, and when I find you, you better tell me!'

He paused on the second-floor landing, his heart pumping hard in his chest now. The guest-room door was to his left. The door to the guest bathroom was to the right. And he suddenly understood that Shooter was here, all right, but not in the bedroom. No; that was just a ploy. That was just what Shooter wanted him to believe.

Shooter was in the bathroom.

And, as he stood there on the landing with the poker clutched tightly in his right hand and sweat running out of his hair and down his cheeks, Mort heard him. A faint shuffle-shuffle. He was in there, all right. Standing in the tub, by the sound. He had moved............