The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 4 page

He clicked that he would give me two full moons, or something that meant two months.

I thanked him, backed from his castle in a show of respect, and went back to Vegas.

I left the message on her answering machine that I had the money for the exchange, had contacted the best doctor in Vegas to do the job, and had prepaid for it. All she had to do was show up. I left the time and date and address of the doctor, the most famous and expensive in Vegas, hoping that might convince her to change her mind.

Nothing. She missed the appointment.

So I pulled some strings in the Casino Gods area of the superhero world, and got the Blackjack God named Danny to talk to her pit boss at work.

That didn’t work.

I talked to her friends, even called her mother, then I set up another appointment for her with the great doctor.

Again she missed it.

So one last time, with Danny, the god of Blackjack keeping the pit boss busy at another table, I went in to talk to her.

She was shuffling and didn’t see me coming.

When I slid the doctor’s business card with a third appointment written on it across the table toward her, she glanced up, the anger in her eyes almost knocking me back a step.

“Why are you insisting in meddling in my life?” she demanded, ignoring the stares from the older couple sitting at the table.

“Because you are in real danger,” I said, using every convincing power I had in my superpower collection. With this much energy turned on at a poker table, I could have convinced a world class player I had a pair of deuces instead of aces.

Julie, on the other hand, was a little tougher. She just glared at me, so I went on.

“I have enough money to help. You won’t ever see me again, but please, just do this. It’s paid for.”

She stared at me as I radiated super levels of good will and empathy and convincing. My superhero powers were on full tilt right at that moment, and for a second I thought she was faltering a little.

“I’m being honest with you,” I said. “Your life is in danger. Please just do it, either with this appointment or on your own. It’s your life, I know, and your body, but I care about your life.”

Then I turned and walked away.

There was nothing else I could do.

I got back on the plane and went home.

I finally heard three months later that they had found her body face down in the desert, as flat‑chested as the day she had come into the world.

I think back and wonder at times what more I might have done to convince her I knew what I was talking about. More than likely nothing. She needed to believe I was still the loser she left for abusive husband hell all those years before.

She needed to believe that those special breasts made her a better person. For her, a certain self‑image was more important than life itself.

For me, Poker Boy, I have my hat, my leather coat, and my superpowers. What more could I want out of life?

Nothing, except maybe winning every time. But even the best superheroes have to lose once in a while. I learned that lesson on the poker tables and with Julie.

Still, you have to feel bad for a person like Julie, caught in a self‑image nightmare. And besides, pulling those sacred suckers out of her ass just had to have hurt.

Second Sight by Ilsa J. Bick

I

I’m not, she thinks, I’m not Lily.

Her brain folds like an accordion, because there’s not‑Lily, squeezing her consciousness against the bony vault of her skull.

I’m not Lily; I was, but now I’m not.

She’s naked, legs scissoring spaghetti twists of off‑white sheet. Her expensive dress Mother picked for her that evening, the scarlet one slit from her ankles to her thighs and a vee plunging to her navel, pools on the floor like hot, fresh blood.

(Mother? Her mother is dead. Cancer. When her father started up with someone else‑twenty‑two and Lily’s only fifteen, and she might have to call that bitch Mom?)

Her mind is very cold. The weatherman is forecasting snow by morning, and the mayor promised salt trucks and snow removal crews at the first flake. Yeah, and every guy in prison didn’t do it. This is Washington, for Christ’s sake. This is what Call‑Me‑Bob, the bald man with the big nose who’s chosen her for this evening, says as the news winks on. Call‑Me‑Bob’s breath is sharp as burned wood from Scotch, but he wants to watch the late news at the same time. He makes jokes. I like to watch, Eve. Even though Eve is not her name either.

And there is no Call‑Me‑Bob, not in this room, this bed where Lily lies.

Her skin prickles with the memory of jungle heat, though the only jungles Lily has seen are concrete and tarry asphalt and rusted steel. The village Not‑Lily remembers is like something out of a movie, populated with people who have almond eyes and wear straw hats.

But she‑Lily‑is hot just the same. A burning flush oozes across her skin like lava. With a small impatient movement, she kicks her feet free.

