Chapter 9
HE WAS in a room, a white-washed brick room with scarred golden oak furniture. He was numb, leaden-weighted. From a thousand- watt lamp in a chromium reflector white-hot light poured down on him, searing his eyeballs even though he kept the lids shut tight after the one look.
Words kept hammering at his consciousness, Brannigan’s words and another man’s. Brannigan and the other man were in their shirt sleeves. Brannigan had a short length of rubber garden hose. He had not missed that one brief flicker of McCloud’s eyelids. He began using the hose again. McCloud knew where he was. He was in the goldfish room at Headquarters.
Brannigan kept saying, over and over again, and punctuating his words with blows, “Come on, McCloud, where is she? Where is Sheila Mayo?”
The other man wo
