Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
“Tried to get her to tell me more, but she wasn’t making sense, said he was trying to turn himself into a chimney, and then she started screaming, and—”
“Ambulance and fire on the way?”
“Yeah.”
As Harry brought the cruiser to a screeching halt at the address, he realized he had been here before. The red Ford Torino in the driveway was something of a clue.
This was where Delbert Dorfman, the racist dickhead who had spray-painted osama lover go home on the window of Ahsan Basher’s convenience store, and later thrown a rock through it, lived.
Harry jumped out and ran toward the house, and stopped briefly when he saw what was happening on the roof. There was a man in his mid-twenties up there, on his back, staring into the sky, barefoot but wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. There was smoke billowing up from his face.
It was, Harry was pretty sure, Dorfman.
Harry noticed a TV tower at the side of the house, figured the man had gotten onto the roof by climbing it rather than using a ladder, since there wasn’t one in sight. Partway up the tower was a heavyset woman Harry guessed to be in her fifties, screaming.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Come down here right now, Delbert!”
But Delbert was giving her no mind. He was busy having a smoke.
Or, more accurately, smokes.
From where Harry stood, the man, jaw wide, appeared to have the contents of an entire package of cigarettes—a good twenty of them, if not more—jammed into his mouth, and every one of them was lit. It was as bizarre a sight as Harry had ever seen, like something an onstage comic would do to provoke a laugh, or a magician might attempt before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.
Delbert lay there spread-eagled, and even though he appeared to be struggling to breathe, and despite his chest going up and down in clear distress, he made no attempt to spit out the cigarettes wadded into his mouth.
“Delbert!” the woman cried. “What are you doing?”
Given her size and age, Harry was thinking, that woman was not meant to be climbing a TV tower. She had one arm looped into a metal brace and appeared to be struggling to get her breath. Harry hadn’t met this woman when he had come here before to warn Delbert off his harassment campaign but was guessing it was his mother.
“Mrs. Dorfman,” Harry shouted. “Get down from there!”
She looked at him and said, “He’s gone crazy!”