But Frost couldn’t make sense of what they had found thus far. The huge sums funneled into this town through Progress for Perfect Peace suggested a criminal enterprise vast in scale. In fact the laundered funds were so enormous that the possibility of a terrorist plot of historic dimensions could not be dismissed. A cop on the take, getting immensely rich for helping the bad guys conceal their activities, wasn’t likely to derail the money train by chopping up his family over a disagreement with the wife.
Four bedrooms, a master-suite sitting room, various closets, and two of three bathrooms offered them only two more grisly pieces of evidence. Both were in the master bedroom.
On the floor near the dresser lay a fragment of a jawbone from which protruded two molars, two bicuspids, and a single canine tooth. Something green trailed from between the molars, perhaps a sliver of skin from a bell pepper or a jalapeno. The facets of the bone that should have been shattered, where they had broken away from the rest of the jaw, instead looked … melted.
Because it was not just another bit of biological debris but an impossible construct out of a surrealist’s fantasy, the second find in the master bedroom proved more unsettling than anything they had discovered thus far. It lay at one corner of the neatly made bed, near the footboard, not as if carefully presented but as if tossed aside — or as if spat out. The thick tongue, curved and with the tip raised as though licking something, would have been repulsive and alarming if it had been nothing more than that, but instead it was like an image by Salvador Dali inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. In the center of the fat tongue, not balanced upon it but snugly embedded in its tissue, actually growing from it, was a brown and lidless human eye.
Frost saw the monstrosity first. In the instant of discovery, he was overcome by a sensation about which he’d often read but of which he had no previous experience. The skin on the back of his neck went cold and seemed to be crawling with something as real as centipedes or spiders.
As an agent of the FBI assigned to the equivalent of a black-ops division, he had seen horrors enough and had known fear in a variety of textures and intensities. But nothing until this had touched that most deeply buried nerve, which was not a physical nerve at all, but an intuitive sensitivity to the uncanny, whether of a supernatural or merely a preternatural kind. Neither all of his education nor his vivid imagination could explain the existence of this abomination. As he stared at it, the crawling sensation burrowed deeper, from the back of his neck into his spine, and a chill scurried down his laddered vertebrae.
He gestured for Dagget to join him. Frost didn’t need to look up to gauge his partner’s reaction to the loathsome object. The sudden intake of breath and a wordless expression of revulsion in the back of his throat conveyed Dagget’s disgust and dread.
For a moment, Frost anticipated that the eye might turn in its fleshy socket, focusing on him, or that the tongue might flex and curl in an obscene quest. But that expectation was imagination run wild. The tongue and the eye on the bed were dead tissue, no more capable of movement than the teeth in the jawbone fragment would be able to chew the carpet under them.
A mere pistol and two spare magazines seemed to be inadequate armament against whatever enemy they faced. The explanation behind events in Rainbow Falls was neither ordinary criminal activity nor terrorism of a kind before seen.
As though he had been cast back to childhood, to the confusions and anxieties of a preschooler, Frost looked down at his feet, inches from the hem of the quilted bedspread, and he wondered if something hostile might be hiding under the bed. Where in the past there had never been a boogeyman or a troll, or any kind of witch’s familiar, might there now be something more mysterious and yet more real than any of those fairy-tale threats?
The spell of childish timidity held him in thrall only for a moment and was broken by the announcement of a real threat. From the darkness in the adjoining bathroom, through the half-open door, into the stillness of the master bedroom came a sound like scores of urgent whispering voices.
Chapter 18
The front passenger-side window dissolved as Deucalion rolled the Toyota Sequoia onto its roof. When Mason Morrell refused to abandon the overturned SUV, the giant expressed the intention of smashing the windshield, as well, and hauling the reluctant warrior from the vehicle whether he wanted to come out or not.
Sammy Chakrabarty prevailed upon Deucalion to let him negotiate with the on-air talent. He reached through the broken window, pulled up the lock stem, and dragged open the passenger door. After using the side of his foot as a broom, sweeping away the broken glass that sparkled in the snow, he got on his hands and knees, and he crawled into the Sequoia.
On all fours on the ceiling of the overturned SUV, he faced Mason at a curious angle. The talk-show host hung upside-down in the driver’s seat. Actually, he wasn’t hanging because he hadn’t taken the time to put on his safety harness, so eager had he been to start the engine and split the scene. He maintained his position by holding tightly to the steering wheel and by hooking the heels of his shoes under the seat as best he could. Of the two men, Mason was the one whose head was nearer the ceiling. Sammy found himself peering down into his friend’s face when the orientation of the SUV suggested that he should be looking up into it.
The only light, the bluish glow of the parking-lot lamps, seeped through the low windows of the inverted vehicle. The air was cold and smelled of new-car leather and of Mason’s spicy aftershave. Besides their breathing, the only sounds were the clicks and tinks and pings of the Sequoia adjusting to its new, unconventional relationship to the pavement.
“I’m so sorry this had to happen,” Sammy said.
Mason sounded more resigned than aggrieved. “It didn’t have to.”
“Maybe it didn’t, but it has. The station will pay for repairs.”
“That’s the way you are, but it’s not the way Warren is. Warren pinches pennies.”
“Remember,” Sammy said, “Warren Snyder is dead. And the thing that looked like Warren is dead, too, its weird guts all over the floor in there. So I’m in charge now.”
Refusing to look at Sammy, Mason declared solemnly, “We’re all going to die.”
“That’s not what I believe,” Sammy said.
“Well, it’s what I believe.”
“I haven’t told you this,” Sammy said, “but I have big plans for you and your show.”
“It’s the end of the world. There won’t be any radio after the end of the world.”
“It’s not the end of the world. It’s a national crisis, that’s all. If we pull together, if we defend the station and get the word out about what’s happening here, we can turn this around in no time. I’ve always been an optimist, you know, and my optimism has always proved to be justified.”
“You’re not just an optimist. You’re insane.”
“I’m not insane,” Sammy said. “I’m an American. Hey, you’re an American, too. Where’s your can-do spirit? Listen, I have plans to expand the format of your show, make it emotionally deeper, really let you spread your wings. I want to advertise it more widely, too. With your talent and my dogged determination, we can take this show to regional syndication, then national, not just five other stations but hundreds. You could be the male Dr. Laura. You could be a more human Dr. Phil.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“You are if I say you are. That’s how radio works.”
A few flakes of snow spiraled through the broken-out window and danced on the frosty plumes of their breath.
Sammy was cold. And the thinly padded ceiling was hard under his bony knees. The weird angle made him feel like he was in one of those topsy-turvy dreams in the movie
Tipping his head forward, rolling his eyes down and sideways to get a better look at his program director, Mason said, “Because I’m tall and built like a football star, people think I’m tough. I’m not tough, Sammy. I don’t think I’m tough enough to stand the pressures of national syndication.”
“I’m tough enough for both of us,” Sammy assured him. “And did you just listen to your voice? The timbre, the natural reverb, the exquisite diction — it’s a gift, Mason. You can’t throw away a gift like that.”
“I don’t know,” Mason said doubtfully. “Sometimes I kinda sound squeaky to myself.”
