That is, he had been happy except for those occasions, usually one week a month, when he'd been partnered with Stu Wargle. Wargle was insufferable. Frank tolerated the man only as a test of his own self-discipline.

Wargle was a slob. His hair often needed washing. He always missed a patch of bristles when he shaved. His uniform was wrinkled, and his boots were never shined. He was too big in the gut, too big in the hips, too big in the butt.

Wargle was a bore. He had absolutely no sense of humor. He read nothing, knew nothing-yet he had strong opinions about every current social and political issue.

Wargle was a creep. He was forty-five years old, and he still picked His nose in public. He belched and farted with aplomb.

Still slumped against the passenger-side door, Wargle said, “I'm supposed to go off duty at ten o'clock. Ten goddamned o'clock! It's not fair for Hammond to pull me for this Snowfield crap. And me with a hot number all lined up.”

Frank didn't take the bait. He didn't ask who Wargle had a date with. He just drove the car and kept his eyes on the road and hoped that Wargle wouldn't tell him who this “hot number” was.

“She's a waitress over at Spanky's Diner,” Wargle said. “Maybe you seen her. Blond broad. Name's Beatrice; they call her Bea.”

“I seldom stop at Spanky's,” Frank said.

“Oh. Well, she don't have a half-bad face, see. One hell of a set of knockers. She's got a few extra pounds on her, not much, but she thinks she looks worse than she does. Insecurity, see? So if you play her right, if you kind of work on her doubts about herself, see, and then if you say you want her, anyway, in spite of the fact that she's let herself get a little pudgy why, hell, she'll do any damned thing you want. Anything.”

The slob laughed as if he had said something unbearably funny.

Frank wanted to punch him in the face. Didn't.

Wargle was a woman-hater. He spoke of women as if they were members of another, lesser species. The idea of a man happily sharing his life and innermost thoughts with a woman, the idea that a woman could be loved, cherished, admired, respected, valued for her wisdom and insight and humor-that was an utterly alien concept to Stu Wargle.

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had been married to his lovely Ruth for twenty-six years. He adored her. Although he knew it was a selfish thought, he sometimes prayed that he would be the first to die, so that he wouldn't have to handle life without Ruth.

“That fuckin' Hammond wants my ass nailed to a wall. He's always needling me.”

“About what?”

“Everything. He don't like the way I keep my uniform. He don't like the way I write up my reports. He told me I should try to improve my attitude. Christ, my attitude! He wants my ass, but he won't get it. I'll hang in five more years, see, so I can get my thirty-year pension. That bastard won't squeeze me out of my pension.”

Almost two years ago, voters in the city of Santa Mira approved a ballot initiative that dissolved the metropolitan police, putting law enforcement for the city into the hands of the county sheriff's department. It was a vote of confidence in Bryce Hammond, who had built the county department, but one provision of the initiative required that no city officers lose their jobs or pensions because of the transfer of power. Thus, Bryce Hammond was stuck with Stewart Wargle.

They reached the Snowfield turnoff.

Frank glanced in the mirror and saw the third patrol car pull out of the three-car train. As planned, it swung across the entrance to Snowfield road, setting up a blockade.

Sheriff Hammond's car continued on toward Snowfield, and Frank followed it.

“Why the hell did we have to bring water?” Wargle asked.

Three five-gallon bottles of water stood on the floor in the back of the car. Frank said, “The water in Snowfield might be contaminated.”

“And all that food we loaded into the trunk?”

“We can't trust the food up there, either.”

“I don't believe they're all dead.”

“The sheriff couldn't raise Paul Henderson at the substation.”

“So what? Henderson's a jerk-off.”

“The doctor up there said Henderson's dead, along with-”

“Christ, the doctor's off her nut or drunk. Who the hell would go to a woman doctor, anyway? She probably screwed her way through medical school.”

“What?”

“No broad has what it takes to earn a degree like that!”

“Wargle, you never cease to amaze me.”

“What's eating you?” Wargle asked.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Wargle belched. “Well, I don't believe they're all dead.”

Another problem with Stu Wargle was that he didn't have any imagination. “What a lot of crap. And me lined up with a hot number.”

