Father speaks as though he is preparing for battle, Kyle thought.

In unison, the dogs howled.

Part Two.

DARKNESS GATHERS.

I pointed out to you the stars, and all you saw was the tip of my finger -Tanzanian proverb.

If 'the tiger sits, do not think it is out of respect.

-Nilotic proverb.

Chapter 9.

*Chief Van Jackson got the call Sat.u.r.day morning: someone had turned up missing.

Tawanda Gary, nineteen years old, had vanished from the home at which she was baby-sitting last night. The woman of the house had come home from work late last night and discovered that her two children were alone, and when her worthless, pothead man came in at dawn, he was clueless, too. A call to Tawanda's grandmother, whom she lived with, didn't turn up any leads, either. Her grandmother hadn't seen Tawanda since she had left to baby-sit.

Tawanda's vehicle, an old Ford Escort, remained parked under the carport of the house at which she'd been working.

Kidnapping and abduction were extremely rare crimes in Dark Corner. Jackson had handled an abduction case only once, and that had been over ten years ago. Murder was equally rare. The only murder in recent memory was when a man had killed his wife in the midst of a domestic dispute, and the murderer had actually called Jackson, personally, to give himself up.

Intuition warned Jackson that this case wasn't going to be so easy. He began the investigation the best way he knew how: by talking to folks.

Sat.u.r.day morning, Jackson spent a while talking to the family who'd hired Tawanda to baby-sit. The woman was forthright and trustworthy, a hardworking lady who held down two jobs to make ends meet. He knew her folks, too. They were good people.

But he wasn't impressed by her live-in man, Andre.

In his early thirties, Andre was a known drug user and had never worked a stable job in his life. He hung out at the basketball courts and the car wash with his buddies, smoking weed and drinking beer. If laziness were a felony, Andre would have been serving a double life sentence.

Every time Jackson saw the man, he thought of Jahlil, and what could happen to his boy if he didn't get his life on track. If Jahlil's att.i.tude did not change, Jahlil was Andre in a few years.

Jackson hated the pathetic example that Andre set for the younger boys in town. But his main problem with Andre on this day was that he was sure the guy was hiding something related to the girl's disappearance.

"Come outside with me for a minute, will you?" Jackson said to Andre while they were in the small living room. "Want to chat with you"

"I'm really tired." Andre yawned dramatically. "I was out all night."

"Ain't gonna take but a minute," Jackson said.

Reluctantly, Andre followed him outdoors. Jackson leaned against the patrol car. Andre watched him, his hands buried in the pockets of his baggy jeans, restlessly jingling coins.

Andre didn't look tired. He looked scared.

"First off," Jackson said. "I don't care about your reputation for smoking weed. We ain't here to talk about that"

"But I don't smoke-"

"Don't start lying to me, all right?" Jackson said. "Don't wanna hear it. It ain't the issue."

Andre drew in a shaky breath. "I don't know what happened to Tawanda, Chief. I really don't"

Jackson removed his hat and began to straighten the brim. "I'm the kind of man, I listen to my intuition. You know what it tells me? Tells me that you're telling the truth-part of it."

"I ain't lying, Chief!" Andre said. "I rolled out as soon as she got here to watch the boys, and when I got back to the crib my woman was already here and said Tawanda was gone. I don't know nothing."

Jackson finished flattening the edge of the hat. He set it back on his head. "What're you scared of, Andre? You're shaking like a leaf."

Andre lowered his head. "I ain't scared."

"You got fear stamped all over you, buddy."

Andre dragged his hand down his face. "Look, I can't talk about it."

"Can't talk about what? You can't hide information that could help solve a crime. That's obstruction of justice, buddy. You serve time for that"

Andre raised his head. His eyes were wet-looking, as though he were about to cry.

"You need to check out the crib up there," Andre said. He quickly motioned toward the horizon, then dropped his arm as if he'd gotten an electric shock. "Any wicked s.h.i.t going down here, you better look there first."

Jackson had followed the man's finger. The only house "up there" was the Mason place.

A coldness wrapped around Jackson, like a mantle of ice.

"All right now," Jackson said. "You got to explain what you mean. What's Jubilee got to do with the girl?"

"h.e.l.l, naw," Andre said. "I done already told you too much. I ain't getting any deeper into this s.h.i.t."

Andre fled inside the house. He slammed the door in Jackson's face.

Jackson knocked. "Open up, buddy. We ain't done chattin'."

No one answered.

Jackson knocked again, then rang the doorbell, and still they ignored him. It surprised him. He had never faced resistance like this from folks in his own town.

But one thing was clear: Andre was scared out of his mind.

He briefly considered using some official force to make Andre speak to him, but he decided against the idea. The guy was flat-out too scared to talk, and he had directed Jackson toward a source that might bear fruit. Jackson didn't like to push folks too hard. It wasn't his style-a good thing, really, because in a small town like this, he'd never needed to be that tough to get the job done.

He only hoped that this case would not push him over the edge.

Sighing, he walked back to the cruiser. He glanced at the Mason house, sitting way up there on the hill.

All week, he had procrastinated visiting the house's mysterious new resident: the bald-headed, sharply dressed black man he had seen driving around town in the Lexus SUV. He told himself that he was too busy fighting crime to squander energy on small-town pleasantries. But if he were being honest with himself, he had to admit that the house made him uneasy. Like most residents his age who had lived in Dark Corner their entire lives, he had grown up hearing frightening tales about Edward Mason's mansion. It was not easy to dislodge images, stories, and rhymes that had been planted in your head when you were a kid.

