Darkfall

and I assume he meant this evening as well.”
    Gresham sat on the edge of his desk. “If you want, I can remove you from the case. No sweat.”
    “Absolutely not,” Jack said.
    “You take his threat seriously?”
    “Yes. But I also take my work seriously. I’m on this one to the bitter end.”
    Gresham lit another cigarette, drew deeply on it. “Jack, do you actually think there could be anything to this voodoo stuff?”
    Aware of Rebecca’s penetrating stare, Jack said, “It’s pretty wild to think maybe there could be something to it. But I just can’t rule it out.”
    “I can,” Rebecca said. “Lavelle might believe in it, but that doesn’t make it real.”
    “What about the condition of the bodies?” Jack asked.
    “Obviously,” she said, “Lavelle’s using trained animals.”
    “That’s almost as far-fetched as voodoo,” Gresham said.
    “Anyway,” Jack said, “we went through all of that earlier today. About the only small, vicious, trainable animal we could think of was the ferret. And we’ve all seen Pathology’s report, the one that came in at four-thirty. The teeth impressions don’t belong to ferrets. According to Pathology, they don’t belong to any other animal Noah took aboard the ark, either.”
    Rebecca said, “Lavelle’s from the Caribbean. Isn’t it likely that he’s using an animal indigenous to that part of the world, something our forensic experts wouldn’t even think of, some species of exotic lizard or something like that?”
    “Now you’re grasping at straws,” Jack said.
    “I agree,” Gresham said. “But it’s worth checking out, anyway. Okay. Anything else?”
    “Yeah,” Jack said. “Can you explain how I knew that call from Lavelle was for me? Why was I drawn to that pay phone?”
    Wind stroked the windows.
    Behind Gresham’s desk, the ticking of the wall clock suddenly seemed much louder than it had been.
    The captain shrugged. “I guess neither of us has an answer for you, Jack.”
    “Don’t feel bad. I don’t have an answer for me, either.”
    Gresham got up from his desk. “All right, if that’s it, then I think the two of you ought to knock off, go home, get some rest. You’ve put in a long day already; the task force is functioning now, and it can get along without you until tomorrow. Jack, if you’ll hang around just a couple of minutes, I’ll show you a list of the available officers on every shift, and you can handpick the men you want to watch your kids.”
    Rebecca was already at the door, pulling it open. Jack called to her. She glanced back.
    He said, “Wait for me downstairs, okay?”
    Her expression was noncommittal. She walked out.
    From the window, where he had gone to look down at the street, Walt Gresham said, “It’s like the arctic out there.”
    II
    The one thing Penny liked about the Jamisons’ place was the kitchen, which was big by New York City apartment standards, almost twice as large as the kitchen Penny was accustomed to, and cozy. A green tile floor. White cabinets with leaded glass doors and brass hardware. Green ceramic-tile counters. Above the double sink, there was a beautiful out-thrusting greenhouse window with a four-foot-long, two-foot-wide planting bed in which a variety of herbs were grown all year long, even during the winter. (Aunt Faye liked to cook with fresh herbs whenever possible.) In one corner, jammed against the wall, was a small butcher’s block table, not so much a place to eat as a place to plan menus and prepare shopping lists; flanking the table, there was space for two chairs. This was the only room in the Jamisons’ apartment in which Penny felt comfortable.
    At twenty minutes past six, she was sitting at the butcher’s block table, pretending to read one of Faye’s magazines; the words blurred together in front of her unfocused eyes. Actually, she was thinking about all sorts of things she didn’t want to think about: goblins, death, and whether she’d ever be able to sleep again.
    Uncle Keith had come home from work almost an hour ago. He was a partner in a successful stockbrokerage. Tall, lean, with a head as hairless as an egg, sporting a graying mustache and goatee, Uncle Keith always seemed distracted. You had the feeling he never gave you more than two-thirds of his attention when he was talking with you. Sometimes he would sit in his favorite chair for an hour or two, his hands folded in his lap, unmoving, staring at the wall, hardly even blinking, breaking his