When shadows move in Casna Park and the wind is in the trees, I can't help but see it as the most terrifying place in the world.

It's brightly lit at night really, with more than enough lampposts throwing light along the intersecting paths, illuminating under the big trees, around the bandstand and war memorial. It's on the eastern side, the cemetery side of the park, that the darkness begins to take on its customary face, that the lampposts at one in twenty meters become one in fifty, then eighty, then infrequent enough for you to be in darkness, and light to be something over there, away from you, something to leave and reach again when you hurry along the paths.

And when the night wind comes to shiver the water of the pond and set the Moreton Bay figs tossing, shuddering, rushing like waves on an unexpected shore, then, then, it is a place to be away from.

I went there because he did. Went there (tracking it back) because a pattern emerged that showed he did, because he was one of those faceless people in a crowd who finally did get noticed, because I was asked to find patterns.

No. Because I had a corner window looking along Bennett Street, then because of a conversation about patterns and how some things just don't get noticed till you look for them. Maybe because of the kind of cop Harry Badman was, that too, but for me it was the window, then the conversation, then the man, then the park.

I was still recovering from the car accident, and a left leg broken in two places, in the last week of being confined to a wheelchair I called Miss Nancy in my second-floor apartment above Bennett Street, looking forward to two or more months of brokering actual legwork to other PIs and the occasional errand "boys" I could safely farm easier jobs out to. Paying the bills had always had a certain novelty aspect to it; now I had to be more creative than ever. Fortunately, Benny and Sue could be trusted; fortunately I had the phone and desk interview patter down well enough to make "assigning operatives" sound like the very best personal service money could buy.

It was mainly that in a region like the Hunter people just didn't need PIs that much, let alone Jay Wendt Investigations.

Oh, and in case you're thinking that all this is too Sam Spade to be true, trust me, there really is a breed of private investigator who fits the Raymond Chandler model to the letter, just as there's a breed that never quite does but wants to really bad. Then there are those like me who, no matter how hard we try to avoid the stereotype and break it every chance we get, keep getting cast in the role by others so we're left grinning wryly at the irony, which somehow looks tough-guy knowing and cool too and just confirms all the clichés.

That's how it was with Harry Badman and me from Day One.

For a start, he didn't for a moment seem to read my agitation for what it was when he showed me his official ID. I'd seen him around a few times and my first thought was: Shit, what have I done?!

"So what can I do for you, detective?" I said, pulling back to let him in, doing my best professional roll away from the door.

"You're just like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window up here, aren't you?" Harry Badman said, riding his own stereotype. At least he didn't say "ain't ya?".

I guided my chair towards the window, glanced briefly out over Bennett Street, then turned smartly. I'd practiced that turn. "Or that TV series, Ironside. That had a wheelchair and Raymond Burr in it too, if you appreciate that sort of thing."

It was the one prepared tough-guy line I'd put together and, wouldn't you know, this time my delivery was perfect.

"Synchronicity," Harry Badman said, a word I'd never have expected from this particular balding, aging, grey-suited cop, and broke his stereotype in one stroke. "I'd like to think we can be as lucky."

We.

"How do you mean?"

Harry Badman sat in one of my old armchairs. "This isn't official business, Jay. At least not in the way you think. I want to hire your services."

"You do?"

It was slackwitted on my part, would've sounded lame and obvious to anyone else. Badman seemed to take it as cynical disbelief. Maybe there was a hearing problem. Tonal drop-outs. Maybe I reminded him of someone else.

"Look, Jay. Can I call you Jay? There are cases we've got that we just don't have time to do properly. Don't have the staff. Don't have the evidence and so the authorization. Cases that don't catch the public eye. Little human interest. No one cares."

"Go on." It must've sounded tough and considered.

"I'm a bit like you, I guess. I'm in it because, well . . ."

I was glad he hesitated. "You believe in justice," I said.

"Yep. In doing whatever we can."

He actually meant it. He really did, and in my profession, you quickly learn that truth is the first casualty of self-interest. This tired-looking police detective who stood in my living-room/office was a bona fide "more than the job" type, and -- by a quirk of circumstance, a blending of stereotypes and old movies -- he was seeing me as one! I didn't dare snigger or flinch, just stared, aware of the traffic and people noise from Bennett Street. And, heaven help me, I replied with another of those lines.

"Where do I come in?" Which had me self-quipping: through the cliché door like everyone else. It really was one of those days.

"Hey, you're stuck up here convalescing. You're already doing what I can't get someone to do officially. Watching Bennett Street."

"And?" I decided to go with it, run the movies, trying not to spot the mannerisms.

Harry Badman took two disks from his jacket pocket. "What system you got?"

"Word 6. IBM compatible."

He handed me one, put the other away. "Run that when you get a chance."

"But you're going to tell me too." It was easy now.

Harry seemed to think a moment. "Let's just say that over the past eight years thirteen people have gone dangerously schizoid on that street down there."

I admit it threw me. I'd expected drug-deal surveillance of school kids, possible breaking and entering checkouts, confirming the presence of some major player hiding out in town, maybe even tracking the latest taggings by the Runalong graffiti raider everyone was upset about.

"Schizoid?" Bogart, Chandler and the rest went out that window. I just couldn't manage the poker-faced, four-beat, even gaze the occasion demanded. And I understood Harry Badman's problem: How could this possibly be a criminal matter, for heaven's sake? Unless . . .

I managed something of a recovery. "Dangerously schizoid? What exactly does that mean?"

