Endless Night Part 14

For a minute there, I actually considered smas.h.i.+ng my way in just so I could get my hands on some car keys and beat it in one of their cars. (A family with a house in a neighborhood like this was bound to have at least two.) I could just see myself roaring away down the road, cop cars coming at me from everywhere. I'd be lucky to get a mile.

Escape by car was out. Hiding in the house was out.

Panic was starting to creep in.

Panic crashed in when I heard the helicopter.

Thup-thup-thup-thup .

Maybe the greatest sound in the world if you've been lost at sea for two months in a life raft, drinking nothing but p.i.s.s and eating your maties.

When you're a killer and you know it's gotta be a cop chopper, the sound cramps your guts. It makes you want to grab your knees and a.s.sume a fetal position. Or maybe weep.

Fear is a pretty interesting thing, I've noticed. Some kinds are a great rush. Other kinds are the s.h.i.+ts. I'm no expert, but my guess is that it has to do with how much control you've got over the situation. The more control, the better it feels.

When you're me with a cop chopper heading your way, you don't get a dose of the fun fear. You get the bad kind.

Anyway, I looked toward the noise and spotted the chopper. It was cruising low over the crest of the hills, maybe half a mile away, heading for the fires. Its spotlight was white and sent a bright blade slanting down at the ground.

So far, it didn't seem to be searching for me.

That was bound to change fast.

I had to get out of sight.

In the middle of the yard was a lemon tree. The yard also had a patio with a plastic roof, a picnic table, and a couple of lounge chairs where you could sunbathe if it was daylight. I could duck underneath any of those things and hide from the helicopter.

If I wanted to get found, that is.

By this time, the chopper was hovering over the hillside behind the old bag's house.

Looking for me.

I let out a noise like a sick cat and made a dash for a wooden building off to my right. When I got past its comer, I saw the driveway leading up to it from alongside the house. A nice, wide driveway.

This was a two-car garage. Its main door was shut, of course. But over near the comer was a normal, human-sized door.

It swung open without so much as a squeak. I slipped into the dark and shut it. This place was a lot darker than the night outside. It had windows along one wall, though, and they let in some light. Not much. Dim, gray light that looked dirty. But it was enough to let me see that this was a utility room. It was part of the garage, but separated from the rest by a wall.

The room was sort of long and narrow. Next to me, just inside the door, was a boxy thing that looked like a refrigerator laid on its side. A freezer chest.

I felt around, found its handle, and lifted its lid.

A glare came out that made me squint. Vapor curled up like white smoke. Cold air hit my skin.

I shut the lid fast to cut off the light.

Then I just stood there for a while, nothing to do except listen to the helicopter while my eyes got reacquainted with the dark. Finally, I could see again. There were a couple of wash basins under the windows, plus a washer and dryer in the darker area beyond the basins. I headed that way.

Looking for a place to hide.

Could I fit inside the clothes dryer? I'm not a big guy, so maybe.

As a last resort, I might've given it a try.

Past the dryer, at the very end of the room, a water heater was braced up in the corner. Next to it was a cabinet about five feet wide, with double doors. I tugged the doors. They each gave off a quick little chirpy noise and swung open.

I'd been hoping for an empty s.p.a.ce like a closet. What I found were shelves loaded with all kinds of stuff.

What I might do was unload one of the shelves and crawl into the cabinet and shelve myself. To make a trick like that work, though, I'd have to pile stuff back up in front of me once I'd gotten inside, or else hide on a shelf above the eye level of the cops who were pretty sure to come looking.

Might work. I stretched up to do some exploring, then stepped on the bottom shelf to give myself more height. And that's when I discovered that the cabinet didn't go all the way to the ceiling.

I climbed higher.

Hanging on with one hand, I used my other hand to explore.

Between the top of the cabinet and the ceiling was a two-foot gap.

Nothing was stored up there. It was empty.

Until I crawled in. (Used the shelves like ladder rungs, and luckily they held. Maybe somebody up there does like me.) Once I got on the top, I curled on my side, reached down and swung the cabinet doors shut. Then I scooted myself back until the rear wall stopped me.

I'd found my perfect hiding place.

It was perfect in terms of hiding, not in terms of comfort. In terms of comfort, it was the s.h.i.+ts. Remember, I was naked except for my Reeboks and my little kilt of Connie's hide. For a place like that, I should've been wearing coveralls. Or maybe one of those big white suits that guys wear when they have to mess around with toxic wastes. But all I had was my bare skin and Connie's. Webs clung to me. Spiders dropped on me out of the dark and scurried up my legs and back. They crawled on my face. They got under Connie's skin. It was awful. Spiders give me the creeps, give me goose b.u.mps.

I went to work slapping and rubbing the d.a.m.n things to oblivion. That was disgusting, too. You could hear them go crunch and feel them turn wet. When you went to brush a body off your skin, it rolled like a booger. Sometimes, it stuck to your finger and you had a hard time flicking it off.

