Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [87]
Now his lethargy was gone. He was exhilarated.
The snare had been laid, the quarry was in sight, and the best part of it all was that the plan was not even his. He had Detective Shepherd to thank for it.
Shepherd—perfect name, a palatable irony. He was a poor shepherd indeed, to lead the choicest member of his flock straight into the wolf’s ravenous embrace.
Cray had met with Shepherd this evening, at the hospital. The conference had lasted thirty minutes. Shepherd had told Cray what was expected of him, the performance he was to deliver. What was particularly important, Shepherd had said, was that Cray must not leave the house until after dark.
It was dark now. Night, Cray’s friend, had visited him again.
He found it amusing that both he and the police needed the darkness. And poor Kaylie—she needed it as well, didn’t she? She needed the shadows, the concealment of the night.
Nocturnal animals, all of them. By day they hid in their burrows—Kaylie in her cheap motel, Cray in his office, the police in squad rooms and courthouses. They did safe, meaningless things. But at night they came alive.
At night the heart quickened. Danger, a night-blooming flower, opened its petals and released its subtle, enticing perfume. Risks were taken. Hunters stalked.
“ ‘Come, seeling night,’ ” Cray quoted in a whisper, “ ‘scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day....’ ”
Macbeth. A reference, as Cray recalled, to the Elizabethan sport of falconry; the bird’s eyelids were sewn shut—scarfed up—while it was in training. By metaphorical extension, day was the time for seeing and being seen, and night,, blinding night, was when the unseen ruled.
Shakespeare must have loved the night. All poets did, and all killers too.
At the end of their meeting. Shepherd had given Cray a portable radio preset to a frequency used by the Graham County Sheriff’s Department. The radio was now clipped to Cray’s slacks, its dark shape nearly invisible against his clothes.
He glanced at it. The power LED was lit, but the radio was silent.
He hoped it would not be silent for long.
With his medical bag in hand, he crossed the kitchen swiftly, his black shoes clacking on Saltillo tile, and reached the door to the garage. Before opening it, he tossed a curt glance out a side window, into the small arbor that bordered his property.
What he saw pleased him, but he deferred a smile.
His Lexus waited for him in the garage. What he’d done to the vehicle had been painful—grooving deep scratches into the finish, slashing the upholstery and tires. Still, the task had been necessary, and most of the damage was superficial.
He surveyed the car in the light of the bare ceiling bulb. It was still a mess, of course, but at least it was drivable once again. After Shepherd’s phone call, Cray had sent for a mechanic, who had replaced all four tires, hammered out some minor damage to one of the wheel rims, and checked under the chassis and the hood.
The front seats remained a travesty, the leather hacked and torn, and the front window on the driver’s side was gone, leaving the vehicle’s interior open to the elements, but Cray didn’t mind.
Comfort was not a prime consideration. Tonight’s drive would be short. He expected to travel no farther than a mile or two.
Even so, he took a moment to find a relatively unscratched CD in the pile of discs on the floor of the passenger compartment. Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. It would do.
He started the engine, then slid the disc into the player and let the rich strains of the opera’s overture fill up his world.
With the remote control, he opened the garage door. As it rose, he settled back in the tattered seat and prepared himself.
There was risk, naturally. Kaylie might be sufficiently frustrated—maddened, even—to try something desperate.
In their meeting Shepherd had raised this possibility. Of course, Shepherd believed Kaylie McMillan to be psychotic. He thought she had wrecked her motel room in a fit of rage,