"How about coffee while I talk?" he said, standing, then walked over to the kitchen area, switched on the kettle, found cups, waited till he'd made us both coffee and was seated again. Then he continued.

"I've spoken to experts over at Blackwater, so I'm pretty well up to speed on this. Dangerously schizoid means an unstable, disordered personality showing clear signs of dysfunctional or antisocial behavior. Extreme anxiety and paranoia. Given to sudden outbursts."

"Violent behavior?"

"Quite often. They're the easy ones to spot."

"Surely your people would be involved then."

"Jay, there are thousands of locals using Bennett Street each week, but some of the thirteen were tourists, travellers passing through."

"Then how did you find out . . . ?"

"It's on the disk. Doctor Dan and I got talking. He's in charge of the clinic over at Blackwater. Patient and next of kin questionnaires entered into the new DHP database showed the overlap. Eight cases who were okay before passing through Everton, who showed marked behavioral differences afterwards."

"That sort of data showed?"

"Over eight years it has. A lot of paranoid schizophrenics are happy enough to talk about their condition -- when they first heard voices, had insights and convictions."

"But Bennett Street? So exact?"

"Jay, five of the thirteen occurred in the past fourteen months. They're becoming a lot more frequent."

"Or just the ones reported are."

Harry Badman regarded me over his coffee mug, nodded as he set it down. "Good point. That's exactly it. That's why I want someone watching. You're right here on the corner. You see it all."

"What part can Bennett Street play?"

"Exactly. What could possibly happen here? Down there?" He gestured towards the window. "But the questionnaires, Jay. Nine of the thirteen mentioned something here. They first had the feeling, heard the voices, saw themselves followed or watched, saw visions here!"

I truly didn't know what to think or say. Harry Badman probably saw that as considered resolve, matched it to some idea of appropriate response.

"It sounds way out, I know. You can see why there can't be an official investigation. Doctor Dan is really pushing for it though -- we both are. It's -- it's one of those demographics that, well, shouldn't be swept aside."

"Who are the five locals? I've read nothing."

"Why would you? They're borderline types. Jack Winters out Greta way. Mary Ash from Box Valley. Tom Coatley's youngest girl."

"Who?"

"Exactly. Just what I mean. No one prominent. The media rarely reports on people going to hospital for this kind of observation. It's often gradual, inconclusive. Behavioral anomalies are seen as dietary, hormonal, some new spinoff of lead poisoning or attention deficit disorder. Victims are admitted to a psychiatric ward, then moved to the appropriate facility later when their conditions are diagnosed as chronic."

I actually rolled my chair over to the window, looked out at maybe fifty-two shops, the post office, the Imperial Hotel; at pedestrians, people going through their usual daily routines. I recognized faces, but not enough, nowhere near enough to make a difference.

"What do you want me to do, Harry?" The 'Harry and Jay' approach was just the way it was.

"Watch Bennett Street. Just watch the street. Log the flow. The constants. Build me a pattern. I'll come in, you explain it to me."

"A pattern?"

"You're in the trade, Jay. You know it all comes down to patterns. We get information but don't get enough to find a pattern. That's why this is so damn hard. Even though we refine the art of seeing."

I almost polly-parroted "art of seeing" back at him but just nodded. Harry was venting, probably had weeks and months of frustration pent up and flowing out.

And he was right. I did know all about patterns. I'd had to explain it at Neighborhood Watch sessions often enough, remind folks how cops driving down a street saw everything in terms of stable patterns and what looked out of place: two people talking in a doorway who suddenly turn away, whose neck and shoulder muscles tense; how you learned to notice parked cars, what first-floor windows were left open, who was watching you in shop-window reflections. It's what you learned to do, I'd tell them, what we all needed to do. Look at what you see. Observe. Like doctors walking that same street seeing people in terms of nutrition, fitness, signs of fatigue.

"We've learned to allow for society's blind spots, Harry," I said.

"Exactly. And for predators scouting prey."

"Kills community, selling average folk that."

"Surely does. Or builds community. The commonweal in the real sense."

First synchronicity, now commonweal. I really had misjudged Harry Badman.

"Do this for me," he said. "I'll pay a third your standard rate."

"A third!"

"Hey, you're sitting here anyway. I'm paying this out of my wage."

"Then make it a quarter." Don't ask me why. I was sitting here anyway.

Harry nodded. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

"The disk has case profiles for all thirteen?"

"Correct. From Doctor Dan's enquiries. Do me a favor. Read it, return it when you're done. Don't copy it. It's supposed to be confidential."

"Understood." Yes, I was seeing Harry Badman differently now. Unofficial surveillance. Circulating confidential files. Risking all sorts of things probably -- him and this Doctor Dan both.

The detective placed his card on the coffee table. "I'll drop by Friday unless I hear from you first. I'll bring a telescope if you don't have one, or a telephoto lens. Hey, and Jay, why the quarter standard?"

"Harry, I'll be candid. I'll need to slack off now and then. This stakeout stuff is eighty per cent of my business but it can send you crazy. Everything will start to look suspicious -- patterns everywhere. I just need the downtime without the guilt, okay?"

"Sure." Then just to let me know we could both play the clichés. "Should've known it wasn't compassion."

"The moral high ground is for guys like you, Harry. I don't even try for it."

"You're helping. That puts you on the side of the angels."

"See you Friday."

