P Deutermann - Nightwalkers

I heard another rocker being dragged over to a position right behind me, and then the sounds of someone sitting down. He was close enough that I could have kicked myself over backward and probably landed right in his lap. The Dobermans read my mind and inched closer, peering intently into my face. They were both wearing red collars with what looked like ball bearings embedded in the fabric. I could see tiny clips where a muzzle could be attached to the collars. I heard the sounds of a cigarette being lit up.

"You don't know me," he said finally, exhaling his first drag. "I'm not James Marlor, by the way."

Now I knew why he'd broken into our offices. The thirty-aught round had been a distraction. He'd been there to place an audio bug or three, and he'd obviously listened to our entire conversation.

"Okay," I said, "and you're not Billie Ray Breen."

"That's right," he said. "Now, I want you to turn your head to the left as far as you can. Not your shoulders or your torso-just your head. Slowly, please."

He had something of a southern accent, but it sounded educated, not the sometimes nasal twang of the Piedmont. I complied, mindful of the sudden tension in the dogs' bodies as I moved. I kept my arms down on the chair's arms, my hands gripping the old wood harder than was probably necessary. I turned my head as far around as I could, and then he leaned forward in his chair so I could see his face.

I almost jumped. There was no face.

Instead there was an oval sheet of what looked like thin white rubber, stretching right up over his head. He looked like what happens when the Mafia ties a guy up and then puts a dry-cleaning bag loosely over his head, tapes it tight around his neck, and lets him slowly suffocate. The facial features were vague protuberances, but where I expected eyeholes there weren't any. The material simply thinned down to the consistency of semitransparent cling wrap. I could just barely see pupils behind the fabric. The material made his eyes look like they were equipped with nictitating membranes, like the eyelids on an alligator. The eyes were strangely immobile, looking past me with perfect parallax. I couldn't see how he'd be able to breathe or talk through that second skin, but then he moved his face out of my line of sight and told me to turn back around. The mask reminded me of one of those Roman marble death masks.

"How do you breathe with that thing on?" I asked.

"It's even harder to talk," he said. "Now, sit still. I'm going to put something over your head and around your neck. It won't hurt you." Then he spoke a sharp command in what sounded like Japanese, of all things, and both dogs stood up and leaned in my direction.

"Close your eyes," he said. I did.

What felt like a steel noose dropped down over my head and face and settled on my collarbones. I didn't care what he said-it felt like a garrote, but with those two Dobes hoping and praying that I'd so much as twitch, I remained still. I heard a latch click, and then I felt the full weight of the device. It apparently had a chain attached, because he tugged on it and pulled my head backward a few inches. It was a collar, not a wire. I was leashed.

"Here's the deal," he said.

"Finally," I said, still trying to keep my cool.

"You are responsible for the death of my wife. Responsible but, so far, never accountable. I'm going to rectify that problem."

My mind was racing, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, and then searching my memory for any case in which I'd done something fatal to a woman. With the exception of one woman up in the mountains, I came up blank, and this guy didn't sound mountain to me.

"Don't remember?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Sure you got the right guy?"

"Very," he said.

I shook my head slowly. It was hard to do with that collar on, and the Dobes were not pleased when I moved. One growled, and the other flashed its teeth, probably on signal from my captor. "Was this a cops and robbers deal?" I said.

"It'll come to you. As will I. What happened to her is going to happen to you, in a manner of speaking."

"I'm still confused," I said. "If I wanted revenge for something like that, some guy kills my wife, and assuming I couldn't hand the case over to the cops, I'd go find him and just do it."

"Would you?" he asked, tugging on the chain again just a little. "Just 'do it'? Or would you play it out a little, make your target suffer, experience some of the terror that she did? Make him go to bed at night wondering, when was it coming, how was it coming?"

I didn't answer. It was weird enough to be having this conversation in broad daylight, with a masked man holding me by the neck with a chain and two killer Dobes poised to share an eyeball appetizer. When I thought about it, though-well, yes, I just might drag something like that out.

"That's what I thought," he said as if he'd read my mind this time. "Either way, I don't care. I'm coming for you. We can have this little contest out here in the country, or downtown, or in Summerfield, or wherever. If you involve other people, they will share your risk. Make sure they know that."

"When did all this happen?" I asked. "I mean, I'm drawing a real blank here."

He ignored my question. "What do you think of my associates?" he asked.

"They do look competent."

"You have no idea. That's what's taken me so long to come for you. I needed something to balance out your shepherds."

My shepherds might be in big trouble if they had to go up against these two, I thought. "So what's the timeline? When do we start?"

"Sometime soon," he said.

"In other words…"

"In other words, you'll know it when you see it coming. If you see it coming. Remember, if you run, you'll just be putting off the inevitable."

He stood up behind me and dropped his end of the chain on the floor. There was a lot more chain than I'd realized.

"Stay right there," he said. "We're leaving. Me first, then my friends there. If you reach for that gun, they'll take a hand, so to speak."

"You walking or driving?" I asked, still trying for a little cool.

He laughed. "I'm going to vanish into thin air, smart-ass. The next time you see me, that's where I'll be coming from. Where we'll be coming from."

I heard him walk back toward the front door of the house, open it, go inside, and close it behind him. The Dobes did not move a muscle, and neither did I. He'd obviously given them another hand signal, which meant he knew what he was doing as a dog handler. Not good.

We sat that way for about two minutes, with me thinking furiously about what had just happened, and the Dobes still thinking about lunch. Then their cropped ears quivered and they both turned and ran down off the front porch and around the side of the house, probably in response to a dog whistle. I sat there, collecting my wits for a moment. I fingered the collar. It felt like hammered iron, a heavy metal but not smooth like steel. There was a latch at the back where the chain joined, and it was set tight enough so that I could not rotate it around my neck. I gathered up the chain and found out it was six feet long.

I wanted to get my gun and go into the house, but he'd probably just gone straight through and out into the back area, called for his dogs, and walked away. He had assumed I wouldn't try to chase him, certainly not with a dog collar on. He had assumed correctly.

So the game had begun. There was no point in my trying to run, unless I wanted to go overseas and disappear in some big city, like Rome. He'd already demonstrated enough in the way of sophisticated surveillance for me to know that running would simply delay the inevitable, just as he'd said.

I looked around the plantation, taking in the dormant crop fields, the budding woods, a few zillion bugs, birds, and squirrels starting up the new year out on the front lawns. What the hell, I thought. This place was as good as any. Now all I had to do was prepare myself. There was still a chance he had the wrong man, but as I got up and started back to the cottage, chain in hand, I had this bad feeling that he didn't.