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at her.  She smiled at me and licked her lips.  She looked a little bit like Kathy, the same hazel eyes and perfect white Chiclet teeth.  I pictured Trevor on top of her and imagined her coming with that bastard inside her.  I threw another dollar at her, then got up to leave.  As I was passing the bar, Max called me over and handed me a folded up napkin.  "From Tiffany," he barked.  I handed him my last ten-dollar bill and walked out.
    I unfolded the napkin in the Rover.  She had written the name Rachel and her beeper number.  You just never know with people.  I stuffed it in my pocket and started the car.  As I was leaving the parking lot, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Trevor Lucas’ red Ferrari pulling in — or thought I saw it.  But tootie combined with booze can play tricks with your mind.
    I drove home and swallowed three Valium before heading for bed.  One used to keep the nightmares at bay, but no longer.  I lay there, stiff, unwilling to let go the reins of my mind.  It seemed an hour passed before the competition between sedatives and stimulants for my brain's chemical receptors finally wrenched me into a realm midway between sleep and wakefulness.  In that purgatory, praying that I would be saved, I heard myself wonder again how a man violent enough to butcher a woman could force himself on her so gently as to not bruise a tissue nor tear a membrane of her softest part.

Chapter 3
     
    Wednesday, 2:38 A.M.
     
    I sat bolt upright, my arms crossed over my face to repel the next blow.  My legs pedaled against the mattress until I was crouched against the headboard, rocking like a child.  My eyes scoured the dark room, knowing the dream was over, but still smelling the mixture of alcohol and tobacco on my father's breath.  My nose burned, and my jaw ached from grinding my teeth.  My mouth was painfully dry.
    I turned on the lamp.  I hadn't changed for bed and was still wearing my boots.  The odor of scotch and smoke I had smelled was wafting off me, no one else.  I struggled to my feet, stripped and went for a drink from the bathroom faucet.  The cold water made my teeth ache, but soothed my mouth and throat.  I lighted a Marlboro from the package in the medicine cabinet and sat down in the wing-back chair by the bed.  I felt anxious and empty.  Raw.
    How much more stable was I, really, than a man like Westmoreland?  On the surface, as a physician, driving my Rover, living in Marblehead with another physician, I had nothing in common with a psychotic drifter.  But in my heart I knew I wasn't entirely different from him.  He was homeless; I was uncomfortable in my own home, even in my own skin.  He was plagued by voices and visions; I was tortured by memories that chased me out of sleep and into the haze of drugs.  How much and what kind of pain, I wondered, would it take to push me over the edge of sanity?
    More than a third of the thirty-six hours Emma Hancock had given me had passed, and I didn't know a whole lot more about Westmoreland than when I'd started.
    I was about to pour myself a scotch when the phone rang.  I figured it was Kathy and I wasn't sure whether to pick it up or let her wonder where the hell I was.  There is a scene at the end of The Verdict where Paul Newman lets the phone ring, sensing his deceitful ex-lover is calling, and I tried to do the same thing.  But I'm no Paul Newman and I really wanted to talk to her.  "Clevenger," I answered.
    "Got it!" the voice at the other end said.
    "Hello?"
    "I got it."
    "Paulson, do you know it's three o'clock in the morning?"
    "Didn't you hear me?  I said, ‘I got it.’"
    He sounded like a maniac patient.  "Calm down.  What the hell have you got?"
    "Ready?"
    "I've got nothing else on my agenda right now."
    "OK.  Here goes.  You listening?"
    "Paulson..."
    He was chuckling.  "It was simple, that's why it was complex.  Like anything worth a damn in science.  It was hard to see because it was right in front