Anyway, I kept busy destroying the spider population while the search went on. Except for the sounds I made, the only other noise came from the helicopter. There were probably plenty of other noises, but nothing you could hear. The chopper's roar would fade out, then grow and grow until it shook everything. Sometimes, I thought the d.a.m.n thing was about to land on me. But then it would fade out again.

It was circling.

Circling and circling and circling. I couldn't see it with my eyes, but in my head I sure could. I saw it circling and circling, the whole time s.h.i.+ning its big white beam down at the hillside and the wilds at the bottom of the slope and the back yards and side yards of every house around.

Looking for me, just for me.

The noise alone was enough to drive you crazy.

By now, everybody in the neighborhood was probably wide awake and staring out their windows. They might've slept through the sirens, but you can't sleep through a cop chopper, not unless you're drunk or deaf. Not when it stays and stays, circling and roaring like that.

If you're a regular person, you're p.i.s.sed because it woke you up. More than p.i.s.sed, though, you're worried. Because you know it's up there for a reason. You know it's hunting a bad guy.

Which means a bad guy's running around somewhere near your house.

You look out your window. Just how close is that chopper? Just how close is that bad guy? You pretty much expect to spot somebody running across your yard and you just hope he doesn't try to come in your house.

It sure gives you the creeps.

But h.e.l.l, you oughta be the guy the chopper is looking for.

When you're the one it's after, it stops being anything as normal as a police helicopter. It's more like some kind of monster-machine, like maybe a UFO getting jockeyed around by a team of bozos from outer s.p.a.ce that are so mean they'd make your basic Gestapo psychos look like Mary Poppins-and they know right where the f.u.c.k you're hiding.

Even tucked away in my snug little nook on top of the cabinet where the spotlight had no chance at all of finding me, the chopper made me want to shrivel up and disappear every time it came close.

You won't get away from me! You can't get away from me!

Man!

Anyway, it was kind of freaking me out up there. So sue me. I'd had a hard night.

When all of a sudden a light beam flicked across the ceiling, I thought for a second that the chopper'd found me.

I thought, How'd it get in here?

I almost screamed.

Then someone said, "Think he's in the freezer?"

"Would you hide in a freezer?" the other guy asked.

"Yeah. A night this hot? You bet."

One of them opened the freezer. I heard it.

The guy who'd said, "You bet," said, "Hey, look. They've got Dove Bars."

"No kidding." This one sounded like he didn't give a hot hoot for Dove Bars.

The chopper was off at a far end of its circle, so I could hear the noises that cops make when they walk. Jostling, squeaking, rattling noises. Their gunbelts are just loaded with every kind of s.h.i.+t imaginable. A walking cop sounds more like a saddle horse than a person.

"Do you want one?" asks the Dove Bar guy.

"No. And neither do you."

"I want one. They're a lot better than Eskimo ... n.o.body's gonna hide in a was.h.i.+ng machine, Pat."

"No?" I heard a lid squeak open.

"See? Told you."

"The way that freezer's lighting you up, you'd better hope this lizard doesn't try to cap you."

"He's not armed. He woulda used it on the kids."

"You never know. Just shut it, okay?"

"You sure you don't want a Dove Bar?"

I heard a quiet grunt. "Not in the dryer."

"I could've told you that."

"Oh, you could tell me a lot of things, Hank, but more than a few of them might be wrong. Matter of fact, my second collar was a weenie-wagger I found inside a clothes dryer."

"He fit?"

"Sure. He was a little fella. In every way." The cop walked closer to me. He sounded like he was almost right underneath me when he stopped. Then the cupboard doors gave their chirping sounds as they came unclamped. "He'd been entertaining all the gals at the laundromat." The doors b.u.mped back shut. I heard Pat walking away. "I just so happened to have a quarter."

The other cop, Hank, laughed.

"Seemed like a great idea, give him a little spin. But then about two minutes after I dragged him out, he blew his supper all over my back seat."

"Aw, s.h.i.+t!" Hank went.

"Not s.h.i.+t, puke."

These guys were a barrel of laughs.

Then they were gone.

I stayed put. Eventually, the helicopter went away. The silence was great. I couldn't feel anything crawling on me. I relaxed and fell asleep.

And slept until Hillary Weston showed up in the morning to do her wash.

Chapter Eleven.

When I woke up, a woman was humming in the room down below me. I couldn't see her, though. The edge of the cupboard top was in the way. All I could see was the ceiling. It was sunlit and painted yellow.

I wanted to know what she looked like.

From the sound of her humming, she seemed to be near the was.h.i.+ng machine or dryer. If she was facing either of those machines, she wouldn't have a view of the cabinet.

So I scooted forward and looked past its edge.

She stood in front of the washer, at an angle that showed me her side and her back. Unless she had tremendous peripheral vision, I was out of sight.

By the time I saw her, she'd already finished throwing in her laundry. She was busy sprinkling detergent powder into the hole at the top of the machine.

She looked good. Slim and not too old. You can't always tell with women, but I'd say she was under thirty by at least a couple of years. She had thick brown hair. Her face had points and corners-cheekbones that stuck out too much, too sharply. A nose and jaw like that, too. Not exactly pretty, but unusual and what you might call "striking."

In fact, her whole body was like that.