Odd Thomas

the back of the church and had turned a corner.
        "The door at the bottom of the steps," I said, "did it lock behind us automatically when we came into the tower?"
        "I don't know. I don't think so."
        I didn't like the idea of being trapped at the top of the tower, even though we could shout for help and surely be heard. The belfry door had no lock, and I doubted that the two of us could hold it shut against him if, in a rage, he was determined to open it.
        Grabbing her by the hand, pulling to impress on her the need for urgency, I hurried along the catwalk, stepping over the cheese and crackers, around the bells. "Let's get out of here."
        "The hamper, our dinner-"
        "Leave it. We'll get it later, tomorrow."
        We had left the lights on in the tower. But the spiral stairs were enclosed, and I couldn't see all the way to the bottom, only as far as the continuously curving walls allowed.
        Below, all was quiet.
        "Hurry," I urged Stormy, and without using the handrail, I preceded her down those steep steps, setting a pace too fast to be safe.
        

CHAPTER 19
        
        DOWN, DOWN, AROUND AND DOWN, I LED AND she followed, striking too much noise from the Mexican-tile steps, unable to hear Robertson if he was climbing to meet us.
        At the halfway point I wondered if this haste might be an over-reaction. Then I remembered his upraised fist, the extended finger, the glowering photos in his study.
        I plunged even faster, around and around, unable to block from my mind the image of him waiting below with a butcher knife on which I might impale myself before I could stop.
        When we reached the bottom without encountering him, we found the lower door unlocked. I opened it cautiously.
        Contrary to my expectations, he wasn't waiting for us in the softly lighted narthex.
        Descending the tower stairs, I had let go of Stormy's hand. Now I seized it again to keep her close to me.
        When I opened the centermost of three front doors, I saw Robertson climbing the church steps from the sidewalk. Although not racing toward me, he approached with the grim implacability of a tank crossing a battlefield.
        In the apocalyptic crimson light, I could see that his creepy but previously reliable smile had deserted him. His pale-gray eyes borrowed a bloody cast from the sunset, and his face wrenched into a knot of murderous wrath.
        Terri's Mustang waited at the curb. I wouldn't be able to reach it without going through Robertson.
        I will fight when I have to, against opponents who dwarf me if I must. But I turn to physical conflict neither as a first resort nor as a matter of misguided principle.
        I'm not vain, but I like my face just the way it is. I prefer that it not be stomped.
        Robertson was bigger than me, but soft. Had his anger been that of an ordinary man, perhaps pumped up by one beer too many, I might have confronted him and would have been confident of taking him down.
        He was a lunatic, however, an object of fascination to bodachs, and an idolizer of mass murderers and serial killers. I had to assume that he carried a gun, a knife, and that in the middle of a fight, he might begin to bite like a dog.
        Perhaps Stormy would have tried to kick his ass - such a response is not alien to her - but I didn't give her that option. Turning from the entrance, I held fast to her hand and encouraged her through one of the doors between the narthex and the nave.
        In the deserted church, low pathlights marked the center aisle. The enormous crucifix behind the altar glowed in a soft spotlight directed on it from above. Flames flickered in ruby-colored glasses on the votive-candle racks.
        Those points of light and the fading red sunset behind the stained-glass windows in the western wall failed to press back the congregation of shadows that filled the pews and the side aisles.
        We hurried down the center aisle, expecting Robertson to slam with charging-bull fury through one of the doors from the narthex. Having heard nothing by the time we reached the communion railing, we paused and looked back.
        As far as I could tell, Robertson had not arrived. If he had entered the nave, surely he would have come directly after us, along the center aisle.
        Although logic argued against my hunch and no evidence supported it, I suspected that he was