The Face

me. Maybe he followed me there, intended to approach me, then decided against it. I don’t know.”
        “Why didn’t you tell me first thing?”
        “I don’t know. It seemed… like one ghost too many.”
        “You think it all gets too rich, I won’t believe it? Have some faith, man. We go back, don’t we? We been shot at together.”
        [246] They chose to leave the church separately.
        Hazard got up first and moved away. From the farther end of the pew, in the center aisle, he said, “Like old times, huh?”
        Ethan knew what he meant. “Covering each other’s ass again.”
        For such a big man, Hazard made little noise as he walked from the nave to the narthex, and out of the church.
        Having a reliable friend to watch your back is a comfort, but the consolation and support provided by even the best of friends is no match for what a loving wife can be to a husband, or a loving husband to a wife. In the architecture of the heart, the rooms of friendship are deeply placed and strongly built, but the warmest and most secure retreat in Ethan’s heart was the one that he had shared with Hannah, where these days she lived only as a precious ghost, a sweet haunting memory.
        He could have told her everything-about the phantom in the mirror, about his second death outside Forever Roses-and she would have believed him. Together they’d have sought some understanding.
        During the five years that she’d been gone, he had never missed her more than he missed her at this moment. Sitting alone in a silent church, keenly aware of the soft beating of the rain on the roof, of the lingering fragrance of incense, of the ruby light of the votive candles, but unable to detect the faintest whisper, whiff, or glimmer of God, Ethan longed not for evidence of his Maker, but for Hannah, for the music of her voice and the beautiful geometry of her smile.
        He felt homeless, without hearth or anchor. His apartment in the Manheim house awaited his return, offering many comforts, but it was merely a residence, not a place endeared to him. He had felt the tug of home only once in this long strange day: when he’d stood at Hannah’s grave, where she lay beside an empty plot to which he held the deed.

CHAPTER 37
        
        FROM ALTERNATING BRONZE-BALL AND BRONZE-flame finials, from cast panels of arabesques, from darts and twists and frets and scallops and leaves, from griffins and heraldic emblems, black and silver rain dripped and drizzled off the Manheim gate.
        Ethan braked to a stop beside the security post: a five-foot-high, square, limestone-clad column in which were embedded a closed-circuit video camera, an intercom speaker, and a keypad. He put down his window and keyed in his six-digit personal code.
        Slowly, with the Expedition’s headlight beams rippling across its ornate surfaces, the massive gate began to roll aside.
        Each employee of the estate had a different code. The security staff maintained computerized records of every entrance.
        Remote-control units such as typical garage-door openers or coded transponders, assigned to each vehicle, would have been more convenient than a key-entry system, especially in foul weather; however, such devices would have been accessible to garage mechanics, valet-parking attendants, and anyone else in temporary custody of a vehicle. One dishonest person among them might easily compromise the security of the estate.
        [248] If Ethan had been a visitor lacking a personal gate-entry code, he would have pushed the intercom button on the post and would have announced himself to the guard in the security office at the back of the property. If the visitor was expected or was a family friend on the permanent-access list, the guard would open the gate from his command board.
         As he waited for the massive bronze barrier to roll out of the way, Ethan was under surveillance by the camera on the security post. Entering the property, he would be scrutinized through a series of tree-mounted cameras angled in such a manner as to reveal anyone who might be lying on the floor of the SUV to avoid detection.
        All videocams included night-vision technology that transformed the faintest moonlight into a revealing glow. A sophisticated bit of software filtered out most of the veiling and the distortion effects produced by falling rain, ensuring a clear real-time image on the