Once again, I tried to charge after Serena but once again the thugs jumped on me, dragged me back. I thought I saw the flash of the knife blade. But now Jamal was coming at us, too. The thought-pulverizing volume of the alarm must've panicked him. He'd abandoned his search for the gun. He was waving his hand urgently. His eyes were big and white beneath his hood. His shouts were lost beneath the siren, but I could see his mouth forming the words "Go! Go! Go!"
The two thugs tore away from the fight-so suddenly I staggered back a step. They rushed out the door, into the dark, into the living room after Serena. Jamal was right behind them. I tried to throw him aside or climb over him-anything to get by. But Jamal turned and harried me with punches, knocking me back against the sink. I grabbed his throat as he tried to get away, and he grabbed mine. For an instant-it could only have been an instant-we twirled around the room locked together like that, the siren screaming and screaming. Our faces were close together. The hatred in his expression was startling, shocking-as if a beast of fire had leapt out of nowhere into life.
And yet, I felt no hatred for him in return. I remember that clearly. Clutching his throat, spinning around the room in his clutches, I had no feeling about him in particular at all. The philosophy he stood for, the murder he may have done, the beating he had given Serena, even the mass slaughter he was planning-it was as if these were just sad facts of the world to me, symptoms of its soul's disease, like a leper's ugly sores or his contagion. I didn't hate the man for them at all. I simply wanted to destroy him-crush him, kill him, whatever it took-just do the job that had to be done and finish him so I could get free and rescue Serena.
Then we broke apart, flew apart as if hurled from each other's hands by a force outside ourselves. My fingers slipped off his neck as I slammed backward into the refrigerator. He stumbled fast away until he caught himself against the stove. He coiled there with his cowled face twisted, and I thought he would leap at me again. But the next moment, he darted out of the room, darted into the same shadows in which Serena had disappeared.
I shoved off the fridge and went after him. Out of the light of the kitchen and into the dark living room. Through the dim shape of the living-room archway into the den at the back of the house. The siren kept howling, howling and howling, through the rooms, through my skull. I reached the den's threshold just as Jamal banged out through the backdoor screen. I ran after him. Caught the screen as it swung shut. Knocked it open again and tumbled out into the backyard.
The night smelled of autumn and of rain. The air was cool and misty and serene. I saw Jamal's shadow flitting from the glow that fell out of the kitchen window and sinking into the black of the cloudy night. I ran after him across the grass, slipping-nearly falling-on the damp leaves. The siren went on caterwauling behind me, insanely loud still, but softer out here, almost bearable.
I could hardly see at all, but I knew my way. The pachysandra patch was to my left. When I was a boy, it almost seemed a living beast to me the way it devoured our tennis balls and whiffle balls and never gave them back. The long-trunked sycamore was to my right-the Counting Tree, we called it, because it was the official spot to stand and lay your arm across its ridged bark and hide your face in the crook of your elbow while you counted off the time in hide-and-seek. And straight ahead maybe thirty yards was the old post fence on which, when we were ten years old, I once sat with Susan Patterson and asked permission to kiss her freckled cheek. There was a hedge on the other side of the fence and a gate in the fence where the hedge broke. It led out to Chatham Road around the corner from my house. I heard the gate squeal as it opened and heard it fall shut with a click and a thud-sounds I could have identified in my sleep. Jamal was younger and faster than I was. He had already crossed the yard and caught up to his companions.
I put on an extra burst of speed, raced after him even faster. In my acceleration, I slipped again, the slick leaves sending my feet shooting out from under me. This time I did fall, went down on my shoulder, the jolt of the impact aching in my bones. I slid several feet through the grass and dirt and leaves-then leapt up again without stopping. Even so, as I regained my feet, I could see they'd reached their car. I could see the interior light of it go on through the hedge's leaves. I could hear the engine revving to life.
I made the gate as quickly as I could, but I knew I'd lost her. I yanked the gate open, strangling on helplessness and suspense and rage. Everything in me wanted to get to her, to help her, to stop them from taking her away.
I worked the gate open without thinking. I dashed through onto the sidewalk.
Headlights snapped on and blinded me. The great green Cadillac roared and screeched and sped away, already passing me as I stepped off the curb into the street. I ran-ran after its red taillights, my arms flailing, my hands clawing at the air. I ran until I couldn't breathe and the big car was pulling farther and farther away from me.
Finally I floundered to a stop, bent over with my hands braced against my knees. I panted and gasped for breath. I could still hear the alarm wailing from my mother's house. And there were new sirens now, police cars, approaching fast. And there was the engine of the Caddy, too, gunning, shifting gears-fading rapidly as the car sped away through the streets of the town I knew by heart.
FRIDAY
The Last Day Begins
I told the police detective everything. It sounded crazy, even to me. Murder in the swamp; an evil university professor; kidnapping; a terrorist attack in the making; and, oh yes, Patrick Piersall-that was the kicker.
"The admiral of the Universal?" the detective mused. "What was his name again?"
"Kane…"
"Augustus Kane, right. That was a hell of a show. I used to love that show."
The detective seemed a patient and jovial civil servant but I thought I sensed a rigidly precise system of moral accountancy at work in him. I suspected he had the Official Catholic Church Graph drawn inside his mind on which he could chart the right and wrong of every thought and action. Maybe it was just his name that gave me that idea-Detective Fitzgerald. But I thought I saw it in his steely blue gaze as well, and in the pattern of ridges dug into the pasty flesh of his rather enormous face. The smile lines around his mouth subtly became squint lines around his eyes, as if he could sit there and laugh with you while sending a narrow look into your soul at the same time.
Anyway, I knew myself the whole story sounded nuts. I told him I knew. I sat there next to his gunmetal desk in the remarkably spacious and spotless detective bureau in the Nassau County Police headquarters and I said, "Look, I know how this sounds. I really do." I said it several times. It didn't seem to help. Fitzgerald tilted back in his swivel chair and played with a pencil in his two hands. He considered me closely from under his bushy red eyebrows in a way that made me feel like a very suspicious character indeed.
The detective was neatly, even nattily, dressed in a white shirt with blue stripes and a jolly but professional orange tie. His red brown hair was close-cropped. His jacket was carefully draped over the back of his chair. I couldn't help but feel conscious of my own appearance under his gaze. My face was all banged and bruised, my right eye half closed, my lip split and bulging. My slacks and shirt were stained with dirt and grass. There were scratches and mud stains on my arms, mud caked under my fingernails. I'd refused to go to the hospital, but I had gone into the station bathroom when we'd first arrived to try to clean up. I got a good look at myself in the mirror there. So I knew I not only sounded crazy, I looked-worse than crazy- disreputable. Like some guy who'd been hauled in after a drunken, violent set-to with his wife.