Niceville

his weapon up, his sights fixed on the head of the black figure sixty feet away. There is no way one can describe what was going on in his head right then as a normal police reaction.
    Beau, at a loss but game, covered him, following carefully as Nick moved down the ornate wood-paneled hall towards the black figure, Beau close behind, his pistol down and to the right, Beau checking each side room as they passed it by.
    About two-thirds of the way down the hall, the image of a tall thick-bodied Muslim woman in a full black burka abruptly resolved itself into a partially open glass door, and, reflected in the glass, a black pillar carved in hieroglyphics, in a niche by the kitchen entrance.
    Nick halted in mid-stride, causing Beau to almost step on his heels, and there he stood, locked in place, his left leg vibrating wildly. Heswallowed, with difficulty, lowered his gun, turned away and put his back up against the wall, breathing in short sharp gasps, both legs now trembling violently, his skin gray and wet.
    “Nick, what’s the matter. Nick. You okay?”
    Nick held up his hand, palm out, working to get himself under control, making a vague gesture for Beau to go on ahead and check out the kitchen.
    Beau stood there for a long moment, wondering if Nick was having a heart attack, and then he moved off down the hall and walked out into the bright open area of an all-white kitchen.
    Nick stayed in the relative gloom of the hallway, staring into nothing as he tried to get his head out of Al Kuribayeh and the Wadi Doan, seeing again the spiky stone village at the bottom of a jagged valley surrounded by sandstone walls a thousand feet high.
    He heard the wind in the creosote shrubs and the thudding chatter of automatic weapons echoing around the valley. He closed his eyes and put his head back against the wall.
    The floorboards creaked near him and he opened his eyes to find Beau there, looking at him with a worried expression.
    “Nick, what’d you see? What was there?”
    Nick wasn’t going to try to explain the Wadi Doan to Beau, or to anyone else.
    “I’m sorry I freaked you. I thought I saw … a woman … at the end of the hall. I thought she might have a gun in her hand. What did
you
see?”
    Beau shook his head, blinking at Nick.
    “Man … I don’t know. I saw this black pillar thing here, looked sorta ripply in the glass. But nothing like a woman.”
    With an effort, Nick got himself back inside his own skin, pushed himself off the wall.
    “Forget about it. Mavis has a great imagination. Remind me to tell her so later. Let’s just go through the house, slow and careful, okay?”
    Beau, relieved to see Nick back to normal, nodded, gave him a happy gundog look.
    “Okay. Where you want to start?”
    “There’s a security camera out front. See if you can find a hard drive for it. Maybe there’s an image on it we can use.”
    “Okay,” said Beau, moving back up the hall towards the door. Nick shook himself one last time, took in a long, uneven breath, let it out slow, and walked towards the bandbox room.
    Pausing in the door, he saw a large octagonal room, pale yellow walls with white crown molding, lined with tall graceful windows, a large stained-glass lamp in the ceiling. The wooden floors gleamed with polish and the windows shimmered with a rain-washed light streaming in through the antique glass.
    A pair of stuffed chairs were set down in front of a large fifties-era stereo and a General Electric television set in a huge blond-wood cabinet. A side table next to one of the chairs held a black remote and a heavy crystal glass that was half full of an amber liquid.
    Nick bent down, sniffed the glass—scotch, flat and warm, been there all night. A comforter lay on the floor in front of the chair, as if it had slipped off Delia’s lap when she got up.
    Assuming it was Delia in the chair.
    He used a pen tip to touch the remote for the stereo and the room was suddenly booming with the sound of a mournful cello, the volume set at a deafening level. The grocery lady, Alice Bayer, had said that she shut it off when she got into the house. Nick shut it off again, used the pen to flick the television set on.
    The screen bloomed slowly into light and he was looking at the front porch, a color image, obviously taken from the POV of the security camera. He could see Beau kneeling down in the lower left corner of the picture, probably tracing a cable.
    Okay.
    She’s sitting here, having a scotch,