When he reached the bodies, he stopped. Blood and gray matter painted the pavement around the skull of the prone man who was nearest. Reed had seen his share of corpses, but the mess here was notable, maybe a prize-winner. In the course of his fall, the guy’s glasses had flipped up to rest on the fringe of his curly hair. The arrangement of the glasses gave him a perversely warm and casual look, a teacherly aspect, as he lay dead in the road with his brains splattered on the asphalt.
A few steps further on, a female was sprawled on her side in the position that Reed himself often adopted when he was on the couch watching television. Her mask of webbing had been scraped away by contact with the road, and the skin that remained was tattered. From what was left of the face and of her body, Reed could determine that she was young, but not much more than that. A bullet had torn a large wound in her chest. The girl’s blood flowed onto the damp pavement.
Sneakers slapped against the pavement behind Reed. “Gerda!” someone screamed. “Gerda!”
Reed turned and Barry Holden rushed past him, falling to his knees by the body of his daughter.
Vern Rangle, nose bloodied, staggered up the road after Holden, bellowing that he’d circumcise him, the fucker.
What a hill of shit: a smeared guy, a dead girl, a howling attorney, Vern Rangle with his blood up, guns and ammo in the road. Reed was relieved that Lila Norcross was not currently serving as sheriff because he would not have wanted to even begin to attempt to explain to her how it had happened.
Reed grabbed for Vern a second too late, catching just a piece of fabric at his shoulder. Vern shook him off and swatted the butt end of his pistol across the back of Barry Holden’s head. There was an ugly cracking noise, like a breaking branch, and a gout of blood. Barry Holden tumbled face-first onto the ground beside his daughter. Vern squatted beside the unconscious lawyer and began to hit him again and again with the butt of his gun. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! You broke my nose, you b—”
The young woman who should have been dead and wasn’t grasped Vern’s jaw, wrapped her fingers over his lower teeth, and jerked him down to her level. Her head lifted and her mouth snapped wide and she buried her teeth in Vern’s throat. Reed’s partner began to whack at her with the pistol butt. It didn’t faze her. Arterial blood pumped out around her lips.
Reed remembered his own weapon. He raised it and shot. The bullet entered through the young woman’s eye and her body went loose, but her mouth remained locked on Vern’s throat. She appeared to be drinking his blood.
On his knees, Reed dug his fingers into the hot and slippery mess where the young woman’s teeth were clamped to his partner’s throat. He hauled and pulled, feeling tongue and enamel. Vern swung at her once more, ineffectually, his gun flying from his relaxing hand and bouncing away. Then he collapsed.
Last in a three-cruiser caravan, Frank drove alone. Everyone had their sirens going. Ordway and Terry were at the fore, followed by Peters and Peters’s sidekick, Blass. Aloneness was not something that Frank sought, but it seemed to find him. Why was that? Elaine had taken Nana and left him alone. Oscar Silver had gone off the road and left him alone. It was grim. It had made him grim. Maybe that was how it had to be, though—how he had to be—to do what he had to do.
But could he do what he had to do? Things were going wrong. Reed Barrows had radioed that shots had been fired and there was an officer down. Frank believed he was ready to kill for his daughter; he was certain that he was ready to die for her. What occurred to him now, though, was that he was not the only one who was willing to take mortal risks. Norcross’s people had stolen police armaments and broken through a barricade. Whatever their reasons, they were determined. It worried Frank that they should be so determined, that their reasons should be such an enigma. What was driving them? What was it between Eve Black and Norcross?
His cell phone rang. The caravan was speeding north on Ball’s Hill. Frank pulled the phone from his pocket. “Geary.”
“Frank, this is Eve Black.” She spoke a shade above a whisper, and her voice had a husky, flirty quality.
“It is, is it? Nice to meet you.”
“I’m calling you from my new cell phone. I didn’t have one, so Lore Hicks gifted me his. Wasn’t that chivalrous of him? By the way, you might as well slow down. No need to risk an accident. The RV got away. There’s just four dead people and Reed Barrows.”
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me, I know. Clint was surprised it was so easy to pull off the heist. I was, too, to be honest. We had a good laugh. I thought you were a little more on top of things. My mistake.”
“You should give yourself up, Ms. Black.” Frank concentrated on measuring his words. On keeping the redness that wanted to overtake his mind at bay. “Or you should give this—thing up. Whatever it is. You should do that before anyone gets hurt.”
“Oh, we’re pretty well past the getting-hurt stage. Judge Silver, for instance, got a lot more than hurt. As did Dr. Flickinger, who actually wasn’t such a bad fellow when his head was clear. We’re in the mass extinction stage.”
Frank choked the wheel of the cruiser. “What the fuck are you?”
“I could ask you the same question, but I know what you’d say: ‘I am the Good Father.’ Because with you it’s all Nana-Nana-Nana, isn’t it? The protective daddy. Have you thought even once about all the other women, and what you might be doing to them? What you might be putting at risk?”
“How do you know about my daughter?”
“It’s my business to know. There’s an old blues song that goes, ‘Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.’ You need to widen your perspective, Frank.”
What I need, Frank Geary thought, is my hands around your throat. “What do you want?”
“I want you to man up! I want you to man the fuck up and make this interesting! I want your precious Nana to be able to go to school and say, ‘My daddy isn’t just a civil servant who catches feral cats, and he isn’t just a guy who punches walls or pulls on my favorite shirt or yells at Mom when things aren’t going his way. He’s also the man who stopped that wicked old fairy who put all the women to sleep.’ ”
“Leave my daughter out of it, you bitch.”
The teasing note evaporated from her voice. “When you protected her at the hospital, that was brave. I admired it. I admired you. I truly did. I know you love her, and that’s no small thing. I know, in your way, all you want is the best for her. And that makes me love you a tiny bit, even though you’re part of the problem.”
Ahead, the first two vehicles were pulling to a stop beside Reed Barrows’s dented cruiser. Frank could see Barrows walking to meet them. Further on, he could see the bodies in the road.
“Stop this,” said Frank. “Let them go. Let the women go. Not just my wife and daughter, all of them.”
Evie said, “You’ll have to kill me first.”
Angel asked who was this Frank that Evie had been talking to.
“He’s the dragonslayer,” Evie said. “I just needed to make sure that he wasn’t going to allow himself to be distracted by unicorns.”
“You are so fuckin crazy.” Angel whistled.
Evie wasn’t, but it wasn’t an issue to debate with Angel—who, anyway, was entitled to her opinion.
CHAPTER 9
The fox comes to Lila in a dream. She knows it’s a dream because the fox can talk.