Shadowfires

expressions or conceal his disgust.
    “I can't talk about it,” Sarah Kiel told Sharp, watching him warily and shrinking back from him as far as she could. “Mrs. Leben told me not to tell anyone anything.”
    Still holding her good hand in his left, he raised his right hand,
with which he had been stroking her arm, and he gently rubbed his
thick knuckles over her smooth, unblemished left cheek. It almost
seemed like a gesture of sympathy or affection, but it was not.
    He said, “Mrs. Leben is a wanted criminal, Sarah.
There's a warrant for her arrest. I had it issued myself. She's
wanted for serious violations of the Defense Security Act. She may
have stolen defense secrets, may even intend to pass them to the
Soviets. Surely you've no desire to protect someone like that. Hmmmmm?”
    “She was nice to me,” Sarah said shakily.
    Peake saw that the girl was trying to ease away from the hand that
stroked her face but was plainly afraid of giving offense to Sharp.
Evidently she was not yet certain that he was threatening her. She'd get the idea soon.
    She continued: “Mrs.
Leben's paying my hospital bills, gave me some money, called my folks. She… she was s-so nice, and she told me not to talk about this, so I won't
break my promise to her.”
    “How interesting,” Sharp said, putting his hand under her chin and
lifting her head to make her look at him with her one good eye.
“Interesting that even a little whore like you has some
principles.”
    Shocked, she said, “I'm no whore. I never-”
    “Oh, yes,” Sharp said, gripping her chin now and preventing her
from turning her head away. “Maybe
you're too thickheaded to see the truth about yourself, or too drugged up, but that's
what you are, a little whore, a slut in training, a piglet who's going to grow up to be a fine sweet pig.”
    “You can't talk to me like this.”
    “Honey, I talk to whores any way I want.”
    “You're a cop, some kind of cop, you're a public servant,” she said, “you can't treat me-”
    “Shut up, honey,” Sharp said. The light from the only lamp fell
across his face at an angle, weirdly exaggerating some features while
leaving others entirely in shadow, giving his face a deformed look, a
demonic aspect. He grinned, and the effect was even more unnerving.
“You shut your dirty little mouth and open it only when you're ready to tell me what I want to know.”
    The girl gave out a thin, pathetic cry of pain, and tears burst
from her eyes. Peake saw that Sharp was squeezing her left hand very
hard and grinding the fingers together in his big mitt.
    For a while, the girl talked to avoid the torture. She told them
about Leben's visit last night, about the way his head was staved in, about how gray and cool his skin had felt.
    But when Sharp wanted to know if she had any idea where Eric Leben
had gone after leaving the house, she clammed up again, and he said,
“Ah, you do have an idea,” and he began to grind her hand again.
    Peake felt sick, and he wanted to do something to help the girl,
but there was nothing he could do.
    Sharp eased up on her hand, and she said, “Please, that was the
thing… the thing Mrs. Leben most wanted me not to tell anyone.”
    “Now, honey,” Sharp said,
“it's stupid for a little whore like you to pretend to have scruples. I don't
believe you have any, and you know you don't have any, so cut the act. Save us some time and save yourself a lot of trouble.” He started to grind her hand again, and his other hand slipped down to her throat and then to her breasts, which he touched through the thin material of her hospital gown.
    In the shadowed corner, Peake was almost too shocked to breathe,
and he wanted to be out of there. He certainly did not want to
watch Sarah Kiel be abused and humiliated; however, he could not look
away or close his eyes, because Sharp's unexpected behavior was the most morbidly, horrifyingly fascinating thing Peake had ever seen.
    He was nowhere near coming to terms with his previous shattering
insight, and already he was experiencing yet another major
revelation.
He'd always thought of policemen-which included DSA agents-as Good Guys with capital Gs, White Hats, Men on White Horses, valiant Knights of the Law, but that image of purity was suddenly unsustainable if a man like Sharp could be a highly regarded member in good standing of that noble fraternity. Oh, sure, Peake knew there were some bad cops, bad agents, but somehow he had always thought the bad ones were