He clutched the dashboard and laid his head on his arm. “Oh, hell, I love you, dammit.” She started to talk. “No, don’t say it. I know what you’ll say. But just let it be known and leave it like that. We go on like we were. Unrequited love won’t kill me.”
She looked at him, amazed that he could bring up something so… extraneous. She had always wondered if he loved her. She loved him in a way. But that wasn’t important, it had been accepted a long time ago. And their relationship was established. Certainly it shouldn’t intrude now. When he turned his face toward her he registered shock. She knew her mascara must be running with the tears, she knew her face must be twisted in fear. “What happened to me?” she asked. Her voice was not her own, so distorted was it by the rush of emotions. “What was going on back there?”
“Becky, I don’t know. But I think we’d better find out.”
She laughed. “Oh, that’s for sure! I just don’t know if I can handle it. We’ve really got some problems here.”
“Yeah. One of them is you. I don’t mean that harshly, but I’m going to have to break my cardinal rule at this time. Let’s change sides, I’m going to drive.”
She hid her amazement. In all the years they had worked together, this was an absolute first. “I must be falling apart,” she said as she sank into Wilson’s usual seat. “This is really a big deal.”
“It’s no big deal. You’re rattled. But you know you shouldn’t be. I mean, you weren’t the one in danger. It was me.”
“You! I was being lured upstairs.”
“To get you away from me.”
“Why do you even say that? You’re a man, a lot heavier than me, not an obvious target.”
“I heard noises on the stairs at the other end of the hall. Breathing noises, like something hungry slavering over its food.” The tone of his voice frightened her. She laughed nervously in self defense, the sound pealing out so suddenly that it startled Wilson visibly. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye but kept the car moving.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the
“Why?”
“Well, they eat them, don’t they? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Everybody they’ve hit has been eaten.”
“Old men, junkies, two cops in a hell of a lonely place. The weak and the isolated. I fitted two key criteria in that house—older man, isolated from all except you. And they damn near lured you away upstairs. You ever go hunting?”
“I don’t like it. I’ve never been.”
“When I was a kid I hunted with my father. We went after moose up north. We used to track for days sometimes. One summer we tracked for a week. And finally we got on to our moose, a big old bull that moved with a slanty track. A wounded bull. Weak, ready for the slaughter. I’ll never forget it. There we were just getting ready to take a shot when wolves stole out of the shadows all around us. They went right past us into the clearing where the moose was grazing. My dad cursed under his breath—those wolves were going to scare our trophy away. But they didn’t. That big bull moose looked down at those scrawny wolves and just snorted. They moved in closer and he stopped grazing and stared at them. You’d never believe it. The damn wolves wagged their tails! And the moose let out a great roar and they jumped him. They tore at him, bled him to death. We were fascinated, we were rooted to the spot. But it was like they agreed together that the killing be done. The wolves and the moose agreed. He couldn’t make it anymore, they needed meat. So he let them take him. And those timber wolves are scrawny. They’re like German shepherds. They look like they’d never be able to bring down a full-grown bull moose. And they wouldn’t, unless he agreed to let them try.” He was watching her again, barely keeping an eye on traffic. He was no better a driver today than she was.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m the bull moose in this version of the story. I wasn’t scared, but I knew they were coming down those stairs. If they had gotten any closer to me, I think I would have been a goner.”
“But you didn’t want them to kill you! We’re not like animals, we want to survive.”
“I don’t know what was going on in my mind,” he said. By the choked gruffness of his voice she knew that if he hadn’t been Wilson he would be sobbing. “All I know is, if they had come any closer I’m not so sure I could have even tried to stop them.”
Chapter 4
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Becky Neff awoke suddenly out of a restless sleep. She felt that there had been a noise, yet now there was no sound except the wind, and a little snow whispering on the windowpane. The glow from the streetlights far below shone on the ceiling. In the distance a truck clattered its way down Second Avenue. The hands of the clock showed three forty-five. She had been asleep four hours. She remembered a hint of dream—a flash of blood, a sickly feeling of menace. Perhaps that had awakened her. Dick’s steady breathing in the bed beside her was a reassurance. If there had been an unusual noise he would be awake too. Gently she touched him, thinking as she did of how things had been between them such a short time ago, and of how change seeps into even the strongest love. She became sad and afraid. The apartment was cold, the morning heat not yet up. “Dick,” she said softly.
There was no response. She hadn’t really said it loud enough to wake him; she didn’t say it again. Then she leaned over to get her cigarettes from the night table and froze. There was a shadow on the ceiling. She watched it move slowly along, a low lump like something crawling on its belly across the bedroom terrace. Her mind raced to the sliding doors— locked? She had no idea.
Then the shadow was gone and she found she was still lying on her back, not reaching across the bed at all. In the manner of bad nightmares this one had continued even after she seemed to be awake. With the thought her heart stopped pounding. Of course it had been a dream. Nothing could climb sixteen stories to an apartment terrace. And nothing could have followed her. Yet she couldn’t quite overcome the feeling that something
The mutilated faces of DiFalco and Houlihan flickered in her mind’s eye. She thought of them staring up from the muddy ground. And she thought of Mike O’Donnell, the old blind man dying in his own darkness.