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had a very good imagination. Perhaps too good. As he drove higher into the mountains, as he passed a sign that read SNOWFIELD 3 MILES, his imagination was humming like a well-lubricated machine. He had the disturbing feeling-Premonition? Hunch?-that they were driving straight into Hell.

The firehouse siren screamed.

The church bell tolled faster, faster.

A deafening cacophony clattered through the town.

“Jenny!” Lisa shouted.

“Keep your eyes open! Look for movement!”

The street was a patchwork of ten thousand shadows; there were too many dark places to watch.

The siren wailed, and the bell rang, and now the lights began to flash again-hid,)use lights, shop lights, streetlights on and off, on and off so rapidly that they created a strobelike effect. Skyline Road flickered; the buildings seemed to jump toward the street, then fall back, then jump forward; the shadows danced jerkily.

Jenny turned in a complete circle, the revolver thrust out in front of her.

If something was approaching under cover of the stroboscopic light show, she couldn't see it.

She thought: What if, when the sheriff arrives, he finds two severed heads in the middle of the street? Mine and Lisa's.

The church bell was louder than ever, and it banged away continuously, madly.

The siren swelled into a teeth-jarring, bone-piercing screech. It seemed a miracle that windows didn't shatter.

Lisa had her hands over her ears.

Jenny's gun hand was shaking. She couldn't keep it steady.

Then, as abruptly as the pandemonium had begun, it ceased. The siren died. The church bell stopped. The lights stayed on.

Jenny scanned the street, waiting for something more to happen, something worse.

But nothing happened.

Again, the town was as tranquil as a graveyard.

A wind sprang out of nowhere and caused the trees to sway, as if responding to ethereal music beyond the range of human hearing.

Lisa shook herself out of a daze and said, “It was almost as if… as if they were trying to scare us… teasing us.”

“Teasing,” Jenny said, “Yes, that's exactly what it was like.”

“Playing with us.”

“Like a cat with mice,” Jenny said softly.

They stood in the middle of the silent street, afraid to go back to the bench in front of the town jail, lest their movement should start the siren and the bell again.

Suddenly, they heard a low grumbling. For an instant, Jenny's stomach tightened. She raised the gun once more, although she could see nothing at which to shoot. Then she recognized the sound: automobile engines laboring up the steep mountain road.

She turned and looked down the street. The gamble of engines grew louder. A car appeared around the curve, at the bottom of town.

Flashing red roof lights. A police car. Two police cars.

“My God,” Lisa said.

Jenny quickly led her sister to the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the substation.

The two white and green patrol cars came slowly up the deserted street and angled to the curb in front of the wooden bench. The two engines were cut off simultaneously. Snowfield's deathlike hush took possession of the night once more.

A rather handsome black man in a deputy's uniform got out of the first car, letting his door stand open. He looked at Jenny and Lisa but didn't immediately speak. His attention was captured by the preternaturally silent, unpeopled street.

A second man got out of the front seat of the same vehicle. He had unruly, sandy hair. His eyelids were so heavy that he looked as if he were about to fall asleep. He was dressed in civilian clothing-gray slacks, a pale blue shirt, a dark blue nylon jacket-but there was a badge pinned to the jacket.

Four other men got out of the cruisers. All six newcomers stood there for a long moment without speaking, eyes moving over the quiet stores and houses.

In that strange, suspended bubble of time, Jenny had an icy premonition that she didn't want to believe. She was certain she knew-that not all of them would leave this place alive.

Chapter 11 – Exploring

Bryce knelt on one knee beside the body of Paul Henderson.

The other seven-his own men, Dr. Paige, and Lisa – crowded into the reception area, outside the wooden railing, in the Snowfield substation. They were quiet in the presence of Death.

Paul Henderson had been a good man with decent instincts. His death was a terrible waste. Bryce said, “Dr. Paige?”

She crouched down at the other side of the corpse. “Yes?”

“You didn't move the body?”

“I didn't even touch it, Sheriff.”

“There was no blood?”

“Just as you see it now. No blood.”

“The wound might be in his back,” Bryce said.

“Even if it was, there'd still be some blood on the floor.”

“Maybe.” He stared into her striking eyes-green flecked with gold. “Ordinarily, I wouldn't disturb a body until the coroner had seen it. But this is an extraordinary situation. I'll have to turn this man over.”