Just as Not‑Lily did when she was very small: wanting to be free of the coarse blanket yet scared to death of the monster beneath the bed; how Auntie, a black stinking ghost smelling of rancid flesh and fruity Special Muscle wine, chanted her muon to bring out the Rakshasas. The demons erupted from Auntie’s skin to sit on her chest, and they held her legs and arms so a son of Yama‑naked, flat‑faced and very hairy‑could nibble her toes with his yellow fangs and bite her neck and hurt her in places that still cause her shame. Yet, always, her toes somehow grew back, and Auntie invariably melted into the Daylight Woman everyone else knew at the first hint of dawn. No one believed her about the nights. Every morning at the well the other girls tittered behind their hands even as they stoppered their mouths because it paid to be careful. You never could tell if a stray Rakshasa still lingered and might ride in on your breath so that not even a kru khmae

What? Who?

could help you.

A table lamp splashes a fan of yellow light, and a thin silver‑blue wash pulses from the television, its screen of silver fuzz scritch‑scratching silent hieroglyphs like the yantra

What?

which only the monks on Ko Len know. The DVD player’s red light winks like a lost firefly because Call‑Me‑Bob

Mackie

likes to watch.

No, it’s Mackie who can’t get enough of the damn awful thing. It’s Mackie.

There is enough light to see, or maybe she possesses some preternatural second sight, like a jungle cat for whom darkness does not matter and is, in fact, all to the better. Her eyes jerk over the ceiling of the hotel room. Tiny cracks fan the plaster, like the crackling glaze of a pottery vase, because the roof leaks and the way the manager figures it, the only people on their backs long enough to care are the girls. The johns aren’t shelling out twenty‑five bucks for the view, for Christ’s sake.

Lying next to Lily/Not‑Lily, Mackie sleeps, hugging the only pillow. Not Call‑Me‑Bob… and who is that?

Get up.

Gasping, she lurches upright, arms flailing, like a marionette whose puppeteer’s been caught napping. Mackie mumbles, shifts, doesn’t wake. The sheet pools at her waist. A scream balls in her Not‑Lily mouth. But Lily doesn’t scream. Can’t.

Up, get up.

In the half‑light, she staggers to her feet, clawing at air. The room’s so cold her nipples stand, and the floor’s icy against her soles, and she‑Lily‑wants her fluffy pink rabbit slippers, the ones her mama bought along with a thick pink terry‑cloth robe for her thirteenth birthday. Lily wants to go home, where she was someone’s little girl once upon a time.

Not‑Lily doesn’t care. Not‑Lily can’t go home either. That they have in common. And there are other things.

She‑Not‑Lily‑takes two minutes to make it to the bathroom. By then, however, her movements are more fluid, as if all Not‑Lily needed was a little practice. Lily’s mind screams, but her consciousness is like a spectator in the second balcony of a badly lit theatre, the stage faraway, the characters Lilliputian.

Pawing open the medicine chest, her fingers walk over bottles. Pills, lots of pills: Darvocet, Vicodin, OxyContin. And Mackie’s works: two syringes, two halves of a Coca‑Cola can, cotton balls for straining heroin, a lighter because discards are way too easy for the cops to match up to a pack. Mackie’s knife, the one he uses on the cans. For an old guy‑has to be sixty, if he’s a day‑he really goes through this stuff. He explained it once: Spoons are probable cause, but Coke, anyone can have a Coke can, for Christ’s sake, this is America.

Pills. Jesus, but Lily wants pills. Pills make things hazy, so she doesn’t care so much.

Mother

Who?

likes uppers. Feed a girl enough, she works for hours. And men will pay a lot of money for the young ones, especially the virgins. Virgins are good luck. They will cure a man of AIDS. Mother once knew a doctor in Poipet who could make virgins, over and over again. Doctors will do anything for enough money.

Not‑Lily’s fingers twitch, flex, grab the knife. The blade locks into place with that sweet, metallic snick.

She says his name three, four times before he rolls over. Mackie’s fat, he’s a pig. Too much beer and Thai takeout, and the grease they use in those spring rolls’ll kill ya if the MSG don’t. His belly jiggles like quick‑silver in the light of the dead channel.

“What the fuh?” He scrubs eye grit with the balls of his fists, an oddly childlike gesture. “What you want, bitch?”

“I’m not a bitch,” she whispers, the Lily piece of her mind finally realizing what is coming next, and, God forgive her, she wants it. She’s even happy because this is revenge, a sort of stand.

