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Aynesworth took three plastic freezer bags from him.

“Front and center, Graham.” For a moment the humor left Aynesworth’s face. This was a hunter’s ritual, like smearing Graham’s forehead with blood.

“That was a real sly show, podna.” Aynesworth put the bags in Graham’s hands.

One bag contained five inches of a charred human femur and the ball of a hip. Another contained a wrist-watch. The third held the teeth.

The plate was black and broken and only half was there, but that half contained the unmistakable pegged lateral incisor.

Graham supposed he should say something. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

His head swam briefly and he relaxed all over.

“. . . museum piece,” Aynesworth was saying. “We have to turn it over to the turkey, don’t we, Jack?”

“Yeah. But there’re some pros in the St. Louis coroner’s office. They’ll come over and make good impressions. We’ll have those.”

Crawford and the others huddled with the coroner beside his car.

Graham was alone with the house. He listened to the wind in the chimneys. He hoped Bloom would come here when he was well. Probably he would.

Graham wanted to know about Dolarhyde. He wanted to know what happened here, what bred the Dragon. But he had had enough for now.

A mockingbird lit on the top of a chimney and whistled.

Graham whistled back.

He was going home.

52

Graham smiled when he felt the jet’s big push rocket him up and away from St. Louis, turning across the sun’s path south and east at last toward home.

Molly and Willy would be there.

“Let’s don’t jack around about who’s sorry for what. I’ll pick you up in Marathon, kiddo,” she said on the phone.

In time he hoped he would remember the few good moments—the satisfaction of seeing people at work who were deeply committed to their skills. He supposed you could find that anywhere if you knew enough about what you were watching.

It would have been presumptuous to thank Lloyd Bowman and Beverly Katz, so he just told them on the telephone that he was glad to have worked with them again.

One thing bothered him a little: the way he felt when Crawford turned from the telephone in Chicago and said, “It’s Gateway.”

Possibly that was the most intense and savage joy that had ever burst in him. It was unsettling to know that the happiest moment of his life had come then, in that stuffy jury room in the city of Chicago. When even before he knew, he knew.

He didn’t tell Lloyd Bowman how it felt; he didn’t have to.

“You know, when his theorem rang the cherries, Pythagoras gave one hundred oxen to the Muse,” Bowman said. “Nothing sweeter, is there? Don’t answer—it lasts better if you don’t spend it talking.”

Graham grew more impatient the closer he got to home and to Molly. In Miami he had to go out on the apron to board Aunt Lula, the old DC-3 that flew to Marathon.

He liked DC-3’s. He liked everything today.

Aunt Lula was built when Graham was five years old and her wings were always dirty with a film of oil that blew back from the engines. He had great confidence in her. He ran to her as though she had landed in a jungle clearing to rescue him.

Islamorada’s lights were coming on as the island passed under the wing. Graham could still see white-caps on the Atlantic side. In minutes they were descending to Marathon.

It was like the first time he came to Marathon. He had come aboard Aunt Lula that time too, and often afterward he went to the airfield at dusk to watch her coming in, slow and steady, flaps down, fire flickering out her exhausts and all the passengers safe behind their lighted windows.