Besides, the next two days would be a marathon of one major emergency after another, the least of which would be car wrecks, drownings, collapsed houses, and downed power lines. Hauser was aware of these things—as the sheriff he had reserved a large part of his energy for battling whatever the storm was going to throw at him—but they took up a lot less real estate in his psyche than he would have previously believed possible. It was the guy with the knife that really had his attention.

Hauser lit up the overheads and the beach road in front of his car went white. He moved slowly in the rain, both glad and pissed off at himself for sending Scopes out here. The nose of the Bronco swung around a low mass of scrub and a luxury sedan lit up in the glare of the overheads. Scopes stood outside, staring at the vehicle.

Hauser got out of the still-running car and the thump of the wipers was lost in the wind. He pulled his four-cell Maglite from the center console and fired it up. Scopes didn’t turn away from the car or acknowledge Hauser in any way. He stood stock-still with the rain clattering against his police poncho like a swarm of angry termites, his Maglite throwing a tight but now-dim oval of yellow on the bloody sand at his feet. The bulb flickered intermittently, as if the water was shorting it out.

Hauser moved past Scopes, and lit up the car in the beam of his flashlight. It was a Bentley, one of the newer GT Continentals, in a silver or tan—it was hard to discern in the yellow beam of the light. The interior was dark and there was no driver silhouetted behind the wheel. The windows were closed and as Hauser got closer to the vehicle, he saw his own reflection shining back at him, shimmering with the rain cascading over the glass. The beam lit up flashes of the interior. Some sort of rich red. But the windows were splattered with something, like a thin coating of dirt, and the effect reminded Hauser of a terrarium. A micro-ecosystem different from the world in which it sat.

The beam of the Maglite grew brighter when he pushed the lens against the wet glass. That was not dirt on the inside of the windows. It was blood. Black dried blood. Hauser pressed his face to the wet glass, shielded his brow with a gloved hand. He swung the beam over the interior and the terrarium comparison came back to him; a closed-in space where monsters lived.

When he turned back to Scopes, he saw that the man’s expression had gone blank, and it reminded him of the way Jake Cole looked around the dead. Disconnected was the expression that came to mind. Only this wasn’t Jake Cole, this was Danny Scopes, and Scopes was still supposed to give a shit. “You call anyone else?”

Scopes nodded. It was a slow nod that took a lot of effort. “Murphy’s coming with the truck. I already photographed the sand here but the rain’s washed all tracks and everything else away.”

Hauser looked down into the red dirt. “Except the blood.”

Scopes nodded again, this time more slowly. “Except that, yeah.”

“You run the car?”

Scopes’s line of sight swung back to the Bentley, rippling with the rain that bounced off its surface. “Yeah.”

“And?”

“And I think Jake might be bad luck.” He turned away, spit into the wet sand.

Hauser nodded and flicked his Maglite off. He looked down. Scopes’s flashlight had died completely, but still hung loosely in his grip. “Someone he knew?”

Scopes nodded again. “The guy sold his father’s art. Name’s David Finch.”

“We can’t leave this here—it’ll be washed away. Get as many photos of the inside as you can—open the lee side front door—then get Murphy to take it to the garage. Use the one that’s up Jarvis. Make sure he covers it up. When you’re done, come to Cole’s. And bring the photos.”

Scopes nodded solemnly. “Photos. Sure. Great.” He reached into his pocket for the camera. “Who would do something like this, Mike?”

Hauser looked out at the angry ocean pounding the beach, then back to the car still lit up red in the spearing eye of his flashlight. He switched it off and all the red went black. “Just some guy,” he said.

And with that he realized that he was getting used to it.

48

Jake was—

—unconscious—

Then he—

—wasn’t—

There was no fighting back through the turgid layers of in-betweenism associated with sleep and awake. He had been out. Now he was back.

He stood up, naked and sweating, the pistol still knotted into his fingers. There was one single second of gratitude for being awake before the fear came back like ten tons of truck that nearly knocked him out of his skin.

“Moriarty?”

How long had he been out? He glanced at the window and took a mental snapshot of the sky, now dark and flat. Rain washed over the window, and the gray clouds shimmered.

“Moriarty?”

He raced out, down the steps. He flipped lights on. Tore through the living room.

“Moriarty!”

Where is he?

“Moriarty!”

And that ugly old whisper started up.

Skinned, it said.

Jake ran through the house naked, knocking over chairs, lamps, screaming his son’s name.

Where was he?

He stopped at the front door, beside the Nakashima console. Where was his son? What had happened to Jeremy?

Then he remembered Kay handcuffed to the bed upstairs.

He covered the steps three at a time and ran down the hall.

The door was half closed and he slammed it into the pocket where it clattered off its track. He flipped on the light and the crisp white sheets on the bed fired to life.

The handcuffs hung from the headboard, dead still and empty.

49

Jake stood at the foot of the bed with a knot of snakes writhing in his head, the sound of their scales scraping against his skull overpowering the voice of the storm outside. The pistol hung from his hand and he stared at the empty bed, the black stabs of ink that covered most of his body gleaming with the sweat of panic that had replaced the earlier sweat of sex.

Not them.

Anything but them.

Please.

He ran down the steps, jumping almost all of them.

“Kay!” he roared.

Sand and rain clattered against the window and the sheet of plywood. Outside, something was banging against the side of the house. Jake raced down the hallway to the front door.

He ripped it open, slamming it into the wall. The handle punched through the sheetrock and a white cloud of dust puffed out and showered to the floor.

Out on the driveway. “Kay!”

He ran to the road, snapped his eyes up and down the empty highway. Rain came down in waves, shimmering on the asphalt like live insects.

The cruiser was still parked on the shoulder. Jake stepped toward it, saw a figure in the front seat, head back, mouth open. It wasn’t Scopes—it wasn’t anyone Jake recognized. He yanked the door open and pulled the man out into the wind and the rain.

“Where the fuck is my wife? My son?”

The cop looked confused. “I…I…don’t—” His eyes dropped to Jake’s naked body and his expression flattened out like he understood what was going on. “Have you been—?”

“I’m not drunk or stoned, you fucking moron!” He shook the man. “My wife and son are gone.”

The cop tried to wriggle free. “I didn’t see—”

“You were out here sleeping.” Jake pushed him away and stared at him for a few seconds. “Do you know what’s happened?”

The cop stared back for a few seconds. “I’m sure—”