But nothing did for the next few moments. The dog’s ears were still stiff and his breathing had quickened.
Milo rubbed one shoe with another and ran his hand over his face. Then the brown door on the screen swung open on two people.
A man, bearded, long-haired, scrawny. The beard, a matted frenzy of blond and gray corkscrews. Above a blemished, knotted forehead, his hair haloed in spiky clumps, recalling a child’s clumsily drawn sun.
The camera moved in on him, highlighting dirty flesh, sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes so wide and bulging they threatened to shoot off the shaggy launchpad of his face.
He was naked from the waist up and sweating furiously. The wild eyes began rotating madly, never blinking, never settling. His mouth was agape, like a dental patient’s, but no sound issued forth. He appeared to be toothless.
His left arm was clamped around a heavy black woman, imbedded so tightly in her soft, skirted waist that the fingers disappeared.
The skirt was green. Over it the woman wore a white blouse that had come partially untucked. She was around thirty-five and her face was wet, tooperspiration and tears. Her teeth were visible, lips stretched back in a rictus of horror.
The man’s right arm was a bony yoke around her neck. Something silvery flashed in his hand as he pressed it up against her throat.
She closed her eyes and kept them clenched.
The man was leaning her back, pressing her to him, convexing her neck and revealing the full breadth of a big, shiny carving knife.
Red-stained hands.
Red-stained blade. Only her heels touched the pavement. She was off balance, an unwilling dancer.
The man blinked, darted his eyes, and looked at one of the SWAT cops.
Several rifles were aimed at him. No one moved.
The woman trembled and the collaring hand moved involuntarily and brought forth a small red mark from her neck. The blotch stood out like a ruby.
She opened her eyes and stared straight ahead. The man screamed something to her, shook her, and they closed again.
The camera stayed on the two of them, then shifted smoothly to another of the SWAT men.
No one moved.
The dog was standing on the chair, breathing hard.
The bearded man’s knife elbow quivered.
The man closed his mouth, opened it. Looked to be screaming at the top of his lungs, but the sound wasn’t carrying.
The woman’s mouth was still open. Her wound had already coagulated-just a nick.
The man propelled her onto the sidewalk, very slowly. One of her shoes came off. He didn’t notice it, was looking from side to side, cop to cop, screaming nonstop.
All at once the sound came on. Very loud. New microphone.
The dog began barking.
The man with the knife screamed, a howling, hoarse and wet.
Panting. Wordless.
Pain scream.
My hands dug into my thighs. Milo faced the screen, immobile.
The bearded man shifted his head from side to side some more, faster, harder, as if being slapped. Screaming louder. Pressing the knife up under the woman’s chin.
Her eyes shot open.
The dog’s barks turned to growls, guttural and bearish, loud enough to be scary and a lot more threatening than the warning sounds he’d uttered last night.
The man with the knife was directing his screams at a SWAT man to his left, haranguing wordlessly, as if the two of them were friends turned hateful.
The cop might have said something because the madman upped his volume.
Roaring. Shrieking.
The man backed away, hugging the woman more tightly, concealing his face behind hers as he dragged her into the doorway.
Then a smile and a short, sharp twist of his wrist.
Another spot of blood-larger than the first-formed on the woman’s throat.
She raised her hands reflexively, trying to bend out from under the knife, losing her balance and stumbling.
Her weight and the movement surprised the man, and for one brief moment, as he tried to keep her upright and haul her backward, he lowered his right arm.
A quick, sharp sound-like a single handclap-and a red dot appeared on the man’s right cheek.
He spread his arms. Another dot materialized, just left of the first one.