Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

mannequins might belong.
    From the east end of the long chamber came a frantic hammering, metal on metal. The perp must be pounding on the larger vent in the end wall, trying to break out, willing to risk a drop to the alley, serviceway, or street below.
    Half a dozen frightened bats erupted from their roosts and swooped back and forth through the long garret, seeking safety but reluctant to trade the gloom for bright daylight. Their small voices were shrill enough to be heard over the rising shriek of the sirens. When they passed close enough, the leathery flap of their wings andan air-cutting
whoosh
made Harry flinch.
    He wanted to wait for backup.
    The perp hammered harder than before.
    Metal screeched as if giving way.
    They couldn’t wait, didn’t dare.
    Remaining in a crouch, Harry crept between piles of boxes toward the south wall, and Connie slipped away in the opposite direction. They would take the perp in a pincer move. When Harry went as far to the south side of the room as the sloping ceiling allowed, he turned toward the east end, where the heavy hammering originated.
    On all sides, mannequins struck eternal poses. Their smooth, round limbs seemed to absorb and amplify the meager light that passed through the narrow vents in the eaves; where not clothed by shadows, their hard flesh had a supernatural alabaster glow.
    The hammering stopped. No clang or pop or final wrenching noise indicated that the vent had been knocked loose.
    Harry halted, waited. He could hear only the sirens a block away and the squealing of the bats when they swooped near.
    He inched forward. Twenty feet ahead, at the terminus of the musty passageway, dim ash-gray light issued from an unseen source to the left. Probably the big vent on which the perp had been hammering. Which meant it was still firmly in place. If the vent had been knocked out of its frame, daylight would have flooded that end of the attic.
    One by one, the sirens expired down in the street. Six of them.
    As Harry crept forward, he saw a pile of severed limbs in one of the shadowy niches in the eaves between two rafters, spectrally illuminated. He flinched and almost cried out. Arms cut off at the elbows. Hands amputated at the wrists. Fingers spread as if reaching for help, pleading, seeking. Even as he gasped in shock, he realized the macabre collection was only a heap of mannequin parts.
    He proceeded in a duckwalk, less than ten feet fromthe end of the narrow passageway, acutely aware of the soft but betraying scrape of his shoes on the dusty floorboards. Like the sirens, the agitated bats had fallen silent. A few shouts and the crackling transmissions of police-band radios rose from the street outside, but those sounds were distant and unreal, as if they were the voices in a nightmare from which he was just waking or into which he was slipping. Harry paused every couple of feet, listening for whatever revealing noises the perp might be making, but the guy was ghost-quiet.
    When he reached the end of the aisle, about five feet from the east wall of the attic, he stopped again. The vent on which the perp had been hammering must be just around the last stack of boxes.
    Harry held his breath and listened for the breathing of his prey. Nothing.
    He eased forward, looked around the boxes, past the end of the passageway into the clear area in front of the east wall. The perp was gone.
    He had not left by the yard-square attic vent. It was damaged but still in place, emitting a vague draft and thin, uneven lines of daylight that striped the floor where the perp’s footprints marred the carpet of dust.
    Movement at the north end of the attic caught Harry’s attention, and his trigger finger tensed. Connie peered around the corner of the boxes piled on that side of the garret.
    Across the wide gap, they stared at each other.
    The perp had circled behind them.
    Though Connie was mostly in shadows, Harry knew her well enough to be certain of what she was mouthing