AS ETHAN WAITED FOR MUSIC THAT WOULD wither1 the soul and for the hospital elevator that would bring it, his cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” Hazard Yancy asked.
“Our Lady of Angels. About to leave.”
“You in the garage?”
“On my way down now.”
“Upper or lower level?”
“Upper.”
“What’re you driving?”
“A white Expedition, like yesterday.”
“Wait there. We have to talk.” Hazard hung up.
Ethan rode the elevator alone and without music. Apparently3 the sound system was malfunctioning4. Nothing but hiss-pop-crackle came from the ceiling speaker.
He had descended5 one floor when he thought that he detected a faint voice behind the static. Quickly it became less faint, though still too weak to convey meaning.
By the time he traveled three floors, he convinced himself that this was the eerie6 voice to which he had listened for half an hour on the [372] phone the previous night. He had been so intent on understanding what it was saying that he’d fallen into something like a trance.
Drifting down from the ceiling speaker, in a fall of static as soft as snow, came his name. He heard it as if from a great distance but distinctly.
“Ethan ... Ethan ...”
On a foggy winter day at the beach or harbor, sea gulls8 in flight, high in muffling9 mist, sometimes called to one another with two-syllable cries that seemed part alarm and part searching signal issued in mournful hope of a reply, the most forlorn sound in the world. This call of “Ethan, Ethan,” as though echoing down to a ravine from a lofty peak, had that same quality of melancholy10 and urgency.
Listening to gulls, however, he had never imagined that he heard his name in their desolate11 voices. Nor had he ever thought that their plaints in the fog sounded like Hannah, as the far voice behind the speaker static sounded like her now.
She no longer called his name, but she cried out something not quite decipherable. Her tone was the same that you might use to shout a warning at a man standing7 on a sidewalk in complete ignorance of a terrible weight of broken cornice falling toward him from atop the building at his back.
Between the lobby and the upper level of the garage, half a floor from his destination, Ethan pressed STOP on the control panel. The cab braked, sagging12 slightly and rebounding13 on its cables.
Even if this was indeed a voice speaking to him—and to him alone—through the overhead speaker, rather than proof of mental imbalance, he couldn’t allow himself to be hypnotized by it as he had been on the phone.
He thought of fogbound nights and the unwary sailors who heard the singing of the Lorelei. They turned their ships toward her voice, seeking to understand the alluring14 promise of her words, steered15 onto her rock, wrecked16 their vessels17, and drowned.
This voice was more likely to be that of the Lorelei than that of his [373] lost Hannah. To desire what is forever beyond reach, to seek it in disregard of reason, is the fateful rock in. an endless fog.
Anyway, he hadn’t brought the elevator to a halt in order to puzzle out the words of the might-be warning. Heart knocking, he pressed STOP because he’d suddenly been overcome with the conviction that when the doors slid open, the garage would not lie beyond them.
Crazily, he expected thick fog and black water. Or a precipice18 and a yawning abyss. The voice would be out there, beyond the water, beyond the chasm19, and he would have nowhere to go but toward it.
In another elevator, Monday afternoon, ascending20 toward Dunny’s apartment, he had been stricken by claustrophobia.
Here again, the four walls crowded closer than they had been when he’d first boarded the cab. The ceiling squeezed lower, lower. He was going to be compressed meat in a can.
He put his hands over his ears to block the ghostly voice.
As the air seemed to grow hotter, thicker, Ethan heard himself straining to breathe, gasping21 on each inhalation, wheezing22 with each exhalation, and he was reminded of Fric in an asthma23 attack. At the thought of the boy, his heart hammered harder than ever, and with one hand he reached toward the START button on the control panel.
As the walls continued to close upon him, they seemed to press into his mind more crazy ideas. Instead of black water and fog where the hospital garage should be, perhaps he’d step out of the elevator to find himself in that black-and-white apartment with the walls of watchful24 birds, with Rolf Reynerd alive and drawing a pistol from a bag of potato chips. Shot in the gut25 again, Ethan would receive no reprieve26 this time.
He hesitated, didn’t push the button.
