chest had taken him out, though not fast enough.
Jack's head lolled to his left. Even as his tunnel vision constricted
further, he saw a black-and-white swing off the street, into the
station at high speed, fishtailing to a stop as the driver stood on the
brakes.
Jack's vision closed down altogether. He was totally blind.
He felt as helpless as a baby, and he began to cry.
He heard doors opening, officers shouting.
It was over.
Luther was dead. Almost one year since Tommy Fernandez had been shot
down beside him. Tommy, then Luther. Two good partners, good friends,
in one year.
But it was over.
Voices. Sirens. A crash that might have been the portico collapsing
over the service-station pumps.
Sounds were increasingly muffled, as if someone was steadily packing
his ears full of cotton. His hearing was fading in much the same way
that his vision had gone.
Other senses too. He repeatedly pursed his dry mouth, trying
unsuccessfully to work up some saliva and get a taste of something,
even the acrid fumes of gasoline and burning tar. He couldn't smell
anything, either, although a moment ago the air had been ripe with foul
odors.
Couldn't feel the pavement under him. Or the blustery wind. No pain
any more.
Not even a tingle. Just cold. Deep, penetrating cold.
Utter deafness overcame him.
Holding desperately to the spark of life in a body that had become an
insensate receptacle for his mind, he wondered if he would ever see
Heather and Toby again. When he tried to summon their faces from
memory, he could not recall what they looked like, his wife and son,
two people he loved more than life itself, couldn't remember their eyes
or the color of their hair, which scared him, terrified him. He knew
he was shaking with grief, as if they had died, but he couldn't feel
the shakes, knew he was crying but couldn't feel the tears, strained
harder to bring their precious faces to mind, Toby and Heather, Heather
and Toby, but his imagination was as blind as his eyes. His interior
world wasn't a bottomless pit of darkness but a blank wintry whiteness,
like a vision of driving snow, a blizzard, frigid, glacial, arctic,
unrelenting.
CHAPTER THREE.
Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder so powerful it
rattled the kitchen windows. The storm began not with a sprinkle or
drizzle but with a sudden downpour, as if clouds were hollow structures
that could shatter like eggshells and spill their entire contents at
once.
Heather was standing at the counter beside the refrigerator, scooping
orange sherbet out of a carton into a bowl, and she turned to look at
the window above the sink. Rain was falling so hard it almost appeared
to be snow, a white deluge. The branches of the ficus benjamina in the
