“He’s supposed to be dead,” Richie said.
“Not even at him.”
The officer handed Richie the gun.
“Cool!” Richie said, grinning. He pointed the gun away from the officer. At the air-conditioner making noise in the window.
“It’s not a toy,” the officer said.
“It’s heavier than it looks like on TV.”
“Yes. That’s enough, now.” He held out his palm and Richie gave the gun back. The policeman spun the empty cylinder.
“So cool!” Richie said. “Do that again! But wait a second.”
The boy put the chest piece of the stethoscope over the hole at the end of the gun barrel.
“Now!”
Again the officer spun the cylinder. The sound was really loud! Like some huge machine with great big gears turning and clicking.
“You gotta hear this,” Richie said.
The boy took off the stethoscope and handed it to the officer. The officer smiled and put the stethoscope on. Put the earpieces in his ears. Richie grinned as he held the device’s chest piece to the end of the barrel again.
“Spin it again!” Richie ordered.
The officer did. Then the big man smiled and said, “Say, that’s really something.”
“If you want to hear something really, really cool...” Richie pointed over to his seated friend.
But then somebody hollered. They were yelling up the attic stairs. “Jackson!”
“Yeah?”
“Chief’s on the horn! Wants you five minutes ago!”
“Be right there!”
Richie said, “Don’t you have time to hear something else cool?”
“Not right now,” the officer said. He took off the stethoscope. He handed it to Richie. The boy put the headset back on. “But I’ll be here again tomorrow and we can pick this up.”
“Okay.”
The officer put his hand on Richie’s shoulder. “But till then, kid? You keep out of trouble.”
Adults always said stuff like that.
Richie watched the officer disappear down the stairwell. His footsteps echoed up. Then they faded.
Richie thought, How would I get into trouble in my own house?
“Boy,” he said out loud. “Adults are dumb. They think just because somebody died they’re dead.”
Then Richie walked over to his friend and sat cross-legged before him. He said, “I was just going to show Officer Jackson how you’re still alive.”
The mummy said nothing.
“You are still alive, aren’t you?” Richie asked.
The mummy said nothing.
“I better check,” Richie said. He leaned in. He was right under a clawed hand but that didn’t scare him. Or bother him. He didn’t want to hurt his friend, so he was gentle. Gentle when he held the chest piece to the mummy’s chest.
At first he didn’t hear it. Then he tried a different place. Right against the wispy fabric. Then the heartbeat sound came. It got louder. And faster.
Richie smiled. He drew away a little. He had to duck under the clawed hand. In the dim light at this end of the attic, he saw something.
Eyes in the sockets.
Or anyway something gleaming red.
Richie said, “Yes!”
The mummy said nothing.
Richie said, “Someday they’re going to listen. I sure wish I knew what you were thinking. But you probably only speak Aztec. Maybe you don’t understand my words. But we understand each other. You know I’m your friend.”
Richie got to his feet. Yawned and stretched. Two work-outs today made him real tired.
“Well, better get out of here now,” he told his friend. “If my mom catches me up here talking to you, she’ll give me hell. Or anyway... heck. You know.” He shrugged. “Language.”
The mummy said nothing.
And Richie went down to his room to get ready for bed.
Chapter 10
Considering everything that had been going on these past few days, Blake Cutter was not surprised to be called at home and summoned back to the station. But he could hardly have anticipated Detective Janet Hodges’s voice on the phone saying, “We’ve got him, Chief. I think we’ve got him!”
Cutter pulled his Challenger into his designated space alongside the old two-story building on Main and found Janet milling out front, waiting eagerly for him. She’d apparently got the call at home, too, as she was in a casual blouse and jeans and no make-up, her normally perfect curly brunette hair mussed. But her eyes were on fire.
As she led him past the civilian counter through the bullpen where only a couple desks were attended, she glanced back, throwing him pieces of information like breadcrumbs.
“Caught the guy at the roadblock,” she said. “Fits the description to a T... Blood on his shirt, cut himself shaving, he says... Right age, features in tune with the Ryan woman’s sketch... Enough so to get the officer’s attention at the stop, anyway... Powerful upper torso, long arms, and no legs... Double amputee.”
“He cooperating?”
They were in the hallway now, off of which were the station’s two interview rooms.
“At first, a bit,” Janet said, as they stopped to face each other. “He has no ID on him. Temporary plates, which we’re tracing. Says his name is Bob Davis, and there’s a bunch of those in the system, of course, but not amputees. He was belligerent when he was asked to get out of the car — a car especially equipped to drive from the steering column.”
“Does he use prosthetic limbs?”
“He has ‘em, but he moves around on his hands at home, he says, and he wasn’t wearing the artificial legs when stopped. They were in the backseat.”
“You say he was belligerent?”
Her eyes flared. “Anybody tried to help him, he took a swing at. He’s indignant. Kept saying, ‘This is the thanks I get!’ Well, this is the f-word thanks I get...”
They went into the viewing booth behind the two-way glass onto the interview room where Sgt. Jackson was questioning the suspect, not getting anywhere.
Janet said, “He clammed up when we got specific about the doctor murders and the incidents at the Ryans.”
Cutter nodded. “More cooperative, huh, when he thought he’d just been brought in for driving without his license.”
Her eyebrows shrugged. “If you call taking swings at police officers cooperation.”
The suspect was wearing a black t-shirt that revealed a massive musculature. His features recalled Helen Ryan’s sketch, all right — round face, deep lines for someone in his early twenties, dark eyes, the kind of flat nose a boxer earns from taking numerous bone-shattering punches, crooked teeth, bushy black hair.
Seated there, at the interview table, the man’s lacking legs from above the knees down was not apparent at all. You would never guess this was the individual who Dr. Roy Ryan had described as half a man. Nor was it the little person they’d expected. But otherwise he fit. He really fit.
Sgt. Jackson was saying, “You’re not going to answer any more questions?”
“Not till my wife and lawyer get here,” he said. His voice was a gravel-edged baritone.
In the observation booth, Cutter said to Janet, “I take it he’s had his phone call.”
“Yeah. We’re not getting anywhere with him.”
“He hasn’t had anything to say for himself since he got a whiff of murder in the air?”
She shook her head. “Just that we’re persecuting him. And when we’re done embarrassing him, he says, this station’s going to be a parking lot... and he’s going to own it.”
They strolled back into the bullpen, where Cutter said, “Well, that’s our man. Obviously.”