Darkfall Part 23

No. In order to kill her, the creature-and others like it, others with the s.h.i.+ning silver eyes-would have had to come out from behind the gate, into the open, where Mrs. Shepherd and others would have seen them. And Penny was pretty sure the goblins didn't want to be seen by anyone but her. They were secretive. No, they definitely hadn't meant to kill her back there at the school; they had only meant to give her a good scare, to let her know they were still lurking around, waiting for the right opportunity*

But why? why?

Why did they want her and, presumably, Davey, instead of some other kids?

What made goblins angry? What did you have to do to make them come after you like this?

She couldn't think of anything she had done that would make anyone terribly angry with her; certainly not goblins.

Confused, miserable, frightened, she opened her eyes and looked out the window. Snow was piling up everywhere. In her heart, she felt as cold as the icy, wind-scoured street beyond the window.

PART TWO.

Wednesday, 5:30 P.M.-11:00 P.M.

Darkness devours every s.h.i.+ning day.

Darkness demands and always has its way.

Darkness listens, watches, waits.

Darkness claims the day and celebrates.

Sometimes in silence darkness comes.

Sometimes with a gleeful banging of drums.

-The Book of Counted Sorrows Who is more foolish- the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?

-Maurice Freehill

Chapter Four.

I.

At five-thirty, Jack and Rebecca went into Captain Walter Gresham's office to present him with the manpower and equipment requirements of the task force, as well as to discuss strategy in the investigation.

During the afternoon, two more members of the Carramazza crime family had been murdered, along with their bodyguards. Already the press was calling it the bloodiest gang war since Prohibition. What the press still didn't know was that the victims (except for the first two) had not been stabbed or shot or garroted or hung on meat hooks in traditional cosa nostra cosa nostra style. For the time being, the police had chosen not to reveal that all but the first two victims had been savagely bitten to death. When reporters uncovered that puzzling and grotesque fact, they would realize this was one of the biggest stories of the decade. style. For the time being, the police had chosen not to reveal that all but the first two victims had been savagely bitten to death. When reporters uncovered that puzzling and grotesque fact, they would realize this was one of the biggest stories of the decade.

"That's when it'll get really bad," Gresham said. "They'll be all over us like fleas on a dog."

The heat was on, about to get even hotter, and Gresham was as fidgety as a toad on a griddle. Jack and Rebecca remained seated in front of the captain's desk, but Gresham couldn't remain still behind it. As they conducted their business, the captain paced the room, went repeatedly to the windows, lit a cigarette, smoked less than a third of it, stubbed it out, realized what he had done, and lit another.

Finally the time came for Jack to tell Gresham about his latest visit to Carver Hampton's shop and about the telephone call from Baba Lavelle. He had never felt more awkward than he did while recounting those events under Gresham's skeptical gaze.

He would have felt better if Rebecca had been on his side, but again they were in adversary positions. She was angry with him because he hadn't gotten back to the office until ten minutes past three, and she'd had to do a lot of the task force preparations on her own. He explained that the snowy streets were choked with crawling traffic, but she was having none of it. She listened to his story, was as angry as he was about the threat to his kids, but was not the least bit convinced that he had experienced anything even remotely supernatural. In fact, she was frustrated by his insistence that a great deal about the incident at the pay phone was just plain uncanny.

When Jack finished recounting those events for Gresham, the captain turned to Rebecca and said, "What do you make of it?"

She said, "I think we can now safely a.s.sume that Lavelle is a raving lunatic, not just another hood who wants to make a bundle in the drug trade. This isn't just a battle for territory within the underworld, and we'd be making a big mistake if we tried to handle it the same way we'd handle an honest-to-G.o.d gang war."

"What else?" Gresham asked.

"Well," she said. "I think we ought to dig into this Carver Hampton's background, see what we can turn up about him. Maybe he and Lavelle are in this together."

"No," Jack said. "Hampton wasn't faking when he told me he was terrified of Lavelle."

"How did Lavelle know precisely the right moment to call that pay phone?" Rebecca asked. "How did he know exactly exactly when you'd be pa.s.sing by it? One answer is that he was in Hampton's shop the whole time you were there, in the back room, and he knew when you left." when you'd be pa.s.sing by it? One answer is that he was in Hampton's shop the whole time you were there, in the back room, and he knew when you left."

"He wasn't," Jack said. "Hampton's just not that good an actor."

