A tall figure, certainly a man this time, almost as tall as Whitey. He carried something in his hand and bent low as he went by the dining-room windows so he wouldn’t be seen from inside. A cunning kind of guy—Whitey could tell right away. The cunning guy crept around to the door. The porch light gleamed on what he had in his hand: an ax. The cunning guy slowly straightened, peeped quickly in through the round window. The next moment he whirled around and scanned the darkness. The porch light shone clear on his face: Roger. He was looking in Whitey’s direction but would never see him, not through all that falling snow, not in that darkness. Darkness was Whitey’s friend.
Raising the ax, Roger pushed the door open and went inside. Whitey forgot about his weakness and pain, stood up at once. He headed for home. High above, the owl hooted, or it might have been something new in the storm.
26
S
now, handled by Roger’s car with ease, but as he drove up the eastern side of the river—despite and because of what he’d told Whitey, Roger had no intention of crossing to the gate side until it was all over and time to call in the local constabulary—he began to think he’d had enough of northern winters, perhaps enough of America itself. Rome: mild in winter, homogeneous in culture, and how long would it take to learn the language? Two or three months? An expensive city, of course, but with the insurance settlement, plus whatever he retained from the sale of the house—and the market was improving at last—supplemented by his pension and Francie’s, there would be enough to meet his modest needs.
Roma aeterna, Roma invicta
. Latin had been one of his strongest subjects; therefore, he could assume that the vocabulary was already in place. Call it six weeks to moderate fluency, two months at most.
A necessary result of the execution of his plan, of course, would be some sort of contact with Brenda. She would probably attend the funeral; indeed, it would be his obligation to inform her of it. No doubt she would feel some sort of misplaced responsibility, given the involvement of her cottage. A drama easily foreseen: hand-wringing, if onlys, et cetera. He would absolve her. Thus they would have roles to play with each other, right from the start, his infinitely sympathetic. Simpatico.
Roger came to the lookout he had chosen, a treeless ledge on a rise almost opposite Brenda’s island, but on the east side of the river. It wasn’t a question of distrusting Whitey, but more that concepts like trust couldn’t fairly be applied to someone like him. Whitey responded to stimuli, a frog in a laboratory, and although Roger had done all that could be done to predetermine the stimuli Whitey was about to encounter, he could not, because of randomness, unpredictability, chaos theory, account for them all. Better, then, if the frog expects the scientist to approach from the left, to approach from the right.
Roger checked the time—5:40. On schedule, despite the snow, everything still according to plan. He used the singular for convenience, but to be accurate there were three plans: the plan as it was understood by Whitey, the plan as it would be executed by the participants, the master plan laid out in Roger’s mind like lines of programming language or a sequence of DNA. DNA, that was it—and Whitey not a frog, but a gene of the most mutable type, capable of warping whole chromosomes, of growing into a monster. A monster under Roger’s command: deployed in the unused bedroom, searching for a painting that wasn’t there—although it existed, would be disposed of in the denouement, when Roger resigned from the tennis club and cleaned out his locker, perfect reason to be there with a plastic garbage bag. Funny—creative, really—this use he’d made of the painting, like Picasso making a bull from bicycle parts. But a minor detail. Major detail: the monster trapped as Francie and her oyster boy came up the stairs. Would it happen right then, Whitey making some little mistake that gave away his presence, leading to panic, his and theirs? Or would they get safely to their little nest, begin doing the things they did, with Francie crying out her petty pleasures, and Whitey listening and listening until he could hear no more, bear no more; he would want some, too, lots and lots.
And all the time, Roger would be waiting in the woodshed at the back, arriving not after Whitey but before; not waiting at the gate, as Whitey expected, but coming inside, to react with horror.
“Whitey, what have you done?”
And Whitey makes his stupid reply.
And Roger, saving the day, commands, “We’ve got to get this cleaned up. Come quick.”
They run together, a team, to the woodshed, where the props stand ready.
“Hand me that mop, Whitey, in there.” Prop one.
