“You know this intruder, Maggie?” he asked mildly, and let me go. I came around fast with fists swinging—really smart, considering he had the gun—but Nick had already backed out of reach. I stood there breathing hard and looking stupid. Maggie stopped glaring at her partner long enough to cast me an anguished look of apology, then shoved past him to grab the phone.

  Nick looked at me with cool, amused dark eyes that held an ugly smoldering spark of anger. He didn’t like me much, but that was okay; the feeling was definitely mutual. There was an ugly arid tension in the air, and Maggie’s eyes kept darting back and forth between me and her partner as if trying to decide who to restrain first. Personally, I voted for good old Nick; there was a suppressed rage in him that was just looking for soft flesh to spend itself on, and I figured I’d been beaten up enough.

  When your life’s gone over the edge of reality, I discovered, there’s very little left to lose. I gave Nick a big, unpleasant smile and felt adrenaline rush through my veins like tonic. After the chilling inhumanity of Adam Radburn, and the nearly-mad menace of Rebecca Foster, Nick’s malice was unimpressive.

  “I think the lady wants you out,” I told him gleefully. Maggie was speaking into the phone, reassuring the duty desk at the station that we were all alive and well. She might, I considered, be a little premature. Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Give it a rest, Nick.”

  “A rest?” Nick Gianoulos laughed and shoved his. gun back into his shoulder holster. “Yeah, okay. You and me, Doc, we’ve got things to talk about, don’t we? Later. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” I said without breaking the stare. “See me during office hours. Maybe I can do something about that bone in your head.”

  “Fuck you,” Nick replied equably, and blew Maggie a kiss. She pretended not to see it, just cradled the phone in between her ear and shoulder and looked past him at me. Her eyes were harsh with warning. I swung the door open and held it for him. “Night, Mag. See you tomorrow, yeah? We’ll sleep on it.”

  Her eyes held mine, desperate and angry. Nick kicked the screen door open and let it slam behind him as he walked out to his car. I closed the door quietly and stood there with my hand on the knob, still watching my wife. She hung the phone up with equal care.

  “You okay?” I asked her. She nodded. Her hair had come down from its clip, and it veiled her face in fragile wisps. “Something you want to talk about?”

  God damn it, Maggie, it’s a gold-plated invitation, it’s a plea …

  Her lips parted and searched for words, but nothing came out. I waited, every nerve singing with tense anticipation. She shook her head slowly.

  “Nothing to worry about. I can handle Nick,” she finally said, and tried to smile. I felt my heart die again.

  “Sure,” I said. She stepped closer to me, and her nose wrinkled.

  “Jesus, Mikey, did you take a bath in booze? How much did you have?”

  “Enough not to care,” I said wearily, and untruthfully. I felt sick and hot. “Roses in the kitchen. I love you, Maggie. I really do.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked me, and reached out to put her arms around me. I tensed. As close as our bodies were, I couldn’t help but fed the gray shadow between us, the mocking laugh. I put my hands lightly on her back, but nothing stirred in my heart except distant anger.

  “Nothing. I’m sick.” I pushed her away and went to the bathroom. The tequila jumped up in a vile rush. After the spasms passed, I flushed the toilet and washed my face and mouth in the sink. Maggie swung the door open, and I looked at her in the mirror.

  She started to say something, but then just turned away. I shut the water off and stood there. It took a minute, but the spasms came again, except that this time they just made me shake as tears rolled down my face.

  No place to go, Mikey. Run or fight. Which is it going to be?

  Like I said before, I’ve never been much of a runner.

  Interlude

  Foster

  “Momma?” Rebecca Foster called as she unlocked the door. “Momma, I brought your medicine.”

  “In here, honey,” her mother called out. The sound of her voice made Rebecca wince; it was weaker and weaker every day. Rebecca put her purse aside and took the paper bag to the kitchen. Her mother was stirring something on the stove, eyeglasses frosted over from the steam; Rebecca frowned and reached over to take the spoon away. Momma was dangerous around the stove. “Now, Rebecca, I can do that. Stop fussing.”

  “I’m not fussing. Here’s your medicine. I want you to take it right now.”

