The Timer Game. Susan Smith Arnout

was swallowing, his face shiny with sweat. ‘Okay to take off my mask?’

      Lewin’s head shot up from inspecting residue in a pan. ‘You mean safe? Yeah, but –’

      The rest of the sentence died as Chip tore off his mask and screamed. His eyes bulged and he shoved Lewin out of the way and raced for the paint-blistered kitchen door, yanking it open and pelting down the steps into the backyard. They could hear him taking great shuddering gasps.

      ‘Stupid kid,’ Vince said.

      Grace shrugged, looking around. ‘He’ll learn. They don’t call it cat for nothing.’

      Methamphetamine cooking smelled like cat urine, if the cat were as big as a town car and the box hadn’t been changed in months.

      Outside, Chip uttered a sharp strangled cry that cut off abruptly into silence.

      ‘I’ll check out the other rooms. Leave the sheets up. I’m going to document the blood spatter.’

      ‘Have at it.’ Lewin put down the search warrant, along with the hazardous-waste forms. ‘I gotta go babysit.’

      ‘Hey, Vince – he’s a chickie. Go easy on him.’

      Lewin grimaced through his mask and stepped out the kitchen door. Grace looked around. It was going to cost the state a bundle getting it cleaned up.

      Something large slapped against the house and slid to the ground. It was a sound like a piece of rotten fruit hitting clumsily and hard. She straightened, listening. Silence. A thin, reedy whistling grew in the silence, followed by a muffled moan.

      She swallowed. ‘Vince?’

      The whistling escalated, the sound wickering through the air like a broken electrical circuit, and the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She moved silently to the kitchen door and down the stairs, yanking off the breathing mask, her head light without the weight.

      It was a small yard with rusted cars up on blocks, obscuring the alley. She stared blankly. There was supposed to be a uniform out back protecting them, just like there was out front, but if he was there, she couldn’t see him.

      From deep in the yard came a bubbling sound. She’d only heard that rattle in ER and it didn’t sound any better now. She eased around the hulk of a car. Chip Page lay clutching his throat, his fingers slick with surging blood. He stared up at her mutely, his eyes wide and terrified, his glasses askew.

      She could see into the alley now. A uniformed officer lay facedown in a pool of blood, his legs at odd angles. Blocking the alley was the taco van, its motor running.

      Her throat closed and she dropped to her knees. Chip’s windpipe had been sliced. His mouth opened soundlessly. Establish an airway. Make sure the victim is breathing. His eyes flicked to a spot behind her and she looked over her shoulder.

      Pain exploded across her jaw as she was broadsided by a fist and yanked to her feet. It was so unexpected all she felt was a dazed terror and blinding pain behind her eyes and a shooting fire down her arm.

      ‘You lose.’

      He was taller than he’d looked in the taco van, pulsing as if he’d been hot-wired. His breath smelled minty fresh. In his other hand, he held a butcher knife.

      He jerked her higher, dragging her backward toward the house, his arm gripping her throat, closing off her airway. Her lungs roared and pricks of light exploded in her eyes. He stumbled, cursing, and she stepped down hard on something mushy.

      It was the partially severed head of Detective Sergeant Vince Lewin. The mask had cracked off and lay to the side. His lips were gray, eyes wide, startled. The butcher knife had cut through his Adam’s apple and it lay, like a small oyster, in a bed of blood.

      On the ground, Chip feebly pointed his finger like a gun. His eyes had started to film. A gun. Dying rookie Chip Page was trying to remind her that he carried a gun. She banged her elbow hard up into her attacker’s throat and slammed her boot back into his shin, and for an instant, he loosened his grip and she wrenched free and stumbled over to Chip, ripping open his Tyvek suit and scrabbling his gun free. It was a Glock 30, slippery with Chip’s sweat and blood, unbelievably heavy. She lunged to her feet, bringing the gun up as she chambered a round and pointed it in a blur of motion fueled by terror and a primitive rage.

      ‘Freeze, asshole. If you think I won’t squeeze it, you’re wrong.’

      He blinked once, refocused on her face. ‘He’s coming for you,’ he whispered.

      ‘Shut up.’ Sweat leaked into her gloves and she tightened her grip.

      ‘He’s the Spikeman. He transmits orders from outer space through the wires in my brain.’

      ‘I said shut up.’

      ‘I came to save you, warn you. He’s after you, the Spikeman. You need to run, Grace, now, before it’s too late.’

      A chill shot through her. He knew her name. How did he know her name?

      ‘Don’t you want to know what he’s going to do to you?’

      She hesitated a split second and saw the knife winking through the air and she pulled the trigger, kept pulling it, emptied it over and over, until he toppled, the back of his head blown off, and still she kept clicking the trigger, firing some phantom bullet, sobbing.

       TWO

      Grace couldn’t stop shivering. Dark was settling over Ocean Beach, the sun a fiery ball sliding into the Pacific. Four blocks away the sand on the beach would be cold now, latched in kelp, the good-natured mothers and toddlers gone, the tourists with white legs sucking Diet Pepsi and eyeing the tattooed volleyball players gone, everyone to their own warm rooms and hot baths and Olive Garden dinners. The beach belonged to the skittering creatures of the night pushing Safeway carts and muttering, runaways with studded ears and vacant eyes, the predators. The world she worked so hard to keep away from her daughter.

      And now look what happened. Look how good she was. She couldn’t even give the kid a dad, and now she’d almost made the kid an orphan.

      Her stomach hurt, acid roiling up. She gripped her knees and bit her lip to keep from wailing. She should be home now, that was the deal, that was the whole thing. Katie had that pen pal assignment she’d been postponing, had to get it done tonight.

      ‘Did you hear me?’

      Grace pulled herself back, looking through the window of the squad car, refocusing. The crime scene glowed yellow in a surreal splash of police car lights, television crews, crime scene technicians. The neighbors were back in force, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and joking. The two cops on traffic detail pressed the cars forward, gesturing savagely, sweat and weariness on their faces.

      Grace chafed her hands together under the thin wool blanket and shifted on the backseat of the patrol car. ‘I’ve already gone through it. I gave my preliminary statement. I’m coming in tomorrow to sign it.’

      ‘Grace.’ Sid Felcher, her crime lab boss, sighed heavily and swiveled in the front seat, his face oily. It wasn’t his squad car, it belonged to the detective who’d taken her statement, but Sid had climbed into the front seat when the detective had gone inside the meth house, and now he rested his arm along the top of the seat as if he were polishing the leather with his forearm.

      ‘Another study just released, found it on the Internet, two biggest stressors for supervisors. Causes ulcers, heart attacks, groin injuries.’ He raised his eyebrows and they inched together like furry mating caterpillars. ‘Well?’

      ‘Sid, I need to call Katie. I need to go home.’

      ‘We already took care of that, remember? She’s fine, your daughter’s fine. Okay, so the answer is, ta dah!’ Sid waved his hands expansively. His nails were bitten.