“But I’m not Lily.” And she brings the knife down. “I’m not.”

She doesn’t know if, through his screams, he hears. Certainly, in a little while, he’s past caring.

II

I was dead asleep when my pager brrred at one A.M. Technically, I was supposed to be at the station for third shift, but plenty of guys took calls from home. Not that I was home, mind you.

On these odd Fridays, I was sure my colleagues in homicide didn’t know what to make of me. I can guarantee you that the Black Hats at the synagogue‑in Fairfax, off Route 236‑thought my presence among them pretty weird. Me, too. Most days, I didn’t understand why I chose to study with the rabbi or occasionally come for a Sabbath meal and good conversation.

We’d met years ago on a murder I and Adam‑my best friend, my partner‑caught. Later, he’d tried to help Adam. Couldn’t, and Adam died. I don’t know if he thought he was helping me now.

Mostly, I was the student. I listened. I asked questions, very pointed ones, mostly about Kabbalist mysticism. The rabbi had interpreted a spell left at the scene of that case, so he knew his stuff. Not like Madonna‑kitsch. Oh, sure, Kabbalah was magic, just as the mezuzah tacked to virtually every doorway in the rabbi’s house was an amulet. But Judaism was pretty specific: Suffer not a witch to live. Exodus 22, verse 18.

But. That’s different from saying magic doesn’t exist.

And Judaism has its protective spells and amulets. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has magical connotations. Name‑magic, some of it. Heck, even Solomon bound demons to build the First Temple.

So we talked. Sometimes, we drank bad coffee, but only if his secretary was in that day.

I crept downstairs, guided by nightlights. The lights were on timers, as was the oven, the compressor on the refrigerator. The refrigerator light bulb was unscrewed. How Orthodox Jews made do before the invention of the automatic coffeemaker, I’ll never know.

Halfway down the stairs, though, I caught the unmistakable aroma of fresh coffee. Hunh. Turned the corner. “Rabbi, what are you doing?”

Dietterich shrugged. He was a bearish man, with a thick tangle of brown beard that was showing more threads of silver these days. In his black robe and slippers, he looked like someone’s scruffy, huggable uncle.

“I had… a dream. Don’t ask me what. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, and I heard you moving around, so…” Another shrug. “You’ll need coffee.”

“You turned on the coffeemaker. Isn’t that forbidden?”

“ Pikuach nefesh. ” Dietterich was a native New Yorker. Every time he opened his mouth, I thought Shea Stadium. “ ‘Neither shall you stand by the blood of your neighbor.’ From Leviticus. To save a human life supersedes all other commands.”

“Well, they usually call me when it’s too late.”

He handed me a travel mug. He did think ahead. “But when you catch a killer, he can’t kill again, right? It evens out.”

The coffee was hot and smooth going down. Clearly he hadn’t taken lessons from his secretary. This was a bigger relief than you can imagine. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Think of this as an advance, a down payment. Save one life, it’s as if you saved the world. Making coffee so you don’t end up wrapped around a tree seems a no‑brainer.”

“What about the Guy Upstairs?” For the record, I wasn’t sure where I stood on the God thing, but I can tell you this: I’ve seen what evil does, and I have no trouble bringing evil down. I’m not wrath of God about it. It’s what I do.

“Hashem can take a joke.” Dietterich hesitated, then said, “Jason, why do you come here? Don’t misunderstand me. We’re friends. But, in you, there is something missing. Here.” His bunched fist touched his chest. “You’re a detective, a seeker. You strive toward light where others see only darkness. But I still think you are a little bit like my hand here. You need to open, just a little.” His fist relaxed. “Like opening a door to a second sight. You can’t hold anything in your mind unless you open your heart.”

I don’t know how I felt. Not embarrassed. More like I’d been filleted and gutted.

He read my face. “I’m sorry. I’m intruding.”

“No. Don’t apologize. A lot of the time I’m stumbling around in the shadows.”

“Then do something about it.” He moved a little closer and pulled something out of a pocket of his robe. A glint of metal, a sparkle. “I don’t know why I haven’t given this to you before now. But now… feels right.”

