The Face

wither everything from hard-case thugs to flower arrangements, Hazard said, “Are you a Christian hater, Mr. Sheen?”
        Sheen’s creeping smile froze before it fully formed. “What?”
        “Do you,” Ethan asked, “believe in freedom of religion or are you one of those who think the United States Constitution guarantees you freedom from religion?”
        Blinking the smile out of his eyes, licking it off his lips, the paramedic said, “Sure, of course, freedom of religion, who doesn’t believe in it?”
        “If we were to obtain a warrant to search your residence right now,” Hazard said, “would we find a collection of anti-Christian hate literature, Mr. Sheen?”
        “What? Me? I don’t hate anybody. I’m a get-along guy. What’re you talking about?”
        “Would we find bomb-making materials?” Ethan asked.
        As Sheen’s smirk had frozen and cracked apart under Hazard’s cold [383] stare, so now the color drained from his face, leaving him as gray as the unpainted concrete walls of the ambulance garage.
        Backing away from Hazard and Ethan, raising his hands as if to call a time-out, Sheen said, “What is this? Are you serious? This is crazy. What-there’s a two-dollar Christmas ornament missing, so I should get a lawyer?”
        “If you have one,” Hazard said solemnly, “maybe you’d be smart to give him a call.”
        Still not sure what to believe, Sheen backed away another step, two, then pivoted from them and hurried toward the dayroom in which ambulance crews waited to be dispatched.
        “SWAT team, my ass,” Hazard grumbled.
        Ethan smiled. “You da man.”
        “ You da man.”
        Ethan had forgotten how much easier life could be with backup, especially backup with a sense of humor.
        “You should rejoin the force,” Hazard said as they crossed the garage toward the doors to the garden-room corridor. “We could save the world, have some fun.”
        On the stairs to the upper level of the public garage, Ethan said, “Supposing all this craziness stops sooner or later-being gut shot but not, the bells, the voice on the phone, a guy walking into your closet mirror. You think it’s possible just to go back to the usual cop stuff like nothing strange ever happened?”
        “What am I supposed to do-become a monk?”
        “Seems like this ought to… change things.”
        “I’m happy who I am,” Hazard said. “I’m already as cool as cool gets. Don’t you think I’m cool to the chromosomes?”
        “You’re walking ice.”
        “Not to say I don’t have heat.”
        “Not to say,” Ethan agreed.
        “I’ve got plenty of heat.”
        [384] “You’re so cool, you’re hot.”
        “Exactly. So there’s no reason for me to change unless maybe I meet Jesus, and He slaps me upside the head.”
        They weren’t in a graveyard, weren’t whistling, but the tenor of their words, echoing off the crypt-cold walls of the stairwell, brought to Ethan’s mind old movie images of boys masking their fear with bravado as they journeyed through a cemetery at high midnight.

CHAPTER 56
        
        ON A GRINDSTONE OF SELF-DENIAL, WITH THE diligence of a true obsessive, Brittina Dowd had sharpened herself into a long thin blade. When she walked, her clothes seemed certain to be cut to shreds by the scissoring movement of her body.
        Her hips had been honed until they were almost as fragile as bird bones. Her legs resembled those of a flamingo. Her arms had no more substance than wings stripped of their feathers. Brittina seemed to be determined to whittle herself until a brisk breeze could carry her aloft, high into the realm of wren and sparrow.
        She was not a single blade, in fact, but an entire Swiss Army knife with all its cutting edges and pointed tools deployed.
        Corky Laputa might have loved her if she had not also been ugly.
        Although he didn’t love Brittina, he made love to her. The disorder into which she had shaped her skeletal body thrilled him. This was like making love to Death.
        Only twenty-six, she had assiduously prepared herself for early-onset osteoporosis, as though she yearned to be shattered in a fall, reduced to fragments as completely as a crystal vase knocked off a shelf onto a stone floor.
        [386] In their passion, Corky always expected to be punctured by one of her knees or elbows, or to hear Brittina crack apart beneath