So began my Rear Window period, right down to setting up my Pentax and telephoto lens on its tripod and snapping and developing shots of the street. It was like being a kid on a long country drive again, spotting a red car with a J and a 6 in the licence plate or a white Japanese import with two women in the front. I saw the shopping and sightseeing habits of thousands, saw the mosaic of parked cars form and change, saw good retail hours and bad for the local stores, who jaywalked, what age groups dominated what cafés, what bus seats, which times of day.

But I never let the window or the street or the patterns become a trap. I made snacks, left Miss Nancy and exercised as well as I could wearing a cast, reread the case-histories from Doctor Dan, napped on the couch just as I always did, took phone calls from Benny and Sue and prospective clients, watched TV and read.

I was hoping I'd get detachment, objectivity, but the opposite happened. Being away from the view of Bennett Street only intensified the patterning when I went back to it. Everyone looked suspicious somehow. A quarter standard wasn't nearly enough.

The files made fascinating reading though, made it all worthwhile really, even without the "he" in Case 11. Five locals, eight transients, people I might know or could've seen, all ages, but none younger than twenty or older than forty-six, both genders -- seven women, six men. All displaying sudden and increasing disorientation, memory lapses, outbursts of irrational anger, an accelerating delusional state, paranoia, feelings of persecution and incredible anxiety, all markedly changed affects. When it became clear that all failed to respond acceptably to the standard medications like Prozac, Clozapine, Risperidone, all thirteen had been incarcerated at different institutions, were being steadily relocated to Blackwater as Dr. Dan Truswell persuaded the respective authorities that the Everton concentration and common Bennett Street locus made it the best short-term strategy (made sure too that certain health subsidies were partly redirected in consideration of such reassignments).

Most of the thirteen had stabilized, remained afflicted by attacks of anxiety and paranoia, delusional lapses and occasional multiple personality "manifestations," but were generally compliant, responsive to both medication and group therapy, and capable of giving lucid if not always structured interviews.

It was only Case 11's allusion to a "he" that gave the clue, lent an added edge of threat and danger to the whole thing. I read the transcript of the Susan Bellamy interview conducted by Dr. Dan Truswell, maybe a dozen times.

DT: Tell me about that day on Bennett Street.

SB: There's nothing there now.

DT: What was there that day?

SB: It isn't easy.

DT: I know, Susan. What was there that day?

SB: Nothing there. No more. Home now.

DT: In a while. You can go home in a while. What happened on Bennett Street, Susan?

SB: It was there. It was just there.

DT: Yes, but what was there? Susan, what was there on Bennett Street?

SB: [No answer]

DT: Susan, think hard. What was there? What was there on Bennett Street that day?

SB: It was there!

DT: What was there?

SB: It's just where he was, okay!

DT: Where who was, Susan? Where who was?

SB: [No answer]

DT: Where who was, Susan?

SB: [No answer]

DT: Susan, who was on Bennett Street that day?

SB: Nothing there. No more. Home now.

DT: In a while. Who was there?

SB: It was there. It was just there.

DT: Who was he? Susan, who was there?

SB: [No answer]

Each time I read it, I almost grasped something, possibly imagined some purpose, some deflected intent in the poor woman's words.

"Anything?" Harry Badman asked when he dropped by at 7:22 on that Friday evening. Bennett Street was set in a lustrous early autumn blue behind me, flecked with streetlights and traffic glitter. Familiar, comforting sounds drifted up through the open window. The curtains stirred in the balmy air.

"You could go mad doing this," I told him. "Everything becomes suspect."

"I'll tell Dan to save you a room over at Blackwater. Can you stay with it?"

I smiled, finding I was liking this unusual man more and more, his political incorrectness, his determination. "I should've sent Miss Nancy back a week ago, Harry. I'm cleared for crutches now. The cast comes off in a month. Then I'm walking-stick deadly. I can stay with it till then. Then it's back to ambulance chasing, I'm afraid."

"Slower ambulances anyway. I see you've got your camera set up. Why don't I bring in a camcorder? I can fast-forward through it in the evenings."

"You're not serious."

"I'm single at the moment."

"Tell Doctor Dan to book you in next to me. This isn't your usual stakeout."

"We're doing what we can, Jay. You saw the reports."

"Susan Bellamy's in particular."

"Exactly. We have a case demographic focused here that no one would usually buy. One but only one 'victim' -- to use that term rather than 'subject' -- suggests a perpetrator. Coincidence or paranoid delusion? Simple fact? No one else mentions anyone. You make a copy, Jay?"

"You said not to."

"Did you make a copy?"

"Would you want to know?"

"What, if you downloaded a copy or if I can trust you?"

"You said not to. I didn't."

"Hard copy?"

"Of course. That okay?"

"I guess. It's Doctor Dan I'm concerned for."

"Then you take it with you when we're done."

"Thanks. I'm not used to being this, well . . . extended."

"Compromised."

Harry nodded. "This whole thing bugs me."

"You plan to locate probable 'he's, take photos, show them to this Susan Bellamy, hope it loosens up something, right?"

"That's it. But not just 'he's, Jay. Could be a 'she' too. We need solo and crowd shots so we have a series for her to choose from."

"Harry, what can it possibly be? If the connection that seems to be there is there? I mean, we're talking varying degrees of improbable. Drug deals and . . ."

"Behavior-affecting contact toxins."

"Okay, at one extreme. Possession at the other. I don't buy the supernatural, I'm afraid."

