Breathless. Part 15

Rap-rap, rap-rap, rap-rap-rap-rap-rap-rap.

"Good grief."

The rapping stopped.

When he heard one of them sniffing along the crack between the bottom of the door and the threshold, he considered renaming them Nosey and Snoopy.

The silence that followed the sniffing was welcome, but then seemed to have a suspicious quality.

Although the skeleton key had long ago been lost, the old door featured a keyhole. Grady leaned sideways on the toilet, lowered his head, and clearly saw a luminous golden eye on the farther side of the keyway.

"You're a little Peeping Tom. You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

The golden eye blinked.

By the time Grady washed his hands and returned to the bedroom, Puzzle and Riddle were on his bed, lifting his pillows to peer under them.

"Off, off," he told them.

They dropped his pillows, sat on his bed, folded their hands on their bellies, and watched him.

Having been awakened after such a short snooze, Merlin yawned extravagantly.

Grady went to the empty dog bed, fluffed it, and said to Puzzle and Riddle, "Here. This is yours."

They stared at him attentively but didn't leave his bed.

In the closet, where he kept a few dog toys, Grady selected a blue monkey. He returned to the bedroom, knelt beside the empty dog bed, and squeaked the monkey to entice Puzzle and Riddle to come to him.

Merlin grumbled, displeased to be disturbed.

A different toy might possibly lure the pair to their proper place. Instead, Grady decided to show them what was wanted, as he might show a puppy.

He went to his bed and scooped up Puzzle. She not only allowed herself to be lifted and carried, but she also curled into the cradle of his arms, exposing her belly, bending her forelimbs at the elbows and the wrists in an expression of happy compliance.

When Grady put her down in the big fleece-covered dog bed that he intended for her to share with Riddle, he said, "Stay," as if the commands of canine-obedience school were universally understood in the animal kingdom. He gave her the blue monkey to keep her occupied.

At his bed once more, he scooped up Riddle, who proved to be as cooperative as Puzzle. Grady carried him to his appointed lodgings-where only the plush blue monkey waited.

With Riddle still in his arms, he turned and saw Puzzle on his bed again. He deposited Riddle with the blue monkey and returned to his bed for Puzzle.

She virtually leaped into his arms, nearly knocking him down. But no sooner had he turned to take her to Riddle than he heard the monkey squeaking on his bed behind him.

Merlin no longer grumbled. Head raised, ears p.r.i.c.ked, he watched with interest.

Instead of taking Puzzle to the empty bed, Grady put her down beside the wolfhound. He lifted one of Merlin's st.u.r.dy forelimbs and draped it over the golden-eyed animal.

"Stay," he told Merlin.

In a sterner tone, narrowing his eyes like Clint Eastwood, he issued the same command to Puzzle. He also extended his arm in an accusatory fas.h.i.+on and pointed a finger at her.

She c.o.c.ked her head to the right.

Grady turned away from her. As he crossed the room to get Riddle and the d.a.m.n monkey, Merlin and Puzzle sprinted past him and leaped onto his bed.

Riddle put the monkey under Grady's pillows. With expressions of blissful contentment, the dog and the two somethings curled around one another.

The wolfhound and his posse watched Grady turn out the bedside lamp. They watched him turn out the overhead light.

Leaving on the lamp beside the large Stickley-style reclining chair, Grady went into the closet to retrieve a spare pillow and a blanket.

The snuggling animals raised their heads as he came out of the closet, and they tracked him as he went to the reclining chair. They seemed unmoved by the sour look he gave them.

Grady sat in the roomy chair, which he had built and upholstered the previous year. He stretched out his legs on a matching footstool.

The three compadres watched him solemnly.

He draped the blanket across himself and put the pillow behind his head.

They watched him adjust the pillow and the blanket until he got everything as right as he could. The chair made a comfortable bed, and he was too tired to play here-we-go-'round-the-mulberry-bush with these animated plush toys.

He said, "Just so you know ..."

The three caballeros remained interested in him, although he couldn't honestly claim that they waited with bated breath for what he would say next.

