ttorney Byron Metcalf took off his tie at five o'clock, made himself a drink, and put his feet up on his desk.

"Sure you won't have one?"

"Another time." Graham, picking the cockleburs off his cuffs, was grateful for the air conditioning.

"I didn't know the Jacobis very well," Metcalf said. "They'd only been here three months. My wife and I were there for drinks a cou­ple of times. Ed Jacobi came to me for a new will soon after he was transferred here, that's how I met him."

"But you're his executor."

"Yes. His wife was listed first as executor, then me as alternate in case she was deceased or infirm. He has a brother in Philadelphia, but I gather they weren't close."

"You were an assistant district attorney."

"Yeah, 1968 to '72. I tan for DA in '72. It was close, but I lost. I'm not sorry now.

"How do you see what happened here, Mr. Metcalf?"

"The first thing I thought about was Joseph Yablonski, the labor leader?"

Graham nodded.

"A crime with a motive, power in that case, disguised as an insane attack. We went over Ed Jacobi's papers with a fine-tooth comb - Jerry Estridge from the DA's office and I.

"Nothing. Nobody stood to make much money off Ed Jacobi's death. He made a big salary and he had some patents paying off, but he spent it almost as fast as it came in. Everything was to go to the wife, with a little land in California entailed to the kids and their de­scendants. He had a small spendthrift trust set up for the surviving son. It'll pay his way through three more years of college. I'm sure he'll still be a freshman by then."

"Niles Jacobi."

"Yeah. The kid gave Ed a big pain in the ass. He lived with his mother in California. Went to Chino for theft. I gather his mother's a flake. Ed went out there to see about him last year. Brought him back to Birmingham and put him in school at Bardwell Community College. Tried to keep him at home, but he dumped on the other kids and made it unpleasant for everybody. Mrs. Jacobi put up with it for a while, but finally they moved him to a dorm."

"Where was he?"

"On the night of June 28?" Metcalf's eyes were hooded as he looked at Graham. "The police wondered about that, and so did I. He went to a movie and then back to school. It's verified. Besides, he has type-O blood. Mr. Graham, I have to pick up my wife in half an hour. We can talk tomorrow if you like. Tell me how I can help you.

"I'd like to see the Jacobis' personal effects. Diaries, pictures, whatever."

"There's not much of that - they lost about everything in a fire in Detroit before they moved down here. Nothing suspicious - Ed was welding in the basement and the sparks got into some paint he had stored down there and the house went up.

"There's some personal correspondence. I have it in the lockboxes with the small valuables. I don't remember any diaries. Everything else is in storage. Niles may have some pictures, but I doubt it. Tell you what - I'm going to court at nine-thirty in the morning, but I could get you into the bank to look at the stuff and come back by for you afterward."

"Fine," Graham said. "One other thing. I could use copies of ev­erything to do with the probate: claims against the estate, any con­test of the will, correspondence. I'd like to have all the paper.

"The Atlanta DA's office asked me for that already. They're com­paring with the Leeds estate in Atlanta, I know," Metcalf said.

"Still, I'd like copies for myself."

"Okay, copies to you. You don't really think it's money, though, do you?"

"No. I just keep hoping the same name will come up here and in Atlanta."

"So do I."

Student housing at Bardwell Community College was four small dormitory buildings set around a littered quadrangle of beaten earth. A stereo war was in progress when Graham got there.

Opposing sets of speakers on the motel-style balconies blared at each other across the quad. It was Kiss versus the 1812 Overture. A water balloon arched high in the air and burst on the ground ten feet from Graham.

He ducked under a clothesline and stepped over a bicycle to get through the sitting room of the suite Niles Jacobi shared. The door to Jacobi's bedroom was ajar and music blasted through the crack. Graham knocked.

No response.

He pushed open the door. A tall boy with a spotty face sat on one of the twin beds sucking on a four-foot bong pipe. A girl in dun­garees lay on the other bed.

The boy's head jerked around to face Graham. He was struggling to think.

"I'm looking for Niles Jacobi."

The boy appeared stupefied. Graham switched off the stereo.

"I'm looking for Niles Jacobi."

"Just some stuff for my asthma, man. Don't you ever knock?"

"Where's Niles Jacobi?"

"Fuck if I know. What do you want him for?"

Graham showed him the tin. "Try real hard to remember."

"Oh, shit," the girl said.

"Narc, goddammit. I ain't worth it, look, let's talk about this a minute, man."

"Let's talk about where Jacobi is."

"I think I can find out for you," the girl said. Graham waited while she asked in the other rooms. Everywhere she went, commodes flushed.

There were few traces of Niles Jacobi in the room - one photograph of the Jacobi family lay on a dresser. Graham lifted a glass of melting ice off it and wiped away the wet ring with his sleeve.

The girl returned. "Try the Hateful Snake," she said.

The Hateful Snake bar was in a storefront with the windows painted dark green. The vehicles parked outside were an odd assort­ment, big trucks looking bobtailed without their trailers, compact cars, a lilac convertible, old Dodges and Chevrolets crippled with high rear ends for the drag-strip look, four full-dress Harley-Davidsons.

An air conditioner, mounted in the transom over the door, dripped steadily onto the sidewalk.

Graham ducked around the dribble and went inside.

The place was crowded and smelled of disinfectant and stale Canoe. The bartender, a husky woman in overalls, reached over heads at the service bar to hand Graham his Coke. She was the only woman there.

Niles Jacobi, dark and razor-thin, was at the jukebox. He put the money in the machine, but the man beside him pushed the buttons.

Jacobi looked like a dissolute schoolboy, but the one selecting the music did not.