Whitey reaches down, baring his neck for the ax. Prop two.
Lines of programming language.
How quiet it would be after that, a tranquil interlude for arranging bodies, adjusting evidence, driving over the river bridge, around to the gate, parking his car beside the others, dialing 911, waiting to tell his story. A story slightly different from the one he’d first outlined, changes necessitated by the addition of the lover—horrible oleaginous word, quite appropriate in this case—to the dramatis personae. A story that now went like this:
A Christmas Eve surprise party, Officer, for Ned’s wife—she was so upset over that tennis match
.
The three of us were meeting here tonight to put up the decorations, with the idea of having everything ready when we brought her here on the twenty-fourth
.
A surprise, you see, to show how we all care, to cheer her up
.
But when I arrived, a little late, what with the snow and all, I found . . . [breaks down, composes self] And he saw me, Officer, and I—I panicked
.
I ran and ran
.
He chased me, caught me by the woodshed. We struggled, I remember falling, grabbing the ax; it’s all a jumble after that
.
All a jumble, but beautifully organized, planned like a mini-Creation: Roger even had a bag of red decorations in the car.
Merry Christmas, Noel, Joy to the World
. Prop three.
Roger pulled off the road, parked in the lookout—and saw another car parked nearby. A pickup truck, actually, but so covered by the blown snow, it was hard to tell. Abandoned, perhaps, possibly for the duration of the storm, possibly forever. Putting on his hat and gloves, zipping up his parka, taking the decorations and his twelve-inch, heavy-duty flashlight from L.L. Bean, Roger got out of the car, locked it, started down toward the river, hunched against the wind. In its perfect, triple-helix form, the plan wound so beautifully in his mind that he almost didn’t notice, almost didn’t process an obvious sight in the middle of the river: lights shining on Brenda’s island.
Lights? Lights on the island? Hadn’t he been clear about the flash? Should he have supplied Whitey with one? No. He wanted Whitey to buy it himself, wanted the receipts for everything—taxi, flash, weapon—found on Whitey’s body: the master plan. Roger tore off a glove, read his watch: 5:49. Lights at 5:49? There were to be no lights at any time, and Whitey wasn’t to be inside until 6:15. Six-fifteen precisely, with Francie and lover arriving at 6:30. It was a two-bladed plan, timing and psychology snipping together like scissors. Timing had been the easy part. So why lights? Why lights at 5:49?
Roger hurried across the river, or tried to, but the snow was deep and light, and he sank to his waterproof, insulated-to-minus-forty-degree boot tops with every step. By the time he reached the island—lights glowing in every window of the cottage—he was breathing heavily.
Roger’s mind fired possible explanations at him: Francie and lover had arrived early, or one or the other; Whitey had arrived early, gone inside because of the storm, forgotten about the lights; someone else—repairman, tramp, Brenda!—was inside; a surge in the wires had activated some automatic timer. And other explanations waited like bullets in an ammunition belt, but by now he was at the woodshed, reaching in, grabbing the ax, moving swiftly toward the cottage.
Swiftly, but not without thought. Smarter than ever in a crisis, or potential crisis, as he corrected himself, Roger remembered to crouch low as he went by the windows, staying out of sight from within. He heard nothing from inside: no voices, no music, no movement. The electric surge-automatic timer explanation rose higher on the list. A simple matter to switch it off, restore darkness, hide as planned by the woodshed, continue as before, everything on schedule. He climbed onto the porch—and saw that the door wasn’t quite closed.
Almost, but not quite: snow packed in against the riser. Therefore? Roger straightened out of his crouch, peered through the window. And saw disorder, all a jumble, all a scramble, red, red, red, but—
The deed was done.
Deed done, deed done, deed done; there she was, laid out facedown beside the overturned table, in tennis shoes, one white, one red, and her hair a new color, red, red, red. From idea to reality, from conception to birth: his plan had borne fruit. But—
No Whitey. No Whitey to close the circle with, to write the last line of code, to make it perfect.
