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remembering what the grocery bag guy had said.
    “What?” Bonnie asked.
    I shook my head. “Nothing.”
    Al was staying firmly in the headlight beams of my pickup. He did not stray from their protective illumination. I had a feeling that three men could not have dragged him away into the dark. He was rooted to the spot. He had that same look on his face when I turned out the flashlight earlier and then turned it back on again—abject terror.
    We examined the car one more time. There were deep indentations in the door that looked like scratches. Either Frankovich hit something or something hit him. Bonnie was down on her knees again. She came out with a riot gun.
    “Hey,” Al said. “That’s police property. You’re gonna get your ass in trouble, lady.”
    “It might come in handy,” she told him and I figured she was right.
    We heard a sound like wire being unreeled and something hit the car. Both Bonnie and I jumped back and Al let out a little cry that was high and childlike. I saw what it was, but I had to put my flashlight beam on it just to be sure.
    “Is that…is that a power line?” Al said.
    I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think so.”
    I didn’t know what the hell it was. It was a black cable that was very shiny like wet rubber, though I was certain it was some type of metal. It had dropped from the sky. About four feet of it was curled up on top…well, on the bottom of the overturned patrol car. It trembled slightly like there was some sort of energy pulsing in it. It was weird, but it didn’t look terribly threatening. I followed its length up into the ebon sky. My light could only make it about fifteen feet or so in that viscous blackness. The cable disappeared up there. It was hanging from something, but whatever that was, I could not see.
    “What the hell is that?” Bonnie asked.
    “I don’t know. It’s not any kind of line I’ve seen before.”
    “Looks kind of like TV cable or something.”
    It did, only much larger. A cable that had roughly the same circumference of a man’s wrist. As I played the light over it, I noticed there was a repeating pattern of tiny holes set within it. The more I looked at it, the more confused I got as to what its actual purpose could possibly be. The only thing I knew for sure was that it looked a hell of a lot like the black, snakelike thing I had seen in my backyard. I was getting a really bad feeling about it.
    “Hey!” Al suddenly said.
    We turned and another cable had dropped not five feet from him. It dangled there, the blunt end of it about six inches off the ground. My guess was that the other one would have been about that long, too, if it wasn’t coiled on the patrol car.
    “I don’t like this,” Bonnie said. “It’s too…on purpose.”
    She was right. There was nothing remotely accidental about these things. Whatever their purpose was, it was surely not coincidental. I noticed the other one over by Al was trembling slightly as well. What did that mean? What the hell did it mean? Kathy was gone and one of those things had been in my backyard and had dragged over the roof of the garage. Now Frankovich was missing and here were two more of them. I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t see a correlation here.
    “We better get back,” I said, dread rising beneath my words like helium.
    The cables scared me and I was not exactly sure why.
    Al had picked up a piece of trim and he was prodding the cable nearest him with it. It moved, swaying back and forth, but that was about it. He kept jabbing it.
    “Well, it ain’t dangerous or anything,” he said.
    “Just leave it alone,” Bonnie told him.
    But there’s something about the male of the species, isn’t there? When a woman tells a man not to do something, it seems to be the first thing he does. We do it when we’re boys and it doesn’t always get any better when we’re men. True to form, Al kept prodding it until it was swinging back and forth like a bell rope.
    “Al, come