Only recently had she realized that her strong dislike for highway travel was also related to something else that her father had done to her. Horton Purney had run a motorcycle repair shop out of a sagging, sunscorched, unpainted barn on the same property as his house, but he had never made much money from it. Therefore, twice a year, he put Sandy in the car and made the twoandahalfhour drive across the desert to Las Vegas, where he knew an enterprising pimp, Samson Cherrik. Cherrik had a list of perverts with a special interest in children, and he was always happy to see Sandy. After a few weeks in Vegas, Sandy's father packed, put Sandy in the car, and drove back to Barstow, his pockets bulging with cash. For Sandy, the long drive to Vegas was a nightmare journey, for she knew what awaited her at their destination. The trip back to Barstow was worse, for it was not an escape from Vegas but a return to the grim life in that ramshackle house and the dark, urgent, insatiable lust of Horton Purney. In either direction, the road had led to hell, and she had learned to loathe the rumble of the car's engine, the hum of tires on the pavement, and the unspooling highway

ahead.

Therefore, the pleasure she now took from driving and sex seemed miraculous. She could not understand where she'd found the strength and will to overcome her horrible past. Since the summer before last, she simply . . . changed, was still changing. And, oh, it was glorious to feel the chains of selfloathing and the bonds of fear breaking apart, to feel selfrespect for the first time in her life, to feel free.

, Now, she got into the Ford pickup and started the engine. Their house trailer was set on an unlandscaped halfacre lot at the southern edge of the tinyalmost nonexistenttown of Beowawe, along Route 21, a twolane blacktop. As Sandy drove away from the trailer, there seemed to be nothing but empty plains, rolling hills, scattered buttes, rocky outcroppings, grass, brush, and waterless arroyos for a thousand miles in every direction. The intensely blue morning sky was immense, and as she got the Ford up to speed, Sandy felt as if she might take flight.

If she headed north on 21, she would pass through Beowawe and soon come to Interstate 80, which led east toward Elko or west toward Battle Mountain. Instead, she went south, into a beautifully barren landscape. With skill and ease, she guided the fourwheeldrive pickup over the badly weathered county road at seventy miles an hour.

In fifteen minutes, Route 21 petered out into a gravel roadbed that led south through another eightythree miles of uninhabited and desolate territory. She did not follow it, choosing instead to turn east on a onelane dirt track flanked by wild grass and scrub.

Some snow lay on the ground this Christmas morning, though not much. In the distance, the mountains were white, but down here, the annual precipitation was less than fifteen inches a year, little of it in the form of snow. Here was an inchdeep skin of snow, there a small hillock against which a shallow drift had formed, and here a sparkling bush on which winddriven snow had hardened into a lacy garment of ice, but by far the largest portion of the land was bare and dry and brown.

Sandy drove fast on the dirt, too, and behind her a cloud of dust plumed up. In time she left the track, headed overlandnorth, then west, coming at last to a familiar place, though she had not set out with this destination in mind. For reasons she did not understand, her subconscious often guided her to this spot during her solitary drives, seldom in a direct line but by wandering routes, so her arrival was usually a surprise to her. She stopped, set the brake. With the engine idling, she stared for a while through the dusty windshield.

She came here because it made her feel better, though she did not know why. The slopes, the spines and teeth of rock, the grass and brush, formed a pleasing picture, though the scene was no prettier and no different from thousands of other places nearby. Yet here she felt a sublime peacefulness that could not be attained anywhere else.

She switched off the engine and got out of the pickup, and for a while she strolled back and forth, hands jammed into the pockets of her sheepskinlined jacket, oblivious of the stingingly cold air. Her drive through the wildiands had brought her back toward civilization, and Interstate 80 lay only a couple of hundred yards to the north. The occasional roar of a passing truckechoed like a distant dragon's growl, but the holiday traffic was light. Beyond the highway, on the uplands to the northwest, lay the Tranquility Motel and Grille, but Sandy glanced just once in that direction. She was more interested in the immediate terrain, which exerted a mysterious and powerful attraction for her, and which seemed to radiate peace the way a rock, in evening, radiated the heat of the sun that it had absorbed during the day.

She wasn't trying to analyze her affinity for this patch of ground. Evidently, there was some subtle harmony in the contours of the land, an interplay of line, form, and shadow that defied definition. Any attempt to decode its attraction would be as foolish as trying to analyze the beauty of a sunset or the appeal of a favorite flower.