Roger whirled around, whirling with his body as his mind was already whirling inside, stared into the night, into the storm, saw nothing but night and storm. Red, so much red: she’d struggled, fought, perhaps hurt Whitey—even, oh what luck that would be!—killed him. Was it possible? Could he still be inside, dead or dying? What a simple revision that would be; in a second or two an amended plan took shape in Roger’s mind, complete. He shouldered the door open and went in, the ax in his hands.
Silence. Red in streaks, in drips, in pools; the cottage a shambles,the overused word never more fitting. Roger found a roll of paper towels on the counter, dried off the soles of his boots, mopped the damp tracks he’d already made, stuffed the paper towel in his pocket for later disposal—
flake of dandruff falls off your head, you fry
—and followed the red trail.
Dining room, living room: no Whitey. On the staircase: no Whitey. In the unused bedroom: cupboard drawers pulled out, mattress stuffing all over the floor, no Whitey in the closet, no Whitey under the bed. In the love-nest bedroom: red handprints on the duvet, a red row of penny-sized drops, almost perfectly straight, on the floor by the side of the bed, pink dust or powder here and there, perfumed air, no Whitey in the closet, no Whitey under the bed.
Roger tried the bathroom last: no Whitey curled up dying on the floor; a flashlight, not a body, in the shower. But someone had taken a shower—condensation still clung to the margins of the mirror. What else? More red: the tiles, the toilet, the sink; more perfumed powder—he realized the whole cottage was redolent of feminine scent; and a watch, Whitey’s watch—Roger recognized it—in the wastebasket. He picked it out with his gloved hand. It had stopped at 5:33. He checked his own watch: 6:15.
Six
-
fifteen precisely
. What had happened? Theories readied themselves in his mind, but what good were they? The deed was only half done and Whitey was on the loose. Roger saw himself in the mirror, eyes enormous, deep V-shaped notch between them, ax in one hand, Whitey’s watch in the other. He dropped the watch back in the wastebasket, started downstairs.
Down the stairs, through the living room, dining room, careful to avoid contamination with the red, mind working, working. Suppose—suppose the lover was on his way even now, due in twelve minutes? Suppose Whitey was lying out in the snow somewhere? Crawling toward the gate, perhaps, in hope of finding Roger. Ergo, what? Roger had no idea. No idea. That scared him. It wasn’t a matter of cognition, knowing that he was in a dangerous situation. It was a matter of feeling fear. Had he ever felt fear before? Not like this.
Roger went into the kitchen, his body trembling now. He stared out the window, holding tight to the ax handle. Never this afraid, but never had he failed to sort his way through suppositions, premises major and minor; never had he failed to think. What had gone wrong? Francie and Whitey had both arrived early, but why? Who had been first? And then? And then? His mind, powered by those 181 IQ points, came up with nothing but question marks. All problems were fundamentally mathematical, yes, but in this case there were too many unknowns. The chaos butterfly had fluttered its wings. Clutching the ax in both hands, Roger plummeted down and down into depths of fear he hadn’t imagined.
But that was nothing. Nothing, because the next moment, something caught his eye—a movement reflected in the glass. He whirled around, whirled again as he had whirled at the front door, again with his brain whirling inside: whirled around in time to see her raise her bloody head off the floor, see her turn toward him, see her look him right in the eye.
But not Francie. It was Anne.
27
P
aralysis.
Roger knew paralysis for the first time in his life. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think: paralysis physical and mental, paralysis complete. All he could do was accept sensory input—not process it, not analyze, syllogize, parse, deconstruct, induce, deduce, subdivide, ramify—merely accept. The worst part was that during this period of paralysis, however long it lasted, and of that he wasn’t sure, his eyes were locked on Anne’s, the whole long time.
And hers on him.
As he watched, the intensity of light in Anne’s eyes slowly changed, as though someone were adjusting the dimmer, turning it down. But not all the way. At one point, the dimming halted, and Anne opened her mouth and formed a word. No sound came out, but the word was clear:
Help
.
