Ticktock (18 page)

“Well, we certainly weren't talking about squirrels.”

Trying to get the discussion back on track, he said, “Are you really an artist?”

Sorting through the other coats in the closet, she said, “Is any of us really anything?”

Exasperated with Del's preference for speaking in cryptograms, Tommy indulged in one himself: “We're anything in the sense that we are everything.”

“You've finally said something sensible.”

“I have?”

Behind Tommy, as if by way of comment, Scootie bit the rubber hotdog:
tthhhpphhtt.

Del said, “I'm afraid none of my jackets will fit you.”

“I'll be okay. I've been cold and wet before.”

On the granite-topped foyer table, beside Del's purse, were two boxes of ammunition: cartridges for the Desert Eagle and shells for the 12-gauge Mossberg that Tommy carried. She put down the pistol and began to fill the half dozen zippered pockets of her ski jacket with spare rounds for both weapons.

Tommy studied the painting that hung above the table: a bold work of abstract art in primary colors. “Are these your paintings on the walls?”

“That would be tacky, don't you think? I keep all my canvases in my studio, upstairs.”

“I'd like to see them.”

“I thought you were in a hurry.”

Tommy sensed that the paintings were the key that would unlock the mysteries of this strange woman—

—
tthhhpphhtt
—

—and her strange dog. Something about her style or her subject matter would be a revelation, and upon seeing what she had painted, he would achieve the
satori
that had eluded him earlier.

“It'll only take five minutes,” he pressed.

Still jamming spare ammo into her pockets, she said, “We don't have five minutes.”

“Three. I really want to see your paintings.”

“We've got to get out of here.”

“Why are you suddenly so evasive?” he asked.

Zipping shut a pocket bulging with shotgun shells, she said, “I'm not being evasive.”

“Yes, you are. What the hell have you been painting up there?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you so nervous all of a sudden?”

“I'm not.”

“This is weird. Look me in the eyes, Del.”

“Kittens,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

“Kittens?”

“That's what I've been painting. Stupid, tacky, sentimental crap. Because I'm not really very talented. Kittens with big eyes. Sad little kittens with big sorrowful eyes and happy little kittens with big laughing eyes. And moronic scenes of dogs playing poker, dogs bowling. That's why I don't want you to see them, Tommy. I'd be embarrassed.”

“You're lying.”

“Kittens,” she insisted, zipping shut another pocket.

“I don't think so.” He started toward the stairs. “Two minutes is all I need.”

She snatched the Desert Eagle .44 Magnum off the foyer table, swung toward him, and pointed the weapon at his face. “Stop right there.”

“Jesus, Del, that gun's loaded.”

“I know.”

“Don't point it at me.”

“Get away from the stairs, Tommy.”

There was nothing frivolous about her now. She was cold and businesslike.

“I'd never point this at you,” he said, indicating the shotgun in his right hand.

“I know,” she said flatly, but she didn't lower her weapon.

The muzzle of the Desert Eagle was only ten inches from Tommy and aligned with the bridge of his nose.

He was looking at a new Deliverance Payne. Steely.

His heart thudded hard enough to shake his entire body. “You won't shoot me.”

“I will,” she said with such icy conviction that she could not be doubted.

“Just to keep me from seeing some paintings?”

“You're not ready to see them yet,” she said.

“Meaning…someday you
will
want me to see them.”

“When the time is right.”

Tommy's mouth was so dry that he had to work up some saliva to loosen his tongue. “But I won't
ever
see them if you blow my brains out.”

“Good point,” she said, and she lowered the gun. “So I'll shoot you in the leg.”

The pistol was aimed at his right knee.

“One round from that monster would blow my whole damn leg off.”

“They make excellent prosthetic limbs these days.”

“I'd bleed to death.”

“I know first aid.”

“You're a total fruitcake, Del.”

