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walls in a hopscotch arrangement. Sixteen in all, counting the ones upstairs. Istanbul, Paris, Rio, the Caribbean, a dozen others. An unknowing person might think he ran a travel agency, but to Kevin the images were simply gateways to the real world, places he would one day visit to broaden his horizon.
    To expand his understanding.
    Even if Slater had been here, there would be no way to tell, short of dusting for prints. Maybe Milton should send out a team.
    Easy, boy. This is an isolated incident, not a full-scale invasion. No need to tear the house down yet.
    Kevin paced to the couch and then back. He picked up the remote control and turned on the television. He preferred to spin through the channels on the huge Sony picture tube rather than settle on any particular channel for long. The TV was yet another window into life—a wonderful montage of the world in all of its beauty and ugliness. Didn’t matter; it was real.
    He flipped the channels, one every other second or so. Football, a cooking show, a woman in a brown dress showing how to plant geraniums, a Vidal Sassoon commercial, Bugs Bunny. He paused on Bugs. I say, what’s up, doc? Bugs Bunny had more truth to speak about life than the humans on the tube. “If you stay in the hole too long, it becomes your tomb.” Wasn’t that the truth. That was Balinda’s problem—she was still in the hole. He flipped the station. The news . . .
    The news. He stared at the aerial images, fascinated by the surreal shots of the smoldering car. His car. “Wow,” he mumbled. “That’s me.” He shook his head in disbelief and ruffled his hair. “That’s really me. I survived that.”
    What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls? He will call again. You do know that, don’t you?
    Kevin clicked the tube off. A psychobabblist once told him that his mind was unusual. He’d tested with an IQ in the top one percentile—no problems there. In fact, if there was a problem—and Dr. Swanlist the psychobabblist certainly didn’t think there was a problem at all—it was that his mind still processed information at a rate normally found in others during their formative years. Age normally slowed down the synapses, which explained why old folks could be downright scary behind the wheel. Kevin tended to view the world through the eyes of an adult with the innocence of a child. Which was really psychobabble for nothing of any practical value, regardless of how excited Dr. Swanlist got.
    He looked at the stairs. What if Slater had gone up there?
    He walked to the stairs and took them two at a time. One master bedroom on the left, one guest bedroom that he used as an office to his right, and one bathroom between the two. He headed for the guest bedroom, flipped on the light switch, and poked his head in. A desk with a computer, a chair, and several bookcases, one with a dozen textbooks and the rest heavy with over two hundred novels. He’d discovered the miracles of stories in his early teens, and ultimately they had set him free. There was no better way to understand life than to live it—if not through your own life, then through another’s. There was once a man who owned a field. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Not to read was to turn your back on the wisest minds.
    Kevin scanned the fiction titles. Koontz, King, Shakespeare, Card, Stevenson, Powers—an eclectic collection. He’d read the books eagerly in his recent renaissance. To say Aunt Balinda didn’t approve of novels was like saying the ocean is wet. She would feel no better about his philosophy and theology textbooks.
    The travel posters in this room boasted of Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, and Morocco. Brown, brown, green, brown. That was it.
    He closed the door and walked into the bathroom. Nothing. The man in the mirror had brown hair and blue eyes. Gray in bad light. Somewhat attractive if he was any judge, but generally average looking. Not the kind of person stalked by a psychopath. He grunted and