I could have gone to the windows to determine if they were fixed or operable. But I
I stood frozen a moment longer, then thawed, and switched on the flashlight. Filtering the beam through my fingers, I went to the door between this classroom and yet one more.
With my hand on the doorknob, I hesitated.
Either intuition or an overstimulated adrenal medulla, pumping inordinate amounts of stress hormones into my system, led me to the sudden perception that Hoss Shackett was in the next room. And not merely in the next room but standing inches away on the other side of this door. And not merely standing on the other side of this door, but standing with his hand on the knob over there, as mine was on the knob over here.
Both sides of the window in the door featured privacy blinds. If I peeled back this blind to peek, I would only see the back of the other blind-unless the chief peeled his back to peek at the same time that I did, in which case we would be eye to eye.
My heart raced. My mouth went so dry that I knew my tongue would rattle against my teeth if I dared move it. I was afraid to turn the knob because, as the chief felt it rotate under his hand, he would
At some point, when paralyzed by fear, you have to decide if it is better to move at any cost or to remain motionless until you fall dead from a burst bladder or go raving mad with terror. Thus far, in such moments, I have always decided to move, and again I made that choice.
I turned the knob, thrust open the door, and entered the next classroom. Hoss Shackett was not waiting there for me.
Although annoyed with myself, I was not embarrassed. Even for someone like me, gifted with paranormal perception, it is often difficult to tell the difference between reliable intuition and the effects of an overstimulated adrenal medulla. You must shrug and take comfort that it was merely the medulla malfunctioning, for if it had been the entire adrenal gland, you would suddenly grow hair on your palms and begin lactating.
A few steps into the new room, a disturbing sound caused me to halt and cock my head to listen. An arrhythmic clicking-ticking rose from other classrooms or from the long hallway to the back entrance, at first utterly alien, then familiar, then abruptly recognized: the click of sharp claws on vinyl flooring as eager coyotes scrambled and slipped and sniffed in search of something odd to eat.
Shackett must have opened the back door and accidentally let them inside. But if he had done so, why hadn’t he cried out in alarm when they surged around him or why hadn’t he fired a shot to spook them into retreat?
If I had navigated correctly through the joined rooms, the door ahead of me should open onto the short hall of the T, the entrance corridor. Indeed, it did.
Although it was not a noble thought, I hoped that the coyotes had torn the chief of police to pieces when they had come through the back door. Not having heard the beasts snarling and not having heard the chief screaming, I assumed my fond hope would not be fulfilled.
As soon as I entered the short hall, I turned left and rushed to the enclosed flagstone walkway between the annex and the church. I slammed the door behind me and kept moving, but when I glanced back, I saw that the latch had not caught, that the door had rebounded, and that it still stood open.
I was in the Hall of What Would Jesus Do, where I ran past a child’s drawing that I had not noticed during my previous passage: Jesus in a helicopter, rescuing livestock from a veal farm.
When I reached the entrance to the narthex, I looked back and saw coyotes leaping through the annex door into the enclosed walkway, tails lashing with the delight of natural-born gourmands when they saw me.
I took time to close the narthex door between me and the pack, and to make certain that the latch engaged.
The front entrance to the church remained locked. I returned along the main aisle of the nave, hurrying toward the chancel railing over which I had fled such a short while ago.
Because the coyotes couldn’t have gotten into the Sunday-school annex on their own and because the chief hadn’t cried out in terror or in the agony of a bitten man, I considered the possibility that he had let them inside to assist in the search for me.
That made no sense. Even coyotes that were something more than only what they appeared to be were nonetheless coyotes, and evil police chiefs were still human beings. Predatory wild animals and people did not form multispecies gangs for their mutual enrichment, not even in California.
I must be overlooking something. This wouldn’t be the first time.
As I threw open the chancel railing and entered the sanctuary, even in my haste I was smug enough to congratulate myself on my quick thinking and fast action. When, in a moment, I departed the church by the sacristy door, the slavering coyotes would be roaming through the annex, confused and distracted, and I would have a clear track to the Mercedes parked in the street.
In the sacristy, I crunched across the glass from the window that I had broken to gain entrance. Evidently, Hoss Shackett had been nearby at the time, had heard the noise, and had followed me into the church through the same window.
Why he had been in the immediate neighborhood, I did not know and did not need to know. Curiosity + cats = road kill. All that mattered was getting to the Mercedes and splitting before the chief saw what vehicle I was driving.
I unlocked the sacristy door and went out into the fog, through which I could see many lights at the previously dark rectory, on the farther side of the courtyard that was populated by bloodcurdling devotional statuary.
Perhaps Reverend Charles Moran had been awakened by a poor parishioner who had no more dried peat moss or briquettes of dung to burn in her potbellied stove, nor any more porridge to feed the six orphaned nieces with whom she shared her one-room shanty out by the pauper’s graveyard, and now he was preparing to rush off to bring her a selection of Lean Cuisine entrees and a case of Perrier.
Whatever he was up to, I assured myself that it was none of my business, but then as I headed toward the street, I had a change of heart at the sight of yellow-eyed legions of coyotes appearing out of the fog as they rounded the corner of the bell tower. As I could not return to the church and as the minister’s residence offered the nearest haven, I decided to ask if Reverend Moran needed a companion on his mission of mercy.
Maybe the coyotes, too, were badly frightened by the unorthodox sculpture and put off their stride, or maybe I found resources that I had never before tapped. Instead of trying to keep up with me, those cousins of wolves decided to outflank me, angling toward the front of the rectory with the intention of being there with bibs on when I arrived.
Still a member of the smartest if also most ignorant species on the planet, I changed course for the back of the house, which I hoped to reach before they realized what I had done.
They continued to lope through the night in silence, which was not characteristic of their kind. Usually, in the hunt, they issued ululant howls, eerie songs of death, that chilled the blood.
Springing up the back-porch steps, I sensed that the silent predators had gotten wise to my trick and were in fierce competition to be the first to rip out the seat of my jeans.
Certain that I had no time to knock and present myself properly, I tried the door and blew out a gust of breath when it proved to be unlocked.
FORTY-SIX
