The radio blared alive at six-thirty the following morning, tuned to a station specializing in soft sounds from the seventies. Elton John sang “The Crocodile Rock.”
At six-fifty, one of April’s neighbors turned on his hearing aid, heard some woman singing about muskrat love, and immediately called the lot manager, who contacted the authorities a few minutes later.
Fortunately, the call was well beyond Steve’s beat, well beyond the city limits. The county sheriff’s department responded quickly, performing their duties with businesslike efficiency. No fuss, no bother. The entire procedure was as simple as shoveling a dead dog off the highway.
To them, April Louise Destino was nothing more than a dead whore.
But April wasn’t dead. Not really. Steve knew that now. She was locked in his basement.
He clutched the reel of 16mm film. He kicked the mashed beer cans into a stand of skunk cabbage. And then he picked up the projector with the broken lens and heaved the big hunk of metal as far as he could.
It crashed, kicked up gravel, and tumbled against a twisted speaker-pole. Something was happening. It had started here last night. Steve could feel it. And it was something that he hadn’t caused, something that April hadn’t caused.
He didn’t know the cause, but he recognized the effect. Even his imagination-impoverished brain could process the clues he’d been given. His dream was becoming real. Doves nested in the dead pines that surrounded the drive-in. April’s dog, Homer Price, had been hiding in a eucalyptus grove near the cemetery, a cartoon eye trained on his mistress’s grave. And April Destino had stepped alive and whole from Steve’s dream into his fortress of solitude.
A sliver of film hung from the plastic reel, fluttering in the warm breeze. Some people said that movies were like dreams. Steve had never quite seen the analogy. Dreams, to him, were a rare commodity. Movies were a dime a dozen. But the 16mm loop was something different. It was the nightmare that April had suffered night after night in the dungeon of sleep.
Steve coiled the film and slipped the reel into his pocket. He tapped it; he felt the slight weight suspended in his pocket; it was very real.
And suddenly everything was very clear, and he realized how wrong he had been. Oh, he was in a dream all right. Slipping into a dream, one image at a time. His mechanical brain was correct in making that assumption.
But where was April?
April had stepped into Steve’s basement.
Doug Douglas had followed her.
But Doug wasn’t part of Steve’s dream.
Doug was part of April’s nightmare.
When April saw Doug, she started screaming.
Even a mechanical brain could sort it out.
April hadn’t stepped into Steve’s dream…
She had stumbled into her own nightmare.
10:57 A.M.
The quiet order of the camera shop calmed Shutterbug. Familiar tasks distanced him from the events of the last ten hours. Totaling the receipts from the previous day, getting the money ready for the register, alphabetizing the prints that had arrived from the developer-these small tasks convinced him that he was nothing more than the owner of a successful retail business, shadowed by no other concerns than those shared by a dozen other businessmen whose stores were located in the same thriving mini-mall.
Then the phone rang. Not the number that was listed in the phone book-that line was connected to an answering machine which informed customers that the store would open promptly at eleven. The private line was ringing. Shutterbug lifted the handset. “Yes?”
“Hanks? That you?”
Shutterbug sidestepped the question. “Who’s calling, please?”
“One of your buddies from San Francisco. I’m in the photography business, too. We’ve worked together, but it’s been a while.”
Okay, this was strictly business. Shutterbug breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t worry. This line is clean. You don’t need to-”
“Don’t be so sure, Hanks.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Hanks. Just shut up for a minute. People are asking questions about you. People are going to be asking you questions.”
“What? Who are you talking about?”
“Two words for you. Hanks: shut up. Whatever they hit you with, don’t say a word. That’s what we’re doing, that’s what you should do.”
The line went dead.
A gentle rapping sounded on the glass door.
Shutterbug whirled, nearly dropping the phone. The man stood on the wide sidewalk, peering into the store from the other side of the smoked glass wall that protected Shutterbug’s wares from the harsh afternoon sunlight. But it wasn’t afternoon-it was morning, and the large panes seemed darker than they should have, and the man on the other side of the glass wall was only a silhouette.
Again, the man’s knuckles struck the glass, ever so gently. Shutterbug’s mouth opened but no words came out. The man pointed at his wrist and tapped again, but he was only pretending to tap now, and instead of the tapping sound Shutterbug heard the little clock ticking steadily on the wall above the cash register.
An electronic chime sounded the hour.
Eleven o’clock. Opening time.
Shutterbug unlocked the smoked glass door. The silhouette didn’t move, didn’t step forward, even when the door was opened.
The policeman grinned, his eyes lost behind mirrored sunglasses.
The sunglasses came off. Steve Austin stood rooted to the sidewalk by a pair of heavy black boots. His uniform was a study in dark creases and his eyes were narrow slits.
“Steve!” Shutterbug said, as if pleasantly surprised. “I haven’t seen you in…well, since forever.”
Steve said nothing.
Shutterbug recognized what might have been a cop’s trick-don’t commit to anything, get the nervous suspect to talk his way into trouble. He wasn’t going to fall for it, even if his hesitation spoke of paranoia.
Paranoia, hell. Shutterbug hadn’t recognized the cop at the drive-in. That cop might have been Steve Austin. And there was the phone call, too. The warning. If this had something to do with Shutterbug’s real business…that would be different.
But the call had come from San Francisco, more than thirty miles away. The two incidents couldn’t be connected. It was impossible.
Austin’s grin was patient, implacable.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Shutterbug said. “C’mon in. What can I do for you?” He stepped behind the counter, separating himself from the big policeman. A little distance made him feel safer. “When was the last time we had a chance to talk? A couple years back? Fifteenth reunion?”
Austin’s grin was welded in place. “I never go to reunions.”
