Vickery had seen him by this time and he was up on the balls of his feet again, nervously watchful. The third man halted opposite the door and looked back and forth between Hannigan and Vickery. He said, “One of you the owner of this house?”
“I am,” Hannigan said. He gave his name. “Who are you?”
“Lieutenant McLain, Highway Patrol. You been here all evening, Mr. Hannigan?”
“Yes.”
“No trouble of any kind?”
“No. Why?”
“We’re looking for a man who escaped from the hospital at Tescadero this afternoon,” McLain said. “Maybe you’ve heard about that?”
Hannigan nodded.
“Well, I don’t want to alarm you, but we’ve had word that he may be in this vicinity.”
Hannigan wet his lips and glanced at Vickery.
“If you’re with the Highway Patrol,” Vickery said to McLain, “how come you’re not in uniform?”
“I’m in Investigation. Plainclothes.”
“Why would you be on foot? And alone? I thought the police always traveled in pairs.”
McLain frowned and studied Vickery for a long moment, penetratingly. His eyes were wide and dark and did not blink much. At length he said, “I’m alone because we’ve had to spread ourselves thin in order to cover this whole area, and I’m on foot because my damned car came up with a broken fanbelt. I radioed for assistance, and then I came down here because I didn’t see any sense in sitting around waiting and doing nothing.”
Hannigan remembered Vickery’s words on the beach: I could give you a story about my car breaking down. He wiped again at the dampness on his face.
Vickery said, “You mind if we see some identification?”
McLain took his hand away from his hip and produced a leather folder from his inside jacket pocket. He held it out so Hannigan and Vickery could read it. “That satisfy you?”
The folder corroborated what McLain had told them about himself; but it did not contain a picture of him. Vickery said nothing.
Hannigan asked, “Have you got a photo of this lunatic?”
“None that will do us any good. He destroyed his file before he escaped from the asylum, and he’s been in there sixteen years. The only pictures we could dig up are so old, and he’s apparently changed so much, the people at Tescadero tell us there’s almost no likeness anymore.”
“What about a description?”
“Big, dark-haired, regular features, no deformities or identifying marks. That could fit any one of a hundred thousand men or more in Northern California.”
“It could fit any of the three of us,” Vickery said.
McLain studied him again. “That’s right, it could.”
“Is there anything else about him?” Hannigan asked. “I mean, could he pretend to be sane and get away with it?”
“The people at the hospital say yes.”
“That makes it even worse, doesn’t it?”
“You bet it does,” McLain said. He rubbed his hands together briskly. “Look, why don’t we talk inside? It’s pretty cold out here.”
Hannigan hesitated. He wondered if McLain had some other reason for wanting to go inside, and when he looked at Vickery it seemed to him the other man was wondering the same thing. But he could see no way to refuse without making trouble.
He said, “No, I guess not. The door’s open.”
For a moment all three of them stood motionless, McLain still watching Vickery intently. Vickery had begun to fidget under the scrutiny. Finally, since he was closest to the door, he jerked his head away, opened it, and went in sideways, the same way he had climbed the steps from the patio. McLain kept on waiting, which left Hannigan no choice except to follow Vickery. When they were both inside, McLain entered and shut the door.
The three of them went down the short hallway into the big beam-ceilinged family room. McLain glanced around at the fieldstone fireplace, the good reproductions on the walls, the tasteful modern furnishings. “Nice place,” he said. “You live here alone, Mr. Hannigan?”
“No, with my wife.”
“Is she here now?”
“She’s in Vegas. She likes to gamble and I don’t.”
“I see.”
“Can I get you something? A drink?”
“Thanks, no. Nothing while I’m on duty.”
“I wouldn’t mind having one,” Vickery said. He was still fidgeting because McLain was still watching him and had been the entire time he was talking to Hannigan.
Near the picture window that took up the entire wall facing the ocean was a leather-topped standing bar; Hannigan crossed to it. The drapes were open and wisps of the gray fog outside pressed against the glass like skeletal fingers. He put his back to the window and lifted a bottle of bourbon from one of the shelves inside the bar.
“I didn’t get your name,” McLain said to Vickery.
“Art Vickery. Look, why do you keep staring at me?”
McLain ignored that. “You a friend of Mr. Hannigan’s?”
“No,” Hannigan said from the bar. “I just met him tonight, a few minutes ago. He wanted to use my phone.”
McLain’s eyes glittered slightly. “Is that right?” he said. “Then you don’t live around here, Mr. Vickery?”
“No, I don’t live around here.”
“Your car happened to break down too, is that it?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then — exactly?”
“I was with a woman, a married woman, and her husband showed up unexpectedly.” There was sweat on Vickery’s face now. “You know how that is.”
“No,” McLain said, “I don’t. Who was this woman?”
“Listen, if you’re with the Highway Patrol as you say, I don’t want to give you a name.”
“What do you mean, if I’m with the Highway Patrol as I say? I told you I was, didn’t I? I showed you my identification, didn’t I?”
“Just because you’re carrying it doesn’t make it yours.”
McLain’s lips thinned and his eyes did not blink at all now. “You trying to get at something, mister? If so, maybe you’d better just spit it out.”
“I’m not trying to get at anything,” Vickery said. “There’s an unidentified lunatic running around loose in this damned fog.”
“So you’re not even trustful of a law officer.”
“I’m just being careful.”
“That’s a good way to be,” McLain said. “I’m that way myself. Where do you live, Vickery?”
“In San Francisco.”
“How were you planning to get home tonight?”
“I’m going to call a friend to come pick me up.”
“Another lady friend?”
“No.”
“All right. Tell you what. You come with me up to where my car is, and when the tow truck shows up with a new fan belt I’ll drive you down to Bodega. You can make your call from the Patrol station there?”
A muscle throbbed in Vickery’s temple. He tried to match McLain’s stare, but it was only seconds before he averted his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” McLain said. “Something you don’t like about my suggestion?”
“I can make my call from right here.”
“Sure, but then you’d be inconveniencing Mr. Hannigan. You wouldn’t want to do that to a total stranger, would you?”
“You’re a total stranger,” Vickery said. “I’m not going out in that fog with you, not alone and on foot.”
“I think maybe you are.”
“No. I don’t like those eyes of yours, the way you keep staring at me.”
“And I don’t like the way you’re acting, or your story, or the way you look,” McLain said. His voice had got very soft, but there was a hardness underneath that made Hannigan — standing immobile now at the bar — feel ripples of cold along his back. “We’ll just be going, Vickery. Right now.”