“You think they’ll fall for it?” Chrissie asked worriedly.
“There’s a chance,” Tessa said.
“Maybe they’ll even think Harry left town yesterday before the roadblocks went up.”
Tessa agreed, but she knew—and suspected Chrissie knew—that the chance of the ruse working was slim. If Sam and Harry really had been as confident in the attic trick as they pretended, they would have wanted Chrissie to be tucked up there, too, instead of sent out into the storm-lashed, nightmare world of Moonlight Cove.
They rode the elevator back to the third floor, where Sam was just folding the ladder and pushing the trapdoor into place. Moose watched him curiously.
“Five forty-two,” Tessa said, checking her watch.
Sam snatched up the closet pole, which he’d had to remove to pull down the trap, and he reinserted it into its braces. “Help me put the clothes back.”
Shirts and slacks, still on hangers, had been transferred to the bed. Working together, passing the garments like amateur firemen relaying pails of water, they quickly restored the closet to its former appearance.
Tessa noticed that traces of fresh blood were soaking through the thick gauze bandage on Sam’s right wrist. His wounds were pulling open from the exertion. Although they weren’t mortal injuries, they must hurt a lot, and anything that weakened or distracted him during the ordeal ahead decreased their chances of success.
Closing the door, Sam said, “God, I hate to leave him there.”
“Five forty-six,” Tessa reminded him.
While Tessa pulled on a leather jacket, and while Chrissie slipped into a too-large but waterproof blue nylon windbreaker that belonged to Harry, Sam reloaded his revolver. He had used up all the rounds in his pockets while at the Coltranes’. But Harry owned a .45 revolver and a .38 pistol, both of which he had taken with him into the attic, and he had a box of ammunition for each, so Sam had taken a score or so of the .38 cartridges.
Holstering the gun, he went to the telescope and studied the streets that lay west and south toward Central School. “Still lots of activity,” he reported.
“Patrols?” Tessa asked.
“But also lots of rain. And fog’s coming in faster, thicker.”
Thanks to the storm, an early twilight was upon them and already fading. Although some bleak light still burned above the churning clouds, night might as well have fallen, for cloaks of gloom lay over the wet and huddled town.
“Five fifty,” Tessa said.
Chrissie said, “If Mr. Talbot’s at the top of their list, they could be here any minute.”
Turning from the telescope, Sam said, “All right. Let’s go.”
Tessa and Chrissie followed him out of the bedroom. They took the stairs down to the first floor.
Moose used the elevator.
3
Shaddack was a child tonight.
Circling repeatedly through Moonlight Cove, from the sea to the hills, from Holliwell Road on the north to Paddock Lane on the south, he could not remember ever having been in a better mood. He altered the patterns of his patrol, largely to be sure that eventually he would cover every block of every street in town; the sight of each house and every citizen on foot in the storm affected him in a way they never had previously, because soon they would be his to do with as he pleased.
He was filled with excitement and anticipation, the likes of which he had not felt since Christmas Eve when he was a young boy. Moonlight Cove was a huge toy, and in a few hours, when midnight struck, when this dark eve ticked over into the holiday, he would be able to have so much fun with his marvelous toy. He would indulge in games which he had long wanted to play but which he had denied himself. Henceforth, no urge or desire would be denied, for despite the bloodiness or outrageousness of whatever game he chose, there would be no referees, no authorities, to penalize him.
And like a child sneaking into a closet to filch coins from his father’s coat to buy ice cream, he was so completely transported by contemplation of the rewards that he had virtually forgotten there was a potential for disaster. Minute by minute, the threat of the regressives faded from his awareness. He did not entirely forget about Loman Watkins, but he no longer was able to remember exactly why he had spent the day hiding from the police chief in the garage at the Parkins house.