Roger didn’t move. He had his reasons, knew them without thinking, since he couldn’t think, a priori. First, this inexplicable paralysis. Second, he had no qualifications to provide help of the kind required. Third, he doubted it was in his interest. Of that he couldn’t be sure, not with so much data missing, but if forced to make an unsupported mental leap, he would have had to conclude that the survival of Anne would be of no help to him. So: help, no. He just couldn’t.
Roger didn’t tell her that, didn’t say
no
, because he couldn’t speak, but perhaps she understood anyway. The dimming control inside her began to turn again, down, down, down to nothing this time. Her head dropped to the floor—no, not dropped, she lowered it delicately, or since she couldn’t have had the strength for that, it was lowered delicately, as though by some unseen, protective force. Impossible, of course, the existence of such a force, for reasons too manifold to list.
With that, with her eyes no longer locked on his, her eyes still open, eyes in every manner but the essential, and therefore no longer eyes at all, Roger’s paralysis lifted. His mind cried out at once for data, starved for it, writhing around inside him for the lack of it. Whitey and Anne: it made no sense. How would Anne ever have known about this place? Why would she have come here? Was it conceivable that she’d been conducting an investigation much like his, but from the other side? Roger didn’t know. He needed data. Still, he couldn’t quite ignore a feeling, not of satisfaction, because of the miscarriage of his plan, but of a related wistfulness, bittersweet, based on the realization that he had come so close. So close: some bug in the programming had upset the timing; some other factor, probably uncontrollable, was responsible for the presence of the wrong woman.
Enough. A digression, although at the speed his mind worked it probably lasted less than a second, and therefore cost him nothing. Data. Start with the time: 6:30. Sixthirty! Was it possible that Francie and her boy were still on their way, might walk in at any moment? Roger hurried to the door, stuck his head out, saw nothing but snow, falling straighter now, and less heavily; heard nothing but the wind in the trees, lower in tone. But, yes, it was possible. Roger glanced around the kitchen. Could he somehow clean up, hide the body, hide every trace? Probably not. Was it in his interest? Why would it be? It wasn’t even in his interest to turn off the lights, in case the following question lay waiting for him in the future, in a courtroom, for example:
Who turned out the lights?
No. Simply get out and get out fast. And if they were coming? Roger didn’t know. Then he thought: what if Whitey was even at this moment crawling to the gate? Simultaneously—it could still happen! Not as planned, but in essence. If only he could be lucky just once in this goddamned life. Roger took the ax and went outside.
He made his way across the river to the western bank, toiled up the snowed-in lane through the meadow. Snow fell, but lighter now, and the wind was dying. Wouldn’t Whitey’s tracks still be visible if he’d gone this way? Roger shone his light back and forth across the meadow, saw snow unmarred all around.
He reached the gate: locked. Beyond it sat one car, covered in snow but a minivan from the shape—not Francie’s car, as he would have known at a glance had he come from this side, but Anne’s. Could Whitey be curled up behind it, or possibly inside? Roger unlocked the gate, walked around the car. No Whitey. But inside? More than unlikely, almost impossible. But if Whitey was inside, then at least he could control the damage by simply finishing him off right there. It meant leaving evidence because he would first have to brush snow off the window. Decision: Roger stood by Anne’s minivan, following long and complex ramifications through his mind. Then he brushed a swath of snow from the windshield and shone his light inside. No Whitey: just an open road map on the front passenger seat and a shopping bag from F.A.O. Schwarz in back. Were children involved? Roger didn’t recall. He scooped up some snow, tossed it on the bare glass. It wouldn’t cling for some reason, though he tried and tried. No matter. The falling snow would do the work, as it would cover his own tracks, tracks he saw clearly in the beam of his flash. He relocked the gate and started back to the island, failing to notice until he was almost there that the snowfall had stopped.
