Robert Mallory’s nighttime visit to Bret Ellis’s home brings Bret’s suspicions and attraction to a head in the same room. Robert arrives after dark, asks whether Bret searched the house in Benedict Canyon, and challenges him to explain who he thinks Robert is. Bret names the Trawler; Robert does not answer that accusation directly. Instead, a sudden intimate advance gives way to rejection and departure, leaving the encounter unresolved and Bret in tears.

Causes and Background

The visit follows a period in which Bret has become increasingly fearful of being targeted. Earlier that afternoon, Steven Reinhardt had warned him not to call Terry Schaffer’s household again. Bret then secured the doors and windows, turned down the phone ringer, and tried to sleep under the influence of a Quaalude. The ringing doorbell initially seemed part of that drugged sleep, but Robert was outside on the lawn, calling Bret’s name and asking to be let in.

Robert looked familiar rather than like the masked intruder Bret feared. He still wore his Buckley clothes, and Bret saw him as the polished fantasy figure he desired. That recognition did not erase the danger or suspicion surrounding him; it made the threshold between fear and longing harder for Bret to hold.

The scene also draws on the pair’s earlier history. At Buckley, Robert had been an object of Bret’s attraction, while Bret’s friendship with Susan Reynolds had placed him close to her relationship with Thom Wright. Robert and Susan’s relationship now formed part of the confrontation, while Bret’s private desire for Robert complicated his attempt to question him as a suspect.

The Confrontation

Robert first asked Bret to open the door and suggested they talk by the pool. Bret unlocked the kitchen door and let him approach, then raised Chicago and asked what Robert wanted. Robert brushed past that accusation, saying the situation had to stop and that Bret needed to get a grip. He also confirmed that he and Susan were together, adding that he was sorry if it bothered Bret. Bret answered that Robert was not sorry about anything.

Robert then asked whether Bret had broken into his house in Benedict Canyon and gone through his things. His apparent confusion startled Bret, especially because Robert referred to the house as his. Bret denied knowing what Robert meant. The question made the confrontation reciprocal: Bret had come to suspect Robert, but Robert was now testing whether Bret had searched his private space and what he had discovered there.

Asked who he thought Robert was, Bret said he believed Robert was connected to the Trawler and responsible for the girls. Robert told him to stop. Bret also brought up a tape involving Robert and Matt Kellner, but Robert denied leaving him one. Bret did not play it; he understood that it implicated him as well. Neither the tape nor the accusation produces a clear admission, and Robert’s account of the house and Bret’s investigation remain in tension.

Intimacy and Rejection

Once they were in Bret’s bedroom, the argument gave way to an intimate advance. Robert touched Bret’s hair and face and kissed him; Bret responded, swept into the desire that had shaped his view of Robert. The encounter did not establish a mutual relationship or resolve the conflict between them. Robert stopped, wiped his mouth, and insulted Bret with a homophobic slur, then said he had known.

The reversal makes the scene’s intimacy inseparable from humiliation. Robert had approached as the person Bret wanted and had briefly seemed to reciprocate that desire, but the rejection left Bret exposed rather than reassured. The episode neither confirms that Robert’s earlier gestures were sincere nor explains why he made them. Its emotional consequence is clear even while its motive remains uncertain.

Departure and Significance

After rejecting Bret, Robert stood at the bay window and looked out at the yard and the lit pool. He then left without further explanation. Bret remained in the room; shortly afterward, he experienced an intense release and collapsed to the floor sobbing. The scene ends not with a solved crime or a settled relationship but with an abrupt departure and a private emotional collapse.

The visit concentrates the novel’s entanglement of investigation, secrecy, and performed identities. Bret is trying to question Robert about the Trawler and the Benedict Canyon house, but the tape he withholds also implicates Bret. Robert asks what Bret knows while remaining opaque about his own connection to the evidence. At the same time, Bret’s desire makes it difficult to separate suspicion from fantasy. The scene leaves the central questions open: whether Robert is connected to the Trawler, what he knows about Bret’s search, and what his brief intimacy meant.