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irritating.
Instead, they continued walking across the deck toward him. Then they started to run!
    A table went over on the deck. Votive candles broke, newspapers and magazines flopped on the deck.
    “Hey!
Hey!
” He looked at them in total disbelief.
    All four of them had jumped into the pool’s shallow end with Frank McDonough.
    “What the hell is this?” McDonough started to yell seriously at the intruding men. He was confused about what was happening,
     frightened too.
    They were on him like a pack of dogs. They grabbed his arms and legs, pinned them, twisted hard. He heard a sickening
crack
and thought his left wrist had been broken. The fast, powerful movement hurt like hell. He could tell how powerful they were
     because he was strong, and they put him down as if he were a ninety-pound weakling.
    “Hey! Hey!” he yelled again, choking on a noseful of water. They had his head pushed back so that he was looking straight
     up into the infinite blueness of the sky.
    Then they were forcing his head under. He tried to catch a quick breath, but got a mouthful of water and chlorine, and gagged.
    They held him under the surface, wouldn’t let him up. His legs and arms were caught in a powerful vise. He was being drowned.
     Oh God, it didn’t make a shred of sense to him.
    He tried to thrash.
    Tried to break free.
    Tried to calm himself.
    Frank McDonough heard his neck snap. He
couldn’t
fight them. He felt his life force ebbing, flowing out of him.
    He could see the figures in their soaking-wet clothes wavering before him in the sparkling, clear blue water. His eyes were
     pinned wide open. So was his mouth. Water flooded his throat and entered his lungs in a terrifying rush. His chest felt as
     if it would implode, which he actually wanted to happen. He just wanted the awful internal pressure and pain to end.
    In an instant, Dr. Frank McDonough understood. He saw the truth as clearly as he could see his own approaching death.
    This was about Tinkerbell and Peter Pan.
    They had escaped on his watch.

Chapter 12
    I T IS ABOUT a forty-minute drive from Bear Bluff to Boulder, if you keep the pedal to the metal, if you really fly.
    I tried my best to make the drive in a semi-sane and controlled manner, but I failed miserably. Everything about the drive
     and the night was a ghostly blur.
    I couldn’t stop seeing Frank McDonough as I had known him for the past six years—smiling, and incredibly full of life. I hadn’t
     been leaving the Bluff much lately. Not for the last 493 days, anyway. Now, I
had
to go to Boulder.
    Frank McDonough was dead. His wife, Barb, had called me in tears. I couldn’t make myself believe it. I couldn’t bear the painful,
     terrifying, awful thought.
    First David, and now Frank. It didn’t seem possible.
    I tried to call my best friend Gillian at Boulder Community Hospital. I got her answering machine and left a message that
     I hoped was coherent.
    I tried to call my sister, Carole, but Carole didn’t pick up at the camping site where she was staying with her two girls.
     Damn, I needed her now.
    I heard awful, wailing police sirens before I actually arrived at Frank and Barb McDonough’s ranch house in Boulder. They
     live close to Boulder Community Hospital, which makes sense, since they both worked there. Barb is a surgical nurse and Frank
     is the top pediatrician.
    Frank
was
a pediatrician. Oh, dear God, Frank was dead now. My friend, David’s friend. How could it have happened?
    The Boulder police sirens were blaring at an ear-piercing level, and they seemed so eerie, so personal, as if they were meant
     for me.
    Just hearing the police sirens brought back so many powerfully bad memories. I had spent months bothering the Boulder police
     about solving David’s murder. I’d tried to solve it myself for God’s sake. I had questioned parking lot attendants, doctors
     who used the lot late at night.
    Now everything, all the bad memories about David’s murder, came flooding back to