"He's a clever fraud," she said. "But even if he isn't tied to Lavelle, I think we ought to get men up to Harlem this evening and really scour the block with the pay phone* and the block across the intersection from it. If Lavelle wasn't in Hampton's shop, then he must have been watching it from one of the other buildings along that street. There's no other explanation."

Unless maybe his voodoo really works, Jack thought.

Rebecca continued: "Have detectives check the apartments along those two blocks, see if Lavelle is holed up in one. Distribute copies of the photograph of Lavelle. Maybe someone up there's seen him around."

"Sounds good to me," Gresham said. "We'll do it."

"And I believe the threat against Jack's kids ought to be taken seriously. Put a guard on them when Jack can't be there."

"I agree," Gresham said. "We'll a.s.sign a man right now."

"Thanks, Captain," Jack said. "But I think it can wait until morning. The kids are with my sister-in-law right now, and I don't think Lavelle could find them. I told her to make sure she wasn't being followed when she picked them up at school. Besides, Lavelle said he'd give me the rest of the day to make up my mind about backing off the voodoo angle, and I a.s.sume he meant this evening as well."

Gresham sat on the edge of his desk. "If you want, I can remove you from the case. No sweat."

"Absolutely not," Jack said.

"You take his threat seriously?"

"Yes. But I also take my work seriously. I'm on this one to the bitter end."

Gresham lit another cigarette, drew deeply on it. "Jack, do you actually think there could be anything to this voodoo stuff?"

Aware of Rebecca's penetrating stare, Jack said, "It's pretty wild to think maybe there could be something to it. But I just can't rule it out."

"I can," Rebecca said. "Lavelle might believe in it, but that doesn't make it real."

"What about the condition of the bodies?" Jack asked.

"Obviously," she said, "Lavelle's using trained animals."

"That's almost as far-fetched as voodoo," Gresham said.

"Anyway," Jack said, "we went through all of that earlier today. About the only small, vicious, trainable animal we could think of was the ferret. And we've all seen Pathology's report, the one that came in at four-thirty. The teeth impressions don't belong to ferrets. According to Pathology, they don't belong to any other animal Noah took aboard the ark, either."

Rebecca said, "Lavelle's from the Caribbean. Isn't it likely that he's using an animal indigenous to that part of the world, something our forensic experts wouldn't even think of, some species of exotic lizard or something like that?"

"Now you're grasping at straws," Jack said.

"I agree," Gresham said. "But it's worth checking out, anyway. Okay. Anything else?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "Can you explain how I knew that call from Lavelle was for me? Why was I drawn to that pay phone?"

Wind stroked the windows.

Behind Gresham's desk, the ticking of the wall clock suddenly seemed much louder than it had been.

The captain shrugged. "I guess neither of us has an answer for you, Jack."

"Don't feel bad. I don't have an answer for me, either."

Gresham got up from his desk. "All right, if that's it, then I think the two of you ought to knock off, go home, get some rest. You've put in a long day already; the task force is functioning now, and it can get along without you until tomorrow. Jack, if you'll hang around just a couple of minutes, I'll show you a list of the available officers on every s.h.i.+ft, and you can handpick the men you want to watch your kids."

Rebecca was already at the door, pulling it open. Jack called to her. She glanced back.

He said, "Wait for me downstairs, okay?"

Her expression was noncommittal. She walked out.

From the window, where he had gone to look down at the street, Walt Gresham said, "It's like the arctic out there."

II.

The one thing Penny liked about the Jamisons' place was the kitchen, which was big by New York City apartment standards, almost twice as large as the kitchen Penny was accustomed to, and cozy. A green tile floor. White cabinets with leaded gla.s.s doors and bra.s.s hardware. Green ceramic-tile counters. Above the double sink, there was a beautiful out-thrusting greenhouse window with a four-foot-long, two-foot-wide planting bed in which a variety of herbs were grown all year long, even during the winter. (Aunt Faye liked to cook with fresh herbs whenever possible.) In one corner, jammed against the wall, was a small butcher's block table, not so much a place to eat as a place to plan menus and prepare shopping lists; flanking the table, there was s.p.a.ce for two chairs. This was the only room in the Jamisons' apartment in which Penny felt comfortable.

At twenty minutes past six, she was sitting at the butcher's block table, pretending to read one of Faye's magazines; the words blurred together in front of her unfocused eyes. Actually, she was thinking about all sorts of things she didn't want want to think about: goblins, death, and whether she'd ever be able to sleep again. to think about: goblins, death, and whether she'd ever be able to sleep again.