Harry gazed out at the night for a moment. "Me neither, Jay. Dan says that hypnosis has been known to cause particularly dramatic reactions in latent schizophrenics. Perhaps it can actually trigger psychosis in certain types."

"That'd mean time was needed though, surely. A certain amount of willingness on the part of the victims."

"Maybe he does it over a cappuccino or on a bus seat or in a post office queue. Sitting on a bar stool at the Imperial. Tourists and locals could well do things like that. All we know for sure is that the change of affect seems too pathologically marked, too sudden and involuntary in every case."

"What does Dan think's behind it?"

"You think we're careful. His skepticism will make us look like foaming zealots."

"But?"

"He's building a theory even as we speak."

"What, that there are people who can catalyze virtually immediate and demonstrable madness in others?"

"Hey, Jay! Now you sound like the one who swallowed a textbook. I'm impressed."

"Don't go coy on me, Mr. Synchronicity, Detective Sergeant Commonweal! You probably knew how I'd be with this. Dan must be asking how I took it."

"He is. But remember, Jay, he's not building a theory because he wants to. It's because he has to in view of case data. Can I leave you with this?"

"Sure. And bring a camcorder if you want. But I'll only use it on probables, okay? Anything I think you should see."

"You could miss it."

"I'll stay alert. Till I get to a walking-stick."

"Thanks, Jay. I'll drop in."

"Nah. Use the stairs. I need someone to remind me of what it was like."

Harry became busy with other duties and didn't get to drop by nearly as often as he wanted, which was just as well. I was two weeks off the crutches I called Long John Newton, out of my cast and well into my third week using a walking stick (named Mr. Falk -- Post Who Walks), already making it downstairs and taking the occasional drives around town when it happened.

I'd given Harry shots and pattern profiles for a dozen candidates in that time, the most probable being the thin young man I called Scarecrow who lingered by the bargain book bins outside Crosley's Books; the little old lady with the handbag clutched to her front; and, most promising, Greenjacket, the short, grey-haired guy in his late fifties or early sixties in tan trousers and dark green jacket who just moved along the sidewalks, first one side then the other, repeating that, just walking, right hand in his jacket pocket, turning into shops in a way that made pretty fancy zig-zags when I schematized them during one of my final Long John hours.

Harry checked them all out as usual. Scarecrow was recently in from Raymond Terrace and staying with family; the CES placed him in a job the week I gave Harry the alert. Handbag turned out to be none other than Mrs. Armstrong, my third grade teacher, a widow run seriously afoul of time and the hour. Greenjacket was a local accountant who'd retired early to take care of an ill wife, now recently deceased.

Harry turned up similar mundane explanations for the actions of my other likelies: Beanie, Jaywalk, Gruesome, and Dreamer. I just added their portraits to my impressive folder of Local Character glossies and the assorted street shots I'd compiled with an eye to drumming up interest among the various local historical societies. Harry was already calling me the Charles Dickens and Mervyn Peake of Everton -- allusions he had to explain to me (right before Philistine and Luddite).

It was a Saturday morning. Bennett Street was at its weekly busiest as usual. I'd been taking some routine streets shots, snatching bits of life, capturing forever an argument between two usually circumspect local politicians right outside Barnes Hardware, capturing the hearse and some of the thirty-two-car cortège in the Giacomo funeral as it was held up at the post office crossing by a little boy dropping his ice cream, capturing some of my latest "planetary" constants in their usual Bennett Street orbits before dobbing them in for Harry's consideration

I had put down my copy of Bleak House (a gift from Harry) and was looking out, wondering yet again at the chances of Handbag and Greenjacket meeting and hitting it off -- they'd come close so many times (when you're street-watching, you get off on these things). I'd seen people furtive, distracted, confused; seen arguments, irritable parents tired from long drives shouting at children, husbands promising just one drink at the pub and coming back after four, young people chatting up each other, individual jaywalking preferences, how people behaved when a police car appeared, how men did when Julie Cavendish walked by. I considered how easy it'd be to be an assassin hiding up here in roomshadow, how much of their lives people didn't think to notice, how aggressive they were at pressing the buttons for crossing lights; how they crossed the street to avoid meeting certain people. Patterns.

I was tracking Greenjacket through one of his pinball zig-zags, curb to shop, enter, miss one, enter, miss two, when I noticed him, almost occluded by Greenjacket's meanderings, a drab man on a bench outside the post office, right there near the crossing where people flowed, thoughts elsewhere.

Drab and forgettable, not characters like Scarecrow and Handbag, not an eye-catcher like Greenjacket with his amiable ramblings or Julie Cavendish with her striking feminine allure. Dickens, Peake and Shakespeare would have passed on this one. But gut-feeling grabbed and I felt a prickling of recognition, something.

Through the telephoto lens I snatched his image, learned him: balding, grey-haired, plain features, in nondescript thrift-shop jacket and pants, dull brown shoes. It was how he watched people, unobtrusively, just doing it from the eyes without turning the head, no sudden or big movements at all really, just being there, blending in.

It was during an intense close-up that I noticed his lips moving almost imperceptibly and felt an inexplicable chill. Sure, he might have been singing a song to himself but I doubted it, was certain he wasn't. It was so ordinary yet so bizarre, like something held carefully in control -- like a mousetrap locked in its frozen moment, waiting. That's how it affected me, how much the streetwatching thing had wound me up. I took some video footage for Harry, then grabbed my folder of street photos and a reading glass, checked the bench back across the weeks and months. No sign of him. He was a new feature in the Bennett Street landscape.