Jacobi's companion was a strange mixture; he had a boyish face on a knobby, muscular body. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, worn white over the objects in his pockets. His arms were knotty with muscle, and he had large, ugly hands. One professional tattoo on his left forearm said "Born to Fuck." A crude jailhouse tattoo on his other arm said "Randy." His short jail haircut had grown out unevenly. As he reached for a button on the lighted jukebox, Graham saw a small shaved patch on his forearm.

Graham felt a cold place in his stomach.

He followed Niles Jacobi and "Randy" through the crowd to the back of the room. They sat in a booth.

Graham stopped two feet from the table.

"Niles, my name is Will Graham. I need to talk with you for a few minutes."

Randy looked up with a bright false smile. One of his front teeth was dead. "Do I know you?"

"No. Niles, I want to talk to you."

Niles arched a quizzical eyebrow. Graham wondered what had happened to him in Chino.

"We were having a private conversation here. Butt out," Randy said.

Graham looked thoughtfully at the marred muscular forearms, the dot of adhesive in the crook of the elbow, the shaved patch where Randy had tested the edge of his knife. Knife fighter's mange.

I'm afraid of Randy. Fire or fall back.

"Did you hear me?" Randy said. "Butt out."

Graham unbuttoned his jacket and put his identification on the table.

"Sit still, Randy. If you try to get up, you're gonna have two na­vels."

"I'm sorry, sir." Instant inmate sincerity.

"Randy, I want you to do something for me. I want you to reach in your left back pocket. Just use two fingers. You'll find a five-inch knife in there with a Flicket clamped to the blade. Put it on the table....Thank you."

Graham dropped the knife into his pocket. It felt greasy. "Now, in your other pocket is your wallet. Get it out. You sold some blood today, didn't you?"

"So what?"

"So hand me the slip they gave you, the one you show next time at the blood bank. Spread it out on the table."

Randy had type-O blood. Scratch Randy.

"How long have you been out of jail?"

"Three weeks."

"Who's your parole officer?"

"I'm not on parole."

"That's probably a lie." Graham wanted to roust Randy. He could get him for carrying a knife over the legal length. Being in a place with a liquor license was a parole violation. Graham knew he was angry at Randy because he had feared him.

"Randy."

"Yeah."

"Get out."

"I don't know what I can tell you, I didn't know my father very well," Niles Jacobi said as Graham drove him to the school. "He left Mother when I was three, and I didn't see him after that - Mother wouldn't have it."

"He came to see you last spring."

"Yes."

"At Chino."

"You know about that."

"I'm just trying to get it straight. What happened?"

"Well, there he was in Visitors, uptight and trying not to look around - so many people treat it like the zoo. I'd heard a lot about him from Mother, but he didn't look so bad. He was just a man standing there in a tacky sport coat."

"What did he say?"

"Well, I expected him either to jump right in my shit or to be real guilty, that's the way it goes mostly in Visitors. But he just asked me if I thought I could go to school. He said he'd go custody if I'd go to school. And try. 'You have to help yourself a little. Try and help yourself, and I'll see you get in school,' and like that."

"How long before you got out?"

"Two weeks."

"Niles, did you ever talk about your family while you were in Chino? To your cellmates or anybody?"

Niles Jacobi looked at Graham quickly. "Oh. Oh, I see. No. Not about my father. I hadn't thought about him in years, why would I talk about him?"

"How about here? Did you ever take any of your friends over to your parents' house?"

"Parent, not parents. She was not my mother."

"Did you ever take anybody over there? School friends or . . ."

"Or rough trade, Officer Graham?"

"That's right."

"No."

"Never?"

"Not once."

"Did he ever mention any kind of threat, was he ever disturbed about anything in the last month or two before it happened?"

"He was disturbed the last time I talked to him, but it was just my grades. I had a lot of cuts. He bought me two alarm clocks. There wasn't anything else that I know of."

"Do you have any personal papers of his, correspondence, photographs, anything?"

"No."

"You have a picture of the family. It's on the dresser in your room. Near the bong."

"That's not my bong. I wouldn't put that filthy thing in my mouth."

"I need the picture. I'll have it copied and send it back to you. What else do you have?"

Jacobi shook a cigarette out of his pack and patted his pockets for matches. "That's all. I can't imagine why they gave that to me. My father smiling at Mrs. Jacobi and all the little Munchkins. You can have it. He never looked like that to me."

Graham needed to know the Jacobis. Their new acquaintances in Birmingham were little help.

Byron Metcalf gave him the run of the lockboxes. He read the thin stack of letters, mostly business, and poked through the jewelry and the silver.

For three hot days he worked in the warehouse where the Jacobis' household goods were stored. Metcalf helped him at night. Every crate on every pallet was opened and their contents examined. Police photographs helped Graham see where things had been in the house.

Most of the furnishings were new, bought with the insurance from the Detroit fire. The Jacobis hardly had time to leave their marks on their possessions.

One item, a bedside table with traces of fingerprint powder still on it, held Graham's attention. In the center of the tabletop was a blob of green wax.

For the second time he wondered if the killer liked candlelight.

The Birmingham forensics unit was good about sharing.

The blurred print of the end of a nose was the best Birmingham and Jimmy Price in Washington could do with the soft-drink can from the tree.

The FBI laboratory's Firearms and Toolmarks section reported on the severed branch. The blades that clipped it were thick, with a shallow pitch: it had been done with a bolt cutter.

Document section had referred the mark cut in the bark to the Asian Studies department at Langley.

Graham sat on a packing case at the warehouse and read the long report. Asian Studies advised that the mark was a Chinese character which meant "You hit it" or "You hit it on the head" - an expres­sion sometimes used in gambling. It was considered a "positive" or "lucky" sign. The character also appeared on a Mah-Jongg piece, the Asian scholars said. It marked the Red Dragon.