Watchers

name.
    She pushed open the stall door and saw Daddy rushing toward her in a pair of blue pajama bottoms, barefoot, with the shotgun cradled in his arm. Mom was there too, in a short yellow nightie, hurrying behind Daddy with a flashlight.
    Up near the top of the sloped yard stood Goodheart, the sire of future champions, his panic gone, unhurt.
    Tears of relief sprang from Tracy at the sight of the unharmed stallion, and she stumbled out of the stall, wanting to go have a closer look at him. With her second or third step, a fiercely hot pain flamed along her entire right side, and she was suddenly dizzy. She staggered, fell, put one hand to her side, felt something wet, and realized that she was bleeding. She remembered the claws sinking into her just before Goodheart had burst from his stall, frightening off the assailant, and as if from a great distance she heard herself saying, “Good horse . . . what a good horse . .
    Daddy dropped to his knees beside her. “Baby, what the hell happened, what’s wrong?”
    Her mother arrived, too.
    Daddy saw the blood. “Call an ambulance!”
    Her mother, not given to hesitation or hysterics in time of trouble, turned immediately and ran back toward the house.
    Tracy was getting dizzier. Creeping in at the edges of her vision was a darkness that was not part of the night. She wasn’t afraid of it. It seemed like a welcoming, healing darkness.
    “Baby,” her father said, putting a hand on her wounds.
    Weakly, realizing she was slightly delirious and wondering what she was going to say, she said, “Remember when I was very little . . . just a little girl . . . and I thought some horrible thing. . . lived in my closet. . . at night?”
    He frowned worriedly. “Honey, maybe you’d better be still, be quiet and still.”
    As she lost consciousness, Tracy heard herself say, with a seriousness that both amused and frightened her, “Well . . . I think maybe it was the boogeyman who used to live in the closet at the other house. I think maybe . . . he was real . . . and he’s come back.”
     
     
9
    At four-twenty Wednesday morning, only hours after the attack at the Keeshan house, Lemuel Johnson reached Tracy Keeshan’s hospital room at St. Joseph’s in Santa Ana. Quick as he was, however, Lem found Sheriff Walt Gaines had arrived ahead of him. Walt stood in the corridor, towering over a young doctor in surgical greens and a white lab coat; they seemed to be arguing quietly.
    The NSA’s Banodyne crisis team was monitoring all police agencies in the county, including the police department in the city of Orange, in whose jurisdiction the Keeshan house fell. The team’s night-shift leader had called Lem at home with news of this case, which fit the profile of expected Banodyne-related incidents.
    “You relinquished jurisdiction,” Lem pointedly reminded Walt when he joined the sheriff and doctor at the girl’s closed door.
    “Maybe this isn’t part of the same case.” “You know it is.”
    “Well, that determination hasn’t been made.”
    “It was made—back at the Keeshan’s house when I talked with your men.” “Okay, so let’s say I’m just here as an observer.”
    “My ass,” Lem said.
    “What about your ass?” Walt asked, smiling.
    “It’s got a pain in it, and the name of the pain is Walter.”
    “How interesting,” Walt said. “You name your pains. Do you give names to toothaches and headaches as well?”
    “I’ve got a headache right now, and its name is Walter, too.”
    “That’s too confusing, my friend. Better call the headache Bert or Harry or something.”
    Lem almost laughed—he loved this guy—but he knew that, in spite of their friendship, Walt would use the laughter as a lever to pry himself back into the case. So Lem remained stone-faced, though Walt obviously knew that Lem wanted to laugh. The game was ridiculous, but it had to be played.
    The doctor, Roger Selbok, resembled a young Rod Steiger. He frowned when they raised their voices, and he possessed some of the powerful presence of Steiger, too, because his frown was enough to chasten and quiet them.
    Selbok said the girl had been put through tests, had been treated for her wounds, and had been given a painkiller. She was tired. He was just about to administer a sedative to guarantee her a restful sleep, and he did not think it was a good idea for policemen of any stripe to be asking her questions just now.
    The whispering, the early-morning hush of the hospital, the