see that the prisoner was still

Hazard selected a claw hammer and raced back upstairs, glad that he had turned on so many lights when he’d first come into the house. He was relieved to see that the prisoner was still alive. Dalton [553] appeared to be on the trembling edge of expiration, as if he might slip away at any moment. Hazard put his gun on the floor and used the claw hammer to pry nails from one of the thick sheets of particle board with which Laputa had sealed off the windows. They were three-inch spikes and pulled loose reluctantly, with bark and screech. He tore the board away from the window and stood it aside, against the wall. The pleated drape had been captured between board and window. Although wrinkled and dusty, it was just the thing with which to wipe his fingerprints off the hammer before he dropped it on the floor. This was a back bedroom only in the sense that it was farthest from the stairs. Like the master bedroom, it faced the front of the house. Through the window, he could see his sedan parked across the street. Returning to the bed, Hazard said, “I came in here on a hunch, without a warrant, and now I’ve got to clean up the situation to save my ass and to be sure we nail Laputa. You understand?” “Yes,” Dalton rasped. “So what you’re gonna say happened is, he was so sure of your total disability, of your inability to even make a sound anyone could hear outside, that the bastard took that board off this evening just to torment you with the sight of freedom. Can you sell that?” On an arid whisper of breath, brittle words scraped and grated from Dalton’s throat. “Laputa said ... he’ll kill me ... tonight.” “All right. Okay. Then it makes a little sense that he might do this.” From the nightstand, Hazard snatched up an aerosol can of pine-scented disinfectant. The container felt half full, heavy enough. “Next,” he told Dalton, “you have to tell them that you reached way down inside yourself, to your deepest reserves of strength, and somehow you found the will, the energy, the anger necessary to pull this can off the nightstand and to pitch it at that window.” [554] “Can do,” Dalton promised shakily, though he looked as if he could do nothing more than blink his eyes.