A Killer in the Wind by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page B

walls, the room, my mind.
    “Let’s face it, we live among troglodytes most of the time,” Emory went on. “People are so incredibly backward, so incredibly insensitive to differences in points of view. I mean, God, this is the postmodern world already! There are cultures on the globe where we’d be perfectly accepted, cultures where we’d be priests and kings. What are they going to say now? ‘Only our way is right?’ By what argument? ‘Oh, I feel it. You’re evil. I feel it in my bones.’ It’s absurd. Socrates himself was . . . What’s the matter?”
    I had been staring past him at the fog gathered at the windows. It seemed to roil and push against the glass like a living animal, seeking access. Then all a once . . . a shadow on the fog . . . a small dark figure moving through it, toward me . . . reaching out for me plaintively with his desperate little hands . . .
    The ghost boy. Alexander.
    Emory looked over his shoulder to see what I was gaping at. But the dead boy sank back into the fog, and the fog sank away into the darkness.
    I glanced at my watch. Almost ten minutes had gone by since he’d pressed that flashlight button. Another five or so and the tacs would invade and we might well be left empty-handed. Emory would slip the net.
    I plunked my drink down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I really am tense. I’d feel a lot better if we could . . . you know, convene and have a drink afterward maybe.”
    Emory sat and gazed at me a long moment, a bland, meditative gaze. With his legs crossed at the knee, he swung his foot back and forth as he considered. In my feverish brain I thought I could practically hear him calculating whether or not to trust me. For a moment, in a waking dream, a waking nightmare, I saw him reach under his blue blazer and draw out a .38, ready to shoot me dead. I caught my breath—but the moment passed, the hallucination passed. He was just sitting there, just gazing at me.
    Then he smiled. He leaned forward in his chair. Set his drink down next to mine.
    “Afterward, you won’t want to, you know. That’s the problem. You’ll scuttle away—you’ll see. But . . .” He slapped his knees resolutely and stood. “I understand your . . . anticipation.” He gestured toward the archway. “Shall we?”
    I followed him back out into the foyer, then up the stairs. It was a hard climb for me. My body felt distant, as if I were running it by remote control from somewhere far away within myself. When we reached the landing, there were several halls going in different directions. So it seemed to me anyway. The place seemed to me a maze, a mad maze that was a living reflection of the mad maze in the haze of my mind. Down we went now along a corridor of doors and dark wood paneling. Around a corner . . . down another corridor. Lights like candles flickered in sconces on the wall. The mist curled around the lamps. Their light faded and the shadows threatened to swarm and overcome me. The tendrils of mist threatened to wrap themselves around me like skeletal fingers.
    I didn’t want to look at my watch, but all the while I felt the time tick-tick-ticking away. Around another corner . . . down another hall . . . Any minute, I thought, any second, Monahan and the staties were going to break down that door and come pouring in here.
    Not yet, I thought. Not yet .
    We came at last to the end of a corridor. There was a small triangular table set in the corner there with a vase of flowers on top of it. Emory bent to move the table aside, lifting its legs carefully over the runner so as not to jar the thing and tip the vase over.
    “You’ll like this part,” he said to me with a sly smile. “Very gothic.”
    Then he straightened. He pressed his palm against the wall, then pressed it harder and made a curt upward motion. A section of the wall snapped open, swung out toward us. Very gothic. Right.
    Emory moved back a little and gestured for me to go in. I stepped