Maybe because his labored27 breathing had recalled Fric in an asthmatic phase, Ethan began to think that among the faint and not quite comprehensible words coming from the overhead speaker was the boy’s name. “Fric ...” When he held his breath and concentrated, he couldn’t hear it. When he breathed, the name came again. Or did it?
[374] In that other elevator, Monday afternoon, the passing bout2 of claustrophobia had been a sublimation29 of another dread30 that he had not wanted to face: the irrational31 and yet persistent32 fear that in Dunny’s apartment he would find his old friend dead but animated33, as cold as a corpse34 but lively.
He suspected that this current claustrophobia and the fear of Reynerd resurrected also masked another anxiety that he was reluctant to face, that he could not quite fish from his subconscious35.
Fric? Fric was emotionally vulnerable, and no wonder, but in no physical danger. The skeleton staff at the estate still numbered ten, counting Chef Hachette and the groundskeeper, Mr. Yorn. Estate security was formidable. The real danger to Fric remained that some lunatic might get at Channing Manheim, leaving the boy fatherless.
Ethan pressed START.
The elevator moved again. In but a moment it stopped at the upper level of the parking garage.
Perhaps he would step out and find himself on a rainy street, in the path of an out-of-control PT Cruiser.
The door slid aside, revealing nothing more impossible than the concrete walls of an underground garage and ranks of vehicles huddled36 under fluorescent37 lights.
As he walked to the Expedition, his ragged38 breathing quickly grew normal. His racing39 heart not only slowed but also settled out of his throat, into his chest where it belonged.
Behind the wheel of the SUV, he pushed the master switch to engage the power locks on all the doors.
Through the windshield he could see nothing but a concrete wall mottled by water stains and car-exhaust deposits. Here and there, over time, florescences of lime had risen to the surface.
His imagination wanted to search for images in this mottling, as it sometimes hunted big game and collected menageries among the shifting shapes of clouds. Here, he saw only decomposing40 faces and the tumbled, tangled41 bodies of the cruelly murdered. He might have [375] been sitting before a ghastly mural of the many victims in the names of whom he, as a homicide detective, had sought justice.
He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let the tension shiver out of him.
After a while, he considered turning on the radio to pass the time until Hazard arrived. Sheryl Crow, Barenaked Ladies, Chris Isaak, without orchestral strings42 and timpanis and French horns, might mellow43 his mood.
He was reluctant to click the switch. He suspected that instead of the usual music, news, and talk shows, he would discover, from one end of the dial to the other, only the voice that might be Hannah’s, futilely44 trying to speak to him on every frequency.
Knuckles45 on glass—tap-tap-tap—startled him. Wearing a rolled seaman’s cap and a scowl46 to curdle47 vinegar, Hazard Yancy peered through the passenger’s window.
Ethan unlocked the doors.
Filling the SUV as fully48 as he might have filled a bumper49 car at a carnival50, Hazard climbed into the front passenger’s seat and pulled the door shut. Although he had more knees than knee space, he didn’t adjust the power controls to move the seat back. He seemed nervous. “They find Dunny?”
“Who?”
“The hospital.”
“No.”
“Then why’re you here?”
“I talked to the doctor who signed the death certificate, trying to figure it out.”
“You get anywhere?”
“Right back where I started—lookin’ up my own ass28.”
“Not a view that’ll draw tourists,” Hazard said. “Sam Kesselman has the flu.”
Ethan needed Kesselman—the detective assigned to the ormolu-lamp murder of Rolf Reynerd’s mother—to read Reynerd’s unfinished [376] screenplay and then to track down the real-life inspiration for the murderous professor depicted51 in its pages.
“When’s he back on the job?” Ethan asked.
“His wife says he can’t even keep chicken soup on his stomach. Looks like we won’t see him till after Christmas.”
“Anybody partners with him?”
“Right at the start, Glo Williams had a piece of it, but the case went cold fast, and he stepped out.”
“Get him back in?”
“He’s on the rape-and-chop of that eleven-year-old girl that’s all over the news, no time for anything else.”
“Man, the world gets sicker by the week.”
“By the hour. Otherwise, we’d be unemployed52. They call Mina Reynerd’s case Vamp and the Lamp ’cause in pictures of her when she was younger, she looked like one of those vamps in the old movies, like Theda Bara or Jean Harlow. The file is strictly53 on Kesselman’s desk, along with other active cases.”
