Detroit Combat by Randy Wayne White

Author:Randy Wayne White
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504024563
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller

THIRTEEN

In the dream, a child was tapping on the wall of the cottage with a toy hammer. In the background there were bare green hills and Irish black-faced sheep in the yard. At the side of the house was an artesian well lined with stone.

The child was smiling. He had bright red hair and a tiny, half-moon scar at the corner of his right eye.

Hawker recognized the child, yet he couldn’t quite make his mind acknowledge who the little boy was. There was a mental shield up, a shield that had something to do with some anticipated tragedy. An explosion—yes, that was it. An explosion and screams and a little red-haired boy too mad to cry and too horrified not to. The harder Hawker struggled to remember, the louder the child tapped with the hammer.

And then he was sitting bolt upright in bed, the cold weight of a new Walther PPK in his hand. He listened carefully, his eyes peering through the darkness into the living room of the bungalow.

Someone was knocking at the door. A soft, anxious knock, as if the person knocking really didn’t want to wake anyone.

Hawker threw back the covers and slid out of bed. He was halfway to the door before he realized he was naked. Hastily he returned to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of sweat pants.

The knocking stopped when he flicked on the lights. Looking at him through a corner of the windowpane was Clare Riddock.

Hawker glanced at his Seiko Submariner watch. It was 1:17 A.M.

She had left more than two hours ago.

He swung open the door. The blast of cold air that hit him in the chest was numbing. The woman seemed to tumble in with the wind.

“Hawk, I’m so sorry to wake you—geez, what an ass I must seem like to you!”

Hunched over, she was rubbing her hands together.

“Out slumming, Detective Riddock?”

She started to say something, then shook her head in exasperation. “God, I can’t believe myself sometimes!” She paced to the fireplace and tried to warm her hands over the few remaining coals. “I can be such a nerd!”

Hawker shrugged, went to the kitchen, poured Johnnie Walker into two small tumblers, and carried one to the lady. “Tell me what you did—I’d like to yell at you too.”

She threw her head back and made a whispered growl of disgust. “I left here at just after eleven. All the way home I kept thinking that I wanted to—” She looked at him briefly and swung her head back toward the nonexistent fire. “I kept thinking I wanted to talk to you some more.”

“Oh?”

She was very careful not to look into his eyes. “Yeah. I’m not sure we covered everything. You know. There are a lot of details to discuss.”

“Oh, right,” said Hawker. “Details.”

“Anyway, I paced around the house for a while, then got back into my car and drove back here, hoping to catch you before you went to bed.”

“And you live close, so that doesn’t explain the lost hour—”

“I missed the turn, tried to stop when I shouldn’t have, and went into a snowdrift.

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