No snow, therefore tracks, L.L. Bean tracks, therefore—what? Process, process, process, Roger instructed his mind. But instead of processing, his mind writhed. “How much fucking data do you need?” he said aloud, perhaps shouted. Nothing came, not a wisp of an idea. This had never happened before. His mind had always risen eagerly to any challenge. Now challenge had become torment. No Whitey, no more snow, Anne dead, the cottage all red inside. Therefore? Nothing. No response. “Think,” he said, and smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, hard.
Nothing.
Roger walked back across the river and onto the island, avoiding the circle of light around the cottage. He leaned against a tree in the shadows, waiting for an answer. Perhaps a mind as powerful as his had powers that couldn’t be completely understood and so couldn’t be completely commanded, like some supercomputer approaching the realm of artificial intelligence. A calming thought. Roger relaxed slightly, shone the light on his watch: 7:00. Would they be coming now? No. They had a hot thing going, but not so hot they’d venture out on a night like this, with the prospect of so many clement nights lying ahead. Therefore—and just as Roger felt his mind come to life at last, felt it really readying itself to think—he realized he had seen not only his watch in the flashlight’s beam but something else as well. He switched it back on, swept it across the snow, saw dark stains on white.
Little stains, like ink drops on blotting paper, but these, he saw as he knelt in the snow, were red, not blue. They’d melted down into shallow pits, the red congealing now, still slightly wet. He took off his glove to make sure of that, touched the red with a fingertip, felt the wetness. After that he plunged his hand into clean snow, rubbed, rubbed, rubbed it off. At the same time his mind was spooling out lines of programming.
Subject: damage control. Datum: Whitey bleeding, perhaps to death. Task: to make sure he did so. Then came a mental leap, too swift to follow exactly, although he half caught images flying by: pattern of blood drops, unmarred snow by the gate, the snow-covered pickup parked at the lookout. Knowledge.
The next moment, Roger was on his way back across to the east side of the river, ax in hand, properly gripped near the head, blade down. Yes: Whitey curled up dying in a parked car; Roger had picked the wrong vehicle, that was all. He reached the east bank, scrambled up the ridge, grasping at tree branches, up over the top, onto the lookout. The pickup was gone.
And the hood of his own car had been brushed off, to identify it, of course. Therefore: Whitey and he weren’t . . . a team anymore. Roger darted around the car, checking the tires—unslashed. The only sign of Whitey’s mental state was the smashed-in rear window. Not good enough, Whitey. Roger unlocked the car, got in. Where would a Whitey-type go in these circumstances? The answer came at once: home to Mama. Not good enough either, Whitey. Roger started his car, backed out of the lookout. In the headlights, snow was falling again, falling hard. His tracks, the brushed windshield of Anne’s car, any other evidence left behind—all would be gone forever in a matter of minutes. This was a tidying-up operation, and nature was helping. The murder of Anne would be a perfect crime, just not the perfect crime he’d had in mind. Roger considered Columbus, bold discoverer of what he hadn’t been looking for. That was one similarity they shared. But Columbus’s greatest accomplishment had been in crossing that uncrossed ocean for the first time. After that the voyage was easy. The lesson: as long as he emerged tonight immaculate, he could deal with Francie at his convenience, like Columbus on a later trip, or Cortés, Pizarro, Balboa. At the same time, he felt an inner stirring, deep in his brain, in the heart of its very core, that some route toward his original goal still existed, a route involving Whitey. If he could make contact with it, draw it to the surface, examine for feasibility and refine for deployment, all before finding Whitey, then he might have to prolong Whitey’s life, or prolong it even more, to be accurate, since Whitey had already exceeded his allotment by almost an hour. Otherwise he would merely tidy up, as planned. This was more like it: he was doing what he did best, what he’d perhaps been born to do—ordering disorder. As he turned south on the lane, Whitey’s treadmarks not quite filled in with snow, Roger caught a glimpse in his rearview mirror of the cottage glowing on Brenda’s island. He prepared his reaction to news of the tragedy.
Drip drip. Lawton Ferry, 97 Carp Road. A dump. Whitey knocked on the door. Why would he ever think this was home? He’d never even been inside. He knocked again.
