The Eyes of Darkness

opposite, in fact. In a flash of understanding she saw through to the heart of the mystery. Her hands, which had been curled into tight fists, came open once more. The tension went out of her neck and shoulder muscles. Her heartbeat became less like the pounding of a jackhammer, but it still did not settle into a normal rhythm; now it was affected by excitement rather than terror. If she tried to scream now, she would be able to do so, but she no longer wanted to scream.
    As the white-haired cashier grasped the plug in his arthritis-gnarled hands and wiggled it back and forth in the wall socket, trying to free it, Tina almost told him to stop. She wanted to see what would happen next if no one interfered with the presence that had taken control of the jukebox. But before she could think of a way to phrase her odd request, the old man succeeded in unplugging the machine.
    Following the monotonous, earsplitting repetition of that two-word message, the silence was stunning.
    After a second of surprised relief, everyone in the diner applauded the old fellow.
    Jenny, the waitress, called to him from behind the counter. "Hey, Al, I didn't touch the thermostat. It says the heat's on and set at seventy. You better take a look at it."
    "You must have done something to it," Al said. "It's getting warm in here again."
    "I didn't touch it," Jenny insisted.
    Al didn't believe her, but Tina did.
    Elliot turned away from the jukebox and looked at Tina with concern. "Are you all right?"
    "Yes. God, yes! Better than I've been in a long time."
    He frowned, baffled by her smile.
    "I know what it is. Elliot, I know exactly what it is! Come on," she said excitedly. "Let's go."
    He was confused by the change in her demeanor, but she didn't want to explain things to him here in the diner. She opened the door and went outside.
     
     
     
     

22
     
    the windstorm was still in progress, but it was not raging as fiercely as it had been when Elliot and Tina had watched it through the restaurant window. A brisk wind pushed across the city from the east. Laden with dust and with the powdery white sand that had been swept in from the desert, the air abraded their faces and had an unpleasant taste.
    They put their heads down and scurried past the front of the diner, around the side, through the purple light under the single mercury-vapor lamp, and into the deep shadows behind the building.
    In the Mercedes, in the darkness, with the doors locked, she said, "No wonder we haven't been able to figure it out!"
    "Why on earth are you so—"
    "We've been looking at this all wrong—"
    "—so bubbly when—"
    "—approaching it ass-backwards. No wonder we haven't been able to find a solution."
    "What are you talking about? Did you see what I saw in there? Did you hear the jukebox? I don't see how that could have cheered you up. It made my blood run cold. It was weird."
    "Listen," she said excitedly, "we thought someone was sending me messages about Danny being alive just to rub my face in the fact that he was actually dead—or to let me know, in a roundabout fashion, that the way he died wasn't anything like what I'd been told. But those messages haven't been coming from a sadist. And they haven't been coming from someone who wants to expose the true story of the Sierra accident. They aren't being sent by a total stranger or by Michael. They are exactly what they appear to be!"
    Confused, he said, "And to your way of thinking, what do they appear to be?"
    "They're cries for help."
    "What?"
    "They're coming from Danny!"
    Elliot stared at her with consternation and with pity, his dark eyes reflecting a distant light. "What're you saying— that Danny reached out to you from the grave to cause that excitement in the restaurant? Tina, you really don't think his ghost was haunting a jukebox?"
    "No, no, no. I'm saying Danny isn't dead."
    "Wait a minute. Wait a minute."
    "My Danny is alive! I'm sure of it."
    "We've already been through this argument, and we rejected it," he reminded her.
    "We were wrong. Jaborski, Lincoln, and all the other boys might have died in the Sierras, but Danny didn't. I know it. I sense it. It's like . . . a revelation . . . almost like a vision. Maybe there was an accident, but it wasn't like anything we were told. It was something very different, something exceedingly strange."
    "That's already obvious. But—"
    "The government had to hide it, and so this organization that Kennebeck works for was given responsibility for the