And it was wrong, and everything he had built stood on top of it, and I watched it all come down behind his eyes in the two seconds it took him to understand that the fireplace was going to speak, and it was not going to speak for him.

Chapter 12 — The Radio

Captain Doyle looked at Ronan for a long, level moment, and then he looked at me, and something in his face had changed — the neutrality gone, replaced by the flat attention of a man who has just realized which way a thing is actually pointing.

He lifted the radio at his shoulder.

“Unit Four, this is Doyle.

I need you to go to the living room of the Ashcroft residence and describe the fireplace to me.