"... I consider this mutiny," he informed them. "Mutiny indeed. And in the morning, discipline will be administered."

He switched off the lamp beside the chair.

Their colorful eyes seemed to float in the darkness.

"I see you watching me," he said.

They didn't blink.

"I'm counting on you, Merlin. Don't let them devour me in my sleep."

Thirty-seven.

At the computer in her office at the veterinary clinic, Cammy Rivers wrote e-mails to Dr. Eleanor Fortney of Tufts University's c.u.mmings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Ma.s.sachusetts, and to Dr. Sidney s.h.i.+nseki of Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine in College Station, Texas. She attached JPEGs of photos of Puzzle and Riddle.

Eleanor Fortney was an eminent zoologist, an internist, and a surgeon who had been a guest lecturer for a month at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Fort Collins, when Cammy had been in her last year of studies at that inst.i.tution.

As one of the very few CSU students who ever achieved a perfect grade-point average in every semester of her studies, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, Cammy had been able to receive a guaranteed seat in every one of Eleanor's small-cla.s.s lectures but had been invited also to partic.i.p.ate in three one-on-one conferences that proved to be some of the most intense educational experiences of her life.

By the time Eleanor completed her month in Fort Collins, she had made a persuasive case that, upon graduation, Cammy should come east to Tufts. Eleanor offered a three-year contract to work in a canine-cancer research project of which she was the director, a program with deep funding provided by an alumnus.

Cammy was tempted by the opportunity to advance her career and contribute to research that might save the lives of countless dogs. But ultimately, she declined. She had dreamed for so long of serving animals not in the research lab, but in the course of their day-to-day suffering; she wanted the satisfaction of healing animals whose names she knew and into whose eyes she had looked.

She and Eleanor had remained in touch, however, and were friends who regarded their work not solely as a profession and primarily as a mission. If Puzzle and Riddle were extreme teratogenic individuals, Eleanor's broad, deep zoological background might enable her to see through the mutations to underlying characteristics that identified their species.

As for Sidney s.h.i.+nseki: After receiving her veterinary degree, Cammy had done a year of postdoctoral work with him to refine her surgical techniques. He was a sweet old gruff bear of a guy who had a keen diagnostic sense and a talent for making intuitive leaps from a few perplexing facts to the truth toward which they pointed.

After sending the e-mails, Cammy trolled a few inst.i.tutional zoological archives that could be accessed with ease, searching for photographs of nocturnal creatures with unusually large eyes.

The aye-aye, inhabiting the rain forests of Madagascar, appeared to have larger eyes than it really did. In the photos, they were such a bright orange that the stunning color contributed to an illusion of immensity. Anyway, with its big batlike ears and pointed muzzle, it wouldn't qualify for a show about mammalian beauty on Animal Planet.

Bush babies' eyes were markedly larger than those of an aye-aye, especially in proportion to their small heads, but they were ocular n.o.bodies compared to Merlin's new playmates.

The loris, native to south and southeastern Asia, had large eyes in proportion to its head but not in comparison to Puzzle and Riddle. A tree-creeper feeding largely on lizards and insects, the largest loris weighed only four pounds.

After the excitement of the night, she thought she would not be able to sleep, but she soon began hitting too many wrong keys and too often misclicking the mouse, and she logged off. When she dropped into bed at 1:50 A.M. A.M., the room seemed to turn slowly like a carousel ... a carousel, and all the beautiful horses were facing in the same direction, toward the mountains and the twilight sky, and something momentous was pa.s.sing through the day, something so gigantic that she could feel its presence looming, yet it remained invisible, or if it was not invisible, then it must be visible only by indirection, only from the corner of the eye. ...

Thirty-eight.

Cool and dry, the California night provided perfect weather for walking with a backpack.

To the west of the highway, the dark land sloped to the ocean, which Tom Bigger could see only because the moon trailed a satin train across the water and the breaking surf threw white spray like flung rice to rattle on the s.h.i.+ngled sh.o.r.e.