He got inside the car.

Snippets of childhood rhymes about the house came to mind: Fast Eddie's always ready, gonna tear out your heart like it's confetti ...

One, two, buckle your shoe, or something in the Mason place'll come get you ...

Jackson grasped the steering wheel in an iron grip.

I don't want to go up there, he thought. Lord help me, I don't want to set foot near that place.

As he drove away, it seemed that a gravitational force prevented him from driving toward Jubilee. He drove, instead, to pick up some doughnuts and coffee. Feeling like a coward every block of the way.

Malcolm, the mutt that Franklin had taken a liking to in the past year, did not show up for his morning meal. Like one of Pavlov's hounds, the canine usually came running to the house within minutes of Franklin filling the bowl with Purina dog food at nine o'clock.

Franklin whistled. "Malcolm! It's time to eat, my friend!"

The dog always entered the yard from the alley, squeezing between the garage and the Dumpster. But the dog did not appear.

Franklin frowned. He waited outdoors a few more minutes, and when Malcolm did not appear, he went inside.

Ruby sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. He settled into a chair beside her.

"My dog is gone," he said.

"He'll probably turn up in a little bit," Ruby said. "Don't worry, honey. Malcolm isn't wearing a watch, you know."

"Of course," he said, not sure he agreed at all with his wife's opinion. He had a feeling that something terrible had happened to the dog. Perhaps it had been struck by a vehicle, or injured in a fight with another animal, or had eaten something that made it ill ...

Or perhaps something worse.

He did not understand the cold finger of dread that traced along his back. It resisted rational explanation. It was a presentiment of doom, like smelling the sour odor of an imminent thunderstorm.

Malcolm's disappearance was a bad sign of ... something.

But what?

Jahlil's father required that he go to the police station at nine o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning, to clean. Jahlil arrived on his bicycle a few minutes before ten o'clock. Almost an hour later than Dad had asked him to be there.

Thankfully, his father was not there to jump on his case about being late. The deputy, Ray Dudu, was the only person in the office. He was a nice guy, if a little weird.

"You need to start reading the real news, Jahlil," Dudu said, as Jahlil swept the floor. Dudu raised the latest tabloid he'd been reading. It had a lurid headline: "Lazarus in Arizona! Man Rises from the Dead" "The Chief won't like me showing these to you, but I have a responsibility to share the truth"

"Sure," Jahlil said. Man, what a nut. Where had Dad found this guy?

As Jahlil pondered how to respond to the loony deputy, his father's patrol car pulled up. Dudu hurriedly put away the tabloids.

"Morning, fellas," Dad said. He tossed his hat on the desk. "I ain't made no progress, really, on the missing girl. n.o.body knows much of nothin'."

"What missing girl?" Jahlil asked. It was the first he'd heard of it.

Dad sat in his desk chair and leaned back, crossing his fingers across his stomach. "Tawanda Gray, lives over on Boone Drive with her grandma. She was baby-sitting last night and has turned up missing."

An image flashed with startling vividness in Jahlil's mind: a man putting a large, covered object inside the back of a Lexus SUV. A package that had a pair of dangling legs.

At the time he had seen it, he been convinced that he was not imagining things. But the fellas had talked him out of it, saying the weed was making him hallucinate. But what if it had really happened, just like he'd seen? What if he was the only witness to the crime?

"You got a funny look on your face, son," Dad said. "You know something about this?"

Jahlil chewed his lip.

He told his father everything.

"s.h.i.t," Dad said. Jahlil rarely heard Dad curse. But Dad continued, "s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t."

"What's wrong?" the deputy said.

"That Lexus truck" Dad grabbed his hat and rose. "Belongs to the fella who moved into the Mason place."

For the first time in years, the last time being the day the doctor had announced that his mother had cancer, Jahlil thought his father looked afraid.

Jubilee was the last house in the world that Van Jackson wanted to visit. But he couldn't procrastinate any longer. If what his boy had said was true-and he had no reason to suspect that Jahlil had lied the fella who had moved into this place was the prime suspect in the girl's disappearance. It was Jackson's duty to question the guy, and arrest him, if need be.

Jackson parked in front of the tall iron gates.

Clouds pa.s.sed over the morning sun, cloaking the world in grayish shadows.

It had been many years since he had last visited the Mason place. He'd last been there to investigate a vagrant who was squatting in the house. The guy had gotten inside through a window. When Jackson discovered the man, he was not prepared for what he had seen. The guy feasted on dead animals and insects: a stinking heap of crows, squirrels, beetles, flies, and spiders were spread at his feet, like a h.e.l.lish buffet.

Pull up a chair and have a bite, the man had said in a raspy voice. There's plenty of food to go around. He bit off the brittle head of a beetle and chewed with pleasure.

Jackson had gagged, then arrested the man. It turned out the guy had escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Memphis.

But those were the kind of incidents that happened at Jubilee. Nothing but bad, bizarre things.

Jackson got out of the car.

It was strangely quiet up there. The Mason place might have been located atop a mountain, far away from human habitation.

Jackson felt his heart whamming like a ba.s.s drum.