slowly. But it was locked, so he put the muzzle of the pistol against
the base of the knob plate.
“Hatch,” Lindsey said plaintively, “he’ll kill her.”
He thought of the young blonde taking two bullets in the chest, flying
backward out of the car onto the freeway, tumbling, tumbling along the
pavement into the fog. And the mother suffering the massive blade of
the butcher knife as she dropped her knitting and struggled desperately
for her life.
He said, “He’ll kill her anyway, turn your face away,” and he pulled the
trigger.
Wood and thin metal dissolved into splinters. He grabbed the brass
knob, it came off in his hand, and he threw it aside. When he shoved on
the door, it creaked inward an inch but no farther. The cheap lock had
disintegrated. But the shank on which the knob had been seated was
still bristling from the wood, and something must have been wedged under
the other knob on the inside. He pushed on the shank with the palm of
his hand, but that didn’t provide enough force to move it; whatever was
wedged against the other side-most likely the girls desk chair-was
exerting upward pressure, thereby holding the shank in place.
Hatch gripped the Browning by its barrel and used the butt as a hammer.
Cursing, he pounded the shank, driving it inch by inch back through the
door.
Just as the shank flew free and clattered to the floor inside, a vivid
series of images flooded through Hatch’s mind, temporarily washing away
the upstairs hall. They were all from the killer’s eyes: a weird angle,
looking up at the side of a house, this house, the wall outside Regina’s
bedroom.
The open window. Below the sill, a tangle of trumpet-vine running A
hornlike flower in his face. Latticework under his hands, splinters
digging into his skin. Clutching with one hand, searching with the
other for a new place to grip, one foot dangling in space, a weight
bearing down hard over his shoulder. Then a creaking, a splitting sound
A sudden sense of perilous looseness in the geometric web to which he
clung Hatch was snapped back to reality by a brief, loud noise from
beyond the door: clattering and splintering wood, nails popping loose
with tortured screeches, scraping, a crash.
Then a new wave of psychic images and sensations surged through him.
Falling. Backward and out into the night. Not far, hitting the ground,
a brief flash of pain. Rolling once on the grass. Beside him, a small
huddled form, lying still. Scuttling to it, seeing the face.
Regina. Eyes closed. A scarf tied across her mouth “Regina!” Lindsey
cried.
When reality clicked into once again, Hatch was already sag his shoulder
against the bedroom door. The brace on the other side fell away. The
door shuddered open. He went inside, slapping the wall with one hand
until he found the light switch. In the sudden glare, he stepped over
the fallen desk chair and swung the Browning right, then left. The room
was empty which he already knew from his vision.
At the open window he looked out at the collapsed trellis and tangled
vines on the lawn below. There was no sign of the man in sunglasses or
of Regina.
“Shit!” Hatch hurried back across the room, grabbing Lindsey, turning
her around, pushing her through the door, into the hall, toward the head
of the stairs. “You take the front, I’ll take the back, he’s got her,
stop him, 1 go, go.” She didn’t resist, picked up at once on what he was
saying, and flew down the steps with him at her heels.
“Shoot him, bring him down, aim for the legs, can’t worry about hitting
Regina, he’s getting away!”
In the foyer Lindsey reached the front door even as Hatch was coming off
the bottom step and turning toward the short hallway. He dashed into
the family room, then into the kitchen, peering out the back windows of
the house as he ran past them. The lawn and patios were well lighted,
but he didn’t see anyone out there.
He tore open the door between the kitchen and the garage, stepped