Or an old feature back again.

Maybe it was the bright winter sunshine, the safety of people and traffic; maybe the Sam Spade/Rear Window routines I'd been following, maybe just more of Harry's commonweal pushing through, the looking out for others he seemed to set so much store by. I set the camcorder running, grabbed Mr. Falk and set off downstairs as slowly -- Sam Spading it -- as a Zen soccer player, made it out onto Bennett Street and into the shot for once. I checked to see my subject was still there, then set off for the pedestrian crossing at my best speed.

Locals greeted me. From the door of the barber shop George Willis called out, "Comin' Mr. Dillon!", which I figured for a line from some old TV show. I grinned at him as if I understood.

When I reached the crossing, I pretended to be waiting for someone and sat at the opposite end of the bench. I made like a guy kept waiting and did a watch check, then looked along the street as casually as I could so I could see his profile.

He was gazing ahead as before, just moving his eyes to track people coming and going, lips moving all the time like someone singing a song to himself. He seemed easy enough, relaxed, harmless, just watching and waiting. I behaved more or less the same way, watching people pass, checking my watch, not wanting to be too obvious.

When next I looked round to check on him, he'd turned his head and was gazing straight at me. At me and beyond me, his rain-colored eyes looking on and past.

I felt a sense of utter dread, knew my eyes must've widened and my body tensed, but the man's eyes did seem focused beyond me, looking out there somewhere.

What to do? I had the gut feeling, more of the sudden certainty, watched the moving lips and terrible vacant gaze of those pale grey eyes.

I made myself stay calm. I'd been cooped up for far too long. I remembered how sure I'd been about Greenjacket and Scarecrow, Handbag and Dreamer. Without photographs, without confirmation from Susan Bellamy, I was being unfair, probably overreacting, being oversensitive and imagining more than there was. The man could be singing for all I knew, his rain-colored eyes vacant only because he was in the reverie of where that song took him. Or he might even be a Blackwater inmate out on day leave. Or just another of those myriads of people I'd started to notice, someone whose wife might come for him at any moment and take him home for a bowl of minestrone on a cold sunny afternoon.

But then, as if cued by my presence, the man rose and stepped onto the crossing, walked off down Bennett Street.

It was both an anticlimax and a relief. I hurried back to my office-apartment at my fastest limp ("See any white whales out there, Mr. Ahab?" George Willis called, to which I answered: "Post Who Walks, never flies!", which left him frowning and bewildered), took a nip of brandy, then set about developing my "Rain Eyes" black and whites in my makeshift darkroom/pantry, finally had a dozen, had Marty Done drop by for the color rolls on his next lab run for the local realties, then phoned Harry.

By the time Harry arrived around 5:14, I had six color enlargements, my own dozen shots laid out on the coffee table, and the video footage ready to go.

"This smacks of overkill just a tad, Jay," Harry said, studying the photographs, "so I'm taking it as more than a hunch."

"Don't go cop on me, Harry. It was recognition. Something. Show them to Doctor Dan. Have him show them to Susan Bellamy. Do a series with her now. It can't hurt."

"That strong a feeling, huh?"

"You should've been there. Maybe it's just me, but it was strange. Suggest to Dan he present them in a series."

"I'll do that tonight, Jay."

"Can I come along?"

"I'd like you to. Say what you felt. We might need you there anyway if Susan Bellamy recognizes him."

In the earlier days of the Harry and Jay Show, back when role models seemed everything, Dr. Dan Truswell would've made a perfect coroner at a crime scene, focused, good-looking, attentive, courtly in a truly natural and charming way, also weary from too much care and late-night concentration, so he looked older than his forty-eight years. The spectacles, the tweed jacket, the flyaway greying hair tipped him more towards psychiatrist academic/mad scientist than I'd expected, but he was a gracious and grateful man, and no doubt a solid and dependable part of Harry's commonweal.

"She may misidentify, you realize," Dan said when the pleasantries were done and we were walking at my best Mr. Falk speed to the interview room in Ward Four. It was 6:52 and late for interviews. Medication procedures had been delayed and modified. "But she's rested and alert and we should get a clear result either way."

"Misidentify?" I said, even though I believed I understood well enough.

"Nature of the condition, Jay," Dan said. "Paranoid delusion. Misperception. Susan can rebuild her world to accommodate strangers when required. Don't be fooled by a positive that's too definite. We'll rely on physiological response signs equally. Respiration. Pupil dilation and saccade activity. Hesitation. Tone. We'll naturally triangulate on the photo-identification, and often you can tell the difference between a convenient, associational blanket recognition and a genuine one. Paranoid schizophrenics want to find meaning and will seek objective correlatives. It can be immediate and alarming to see. A genuine recognition can possibly take longer, believe it or not -- the subject rejecting confused, uncertain and projected memories, sorting false from real, actually remembering."

I couldn't help myself. I guess I needed to establish my own bona fides. "Unless trauma causes that delay, I imagine. Or the confusion is part of the individual's condition."

Doctor Dan cast a glance at Harry Badman and smiled. "Which is why this could take a while. As Harry would've told you, she gave no marked reactions at all to the shots of Scarecrow, Handbag or any of the others. No discernible traces of recognition at all. I emphasize 'discernible'. It's a deep pool in there."

