Because Dorothy’s enemy was cancer, Kipp had not been able to do anything for her.
Woody’s enemy was not cancer.
A remarkable quiet had settled on the residence.
Kipp listened and heard naught, and that was good.
At last the wind had ceased to torment the structure.
The house did not groan with either all that it contained or the weight of history.
The air was rich with scents, and so many of them were of the greatest importance.
He took no pride in being the dog chosen by destiny to bond with the boy who might change the world.
Instead, he was honored, humbled. And determined not to fail.
He heard the vehicle turn in to the driveway.
The engine died.
Doors opened.
Kipp smelled one, two, three, four Haters.
His hackles bristled.
Four subtly different varieties of evil.
He got to his feet, holding his tail low and still.
The doorbell rang.
As the chimes echoed through the house, a peal of thunder followed, a rending crash as if the crust of the earth must have cracked to its molten core.
118
John Verbotski rang the doorbell. On the porch behind him were Knacker, Speer, and Rodchenko, the last two with briefcases of a style that FBI agents might carry, in which were all the necessary drugs and instruments of interrogation.
Verbotski startled when lightning flashed as if the sun had gone nova and burned off the overcast in an instant. A fierce crack of thunder reverberated in his teeth and bones.
As a hard rain abruptly rattled on the porch roof with the icy racket of hail, the door opened, and a man loomed on the threshold with a boy at his side.
The guy must have been the unknown individual who had arrived in a Range Rover. He was tall and fit, and he had about him an air that Verbotski didn’t like. Competence? Steadfastness? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
His intuition told him to shoot this fucker now. But Verbotski had earned a university degree—or received one—in psychology. His favorite German masters of that field had written that intuition was merely a myth, that the concept had its origins in the Volkskunde of superstitious peasants who believed in such nonsense as natural law.
An enlightened man must be guided by cold reason based on clear-eyed observations and hard facts. When he gave credence to intuition, he was doomed as all such myth-besotted fools were doomed. He held his fire.
The boy at the man’s side must have been the mental misfit, the son of Megan Bookman. He was small for his age. His blue eyes seemed to swim in their sockets, as if he couldn’t quite focus on anything, and his smile was like that on a strange doll or marionette, eerie because it seemed perpetual and unrelated to any emotion.
“May I help you gentlemen?” the man said.
Verbotski had his fake Bureau ID ready, and he presented it with a smile that he was sure looked more genuine than that of the basket-case boy. “Special Agent Lewis Erskine.” Indicating his companions, who displayed more phony ID, Verbotski said, “Special Agents Jim Rhodes, Tom Colby, and Chris Daniels. We’re here to see Mrs. Bookman regarding the unfortunate encounter she had with Lee Shacket, who’s now on the Bureau’s most-wanted list.”
All that didn’t sound quite right to Verbotski as he said it, and he wished he’d taken more time to practice his lines. But the boy maintained his idiot smile, and the man appeared relieved. “I’m Ben Hawkins, a friend of Mrs. Bookman’s. Considering that Shacket’s killed people in at least two states, we’ve been wondering why the hell someone at the federal level wasn’t on this. Come in, come in, Agent Erskine, gentlemen. We’re all in the living room.”
Leaving them to shut the door behind themselves, Hawkins turned his back, not in the least suspicious, and started across the foyer. When he realized that the eternally smiling boy was still in the doorway, staring through Verbotski and crew, Hawkins halted and said, “Come along now, Woody. Let’s get a cookie, son.” When the boy still didn’t move out of the way, Hawkins returned and took him by the hand. “Sorry,” he said to Verbotski. “Woody is a very good boy, he usually listens, but he’s . . . you know, special.” With that, he gently led the kid toward the living room archway.
Being Lewis Erskine, Verbotski went into the house, and his crew followed, and Speer closed the door.
The torrents of rain came down so hard that they filled even this