LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 1

      AFTER THE APPLE HAD BEEN CUT IN HALF, the halves had been sewn together with coarse black thread. Ten bold stitches were uniformly spaced. Each knot had been tied with a surgeon’s precision.

      The variety of apple, a red delicious, might have significance. Considering that these messages had been delivered in the form of objects and images, never in words, every detail might refine the sender’s meaning, as adjectives and punctuation refined prose.

      More likely, however, this apple had been selected because it wasn’t ripe. Softer flesh would have crumbled even if the needle had been used with care and if each stitch had been gently cinched.

      Awaiting further examination, the apple stood on the desk in Ethan Truman’s study. The black box in which the apple had been packed also stood on the desk, bristling with shredded black tissue paper. The box had already yielded what clues it contained: none.

      Here in the west wing of the mansion, Ethan’s ground-floor apartment was comprised of this study, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Tall French windows provided a clear view of nothing real.

      The previous occupant would have called the study a living room and would have furnished the space accordingly. Ethan did too little living to devote an entire room to it.

      With a digital camera, he had photographed the black box before opening it. He had also taken shots of the red delicious from three angles.

      He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core. He was reluctant to snip the stitches and to take a look at what might lie within.

      Years as a homicide detective had hardened him in some respects. In other ways, too much experience of extreme violence had made him vulnerable.

      He was only thirty-seven, but his police career was over. His instincts remained sharp, however, and his darkest expectations were undiminished.

      A sough of wind insisted at the French panes. A soft tapping of blown rain.

      The languid storm gave him excuse enough to leave the apple waiting and to step to the nearest window.

      Frames, jambs, rails, muntins—every feature of every window in the great house had been crafted in bronze. Exposure to the elements promoted a handsome mottled-green patina on exterior surfaces. Inside, diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown.

      The glass in each pane was beveled at every edge. Even in the humblest of service rooms—the scullery, the ground-floor laundry—beveling had been specified.

      Although the residence had been built for a film mogul during the last years of the Great Depression, no evidence of a construction budget could be seen anywhere from the entrance foyer to the farthest corner of the last back hall.

      When steel sagged, when clothes grew moth-eaten on haberdashery racks, when cars rusted on showroom floors for want of customers, the film industry nevertheless flourished. In bad times as in good, the only two absolute necessities were food and illusions.

      From the tall study windows, the view appeared to be a painting of the kind employed in motion-picture matte shots: an exquisitely rendered dimensional scene that, through the deceiving eye of the camera, could serve convincingly as a landscape on an alien planet or as a place on this world perfected as reality never allowed.

      Greener than Eden’s fields, acres of lawn rolled away from the house, without one weed or blade of blight. The majestic crowns of immense California live oaks and the drooping boughs of melancholy deodar cedars, each a classic specimen, were silvered and diamonded by the December drizzle.

      Through skeins of rain as fine as angel hair, Ethan could see, in the distance, the final curve of the driveway. The gray-green quartzite cobblestones, polished to a sterling standard by the rain, led to the ornamental bronze gate in the estate wall.

      During the night, the unwanted visitor had approached the gate on foot. Perhaps suspecting that this barrier had been retrofitted with modern security equipment and that the weight of a climber would trigger an alarm in a monitoring station, he’d slung the package over the high scrolled crest of the gate, onto the driveway.

      The box containing the apple had been cushioned by bubble wrap and then sealed in a white plastic bag to protect it further from foul weather. A red gift bow, stapled to the bag, ensured that the contents would not be mistaken for garbage.

      Dave Ladman, one of two guards on the graveyard shift, retrieved the delivery at 3:56 a.m. Handling the bag with care, he had carried it to the security office in the groundskeeper’s building at the back of the estate.

      Dave and his shift partner, Tom Mack, x-rayed the package with a fluoroscope. They were looking for wires and other metal components of an explosive device or a spring-loaded killing machine.

      These days, some bombs could be constructed with no metal parts. Consequently, following fluoroscopy, Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air.

      When the package proved clean, the guards unwrapped it. Upon discovering the black gift box, they had left a message on Ethan’s voice mail and had set the delivery aside for his attention.

      At 8:35 this morning, one of the two guards on the early shift, Benny Nguyen, had brought the box to Ethan’s apartment in the main house. Benny also arrived with a videocassette containing pertinent segments of tape from perimeter cameras that captured the delivery.

      In addition, he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother’s com tay cam, a chicken-and-rice dish of which Ethan was fond.

      “Mom’s been reading candle drippings again,” Benny said. “She lit a candle in your name, read it, says you need to be fortified.”

      “For what? The most strenuous thing I do these days is get up in the morning.”

      “She didn’t say for what. But not just for Christmas shopping. She had that temple-dragon look when she talked about it.”

      “The one that makes pit bulls bare their bellies?”

      “That one. She said you need to eat well, say prayers without fail each morning and night, and avoid drinking strong spirits.”

      “One problem. Drinking strong spirits is how I pray.”

      “I’ll just tell Mom you poured your whiskey down the drain, and when I left, you were on your knees thanking God for making chickens so she could cook com tay cam.”

      “Never knew your mom to take no for an answer,” Ethan said.

      Benny smiled. “She won’t take yes for an answer, either. She doesn’t expect an answer at all. Only dutiful obedience.”

      Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the thin rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air.

      Watching weather clarified his thinking.

      Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams.

      From his uniform days through his plainclothes career, friends on the force had said that he did too much thinking. Some of them were dead.

      The apple had come in the sixth black box received in ten days. The contents of

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