“So even after Christmas, he might not get to it first thing.”
Hazard stared at the concrete wall beyond the windshield, as if stocking a menagerie of his own. Maybe he saw gazelles and kangaroos. More likely, he could not avoid seeing battered54 children, strangled women, the bodies of men torn by gunfire.
Memories of innocent victims. His ghost family. Always with him. They were as real to him as the badge he carried, more real than the pension that he might never live to collect.
“After Christmas isn’t soon enough,” Hazard said. “I had this dream.”
Ethan looked at him, waited. Then: “What dream?”
Rolling his Paul Bunyan shoulders, shifting on the seat to gain legroom, looking as uncomfortable as Babe the Blue Ox in a canary cage, Hazard stared at the concrete wall while he said matter-of-factly, “You were with me in Reynerd’s apartment. He shot you in the gut. Next, we’re in an ambulance. You’re not gonna make it.
[377] They have these Christmas decorations in the ambulance. Tinsel, little bells. You ask me for a set of the bells. I take one set down, try to give them to you, but you’re gone, you’re dead.”
Ethan turned his attention to the parking-garage wall once more. Among the decomposing corpses55 that his imagination identified in the stains and subtleties56 of texture57, he expected to see his own face.
“I wake up,” Hazard continued, still focused on the mottled concrete, “there’s someone in the room with me. Standing over the bed. A darker shape in the dark. Some guy. I’m up, I’m at him, but he’s not there. Now he’s across the room. I go after him. He moves. He’s quick. He doesn’t walk, he like glides58. My piece is in my holster, hanging on a chair. I get it. He keeps moving, quick, too quick, gliding59, like he’s playing with me. We circle the room. I get to a light switch, click on a lamp. He’s at my closet doors, his back to me. Mirrored closet doors. He walks into the mirror. Disappears into the mirror.”
“This is still the dream,” Ethan suggested.
“I told you, I wake up, there’s someone in the room with me,” Hazard reminded him. “I didn’t get a good look at him, his back to me, just a glimpse in the mirror, but I think it was Dunny Whistler. I open the closet door. He’s not in there. Where is he—in the damn mirror!”
“Sometimes in a dream,” Ethan said, “you wake up, but the waking up is just part of the nightmare, and you’re really still dreaming.”
“I search the apartment. Don’t find anybody. Back in the bedroom what I do find are these.”
Ethan heard the sweet silvery ringing of small bells.
He looked away from the concrete wall.
Hazard held up an array of three concentrically strung bells like those that had hung in the ambulance.
Their eyes met.
Ethan knew that Hazard had instantly read not the nature of his secrets but certainly the fact that he had secrets.
The astonishing things that had happened to Ethan in less than [378] thirty hours, and now also to Hazard, plus the inexplicable60 case of dead Dunny walking and possibly orchestrating the murder of Reynerd: All this had to be connected somehow to the contents of the six black boxes and the threat against Manheim.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Hazard demanded.
After a long pause, Ethan said, “I have a set of bells, too.”
“You get yours in a dream like I did?”
“I got mine just before I died in an ambulance late yesterday afternoon.”
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1
wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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malfunctioning
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| 出故障 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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gulls
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| n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 ) | |
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muffling
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| v.压抑，捂住( muffle的现在分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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rebounding
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| 蹦跳运动 | |
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alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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wheezing
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的现在分词 )；哮鸣 | |
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asthma
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| n.气喘病，哮喘病 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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labored
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| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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sublimation
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| n.升华，升华物，高尚化 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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fluorescent
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| adj.荧光的，发出荧光的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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decomposing
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| 腐烂( decompose的现在分词 )； （使）分解； 分解（某物质、光线等） | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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futilely
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| futile（无用的）的变形； 干 | |
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knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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curdle
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| v.使凝结，变稠 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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bumper
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| n.(汽车上的)保险杠；adj.特大的，丰盛的 | |
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carnival
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| n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演 | |
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depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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glides
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| n.滑行( glide的名词复数 )；滑音；音渡；过渡音v.滑动( glide的第三人称单数 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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