The metal was like nothing I’d seen. In fact, my mind must’ve been playing tricks because the light was very poor. The metal wasn’t smooth but woven: gold filaments, I thought, and maybe silver? A hint of blue in the weave. I made out a five‑by‑five grid. A different gem sparkled in every square, both illuminating and magnifying a strange character‑were they letters?‑incised in the metal beneath. I counted five different symbols. Two were like runes, but the other three looked more like crude Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The center square was unique, with a character repeated nowhere else in the grid: a squashed teardrop canted right, tip down, broader bottom adorned with inwardly curved hooks or prongs. I thought: Georgia O’Keeffe. I rubbed my thumb over the gem there. A glitter of purple. Amethyst? “What is this?”

He opened his mouth, but my pager brrred again, and too late, I remembered I hadn’t called in yet. “Sorry, I have to take this. I didn’t want to use the phone in the house. But thank you.” I slipped the charm into my trouser pocket. “And don’t be sorry.”

“It’s fine, fine. We’ll talk later.” He made a shooing motion. “Go. Save the world.”

The crime scene guys had finished with pictures and were working the room. Kay Howard, the deputy M.E., was hunkered over the body. My partner, Rollins, was downstairs talking to the night clerk, a diminutive Indian with coke‑bottle glasses and an accent that got thicker the more questions we asked.

I waited, resisting the urge to crowd Kay, something that comes easy when you’re as big as I am. People say I look like Patrick Ewing, except Ewing has the beard, and I’m two inches shorter and about eighty billion bucks poorer. I saw an opening when Kay bagged the hands. “Anything?”

“Well, she went right for the eyes.” Her gloved finger traced a bloody orbit. “Very clean, no ragged edges, no evidence that she hesitated at all. She got him a good shot on the right.” Kay gestured toward the evidence bag with a black‑handled, blood‑soaked pocketknife. The blade was serrated along two thirds of its length, then tapered to a sharp, slightly upturned point. A quarter inch was missing from the tip.

“We’ll probably find the tip somewhere in the brain, or maybe wedged in the sphenoid at the back of the orbit, but that’s not what killed him.” Kay indicated a deep, ragged, fleshy necklace extending from MacAndrews’s right to his left ear. Congealing purple blood sheeted the dead man’s chest and there were drippy arcs painted on the wall immediately above the headboard. A slowly coagulating river of purple‑black sludge stained his forearms, though I could just make out what looked like a tattoo on his left bicep. (Or it could’ve been a cockroach. If his toenail fungus was any indication, personal hygiene wasn’t among MacAndrews’s finer qualities.)

“She got both the arteries and didn’t stop. Sawed right through the trachea.” She looked up, and I saw a glint of steel in her eyes, a little defiance. “If it wasn’t so politically incorrect, I’d say good riddance.”

“The guy was an asswipe pimp. Won’t hear me disagree.”

“I did not hear that,” said the tech. He was fiddling with the DVD player. “I’m not even in the room, and if I am in the room, I’ve turned off my hearing aid.” His tone changed. “Whoa, we got a DVD here.”

“So let’s see what our bad boy here was watching,” I said.

The film was clearly homemade but grainy, as if it might be a transfer from a VCR tape. It felt… old.

The room could’ve been anywhere, and the camera stayed tight on a single bed with a dirty brown blanket and a single pillow. No pillowcase. Nothing on the walls I could see right off the bat, though there might have been something on the corner of a night table protruding into the frame. Cigarette pack? And something green and white on the bed, near the pillow. Something else propped alongside. No sound.

A girl lay over the blanket, her head propped on the pillow. Ten, maybe twelve years old. She was Asian, with long black hair scraped back in a ponytail. She was naked and when she moved, she did so sluggishly as if moving through water. Drugged.

The man was also naked except for the black ski mask. There might have been something on his right ass cheek‑a large mole, maybe‑but I couldn’t be sure. He loomed over the bed, then turned and flashed a V. Then he reached to his right, somewhere off‑camera.

When his hand came back, I saw the tongue of a clear plastic bag in his fist.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said the tech.

Kay let go of a small, sick gasp. “God.”

I didn’t say anything, but I knew: God had as much to do with it as the Tooth Fairy.

It took perhaps eight or ten horrible minutes, and that was only because he didn’t flip her onto her stomach and tighten the plastic bag until the very end. Even then, he prolonged the moment, teasing her, rolling the plastic away from her gaping mouth so she might gulp a precious breath or two before cinching the bag tight once more.

