He trotted around to the front of the house where the prowl car he and Officer Haines shared was parked on the gravel apron. He needed to call this in.
He opened the car door and the ball-peen hammer swung and its flat head sank into his furrowed brow. He pitched backward onto the gravel, taking the hammer with him, and when the hammer was yanked away, the sound was a sucking slurp like a boot pulling out of thick mud.
But of course Officer Raymond didn’t hear it, nor the grunting of the low-slung yet broad-shouldered figure that yanked him by the ankles and dragged him around the side of the house toward the maintenance outbuilding, making a third flattened path in grass that really could use cutting.
At the Peachtree Heights PD, Cutter didn’t even get a ring tone when he tried the Ryan house. He called the operator, who — after about a minute — came back and said the line was apparently down.
Janet Hodges was at the dispatcher’s station trying to get through to any of the police on patrol at the Ryan place. She came over to Cutter and reported that she’d had no luck either.
Cutter said, “We need to get out there now. Tell the dispatcher to send two additional units, immediately. Then come with me.”
She did.
After he’d loaded the fourth corpse into the maintenance outbuilding, Dennis returned to the ladder and started to climb. At the top, the window was locked.
He broke the glass with the heel of his fist — with the four cops dead, all the noise might do was attract Dr. Ryan, which was fine with Dennis. Then he reached in and around and unlocked the window, slid it up.
And crawled inside.
The breaking glass woke Richie. He wasn’t sure what he’d heard. He even thought he might have dreamed it. But then came more sounds — not loud, just something moving in the attic. And that only made him sit up and smile.
Was his friend walking around up there?
The beating of the mummy’s heart had been getting stronger, faster. So that made sense.
He got out from under the covers. He thought about changing into some clothes, but then figured the Six Million Dollar Man jammies would do. But he took the time to get into his slippers. And to grab the stethoscope and put it around his neck. Loose, not with the earpieces in.
The light switch was at the bottom of the stair well. He flipped it on. Then he went up and was kind of expecting to find his friend walking around up there. Maybe moving slow, with his arms stuck out, like in a movie about a mummy who wasn’t Aztec that Richie had seen. That mummy walked really slow, although everybody ran away from it really fast.
Yet somehow in the movie the mummy caught up with them anyway. It didn’t really make sense, but oh well. That was just a movie.
And his friend didn’t seem to have moved at all. He was sitting quietly on the floor in his faded color collar and thin tunic like always.
“Sorry if I woke you up,” Richie said.
The mummy said nothing.
“Can’t sleep?” Richie asked, walking over. He sat cross-legged before his friend. “Me too neither. I think Mom and Dad are asleep, though. They were noisy for a while, but the last I checked?” He lifted the tip of the stethoscope. “They were snoring. Dad was, anyway.”
The mummy made no comment.
Richie said, “You can’t sleep either, can you? You’re okay, aren’t you?”
The mummy’s eyes weren’t glowing red anymore.
“Hey, you haven’t died again, have you? You don’t look so good. You look different. Maybe I better listen to you.”
Richie leaned in, under an outstretched bony hand, and pressed the chest piece gently against the wispy cloth. And the heartbeat came fast and loud.
The boy grinned and the mummy grinned back.
“I knew you were still alive!... Are there mice up here or something? Do you hear boards creaking?”
The mummy said nothing.
“Must be my imagination,” Richie said, but he was a little scared. “My dad says I have a good imagination. So there’s no need to worry, right? Anyway, you’re here to protect me...”
Chapter 12
Chief Blake Cutter was at the wheel of his Dodge Challenger, siren going, portable cherry-top on the vehicle’s roof painting the night a vivid red. Buford PD Detective Janet Hodges, in the rider’s seat, was working the radio for him.
“The two units patrolling the grounds,” she told him, “are still not answering.”
“Damn,” Cutter said.
Due to the alert the PD and their expanded staff on loan from various area suburban departments were on, Cutter had been able to quickly round up three patrol cars to make the high-speed, sirens-and-flashers trip to the Ryan estate on the northern outskirts of Peachtree Heights.
“They’re only checking in on the half hour,” Janet said, trying to reassure Cutter but obviously not all that reassured herself. “Probably nothing to worry about. They’re just patrolling the grounds like they’re supposed to.”
“They missed the last check-in,” he said. “Let’s hope they’re just screwing off, hearing a suspect’s in custody. Smoking, standing around talking. Not... in trouble.”
“They’re probably fine,” Janet said.
At least only a few cars were out at this hour, and those that were quickly pulled over and got out of the way of the screaming cop caravan.
“Probably,” she repeated.
The heartbeat in Richie’s ears seemed steady and strong. As he listened, he continued speaking to his friend, who seemed to hang on the boy’s every word, even though grinning as if everything Richie said was very funny.
“If Dad would just listen,” Richie told the mummy, “we’d show him you’re alive! He doesn’t think you’re my friend. He thinks you’re a Halloween skeleton or something. He thinks it’s just make-believe, us being pals.”
Sighing, the boy in the Six Million Dollar Man pajamas withdrew the stethoscope tip from the bony torso’s chest and said, “If Dad would just listen through this, he’d know! And you’d be his newest patient. He’d give you vitamins and medicine and help you walk again. Then we could really be friends. You could tell us things about the first time you were alive. It would be so cool.”
With a sigh, Richie slipped the stethoscope earpieces out and allowed the device to remain slung over his neck and dangling down, and got to his feet.
“If I were a doctor,” he said, “I’d help you. If I were a real doctor, like my daddy. Right now I guess I am just playing. But I’ll get Dad to listen to your heart beating tomorrow. I promise.”
He took a moment to listen for that rustling again and didn’t hear anything. He wasn’t afraid. Mice or insects skittering around up here were nothing a boy his age should be scared of (he told himself). But if that was a squirrel or raccoon or something, he should probably tell his father and leave it for him to handle. Wild animals could have rabies, Dad said.
As he looked past his Aztec pal seated near the start of the storage area’s center aisle, Richie decided he better be getting down to his bedroom. He’d never been up here in the middle of the night before. In the daytime, sunlight came in the windows at both ends of the attic, and that single hanging lightbulb kept the work-out area plenty bright. All the exercise equipment was kept shiny and clean, and his dad had mopped and scrubbed around. It had made that part of the old attic seem new. But the rest had seemed ancient even before an Aztec mummy had been added as a sort of guard at the gateway to all that junk.