Prodigal Son

to the kitchen. There it halted before the pantry door.
        She waited for it to do something, and then she decided that it was in need of her assistance. She opened the pantry door, switched on the light.
        As the determined hand crawled toward the back wall of the pantry, Erika realized that it must wish to lead her into Victor's studio. She knew of the studio's existence but had never been there.
        His secret work space lay beyond the back wall of the pantry. Most likely, a hidden switch would cause the food-laden shelves to swing inward like a door.
        Before she could begin to search for the switch, the shelves in fact slid aside. The hand on the floor had not activated them; some other entity was at work.
        She followed the hand into the hidden room and saw on the center worktable a Lucite tank filled with a milky solution, housing a man's severed head. Not a fully realized head, but something like a crude model of one, the features only half formed.
        Bloodshot blue eyes opened in this travesty of a human face.
        The thing spoke to Erika in a low, rough voice exactly like that of the entity who, through the TV, had urged her to kill Victor: "Look at what I am… and tell me if you can that he's not evil."

CHAPTER 71
        
        WHEN SHE PARKED in front of Harker's apartment house, Carson got out of the car, hurried to the back, and grabbed the pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun from the trunk.
        Michael joined her as she loaded. "Hey. Wait. I don't pretend to be a SWAT team."
        "If we try to take Harker into custody like he's an ordinary wack job, we'll be two dead cops."
        A guy in a white van across the street had noticed them. Michael didn't want to make a scene, but he said, "Gimme the shotgun."
        "I can take the kick," she assured him.
        "We're not going in that way."
        She slammed the trunk and moved toward the sidewalk.
        Michael moved with her, trying reason where gimme didn't work. "Call for backup."
        "How're you gonna explain to Dispatch why you need backup. You gonna tell them we've cornered a man-made monster?"
        As they reached the front door of the building, he said, "This is crazy."
        "Did I say it wasn't?"
        The front door opened into a shabby-genteel lobby with sixteen brass mailboxes.
        Carson read the names on the boxes. "Harker's on the fourth floor. Top of the building."
        Not convinced of the wisdom of this but caught up in Carson's momentum, Michael went with her to a door beyond which lay stairs that led up through a shaft too long in need of fresh paint.
        She started to climb, he followed, and she warned: "Deucalion says, in a crisis, wounded, they're probably able to turn off pain."
        "Do we need silver bullets?"
        "Is that some kind of sarcasm?" Carson asked, mimicking Dwight Frye.
        "I've got to admit it is."
        The stairs were narrow. The odors of mildew and disinfectant curdled together in the stifling air. Michael told himself he wasn't getting dizzy.
        "They can be killed," Carson said. “Allwine was."
        "Yeah. But he wanted to die."
        "Remember, Jack Rogers said the cranium has incredible molecular density."
        "Does that mean something in real words?" he asked.
        "His brain is armored against all but the highest caliber."
        Gasping not from exertion but from a need for cleaner air than what the fumy stairwell offered, Michael said, "Monsters among us, masquerading as real people-it's the oldest paranoia."
        "The word impossible contains the word possible."
        "What's that-some Zen thing?"
        "I think Star Trek. Mr. Spock."
        At the landing between the third and fourth floors, Carson paused and pumped the shotgun, chambering a shell.
        Drawing his service piece from the paddle holster on his right hip, Michael said, "So what are we walking into?"
        "Scary crap. What's new about that?"
        They climbed the last flight to the fourth floor, went through a fire door, and found a short hallway serving four apartments.
        The wood floor had been painted a glossy battleship gray. A few feet from Harker's door lay keys on a coiled plastic ring.
        Michael squatted, snared the keys. Also on the ring was a small plastic magnetic-reader membership card in a supermarket discount club. It had been issued to Jenna