He went over to Joan and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Joan?" he coaxed. "Are you all right?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm scared, Rye." A nod at Doreen. "She scares me."
"How? Tell me how she scares you, Joan."
Joan shook her head again. "I can't," she whispered, as if fearful Doreen would hear her. "I don't know-it's the same kind of fear that some people have when they turn a rock over and see a strange-looking insect underneath." She smiled quiveringly. "Rye, I've turned this particular rock over before."
Ryerson glanced quickly at Doreen, who was smiling in their direction, then back at Joan. "Joan," he said, "I'm supposed to be so damned psychic, but I haven't got the foggiest idea what you're talking about. Are you saying that you know this woman?"
"No. I don't know her. I've never seen her before." She took Ryerson's arm, coaxed him closer to her. "But Rye," she said, voice low, "she knows me. And she scares the hell out of me."
~ * ~
In the Buffalo Police Department Records Division
"We have to have a damned warrant," Irene Sabitch grumbled as she hung up the telephone receiver.
"Well, Jesus," Glen said, "I could have told you that."
She gave him a weary look. "I'm sure you could tell me quite a few things, Glen."
He held his hands up, palms out. "Don't shoot, don't shoot!" He smiled. She rolled her eyes. He went on. "So what are you going to do now?"
She sighed. "What can I do? Getting a warrant to look into a precinct captain's Greyhound Express locker would be like … like …" She was stumped.
Glen offered, "Like saying yes to going out with me, Irene?"
She nodded enthusiastically. "It would be at least that hard."
He looked crestfallen, though only for a moment. He smiled. "Can't blame me for trying."
"Uh-huh." A pause. "You know, Glen, Captain Lucas put those numbers there"-she nodded at her monitor-"for a reason. Hell, he told me not to meddle for a reason." She shrugged. "It's only a theory, but I think he wants to be caught, Glen.'
"Sure, Irene. Sure," Glen said. "But caught at what?"
She looked blankly at him. "Gee," she said, "I don't know."
~ * ~
Officer Leonard McGuire glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He could see his right eye, his eyebrow, part of his forehead. He said aloud, "Who am I looking at? Who are you?" The reflection stared back impassively.
He also wanted to know where he was going. Where, in reality, he was being drawn, and who or what was drawing him there.
He recognized the area he was in: "The District," where, several days earlier-and it seemed like centuries now-he and Mathilde and Spurling had found the body of a wino.
A call came over McGuire's radio: "All cars in the area of Bailey Avenue and Schyler respond to two one two"-hit and run-"white female. Suspect vehicle last seen heading north. Suspect vehicle is described as closely resembling a black and white unit."
McGuire grabbed his mike, hit the talk button, said, "Unit Fourteen respond-" And put the mike down.
The radio squawked back, "Unit Fourteen? Come in, Unit Fourteen."
He pulled the squad car over to the curb, stopped, pushed his door open, got out, turned stiffly, and faced the huge cement-block building to his right. Vaguely he was aware of the acrid stench of the smelters two miles away. Just as vaguely he was aware of a low humming noise from within the big cement building, as if there were people inside it. And very, very powerfully, he realized that he was being manipulated; that whatever had drawn him here would draw him into that building and then would do with him what it pleased.
But as powerfully as he realized this, he realized just as powerfully, just as hellishly, that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
~ * ~
Ryerson watched Joan leave Frank's Place. She'd told him to take all the time he needed but that she'd wait in the car. "I shouldn't have come here in the first place, Rye," she'd said. "I'm scared. That woman scares the hell out of me."
He turned to the woman; she was smiling at him, a coy smile that whispered of victory. He said to her, "How do you know Jack Lucas?"
"We're friends," she answered quickly and smoothly, as if she'd anticipated the question. "We go back-" Her smile broadened. "A long time."
"How long?"
She sipped her whiskey, reached into her bodice, withdrew a soiled hanky from it, and wiped the lipstick from her glass. "Months," she said.
"Months?" Ryerson said.
"Oh, yes," she said, "a long time."
"And how long have you known Miss Evans?"
She missed a step. A small half-step, but Ryerson noticed it. And when she missed it, the fog and static that he'd been reading from her lifted very briefly and he was able to peer past it.
He saw little.
Only an evening sky littered with stars. And, underlying it, the suggestion of a wire fence. And beyond the fence, a field of chickweed and clover.
He knew that he'd been there. He'd seen it from a slightly different angle, perhaps, and not very well, because his night vision was all but nonexistent. But he had been there.
If only he could remember when.
Then the fog settled and Doreen was back in step. "Miss Evans is imagining things, my man." Another sip of the whiskey, another swipe at the lipstick on the glass. "I don't like kids. Maybe Miss Evans does"-another coy smile appeared-" 'cuz some of us ain't too discriminatin'. But me, I like my meat well done." She gave Ryerson a long, critical once-over. "Yes, sir, very well done."
Her once-over made Ryerson very uncomfortable. He glanced nervously about at the two men at the opposite end of the bar, then at the bartender, who was clearly trying to look like he didn't give a damn what Ryerson did, then back at Doreen, who began to chuckle.
And as she chuckled, the fog and static he'd been reading from her lifted once again. Again he saw a sky crowded with stars, the hint of a wire fence, a field of chickweed and clover.
And he saw something else, too. Something that brought a gasp from him and made him step involuntarily away from her, as if from something obscene.
He saw the damp reddish-brown earth all around her as if it were some kind of bizarre halo.
And as he backed away from her, her chuckling quickened. "You got problems, Mr. Biergarten? You don't like Doreen?"
Chapter Twenty-Two
Joan had been asleep for only a few hours when the dream started, the same dream that had driven her screaming into wakefulness a dozen times before. She saw the field of chickweed and clover, the wire fence gleaming dully in the moonlight, and she knew that if she came up over the rise, she would see the spot where Lila had been buried, and the nightmare would have her in its grasp at last.
Already, she could feel that a clammy sweat had started, that a cold knot of panic had formed in her stomach.
So, as she had a dozen times before, she bit her lip hard to wake herself. And saw the field of chickweed and clover undulate, as if it were a reflection on a pond. Then the wire fence, gleaming in the moonlight, lost itself in infinity. And she knew that the awful grip of the dream was starting to fade.
She knew also that she had succeeded only in chasing it off yet again. That it would return until, as Ryerson had told her, "it has played itself out." And even as she woke she knew that her wisest course of action would be to let the dream do just that-play itself out. Complete the circle. "I do it with songs that get stuck in my head," Ryerson had also told her. "I force the song to complete itself, to come to an end. And when it does complete itself, I'm usually free of it."