That Christmas morning, Sandy did not yet know that Ernie Block had been drawn, as if possessed, to the same patch of ground on December 10, when he had been on his way home from the freight office in Elko. She did not know that it aroused in Ernie an electrifying sense of pending epiphany and more than a little fearemotions quite unlike those that it stirred in her. Weeks would pass before she learned that her special retreat had a strong attraction for others besides herselfboth friends and strangers.

Chicago, Illinois.

For Father Stefan Wycazikthat stocky Polish dynamo, rector of St. Bernadette's, rescuer of troubled priestsit was the busiest Christmas morning he had ever known. And as the day wore on, it swiftly became the most meaningful Christmas of his life.

He celebrated the second Mass at St. Bernadette's, spent an hour greeting parishioners who stopped by the rectory with fruit baskets and boxes of homemade cookies and other gifts, then drove to University Hospital to pay a visit to Winton Tolk, the policeman who had been shot in an uptown sandwich shop yesterday afternoon. Following emergency surgery, Tolk had been in the intensive care unit yesterday afternoon and all through the night. Christmas morning he had been moved to a semiprivate room adjacent to the ICU, for although he was no longer in critical condition, he still needed to be monitored constantly.

When Father Wycazik arrived, Raynella Tolk, Winton's wife, was at her husband's bedside. She was quite attractive, with chocolatebrown skin and stylish closecropped hair. “Mrs. Tolk? I'm Stefan Wycazik.”

“But-”

He smiled. “Relax. I'm not here to give anyone the last rites.”

“Good,” Winton said, , cause i'm sure not planning on dying."

of looming over me ... calling my name ... but I was still in a haze, you see."

“It's a miracle Win survived,” Raynella said in a tremulous voice.

“Now, now, honey,” Winton said softly. "I did make it, and that's all that counts." When he was sure his wife would be all right, he looked at Stefan and said, "Everyone's amazed that I could lose so much blood and pull through. From what I hear, I must've lost buckets."

“Did Brendan apply a tourniquet?”

Tolk frowned. “Don't know. Like I said, I was in a haze, a daze.”

Father Wycazik hesitated, wondering how to find out what he needed to know without revealing the extraordinary possibility that motivated this visit. "I know you're not very clear about what happened but . . . did you notice anything peculiar about ... Brendan's hands?"

:'Peculiar? What do you mean?"

“He touched you, didn't he?”

"Sure. I guess he felt for a pulse ... then checked around to see where the bleeding was coming from."

"Well, did you feel anything ... anything unusual when he touched you ... anything odd?" Stefan asked carefully, frustrated by the need to be vague.

“I don't seem to be following your line of thought, Father.”

Stefan Wycazik shook his head. "Never mind. The important thing is that you're well." He glanced at his watch and, feigning surprise, said, “Good heavens, I'm late for an appointment.” Before they could respond, he snatched his hat from the chair, wished them godspeed, and hurried out, no doubt leaving them astonished by his behavior.

When people saw Father Wycazik walking toward them, they were usually reminded of drill sergeants or football coaches. His solid body and the selfconfident, aggressive way he used it were not what one expected of a priest. And when he was in a hurry, he was not so much like a drill sergeant or a football coach as he was like a tank.

From Tolk's room, Father Wycazik blitzed down the hall, shoved through a pair of heavy swinging doors, then through another pair, into the intensive care unit, where the wounded policeman had been until just an hour ago. He asked to speak to the physician on duty, Dr. Royce Albright. With the hope that God would forgive a few little white lies told in a good cause, Stefan identified himself as the Tolk family's priest and implied that Mrs. Tolk had sent him to get the full story of her husband's condition, about which she was not yet entirely clear.

Dr. Albright looked like Jerry Lewis and had a deep rumbling voice like Henry Kissinger, which was disconcerting, but he was willing to answer whatever questions Father Wycazik wished to pose. He was not Winton Tolk's personal physician, but he was interested in the case. "You can assure Mrs. Tolk that there's almost no danger of a setback. He's coming along marvelously. Shot twice in the chest, pointblank, with a .38. Until yesterday, no one here would've believed that anyone could take two shots in the chest from a largecaliber handgun and be out of intensive care in twentyfour hours! Mr. Tolk is incredibly lucky."

“The bullets missed the heart, then . . . and all vital organs?”

