rumpled gray jacket and tie. The back door of the sedan opened and Paula Swenson stepped into the sunshine. She wore sunglasses like the driver's.
'Time to meet your new partner,' McDonald said, getting out of Kracowski's car.
McDonald led the way to Kracowski's house, fumbled in his pocket and came out with a key. Within seconds the door swung open and McDonald stepped aside so the others could enter.
'I thought you secret agents employed more sophisticated methods to gain illegal entry,' Kracowski said.
'I've had a key almost as long as you have,' McDonald said. 'Thanks, Paula.'
Paula almost smiled at him, then her face went blank again. Kracowski stared at her, for the first time wondering if what he had mistaken for admiration and affection in her eyes was actually animal cunning.
'Nothing happens by accident,' McDonald continued. 'You may think you moved here of your own free will, because of the important research you needed to conduct at Wendover, but didn't you ever wonder at how easily the red tape fell away? And why the Department of Social Services wasn't constantly breathing down your neck?'
'I should assume my house has been bugged?' Kracowski looked at the corners of the living room with new interest. 'With tiny cameras planted all over the place? Where are they? In the mantel clock, maybe?'
'You're too trusting, Richard,' Paula said. 'You shouldn't have let me move in until you got to know me better.'
Kracowski studied the two men from the sedan. The guard wore an unreadable expression that looked as if it would break before smiling. He'd taken off his sunglasses, but the eyes were as blank as windows.
The man in the gray jacket, on the other hand, had eyes that rolled in their sockets as if constantly on watch for phantoms. His face was wrinkled and pale, dark hair trimmed unevenly close to the scalp, sprouting out at the sides like some grotesque clown's. He smelled of institutional soap. His teeth worked together, chewing air.
'I want you to meet the man who is going to help you prove the existence of life after death,' McDonald said. 'Someone who was working for us in a similar capacity before he had… personal issues.'
The anxious man nodded at the fireplace and picked a glass paperweight from a dusty hutch. He held it to one eye and squinted through it, his pupil made large and obscene.
'Dr. Kracowski, say hello to Dr. Kenneth Mills, esteemed clinical psychologist.'
'A pleasure to meet me, Doctor,' Kenneth Mills said. He turned abruptly and flung the paperweight into the fireplace, shattering it. Broken glass sprayed across the carpet. Neither McDonald nor the guard flinched. Swenson fumbled in her purse.
Mills grinned, showing sharp incisors to Kracowski. 'I look forward to working with you. By the way, how's the boy?'
'Boy?' said Kracowski, blown off balance by the man's tempest.
The grin grew wider and sharper. 'My son. Freeman.'
THIRTY-TWO
Starlene touched the wall again just to be sure that the world was solid and real. She was still dizzy from the treatment, though the ghosts had faded the moment Kracowski had shut off the energy fields. Or were the ghosts still there, only she couldn't see them? What sort of boundaries did ghosts observe? Was the deadscape confined to the basement of Wendover, or were the spirits at this moment running their invisible hands across her flesh?
She felt safer here, in her cottage a hundred feet away and not in the musty bowels of the group home. She shared the cottage with another counselor, Marie, who was on vacation. Too bad, because Starlene could use some company, even if Marie was of that peculiar Baha'i faith. Marie's placid chatter would have been a welcome distraction from the memories of the ghosts.
Starlene picked up the phone and called the main building. 'Randy?'
'Yeah,' he answered, in the same cold manner he'd displayed toward her since the incident with the man at the lake. 'What's going on?'
'I need to talk to you.'
'You know I'm on duty.'
She was careful to keep her voice level. She hated signs of weakness or desperation in others, and she especially despised them in herself. 'Can't one of the other counselors cover you for a few minutes?'
Randy sighed and put a hand over the mouthpiece. She heard his muffled voice as he called out to someone. Moments later, he was back on the line. 'Allen will cover. We're in between classes right now, so we should be okay. You at your cottage?'
'Yes.'
'Wait there. This had better be good.'
She hung up and thought about calling her minister, to ask how ghosts fit in with God's plan for the world. What would Jesus do? If Jesus saw a ghost, what would He do? But the minister wouldn't understand, because his miracles were confined to the pages of the Bible.
She sat on the worn vinyl sofa that might have been here since the 1950s. The rest of the furniture was just as outdated except for the few feminine touches she and Marie had injected. She picked up the cat-shaped throw pillow and hugged it to her chest. Something fluttered in me kitchenette and Starlene lifted her feet from the floor and tucked them under her knees.
A mouse. Probably only a mouse.
A knock came, and at first she thought it was Randy, although Randy usually pounded with the bottom of his fist instead of tapping.
'Come in,' she said.
Another knock, softer than the first, and Starlene realized the knock had come from inside the house. The bathroom. No one was in there.
No one.
She could sit there scared half to death, waiting for Randy to come rescue her, or she could open the bathroom door and prove to herself that a ghost hadn't followed her from Wendover. Except you couldn't prove that ghosts didn't exist. Even when you had or hadn't seen them with your own eyes.
She put her feet on the floor. A Bible sat on the battered coffee table, the King James version, the Gospel. She picked it up. Bibles worked against evil, didn't they? Or was that only crosses? But what if the ghosts weren't evil? They had to be evil, or else God would have given them a proper place in heaven.
She pressed the Bible to her chest and went down the short hall to the bathroom. This was a job for Ecclesiastes. She sought scraps of remembered verse, something fortifying and enlightening. The knock came again, like an insistent whisper.
Starlene clutched the door handle. The metal was cold as a morgue slab. She wanted to run, Randy would grab her and hold her, she could cry on his shoulder and everything would be okay and all the bad stuff would go away and Running would show a lack of faith.
God in His mercy would never allow harm to come from the other side of the grave. And surely the dead were beyond sin. Even a soul damned for all eternity should have its license to harm revoked.
Maybe these souls were good souls, Christian folk who had gotten lost on the way to Rapture.
The knock came again, vibrating the air of the room. The deadscape experience had been subjective, a strange and short nightmare, a contrived memory that would have faded with time. This was real. This was happening. Before she could talk herself out of it, she twisted the handle and let the door swing open.
The boy was on his knees, his face as white as the porcelain sink. The hand that had tapped at the door was poised in the air, quivering. His dark eyes were wild and lost, his lips trying to form words. The sun cut an orange slash between the curtains, the light parted the boy's hair, specks of dust spun in the air.
'Deke,' she said. 'Where have you been?'
His mouth gaped. He was a beggar asking for impossible things. She wanted to reach out to him, but was afraid of what he might do. She had read his case history, and had even built part of it. Sociopathic behavior couldn't be flipped on and off like a light switch, no matter what Kracowski believed.
