‘Killed in a locked room, yes. I’m still not sure about the “beaten” part.’
‘And there’s no way the killer could have gotten out of here before the first squad car arrived?’
‘No way.’
‘Yet he isn’t here now.’
‘Right. Seames’s too-young face seemed to be straining toward a more harmonious relationship with his graying hair and his stooped shoulders: It appeared to have aged a few years in just the past ten minutes. ‘You see why I’m frantic, Lieutenant Haldane? I’m frantic because two top-notch former defense researchers have been killed by persons or forces unknown, by a weapon that can reach through locked doors or solid walls and against which there seems to be absolutely no defense.’
* * *
Something about it had been different from an earthquake, but Laura couldn’t precisely define the difference. Well, for one thing, she couldn’t remember the windows rattling, although in an earthquake strong enough to fling open the cupboard doors, the windows would have been thrumming, clattering. She’d had no sense of motion either, no rolling; of course, if they had been far enough from the epicenter, ground movement wouldn’t have been easy to detect. The air had felt strange, oppressive, not stuffy or humid, but … charged. She’d been through a number of quakes before, and she didn’t remember the air feeling like that. But something else still argued against the earthquake explanation, something important on which she couldn’t quite put her finger.
Earl returned to the table and newspaper, and Melanie continued to stare down at her hands. Laura finished making the salad. She put it in the refrigerator to chill while the spaghetti was cooking.
The water had begun to boil. Steam plumed from it. Laura was just taking the vermicelli out of the Ronzoni box when Earl glanced up from the newspaper and said, ‘Hey, that explains the cat!’
Laura didn’t understand. ‘Huh?’
‘They say animals usually know when an earthquake is coming. They get nervous and act strange. Maybe that’s why Pepper got hysterical and chased ghosts all over the kitchen.
Before Laura even had time to consider what Earl had said, the radio clicked on as if an unseen hand had twisted the knob. Living by herself, as she had for the past six years, Laura sometimes found the silence and emptiness of the house to be more than she could bear, and she kept radios in several rooms. The one in the kitchen, by the bread box, only a few feet away from where Laura was standing, was a Sony AM-FM with a clock, and when it snapped on all by itself, it was tuned to KRLA, where she had set the dial the last time that she’d used it. Bonnie Tyler was singing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart.’
Earl had put down his paper. He was standing again.
Laura stared at the radio in disbelief.
Of its own accord, the volume knob began to rotate to the right. She could see it moving.
Bonnie Tyler’s throaty voice grew louder, louder.
Earl said, ‘What the hell?’
Melanie drifted unaware in her private darkness.
The voice of Bonnie Tyler and the music enfolding her words now bounced back and forth off the kitchen walls and made the windows rattle in a way that the ‘earthquake’ hadn’t done.
Aware that a chill had settled over the room once more, Laura took a step toward the radio.
In another part of the house, Pepper was screeching again.
* * *
As Dan was turning away from Michael Seames, the FBI agent said, ‘By the way, what happened to your forehead?’
‘I was trying on hats,’ Dan said.
‘Hats?’
‘Tried on one that was too small for me. Had a hell of a time getting it off. Pulled skin right along with it.’
Before Seames could respond, Ross Mondale stepped through a door at the back of the store, behind the sales counter. He spotted Dan, and he said, ‘Haldane, come here.’
‘What is it, Chief?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What about, Chief?’
‘Alone,’ Mondale said fiercely.
‘Be right there, Chief.’
He left Seames blinking and puzzled. He picked his way through the wreckage, past the corpse, around the counter. Mondale motioned him through the door back there, then followed him.