The queen palms hung limp, drizzling from the tip of every blade of every frond. Under the merciless lash of the rain, the lush ferns drooped almost to the point of humble prostration, their lacy pinnae glimmering with thousands upon thousands of droplets that, in the low landscape lighting, appeared to be incrustations of jewels.
Scootie led the way, padding through the shallow puddles in the courtyard. In the quartzite paving, specks of mica glinted around the dog’s splashing paws, almost as if his claws were striking sparks from the stone. That phantom fire marked his path along the walkway beside the house, as well.
The Art Deco panels of copper were cold against Tommy’s hand as he pushed open the gate to the street. The hinges rasped like small whispering voices.
On the sidewalk in front of the house, Scootie abruptly halted, raised his head, and pricked his ears. He dropped his rubber hotdog and growled softly.
Alerted by the dog, Tommy brought up the shotgun, gripping it with both hands.
‘What is it?’ Del asked. She held the gate open behind them to prevent it from falling shut, automatically locking, and inhibiting their retreat if they needed to go back to the house.
But for the splatter-splash-gurgle-plink of water, the lamp lit street was silent. The houses were all dark. No traffic approached from either east or west. Nothing moved except the rain and those things that the rain disturbed.
The white Honda stood fifteen feet to Tommy’s right. Something could be crouched along the far side of it, waiting for them to draw nearer.
Scootie was not interested in the Honda, however, and Tommy was inclined to trust the Labrador’s senses more than his own. The dog was riveted by something directly across the street.
At first Tommy could not see anything threatening -or even out of the ordinary. In the storm, the slumbering houses huddled, and the blackness of their blind windows revealed not even a single pale face of any neighbourhood insomniac.
Palms, ficuses, and canopied carrotwoods stood solemnly in the windless downpour. Through the cone of amber light cast by the streetlamp, skeins of rain unravelled off the spool of night above, weaving together into a stream that nearly overflowed the gutter.
Then Scootie stiffened and flattened his ears against his skull and growled again, and Tommy spotted the man in the hooded raincoat. The guy was standing near one of the large carrotwoods across the street, beyond the brightest portion of the lightfall from a streetlamp but still vaguely illumined.
‘What’s he doing?’ Del asked.
Although Tommy couldn’t see the stranger’s shad-owed face, he said, ‘Watching us.’
Del sounded as if she had seen something else that surprised her: ‘Tommy…?‘
He glanced at her.
She pointed east.
Half a block away, on the far side of the street, her battered van was parked at the curb.
Something about the imposing figure under the carrot-wood tree was anachronistic – as though he had stepped through a time warp, out of the medieval world into the late twentieth century. Then Tommy realized that the hooded raincoat was the source of that impression, for it resembled a monk’s robe and cowl.
‘Let’s get to the Honda,’ Del said.
Before they could move toward the car, however, the observer stepped away from the carrotwood, into the glow of the streetlamp. His face remained hidden under the hood, as if he were Death engaged on his nightly collections of those poor souls who perished in their sleep.
Nevertheless, as faceless as he was, the stranger was naggingly familiar to Tommy. Tall. Heavyset. The way he moved.
He was the good Samaritan from earlier in the night, the man who had clumsily descended the embankment from MacArthur Boulevard and crossed the muddy field where the Corvette had crashed. He had been approaching the blazing car when Tommy turned and ran from the fire-enraptured demon.
‘Let’s see what he wants,’ Del said.
‘No.’
How the thing-from-the-doll could now be riding the Samaritan, or hiding inside him, or posing as him – this was a mystery that Tommy was not able to fathom. But the fat man in that muddy field no longer existed; he had been either slaughtered and devoured or conquered and controlled. Of that much, Tommy was certain.