By the light of the moon

anyway,
either for the fun of it or to polish his homicidal image. Crazed
killers were probably convinced, as were most modern Americans,
that maintaining high self-esteem was a requirement of good mental
health.
    Locking each sinuous shape of pasteboard in place with a
ritualistic nod and with the pressure of his right thumb, Shepherd
continued to solve the puzzle at a prodigious pace, adding perhaps
six or seven pieces per minute.
    Dylan's blurry vision had cleared, and his urge to vomit had
passed. Ordinarily, those developments would be reason to feel
cheerful, but good cheer would continue to elude him until he knew
who wanted a piece of him – and exactly which piece was
wanted.
    The internal timpani of his booming heart and the rush of blood
circulating through his eardrums, which produced a sound
reminiscent of a cymbal softly beaten with a drummer's brush,
masked any small noises the intruder might be making. Maybe the guy
was eating their takeout dinner – or performing preventive
maintenance on a chain saw before firing it up.
    Because Dylan sat at an angle to the mirror that hung above the
desk, only a narrow wedge of the room behind him was presented in
reflection. Watching his brother, the jigsaw juggernaut, he
glimpsed movement peripherally in the mirror, but by the time he
shifted his focus, the phantom glided out of sight.
    When at last the assailant stepped into direct view, he looked
no more menacing than any fifty-something choirmaster who took
great and genuine pleasure in the sound of well-orchestrated voices
raised in joyous hymns. Sloped shoulders. A comfortable paunch.
Thinning white hair. Small, delicately sculpted ears. His pink and
jowly face looked as benign as a loaf of white bread. His
faded-blue eyes were watery, as though with sympathy, and seemed to
reveal a soul too meek to harbor a hostile thought.
    He appeared to be the antithesis of villainy, and he wore a
gentle smile, but he carried a length of highly flexible rubber
tubing. Like a snake. Two to three feet long. No inanimate object,
whether a spoon or a meticulously stropped razor-edged switchblade,
can be called evil; but while a switchblade might be used merely to
peel an apple, it was difficult at this perilous moment to envision
an equally harmless use for the half-inch-diameter rubber
tubing.
    The colorful imagination that served Dylan's art now afflicted
him with absurd yet vivid images of being force-fed through the
nose and of colon examinations most definitely not conducted
through the nose.
    His alarm didn't abate when he realized that the rubber tubing
was a tourniquet. Now he knew why his left arm had been secured
with the palm up.
    When he protested through the saliva-saturated gag and the
electrician's tape, his voice proved no clearer than might have
been that of a prematurely buried man calling for help through a
coffin lid and six feet of compacted earth.
    'Easy, son. Easy now.' The intruder didn't have the hard voice
of a snarly thug, but one as soft and sympathetic as that of a
country doctor committed to relieving every distress of his
patients. 'You'll be just fine.'
    He was dressed like a country doctor, too, a relic from the lost
age that Norman Rockwell had captured in cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post . His cordovan shoes gleamed from
the benefit of brush and buffing cloth, and his wheat-brown suit
pants depended upon a pair of suspenders. Having removed his coat,
having rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, having loosened collar
button and necktie, he needed only a dangling stethoscope to be the
perfect picture of a comfortably rumpled rural physician nearing
the end of a long day of house calls, a kindly healer known to
everyone as Doc.
    Dylan's short-sleeve shirt facilitated the application of the
tourniquet. The rubber tube, when quickly knotted around his left
biceps, caused a vein to swell visibly.
    Gently tapping a fingertip against the revealed blood vessel,
Doc murmured, 'Nice, nice.'
    Forced by the gag to inhale and exhale only through his nose,
Dylan could hear humiliating proof of his escalating fear as the
wheeze and whistle of his breathing grew more urgent.
    With a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol, the doctor swabbed
the target vein.
    Every element of the moment – Shep waving to no one and
blitzing through the jigsaw, the smiling intruder prepping his
patient for an injection, the foul taste of the rag in Dylan's
mouth, the astringent scent of alcohol, the