Shadowfires

Arrowhead?”
    “No,” Rachael said.
    “It's not on the lake, really. Farther up there on the mountain. He took me up to it once. He owns a couple of acres of woods and this neat cabin-”
    Someone tapped on the window.
    Rachael and Sarah cried out in surprise.
    It was only Benny. He pulled open
Rachael's door and said, “Come on. I've got us a new set of wheels.
It's a gray Subaru-one hell of a lot less conspicuous than this buggy.”
    Rachael hesitated, catching her breath, waiting for her drumming
heartbeat to slow down. She felt as if she and Sarah were kids who'd been sitting at a camp fire, telling ghost stories, trying to spook each other and succeeding all too well. For an instant, crazily, she had been certain that the tapping at the window was the hard, bony click-click-click of a skeletal finger.

----
12 SHARP
    From the moment Julio met Anson Sharp, he
disliked the man. Minute by minute, his dislike intensified.
    Sharp came into Rachael
Leben's house in Placentia in more of a swagger than a walk, flashing his Defense Security Agency credentials as if ordinary policemen were expected to fall to their knees and venerate a federal agent of such high position. He looked at Becky Klienstad crucified on the wall, shook his head, and said, “Too bad. She was a nice-looking piece, wasn't
she?” With an authoritarian briskness that seemed calculated to
offend, he told them that the murders of the Hernandez and Klienstad
women were now part of an extremely sensitive federal case, removed
from the jurisdiction of local police agencies, for reasons that he
could not-or would not-divulge. He asked questions and demanded
answers, but he would give no answers of his own. He was a big man,
even bigger than Reese, with chest and shoulders and arms that looked
as if they had been hewn from immense timbers, and his neck was
almost as thick as his head. Unlike Reese, he enjoyed using his size
to intimidate others and had a habit of standing too close,
intentionally violating your space, looming over you when he
talked to you, looking down with a vague, barely perceptible, yet
nevertheless infuriating smirk. He had a handsome face and seemed
vain about his looks, and he had thick blond hair expensively razor-
cut, and his jewel-bright green eyes said, I'm better than you, smarter than you, more clever than you, and I always will be.
    Sharp told Orin Mulveck and the other Placentia police officers
that they were to vacate the premises and immediately desist in their
investigation. “All of the evidence
you've collected, photographs you've taken, and paperwork you've generated will be turned over to my own team at once. You will leave one patrol car and two officers at the curb and assign them to assist us in any way we see fit.”
    Clearly, Orin Mulveck was no happier with Sharp than Julio and
Reese were. Mulveck and his people had been reduced to the role of
the federal agent's glorified messenger boys, and none of them liked it, though they would have been considerably less offended if Sharp had handled them with more tact-hell, with any tact at all.
    “I'll have to check your orders with my chief,” Mulveck said.
    “By all means,” Sharp said. “Meanwhile, please get all your people
out of this house. And you are all under orders not to speak of
anything you've seen here. Is that understood?”
    “I'll check with my chief,” Mulveck said. His face was red and the arteries were pounding in his temples when he stalked out.
    Two men in dark suits had come with Sharp, neither as large as he,
neither as imposing, but both of them cool and smug. They stood just
inside the bedroom, one on each side of the door, like temple guards,
watching Julio and Reese with unconcealed suspicion.
    Julio had never encountered Defense Security Agency men before.
They were far different from the FBI agents that he had sometimes
worked with, less like policemen than FBI men were. They wore elitism
as if it were a pungent cologne.
    To Julio and Reese, Sharp said, “I know who you are, and I know a
little bit about your reputations-two hound dogs. You bite into a
case and you just never let go. Usually
that's admirable. This time, however, you've got to unclench your
teeth and let go. I can't make it clear enough. Understand me?”
    “It's basically our case,” Julio said tightly. “It started in our jurisdiction, and we caught the first call.”
    Sharp frowned. “I'm telling you it's over and
you're out. As far as your