Free They Thirst by Robert McCammon

she wondered if even in his dreams he thought of stalking that awful killer through the dark canyons of the city. She reached out and touched his rough bear's paw of a hand. "Please," she said softly. "I'll make a picnic lunch for us today."
    "They expect me to be there," he said and patted her hand. "Next Saturday we'll have a nice picnic. Okay?"
    "No, it's not okay. They're working you to death! You leave early in the morning and don't come home until late at night. You work Saturdays and most Sundays, too! How long is it going to go on?"
    He wiped his mouth with a napkin and dug his fork into a mound of potatoes. "Until we find him," he said quietly.
    "That may be never. He may be out of the city now, out of the country even. So why are you the one who has to work like a dog and answer all the questions and be on the front page of all the newspapers? I don't like what some people are saying about you."
    He raised his eyebrows. "What are they saying?"
    "You know. That you don't know what you're doing, that you don't really care about finding that man, that you're not a good policeman even."
    "Oh, those things." He nodded and drank down the rest of his coffee.
    "You should tell them all to go to the devil!" she said fiercely, her eyes shining. "What do those people know about how hard you've been working, day and night like a Trojan! They should give you a medal! You've spilled coffee on your tie." She leaned forward with her napkin and dabbed at it. "If you keep your coat buttoned, it won't show."
    "All right," Palatazin said. "I'll try to." He pushed his plate away and put a hand on his expanded stomach. "I've got to go in a few minutes. That Clarke girl from the Tattler is coming to the office this morning."
    Jo made a disgusted face. "What—to write more slime? Why do you even talk to that woman?"
    "I do my job, she does her job. Sometimes she gets carried away, but she's harmless."
    "Harmless? Ha! It's stories like hers that make people so afraid. Describing what that awful gyilkos did to those poor girls in such terrible detail, and then making out that you don't have sense enough to find him and stop him! She makes me sick!" Jo stood up and took his plate over to the sink; she was shaking inwardly and trying to control it, trying not to let her husband see. Her blood, the Hungarian gypsy blood of a hundred generations, was singing with anger.
    "People know what that newspaper is," Palatazin said, licking a forefinger and rubbing the coffee stain. Defeated, he let the tie drop. "They don't believe those stories."
    Jo grunted but did not turn from the sink. A new mental picture was forming in her brain, something that had gradually grown there over the past few weeks: Andy, armed with a gun, moving through the dark corridors of some unknown building, seeking the Roach all alone; and then huge, grasping hands reaching for him from behind, clamping around his throat, and squeezing until the eyeballs popped out and the face turned purplish blue. She shook her head to rid herself of the nagging thought and said softly, "God have mercy!"
    "What?"
    "Nothing," she said. "I'm thinking out loud." She turned back to him and saw that his face was not purplish blue, nor were his eyeballs popping out. His face, on the contrary, reminded her of that dog in the Hush Puppies ads, all jowls and sad eyes under bushy, gray-flecked brows. She said, "You're not going to do anything dangerous today, are you?"
    "Of course not." He thought, Am I? How can I know? This was a question she asked him every morning and an answer he gave in kind. He wondered how many wives of policemen asked that question, how many cops replied as he had, and how many ended up dead from the burglar's or the rapist's or the junkie's gun. Far too many, he was sure. He wondered how George Greene had answered that question on a July sixth morning over twelve years ago. Greene had been Palatazin's first partner, and on that terrible day he was shot four times in the face