  “In a minute,” Momma said vaguely. Her eyes were huge, magnified by the glasses. Rebecca wondered when they’d gotten so pale. They’d been robin’s-egg blue when she was little, and they’d smiled so easily. They didn’t smile at all anymore. Momma always looked at her—at everyone—with nervous eyes, as if she couldn’t quite remember who her own daughter was or why she was talking to her.

  At least, on good days she was nervous. On bad days, her face closed up into a tight suspicious mask, and she said things to Rebecca that she couldn’t possibly mean. Momma’s mouth tightened a little and Rebecca felt her stomach drop. Please God, be merciful, no more, not now.

  “Take it right now, Momma. Here.” She put the spoon down and opened the bottle, then shook out the right dosage of pills. Her fingers were shaking.

  “I can’t find the glasses. I need some water,” Momma said petulantly. “I’ll choke if I don’t have some water.”

  “They’ve been in the same place for thirty years.”

  “Well, I don’t remember!” Momma nearly shouted, and started to cry. When Rebecca, frightened, reached up over the sink and got a glass for her, the crying stopped, just like a two-year-old who’d gotten her way.

  When Rebecca turned around, her mother had laid the pills down and walked over to wipe down the dinner table. “Momma …”

  “What, honey?”

  “Momma, please take your pills.” She felt a growing helplessness clog her throat, and a growing rage deep down under that. It was so hard, so hard to remember her mother as she’d been before, so strong and sure. Rebecca walked over to her and pressed the pills into her damp palm. “Here. Take them.” Momma watched her for a moment with those childlike, suspicious eyes, then swallowed the dose obediently. She forgot about wiping down the table and went into the living room, dropping the damp cloth on the faded linoleum on the way. Rebecca didn’t follow her, just went back to the stove and looked in the pot her mother had kept simmering.

  It was just water. Nothing else. Rebecca bit her lip hard enough to bite back tears and turned the burner off. Momma’s forgetfulness had already cost them one melted teakettle and a minor fire on the wallpaper behind the stove. She’d never forget coming in and smelling the smoke, seeing the fire, finding Momma sitting blankly in the living room watching a rerun of I Love Lucy.

  Please, God, no more. I can’t do any more …

  “What do you want for dinner, Momma?” Rebecca called out. Her voice was almost steady.

  “What’s wrong with what I fixed?”

  “Nothing, we can have that if you want.”

  There was a long, long silence. The television wasn’t playing. A lump rose in Rebecca’s throat because she knew what her mother was doing; she was sitting in her chair fingering the tattered lace doilies on the arms, staring off into space. A zombie-thing, half in this world, half in the next.

  Please, God, take her now, if you are a God of mercy, don’t do this to me any more …

  Rebecca took a deep breath, opened the refrigerator and looked at the contents, then pulled out a half chicken. She unwrapped it and started washing it in the sink.

  “What did I fix?” Momma wanted to know. Rebecca took the boning knife from the rack and diced the chicken apart. Pinkish blood oozed out over her fingers, reminding her of the morgue, the dead, the damned. Of Adam. Her hands started to tremble; she brought the knife down badly and cut her finger open. She held the wound under cold running water until it had sealed, then pulled an adhesive bandage out of the utility drawer to bind it.

  “Chicken,” Rebecca finally said. There was a pause from the other room as Momma tried to remember and failed.

  “Yes, chicken’s good. I thought chicken would be good for you, Becky, you don’t eat enough chicken. I ate chicken nearly every day when I was growing up.” Momma’s voice was soft and quiet. “I used to have to go out and decide which chicken to kill. My momma showed me how to wring it so its head came off all in one piece. It was easier that way. Lord, but that was messy. I hated having to kill chickens. You had to pick it up and whirl it around, and the blood—that blood used to get all over. All over.”

  Rebecca pressed her hands to her mouth and tried not to throw up.

