“Fire up the converters, R2, we’re about to make the jump to light speed. ”
Crow chuckled. “Okay, but you’re R2D2, I’m Luke. ”
“No way. ”
“Hey, who’s driving?”
“Hunh. Well, if you’re Luke Skywalker, where’s your light saber?”
Crow’s smile dwindled slightly and his eyes took on a strange, distant quality. Then he leaned across the seat, thumbed open the glove compartment, and took out the Beretta. He eyed it to make sure the safety was on and then tucked it in his waistband, where it once again felt like a block of sinister ice against his skin.
“That enough of a light saber for you?”
Mike swallowed the watermelon in his throat. “It’ll do,” he said.
Crow turned the key and Missy sprang to life. With barely a squeal of tires he pulled the car back onto the road and headed toward the hayride at a sedate eighty-?five miles an hour.
3
Terry hung up the phone with a sigh, knowing it was going to be a very long night. Around him, the station house was in full furor, with officers coming and going, phones ringing, chatter filling the air. For a stretch of moments, Terry just stood by the desk, fingertips still resting lightly on the curved back of the phone, lost in musings. He thought how odd it was that Crow had encountered Mike Sweeney. It bothered him for some reason that he couldn’t quite touch. There was something about that kid that had always bothered Terry. Every time he saw him pedaling down Main Street with his canvas bag of papers it always gave him a weird feeling in his gut. Not something he could put his finger on, just a little flicker of the creeps. Weird kid, he thought, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had enough things to worry about, primarily the organization of a real honest-?to-?God manhunt in Pine Deep. Lord, he thought, this is all I need, and Halloween just a month away.
He went into the men’s room, closed the door, and locked it. From an inner pocket he took out his bottle of Xanax and popped one, washing it down with handfuls of water from the tap. His morning dose of clozapine had kicked in, and he could feel his bowels cement shut. Though he didn’t get the drowsiness his shrink had warned him of, he hadn’t had a good bowel movement since he’d started the antipsychotic. With the Xanax on top of the other drug he felt he might be able to get through the rest of the day.
He washed his face, pressing cupped hands full of cold water to his face for a long moment, patted himself dry, straightened his tie, and went back out to the squad room.
Detective Sergeant Ferro was talking earnestly with Gus Bernhardt, but the chief glanced up and waved him over. “D’you have a minute?”
“Sure,” Terry said, but as he began to move he caught sight of himself reflected in the large picture window across from the desk. The darkness without and the bright fluorescents within transformed the glass to a dark and opaque mirror. Terry saw himself reflected in the polished-?coal surface, saw his own size and brawn, he saw his red beard and red hair, but the darkened glass distorted things, shaded his hair to black and deepened t
he wells of his eyes so that his reflection looked like that of a bearded skull without eyes or expression, a scowl devoid of humor or compassion. He stood and stared at the distorted reflection, remembering his dreams of the last few nights. The beast reflected in the store windows of a burning town. Then he made a face of self-?disgust at his own ridiculous paranoia and turned away to join the others.
As he left, the mirrored glass surface of the window was wiped clean for a moment, but then another image gradually appeared. It seemed to come forward toward the light, like someone stepping out of deep shadows into pale lamplight. If anyone had been watching, the image might have just seemed like someone stepping out of the darkness beyond the glass to a point of nearness where the glass once more became transparent; but anyone on the other side of the glass would have known this wasn’t true: there was no one outside the chief’s office, no one in the street at all. Yet the image remained. Not a figure outside, not a reflection of anyone inside, for inside the station there was no little girl with bright red curly hair and bright blue eyes and a dark green dress. That image appeared only in the darkness of the glass. A pretty little girl, with an oval face and a stuffed rabbit clutched in the child’s hand. A lovely face, even though streaked with blood; a pretty dress once, but which hung now in blood-?soaked tatters.
The little red-?haired girl watched the big red-?haired man move away, watched with troubled eyes as he went over to the policemen and began to talk. A tear like a single pear-?shaped diamond appeared on her cheek. It paused for a moment, and then rolled slowly down her face, tumbling over the streaks of blood, becoming tainted with red, metamorphosing into a tear of blood as it wended its way down to her chin. By the time it reached the point of her chin, the image in the darkened window had faded and was gone.
4
Val Guthrie stared into the black eye of the pistol, her face blank except for a small half smile on her lips.
“What?” she asked softly.
Karl Ruger’s smile swelled like a hammer-?struck thumb; his dark eyes fairly twinkled with wit and gentlemanly charm. He stepped forward and pressed the barrel into Val’s stomach and like a storm wind, pushed her backward into the house. Without looking he hooked a heel around the edge of the door and swung it shut. It closed with a mild click.
The absurdity and total shock of this man with the feeble-?looking little gun still held Val in a bemused thrall. She looked down past her breasts to where the hard metal of the gun made a soft dent in her midriff.
“What…?” she asked again. Her mouth worked, trying to say more, but her brain possessed no adequate vocabulary for this kind of thing.
“Val? Who is it?” Her father’s voice floated from the kitchen with amiable curiosity, but it might have been the howl of a banshee for the effect it had on Val’s befuddled mind. As if a strong wind had blown sharply across her brain, her wits cleared and abruptly she was back in her own consciousness. There was a gun pressing against her stomach and the smiling man was pushing her backward into her own house.
“Dad!” she cried out in a sharp, shrill voice, and a moment later something struck her face so hard and fast that her newly returned awareness was swept from the saddle. She reeled away and slammed into the wall, only dimly aware that it was a hand that had struck her, not a bullet. The hand had been so fast that she hadn’t seen it even twitch, let alone have time to duck the blow. The whole right side of her face burned as if the man had splashed her with boiling water, and tears sprang into her eyes.
“Val?” she heard her father call. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell are—”
Val couldn’t see a thing; stars swirled with firework frenzy before her eyes, and before she could shake her head clear, something clawed at her hair and then wrenched her backward with horrible force. She staggered and fell back against a firm yet yielding surface. A body. She could feel fingers snarled in her hair and then something that was cold-?hot pressed into the soft flesh below her right ear. Something very hard, small, and round.
A whispery voice spoke and all around her the world froze.
“Stop right there, old fella, or I’ll blow this bitch’s brains all over the wallpaper and all over you, too. You want that? No? Then just stand right there. ”