Hands trembling, Augie peeled the slim layer of metal away from the body of the clippers. It swiveled out smoothly, the semisharp point of the file adding a good three inches to the length of his weapon.
It wasn’t much, Augie knew. At best, he’d have one chance. He needed to aim precisely at the most vulnerable spot on the giant’s body, and he needed to hit it hard and thrust the blade deep. That might buy him enough time to get through to the kitchen and out the back door.
Augie realized the stomping sounds had stopped. There was silence from the rest of the house. Was it possible that the monster had gone? That he had searched the place, yet somehow missed the bathroom where Augie was hiding? Walked past the locked door, thinking it was solid wall?
It didn’t seem possible. That would be like winning the lottery on the same day you hit the superfecta. And Augie had never been a great believer in luck, especially his own. But the sounds had stopped. No stomping, no hissing.
Augie crept quietly to the bathroom door-and waited. He waited for what seemed like hours, like days. He waited until the sun burned out and the moon fell into the sea and the universe died of heat loss. And then, slowly and carefully, he placed his right hand on the doorknob and turned.
Still nothing from the rest of the house.
He turned the knob the rest of the way, catching his breath as the dead latch eased silently out of the strike plate. Keeping the knob twisted all the way to the left to prevent any stray sounds, he gently pulled the door toward himself until there was a tiny crack spilling light from the hallway.
Augie stayed frozen, waiting to see if anyone had noticed the movement. Again, all was still. This might actually be the day for him to buy lottery tickets at the racetrack. He took a deep breath and yanked the door the rest of the way open, clutching the nail clippers tightly in his free hand.
At first, Augie saw only the corridor and a wink of sunlight coming from the kitchen window at its end.
And then he saw the sharpened teeth-and heard the monster’s terrible roar as it lunged at him.
Augie closed his eyes and struck out with the nail clippers, knowing that this time, his hands wouldn’t be enough to save him.
Chapter Twenty
The neighborhood was one of those quaint parts of the city dating from an ancient time when citizens of Santa Barbara still believed that the population who spent their lives serving their superiors, cleaning their houses, fixing their cars, or serving their dinners, should be allowed to live within a gas tank’s drive from them. The houses were designed and built for people who would use them to live in, possibly raise children in, not simply as markers to prove how much more money they had than their neighbors.
That meant there were no Moorish castles on this block, no Spanish palaces, or quasi-Mediterranean su pervillas. Instead, there were simple, one-story cottages and ranch houses, few with more than three bedrooms and a good number with only one bath. The small front yards were mostly patches of brown lawn, and there weren’t many houses not in need of a fresh coat of paint. A few blocks in either direction, the houses started to get bigger and newer as the older places were being replaced by lot-spanning micromansions, but this area was essentially untouched. Had the real estate boom gone on for another year, this street might have been demolished to make room for a fleet of grander dwellings, but the discovery that the area had been the dumping ground for a local chemical company’s effluent before being developed for housing tended to make the land here less attractive to spec builders. Small wonder that you could still buy a house on this street for as little as eight hundred thousand dollars.
If there were any houses still standing after today, that was. Right now, that seemed to be in question.
Both ends of the block had been closed off by fire engines. A squadron of police cars was arrayed up and down the street, and uniformed officers were pounding on doors, grabbing the residents who opened them, and racing them away beyond the fire engine boundaries. A boxy gray truck loomed in front of a particularly shabby Cape Cod, the words BOMB SQUAD emblazoned on all sides to chase away any residents who might have ignored the police pounding on their doors.
Shawn and Gus stood with Detectives Lassiter and O’Hara, staring at the Cape Cod.
“This is fun,” Shawn said finally. “Tomorrow you should all come over and stand outside my house.”
“No one asked you to come along, Spencer,” Lassiter said. “I think we can handle this perfectly well without your help.”
“What, standing around and watching while no one does anything?” Shawn said. “Nobody does that better than me.”
“He’s the champ,” Gus said. “He never misses an episode of Private Practice.”
“This is called staging,” Lassiter said. “We’re getting all our people into position, evacuating the civilians out of the area, and then we move.”
“That’s not very interesting,” Shawn said. “In the movies, this part is handled in a few quick cuts.”
“Or a montage,” Gus said.
“Only if the house in question is located in 1987,” Shawn said. “And then the audience spends their time wishing all these cops would turn their weapons on Kenny Loggins before he starts another song. The point is, we’re supposed to cut in right before the action starts.”
“If what you want is a movie, go see one in a theater,” Lassiter said.
“That’s a good idea,” Shawn said. He turned to Detective O’Hara, who was snapping her cell phone shut. “How about it, Jules? We could catch a matinee of all twenty-two Bond movies, and probably still make it back before anything actually happens.”
“Shawn, you shouldn’t even be here,” O’Hara said. “It would probably be best if you and Gus moved back behind the line.”
“And miss all the excitement?” Shawn said. “Besides, you brought us here.”
Technically, that was true, but it certainly hadn’t been on purpose. Shawn and Gus had dropped by the police station to see if there had been any test results back on the air in the canisters from the Vegas penthouse. When they got there, they found Lassiter and O’Hara strapping themselves into Kevlar on their way to the door.
“Jules, Lassie!” Shawn said as the two detectives bustled past him.
“Can’t talk, sorry,” O’Hara said. “Come back tomorrow.”
The front door closed behind them.
“They didn’t just do that,” Shawn said.
“They so did,” Gus said.
“Didn’t even stop to apologize,” Shawn said.
“Or to let you have the last word,” Gus said.
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “I have a reputation to protect around here. Whenever anyone leaves the room, I get to make a pithy quip that sums up the essentials of the mise-en-scene in a way that not only adds some much-needed levity to our tragedy-besotted world, but gives a unique perspective that often leads everyone involved to see the situation in the correct light.”
“It’s amazing that they go anywhere without your services,” Gus said.
“It’s amazing they think they can get away with it,” Shawn said.
They could hear sirens starting up and the squeal of rubber on asphalt as a fleet of police cars tore out of the lot.
“What’s more amazing is that they seem to have been right about that,” Gus said.
“Not as long as my name is on this building,” Shawn said, grabbing Gus by the shoulder and propelling him toward the station’s rear exit.
As they made their way back, Gus finally understood what a young salmon must feel when it comes time to spawn. They were definitely swimming against the tide, as a swarm of police officers jostled past them on their way to the front door. Of course, Gus reasoned, a salmon was probably pretty sure that something good was going to happen when he finally reached the end of his upstream voyage, and Gus couldn’t imagine what they were going to find in the alley behind the station, besides a couple of Dumpsters and some really bad smells, but Shawn wasn’t giving him a choice in the matter.