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His last move, the one he hoped would make Peter crazy, was to take Jesse to the window, open it and place him there facing out. It would be from this display that, hopefully, the realization would sink in. Peter could choose not to believe in Jesse, or to believe in him and still not care. The third possibility, the one
Janek
was counting on, seemed sometimes, when he thought about it, not plausible at all.

So he placed the old man in full view, on the very spot where Amanda had once set her exercise mat, then stood beside him feeling the cold night air wash across his face. Did he also feel something else, that same shiver that had brushed him on a night so many months before? He stared, wanting to penetrate the darkened window across, willing himself to make out the face he knew must be lurking there behind the glass.

For an instant he thought he saw it. A movement...or something. He stared harder, feeling Jesse beside him, hearing the old man's breathing, wondering if it matched the worried breathing taking place across the yard. Then, he didn't know why, he felt the connection suddenly broken. And just then, as he asked himself if he was imagining things or whether his scheme was going bad, he heard a noise and turned around in time to see Stanger come rushing though the door.

The detective was panting. He'd run up the stairs. "Charged by me," he gasped, trying hard to steady himself. "Came tearing out, Lieutenant. Too fast." Stanger let his arms fall to his sides. "Sorry, Lieutenant. He's gone...."

"W
ell, at least," said Sal, "you ran him to ground."

"But where's the ground?" Aaron asked.

It was Christmas Eve. They were sitting in the squad room. Sal and Aaron had been roaming the city checking out Peter's haunts. Aaron was wearing his yarmulke. Carols, played over the precinct-house PA, wafted to them through the walls.

The Jesse plan had certainly worked, but not the way
Janek
had hoped. A week after the
dumbshow
at Amanda's and Peter had not reappeared, had not returned to his apartment, although
Janek
still had Stanger posted there.

"It being the holidays, maybe he's gone home."

Aaron looked at Sal and laughed. "That dump down in Jersey?"

"Home is home."

"This guy's not sentimental."

"So where the hell does he hide out?"

The two detectives looked at
Janek
. The three of them had been puzzling the problem for a week. It seemed logical that Peter was hiding; spooked by the appearance of his father, he had figured the game was up and fled. Jesse was now ensconced back in his cabin with Howell as companion and guard. Peter had known where to address the pictures, but
Janek
didn't think he would head down there; faced with his father, he had chosen to run.

"It being the holidays, why don't
we
go home?"

"That," Aaron said, "is a great idea."

They went downstairs together. There was a Christmas tree set up in the lobby, a pathetic little spruce laden with tinsel. An old sergeant in a Santa costume sat grinning on a bench reserved for drunks. Police officers' kids crowded around and giggled.

Light snow was falling when they stepped outside. The sky was dark and people hurried along the sidewalks clutching packages. The three detectives stood together for a moment, then headed for their cars.

On his way to Long Island City
Janek
found the traffic almost sweet. Drivers were polite and the
Queensboro
Bridge seemed magical, the snow clinging to its girders like a fringe. He listened to Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" on the radio, thought of Lou
DiMona
and wondered if she'd flown to Houston to spend the holidays with Dolly.

He parked outside Caroline's building, retrieved his presents and carried them up the stairs. Climbing, he felt like a very weary detective, but when he opened the door and she ran into his arms he felt himself shedding all fatigue. They ate, drank, listened to music, made love, lay touching each other until they fell asleep. In the morning they exchanged gifts. He gave her a new gold chain and an oversize graphite tennis racquet. She gave him a soft gray button-up sweater and a waffle iron—he'd once told her he was sometimes seized with irrational cravings for waffles.

Watching her make breakfast, he wondered why he was so happy. For years Christmas had filled him with gloom. It had been a day that never passed quickly enough, but this year—a unique sensation—he hoped it would go on and on.

"That's because you're not alone," she said. "This year you have a home."

"But I didn't feel this way when I had a home before," he said.

"You didn't have a home," she said. "You had a house."

In the afternoon they went for a walk. The snow had stopped, the sun was out, the air was clear and sharp. She carried her
Leica
. He watched while she stopped and took pictures. He never tired of watching her or of the intensity she transmitted when she worked.

"Funny how the last few months have been filled with so many photographs," he said. "Yours. Then the crime-scene shots. Then that old snapshot of your father with Al and Hart."

"And Lane's shots of me, too. Don't forget them."

"And the pictures he sent Jesse—the ones you told me must exist." He looked at her. "So where is he? Sal says he'd head for home."

"Sal's right."

"Not the cabin. Howell's down there, anyway."

"Maybe there's another home."

"Where?"

She shrugged. "Everyone's got a place."

They walked. A boy rode toward them on his new Christmas bicycle. An old man stood on the corner tossing seeds at a flock of pigeons. Another home.... So many photographs....
Janek
looked up. A plane cut across the sky, leaving a trail of vapor. He stopped. He looked at her. "The parlor," he said.

"What?" She stopped too, to search his eyes.

"The place where he put his mother's furniture." He could feel his voice rising. "The chairs with doilies on the arms. The side tables holding the family photographs. The place in the movie. The place he took the girl." He paused, still looking at her. "The room."

H
e knew all about secret rooms, had been in them before. We all have them, he often said—secret hiding places like Mandy's stash, chambers in the mind, and, sometimes, actual rooms. They are the places where we store our demons and our fears, the props of our childhoods, the memories that control our lives. Aaron had long recognized
Janek's
fondness for uncovering secret rooms. He called it "Frank's specialty."

"He loves the process," Aaron said.

