‘I didn’t choke up,’ Mondale said. He took a step toward the desk, but as a threatening gesture it was ineffective.
* * *
‘Something’s … coming …’
Fascinated, Earl watched the radio.
Laura looked at the door that opened onto the patio and the rear lawn. It was locked. So were the windows. The blinds were drawn. If something did come, where would it come from? And what would it be, for God’s sake, what would it be?
The radio said: ‘Watch …’ Then: ‘Out …’
Laura fixated on the open door to the dining room. Whatever was coming might already be in the house. Maybe it would come from the living room, through the dining room …
The frequency selector stopped again, and a deejay’s voice boomed through the speaker. It was swift patter with no purpose but to fill a few seconds of dead air between tunes, yet for Laura it had an unintended ominous quality: ‘Better beware out there, my rock-‘n’-roll munchkins, better beware, ’cause it’s a strange world, a mean and cold world, with things that go bump in the night, and all you got to protect you is your Cousin Frankie, that’s me, so if you don’t keep that dial where it is, if you change stations now, you better beware, better be on the lookout for the gnarly old goblins who live under the bed, the ones who fear nothing but the voice of Uncle Frankie. Better look out!’
Earl put one hand on top of the radio, and Laura half expected a mouth to open in the plastic and bite off his fingers.
‘Cold,’ he said as the tuning knob moved toward another station.
Laura shook Melanie. ‘Honey, come on, get up.’
The girl didn’t stir.
One clear word burst from the radio as the tuning knob stopped again in the middle of a news report: ‘… murder …’
* * *
Dan wished that he could magically transport himself out of the dreary spook-shop office and into Saul’s Delicatessen, where he could order a huge Reuben sandwich and drink a few bottles of Beck’s Dark. If he couldn’t have Saul’s, he’d settle for Jack-in-the-Box. If he couldn’t have Jack-in-the-Box, then he’d rather be at home, washing the dirty dishes that he had left in the kitchen. Anywhere but in a confrontation with Ross Mondale. Dredging up the past was pointless and depressing.
But it was too late to stop now. They had to go through the whole Lakey killing again, pick at it as if it were a scab, peel and pick and pluck at it to see if the wound was healed underneath. And of course that was a waste of time and emotional resources, for both of them knew already that it wasn’t healed and never would be.
Dan said, ‘After Dunbar shot me there on the front lawn of the Lakey house—’
‘I suppose that was my fault too,’ Mondale said.
‘No,’ Dan said. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to rush him. I didn’t think he’d use the gun, and I was wrong. But after he shot me, Ross, he was stunned for a moment, stupefied by what he’d done, and he was vulnerable.’
‘Bullshit. He was as vulnerable as a runaway Sherman tank. He was a maniac, a flat-out lunatic, and he had the biggest goddamned pistol—’
‘A thirty-two,’ Dan corrected. ‘There’re bigger guns. Every cop comes up against bigger guns than that, all the time. And he was vulnerable for a moment, plenty long enough for you to take the son of a bitch.’
‘You know one thing I always hated about you, Haldane?’
Ignoring him, Dan said, ‘But you ran.’
‘I always hated that wide, wide streak of self-righteousness.’
‘If he’d wanted to, Dunbar could have put another slug in me. No one to stop him after you ran off behind the house.’
‘As if you never made a mistake in your goddamned life.’
They were both almost whispering now.
‘But instead he walked away from me—’
‘As if you were never afraid.’
‘—and he shot the lock off the front door—’
‘You want to play the hero, go ahead. You and Audie Murphy. You and Jesus Christ.’