At the end, as he was about to make his turn, he saw a tall blond man with heavy features and furious eyes step out into the road and grab at his handlebars with both hands. Mike tried to twist free, tried to veer around him, but one powerful hand clamped around the fork tube just below the handles and the bike stopped as surely as if he’d slammed into a wall, and his own momentum sent him flying over the handlebars. He rolled in midair, trying to land on his feet, needing to land running, but he kept turning and slammed onto his back with so much force that he could hear bones break all along his back. He skidded along the blacktop, his hooded jacket shredding, and then his shirt…and then his skin. By the time he stopped the long slide, there was a ten-foot smear of red painted on the blacktop. Mike cried out in agony and raised his head to see where the truck was and how much time he had, trying at the same time to read his body to see how badly he was hurt. He raised his head and looked down the length of his body and there, framed between the upturned toes of his sneakers, was the wrecker.
Three feet away.
It would have been some small comfort to Mike if that had been the point at which he woke up from the dream, but it wasn’t. He felt the wheels all the way up his body; he felt and heard each bone splinter and snap, felt the searing pain as his groin and stomach were ground flat under the immense weight of the wrecker, tasted the coppery blood as it burst in a torrent from his screaming mouth, felt every part of him explode into bloody fragments until the rolling wheels smashed his awareness into utter black agony.
Then he woke up, covered in sweat, his body still screaming from every pore, from every nerve ending. His curly red hair hung in seaweed twists down from his bowed head, and his freckles were as dark as bullet holes against his pale skin. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it hurt, lances of pain shot down his left arm, numbing his fingers. Fiery lights danced in his blue eyes and he bent forward, gagging, almost vomiting. Then…it eased. Like a great wave the pain reached its peak and then slid back into the vast sea of his dreams, leaving him awake and alive. Even so, he trembled and shuddered. Mike had once read that the body had no memory for pain, but he knew that wasn’t true.
As the dream—and the ghost pain—eventually faded and he settled back against the sweat-soaked sheets, he feared to return to sleep, just as much as he feared being awake in this house. Vic Wingate here in the real world, the wrecker lurking on the black roads of his dreams. At fourteen, Mike Sweeney had cultivated a precise understanding of the nature of hell and an absolute belief in its reality. It was called “his life.”
(5)
When the door opened, Crow expected it to be Terry Wolfe, but it was Saul Weinstock. The doctor wasn’t smiling, which was rare for him, and his face showed the same haggard look everyone involved in the Ruger affair seemed to be wearing. A team moroseness tinted by extreme exhaustion. He held a clipboard in one hand and had a folded newspaper under his arm. Tow-Truck Eddie looked up from his reading as Weinstock slouched in.
“Can I have a couple of minutes, Eddie?”
Using a finger to bookmark his place in Revelations, the officer stood, towering head and shoulders above Weinstock, and left without a word. When the door was closed, Weinstock dragged the guest chair nearer the bed and sprawled in it, looking over his shoulder at the closed door. “He’s an odd duck,” he observed.
Crow grunted agreement. “Always has been.”
“Ever have a real conversation with him?”
“I don’t know if anyone has. Maybe God. He was on the cops full time when I was, but aside from work-related stuff I doubt we ever said ten words to one another. No, that’s a lie. He once asked me if I’d accepted Jesus as my personal savior.”
Weinstock looked amused. His features were a dead ringer for Hal Linden in his
“Told him I’d think about it, and left it there. He never asked again.”
“I’m shocked. I can’t imagine you missing the chance for a smartass comment.”
“Uh, Saul, have you looked at the size of that sumbitch? He could bench-press Iowa. Guess he never asked you about JC?”
Saul snorted. “Haven’t you heard? We Jews are all going to hell. We have a special section, a gated community. Right next door to the Buddhists, the Hindus, and the pro-choice lobby. It’ll be a party town.” He glanced back at the closed door. “Seriously, though, that guy spooks me a little. I’ve never met anyone with less of a sense of….” He groped for the word.
“Humor?”
“No. Humanity, I guess. It’s just hard to believe that he does ordinary things like watch MTV, eat Fruit Loops, or fart.”
“I’ve done all three at the same time.”
