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Afar: Cass Jurinsky, a craggy, ancient-looking female author who wrote about the horror genre. When she asked what I did for a living and I mentioned Alex's name, she got excited. "Vicki was a big fan of his," she said. "She used to talk about using him as a character in one of her novels." Alex in a horror novel. I tried to imagine him playing tag with a poltergeist. "Seriously." She looked at me with sad eyes. "I guess she never got in touch with him, did she?" "Not exactly," I said. Maybe it explained why she'd come to us for help. "What was her state of mind when she got back from her vacation? Did you notice anything unusual, Cass?" "She seemed depressed," Jurinsky said. "I don't know what it was. It was as if all the spirit had gone out of her." She had white hair and a lined face. But her eyes took fire when she talked about Vicki and her diabolical creations. "Nobody was better at it. She didn't have the biggest audience because she wrote a subtler kind of horror than the rest of them. But if you were tuned in to her, nobody could scare the pants off people the way she did." "Where did you last see her?" I asked. "A few weeks ago. At the World Terror Convention. It's for horror fans." (I could have figured that one out.) "They hold it every year in Bentley. Vicki showed up without warning. She wasn't on the schedule, but at one point I looked up and there she was. I didn't even know she was back." "You got to talk to her?" "Oh, yes." She sighed. "I loved that woman. I asked her how the trip had gone, and she said it was all right but she was glad to be home. And I remember thinking she didn't look glad." "How did she look?" "You want the truth? Frightened. And older. She'd aged while she was away." Jurinsky stopped, and I saw her replaying the scene in her mind. "I asked if everything was okay, and she said sure. She said it was good to see me again, then somebody interrupted and I drifted away from her." "That's it?" "That's it." Her lips tightened. "I should have paid more attention. Maybe I could have helped." We stood quietly for a moment. She seemed far away. Then I brought her back. "Why do you think she went to the convention?" "Well, she usually attended World Terror. She enjoyed spending time with her fans. Or, maybe she was looking for someone to talk to." "You?" "I'd guess anybody. Looking back now, I think she just wanted to be in a crowd. A crowd that knew her. But I was too busy to notice." She took a deep breath. "Too dumb."
     
***
     
    It was on the whole a depressing hour and I was glad when it was over. Alex had found a couple more who'd seen her, and who'd thought something might be wrong. But nobody had pursued the issue with her. "I talked with Cory again," he said. "And-?" "She bought a new notebook after she got home from Salud Afar." "What happened to the old one?" "Apparently left behind." On the way home, he mentioned that he'd gotten the name of her psychiatrist.

FOUR
Trust your instincts, Shiel. In the end, it's all you've got.
    - Nightwalk
    The painful truth about humanity is that the only people who can't be bought are the fanatics. Clement Obermaier was not a fanatic. He was the authorizing psychiatrist in Vicki's case. And when Alex offered to contribute substantially to a fund in which he had an interest, he discovered a way around the ethical dilemma posed by the need to talk about a patient. Alex met him at Cokie's Place, a cabaret in the mountains north of St. Thomas. Afterward, he reconstructed the conversation for me.
    Obermaier apparently thought Alex hoped there'd be a manuscript around somewhere. If there were, it would be worth a considerable sum. "At first," Alex said, "it was pretty obvious he was hoping he could talk to me, collect the contribution, but not tell me anything." "So what did he tell you?" "Somebody did a lineal block on her." "A what ?" "It's a procedure that's used with psychotic patients. Or with those who have extreme emotional problems. It allows the