“Not only that,” Albright said, "but neither round did major damage to any veins or arteries. A .38-caliber slug has lots of punch, Father. Ordinarily, it chews up the victim. In Tolk's case, one major artery and vein were nicked, but neither was severed. Very fortunate, indeed."

“Then I suppose the bullet was stopped by bone at some point.”

"Deflected, yes, but not stopped. Both slugs were found in soft tissue. And that's another amazing thingno shattered bones, not even a small fracture. A very lucky man."

Father Wycazik nodded. "When the two slugs were removed from his body, was there any indication they were underweight for .38-caliber ammunition? I mean, maybe the cartridges were faulty, with too little lead in the bullets. That would explain why, even though it was a .38 revolver, the shots did less damage than a pair of .22s."

Albright frowned. "Don't know. Could be. You'd have to ask the police . . . or Dr. Sonneford, the surgeon who took the slugs out of Tolk."

“I understand Officer Tolk lost a great deal of blood.”

Grimacing, Albright said, "Must be a mistake about that on his chart. I haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Sonneford today, it being Christmas, but according to the chart, Tolk received over four liters of whole blood in the operating room. Of course, that can't be correct."

“Why not?”

"Father, if Tolk actually lost four liters of blood before they got him to the hospital, there wouldn't be enough in him to maintain even minimal circulation. He'd have been dead. Stone cold dead."

Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mary and Pete Monatella, Jorja's parents, arrived at her apartment at six on Christmas morning, blearyeyed and grumpy from too little sleep, but determined to take up their rightful posts by the brightly trimmed tree before Marcie awoke. Mary, as tall as Jorja, had once been almost as shapely as her daughter too; now she was heavy, girdled. Pete was shorter than his wife, barrelchested, a bantam rooster who seemed to strut when he walked but was one of the most selfeffacing men Jorja had ever known. They came burdened with presents for their only grandchild.

They had a present for Jorjaplus the usual gifts they brought every time they visited: wellmeant but annoying criticism, unwanted advice, guilt. Mary was hardly through the door before she announced that Jorja should clean the ventilation hood above the range, and she rummaged under the sink until she found a spray bottle of Windex and a rag, with which she performed the chore herself. She also observed that the tree looked underdecorated-“It needs more lights, Jorja!”-and when she saw how Marcie's presents were wrapped, she professed despair. "My God, Jorja, the wrapping papers aren't bright enough. The ribbons aren't big enough. Little girls like bright papers with Santa Claus on them and lots of ribbons."

For his part, her father was content to focus all of his discontent upon the huge tray of cookies on the kitchen counter. "These are all storebought, Jorja. Didn't you make any homemade cookies this year?"

"Well, Dad, I've been working a little overtime lately, and then there're the classes I'm taking at UNLV, and-"

“I know it's hard being a single mother, baby,” he said, "but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of Christmas. It's an absolute fundamental."

“Fundamental,” Jorja's mother agreed.

The Christmas spirit had been late in coming to Jorja this year, and even now she had a tenuous grip on it. Subject to her parents' wellintentioned but infuriating nonstop commentary on her shortcomings, she might have lost the holiday mood altogether if Marcie had not put in a timely appearance at sixthirty, just after Jorja had slipped a fourteenpound turkey into the oven for the big meal later in the day. The girl shuffled into the living room in her pajamas, as cute as any idealized child in a Norman Rockwell painting.

“Did Santa bring my Little Ms. Doctor kit?”

Pete said, "He brought you more than that, pumpkin. Look here! Just look at all Santa brought."

Marcie turned and saw the treewhich “Santa” had put up during the nightand the mountain of gifts. She gasped.

“Wow!”

The child's excitement was transmitted to Jorja's parents, and for the time being they forgot about such things as dusty ventilation hoods and storebought cookies. For a while the apartment was filled with joyous, busy sounds.

But by the time Marcie had opened half her gifts, the celebratory mood began to change, and in crept a little of the darkness that would reappear in a far more frightening form later in the day. In a whiny voice that was out of character, the girl grumped that Santa had not remembered the Little Ms. Doctor kit. She discarded a muchwanted doll without even taking it out of its box, moving to the next package in the hope that it contained Little Ms. Doctor, clawing at the wrappings. Something in the child's demeanor, a queerness in her eyes, disquieted Jorja. Soon Mary and Pete noticed it as well. They began urging Marcie to take more time with each present, to get more pleasure out of each before rushing on to the next, but their entreaties were not successful.