Seize the Night

I was drawn to that place instead of the one next door.”
    “Psychic hoodoo?”
    “Like the songs that sea nymphs sing to lure unwary sailors to destruction.”
    “These aren't sea nymphs. These are bugs in cocoons.”
    “We don't know they're bugs,” I said.
    “I'm way sure they aren't puppy dogs.”
    “I think maybe we got out of that bungalow just in time.” After a silence, he said, “It's crap like this that takes all the fun out of the end of the world.”
    “Yeah, I'm starting to feel like a piece of chum in a school of hammerheads.”
    The tape was duped. I took the copy to the composition table and, picking up a felt-tip pen, said, “What's a good neo-Buffett song title?”
    “Neo-Buffett?”
    “It's what Sasha's writing these days. Jimmy Buffett. Tropical bounce, parrot head worldview, fun in the sun—but with a darker edge, a concession to reality.”
    “‘Tequila Kidneys,’” he suggested.
    “Good enough.”
    I printed that title on the label and inserted the cassette into an empty slot in the rack where Sasha stored her compositions. There were scores of cassettes that looked just like it.
    “Bro,” Bobby said, “if it ever comes to that, you would blow my head off, wouldn't you?”
    “Anytime.”
    “Wait for me to ask.”
    “Sure. And you me?”
    “Ask, and you're dead.”
    “The only fluttering I feel is in my stomach,” I said.
    “I figure that's normal right now.”
    I heard a hard snap and a series of clicks, followed by the same sounds again—then the unmistakable creak of the back door opening.
    Bobby blinked at me. “Sasha?” I went into the candle lit kitchen, saw Manuel Ramirez in his uniform, and knew the sounds I'd heard had been from a police lock-release gun.
    He was standing at the kitchen table, staring down at my 9-millimeter Glock, to which he had gone directly, in spite of the dim light.
    I had put the pistol on the table when Bobby's news about Wendy Dulcinea's kidnapping had left me shaky.
    “That door was locked,” I said to Manuel, as Bobby entered the kitchen behind me.
    “Yeah,” Manuel said. He indicated the Glock. “You buy this legally?”
    “My dad did.”
    “Your dad taught poetry.”
    “It's a dangerous profession.”
    “Where'd he buy this?” Manuel asked, picking up the pistol.
    “Thor's Gun Shop.”
    “You have a receipt?”
    “I'll get it.”
    “Never mind.”
    The door between the kitchen and the downstairs hall swung inward.
    Frank Feeney, one of Manuel's deputies, hesitated on the threshold.
    For an instant, in his eyes, I thought I saw a veil of yellow light billow like curtains at a pair of windows, but it was gone before I could be sure that it had been real. “Found a shotgun and a .38 in Halloway's Jeep,” Feeney said.
    “You boys belong to a right-wing militia or something?” Manuel asked.
    “We're going to sign up for a poetry class,” Bobby said. “You have a search warrant?”
    “Tear a paper towel off that roll,” the chief said. “I'll write one out for you.”
    Behind Feeney, at the far end of the hall, in the foyer, backlit by the stained-glass windows, was a second deputy. I couldn't see him well enough to know who he was.
    “How'd you get in here?” I asked.
    Manuel stared at me long enough to remind me that he was not a friend of mine anymore.
    “What's going on?” I demanded.
    “A massive violation of your civil rights,” Manuel said, and his smile had all the warmth of a stiletto wound in the belly of a corpse.

19
    Frank Feeney had a serpent's face, one without fangs but with no need of fangs because he exuded poison from every pore. His eyes had the fixed, cold focus of a snake's eyes, and his mouth was a slit from which a forked tongue could have flicked without causing a start of surprise even in a stranger who'd just met him. Before the mess at Wyvern, Feeney had been the rotten apple on the police force, and he was still sufficiently toxic to cast a thousand Snow Whites into comas with a glance.
    “You want us to search the place for more weapons, Chief ?” he asked Manuel.
    “Yeah. But don't trash it too much. Mr. Snow, here, lost his father a month ago. He's an orphan now. Let's show him some pity.”
    Smiling as if he had just spied a tender mouse or a bird's egg that would satisfy his reptilian hunger, Feeney turned and swaggered down the hallway toward the other deputy.
    “We'll be confiscating all firearms,” Manuel told me.
    “These are legal weapons. They weren't used