He meant what he said. To one extent or another, she
had
to be mentally unbalanced, even though she had told him earlier that she was the sanest person he knew. Regardless of what mysteries she guarded, what secrets she held, nothing she ultimately revealed to him would ever be sufficiently exculpatory to prove her behavior was reasoned and logical. Nevertheless, though she scared him, she was enormously appealing as well. Tommy wondered what it said about his own sanity to acknowledge that he was strongly attracted to this basketcase.

He wanted to kiss her.

Incredibly, she said, “I think I'm going to fall in love with you, Tuong Tommy. So don't make me blow your leg off.”

Astonished into a blush, conflicted as never before, Tommy reluctantly turned away from the stairs and went past Del to the front door.

She tracked him with the Desert Eagle.

“Okay, okay, I'll wait until you're ready to show them to me,” he said.

At last she lowered her weapon. “Thank you.”

“But,” he said, “when I finally do see them, they damn well better be worth the wait.”

“Just kittens,” she said, and she smiled.

He was surprised that her smile could still warm him. Seconds ago, she had threatened to shoot him, but already he felt a pleasant tingle when she favored him with a smile.

“I'm as crazy as you are,” he said.

“Then you've probably got what it takes to make it till dawn.” Slinging her purse over one shoulder, she said, “Let's go.”

“Umbrellas?” he wondered.

“Hard to handle an umbrella and a shotgun at the same time.”

“True. Do you have another car besides the van?”

“No. My mom has all the cars, quite a collection. If I need something besides the van, I borrow it from her. So we'll have to use the Honda.”

“The
stolen
Honda,” he reminded her.

“We're not criminals. We just borrowed it.”

As he opened the front door, Tommy said, “Lights off,” and the foyer went dark. “If a cop stops us in our stolen Honda, will you shoot him?”

“Of course not,” she said, following him and Scootie into the courtyard. “That would be wrong.”

“That would be wrong?” Tommy said, still capable of being amazed by her. “But it would've been right to shoot
me?
”

“Regrettable but right,” she confirmed as she locked the door.

“I don't understand you at all.”

“I know,” she said, tucking the keys in her purse.

Tommy checked the luminous dial of his watch. Six minutes past two o'clock.

Ticktock.

While they were inside the house, the wind had died away completely, but the power of the storm had not diminished. Although no thunder or lightning had disturbed the night for hours, cataracts still crashed down from the riven sky.

The queen palms hung limp, drizzling from the tip of every blade of every frond. Under the merciless lash of the rain, the lush ferns drooped almost to the point of humble prostration, their lacy pinnae glimmering, with thousands upon thousands of droplets that, in the low landscape lighting, appeared to be incrustations of jewels.

Scootie led the way, padding through the shallow puddles in the courtyard. In the quartzite paving, specks of mica glinted around the dog's splashing paws, almost as if his claws were striking sparks from the stone. That phantom fire marked his path along the walkway beside the house as well.

The Art Deco panels of copper were cold against Tommy's hand as he pushed open the gate to the street. The hinges rasped like small whispering voices.

On the sidewalk in front of the house, Scootie abruptly halted, raised his head, and pricked his ears. He dropped his rubber hotdog and growled softly.

Alerted by the dog, Tommy brought up the shotgun, gripping it with both hands.

“What is it?” Del asked. She held the gate open behind them to prevent it from falling shut, automatically locking, and inhibiting their retreat if they needed to go back to the house.

But for the splatter-splash-gurgle-plink of water, the lamplit street was silent. The houses were all dark. No traffic approached from either east or west. Nothing moved except the rain and those things that the rain disturbed.

The white Honda stood fifteen feet to Tommy's right. Something could be crouched along the far side of it, waiting for them to draw nearer.

Scootie was not interested in the Honda, however, and Tommy was inclined to trust the Labrador's senses more than his own. The dog was riveted by something directly across the street.

