Cutting Edge

camera… in theory, insofar as DeMarco was concerned for the present. His trust in any gadget or weapon had to meet the same standard he applied to women: He would reserve judgment until he saw how well it treated him.

Thus, DeMarco’s test. On his first day at the hotel, he had noticed a couple of minidome cameras in the hallway outside his room. The first to snag his careful eye was mounted flush with the ceiling near the elevator bank and might easily have been taken for one of the domed light fixtures with which it was aligned in a long row. The second minidome was more visibly mounted about two feet to the right of his door — and four or five feet above his head — in a corner formed by the juncture of the wall and ceiling. Neither bothered him by its presence. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Rio was a five-star hotel catering to upper-echelon international travelers. And any decent lodging nowadays was obliged to provide security for its guests. At its most basic, this would consist of an in-house security staff and twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week video monitoring of common areas.

DeMarco’s idea was to give the camera near his door a covert pass with his detector simply to find out whether it would buzz and flash its little indicator light as touted. If the gadget worked, he would accept the good things he’d heard about it. Make it his steady, so to speak. If it didn’t, he would have to reevaluate their relationship and likewise warn his men against putting too much faith in it.

As the Dylan song went, just like a woman.

Now DeMarco turned down the hall toward his room, the locator nestled in his right palm. At the door he took his swipe-card key from his shirt pocket with his free hand and inserted it into the reader, simultaneously thumbing on the locator to pass it under the camera, keeping it turned away from the bug-eyed enclosure… just a weary guest about to give himself a little neck rub after a long morning of hustle and bustle.

The gadget began to vibrate in mid-pass.

Good, he thought.

DeMarco brought it down between his shoulder blades with a smooth movement, raised it, slid his eyes onto the LED. It was blinking rapidly. He made an adequate show of massaging himself through his shirt, then lowered his right hand to his side, away from the overhead camera, and took another peak at the red light. The blinking slowed, stopped.

Even better.

Satisfied he’d gained a trustworthy companion, DeMarco pushed open his door and stepped into the room. He headed straight over to his dresser and tossed the card key on top of it, already unbuttoning his shirt below its open collar, eager to get under the refreshing shower spray and rinse the sweat and airport dust off his body. Although it was still well before noon, the outside temperature had to be somewhere in the upper eighties, and the soupy humidity made it feel even hotter.

As he went to put his camera locator down beside the card, his finger on the power button to click it to the OFF setting, DeMarco felt a sudden vibrational shiver from it, and realized the LED was blinking through his fingers again.

Rapidly.

Very rapidly.

His brows arched. Red light flickering between his knuckles, he continued to feel the silent pulsations of the locator’s alert signal. Then he thumbed it off, his eyes cutting left and right, taking in the room — its walls, ceiling, furnishings, picture frames, mirrors, central air-conditioning unit. Everything.

DeMarco swore inwardly. Not moving his lips. Betraying no hint of surprise through a muttered word or gesture.

After a moment he finished undressing, went into the shower, and turned on the tap, feeling tense and exposed, trying his best to act as if nothing were amiss.

His equipment tryout had proven to be more informative than he’d bargained for. A lot more.

He would have to talk to Pete Nimec right away.

* * *

After a night of bad dreams, Julia Gordian had hoped to shake off her mild funk at work Sunday, but the chill, gray weather was doing nothing to give her a lift.

The shelter had been quiet since she’d arrived, Rob off to do his double-duty accounting out at the San Gregario Beach resort, Cynthia dealing with a colicky infant in their house down the lane, leaving Julia to mind things alone. She was okay with that part, but would have been happier if it weren’t such a slow day for adoption prospects. There were no appointments scheduled for that morning, and only two penciled in for the afternoon. Quiet, and the low mist pressing against the shop window added to her downbeat mood.

Julia knelt over a bulk order of dog kibble delivered the day before, slid a box opener between the carton’s taped flaps, spread them open, and did a quick count of the three-pound bags inside against the total listed on the packing slip. Behind the counter with her, Vivian loafed on her cushion, raising her head off her crossed paws to nuzzle the carton with mild interest.

“Thanks for the hardy assist, Viv. But everything’s here,” Julia said, scratching the grey behind her ears, which were folded like a bow on a bonnet — the left ear flipped limply to the right, the right flopped to the left, the two overlapping over the fine, tawny fur betwixt. “No shortages to report.”

Viv produced a kind of whistling yawn, stretched, and rolled onto her back. Since being rebuffed by the Wurmans she had become Julia’s honorary sidekick, winning the position through charm and sympathy.

Julia smiled at her with affection.

“The tummy rub has to wait, kid,” she said. “I’ve got to earn my nonsalary.”

Julia reached into the carton. And while she unpacked and filled the shelves, found herself thinking about the dreams.

They had plagued her every so often since her divorce from Craig. Less often recently, but it seemed their run had not quite concluded and would recur for disturbing encore presentations anywhere between once and twice a month. Julia never knew what events would stir up the pockets of unconscious turbulence or why she’d go plunging into them on any given night. And she was stumped by their power to throw her out of whack almost two years after she’d last had any direct contact with her former husband. They were, like most dreams, insipid. Formulaic variations on a stock theme; confused, weak, even silly recalled in the light of day. But the sleeping mind was both captive audience and uncritical judge of its own regurgitated material, and they had once again kept her tossing and turning in bed.

Leading off last night’s bill had been the creepshow she thought of as Julia Can’t Find Her Home. The title said it all. She’d been driving home from somewhere — home being the residence Julia had shared with Craig for their entire six-year marriage — then swung off the usual highway exit and suddenly found herself in the wrong neighborhood. Or, to be more accurate, in a weirdly transformed version of what she somehow knew to be the right neighborhood. The street layout was vaguely familiar. There were landmarks that seemed to belong where she saw them, houses she seemed to recognize, but they had been altered in some uncertain way, and shuffled around like pieces on a Monopoly board. As Julia turned corner after corner, her initial bafflement escalated to panic. There was no sign of her driveway, her front yard. She was lost. The house wasn’t anywhere. She wasn’t anywhere. She couldn’t even retrace her route to the highway. She was without any sense of direction, her bearings gone, driving up and down increasingly alien and unknown streets, circling them in a futile, endless search for a home that had vanished.

That realization had awakened her with a scream, prompting a trip into the kitchen for a glass of cold water. It hadn’t ended the nightmares, though.

Julia in a House Full of Strangers… Almost! had followed shortly after she’d fallen back asleep. In this dream, the beleaguered heroine arrived at her residence without any trouble, but opened the front door to find it filled with complete strangers. As she rushed through its interior she saw people everywhere. Cozying up on the sofa, at the refrigerator, seated in the dining room, chatting and laughing in the halls. None of them knew her. None was interested in knowing her. In fact they didn’t seem to notice her at all, just went about their affairs as if she were invisible. She’d wandered the house like a ghost, found herself outside her bedroom. The door was wide open. Inside a couple was vigorously making love, tangled naked in the sheets. The lights were on. They ignored her when she appeared in the doorway. Julia could see the woman’s back, see a man underneath her, his face blocked by her riding body, his ecstatic groans muffled against her breasts. It had sounded like Craig. It had sounded exactly like Craig. And that had brought Julia back to reality with a start, left her crying into the pillow of her own darkened bedroom for perhaps half an hour.