  It hadn’t been very hard to kill the first one. He was sickly, drained by Adam’s evil spells and hungers, a man with a woman’s soft eyes. She’d taken his groceries in for him from his car—just a stranger, a helpful Samaritan—and when he’d gone in the bathroom to put his toilet tissue away she’d pushed him. He’d hit his head on the corner of the bathtub with enough force to shatter his skull. Rebecca hadn’t really intended to kill him—just scare him a little—but somehow that was all right, that was what God had intended all along. He was simply a weak man who’d been consorting with Adam Radburn, giving life and strength to the devil, and so he’d been struck down. Yes, that was all right. She’d checked his pulse and left him there with his blood running along the white tile, walked through the unlocked door, and drove away. It had all been very deliberate, no panic. God’s hand had been on her the whole time.

  Even afterward. The coroner ruled it a death by misadventure. A tragic household accident. Rebecca was sorry that it had taken so long to find him, though; she hadn’t wanted his body to lie there for days and days, but she couldn’t call and report him, could she?

  She traced Adam to another one, a young black woman. Her name was Aida, and she was loud and abrasive; some people thought she was funny, but her jokes were never appropriate and all too often mocked God and morals. It had made Rebecca feel dirty and uncomfortable to watch her. Aida didn’t have any health problems at all, except that she ran a bit to fat. She managed a clothing store out on Inwood Road, something that carried those things Rebecca’s momma called “hooker clothes.” When Rebecca had tried to talk to her one night after she closed her store, Aida had slapped her and walked away. It was God’s will, again; Rebecca hadn’t meant to run her off the road, but she couldn’t be sorry for it. Better the flames of a burning car than the flames of hell, she’d thought. Her only regret was that she wished the colored woman had died more quickly. Rebecca kept seeing her in nightmares, jerking and twisting in that orange light.

  It had all been a plan to hurt Adam, to weaken him; Julie Gilmore had hurt him the worst of all. Rebecca had wanted it that way. She’d taken a long time looking for someone to do the job, and do it right. She’d paid him well to do it, much more than a homeless wreck like he was could have expected. When he was done—she didn’t watch the filthy act, of course—she’d gone in and checked Julie Gilmore herself. She’d certainly looked dead.

  But she hadn’t been dead. No one was more surprised than Rebecca when she heard Gilmore had been brought into City Square; no one was more relieved when she died without speaking. Rebecca had been desperate enough to think of killing her in the hospital, and she’d have done it before she let Adam Radburn get close enough to find out what had happened. Again, God had held Rebecca in the hollow of his hand, and she’d gone to the hospital chapel to thank him for his mercy. Rebecca had been several steps into the dim peace when she saw him, the white devil, sitting in the front by the altar.

  He’d looked as if he was praying. He was mocking God, defiling the chapel by his presence. He’d looked up as if he’d felt her stare, and his eyes were as red as hot coals in the dimness.

  He blinked, and they were brown.

  But she knew the truth.

  “Rebecca!”

  She gasped and flinched. Grease spattered her, red dots of pain along her hands. Momma blinked at her from the other side of thick glasses, eyes vague and annoyed. Rebecca scrubbed at the painful bums nervously and held them under cold water.

  “Did you hear me?” Momma asked, in that Momma-tone that nobody could ever do quite so well as her. “I said you’ve got a telephone call. Lord, I don’t know what to do with you, child, those boys always calling you up—not decent, I’ve always said. And you with school in the morning.”

  “Okay.” Rebecca smiled at her, even though it hurt. “I’ll hurry?

  “You do that. Did you do your homework, Becky? You ought to pay more attention to your schooling. Girl like you …” Momma shuffled away, muttering, off on some new errand before she could finish the thought.

  Rebecca Foster had been out of school for fifteen years.

  There was breathing on the other end of the phone, harsh, quick breathing. Rebecca pulled it away from her ear a little, sure that she could feel that hot breath on her neck, stirring the hair.

  “Hello?” she said sharply. “Is anybody there?”

  There was a click on the other end of the line. She stood there with the receiver held a little away from her ear, listening to the buzz and crackle, and then slowly replaced it on the phone. Adam. Yes, she was sure it had been Adam. He could tell when she was thinking about him, the devil had his ways …

  But that was all right. She was patient, and thorough, and would find his weakness. She was the Eye of God. Rebecca took one of the discarded chicken bones and broke it and broke it until it was in tiny crumbled pieces on the scarred counter.

