The Face

through the sedan.
        “If you die,” Dunny said, “I can’t bring you back. I’m not your guardian.”
        As solid as flesh one instant, liquid the next, Dunny collapsed without a splash into the puddle in which he stood, as though he had been an apparition formed of water, shimmering to the wet pavement in vertical rillets, vanishing in an instant, even more fluidly than he had slipped away into a mirror.

        The waterproof storm suit featured a foldaway hood, anatomically shaped knees, and more pockets than a kleptomaniac’s custom-tailored overcoat, all with zippers. Two layers of socks, black ski boots, and leather-and-nylon gloves-almost as flexible as surgical gloves but less likely to arouse suspicion-completed the ensemble.
        Pleased by his reflection in a full-length mirror, Corky went down [471] the hall to the back guest room, to learn if Stinky Cheese Man was dead and to give him a scare if he wasn’t.
        He took with him the 9-mm pistol and a fresh sound suppressor.
        At the door to the dark room, the stench of the incapacitated captive could be detected even in the hallway. Past the threshold, what had been a mere stink became a miasma that even Corky, an ardent suitor of chaos, found less than charming.
        He switched on the lamp and went to the bed.
        As stubborn as he was stinky, the cheese man still held on to life, although he believed his wife and daughter had been tortured, raped, and murdered.
        “What kind of selfish bastard are you?” Corky asked, his voice thick with contempt.
        Weak, having for so long received all liquid by intravenous drip, kept perilously close to mortal dehydration, Maxwell Dalton could not have replied except in a fragile voice so full of rasp and squeak as to be comical. He answered, therefore, only with his hate-filled stare.
        Corky pressed the muzzle of the weapon against Dalton’s cracked lips.
        Instead of turning his head away, the lover of Dickens and Twain and Dickinson boldly opened his mouth and bit the barrel, though this act had the flair of Hemingway. His eyes were fiery with defiance.

        Behind the wheel of the sedan, parked across the street from the Laputa house, trying to get a grip on himself, Hazard thought of his Granny Rose, his dad’s mother, who believed in mojo though she didn’t practice it, believed in poltergeists though none had ever dared to trash her well-kept home, believed in ghosts though she’d never seen one, who could recite the details of a thousand famous hauntings that had involved spirits benign, malign, and Elvis. Now eighty years old, Granny Rose-Hoodoo Rose, as Hazard’s mom called her [472] with affection-was respected and much loved, but she remained a figure of amusement in the family because of her conviction that the world was not merely what science and the five senses said it was.
        In spite of what he had just seen in the street, Hazard couldn’t get his mind entirely around the idea that Granny Rose might have a better grasp of reality than anyone he knew.
        He had never been a man who harbored much doubt about what to do next, either in daily life or in a moment of high peril, but sitting in the car, in the rain, in the dark, shivering, he needed time just to realize that he should turn on the engine, the heater. Whether or not he should ring the bell at the Laputa house, however, seemed to be the most difficult decision of his life.
         If you die, I can’t bring you back, Dunny had said, with the emphasis on you.
        A cop couldn’t back off just because he feared dying. Might as well turn in the badge, get a job in phone sales, learn a craft to fill up the empty hours.
         I’m not your guardian, Dunny had said, with the emphasis on your, which was a warning, of course, but which also had implications that made Hazard dizzy.
        He wanted to pay a visit to Granny Rose and lie with his head on her lap, let her soothe his brow with cool compresses. Maybe she had homemade lemondrop cookies. She could brew hot chocolate for him.
        Across the street, through the screen of rain, the Laputa house didn’t look the same as it had when he’d first seen it. Then it had been a handsome Victorian on a large lot, warm and welcoming, the kind of home that protected families in which all the kids became doctors and lawyers and astronauts, and everyone loved one another forever. Now he looked at it and