“I don't know if it's safe to touch him.”

“Someone has to do it,” Bryce said.

Dr. Paige stood up, and everyone moved back a couple of steps. Bryce put a hand to Henderson's purple-black, distorted face. “The skin is still slightly warm,” he said in surprise.

Dr. Paige said, “I don't think they've been dead very long.”

“But a body doesn't discolor and bloat in just a couple of hours,” Tal Whitman said.

“These bodies did,” the doctor said.

Bryce rolled the corpse over, exposing the back. No wound.

Hoping to find an unnatural depression in the skull, Bryce thrust his fingers into the dead man's thick hair, testing the bone. If the deputy had been struck hard on the back of the head… But that wasn't the case, either. The skull was intact.

Bryce got to his feet. “Doctor, these two decapitations you mentioned… I guess we'd better have a look at those.”

“Do you think one of your men could stay here with my sister?”

“I understand your feelings,” Bryce said, “But I don't really think it would be wise for me to split up my men. Maybe there isn't any safety in numbers; then on the other hand, maybe there is.”

“It's okay,” Lisa assured Jenny, “I don't want to be left behind, anyway.”

She was a spunky kid. Both she and her older sister intrigued Bryce Hammond. They were pale, and their eyes were alive with dervish shadows of shock and honor-but they were coping a great deal better than most people would have in this bizarre, waking nightmare.

The Paiges led the entire group out of the substation and down the street to the bakery.

Bryce found it difficult to believe that Snowfield had been a normal, bustling village only a short while ago. The town felt as dry and burnt-out and dead as an ancient lost city in a far desert, off in a corner of the world where even the wind often forgot to go. The hush that cloaked the town seemed a silence of countless years, of decades, of centuries, a silence of unimaginably long epochs piled on epochs.

Shortly after arriving in Snowfield, Bryce had used an electric bullhorn to call for a response from the silent houses. Now it seemed foolish ever to have expected an answer.

They entered Liebermann's Bakery through the front door and went into the kitchen at the rear of the building.

On the butcher's-block table, two severed hands gripped the handles of a rolling pin.

Two severed heads peered through two oven doors.

“Oh, my God,” Tal said quietly.

Bryce shuddered.

Clearly in need of support, Jake Johnson leaned against a tall white cabinet.

Wargle said, “Christ, they were butchered like a couple of goddamned cows,” and then everyone was talking at once.

“-why the hell anyone would-”

“- sick, twisted-”

“-so where are the bodies?”

“Yes,” Bryce said, raising his voice to override the babble, “where are the bodies? Let's find them.”

For a couple of seconds, no one moved, frozen by the thought of what they might find.

“Dr. Paige, Lisa-there's no need for you to help us,” Bryce said, “Just stand aside.”

The doctor nodded. The girl smiled in gratitude.

With trepidation, they searched all the cupboards, opened all the drawers and doors. Gordy Brogan looked inside the big oven that wasn't equipped with a porthole, and Frank Autry went into the walk-in refrigerator. Bryce inspected the small, spotless lavatory off one end of the kitchen. But they couldn't find the bodies-or any other pieces of the bodies-of the two elderly people.

“Why would the killers cart away the bodies?” Frank asked.

“Maybe we're dealing with some sort of cultists,” Jake Johnson said. “Maybe they wanted the bodies for some weird ritual.”

“If there was any ritual,” Frank said, “it looks to me like it was conducted right here.”

Gordy Brogan bolted for the lavatory, stumbling and weaving, a big gangling kid who seemed to be composed solely of long legs and long arms and elbows and knees. Retching sounds came through the door that he had slammed behind himself.

Stu Wargle laughed and said, “Jesus, what a ninny.”

Bryce turned on him and scowled. “What in God's name do you find so funny, Wargle? People are dead here. Seems to me that Gordy's reaction is a lot more natural than any of ours.”

Wargle's pig-eyed, heavy-jowled face clouded with anger. He didn't have the wit to be embarrassed.

God, I despise that man, Bryce thought.

When Gordy came back from the bathroom, he looked sheepish. “Sorry, Sheriff.”

“No reason to be, Gordy.”