Come on, you stupid bitch
.
“Who is it?” A high, shaky voice, but hers: Whitey knew that at once from the way it grated on him.
“Open the fuckin’ door.”
Pause. “Oh my God.”
Click. The door opened. A thin old woman, bent and ugly, stood there gazing up in his direction, the centers of her eyes milky where they should have been black. “Oh, Donald,” she said. “You’ve come home at last.” She held out her arms.
“Are you nuts?” Whitey pushed past her, went inside, glanced around. A dump, and a stinking one.
She closed the door, followed him, sliding along crabwise, her head at a funny angle.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
“This is only how I can see just a teeny little. Around the edges like. Don’t work for TV at all, but I can’t say I miss it. Have you any idea the kind of filth—” She stopped, her face averted, but maybe seeing him semiclear from that angle. “Oh, Donald, has something happened?”
“Why would you say a stupid thing like that?”
“But you’re bleeding. Aren’t you? Aren’t you bleeding, Donald?”
“That matters to you? Acting like you never seen blood before?”
“What do you mean?” she said. He started down the hall to the back of the house. She twisted her head frantically, trying to get him in her field of vision. “It’s all the fault of that ungodly psychiatrist. I hope he burns in Hell for a thousand years.”
“Shut up, Ma,” Whitey said. “Where’s the sewing stuff?”
She started to cry: same old cry, like fucked-up crows. He went back into the front room.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She wiped her eyes, her snotty face, on the back of her hand. “You said
Ma
, Donald.”
“So?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“You’re out of your mind, you know that? Now, where’s the sewing stuff?”
“Sewing stuff?”
“I don’t have time for this. The sewing stuff, in that basket thing.”
“My sewing basket? The wicker one handed down from Granny Nesbit?”
“Just tell me where.”
“But, Donald, I don’t sew anymore. Haven’t for years. I can’t see the TV, never mind for sewing. I’m having eye difficulties, or haven’t you been listening?”
Whitey wanted to smack her, smack and smack and smack, but he was too weak, hurt too much, and it wouldn’t get him the sewing stuff any quicker, if at all. So he just took her by the wrist, and squeezed a little, family style. “I don’t want you to sew. I’ll sew. Just get me the basket.”
“But what’s torn,Donald? I knew you were hurt, just knew it.”
“No one’s hurt. A little fender bender is all.”
“A fender bender? Cross your heart?”
“Every time.”
She disappeared in her bedroom, returned with the sewing basket. “What’s there to drink?” said Whitey, taking it.
“Tea, of course,” she said, “and some Pepsi.”
“I mean a drink.”
“Like alcohol?”
“Yeah. Alcohol.”
“But you always liked Pepsi.”
“I want a fucking drink, for Christ sake.”
“None of that here, Donald, not since I joined up with the Redeemer Church. Have I mentioned them? And I really wish you could see fit not to take the Lord’s name in vain.”
He was already in the bathroom at the end of the hall, closing and locking the door. A stinking little bathroom. He turned on the light, looked at himself in the mirror. Blood, and plenty of it.
Someone was going to pay
.
Whitey found gauze and a roll of tape in the cabinet, also a bottle labeled Vicodin. Wasn’t that one of Rey’s favorites? He swallowed the three or four remaining tablets, took off his jacket and shirt, began to bandage himself. A long slash across his gut, a puncture in his chest that he picked a sliver of long green glass from—and that reddened the bandages almost right away—others. But they’d heal, no problem. The worst was under his chin, where a big flap hung down like a goddamn bullfrog tongue, dripping red in fat round plops: no bandaging that.
As Whitey opened the sewing basket, he remembered the bullfrog he’d speared through the head down on the I-95 median. Now, what the hell was that supposed to mean? Like God was watching from up in the clouds or something? He’d done nothing wrong on the median—thought it was a snake, remember? He’d killed the wrong thing, was all. And out on the river just now, he’d been put in an impossible situation, done what he’d had to. When the going gets tough, the tough get going—