private investigator’s license. Opposite it, in another plastic window,
was a business card for Dakota & Dakota.
Candy remembered a vague image of the Dakota & Dakota offices, which had
come to him in Thomas’s room when he had obtained a vision of Clint from
the scrapbook. There was an address on the card. And below the name
Clint Karaghiosis, in smaller type, were the names Robert and Julia
Dakota.
Outside, the sirens had died. Someone was pounding on the front door.
Two voices shouted,
“Police!” Candy threw the wallet aside and took the gun out of the dead
man’s hand. He broke open the cylinder. It was a five shot weapon, and
all of the chambers were filled with expended cartridges. Clint had
fired four rounds in the kitchen, but even in his moment of vengeful
fury, he had possessed enough control to save the last bullet for
himself.
“Just because of a woman?” Candy said uncomprehendingly, as if the dead
man might answer him.
“Because he couldn’t get sex from her any more now? Why does sex matter
so much? Couldn’t you get sex from another woman? Why was sex with
this one so important, you didn’t want to live without it?” They were
still pounding on the door. Someone spoke through a bullhorn, but Candy
didn’t pay attention to what was being said.
He dropped the gun and wiped his hand on his pants, cause he suddenly
felt unclean. The dead man had handled it, and the dead man seemed to
have been obsessed with one question, the world was a cesspool of lust
and bauchery, and Candy was glad that God and his mother had spared him
from the sick desires that seemed to infect nearly everyone else.
He left that house of sinners.
SLUMPED ON the sofa, Hal Yamataka had a slice of pizza in one hand and
the MacDonald novel in the other, when he heard the hollow flowerlike
warble. He dropped both to his feet.
the book and the food, and shot
“Frank?” The half-open door swung slowly inward, not because it was
being pushed open by anyone but because a sudden draft, sweeping in from
the reception lounge, was strong enough to move it.
“Frank?” Hal repeated.
As he crossed the room, the sound faded and the draft died. But by the
time he reached the doorway, the unmelodiclar could teleport more
efficiently and swiftly than Frank, creating less air displacement and
less noise from molecular resistance. Nevertheless he was surprised
that she had not gotten up to investigate, the sounds he had made during
arrival had been only one room away from her and, surely, odd enough to
prick her!” curiosity.
She turned a few more pages, then leaned forward to where He could not
see much of her from behind. Her hair thick, lustrous, and so black it
seemed to have been spun from the same loom as the night. Her shoulders
and back were muscular. Her legs, which were both to one side of the
chair crossed at the ankles, were shapely. If he had been a man with
any interest in sex, he Supposed he would have been excited by the curve
of her calves.
Wondering what she looked like-and suddenly overwhelmed by a need to
know how her blood would taste stepped out of the open doorway and took
three steps to her. He made no effort to be silent, but she did not
look up.
The first she became aware of him was when he seized a handful of her
hair and dragged her, kicking and flailing, out of the chair.
He turned her around and was instantly excited by her.
He was indifferent to her shapely legs, the flare of her hips, trimness
of her waist, the fullness of her breasts. Though beautiful, it was not
even her face that electrified him. Something else. A quality in her
gray eyes. Call it vitality. She was more alive than most people,
vibrant.
She did not scream but let out a low grunt of fear or an then struck him
furiously with both fists. She pounded his chest, battered his face.
Vitality! Yes, this one was full of life, bursting with life, her