Hideaway

versions of Darth Vader, for God's sake. Read his description of Satan and then go look at whichever film Jabba the Hut was a part of. Old Jabba the Hut is a ringer for Satan, if you believe this lunatic.” One more glass of chenin blanc, one more glass. “Marion and Stephanie died—” A sip. Too long a sip. Half the glass gone. “—died so Jeremy could get into Hell and have great, dark, antiheroic adventures in a fucking Darth Vader costume.”
    He had offended or unsettled her, probably both. That had not been his intention, and he regretted it. He wasn't sure what his intention had been. Maybe just to unburden himself. He had never done so before, and he didn't know why he'd chosen to do so tonight—except that Morton Redlow's disappearance had scared him more than anything since the day he had found the bodies of his wife and daughter.
    Instead of pouring more wine for herself, Kari rose from her armchair. “I think we should get something to eat.”
    “Not hungry,” he said, and heard the slur of the inebriate in his voice. “Well, maybe we should have something.”
    “We could go out somewhere,” she said, taking the wine glass from his hand and putting it on the nearest end table. Her face was quite lovely in the ambient light that came through the view windows, the golden radiance from the web of cities below. “Or call for pizza.”
    “How about steaks? I've got some filets in the freezer.”
    “That'll take too long.”
    “Sure won't. Just thaw 'em out in the microwave, throw 'em on the grill. There's a big Gaggenau grill in the kitchen.”
    “Well, if that's what you'd like.”
    He met her eyes. Her gaze was as clear, penetrating, and forthright as ever, but Jonas saw a greater tenderness in her eyes than before. He supposed it was the same concern she had for her young patients, part of what made her a first-rate pediatrician. Maybe that tenderness had always been there for him, too, and he had just not seen it until now. Or perhaps this was the first time she realized how desperately he needed nurturing.
    “Thank you, Kari.”
    “For what?”
    “For being you,” he said. He put his arm around her shoulders as he walked her to the kitchen.
     
    ----
     
    Mixed with the visions of gargantuan machines and dark seas and colossal figures, Hatch received an array of images of other types. Choiring angels. The Holy Mother in prayer. Christ with the Apostles at the Last Supper, Christ in Gethsemane, Christ in agony upon the cross, Christ ascending.
    He recognized them as paintings Jonas Nyebern might have collected at one time or another. They were different periods and styles from those he had seen in the physician's office, but in the same spirit. A connection was made, a braiding of wires in his subconscious, but he didn't understand what it meant yet.
    And more visions: the Ortega Highway. Glimpses of the night-scapes unrolling on both sides of an eastward-bound car. Instruments on a dashboard. Oncoming headlights that sometimes made him squint. And suddenly Regina. Regina in the backsplash of yellow light from that same instrument panel. Eyes closed. Head tipped forward. Something wadded in her mouth and held in place by a scarf.
    She opens her eyes.
    Looking into Regina's terrified eyes, Hatch broke from the visions like an underwater swimmer breaking for air. “She's alive!”
    He looked at Lindsey, who shifted her gaze from the highway to him. “But you never said she wasn't.”
    Until then he did not realize how little faith he'd had in the girl's continued existence.
    Before he could take heart from the sight of her gray eyes gleaming in the yellow dashboard light of the killer's car, Hatch was hit by new clairvoyant visions that pummeled him as hard as a series of blows from real fists:
    Contorted figures loomed out of murky shadows. Human forms in bizarre positions. He saw a woman as withered and dry as tumbleweed, another in a repugnant state of putrefaction, a mummified face of indeterminate sex, a bloated green-black hand raised in horrid supplication. The collection. His collection. He saw Regina's face again, eyes open, revealed in the dashboard lights. So many ways to disfigure, to mutilate, to mock God's work. Regina. Poor baby. Don't be afraid. Okay? Don't be afraid. We're only going to an amusement park. You know, like Disneyland, like Magic Mountain? How nicely will she fit in my collection. Corpses as performance art, held in place by wires, rebar, blocks of wood.