Harry and I never met Susan Bellamy, of course. A familiar and "neutral" base was needed, so we watched through the observation room one-way as Dan did the interview. Susan wore day-wear civvies and sat in a comfortable chair at a well-lit table, with an orderly waiting to one side. Dan sat opposite the woman, thanked her for doing this, and showed her the first of the six photos he'd selected. Rain Eyes was Number Three onwards.

"Nothing much tonight, Susan. Just a few pictures I'd like you to look at. Won't keep you long. Just say if you know any of these people."

Susan didn't touch the pictures, just looked down when Dan placed them before her, one atop the other. Pictures One and Two elicited no response. At Three, the woman reacted, first craned forward, then pulled back.

"What is it?" Doctor Dan asked, his voice low and gentle.

Susan Bellamy looked tense and disturbed. She started to make a long low humming sound.

"What is it, Susan? Do you know this man?"

The woman hummed, staring down at the picture.

"Susan, did you see this man on Bennett Street?"

She hummed a while longer, then spoke, not looking up. "I mean it was where he was, wasn't it? Just where he was."

"Where who was, Susan?" Dan's voice remained gentle, firm and urging.

"What? What's that?"

"You once told me that's where he was. On Bennett Street. Was it this man you saw? Can you be sure?"

"Him. He came at me. He was there." Susan Bellamy's voice was breathy with emotion.

"But what happened there, Susan?"

"He was just there."

Dan tried a different tack. "Had you seen him before?"

"It's his place, isn't it? He was there."

"It's his place?"

"Yes. He was there."

"Yes, but had you seen him before?"

"He pushed me."

"Pushed you? You're sure? He pushed you?"

"He pushed me."

"You're sure? Could he have bumped into you by accident?"

"He touched me."

"Yes, Susan, but could it have been an accident?"

"He looked at me. He touched me."

"On Bennett Street? In front of everyone? He touched you?"

"Yes. He touched me. He knew."

"What did he know?"

"He was just there."

"What did he know?"

Susan frowned at the photo. Moving slowly, Dan spread the pictures out so the three Rain Eyes shots were showing.

"You're sure now? This is the man you saw?"

"He was just there."

"Have you ever seen him before?"

"He was there."

Dan poured her juice from a jug on the table, pushed the glass towards her right hand.

"Tell me about how you met him. Tell me about that day on Bennett Street."

"It can't be a good thing."

"Tell me about when he pushed you, Susan. On Bennett Street."

"What? What's that sound?" She looked up.

Dan did too, listening. "Just the air conditioning. What about him bumping into you?"

"No. That sound?"

Dan listened again. "I can't hear it. What's it like?"

Susan didn't answer, just frowned, looked down at the pictures.

"Is this the man who bumped into you?" Dan asked again.

"He didn't," she said.

"Who pushed you then."

"He was there for it. What's that sound?"

"It's the air conditioning, Susan. He was there for it. Tell me why he pushed you."

"It's not easy. It isn't ever easy."

"I know. But you do remember this man on Bennett Street. You're helping us by telling us about it. He pushed into you. He touched you. Why?"

"He knew."

"What did he know?"

"What it was. He knew."

Dan showed no impatience. "What was he doing, Susan? Tell me what he was doing."

"Outside is easier."

"Why?"

"It all goes on. Outside. It all does."

"Susan, we're almost finished. Try to remember very carefully. Is this the man who bumped into you -- who pushed you on Bennett Street?"

"I think so."

"Then think very carefully now. What happened that day? What do you remember?"

"He was there for it. He knew."

"What was he there for?"

"He was waiting for it."

"For what, Susan? What was he waiting for?"

"He was looking for me. Waiting. It isn't easy."

"What isn't easy?"

Susan didn't answer.

"Why was he waiting for you?"

But the woman was humming again and rocking just a little in her chair.

Dan gathered up the pictures, smiled at her. "Thanks for your help, Susan. We'll try again tomorrow. Take her back now, Carla."

Dan walked us out to the car. "It's very promising," he said as we crossed the carpark. "But don't take it as reliable recognition yet. It could be projection from her, the need to anchor her experience on someone. We'll show her a larger series with a single shot of -- what are you calling him, Jay?"

"Rain Eyes," I said.

"A shot of Rain Eyes at random in a run of ten, fifteen or so. See if we get significant repeated physiological reactions as well. ECG, EEG, optical, galvanic, things like that."

"You realize this guy's already here in town," I said.

Harry unlocked the car. "You may just be pattern sensitive, Jay. He might be in town every other day for all we know. We could just have a blind spot. Despite the shots, you may have just noticed him today."

"I sat next to him on a bench, Harry. Where do you think I got the name Rain Eyes? There's something there. It seems. Seemed."

"Good recovery," Doctor Dan said, smiling, eyes twinkling. "We can't rush on this."

Harry got into the car. "There's probably never going to be a case either way. None of it can be remotely admissable. We three are legs on a pretty remarkable tripod."

"Doing my job, Harry," Dan said.

I waved to Doctor Dan. "Yeah, I'm being paid too."

Dan dropped me at Bennett Street after 9 P.M. and I hobbled upstairs, opened the window just a few inches, took my phone and e-mail messages, made coffee and settled on the sofa to reread the thirteen cases, keeping Susan Bellamy's till last.

At 10:55 the phone rang, startling me in the windy winter night. It was Harry.

"Jay, two things. Dan just called. You may be right about this guy you saw. It looks like there's another case. A Bob Reese was signed in at the hospital a few hours ago. A stock and station inspector from Morrisset. Stopped here on his way through around five o'clock. Had something like a fit at the Imperial and they brought him in for observation. The duty nurse called Dan. It's still too soon to say."

