“Do you always arrest people by pistol-whipping them?”
“Only murdering scum like you.”
I stared at him for a second. This was the first I’d heard I was a murderer. The scary part was, for all I knew he was right. I decided to bluff it through.
“Am I a suspect, then? In what murder?”
“You’re a perp in one case and a suspect in a dozen more,” he said. His eyes strayed toward the thing that still approached us with agonizing slowness. A crawling slug of hot, molten stone.
I pressed the short barrel of my .32 automatic into the flesh of his throat and took his gun out of his hand. I turned him around, but kept the two of us face-to-face. The stone slug was now behind him, still crawling across my lawn, leaving a blackened trail as it came. McKesson’s eyes widened, showing the glistening whites. He flicked his gaze this way and that, breathing harder, but he couldn’t see the thing that crawled closer with infinite slowness behind him.
“You know what it’s going to do when it gets to you, don’t you?” I asked. “I have a feeling a man’s legs will broil nicely, from its point of view.”
“You won’t be able to control it if it gets to a source of fuel,” the detective said. “It’ll get you too.”
“What source of fuel?”
“My body fat.”
I peered at him, suspecting bullshit, but there was no hint of a lie there. I felt vaguely disgusted. I dared a glance over his shoulder. The thing had passed over its first plastic-headed sprinkler. A wisp of steam rose up. The slug made an unhappy, mewling sound. It slowed down a fraction more, probably from contacting a source of cold water. McKesson didn’t know that, though.
“What the hell is it doing?” he demanded.
“It’s eyeing your haunches and speeding up.”
“You’ve got my gun, just run for it. I’ll catch up to you later.”
“If I’m a killer, why shouldn’t I knock off one more?”
“You haven’t killed any cops yet. If you had, there would have been five of us waiting for you to show up out here.”
I glanced back behind him, faking a startled look. I pulled him forward by the shirt collar, keeping the gun under his chin. He stumbled forward.
“What?” he asked.
“It was just getting a little close. But I’m not done with you yet.”
McKesson was breathing harder and sweating now. “Ask me something then, asshole.”
“Ah, ah—I prefer Mr. Draith.”
“Yeah, OK,” he said, glaring. “Mr. Draith.”
My cheekbone was throbbing and I thought about making him call me sir. But I decided not to waste any more time.
“Hard, fast questions; hard, fast answers. Any bullshit and I push you a step back.”
“Ask then, dammit.”
“What the hell is that thing that’s about to crawl up your calf?” I asked. “How can a rock move?”
“Do I look like a frigging scientist? It’s just a living piece of flaming rock. Some call it a lava slug.”
“Are they always this slow?”
“Only when firemen accidentally spray them with hoses.”
“How do you know so much?” I asked. “Do you keep them for pets?”
“Not me.”
“You just burn down houses by planting them?”
“Not me either,” he said, his teeth clenched.
“Who, then?”
Detective McKesson shrugged. “People. The Community.”
I recalled Dr. Meng using that term. The Community. “Give me a name, a place.”
“You know a couple of names already.”
I pulled him suddenly toward me again, forcing him to take two stumbling steps toward the sidewalk. He came with me, alarmed.
“Oops,” I said.
“What?” he asked quickly.
“It almost got you,” I lied. The creature was still a good distance away. It was definitely going slower now that it traveled over cool grass and earth rather than the ashes of my house. “How about you and me getting into your car and getting out of here?”
“You’re letting me take you in? Good choice, Draith. You might get a plea out of this.”
“No, Jay,” I said, “I’m going to let you keep answering questions in a different environment. I’m keeping both the guns.”
McKesson tried again to look through the back of his head. I had to give him credit: if it had been physically possible, he would have managed it right then.
“Kidnapping?” he asked. “Maybe you were innocent, but you are stacking up real felonies right now.”
“You burned my house down by putting some kind of alien rock in it and then waited until I got home, at which point you smashed me in the face,” I said. “Can you understand why I’m not in a trusting mood?”
McKesson stared at me and read my eyes. I stared back flatly.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll drive. I can’t stand another second with that thing behind me.”
We climbed into his car and drove off together. He didn’t snap on the lights until we’d reached the corner.