In the east lay hills, visible because they were silhouetted against the star-speckled sky and because, following a rainless summer, they were dressed in pale parched gra.s.s. Widely separated hursts of live oaks made Halloween shapes against the pallid meadows.

To every quarter of the compa.s.s, the lonely land revealed no signs of habitation.

He knew where he must go and what he must do. But it was a long walk to the city and a hard thing that needed to be done.

Well past midnight, little traffic cruised the highway. These were the hours when long-haul truckers reigned, and they traveled the interstate farther inland.

Even in the darkness, Tom received signs. The headlights of a southbound car revealed a dead rattlesnake on the pavement, its eyes glittering as if sequined, and he knew that it was there only for him to see.

He pa.s.sed a deer crossing sign that vandals had riddled with bullet holes. And a short distance farther along the shoulder of the highway, his trudging feet scattered small objects that clinked off one another with a bra.s.sy sound. When he switched on his flashlight, perhaps twenty expended sh.e.l.l casings gleamed in the dirt and gravel.

Snakes and bullets. Evil and violence.

A low smooth rock formation rose like a bench made by Nature for a weary hiker. He stopped and unburdened himself of the backpack.

He unzipped the storm flap on the lower compartment and withdrew a stuffsack that contained his unloaded pistol. He returned the empty stuffsack to the lower compartment, and zipped shut the storm flap.

Bearing the backpack once more, carrying the gun in his left hand, at his side, out of sight of any motorists who might pa.s.s, he continued north.

Since leaving the town, he felt that he was not alone. Mile by mile, the impression of an unseen companion intensified.

From time to time, he stopped and turned slowly in a circle to study the night. He never glimpsed movement other than the swaying of gra.s.s and the trembling of leaves in the languid breeze that came off the sea. He never saw a ghostly form, or moonglint in an eye.

He walked about half a mile before he heard the engine of a northbound vehicle. Judging by the sound, it must be a light truck or an SUV, but he did not look back.

Motorists disposed to pick up hitchhikers were less charitable to him because of his size and face. He seldom attempted to thumb a ride. Consequently, he walked facing oncoming traffic, which was safer anyway.

Engine noise grew, headlights washed the pavement, and a Chevy Suburban swept past in the farther lane. Brake lights brightened.

A hundred yards ahead, the vehicle made a U-turn and came south, coasting to a stop beside the highway, about fifty feet from Tom. Doors opened.

The headlights half blinded him, but he saw the silhouettes of two men at the front of the Suburban. A third stood just forward of the driver's door.

Tom didn't try to sprint off the highway and into the dark land because even gentle terrain could be treacherous to a blind runner.

Besides, he didn't run from anything, neither from violence junkies cruising in search of kicks nor from a tsunami. If someone or something killed him, he would only be getting the death that he wanted but that he had no courage to embrace by suicide.

He walked toward them, keeping his head high.

When they got a good look at his face, with the grisly details no doubt exaggerated by the extreme light and shadows, one of them said, "Holy h.e.l.l, Jackie, look at this," and the one named Jackie said to Tom, "Hey, where you goin', Frankenstein?"

"Leave me alone," he warned, and kept moving toward them as he raised the pistol from his side and transferred it to his right hand.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" shouted the guy by the driver's door. "Stop right there, Karloff. I got you covered."

To prove his claim, he fired a round over Tom's head. The report sounded like a rifle.

Through the years, each time that he committed an armed robbery with an unloaded gun, Tom expected his victim to be carrying heat and to do him the favor of shooting him dead.

Here seemed to be the men who would set him free at last. He was surprised, therefore, when he didn't continue toward them.

"Drop the gun," the shooter commanded.

Jackie's pal said, "Blow his brains out, George, do it."

George warned Tom, "I'll do it. Drop the gun or I'll do it."

Instead of casting the pistol aside, Tom tucked it under his belt, against his abdomen.

Less than twenty feet separated him from the two men in front of the Suburban. Wary, they moved toward him, careful to remain out of their armed companion's line of fire.

"I'm not alone," Tom said.