It was the day after Christmas. The squad room. Eight
A.M.
Janek
had called Aaron and Sal at home the night before: "That's where he's holed up. So now we got to find the place."

He had ordered Sal to cover for Stanger while Stanger located Nelly Delgado and brought her in. She was sitting with them now swearing she could never find it, sniffling on account of a cold, angry at being hauled out of bed.
Janek
tried to soothe her. Certainly she could remember if she tried. The two other detectives were busy, Sal on one phone trying to locate the prop man who'd worked on
Mezzaluna
,
Aaron on the other talking to Peter's aunt in Cleveland, begging her to remember where she'd shipped the furniture when Peter had asked for it when he'd first moved to New York.

"Guy takes you from Times Square to Brooklyn in a cab,"
Janek
said, "he's got to take a tunnel or a bridge." Nelly nodded. "There're three bridges. Williamsburg, Manhattan, Brooklyn." He looked at her. "Or did he take the tunnel?"

"No. It was a bridge."

"There, you see—it's not so hard."

"But I don't know which."

"Of course you don't. That's why Sal's going to show you all of them. Sooner or later it'll start coming back. Would you be willing to be hypnotized? We have a police hypnotist."

Nelly glared.

By ten o'clock Sal had found and spoken with the prop man, the set decorator and the production manager. They couldn't remember much except that the scene between
Targov
and the whore had been shot on a set Peter had ordered built. So where had they gotten the props? Peter had chosen them, the set decorator said. Where? He didn't know, though the prop man vaguely remembered a truck. A union truck driven by theatrical teamsters? No, the picture had been made nonunion; Peter had employed film students. They'd used a rented van. When the set was struck they'd hauled the stuff away.

"Back to where he kept it," Aaron said.

"Unless he gave up the place and put the furniture in storage."

Janek
didn't think he had. "It was his refuge. He needed that room. You don't give a refuge up."

"Refuge against what?" Sal asked.

"Anger. Madness."
Janek
paused. "That's always the curious thing. The place where the fury was forged becomes the place where the fury is relieved. If Peter went to such pains to recreate his mother's parlor he's still got the place and that's where he is."

Sal was assigned to drive Nelly to Brooklyn. They would try to locate the neighborhood, then explore it block by block. She remembered that the building wasn't on a corner, that it didn't have an elevator and that it was six stories high. So maybe,
Janek
admitted, there're five thousand such buildings in Brooklyn. So we do the legwork, he said.

Aaron booked a flight to Cleveland. Liz Lane hadn't kept her copy of the mover's bill of lading and had no record of Peter's old address. She didn't even remember the shipper's name. She'd found it in the Yellow Pages, had chosen it from an
ad.

Janek
drove him to the airport. He encouraged him while they waited for the plane. "Get her to remember the year and then the season and then get the phone company to find you a phone book from that year. Go through it with her. She might remember whether the ad was on the right or left. Worse comes to worst, call all the interstate shippers. Make a list and work your way through."

When he returned to the precinct he phoned the city rent commission. Was there a way to locate a tenancy if all you had was the tenant's name? He got the answer quickly enough: "Sorry, Lieutenant—no."

After four days Sal asked to be relieved. He was sniffling; he'd caught Nelly's cold. "She's a good kid, but it's hopeless, Frank. Miles and miles of tenements. Everything starts to look the same."

Liz Lane spent three days pondering an old edition of the Cleveland Yellow Pages before she phoned Aaron at his motel in the middle of the night. She said she thought the shipper's name was "from the Bible or maybe from a myth." Aaron drove over to her house. For the tenth time they went through the phone book together. She narrowed it down to the Atlas, Hercules and Samson moving companies. The next morning Aaron contacted all three and cajoled them into searching their dead files. It took two more days before Atlas found the papers and could give him the address of the consignee. Aaron phoned it in from Cleveland.
Janek
and Sal rushed over to the place. There was nothing there but a vacant lot. Ten years before, the building had been demolished.

Aaron flew back to New York.

At two o'clock in the afternoon on December thirty-first
Janek
interviewed Nelly Delgado again. He took her through her story step by step—the drive to the tenement, the walk up the stairs, the layout of the apartment, the scene. He was looking for something, anything, a detail she didn't realize was important, a small thing that had slipped her mind that could help him find the place. Her impressions were less than vivid. Had she seen a telephone? No. Had she used the bathroom? No. Did the windows face the front of the building? She didn't know. Why not? The curtains had been drawn and also there'd been shades.

From her description
Janek
drew a floor plan, then located the positions of the couch, the chairs, the side tables, the buffet.

"What happened when you reached the door?"

"I waited while he took out his keys."

"Then he unlocked it?"

"Yes."

"Then what happened?"

"We went in."

"You first?"

"No. Him."

"Then?"

"He turned on the lights."

If Peter had lights he had electricity. If he had electricity he had an account with Con Edison. Perhaps the account was under an assumed name, but Nelly remembered there'd been no name beside the buzzer. What about the mailbox? She didn't remember the mailbox. But the electric company had to send bills somewhere.
Janek
picked up the phone.

By five o'clock they were running computer checks.
Janek
fed the Con Ed girl names. Peter Lane: the only account was the one on Eightieth Street. Peter Dill: there were two; Sal and Aaron left to check them out.
Janek
tried all sorts of variations on Lane and Dill, and when he'd exhausted those he started with the names of the killer characters in the films. At 8
P.M.
he was sure he had it:
Targov
, Ivan; 12309 Oakland Avenue, Brooklyn, in
Greenpoint
near
McCarren
Park.