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“No,” Crawford said. “Where’s the incinerator?”

When Crawford returned in four hours for the next visiting period, Molly wasn’t in the waiting room and she wasn’t in the intensive-care unit.

Graham was awake. He drew a question mark on the pad at once. “D. dead how?” he wrote under it.

Crawford told him. Graham lay still for a full minute. Then he wrote, “Lammed how?”

“Okay,” Crawford said. “St. Louis. Dolarhyde must have been looking for Reba McClane. He came in the lab while we were there and spotted us. His prints were on an open furnace-room window—it wasn’t reported until yesterday.”

Graham tapped the pad. “Body?”

“We think it was a guy named Arnold Lang—he’s missing. His car was found in Memphis. It had been wiped down. They’ll run me out in a minute. Let me give it to you in order.

“Dolarhyde knew we were there. He gave us the slip at the plant and drove to a Servco Supreme station at Lindbergh and U.S. 270. Arnold Lang worked there.

“Reba McClane said Dolarhyde had a tiff with a service-station attendant on Saturday before last. We think it was Lang.

“He snuffed Lang and took his body to the house. Then he went by Reba McClane’s. She was in a clinch with Ralph Mandy at the door. He shot Mandy and dragged him into the hedge.”

The nurse came in.

“For God’s sake, it’s police business,” Crawford said. He talked fast as she pulled him by the coat sleeve to the door. “He chloroformed Reba McClane and took her to the house. The body was there,” Crawford said from the hall.

Graham had to wait four hours to find out the rest.

“He gave her this and that, you know, ‘Will I kill you or not?’” Crawford said as he came in the door.

“You know the routine about the key hanging around his neck—that was to make sure she felt the body. So she could tell us she certainly did feel a body. All right, it’s this way and that way. ‘I can’t stand to see you burn,’ he says, and blows Lang’s head off with a twelve-gauge.

“Lang was perfect. He didn’t have any teeth anyway. Maybe Dolarhyde knew the maxillary arch survives fires a lot of times—who knows what he knew? Anyway, Lang didn’t have any maxillary arch after Dolarhyde got through with him. He shot the head off Lang’s body and he must have tipped a chair or something for the thud of the body falling. He’d hung the key around Lang’s neck.

“Now Reba’s scrambling around looking for the key. Dolarhyde’s in the corner watching. Her ears are ringing from the shotgun. She won’t hear his little noises.

“He’s started a fire, but he hasn’t put the gas to it yet. He’s got gas in the room. She got out of the house okay. If she had panicked too much, run into a wall or something or frozen, I guess he’d have sapped her and dragged her outside. She wouldn’t have known how she got out. But she had to get out for it to work. Oh hell, here comes that nurse.”

Graham wrote fast. “How vehicle?”

“You have to admire this,” Crawford said. “He knew he’d have to leave his van at the house. He couldn’t drive two vehicles out there, and he needed a getaway piece.

“This is what he did: He made Lang hook up the service-station tow truck to his van. He snuffed Lang, locked the station, and towed his van out to his house. Then he left the tow truck on a dirt road back in the fields behind the house, got back in his van and went after Reba. When she got out of the house all right, he dragged out his dynamite, put the gasoline around the fire, and lammed out the back. He drove the tow truck back to the service station, left it and got Lang’s car. No loose ends.

“It drove me crazy until we figured it out. I know it’s right because he left a couple of prints on the tow bar.

“We probably met him in the road when we were going up there to the house . . . Yes, ma’am. I’m coming. Yes, ma’am.”

Graham wanted to ask a question, but it was too late.

Molly took the next five-minute visit.

Graham wrote “I love you” on Crawford’s pad.

She nodded and held his hand.

A minute later he wrote again. “Willy okay?”

She nodded.

“Here?”