"And the other thing?"

"Apparently Susan Bellamy was being put to bed and began saying a name."

"What was it?"

"Rain Eyes."

There was a chilling silence between us. I was aware of the curtains stirring, of the night wind pushing along Bennett Street, of a few, just a few, traffic sounds.

"That can't be possible, Harry. We were never with her. It has to be coincidence."

"It's bloody disturbing is what it is, Jay. But that's what it sounded like. Dan says Carla seemed pretty certain. Susan said it three or four times."

"What do we do with this, Harry?"

"We wait. We find Rain Eyes and ask some questions. We wait and see what Doctor Dan gives us on Reese. We may have something."

"Yeah, well thanks for the nightcap."

"You deserved to know tonight, Jay."

"Yeah. You sleep well too."

"Can't. Got other cases to log time on. I'll keep you posted."

"I've got Mr. Falk to keep me 'posted'. You keep me from going bankrupt."

"Mr. Falk?"

"You ever read Phantom comics, Harry?"

"Never did."

"Then forget it. Sleep tight."

"I don't drink on duty, Jay."

And we laughed together and hung up, leaving a strange bleakness behind, an emptiness, something badly wrong and still unfinished.

I just sat there afterwards, watching the curtains, listening, trying to think of any way the name could have reached Susan Bellamy. Nothing on the backs of the photos. She'd never touched them anyway. I sat there trying for possible solutions: Harry or me mentioning it and forgetting we had, Carla somehow overhearing and telling Susan, things like that, taking it way beyond believability.

Coincidence. Spontaneous "nomination." A new term for Harry.

It just didn't work. Nothing did.

But I was probably tired. When next I looked it was 11:20 and the wind had turned chill. I went to close the window and glanced out on the empty street.

He was sitting on the bench by the post office.

I felt everything go cold, felt my legs weaken and my breath catch, instinctively stepped back into the room, did a twenty count (made myself do twenty not ten!) and switched off the lamp, stepped back to the window.

He was there. Someone was there. Something. I tried to allow for misperception, tried to figure what else it could be.

There was nothing else.

It was a person. It was him, I was certain. Same position, same end of the bench, right there on the empty windblown street where the white crossing lines lay like a fallen picket fence and the yellow crossing sign overhead winked on and off on its lines, making its pulsing heart rhythm.

He just sat there, night-darkened, shadowed, grey eyes probably peering out, mouth probably working in time with the hypnotic Ham-Sa, Ham-Sa breath rhythm of the crossing sign. Something from Chinese philosophical traditions. Something for Harry.

And as if cued by my light going off, by the darkness in my window, Rain Eyes stood and began walking off down Bennett Street.

What to do? Phone Harry, call Doctor Dan?

Because of what? A local who'd been dozing and missed the last bus, who'd woken at this late hour and was now heading home?

But we all need closure. Resolution. At the end of months of watching the street, never having had this feeling about anyone else, having seen Susan, heard her words, been told she'd said that name, something like it, I had to go. With Bob Reese today, I had to.

I tried Harry's mobile but got the engaged signal, so left a quick voice mail message on his office line saying I'd be tracking Rain Eyes.

I grabbed Mr. Falk and began my well-practiced grab, hop and step downstairs, was finally out on Bennett Street in the close-to-midnight windy dark, aiming for the endless blink-blink of the crossing sign. A few cars came and went, faded as twin points of converging red, were soon gone altogether. The wind whistled about fences and the closed storefronts, fluttered canvas awnings, shuddered loose signs and rushed in the trees.

I thought I could see him ahead, crossing Bennett Street now, heading towards the darkened houses where the retail section of Everton became a sleep-darkened, residential part of town.

I was passing the Imperial Hotel, smelled stale beer, disinfectant, the barest hint of piss, smelled the land and dry crop smells lifting over fields and fences.

I felt I was gaining. Even with my leg and Mr. Falk to slow me down, even starting after he had and from further away, I'd become quite adept at limping like this.

Or maybe Rain Eyes was lingering. Waiting. Preparing. Come on, Jay! Come get your madness!

But Rain Eyes was still a way off and there were streetlights.

Just see where he goes, where he lives, I told myself. That's all. Something for bright sunlight and a new day.

I tried Harry's number again, this time found myself automatically re-routed to his office voice mail. For all I knew he was out on a date; his "duties" could mean he was with someone and had switched off his mobile.

I didn't have Dan's number and didn't have time to make other calls. Rain Eyes had reached Casna Park and had turned from my line of sight, was probably already crossing the park.

I slowed a bit, aware of my heart pounding, my breathing -- Ham-Sa, Ham-Sa -- matching the crossing sign back there, another part of the wind over all the safe familiar places.

I'd driven down to this end of Bennett Street countless times but hadn't walked it in years. There was the church, the bridge, the river behind the willows. There were silos and the rail embankment all set in wind and darkness. And now the park, streaked with light and shadow, set with paths and lampposts, crowned with Moreton Bay figs, all rushing and flowing. But no sign of Rain Eyes.

Now was the time to go back. Leave it and retrace my steps -- church, bridge, embankment -- go past the shops and the Imperial again, back to the post office and the winking sign and the bench. Back to my window and the place where things like this were safely out there, at the end of telephone calls, the sort of things that happened to others.

Still no sign of him.

