For the first time, more worry than hatred was evident in Ross Mondale’s face.
‘You see?’ Dan said. He smiled again, more broadly than before. ‘You don’t have any choice. You have to let me work on this case the way I want to work on it, without any interference, just as long as I want. If you mess with me, I’ll destroy you, so help me God, even if it means problems for me too.’
* * *
The overhead lights grew even dimmer. But the radio’s eerie green radiance was now so bright that it hurt Laura’s eyes.
‘… STOP … HELP … RUN … HIDE … HELP…’
The Plexiglas that shielded the radio dial suddenly cracked down the middle.
The Sony vibrated so violently that it began to move across the counter.
Laura remembered the nightmarish image that had come to her a few minutes ago: crablike legs sprouting from the plastic casing …
The refrigerator door flew open again all by itself.
With a hiss and squeak of hinges, with scattered thumping sounds, every cupboard door in the room abruptly and simultaneously flung itself wide open. One of them banged against Earl’s legs, and he almost fell.
The radio had stopped emitting selected words from various stations. Now it was simply spewing out a shrill electronic noise at higher than full volume, as if attempting to shatter their flesh and bones as a perfectly sung and sustained high-C could shatter fine crystal.
* * *
Ross Mondale sat on a shipping crate and buried his face in his hands, as if weeping.
Dan Haldane was startled and disconcerted. He had been certain that Mondale was incapable of tears.
The captain didn’t sob or wheeze or make any other sounds, and when he looked up again, after half a minute or so, his eyes were perfectly dry. He hadn’t been weeping after all — merely thinking. Desperately thinking.
He had also been putting on a new expression, a conscious act not unlike exchanging one mask for another. The fear and worry and anger were completely gone. Even the hatred was fairly well hidden, although a dark rime of it was still visible in the captain’s eyes, like a film of black ice on a shallow puddle at the edge of winter. Now he was wearing his patented friendly-and-humble face, which was transparently insincere.
‘Okay, Dan. Okay. We were friends once, and maybe we can be friends again.’
We were never really friends, Dan thought.
But he said nothing. He was curious to see how conciliatory Ross Mondale would pretend to be.
Mondale said, ‘At least we can start by trying to work together, and I can help by acknowledging that you’re a damned good detective. You’re methodical, but you’re also intuitive. I shouldn’t try to rein you in, because that’s like refusing to let a natural-born hunting dog follow its own nose. Okay. So you’re on your own in this case. Go wherever you want, see who you want, when you want. Just try to fill me in once in a while. I’d appreciate it. Maybe if we both give a little, both of us bend a little, then we’ll find that we not only can work together but can even be friends again.’
Dan decided that he liked Mondale’s anger and unconcealed hatred better than his smarmy appeasement. The captain’s hatred was the most honest thing about him. Now, the honey in his voice and manner didn’t soothe Dan: in fact, it made his skin crawl.
‘But can I ask you one thing?’ Mondale said, leaning forward from his perch on the packing crate, looking earnest.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why this case? Why’re you so passionately committed to it?’
‘I just want to do my job.’
‘It’s more than that.’
Dan gave nothing.
‘Is it the woman?’
‘No.’
‘She’s very good looking.’
‘It’s not the woman,’ Dan said, though Laura McCaffrey’s beauty had not escaped his attention. It did indeed play at least a small role in his determination to stay with the case, though he would never reveal as much to Mondale.
‘Is it the kid?’
‘Maybe,’ Dan said.
‘You’ve always worked hardest on cases where a child was abused or threatened.’