Kay was crying. The color was gone from the tech’s face. I was dry‑eyed and shaking, my guts in knots, a black rage blooming in my chest.

Made me want to make an arrest somewhere dark and faraway. Maybe have a little accident, or something.

Something.

III

Jane Doe, mute and catatonic, had been taken to George Washington University Hospital.

The ER was hopping, so the bars must’ve closed. In the waiting room, the air smelled like dirty socks, musty and close; there was a motley assortment of frightened relatives, squalling kids with dead‑tired moms in do‑rags, the odd broken arm or leg.

In back, I waited behind the nurses’ station. Nothing really going tonight. An MVA in one trauma bay: a weeping young blonde girl in a neck brace and torn blue jeans. A couple of heart attacks‑that high mosquito whine of defibrillators charging, someone bawling, “Clear!”

One big moose with steely Old Testament prophet hair and a scruff of white beard. A Sixties throwback: black leather jacket with matching leather chaps, boots, aviator sunglasses in a breast pocket. He was Bay 4, very drunk, very busy bleeding all over his Grateful Dead t‑shirt and loudly harassing an earnest‑looking female medical student, yelling that he’d taken worse in ’Nam and just needed a “goddamned needle …”

Across from Jerry Garcia’s stunt double, I spotted an Asian family. Two women in their, oh, forties, fifties and one middle‑aged guy clustered around a gurney. A shriveled, skeletal‑looking guy with sickly yellow skin lay motionless as a mummy, tucked beneath a sheet. His bald head was cadaverous, the skin stretched tight across his skull. His black eyes were dull, fixed. Not just old. Ancient. There were blue‑black sooty smudges on his forearms and several more on his neck.

Hmmm. In a fire, maybe?

Maybe it was because they were Asian, and I’d just seen that damn film. To this day, I don’t know why they drew my attention. Now very curious, I tossed a glance at the whiteboard. which listed, in blue felt marker, each bay by problem.

Jerry Garcia was in 4: ETOH, lac. Doctorese for a drunk done busted his head.

My Jane Doe was in Bay 8: ?Sz.? Head trauma Neuro. Little red dot signifying she was a police case. As if the shiny black shoes visible beneath the drawn curtain weren’t the uniform assigned to keep tabs on my suspect, and her being cuffed to the gurney wasn’t like, you know, a giveaway.

The Asian family occupied Bay 7: Ψ.

Psychiatry. Hmmm.

“Detective Saunders?” A squat, utterly humorless doctor with gimlet, pewter‑gray eyes and pale, nearly translucent lips stuck out his hand. The words Phillip Gerber, M.D. and Neurology were stitched in blue above the left breast pocket of his white doctor’s coat. Ten to one, no one called him Phil. “Dr. Gerber. I’m the neurologist on the case.” Just in case I couldn’t read.

Gerber’s palm was soft. Like shaking hands with a grub. “So what can you tell me about our Jane Doe?” I asked, taking back my hand.

“Well, she’s no longer mute, for starters. Her name’s Lily Hopkins. Don’t have an age or place of residence, but we’re running her through the NCMEC, but that’s only good if she’s been reported missing.”

“She’s responsive? Can I speak with her?”

“Yes, in a moment.” He’d fingered up a chart and was now flipping pages. “Her neurological examination is unremarkable. Blood work was negative except for some alcohol in her system…”

I waited while he droned through the negatives. In Bay 4, I saw the medical student twitch a curtain around Jerry Garcia’s gurney. She was pissed but trying to look as though getting cussed out by a drunken, bloody Sixties throwback was something you just took in stride. Her eyes briefly flicked my way. Lingered a sec, a sparrow of some emotion flitting across her face. I raised my eyebrows in my best yeah, you really got an asshole there expression. She got that. The corner of her mouth twitched in a tiny smirk as she slid behind the nurses’ station, wrote Surg and Ψ on the whiteboard, then sat with the chart about two chairs down from where I stood with Gerber.

When Gerber came up for air, I said, “So you’re thinking…?”

He didn’t look pleased at being derailed. Good. “I’ll be honest, Detective. For the record, I’m not a fan of psychiatric diagnoses, though I’m no expert. They’re only descriptive, not etiological. Having said that… You’re familiar with multiple personality?”

“A little.”