At first Tommy could not see anything threatening—or even out of the ordinary. In the storm, the slumbering houses huddled, and the blackness of their blind windows revealed not even a single pale face of any neighborhood insomniac. Palms, ficuses, and canopied carrotwoods stood solemnly in the windless downpour. Through the cone of amber light cast by the streetlamp, skeins of rain unraveled off the spool of night above, weaving together into a stream that nearly overflowed the gutter.

Then Scootie stiffened and flattened his ears against his skull and growled again, and Tommy spotted the man in the hooded raincoat. The guy was standing near one of the large carrotwoods across the street, beyond the brightest portion of the lightfall from a streetlamp but still vaguely illumined.

“What's he doing?” Del asked.

Although Tommy couldn't see the stranger's shadowed face, he said, “Watching us.”

Del sounded as if she had seen something else that surprised her: “Tommy…?”

He glanced at her.

She pointed east.

Half a block away, on the far side of the street, her battered van was parked at the curb.

Something about the imposing figure under the carrotwood tree was anachronistic—as though he had stepped through a time warp, out of the medieval world into the late twentieth century. Then Tommy realized that the hooded raincoat was the source of that impression, for it resembled a monk's robe and cowl.

“Let's get to the Honda,” Del said.

Before they could move toward the car, however, the observer stepped away from the carrotwood, into the glow of the streetlamp. His face remained hidden under the hood, as if he were Death engaged in his nightly collections of those poor souls who perished in their sleep.

Nevertheless, faceless though he was, the stranger was naggingly familiar to Tommy. Tall. Heavyset. The way he moved…

He was the good Samaritan from earlier in the night, the man who had clumsily descended the embankment from MacArthur Boulevard and crossed the muddy field where the Corvette had crashed. He had been approaching the blazing car when Tommy turned and ran from the fire-enraptured demon.

“Let's see what he wants,” Del said.

“No.”

How the thing-from-the-doll could now be riding the Samaritan, or hiding inside him, or posing as him—this was a mystery that Tommy was not able to fathom. But the fat man in that muddy field no longer existed; he had been either slaughtered and devoured or conquered and controlled. Of that much, Tommy was certain.

“It's not a man,” he said.

The Samaritan moved ponderously through the lamplight.

Scootie's growl escalated into a snarl.

The Samaritan stepped off the curb and splashed through the deep, fast-moving water in the gutter.

“Get back,” Tommy said urgently. “Back to the house, inside.”

Although his growl had been menacing and he had seemed prepared to attack, Scootie needed no further encouragement to retreat. He whipped around, shot past Tommy, and streaked through the gate that Del was holding open.

Del followed the dog, and Tommy backed through the gate as well, holding the Mossberg in front of him. As the patinated-copper panel fell shut, Tommy saw the Samaritan in the middle of the street, still heading toward them but not breaking into a run, as if confident that they could not escape.

The gate clacked shut. The electric security lock would buy no more than half a minute, because the Samaritan would be able to climb over the barrier with little trouble.

The portly man would no longer be hampered by his less-than-athletic physique. He would have all the strength and agility of the supernatural entity that had claimed him.

When Tommy reached the courtyard, Del was at the front entrance to the house.

He was surprised that she had been able to fish her keys out of her purse and get the door open so quickly. Evidently Scootie was already inside.

Following Del into the house, Tommy heard the gate rattle out at the street.

He closed the door, fumbled for the thumb-turn, and engaged the deadbolt. “Leave the lights off.”

“This is a house, not a fortress,” Del said.

“Ssshhh,” Tommy cautioned.

The only sounds from the courtyard were rain splattering against quartzite pavers, rain chuckling through downspouts, rain snapping against palm fronds.

Del persisted: “Tommy, listen, we can't expect to defend this place like a fort.”

Wet and chilled yet again, weary of running, taking some courage from the power of the Mossberg and from the door-buster pistol that Del carried, Tommy hushed her. He remembered a night of terror long ago on the South China Sea, when survival had come only after those refugees in the boat had stopped trying to run from the Thai pirates and had fought back.