Uncle Keith had come home from work almost an hour ago. He was a partner in a successful stockbrokerage. Tall, lean, with a head as hairless as an egg, sporting a graying mustache and goatee, Uncle Keith always seemed distracted. You had the feeling he never gave you more than two-thirds of his attention when he was talking with you. Sometimes he would sit in his favorite chair for an hour or two, his hands folded in his lap, unmoving, staring at the wall, hardly even blinking, breaking his trance only two or three times an hour in order to pick up a brandy gla.s.s and take one tiny sip from it. Other times he would sit at a window, staring and chain-smoking. Secretly, Davey called Uncle Keith "the moon man" because his mind always seemed to be somewhere on the moon. Since coming home today, he'd been in the living room, sipping slowly at a martini, puffing on one cigarette after another, watching TV news and reading the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal at the same time. at the same time.

Aunt Faye was at the other end of the kitchen from the table where Penny sat. She had begun to prepare dinner, which was scheduled for seven-thirty: lemon chicken, rice, and stir-fried vegetables. The kitchen was the only place Aunt Faye was not too much like Aunt Faye. She enjoyed cooking, was very good at it, and seemed like a different person when she was in the kitchen; more relaxed, kinder than usual.

Davey was helping her prepare dinner. At least she was allowing him to think he was helping. As they worked they talked, not about anything important, this and that.

"Gosh, I'm hungry enough to eat a horse!" Davey said.

"That's not a polite thing to say," Faye advised him. "It brings to mind an unpleasant image. You should simply say. 'I'm extremely hungry,' or 'I'm starved,' or something like that."

"Well, naturally, I meant a dead dead horse," Davey said, completely misunderstanding Faye's little lesson in etiquette. "And one that's been cooked, too. I wouldn't want to eat any horse," Davey said, completely misunderstanding Faye's little lesson in etiquette. "And one that's been cooked, too. I wouldn't want to eat any raw raw horse, Aunt Faye. Yuch and double yuch. But, man-oh-man, I sure could eat a whole lot of just about anything you gimme right now." horse, Aunt Faye. Yuch and double yuch. But, man-oh-man, I sure could eat a whole lot of just about anything you gimme right now."

"My heavens, young man, you had cookies and milk when we got here this afternoon."

"Only two cookies."

"And you're famished already? You don't have a stomach; what you you have is a bottomless pit!" have is a bottomless pit!"

"Well, I hardly had any lunch," Davey said. "Mrs. Shepherd-she's my teacher-she shared some of her lunch with me, but it was really dumb-awful stuff. All she had was yogurt and tuna fish, and I hate hate both of 'em. So what I did, after she gave me a little of each, I nibbled at it, just to make her feel good, and then when she wasn't looking, I threw most of it away." both of 'em. So what I did, after she gave me a little of each, I nibbled at it, just to make her feel good, and then when she wasn't looking, I threw most of it away."

"But doesn't your father pack a lunch for you?" Faye asked, her voice suddenly sharper than it had been.

"Oh, sure. Or when he doesn't have time, Penny packs it. But-"

Faye turned to Penny. "Did he have a lunch to take to school today? Surely he doesn't have to beg for food!"

Penny looked up from her magazine. "I made his lunch myself, this morning. He had an apple, a ham sandwich, and two big oatmeal cookies."

"That sounds like a fine lunch to me," Faye said "Why didn't you eat it, Davey?"

"Well, because of the rats, of course," he said.

Penny twitched in surprise, sat up straight in her chair, and stared intently at Davey.

Faye said, "Rats? What rats?"

"Holy-moly, I forgot to tell you!" Davey said. "Rats must've got in my lunchbox during morning cla.s.ses. Big old ugly rats with yellow teeth, come right up out of the sewers or somewhere. The food was all messed up, torn to pieces, and chewed on. Grooooooooss Grooooooooss," he said, drawing the word out with evident pleasure, not disgusted by the fact that rats had been at his lunch, actually excited about it, thrilled by it, as only a young boy could be. At his age, an incident like this was a real adventure.

Penny's mouth had gone as dry as ashes. "Davey? Uh* did you see the rats?"

"Nah," he said, clearly disappointed. "They were gone by the time I went to get my lunchbox."

"Where'd you have your lunchbox?" Penny asked.

"In my locker."

"Did the rats chew on anything else in your locker?"

"Like what?"

"Like books or anything."

"Why would they want to chew on books?"

"Then it was just the food?"

"Sure. What else?"

"Did you have your locker door shut?"

"I thought I did," he said.