He stared at me a moment. “Well, you took that in stride. Mention DID to a detective or lawyer, and they roll their eyes.”

I chose my words carefully. “I’ve seen a few things. Is she a multiple?”

Gerber’s lips thinned to a paper cut above his chin. “Personally, I think Dissociative Identity Disorder is ludicrous. But, no… Ms. Hopkins is not a multiple. She doesn’t claim to have alters. I don’t know about her past, but trauma in and of itself does not induce dissociative phenomenon.”

Over Gerber’s head Jerry Garcia hove into view, swaying. He’d changed into one of those flimsy hospital gowns. A wide gauze wrap stained with rust was wrapped around his scalp like a bandana. He listed, pulling hard to port, tacking for the wall to hold himself up.

I said to Gerber, “So what are you saying?”

To my right, a slender doctor rounded the corner behind the nurses’ station and touched the medical student’s shoulder. I laid odds she was the shrink. Just… something about her, the way she carried herself like an eye of calm in the center of a hurricane. Self‑possessed. Confident.

She was also stunning: a long graceful neck, auburn hair she wore in a French knot, green eyes. Heart‑shaped face exaggerated by a widow’s peak.

Her name was embroidered in blue thread above the left breast pocket: Sarah Wylde, M.D. Below that: Psychiatry.

Wylde. A little ding in the back of my brain. That name…

As soon as I saw the two women together, I knew: sisters. And maybe she felt my gaze because she did the same thing her sister had. Her eyes touched on my face‑and lingered there.

A tiny jolt of… recognition.

In my pocket, a strange heat. Puzzled over that a second and then remembered: that charm. What…? I trailed my hand over the metal. It was warm, the gems almost pulsing, as if keeping time with a hidden heart.

What?

Gerber was saying, “The EEG findings are clear.”

I wrenched my attention back to Gerber. “Clear?”

“Yes, you can’t fake an EE‑”

“Hey.” Garcia bawled. Then louder: “Hey! You!” Gerber looked over his shoulder. The usual bustle quieted as people paused.

The student pushed to her feet. “Mr. Dickert, if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Fuck you say.” Dickert was out of the bay now, maybe twenty feet into the ER. The student started forward, but her sister smoothly interposed herself between the two.

“Mr. Dickert,” she said. “I’m Dr. Wylde. Can we speak for a few moments?”

Dickert’s eyes jerked to her face, and then they got buggy. An expression that was equal parts horror and rage contorted his features. “No.” He took a step back, swaying, and pointed with a finger that shook badly enough to be visible from where I was. “You, you stay away from me.”

Wylde advanced slowly. “I’m sure we…”

“Gook.” Saliva foamed on Dickert’s lips. “You’re a fucking gook. ” Then he seemed to see the Asian family for the first time. “Fuck you staring at?”

“Hey.” I stepped around Gerber. I saw the curtain to Bay 8, Hopkins ’ bay, move as the uniform poked her head out to see what was going on.

“Please, Detective.” (How did she know?) Dr. Wylde held up a hand but didn’t turn around. “I can handle…”

That’s as far as she got, but I saw it coming. “Doc!”

A fraction of a second too late.

With a ferocious bellow, Dickert launched himself at Wylde. He was on her in a second, his fist crashing into her jaw.

Her sister screamed. “Sarah!”

Wylde tottered, but he’d wrapped her up, an arm clamped round her throat in a stranglehold. “This is a fucking trap! You’re all gooks! You think you can fool me? You’re not smart enough, Charlie. You can’t fool me!”

“Sarah!” The student started for her sister. “ Sarah! ”

Pandemonium now: a nurse jabbering into a phone, two security guards muscling their way through, the uniform drawing her service weapon.

“Holster your weapon!” I shouted. The last thing we needed was gunfire. “Now!”

“Gook cunt! ” Dickert had a hand clamped around both Wylde’s wrists. Whirling her around, screaming, spit flying‑and then his voice changed, went guttural: “Be gone until I com…”

Without warning, his head jerked, a whiplash snap, and then he was staggering back one step, two. Blood spurted from his nose, and he dropped.

In my pocket, the charm heated. And that’s when I saw it, or maybe it was a trick of the light. But in the space between the two‑between Dickert and Wylde‑the air danced. It quivered, rippling like the surface of an ocean breaking apart.