One thing he had learned from his research into clairvoyance, however, was that some people were capable of faking occult phenomena. They could throw their voices, or make themselves temporarily invisible to those around them, or at least unnoticed. It was nothing supernatural, it was simply a trick, like stage magic, or hypnotism, or an optical illusion. Because of her mental disability, it was conceivable that Sandra had been unaffected by whatever gimmick the man in gray had employed to distract the attention of passersby. That was why—the more Decker thought about it—the more interested he was in seeing the figure that Sandra might draw.
He shampooed his hair with Fix and felt the suds sliding down his back. He was beginning to relax now. One more shot of tequila as a nightcap, and he was going to bed, and to sleep, and tonight with any luck he wouldn't have quite so many nightmares. He reached for his towel and climbed out of the shower.
As he did so, he thought he heard a clicking sound coming from the living area. He stood still and listened. Nothing. It must have been the air-conditioning. He dried himself and went back into the bedroom. He was opening his drawer to take out a clean pair of boxer shorts when he heard it again. Click—click-----click.
He stepped into his shorts and then stood perfectly still and listened. Almost half a minute passed. Then click click—click. And then a rattle.
It sounded as if there were somebody in the kitchen,
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rather than the living area. Decker opened his closet door and took out his baseball bat. He just hoped that if it was an intruder, he hadn't noticed that a fully loaded Colt Anaconda was hanging from the hat stand right outside the kitchen doorway.
Click—click. Decker eased the bedroom door open a little wider and then stepped out into the living area, keeping his back close to the wall. His holster was still where he had hung it up, thank God. But the odd thing was that the front door was still locked, and the security chain was still fastened.
He made his way across the wooden floor, trying not to make sticky noises with his warm feet. He reached the opposite wall and flattened himself against it, breathing deeply to steady himself.
The clicking continued, intermittently. Then he heard something else, and his back prickled as if cockroaches were rushing down it. Singing. High-pitched, breathy singing. Quite tuneless, and the words were barely distinguishable. But it was singing and it was Cathy. She had always sung like that.
Decker felt as if the entire world were tilting underneath his feet. Cathy was dead. He had seen Cathy dead. He had convinced himself that ghosts didn't exist and spirits couldn't be summoned back and yet here she was, singing in his kitchen in the middle of the night. It gave him a feeling of dread far greater than any intruder could have inspired. He lifted the baseball bat and his hands were shaking so much that he had to lower it again. Besides, what was he going to do, if it really was her? Hit her?
Decker took a sharp breath and stepped into the kitchen doorway. The singing abruptly stopped and there was nobody there. He stood there for a while, not knowing what to do. He cleared his throat and said, "Cathy? Are you here,
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Cathy?" but of course there was no reply. He took another step forward, and sniffed, in the hope that he might be able to smell her, that distinctive flowery perfume she always wore, but there was no trace of it.
He peered around the corner of the kitchen toward the brightly lit countertop next to the sink. On top of his seasoned-oak chopping board there was a pattern of pale, glistening lumps. At first Decker couldn't understand what he was looking at, but with a growing sense of eeriness he realized that it was a face, with staring eyes and jagged teeth—not a real face, but a face that had been fashioned out of slices of raw chicken, with a pointed breastbone for a nose, two slices of banana for eyes, and teeth made from diced-up apple.
It was unsettlingly lifelike, and the way it was looking at him made him feel as if it were just about to speak. But who had created it, and why, and how? A small sharp knife lay beside the chopping board, but whoever had used it had completely vanished.
Decker paced slowly up and down the kitchen, waving his baseball bat from side to side, as if it might come into contact with somebody invisible. Again, he whispered, "Cathy? Are you here, sweetheart? Talk to me, Cathy." But there was still no reply, only the mournful hooting of a ship on the river.
He went back into the living area and checked behind the drapes. The windows were closed and locked, so nobody could have escaped by climbing out that way. Besides, it was a sixty-foot drop to the street. He went back to the bedroom and opened all of the closet doors. Nobody. He frowned down at the photo of Cathy beside the bed. "Was that you? Or am I going out of my mind?"
He returned to the kitchen. He stared at the chicken‑
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meat face for a while but he had no idea what significance it had, if it had any significance at all. He thought of Jerry Maitland, saying, "There was nobody there . . . there was cutting and cutting but there was nobody there."
He wondered if he ought to call Hicks to take a look, but he decided against it. Hicks needed his sleep and besides—Decker didn't want to give the impression that he was losing his grip. He had seen it happen too many times before, detectives subtly falling apart. Their breakdowns were mostly caused by the steady erosion of suppressed grief, after one of their partners had been killed; or after their marriages had broken up, and they had lost custody of their children; or after they had been called out to one too many grotesquely mutilated bodies. They always thought that they were keeping their emotions under control, while all of their fellow officers could see that they were as brittle as an automobile whose bodywork had rusted right through to the paint.
Decker took his Polaroid camera out of the bookcase, loaded it with film, and took six or seven pictures of the kitchen counter. Then he cleared all the meat and fruit into the sink, and pushed them into the waste disposal. The knife he picked up by the tip and dropped into a plastic food bag.
He looked around the kitchen one more time. He cleared his throat and said, "Cathy, sweetheart, if what I heard was really you, why don't you give me a sign? Why don't you tell me why you're here? Why don't you let me see you for a minute? Why don't you let me touch you?"
He waited but there was no answer and no sign. Maybe
he was going crazy. Maybe he was simply overtired.
In the end he switched the lights off and went to bed.
* * *
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As soon as he fell asleep the nightmares began. Nightmares more frightening than any he had ever had before.
He dreamed that he was struggling through thick, lacerating underbrush. It was nearly dark and he knew that he had to hurry. Off to his left he could see fires burning, and he could hear men shouting to each other.
The branches caught in his clothing and lashed against his face. His feet were bare and every step was prickly with briars. The fires began to leap up higher, and he could smell smoke on the wind, and hear the crackling of burning bushes.
He was shaking with exhaustion, but he knew that if he stopped for even a minute the fires would cut him off, and he also knew that there was somebody close behind him, somebody who wanted to do him serious harm. He looked over his shoulder. He couldn't see anybody, but he was sure that they were very close behind.