  A sense of peace descended over her, as well as a memory of multicolored light.

  When she was ten years old, the family lived on a farm way out in the country, miles away from a road and hours away from even a small town. It was hot in the spring and hotter in the summer and unbearable in early autumn, but Rebecca had loved it anyway. She’d particularly loved the bumpy weekly drive to the Community Baptist Church in nearby Brundle, where she’d modeled her momma’s fine sewing and admired the pretty stained glass window behind Preacher Stuart’s head.

  It was a round window, and the wood around it was painted black. There wasn’t any pattern to it, just bright abstract colors—red, blue, green, yellow. But mostly red, a beautiful dark red like-grape juice held up to the light. It reminded her of the peace of God, every time she looked at it. After a while, she realized that it was looking back.

  It was almost enough to make her forget the bad things about the farm, and Daddy.

  She’d learned later that the window wasn’t really stained glass at all, just tissue paper glued in patterns over a plain sheet of glass, but it was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Almost as beautiful as her mother’s set of bone china dishes. But those were locked away and to even breathe on one was a swatting offense. Rebecca never, never wanted to give her daddy a chance to turn her over his knee. Anyway, the stained glass window was there for her to admire every single Sunday.

  She was thinking of the light glowing in that window when she should have been watching what she was doing. Hold the ladder, her daddy had ordered, as he climbed up to tie the rope on the sturdy hook in the center of the bam. It was a hot August day, 100° in the shade and thick with humidity. The smell of the barn was choking—moldy hay and fresh manure; Rebecca thought she could feel the smell crawling down her throat like a river of tickling little ants, and the thought made her cough. And cough again. The ladder shook with the force of it.

  “Hold it still, girl!” her daddy yelled from above, and she nodded and coughed some more. I’m droppin’ the rope now, you hear me?”

  She’d nodded again, still thinking about the sun streaming through the colored window. She dreamed about the window all the time in Daddy’s presence, because she believed that the window was God’s eye and while it was on her nothing bad could happen. Motes of dust danced in the blue light, then the red, then the yellow. She liked the red best. She dreamed the window was made with real rabies, sometimes.

  She looked up just in time to see the dark mass of the rope falling down on her like a whipping, coiling snake. And screamed.

  And jerked backward.

  With the ladder.

  Her scream was so loud that she didn’t hear Daddy’s, and by the time she looked up he’d stopped screaming. He was still jerking, though, just like a worm on a fishing lure.

  The thick iron hook had punctured his belly and ripped up until his ribs stopped it and wedged it firmly in place. A smooth white coil of intestine slipped down around his knees, and slipped lower every time he twitched.

  Like a worm on a hook.

  Rebecca stood there watching him, numb and silent, as the rope turned red and began to chip her father’s life onto the dirt at her feet. Like rubies.

  Like bits of glass from her shattered church window. Like the fiery eyes of a very jealous God.

  Rebecca Foster, ten years old, went to her knees in the blood and dirt and thanked him for freeing her at last from her daddy’s grasping, hurting hands. She wouldn’t hear him outside her room at night anymore, wouldn’t feel his fingers slipping up inside her panties when he lifted her up.

  Wouldn’t have to think about any of that anymore.

  God was looking out for her.

  Rebecca made sure she was at the hospital early, even though she had the day off. She wanted to watch them—Adam Radburn and Michael Bowman. Especially Doctor High-and-Mighty Bowman. She’d seen them together in the morgue that night when Bowman learned the truth; he’d had time to think, to reach the only moral decision, but instead he’d turned to darkness, to the devil. She’d tried to save him, but the damned were so hard to save, so hard.

  Dr. Bowman seemed distracted. Something was wrong with his hand, but that wasn’t the worst of his problems, no indeed. He took such vain care of himself, and she was sure he’d never have let himself look so bruised and worn if he’d had a choice. Rebecca waited while he did his surgeries—whatever else could be said of him, nobody could claim he wasn’t good at his job—and watched him go toward the elevators to his office.