Charley responded with a low howl of his own. When Cody moved toward the entrance, Charley held his ground. He had mistaken the shepherd’s signals as urging him to go in. Instead, Charley was trying to keep him back, trying to protect him from what lay in wait inside the cave.
But the warrior would not be deterred. “Stay,” he commanded.
Charley whined in protest, but obeyed his master, hunkering down to wait beneath the sheltering tree.?
The opening was small but large enough to crawl through. On his hands and knees, he entered the cave. He looked in, sniffing the stagnant air.
Once he’d cleared the entrance, he found the cave enlarged. It was almost tall enough to stand, so Cody moved to a half-upright crouch as he headed forward into the pitch darkness.
The odor was feral, but the cave was too dark even for his sharp eyes. He sniffed the air again. Was it fur? A fox perhaps? Was he intruding on its domain?
The cave was long and Cody was walking into its inky recesses blind, and even more vulnerable because he was backlit by a distant light in the Park.
But his steps on the slippery stone pavement were firm, instincts strong enough to tell him he was not alone.
He was aware he was being watched. An overwhelming sense of evil washed over him, and Cody walked toward the presence as though under its control.
Then his nose identified the smell. It was perspiration, mixed with an expensive cologne. He flashed back to the Ladies Auxiliary Ball, recalling where he had smelled it before.
A bolt of lightning startled him and cast a blue glow through the cave opening. His ears ringing from the crack of thunder, Cody was startled to hear the hesitation in his voice. “Hamilton?”
By answer Cody heard the feathery whisper of his death flying toward him. His mouth dried up.?
Before he could duck, the arrow had missed him by an inch.
Cody immediately realized that this was intentional.
He heard the writer’s ghastly laughter.
“Woops. Missed!” Hamilton emerged from the depths, eerily illuminated with a hellish orange light. He was carrying a child’s flash light shaped like a jack o’lantern.
“Detective Cody,” Hamilton said. “We have got to stop meeting like this. One would think you were stalking me.” The outlandish laughter again.
“You missed me on purpose,” Cody said. “Cliche or not, you’re a writer. You need to talk.”
This time the laugh was more like a cackle.
“You killed your lover!”
“Oh, don’t fret your handsome head about her. It was instantaneous. I couldn’t bear for her to suffer. She doesn’t want to live without me, you know. Fiercely loyal to the last.”
“She was the vampire woman in red at the Yellow Door,” Cody said.
Hamilton nodded. “Good, Micky. Now you’re thinking. She met Handley there to pick up the key and to make sure she passed muster. He was picky about his illicit rendezvouses.”
“Why Handley? Why did you pick him?”
“The town will read all about him and his sister when they find my masterpiece on Number Five’s body.”
“His sister? What do you mean, Number Five? Isn’t Victoria Number Five?”
“Read the article.” Hamilton’s life was indeed diabolical.
“Melinda Cramer was Handley’s sister, wasn’t she? The DNA match I ordered will come back positive.” He read the slightest wrinkle of Hamilton’s eyebrows as a confirmation.
“Stop the cat and mouse,” Cody said. “I know you’re going to tell me who Number Five is.”
“Jake Sallinger, my erstwhile editor at Metro,” Hamilton answered in a coy tone. “By now your boys have found his body-and my article. Alas, this is one piece I’ve written that the bastard won’t get to mark up with his illegible scrawl. They’ll decide to run it, of course, after a perfunctory wringing of their limousine liberal consciences.”
“What about Handley’s sister?” Cody pressed. “Why did you go after the two of them?”
“Victoria was right. You aren’t that good, are you? You’re a good clue man, but you stink at research. Read the article.”
“So thanks to your marksmanship, Victoria became Number Six…”
“She wanted to be the one to do you,” Hamilton said. “She always told me I get all the luck. I only wish I could have fucked with you a little more,” he added, “for all the aggravation and delays your reluctant cooperation caused me.”
“Your luck has run out, Ward.” Cody reached for the cuffs in his jacket pocket.
But his hand never got there.
Distracting the detective’s attention with the plastic lantern, Hamilton’s free hand had concealed something behind his back.
A distinctly marine odor made Cody cry out. He moved to block the man but was too late.
With a single fluid motion Hamilton lurched at him, using the arrow as a hand-held weapon, and stabbed him savagely in the leg, puncturing his pants behind and two inches above his knee.
Then he compounded the wound by yanking it back out.
Saxitoxin. Cody’s brain identified the odor, recognizing it from one of Max’s forensic pathology demonstrations. He broke into a sweat. The marine secretion was neurotoxic to mammals and caused a respiratory paralysis known as paralytic shellfish poisoning.
“Which leaves you,” Hamilton said, “as the very probable Number Seven. Though, of course, I always believe in backups.” There was the coy tone again. “Either way, I win, you lose.” His voice now sounded like a hissing snake.
Then, howling in ghoulish laughter, Hamilton watched Cody fall to his knees.
The detective lost control over his legs.
Echoing from outside the cave was Charley’s angry howl, backed by the distant chorus of the wolves.
“I’m not sure your canine pals can help you now,” Hamilton said, shoving Cody’s back against the wall of the cave and pulling his legs in front of him.
“Sit up! Sit up! That’s a good boy,” Hamilton chuckled-and disappeared into the darkness from which he came.
There must be another entrance was what Cody thought as the numbness rose through his midriff.?
Cody could think of only one thing: The poison’s effects would progress upward, finally paralyzing his heart. He must cut the toxin from his body while he could still use his arms.
His fear was replaced almost immediately by action. He remembered the words of Old Man.
Do not panic or you will die. Be calm but do not hesitate. Move slow like the possum, but do not waver. Do what you must do before the sleep comes.
Charley rushed onto the scene, yapping mournfully. Fending the dog away with one arm, Cody moved resolutely but in slow motion, using his hunting knife to slice open his pants and expose the puncture wound that was already reddening and beginning to swell.
Unflinching, he leaned over, cut a v-shaped incision an inch deep, and scooped the flesh away with the sharp blade. He could smell the venom as he discarded the scoop of bleeding flesh, and sliced two long strips of cloth from his pants. His teeth began to chatter. Pain overwhelmed him. His thoughts were a jumble of images flashing through his head:
Amelie’s face as he entered her in the sauna.
Handley in his death seat.
A shaft of blue sunlight.
The rattlesnake striking in the cave.
Uncle Tony’s frozen rictus.
His Pa vomiting in the bathroom.
The beautiful Song Wiley, serene in death.
The white wolf pointing him the way.
Hamilton’s infernal sneer.
Drawing on his last strength, he leaned forward to suck the venom from the wound. But the angle was
