Shadowfires

half an hour-”
    “Five minutes!” Sharp said.
    “Well, sir,” The Stone said quietly,
“you've got to give me time to say hello to my daughter, time to hug her. I haven't
seen her in almost eighteen months. And I need time to get the whole
story from her, to find out what sort of trouble she's in. That's got
to come first, 'fore I start throwin' questions at her.”
    “Half an hour's too damn long,” Sharp said. “We're in pursuit of a
man, a dangerous man, and we-”
    “If I was to call an attorney to advise my daughter, which is her
right as a citizen, it'd take him hours to get here-”
    “Half an hour,” Sharp told The Stone, “and not one damn minute
more. I'll be in the hall.”
    Previously, Peake had discovered that the deputy director was a
sadist and a pedophile, which was an important thing to know. Now he
had made another discovery about Sharp: The son of a bitch was, at
heart, a coward; he might shoot you in the back or sneak up on you
and slit your throat, yes, those things seemed within his character,
but in a face-to-face confrontation, he would chicken out if the
stakes got high enough. And that was an even more important
thing to know.
    Peake stood for a moment, unable to move, as Sharp went to the
door. He could not take his eyes off The Stone.
    “Peake!” Sharp said as he pulled the door open.
    Finally Peake followed, but he kept glancing back at Felsen Kiel,
The Stone. Now there, by God, was a legend.

----
20 COPS ON
SICK LEAVE
    Detective Reese Hagerstrom went to bed at
four o'clock Tuesday morning, after returning from Mrs. Leben's house
in Placentia, and he woke at ten-thirty, unrested because the night
had been full of terrible dreams. Glassy-eyed dead bodies in trash
dumpsters. Dead women nailed to walls. Many of the nightmares had
involved Janet, the wife Reese had lost. In the dreams, she was
always clutching the door of the blue Chevy van, the infamous van,
and crying, “They've got Esther, they've got Esther!” In every dream,
one of the guys in the van shot her exactly as he had shot her in
real life, point-blank, and the large-caliber slug pulverized her
lovely face, blew it away…
    Reese got out of bed and took a very hot shower. He wished that he
could unhinge the top of his head and sluice out the hideous images
that lingered from the nightmares.
    Agnes, his sister, had taped a note on the refrigerator in the
kitchen. She had taken Esther to the dentist for a scheduled
checkup.
    Standing by the sink, looking out the window at the big coral tree
in the rear yard, Reese drank hot black coffee and ate a slightly
stale doughnut. If Agnes could see the breakfast he made for himself,
she would be upset. But his dreams had left him queasy, and he had no
appetite for anything heavier. Even the doughnut was hard to
swallow.
    “Black coffee and greasy doughnuts,” Agnes would say if she knew.
“One'll give you ulcers, other'll clog your arteries with
cholesterol. Two slow methods of suicide. You want to commit suicide,
I can tell you a hundred quicker and less painful ways to go about
it.”
    He thanked God for Agnes, in spite of her tendency, as his big
sister, to nag him about everything from his eating habits to his
taste in neckties. Without her, he might not have held himself
together after Janet's death.
    Agnes was unfortunately big-boned, stocky, plain-looking, with a
deformed left hand, destined for spinsterhood, but she had a kind
heart and a mothering instinct second to none. After Janet died,
Agnes arrived with a suitcase and her favorite cookbook, announcing
that she would take care of Reese and little Esther “just for the
summer,” until they were able to cope on their own. As a fifth-grade
teacher in Anaheim, she had the summer off and could devote long
hours to the patient rebuilding of the shattered Hagerstrom
household. She had been with them five years now, and without her,
they'd be lost.
    Reese even liked her good-natured nagging. When she encouraged him
to eat well-balanced meals, he felt cared for and loved.
    As he poured another cup of black coffee, he decided to bring
Agnes a dozen roses and a box of chocolates when he came home today.
He was not, by nature, given to frequent expressions of his feelings,
so he tried to compensate now and then by surprising those he cared
for with gifts. The smallest surprises thrilled Agnes, even coming
from a brother. Big-boned, stocky, plain-faced women were not used to
getting