Was he behind a tree? Behind the bandstand or the war memorial or on the other side of the pond that I could see shivering with light? Beyond those long, lighted, forbidding paths, intersecting, crisscrossing, double-crossing?

I was aware of no conscious choice to go on through the stone pillars of the entrance, was just aware of the town changing as I moved away at an angle to it, darkened houses out there, the cemetery over there, the dark hills beyond, rolling under the cold wind.

With no sign of him.

I realized then why some people never go back, why they end up looking in darkened cellars and locked boxes, why they continue on like domestic cats following a python along a track, caught in a need-to-know suspension of smart and sensible, in a one-step-more of unconscious choosing.

The moment mattered. Primally and foolishly it did. Personally and vitally I had to resolve something for myself. Continuing was the only meaningful thing just then.

It was deserted all the way, just the trees and the wind and the shuddering light, no sign of Rain Eyes to be seen.

At last I reached the cemetery gates, found them closed but still unchained after the funeral earlier in the day, a minor oversight in a town like Everton.

Rain Eyes had vanished into the night, perhaps even this part of it, but I was on cat-after-the-snake automatic and actually walked among the graves, as cat-quiet as I could, followed the central path along to the Roman Catholic section, made out vaults and crypts I knew from boyhood games and teenage trysts, proceeded carefully and quietly, found the low Giacomo crypt.

He was stretched out on top of it.

I went no further. This wasn't one of those miniature house-style tombs; this was a waist-high, double-bed crypt for four, and he was laid out on top.

Murmuring, I knew. Staring upwards and murmuring at the night.

I backed away, turned and hurried. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I told myself.

Every far-off lamppost beckoned, became sanctuary, priceless, wonderful, but I skirted them till I was in the park again, following the windblown path. Only then did I look behind me.

Rain Eyes was there, a hundred or so meters back, following, moving smoothly, silently, one moment lit, the next in tree-shadow.

Mr. Falk made a dull staccato on the path as I hurried past the pond. It was shivering, riffling like softly gilded pages. I reached the cleated wooden drum of the bandstand, the statue of the war memorial, drummed my way on towards light and life and Bennett Street.

Rain Eyes followed on behind.

I thought of the Bible story of the man possessed by all those demons, of Christ driving them out into the herd of Gadarene swine. Thought of Reese being brought in, a new case, with the coincidence of Rain Eyes' appearance and the Giacomo funeral.

Though not Giacomo for Reese, of course. Reese had someone else passed on by Rain Eyes. Rain Eyes had Giacomo now.

Would he have to touch me, bump into me, push me as he'd done with Susan, possibly the others, or could he send it rushing along the path to strike home?

I could feel him behind me. Filled with his latest ghost. Waiting to download, give me someone to keep me company. A companion.

The understanding shocked me, but more that I felt so little surprise, that I had accepted something like this.

I glanced back again.

And he was right there, ten meters back now, like in a game where someone runs to catch up when you're not looking, then acts as if they've been walking normally all along. He was too close.

I could see his eyes staring. Could see his manic grin and the determined step. His mouth murmuring.

I couldn't outrun this. I turned, raised my only weapon. Mr. Falk. Post Who Walks. Strikes.

But no. That would bring him too close. His eyes, his avid grin showed me that.

I raised my stick, threw it at seven meters, eight, whatever it was, struck him on the forehead it seemed, definitely on the face. Rain Eyes staggered, stumbled back, fell.

And I rushed on, my leg throbbing, aching, pounding down. Out of the park, along the street, the blinking Ham-Sa, Ham-Sa mocking, calling. I looked round once, twice, then pressed doggedly on.

I expected him on the bench, expected him in my room, expected some signature like my walking stick left on the bed, some obvious trick conclusion like you see in films. But no.

I tried Harry again, phoned Doctor Dan, expected busy signals as Rain Eyes came towards me along Bennett Street or worse, expected insanity on the other end of the phone, crazed laughter, but they were there, Harry awake, Dan crusty with sleep, and they said they'd be over immediately.

They were, in Harry's car fifteen minutes later, and we drove down to the park and found Rain Eyes lying on the path in the wind and the night, eyes open, staring upwards in a stupor but alive, lips no longer moving. At least that.

Dan used Harry's mobile, got an ambulance sent round, and Malcolm Jade -- so his wallet ID said -- was taken to hospital. My parting comment made Harry look at me long and hard.

"Doctor Dan, do me a favor and ride in front, will you?"

Dan nodded, probably just to humor me, perhaps because he sensed my fear.

"You're a mean shot with a walking stick, Jay," Harry said as the ambulance disappeared from view.

"How're you going to report this?"

"Depends on how Malcolm Jade reports it I'd say. Looks to me like he was struck by a branch blown down from a tree. It's a windy night."

"Thanks, Harry."

"Thank me tomorrow."

The mind is an amazing thing as Doctor Dan will tell you. Both Harry and Dan let me run through it again over at Blackwater for the unofficial, inadmissable-evidence, legs-of-a-tripod record, then Dan stood with his back to the window, pure theatricality, and announced that Malcolm Jade was fine, doing well enough physiologically, but that he would have to remain at Blackwater, that when he wasn't raving incoherently, he was insisting that he was Mario Giacomo.

Malcolm Jade is gone, perhaps buried deep down. There's a new resident now, and there's a park I try to avoid and a walking-stick I'll never touch again. It's irrational, I know, but you know what they say about The Phantom and ghosts walking. They never die.