Eyes of Prey

knowledge of her home had confirmed his authority.
    “We’ve had some critical pressure fluctuations up and down the street because of a main valve failure. We have a sniffer here”—Bekker hefted the black box, so she could see the meter—“and we’d like to take some readings in your basement, just in case. There could be a problem with sudden flareups. We had a fire over on the next block, you probably heard the fire trucks.”
    “Uh, I’ve been meditating . . . .” But she was already pulling the chain. “I’m in a terrible rush, I’ve got to get to work . . . .”
    “Just take a minute or two,” Bekker assured her. And he was in. He slipped his hand in his pocket, gripped the hammer, waited until he heard the door close firmly.
    “Through the kitchen and down the stairs,” Armistead said. Her voice was high and clear, but there was an impatient edge to it. A busy woman, interrupted.
    “The kitchen?” Bekker glanced around. The drapes hadbeen closed. The smell of prairie flowers was in the air, and spice, and Bekker realized that it must be her herb tea. The power came out now, out of the corner of his head, and his vision went momentarily blue . . . .
    “Here. I’ll show you,” Armistead said impatiently. She turned her back on him, walking toward the rear of the house. “I haven’t smelled a thing.”
    Bekker took a step behind her, began to draw the hammer, and suddenly blood gushed from his nose. He dropped the meter and caught the blood with his hand, and she saw the motion, turned, saw the blood, opened her mouth . . . to scream?
    “No, no,” he said, and her mouth closed, halfway . . . everything so slow. So slow, now. “Ah, this is the second time today . . . . Got hit in the nose by my child, just a five-year-old. Can’t believe it . . . Do you have any tissue?”
    “Yes . . .” Her eyes were wide, horrified, as the stream of blood dripped down his coveralls.
    They were on the rug in the front room, and she started to pivot, going for the tissue. The power slowed her motion even more and demanded that he savor this. There could be no fights, no struggles, no chances. She couldn’t be allowed to scratch him, or bruise him . . . . This was business, but the power knew what it wanted. She was saying, “Here, in the kitchen . . . ,” she was pivoting, and Bekker, one hand clenched to his face, stepped close again, pulled the hammer from his pocket, swung it like a tennis racket, with a good forehand, got his back and shoulder in it.
    The hammer hit with a double shock, hard, then soft, like knocking a hole in a plaster wall, and the impact twisted Armistead. She wasn’t dead; her eyes were open wide, saliva sprayed from her mouth, her hips were twisting, her feet were coming off the floor. She went down, dying, but not knowing it, trying to fight, her hands up, her mouth open, and Bekker was on her, straddling her. One hand on her throat, her bodybucking. Evading the fingernails, hitting with the blunt head of the hammer, her forehead, once, twice . . . and done.
    He was breathing like a steam engine, the power on him, running him, his heart running, the blood streaming down his face. Can’t get any on her  . . . He brushed his bloodied face with the sleeve of his coveralls, looked back down, her eyes half open . . . .
    Her eyes.
    Bekker, suddenly frightened, turned the hammer.
    He’d use the claw . . . .

CHAPTER
9
    The evening dragged; the feeling that he was waiting stayed with him.
    He thought of calling Jennifer, to ask for an extra visit with their daughter. He reached for the phone once, twice, but never made the call. He wanted to see Sarah, but even more, he wanted to settle with Jennifer. Somehow. End it, or start working toward reconciliation. And that, he thought, was not a process begun with a spur-of-the-moment phone call. Not with Jennifer.
    Instead of calling, he sat in front of the television and watched a bad cop movie on Showtime. He switched it off a few minutes before the torturously achieved climax: both the cops and the crooks were cardboard, and he didn’t care what happened to any of them. After the late news, he went back to the workroom and began plodding through the game.
    Bekker stuck in the back of his head. The investigation was dying. He could sense the waning interest in the other cops. They knew the odds against the case: without eyewitnesses or a clear suspect who had both motive and